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To eat New Orleans raw, if you're into that sort of thing, it helps to be at the Maple Leaf Bar on Tuesdays around midnight. The Maple Leaf is a legendary watering-hole-in-the-wall. Its décor is of the scuffed-pool-table/Abita-beer-sign variety. It has worn plank floors and chipped crimson walls and pressed-tin ceilings through which peek gaslight pipes from the days before the place went electric. Its music hall is about the length and width of three living rooms. It is here that almost every Tuesday night, on a rickety postage stamp of a stage, the best live band in America, the Rebirth Brass Band, makes its stand.
The band's leader and founder, Tuba Phil Frazier, describes their sound as not jazz, not funk, but "junk." But this "junk" is like mainlining the very soul of New Orleans--the sousafunky sounds of tuba and bass drum-driven percussion propelling call-to-war horns. It is the soundtrack of its streets and jazz funerals and "second-line" parades in which brass bands move through the city's black neighborhoods on Sunday afternoons during parade season. In keeping with the town's never-ending-party ethos--the reason New Orleans always seems three beers ahead of wherever you're from--the "season" lasts two-thirds of the year.
During it, brass bands take to the streets at the behest of the city's scores of social aid and pleasure clubs, collecting second-line dancers behind them as a coat collects lint. A tradition that predates jazz itself, it's serious business--like church without religion. Men will skip football for second lines, and women will buy outfits for them. Unlike the rest of America, accustomed to living in flat-screened isolation chambers, New Orleans people--or what's left of them after Katrina--like to go out into the street to see and be seen.
Though it is internationally renowned, now playing jazz festivals throughout the world, Rebirth still owns these streets. It developed its sound playing them ever since Frazier cofounded the band in 1983 with Kermit Ruffins (now solo). As high school kids in the Treme neighborhood, from where so many of the city's musicians come, they played the French Quarter for tips, using them to buy Popeyes chicken and beer for themselves, and lunchmeat for Frazier's poor family. "If there was any money left over, our momma said buy some Kool-Aid--so you know we were ghetto," says Frazier's sister, Nicole James, an actress who works the door of her brother's show, while pushing the T-shirts of her rapper/tax-accountant husband. (In these uncertain times, it pays to have a fallback gig.)
The band, as currently constituted, is nine players strong. They are mostly thirtysomething and all African-American locals who came up in housing projects and some of the city's rougher neighborhoods, like the 9th Ward and the Treme. They tend to stay a long time. Even Rebirth's rookies have six years under their belts, and some have been playing with the band since they were teenagers.
Like an army ready to advance, they take their places onstage in two straight lines. The back line is the foundation, as Phil calls it, that pushes the front. There is no set list or sheet music. Roughly half their songs are originals, but none are written down. Tuba Phil calls all the tunes by blowing the opening licks, from New Orleans traditionals to retooled R&B numbers by the likes of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield. If other players can't catch what he's doing from one of the 500 or so songs in their repertoire, they're better off finding another band.
Joining Phil and his sonic-boom of a sousaphone is Derrick "Big Sexy" Tabb, who plays with a viciousness that suggests he is skinning a cat, rather than hitting a snare drum. Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee called him "one of the baddest drummers I've ever seen." Next to Big Sexy, strapped up to a parade bass drum, is Keith "Bass Drum Shorty" Frazier, Phil's younger brother and the only other original member of the band. Around town, he is known for a peculiar innovation. He plays his high-hat cymbal not with a coat-hanger, as was the tradition before he changed it, but with a flathead screwdriver, since he likes the way it sounds: "like the swoop-splash of a rock hitting a lake."
Slathering all that bass in brass is the front line, who, standing six across in their wife-beater tank-tees, sports jerseys, and low-hanging jeans, look less like a horn section than like a hit squad of brass assassins. Each of them is a tight enough pocket player that he could hold the groove in the JB Horns (the Rebirth's heroes). But as a marksman, each is also dangerous enough to score a solo head-shot from a hundred yards away.
On saxophones are Byron "Flea" Bernard, a social worker who also plays with his church band and who dearly wishes Rebirth would cut a gospel album, and Vincent Broussard, who looks like he should play with the Wailers with his back-length dreadlocks. On trombone is Lil' Herb Stevens, who is not lil' at all, and who sports Bible-themed tattoos all over his arms, patting Jesus on His head and apologizing if anyone says anything sacrilegious. Joining him is Stafford "Freaky Pete" Agee, so named for calling the ladies onstage and "freaking" them, though he is still a man of high principle: He refuses to play anything that's not grease-bucket funky.
