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The Search for Florentine L. Noah's Ancestry out of N.C., TN, MO
My gr-gr-grandfather, Florentine is buried next to his wife, Mary Ellen Stout at the Kinsey Cemetery near Poplar Bluff, Missouri. He was born in Alamance County North Carolina 27th July 1850. He and Mary (b. 24th June 1855, N.C.)might have been married 1875, Obion, TN, not yet verified.
I began my research back in 2000, but suspended the process after 2003 when my husband and I downsized our life. I still have not reinstalled my Famuly Tree Maker Program, (computer problems), but do have all of my hand written notes.
I suspect that my Family line is that of Peter Noe because I believe I found Florentine in the 1860 census household of Edison H Noah and Margaret "Peggy" Fox. A male child of approximate age of 9-10 was list as "F" out of birth order with the two other toddler-age male and female children. Edison is in the Peter Noe family line.
My contacts with aged cousins (now deceased)provided some family lore that Florentine "did not like his first name" or that he "named himself" and so he was known as FL during his adult life. He was also
overheard to say that he "was a woods-colt." I presume an old euphemism for "illegitimate" child. He allegedly claimed that he "should have been a Spoon."
My research has revealed that the Spoon family name was prevalent in Alamance County where Florentine was born, and in the three surrounding counties. However, I have not been able to complete my Noah family lineage because of the mystery of Florence L.'s parentage. | <urn:uuid:6a683d5d-1d2c-4182-b548-de16f5cb57dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.familytreecircles.com/the-search-for-florentine-l-noah-s-ancestry-out-of-n-c-tn-mo-16437.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987229 | 379 | 1.5 | 2 |
More I'll Sing for You Pictures
During the 1950s and '60s, Boubacar ''KarKar'' Traoré is at the center of the Malian music scene, until the government cracks down and Mali's economy suffers due to new government policies. Eventually, KarKar emigrates to France, where he struggles to make a living as a singer. His life changes when a music producer finds one of his old recordings. The documentary follows his journey of redemption to Mali, where he pairs up with other renowned musicians, such as Ali Farka Touré.
Be the first to rate this movie | <urn:uuid:d097e81e-18e6-4119-8468-54c93daad7ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://movies.zap2it.com/movies/ill-sing-for-you/30415?aid=zap2it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963729 | 126 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Bay Area residents urged to keep pets indoors July 4
While Bay Area residents may delight in the region's annual Fourth of July fireworks displays, their furry companions may not enjoy the festivities as much.
Local animal shelters are advising people to leave their pets at home and indoors if they are going to go watch fireworks shows on July 4.
"Don't bring dogs out to firework shows," Peninsula Humane Society spokesman Scott Delucchi said. "You see people do it, but it's a terrible idea. It could be pretty traumatic for the dog."
The loud noises and bright lights can scare pets and cause them to panic and possibly run away.
"On a night you expect to hear fireworks, bring the animal indoors," Delucchi said.
He further recommends that pet owners shut the blinds or close the curtains, and turn the TV or music volume up.
"We find people who do that don't have any trouble," he said.
But if those measures have not worked in the past, Delucchi urges pet owners to speak with a veterinarian for other steps that can be taken to help the animal.
Delucchi advises those who leave their pets outside to shore up fence boards for sturdiness.
"Take a walk around to make sure the boards are secure," Delucchi said. "Take a look at that before the Fourth of July."
He said Independence Day is usually the busiest time of year for the Humane Society, but that the number of pets lost on the holiday has dropped significantly over the past 15 years because people are taking more precautions.
San Francisco Animal Care and Control is reminding owners to make sure their pets' identification tags are visible at all times, and to have a veterinarian implant a microchip in addition to the tags.
animal, 4th of july, local news
- Santa Cruz police arrest crime plot mastermind
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- I-5 bridge collapse raises Bay Area safety questions
- Damage reported after 5.7 quake in Greenville
- Police position DUI checkpoints in unsuspecting areas
- Limos without valid permits listed on airport website
- Shift in tactics may be helping Oakland police
- 3-D printer helps save dying baby with rare disease
- Lawmakers want to restore dental care to Medi-Cal
- Walnut Creek student dies after brain hemorrhage
- NASA Ames focusing on advanced manufacturing
- abcnews: McDonald's CEO scolded by 9-year-old
- roundup: Bicyclist killed ID'd; Unsolved murder
- weather: Bay Area weather forecast for Saturday
Most Viewed StoriesMost Viewed VideoMost Viewed Photos | <urn:uuid:efe0963d-42f7-49e1-91f0-956523062138> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=8723490 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955867 | 546 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Danny Glover heaved a sigh when I asked him recently what he thought of President Obama’s performance so far.
It wasn’t a sigh of relief.
“I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different,” the activist movie actor said of Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. “On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street?”
“He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman,” says Danny Glover. “But what choices do they have within the structure?”
More in sorrow than in anger, Glover went on: “What choice does he have—in four years, eight years? Let’s just call a spade a spade. Really. There are no choices out there. He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman—but what choices do they have within the structure?”
• Reihan Salam: Obama Is the Left’s Worst Enemy Glover is among a growing chorus of African-American opinion leaders who are publicly and privately expressing varying degrees of resignation, disappointment, and outright anger concerning a presidency on which so many hopes have ridden. Who can forget the iconic image of the tear-streaked Rev. Jesse Jackson—who in 1984 and 1988 waged formidable campaigns of his own for the Democratic presidential nomination—as he stood overcome with emotion amid the jubilant crowd at Chicago’s Grant Park as Obama gave his victory speech?
These days Jackson is decidedly dry-eyed.
“Let me distinguish African-American support for the president from the need to challenge policies and protect our interests,” Jackson said. He argues that vocal and effective activism on Obama’s left flank could alter the political dynamic and help him accomplish such goals as health-care reform, job creation, and stricter regulation of Wall Street—in much the same way that civil-rights marches in the South, and the media attention they received, captured the nation’s moral imagination and helped Lyndon Johnson pass landmark legislation in the mid-1960s. “But this doesn’t always turn on a race-based analysis,” Jackson cautioned. “It doesn’t always have to be a function of animus” of one African American for another.
Yet in recent weeks, such prominent voices as Rep. John Conyers, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and New York Times columnist Charles Blow have been among those taking shots at Obama over his policies, rhetoric, and political positioning.
“A lot of people are pissed off out there,” said one well-known political player who slams the president for embarrassing African-American Gov. David Paterson of New York by trying to shove him out of next year’s Democratic primary election in favor of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and campaigning vigorously for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine’s unsuccessful reelection race while ignoring African-American candidate Bill Thompson’s closer-than-expected mayoral bid against Mike Bloomberg. “Thompson could have won that race,” says this politico, who—for the moment, anyway—is keeping his powder dry and declining to criticize the president on the record.
Conyers, in a remarkable outburst to The Hill newspaper, recounted how he cut Obama off a few weeks ago when the president phoned to demand an explanation for the congressman’s blunt criticisms of the troop surge in Afghanistan (“he’s getting bad advice from clowns”), Obama’s compromises on health-care reform (“bowing down” to the “nutty right wing”), and his alleged mishandling of the promised prison shutdown at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“He called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues,” Conyers told The Hill. “And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’ ” But the 80-year-old Conyers informed the president that he was in no mood to chat. “I’ve been saying I don’t agree with him on Afghanistan, I think he screwed up on health-care reform, on Guantánamo and kicking Greg off,” Conyers added, referring to the forced resignation of White House counsel Gregory Craig over the Guantánamo prison issue.
The New York Times’ Blow, in his Dec. 4 column, noted the president’s surprising lack of empathy for blacks suffering disproportionately from the dire effects of recession.
“There was an expectation, particularly among African Americans, that the first African-American president would at least be vocal about feeling their pain,” Blow said last week on MSNBC’s Hardball. “I think that has not been the case. The president has given a couple of speeches and he has been very heavy on the stick and not very heavy with the carrot… Just in the inability for him to commiserate with that group of people, people feel a bit deflated… He said he’s not going to focus separately on African-American issues at all. That let a lot of people down.”
These sentiments are mirrored in recent polls suggesting that while overall support for Obama among black voters continues to be overwhelming, hovering in the 90 percent range, the intensity of that support appears to be diminishing—a trend that could end up affecting black turnout in next year’s congressional midterm elections and possibly even the presidential election of 2012.
A breakout of black voters in Washington Post surveys over the past eight months shows that those who “strongly” approve of Obama fell from 85 to 69 percent, while his disapproval rating quintupled—from 2 to 11 percent. Admittedly, that’s still very low number, but it’s evidently moving in the wrong direction.
Senior research associate David Bositis, of the African-American-oriented Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, says record black turnout was among the factors that delivered six key swing states to Obama, totaling 107 electoral votes, in the 2008 election—Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Bositis predicted that black turnout for Obama will remain strong in 2012—and that the president enjoys significantly higher approval ratings among black voters than African-American members of Congress in their own districts. But independent pollster Matthew Towery, a former Republican strategist, said even a slight diminution in turnout could have an outsize impact.
“In a state like Florida, which Obama won by two percentage points, a falloff of 10 percent in black turnout might have changed the result and given the state to McCain,” said Towery, who recently conducted a statewide poll showing the president with an astonishing 35 percent disapproval rating among African Americans in Georgia. Towery cautioned that the startling statistics might be a peculiarity, owing to the brutal economic downturn in a state that was only recently booming.
“My best guess is that the current black polling numbers for Obama are somewhat unusual in Georgia because black professionals and the black middle class here have had to get in the unemployment line alongside younger workers who've only recently moved to the city and state; and many of them, too, have seen their houses foreclosed on,” Towery wrote in a recent column. He added: “Will government’s apparent inability to effect the promised positive 'change' begin to fan discontent in other black communities across the nation? Or will this encroaching uneasiness with Obama stay limited to this one snapshot in time in this one Southern state? We can't yet know, but the early signs are there.”
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects. | <urn:uuid:a281549e-e12b-46f2-a9d9-5b6efb8c6cf9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/12/15/has-obama-abandoned-blacks.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96541 | 1,810 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Talmud Study Online
I've had the opportunity from time to time to learn the Talmud, but currently there is nothing being offered in my area. I was wondering if it's possible to do this online, and if so, what sites are the best?
The Aish Rabbi Replies:
It's always best to study with a local rabbi. This will give you an opportunity to probe the nuance of the issues, and develop a personal connection with a rabbi, which will enrich your Torah growth far more than any online study. It will also avoid many inherent ambiguities.
Having said that, if you have no other option, then yes, the Talmud can be studied online. Try these websites:
I also suggest checking out the Gemara Marking System. This is an innovative method that uses geometric shapes to structure the Gemara, thereby increasing understanding, retention, and effective review. Over 25 years in development, this method is currently being used by thousands of people worldwide.
The markings visually highlight what is unfolding on the page, and break down the flow of the Gemara into precise points: What is the Gemara trying to prove with this statement? How does it correlate with what comes before and after? What are its implications for the overall structure? The markings are overlayed and interconnected – providing a clear, composite picture of each section of Gemara. There are free "pre-marked" Gemaras, to demonstrate how the system works, as well as audio classes to learn Daf Yomi using the Gemara Marking System. Check it out at www.gemaramarkings.com | <urn:uuid:3e4d90c0-7dbb-4bd6-9773-fd3f9227da4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aish.com/atr/Talmud_Study_Online.html?catid=911709 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94961 | 330 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Stories of Survivorship
Marjorie had survived cancer before. Back in 1998 when she lived in Flushing, New York, she was diagnosed with Stage 3B cervical cancer and was treated with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy followed by a hysterectomy.Last October, Marjorie decided to take the train to New York, followed by a subway ride to Queens, to visit a friend. The next morning, she awoke with a pain in her outer breast. She thought it was a strained muscle from going up and down the subway stairs.After two mammograms and two ultrasounds, she met Dr. Anees Chagpar, Director of the Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital. Dr. Chagpar told her that there were two masses in the outer side of her right breast.
Raffaella Zanuttini’s busy life as a Professor of Linguistics at Yale, as a wife, and as a mother of two boys, 12 and 15, does not leave her much spare time. So when her February mammogram showed more calcifications lined up in a suspicious pattern and the nurses at the Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital recommended she have a biopsy, she was not ready to act. After having the biopsy done, Rafaella was diagnosed withductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). She made an appointment with Dr. Anees Chagpar, Director of the Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital. | <urn:uuid:d6c4d4d3-2eb9-4e56-ae6b-4b92a8698e30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medicine.yale.edu/cancer/patient/support/stories/index.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9809 | 304 | 1.554688 | 2 |
'Please help the Athens Olympics'
Wednesday, 14 April, 2004, 11:56 GMT 12:56 UK
A request for help in allocating funds to blood test the athletes at the summer Olympics
A message purporting to be from representatives of the Olympic Organizing Committee asking for help in disbursing funds for medical facilities at the Athens Games. Too much money has been allocated, it says, and as a trustworthy person, you've been selected to nominate an account to transfer the remaining $19m into. Please do not go public with this, it says, so as not to jeopardise the hospitals' chance of receiving the funding. For your trouble, you will receive 20%.
"My initial reaction was to laugh, to be honest," says BBC News Online user Ian Pearse. "We get so many of these at work, all written in over-friendly English with bad spelling, supposedly having been given our names as honest people."
If this ploy seems familiar, it is - it's a variation of the advanced fee fraud most commonly associated with requests for help in transferring government funds out of Nigeria (or the Philippines, or Eastern Europe...).
Those who respond will be asked for their - or their company's - bank account details, identification such as a photocopy of a passport or driver's licence, and an administration fee which may run to thousands of pounds.
Previous scammers have asked for funds to cover the cost of wiring money out of the country, or to pay for a security firm to transfer such a hefty wedge to the bank.
It should come as no surprise to learn that if a proposition seems to good to be true - that your name has been chosen out of all the people online in the world, that millions can be yours for such a seemingly simple task - then it is.
These scams hope to appeal to people's greed or their wish to help others. Following efforts to crack down on the now notorious Nigeria 419 scam, the fraudsters have changed their tactics.
Millions of unsolicited e-mails are sent out each year, purportedly from officials - in this case a doctor charged with testing athletes' blood - a banker, a distraught relative, who wants your help in the deal of a lifetime.
To gain trust, many impersonate real people or claim to represent genuine organisations such as the Olympic Organizing Committee. Some set up elaborate websites to help convince the victim that the deal is genuine.
Those who have been drawn in by such a scam should report it to the National Criminal Intelligence Service or contact their local police force. | <urn:uuid:2cc57635-e31f-4d49-96ce-c091003070d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957793 | 525 | 1.65625 | 2 |
ISLAMABAD — Alia Amirali is a second-generation change agent in a society that’s stuck — or maybe worse: scared, confused, depressed, afraid it might be sinking. Her project, she begins, is to “rebuild the left” in Pakistan. She is giving us just a hint of a program, and finally a sort of plea to her alienated family and friends: go out and meet a real Pakistani for a change. As if to say: let’s find in each other the land of milk and honey that our parents remember before the mosque and the military seized the country 30 years ago.
Alia Amirali is the general secretary of the Student Federation in the Punjab. She’s also a daughter with a very different spin on creative dissent from her eminent father Pervez Hoodbhoy. Most usefully for me, Alia Amirali is short-listing the obstacles the rising generation sees between here and a society you’d want to live in.
(1) the Post-Colonial State. The machinery of statehood was built by the British to administer a colony. So the “state” in Pakistan is older than the 64-year-old “nation,” and still a bad fit with a patchwork of Sindhis, Punjabis, Balochis and many more language and faith minorities that might likely choose a looser federation of provinces if they had the choice.
(2) Islamism. Mohammed Ali Jinnah‘s founding dream was of a homeland for India’s Muslims that would also be a secular state and a pluralistic society, but he died scarcely a year after Pakistan’s birth, leaving a “conceptual orphan,” as it’s been called. “Being Muslim,” Alia Amirali is saying gently, “is not enough to keep us all together as a nation.”
(3) The assassination habit. The most exalted powers in Pakistan, like Benazir Bhutto, and the humblest Balochi separatists face the same grim equalizers: torture, disappearance and/or death. The rule of the Army and the “deep state” in Pakistan, as Alia Amirali puts it, is: “if they cannot control it, they will crush it,” and they will not be held accountable.
(4) The void. Since the military outster and execution of the charismatic populist President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979, Pakistani politics has been a mostly closed brokerage of favors and commercial deals — proof against debatable national “issues,” proof against fresh talent, too.
(5) The USA. “The American presence,” which feels like “occupation” to Alia Amirali, “is the biggest contributor to this chaos, this back-to-the-cave situation that Pakistan is in.” For 30 years the United States has been at war in, through or around Pakistan; we embraced and enabled the Islamist martial-law President Zia-ul-Haq through the 1980s. It is this American imperial record that lends legitimacy to the Taliban, in Alia Amirali’s view, and more than anything else separates Alia Amirali from her father. “He is hoping somehow that this very same character who created this monster will do away with it.” | <urn:uuid:8a59ddb3-09ef-4e6d-9006-0baf87514425> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.radioopensource.org/alia-amirali-change-agent-in-a-stuck-society/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9559 | 717 | 1.820313 | 2 |
With a show of works by Boris Mikhailov, born in Ukraine in 1938, the Berlinische Galerie
is acknowledging a major position in contemporary photography. Mikhailov establishes many links between documentation and conceptual art, and in so doing he has also made an important contribution to media theory in terms of the way we look at photography and the history of our responses to it. In the 1990s, everyday meant existential, threatening. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he turned his attention to the losers in this social transformation, taking portraits, displaying poverty and despair, and with that the consequences of the ruthless, repressive Soviet system.
In 2002, Ulrich Domröse was able, as Curator of Photography, to purchase eight works from the series Case History for the Berlinische Galerie. Four works from the Berlin series In the Street followed soon afterwards. Mikhailov, who came to Berlin in 1996 on a DAAD bursary for artists, returned to the city in 2000. Since then he has divided his time between Berlin and his home town of Kharkov in Ukraine. Building on the Berlinische Galerie holdings, an exhibition has been designed that not only reflects the gallerys commitment to collecting contemporary art, but also documents personal relationships with Berlin as a backcloth to artistic experience, while presenting Mikhailovs work through a selection from different series.
Since starting out as a photographer in the mid-1960s, the artist has produced a wide-ranging and impressively multi-facetted oeuvre. A virtuoso, Mikhailov has drawn on very different possibilities presented by the medium, depicting his immediate surroundings with both brutal bluntness and humorous irony. His constant exploration of new photographic techniques, his use of widely varying styles, but also his abilitiy to switch between a conceptual approach and a documentary perspective, make him one of the most interesting artists of the present day.
The exhibition has been conceived as a retrospective and brings together a selection ranging from the experimental photographs of early years to works made recently in Berlin. It is the first comprehensive exhibition of the artists work to be shown in Germany.
David Saik who had already arranged the upper floor of the permanent collection of the museum space was again appointed to conceive the exhibition architecture. | <urn:uuid:095e0751-3032-43d0-8206-f07be8b383b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=53840&int_modo=2 | 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 | 0.969881 | 457 | 1.640625 | 2 |
All About Yoga’s resident teacher Gabrielle Louise sought to change her life after years of stressful work in the financial industry caused her both chronic pain and emotional strife. She quit her job and hightailed it to Africa, where her studies in plant medicines along with ceremony and ritual earned her initiation as a traditional healer. Over time—some spent in India and Tibet—she found that a heightened state of well-being, enhanced by yoga and meditation, brought her above the physical pain she experienced on a daily basis. She describes this process as her Kundalini awakening. Today, she shares this effort with her students at her studio, where her classes range from three yoga modalities to kriya meditation.
Gabrielle Louise guides students through a variety of yoga poses and, in the process, shows them yoga's many benefits, including deep relaxation, boosted flexibility, increased body awareness, and increased overall physical wellness. In addition, she also taps into other Eastern arts, restoring balance and boosting memory with meditation, increasing peace of mind with tai chi's gentle movements, and activating dormant happiness energies with qi gong's focused poses. | <urn:uuid:a027cf0b-3b9f-4820-ac82-4badd76ff303> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.groupon.com/local/jonesboro-ar/things-to-do | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967838 | 232 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Hillary Rodham Clinton / Johannes Simon, Getty Images
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, already ill with a virus, is now recovering from a concussion sustained after fainting, her office said Saturday.
Clinton "will continue to be monitored regularly by her doctors," said a statement from spokesman Philippe Reines.
"At their recommendation," Reines added, "she will continue to work from home next week, staying in regular contact with department and other officials. She is looking forward to being back in the office soon."
In explaining her injury, Reines said: "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion."
The virus had forced Clinton to skip a planned trip this week to North Africa and the Persian Gulf.
Clinton, 65, is expected to announce her retirement from the State Department soon.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is one possible replacement for Clinton.
Another candidate - United Nations ambassador Susan Rice - said Thursday she would not seek the position in the wake of Republican criticism over statements she made after the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya
The Associated Press, citing unnamed aides, reported that Clinton is not expected to testify at a Thursday congressional hearing on the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Hilary Clinton recovering from concussion | <urn:uuid:e2b505d6-345f-46a7-943c-851b8b42fe5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jacksonsun.com/usatoday/article/1771423 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946972 | 296 | 1.773438 | 2 |
In Praise of Consensus
The constitution of the debian operating system project says things like “consistent with the consensus of the opinions of the Developers” at various points but doesn’t say how strong a consensus or how the project will test for consensus. I think those were mistakes, breaking a couple of the conditions for consensus.
Wikipedia’s understanding of consensus is even worse. Wikipedia seems to treat consensus as a synonym for unanimity. Its testing methods allow an infinite loop to form where the casual observer can’t differentiate between a controversial proposal and consensus. I think those were mistakes.
These famous-but-imperfect implementations frequently lead to misdirected rants which seem to misunderstand consensus as requiring perpetual bikeshedding. Apache’s implementation is rather better – and it may surprise you to learn that our co-op is mostly run by consensus.
There are two key differences which I feel makes consensus work for us: we’ve set limits beforehand on some decisions where we need to act fast – where not making a decision would usually be the same as making a bad decision – and our methods of testing for consensus are better. We test for consensus with secret-at-vote-time-but-published-after straw polls, or using Crowd Wise by email.
I summarise Crowd Wise as follows: gather all ideas plus option 0 (do nothing) if possible, carry out a de Borda (preference) voting round 1, merge/amend/consolidate ideas, voting round 2 if needed. It does still work better if participants put their ego aside a little and co-operate, but it does put limits on non-co-operators.
Anyway, as described in Xana/ xana2/ bamamba/ Why Russ is wrong, debian isn’t exactly using consensus much at the moment, anyway. Should we try to fix its bugs? Do you know other projects where consensus is working?
Syndicated 2013-02-21 04:02:37 from Software Cooperative News » mjr | <urn:uuid:15d55a61-ba7f-4607-9b18-139219a3b2dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advogato.org/person/slef/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951387 | 428 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Stores typically open in the wee hours of the morning on the day after Thanksgiving that's named Black Friday because it's traditionally when they turn a profit for the year. In fact, generations of shoppers have made Black Friday rituals of going to bed early after munching on turkey and pumpkin pie so that they can head out to stores early the next day.
But Black Friday openings have crept earlier and earlier over the past few years as stores have experimented with ways to compete with online rivals like Amazon.com that can offer holiday shopping deals at any time and on any day. And this year, crowds gathered across the country as stores such as Target and Toys R Us opened on Thanksgiving evening, while retailers from Macy's to Best Buy opened their doors at midnight on Black Friday.
About 11,000 shoppers were in lines wrapped around Macy's flagship store in New York City's Herald Square when it opened.
Joan Riedewald, a private aide for the elderly, and her four children ages six to 18, where among them. By the time they showed up at the department store, Riedewalde had already spent about $100 at Toys R Us and planned to spend another $500 at Macy's before heading to Old Navy.
"I only shop for sales," she said.
Retailers are hoping that the earlier openings will help boost sales this holiday season. It is unclear how many shoppers took advantage of the earlier openings. But about 17 percent of shoppers said earlier this month that they planned to shop at stores that opened on Thanksgiving, according to an International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs survey of 1,000 consumers. Overall, it's estimated that sales on Black Friday will be up 3.8 percent to $11.4 billion this year.
Jeff Jones, the chief marketing officer at Target (TGT), says it's the customers who asked for it. "They tell us every year that they would love to be able to shop after dinner on Thanksgiving," he told "CBS Evening News," "and really not battle the overnight scene if they don't have to."
The earlier hours are an effort by stores to make shopping as convenient as possible for Americans, who they fear won't spend freely during the two-month holiday season in November and December because of economic uncertainty. Many shoppers are worried about high unemployment and a package of tax increases and spending cuts known as the "fiscal cliff" that will take effect in January unless Congress passes a budget deal by then. At the same time, Americans have grown more comfortable shopping on websites that offer cheap prices and the convenience of being able to buy something from smartphones, laptops and tablet computers from just about anywhere.
That's put added pressure on brick-and-mortar stores, which can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue during the holiday shopping season, to give consumers a compelling reason to leave their homes. That's becoming more difficult: the National Retail Federation, an industry trade group, estimates that overall sales in November and December will rise 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion, or about flat with last year's growth. But the online part of that is expected to rise 15 percent to $68.4 billion, according to Forrester Research.
As a result, brick-and-mortar retailers have been trying everything they can to lure consumers into stores. Some stores tested the earlier hours last year, but this year more retailers opened their doors late on Thanksgiving or earlier on Black Friday.
In addition to expanding their hours, many also are offering free layaways and shipping, matching the cheaper prices of online rivals and updating their mobile shopping apps with more information.
"Every retailer wants to beat everyone else," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America's Research Group, a research firm based in Charleston, S.C. "Shoppers love it."
Indeed, some holiday shoppers seemed to find stores' earlier hours appealing. "I ate my turkey dinner and came right here," said Rasheed Ali, a 23-year-old student in New York City who bought a 50-inch Westinghouse TV for $349 and a Singer sewing machine for $50 at a Target in New York City's East Harlem neighborhood that opened at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. "Then I'm going home and eating more."
Carey Maguire, 33, and her sister Caitlyn Maguire, 21, showed up at the same Target about two hours before it opened. Their goal was to buy several Nook tablet computers, which were on sale for $49.
But while waiting in line they were also using their iPhone to do some online buying at rival stores.
"If you're going to spend, I want to make it worth it," said Caitlyn Maguire, a college student.
By the afternoon on Thanksgiving, there were 11 shoppers in a four-tent encampment outside a Best Buy store near Ann Arbor, Mich., that opened at midnight. The purpose of their wait? A $179 40-inch Toshiba LCD television is worth missing Thanksgiving dinner at home.
Jackie Berg, 26, of Ann Arbor, arrived first with her stepson and a friend Wednesday afternoon, seeking three of the televisions.
The deal makes the TVs $240 less than their normal price, so Berg says that she'll save more than $700.
"We'll miss the actual being there with family, but we'll have the rest of the weekend for that," she said.
While some hoppers appreciated the early start to the holiday shopping season, some workers were expected to protest the expanded hours. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has been one of the biggest targets of protests against holiday hours. Many of Wal-Mart's (WMT) stores are open 24 hours, but the company offered early bird specials that once were reserved for Black Friday at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving instead.
The issue is part of a broader campaign against the company's treatment of workers that's being waged by a union-backed group called OUR Walmart, which includes former and current workers. The group is staging demonstrations and walkouts at hundreds of stores on Black Friday.
Mary Pat Tifft, a Wal-Mart employee in Kenosha, Wis., who is a member of OUR Walmart, started an online petition on signon.org that has about 34,000 signatures. "This Thanksgiving, while millions of families plan to spend quality time with their loved ones, Wal-Mart associates have been told we will be stocking shelves and preparing sales starting at 8 p.m.," she wrote on the site.
OUR Walmart said workers walked off their jobs in stores in Dallas, Miami and Kenosha, Wis., on Thursday. But a spokeswoman for the group did not immediately give numbers on how many workers participated.
For their part, retailers say they are giving shoppers what they want. Dave Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman, said that the discounter learned from shoppers that they want to start shopping right after Thanksgiving dinner. Then, they want to have time to go to bed before they wake up to head back out to the stores.
Still, Tovar said that Wal-Mart works to accommodate its workers' requests for different working hours. "We spent a lot of time talking to them, trying to figure out when would be the best time for our events," he said. | <urn:uuid:00460934-0e28-4f30-84da-cb9dfbe80e00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtsp.com/rss/article/283506/81/Black-Friday-gets-earliest-start-yet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979414 | 1,518 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Within a week, Kansas City police will be able to instantly pinpoint every gunshot fired within a 3.55-square-mile area of the urban core.
By CHRISTINE VENDEL
The Kansas City Star
Previously, police had to rely mostly on residents to report gunfire. But some residents were so used to hearing the staccato blasts that they quit calling police.
A new gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter which is expected to be running by Monday will direct officers to within several feet of where the shooter was when the gun was fired. It can also tell them how many shots were fired and how many weapons were used.
In addition, the system will be able to tell officers if shooters are in a vehicle or moving on foot, even providing a speed and direction of travel.
Police wont be more specific but said the system covers part of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authoritys Troost Max bus route and the Green Impact Zone.
The system will enable officers to respond more quickly to gunfire to increase the chances of catching suspects and finding victims, who may need medical attention.
Even if officers cant find victims or suspects, officers will contact residents in the area and try to gain information and cooperation and build relationships, police officials said. Police also plan to collect data from the system to help them deploy resources and crime prevention strategies.
The system uses multiple sensors to pick up the sound of gunfire. The information is fed to the operations center of SST Inc., the California-based company that developed and markets it. SST acoustics experts will then assess the information to determine if the sounds source is indeed gunfire or something else, like a car backfiring or fireworks.
When a sound is verified as a probable gunshot, the experts will alert Kansas City police dispatchers, who will see the location on a map on a monitor. The whole process should take about 45 seconds to one minute, police said.
ShotSpotter is used in more than 70 other cities across the country, police said, but Kansas City is thought to be the first where police and transit officials are collaborating on the project. The system is being funded for five years by a $720,000 federal grant. The money was left over from a previous ATA project.
To reach Christine Vendel, call 816-234-4438 or send email to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:1b3891eb-b9d1-4549-ac4a-675bed0af830> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/26/3835550/was-that-a-gunshot-new-kc-system.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957449 | 490 | 1.820313 | 2 |
- 1 - Mini Gravel Cleaner (1" x 12" Tube)
- 1 - UGV Filter Stack Head (with grates)
- Air Tubing (Approx - 6 FT)
- Air Tubing Suction Cups
- 1" Heater Clip/Suction Cup
- Fittings... 1 Tee / 1 Plug for Air Tubing
How to Build It...
Buy a Mini Gravel Filter , pull off the hose , plug that end with a standard Air Tubing Plug .
Cut The Gravel Cleaner Body down to 6" .Now cut a piece of tubing to run from inside of Stack Head to 1" from end of tube.
I placed a tee on the end to airline , if for no other purpose...it looked good there !
Anyways... Now just run Air Tubing through the Stack Head with a tubing connector .
Off the other side of the connector attach your tubing to the CO2 supply ... Simple as that.
When mounted properly it hides nicely against the wall of your tank. Remember...
The larger the bubble the more CO2 diffuses into water.
- Air Tubing clip
- Air Tubing
- Cut down to 6"
- Remove hose and plug or run tubing to powerhead intake for more water flow over bubble
Tips on How to Set it up!
When positioning the diffuser remember that water flow past the opening will increase CO2 amounts entering your water.
I have a powerhead in the corner of tank that points down to diffuser and puts constant flow past opening.
I keep a heavily stocked tank in regards to fish so water flow is critical to me.
Any excess buildup of CO2 in diffuser will just release to surface and dissipate.
At 1 bubble every 5 seconds I have 1 large bubble escaping the diffuser every few minutes.
When my Generator slows to 1 Bubble every 10 seconds it still will still release CO2 and maintain a large " puddle " of CO2 dissolving into water at all times.
You will be able to tell easily when a new yeast mix is needed because your Mix will not be able to keep up with the dissolving "Bubble" in your diffuser !
It usually takes about 4 - 5 hours for a full bubble of CO2 to dissolve so it gives you a little time to get new mix activated.
Another good feature of this set-up is that it acts as a nice "Bubble Counter" as well.
Now you can monitor your Yeast Mix without trouble.
You will never need to guess again if your generator is producing CO2 at a good rate and you also can eliminate
having a seperate counter hooked up.
Notice the angle in the END VIEW .
This angle is what determines the overall size of the CO2 puddle by holding back a " thicker " bubble.
It isnt the thickness of the bubble that will gain you CO2 content in your water but the " Surface Area " of the bubble to water contact that counts.
If it is adjusted so that the bubble is at the center of the tube and the tube is level it will have the greatest amount of CO2 in contact with the water for dissolving.
For a lesser amount of CO2 simply angle the tube position to give you a smaller amount of bubble contact with water.
Excess CO2 will simply rise to surface leaving a constant size of bubble contact as you can see in the SIDE VIEW photo.
When it is installed be sure to test water no more than 12 hours later as properties will change RAPIDLY !
For 30 Gallon Tanks and under you should start with an angle in Diffuser and adjust accordingly.
All those articles on the how-too's of water parameters are out there and I strongly suggest you do what I did and Read .. Read .. Read
... like I said this setup is in a 30 gallon and my plants were flowing 02 and were noticably happier in the first day !
Now that I have it adjusted to my needs ,
I am staying nicely in the 20 - 25 ppm range and my plants and fish have never looked better...
If you have been an " Aquarium Accessory Pack Rat " like me over the years you probably have most of the parts allready... and the mini-vac ??
I paid 3.99 for that.
Have fun with it and if you have any suggestions or ideas to improve on it I would be interested to hear them . Enjoy !
Article written by Buck (Buckman's Home)
Have a question about this article? Discuss it on the board! | <urn:uuid:a6db6023-c183-429b-a631-dd7ea437a39a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plantedtank.net/articles/DIY-CO2-Diffuser/8/ | 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 | 0.933644 | 954 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Essay by Jan Hokenson
Department of Comparative Literature / Florida Atlantic University
"I can't decide whether to have my novel be a comedy or a tragedy," boasts the male lover of Lisa Alther's first heroine, the now legendary Ginny Babcock in Kinflicks. Terminally weary of male pretensions, she retorts, "Does it make any difference?" "Of course it does. It determines the whole structure. The essence of comedy is that life goes on; the main characters are survivors. They keep popping back up whenever they're knocked down. In tragedy, though, the heroes usually die and drag kingdoms down with them." In this rare moment of reflexive poetics, the young man is as wrong about Ginnie's sexuality as he is about Alther's own novelistic art. In Alther's comic novels, it is heroines who are knocked down and drag male kingdoms with them, only to pop back up and look around, ready to take on another one, optimally in the loving company of another woman. Wars, rapes, tortures, treacheries, grisly maimings--our modern tragedies--proliferate. They change the rhythm of life but they cannot stop the protagonists' serio-comic, poignant quest for clarity and conviction. Social and political ideologies, indeed any inflexible system of knowledge, turns out to be pseudo-heroic posturing, just so much macho impedimenta. Along the way to that discovery Alther's comic heroines get themselves into hilarious dilemmas and do battle with some of America's most cherished cultural assumptions about social justice, personal identity, dignity, and love.
Her first novel, the best-seller Kinflicks, won Alther a wide audience in 1975, when reviewers at the New York Times Book Review and The Nation hailed her "comic genius" and welcomed this new voice in American literature. Four subsequent novels, a novella, and four stories have strengthened that voice and extended its range, as Alther has continued exploring the lives and deaths of her generation of Americans. In 1996, recognizing Alther's prominent place in American letters, Penguin reissued the five novels in new editions. Regularly translated into many languages, Alther is one of few American lesbian novelists who have achieved mainstream readership and an international audience.
In addition to the appeal of madcap comic characters and deft social satire, one of the reasons for such steady success may be that, in an age when gay writers can deluge readers with explicit sexual detail, Alther is more concerned with the emotional impact of sex and sexualities. She takes a biographical approach to character (each protagonist is rooted in a rural Southern childhood before being loosed into the laboratory of the world) and she keeps her focus trained on the single, manifold problem of making sense of things-- sex included. In an Alther fiction, sexuality begins straight (a Southern duty) only to turn wildly experimental in gay and lesbian follies, before settling into patterns of lesbian courtship, mechanical misfittings, spiritual misfirings, and other comic couplings that leave Alther's women ecstatic for a time, but increasingly bemused by the strange incompatibility of human desires. Alther's lesbians are born asking impertinent questions about the world and, all their lives, rejecting facile answers outright. Comedy occurs in the collisions with authority and the brutal tyrannies by "experts" of all sorts. Alther's people must strike out on their own, working their way through gender stereotypes and discarding conventional wisdom. One of Alther's distinctions is that her women must think their way forward, and so Alther's "comi- tragedies" (to borrow Beckett's term) resonate with rollicking debates about the nature of the individual in a swiftly changing culture.
Alther favors the Bildungsroman or novel of education, tracking gay or androgynous characters from infancy forward, and charting both their inexhaustible sensuality and their increasing clarity of mind. Emily in Original Sins has "difficulty thinking in categories," and certainly cannot fit into any of them, until she realizes that most social categories are themselves manipulative, faintly absurd conventions. The most tenacious convention for Alther's people is the ideal of romantic love, which they keep rejecting and ridiculing- -and reenacting. They all come to realize, like Jude in Five Minutes in Heaven, that "everyone is a house of mirrors," flashings of different heritages, social contexts, sensualities, which can combine now this way, now that, in a dynamic kaleidoscope of cultural icons and contradictory possibilities. Soulmates are a long shot.
Alther works with two primary forms, the multi-character epic or the duologue of two women in alternating states of consonance and dissonance. Kinflicks and Five Minutes in Heaven track one young woman through a lifetime's relations and acquaintances, flashing back repeatedly to past actions and origins of present reflections, and Original Sins fans out prismatically into alternating monologues of five different characters in successive stages of life. Other Women rotates two monologues, each riven with flashbacks, to weave the friendship that eventuates between a young lesbian mother and her psychotherapist, session by session. Alther once interlaced both forms in vigorous, tensile balance in Bedrock, where two women lovers try to comprehend an entire New England town. Whether the structure is prismatic or dual, the Alther novel uses monologues to alternate viewponts and to weave the past (of American social history as well as main characters) into the present. Frequent flashbacks (Alther's people are their past-in-the-present) function both comically and tragically, revealing, for instance, the ludicrous hubris of youth and the grotesque mortality of a generation organizing Freedom Rides, discovering drugs and contraceptives, fighting in Vietnam, smashing color lines and gender ceilings, dying of cancer and gay-bashing.
Alther's rebellious lesbians begin as gentle iconoclasts, wondering about the nature of stereotypes while enduring each one like a hair shirt. Ginny Babcock's uproarious escapades as a Southern tomboy, a Spinoza-spouting ivy-leaguer, a lesbian communer, a frantic New England housewife and mother, an angry adulteress, fuse into facets of the disillusioned young woman in the present. The hilarity of the heroines' predicaments derives both from the Molieresque eccentricities of people around them, a comic cast of Americana, and from their own (Southern) impulse to please them all. Minor characters in the margins furiously debate the novels' major issues (free will, medical ethics, human cruelty) like a satiric chorus to the heroine's epic endeavors on the main stage. Great ideas collide around them, and regional cultures clash within them, as they navigate the American landscape of 1950-90, pot-holed with racism and bigotry, colonial war guilts and liberation movements.
In taut prose of sure precision and figurative power, shot with deft comic timing and crackling dialogue, Alther fluidly shifts between several registers, from lyric to broad farce. She is primarily known as a social satirist, and she uses satire both to critique the sorry state of America's ideals and to celebrate the comical optimism that always surfaces again, if only in disenchanted burlesque.
Although the thematic territory differs in each novel, as does the American decade, the Alther heroine stumbles like Candide through fake truths and phony promises. What begins in hapless earnest ends in comically discarding the savior du jour (evangelical religion, paternalistic capitalism, revolutionary politics), always including sexual correctness (sex is sport, sex is sacred) and manipulative lovers, until she throws up her hands and begins using honest candor as a way of living. Alther's implication seems to be that, where knowledge and the knowers are corrupt, aggressive naivete is the best self-defense--and may be an epistemological tool for the bare beginnings of understanding oneself and the world.
In early Alther, however, that is a lonely bargain, clarity at the cost of social connection. As the later novels center upon two women, in more nuanced "spelunking in the caverns of the psyche" (in Other Women), Alther's practice of constructing characters from their successive roles or incarnations is interiorized into the women's own reflections on their experience. Like Caroline in Other Women, they learn to see their own "reruns" and to discern, like Clea in Bedrock, their "connectedness" in a world without peace or perhaps even sanity.
Horrific scenes of cultural violence (white on black, black on black, liberal Yankee on conservative Southern, male on female) are riddled with Alther's irrascible humor. In Original Sins, women are just orifices for black and white male sympathy (especially "the Great Ear"). Cinematic techniques of scene-splitting mock heroic pretensions (idealists quarrel against the background dialogue of American Bandstand, feminists couple to the strains of "Stand by your man/ Give him two arms to cling to"), and background tv's superimpose images of carnage, displaying Freedom Riders being hosed down in the barbaric South while Black Power leaders abuse "their" women in Manhattan. The novels are slashed or spliced with such comic and sarcastic fragments of their englobing cultural contexts, in Alther's electronic fantasia of irreverence.
Such quicksilver slippage between viewpoints is more than just a comic technique, for it manifests the instability of perception and identity in the carnivalesque confusions of personal aspirations and cultural realities. Alther's gay characters in particular wonder whether they can survive it all with any indviduality. Carnival--the wild fun, the certain danger, the mad masks as well as the freakshow- -is never far in Alther's fiction. It too has many forms, such as the acid hilarity of the masks: Emily in Original Sins, at her dreary publishing job for sexist bosses, has one of the Alther moments of recognition: "Emily suddenly saw herself as Stepin Fetchit: 'Yassuh, that noose is mighty fine. Law, it looks so fit and snug! Why, boss, you just the smartest thing!'" At the end of Other Women, as anguished therapy ends and winter ice is breaking up, birds begin coming back from tropical migrations "like revellers returning from a Caribbean carnival." The interior, psychic carnival of the late novels has its roots in the earlier epics. In Bedrock Clea abandons trendy Manhattan for the bedrock of an historic American village, which turns out to be a ten-generation carnival of crazies. One denizen prefigures the later heroines in realizing, "We all crazy... it's just a question of how, not whether." Whether carnival in Alther is a place, a bewitching person, a state of mind, it beguiles and seduces, and passage through it chastens and cleanses.
Alther's is the classic carnival of the world topsy-turvy, where an ass is obeyed in office and the Pope wears donkey's ears. It is a frightening realm of deadly danger, because it scrambles all certainties in a danse macabre with extinction (of outworn selves, of ideals), and to survive it is to win the boon of authenticity (and so maybe oneday true love). Ginnie Babcock's descent into the basement with Hawk the mind-tripper, Clea and Hannah's spelunking in the psyche, Jude's flight into the catacombs of Paris in Five Minutes in Heaven, are forms of carnival where, if Alther's holy fools learn to laugh at themselves, they gain the wisdom of humane insight and the strength to carry on without a big idea.
Increasingly in the later novels, as cultural lunacy extends its compass, Alther focuses on the concomitant problem of whether love without erotics, even for two women who love each other intensely, can suffice in such a world. The answer, in the self-mocking flourish of fairy tale in Bedrock and in the uprorious mock-heroics in Five Minutes in Heaven, is probably laughter, an Erasmian hoot at the folly of such questions, in such a world.