Leading the charge are the band's slash-and-burn trumpet players. There's sparkplug dynamo Derrick "Khabuki" Shezbie, whose cheeks turn into Dizzy Gillespie balloons when he blows (he often brackets one with his free fingers to get a tighter sound). A member of another brass band enviously tells me, "Khabuki could carry that band, and two others at the same time." Rounding the lineup out is Glen "The General" Andrews, who likes to head for the high registers like a runaway sherpa who's caught sight of the summit.
He is called "The General" because he, along with his cousin Big Sexy, likes to make sure everyone hits his parts (Khabuki, too, is a distant cousin). You'd never know that Andrews is self-taught and doesn't even read music. "Wynton Marsalis might say, 'What the hell are you doin'!'" he jokes. But as The General tells me with a gold-toothed grin, "I can go where he plays, but he can't come on our stage where we play. I play something I made up from my heart, y'know." It puts me in mind of something Louis Armstrong said of snooty Creole musicians when he and Kid Ory blew them off the street during a jazz funeral: "Any learned musician can read music, but they all can't swing."
And swing the Rebirth does, especially live. Not to take anything away from their 13 fine recordings, but the difference between hearing them live and on disc is the difference between making love to a beautiful woman and having the experience described to you. Still, I haven't come to New Orleans to sign on as their roadie. I'm here on official business, to take a snapshot of their city a year and a half after Katrina nearly totaled it.
To that end, I bring to the Maple Leaf show one of my old guides to New Orleans, the pseudonymous Kingfish, of whom I've written in these pages twice before. When I first met him, as the waters were still rolling in after Katrina, New Orleans felt like a live adaptation of the Book of Revelation. People were dying in the streets, the desperate became more so, and the lawless were taking over. A good native son whose family goes back to the city's beginnings, Kingfish was one of the last men standing in his swank Uptown neighborhood. He let our visiting crew of journalists clean out his refrigerator and bathe in his pool, since the hotels had long since evacuated.
Before the gig, I stop by his house to collect him. His kids are snug in their beds, instead of in exile in Florida. And there is nobody sleeping on the couch with a shotgun, as was his looter-protection practice back during the flood. There is one remnant of those days, however. In his living room is a trophy case featuring a pair of beat-up Adidas sneakers. In between running humanitarian rescue missions during the storm, Kingfish lost patience with the looters. When he saw one coming out of a linen store with a swag bag--hardly a necessity unless the thief had to have cool fabrics for summer--Kingfish bore down on him with his shotgun. "Scared him clean out of his shoes," he says. "I just couldn't take it anymore."
As he fixes us some pregame Old Fashioneds, Mrs. Kingfish eyes his pressed khakis and Casual-Friday chambray shirt disapprovingly. "You're going to the Maple Leaf," she says, "Don't you have a black T-shirt or something?" He shrugs his shoulders, in a what-do-you-want-from-me fashion. "I probably have a buttoned-down T-shirt somewhere," he says. While Kingfish plays at being the Uptown swell, like many whites in New Orleans who've benefited from three centuries of cultural cross-fertilization, he has more soul than he likes to let on.
We get to the bar before the Rebirth does, and Kingfish eyes the decrepitude approvingly. "You can't reproduce this," he says. "When you go to Joe's Crab Shack, this is what they try to do." The Meters play on the juke, while the bar is the kind of place where you can have enlightened debates as to who was the better piano player, Professor Longhair or James Booker (the late Booker usually wins, since he used to hold down Rebirth's Tuesday night gig). At the end of the bar is a photo of Everette Maddox, who was the Maple Leaf's "poet laureate," at least until he drank himself to death. Maple Leaf owner Hank Staples says that he's buried out back on the patio. At least half of him is. Seems there was a dispute among his friends, and the rest of his ashes were scattered in the Mississippi River. He died as he lived, and his tombstone testifies: "He was a mess."
It could be New Orleans's epitaph, and some would have it that way. But not tonight. Tonight the band takes the stage an hour and a half late (in the Big Easy, start times are mere suggestions). But the Rebirth makes up for it. The Frazier brothers lay down a thoracic cavity-thumping bass groove, and the rest of the band plays like their horns have caught fire and need blowing out. Empty beer bottles rattle on the speakers, while the band sings and spits and croaks out in frogman gurgles its burning-down-the-house anthem, "Rebirth Got Fire! Rebirth Got Fire!" Both black and white and rich and poor and middle-aged and young bob violently like several hundred buoys on a gathering wave.