Many readers have noted that they can trace the changes in contemporary American culture by charting the shifts in Alther's social landscape of America. However turbulent the setting, Alther always measures politics--social and sexual--against a high standard of humane value; laughing travesty can swiftly soar into dark anger. In Manhattan Emily watches Civil Rights leaders exploit the women's movement: "And next week the sisters would be stacked in someone's attic like cast-off hulahoops. Political consumerism. Fuck it." In Other Women, Hannah is Alther's first authority figure worthy of affection, indeed honor, as a scarred and humane healer, and a woman. In Five Minutes in Heaven, following one of the finest sagas of Southern childhood since Huckleberry Finn (now with tomboys), and after the serial deaths of three beloveds, Jude flees to Paris-- straight into Alther's first cross-cultural comedy of the not-so-innocent lesbian abroad, who trips over French social and sexual values with panache. Like several late Alther heroines, though more intensely, Jude ponders the nature of evil. Alther leaves her still thinking through it, and still learning to laugh.
Department of Comparative Literature
Florida Atlantic University
BACKGROUND | EVENTS |
BOOKS | GUIDE |
PHOTOGRAPHS | INTERVIEW | <urn:uuid:a0402433-6a37-4a13-a97e-bf2bc52f1cf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artvt.com/writers/alther/p_althercritq.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934795 | 2,862 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Welcome to GROWERSINDIA Goat Farm, Home of Talassery, boer and talassery x boer crossbreed and sirohi breeds, Wherever The Focus is on Quality not Quantity. Our farm is established in belukurichi, namakkal-dt tamilnadu.
We would like to invite you to can come into our Farm site and take a look about. Our Boer Goat Farm was begun in 2010 with the goal in mind to put together a herd of 50 boer breeding does and to provide sound quality registered breeding stock to the Boer Goat Industry.
We started off with just a handful of does that were got locally from identified breeders We put in the last two years growing our herd from our main does. As we grew our herd, we culled nearly anything that did not produce the quality we were looking for and was lacking parasite resistance.
We are the contributing Goat India. Indian farmers raise different variety of Goats depending on the temperature, quantity of resources and need of a farmer, while some raise for meat others raise for milk and manure. Goat Meat is preferred by many communities and countries for variety of reasons, mostly favorite in big crowd parties, Lean Meat diet for regular consumption, religious practices etc, there are very few good sized continuum Goat Farms which cater the demand. There is vast demand for Indian Goats overseas as well, Indian goats are desired over other regions due to the fact of their natural growth and quality of meat. In today's world SUPERIOR is something which every distributor would like to offer and every buyer would like to are given. The important reason to raise the goats in stall is QUALITY.
Stall fed goats are favorite for many reasons, these goats are elevated and nourished in clean and neat sheds, providing best well-being and food for the goats. The stall fed system is positive for both the farmer and the shopper, while the farmer benefit from control over each and every goat, their fast growth, better control over diseases and better utilization of manure, the consumer gets the QUALITY product. Financial goat farming in India is a developing, innovative and growing sector. Goat are a very fundamental species of livestock in India, mainly on balance of their short generation intervals, higher rate of prolifically and the ease with which the goats and their products can be marketed. Goat India are main meat animals of India, their meat is most preferred and hence the costliest of all meats.
Many factors have an effect on the nutritional specifications with goats: maintenance, growth, pregnancy, lactation, fiber production, activity and natural environment. As a general rule of thumb, goats will consume at least 3% of their body weight on a dry matter basis in feed. The exact percentage varies according to the size (weight) of the goat, with smaller animals needing a higher eating (percentage-wise) to maintain their weight. Maintenance requirements increase as the level of the goat's actions increases. Goat Farms India that has to travel farther for feed will have a higher maintenance requirement than a goat in a feed lot. Environmental conditions also affect repair requirements. In cold and severe weather, goats require more feed to sustain body heat. The added highlights involving pregnancy, lactation and growth further increase requirements. | <urn:uuid:708741fa-d888-4b17-961d-3a070ff7eaa1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.design21sdn.com/share/21923 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965706 | 668 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Sat May 26, 2012
'Istanbul': A Twisted Tale Of Foreign Espionage
Originally published on Sat May 26, 2012 10:52 am
The big war is over, and the Cold War has just begun. Leon Bauer, an American tobacco man, wonders how to fit into this new world.
Bauer and his wife, Anna, a German Jew, made it to Istanbul just before World War II began. With his U.S. passport and fluency in German and Turkish, the tobacco man became useful to allied intelligence.
But before he picks up a more peaceful life, Bauer is given a last big job. He's supposed to slip Alexi, a Romanian defector with important Soviet secrets, out of Istanbul. Alexi's secrets might help old allies — but the defector once helped massacre Jews in Romania.
Bauer is being asked to help a man in this new war who represents what he fought in the last one.
The storied, intricate, contradictory city of Istanbul is a fitting backdrop for Joseph Kanon's new book, Istanbul Passage. Kanon tells NPR's Scott Simon that he set the novel in Istanbul after visiting as a tourist. "I fell in love with it and thought this would be a great excuse for coming back again and again to do research," he says.
On the city of Istanbul as a protagonist in the novel
"Istanbul was, in a sense, how the book started. But the larger answer, of course, is that the period that particularly interests me, which is the war and the immediate aftermath — it had long been known for derring-do and intrigue — but during our time it had become a neutral city, right on the fringe of the war, and as a result, it was a magnet for spies. It was one of those places where Germans and Russians and British could actually meet in somebody's drawing room — all during the war. It was, in essence, all a kind of Casablanca. But now that time is coming to an end."
On how Kanon's novels are inspired by places
"It's really the place. It began with Los Alamos, and I went there as a tourist and became so intrigued and fascinated, and I wanted to know what it was like to have been one of the scientists — what was it like to be part of the Manhattan Project. And one thing leads to another; Berlin fascinated me because of the American occupation about which I knew relatively little, and I wanted to know more. So you follow your interests. Once you saturate yourself in the place and its layering of history, the characters suggest themselves; and once you have the characters, then you're there."
On Leon Bauer's transition to a tobacco man
"To have been an expatriate businessman at that period had a fair amount of money and glamour attached to it. It was interesting to have lived in Istanbul for Leon. The job wasn't drudgery. He wasn't dragging himself to the office every day. It was fairly easy. There was almost that neo-colonial life that the European community was leading in Istanbul. And it had its pleasures; he enjoyed it. What he didn't want, particularly, was to be transferred back to Raleigh into a cubicle or what would then have been a small office."
On loyalties and compromise
"I mean, I find that ultimately what you want to talk about is: How do we live? How do we make these moral choices, and where do we draw the personal line of your own moral limits? In this particular instance, I wanted to set up a situation for him early on where he has a choice, but both choices seem to him wrong — whatever you do isn't right. What do you do in that kind of situation? And I find that it's more and more this sense of moral compromise, [and it's] very much part of the world that we've inherited.
"You know, people often say, 'Why write about this period?' And I think the immediate postwar period is the beginning of our time. If we want to use a movie metaphor for it: The world begins with the black and white clarity of Casablanca. You know where you're at. It's romantic. Ingrid Bergman walks in and looks wonderful, and things are very clear. But the war ends with The Third Man and the kind of muddied, gray moral compromise that I think really was the world that it ushered in, and the world that we've inherited."
On being called the next Graham Greene
"I think it's a flattering comparison, and you know you could be compared to other thriller writers, but I think it's being said — when people pigeonhole you this way — is that there's a certain level of seriousness, of purpose, I hope of fine writing."
On moral reasoning and making bargains
"We all tell each other stories so we can understand more of the variety of experience that's around us, because we're going to have to make these decisions. I think day by day — often we're taking them in very small steps; they're not certainly as dramatic or highlighted as they would be in this sort of novel, which is one of the reasons we have these novels. But we're nevertheless making them all of the time ourselves. We're always making personal, moral decisions."
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon. The big war is over. The Cold War has just begun. And Leon Bauer, an American tobacco man, wonders how to fit into this new world. Bauer and his wife, Anna, a German Jew, made it to Istanbul just before World War II began and with his U.S. passport and fluency in German and Turkish, the tobacco man became useful to allied intelligence.
But before he picks up a more peaceful life, Leon Bauer is given a last big job. He's supposed to slip Alexi, a Romanian defector with important Soviet secrets, out of Istanbul. Alexi's secrets might help old allies, but the defector once helped massacre Jews in Romania. Leon Bauer is being asked to help a man in this new war who represents what he fought in the last one.
The storied, intricate, contradictory city of Istanbul is a fitting backdrop for Joseph Kanon's new book, "Istanbul Passage," which Kirkus Reviews calls an instant classic. Joseph Kanon, former publishing executive and author of previous bestsellers, including "The Good German" and "Los Alamos" joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
JOSEPH KANON: My pleasure.
SIMON: This novel opens with Leon Bauer and a friend, confederate, Mihai, an old comrade waiting for a package, Leon says there's a new war on now and Mihai says be careful you don't get to like it. Is Leon Bauer just afraid to go back working for R. J. Reynolds?
KANON: I think that he's been drawn to - you know, during the war there's a certain amount of glamour, patriotic glamour, attached to the secret world. And one of the things that's going to happen to him in this story is learning that when you get involved in spinning some webs, you're inevitably going to get caught in them yourself.
Mihai is an old hand at this. He works for Mossad. He's been getting Jewish refugees out. Istanbul was one of the very few escape valves that was still operating during the war, and he's experienced. He's hardened. And he realizes that not all is going to be as clearly black and white as it was for Leon during the war.
SIMON: Help us understand Istanbul because in many ways that's the other protagonist in this novel.
KANON: Istanbul is in a sense how the book started. I, you know, like any tourist I fell in love with it and thought this would be a great excuse for coming back again and again to do research, but the larger answer of course is that the period that particularly interests me, which is the war and its immediate aftermath, it had a very singular position in the world of intrigue.
It'd long been famous for this. I mean, under the Byzantines and other the Ottomans it was a place famous for daring-do and intrigue. But during our time, it had become a neutral city right on the fringe of the war and as a result, it was a magnet for spies. It was one of those places where Germans and Russians and British could actually meet in somebody's drawing room all during the war.
It was, in essence, a kind of Casablanca, as we saw in the movie. But now, that time is coming to an end, and what sort of life are they going to inherit, these people?
SIMON: You set novels, as we mentioned, in Los Alamos and in Berlin and Istanbul. What comes to you first? Characters, a story, a time or a place?
KANON: It's really the place. It began with Los Alamos. I went there as a tourist and became so intrigued and fascinated and I wanted to know what it was like to have been one of the scientists. What was it like to be part of the Manhattan Project? Berlin fascinated me because of the American occupation, about which I knew relatively little at that point. I think most of us don't know a lot about it.
So you follow your interests. Once you saturate yourself in the place and its sort of layering of history, the characters suggest themselves and once you have the characters, then you're there.
SIMON: A conundrum that seems to keep coming back to Leon Bauer is that just a few years before he would've happily, usefully, and dutifully helped to dispatch a man like Alexi who had the blood of a massacre on his hands. And now he's being asked to help Alexi because he can be useful in a new conflict. It does raise the questions as to what you can really believe in.
KANON: Very much so, and it also raises the question of the complexity of everybody. You know, Alexi is not just one thing. One of the undercurrents, I hope, in the novel is Leon experiencing him. You can make a snap decision about someone. You can condemn him. You can say he belongs in this pigeonhole or that, but it's never quite satisfactory. People are a lot more complicated than that.
There's a scene early on. Alexi is a chess player, and he's playing with himself and Leon says how do you do that? And he said, well, you switch the board around and one of the interesting things you discover is that it looks entirely different when you're playing from the other side. It's not just a question of guessing or empathy, it's really a question of being in someone else's shoes and I think that's part of the "passage", in quotes, that Leon has to go through with him.
SIMON: You know, when I read that scene I wondered is this a metaphor and then I thought, nah, that's too easy.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIMON: It was a metaphor, wasn't it?
KANON: Well, it was a kind of metaphor but not necessarily for the whole book.
SIMON: Yeah. We certainly don't want to give away the ending, but Bauer, businessman that he is, comes up with a bargain for his conscience. Do those kind of bargains really exist?
KANON: I think they do. I think that this is part of living. And I think it's, you know, we all tell each other stories so that we can understand more of the variety of experience that's around us because we're going to have to make these decisions. I think day by day often we're taking them in very small steps. They are not certainly as dramatic or highlighted as they would be in this sort of novel, which is one of the reasons we have these novels.
But we're nevertheless making them all the time ourselves. We're always making personal moral decisions.
SIMON: You have been called the new Graham Greene - or the next Graham Greene - so many times but as you're no doubt aware, anybody who writes an espionage novel that's successful gets called the next Graham Greene.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KANON: And the next le Carre, both of which are flattering comparisons. So they just keep coming.
SIMON: Well, I mean, it's a little bit like being the rookies on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Does it carry a certain sting at the same time too?
KANON: No. I think it's a flattering comparison and I think essentially what's being said when people pigeonhole you this way is that there's an, oh, a certain - along with the entertainment quality which I hope that the books have, a certain level of seriousness and purpose. And I hope fine writing.
SIMON: Are you making exploratory trips elsewhere in the world for your next novel?
KANON: I am. It turns out that I'm going to go back to Berlin. I just have not exhausted it as a subject of interest to me. This time I want to focus on East Berlin and the rise of the DDR, which I think here is just perceived as another Soviet client state but in fact is so much more interesting. It was a real anomaly of its time and place.
SIMON: Joseph Kanon in New York. His new novel is called "Istanbul Passage." Thanks so much.
KANON: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. | <urn:uuid:d7a40590-3b37-4b31-b490-f04c44935a86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wmra.org/post/istanbul-twisted-tale-foreign-espionage | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983214 | 2,883 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I participated in the Christmas Bird Count at Estero Llano Grande State Park in Weslaco, Tx today and it was hot--both in terms of the birds and the temperature. In fact the high temperature of 90 degrees was a record for Weslaco for this date. With the strong winds that blew much of the day, and the high humidity, it was challenging though very different from the Christmas Bird Counts I usually go to in Colorado. The Common Pauraque in this pic was one of the great birds I saw at this state park that is one of the World Birding Center designated sites. Common Paurague's are found in the U.S. only in southern Texas. This bird, like others of it's species, sleeps during the day. As seen in the pic the bird's eye is open a bit. It was like that when we first saw it so I think it may sleep that way, possibly in order to be aware of predators. SeEtta
Friday, December 26, 2008
Though I saw this nice Crested Caracara just a little south of the Falfurrias Rest Stop, I saw 5-6 Crested Caracaras as I drove a county road just northeast of the rest stop and 2 of them were engaged in an aerial manuevers. This could be siblings engaged in play according to the Birds of North America online which states that siblings of this species "are frequently seen conducting aerial manuevers, chasing each other."
I was also delighted to spot a White-tailed Hawk flying near the road as well as several Harris' Hawks, specialties of the Rio Grande Valley along with Crested Caracara. It was quite a nice welcome to the area for me as during prior trips here I have missed some of these species. SeEtta
I haven't been posting as I left the day after my last post on my road trip to the Rio Grande Valley in the far south of Texas. This Black-and-White Warbler was one of the first birds I found as I entered South Texas, finding it and lots of other goodies (like several each Ladder-backed and Golden-fronted Woodpeckers) at the Falfurrias Rest Stop, a well known birding hotspot just south of the town of Falfurrias. It was so birdy I had to drag myself away to continue on my trip. SeEtta | <urn:uuid:b84f4394-f003-4af9-8b15-c5c9a2e57db1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://birdsandnature.blogspot.com/2008_12_21_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980479 | 506 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Ranked second in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, we are committed to providing state-of-the-art diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation for adults and children with rheumatic and immunologic diseases. These diseases vary from the simple to complex and mild to life-threatening. They include bursitis/tendonitis, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, pseudogout and multiple other forms of arthritis, systemic lupus, vasculitis, fibromyalgia and others.
In every instance, there are opportunities to improve the quality of life and enhance longevity. Achieving disease control is almost always within our grasp, but cures are more elusive. That is why we are engaged in research that explores mechanisms of disease, innovative treatments and studies of outcomes that measure the success of new diagnostic tools and therapies.
It is critical that the physician thought-leaders in our Department pass on their knowledge to the next generation of doctors. Consequently, our efforts to provide excellent care are duplicated in state-of-the-art training for our students at the Lerner College of Medicine, residents, subspecialty fellows and our most advanced post-doctoral care trainees.
Treating patients with osteoporosis and other forms of bone diseases.
A premier center of HIV clinical research, education and service.
Specifically devoted to patients with these rare diseases.
Consistently ranked in the top 3 by U.S. News & World Report.
Providing comprehensive care for children and adolescents with bone and joint disorders.
This information is provided by Cleveland Clinic and is not intended to replace
the medical advice of your doctor or health care provider.
Please consult your health care provider for advice about a specific medical condition.
© Copyright 2013 Cleveland Clinic. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:3f32bd4c-b0e0-4cd0-96d9-d902b23c1e7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://my.clevelandclinic.org/orthopaedics-rheumatology/departments-centers/rheumatic-immunologic-diseases/default.aspx?utm_campaign=rheum-url&utm_medium=offline&utm_source=redirect | 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 | 0.93134 | 377 | 1.804688 | 2 |
OBJECT to Page 3 and Turn Your Back on Misogyny!
On November 17th at 12pm, along with the Turn Your Back on Page 3 campaign and other feminist groups, we'll be marking the anniversary of Page 3 with a protest outside News International HQ calling for an end to sexist misrepresentations of women in our press.
These Page 3-type portrayals of women would not be broadcast on TV, and they are prohibited from the workplace because they are considered a form of sexual harassment. Yet newspapers are free to print these discriminatory images on a daily basis.
Along with other women's organisations, OBJECT gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry calling for an end to this form of institutional sexism, which directly links to the discriminatory ways in which women and girls are viewed and treated in our society.
Now is our chance to join together and take to the streets to call for an end to Page 3 and sexual objectification of women in our press.
Join us to challenge media sexism, and to call for an end to the Page 3 portrayal of women!
For feminists in London:
Join us on November 17th at 12pm at News International HQ, 3 Thomas More Square, London, E98 1XY. Be ready to make a lot of noise and to demand an end to the discrimination of women in our press.
What to bring:
Bring a white T - shirt and a marker pen, and write your personal message against Page 3 and the culture it promotes. If you want an OBJECT T shirt to wear on the day, you can buy them here, and you can always write on a bit of paper which you safety pin to your T Shirt if you want to preserve the shirt.
Please also bring banners and placards with your anti-sexism slogans, as well as musical instruments and a readiness to sing and chant!
For all feminists across the country:
· Take photos of where you see Page 3 and other sexist images (on the bus, on the tube, in a cafe, on a park bench, in your local newsagent or supermarket) and tweet them to @objectupdate #NowhereFreeFromPage3 (include as much context as possible).
· Tell us why you object to Page 3 - tweet @objectupdate #IObject2Page3 or email firstname.lastname@example.org and if you'd like to do a video blog on this issue for our blog get in touch!
· Send your MP the OBJECT/Turn Your Back on Page 3 evidence to the Leveson Inquiry asking for support, and email any responses to email@example.com
· Email the Leveson Inquiry at firstname.lastname@example.org asking that the issue of the portrayal of women in the press, and of prejudicial reporting of violence against women and girls, is addressed in their recommendations . You can refer them to the joint submission by OBJECT, Eaves, Equality Now and the End Violence Against Women Coalition.
Also, as well as the protest at News International HQ, feminists across the country will be tweeting News International and taking action. It would be fantastic if November 17th marked a national day of action against media sexism. If you are up for planning a local action (big or small) please post details and share suggestions, and remember to take lots of photos! And, feel free to email email@example.com for ideas and support.
We look forward to joining with all of you who want to see an end to this sexist portrayal of women in the press, and our message is clear:
'Turn your back on Page 3, stand up to misogyny!'
Please join the event on Facebook and share the information with your network. | <urn:uuid:bf51f6f1-954e-4bf5-85e3-a39664a92224> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.object.org.uk/morenews/170-page-3-protest-saturday-17th | 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 | 0.942002 | 768 | 1.515625 | 2 |
During the months of March and April, the San Marino Police will be extra vigilant about motorists who fail to stop for pedestrians, especially students, the San Marino Police Department said Monday in a CLEARS message.
The Pedestrian Safety Operations involve officers and pedestrian decoys who will use the crosswalks along Huntington Drive to ensure motorists yield as required by the California Vehicle Code.
Police will also be targeting motorists starting April 23, when and students will participate in a three week challenge to walk or ride their bikes to school every morning due to a Safe Routes to School (SRTS) grant from the federal government. The grant aims to encourage students to walk or bicycle to and from school instead of being driven to school and will be used to educate and encourage students and drivers to use safe practices on their commute, especially as they travel on Huntington Drive, according to Safe Routes to School Grant Coordinator Mary Ulin.
Each participating student will receive a bar code tag to attach to his or her backpack. When the student arrives at school a volunteer parent will scan the bar code, which will immediately send an email to the student’s parent, said Ulin.
where officers dressed in civilian clothes acted as pedestrians crossing at Huntington Drive and Chelsea Road. Cars who did not completely stop until the pedestrian was out of the crosswalk were pulled over for a warning or ticket. In all, 119 drivers were cited at the time.
Pedestrian Crossing Law
San Marino Police will be enforcing the following vehicle code relating to pedestrians:
California Vehicle Code Section 21950.(a) says,
"The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for his or her safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.
(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian."
For example a car travelling 40 MPH (the posted speed limit on Huntington Drive) will take about 60 feet to stop, according to SMPD. If you are beyond this distance and there is a pedestrian entering or in the crosswalk, the driver is expected to yield to the pedestrian.
What do you think about police using pedestrian decoys to target motorists at crosswalks? What do you think of the Safe Routes to School program? Tell us in the comments. | <urn:uuid:5d65161d-99dc-4eed-98d6-c4b730d0cc9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sanmarino.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/san-marino-police-to-target-drivers-at-pedestrian-crob73f6e9e4f | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956935 | 573 | 1.65625 | 2 |
By guest blogger Tiana Bouma
Tiana is a senior at University of Oregon double majoring in Political Science and Journalism with a focus in magazine. Her hometown is now Bend, OR but she graduated from high school in Danville, CA. After graduating from UO, she plans on traveling and working for National Geographic. During her spare time, she enjoys music, reading, sports and movies.
This blog post is the first in a series of posts about Greek Life in college. Click here for part 2.
For many incoming freshman, fraternity and sorority life is synonymous with the college experience. Yet, entering that commitment can bring about a lot of questions.
As a founding member of a sorority on my University of Oregon campus, I have had a unique experience in the Greek system. I love the experience I am having and I found an amazing community that fits me. Community is the most important aspect to me.
Being a member of the Greek system requires a feel of comfort and ease at the chapter you choose during recruitment. If there is no chapter that appeals to you, then do not force a choice because it will not be the right decision.
If you make the decision to rush, then congratulations, it is a bond that cannot be easily replaced. Do not enter rush with a certain chapter in mind. As much as we may want to be a legacy (a brother/sister, son/daughter, grandson/granddaughter or nephew/niece of a specific member of a Greek organization), what fits for our parents or siblings may not fit for us.
Moving to college and going through recruitment in the first few weeks of school is stressful but remember you are not alone. Remember that everyone going through recruitment is undulated by the college lifestyle and the gaggle of people as well.
Here are a few tips that about going Greek:
- Be yourself – It sounds cliché but the men and women you are meeting need to see the real you.
- Don’t try to force a fit – If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. Go with your gut and you will find the chapter that is right for you
- Talk about life and goals – Talking about your goals and life plans will help you make connections with members of the chapter. If you click on those deep-level items, you are bound to get along.
- Be prepared to put work into the relationships – Being a member of the Greek community takes work just like being a member of any community does. Don’t expect everything to come to you. There is a saying, “You get out of it what you put into it.”
- Don’t let your decision be swayed by others – Make sure you are making the decision you want to make. Outside influencers don’t necessarily know what you are feeling and may be tempted to sway you one way or the other for their own reasons.
- Don’t be nervous or scared, you will know when the fit is right
Entering the Greek system is a great experience. I wish you luck if you choose to go through recruitment and when you join a chapter, remember to wear your letters proudly! | <urn:uuid:c92798cc-54d5-422c-b3ee-9491ef78e79c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.bookrenter.com/tag/rush/ | 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 | 0.969676 | 661 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Media professionals interested in reporting on university-related stories are encouraged to visit the media newsroom.
April 13, 2010
By Mike Wolterbeek
Strong backs and strong engineering propelled students from the University of Nevada, Reno to a win at the Mid-Pacific Conference concrete canoe competition Saturday in Chico, Calif. The team’s first-place performance earned them a spot in the national competition in June.
“We’re always nervous going into the regional competition because our conference has a high level of expertise,” team advisor Kelly Lyttle said.
The Wolf Pack paddlers bested seven other teams, all from California, in “Battle Born,” their lighter-than-water canoe built with a creative mixture of cement, fibers and other exotic materials. The competition is a combination of fast paddling, engineering, design, a technical paper and oral presentation.
After dominating the race portion of the competition with three first-place finishes and two second-place finishes, the team took first in the final product portion, second in the oral presentation and third in the technical paper portion of the event.
“At the awards banquet we were on pins and needles,” Lyttle said. “We knew it was going to be close.”
The Nevada students edged out second-place San Jose State University by less than a percentage point with a score of 91.5 points out of 100.
The 25 team members, led by project manager and senior civil engineering student Kim Rafter, have been working on the new canoe for eight months using design specifications laid out in the 76 pages of rules and regulations governing the American Society of Civil Engineers competition.
The boat must be 20 feet long and no more than 31.1875 inches wide at the middle. A complete set of design specifications and drawings, including concrete mixtures, dimensions, structural elements and floatation materials, are used by each of the teams in building their boats. A new requirement was to have two recycled aggregates in the mixture.
“We already had one, and, after a lot of effort to find a light material, we found a recycled product used in road striping,” Lyttle said. “It was a bit heavier, requiring us to encase Styrofoam in the ends for added flotation.”
The team will travel with “Battle Born” to San Luis Obispo, Calif. for the 23rd Annual ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition June 17-19, which is hosted by California Polytechnic State University.
“This is great news,” said College of Engineering Dean Manos Maragakis. “We have established a strong tradition in the national competition.”
This will be the team's fifth national appearance. They won the national title in 2008. The Nevada team has represented the Mid-Pacific Conference four times at the national level with all top-10 finishes: in 2006, sixth place; 2007, third place; 2008, first place; and 2009, fifth place.
The team's National Concrete Canoe Competition performance record includes:
The ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition provides students with a practical application of the engineering principles they learn in the classroom, along with important team and project management skills they will need in their careers. The event challenges the students' knowledge, creativity and stamina, while showcasing the versatility and durability of concrete as a building material. | <urn:uuid:b1e2e71a-ffdd-4f30-a35e-7e2bc27e14ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2010/students-paddle-to-victory-in-concrete-canoe-competition | 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 | 0.952072 | 713 | 1.5 | 2 |
Key Consumer Trends In The U.S. Financial Industry
Tags: Marketing Services, Customer Management
Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, noted that consumer spending "appears to have slowed significantly," while higher energy prices and a weakening job market could weigh further on consumption.
Most market forecasts suggest a slower pace of economic growth in the first half of 2008. Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, notes that consumer spending ""appears to have slowed significantly,"" while higher energy prices and a weakening job market could weigh further on consumption. ""The business sector has also displayed signs of being affected by the difficulties in the housing and credit markets,"" notes Mr. Bernanke. Financial markets, meanwhile, remain under ""considerable stress,"" he adds, and officials will monitor financial developments ""closely."" In its quarterly economic forecasts released last week, the Fed downgraded its 2008 gross domestic product forecast by 0.5 percentage point to a range of 1.3 percent to 2 percent. That's even further below what officials expected back in July."" The incoming information since our January meeting continues to suggest sluggish economic activity in the near term,"" says Mr. Bernanke. | <urn:uuid:e7469082-4b61-41a1-88e7-be4a3b51196c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.experian.com/innovation/marketing-resources/key-consumer-trends-in-the-us-financial-industry.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965598 | 237 | 1.578125 | 2 |
He saw in a vision evidently, about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, "What is it, Lord?" And he said unto him, "Thy prayers and thine alms are coming up for a memorial before God."
The Acts of the Apostles 10: 3-4
You can ask yourselves the question: what connection exists between Cornelius with his vision and us, who live in the 20th century - people with modern ideas; men sophisticated, with critical minds; men who claim to have mastered the forces of nature. We have to constantly bear in mind the following thought: our outlook and theories, our explanation of Life do not represent the actual world as it is in reality these are only our concepts of the world. What the world is in reality is an enigma which even if we were given a million years of life we wouldnt be able to solve it.
The quoted verse relates to the individual life of man. On the Earth, in the present state of his development, man has a threefold relation and does three jobs: to himself, to his neighbour, and to God. When we speak about man, we have to ask ourselves the question whether we are referring to his individual life, or to the life he manifests in his relations with his neighbours, or to the Life which manifests itself when we are connected to God, because in any of these three viewpoints, the world takes a different perspective.
If we decide to find out how modern science views Life we will see that it has the following concept: personal or individual life cannot continue after death; life is contained inside the body and is solely a product of the body; thinking is a product of the brain and consequently, when these organs are destroyed, both life and thinking perish forever. So modern science says; such are its concepts. According to it, thinking is a product of the brain, but from a purely philosophical point of view in the world there are organs that exist with a function other than the energy-producing one. If Life originated from the cells of the body and if thinking were in truth a product of the brain, as science states, then its conclusions are correct. But we have three types of organs and three types of functions: organs producing energy, organs releasing energy, and organs transmitting energy. If we take for an example a shell of a modern military gun and the tiny fuse igniting the explosive, I want to ask you, ''Does the gun generate energy in any form?'' No, it only passes and directs the energy. The gun has not produced the explosive, its function is only to release that energy which through a certain transformation of the molecules inside the substance expands their volume and thus produces an explosion. There are also other organs which release energy. Lets say we have a prism exposed to sunlight, which refracts the sunrays and due to that, certain colours become visible; and I ask you, is it the prism that creates the colours? No, it only refracts the rays, and even if the prism breaks, the colours will continue to exist. In the same way, the energy of human thought exists even after the brain is destroyed. In that sense we can say, that the brain is a device through which the Divine Thought; the initial Divine Energy is refracted and manifested in the form of mind and thought. Therefore, the brain is not a source of thinking; it is only an organ transmitting thought; while the Divine Thought continues to exist even after this organ perishes.
In this way, we live in a Divine world, where certain organs exist, which are imperishable. We know that in the physical field there exists certain compounds which undergo transformations, but in the higher worlds, and in the initial higher conditions of matter there exists unchangeable compounds. I call them stable compounds initial types, out of which the world of today is built. This world in its physical manifestation we call a physical world, i.e. it does not possess the higher consciousness, which exists in the Spiritual World. For instance, your fingers do not have the sensitivity your brain has, and your ears do not have the sensitivity to perceive light, as your eyes do. What is this sensitivity of the eyes due to? Quite naturally, we can give various answers to this question, but we have to first adopt one statement as a starting point of our reasoning. In Mathematics, there is an axiom stating: any two lines equaling a third line equal each other; in other words, we always have to have one condition, one measure, as a starting point. This sensitivity is a function of the human soul.
Now, I have no time to tell you what the soul is like. The human soul is something large; it manifests itself both individually, in man and collectively. In truth, the soul is one; Life is one; but those who do not comprehend this philosophical concept may come up with very wrong views when I say one and many souls. Just the same, as they talk, for instance, about the acorn: the acorn is one, but when we plant this acorn, first it builds up one branched sprig with three branches; then three more are formed above; till it ramifies more and more and forms thousands of individual leaves and acorns.
Someone, who has no idea of the acorns nature, while looking at the tree, will consider the leaves as separate individuals; however, they all come from and are contained within the acorn within this seed. This seed is God. Create the conditions and plant that seed within yourselves and it will unfold all talents, all secrets, and wonders. This seed, this acorn can shrink; it can grow; it can transform itself into a beech, a bear, a whale, a man, an Angel. This seed is within it is one, and at the same time, many. Therefore, things can unite or disperse depending on the viewpoint: if we look from above, things will seem numerous; if we reach downwards, we will see that all things are sustained by the one trunk. We should apply the same point of view to all people: for me, some of them are like leaves; others like branches, like roots, like seeds, like unripe fruit. Quite naturally those of you, who belong to the leaves, will not understand my philosophy, because your lifespan is short it is a six-months life. When spring comes, you become beautiful, wonderful; yet when autumn comes and frost falls, you wither and say, Our time has gone. Some day a storm may break the branches of your tree in two and eventually your whole tree may fall. But even then and there, in the soil, one acorn will remain, which contains Life and says, ''I have the power to bring you back to Life,'' and it falls down to the soil, drinks up its sap of life and restores all things back to life. Where, then, is the end of all things? This is a constant process, as infinity has no end. When the leaves fall on the Earth, do not think that the entire world has come to an end. Do not think like Nastradin Hodza,1 who said, ''When my wife dies, that will be the end of half the world. When I die, the whole world will end.'' This world may die, but the other, the Divine World will not not at all. Why do we experience death, why is our world imperfect? When we reach a certain point, we have to transform ourselves into new flesh in order to receive a new impulse for work of the soul.
Cornelius was not an uneducated man, in my belief he should have possessed deep knowledge; he was initiated, because God shall not appear before foolish people. It will be foolish for a great musician to play before a man who cannot hear and then ask him what he makes of the music; such a man will answer, ''I can only see how you are moving your fingers to and fro.'' And the musician will say, ''You are stupid,'' meanwhile both are stupid. Or, imagine a painter who has painted a beautiful picture, and shows it to a man who cannot see, and asks, "How do you see it?" and that man answers, "There is a canvass before me, but this canvass is a little bit silly here and there, you must have bought it some place," and the artist will say, ''What a simpleton you are, you dont understand anything.'' They are both simpletons the one for not seeing and the other, the painter, for not understanding that the other man is in no condition to understand. In the same way, when a Higher Being comes to us, we have to be able to understand the inner nature of all things. I have read many works of philosophy, I go through them every day and at times I burst my sides with laughter; some philosophers resemble men who cannot see they work gropingly and write, "This world is a canvass with imperfections; with too little suffering; and all men are fools." You are right, I say, but these conclusions are valid for you only. This world is more than a canvass, more than these up and downturns; there should be Light in the eyes, ears, in the mind, in all the brain centres of the man, in all his strengths and abilities; so that he may understand things. And the one who understands the world must have lived a long life one life only is not enough for a man to understand the world. What can you comprehend within a life-span of twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred years under the present conditions in the world, what philosophy can you learn? You will constantly read in the papers which army2 is the prevailing one; how many people the Romanians killed; how many prisoners-of-war the Bulgarians have captured; what inventions the Germans have made. For example, the Germans have devised 42-cm guns; the French are developing a 52-cm gun; the Americans a 54 cm gun; the Germans had so-and-so zeppelins, the French so-and-so airplanes; I ask you what philosophy will you learn from all that?
Laws exist that regulate things. Wars break out for a reason. What are the reasons when a storm arises and dust swirls in the air? The scientists say that someplace the air has been heated more; someplace less; and currents have originated. Why should air be heated and why should it be cooled; can't we do without that? No, we cannot. You may say its something bad, because there are storms which destroy houses. Yes, but at the same time the storms will bring you moisture, will clear the air, etc., i.e. to the vegetable kingdom they will do more good than harm. What are the reasons for a war to break out? It is a storm in the Spiritual World, which comes to refresh people. After that storm, the people will become very intelligent; writers will appear who will reason very intelligently. Now we can only see the harm but in fifty years we shall return to see the outcome. In the Divine World everything comes into use and nothing happens by chance. The one killed on the battle field was meant to be killed; the one who had his house burned, he had to have his house burnt; if one had a leg cut, it was because this leg had to be cut. Statistics exist, proving the natural course of events; there are laws, regulating the events in Life which only seem to occur by chance for example, how many ships shall sink and how many should be built for ten years; when will the period of the greatest number of sinking set in and then the period of the least number of sinking; or let us take for example fires: how many houses should burn every year; then let us take for example births and deaths how many people have to be born and how many have to die each year. And more: I have, for example, the study of a mathematician, who is also an astrologer; and he did calculations in the following way: for ten towns in England he studied the number of the boys and girls born in the course of ten years; and afterwards he succeeded to mathematically establish with an error of one percent only how many boys and girls will be born in each of these towns in the course of the following ten years. Some reach even farther with their calculations and foretell, let us say which tickets will be the winning ones in the next draw of a lottery, which is drawn four times in a year. Therefore, a law exists, that regulates things. This is a new science, which has deep roots and a rational foundation.
Now, you are starting to scratch the backs of your heads; this scratching might seem, at first glance, to have no meaning at all, but I know why it is happening. Or, someone has confused his work and puts his index finger on his forehead above his eyebrows; to such a man we say, "You have not judged right, and that is why you have confused your work," you should judge carefully. In this laboratory above the eyebrows everything is stored that you need; there is your library where you can find the book; this and that page or this and that article of the law, which will enlighten you. Some have the habit of pressing their head but with pressing you cannot open a door; this is the way to crush nuts only. To be able to open the door of learning, men should have the key.
Hence, we have to live mindfully. Many books are written on the issue of what Mindful Life is. It is your task you have to live according to the way you comprehend things because a student with no comprehension of his own will never understand the subject matter his teacher is teaching.
Now we are placed in the following contradiction. There is a legend, that God originally created two men on the Earth, but they could not get on well together; they started hating each other; and that is why God placed them in the two most distant places in space, so that they could not see each other. But they began to miss each other; started to love each other and in order to join, these two souls built a bridge and this bridge is the Milky Way. Therefore there is a way through which people can get on well together and it is the Milky Way of Harmony, of Love. Christ descended via this way, too.
Some want to know what an Angel is; while what I want to know is what man is. The old Indians have defined man as a thinking being; then, what is an Angel? Angel in Sanskrit means servant, but it also means glowing fire, and also love. If you love, you are an Angel; if you do not love, you are a man. But I say to someone, "You are not an Angel, you are one of those souls, who have not agreed with their neighbour, and for that reason God has nailed you somewhere in space and you have no bridge to join you."
Peter in Sanskrit means spirit (Pitar); in fact, they told Cornelius, "Go to the Spirit, It will tell you all." Peter in Old Greek means stone. There exist living stones only the Spirit can be a living stone. By stone Christ means things unchangeable within, Divine, mindful.
Cornelius had to pray here is a task. Many still do not know how to pray; some say, "What am I expected to tell God, doesnt He know?" And others ask how they should pray. If you ask a theosophist, he will tell you, "I am God, I have nothing to pray for, I will only reason." While the philosopher will say, I will think. But prayer is necessary it is the breathing of the human soul; it is communication between God and the human soul. When God speaks, you shall keep silent and listen carefully as a student and when He stops, He will tell you, "I want you to repeat what I have told you." The word prayer means to ascend and descend. There are people who talk incessantly; they are chatterboxes even when they sleep at night, they talk, while they should keep silent. What is sleep? I will tell you; when you sleep, God teaches you lessons because you are isolated from the external world, from family, house, etc., this is the time when God can speak to you. When man wakes up, God would tell him, "Repeat what I have told you." And what will this man repeat, if he has not heard and comprehended well Gods commandments? He will beat his wife, will spank his children and will live the whole day indisposed, because he has not comprehended the lesson, and has not understood the meaning of Life for this day.
When a Divine Messenger descends from Heaven to us, he wants to tell us that without Purity we will never see God; that without Holiness we will never comprehend Him; that without Kindness and Love, without Compassion and without Justice we will not feel Him. We have to understand what Love is. Some say, "We understand what Love is," some of you, I believe, do understand what Love is; but you have to understand it deeper. Love is always the stepping-stone to hatred; if you love Good - you will hate evil; if you love evil - you will hate Good. Consequently, Love alone cannot solve the question and bring deliverance to man, if it is not accompanied with a constant evasion of its antipode. Who, then, will save the world? - The Angel of Love, accompanied by the Angel of Compassion. Only in Compassion there is no shadow, only in the Mercy of God there is no division we have to study the law of Compassion. For this reason this Angel came to Cornelius to teach him the law of Compassion. And when the people of the world learn to be compassionate and apply Compassion everywhere, then all will live in peace. Truth makes men free, teaches him what is Good and what is wrong; who is foolish and who is wise; but it does not contain within itself the element to reconcile people; Love, too, alone can not bring about peace. Divine Compassion is the key that reconciles Justice with injustice, Wisdom with foolishness, Good with evil, so that they shall not fight within us. They say about someone, "He is good, I cannot stand him; he is foolish, I cannot stand him; he is bad, I cannot stand him." The World is not bad, what is bad is our understanding of things; we are bad within ourselves, and the world is very good. The soul which you hate agonizes, it suffers, it is chained somewhere in Heaven.
Some people now say, "You will never save your soul; you will eternally live in hell." And I ask, who among those philosophers is the advisor to God to know what He thinks? They are like the man who could not hear but listened to the great musician; and like the man who could not see and touched the canvass of the great artist. Are they the men who will show us the way to Deliverance, the way of the new civilization? No, they are not. He is the Angel who descended to teach us Compassion Christ; in the soul of Christ there is Compassion and self-sacrifice. Sometimes you say, "We are very educated, that is why we shall hide, so that they will not demagnetize us, or rob us," no, open your safes, open your hearts, open everything! Do not shrink into yourselves like the snail, which protrudes its antennas and then draws them in again you have to leave your shells. I do not talk to snails or shells I talk to people who ask themselves the questions, "What is the meaning of my life, what is my purpose, what shall I do?" I answer: you have to learn Divine Compassion. Whenever I have spoken about Compassion, they have, every time, been angry with me, saying, "You wish us ill, you do not understand us." I understand you, I understand that you love Truth, Justice, but I have not met a compassionate person among men yet. Yet, deliverance is in Compassion this is the teaching of Christ, this is the culture of the future.
After this war Compassion will come. The disabled, who will be in the millions, with their thought will create a new movement they will ask, "What was all that about, for what reason we fought if not to correct our previous mistakes?" The people of today who are fighting are civilized, they are not barbarians, and they will contemplate on this issue. They are now only quarrelsome men and women. The woman cannot stand her husband, because he cast a glance at another woman how could he possibly look at another woman? Well, he should be blind not to look. The man, on his part, quarrels with his wife, too, when she casts a glance at another man.
Some say that Christ on his coming will put the world right. Christ is coming now to introduce the New Teaching of reconciliation between people, the teaching of Compassion towards everyone without making any differentiation as with Cornelius. And when we start to pray and do good deeds, then God will send us to this Peter to the Spirit. And the Spirit will bring us Joy and Rejoicing and will reveal to us the great tasks. The Spirit will create the Milky Way in our soul and we shall travel from one sun to another; from one planet to another and we shall see how great God is. Firstly, we shall head to the nearest star; then, after having lived there, we shall proceed to other stars. For each and every one of you there are great goods in store, a great future there, if only you embrace Compassion. What are you expecting now? - That Christ shall come to save you. I know that Christ has at least a hundred times lifted you from the earth; you have many times thrown yourselves into the water and Christ has saved you.
It is very clear what is happening in the world today it is the arm of God at work; God is forming a new world. What will happen with Bulgaria? The situation of Bulgaria and of all people in Europe will be much better than it is now. When a corpulent man with a fat belly weighing one hundred and fifty kilos catches typhus and slims down to fifty kilos, they say, "Poor man!" While actually, he has now become a man, before this he was not a man. This war is healing us from a similar disease all people are ill and God will heal them. Those who are dying now will revive again, like the leaves which fall the new acorn will raise them from the dead and will bring them back to life. Nothing perishes in the world, the outer form is not the reason for the inner Life as God lives so will we live with Him. Even in this world we have to make an effort to be good servants and good sons; to work honestly, so that when we return to Him, He could say that we have fulfilled His will.
Now some say, "I will not see God" everyone shall see Him. When we join Him, he will say, "Why did you disgrace your name, why did you kill your brother, why did you dishonour your sister? You will return again." God will not talk sharply; I can imagine what He will say. He will give you a serious look and will say gently, "I am very sorry, son, that you have not yet understood My Compassion. Now, go back to the Earth to learn Compassion, return there to show men what I Am like. I Am the God of Compassion. They think I Am cruel, unmerciful, everybody is complaining about Me and discredits Me, and this is not good." And when people see the compassionate man, they will say, "Here is one, who is walking the ways of God." And now people say, "Even those, the religious people, are quarrelling." And that is why I am not asking you if you are religious; I am asking you whether you are compassionate. We can say about someone that he is a learned man, but has no Compassion he is supposed to be an intelligent person, but says to his neighbour, "You are stupid, I cannot stand you." About another person we can say that he is a good person, has love, but does not have Compassion.
I want you to keep within you this morning one word only the word Compassion.
In 1875, in Chicago, a gentleman was milking his cow by the light of a candle; the animal kicked the candle, the straw was set on fire and most of the city burned down. The cost of the damage was billions of dollars. When the fire approached his house, a wealthy man told someone who was there, "I will give you two hundred thousand dollars if you take my safe out." "Dash!" - said the other man running to save his life, as the fire was following on his heels.
Thus, the wealthy American had to run away without his wealth. Now someone may say, "If only I had been there to take the two hundred thousand dollars what a stroke of luck it would have been!" Yes, but the fire is following on your heels. It is not money that decorates Life. And Chicago, having lost so much after the big fire, has now an even more magnificent outlook. Now, likewise, the war introduces the same into the world on its ruins a greater culture will be built.
Now, if you understand the Spirit of Compassion, which God is sending to you, you will comprehend His teaching.
September 17, 1916, Sofia
1 Nastradin Hodza, or Hoca which means teacher in Turkish was a wise, witty man with a good sense of humour, whose stories have been told almost everywhere in the World. The year 1996 was proclaimed Nasreddin Hoca year by UNESCO.
2 The Master refers to the First World War, 1914-1918 | <urn:uuid:faee9f64-7a97-4c40-9ff6-9a9fe3846bfc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clubconspiracy.com/forum/showpost.php?p=78887&postcount=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974019 | 5,437 | 1.796875 | 2 |
23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism: Item #1 -- There's No Such Thing as a Free Market
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Editor's Note: Many books have tackled the great recession of 2008, the second worst economic crisis in history, after the depression. But I doubt there is one book, written in response to the current economic crisis, that is as fun or easy to read as Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell you About Capitalism. I'd never heard of this Korean economist, probably because he lives in England and teaches at Cambridge, but he is well known in economic circles, and well respected.
It is no secret that the American society is dominated by the super rich, held for hostage by the banks, dominated in the Nation's Capital by the tens of thousands of lobbyists and their big bucks, as the Republican party and their corporate Tea Partyists provide cover for giant theft of many billions of wealth for the very rich, with of course the cooperation of the Democrats who supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy (Check out Rachel Maddow's op-ed, which explains why Dwight Eisenhower, who taxed the rich to balance the budget, which be a radical in today's political reality). In this very discouraging environment it is hard to imagine scenarios where normal folks, every day voters, the non-rich, who are not represented by lobbyists, can have much influence.
On top of that, making change even harder, is an enormously effective propaganda system that perpetuates inaccurate and often destructive myths about virtually every element of capitalism and the US and global economy. And top economic officials in the Obama administration and leading mainstream economists often perpetuate these myths, and the corporate media marches along side repeating them like the gospel.
So, as far as I am concerned there never can be too much truth-telling to attempt to pull away the curtain of propaganda and disinformation that shrouds our economic thinking and actions. I am not under the illusion that the facts will set us free. As research has shown, when people connect their opinions to a set of values or leaders, they will not be open to changing their mind, and presentation of contrary "facts," may make them dig in more clinging their their misinformation. But when it comes to the economy, the propaganda system has been so pervasive, and supported by conventional wisdom that people who need to know better, buy into it, and yes that includes liberals and progressives who have a kind of inertia of the mind of their own. It is hard to change one's sense of things.
AlterNet's Economics editor Joshua Holland made a nice contribution to this public education effort this Fall with his book: The Fifteen Biggest Lies about the Economy Now we have the funny, and sharp Chang. What follows is chapter one of his book: "There is No Such Thing as a Free Market." Other chapters are quite revealing such as: " The Washing Machine Has Changed the World More than the Internet;" "More Education, in Itself, Is Not Going to Make a Country Richer;" "The U.S. Does Not Have the Highest Living Standard in the World;" "Companies Should Not Be Run in the Interest of their Owners."
Chan's main point is the recent economic disaster wasn't by accident, that active government can promote economic dynamism, that tax cuts for the rich simply redistribute wealth upward, and that we will continue on the path to economic disaster,with no end in sight, unless the collective wisdom, goes in a different direction. -- AlterNet Executive Editor Don Hazen | <urn:uuid:6a31a80b-0e38-4204-8509-266e7e2e8438> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alternet.org/story/149688/23_things_they_don't_tell_you_about_capitalism:_item_%231_--_there's_no_such_thing_as_a_free_market | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961293 | 732 | 1.648438 | 2 |
DURHAM ¿ Tom Schram, associate professor of education at the University of New Hampshire, will deliver the distinguished Kimball Lecture Friday, Sept. 28. The title of his lecture is ""Redefining the End of Teacher Education."
Presented by the UNH Department of Education, the Kimball Lecture will take place at 4 p.m. in the Memorial Union Building, Theatre II. A reception will follow. It is free and open to the public.
"Teacher education is at a serious crossroads. The impact of policy initiatives on teacher education reform has reached what some call 'crisis proportions' and sent our profession into a serious reactive mode. The challenges we face are exacerbated by the way the federal government under both the Bush and Obama administrations has sent mixed messages to potential teachers, parents of K-12 students, policymakers, providers, and accreditors about what should be required in the preparation of teachers," said Schram, who also directs UNH's teacher education program.
"And there is no disputing the fact that university-based teacher education, in particular, is being vilified by everyone these days, from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and our own state legislators to the National Council on Teacher Quality and designers of fast-track alternative pathways to teacher certification," he said. "We're dealing with a host of factors—a focus on teacher effectiveness, data-driven instruction, a culture of high-stakes testing, among others—that may affect student achievement without questioning whether the achievement is meaningful."
To address how teacher educators hold themselves accountable, Schram will discuss how teacher quality is being framed as a large-scale public policy problem and the federal pressure to hold teacher education programs accountable through high-stakes rating systems.
"We are in the midst of a policy culture that seems to favor looking for ways to include some degree of teacher value-added measures as part of a larger package for teacher evaluation—and, in like fashion, it appears the U.S. Department of Education is going to try to compel institutions of higher education like UNH to accept regulations that judge the quality of teacher preparation institutions by the test scores of K-12 students taught by their graduates," he said.
Schram is the 16th recipient the Roland and Charlotte Kimball Faculty Fellowship, which is awarded each year to an outstanding member of the Department of Education who has demonstrated exemplary leadership in his or her field. Past recipients have included Joe Onosko, Todd DeMitchell, John Carney, Michael Andrew, Ann Diller, Nodie Oja, Grant Cioffi, Barbara Houston, and Georgia Kerns.
Schram received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. His research has focused on teacher preparation, teacher learning, and school-university collaborations. His honors and awards include the UNH College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, the Distinguished Service Award from the New England Educational Research Organization, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in Teaching and Teacher Education from the American Educational Research Association Division K. | <urn:uuid:4799be70-9d53-41e0-972f-ba01414ed205> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120918/GJCOMMUNITY_01/709189980/-1/FOSNEWS&CSProduct=fosters | 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 | 0.964698 | 627 | 1.570313 | 2 |
These days, the mobile phone can do a lot of things. It is a hand held device that is used not solely for talking with other people but for other things. There are features that it can do such as using the MP3 player to listen to music, take photos through its camera, go for text messages and games as well as the internet browsing. The SMS and text messages as a feature in the cell phone are truly helpful. It is one way to communicate to other people. Aside from that, the text messages are also the ideal way so that you can express to people regarding your feelings about something.
You can express for your love to your boyfriend or through your girlfriend as well. For instance, you can tell him or her that you are angry or you can also send love quotes. It is one way to show to other people that they are being remembered through the good morning and good night text messages. In fact, you can also send friendship text messages and so on. There are also jumma day sms that you can find through the internet as a resource.
As you are searching for the text message that you wanted to send to other people, remember that you can view these things in categories. You can find love sms and other mobile sms jokes as well. Check their site today at the smsfront.com for cool text messages and inspirational quotes as well. | <urn:uuid:f24defdd-20fd-4c8b-869f-792371362c71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.centralishiventureclub.com/category/art-entertainment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97821 | 283 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Dovetailing off of Alex's earlier post, there's still more to mention from the mainstream media's fervent attention towards all things green. Time magazine took a long look at Chicago in Friday's issue, focused largely on the aggressive environmental agenda of Mayor Richard Daley. The ubiquitous image of Chicago City Hall's green roof has come to stand as a symbol of the city's mission, though it represents just a fraction of the planned 2 million square feet of green roof (more than all other U.S. cities combined). Solar and wind energy, LEED platinum municipal buildings, and half a million new trees since the mayor took office all demonstrate a trend towards greener city operations.
If it works and Daley is betting a hefty sum it will, with promises to buy millions in solar panels, for example the green movement here is expected to yield the city perhaps billions in saved energy costs and new business."This is way beyond tree hugging in Chicago," said [Sadhu] Johnston [the mayor's environmental commissioner]..."This is about quality of life. What we're talking about is creating a city that exists in harmony with the world, a place that can be a model. Cities have long been hurtful to the environment. Raw materials came in and waste went out. We' re trying to redefine that relationship, and cities can be models." | <urn:uuid:cfbb28bf-2b7e-4154-9422-2daf07fe3473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004443.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96122 | 275 | 1.75 | 2 |
Hot sauce: Appetizing, but anally aggravating?
Originally Published: July 14, 2006 - Last Updated / Reviewed On: January 24, 2013
I enjoy my spicy foods. In fact, the spicier, the better. If I break a sweat when I'm eating, I've made a successful meal. I'm extremely active, physically, and I rarely get sick. I don't use tobacco, but I drink coffee daily. I average about two bowel movements a day, and I've found within the last week or so, blood on my toilet paper when I wipe my arse. Can the blood be caused by my spicy foods? I had my wife check out the area in question, and she says that it doesn't look like my rectum was bleeding (but it sure felt like it for about two minutes). I just wanted to know if the spicy foods can actually cause bleeding around there, and if so, does this mean that the bleeding could be caused in other places within my digestive system?
Sorry to hear that your rectum is wrecking your life right now! The good news is that there may not be any reason to cool off on spicy foods just yet. Although eating spicy foods can irritate your stomach and aggravate other digestive problems, they cannot cause your stomach, or any other organ in your digestive tract, to bleed on its own. In some cases, they can lead to inflammation in people who have very sensitive stomachs, such as those with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). However, because you have a history of frequently enjoying spicy foods before the bleeding started, this is probably not the case. Is it possible that the blood is actually in your stools? If this is the case, you may want to consider seeing a medical provider sooner rather than later.
Ulcers, which are caused commonly by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen or aspirin, can wear away at the walls of the stomach and duodenum (small intestine) and cause bleeding.
The most common cause of bleeding in the lower digestive tract (which consists of the large intestine and rectum) is the presence of hemorrhoids in the anus or rectum. Hemorrhoids are swollen and inflamed veins in that area that can be torn or ruptured, leading to the appearance of bright red blood in the toilet and/or on toilet paper. They are caused by increased pressure on the veins of the lower digestive tract, and common sources of the pressure include (but are not limited to) heavy lifting, diarrhea, and extra straining due to constipation.
Alternatively, an anal fissure, or a cut on the lining of the anus, may be responsible for the bleeding. In the worst-case scenarios, bleeding from the digestive system can signify various forms of cancer, cirrhosis, Crohn's Disease, or polyps, especially if it is accompanied by pain.
Because there are so many different things that can cause the bleeding, it is probably a good idea to visit a health care provider. If you're a student at Columbia, you can make an appointment with Columbia Health (Morningside campus) by calling 212-854-2284 or logging on to Open Communicator. If you are on the Medical Center campus, contact the Student Health Service at 212-305-3400 for an appointment.
May your bum stop its burnin'! | <urn:uuid:a551fb25-7190-46e5-8bc3-778e21108e25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/hot-sauce-appetizing-anally-aggravating | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955347 | 713 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Before beginning on a summary of the book, these words from Simon Critichely’s Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity are worth a look:
Archive for the ‘communism’ Category
When I saw that Badiou and Zizek had been on HARDtalk, I was excited and apprehensive. To have two contemporary philosophical giants given prime TV time to answer questions on topics that are completely neglected by the mainstream media, feels like a progressive move, but also has a kind of ‘lambs to the slaughter’ feel about it, too, as philosophy and philosophers seem to be banished from television. Except for a few programs on existentialism that were made many years ago, I don’t think Heidegger, who seems to be the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, has probably ever been mentioned. For Badiou and Zizek to gain some prime TV time seems like times are changing. However, I do feel that appearances on these programs for both Zizek and Badiou were mixed blessings and also, partially wasted opportunities. I would have though that for a program whose title picture, which is begging to be etched with a hammer and sickle, wouldn’t look out of place in a Soviet style steel mill, may have been a little nicer to these two.
The recent Zizek interview was the more disappointing of the two. This is only because Zizek is the more fluently spoken in English and thus his sparing skills should be more than a match for Stephen Sackur’s antagonistic blunt style. The program is set up to ask the ‘hard’ and tough questions, to harass and force the interlocutor to slip up and generally be exposed as a feeble minded simpleton, who can’t articulate themselves and generally gets a bit flustered when their safety net gets taken away. Both Zizek and Badiou walked straight into the antagonistic form of the program. As philosophers, one would think they would try to undermine the structure of the program to bring a reflexive focus to the polemics at hand. This did not happen, they both tried to answer the questions as normal, falling into trap after boisterously set trap.
Zizek is characterized in the introduction as someone he sees the good in Stalin and thinks Communism is the answer to the ills of the twenty-first century. The antagonisms are set from the start, here is the enemy, now we can expose his nonsense or perversity’ as the interviewer repeats again and again. Zizek, who writes many big and deliberately flummoxing books (his Lacanian postponing the end point of clarity works at the level of form to force the reader to ‘traverse the fantasy’ of the ‘subject supposed to know’, i.e. that Zizek knows and that by reading his work they too will come to know). It seems like an exercise in condensation, but it is more one of intuition. The answers are not cut off because he isn’t given the time to respond properly, or because the program must end at a certain point. No, it is because the form is given credibility to provide a type of truth defined by the program (i.e. watch the interviewee squirm when confronted by their own words and actions), rather then forcing the phantasmatic stance of the program and its viewers out of their comfort zone.
For instance, Sackur exposes Zizek’s hypocrisy by quoting from him that Stalinism is favourable to any liberal democracy, after Zizek announces on the program that Communism was probably the biggest disaster of the 20th century, even more so than Nazism (as under Nazism, there was always a distinct set of persons demonized for a particular reason, while under Stalinism, it could be anybody for any arbitrary reason). Zizek explains that it is because of the possibility of a different social regime, other than liberal capitalism, is opened up by communism, whereas liberal capitalism promotes itself as an ontological realism (I’m paraphrasing here).
Sackur then asks him why is he a communist even after Zizek admits it was a ‘total failure’. Clearly, Sackur completely misses the answer Zizek gave previously or he wouldn’t have asked the same question again. Sackur was probably too busy listening to instruction on his ear piece or thinking about his set questions to give an intelligent answer to Zizek’s comment. Although it could be said that the repetition and incredulous tone of the interviewer is part of the format of the program, and thus a provocative tactic rather than an intellectually sincere one. Zizek stresses the importance of recognising the change in horizon between, what used to be ‘socialism with a human face’ to the now ubiquitous ‘capitalism with a human face’: capitalism, even with a human face, will not be able to solve the antagonisms we confront today at they remain external to the horizon of capitalism.
After being accused of Eurocentricism and ignoring the successes of India and China in raising people out of poverty through bolstering the middle classes, Zizek responds that these are not successes as they have resulted in segregation of public space, through favellas and immigration ‘problems’: in sum, those who are excluded and politically isolated. Unfortunately he then makes a statement about these places being concentrations camps, and then withdraws the comment after being challenged by Sackur. He does make the point that it its because of their isolation that makes it seem like they are in concentration camps, but he should not have conceded as there is a clear linearity between camp and favella that would have been more useful to expand upon. However, to expand upon this would probably not have suited the programs spitting contest style, so would no doubt have been cut.
The interviewer is keen to emphasise his reading of Zizek’s critics, who condemn Zizek’s claim that Islamic fundamentalism is a product of liberal capitalism. Zizek responds with the example of Afghanistan pre-soviet invasion, as an example of secular Islam that becomes fundamentalism through engagement with the international community. This again misinterpreted by Sackur who says that Zizek blames capitalism for all the world evils. Zizek responds with that quip that perhaps his readers (and interviewers) should read him correctly, so as not to confuse his critical examination of capitalism with a complete rejection of it: for Zizek, we cannot go back to a fantasy world untouched by capitalism, but apply our critique from within capitalism, which demonstrates that we cannot reject in its entirety that which founds our very mode of engagement with the world.
Sackur is concerned that as there is no clear example or even an abstract thinker who represents an ideal for communism: this, he insists, surely must be a bad sign. Zizek concludes that he isn’t after revolution in the standard sense. He makes it clear that “we need to form a new form of collectivity that will be neither market or state bureaucracy”, but he is a pessimist: democracy won’t deliver us from our problems: it may not be light at the end of the tunnel but a train coming towards us.
If we take out Zizek’s main points, those who have never read or seem Zizek before may be a little put off by the cerebral rants, excessive hand movements and conversational tangents, but I think he recognises the need to cut the crap and say as clearly as possible his position, because Sackur is determined to misrepresent him at every turn. Zizek does deal well with the questioning and he does seem to come off quite well and at times, unusually, focused on the main points.
Sackur applies the same style, albeit slightly slowed down, no doubt recognising the limited English skills of his guest. Although Badiou’s answers clearly weren’t suited to the medium, Zizek seems to have met his challenges with forceful and better presented summaries. It is still discouraging, that while any TV exposure for philosophers is always music to my ears, it is a shame that it is performed not through a careful and sincere dialogue, but through a sensationalist interview that is aimed not at ‘hardtalk’ but discouse that legitimises intellectual confrontation based upon misinformation, misreadings and misdirection of aggression. Sackur doesn’t present ‘hardtalk’ but a fake attempt at provocative discourse that can never agree with or arrive at any conversational synthesises or progression. It plays upon a fantasy of straight talking, ‘cut the crap’ style journalism that is not exposing anything but the farcical format of the show itself. The interviewer doesn’t want to understand Badiou and Zizek, but to attribute to what ever response they deliver to one of a ‘perverse’ nature or purely some form of ‘continental’ intellectual entertainment, suitable for a limited audience of pseudo radicals.
Even if Sackur’s position could be described as playing devils advocate with his guests, one gets the feeling that some of the time it is quite personal: such as this quote towards Badiou, that people at home are thinking “here is a man who is stuck in the romance of 1968, a time of course when you were on the barricade and you want to recreate the romantic idea that the working class can take to the streets and re-order society and you sit there, frankly, with your metaphorical Gauloises in your mouth spouting this French radical ideology but no one really buys it any more”. Partially, I think Badiou may not have heard him properly, as there was little sign of being flustered by this Francophobic question. It isn’t a helpful question and an ironic use of the word ‘buy’ as well. It may well be that people at home are struck in reductive caricatures of cigarette smoking Parisian coffee shop French intellectuals, but the programme, ultimately was giving the same message. What is clear from these interviews is not an open dialogue between communist philosophers and the BBC, but the desire to discredit ‘romantic’ emancipatory philosophies.
As a mobilization of unit operations (see Ian Bogost’s book, Unit Operation), the program advocates a hostile incredulity to the idea of communism which involves the operations of cutting into sentences, swapping and changing topics, not allowing for follow up responses and presenting the interviewee with quotes taken out of context which would require more time than the program can allocate for its examination. The two central unit operation of HARDtalk are reductive positional generalization (to provoke aggression in the interviewee) and incredulous rebuttal (to mock the interviewee’s perspective). In general, I find any reliance on cultural theorists or academics on television tends to end is grotesque simplifications. For example, the pop psychologist analyst on Big Brother. These sound-bite simplifications may swing well into the next dazzling video clip, but offer little extended and more fruitful analysis. For self proclaimed philosophers to be guests on this TV program and to engage the show on its own terms is not only a little disappointing, but it forgets the elementary philosophical lesson of Plato’s Apology. If you remember, this is where Socrates asks the court to consider him a “stranger” to his new trial environment. It isn’t that Badiou and Zizek are “strangers” to television, but they are to the distinctly uncharitable style of the show. A reflexive response and recognition of the problematic televisual medium itself may have been a philosophically more thought provoking response to what were, at times, ignorant and antagonistic questions.
What is salvagepunk? Salvagepunk is “a return to the repressed idiosyncrasy of outmoded things”, so says Evan Calder Williams, inventor and sharp Marxist prose stylist over at Socialism and/or Barbarism. But what does this mean and why do I think it is a very important move towards recognizing the apocalyptic world in which we live, a world of excess consumption and waste, in contradistinction to the impotent Marxist waiting game of capitalism’s hoped for demise? It is this world we must attend to, not the promises of a new world, but the concrete conditions of our historically contingent moment. To quote the last line from his recent talk at the Historical Materialism conference (full audio available HERE)
I don’t believe another world is possible, because I know that all things superseded stick around and stink as unwelcome reminders of that we have to deal with, so another world is necessary but only built from the gutted hull of this one
Firstly, salvagepunk should be seen as the negation of salvage as we know it. Etymologically, as Williams investigated, salvage is synonymous with pay-off, with “saving the day and keeping things as they are”. Back in the 17th century, if a ship was saved that would have gone down or being captured, a payment would have been given to the salvagers. In salvage, there is always a “transfer of exchange value”, which we saw recently with the salvage of the banks as they were blasted to pieces by bad loans and pirate capitalist canon balls. We are in an era of salvage as “waste sorting and recuperation”, and capitalism biggest act of salvage is not the bank bailout, but time itself. Our free-time is a calculated countdown back to labour time as capitalism never sleeps, with round the clock consumption and production by supermarkets, television and factories. Night-shift, day-shift, split-shift, part-time, on-call, ‘unsociable hours’, the day and night of the post-Fordist labourer, “inhuman rhythms” of machinic repetition, re-training and dynamic flexibility. The capitalist salvages time by firing your work colleagues and giving you extra work. For sure, salvagepunk will not salvage the capitalist time of abstract labour time.
Salvagepunk is not like Guiyu City in China. Guiyu is an e-waste recycling center. The global sorting mechanism of low cost labour means the rich make high technology e-waste and the poor salvage the quality components and sell it back to the rich. The high cost of disposing this waste means it is outsourced to countries with little or no environmental and health and safety regulation, such as Guiyu in China. The ratified international laws banning such activities go unnoticed and unenforced. This is salvage in the image of exploitative late capitalism: exploit those who aren’t educated enough to know the ‘precious’ metals they’re extracting and smelting from old computer motherboards and cathode ray tubes are polluting their waters and slowly killing them. It is this logic that salvagepunk will gladly let decay and rot.
The punk of salvagepunk is what makes it revolutionary. Punk is not the commodified and commercialize image of Mohawked teens with pins through noses. It is certainly not the PVC slick technological wet dream of cyberpunk with its Deleuzian ‘intense’ nomadic multitudes and immaterial labour. Nor is it the “false dream image” of steampunk,where “its falseness lies in it being the wrong dream image, the ideological blind that is the dream image proper to the liberal escape plan for the contemporary crisis and its envisioned fall-out”. Punk is thus the “deep fidelity to its historical moment and the fact it no longer believed in a future – the present is already the hollowed out present of that future”. Punk is born from harsh experience. As Johnny Rotten says of the Sex Pistols song God Save the Queen “You don’t write a song like ‘God Save The Queen’ because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and you’re fed up of seeing them mistreated.”
The face of salvagepunk is not the “sneer of cyberpunk” but a “graveside smile and the perspective of looking toward what can be reassembled ‘wrongly’ and how”. Salvagepunk turns objects upside down. Objects are no longer just what they are given to us, packaged and ready hot off the factory floor. Salvagepunk is a view to the “idiosyncratic uses of given materials”, a recognition of the “already-present singular values of things”. In their ruin, their monetary value is lost and their real value comes forward, not as something with a particular purpose, but objects that in their singularity aren’t sublated into the warped simulacra of consumerist fashion and prestige. Objects become objects, not money and exchange value. As Guattari states “capitalism reduces everything to a state of shit, to a state of undifferentiated and unencoded flux, out of which each person in his private and guilt ridden way must pull out his part. Capitalism is the regime of generalized interchangeability: anything in the ‘right’ proportions can be equal to anything else”. Capitalism decodes and flattens out difference into a smooth space of homogeneous real abstraction. Where the fantasy of capitalist realism at the ‘end of history’ dictates that economic, environmental, democratic salvation is just around the corner, that things will ‘change’ only if the sweaty hand of the free market is not continually stifled by ‘regulations’ and socialist welfare systems. Salvagepunk, in contrast, is a heterogeneous time of the proletariat, of “fireworks and flares” (Negri), a post-apocalyptic subject.
Williams is keen to emphasize the post-apocalyptic is a “mode of though, not a state of affairs”. The world is apocalyptic, not in the Hollywood sense of asteroids and plagues, but the gradual banal entropy of unsustainable system of repetition without difference, the real abstraction of late capitalism. Post-apocalyptic thinking is the affirmation of concrete negation against real abstraction: the non-identical thinking of objects not as “undifferentiated and unencoded flux” but as “particular, sensuous objects that strain to declare, particularly in the context of their commensurability of the value form, their singularity”. In other words “we need to get back to real life, real things” as “the concrete is the exposure of real abstractions”. Post-apocalyptic thought turns the impotent fantasy of the wait for that right historical moment of communist revolution into a always already active political and social collectivity.
This is a metaphysical drive towards the object as object which recognizes the object as “registrations of and stores of historical energy to be released”. This abandons the post-modern world space as image, a Society of the Spectacle, and reaches for the “idiosyncrasy” of objects. This unsettling of objects is anti-representational and free the function of objects to their own historical moment. By doing this, we occupy materialist time, the genealogical time of Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism. The reawakening of past possibilities forgotten by the all-too-ready to dump and forget postures of capitalist consumer culture. The buried historical “traditions and horizons of collectivity, solidarity, and true antagonism” are the objects to be salvaged. The rethinking and reclaiming of these broken communist social relations are what is to be salvaged from our capitalist waste ground. Salvagepunk, as a form of subjectivity and thought, is a metaphysical attuning to the conditions of the specificity of historical-being.
In this regards, salvagepunk is venomously anti-Kantian yet sees in Kant a “radical misanthropic gesture”. The nature of human subjectivity is not an ahistorical givenness through the necessary conditions of transcendental apperception, but a historical givenness. “As the law is not transhistorical but the abstract will of life historical totality of a moment, so too “nature” (as perversion) is historical.” The Kantian framework, Williams argues, is clearly overthrown by capitalism’s propensity to generate irrationality in competition and “the elevation of the general misanthropic condition to the system as a whole”. Kantian human nature, the movement of man from ‘nature’ (ahistorical ‘crocked wood’) to ‘Nature’ (rational historical Will), is challenged by Williams who states “human actions are the becoming-necessary of the will to freedom”, where recognition is given to the “particularity of the actions at hand” – the situation is and produces the situation. The appeal is contra to any notion of the ahistorical absolute.
Part 2 will look at where Williams sees these themes of apocalypse staring back at us, such as in zombie movies and black metal music. Together with his look at post-apocalyptic visions in movies such as Mad Max and the Bed Sitting Room. I will also briefly summaries his work on Michael Jackson’s CaptainEO. But now, I’ve got to go, as I’m, off to see The Mars Volta play at the London Forum. Good times!
Wendy Brown – Capitalism and Religion HERE
Benjamin Noys – Apocalypse and Accelerationism HERE
Even Calder Williams – Combined and Uneven Apocalypse HERE
‘The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes’. The fundamental structure of the state machinery is arranged to perpetuate answering to authority.
Communism’s main argument is the following: that economic production and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising there from constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch. Since dissolution of communal land ownership, all history is the history of class struggle, between the exploited and the exploiters. Only a total emancipation of the whole of society from exploitation can work. The aim is to ‘proclaim the inevitable impending downfall of present day bourgeois property’. It is not socialism.
Socialism is a maintaining of capitalism with a friendly face by eliminating social abuses. Communism is a total reconstruction of society, not just political revolutions. In 1847, socialism was a middle class movement and communism a working class movement, as such, Marx warns ‘a spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism’. In 1847, Marx’s epoch, he saw the bourgeoisie as having simplified class antagonisms: there is now only the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie has a hegemonic hold on values, and as Marx states, ‘the bourgeoisie has resolved personal worth into exchange value’, freedom now is equal to free trade. The bourgeoisie will revolutionize the instruments of production and therefore the relations of production and the whole relations of society. The aim, for the epoch of the bourgeoisie is the constant revolution in production methods, the uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting certainty and agitation. ‘All fixed, frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new formed areas become antiquated before they can ossify… all that is solid melts into air… all that is holy is profane’. The market must nestle everywhere, establish connections everywhere’. Where all enter a domain of cosmopolitan consumption, the normalization of the use of capital and its paradigms of desire. The interdependence of nations perpetuates capital and the nation itself, where the ‘cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery’ which has now, at the end of history, smashed every last wall of resistance when and where ever it was seen. The bourgeoisie force the world to conform to its model and creates a world after its own image, as the world of the neoliberal springs from the Washington consensus, and engulfs mostly without resistance all that it touches. When there is a crisis of over-production, society falls apart, unless new markets are created and old markets are re-exploited.
The main aim of the bourgeoisie is to commodity the proletariat, to lose their charm and character, which are in tern redefined as expressible as commodities (what does this hat say about me? which colour ipod represents me the best?). The proletariat becomes an ‘appendage of the machine’, where labourers are arranged like soldiers, in rank, authority and worth. Differences in age and sex are neutralized by capitalism, all the instruments of labour of the consumer of commodities, more or less expensive to use according to their age and sex. Although child labour in developed society is behind us, child labour is still exploited by capitalists all over the world. Children in developed countries are accomplices to this as they are born as consumers and trained to consume wit the same hear no evil, speak now evil, see no evil attitude as the bourgeois society around them.
In bourgeois society the past dominates the present, in communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society, capital has freedom, people don’t. Communism is against freedom as promoted by the bourgeoisie, as individuality and free-trade. ‘Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that is done is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others as a means of such appropriation’, we should enjoy our arts and leisure only when it has been produced in conditions not equatable to exploitation, I,e, outside a system of wage labour and the squeezing of profit from it. The recent phenomenon of ‘fair-trade’ is not enough. Those that work, get as little as possible to perpetuate the necessity of their labour, those who acquire do not work.
Communism aims to abolish the family as we know it. The family of the bourgeoisie, the wife in an instrumental part of production (and adultery is the private prostitution within alienated bourgeois society). Communism aims to abolish all countries and nationalities, as Marx writes ‘working men have no country’. The abolition of property is not a communist aim: it is the abolition of private bourgeois property. ‘Abolition of private property’ is communism. This should happen when the proletariat is raised to the ruling class, to achieve what is known as the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, means to abolish private property, a progressive/banded income tax, to abolish inheritance, confiscation of property from rebels and emigrants, centralize credit by setting up a state banking monopoly, to centralize transport, communications and factories, to all have the equal obligation to work, to bring agriculture and manufacturing together by merging town and city via the equal distribution of the population, to have free education, to abolish child labour. In sum, ‘the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’. It could be said, that people of no class have no reality and exits in the realm of philosophical phantasy. To think one can philosophize, as classless thing, is to flee from the relations of the world you are thrown, by inauthentically ignoring ones historicity: all history is the history of class struggle. ‘All history is nothing but the continuous transformation of human nature: philosophy can be replaced by economic-historical science of society’, and accordingly, Marx questions Hegel, as ‘it is not the consciousness of men that determined their being but on the contrary their social being that determines their consciousness’.
We are in the age of the petite-bourgeoisie, where unions have numbers but have proven time and again to be in the pockets of politicians. The unions are a reaction to the fluctuating wages of the workers. Fluctuating wages causes anxiety: alienation is the existential state of the poor: the proletariat. The proletariat, the dangerous class, the social scum, is waged labour, capital needs labour and the bourgeoisie need capital. Liberal tools such as the minimum wage set the standards for bare existence. To the petite-bourgeoisie, all should become bourgeoisie! To eradicate social inequalities and let everyone enjoy the luxuries and products of their labour. Even those of the minimum wage can get credit cards to buy now pay later for that Playstation 3, car or fashionable haircut. The petite-bourgeoisie acts for the protection of the working class with these tools: the police, prisons and free-trade. The police reinforce, protect and perpetuate the capitalist state machinery, demonize enemies through media discourses and use prisons as the quantitative pecuniary measure of punishment, the ‘horror’ of being forced out of free society. Free society, free trade, free to consume as much as you like, hang the costs, borrow, pay later, you’re free. | <urn:uuid:277f5d4f-72a2-4748-980b-5a2e45df3f32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://avoidingthevoid.wordpress.com/category/communism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951848 | 6,085 | 1.71875 | 2 |
by Butler Shaffer
by Butler Shaffer
I have long been a critic of the state's co-option of holidays to serve governmental purposes, thus negating the messages these holidays originally served. July 4th — designed to celebrate independence from the state — has been refashioned as a holiday for revelling in the state's favorite activity, war. Television treats us to a seemingly endless supply of John Wayne films, urging us to embrace the contradictory idea that submitting ourselves to increased state power is the way to promote our liberty! It is such twisted thinking that leads those who refuse to examine the content of their minds to bleat about the soldiers who "fight for our freedom." What nonsense. Shall we next be told that Sunset Boulevard hookers are peddling virtue?
Just how far we have contorted our thinking about "independence day" is reflected in most people's thinking about fireworks. Like private gun-ownership, our personal use of fireworks represents too much power in the hands of individuals. And so, we confine ourselves to the absurdity of having the state celebrate our liberty and independence for us!
Memorial Day is another holiday corrupted by statism. Originally begun as a day for remembering the dead — particularly those who had died in war — it, too, has been twisted into a day for celebrating — not condemning — warfare. Back to the film files for more John Wayne flicks. Like his neocon successors who never heard a gunshot fired in anger, Wayne remains a hero to the statists for having bravely and selflessly defended the back-lot of Republic Pictures during World War II.
The November 11th Armistice Day holiday of my childhood — which celebrated the end of a war — has metamorphosed into Veterans Day, with thousands of war veterans donning their American Legion caps or U.S.S. Missouri baseball caps to praise the war system, rather than its albeit temporary cessation. More John Wayne celluloid makes it to the television screens. In such fictionalized accounts, young and impressionable minds learn the righteousness not only of obedience to authority, but of throwing oneself upon a live hand grenade.
And for what could we be more thankful on that fourth Thursday in November than living in a nation ruled by an all-powerful state that protects us from the savage hordes menacing us from such lands as Grenada, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Iraq, or any other enemy-of-the-month selected by establishment rulers? Nor does New Year's Day go unused by the state, it being the date on which most of the new regulations on our lives take effect, as well as the beginning of a new tax year.
Even Christmas — the day, not that many decades ago, that was virtually synonymous with "peace" — has given rise to Christmas cards depicting flag-draped Santa Clauses, and homes decorated in red, white, and blue lights. And as children unwrap their "G.I. Joe" toys or their warrior-based computer games, the ballad "Onward Christian Soldiers" may be heard on a local radio station.
Even as modernly practiced, there is one nice thing about national holidays: they provide a day off work for government employees. With this thought in mind, I propose a further expansion of such holidays, to the end that all 365 days of the year be taken up in honoring someone, or some event, or some group of people who should be accorded the same recognition as those now favored. I have a few samples to get our thinking started.
When a holiday for Martin Luther King was first being considered, I suggested other renowned blacks as more suitable honorees, Frederick Douglass being my choice. If there was an insistence upon selecting a more recent candidate, I would have preferred Malcolm X, who — particularly near the end of his life — saw the deeper basis of social conflict than the simplistic "black-versus-white" model upon which most of us have settled, and which is becoming a focal point in this year's presidential campaign. So, indulge my thinking for the purpose of having additional national holidays for Douglass and Malcolm.
In this age of hyphenated ego-boundary identities, religious, ethnic, and nationality groups could take up the cause for honoring their specific associations. The Christians and Jews already have their holidays (a word which, itself, stems from "holy days") recognized. But what about Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, Hindus, and the many other religions that are not recognized with a holiday? At a time when politicians like to talk about diversity, why are the members of these religions left out? And what about atheists? Shouldn't Madalyn Murray O'Hair's birthday also be recognized, as a confirmation of the non-establishment clause of the 1st Amendment?
Just imagine what could be done to shrink governmental behavior by recognizing nationality groups for a national holiday? Lithuanian Day, Cinco de Mayo, Norwegian Day, Kenya Day, Thailand Day, . . . on and on to encompass all nationalities as well as sub-nationalities (e.g., not just Iraq Day, but Shiite Day, Sunni Day, etc.). Yugoslavia — which has since decentralized into five separate nations — and Czechoslovakia — which has fragmented into the Czech Republic and Slovakia — could multiply the numbers, just as the collapse of the Soviet Union has breathed new life into a great many independent nations.
And why have we limited America's presidential nominees to a single President's Day? How about a day to honor each of them? My favorite — and the only one I would choose to honor — would be William Henry Harrison, a man who caught pneumonia on inauguration day and died a month later! Grover Cleveland would probably be entitled to two such days, his having served two non-consecutive terms.
You get the picture. Occupations, genders, lifestyles, belief systems, etc., etc., could each be recognized. Instead of a generic "Labor Day," what about a day recognizing farmers, who produce the food that sustains us? Furthermore, what about a day to honor those whose work is far more central to our well-being than rock stars and athletes, namely, those who dispose of the entropic wastes of our world (e.g., garbage and trash collectors, undertakers, and plumbers)? Such people — along with farmers — do the work many of us despise and yet, without their efforts, we would be inundated in waste (have you ever lived in New York City during a garbage-collectors' strike?).
Let us have a paid holiday for everyone, in honor of all these e pluribus unum groups we like to imagine have created America. If all 365 days could be filled up, this would mean that all government employees would continue to get paid: they just wouldn't show up for work to do anything. The benefit of paying such people to stay out of our way would be a wonderful first step toward a total dismantling of the state. We would still be stuck with paying their salaries but, on the other hand, we would have put an end to their ceaseless meddling. Enough of these people might become so bored with having no work to perform, they might quit their government jobs and go into the marketplace with the rest of us! To paraphrase an old Vietnam War saying, "what if they created a government, but nobody came?"
July 4, 2008
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival.
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First time accepted submitter carlypage3 writes "Benefits claimants in the UK are being forced to use Microsoft's now obsolete Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 software. The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) states that its online forms are not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 and 10, Safari, Google Chrome or Firefox. As if that wasn't unnerving enough, the Gov.UK website says that users cannot submit claims using Mac OS X or Linux operating systems, either." (Note: as we noted not long ago, it's not just the DWP that's stuck using IE6.)
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AmiMoJo writes "It looks like Mozilla are finally going to remove the much hated blink tag from the Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox. Work to remove support for the tag, which was always non-standard and is not supported by the most popular HTML layout engines WebKit and Blink (Chrome, Safari, Opera, Android), is progressing and should show up in a future version of the browser." A comment attached to the discussion of this (not completed) move points out the odd possibility that Google's new Blink rendering engine may feature the blink tag via CSS animation, which would be "hilarious/awesome."
An anonymous reader writes "A new trojan specifically for Macs has been discovered that installs an adware plugin. The malware attempts to monetize its attack by injecting ads into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (the most popular browsers on Apple's desktop platform) in the hopes that users will generate money for its creators by viewing (and maybe even clicking) them. The threat, detected as "Trojan.Yontoo.1" by Russian security firm Doctor Web, is part of a wider scheme of adware for OS X that has "been increasing in number since the beginning of 2013," according to the company."
Freshly Exhumed writes with an "inconvenient truth" as reported at Internet News: "Google Chrome running Chrome OS was hailed as being a survivor in the Pwnium/Pwn2own event that hacked IE, Firefox and Chrome browsers on Windows. Apple's Safari running on Mac OS X was not hacked and neither (apparently) was Chrome on Chrome OS. Google disclosed [Monday] morning that Chrome on Chrome OS had in fact been exploited — albeit, unreliably. The same researcher that took Google's money last year for exploiting Chrome, known publicly only as 'PinkiePie' was awarded $40,000 for exploiting Chrome/Chrome OS via a Linux kernel bug, config file error and a video parsing flaw." Asks Freshly Exhumed: "So, was it really Google Chrome, or was Linux to blame?"
New submitter jgb writes "WebKit is, now that Opera decided to join the project, in the core of three of the five major web browsers: Apple's Safari, Google's Chromium and Opera. Therefore, WebKit is also a melting pot for many corporate interests, since several competing companies (not only Google and Apple, but also Samsung, RIM, Nokia, Intel and many others) are finding ways of collaborating in the project. All of this makes fascinating the study of how they are contributing to the project. Some weeks ago, a study showed how they were submitting contributions to the code base. Now another one uncovers how they are reviewing those submitted contributions. As expected, most of the reviews during the whole life of the project were done by Apple, with Google as a close second. But things have changed dramatically during the last few years. In 2012, Google is a clear first, reviewing about twice as much (50%) as Apple (25%). RIM (7%) and Nokia (5%) are also relevant reviewers. Code review is very important in WebKit's development process, with reviewers acting as a sort of gatekeepers, deciding which changes make sense, and when they are conforming to the project practices and quality standards. In some sense, review activity reflects the responsibility each company is taking on how WebKit evolves. In some sense, the evolution over time for this activity by the different companies tells the history of how they have been shaping the project."
Dystopian Rebel writes "A Stanford comp-sci student has found a serious bug in Chromium, Safari, Opera, and MSIE. Feross Aboukhadijeh has demonstrated that these browsers allow unbounded local storage. 'The HTML5 Web Storage standard was developed to allow sites to store larger amounts of data (like 5-10 MB) than was previously allowed by cookies (like 4KB). ... The current limits are: 2.5 MB per origin in Google Chrome, 5 MB per origin in Mozilla Firefox and Opera, 10 MB per origin in Internet Explorer. However, what if we get clever and make lots of subdomains like 1.filldisk.com, 2.filldisk.com, 3.filldisk.com, and so on? Should each subdomain get 5MB of space? The standard says no. ... However, Chrome, Safari, and IE currently do not implement any such "affiliated site" storage limit.' Aboukhadijeh has logged the bug with Chromium and Apple, but couldn't do so for MSIE because 'the page is broken" (see http://connect.microsoft.com/IE). Oops. Firefox's implementation of HTML5 local storage is not vulnerable to this exploit."