Talent buyer Stu Schayot of the Howlin' Wolf club sees a lot of great bands, but tells me there's none like Rebirth: "When those guys play, there's a feeling that there's no other spot on this planet where this moment is happening. And if you're from New Orleans, it's like you own it. It's such a New Orleans thing they've created. My philosophy is: If everybody saw Rebirth once a week, there'd be no crime in this city. You go to a show, and every walk is there. You could be standing next to a lawyer, and a guy from the projects. No class, no race. All energy. Just people in unison, having a good time."
Close to me, I watch a freakishly nimble second-line dancer named Ron "The Busdriver" Horn, so monikered because he drives a bus. He moves as though his joints are made of Slinkys. He is black, but he wants me to meet Chocolate Swerve, his white sidekick and understudy. Swerve recently broke his ankle when the crowd got him over-pumped as he was dancing onstage during a Rebirth show at Tipitina's. ("In cowboy boots," Horn says with some embarrassment. "I laughed all the way to the hospital.")
Still, boasts Horn, "ain't nobody can deal with him," as Swerve replicates his moves. "We're brothers from another mother." Horn met Swerve after the former's house got washed out in the 9th Ward. Swerve was a roofer from out of town--one of the rare ones who didn't try to cheat him. They became thick as thieves, and, well, now look, says Horn, like the beaming parent of an accomplished child.
I ask Horn if this stuff matters, in the grand scheme of the greater disaster that has become his city. He looks at me as if someone had jumped me with a stupid stick. "It's all that matters." After the storm, he says, he left "a wonderful lady" back in Atlanta "who I dealt with for 11 years" because he had to get back. "This," he says, pointing to the Rebirth, "is what makes the culture keep living. I came back for my kids and the culture." Now 41 years old, he used to play trumpet in the same junior high band as Tuba Phil, and his son now plays trumpet in one of the best marching bands in New Orleans. "She's got the house now," he said, speaking of his woman. "But I came back for my culture. I told her if you ever need me, I'm there. But we're fighting here. Ain't gonna give up. I got to help rebuild."
I grab the Kingfish to introduce him, but the second he catches The Busdriver's eye, he exclaims, "Hey baby!" and they embrace. Years ago, Horn used to work for Kingfish. "This is New Orleans," Kingfish explains. "We all know each other." Kingfish doesn't tarry for long, however, as a pretty black girl innocently and wordlessly grabs his hand while the Rebirth plays "Feel Like Funkin' It Up." He spins her around the dance floor, or at least the two feet of it that are available to him. He smiles an isn't-this-place-great smile.
"Why do you think I put up with all the bulls--t?" Kingfish says.
There are plenty who said New Orleans wouldn't come back after the storm. But it's back, all right--back as the murder and mayhem capital of the United States. According to one Tulane demographer, in 2006, there were 96 murders per 100,000 people--68 percent more than in 2004. And 2007 is off to an auspicious start with 37 murders as of mid-March. It's an impressive effort from the bad guys of New Orleans, who are putting up big numbers even though there are fewer people around to kill. The population has dwindled to 191,000 from its pre-storm 467,000. With New Orleans's notoriously overstretched and feckless police force and DA, about two-thirds of the homicides are going unsolved. So many criminals have been released without charge that the term "misdemeanor murder" has gained wide currency.
While city spinmeisters would have it that the murder rate entails black-on-black drug-related killings--which is largely true--they're by no means all that's going on. In just one recent week, a female filmmaker and the Hot 8 Brass Band's Dinerral Shavers (who frequently sat in with Rebirth) were both killed in front of their own children, causing an outraged citizens' march on City Hall.
On some days, the Times-Picayune reads like good crime fiction with a southern gothic twist. There were the star-crossed lovers who met the night Katrina hit, and who ended up cohabiting over a voodoo temple in the Quarter. They came to a bad end when he calmly strangled her, dismembered her, then jumped off the roof of the same hotel in which I'm staying, but not before leaving a suicide note that detailed his handiwork: Police found parts of her in a pot on the stove next to the chopped carrots and more in the oven on turkey-basting trays. "He may have in retrospect seemed a little troubled," said his landlord.