Orome1 writes "Adobe has pushed out an emergency Flash update that solves two critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2013-0633 and CVE-2013-0634) that are being actively exploited to target Windows and OS X users, and is urging users to implement it as soon as possible. According to a security bulletin released on Thursday, the OS X exploit targets Flash Player in Firefox or Safari via malicious Flash content hosted on websites, while Windows users are targeted with Microsoft Word documents delivered as an email attachments which contain malicious Flash content. Adobe has also announced its intention of adding new protections against malicious Flash content embedded in Microsoft Office documents to its next feature release of Flash Player."
theodp writes "Earlier this week, hackers gained access to Twitter's internal systems and stole information, compromising 250,000 Twitter accounts before the breach was stopped. Reporting the incident on the company's official blog, Twitter's manager of network security did not specify the method by which hackers penetrated its system, but mentioned vulnerabilities related to Java in Safari and Firefox, and echoed Homeland Security's advisory that users disable Java in their browsers. Sure, blame everything on Larry Ellison. Looks like bad things do happen in threes — Twitter's report comes on the heels of disclosures of hacking attacks on the WSJ and NY Times."
Dupple writes "After settling with the FTC, Google is under pressure again regarding user privacy. From the BBC: 'A group of Apple's Safari web browser users has launched a campaign against Google over privacy concerns. They claim that Google bypassed Safari's security settings to install cookies which tracked their movements on the internet. Between summer 2011 and spring 2012 they were assured by Google this was not the case, and believed Safari's settings to be secure. Judith Vidal-Hall, former editor of Index On Censorship magazine, is the first person in the UK to begin legal action. 'Google claims it does not collect personal data but doesn't say who decides what information is "personal,"' she said. 'Whether something is private or not should be up to the internet surfer, not Google. We are best placed to decide, not them.'"
Press2ToContinue writes "Amazon has found a simple way around Apple's tight-fisted App Store rules: give users a web app to buy MP3s that runs in Safari. This way, they have no need to pay 30% per tune to Apple. Freedom of choice of vendor in Apple-only territory? Is this a big breach of Apple's walled garden? I wonder if Apple with have a response to this."
DeviceGuru writes "Although IE remains the one of the top browsers on desktops, it's being trounced on tablets and smartphones by browsers based on WebKit, including Safari, the Android Browser, and Google Chrome. Faced with this uphill battle on handheld mobile devices, Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss has suggested that it might be time for Microsoft to throw in the towel on Trident and switch to WebKit (though Reiss later decided he was wrong). But although there are lots of points in favor of doing so, there are also some good reasons not to, including security and a need for healthy competition to avoid having mobile developers begin to target WebKit rather than standards."
itwbennett writes "Judge Susan Illston has said she will approve a $22.5 million settlement deal between Google and the FTC over the company's practice of circumventing privacy protections in Apple's Safari browser to place tracking cookies on user's computers. Judge Illston also expressed concern about what will happen to the tracking data Google collected, since the settlement doesn't call for Google to destroy the data."
Trailrunner7 writes "A security researcher has submitted to Oracle a patch he said took him 30 minutes to produce that would repair a zero-day vulnerability currently exposed in Java SE. He hopes his actions will spur Oracle to issue an out-of-band patch for the sandbox-escape vulnerability, rather than wait for the February 2013 Critical Patch Update as Oracle earlier said it would. Adam Gowdiak of Polish security consultancy Security Explorations reported the vulnerability to Oracle on Sept. 25, as well as proof-of-concept exploit code his team produced. The vulnerability is present in Java versions 5, 6 and 7 and would allow an attacker to remotely control an infected machine once a user landed on a malicious website hosting the exploit. Gowdiak said his proof-of-concept exploit was successfully used against a fully patched Windows 7 machine using Firefox 15.0.1, Chrome 21, IE 9, Opera 12, and Safari 5.1.7."
An anonymous reader writes "cHTeMeLe is a board game about writing HTML5 code. In cHTeMeLe, players endorse their favorite web browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, or IE) and then score points by correctly laying out HTML tags, while also trying to bug or crash their opponents' code. From the article: 'Despite cHTeMeLe's technical theme, its developers claim you don't need any web programming experience to play. The game takes web design standards and boils them down into game rules that even children can learn. To help less technical players keep everything straight, the tag cards use syntax highlighting that different parts of code have unique colors — just like an Integrated Developer Environment. No one is going to completely pick up HTML5 purely by playing cHTeMeLe, but it does have some educational value for understanding basic tags and how they fit together.'"
jcatcw writes "Just as Oracle is ramping up for the September 30 start of JavaOne 2012 in San Francisco, researchers from the Polish firm Security Explorations disclosed yet another critical Java vulnerability that might 'spoil the taste of Larry Ellison's morning ... Java.' According to Security Explorations researcher Adam Gowdiak, who sent the email to the Full Disclosure Seclist, this Java exploit affects one billion users of Oracle Java SE software, Java 5, 6 and 7. It could be exploited by apps on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. Wow, thanks a lot Oracle."
New submitter SquarePixel writes "Microsoft is urging Safari users to switch to Bing after Google was fined $22.5 million for violating Safari privacy settings. 'Microsoft is keen to make sure that no-one forgets this, let alone Safari users, and the page summarizes the events that took place.' It tells users how Google promised not to track Safari users, but tracked them without their permission and used this data to serve them advertisement. Lastly, it tells how Google was fined $22.5 million for this and suggests users to try the more privacy oriented Bing search engine."
New submitter spac writes "AllthingsD has an interesting story about how a startup called Wajam requires users of their service to download a script that sets up a proxy to handle all network requests for the purpose of providing 'Social Recommendations' within built-in apps. The privacy implications of using this profile script isn't clearly presented to users. Are we really to entrust our data to a company founded by a man who comes from the world of browser toolbars? And for social search?!" The company rushes to counter privacy concerns by pointing out that their service has "received security certifications from TRUSTe, McAfee and Norton."
Trailrunner7 writes "Google, which has come under fire for years for its privacy practices and recently settled a privacy related case with the Federal Trade Commission that resulted in a $22.5 million fine, is building out a privacy 'red team,' a group of people charged with finding and resolving privacy risks in the company's products. The concept of a red team is one that's been used in security for decades, with small teams of experts trying to break a given software application, get into a network or circumvent a security system as part of a penetration test or a similar engagement. The idea is sometimes applied in the real world as well, in the form of people attempting to gain entry to a secure facility or other restricted area."
wiredmikey writes "The US Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for violating the privacy of people who used rival Apple's Safari web browser even after pledging not to do so. The FTC said Google had agreed with the commission in October 2011 not to place tracking cookies on or deliver targeted ads to Safari users, but then went ahead and did so. 'For several months in 2011 and 2012, Google placed a certain advertising tracking cookie on the computers of Safari users who visited sites within Google's DoubleClick advertising network,' the FTC said in a statement. 'Google had previously told these users they would automatically be opted out of such tracking.' While Google agreed to the fine, it did NOT admit it had violated the earlier agreement."
TrueSatan writes "iOS 6 beta 4 has removed the YouTube application that existed on iOS since the first version in 2007. Apple confirmed that YouTube is gone from iOS 6. Google is apparently building its own app saying: 'Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.'" | <urn:uuid:bd18c62f-e8ce-4a05-809e-0e5fd4a98ac7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://apple.slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=safari | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949954 | 3,011 | 1.546875 | 2 |
HUCK THE SCHMUCK
I had thought that by now we knew everything about Mike Huckabee: the love of more and higher taxes, the betrayal of home schooling, the parole of the man who then raped and killed another woman, the attempt to bring as many illegal aliens to Arkansas as possible, et cetera and so on. Of course, I was horribly wrong.
Now come revelations that penetrate to the heart of the man, which he says is the fact that he is a preacher of Christ, except of course that his own staff now admits he was lying when he kept boasting he was the only candidate on the stage with a “theology degree.” Remember his smart aleck offer to help Ghouliani when the moderator asked the Ghoul about his spiritual beliefs in the debates?
Because I have lived so long and seen so much, I am not easy to shock. But Huckabee has done so. As you know, one of the main differences between him and the other man from Hope, Arkansas – I can’t recall his name; he is the husband of Hillaroid – is the musical instrument they play. The other man plays the sexaphone (sic); Huck plays the guitar. Indeed, Huck plays guitar in a group called Capitol Offense. One of the numbers they do is “Honky Tonk Women.” Here are some of the lyrics:
met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis,
laid a divorcee in New York City,
So, what do we have here? We have a man drinking to excess in a Memphis whore house to get a woman off his mind. We have an alcoholic whore trying to turn a trick. Because he is mourning the loss of the first woman, the whore has to drag him upstairs to a bedroom for the purpose. Presumably, she could do so only because Friar Huck had already lost those famous hundred pounds in preparation for his presidential race. No normal woman, and certainly not a gin-soaked whore, could lift a thing the size of Huckabee before.
The narrator thankfully survives the night of abandon. The next stanza finds him in New York. He is still lamenting the loss of the unnamed lady in Memphis, because in New York another lady, a divorcee, has to struggle to bring Huck the Schmuck to her bed. The lady blows his nose, which sounds disgusting and then blows his mind. I shall say no more here because the verb “blows” comes dangerously close to the area patented by the other man from Hope, the one whose name I can’t remember.
Of course, “Honky Tonk Women” is a Mick Jagger/Rolling Stones song. To do it justice, Huckabee’s Capitol Offense presumably had to practice, singing these words over and over again. Excuse me? Remember we are not talking here about some difference in doctrine. We’re not talking about different interpretations of Original Sin. We’re talking about the personal behavior of a preacher, a minister of Christ. Will Huck the Schmuck be performing “Honky Tonk Women” in the Huckabee White House?
Capitol Offense appears to have a penchant for professional hookers. Another number they do is “Devil With the Blue Dress On.” Here are some of the lyrics: “She walks real cool, catches everybody's eye/She's got such good lovin' that they can't say goodbye.” There is also the immortal:
golly, Miss Molly
Notice that unlike every other minister of Jesus I have heard of, Huck the Schmuck does not lament the fact that these women are prostitutes and try to reform them. On the contrary, Capitol Offense celebrates and applauds their prostitution. Huckabee apparently will do anything to look “cool.”
Needless to say, the Prostitute National Press has not said a word about this. Instead, they have tried (unsuccessfully) to make something of the fact that Tucker Carlson booby trapped Dr. Ron Paul into accepting a donation from a man he didn’t know who runs a brothel in Nevada. By the way, Dr. No plays no instrument and can’t carry a tune.
But now here comes something even worse. What? Worse? Yes! In 2004, at a dinner meeting of the Republican Governors Association, Huckabee mounted the rostrum to deliver the opening prayer. You would ask the only man present with a “theology degree” to do that. As the schmuck got started, the mobile phone in his pocket rang. And an “embarrassed” Governor Huckabee took the call. Guess who it was.
It was God
That’s right; God took time out from His manifold activities to call Friar Huck as he began his remarks. Either that, or Huck was doing an impression of Bob Newhart, in which case his impression was masterful; but I saw the video and can assure you that was not what he was doing. He was using the “theology degree” he now is lying about to drive home the “fact” that, despite the hymns to prostitution of Capitol Offense, he was the only governor the Creator would call.
As brilliant as he was, Friar Huck did miss one trick. He should have had God call collect. Then Huck could magnanimously have accepted the charges. On the other hand, the charges from Heaven to here are probably prohibitive, and everyone knows God has unlimited funds insured by FDIC, so He probably would pay for such a call Himself. Here are the main things the other governors – rotten, no-good sinners who therefore don’t get calls from God – heard Friar Huck say:
The transcript says there was much delighted laughter during all of this. At the end there was (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE). When I heard about it, I gasped. When I saw the video I marveled. Notice that Huckabee revoltingly trivializes God. He patronizes God, reducing Him to a Straight Man in a comedy act. This is not the God I know, not the Creator of everything that is, not the God who spoke the world into existence. Am I wrong? Am I making more of this than it deserves? I don’t think so, but please let me know.
More proof that Huck the Schmuck thinks Christianity is a joke came after the people of Arizona enacted a law (Proposition 200) that denies benefits to illegal aliens. The courts upheld Prop 200 and a couple of Republican Senators in Arkansas proposed a similar law there. The Arkansas law would have required proof of citizenship to vote.
But Huck denounced the proposal as "race-baiting and demagoguery." He said the bill “inflames those who are racist and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem. But there's not.” So, in Arkansas, Huck says illegal aliens are not a problem, even when they vote. Now, running for President, he says the reverse.
But here comes the kicker. Fellow Republican Senator Jim Holt, one of the bill’s sponsors, is also a Christian. Singling him out, Governor Schmuck said as follows: “I drink a different kind of Jesus juice.” Again we see that, in Huckabee’s lexicon, Jesus is a joke, a Straight Man in a comedy act, a dummy sitting on Huckabee’s knee. The Schmuck will do or say anything in his lust to be “cool.” But English speakers will remember that “cool” means “not so hot.”
When I saw the Huck and his Straight Man go through his act, I wondered. Are there really any Americans dumb enough to fall for this malarkey, dumb enough to give credence to a man who makes Elmer Gantry look like John the Baptist? The answer is, yes, there are millions of them. Many of those millions belong to what they call the Religious Right.
This time around, despite everything we now know, Friar Huck is their choice. So I have only one question for you. Are you out of your minds? Dr. Ron Paul exemplifies to the max everything you say you believe. Mike Huckabee makes Dr. No look like a glorified combination of Washington, Jefferson and Henry. But you have rejected Dr. Paul in favor of a blatant scumbag.
Over and over again, you have betrayed yourselves. You did it with Bush. He ridicules you as suckers in private; in public he says he is “born again.” Apparently that is all a man need say to win your devotion. Because he is a fraud, your country now is falling apart, soon to be merged out of existence with Mexico and Canada. Your freedoms are gone.
preachers are not preachers. They are motivational speakers, lusting
for fame and the buck. They are cowards, not Christians, not the Black
Regiment that led the War for Independence. If they tell you to vote
for the rear end of a horse, you will flock from the meeting halls
to the polling places and do so, like characters in George A. Romero’s
classic, “Night of the Living Dead.” Now you are getting ready to
do it again. And you will deserve everything you get when reality
hits you in the face.
© 2007 - Alan Stang - All Rights Reserved
are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale
Alan Stang was one of Mike Wallace’s original writers at Channel 13 in New York, where he wrote some of the scripts that sent Mike to CBS. Stang has been a radio talk show host himself. In Los Angeles, he went head to head nightly with Larry King, and, according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. He has been a foreign correspondent. He has written hundreds of feature magazine articles in national magazines and some fifteen books, for which he has won many awards, including a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for journalistic excellence. One of Stang’s exposés stopped a criminal attempt to seize control of New Mexico, where a gang seized a court house, held a judge hostage and killed a deputy. The scheme was close to success before Stang intervened. Another Stang exposé inspired major reforms in federal labor legislation.
His first book, It’s Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights, was an instant best-seller. His first novel, The Highest Virtue, set in the Russian Revolution, won smashing reviews and five stars, top rating, from the West Coast Review of Books, which gave five stars in only one per cent of its reviews.
Stang has lectured in every American state and around the world and has guested on many top shows, including CNN’s Cross Fire. Because he and his wife had the most kids in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, where they lived at the time, the entire family was chosen to be actors in “Havana,” directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, the most expensive movie ever made (at the time). Alan Stang is the man in the ridiculous Harry Truman shirt with the pasted-down hair. He says they made him do it.
Prostitute National Press has not said a word about this. Instead, they have tried (unsuccessfully) to make something of the fact that Tucker Carlson booby trapped Dr. Ron Paul into accepting a donation from a man he didn’t know who runs a brothel in Nevada. | <urn:uuid:c2f8ab5a-2388-480f-82b7-df1f8ce5fe06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan22.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96822 | 2,432 | 1.648438 | 2 |
College Makes IBM i Apps Appear Less Old, More Cool
Published: March 27, 2012
by Alex Woodie
Baker College's IBM i applications now look a little younger and a lot cooler as a result of an application modernization project that was recently completed with Profound Logic's tools. The revamp of the UI might just have saved the IBM i from being scrapped for another platform.
Baker College of Michigan is a longtime (and mostly happy) user of the IBM i platform. The college, which serves 43,000 students across 17 physical campuses and the Web, uses the computer platform to run a variety of critical applications. Over the several decades of use, the college has more than a million lines of RPG in production.
While the platform has, by all appearances, served its purpose well at Baker, some of the college's 2,000 users balked at using the green-screen interface. "The feedback we received from end-users at the college is that the applications they accessed on 5250 looked old," Mike Andritsis, the college's IT leader, says in a recently published case study. "We would get asked frequently why we were using programs that looked like DOS from several decades ago."
It's hard to argue with that perception. After all, it does look like Microsoft DOS, even if IBM i is much more modern and powerful than that ancient OS. But more worrisome to Andritsis was the fact that some people were using the ugly 5250 interface to justify a migration off the IBM i platform. If the screens look outdated, the thinking goes, then the underlying computer must be old too.
Andritsis took this as a call to action to save the platform at Baker, retain the considerable investment in business logic, and prevent the college from making a costly mistake. "I believe IBM i is an incredibly reliable, stable platform, and that it makes sense to use modernization tools that are available for the i instead of essentially throwing the baby out with the bathwater," he says.
The college eventually chose Profound UI, a modernization tool based on IBM's Rational Open Access: RPG Edition technology. The software allows users to create new Web and mobile interfaces that don't rely on the 5250 data stream.
Baker College began working with Profound UI in 2010, and has completed the first phases of its modernization project. The reception by the college's end users has been positive. "Even though our end-users expressed frustration at working with 5250 screens, I expected some push-back on working with the modernized applications," Andritsis says. "But I was blown away at the positive reception the users gave them."
The college's IT team continues to develop back office logic in RPG, while Profound UI is used for user interface development. There was a learning curve associated with the new system, but a cross reference tool helped users of the new GUI locate items they were accustomed to accessing in the old green screens.
Going forward, Andritsis and his team are working on further simplifying the new screens, including reducing the number of clicks required to accomplish tasks, and working with batch processing.
Profound Updates RPG OA Screen Modernization Tool
Charges Dropped, Rational Open Access Goes Free
Profound Announces Another RPG:OA First, Unveils RDi Plug-In
Profound to Resell RPG Open Access for IBM
Early Adopters of Profound UI Pleased
DDS Conversion Tool Joins Profound's Web Development Tools
Profound Brings RPG:OA-Like Features to V5R3 and V5R4
Profound Delivers First RPG Open Access 'Handler' | <urn:uuid:afd5b47e-5218-43f5-a9fa-a300fd061029> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs032712-printer05.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959938 | 750 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The Russian Business Network (commonly abbreviated as RBN) is a multi-faceted cybercrime organization, specializing in and in some cases monopolizing personal identity theft for resale. It is the originator of MPack and an alleged operator of the Storm botnet.
The RBN, which is notorious for its hosting of illegal and dubious businesses, originated as an Internet service provider for child pornography, phishing, spam, and malware distribution physically based in St. Petersburg, Russia. By 2007, it developed partner and affiliate marketing techniques in many countries to provide a method for organized crime to target victims internationally
According to internet security company VeriSign, RBN was registered as an internet site in 2006.
Initially, much of its activity was legitimate. But apparently the founders soon discovered that it was more profitable to host illegitimate activities and started hiring its services to criminals.
The RBN has been described by VeriSign as "the baddest of the bad". It offers web hosting services and internet access to all kinds of criminal and objectionable activities, with individual activities earning up to $150 million in one year. Businesses that take active stands against such attacks are sometimes targeted by denial of service attacks originating in the RBN network. RBN has been known to sell its services to these operations for $600 per month.
The business is difficult to trace. It is not a registered company, and its domains are registered to anonymous addresses. Its owners are known only by nicknames. It does not advertise, and trades only in untraceable electronic transactions.
One increasingly known activity of the RBN is delivery of exploits through fake anti-spyware and anti-malware, for the purposes of PC hijacking and personal identity theft. McAfee SiteAdvisor tested 279 “bad” downloads from this one site, and found that MalwareAlarm is an update of the fake anti-spyware Malware Wiper. The user is enticed to use a “free download” to test for spyware or malware on their PC; MalwareAlarm then displays a warning message of problems on the PC to persuade the unwary web site visitor to purchase the paid version. Along with MalwareAlarm, much other rogue software is linked to and hosted by the RBN.
According to Spamhaus, RBN is “Among the world's worst spammer, child-pornography, malware, phishing and cybercrime hosting networks. Provides 'bulletproof hosting', but is probably involved in the crime too”. RBN was the subject of an article in the Washington Post on October 13, 2007, where Symantec and other security firms claim RBN provides hosting for many illegal activities, including identity theft and phishing. The article quotes a spokesman for Kaspersky Labs that the owners of RBN might not have directly violated the law as they primarily provide hosting services; their customers are apparently the ones violating laws. | <urn:uuid:abdc71b6-8ca7-47a8-8e72-4bd1e3e51d8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cyberwarzone.com/content/russian-business-network | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963168 | 608 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Industry Management Major
The TECH major is available to students who matriculated at Kellogg in Fall 2011 or earlier.
Technology is transforming both consumer products and the day-to-day operations of the companies that produce. Leading firms often stay ahead of the competition with innovative products and procedures, yet there is a well-documented digital divide between managers who can harness the power of technology and those who cannot. The Technology Industry Management (TECH) major equips students to manage technology and innovation and provides them with an in-depth understanding of how enterprise technologies can make businesses more successful.
"Horizontal" courses expose students to the fundamentals of enterprise technologies, management of technology projects and portfolios, innovation management, and technology strategy, while "vertical" courses focus on the managerial challenges in creating and marketing technology products and services. The major is useful for students who wish to work as product managers in technology companies, consultants in strategy consulting firms or as entrepreneurs. It is also useful for future general managers who will sponsor initiatives involving enterprise technology or new technology products and services. | <urn:uuid:fa758ec9-9db5-450a-abc0-294530a799b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academic/tech/index.htm | 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 | 0.934038 | 216 | 1.710938 | 2 |
ADD and Loving It: The Documentary
The A.D.D. Resource Center was established in 1993 to offer help to individuals with ADD (now called ADHD) and their families. We provide many programs, including Coaching and Parenting Classes, that transform the challenges of ADHD, and welcome you to ask us how we can make a difference in your life.
Unfortunately, ADD/ADHD is still a very misunderstood condition that this video (see below), with humor and heart, has made more comprehensible, and we appreciate its value and encourage people to view it.
This one hour documentary describes life with ADHD from the very funny and poignant perspective of Canadian comedian and actor, Patrick McKenna, his wife and the directors.
We are disappointed that the full version is no longer available for public viewing. To order your own copy click here on: ADD & Loving It?!
Filmed in 2009, by VW Media, the complete documentary is for sale on this site (see below) , but is also frequently run on Public Television stations.
Watch the trailer for the video
Patrick McKenna is a talented and award winning dramatic actor, and he takes us back to his public school to reveal the dark side, peeling back the layers of a very difficult childhood. Talking about the struggles at school, in his career, and as a parent, exposes a pain that Janis admits, “We spent our whole lives trying to cover up.”
Canadian comedy legend Patrick McKenna is after the truth. “Everything you think you know about A.D.D. is wrong.” In this one hour documentary he talks to researchers, specialists and doctors about A.D.D. and A.D.H.D.. He also chats with ordinary Canadians & Americans who are directly dealing with the challenges of this common problem. Interwoven with these insights, Patrick shares his own life story and his struggle with undiagnosed and untreated A.D.H.D, and now his success taking it on Adult A.D.D..
Though the suffering is real, Patrick is interested in the good news. When A.D.D. is diagnosed and treated, life can become very sweet. A liability can become an asset. As one expert explains, “This is not a diagnosis to fear. This is a diagnosis to understand and embrace.”
There’s plenty of comedy as Patrick’s wife Janis takes him through a slew of the most reliable tests for A.D.D.. They can’t stop laughing in recognition, and Patrick giggles, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Janis admits, “I didn’t know it would be this much fun!”
But Patrick McKenna is also a talented and award winning dramatic actor, and he takes us back to his public school to reveal the dark side, peeling back the layers of a very difficult childhood. Talking about the struggles at school, in his career, and as a parent, exposes a pain that Janis admits, “We spent our whole lives trying to cover up.”
Click here to order: ADD & Loving It?! | <urn:uuid:9bad2960-fe17-4ad7-9b95-59866126cf1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.addrc.org/add-and-loving-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970028 | 660 | 1.554688 | 2 |
A Tale of Two Protests
by Erin Dwyer • Sep 15, 2011 at 5:04 pm
The Israeli ambassador and his staff left their embassy in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Wednesday night one day ahead of a planned anti-Israel "million-man march." While some news reports said the staff were evacuated, an Israeli foreign ministry official denied that claim, stating that the embassy routinely shuts down on Thursday and the staff's departure was only expedited by a few hours.
Either way, the measure was seemingly taken as a precaution after last weekend's protest against the Israeli embassy in Cairo. During the 13-hour rampage of Israel's embassy, which forced the ambassador and his family to leave the country, hundreds of demonstrators tore down a security wall as Egyptian police looked on. After breaking into the building, protesters dumped documents out of the windows. Egyptian commandos, at the urging of the United States, eventually rescued six Israeli security men trapped inside.
A protester holds the Egyptian flag as a fire rages outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo.
But in Jordan the call for the "million-man march
" -- largely fueled by the Palestinian Authority's statehood bid at the UN, and whose followers were demonstrating in support of closing the Israeli embassy, expelling the ambassador, and annulling the 1994 peace treaty with Israel -- came and went without much steam. According to a New York Times report out Thursday evening, only about 200 protesters showed up
, and Jordan was prepared with plenty of security officers on hand.
That the Jordanian authorities were willing to prepare themselves for a larger crowd and protect the Israeli building is welcoming news. Israel only has diplomatic relations with two Arab countries -- Jordan and Egypt. Moreover, in the span of just ten days, Israeli ambassadors have been forced out of Turkey and Egypt, and essentially Jordan. Prior to the Arab uprisings, Israel's diplomatic relations with these three countries provided a crutch of stability in an unpredictable region. The "Arab Spring," it seems, will not be a spring-board for warm Arab-Israeli relations.
Related Topics: Egypt, Israel, Middle East Uprising | Erin Dwyer
receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free jewish policy center mailing list | <urn:uuid:b55df1e4-4516-4740-a5b5-57fb9de2eb51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/blog/2011/09/a-tale-of-two-protests | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954609 | 455 | 1.53125 | 2 |
More Articles for accelerated bridge construction
Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez on Jan. 10 joined officials from the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) as they put a new bridge in place on the I-15 West Mesquite Interchange with new technologies that allowed ...
Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez has reviewed what the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) says are the "innovative, money-saving" construction methods that will allow the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) to replace 14 bridges this summer as part of the I-93 ...
- MoDOT employs robot to mow roadside grass1518 Views
- I-5 bridge expected to reopen in mid-June987 Views
- CDOT “Slow for the Cone Zone” ads depict kids as construction workers460 Views
- USDOT to release $15.6 million for I-5 bridge416 Views
- 25 percent of U.S. bridges classified as deficient in 2012345 Views | <urn:uuid:d1cd95a9-7f07-4ef8-81a1-646d6b857e2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.betterroads.com/tag/accelerated-bridge-construction/ | 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 | 0.93145 | 200 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Speed & Break Tips While Putting
by Robert Partain
There are two areas in putting that have almost nothing to do with the mechanics of putting, and, yet, they are crucial to keeping your putting strokes down. They are: judging speed and estimating the break.
Why Do My Feet Hurt So Much When I Run?
by Willie Jones
Most people do not know that there is a proper shoe for their foot type. Knowing your foot type before you hit the stores can make a world of difference whether you want to do brisk walking, jogging or marathons.
The Secret And Crucial Role Of Alignment
by Alastair Canaway
The alignment is an absolutely crucial and vital part to any golfer’s game. You swing round your body, therefore if your body is offline, your swing in turn will be off line and out of sync, resulting in a poor swing and a poor shot, usually ending up deep in the rough.
Chelsea Football Club - The Story Of The Blues
by Nilesh Peshawaria
Most soccer teams have an emotional link to their home stadium, but the history of few teams and stadiums are as intertwined as that of Chelsea FC and Stamford Bridge, their London home.
Does Creatine Really Help Build Muscle?
by Craig Rowe
Unfortunately, most people believe that creatine helps build muscle and it does in a way, but probably not the way you are thinking. The best way to describe creatine is to say that it helps the muscles help themselves build muscle.
Calf Cramps - 5 Ways to Avoid the Pain
by Charlie Cory
If you are a runner, then I am sure that you will know about calf cramps. Imagine this scenario if you will. Let's say that you are 7.5k into a 10k run and the road starts to incline. Ever so slightly, but enough to put that extra strain on your legs as you try to maintain contact ... | <urn:uuid:5c687caa-129b-46d0-8177-f6bab12f80bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sportandme.com/sports-popular-articles.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94253 | 398 | 1.640625 | 2 |
VOLUNTEER fire departments, essential to public safety, face a cost crunch. Some public officials in Kanawha County have indicated interest in a fire levy to provide the needed funds.
But getting voters to pass a fire levy that directs public funds to privately run volunteer fire departments depends on convincing the public that all of these organizations 1) need to exist, and 2) handle public money responsibly.
To their credit, Kanawha County commissioners started requiring departments to submit a little more financial information. Most readily complied.
But two departments have made news for financial irregularities. Raising confidence may take a while.
Steve Johnson, a member of the board of the Chesapeake department, is paid about $30,000 a year by the communications company. His son, P.J. Johnson, is paid about $56,000 a year as chief of the department.
The Chesapeake department initially refused to provide information requested by the county, and later refused to supply information sought by the state legislative auditor's division. That led legislative auditor Aaron Allred to tell state Treasurer John Perdue on Jan. 2 to withhold all state funds from the department.
Thus the Chesapeake department did not receive about $12,000 generated by the 0.5 percent surcharge on fire and casualty insurance premiums. The department supplied the documentation on Jan. 9, but it has not yet been reviewed. | <urn:uuid:4326e8fa-fbe0-481b-92ad-027288ab1a6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Editorials/201302060237 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953024 | 283 | 1.554688 | 2 |
st. john chrysostom,
Archbishop of Constantinople,
epistle of st. paul the apostle
The Argument. 1184
As I keep hearing the Epistles of the blessed Paul read, and that twice every week, and often three or four times, whenever we are celebrating the memorials of the holy martyrs, gladly do I enjoy the spiritual trumpet, and get roused and warmed with desire at recognizing the voice so dear to me, and seem to fancy him all but present to my sight, and behold him conversing with me. But I grieve and am pained, that all people do not know this man, as much as they ought to know him; but some are so far ignorant of him, as not even to know for certainty the number of his Epistles. And this comes not of incapacity, but of their not having the wish to be continually conversing with this blessed man. For it is not through any natural readiness and sharpness of wit that even I am acquainted with as much as I do know, if I do know anything, but owing to a continual cleaving to the man, and an earnest affection towards him. For, what belongs to men beloved, they who love them know above all others; because they are interested in them. And this also this blessed Apostle shows in what he said to the Philippians; “Even as it is meet for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, both in my bonds, and in the defence and confirmation of the Gospel.” (Phil. i. 7.) And so ye also, if ye be willing to apply to the reading of him with a ready mind, will need no other aid. For the word of Christ is true which saith, “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matt. vii. 7.) But since the greater part of those who here gather themselves to us, have taken upon themselves the bringing up of children, and the care of a wife, and the charge of a family, and for this cause cannot afford to all events aroused to receive those things which have been brought together by others, and bestow as much attention upon the hearing of what is said as ye give to the gathering together of goods. For although it is unseemly to demand only so much of you, yet still one must be content if ye give as much. For from this it is that our countless evils have arisen—from ignorance of the Scriptures; from this it is that the plague of heresies has broken out; from this that there are negligent lives; from this labors without advantage. For as men deprived of this daylight would not walk aright, so they that look not to the gleaming of the Holy Scriptures must needs be frequently and constantly sinning, in that they are walking in the worst darkness. And that this fall not out, let us hold our eyes open to the bright shining of the Apostles words; for this mans tongue shone forth above the sun, and he abounded more than all the rest in the word of doctrine; for since he labored more abundantly than they, he also drew upon himself a large measure of the Spirits grace. (1 Cor. xv. 10.) And this I constantly affirm, not only from his Epistles, but also from the Acts. For if there were anywhere a season for oratory, to him men everywhere gave place. Wherefore also he was thought by the unbelievers to be Mercurius, because he took the lead in speech. (Acts xiv. 12.) And as we are going to enter fully into this Epistle, it is necessary to give the date also at which it was written. For it is not, as most think, before all the others, but before all that were written from Rome, yet subsequent to the rest, though not to all of them. For both those to the Corinthians were sent before this: and this is plain from what he wrote at the end of this, saying as follows: “But now I go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints: for it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem.” (Rom. 15:25, 26.) For in writing to the Corinthians he says: “If it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me” (1 Cor. xvi. 4); meaning this about those who were to carry the money from thence. Whence it is plain, that when he wrote to the Corinthians, the matter of this journey of his was in doubt, but when to the Romans, it stood now a decided thing. And this being allowed, the other point is plain, that this Epistle was after those. But that to the Thessalonians also seems to me to be before the Epistle to the Corinthians: for having written to them before, and having moved the question of alms to them, when he said, “But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren” (1 Thess. 4:9, 10): then he wrote to the Corinthians. And this very point he makes plain in the words, “For I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Achaia was ready a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many” (2 Cor. ix. 2): whence he shows that they were the first he had spoken to about this. This Epistle then is later than those, but prior (πρώτη) to those from Rome; for he had not as yet set foot in the city of the Romans when he wrote this Epistle, and this he shows by saying, “For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift.” (Rom. i. 11.) But it was from Rome he wrote to the Philippians; wherefore he says, “All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Cæsars household” (Phil. iv. 22): and to the Hebrews from thence likewise, wherefore also he says, “all they of Italy salute them.” (Heb. xiii. 24.) And the Epistle to Timothy he sent also from Rome, when in prison; which also seems to me to be the last of all the Epistles; and this is plain from the end: “For I am now ready to be offered,” he says, “and the time of my departure is at hand.” (2 Tim. iv. 6.) But that he ended his life there, is clear, I may say, to every one. And that to Philemon is also very late, (for he wrote it in extreme old age, wherefore also he said, “as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner in Christ Jesus”) (Philem. 9), yet previous to that to the Colossians. And this again is plain from the end. For in writing to the Colossians, he says, “All my state shall Tychicus declare unto you, whom I have sent with Onesimus, a faithful and beloved brother.” (Col. iv. 7.) For this was that Onesimus in whose behalf he composed the Epistle to Philemon. And that this was no other of the same name with him, is plain from the mention of Archippus. For it is he whom he had taken as worker together with himself in the Epistle to Philemon, when he besought him for Onesimus, whom when writing to the Colossians he stirreth up, saying, “Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received, that thou fulfil it.” (Col. iv. 17.) And that to the Galatians seems to me to be before that to the Romans. 1185 But if they have a different order in the Bibles, that is nothing wonderful, since the twelve Prophets, though not exceeding one another in order of time, but standing at great intervals from one another, are in the arrangement of the Bible placed in succession. Thus Haggai and Zachariah and the Messenger 1186 prophesied after Ezekiel and Daniel, and long after Jonah and Zephaniah and all the rest. Yet they are nevertheless joined with all those from whom they stand so far off in time.
But let no one consider this an undertaking beside the purpose, nor a search of this kind a piece of superfluous curiosity; for the date of the Epistles contributes no little to what we are looking after. 1187 For when I see him writing to the Romans and to the Colossians about the same subjects, and yet not in a like way about the same subjects; but to the former with much condescension, as when he says, “Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations; for one believeth that he may eat all things, another, herbs” (Rom. 14:1, 2): who is weak, eateth weak, but to the Colossians he does not write in this way, though about the same things, but with greater boldness of speech: “Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ,” he says, “why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances (touch not, taste not, handle not), which all are to perish with the using, not in any honor to the satisfying of the flesh” (Col. ii. 20-23);—I find no other reason for this difference than the time of the transaction. For at the first it was needful to be condescending, but afterwards it became no more so. And in many other places one may find him doing this. Thus both the physician and the teacher are used to do. For neither does the physician treat alike his patients in the first stage of their disorder, and when they have come to the point of having health thenceforth, nor the teacher those children who are beginning to learn and those who want more advanced subjects of instruction. Now to the rest he was moved to write by some particular cause and subject, and this he shows, as when he says to the Corinthians, “Touching those things whereof ye wrote unto me” (1 Cor. vii. 1): and to the Galatians too from the very commencement of the whole Epistle writes so as to indicate the same thing; but to these for what purpose and wherefore does he write? For one finds him bearing testimony to them that they are “full of goodness, being filled with all knowledge, and able also to admonish others.” (Rom. xv. 14.) Why then does he write to them? “Because of the grace of God,” he says, “which is given unto me, that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ” (Rom. 15:15, 16): wherefore also he says in the beginning: “I am a debtor; as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also;” for what is said—as that they are “able to exhort others also” (Rom. 1:14, 15),—and the like, rather belongs to encomium and encouragement: and the correction afforded by means of a letter, was needful even for these; for since he had not yet been present, he bringeth the men to good order in two ways, both by the profitableness of his letter and by the expectation of his presence. For such was that holy soul, it comprised the whole world and carried about all men in itself thinking the nearest relationship to be that in God. And he loved them so, as if he had begotten them all, or rather showed (so 4 mss.) a greater instinctive affection than any father (so Field: all mss. give “a fathers toward all”); for such is the grace of the Spirit, it exceedeth the pangs of the flesh, and displays a more ardent longing than theirs. And this one may see specially in the soul of Paul, who having as it were become winged through love, went continually round to all, abiding nowhere nor standing still. For since he had heard Christ saying, “Peter, lovest thou Me? feed My sheep” (John xxi. 15); and setting forth this as the greatest test of love, he displayed it in a very high degree. Let us too then, in imitation of him, each one bring into order, if not the world, or not entire cities and nations, yet at all events his own house, his wife, his children, his friends, his neighbors. And let no one say to me, “I am unskilled and unlearned:” nothing were less instructed than Peter, nothing more rude than Paul, and this himself confessed, and was not ashamed to say, “though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge.” (2 Cor. xi. 6.) Yet nevertheless this rude one, and that unlearned man, 1188 overcame countless philosophers, stopped the mouths of countless orators, and did all by their own ready mind and the grace of God. What excuse then shall we have, if we are not equal to twenty names, and are not even of service to them that live with us? This is but a pretence and an excuse—for it is not want of learning or of instruction which hindereth our teaching, but drowsiness and sleep. (Acts i. 15; ii. 41.) Let us then having shaken off this sleep with all diligence cleave to our own members, that we may even here enjoy much calm, by ordering in the fear of God them that are akin to us, and hereafter may partake of countless blessings through the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ towards man, through Whom, and with Whom, be glory to the Father, with the Holy Ghost, now, and evermore, and to all ages. Amen.
Field counts this as the first Homily: but it seemed needless to disturb the usual numeration.i:1185
It is remarkable that the conclusions of Chrys. should harmonize so well with the results of modern scholarship in regard to the order of the Pauline epistles. Except in assigning the Epistle to the Hebrews to Paul and in apparently interposing a considerable period between Philemon and Colossians, his statements may be taken as giving the best conclusions of criticism.—G.B.S.i:1186
“Or Angel, i.e. Malachi; who was so called from the expression Mal. i. 1 (LXX. διὰ χειρὸς ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ cf. E.V. in margin by the hand of Malachi), cf. 2 Esdras 1.402 Esdr. i. 40.”i:1187
Our author rightly attaches much importance to the time and occasion of writing as bearing upon the meaning of the epistles. The earliest epistles—those to the Thessalonians—relate to Pauls missionary labors and are but a continuation of the apostles preaching. They might almost be called samples of his sermons. The group which falls next in order (Gal., 1 and 2 Cor., and Rom.) comprehends the great doctrinal discussions of the problems of law and grace, and reflects the conflict of the Apostle to the Gentiles with the Judaizing tendency in all its phases. This group is most important for the study of the Pauline theology. The third group—the epistles of the (first) imprisonment—Col., Philem., Eph. and Phil.—besides containing a wonderful fulness and richness of Christian thought, exhibits to us the rise and spread of Gnostic heresies,—the introduction of heathen philosophical ideas which were destined to exert a mighty influence upon the theology, religion and life of the church for centuries. The last group—the Pastoral epistles—has a peculiar private and personal character from being addressed to individuals. They have a special value, for all who hold their genuineness, from being the latest Christian counsels of “Paul the aged.”—G.B.S.i:1188
The “learning” of the Apostle Paul has been greatly exaggerated on both sides. It has been customary to overestimate it. He has been described as learned in Greek literature. The quotation of a few words from Aratus (Acts xvii. 28) and the use of two (probably) proverbial sayings which have been traced to Menander and Epimenides (1 Cor. xv. 33; Titus i. 12) furnish too slender support for this opinion. (vid. Meyer in locis). It is said that Paul had abundant opportunity to become acquainted with the Greek literature in Tarsus. But he left Tarsus at an early age and all the prejudices of his family would disincline him to the study of Heathen literature. His connection with Gamaliel and the style of his epistles alike show that his education was predominantly Jewish and Rabbinic. He was learned after the manner of the strictest Pharisees and from his residence in Tarsus and extended travel had acquired a good writing and speaking knowledge of the Greek language. Chrys. is uniformly inclined, however, to depreciate the culture of Paul. This springs from a desire to emphasize the greatness of his influence and power as compared with his attainments. The apostles confession that he is an ἰδιώτης τῷ-λόγῳ (2 Cor. xi. 6), means only that he was unskilled in eloquence and is to be taken as his own modest estimate of himself in that particular. Moreover it is immediately qualified by ἀλλ᾽ οὐ τῇ γνώσει which is entirely inconsistent with the idea that he was rude or illiterate in general, or that he considered himself to be so.—G.B.S. | <urn:uuid:e02dc38d-ad0d-4882-a1b9-bfd5aab49ab8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/111/1110063.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979657 | 3,869 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Economist and best-selling author Arthur Laffer appeared on the April 12 edition of The 700 Club with Dr. Pat Robertson to discuss his prescription for putting the country back on the road to prosperity. Read below or click play to watch his interview.
Estimates show that America faces a record $1.6 trillion deficit and unemployment rates at a 25-year high.
For everyday Americans, it's easy to lose hope. But has America seen the end of it's prosperity?
Arthur Laffer, former economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, doesn't think so. Rather, he insists that recent administrations have failed to grasp what he calls "Economics 101."
While former President George W. Bush and President Obama may not appear to have much in common, Laffer says they share a fundamentally wrong view on economic policy and have given into fear in attempts to counter-balance the failing economy.
Hasty decisions and bad political policy have led the country further into debt and ultimately to "the end of prosperity" - the topic of Laffer's 2008 best-selling book.
Now, the leader of the 1980's tax-cutting movement has returned with a follow up book, "Return to Prosperity."
He, along with co-author Stephen Moore, show how America can regain its economic superpower status. Laffer says knee-jerk spending packages, price and wage controls, and government over-regulation suffocate the economy.
- Cut government fat
- Reduce debt
- Encourage retirement savings
- Revive the investor class.
Bottom line, he says, is "we can't tax and spend our way back to the good times."
In his book, Laffer offers practical economic theories to back a plan that would return America back to its super-power status. It's a plan he insists is vital to all Americans.
*Originally published April 12, 2010. | <urn:uuid:4e88c938-7000-4d74-a839-d4e48903d043> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/finance/2010/April/Has-America-Seen-the-End-of-Prosperity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960886 | 386 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Last weekend I attended California's Artisan Cheese Festival. While the highlight was tasting tons of scrumptious cheeses, I did learn how to create a beautiful cheese plate. A cheese plate is wonderful for parties because it doesn't involve any cooking; it's more about assembling and displaying in an attractive way. To see my tips for creating a beautiful cheese display, read more.
- Start by selecting the cheeses. Choose cheeses that represent a variety of types and textures. You want to find a balance between flavors. Offering three to five cheeses is ideal, as it won't overwhelm the palate.
- If you want to get creative, choose a theme. All of the cheese could be from the same region, from the same milk or from different milks.
- Avoid common cheeses that most people have already tried. Head to a local cheese shop and look for artisan cheeses. If you are on a budget, buy one or two quality cheeses instead of a bunch of cheaper ones.
- Present the cheese on a large platter or board with plenty of room. You want each cheese to have its own space. Make sure the cheese is easily accessible. Arrange hard cheeses on the outside of the board or crumble into small chunks.
- Create levels in the display. Turn bowls or pans upside down or place old shoe boxes underneath the tablecloth.
- Make the plate pretty by placing large leaves underneath the blocks of cheese. Fresh herbs are also a lovely and fragrant touch.
- Don't forget the accompaniments that enhance the cheese: olives, nuts, fresh fruit, jams, honey, crackers, breads, thinly sliced meats, pate, etc. For beverages both wine and beer make good complements to cheese.
- Make sure the cheese you are serving is at room temperature.
- Lastly label the cheeses so guests know what they are tasting.
Got a great tip for creating a wonderful cheese display? Please share with us below! | <urn:uuid:3a59ce62-3bf0-4a49-89b6-3076711f716f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yumsugar.com/Make-Delicious-Cheese-Display-1115553 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944188 | 410 | 1.515625 | 2 |
ENDURE HARDSHIP AS DISCIPLINE
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?...No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12: 7-11
As we see in Hebrews chapter 12, once we “keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,” we will be aware of how we should then live. Now he teaches us about the value of hardships and discipline that does not seem helpful but in the end produces a harvest of righteousness and peace.
Alexander was on his first research trip to Cuba for Open Doors. He asked a Cuban pastor what his needs were. He expected the response to itemize the many material needs that the churches in Cuba obviously lacked.
“The first thing we need is your prayers,” he replied, “to know the Body of Christ is with us.” Then he went on to list their tremendous need for Bibles, teaching aids, Sunday School materials and printing supplies. Then he concluded with the statement that they could use anything and everything.
“If you send us just a bar of soap, we’ll be grateful,” he confessed. “We'll praise God for it!”
Alexander says, “I felt a big lump in my throat as I thought of all the Bibles, literature and freedoms I enjoyed. Yet even with all my blessings, my testimony was not as strong. So I struggled to articulate my feelings. ‘Pastor,’ I said, ‘I can only begin to sense and imagine the difficulties you have encountered.’”
The pastor’s eyes became misty and he softly responded, “Oh yes brother, we have been through a most difficult twenty-five years. Yet we don’t fear persecution. As a matter of fact, we welcome it because it purifies us!”
Freddie Sun spent years in prison in China because of his Christian faith. Prison was literally a trial of fire for him. He worked in a factory making tee-joints from pig iron. Every day he loaded and unloaded the furnace which fired up to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. In the midst of this hell on earth, God spoke to him. “I have put you in this high-temperature furnace. Don’t worry—you won’t melt. But your impurities will be removed so you can become a useful tee-joint!”
RESPONSE: Today I will receive God’s discipline with the awareness that it is refining me to be more like Jesus.
PRAYER: Lord help me to accept hardship as Your discipline for my life. I look forward to the harvest of righteousness and peace.
STANDING STRONG THROUGH THE STORM (SSTS) -A daily devotional message by Paul Estabrooks
© 2010 Open Doors International. Used by permission
“When the storm has swept by, the wicked are gone, but the righteous stand firm forever.” Proverbs 10:25
Right now millions of Christians face persecution because of their faith in Christ. Register to receive the Open Doors USA Weekly Prayer Alert email. Join alongside thousands of others praying for our brothers and sisters worldwide to stand strong in the midst of their struggles. Also learn more about countries where the persecution of Christians is most severe by visiting the Open Doors website today. | <urn:uuid:5ebdef7b-178e-473a-9045-ff1d760a4843> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oneplace.com/devotionals/standing-strong-through-the-storm/standing-strong-through-the-storm-november-11-11659840.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963253 | 740 | 1.734375 | 2 |
|Tuesday, May 28
Updated: May 31, 1:03 PM ET
American football, Samoan style
By Ted Miller
Special to ESPN.com
PAGO PAGO, American Samoa -- It's a sweltering afternoon. Shoulder pads are cracking. Coaches are howling. The familiar smell of mud, sweat and grass rises in a pungent steam from the ground.
It could be a scene from any football hotbed, from Odessa, Texas, to south Florida, where players dream of 80,000-seat stadiums and highlights on ESPN.
But if you want to find this cradle of football, you'll need a globe and a good eye, because Tutuila, the population center of America Samoa, is a 54-square-mile volcanic island in the South Pacific, more than 4,500 miles from the U.S. mainland and 2,300 miles south-southwest of Hawaii.
When this nearly four-hour practice is over, the athletes will wrap themselves in skirts -- more accurately, lava lavas, the traditional wraparound sarongs Samoan men wear -- and head back to their open-air homes, or fales, in beachside villages surrounded by tropical green hills.
Samoans once were known as fierce warriors who practiced cannibalism. Now they take their aggressions out on the football field, and they do so with uncanny power and skill due to a potent brew of genetics and culture. Their bodies are naturally big-boned; traditional dances make them nimble; and a disciplined upbringing emphasizes the group over the individual, wiring them for team sports.
Writer Robert Louis Stevenson, Samoa's most famous expatriate, called Polynesians "God's best, at least God's sweetest work." He'd get no argument from college coaches from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Provo, Utah, to Bowling Green, Ky., whose eyes widen at the sight of those tongue-twisting, vowel-laden names.
There are approximately 500,000 Samoans in the world, only half of whom come in contact with American football. Yet more than 200 play Division I college ball.
Every Pac-10 team will have at least one Samoan player on its roster this season, most with two or more. Teams as diverse as Tennessee, Nebraska, BYU, Idaho, Louisiana Tech and Western Kentucky have Samoan players.
An estimated 28 Samoans will be on NFL rosters this year, at least six of whom were born or lived on The Rock.
Four Samoans were selected in the first four rounds of the NFL draft a month ago. Nebraska's Toniu Fonoti (second round, San Diego) and UNLV's Anton Palepoi (second round, Seattle) were both born in American Samoa.
It has been estimated that a Samoan boy is 40 times more likely to reach the NFL than a boy growing up in the United States.
"It's the sport we were born to play," said University of Washington defensive lineman Tui Alailefaleula, a native of American Samoa. "Football is the game where we can reach our goals and help our families."
'They thought we were Mexican'
A year before, Western Kentucky head coach Jack Harbaugh liked what he saw on a tape of linebacker Kris Mau of Faga'itua. One of his assistants, Mike Fanoga, a native of American Samoa who migrated to the U.S. and played for UTEP, then made a trip to the island for a clinic.
"(Fanoga) called back about another player and before you knew it four of them were coming here," Harbaugh said.
Next year, two Leone players top a list of potential Division I-A recruits. Purcell's younger brother, Amani, is a 6-foot-3, 260-pound defensive end. Fano Tagovailoa is, according to one local coach, "the best quarterback we've seen in Samoa."
Schools like BYU, Arizona and Hawaii have scoped island talent for years. But other programs have started sending coaches to annual football clinics. This month, assistants from USC, Texas Tech, Nevada and Tennessee-Chattanooga will join Fanoga on the island.
A number of obstacles challenge coaches recruiting American Samoa, not the least of which is the expense and time required for the 15-hour airplane trip needed to get there.
Samoan prep athletes often struggle to meet NCAA academic standards. Most grow up in bilingual households, which makes the English portion of the SAT a struggle. This entices some families to seek an off-island education for their children, typically with relatives living in Hawaii or stateside.
Once a player arrives at a university, the change in lifestyle is dramatic.
"They've never been away from the islands -- it's like another planet," Fanoga said. "They don't tend to go to class at first because it's so relaxed on the island."
The food, culture and pace of life are strange. Mau had never seen snow before he arrived at Western Kentucky. He and his fellow Samoans were equally new to their classmates, particularly when they donned their lava lavas for campus strolls.
"It's the first time they've seen a Samoan," Mau said. "They don't even know where Samoa is. They thought we were Mexican."
Polynesian players tend to stick together, even though that often necessitates ignoring the ancient rivalry between Samoans and Tongans. Washington has four players from American Samoa, two from Tongan and another from Hawaii who pal around.
"They call us 'The Tribe,' " Alailefaleula said. "We play jokes and bag on the Tongans, but we hang out."
Fanoga is turning a recruiting eye toward the far more populous island of Western Samoa, an independent country known for producing the world's finest rugby players. One of the few Western Samoans playing college football is USC running back Malaefou MacKenzie.
"When I go home, they really don't know what football is," MacKenzie said. "But you don't understand the raw athletes they have over there. They're in better shape and more disciplined."
'America's Shame in the South Seas'
The U.S. had a naval base on the island until the 1950s, and many Samoan men joined the military as an alternative to the malodorous tuna canneries, the island's largest employer.
The steady flow of Samoans to the U.S., often through the armed forces, made a significant impact in college football in the 1970s, when Mosi Tatupu (USC) and Manu Tuiasosopo (UCLA), among others, made names for themselves. Three consecutive team MVPs at Washington State were Samoan: Jack "The Thowin' Samoan" Thompson, Samoa Samoa and Tali Ena.
But all those athletes grew up primarily in the U.S. Football didn't arrive in American Samoa until 1969, and only then because of a well-meaning but misguided act of cultural imperialism in the early 1960s. That's when an article in Reader's Digest, titled "America's Shame in the South Seas," concluded that the simple island lifestyle was actually abject poverty.
In response, President Kennedy led an aggressive and controversial effort to modernize the island. An airport, schools, a hotel, roads and homes were built. American-style business sprouted up.
Television arrived, beaming in pictures of American life and introducing football to the rugby-crazed Samoans.
"It (Samoan success in football) doesn't come as a surprise to my people," said Eni Falemavaega, the non-voting U.S. Congressman from American Samoa. "It's inherent in the Samoan character. We love contact sports. Our first love was rugby, but we like American football because it pays more."
As a result, the ancient customs and codes of conduct that govern Samoan life -- the fa'a Samoa or the "Samoan way" -- has added a tradition over the past 30 years: football.
'No, you can't come to practice in a lava lava'
"They'd come to practice with one sock and no shoes," he said. "I'd say, 'No, you can't come to practice in a lava lava.' "
Because the island didn't have any youth leagues, the players knew almost nothing about the game, other than they would get to tackle each other.
Tuitele had to explain the most basic rules and fundamentals.
"All they thought was attack, attack. Tackle the quarterback. Attack the guy with the ball," he said.
Now the championship game is second only to Flag Day as an island celebration. Tafuna Veteran's Memorial Stadium is packed beyond capacity with spectators standing on cars or climbing trees to watch the action.
"It's so loud it's like the Super Bowl," Tuitele said.
The players' skills and knowledge have improved greatly over the years. While no youth leagues exist, elementary schools feature flag football. The high schools also have started junior varsity programs over the past two seasons.
Nonetheless, providing equipment basic to prep teams on the mainland is difficult because of the expense. Uniforms are often mix-and-match. A weight room is a rare luxury.
One significant area of improvement is game tape, which is essential to attract the interest of college recruiters. Quality tapes were virtually non-existent until 1996, when the Samoa News, the local newspaper, ran a series of stories calling for the local television station to broadcast games.
An impressive game tape can catch a coach's interest. Few coaches who have recruited Samoan players don't go looking for another.
"You can see a passion in their eyes," Harbaugh said. "Some youngsters in this country don't have a passion for football. (The Samoans) look at this as a tremendous opportunity."
Ted Miller is a staff writer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer | <urn:uuid:28d36d5e-8811-4a59-8e08-c76e8aaf2551> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://espn.go.com/gen/s/2002/0527/1387562.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970658 | 2,090 | 1.765625 | 2 |
These can range from a soft, spreadable young cheese with a mild flavour, to a well-matured, strong, zesty, very goaty-flavoured one.
For eating, I like the strong-flavoured French Crottin de Chavignol, the English Chabis, or Mine Gabhar, which is made in County Wexford, Ireland.
The log-shaped Chèvre, dusted in ashes, is a medium-matured softer goats’ cheese. For a fresh farmhouse goats’ cheese with a milder flavour that also grills very well, Perroche, made in Herefordshire, is superb. But because the quantity of goats’ cheese made on farms fluctuates with the seasons, it is often in short supply.
There are farm-made soft-rind goats’ cheeses labelled Welsh or Somerset, which are fine for cooking.Goats’ cheeses in general are good for cooking. For a strong flavour, choose Crottin de Chavignol; farm-made soft-rind goats’ cheeses labelled Welsh or Somerset will be mellower.
A tin of cooked lentils allows you to rustle this lovely, French-inspired salad up in minutes. You could also serve it without the cheese as an accompaniment to chicken and fish. Let's raise the pulse rate!
Anchovies, mi-cuit tomatoes, olives, oregano: all strong flavours, but combine them in a processor and you end up with this lovely pate-like result. Spread it on to toasted bread for a type of bruschetta - useful as nibbles at a party.
An easy and quick vegetarian tart, this one uses ready-made puff pastry and a wonderful jar of caramelised red onions that should be a staple in your storecupboard.
Soufflés can be a bit tricky to get right, but if you're worried about them, these twice-baked versions are ideal as they combine all the fluffy loveliness of a soufflé with eminent good behaviour. Make them ahead or even freeze them if you prefer.
Vegetarians certainly won't feel short-changed with this sumptuous meat-free version of shepherd's pie: in fact, meat eaters will no doubt love it as much as they do! | <urn:uuid:22239185-c22a-4978-adda-8310a0b4a3ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deliaonline.com/ingredients/in-season/winter/february/Goats-cheeses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938368 | 491 | 1.5 | 2 |
Look what just hit the Internet — the Tichel Cuties (tichel being the scarf that traditionally observant Jewish women wear over their hair once they are married) singing a kosher version of some Lady Gaga songs. Well, it may be kosher, but it’s not so innocent. The sexual overtones — not to mention some of the lyrics — in this video caused me to be pretty sure that this is all a satire. … Right?
The video was posted to YouTube as an “Ofn Tisch” (Yiddish for “on the table”) production by site member “dugree” (Hebrew/Arabic slang for “telling it straight” – as in, no bullshitting around). But if you look closely, you can see that it bears the mark of the Bible Raps Project duo Matt Bar and Ori Salzberg. Salberg can be seen in some of his videos wearing a T-shirt imprinted with “dati l’lo kippah,” which means non-yarmulke-wearing religious Jew.
Most importantly, it’s stated at the end of “Chagaga! (Tichel Cuties)” that “No actual married women appeared in this video.” Whew, what a relief.
Watch the video:
Update: Read an interview with one of the day school girls behind the video here.
Renee Ghert-Zand is an educator and writer. She blogs at Truth, Praise and Help, where a version of this post originally appeared. | <urn:uuid:33ac9b74-8e11-4f74-882b-857d227351a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/128433/meet-the-tichel-cuties/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957082 | 339 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Shocking Study: Beer Goggles Don't Make People Look Better . . . They Just Make You Not Care
According to a study by the University of Durham, beer goggles don't work quite the way that you might have imagined.
Drinking alcohol doesn't exactly make other people SEEM more attractive to us. When we're drunk, we still see people just as attractive or unattractive as we do when we're sober.
But alcohol DOES switch off the part of our brain that handles impulse control. That means we don't have a little voice telling us that doing certain things might be a bad idea.
But alcohol DOESN'T shut off the part of our brain responsible for sexual desire. So beer goggles don't make unattractive people look better . . . they just make us not CARE how they look. Did we really need a scientific study to tell us all this? | <urn:uuid:589c59ab-4188-41d9-a1e6-8c6d8846fb79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kprcradio.com/pages/The950BeerPage.html?article=11024276 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948344 | 180 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Wearing number 20, Matt Taormina played the position of defenseman while playing for the New Jersey Devils during the 2010/2011 National Hockey League season. He earned a salary, reportedly, of $510,000. The total team salary for the New Jersey Devils was reportedly $57,140,000, so his salary was about 0.9% of the team's total reported payroll. The median salary for a player on the New Jersey Devils was $1,100,000. The average salary was $2,285,600. During the 17 games that he played that season, he scored 3 goals and had 2 assists - a total of 5 points. If we divide his reported salary by the number of games played, we find he earned $30,000.00 per game played. Matt Taormina had a plus/minus of -2, 2 PIM (penalties in minutes), 1 PP (power play goals), 0 SH (short-handed goals), 0 GWG (game winning goals), and took 38 shots. He had a shooting percentage in the 2010/2011 season of 7.90%. If we want to evaluate his performance strictly on offense, we can divide his salary by the number of goals scored, as well as by the number of points (goals plus assists). His salary per goal scored was $170,000 and his salary per point was $102,000.
But then, there are taxes. Each hockey season is played during two calendar years, however, given an annual salary in the U.S. of $510,000 we can estimate that he would have to pay $153,784 in federal income taxes. That is about the same amount of tax as the tax paid by 19 median high school teachers, 21 median police officers, or 30 median fire fighters. After paying the IRS, he would have $356,216 left over. However, he may still have to use some of that money to pay state or city taxes as well. | <urn:uuid:b8601f1b-094c-4b4d-92a3-79ea5314b13e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teachmefinance.com/Sports%20Finance/Matt%20Taormina%20New%20Jersey%20Devils%202010-2011%20NHL%20statistics.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991671 | 404 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Fryman Family Genealogy Forum
Found online at the following URL
http://www.heritagepursuit.com/Delaware/delthompson.htm from an 1880 Delaware Co. Ohio history:
JOHN FRYMAN, farmer, stock-grower, and manufacturer of draining-tile; P.O. Richwood; was born in Tennessee April 30, 1805 ; when he was quite young, his parents removed to Pennsylvania, where they remained but a short time, then came to Belmont Co., Ohio. At the age of 21, John returned to Pennsylvania, where he was married, Jan. 15, 1827, to Miss Mary Smith, whose parents were natives of Pennsylvania, but came to this county at an early day. Mr. Fryman resided n Pennsylvania until 1835, at which time he came to Thompson Township and purchased 100 acres of swamp land, which he cleared and drained; to this he occasionally added, until he became the possessor of about 400 acres, some of which he has since sold, but still has about 300 acres remaining, which is well improved. He had a family of two sons only, the eldest, Thomas, died at 14 years of age; the next, Samuel, whose biography appears in this work, lives near his father, and is connected with him in the manufacture of draining-tile. Mary Fryman, the wife and mother, died Sept. 4, 1879. Mr. Fryman has always made farming and stock-raising his principal business; he began life poor, making all that he now has by his own hard work and perseverance ; he resided with his father until of age, receiving a common-school education. Is a member of the Disciples Church. Politically, he is a Democrat, but respects the opinions of others on that subject.
SAMUEL FRYMAN, farmer, stock grower and manufacturer of draining-tile; P. O. Richwood, Ohio; is a son of John Fryman, whose biography appears in this work; he was born in Pennsylvania May 10, 1833, and came to this county with his parents in 1835, with whom he resided until of age, receiving a common-school education ; he has been married twice: First, May 4, 1855, to Miss Hannah Bonner, who was born and raised in Delaware Co.; from this union there were five children-John, Henry, William, Samuel A., and Mary, two of whom are now dead; the mother died Aug. 15, 1864; Mr. Fryman was again married, Oct. 25, 1866, to Miss Catharine J. Snowdon, who was born in the adjoining county of Union; by this wife there are eight children-Thomas, Benjamin, Willson, Nelson, Clara E., Walter S., Delilah and Mary A., one of whom is dead; Mr. Fryman has always followed farming and stock-raisin-. in connection with which he and his father had lately commenced the manufacture of draining tile; owns a farm of fifty acres which he cleared and improved. Himself and wife are members of the Disciples Church; politically, he is like his father, a Democrat; holds the office of Township Treasurer, an office he has had for the last five years; he is an energetic man, and one of the good citizens of Thompson Township. | <urn:uuid:942e0d04-79dd-40a0-a1bd-5e60d0e8035c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.genforum.genealogy.com/fryman/messages/213.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989843 | 691 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Permit Test - Category
Most of us make a decision to get behind the wheel and start driving at some point and taking the first step towards obtaining a drivers license is always the hardest step. You don't know what's required of you, where to go, what to study and most of us are afraid of taking a drivers permit test, which is no wonder, with more than half of all test takers failing the exam the first time. If you want to be among those who pass the permit test the first time they take it, follow these quick and easy tips!
Railroad crossings are a dangerous place for any driver - quite a few of them are not regulated and many drivers don't pay due caution when crossing them, which results in tragic fatal accident. Due to their sheer mass, trains cannot stop as rapidly as cars do, so even if the train driver sees that a vehicle has entered the crossing, there is nothing he can do to prevent an accident from developing. It is important that you learn the rules of safe travel through railroad intersections, it will not only help you pass your New York permit test easily but will ensure your safety behind the wheel. If you are still not comfortable with the rules even after you go through this sample, make sure to do more practice permit test NY questions in the complete exam offered on the website!
Driving under the influence is a big problem, each years thousand of people are killed in traffic accidents that involve drivers who injected alcohol or drugs before getting behind the wheel. Many states require learners permit applicants to complete a substance abuse program that teaches them the dangers of drunk driving, since these programs are thought to reduce the chances of people getting behind the wheel after consuming alcohol. Questions on the effects of alcohol on your driving ability frequently come up on the Michigan permit test and you really need to work on those if you want to pass the exam the first time you take it. Today we are looking at one of such Michigan permit test questions in more details.
A very large number of traffic accidents happens at intersections when people do not yield the right of way. Sometimes it's running a red light, sometimes it's not noticing a stop sign, sometimes it's complete disregard of all traffic rules and regulations. Since we want to make sure that you pass your Massachusetts permit test the first time you take it, we went ahead and included a number of sample permit test questions that cover various situations when you need to apply the rules that govern the right of way. Remember, there are more practice permit test MA questions in the complete sample test, make sure to check it out before you go in for the real knowledge test!
While driving in harsh weather conditions, such as snow and ice, is an advanced driving technique and you are not expected to be a pro on driving on ice when you come to the office to take your Colorado permit test, you are expected to know the basics that will keep you safe in the winter. These basic defensive driving techniques are usually taught by driving schools and they are covered by Colorado drivers education classes, however you can also catch a gleam of driving on snow and ice in the Colorado permit test handbook. Since similar questions frequently appear on the permit test in Colorado, we included these questions into our Colorado practice permit test.
Dealing with road rage is not something they teach at expensive martial arts schools, it's a skill you need to learn well before you get behind the wheel and go for your first drive. Since inexperienced drivers usually drive slower than other drivers on the road and tend to make more mistakes, they frequently become targets for road rage and this is why it is important for you to know how to deal with a potentially dangerous situations. While questions on road rage rarely come up on the Missouri permit test, we still think it's a very important skill to learn for every new drivers and that is why we have a number of questions on dealing with road rage in our Missouri permit practice test. Today we are looking at one of such questions in more details!
Today we are looking at one of the MVA permit test questions that deals with using your high beams headlights and defensive driving tactics. Knowing how to use your headlights correctly and when it is appropriate to switch between high beams and low beams is important because you may blind other drivers if you use your high beams and the other vehicle is just too close to you. However, what do you do when someone is coming towards you and he is not switching from high beams to low beams? Sure, you can flash your high beams a few times to let the guy know what the problem is, in case he forgot it, but what do you do if this does not help, how do you avoid being blinded? Check out the MVA permit test question below to find out if your answer is right! You should also take the full MVA practice permit test that is available to Maryland students on this website!
Traffic signals is an important part of the road infrastructure and it is probably one of the most effective and simple traffic management system created by men to this date. Despite the apparent simplicity of traffic lights and traffic signals, they convey a number of very important messages and you need to learn to understand and follow their directions all the time, not simply because you will not pass your New York state permit test without them, but because they may save your life some day. Our NYS permit test practice quiz contains a number of questions on traffic signals, make sure to check out the full exam before you go into the DMV office!
Correctly identifying and understanding traffic signals is essential for your safety while driving. There are not that many traffic signals for you to learn, but you must really commit them to your memory and follow them every time. Learning all traffic signals will also help you pass your Kentucky permit test the first time, since the Ky permit test has a number of questions that cover road signs and traffic signals. Our Kentucky practice permit test was designed specifically to help you learn the state driving laws, road signs and traffic signals and today we are looking at one of such questions that deals with a flashing yellow light.
As we entered a new year, many of those who are planning to get a drivers license this year wonder: is the 2013 Wyoming permit test different from the knowledge exam that was offered by the state last year? Are there many new Wyoming permit test questions that I did not study for? Will the Wyoming permit practice test I took couple of weeks back be enough for me to pass the permit test? We will try to answer all these questions and debunk some of the myths associated with the Wyoming permit test 2013. | <urn:uuid:ab6687cd-755b-4a66-99cd-c1ecbea625ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://education4drivers.com/categories/permit-test.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968641 | 1,335 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Posted September 23, 2005 Atlanta
Research News & Publications Office
Contact John Toon
Company signs five-year R&D agreement with Georgia Tech
Officials of Italian-based Pirelli and the Georgia Institute of Technology have signed a five-year strategic research and development partnership to develop new optical components and systems and new broadband access technologies for future high-speed telecommunications networks. The agreement was announced Sept. 22 by Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, representatives of the company and Georgia Tech officials.
Pirelli and researchers from the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC) at Georgia Tech will develop a new generation of integrated optical systems. Atlanta will become the North American operational branch of Pirelli Labs, the advanced research center of the group based in Milan. The group, founded in 2001, specializes in broadband access and second generation photonics.
Pirelli will also consolidate all of its North American corporate staff activities in the new Atlanta center, including the headquarters of Pirelli Broadband Solutions, a new company that engineers and markets the innovations conceived in Pirelli Labs. This alliance will help position Georgia to become a world-class center of research excellence in photonics and broadband technologies.
"Pirelli already has a great history here in Georgia, with tire facilities in Rome," said Governor Perdue. "I am very proud that this great company has chosen Georgia for its new North American headquarters location and as the home of the new company: Pirelli Broadband Solutions. Pirelli's selection of Georgia as its new home for the broadband business was driven by the value of proximity to Georgia Tech's Electronic Design Center (GEDC), which is recognized worldwide as the leading academic research laboratory in high-speed communications electronics."
Under the agreement, visiting researchers from both organizations will work in Georgia Tech laboratories -- and in the clean rooms of Pirelli Labs near Milan. There, advanced facilities devoted to research and development of optical components for telecommunications occupy about 54,000 square feet in the Pirelli Labs building.
Pirelli's location in Atlanta will initially include laboratory space at the GEDC in the Technology Square Research Building at Georgia Tech, as well as additional headquarters office space next door in the Centergy One building. Pirelli's initial team will consist of executive, engineering, scientific, marketing and sales professionals.
"We are excited at the reception we have received in Georgia and the cooperation at all levels from the governor, his staff and the University System of Georgia," said Kevin Riddett, president and chief executive officer of Pirelli North America, Inc.
Added Giorgio Grasso, CEO of Pirelli Labs Optical Innovation: "By combining the respective know-how, Pirelli Labs and Georgia Tech will be able to develop new cutting-edge broadband access and optical technologies for the North American market. We view our partnership with GEDC as a major strategic asset in our future broadband activities."
Pirelli, a pioneer in photonics worldwide, is among the world's leaders and innovators in a number of fields, including its key markets of tires and telecommunications systems.
"Today's announcement indicates that we are making great progress in establishing Georgia as a hot spot in the world of electronic design," said Craig Lesser, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. "We set out to make Georgia a world leader in the design of high-speed communications systems, devices and chips, and Pirelli's location here takes us one step closer to achieving that vision."
The Pirelli decision demonstrates the impact that Georgia Tech can have on the state's economy, noted Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough.
"We are excited that an innovative company like Pirelli has chosen to locate at Technology Square in partnership with GDEC," said Clough. "This outcome reflects the power of linking Georgia Tech's research and educational assets with those of the state of Georgia to help build the state technology sector in a time when competition for such jobs comes not only from other states, but other nations as well."
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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (firstname.lastname@example.org). | <urn:uuid:a80f2473-42f0-4521-b1ba-201d20c1b442> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=73812 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946675 | 889 | 1.507813 | 2 |
[a talk for an Orthodox Christian Pro-Life Event; January 22, 2012]
Today is the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion—through all 50 states, for any reason whatsoever. When I was a college student, back in the 70’s, I was in favor of legalizing abortion. I wasn’t a Christian then, but I was a feminist, the first feminist in my dorm, and I was loudly in favor of social revolution and women’s rights. I took it for granted that abortion was necessary, if women were ever going to be equal to men.
Of course, I didn’t think the number of abortions would ever be very high. Most of us, at that time, assumed that women wouldn’t want to have abortions, and would do so only in the most extreme situations. Things didn’t turn out that way. As of last June, the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade was 53,600,000. (NRLC estimate of 49,551,703 through 2007, and 1 million /yr since then)
A number like that is hard to grasp. There’s a quote often attributed to Josef Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” So people have tried to think of illustrations to make the numbers real. Many years ago, I heard a speaker say that, if the name of each child killed by abortion was inscribed on a monument like the Vietnam War memorial, the wall would stretch for 50 miles. That was a long time ago, and the wall by now would be several times longer; but of course no such wall could be built, because those children had no names.
Sometimes pro-lifers have tried to represent the statistics by setting up a temporary “cemetery of the innocents,” with one white wooden cross representing each child. A friend of mine worked in the Dept of Health and Human Services under George Bush Sr, and one day she and the director watched out the window as people set up one of these cemeteries; 4100 white wooden crosses stood in lines across the lawn. The director asked what was going on, and she replied that it was designed to make people realize the numbers of abortion; each cross represented an aborted child.
He looked at the multitude of crosses and said, “Imagine, that many in a single year.” She replied, “No, sir. That many in a single day.”
Why should we care about this? Why should Orthodox Christians, in particular, care? Isn’t the pro-life cause something that Catholics get involved in, and evangelical Protestants? What business is it of ours?
You may be surprised to learn that abortion was common in the ancient Roman Empire. The methods were more dangerous than today (I should say, more dangerous to the mother; every abortion is lethally dangerous to the child). But those methods were nevertheless used by women who wanted to conceal sexual activity, or who were forced to have abortions by their husbands and lovers.
The ancient, pagan world was a harsh one. Not only were children aborted before birth, but a newborn child was not officially received into a family until its father picked it up and held it. If the father didn’t want the child he simply refused to take it up, and the child was legally abandoned. This was called “exposing” an infant; it would be placed in some public place, and the social fiction was that someone else might pick it up and care for it. Sometimes people did take in these babies, and rear them to be sold as slaves or put on the street as prostitutes. But, often enough, no one took the child before it was found by dogs or other animals, or died of exposure and starvation.
And this was legal. It was a harsh world. Christians stood out as different, in that world. They were different in seeing every human being as worthy of dignity, whether free or slave, male or female, Jew or Gentile (as St. Paul said in Galatians 3:21). One of the big differences between Christians and pagans was that Christians did not have abortions. From the earliest years, the Church Fathers spoke against abortion. Let me read you some of their statements.
This is from the Didache, a work which was written about the same time as the Gospels: “You shall not murder a child by abortion.”
The Letter of Barnabas, written about the same time, repeats those words. “You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not murder a child by abortion.” Note the connection he makes there. This is not about sexual morality, it’s about loving your neighbor, who in this case is a helpless child.
The Letter to Diognetus, probably written around 125, describes to a nonbeliever what Christians are like. He writes, “They marry, as do all others; they beget children, but they do not abort fetuses.”
The Apocalypse of Peter says that, in heaven, aborted children are cared for by an angel named Temlakos. He writes, “The children shall be given over to the caretaking angel Temlakos, and those who slew the children will be punished forever, for this is God’s will.”
Let’s pause a moment and ask: who slew them? When a woman aborts her child, who is to blame? Most people would say that it is the woman’s choice, so she bears the responsibility. But I learned how complex it can be some years ago, when I was working on a book titled Real Choices. My goal in the book was to find out why women have abortions, and figure out what pro-lifers can do to help them have better alternatives.
In the process I went all over the country interviewing women who had had abortions, and I asked them to tell me what led up to their choice. What I found was that, in many tragic cases, the abortion hadn’t been her choice at all. Sometimes it was the choice of her boyfriend or husband, and sometimes it was her own parents pressuring her to have an abortion. Two women told me the same story, that even while they were lying on the table in the abortion clinic, they were praying the boyfriend would burst through the door and say, “Stop! I changed my mind!”
So it’s not up to us to decide who gets the blame. God alone reads the heart. Surely, we as an entire culture must shoulder some of the responsibility, for giving women the message that abortion can solve her problems, and she should be grateful to have a so-called “choice.” Yet it’s obvious that this “choice” is profoundly unnatural in biological terms; throughout history women would regard the premature end of pregnancy and death of an unborn child as a tragedy. But we’ve been through almost 40 years of brainwashing about how liberating abortion is, so we shouldn’t be too surprised that so many women end up in abortion clinics—and when it’s all over, are left to grieve alone. There is an enormous thundercloud of unspoken grief in America, due to the millions of women who bought the abortion lie, and now are haunted by that so-called choice.
So there’s no room for blame. God sees the heart, and God knows. And whatever the woman’s role in this tragedy might be, surely there’s nothing as cold-hearted as the person who decided to go into business doing abortions all day long.
Yet, even though the early Christians refused to participate in abortion, a terrible rumor circulated about them in those days. You know that, in the centuries when Christianity was illegal, some parts of our faith were kept secret and not shared outside the community of believers. For example, the Holy Mystery of the Eucharist was something only baptized Christians knew about, and it was never spoken about to nonbelievers. We still say, in the pre-communion prayer of St. John Chrysostom, “I will not speak of your mystery to your enemies.”
Yet rumors started to circulate that Christians were cannibals. There was a story going around that in Christian worship a baby was put inside a sack of flour and beaten to death, and then eaten. Well, if you thought people in your neighborhood were doing that as part of a religious ritual, you’d want to see them executed too. And you can see how the rumor is a mixed-up version of our belief that Christ came to earth as a child, and that he gives us his Body and Blood in the Eucharist. So, many of the early Christians were martyred because they were thought to be child-killers and cannibals, and some early writers protest it’s a lie, Christians do no such thing, while it’s pagans who commit abortion and expose newborns.
Minucius Felix wrote, around 200 AD, “I would like to meet the person who says …that we [Christians] are brought into the faith by means of the slaughter and blood of an infant. Do you think that it can be possible for such a tender little body to receive such fatal wounds? Is it possible for anyone to pour forth the new blood of a little child, scarcely come into existence? Nobody is capable of believing this—except the person who would do it. Yes, I see that you expose your newborn children to wild beasts and to birds, and at other times crush them to death. There are some women who drink medicines that extinguish the life of a child while it is still inside their body, and thus murder their own relative before they bring it forth.”
Tertulllian says that for Christians, “Since murder has been once and for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. …To interfere with a birth is merely an earlier way of killing a person. It doesn’t matter whether you take away a life that has been born, or destroy one that is coming to birth.” (Apology 9:8) Elsewhere he wrote, “We hold that life begins with conception, and that the soul also begins at conception; life has its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.” (Apology 27)
St. John Chrysostom wrote, “Do you condemn the gifts of God, and fight against His laws? Childlessness is seen as a curse, but you seek it as though it were a blessing. Do you make the chamber of birth a place of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is formed to give life to perpetuate killing instead?” (Homilies on Romans 24)
St. Basil puts medicines that cause abortion in the same category as other kinds of killing. He writes, “The man or woman is a murderer who gives a potion, if the person that takes it dies from it. So also are they who uses a medicine to procure abortion; and so are those robbers who kill on the highway.”
Our Orthodox Christian heritage is absolutely opposed to abortion and child-killing from its very beginnings. This stand against abortion and exposure of infants is, in fact, one of the things that attracted people to the Christian faith. Women were drawn to a religion that, for a change, would stop men from taking their children away.
Our faith’s affirmation of life from the moment of conception is evident in the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and Elizabeth says that her unborn son leaped for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. She says, “Why do I deserve such honor, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:39-45) The unborn John the Forerunner recognized the presence of Christ and his mother, and Elizabeth, with prophetic insight, realized what was happening.
Our Lord Jesus Christ did not become a human being on Christmas Day, but 9 months earlier, on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel appeared to the Virgin Mary and told her that she would conceive a child. The Forerunner did not become a human being on the day he was born; he was already a prophet and a servant of the Most High, even in his mother’s womb.
I don’t see how people living in a scientific age can think a fetus in the womb is not a living human being. People have understood this for centuries—every Christian who went to church on the feast of the Annunciation, for example. Now, we know much more than they did, in terms of prenatal science. We have sonograms and can actually look inside the womb. We know that, at the moment the sperm dissolves in the ovum, there is a living, growing human being. There is actually no scientific debate about when life begins. From the moment of conception it is alive. From that moment is starts growing, fast. By 21 days, it has a heartbeat. It is definitely alive, and in fact if it was not alive she would not need an abortion, but would have a natural miscarriage. So “When life begins” is not something scientists, or even ordinary people, are confused about.
It is human, too. If you looked at a cell from the growing unborn child under a microscope, you would say, “Yes, that’s human. That’s not chimpanzee, it’s not watermelon. It is human.” This living being is 100% human.
What’s more, it is a unique living human. If you took a cell from the mother, a cell from the father, and a cell from the unborn child, and analyzed the DNA, you would say, “There are three individuals here.” The unborn child is dependent on its mother for sustenance, and after birth will continue to be dependent on both father and the mother for shelter and food. But it is not a part of the mother. It does not have her DNA.
So we know that from the very beginning this unborn being is alive. It is human. It is unique. And that is the basis of the Orthodox Christian belief that abortion is wrong.
Of course, there are many women who’ve had abortions, but didn’t want to. Or may have felt it was the only choice at the time, and in the years afterward regretted it. There is a lot of hidden grief about abortion, but very little talk about it.
When I was writing Real Choices, one woman told me that, at the time of her abortion, she was pro-choice. But afterward she felt terribly sad, and she told me, “I couldn’t tell anybody how I felt. If I’d told my pro-choice friends that I felt depressed, they would say, ‘Are you a traitor? You had your choice; you should be happy with it.’ But if I told my pro-life friends, I was afraid they might say, ‘You’re a murderer. We won’t have anything to do with you.”’
So there are many, many women, and certainly some Orthodox Christian women, who have this in their past, and they grieve but don’t feel free to talk about it. I would urge anyone in that position to talk with your priest. Believe me, there’s nothing you can say to a priest that he hasn’t heard sometime before. He’s never going to be shocked. And priests often say that, when they hear a confession, it makes them admire the person more, who love God so much that they’re willing to speak of painful things. So please don’t keep this in. If you hide this grief inside it feels even bigger and more overwhelming than needs to be. So schedule a talk or schedule a confession, and begin to be healed from this guilt. God forgives.
If you’ve been involved in an abortion, don’t let yourself be overtaken by despair, but remind yourself that that child is still alive, in heaven. Maybe it did not have a long earthly life, but its eternal life will go on forever, in the presence of God. Psalm 27:10 says,
Though my mother and my father reject me, you will take me up.
God the Father has taken that child up, as one of his own. And if you persevere on the path of holiness, one day you’ll be reunited with that child, in the place where all sorrow and sighing has fled away, and the tears have been wiped from every eye.
If you need to talk through you grief, look in look in the yellow pages for “abortion alternatives.” You will find listed there a number of pregnancy care centers, and these center’s don’t help only pregnant women, but also women who have had abortions, and even the fathers of aborted babies. Nearly all pregnancy centers offer abortion grief counseling, and they can help you work through this grief to resolution.
In conclusion, I’d like to give you three reasons for hope. Though abortion has been a fixture in America for 38 years, there is reason for hope.
The first is that people can change their minds about this issue. I can give myself as an example. As I said, I was very pro-abortion back in my college days. One day I was home on vacation, and was reading my dad’s copy of Esquire magazine. In it there was an article titled “What I Saw at the Abortion.”
As I read the description of a second-trimester abortion, I was horrified. Because I was anti-war, anti-death penalty, a vegetarian, anti-violence in every form. And I had to admit that abortion was the violent taking of a human life. It was completely incompatible with my other non-violent values.
So the first point of encouragement is—me. It is possible for people to change, even if they’ve been hardened defenders of abortion. If I can change, anyone can change.
The second reason for hope is that polls are just beginning to show a shift in America on this issue. It made the news in May 2009, when the Gallup organization released the surprising results of a poll. For the past 14 years, Gallup has been asking Americans, “With respect to the abortion issue, do you consider yourself to be pro-choice or prolife?”
In 2006, 51% said they were pro-choice and 41% pro-life. But in May 2009, those numbers exactly flipped. For the first time, a majority said they were pro-life; 51% pro-life and 42% pro-choice.
Now, it’s not like there were a lot of pro-life messages in the culture during those three years. If anything, it looked like the abortion debate was over. People weren’t talking about it as much as they used to. Yet maybe, in that moment of silence, some deep-seated ambivalence had a chance to come forward. For whatever reason, America was becoming a country where the majority of the people are now willing to claim the label “pro-life.”
One possible reason this has happened is that young people are more pro-life than older people, and as they come into adulthood the balance is beginning to shift. I think that, for my generation, abortion was framed as being all about the woman, and what struggles she faced, and her right to choose. But I think that for younger people it’s about the baby. Boomers identified with the woman, but they identify with the child who is at risk.
In October, 2010, a book was released titled “American Grace,” and it contained the results of the most comprehensive survey ever held in America on the topic of religion. One thing the authors found was that young people are more pro-life than their parents. Now, young people are not more conservative than their parents, and they’re not religious. They are less likely to attend church, more likely to favor of gay marriage and to call themselves liberals. But they are consistently more opposed to abortion than their parents.
The authors, Robert Putnam and David Campbell, say that this is showing up consistently in many polls, so there’s no longer any doubt about it. They don’t know why it is happening, but they suggest that maybe the prevalence of ultrasound images of unborn babies has made a difference. Also, that young people don’t think it’s likely abortion will be made illegal, so opposing it doesn’t seem likely to cause a drastic change in the law. And they think that young people feel that contraception is available to everyone, so if there’s a pregnancy, it’s due to irresponsibility. They don’t have sympathy with that.
I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Juno (2007), about a high school student who gets pregnant and places the baby for adoption rather than have an abortion. The authors of American Grace call it “a good illustration of young people’s increasing uneasiness with abortion.”
When Juno gets pregnant she calls up an abortion clinic and makes an appointment, in almost a flippant way. But as she’s walking in to keep her appointment she meets a classmate who is outside protesting. The classmate tells her that her baby already has fingernails, and Juno is surprised. As she sits in the clinic waiting room, she keeps noticing people’s fingernails, clearly thinking about it—and she gets up and walks out without the abortion. The authors of American Grace say “We mention the movie because the character of Juno neatly embodies young people’s unease with abortion. …At no point in the film does she offer a religious reason for choosing not to abort her pregnancy.”
And here’s a third reason for hope: we don’t have to wait for the laws to change on abortion to start reducing these high numbers. We can make a difference today by helping pregnant women choose life.