Then there was the bizarre murder allegedly committed by renowned radio talk show host Vincent Marinello, who police suspect shot his wife in the face twice, made it look like a robbery in a parking lot, then rode away on his bike. The tip-off was the to-do list found in his FEMA trailer, with checkmarks beside incriminating tasks like "mustache and beard" and a reminder to get rid of the weapon. He appears to have remembered everything except to throw away his list.
None of this, of course, even addresses the post-Katrina toll or the frustration New Orleanians feel with federal, state, and local officials. Even many of those who voted to reelect Mayor Ray Nagin have taken to calling him "the invisible mayor." And after George W. Bush rejected Louisiana's Baker Plan to help speed rebuilding, and failed to forgive the state the matching 10 percent it must pay for all federal disaster assistance as he did New York after 9/11, and neglected even to mention New Orleans in his State of the Union address, many New Orleanians were unclear during his recent visit, when Bush promised that they hadn't been forgotten, whether he was reminding them or himself.
At a Rebirth show at the Howlin' Wolf one night, I watch as trombonist Stafford Agee takes the mike and improvises a lament in which he name-checks everyone from FEMA to the mayor to the president, with the sing-a-long refrain, "F-- 'em all, f-- 'em all, f-- 'em all." The crowd joins in lustily. It doesn't feel like disaffected youth spoiling for a fight, either. It's not angry, so much as weary: the song of a city that's given immeasurable joy to the rest of the country with its music and architecture and food, but that feels like it's getting erased.
The Katrina Index, put out jointly by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the Brookings Institution, and which might as well be called the Misery Index, tells the story in numbers. Less than 1 percent of those who've applied for assistance through the state's Road Home Program have received their home-repair grants. Public transportation has hardly improved in a year, with the city still at 17 percent of its buses. Though Orleans Parish schools were a disaster before the storm, with educational standards reportedly below those of Zimbabwe and Kenya, 56 percent of schools remain closed, and 69 percent of child-care centers do as well. The mass exodus of doctors might have to do with the fact that only 12 of Orleans Parish's 23 state-licensed hospitals are still in operation.
Then there are the things that statistics can't measure--the weirdness quotient. One afternoon, I take a spin around the city with another old friend, Joe Gendusa, a tour guide I met during Mardi Gras 2006. When he's not giving the Southern Comfort cocktail tour, he gives the Katrina Disaster tour for the Gray Line company three times a week. Gray Line is a bit of a disaster itself. Before the storm, it had 65 local full-time employees. Now it has four.
I took Gendusa's bus tour last year, but this year, as he drives me around in his car, I'm shocked at how little has changed in neighborhood after mostly abandoned neighborhood: Lakeview, Gentilly, the 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans East. The only appreciable difference is that most of the debris has been cleared and many of the houses gutted. Now the place has the eeriness of one of those Rapture movies evangelical youth ministers show their charges to scare them into the Kingdom. Except nobody's been called up to Heaven. They're all in Baton Rouge or Houston or God-knows-where. Many old friends and neighbors still haven't found each other.
Tourists who only travel from the airport to the Quarter or the Garden District would never know anything's wrong. But the rest of the city? "It's a disaster, and will be for the rest of my lifetime," the 66-year-old Gendusa says. "You're talking about rebuilding an entire city." As we drive down a boulevard in Lakeview that once boasted large houses and oak canopies, but that is now desolate and destroyed, the lifelong New Orleanian, whose Italian immigrant grandfather helped start the Gendusa bakery empire that invented Po Boy bread, is gobsmacked. As he drives, here's a verbatim transcript of his reaction: "I don't recognize it. Oh my god! Look at this! Oh my god, look at this! Oh Jesus! Un-bel-leeeev-able!" Keep in mind, he sees this wreckage nearly every day, since he is paid, in essence, to feed off the cadaver.
And yet it never ceases to shock him. Nor does the behavior of some of the citizenry. "They're looting FEMA trailers!" he says. "What a bunch of scumbuckets!" He tells a particularly galling story. One woman who'd recently had her mother cremated was saving the ashes until she could have a proper burial at one of the city's storm-damaged cemeteries. "Her trailer was broken into, looted, everything was stolen out of boxes," Gendusa says. "Guess what they stole? Her mother! These stupid asses looted the mother! She's on television crying, saying you can have whatever you want, just bring my mother home. We won't ask any questions, just put her on the steps."