When I wrote Real Choices, I was trying to find out what were the main reasons pregnant women chose abortion rather than finishing the pregnancy and either raising the child or placing it for adoption. What do pregnant women need?
I thought the answer would be something like, more maternity homes, more college scholarships. But when I asked women who had had abortions what the reason was, I kept hearing the same thing. Over and over again, women told me, “I had my abortion was because of a relationship.” Most of the time it was the father of the child who was pressuring her to have an abortion; in other cases, it was her parents. In 88% of the cases, the woman had had the abortion because someone she loved told her she should.
When I asked, “What could anyone have done to help you have the baby,” Over and over women told me, “I would have had the baby if there had been somebody to stand by me.” They weren’t asking for a lot; they weren’t asking for housing and jobs and a handout. They were just asking for a friend.
All over this city there are pregnancy care resource centers that exist to give pregnant women that support. They give a lot more than that, but the most important thing is standing by the pregnant woman and helping her be strong. Again, look in the yellow pages under “alternatives to abortion.” These organizations always need help from people who believe in their mission. They need donations of diapers, baby formula, maternity clothes, and they need volunteers, too. Think about giving your time to one of them. That’s the third reason for hope: you can prevent abortion, one case at a time, right in your own neighborhood, just by being a friend.
Finally, I want to recognize you for your courage and dedication. After I’d been speaking and writing about the abortion issue for many years, appearing on TV shows and college campuses all over the country, I came to the conclusion that the biggest influence in the abortion debate is peer pressure. I saw over and over that my opponents in debate had no answer for the arguments I put forth. So they would just ignore them, and talk about how awful pro-lifers are. I would attack abortion, and they would attack me. They didn’t try to defend abortion.
If you stand up on this issue, you will be attacked. Pro-choice is still the socially-approved position, and it takes a lot of courage to publicly say that you stand for life. In every generation there’s an issue like this, that draws a line between those who will stand up for what is right, and those who just go along. Only the bravest people take a stand, and continue to bear witness even when others mock them and misrepresent them; only the bravest keep standing when, from a worldly perspective, the cause looks lost. Only the most dedicated people are willing to keep working for change, when the struggle is all uphill and they reap nothing but rejection.
You are those people. And you are not alone. The angels and saints see you persevering in this labor, just as champions of earlier generations did their part. The struggle is not lost. Despite overwhelming pressure to favor abortion, the tide of public opinion is beginning to turn. Young people are leading the way.
Your efforts on behalf of this cause, to help pregnant women and preserve the lives of unborn children, are seen by God and the angels, and will stand for eternity. You are the heroes of this hour—and, even if the hour looks dark, it truly is darkest before the dawn. Truth cannot be suppressed forever. You may wonder if the pro-choice side has won the day—but sooner or later, that day will end. No generation can rule from the grave. The time to get on the right side of history is now. | <urn:uuid:2dcb64d0-5b91-4732-9c68-63f20b225b2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.frederica.com/writings/the-pro-life-cause-orthodoxy-and-hope.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98087 | 5,525 | 1.65625 | 2 |
LA JOYA - Hector Cantu has been driving a bus for almost a quarter of a century. But after all those years, he said the job and commute times are still the same.
"Oh just a little bit, they've changed just a little bit," said Hector Cantu, La Joya ISD Bus Driver.
It's only the third week, and already Cantu knows each student by their first name. He's been driving long enough to know most of his kid's parents.
"Yes, yes, I am proud to say that, this is my third generation since I have been here since 1989, and I like the job," said Cantu.
Ready to take off at 5:30 a.m.. every morning, Cantu prepares his bus to drive his several routes.
"I have three trips, the first one is middle school, and then the second is elementary. And the third one, it's the last one, it's high school," said Cantu.
Three trips that all must be completed by 7:30 a.m.., but having more than one route is actually normal for bus drivers.
"About 80 to 90 percent have about three to four routes," said Alfredo Salinas, La Joya ISD Transportation Supervisor.
With over 20,000 students to take to school and over a 200 mile radius to cover, it's surprising to find out, bus commute times are still relatively the same year to year.
The average commute time per student is about 15 to 20 minutes. And that time has actually gone down from previous years by about 5 minutes. The reason why is because of re-zoning and a new bus route system for elementary students.
News Center 23 Reporter Erin Murray explains. | <urn:uuid:0eff070f-1fd3-4535-adff-ffa2973e6dd6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kveo.com/print/node/24772 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982615 | 362 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Is The New Math Failing Students and Parents?
I struggle with math almost daily. I am alternately exasperated and dumbfounded (not as much as my math-genius husband) with my inability to visualize and understand numbers.
I wonder if I had been taught math differently if I would have had a better understanding of it. There were parts to math that I liked - the ability to be absolutely correct - which allude my preferred softer subjects. I partially blame the system for losing me and now I live without the skills to really understand compound interest.
I would have though that in the last three decades someone would have found a way to make math understandable and relatable for kids (even ones without natural numeracy skills).
They do teach math differently now. Instead of rote memorization and the lining up of numbers, numbers are grouped and taught with bits of papers and words.
I'm practically innumerate but I liked borrowing and taking away from larger numbers - that made sense to me. So when I went over that method with my third grade son, he looked at me like I was crazy. He had no idea what I was talking about.
I had no idea what he was talking about either. Then we were both confused and frustrated.
This phenomenon of the new math is covered in a cover story by Maclean's magazine, provocatively titled: "Why is it your job to teach your kids math?"
The story details the experience of two math professors trying to understand the new ways of teaching math to their kids. They find the textbooks disturbingly "confusing" and say: “I don’t have a problem with alternate strategies,” Stokke says. “But I fear they’re learning so many, that in the end they’re not mastering any.”
Parents are being encouraged to go to math nights to catch up on the new techniques for several weeks in a row. Many families, who can afford it, are hiring math tutors to help them explain to their kids what the parents don't understand. While parenting experts tell us that homework is not the parents' domain and is between the kids and their teachers - the message the schools are sending is that math homework is a shared experience complete with classes.
As Anna Stokke says, "...the moment you say parents should play a significant role in public education, you have a two-tiered system." That is true and unfair.
The Stokkes are so frustrated that kids are lacking basic skills that they have founded a lobby group to pressure the Alberta government to stregthen math education for kids in Kindergarten to Grade 12.
Ironically, I have found myself also questioning the new math methods along with some of the more traditional experts. My oldest son is very numerical and he found the emphasis on language in math confusing because he is unable to explain methods of grouping when he can add and multiply large numbers in his head.
I am not sure if the reaction against the new techniques is a knee-jerk "my kids should be drilled like I was" or if there is something to the argument that kids are not learning the basics. Weren't our parents complaining about the "new" math when we were kids?
Obviously, some of the issue is that teachers should be able to integrate different methods into their teaching, but since few primary teachers have math training they may not be comfortable with being creative with the lessons. At least, primary school teachers should be better trained in teaching math and should understand that each kid learns differently and expresses numeracy differently - especially in the younger grades.
Until this whole math thing is figured out, it looks like my husband has a lot of homework ahead of him.
Want more chaos? Last year, my friend Ceri an ex-fashion editor wonders about the messages she was sending out to her daughter. | <urn:uuid:40e62a2a-018e-403d-acee-d75fedd03919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.embracethechaos.ca/2012/03/the-new-math-failing-students.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 | 0.980836 | 796 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The reality is, as we watch our colleagues on the ground fight countless battles as the entire response grid loses the war, nothing further can be done without funding provided in a non-biased, transparent, and accountable way.
One of the key sociological observations of the entrenched hierarchical command and control bureaucracy, which includes our government, the Haitian government, UN, and the favored core of large NGOs, is continued siloing of information and further acquisition of funding and resources to "feed the beast", therefore perpetuating the enormous problem we now face. It is actually an indicator of a failed social system, as many others have noted. For those who study the collapse of societies, it is a classic indicator, where the impact and scope of the challenge-event becomes magnified.
This is a "war" best fought asymmetrically, with light, fast, and agile ground teams of those capable of starting IVs and "oh by the way" hand out educational material. The war for adequate water and sanitation was never a realistic prospect and remains a particularly unrealistic prospect now. This is due to the hundreds of years of ingrained cultural behavior that required counteraction.
We are most certainly at the point where the terrible triage of what communities will be supported versus not is being made… notice the deliberate use of the verb "is". The story of Gonaives is being played out silently in the mountains, where many of the communities have no phone. Meanwhile back in the original epicenter of St Marc, we have report in the Haiti MPHISE that clinics have run completely out of personnel and supplies, leaving many to die unassisted. There is now no more time to train Haitians to train others for many parts of northern and central Haiti. … Perhaps this may be done in the relatively nascent South.
The effort has shifted from one of response to one of recovery in many locations, and I find myself again asking the question of "what good has our country done here?" as I ponder the implied meaning of these events for disaster response in our own country. The story of Katrina is certainly being played out for the third time in Haiti. The second was the earthquake. Some in the HEAS, in a fit of despair and helplessness, believe this event to represent nothing more than a natural evolutionary process of population reduction.
I and about 25 members of our team walked away from a multi-million dollar effort funded by our government, compelled to do so by the bureaucratic behavior you see now. This action was preceded by our walking away from entrenched and stymied efforts to integrate national biosurveillance within a similar bureaucratic framework. On my way out the door, one government official referred to me as a "traitor". One thing is sure, I am certainly gaining an education as a Christian and American that the definition of "traitor" is certainly a political one, as is "The Right Thing To Do".
The analogy of "Normandy" is a good one, and one that should be answered immediately and non-ambiguously by deployment of our military. Trust that regardless of the political resistance we have witnessed, we will continue fighting until (if) the military arrives. | <urn:uuid:39abc25e-2de3-488c-88c6-5222229209fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/haiti_operational_biosurv/2010/11/commentary-the-perspective-and-reality-of-heas-operations-haiti-cholera.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965458 | 644 | 1.695313 | 2 |
I rode out with some friends on their ranch the other day. Ostensibly, the goal was to locate a pregnant cow and see if she had delivered yet, and then to doctor a prolapsed cow, but it was such a glorious day, and the tasks were so few and so easy that it amounted to little more than an excuse to take a lazy and leisurely trail ride. We started on the flat, skirting the hills for a mile or so, and then rode up a long oak-studded canyon that grows gradually narrower and steeper as it rises. It’s a slow transformation and we were still in wide-open spaces at the lower elevation, riding through the oaks, when two golden eagles took off from the ground. One of them angled away, up one side of the canyon, but the other flew right over our heads, a distance close enough to be measured in feet, not yards, and as he passed over we could hear, in the valley below us, the faint and lonesome whistle of a train.
Golden eagles are some of the greatest avian hunters in the world, and these two might have been dining on a rabbit, or a ground squirrel, or a young deer, or even a new-born calf, though no agitated mother was in evidence, but at that moment they were something more than birds. Their flight, mingled with the sound of the distant train, became symbolic of time and place and a traditional activity that is passing from the world. We sat our horses and watched as the two birds rode the thermals, drifting east and finally out of sight. In that canyon, at that moment, it could have been 1912 instead of 2012, and it gave me hope that this magical and surprising old world will endure in spite of all man’s tender mercies. | <urn:uuid:f6c2f641-324f-4a7f-aded-8d13eb708dab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.readjamesonparker.com/archives/617 | 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 | 0.98426 | 375 | 1.570313 | 2 |
MRC Study: As Surge Succeeds, Iraq News Gets Rarer
"Insurgent attacks are down from 170 in January to 120 in August," ABC's Terry McCarthy noted on the September 9 World News Sunday, the day before Petraeus testified before Congress. "But that is still four attacks a day, on average. Iraq remains a very violent place....Life in central Iraq is still deadly dangerous."
"Victory is not at hand, not even in sight," CBS's David Martin similarly contended on the next night's Evening News. On the NBC Nightly News, reporter Jim Maceda found it "palpably quiet" in an area of Iraq once controlled by Sunni insurgents, but "this is really an exception....That civil war as, again, as you get out of the capital of Baghdad, it is truly brewing. So this is really just a partial success for this surge so far."
That was three months ago. Now, all three networks have become more optimistic in their on-ground reporting from the war zone, admitting that the surge in troops and new counterinsurgency tactics have reduced the violence. But as the news from the war front improves, a Media Research Center study finds ABC, CBS and NBC are less likely to tell viewers about it.
MRC researchers examined all 354 Iraq war stories that aired on the big three evening newscasts from September 1 through November 30, including weekends. That figure includes 234 field reports, plus 120 short headline items read by the news anchor.
Vanishing War. Back in September, as reporters voiced skepticism of General Petraeus' progress report, the networks aired a total of 178 Iraq stories, or just under two per network per night. About one-fourth of those stories (42) were filed from Iraq itself, with most of the rest originating in Washington.
In October, TV's war news fell by about 40 percent, to 108 stories, with the number of reports filed from Iraq itself falling to just 20, or less than one-fifth of all Iraq stories. By November, the networks aired a mere 68 stories, with only eleven (16%) actually from the war zone itself.
Pessimistic CBS. Of the three evening newscasts, ABC's World News was the first to take serious note of the improving situation (back on October 1), and has offered the most stories (9 field reports, 7 from Iraq) detailing the progress. "Not only is there a huge increase in Iraqi citizens groups who are coming forward to help the Americans, but overall levels of violence have gone way down," Terry McCarthy noted on November 22. In a Thanksgiving week interview with President Bush, anchor Charles Gibson was congratulatory: "You took a lot of doubting and rather skeptical questions about the surge. I'll give you a chance to crow. Do you want to say I told you so?"
On NBC, reporter Tom Aspell filed five stories about progress, generally balancing good news with bad. "Refugees coming back to Baghdad are going to see a lot of changes. There are more people in the streets, shops are open and traffic everywhere," Aspell noted November 27. "But it is still a dangerous city."
For its part, the CBS Evening News has offered only three stories documenting the recent progress, just one from their reporter in Iraq, Lara Logan, on November 21. Five weeks earlier, Logan announced on NBC's Tonight Show that the war was going "extremely badly, from my point of view." Reality, she claimed, was "much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq."
For three years, the establishment media — particularly the big broadcast networks — have inundated Americans with the bad news from Iraq. Now that our military is making obvious progress against a dangerous enemy, such important news should be shouted from the rooftops, not buried. Indeed, the success of the U.S. surge in Iraq may wind up being the biggest news of the year. | <urn:uuid:cf67d6c4-8f35-4075-be46-dc3c12b7a556> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rich-noyes/2007/12/05/mrc-study-surge-succeeds-iraq-news-gets-rarer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969747 | 807 | 1.609375 | 2 |
A better storage tank system
An engineering company finds a way to improve its storage tank installation process.
Stanco Projects, a division of Semco Systems Ltd., designs, manufactures, and installs a wide range of turnkey bulk chemical handling systems for power, mining, and petrochemical facilities around the world. The company frequently installs chemical slurry makeup systems for produced water treatment at oil and gas facilities in northern Canada. Since many of the facilities are located in remote areas with limited access, shipping the tank and other equipment to a facility and assembling a system on-site is time-consuming and costly. Several years ago, the company decided to find a way to decrease the system installation time and costs. | <urn:uuid:dfd30277-1fcd-4857-91e1-b324c607ce3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powderbulk.com/Content/getArticle.aspx?ItemID=c594c7fe-7a30-4f97-baa3-c04ba8c2ab0f&OrgID=bea2f49a-1db7-48f0-9ace-58b91930ce33&Organization=Columbian+TecTank | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954414 | 142 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Society and Archives
WILLIAM J. MAHER, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
53rd president of the Society of American Archivists
following incoming presidential address was delivered on August 30, 1997, during
SAA's 61st annual meeting in Chicago, IL, Fairmont Hotel.
the closing luncheon of the 1983 SAA meeting in Minneapolis, David B. Gracy
launched one of the most focused presidencies and SAA programs in the modern
era. Under the banner of "Archives and Society," he called for a concerted campaign
to increase the resources provided to archives by directing attention to archivists'
need for greater recognition from society for the value of what they do. Gracy's
presidency is often pointed to as a model of success. Several public programs
were launched in support of "archives and society," but if the initiative succeeded,
it did so because it pushed archivists to reassess themselves and their work
in terms of public relations and to appreciate the enormous importance of good
public relations to the betterment of archival programs.
an organization, SAA has played a significant role in fulfilling the mandate
laid down by Gracy. At the same time, the task of securing more resources and
a better public image of archives is really never complete, and we all must
admit that there are some archives which are no better off today than they were
before David delivered his vision to SAA. Collectively, we are still very much
subject to the cycle of poverty that he identified as inhibiting the best intentions
and efforts of archivists. What's worse is that with the advent of electronic
records systems, there is a new challenge capable of putting us even further
behind than we were before with the significant danger that without control
of electronic records, we will no longer even hold the historical and cultural
capital to claim a distinctive and important role in society.
the increasingly complex and competitive information environment within which
archives exist, we are in fact in the rather strange position of being at risk
of losing the archivist in archives. In the years since Gracy spoke, we have
witnessed society as a whole become increasingly focused on information, and
increasingly interested in using information in non-conventional forms. In such
an information age, one would think that archives should prosper, but most programs
are still grossly under-supported, often under-used, and archivists remain under-compensated
and still marginalized on key issues of information policy.
tenuous position can be illustrated, at least partially, by the increasing
public use, or should I say misuse, of the very word "archives." Perhaps through no
fault of our own, we have lost control of the word "archives." It has been seized
and used by computer specialists, librarians, advertising copywriters, academic
faculty, newspapers, and electronic media to cover all manner of information
gatherings that really are quite clearly not archives. On a personal level,
I find that I have to spell and explain the pronunciation of "archives" far
less than I did a decade and a half ago. In academic circles, I find I do not
have to answer questions about whether archives are old artifacts and museum
objects because there is a ready understanding that "archives" are information.
In fact, according to my analysis of citations in the Newspaper Abstracts database
there is a threefold increase of the use of the word archives in the news media
from 1985 to 1996. In our current multimedia age, there is also the appreciation
that "archives" comprise not just manuscripts but documents in all forms and
the increased popular use of the word "archives," there is clear evidence that
the misuse of the term is not decreasing. My review of Newspaper Abstracts for
1985 and 1996 shows that the percentage of inappropriate or clearly incorrect
uses of "archives" has remained relatively constant. One of my personal favorites
was in an article by Chicago Tribune sportswriter Mike Kiley who, in
writing about the Chicago Bears' poor track record in their second-round NFL
draft picks, must have been looking for some way to elevate his diatribe above
opinion when he wrote that the Bear's "second-round archives" were littered
with lackluster talent and broken hearts. We also note the use of the word "archives"
in the popular culture media, such as the cable TV oldies service titled "VH1
Archives." A quick Alta-Vista or Yahoo search of the Internet for the word "archives"
will show over 2 million "hits," many of which are references to professionally
operated archives and manuscript repositories, but many more that are little
more than some Internet junkie's personal backfiles of top forty tunes, Baywatch
stars' vital statistics, or logs of government conspiracies.
we have some of the same institutional problems as when David Gracy spoke, one
can see the evolution of the language as a positive sign for archivists. Instead
of archives not being understood and valued, we have rather the opposite problem
archives are seen as something so desirable that many people believe they understand
them quite readily.
university faculty I encounter, in fact, have a strong interest in developing
their own so-called "archive" of personal documents and/or research material.
Almost invariably their project consists of scanning documents and images collected
through their research and, increasingly drawn on a highly selective basis from
the processed holdings of an established archival repository. These academics
seek their place in the scholarly firmament as they compile a product such as
the definitive "Virtual Archive of Central Illinois Alpine Skiing." As suggested
by this example, there are collateral tendencies to use the word "archives"
minus its North American requisite terminal "s" and to "verbify" the noun.
many cases, the non-professional appropriation of the term "archives" appears
to be part of an attempt by the scholar or database builder to lend panache
or cachet and an air of respectability to what otherwise might be little more
than a personal hobby or collecting fetish. As archivists, should we simply
welcome this popularization of the term "archives" or should we be bothered
by the prevalence of its frequent misuse? Perhaps we should look only on the
positive side and see that the growing amateur usage of "archives" reflects
the sort of public recognition of the value and importance of documentation
that Gracy sought. On the other hand, there is in the popularized use of "archives"
a rather significant threat to the basic goals of the archival profession. Call
it paranoia, but I always have the sense that when we see "archive" used as
a verb, or the word "archives" used in a bastardized way to describe what is
clearly a singular, idiosyncratic, and synthetic gathering of documents, we
are being confronted with a challenge to our position as professional archivists.
Is this just a guild-like reaction as we see others stake a claim to what has
been our sacred territory? Or is it a defensiveness borne of concern that society's
precious few resources will be drawn off by these rogue efforts while "real" archival
work goes on in a cycle of poverty?
your president for the next year, it would be remiss for me to dismiss criticisms
of the bastardization of the term "archives" as petty and irrelevant. After
all, our professional societies are indeed the latter-day equivalent of guilds,
and if we as professional archivists are not prepared to vigorously defend
stake in the information landscape, we have little justification for our continued
existence as a society. There are, however, more important reasons for being
diligent and active in defense of the very terminology of our profession.
is, in fact, so troubling about the many pseudo archives now being established
is that they frequently lack several of the very core archival functions. In
some cases, it is that they constitute private and idiosyncratic collections
developed ex post facto, and thus are far from the contextually based organic
bodies of evidence that comprise most of the archives and manuscript collections
among members of SAA. In other cases, they are little more than undifferentiated
masses of electronically stored information, often compiled by accident of system
design, for backups, and frequently occupying large quantities of computer space
with a low value to volume ratio. However, what is most troubling in these pseudo
archives is their lack of the professional and theory-based application of the
seven major archival responsibilities. That is, what defines the professional
core of archival work is the systematic and theoretically-based execution of
seven highly interrelated responsibilities securing clear authority for the
program and collection, authenticating the validity of the evidence held, appraising,
arranging, describing, preserving, and promoting use. To help the non-archival
world understand the value of what professionalism brings to archives and information,
we must continue to emphasize how our expertise in each of these seven domains
is necessary to ensure that a concise and authentic record of the past is preserved
and made accessible as evidence to the future.
we stop the misappropriation of our nomenclature? Is this an important threat
to us as professionals? What role can and should SAA play in this admittedly
dicey area when we often become side-tracked into lengthy internal disputes
over the meaning of such basic terms as "archives," "provenance," or "evidential
value?" Rather than suggest that SAA or each of us become some sort of language
police censuring each prominent misuse of archival terminology, we have a more
positive and proactive role to play in the rapidly changing information environment.
In brief, rather than trying to fight a rear-guard action, against public misuse
of "archives," we should accept the positive benefits of greater societal recognition
of archives but also use each such occasion to assert the professional dimension
of society's use of "archives." For example, with the rapid growth in information
technology and the growing bandwidth for information formats, we must be particularly
watchful of public policy developments that will impact and impede our fundamental
archival goals and responsibilities. In 1996-97, SAA Council has examined or
has been presented with issues such as copyright limits on fair use, electronic
records, and preservation for digitized documents. We need to play a primary
role in stating the archival policy on issues involved in our fundamental archival
responsibilities to provide for an accountable record of our institutions and
secure a historical heritage for society.
recent involvement in several policy issues fits the model of the role I see
us as needing to fulfill to provide critical advocacy at the dawn of a new
These include: taking an unambiguous stance in opposition to proposed CONFU
(Conference on Fair Use) guidelines on the "fair use" of digital images;
signing on as amicus curia in two archival-related lawsuits; adopting a policy
on archival preservation issues involved in the digital preservation of conventional
documentary materials; developing a clear public statement on behalf of the
November 1996 NHPRC strategic plan priorities; providing specific recommendations
to the Moynihan Committee to expedite the declassification of federal documents;
and speaking out vigorously against the potential politicization of the position
of chief of the California State Archives.
this audience, I am sure there are some who may disagree with some of the stances
SAA has taken. However, what I hope everyone will appreciate is how each of
these positions was developed to assert a professional response on a public
matter involving a fundamental archival principle. In the case of the IRS suit,
it was for compliance with the Federal Records Act and thus for accountability
of public agencies. In the suit of Bruce Craig versus the United States, it
was for reasonable scholarly access to historical grand jury records. In regard
to declassification, it was to advocate for a more effective governmental policy
and a more realistic way to administer the declassification of old national
security documents. In the case of NHPRC's priorities, it was for the need to
fund archival projects, especially those dealing with electronic records. In
the case of the position of director of the California state archives, it was
for professional preconditions of employment. In the case of the CONFU guidelines,
it was for copyright policies that would not inhibit archival and research work
to disseminate historical information using the latest information technology.
In the preservation guidelines, it was the need to recognize the distinctiveness
of archival from library or technical issues when employing digital technologies
Such activities are merely illustrative of what we hope will
be a more active SAA in advocacy. Rather, to paraphrase the epithet of University
founding regent John Milton Gregory, borrowed from Christopher Wren--"if you
seek the monument, just look around"--"If you seek the definition of SAA, you
only need review these advocacy examples." They define us as a profession and
as a society that sees its mission as service to society at large.
An equally critical defining characteristic of these efforts has been that in
many respects, these advocacy positions have been responsive rather than proactive
initiatives. In most cases, we were asked for a reaction or opinion on a policy
question that others were considering. Some years ago, the emphasis on being
proactive might have censured these efforts as being reactive and thus retrograde
at best. In many cases, it is better to be proactive, but in the current information
policy environment, we simply cannot review every possible information policy
matter to identify concerns of interest to SAA. Instead, we have been blessed
by an active membership and set of coalition partners who are aware of our interests
and who value our support on key issues. Even in a matter so basic and traditional
as the advocacy on behalf of professional employment credentials, we are dependent
on, and we succeed because of the initiative and preparedness of individual
members who alert us to the issues and actively help articulate the position
or policy statement that SAA ultimately issues.
all cases, significant progress on public issues requires diligence and considerable
effort by Council members who may spend hours reading background documents,
preparing discussion documents or seminar sessions, and drafting the ultimate
policy statement. This work has been most effective and encouraging, but at
the same time, Council realizes that it must do more even if only to signal
the kinds of policy problems it wishes to consider for formal positions. Consequently,
we have recently considered a policy statement on our vision
for archival advocacy which outlines the key principles and general policy
areas we wish to emphasize and advance.
This statement appears on SAA's website and in Archival Outlook, but
as a preview, I note the following. SAA is particularly concerned that the archival
dimensions of the following issues related to technology, commercial developments,
and governmental policy be addressed:
mechanisms for the creation of reliable,
authentic, identifiable, accessible, and manageable records of government,
institutions, and society in general;
the sustainability and viability of electronic documentary formats and
intellectual property regulations that promote the use of new technologies
to expand access to records and other documentary materials;
development and adoption of standards and protocols that facilitate identification,
description, communication, longevity, and access for both traditional and electronic
forms of documentation;
provision of adequate financial and policy support to fulfill legal,
institutional, and societal mandates;
mechanisms and policies that ensure the prompt declassification of federal
records whose secrecy requirements have passed;
assurance that the management of individual archival programs follows
the norms of the profession so that the archivist's distinct role and responsibilities
are not compromised by political, institutional, or other considerations; and
accessibility of public records and documentary cultural property, regardless
of format, to the public at a reasonable cost.
Developing a more active and focused position for SAA to
advocate on behalf of archival issues will require more than just Council
action, and more than
just additional funding for SAA's support of advocacy groups and lobbying agencies.
What is most critical is the involvement of individual members in a two-part
process. On the one hand, members need to alert Council and the executive
to issues on which a clear archival policy statement is needed. This can be
done both individually as well as through SAA constituent groups such as
sections, roundtables, and representatives. On the other hand, once SAA has
adopted a statement, it behooves each of us as professional archivists to
the item within our own repository guidelines and policies. At the least, each
of us bears a special responsibility to disseminate archival policy positions
at our home institutions. If we wish to ensure that archivists remain in
view of archives, it is archivists who must place themselves at the center
of society's perception of archives. Through such efforts, we will define
and in the spirit of Christopher Wren and John Milton Gregory, create the "archives" that
society will seek.
I would like to close with a final favorite example of the
public misuse of the word "archives," which aptly illustrates the mixed feelings we all must
have as we see "archives" embraced by society and commerce.
Sometime ago, I returned a mail-in rebate coupon from the
distillers of Glenlivit, my regular brand of single-malt scotch. I have subsequently
been on the mailing
list of the Glenlivit Society and receive periodic promotions from its "concierge."
A recent mailing encouraged me to visit the distillery in Banffshire, Scotland
and included a special invitation entitling me and my guests to several privileges--free
admission, inscription in the V.I.P. guestbook, and a V.I.P. private tasting
of "the Glenlivit Archive" a special bottling not available to the public. So
rather than curse the corruption of the language, I propose that we engage in
the "archives" of society and impose on it our archival principles, spirit, | <urn:uuid:64b68e8f-cc2d-4078-84a4-93466627c47d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.archivists.org/governance/presidential/maher-1.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933873 | 3,847 | 1.695313 | 2 |
American higher education is getting dangerously fat. Unfortunately, the federal government’s idea of a diet is to feed colleges more and cut back on their exercise.
The signs of bloat are clear. According to a recent report from the College Board, between 2004 and 2005 — what seems like the hundredth straight year — the average price of tuition grew faster than inflation. Consider some of the recent binges the money went to pay for: American University president Benjamin Ladner, whose $633,000 salary and substantial university-owned house apparently weren’t enough to satisfy him, used school funds to pay for a personal chef he occasionally sent for training in Europe, an engagement fete for his son that ran hundreds of dollars per person, and a garden-club party that cost over $5,000. His punishment? A $3.75 million payoff to leave the school.
Even more alarming are reports of extravagances being built throughout the ivory tower. A 2003 New York Times article, for instance, detailed the proliferation of mammoth Jacuzzis, climbing walls, and other indulgences. This September, Sports Illustrated.com profiled the University of Missouri’s new $50-million recreation complex that features “the indoor Tiger grotto” that “takes on a South Beach vibe: Students chill in the hot tub or splash in a lazy river surrounded by palm trees and a rocky waterfall while waiters serve poolside wraps, smoothies and protein shakes.”
These things, of course, just show how plump academia is now. The most ominous signs for higher education’s future health are federal plans to fix academia.
Congress, for instance, is finalizing the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Many lawmakers have trumpeted the legislation’s efforts to save a few bucks by cutting federal subsidies to lending companies, but it also expands student aid considerably. That’s a recipe for disaster because student aid is higher education’s favorite meal. The same College Board data that showed tuition growth outpacing inflation also revealed that federal student aid, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled over the last ten years, increasing from $44.5 billion to a whopping $90.1 billion. Moreover, while the inflation-adjusted cost of tuition, fees, and room and board increased 42 percent at four-year public colleges and 32 percent at four-year private schools, at almost the same time aid per full-time-equivalent student increased 62 percent.
No wonder students and colleges keep getting fatter. More and more of what they’re consuming is being furnished by taxpayers. And Bush administration officials want to see that higher-education revenue keep on growing. In September, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announced the formation of a commission tasked with designing a “national strategy for higher education” to prepare us for the 21st century.
The commission is composed entirely of people in academia, government or big business, all of whom benefit when taxpayer money is shoveled into higher education. Its recommendations are therefore almost a foregone conclusion: The federal government should spend more on student aid supposedly to ensure, as Spellings demands, that we have a workforce for the 21st century, and on “basic” research that businesses want done but on which they would rather not risk their own money.
Of course, with a unified national strategy two more things will come: federal control of academia and an end to the competition for students that has driven innovation in American higher education and made it the envy of the world. It’s the worst thing we could do according to a recent analysis by The Economist, which concluded that for a higher education system to succeed, it must “first: diversify [its] sources of income” and “second: let a thousand academic flowers bloom. Universities… should have to compete for customers.”
Unfortunately, we are heading in the opposite direction. Think No Child Left Behind for the Ivy League. “Many people don’t realize that federal dollars… make up about one-third of our nation’s total annual investment in higher education,” Secretary Spellings declared as she announced the formation of her commission. “By comparison, the federal government’s investment in K-12 education represents less than 10 percent of total spending. But unlike K-12 education, we don’t really ask many questions about what we’re getting for our investment in higher education.”
The federal government continues to serve colleges and universities the free money that has made them dangerously fat, and is now planning to keep them from doing the one thing that has helped them stay at least marginally fit: competing with one another. American higher education, it appears, is heading for a coronary. | <urn:uuid:ae51d3e0-18e2-49dd-b7bb-55018ba6e544> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/obesity-threat-no-child-left-behind-ivy-league | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960473 | 992 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Cheap imported handheld x-ray device known as the Tianjie Dental Falcon from China, could expose patients to ten times suggested levels of radiation, increasing their risks of cancer and organ damage, according to UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
There are good reasons why the P-Noy government is targeting a P60-billion annual collection from sin taxes.
President Benigno S. Aquino III certified as urgent House Bill 5727 or Sin Tax Reform Bill that seeks to increase taxes on cigarettes and alcohol products.
Osteoporosis is a bone disorder that weakens the bones by reducing their density.
In view of the increasing number of cases of leptospirosis the Department of Health (DOH) is appealing to those with flu like symptoms for more than two days to seek treatment.
Tattooing is not only a body work of art but also a form of self expression for people who are not afraid to express themselves in projecting their personality.
Obese people are more likely to lose their memory and thinking skills quicker than those who are slim and healthy in weight, according to researchers.
Chemotherapy Triggers To Secrete Protein That Enhances Tumor Growth & Resistance To Further Treatment
Chemotherapy can cause damage to healthy cells which triggers them to secrete a protein that enhances tumor growth and resistance to further treatment, a study revealed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warns people to take recommended precautions when interacting with pigs and avoiding in contact with them that appear ill.
The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) is calling for a standardized form of color coded labeling on foods, which it says would help consumers to better control the amount of salt, sugar and fat they take. | <urn:uuid:70bba7c7-8eb3-4fd9-8707-8f6c735baddd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://affleap.com/category/health-issues/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949735 | 365 | 1.742188 | 2 |
A Story of Love: Marriage, Patience, and Perserverance
Speaker: Shaykh Abu Yusuf Tawfique Chowdhury
Shaykh Tawfique beautifully depicts the story of Abu Talha, Umm Sulaim and their righteous family. Many lessons can be extracted from the lives of this exemplary family, whose members served Islam in such a dedicated manner. There are delightful details about the love and marriage between Abu Talha and Umm Sulaim, as well as unique examples of patience and perseverance when the family was faced with trials. A thought proving experience for any Muslim. (1 audio CD)
Shaykh Abu Yusuf Tawfique Chowdhury is the founder and director general of AlKauthar Institute and Mercy Mission. AlKauthar Institute, an Islamic education based institute spans five continents with thousands of students around the globe. Sheikh Tawfique graduated fromthe college of Shariah from the Islamic University of Madinah. Being a prolific speaker, Sheikh Tawfique has travelled internationally sharing his knowledge in many countries in Europe, North America, Middle East, Asia and Australia. | <urn:uuid:b4aa9653-374d-4601-9adc-dfa3d27115b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://store.emanrush.org/pc-617-119-a-story-of-love-by-tawfique-chowdhury-1-cd.aspx | 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 | 0.948104 | 234 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Food and Society Speaker Series
So seemingly mundane, food lies at the heart of the human experience. From the farm to the fork, food takes on social significance far outweighing the scholarly attention it receives. Funded in part by a Mizzou Advantage grant, the Food and Society Speakers Series brought a sampling of speakers, films, and artifacts intended to draw attention to some of the complex issues facing our society—and to whet the appetite for conversations to come—about what we eat, how we eat, and how our food is procured.
The “Food and Society Speaker Series” was a sequence of educational and networking events at the Museum of Art and Archeology during the Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 semesters. Bringing distinguished scholars to campus while also highlighting local research expertise, the series explored current research on the complex relationships among food, culture and society and also developed an association of scholars to examine these dimensions of food. This speaker series was the first of its kind at MU, opening the door for cross‐disciplinary collaborations on some of the crucial issues facing the future of food in our society.
Food for the Future | <urn:uuid:cbe3ec25-539b-4617-8d64-f506257d2a4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mizzouadvantage.missouri.edu/project/food-and-society-speaker-series/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938059 | 230 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the December quarter National Accounts data which gives us the rear-vision mirror view of how the economy has been travelling at a distance of 3-months. The data confirms that the Australian economy sidestepped the global economic crisis with just one negative quarter of real GDP growth and is moving towards trend growth. However, restoring trend growth is nothing to be proud of. The fact remains that the current performance of the Australian economy will not be sufficient to achieve and sustain full employment. The RBA claim yesterday that getting back on trend growth is a justification for tightening monetary policy just reinforces the neo-liberal policy dominance – that some underutilised labour is required to fight inflation. While the RBA monetary policy tightening will not help growth, the real threat to our prosperity will come in the May budget when the federal government will announce its fiscal austerity plans. Combined with the deflationary impacts of similar moves by other governments and the impending meltdown of the EMU region, the GDP growth we are enjoying today may not persist. And all this will be driven by the mindless ideology of the deficit-terrorists.
ABC News reported that:
Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.9 per cent in the December quarter, and 2.7 per cent over the past year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics official economic growth figures put Australia well ahead of most other developed economies which had negative growth in 2009.
They quoted a bank economist who said that “the Federal Government’s stimulus drove much of the fourth quarter growth … [and] … It has the Government’s fingerprints all over it, as their stimulus spending and tax breaks boosted investment. But that was well timed and just testifies to how successful policy stimulus has been in Australia.”
Any examination of the data leads you to this conclusion (see below).
So deficit-terrorists – shut up!
While all the domestic spending components are now showing positive growth – and the majority opinion is that the confidence boost provided by the government support has helped private spending to recover quickly – the “biggest drag on the economy came from the wider trade gap, with the rise in imports subtracting 1.6 percentage points from the growth – a contribution more than matched by domestic activity”.
The future however is less than clear. With the RBA tightening monetary policy the sensitivity of household borrowing may be stronger now than in the previous recovery periods. This is because the households are still carrying record levels of debt and there has not been significant de-leveraging in the downturn evident. Some but not much! The probability of bankrupcty (at the margin) is now much higher than it was when the RBA tightened after the 1991 recession.
So the consumer recovery may be muted.
Also the investment growth was dominated by inventory rebuilding and that process is finite. Once inventory levels recover to their normal states firms that source of growth will cease.
Finally, there is the May budget. The Australian government is buying into the fiscal austerity obsession that looks like derailing World growth in the coming year. They have already committed to imposing a 2 per cent cap on spending growth in the 2010-11 budget and this will stifle the public contribution to demand.
With the World on the brink of a double-dip recession all this suggests that our easier road is about to get harder.
With labour underutilisation rates still around 13.5 per cent in Australia it is madness to withdraw the fiscal stimulus now. See more on this below.
The following graph shows the quarterly percentage growth in real GDP from March 2005 to December 2009 (blue columns), the quarterly growth in real GDP per capita (green columns) and the red line is the 3-year moving average of real GDP which gives some idea of the trend quarterly growth rate in real GDP by smoothing out the short-term fluctuations.
The data thus reveals that quarterly real GDP growth is back on trend (computed as a 3-year moving average) but the growth in real per capita GDP is much more muted.
In terms of living standards, while annual real GDP growth was estimated to be 2.7 percent (between December 2008 to December 2009), the ABS reported that growth in real net national disposable income was minus 1.2 per cent. In other words, we all suffered a loss.
In this regard, the ABS said:
A broader measure of change in national economic well-being is Real net national disposable income. This measure adjusts the volume measure of GDP for the Terms of trade effect, Real net incomes from overseas and Consumption of fixed capital … During the December quarter, trend Real net national disposable income increased 0.6%, with change over the past 4 quarters at –2.0% compared to 2.0% for GDP.
So the trend is below that actual seasonally-adjusted measure which doesn’t augur well for the future.
Of-course, the trend rate of growth (computed as a 3-year moving average) doesn’t relate to the labour market in any direct way. The late Arthur Okun is famous (among other things) for estimating the relationship that links the percentage deviation in real GDP growth from potential to the percentage change in the unemployment rate – the so-called Okun’s Law. The algebra underlying this law can be manipulated to estimate the evolution of the unemployment rate based on real output forecasts. Please read my blog – What do the IMF growth projections mean? – for more discussion on how the required GDP growth rate is conceived and calculated.
The summary approximate rule of thumb that emerges is that if the unemployment rate is to remain constant, the rate of real output growth must equal the rate of growth in the labour-force plus the growth rate in labour productivity. It is an approximate relationship because cyclical movements in labour productivity (changes in hoarding) and the labour-force participation rates can modify the relationships in the short-run. But it should provide reasonable estimates of what will happen.
So the sum of labour force and productivity growth rates is referred to as the required real GDP growth rate – required to keep the unemployment rate constant.
Remember that labour productivity growth (real GDP per person employed) reduces the need for labour for a given real GDP growth rate while labour force growth adds workers that have to be accommodated for by the real GDP growth (for a given productivity growth rate).
I should add that the required GDP growth rate is dependent in part (by construction) on the labour productivity growth estimates. In recent years, labour productivity growth has been lower than in the past because of the dumbing down of the labour market – the dominance of service sector employment and the dominance of casualised work within that compositional shift. The rising underemployment that Australia has experienced since the 1991 recession and which accelerated in the current downturn is evidence of this shift in employment quality.
As a result, it is easier for the Australian economy now to meet the required real GDP growth rate because our labour productivity rates are that much lower. However, in terms of growth in material standards of living, it is labour productivity growth that matters.
Quite apart from the distributional theft that has been going on where real wages growth has been suppressed in relation to labour productivity growth by neo-liberal legislation which have undermined the capacity of labour to maintain the historical share in national income – see blog – The origins of the economic crisis) – the falling productivity growth has limited our options. See below for more distributional analysis.
This is another example of the destructive impacts of the neo-liberal deregulation agenda – the shift in national income shares has clearly allowed the “financialisation” of our economy to expropriate ever increasing chunks of real output without a commensurate contribution (given that the financial sector adds virtually nothing to real GDP growth – it just redistributes mostly – to itself!) – has also undermined the real living standards of the majority over time by slowing down the rate of labour productivity growth. This trend is common across almost every economy.
In terms of the graph, the impact of the 1991 recession is very clear. But in the current period, even though real GDP growth is getting close to be back on its recent 12-quarter trend it is still inadequate in terms of the rates needed to reduce the labour market slack.
The computation of the required GDP growth rate is somewhat arbitrary but to provide a trend picture (matching the trend rate of GDP growth) the following graph shows the 3-year moving average of the sum of labour force and labour productivity growth on a quarterly basis since March 1985 up until December 2010 and the 3-year moving average of real GDP growth (annualised).
So when the green line (required) is above the blue columns (trend) there will be a tendency for the unemployment rate to rise and vice versa unless hours adjustment are significantly higher than adjustment of persons employed.
So while the RBA yesterday (see blog – Interest rates up – but its messy) seemed content to start slowing the national economy down – according to its own logic of pushing interest rates up to deflate aggregate demand – because the growth rate was nearly back on trend – the reality is that the trend growth is not even sufficient to really eat into the 13.5 per cent labour underutilisation rate.
Which reinforces the view I have that we have learned very little from this crisis in terms of allowing and freeing ourselves of the irrational belief that inflation is about to accelerate out of control and we need to keep some degree of labour market slack in the form of unemployment and underemployment to “discipline” the inflation process – even though this is a very costly exercise in real terms.
A comparison of the real costs of this strategy is never made – and ideology in the form of the flawed NAIRU logic is just asserted that the long-term real costs of the strategy (deliberately using labour market slack) to hold inflation in check are zero. You read that correctly – the mainstream believes there are no long-run costs of unemployment. All swings in unemployment are considered transitory, of minimal impact, and the results of voluntary choices anyway. Please read my blog – The Great Moderation myth – for more discussion on sacrifice ratios and why deflationary monetary policy strategies generate permanent and significant real deadweight losses.
What is driving growth?
Table 8 in the ABS National Accounts publication for the December quarter shows the contributions to GDP growth. The following three graphs provide different perspectives on this issue.
The first graph shows the contributions to the annual change in GDP from December 2008 to December 2009. GDP growth is in percent and the contributions are in percentage points. They do not sum to the total because of the existence of the statistical discrepancy.
The data just verifies what I said in the introduction with respect to the contribution of the government stimulus efforts. Note also the inventory contribution.
To provide more relief to the public versus private contribution, the following graph aggregates the components into standard aggregate national accounting categories. You can see that the dominant driver of real GDP growth over the last year has been the contribution of the government sector (both investment and consumption).
The following graph shows the contribution of government spending (percentage points) to real GDP growth (per cent) since March 2008 – which is when the crisis really started to impact on Australia. Once again imagine where we would have been without the stimulus packages which boosted goverment net spending from late 2008 onwards.
Finally, on contributions, the ABS reported that for the December 2008 to December 2009 period the expenditure-based statistical discrepancy was a -1.4 percentage points contribution – this is the error that arises between the three ways of assessing the national accounts. The ABS define it as being “calculated as the differences between aggregate incomes, expenditures, or industry products respectively and the single measure of GDP”.
So given the relative size of the expenditure-based statistical discrepancy, don’t be surprised if there are not some revisions next quarter to the current estimates. These are survey results after all and put together from a number of different sources of survey information, some of which is only guessed at the time of publication and firm up afterwards (and therefore comprise the basis of the revision).
We haven’t learned – distributional shift to profits continues
The ABS now compute as a regular addition to its quarterly national accounts a measure of real unit labour costs – which otherwise indicate the wage share in national income.
They describe this measure in the following way:
Unit labour costs (ULC) represent a link between productivity and the cost of labour in producing output. A Nominal ULC measures the average cost of labour per unit of output while a Real ULC adjusts the nominal ULC for general inflation. Positive growth in a real ULC indicates that labour cost pressures exist.
Real unit labour costs (RULC) are identical to the wage share in national income and are constructed in the following way. ULC = Wage rate times employment divided by total output = W.L/Y. Note that L/Y is the inverse of labour productivity. RULC = ULC/P (where P is the price index). So RULC = (W.L/P.Y), that is the wage share (W.L is the total income payments to labour and P.Y is GDP). It can also be written as (W/P)/(Y/L), which is the ratio of the real wage (W/P) to labour productivity (Y/L).
In the 1970s it was thought to be a valuable measure to test the proposition that real wages growth in excess of labour productivity (so RULC rising) would cause unemployment. This was the prediction of the erroneous mainstream (neo-classical) marginal productivity theory. So there was an industry of economists running regressions and drawing graphs etc to show that when RULC rose employment fell – just as they told the Keynesians it would!
The problem with all that hoo-ha was that RULC is a somewhat ambiguous measure because its movements are influenced by both the numerator and the denominator and the latter is highly pro-cyclical – that is, it falls in a recession and rises in the boom (because of hoarding).
So RULC can fall because the real wage is falling as a result of discretionary policies to deregulate the labour market and attack unions. But, equally, it can fall because the economy is booming and productivity growth is strong. So correlations between RULC and employment will render what is referred to as “observational equivalence” with respect to macro theories of employment. Both the mainstream and Keynesians predict a negative correlation between real wages and employment but for vastly different reasons. Anyway, that is all as an aside.
The latest estimates for the December quarter 2009, show that RULC decreased by 1.3 percent while the trend Non-farm RULC decreased by 1.7 percent. The ABS say that the “Non-farm measure is generally preferred as it removes some of the fluctuations associated with Agriculture”.
The following graph shows the evolution of RULC (the wage share in national income) since September 1985 in index number form (September 1985 = 100). It shows the continuous redistribution of income from wages to profits which I document as one of the characteristics of the neo-liberal period that led to the current crisis. Please read the blog – The origins of the economic crisis – for more detail on this point.
In historical terms, this redistribution is very large and unprecedented – another atypical behaviour – which the neo-liberals have tried to condition us is just normal. It is not! This trend along with the rapid increase in household indebtedness and the obsessive pursuit of budget surpluses are all historically atypical behaviours – which have to be reversed if we are to avoid further crises of the type that has recently crippled the World economy.
I do not believe that the households can absorb the real output that is being produced by the economy under these distributional trends without having to continually increase their debt levels. Real wages growth has to come back into line with productivity growth to ensure sustainable growth is achieved and this means one thing – there has to be a rather significant shift in the wage share upwards.
The reality is that this can only be accomplished if real wages growth is allowed to track labour productivity growth. That will require a paradigm shift away from labour market deregulation, anti-labour legislation and trade union bashing.
I don’t see that happening any time soon and combined with our failure to take a serious position on financial market reform and our obsession with fiscal austerity – it is clear we are setting our economies up for the next crisis. Conservative ideology triumphing over good economics.
Reflections on the government stimulus rescue
I did a radio interview late yesterday from my new beach hideaway office (yes I was actually working) about the impacts of the fiscal stimulus package. The argument being presented by the ABC presenter was that we might have been better off without the package because the government footprint has distorted prices and been an adminstrative disaster.
On this theme, Sydney Morning Herald’s economics commentator Ross Gittins said his article today (March 3, 2010) – Rudd pays for avoiding recession:
Years ago a central banker explained to me that, in his bank’s efforts to keep the economy from being blown off track, it was never a good thing to be too successful. Really, I said, why not? Because if you’re too successful at eliminating evidence that the economy had a problem, it won’t be long before people are questioning why you took the steps you did when, clearly, there was never a problem.
I agree with this. The tack taken by the ABC presenter yesterday reflected this sentiment. I made the point that it is possible that some parts of the stimulus intervention (a relatively minor proportion of total funds spent) were problematic in terms of adminstrative issues. I refer to the now-scrapped insulation program. There has been a major beat up about this program in the media but the facts are in dispute. I would conclude it wasn’t a very good program but the facts that are available are very blurred.
But the point I made was that large-scale stimulus interventions of the type taken by the Australian Government – which in international terms was early and large relative to GDP – are very complicated and you can expect some administrative inefficiencies. Imagine if the private sector had to ramp up investment spending within a quarter or so – what do you think would be the outcome of those projects.
I also indicated that the neo-liberal era has been marked by a major reduction in Departmental capacity to design and implement fiscal policy – given the obsession with monetary policy and the major outsourcing of “fiscal-type” government services to the private sector. Many of the major Federal government policy departments are now just contract managers for outsourced service delivery. So with the voluntary reduction in “fiscal space”within the federal government over the last 20 years or more it is no surprise that the overall capacity of the government machine to implement efficiently and speedily complicated nation-wide infrastructure programs has been diminished.
This is a lesson for the future in my opinion. We can no longer deny that fiscal policy is required to address serious swings in private spending. Monetary policy has been proven – categorically – to be ineffective in dealing with aggregate demand failures of the sort we have witnessed in the current crisis. In that context, governments must develop forward-looking capacity to ensure that it has project implementation skills when they are required.
Having said that, I also pointed out in the interview that while complex interventions will not be perfect in design or execution you have to consider what would have been the case if we had have followed the Chicago school (or the Harvard school) line – and left it to the private market to sort the mess out. It is clear to me that we were facing a repeat of the Great Depression such was the damage to the financial system and the plunge in real output in the major economies.
Finally, the Australian downturn was less severe than we thought at the time of the intervention. It is easy to look back with the benefit of the 20-20 vision and say that in some areas too stimulus was provided. I was asked about the price distortions in the trades area where builders and plumbers etc that are working on public infrastructure projects are now reportedly charging increased fees to contract private work. I questioned the veracity of that claim in fact – given the data doesn’t show any major blowout in labour costs etc.
But the major point is that at the time the stimulus packages were designed and announced, the Government believed we were on the precipice of another Great Depression. The international events demonstrate that the crisis has been very severe. So the government rightly assumed that there would be major idle labour skills available to be brought back into productive work. That was a reasonable assumption and the fact that the downturn hasn’t been as bad as that demonstrates that the fiscal stimulus has been very effective.
However, I concluded by saying that I would have concentrated the stimulus on efforts to provide public sector jobs to the most disadvantaged workers who bear the brunt of unemployment and underemployment. They are still idle and without sufficient income. It would have delivered much more to the economy than competing for tradespersons with other “private” demands for those services, however, weak they were at the outset of the crisis.
But while Gittins gets that part of the story correct, don’t think he has a sound grasp on things in general. Here is a giveaway paragraph in today’s article:
Obviously, Rudd had a lot of help – from the Reserve Bank and the alacrity with which it slashed interest rates, from the good shape of the budget he inherited from the Howard government and from the rapid bounceback by China and our other Asian trading partners.
Conclusion: same old mis-guided gold standard thinking. First, the monetary policy easing has been shown by Treasury to be a minority feature of the aggregate demand recovery.
Second, the budget the government inherited from the previous conservative government (10 surpluses in 11 years) provided no extra financial capacity to the present government to net spend and underwrite the recovery. They could have engineered the same intervention even if they had inherited 11 years of deficits.
The point Gittins is making relates to the low levels of public debt that the present government “inherited”. All that indicates is that the previous government had squeezed the wealth holdings of those in the private sector.
In this regard, the surplus obsession was not healthy at all and contributed to the degradation of public infrastructure and the decline in quality public services, not to mention the persistently high labour underutilisation rates in Australia. By continually squeezing the private sector of liquidity, the surpluses also provided the dynamic for the latter to increase its debt levels to maintain spending growth. That strategy was unsustainable and contributed to the crisis we have recently endured.
Any real GDP growth is good news. But the fact is that it is still insufficient to absorb the pool of underutilised labour.
The fact that it getting back on trend just reinforces the neo-liberal dominance on our thinking. The past trend was inadequate in terms of the available labour preferences for more work. We needed to change our mindset and aim for higher employment growth.
The RBA’s actions to tighten monetary policy yesterday because GDP growth was “nearing trend” only reinforce my view that we haven’t really learned much from the downturn.
And the real threat to prosperity will now be revealed in the May budget when the federal government will announce that we are out of the recession and it is time for fiscal austerity. Combined with the deflationary impacts of similar moves by other governments around the world and the impending meltdown of the EMU region, the GDP growth we are enjoying today may not persist into the next year.
If the world double-dips and our government persists in its obsession to get back into surplus post-haste, the future is less than bright. And we can blame the mindless ideology of the deficit-terrorists for the damage.
Digression: Look what turned up today!
Today I was working away at my mobile office located at a cabin in the sand dunes near Elizabeth Beach, NSW (just around the corner from Boomerang Beach) when a visitor turned up to look around (probably to check up whether I was working or not).
Here he/she is (click for bigger picture):
It just looked around and then shuffled off. We have seen versions of this animal while up the coast in the past which are 2 metres long and they run like the wind.
I am investigating increasing the font-size to all the ageing readers. It might need a re-coding of the theme though. We will see.
Anyway, that is enough for today!
The surf beckons. | <urn:uuid:36c95518-f776-47fb-856f-bb7488e7732e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=8399 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956551 | 5,139 | 1.570313 | 2 |
|Experiment to see when Google crawls a new page|
| 1:27 am on Jul 7, 2010 (gmt 0)|
Quick experiment I just did to see when Googlebot crawls a new page on an established domain. No other inlinks, this page lives in its own new directory.
Post to twitter (not using bit.ly but the whole URL), from a 600 follower account-- immediate hit from Googlebot as well as a Google App Engine bot.
Post to established but fairly inactive blogger account with link in title, immediate hit from Googlebot.
Post to Facebook with large account (1000 friends)- nothing from Googlebot (not surprising, privacy settings are tight on this account).
Maybe this is obvious stuff to most, but it's pretty fascinating to me (especially the Twitter indexing, but it makes sense as immediate indexing is basically the only way they can add any value to Twitter search).
| 3:29 am on Jul 7, 2010 (gmt 0)|
You likely told Google about the page long before you posted a link to it from any of those places.
Do you use the google toolbar? Does the page/site have adsense? Did you visit a 3rd party site that has adsense? Did you visit a 3rd party page that has other Google tools on it? Did you check your email? Do you have any other toolbars like Alexa that retrieve history? Does the site have an rss feed that is being copied by a spammer? Rss being picked up by Google reader? Does the site have a sitemap generator that added a link and pinged search engines? Does the site ping search engines when changes are made to the site? Did you see an ad on any page you visited after posting that was from doubleclick or used the google dart cookie? Does your site or any site you visited use tracking? Analytics? Site Meter? Do you use Google chrome? Many of the google products don't even need to be "turned on" to gather data, they just store it for future sending. Did you visit youtube? etc..etc..etc. Do you have a pagerank browser add-on? you get the idea.
The list of ways Google gathers data is MONUMENTAL making the type of test you're describing near impossible.
Cookies: Does your computer have any of the following cookies right now? google.com? youtube.com? doubleclick.net? blogger.com? picasa.google.com? finance.google.com? base.googlehosted.com? etc...etc.
Log files: Any server request made of a google property(including on other people's websites) results in data stored in log files about you which is added to their database(s), some of which are permanent backups that will never be deleted. When data is added about you it's even possible that a crawler is assigned to come look for other changes about all things "you" online.
Google gathers information about you and your browsing habits from ALL of it's products and from 3rd party sites that use any of them even if you don't own them and just visited. They didn't become the biggest search engine without making use of all it's data either.
edit: I'd even wager that Google assigns affiliations between content(s) that don't even mention you. My webmasterworld account for example, it may already be added to my data history. It's very safe to assume Google is that advanced with it's data gathering given how many redundant layers of data gathering it uses.
No really, it wouldn't be that hard. The browser tools and such mentioned above are working even now. User:Sgt_Kickaxe was the first to access this reply and also visits Google adsense account #123456789. Therefore Sgt_Kickaxe IS LIKELY #123456789. Sgt_Kickaxe is ALWAYS first to see replies by Sgt_Kickaxe and the ONLY person to also access #123456789. Therefore Sgt_Kickaxe IS #123456789. Rinse and repeat with other sites/google products and, well, it's the ultimate gotcha even when you think you're anonymous. Some data like this can't be posted for privacy reasons but Google has it. url's are childsplay in comparison.
| 6:36 am on Jul 7, 2010 (gmt 0)|
your post is awesome... and I venture to guess absolutely right.
My only point is that I saw an "if A, then B" correlation with this experiment. Literally watching the logs in real-time, I saw a post to Blogger was *immediately* followed by a GBot access, likewise with the post to Twitter just a few minutes later.
Could be helpful to people who are struggling to get their sites indexed (seen a lot of that lately).
| 6:59 am on Jul 7, 2010 (gmt 0)|
It was a pretty good rant, wasn't it? Not enough people know how massive the data collecting effort is from G.
You're right too, add a few Google products to browser or site and you'll get ranked much more quickly when you post to other sites who are also providing data to Google but it's impossible to say which data collection path got Google there first. It is possible to say that Google is SO fast because they have SO MANY ways of gathering data from people like you and me. | <urn:uuid:e4ca8692-43f9-461b-823a-5c0cc2c306cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4165503.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949368 | 1,132 | 1.617188 | 2 |
By Pete Kotz
By Michael Musto
By Michael Musto
By Capt. James Van Thach told to Jonathan Wei
By Kera Bolonik
By Michael Musto
By Nick Pinto
By Steve Weinstein
The Constitution is not what the President [alone] says it is. American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine, July 24.
When George W. Bush signs a bill from Congress into law, he adds a "signing statement"more of them than any of his predecessorsthat he will not enforce that law if it impedes his inherent constitutional authority as head of "the unitary executive." (Press secretary Tony Snow brushes these off as "little statements."
In Bush's first term, he has, as the Associated Press notes, issued at least 750 of these"reserving the right to revise, interpret, or disregard laws.
Most notoriously, after a televised White House surrender to Senator John McCain, Bush signed a law including McCain's banning of "cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment" of U.S. detaineesbut then, in a signing statement, he said he could ignore that part of the law in the war on terrorism.
The increasingly intense national debate on the president's bypassing the representatives of the people whenever he chooses has even reached the comic pages. On August 1, in The Record, a daily newspaper in Bergen, New Jersey, Wiley Miller's strip Non Sequitor shows a father remonstrating with his small son: "I hear you don't think you have to clean your room."
"Well," says the child, "while I grant you the existence and legitimacy of your rules, I've enacted the power of a signing statement that makes me the exception to those rules."
On July 13, on the editorial page of The Lufkin Daily News, serving a small community in Texas, supporters of Bush's frequent use of signing statements are asked if they're "willing to provide such leeway in skirting laws to a President Hillary Clinton? Or a President John Kerry? We doubt it."
Of much greater concern to the White House than those barbs is a stinging American Bar Association task force reportsummarized by ABA President Michael Grecoaccusing Bush of violating his oath of office by signing a law and then refusing to enforce it.
This ignoring of Bush's oath of office, says Greco, "is made clear in Article I of the Constitution, in the so-called 'presentment clause,' which decrees that a president must accept or reject a law as a whole. He cannot pick and choose the parts he likes. . . . The president must sign or veto a law as a whole."
Greco, who has become the immediate past president of the ABA since the report, his term having ended, reminded the president that Tom Paine, in stoking the fires that led to the American Revolution, "famously remarked that, in England the king was the law, but in America the law is king." (Emphasis added.)
Or, as Bush's very first predecessor, a fellow named George Washington, put it, the president "must approve all the parts of a bill or reject it in toto."
The 10 members of the ABA task force included three prominent Republican constitutionalists: former congressman Mickey Edwards; Bruce Fein, who was in the Reagan Justice Department; and William Sessions, former head of the FBI and CIA and a former federal circuit court judge. (I've known Bruce Fein for many years and can attest there is no fiercer Republican conservative scholar nor a fiercer protector of the Constitution.)
It's also important to note that before the ABA report on the signing statements, the valuable bipartisan Constitution Project in Washingtoncomposed of an array of judges, scholars, and other constitutional expertsalso issued a sharp criticism of Bush, challenging the constitutionality of his signing statements.
"We have come together," said the signers of the Constitution Project's accusation, "because we agree that we face a constitutional crisis. . . . The separation of powers is not a mere 'technicality.' It is the centerpiece of our Constitutionand our freedoms depend on it." (Emphasis added.)
Among the long list of signers were: former congressman Bob Barr; law professor David Cole and John Dean (both penetrating critics of the administration's assaults on civil liberties); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; law professor Geoffrey Stone, author of the essential book Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (W.W. Norton and Co.); and Fein.
The American Bar Association report urged Congress to enact legislation to require a review by the courtsexercising the separation of powersof these "signing statements that assert the President's right to ignore laws passed by Congress."
And on the floor of the Senate, on July 24, Republican Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, declared bluntly: "We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will authorize Congress to undertake judicial review of these signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional." (Emphasis added.)
This proposed legislation is based on the draft bill written by the indomitable Fein, whose keen sense of the sources of our Constitution is illustrated by this portion of the bill: "Article II, Section I [of the Constitution] declares that the President 'shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. . . . ' Its inspiration was the English Bill of Rights in 1688. It declared, 'That the pretending power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, without the consent of Parliament, is 'illegal.' "
Find everything you're looking for in your city
Find the best happy hour deals in your city
Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%
Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:e3e2aea1-5e72-4c58-b841-06f6c3e53296> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-08-08/news/bush-s-invisible-ink/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948597 | 1,226 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Paint is a fascinating material.
On the physical level, paint is applied to a surface as a liquid. Through a chemical process the liquid becomes a solid, a thin coating that bonds with your wall – which is kind of cool to think about. The coating can be a variety of colors, textures, or layers to create visual effects that are even cooler.
From an energetic perspective, paint in its liquid form is a plastic substance with a vibration that can be altered. Once the paint dries its vibration becomes fixed, sealed into the surface of the wall, forming an imprint. The imprint emits a vibration in a frequency that permeates the quality of experience in that room. It creates a subtle atmosphere – a space of consciousness – that effects the quality of all the activities that take place there.
Every time you paint a room, you are creating a vibrational imprint. This imprint reflects your state of being at the time you create it.
For example, if you are happy and excited to paint your room in the uplifting shade of green that inspires you, this uplifting vibration gets imprinted on and into your walls. If you resent painting the room and are angry your partner won’t help you, then a heavy, resentful vibrational frequency will permeate the room. If you hire painters who don’t take pride in their work and just want to get the job finished, paid and on with their lives, a survival attitude will subtly influence your space, your choices, and your behavior.
Here are three tips to use when you paint to change the energy of your room:
Top down design
Take some preliminary time considering what energy you want your room to vibrate – even before you choose a color – light and uplifting or earthy and cozy? Do you need a productive or creative energy for your home office? Do you want your kitchen to be a haven of nourishing, satisfying energy? Perhaps you want to ignite more intimate energy for a new partner you want to invite into your life. Perhaps you are after the energy of a greater level of abundance?
Once you’re clear about the energy you desire, you have to feel that desire and energy. How does that energy feel to your body, in your general awareness? Does it tickle your belly? Does it warm your heart? Does it make you tingle all over, or bring you to a quiet, grounded space? Feel that energy, then choose your colors based on that feeling. This is key. The process works outside your discursive mind, and gets you in touch with your authentic desires. Once you can feel it, you can embody what you want and create space for it to unfold in your life.
Charging your paint
Before you begin to paint your walls, spend a few moments going inside. Sit down with your paint can in front of you and remove the lid. Close your eyes. Breathe. Go back to that energy you want your room to exude. Revel in this feeling. Be open to the feeling more and more deeply until it becomes tangible, light, a vibration through your whole being. When you fully feel that energy, rub your hands together at chest height.
Now, slightly separate your hands and feel the energy as if it was a ball between them. Then gently extend your hands, one on each side of the paint can, palms facing inwards. Let the energy flow though your heart, into your hands, then permeating the paint. You can have your eyes softly open or closed, but take as long as you need, until you feel satisfied that the energy of the paint resonates with the energy inside you.
Getting out of your mind
As you paint, let go of your worries, nagging fears, and repetitive thoughts that do not support you. Focus on what you are creating. Fall in love with the color you’ve chosen, be more conscious of every inch of the room you are transforming. Feel how much you will enjoy being there once the work is complete. And during it all, hold the energy of what you want it all to feel like inside you. Radiate.
If you get distracted, say by a phone call, make sure that the conversation resonates with the energy you are holding. Otherwise leave the room until it’s over and then spend a moment closing your eyes and re-engaging the energy before resuming.
A client I’m coaching to paint her home office gave me this great tip: “I light a candle before I begin painting, and then when I’m done I blow it out. It helps me bring a greater awareness to the work I’m doing, and gives my painting sessions a clear beginning and ending – no fuzzy gray area.”
I hope that you find these tips useful for improving the energy of your living spaces. If you give any of these suggestions a whirl, I’d love to hear about your experiences and answer any questioins you have.
Meanwhile, keep shining.
Photo by: AnnMarie from Venusian Fusion | <urn:uuid:50ea40dc-c5e5-4128-9c5b-ad284855facc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deadlinenews.com/2012/06/19/the-energy-of-paint/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947819 | 1,041 | 1.5 | 2 |
Various websites now provide questionnaires, checklists, programs, decision-trees, and so on to guide an employer in trying to decide who qualifies as an exempt executive, administrative, professional, or outside-sales employee under the defining federal Fair Labor Standards Act regulations. These tools are fine as far as they go, but their usefulness is normally very limited.
No such approach (whether online or otherwise) can substitute for the indispensable analysis and judgment required to determine whether one of these "white collar" exemptions applies. Typically, these systems simply break-down the regulations into their component parts and then take the responder through them one-by-one, asking him or her to indicate whether the requirement is satisfied by clicking "Yes" or "No" or some other abbreviated answer.
You Need More Than An Outline
But many important regulatory requirements and concepts are vague or ambiguous and do not lend themselves to such quick/easy/short responses. Moreover, most of the controlling principles have been the subjects of years or even decades of definition, refinement, explanation, elaboration, and application in numerous court decisions and in U.S. Labor Department interpretations and opinions. These authorities have often revealed or established exemption nuances, variations, and pitfalls that are by no means readily apparent in the regulations themselves, and some of which do not actually appear in the regulations at all. A person who can effectively bring to bear the knowledge, expertise, and experience necessary to apply the exemption rules probably has no need for an online questionnaire in the first place.
And sometimes the questions raised in or statements made by these online resources can be inaccurate and potentially misleading. For example, even the U.S. Labor Department's "FLSA Overtime Security Advisor" asks as to the executive exemption, "Does the employee's primary duty involve management . . .." [Emphasis added]. However, the regulatory requirement is that an exempt executive employee's primary duty must BE management; this is not a trivial difference.
Furthermore, while these websites often provide what might seem to be definitive and reliable answers, employers should not take these statements at face value. As an illustration, after a series of exemption-supporting responses, USDOL's Advisor pronounces that the employee "appears" to meet an exemption's duties-related tests. Even if an employer could someday prove that it had relied upon the Advisor in deciding that an employee was exempt, one likely counter-argument will be that management's Advisor responses did not reflect the proper application of the relevant legal principles to the actual content of the employee's work.
"Garbage In, Garbage Out"
No software magic is at work in these online resources. Their results do not transcend the user's own, independent and essential understanding and analysis of each determining factor and fact. The best these tools can do is serve as preliminary, very-general guidance to an evaluator who is undertaking:
♦ To elicit all of the relevant, current, clear, accurate, detailed, and specific facts and circumstances from someone who thoroughly understands the job in question;
♦ To evaluate those facts and circumstances against, and with a thorough knowledge and understanding of, the controlling legal tests, requirements, and related refinements and interpretations; and
♦ To make his or her own, independent judgments about what exemption-related conclusions should be drawn from this process.
Finally, remember that state and local laws might not recognize all of the exemptions available under the FLSA or might recognize them only on different or more-limited terms. Consequently, FLSA-focused online resources do not necessarily address whether an employee is also exempt from wage-hour requirements imposed by a different jurisdiction.
◊ Have a comment or something else to add? Please use our comment feature below. | <urn:uuid:62f42722-92cc-4b1f-ba78-2e7c54ab0754> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wage-hour.net/?tag=/job-descriptions-and-exemptions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938707 | 764 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Wed March 20, 2013
Is Your Hospital Safe?
Here's a new online tool to help you decide: www.hospitalinspections.org.
It's searchable by topic (e.g., "medication error") and by state, and contains details about deficiencies cited during a complaint inspection. That means it doesn't contain information about routine inspections. And it only goes back to 2011. Also, it's incomplete, because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has only just begin collecting and posting this data online. And right now, that doesn't include the hospital's response to the complaint and inspection. Although you can read, in some of the narrative sections of the reports, what hospital employees told inspectors about what happened and how they responded.
But here's what's significant about this new online tool:
- This data is hard to come by otherwise. Some states make it available online, but not Rhode Island. Until now, you'd have had to have filed a Freedom on Information Act request to get it. Here, although still incomplete, it's easier to find and search.
- The tool is the result of years of advocacy by the Association of Health Care Journalists, who pushed federal officials to publish this information. Thank you, AHCJ!
You can find other details about hospital quality and patient satisfaction in Rhode Island on the Department of Health web site. Check reports for individual measures - like preventing hospital-acquired infections - here. Compare hospitals in Rhode Island and look up patient satisfaction survey results, as well as readmission and death rates from certain conditions here. | <urn:uuid:a9745c64-13c8-432d-bf1a-ebea53f2c58b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ripr.org/post/your-hospital-safe | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948774 | 328 | 1.796875 | 2 |
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The federal health care overhaul will affect the way millions of Americans receive and pay for their personal medical coverage, but it won’t be the same in every state. The federal law aims to extend health care coverage to the uninsured, who number more than 600,000 in Oregon.
But this state has gone further, enacting a state-level overhaul for the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon’s version of Medicaid, which is jointly funded by the state and federal governments to provide health coverage for people with low incomes.
The Associated Press tackles some frequently asked questions for Oregon residents:
— What is a coordinated care organization, or CCO? How will my medical care be different under a CCO?
They’re new regional organizations that will be responsible for managing the health care of patients in their area. They’ll get paid a specific amount for each patient every month, instead of for every procedure performed.
Most people won’t see much of a change, especially if they’re healthy and don’t spend much time in the doctor’s office.
If you have a chronic condition like diabetes, asthma, heart disease or kidney failure, or if you spend a lot of time in the hospital, the CCO is supposed to ensure that all the doctors you see are working together. If you see a counselor or other mental health professional, that person might start working more closely with your primary doctor. You might be assigned a caseworker to ensure you’re taking your medications and not having any side effects.
The CCOs have quite a bit of flexibility, so it’s impossible to predict exactly what will change for any individual patient. The first CCOs come on line Aug. 1, with others beginning to operate in September, October and November.
— I’m on the Oregon Health Plan. Will I still have my coverage? Do I need to join a coordinated care organization?
You will continue to be on the Oregon Health Plan as long as you meet the qualifications, and you don’t need to do anything to keep your coverage. When a coordinated care organization is certified in your area, you’ll automatically be enrolled. You’ll get a letter 30 days before any change happens, and your medical ID card will stay the same. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/QuJORz .
— I’m uninsured, but I’m not eligible for the Oregon Health Plan. What happens to me?
That’s a complicated question, and the answer depends on your family’s income and the cost of your health coverage. By the first day of 2014, the Oregon Health Insurance Exchange will have a website and phone number to tell you exactly what you’re eligible for and let you compare various plans and prices. But for now, we’ll try to help you sort it out.
If your family makes less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level — that’s $14,856 for an individual, or $30,657 for a family of four — you and your family will become eligible for the Oregon Health Plan, if you aren’t already.
If you make between 133 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level — up to $44,680 for an individual, or $92,200 for a family of four — you will get some money from the federal government to offset the cost of buying private insurance. You will buy that coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange. When you call them or go to their website, beginning in 2014, they’ll ask you for information about your income and life situation and determine how much assistance you’re eligible for. If you fall in this category, you won’t have to pay more than 9.5 percent of your income on health coverage, and the percentage is lower for lower-wage earners.
If you make more than that, you can buy coverage through the exchange, but you won’t get a federal subsidy.
— What if I get health coverage from my employer?
You’ll probably keep your coverage, but that’s up to your employer. If your company has 50 employees or fewer, the boss might decide to buy your coverage through the Health Insurance Exchange, or she might give you some money and let you buy your own coverage through the exchange. If you have more than 50 co-workers, your employer won’t be eligible for the exchange.
— I’m still utterly confused. Where can I find more information?
You’re not alone. Kaiser Health News has a helpful guide at http://bit.ly/N8bmaY . The Obama administration has created www.healthcare.gov to help break down the federal law, and the Oregon Health Authority has created http://health.oregon.gov to help understand the state law.
Jonathan J. Cooper covers Oregon politics and government. Contact or follow him at http://twitter.com/jjcooper | <urn:uuid:090059d1-6073-4dad-b262-ad4fded13e31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfaq.co.uk/2012/06/29/faq-the-health-care-overhaul-in-oregon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939857 | 1,086 | 1.703125 | 2 |
War of the Worlds: New Millennium by Douglas Niles (2005)
This novel makes the assumption that H.G. Wells never actually wrote The War of the Worlds or
indeed that his fictional world ever existed at all. So when Martians turn up in the early
2000's, we are totally unprepared for the concept of an alien invasion. As in the original
novel, the first sign of trouble is a series of inexplicable flashes spotted on the surface
of Mars, foreshadowing the arrival of a fleet of spacecraft. In one of the more interesting
departures from the original, the first three incoming cylinders do not land, but instead
self-destruct above the Earth, sending out powerful electromagnetic pulses, which fry most
of our electronics. The remaining cylinders slam to Earth and begin disgorging Tripod
fighting machines, which is where it goes a bit wrong. I can sympathise with the writers
desire to stamp his own ideas on the concept of the Tripods, but this really was one area
best left alone. Having the Tripods stamp around the countryside on beams of light is too
silly to take seriously; if you'll pardon the pun, it just doesn't hold up.
Chapter by chapter, the novel alternates from character to character, giving us a number
of different perspectives on the war. It's a familiar enough literary device and the author
doesn't stray far from the conventions, except for a disconcerting habit of switching to
the first person for one character, which is rather odd, as he does this with no one else.
Naturally, just about everyone knows everyone else in the story and the various threads
are destined to come together for the big denouement at the end.
Like the movie Independence Day, the action is largely rooted in the United States, and
so when the author very occasionally steps outside the USA, you are left wondering why
he bothered, or left rather frustrated, because one of the more interesting ideas of the
book turns up in one of these momentary side trips abroad. The sad fact is that an invasion
from Mars would very likely not unite the world against a common enemy, but simply raise
the stakes for the settling of scores and unpleasant mistakes. Thus it is that Pakistan
launches a nuclear strike at the Martians, which is mistaken for pre-emptive strike by
the Indians, triggering a full-scale nuclear exchange. It's a great idea, but tossed
aside in a few pages. It's ironic when you consider the name of the novel, (both this one
and its illustrious predecessor), that the action tends to be very much concentrated in
one locale; England for the original and America for this version. As the brief scene set
between Pakistan and India implies, there is a rich vein of material to be tapped here,
showing not only the physical impact of the Martians, but the political and social
upheavals that would surely result on the world stage.
In must particulars this is a reworking of the original novel, though one of the more
entertaining pastimes while reading the book is spotting the references to other subsequent
versions and interpretations of the novel. In the light beam stilted War Machines, there
is a hint of the George Pal movie (the idea that was considered and then largely abandoned
except for one brief scene) and one of the characters is called Koch, which is surely a
reference to Howard Koch, the writer of the 1938 Orson Welles panic broadcast.
H.G. Wells closed his narrative with the Martians destroyed by earthly germs, but Niles
inverts this idea for Millennium, abandoning completely any suggestion that the Martians
are interested in us as livestock. In fact I rather think he was influenced by the mindset
of the post 9-11 world. Anything alien doesn't warrant an explanation for its actions, it
is simply sufficient (even beneficial and expedient) just to say they implacably want to kill us without rhyme or
reason. Admittedly, in principle, it's an interesting idea that Niles presents for the
eventual victory of humanity, but one rather fatally flawed in execution. Without spoiling
it for readers, I'll just say that if the Martian war machines are so impenetrable to modern
human munitions, I can hardly imagine that the home cooked solution his heroes deploy would
have the remotest chance in hell of success.
So not then a great addition to War of the Worlds literature. For sure it's a fair airport
novel to be read and forgotten about; a quick page-turner with some nice set pieces, but
full of irksome little niggles. Would the Martians really abandon their cylinders immediately
on landing and let someone just walk in to steal away a vital clue to their defeat? Why are
they just destroying everything without the slightest apparent motivation, and can you really
see the Valles Marineris canyon on Mars through a portable telescope as the author suggests.
(The answer to that seems to be a firm no.) So in conclusion, not a book I can comfortably
recommend to any but War of the Worlds completists.
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The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The ultimate novel of alien invasion as Martians crash to Earth in Victorian England. | <urn:uuid:be8ee83d-b6dd-46c2-9dd4-cef2302f92e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_worlds_new_millennium.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94754 | 1,173 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Two weeks ago, the Better Nation blog contained a posting by Jeff Breslin which contained the following passage:
Perhaps the saddest aspect of Ireland’s current difficulties is the number of bright young things leaving the country for better prospects abroad. One could argue that this isn’t a road that Scotland would want to go down through independence and, yet, that is precisely what is happening now. (I know this from experience as I moved to London strictly because Scotland couldn’t provide the PhD that my partner wished to study. Wales, incidentally, could).
The Irish population in 1961 was 2.8m. The population today is 4.5m.
The Norwegian population in 1961 was 3.6m. The population today is 5.0m.
The Icelandic population in 1961 was 179,000. The population today is 318,000.
The Scottish population in 1961 was 5.2m. The population today is 5.2m.
There is clearly only one stagnant, problem child in the above list and that is because there is an historic, corrosive brain drain taking place in Scotland that is damaging growth from both a population and an economic viewpoint. It is little wonder that ‘London-based parties’, to use an unfortunate phrase, are championing the continuation of the UK when it is London that is the prime beneficiary of this very brain drain.
Kids wanting to get away from it all in Sweden move to Stockholm, kids wanting to get away from it all in Norway move to Oslo and kids wanting to get away from it all in Iceland move to Reykjavik but too many kids wanting to get away from it all in Scotland move to London, and we are haemhorrhaging talent and creativity as a direct result.
I decided to have a closer look at this. Using figures from Wikipedia (look for the articles called Demographics of …), I’ve made two graphs.
The first one (top right) shows the populations of Scotland, Ireland, Denmark and Norway from 1900 to 2010. In 1900, Scotland was by far the most populous country of the four, with almost as big a population as Norway and Denmark combined. Scotland and Ireland had almost stagnant populations for the following decades, while Norway and Denmark grew rapidly. A while after Ireland became independent, the Irish population suddenly exploded, and it has now almost caught up with Denmark. Scotland seems to have experienced modest growth after the introduction of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
The second graph clearly shows a difference between non-independent Scotland and pre-independence Ireland on one hand, and the independent countries (or the dominant part of the union, in the case of England) on the other.
If Scotland had experienced the same relative population growth as Denmark since the year 1900, the population in 2010 would have been around 10.1m instead of 5.2m. Would this have happened if Scotland had regained her independence under Queen Victoria, or are there other reasons why Scotland would never have been as fertile as Denmark? | <urn:uuid:b633b2f0-8384-4073-9d99-a9f30e5c9964> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.widmann.org.uk/2012/03/14/5227/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970333 | 618 | 1.796875 | 2 |
(AP) DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Leaders from eight former Soviet states gathered Saturday to celebrate enduring cooperation over the two decades since their nations collectively gained independence, but mutual acrimony and recriminations cast a shadow over the event.
The heads of state from the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose association of ex-Soviet republics, ended the summit in the capital of Tajikistan by signing a declaration calling for peaceful conflict resolution among member states and the creation of a free trade zone.
The summit took place against the backdrop of a simmering row over natural gas prices between Russia and Ukraine. The Armenian and Azerbaijani delegations also exchanged frosty remarks about their long-running dispute over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an authoritarian whose government is also at odds with Moscow over gas prices, did not turn up at all. Other no-shows included the presidents of Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.
Attendees included Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Krgyz President Roza Otunbayeva.
A lackluster summit will likely only serve to deepen misgivings over future of the 11-nation CIS, an organization created in the dying days of the Soviet Union as a forum for dialogue. The Tajikistan summit appeared more than anything to act as a venue for airing mutual grievances and frustration with the West.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych tried Saturday to quash suggestions that Russian gas monopoly Gazprom might be allowed to take over Ukraine's pipeline network in exchange for a deal on lower gas prices.
Ukraine is piling pressure on Russia to reduce prices for its gas, saying that an 2009 import contract contradicts an earlier deal and must be revised.
Russian news agency Interfax cited Yanukovych as saying settling the gas price issue will have to come before any other commercial negotiations can take place.
The prospect of another standoff over gas prices causes alarm in Western Europe, which relies on Russia for a quarter of its gas needs. Some 80 percent of the gas bound for Western Europe is carried through Ukrainian pipelines.
Ukraine wants to reduce the amount of gas it buys from Russia by one-third to 27 billion cubic meters annually. The current contract requires Ukraine to pay for at least 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year, regardless of the quantity it actually imports.
During the plenary session, Medvedev sharply criticized the election monitoring body of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a trans-Atlantic rights group. Virtually all elections held in the CIS since the fall of the Soviet Union have been deemed unfair by the OSCE, fostering much resentment among the former Soviet nations.
"All of us try to hold free and democratic elections. But this does not give a free hand to any outside force to form the domestic situation in our countries," Medvedev said.
Azerbaijan's Prime Minster Artur Rasizade reacted angrily to an address in which Armenian president Serge Sarkisian praised the people of Nagorno-Karabakh for what he described as their struggle for self-determination.
Armenia gained effective control over most of the breakaway territory that lies within the territory of Azerbaijan after a bitter war between the countries that ended in 1994, leaving 30,000 dead and more than 1 million displaced.
"Once again, there has been another demonstration of Armenia's unconstructive position in the settlement of this difficult and protracted conflict," Rasizade said.
In the spirit of the uneasy mood that appears to have prevailed at the summit, Rasizade also tartly admonished Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon's repeated references to the "Republic of Azerbaijan."
"We're not the Republic of Azerbaijan, we're the Azerbaijani Republic, by the way," he said. | <urn:uuid:dc6b4ef9-7d00-4f37-83f0-8df4ac1c2ce3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.homin.ca/news.php/news/8997/group/25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953134 | 788 | 1.84375 | 2 |
A recent USA Today poll revealed that about 25% of Americans know little to nothing about the sequester–the mandatory across-the-board budget cuts instituted today. This is alarming since these budget cuts could affect us on a daily basis and could make life pretty inconvenient. Probably because of this collective cluelessness, another Pew/USA Today poll revealed that if nothing is done to resolve the sequester issue, about half of Americans will put the blame on Congressional Republicans and about 30% will blame the Obama Administration. And so, the finger-pointing continues in yet another politician-created crisis.
How did we get ourselves into this mess?
The sequester resulted from the debt ceiling debacle in the summer of 2011. Congress was debating whether to raise the debt ceiling and had a deadline of August 1st to come up with an agreement along with a deficit reduction plan. A “supercommittee” of politicians from both parties worked together to figure out mutually beneficial tax increases and budget cuts. Not surprisingly, the committee failed to agree on final terms; what they did come up with was a plan to decide to plan to hopefully-maybe-fingers-crossed come up with some deficit reduction options sometime in the inter-galactic future.
This mandate was part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, and also included the sequestration language–that is, failure to agree on deficit-reducing legislation would automatically trigger the sequester, which are automatic cuts that would affect every discretionary area of the federal budget.
When the Budget Control Act was drafted, no one thought Congress would be so irresponsible as to allow these budget cuts to be triggered. But like the 2011 debt ceiling debacle that lasted over six months and culminated in deadline drama, and the recent fiscal cliff thriller that ended with “cliff”-hanging legislation on New Years Eve, it looks like Congress is going to ride this one out too.
To read the rest of the article, go here. | <urn:uuid:793053bc-0589-4d3a-93c4-c615b9b88d6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gogirlfinance.com/money/the-sequester-how-do-government-budget-cuts-affect-me/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964436 | 400 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Staff Photo: Brendan Sullivan Shoe cobbler Steven Olmstead of the Mall of Georgia Shoe Repair has been collecting shoes since the 1970's. Olmstead oldest pair of shoes dates back to the 1850's. "This is not my trade, it's my life" said Olmstead.
BUFORD -- Some people consider shoes just another accessory we wear, akin to shirts, pants, gloves and hats. But to Steven Olmstead, a fifth-generation cobbler at Mall of Georgia Shoe Repair, they are more than that.
"Shoes are a way of life, not a trade," Olmstead said.
Olmstead keeps part of his life in the store -- which is owned by Yuriy Yakubov, a native of Uzbekistan -- as a miniature museum collection. Olmstead keeps 11 pairs of shoes in a glass case, varying in style and color and dating back to at least the 1820s.
The variety in the collection shows the high and low end of footwear from previous eras. One item is a brown doll shoe that he says an infant wore because that's all the family could afford. Another is black and gray with gray spats. Olmstead calls them "Four Dollar Gangster Shoes" because they are the type Al Capone might have worn.
"You very seldom find the two-tones, and none of them new. If you do, I'd like to have them," he said with a chuckle.