We look at each other for a beat, then both start laughing uncontrollably. Sometimes, there's nothing else to do. I've always loved New Orleans, because life comes at you here faster and stranger and more darkly beautiful than it does in other places. Sherwood Anderson called it "the most civilized spot in America"--a place where there is "time for a play of the imagination over the facts of life." These days, however, the imagination can't keep up.
A swarm of African killer bees has been found in St. Bernard Parish. The city has turned into "the super bowl of sex" for hookers, say the police, since there're so many out-of-town construction contractors to service. For a while, a transvestite gang of shoplifters was terrorizing stores on Magazine Street. Researchers have now determined that parts of the city are sinking more than one inch per year. And as if that's not a bad enough omen, there's now irrefutable proof that New Orleans is reverting to third-world conditions: Squalor-seekers Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt just got a place in the Quarter. "No matter what happens, we'll always have better restaurants than Namibia," cracks my friend Danny Abel, an attorney and Creole chef.
Then there's the tornado. It hits overnight while I'm in town. My phone rings in the morning, and it's the Kingfish. "C'mon, let's go see the wreckage," he says. "It'll be like old times." We drive around, surveying the damage where the twister came across the Mississippi and took a path from Uptown to Pontchartrain Park, damaging hundreds of homes and killing an old woman who was living in a FEMA trailer in her front yard, just days away from moving back into her repaired house.
Kingfish spins me around to one home in particular. "That's my friend's," he says, of a once-beautiful place that's now seen its second-story porch completely collapse, so that it looks like a fence was erected across the front door. Snapped telephone lines hang from branches like Mardi Gras beads after a parade. There are tons of downed trees and out-of-commission stoplights and missing street signs, though that was already true before the tornado hit. It does feel like a nostalgia tour. In fact, it's sometimes hard to tell the new destruction from the old destruction. "Look for rust," Kingfish instructs. This city is starting to feel doomed, I tell him. "Yeah, but how 'bout them Saints," he deadpans.
The Kingfish loves this city as much as anyone who's still here--and very few people are still here by accident. But he's hardly a romantic. Since I saw him last year, he's hedged his bets by selling off 70 percent of his real estate. "I was scared," he explains. On our drive, he points out all the big chains that aren't coming back, one of which, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, was born in New Orleans. Pointing at Ruth's old house next to the shuttered restaurant, he says, "She lived there till the day she died. The corporate people she sold it to won't reopen it. I used to go there every Sunday night."
The fundamental problem, he opines, is that no real help is on the way, and simultaneously, the city is suffocating itself under paralyzed leadership that won't exclude any neighborhoods from redevelopment for fear of political blowback. They won't draw the net and stop pretending that they can support a footprint for 600,000 people, when only a third of that is left. "We had more people here at the beginning of the last century. Where else has that happened besides Chernobyl?" Kingfish asks. Consequently, services are spread thin. The city is being repopulated helter-skelter as the result of hundreds of thousands of individual insurance transactions and private choices.
And on the rare occasion that you are made whole by your insurance company and can rebuild, what if your neighbors aren't and can't? As he points out random blocks where one person is back and three houses on either side of him aren't, he says, "You have the jack-o'-lantern effect all over the city." This will contribute to blight, and already has, as even his construction materials are frequently stolen from building sites. If there's one thing Kingfish learned from the storm, he says, it's that "police don't protect neighborhoods, neighbors protect neighborhoods."
In the midst of this reality, everything is becoming more difficult. He gives me an example. He owns a building worth $1.1 million in New Orleans, and recently bought another for the same price in Maine. The difference, he says, is that insurance "in New Orleans is forty grand, in Maine, it's four. What does that mean? There's less profit, the property's worth less, and I have to charge more rent." If you don't feel sorry for the Kingfish and his investment problems, keep in mind that his reality trickles all the way down to the poor. On average in this city, a lousy one-bedroom apartment that used to rent for $531 per month before the storm now goes for $836.
He points to an abandoned business. "How are we gonna support all this blight? What's gonna happen to this? Somebody will buy it at some price at some point. But who are his customers?" The market always corrects, he says, ever the capitalist. "But it's going to be ugly, and people are going to get screwed." He says the city should have taken its federal aid, bought out all the poor, low-lying areas like the 9th Ward, made people whole, and given them the option to buy elsewhere, which would be less expensive than rebuilding it all. But now, individual residential renovations are already taking place, so a buyout would cost infinitely more. As he says, "It's too late now."