Olmstead got his start at Niven's Shoe Repair in Gainesville, which is now Red Shoe House. He started working on shoes at age 5, got on full-time payroll at age 12 and has been doing the job for the past five decades.
"(My grandfather) tore up the stitcher down there and had me to put it back together," Olmstead said. "He said, 'You're on payroll at $40 a week.' I was 12 years old. I've been on payroll ever since, and I'm 60."
Red Shoe House is owned by Eddie Tatum, who Olmstead calls a good friend. It's also where Gov. Nathan Deal gets his shoes repaired. Olmstead has serviced some big names in his time, including Deal, Andrew Young, Herschel Walker, Evel Knievel, Bill Elliott and Matt Kenseth.
Knievel didn't exactly have a normal experience in Olmstead's shop.
"I (ran) Evel Knievel slap out of the shop," Olmstead said. "I had my own shoe shop under the Coca-Cola sign on Peachtree Street at the time. Evel Knievel come to town, it's 1976 because everything was red, white and blue. He wanted me to paint his boots for his audition."
But Knievel didn't want to wait. He wanted to get to the front of the line.
"'I want you to do them this afternoon,'" Knievel told Olmstead. But Olmstead wasn't having it.
"I'm the owner. You won't get your damn shoes today. Get the hell out of my shop," Olmstead recalled with a grin. "He didn't have his shoes fixed that day. Not by me."
Many of the objects in Olmstead's collection, which also includes wooden sandals, salt and pepper shakers, and old shoe polish, have been given to him from customers in appreciation from his work.
The quality of the shoes has changed over time, which is why Olmstead has been able to hold on to shoes from nearly 200 years ago.
"Everything was made of leather back then," he said. "Solid leather. And the majority of them are handmade. They ain't made by machine. Today's market, there's no quality control. Everything's made of what I call garbage."
For work, Olmstead wears a pair of 15-year-old original Rockports that he said a customer left. He fixed them up and has worn them on the job since.
"You can't buy these any more," he said of the shoes' quality.
Some of the pieces in Olmstead's collection came from the Crawford Long Museum in Jefferson. He didn't like them just gathering dust in a back room, and so he decided to show them to the public at his place of employment.
As for the entire collection, Olmstead wants people to appreciate the pieces. His children were killed in a car wreck in 1977, so he has no one to inherit the collection once he's gone. His hope that someone else will come along, buy the pieces -- he said they are for sale -- and give them the light of day instead of relegating them to the back room of a museum again. | <urn:uuid:0e6d5622-f82d-4182-b601-d0ad88675ee1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2013/jan/11/cobbler-turns-lifes-passion-into-small-shoe-museum/?news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986552 | 998 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A couple of weeks ago we held back to back Engine 2 Immersions in Austin, TX.
What is an Immersion?
An Immersion with Engine 2 is a nutrition education program designed to give you what most of us have never received – a true education about what foods are good for you (and the science behind HOW amazingly good for you they are) and what foods are not (and the science behind how amazingly NOT GOOD for you they are).
This is the education that most of us did not receive growing up. Or in high school. Or college. Or ever. The reality is that most of us we eat the way we do because it’s what we have always known – we eat what our parents ate, or something like it.
And that’s not any one’s fault – food is an incredibly important part of our emotional lives, to say nothing about the role that foods plays within our family and amongst friends. You gather around a table of food at dinner with your children, and holidays with your family, and at restaurants with your friends. But the shockingly powerful role that our daily meals have on our long-term health is usually not discussed – or known – by most of us.
And yet, the science is crystal clear that changing the ingredients that go into what we eat – you don’t have to change the FOOD, just a few of the key things that go INTO the food – can have immediate and dramatic effects on your health. In as little as a week you can drop your cholesterol by 40-50 points. You can lose 15 pounds. You can have diseases that have plagued you for years fade away in a few weeks. The list of seemingly impossible changes to your health can be profound, and visible in the mirror within weeks.
Engine 2 is not a diet. It is a change in how you approach the food you eat. Nothing is more intimate and personal that what you put in your mouth each day to feed and nourish yourself. When you learn the ‘Why’ and the ‘How’ of food – why the ‘Standard American Diet’ is so extraordinarily hard on the body, what foods to wean yourself off of, and what foods to integrate into your diet AND how to do that – it is our experience that your entire life is transformed.
The knowledge we bring to you, and tools we teach at the Engine 2 Immersions are not new, nor were they invented by us. They are the compilation of everything that we have seen work in other methods and programs – they are the ‘best practices’ and most effective ideas. Rip has been able to help hundreds of firefighters across the country transform themselves, their lives, and the health of their entire families, by taking these immensely dense concepts and making them real, practical, and adoptable.
We have two kinds of Immersions, public Immersion in which everyone is invited to come and we hold corporate Immersions, for companies who are serious about changing the health of their employees.
Please check out our Immersion videos:
and: Corporate Immersion
We hope to see you at an upcoming Engine 2 Immersion! | <urn:uuid:086fc5c8-ef98-432f-aaa7-579f4381754b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://engine2diet.com/the-daily-beet/the-engine-2-immersion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973224 | 654 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Truckers in Minnesota seek a government place to pee, and rest
While most drivers speed past the cone zones that block access to the rest areas, heading for a pit stop at the next fast food joint down the road, the Minnesota Trucking Association says its members are left to squirm.
Those state rest areas are the only places big enough for the trucks to pull off the road safely, organization president John Hausladen says. Not only that, but drivers are required by law to pull over and rest after 11 hours of driving.
And the MTA's concerns go beyond having a safe place to pee. In the shutdown it may become impossible for truckers to file required safety forms, and subject their rigs to weigh-ins, as long as the shutdown goes on. That, in turn, will put a squeeze on Minnesota's economy.
So Hausladen's group is joining a growing list of those pleading special cases before the court-appointed master in charge of defining essential services in need of funding. Also in line today: the Dayton administration, which wants to add special education aid, chemical dependency and mental health services, HIV case management and counseling services, and services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes to its growing list of what's essential.
- Minnesota government shuts down
- Minnesota legislators who won't accept their salary during a shutdown
- Minnesotans blame Legislature, Dayton equally for shut down
- Dayton will refuse salary during shutdown
- Countdown to government shutdown: Who's to blame? | <urn:uuid:d871138a-81ad-4542-8567-311bc543f059> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/07/truckers_rest_areas_minnesota_shut_down.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953603 | 313 | 1.710938 | 2 |
I have to admit, it's nice to wake up in the morning without half expecting the White House to launch another intervention in a Third World country or proudly announce another cut in a domestic social program that will make people in my neighborhood even poorer. It is indeed a breath of fresh air to have a president who argues against nuclear testing and for universal health care coverage. And it may be that the unprecedented role being played by Hillary Rodham Clinton will make a more lasting contribution to fundamental questions of equality than most of the administration's other accomplishments.
When Angolan thug Jonas Savimbi violated the results of his country's first free elections, he expected the usual help from his friends in the White House, but the new president told him to get lost. Jean-Bertrand Aristide must have been equally surprised when the new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seemed genuinely interested in restoring Haitian democracy instead of finding another American reason for supporting the "stability" of his impoverished nation's brutal military leaders. Perhaps most important to me is to have someone in the White House who seems genuinely moved and anguished by the poverty and violence experienced by inner-city children, instead of a president who always seems to talk about such things as if he's speaking only to white suburban voters.
Yet, there is real trouble in the Clinton presidency at the end of its first year. It began in the budget debate, which produced a series of such embarrassing compromises that no one was happy. Fortunately for Clinton, economic indicators are slowly improving, but the economy has hardly been turned around as per campaign promises. Neither the structural nor, I would contend, moral issues of our economic life were ever really confronted.
What has emerged in the first quarter of this presidency is Clinton the compromiser rather than Clinton the visionary. On issue after issue, the myriad of vested special interests that control this town have successfully intervened to make promises into pittances. A pattern has been set: A lofty goal is stated (often from the election campaign); eventually a proposal is offered to achieve about one-twentieth of the original idea; and after wrangling in the Congress and the media, one-fiftieth of the vision is approved - subject to further modifications.
SOME WOULD SAY this is just the inevitable compromise of politicswhich is, after all, "the art of the possible." But something deeper may be at work here - a president who seems more comfortable at trying to please everyone and be successful than one who knows the heart of his convictions and principles and is willing to stick by them.
A revised program of student loan repayment instead of an exciting new vision of voluntary service simply does not set the country in a new direction, which is what we so desperately need. E.J. Dionne writes in The Washington Post, "Clinton no longer looks like he's really going to change things." Most significant, what is least changed is the cynicism and distrust that most Americans still feel toward their government. To change that would require a kind of political leadership that consistently articulates and demonstrates a new vision and agenda, and is even willing to lose some political battles in the process.
At this point in history it would demand, too, that the new visions go beyond the now hopelessly outmoded political categories and solutions that still govern and paralyze our public discourse. Clinton has not done that yet. He is still beholden to and controlled by traditional Democratic approaches, while his Republican opponents seem to care only to discredit Clinton so as to regain power in four years. Neither side has shown the intellectual and moral courage to work together to find new and workable solutions to our most pressing problems. That is what a disgruntled electorate is still waiting to see.
Because such new political leadership would require a solid grounding in spiritual values, one hoped that the religious community would have played a prophetic role in the first year of the Clinton administration. But, unfortunately, the equally polarized religious constituencies have behaved much like the politicians.
Many conservative evangelicals have virtually identified the Clintons with the Antichrist, while liberal Protestant leaders have gushed at their new-found access to the corridors of power. One wonders how the new president might really be served by a kind of dialogue with religious leaders that encourages a serious accountability to political morality and the prophetic imagination to open up new social possibilities.
One wonders, too, whether this or any president would really want such a dialogue. In biblical language, does King David ever really want to have a serious conversation with prophet Nathan? Uncomfortable topics would come up, such as last year's bombing of Baghdad's children because of their ruler's offenses.
But there have been glimpses of real hope in this administration - when Bill Clinton remembers his campaign calls for a new covenant, when Hillary Clinton demonstrates the courage and competence that confirms a new status for women in this country that goes far beyond her husband's presidency, when Al Gore stands with religious leaders to launch new environmental initiatives, and when our children can see a government that for the first time really "looks like America." Whether those symbols yield to real substance in racial, economic, gender, and environmental justice will ultimately be the real test of this presidency. We have three quarters to go. | <urn:uuid:781cad23-e2ca-40e0-a681-152d1db2fbea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sojo.net/magazine/1994/01/first-quarter | 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 | 0.97001 | 1,057 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Also, I thounk you people are confusing marketing with advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing is much broader, and is something PHP has been doing for a long time, via the community. People are pimpin' PHP left and right, and they are not getting paid for it at all. That's most certainly marketing, too!
I also entirely disagree that a product needs any advertising whatsoever to get established. If it's superior to other product on the market, it will more often than not market itself, via word of mouth. I'm thinking about Google and Apache here, for instance.
With that said, PHP could of course do well with some corporate backing. I have not seen any figures, but I bet Linux took a big jump when IBM started pimping it on the B2B market. They did a lot of advertising, too, but the real value was that IBM held Tux under his shoulder and said "It's cool. He's with me." when he walked into the corporate club.
PHP doesn't lack advertising - it lacks trust. I think it will start to gain it when PHP 5 has had a few stable releases.
I also think it needs more standardization in general. A standard class library, a standard way of coding, a standard framework etc. Diversity is good, but in PHP:s case, it's gone way overboard. It needs some "defaults". | <urn:uuid:3f51cb8e-aaa7-4069-8796-34303e5c41ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?119980-Enterprise-PHP&p=868456&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985475 | 294 | 1.53125 | 2 |
18 July 2012
Global Rainbow by Yvette Mattern is a large scale, spectacular outdoor laser projection which stretches five miles into the sky. Created by American artist, Yvette Mattern, the seven beams of light represent the colours of the rainbow and are intended to symbolise hope.
The light installation was shown in two venues in the north of England and one in Northern Ireland earlier this year. It celebrated the Cultural Olympiad, a series of arts events throughout the country in the run-up to the Olympic Games. | <urn:uuid:795dc13f-88ce-4a6e-b1b4-faf3e19d4feb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/barometer/in-brief/2012-11/global-rainbow | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947605 | 106 | 1.828125 | 2 |
W hen last Monday’s deadline for candidates to file a petition to run for a seat on the Whitehall Board of Education came and went, only one person had submitted their name for three open spots.
Whitehall is one of several local districts that do not have enough candidates to fill the upcoming vacancies on the board of education. Even the BOCES Board of Education, which can draw candidates from multiple counties, has only four board members for five open spots.
According to Virginia Rivette, vice president of the board and a member for 13 years, the lack of candidates is a new problem for the board.
“Some years we’ve had just enough but as long as I’ve been here, there’s always been enough to at least fill the vacancies.”
One reason for the lack of interest may be the current fiscal climate, in which the cost of operating a district continues to rise, primarily due to soaring pensions and health benefits, while state aid continues to decline. At the same time, the state has mandated that school districts keep the rate of tax increases at or below 2 percent.
Those factors have put many districts and, by extension, their boards of education in the unenviable position of having to eliminate positions.
“The times are very discouraging to people for these jobs,” Superintendent James Watson said during last week’s board meeting.
Since the 2009-10 school year the board has eliminated about two dozen jobs and reduced a number of other positions to part-time.
Mark Deluca, who has served on the board of education for 12 years and is currently its president, said some of those cuts could be neighbors or friends.
“Being a small district, you know everybody when you cut jobs. It’s tough,” he said.
“I think the biggest thing is the money is so tight, and the state has its mandates and are constantly cutting aid, it’s making the job of coming up with money more difficult.
Our hands are getting more tied every year.”
Rivette said the state has so many controls over what districts and their boards can do, that some members may become discouraged.
“You come on with these big ideas, but the state has so many controls,” she said.
Lack of engagement
But she views the lack of candidates as more of a function of declining volunteerism that has plagued other civic organizations and government bodies.
“I think some of it is for the same reasons why the EMS and the fire company have had problems getting volunteers,” Rivette said. “Everybody’s lives are so busy and everyone is consumed with making enough money to get by.”
Being on the board can be a big time commitment. There are board and committee meetings that consume several evenings every month. And many members feel it’s part of their duty to attend sporting events and other school functions.
“You don’t want to lose touch with what is happening,” she said.
Apathy may also play a role.
“I think it’s like everything else, people aren’t interested or can’t be bothered,” said James Huntington, who at almost 15 years is the longest tenured member of the board. “There’s just too much going on in people’s lives.”
The board has three options to fill the vacancies: appoint members to the board; hold a special election; or do nothing.
Doing nothing is likely not a long-term option. The board would still function as a nine-member board and therefore would require five votes to pass any action. If three members were unable to attend a meeting, the board would be unable to achieve anything even by consensus.
The other options aren’t ideal either, as the board would have to find people who are interested in the position.
“If you can’t find anyone to fill out a petition, I don’t know who we’d ask,” Deluca said.
Rivette said whenever the board has needed to fill vacancy before, they’ve turned to past members.
The board is going to seek advice from its legal counsel and will make a decision after next month’s election.
Huntington, who said he was surprised by the lack of turnout, said the job can be difficult, but he doesn’t necessarily agree with people who say it’s a thankless job.
“It’s difficult but at the same time it’s rewarding,” he said. “When you see the number of college-bound students has doubled in the last 10 to 15 years, that’s very rewarding.” | <urn:uuid:b24e896e-ff80-4646-8c94-0db40a48e80e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manchesternewspapers.com/2012/04/26/tough-decisions-time-may-deter-candidates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977306 | 1,014 | 1.585938 | 2 |
NEW ORLEANS - Just after dawn Friday morning, a mass said at a New Orleans church will be a historic moment for its members.
The series of church closures led to police actions and arrests.
There is quiet elation among the members of the St. Henry's congregation who will be able to attend mass on weekdays at their historic neighborhood church for the first time since the archdiocese closed it three years ago.
"I think the message is, 'You got to keep the faith,' and we had a lot faith coming in. Since Archbishop Aymond has been here, there has been a lot of communication, a lot of going back and forth. Not everybody gets what they want, sure, we'd love it to go back to the way that it was, but times change and we understand that," said Alden Hagardorn of the Save St. Henry's Movement. "Great things are happening here this morning."
St. Henry's was one of a number of churches closed as part of a plan to consolidate parishes citywide due to a decline in the city's population and budget problems in the archdiocese.
St. Henry's and nearby Our Lady of Good Counsel were closed, and their congregations merged with St. Stephen's Church to form the new Good Shepherd Parish.
But congregation members refused to leave, staging sit-ins and occupations that eventually led to police actions and arrests in early 2009. At Good Counsel there were handcuffs and at St. Henry's there were citations and tears.
"I can't understand it. I feel so lost and broken, and my hope is just crushed. The church did this to me," said St. Henry's member Cynthia Robidoux in 2009.
But St. Henry's members never gave up, praying the rosary at first outside the church, and then inside with permission from the archdiocese.
Now, Archbishop Aymond has set up a schedule of masses at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays, and while no Sunday masses are in the plans, and St. Henry's is not re-opened as a parish, Friday morning's first mass is expected to draw a large crowd. | <urn:uuid:14b598df-baeb-41e1-b284-428be93a79b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwltv.com/news/Uptown-church-reopens-for-weekday-mass-three-years-after-being-closed-159171445.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986258 | 450 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The buying and selling of hacking tools, e-crime kits, malware, and stolen credit card numbers, in a cyber crime flea market environment, may seem as if it stretches the bounds of reality. But, guest writer Paul E. Lubic, Jr., explains in this eye popping report, that this is in fact, a new cyber crime reality.
Here’s Paul’s report:
The global cyber crime marketplace is alive, real, and growing. In a recent article, Global Cyber Crime…, I alluded to the existence of a market for renting botnets, purchasing malware, and obtaining stolen personal information.
At that time, this market of buyers and sellers existed on a small number of black hat-type websites. However, now these brazen thieves have come out in the public to exchange their criminal wares.
According to an article in the Register, Scotland Yard cuffs teens for role in cybercrime forum, a public forum of 8,000 attendees was held in London. The two teens who were involved in organizing the forum are not the story here. It’s the fact that there were vendors there, probably in show booths giving away trinkets for stopping by, that were selling hack-tools, e-crime kits, malware, and 65,000 credit card numbers.
I applaud Scotland Yard for arresting the teen organizers, but I don’t understand why they didn’t arrest those attendees and vendors who were trafficking in these crime-related tools and illegal credit card information. What is wrong with this picture? I don’t think it’s because of ignorance—Scotland Yard evidently knew laws were being broken or they wouldn’t have arrested the organizers.
Could it be that British computer laws don’t address the marketing of these products? Perhaps no one realized the gravity of the situation—they were selling Zeus, the malware that steals banking and credit card information and instructions on how to use it.
Maybe there were undercover agents making purchases and gathering evidence for future arrests. Or it could be all of the above; but the bottom line is that a lot of criminals and malware could have been taken off the street…but weren’t.
The message being sent to the cyber criminal community is that as long as the forum is in England, and you don’t get involved in the actual organization of the forum or conference, you’re free to ply your wares and sell or purchase tools with which to break laws and steal from the masses.
However, this forum, as disturbing as it might be, is just a harbinger of a much greater global cyber crime picture that concerns me. It should concern you too.
The messages we should be taking from this are:
- The criminals are becoming emboldened, almost unafraid of being arrested. This is because there is so much money in cyber theft that it’s worth the risk; coupled with the fact that this is a new industry and the early participants will become the most rich.
- The amount of cyber crime being committed is expanding at an alarming rate. Anyone is able to get into the cyber crime business for as little as a few hundred $US, and because of this, there is an explosion of cyber crime underway as we speak.
- The world’s law enforcement community is woefully undermanned and under educated in cyber crime. This area of law enforcement needs to be funded at a much greater level than the present “handful” of cyber crime officers in each organization today.
- We need to be afraid…very afraid of this problem. For all the reasons stated in items 1-3, we will remain the target of cyber crime for the foreseeable future.
Guest writer Paul E. Lubic, Jr. is a long time IT professional who has held the positions of programmer, IT Security Manager and Chief Information Officer. His interests lie in the IT security area, but he writes on all categories of technology.
Paul is a mature and seasoned writer, with a rare ability to break down complex issues into an easy to understand format. Check him out at his Blog – Paul’s Home Computing.
If you found this article useful, why not subscribe to this Blog via RSS, or email? It’s easy; just click on this link and you’ll never miss another Tech Thoughts article. | <urn:uuid:5ad144a6-5a3f-4901-9779-51c16129102b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://billmullins.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/the-global-cyber-crime-marketplace/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962929 | 901 | 1.609375 | 2 |
On one side, the region’s jobless rate dropped to 7.9 percent, its lowest point since April 2008.
However, fewer people sought work. The labor force – the number of people with jobs or actively pursuing jobs, dropped fell by about 4,000 people.
Still, last month’s jobless rate was under 10 percent for the eighth time this year. Entering 2012, the region’s jobless rate had been in double digits for 35 of the previous 36 months.
So far this year, unemployment has averaged 9.4 percent in the region.
The numbers have improved since the depths of the Great Recession, which battered the economy on all levels. Last year, unemployment averaged 11.5 percent in Northeast Mississippi, a slight improvement from 11.7 percent in 2010. Three years ago, the region averaged 11.2 percent unemployment.
Statewide, the unemployment rate also improved last month, with 81 of 82 counties posting lower rates.
Rankin County’s 4.6 percent remained the lowest jobless rate. Clay County’s 16.1 percent remained highest.
Most counties saw unemployment fall because fewer people sought work. The number of people telling surveyors they had jobs fell in 53 counties. In larger counties, employment grew only in Forrest and Lamar counties.
Lee County, the largest county in Northeast Mississippi, saw about 400 people employed in November. But its unemployment rate dropped to 7.6 percent from 8.4 percent a month earlier.
County-level rates aren’t adjusted to cancel out predictable seasonal changes.
Seasonally adjusted, the state’s jobless rate fell to 8.5 percent in November from October’s 9 percent. November 2011’s rate was 10.6 percent.
Lafayette County had Northeast Mississippi’s lowest rate at 5.4 percent, which also was the fourth-lowest in the state.
Pontotoc (6.6 percent), Union (6.7), Oktibbeha (7.2), Itawamba (7.4), Alcorn (7.5) and Calhoun (7.5) were among the top 25 lowest statewide. | <urn:uuid:e32633ea-88c3-406c-9a8d-c8c27031b6df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://djournal.com/pages/news_obituaries_full/push?article-Region%E2%80%99s+jobless+rate+drops%20&id=21260066 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941062 | 456 | 1.84375 | 2 |
- Local Coverage
A trolley car collision yesterday afternoon near Brigham Circle is likely due to human error, an MBTA official said last night.
The two Green Line trains smashed into each other at about 4 p.m., sending two passengers and one operator to the hospital with neck and back pain. The injuries were not life-threatening, officials said.
MBTA spokesman Joseph Pesaturo said the crash is under investigation, but it appears a misaligned switch is to blame.
He said a train headed inbound from Brigham Circle had just left the stop and had no passengers aboard when it collided with an outbound train that had about 24 passengers on board. The collision derailed the trains, tipped a street lamp over and spilled gravel onto the road.
Witnesses said it sounded like a “big bang.”
The investigation closed Huntington Avenue in both directions for more than two hours as authorities investigated the crash. Pesaturo said MBTA workers hoped to have the tracks reopened in time for this morning’s commute.
Pesaturo said the inspector who is responsible for the switch in that area was at the scene and was being interviewed. He said the inspector has several years of service on the job and a reputation as a good worker. He said it is too early to say why the switch was not aligned correctly. | <urn:uuid:78c4a1cb-0087-45a5-a366-6d39f0e5cb80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bostonherald.com/print/1061166296 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982436 | 273 | 1.507813 | 2 |
With incentives to find new antibiotics signed into U.S. law last month, "multiple players are vying for the lead in the [multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB)] drug development niche," Nature Medicine reports. "The fifth reauthorization of the U.S. Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), signed into law on 9 July, includes a subsection called the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act that aims to spur development of antibiotics for drug-resistant bacteria, including MDR-TB," the news service writes, noting, "Drug makers that ask for approval of medicines to treat these pathogens will receive priority review, as well as five additional years of market exclusivity and fast-track status." Currently, MDR-TB treatment "involves a bevy of regular tuberculosis medicines that, in many cases, must be administered for as long as two years or more ... [and] don't always work," Nature Medicine states, adding, "The hope is that new medicines will shorten treatment times and improve cure rates." The article discusses several medicines that are in different phases of research (Willyard, 8/6). | <urn:uuid:8431d82a-67ca-4115-b499-acc79681bd24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medilinkz.org/africa/global/37202-drug-companies-developing-novel-treatments-for-mdr-tb.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9618 | 241 | 1.84375 | 2 |
proposed. Partly this is because the plan doesn't go nearly far enough, given the size of the problem — conservative estimates put the unfunded liabilities of CalPERS, CalSTRS, and the UC retirement plan alone at $500 billion — and partly it's because even these tepid reforms don't stand a chance in the face of organized labor's opposition. Like it or not, this is a cliff the Golden State is probably going to drive over. If you don't believe us, this story about state Treasurer Bill Lockyer should tell you a lot about Sacramento's receptiveness to pension reform.
If you follow the pension issue in California, you're probably aware that the same Stanford research team that produced the $500 billion liability estimate has released a new report. Their original estimate, published in April 2010, found that the state's three biggest pension funds had a total unfunded liability of $425 billion as of 2008; in the absence of more recent data, the researchers assumed that the funds' heavy losses in 2008-09 pushed the unfunded liability north of a half-trillion dollars. Now, we have the data: using a risk-free rate of return (which makes sense, if taxpayers are guaranteeing the pensions), CalPERS, CalSTRS, and UCRP have a total unfunded liability of $498 billion. Under this assumption, neither CalPERS nor CalSTRS are more than 48% funded (UCRP is 61% funded); fully funding these two funds next year would require government spending on them to rise from $4.8 billion to an astounding $22.7 billion, or over a quarter of the General Fund budget, while fully funding the UCRP would require an additional $3 billion. In other words, if you thought $1 billion in trigger cuts were bad, this would be a catastrophe. Put simply, an honest accounting of public pensions would capsize government in California. In addition to calling for increased agency and employee contributions to pensions, the Stanford authors, led by former Democratic Assemblyman Joe Nation, call for reducing benefits to current workers and raising the retirement age.
Making these kinds of recommendations to the union-owned Democratic establishment in Sacramento, of course, will tend to get roughly the same reception as slandering the Koran in a public square in Riyadh. And yesterday, Treasurer Bill Lockyer announced that he was resigning from the pension advisory board of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, which issued the report. Lockyer's spokesman offered this bit of childish repartee: "When it comes to public pensions, maybe SIEPR should stand for 'Stanford Institute to Eviscerate People’s Retirement.'" Apparently, Lockyer thought the report failed to consider the legal difficulties of reducing benefits for current workers, and didn't account for the effect of including pension retirees on plans' boards. In other words, he ignored the math underlying the report's arguments and raised a silly objection as a way of discounting it entirely. Ladies and gentlemen, your political leadership! | <urn:uuid:e170ca4a-b147-42f1-9098-1f5a50da039d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goldenstateliberty.com/2011/12/bill-lockyer-throws-tantrum-picks-up.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956192 | 623 | 1.515625 | 2 |
You can try to spend hours (or even the whole day) together in Technorama.
There, the children can try everything related to science (they have Chemie Lab as well), try to make ice cream, make chocolate, try all the theory of mechanics, physics...
And try to explain all those thing to him.
(Hints : they have the "how things work" brochure nearby the exhibition in English too, just in case you cannot explain it to him
Or maybe even better, check their website www.technorama.ch
edit: they are in Winterthur, just about 30 min. by train from Zurich. | <urn:uuid:982b7259-a40a-4bcf-89e6-742dcc32c7bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.englishforum.ch/851024-post2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965594 | 132 | 1.539063 | 2 |
- Last Updated on Monday, 25 March 2013 13:18
- Written by Jim Wallis.
GUIDE TO THE RIVER ORCHY
(Loch Tulla to Bridge of Orchy)
NAME OF RIVER: Upper Orchy.
WHERE IS IT?: A major river in Glen Orchy (no surprises there), the A82 from Glasgow to Fort William passes it at the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, a good meeting place for paddlers. Just above the classic section of the Orchy (NN 2966 3964).
PUT-INS/ TAKE-OUTS: Get to the Bridge of Orchy (i.e. the turning immediately north of the Hotel from the A82 - new plant pots mean you can't cut the corner across the hotel car park!) and check the gauge. This can be your takeout, to find the put in drive upstream on the minor road for a couple of Km's until you come to trees on both sides of the road (and a fence on the water side of the road). You can drag your boats down to Loch Tulla from here. Alternatively stop short of the trees, get changed in the wind and drag your boats a bit further to the river - might as well start on the loch! (NN 293 421)
APPROX LENGTH: 2 km.
TIME NEEDED: Depends on your intentions! 20 mins or less as a trip, 2 hours or more as a training session!
ACCESS HASSLES: Unknown. The suggested put in is across open land before the fenced off area of forest. The picnic area at the bridge is one of the most used access points in the west so shouldn't present a problem! Access to the hotel for hot chocolate (or beer) is via the front door!
WATER LEVEL INDICATORS: Have heard that 2' is the ideal level, although we ran it dropping from around 2' and it was OK, say 1.5' as a sensible minimum. I have heard of it being run at 7', or was it 9', either way the playwaves are reported to be excellent at that level (I can't actually imagine the river that high!).
GRADING: Grades 2.
MAJOR HAZARDS/ FALLS: Hypothermia?
GENERAL DESCRIPTION: From the Loch the river starts fairly well as it continues. The glen is very open here with good views, and potential for extreme wind and weather hazard! I don't know how to describe grade 2 water, except that there are plenty of eddies and shoots to train on, plus some good standing waves (level dependant). The rapids are a bit steeper toward the end with the best waves being within sight of the bridge.
If it seems too short, you could continue to Big Rock rapid on the main section (where the Glen Orchy road joins the river) without upping the difficulty - in fact it's probably easier between the bridge and Big Rock!
OTHER NOTES: The shuttle is very runnable or walkable if you have a small group to coach.
CONTRIBUTED BY: Jim Wallis. | <urn:uuid:48473f0e-3d9b-43b3-ae76-2ec863cc5786> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukriversguidebook.co.uk/rivers/scotland/west-highlands/river-orchy-loch-tulla-to-bridge-of-orchy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946812 | 656 | 1.734375 | 2 |
What Happens to Your Old Clothes?
I will openly admit that I have way too many clothes. They are stuffed into every nook and cranny of my bedroom — in dressers, in closets, in plastic storage bins.
I would guess that I wear approximately 25 percent of my wardrobe on a regular basis — and the rest just kind of sits there.
Like many Americans, I try to clean out my closet a few times each year, usually at the start of a new season. As I mentioned in a previous post, I did this a couple of weeks ago, when the weather here in Missoula finally started to warm up.
Whenever I drop off a load of used clothing at the thrift store, I assume that most of it will be placed on clothes racks and eventually sold to someone else. I like to imagine that I’m doing a good deed — that I am perhaps, in a way, helping someone in need.
But, according to an article that recently appeared on Slate, reality doesn’t always reflect this idealistic vision of what happens to my unwanted clothing.
I guess I always assumed that somebody would want my old dress shoes or my too-short pair of gently used Abercrombie and Fitch jeans. I mean, they are perfectly wearable — except for those scuffmarks and that missing back-pocket button.
The truth is, with the enormous oversupply of manufactured clothing in the U.S., consumers of secondhand goods can afford to be a little picky. Even clothes that end up being shipped overseas to poor countries in Africa often go unsold, as shoppers there become increasingly fashion-forward and the supply of cheap imported clothing continues to grow.
Rejected garments are sometimes shredded and recycled, but if the amount of discarded clothing keeps increasing at current rates, more and more of it will end up as waste.
Of course, this shouldn’t stop you from clearing out the stuff you don’t wear, but it might make you think twice about adding unnecessary items to your collection.
Brooke is a 2010 graduate of The University of Montana, where she ran track and cross country for the Grizzlies. She is currently working as a writer and editor in Missoula. | <urn:uuid:e1d3cf1c-f858-4228-b770-e0da1f30e1d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://klyq.com/what-happens-to-your-old-clothes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9685 | 464 | 1.671875 | 2 |
You are here
The music of Aaron Copland (1900-1990) is woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. His Fanfare for the Common Man is almost as ubiquitous on Independence Day as the national anthem. His orchestration and quotation of the Shaker song "Simple Gifts" in his ballet Appalachian Spring is no less prevalent, also finding its way into the popular media. The music from Rodeo is also popular, most recently associated with television commercials for beef, as the mellifluous and authoritative voice of Robert Mitchum proclaimed to us "it's what's for dinner" and then a new campaign tells us "it's what you want," all with the "Hoedown" from Rodeo in the background.
Copland's ballet Rodeo is a celebration of the American West. The commission for Rodeo came, surprisingly enough, from the classically-oriented Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with the music by Copland and the choreography and scenario by Agnes de Mille. The ballet was precedent-setting - there were said to be 22 curtain calls at its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on October 16, 1942 - and the success of this ballet insured that dance would thrive as an integral part of American musical theater.
The ballet takes place at Burnt Ranch, where a Cowgirl finds herself competing with visiting city girls for the attention of the local cowboys, especially the Head Wrangler. In the "Saturday Night Waltz," Copland quotes the song "Old Paint" and paints a picture of the Cowgirl's isolation, but also gives us hope that her plight is only temporary. "Hoedown" begins with dynamism and verve, signaling the Cowgirl's rebirth: she has suddenly put aside her cowpoke duds and reappeared as the prettiest girl in the room. Copland borrows two square dance tunes - "Bonyparte" and "McLeod's Reel" - to aid in this romp, a fanciful and uplifting take on the American square dance. We have a typical, stand-up-and-cheer Hollywood Western ending, too, as the girl gets the right guy for her, not the aloof and snooty Head Wrangler at all, but Another Cowboy who has shown her respect, kindness, and honor.
-- Composer and writer Dave Kopplin is Assistant Professor of Music at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. | <urn:uuid:a153c0ec-7733-4b0c-ba3b-ba33c1c733ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/saturday-night-waltz-and-hoedown-from-rodeo-aaron-copland | 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 | 0.958541 | 504 | 1.75 | 2 |
Mornings for students, parents and middle school officials just got a little less hectic this week, as the “bus loop” at the Los Alamos Middle School became open for business.
Los Alamos Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Gene Schmidt said he was there the day the loop opened, because he didn’t want to miss it.
“It was a very special moment for us, I’m very proud of what we accomplished,”
Schmidt said, adding that it was one of many planned improvements to the infrastructure of the Los Alamos School District.
“What we’re trying to do whenever possible is separate parent drop-offs, student/pedestrian walks and bus drop-offs,” Schmidt said.
Not only will it increase safety, Schmidt said, but having a dedicated pick-up and drop-off area for buses will cut down on the confusion at peak parking times. “It avoids a lot of confusion in terms of right-of-way, when you have cars coming in, buses coming in, staff and kids walking through, it does a nice job of organizing the traffic flow pattern,” Schmidt said.
Now that the bus loop is open, parents and pedestrians will have their own entrance to the school while the 13 buses used to transport students from Los Alamos and White Rock will have their own drop-off site from Hawk Drive. | <urn:uuid:1e7bfcfb-f141-46b1-addc-67d474538a47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lamonitor.com/news/education?page=9&mini=calendar-date%2F2012-11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964437 | 293 | 1.632813 | 2 |
People Of WFIT
Thu March 8, 2012
Congressman Proposes Stiffer Penalties For Those Who Lie To Buy Guns
A Democratic Congressman has introduced legislation that would impose tough new penalties on people who lie when they buy guns.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Ca.) says the bill, the Straw Purchaser Penalty Enhancement Act, would give federal agents new tools to crack down on the flow of weapons across the Southwest border into Mexico.
Nowadays, many episodes where people lie about the true identity of the purchaser of guns, or engage in straw purchases, never get prosecuted at all, Schiff says in an interview with NPR.
"The penalties are so insufficient that prosecutors don't want to bring the cases and more than that you can't get sufficient cooperation when you indict them to roll them up and use their testimony against higher ups in the gun smuggling organization," he says.
Under Schiff's proposal, people engaged in straw purchasing could face a mandatory two year minimum prison sentence, which he says could "put some teeth" in the law and help prosecutors compel the gun buyers to provide information about higher ranking people who receive the weapons.
The proposal comes after a year long congressional investigation into the flawed gun trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious. In that case, agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Arizona lost track of more than 1,000 weapons purchased under suspicious circumstances. Many later turned up at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexican border, including near the body of slain U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
"Part of the reason that such desperate and flawed techniques were used," in Fast and Furious, Schiff says, is because agents testified they didn't have more potent legal tools at their disposal.
"If we can provide prosecutors...with a hammer to place over the head of those who are knowingly and willingly participating in the smuggling of weapons to these traffickers, then hopefully we can put a dent in this mutually destructive trade with Mexico where they send their drugs north and we send our arms south," Schiff says.
The prospects for his bill are unclear. The National Rifle Association has opposed most new gun controls, citing the Second Amendment, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have tried to block the Obama administration's efforts to get more disclosure about multiple gun purchases in border states. | <urn:uuid:8ddb951f-22fa-484e-9c50-364bac5b9263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wfit.org/post/congressman-proposes-stiffer-penalties-those-who-lie-buy-guns | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964793 | 473 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal “Books” section featured an article called, “The Agony of Writing” by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen. With a not very hopeful opening sentence (“I hate to write”) matching the title, Quindlen shared her approach to the creative performance secrets of her craft in “The Agony of Writing.”
Her strategy can be generalized into to the seven following steps to deal with creative blocks and sustain creative performance. Most are comparable to creativity instigators we’ve discussed, but she introduced some intriguing creative strategy twists along the way:
Even if your particular pursuit for creativity is a dreaded struggle, put yourself in a position to start. Whatever the motivation (i.e., intense fear, important obligations, pending financial doom, etc.), motivate yourself to stop procrastinating and start creating.
2. THINK creative; DO something else
Quindlen uses a variation of the phenomenon of coming up with great ideas in the shower to her advantage daily. She begins each day with a one-hour walk where she works on the story flow for her current work. While this isn’t a new creative strategy, until reading her description, I’d never simplified it to, “THINK creative; DO something else.”
3. Remove quality as a hurdle for getting started
Anna Quindlen says she doesn’t “believe in writer’s block.” Her attitude is to start writing, even if it isn’t great writing. She has found anything that feels close to creativity (even if it’s lacking) can lead to better output later. Essentially, crappy is better than nothing when it comes to working through creative blocks.
4. Identify something to put you in your creativity zone
One way to instigate creativity is with a physical object or setting that establishes your mood. Anna Quindlen uses a physical article that puts her into the world about which she is currently writing. I really like the idea of anchoring a cerebral creative process with a physical object. That helps me explain the toys and squeeze balls on my desk.
5. Identify and protect a scheduled creative time that works for you and your creativity rhythms
Your focused creative time has to consistently and predictably support your creative efforts. Quindlen calls her creative time the “elementary school schedule,” since it runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., or the time the kids are away from the house. She even shuns lunches out to avoid breaking her creativity rhythms during the day.
6. Direct your creativity and creative energy to production
Author Truman Capote was noted for talking about his work a lot. Talking about writing isn’t writing, just as talking about ideas isn’t the same as doing something with ideas. Quindlen cautions against using mental energy to talk about your creative task without ever working on it. She also advises individuals to not take on additional jobs or pursue hobbies tapping your primary creative energy. She believes she has only a certain number of words available per day and tweets, emails, and writing for some other purpose use up those precious words.
7. Quit midstream
Anna Quindlen always ends her writing for the day in mid-sentence. Because she hasn’t finished up the day with a completed sentence, she has a natural place (and a head start) in getting started the next day. This was a different take for me, and I suspect for most people. It seems people usually try to stop at a “natural stopping place,” which is a point of completion, even if it’s an interim one. I’ll definitely try to quit midstream and see how it works.
That’s what a Pulitzer Prize winnder does to sustain creative performance. Can you see yourself incorporating these ideas into your creativity regimen? Are there other creative strategies working better for you? – Mike Brown
Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at email@example.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you. | <urn:uuid:bd0a3f67-1699-4489-9785-5bdc3b208715> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brainzooming.com/creative-blocks-creative-performance-and-creative-strategy-from-a-pulitzer-prize-winner/11907/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951223 | 920 | 1.789063 | 2 |
26-Aug-2004 -- After an unsuccessful confluence attempt in a remote village district between Hohhot and Baotou, we decided that we would attempt the 41N and 108E confluence from a little known city near the Mongolian boarder, Baynnur. We arrived in Baynnur at a very exciting time. The celebration to change the cities name signified that they had graduated from town status to city status. Also, they were in the middle of a huge melon harvest, of which we partook in a few.
Upon arriving in the city we quickly met Zeng Xiaofei who had been studying in New Zealand and spoke excellent English. He invited us for drinks as it was his last night in Inner Mongolia. On our way to the bar to meet his friends, we explained to him what the confluence project was, and asked him if he would help us get to our point. He translated to a taxi driver that we would pay 100 Yuan ($12.07US) for him to take us 50km out of town to a ‘unknown point”. He was a little skeptical but decided to participate in our adventure. Like clockwork he arrived at our hotel and picked us up the next morning.
Our journey went well and the confluence point was very close to the highway. We found an old farm road and our ever more curious taxi driver kept following our directions. Eventually the driver had to ask a farmer if we could enter his field. We had permission and the taxi took us to within 100 meters of the confluence sight. We ended up in these sunflower fields and were able to find the exact mark. | <urn:uuid:cd95526a-053a-47f3-b1a1-02d8b6dcf563> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=9381 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989862 | 338 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Nelson George wrote this compilation of information that he accumulated from interviews with members of the Jackson family and several journalists that had spoken with or written about Michael and the rest of the Jackson family from the time they began singing professionally until 1983.
There are several facts that have come out through the years after this book was published that are incorrect in this book. Simple things like who discovered the Jackson 5 and how big their original home was. However, this is an interesting tome detailing a lot of the background work that was laid in order to make the Jackson boys famous.
Most Jackson fans know that Michael was the youngest member and began singing professionally at the age of 5. Details about schools attended, fans chasing the boys, and family pets are provided all through this book. His membership in the Jehovah Witness church and vegetarian lifestyle are briefly touched upon as well. Michael lived with Diana Ross when the Jackson 5 first arrived in California and his relationship with Diana is portrayed as a learning environment that he highly enjoyed.
16 pages of black and white photos portray Michael as a fun-loving, hard-working artist that knew a lot of celebrities including Tatum O’Neal and Quincy Jones. Also discussed is the 1978 acting role that Michael played in The Wiz, an altered version of the Wizard of Oz.
Some interesting side-tales regarding discography are included, as well as information about some of the background artists and session musician little-known facts are related to the reader. Also discussed is the work that went into Michael’s solo “Off The Wall” and “Thriller” albums, along with the great success both enjoyed in sales and awards. (As of 2009, “Thriller” remains the highest-selling record album of all time).
Of course, life-long Michael Jackson fans will find no surprises in this book. But, if the reader has never read anything about his rise to fame through 1984, this is a good little book that can be read in about 2 hours and gives enough generic information to get a good look at Michael and his family. This book lets readers see him as a shy and kind human being that is at the top of his form in the entertainment world at the time of the book’s publishing date. | <urn:uuid:54fe5663-bc2f-4fcd-b6a2-3736d0325239> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shvoong.com/books/biography/1962427-michael-jackson-story/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982056 | 464 | 1.664063 | 2 |
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