On my ride with Gendusa, he told me his brother had moved across the lake out of Orleans Parish and now mocks him for refusing to do the same. "This is my home," he said. "I walk the streets of the Quarter, and I feel my grandparents and my parents. I can still see my daddy, walkin'. He loved New Orleans. I can never turn my back on it, even if it hurts to see it bleed." When friends visit, and remark that it is old and dirty, he tells them, "Go back to Disney World." He'd rather live in a diminished New Orleans than a thriving Orlando.
The Kingfish echoes the sentiment, as do nearly all the New Orleanians I speak to. He tells me still, even now, he's surrounded by beautiful architecture and brilliant music and world-class restaurants. "It's a unique place, great people," says Kingfish. "We have a very big soul here. But we have some fundamental flaws that are probably the opposite side of that coin. What makes us soulful also makes us sort of pitiful when it comes to fixing ourselves."
Yes, sometimes he gets jealous of friends who've fled to more stable places, where the headline of the day is that a new on-ramp will cut congestion, while the news here is "'Murders and Dismal Reality'--you just can't get away from it." "But you know what?" he adds defiantly. "I have friends leaving perfectly good cities to come back because they have survivor's guilt. They feel, 'I left my city, I gotta be in the game.' It's the biggest story to ever hit this town. So whaddya' gonna leave? Go live in Niceville?"
Two weeks after I've left, the Kingfish calls. He was coming home from the Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds racetrack, and in Mid-City he almost got caught in a drive-by murder. "We heard the pop-pop, and saw a bunch of thugs run past our car after the intersection was blocked. Had to back my car up to get out of there." He tells me to check the papers for the details. "Just make sure you get the right story. There were six shootings and three killings yesterday."
If New Orleans is not yet a Lost City, there is nobody in it who has not lost something. The Rebirth is no exception. During Katrina, over half the band members lost everything: their houses, their clothes, their instruments. Some won't even talk about it. Big Sexy Tabb, who had to hotwire a van to get his family and others to safety, is one of them. "If I could get hypnotized, I'd hope they'd say, 'You won't remember Katrina and all the s--t it caused.' But you live it every day, man. Every day."
Even those from whom the floodwaters didn't take everything still have harrowing stories. Trumpet-player Khabuki Shezbie, for instance, was on the fourth floor of his apartment building, so his place didn't get flooded. But when the water started rising over the second floor, he decided to swim for it. He swam almost a mile, "with my horn on my back--had to replace all the valves," he says. He saw dead animals and people. Parents tried to float their kids on mattresses. Though a boat finally rescued him, somebody broke into his place afterwards and cleaned him out.
Sometimes, the loss manifests itself in the most innocent conversations. One day, I go see trombonist Stafford "Freaky Pete" Agee on his jobsite in a house that's being restored in the Lower 9th Ward. He is one of two Rebirth musicians who also work civilian jobs (Saxophonist Flea Bernard works in a welfare office, and says after the storm even six-figure lawyers were coming in for food stamps). Since Katrina hit, Agee has become an electrician, "just picked it up as I went." He wears a Lowe's apron, a white bandana around his head, and his high school marching band sweatshirt, though the school no longer exists. We talk music instead of destruction, but then I ask him if he names his trombones. Yes, he says, he names them after old girlfriends. "I have a couple horns named Sandy--she came around twice," he says.
I ask if he's ever named one after his ex-wife. "If I had, I would destroy it," he says bitterly. Now fishing, I joke that she hurt him. "Yeah, she did," he says. She cheated on him with a friend, which he discovered during a Battle of the Bands in Houston. Rebirth was there to play "a down-home New Orleans dance party" for evacuees. Now his marriage is busted, and his kids live in Alabama with relatives since the public-school waiting list is too long in New Orleans. So you see, he says, pointing to a socket that he's wiring, "I keep myself busy so I don't stay in my head."
The sadness is always there, he says. "But I take my frustrations out through my music. I use it to uplift myself. New Orleans right now is kind of a lost soul on stand-still. The soul of it isn't here, because a lot of people that bring that soul are no longer here. It's not like it used to be." So right now, says Agee, in a sentiment that one band member after another expresses, "it's like the city's on our shoulders. It's taken on more importance. Where else in the world can you go and find a brass band parading in the street every Sunday, or have them come over to play for your party? We carryin' it, keepin' the spirit. When they think the feeling is gone, it brings people back home."
Rebirth has always played the small shows, on the theory that all the money adds up, even if sometimes, according to trombonist Herb Stevens, it costs him more to drive to the gig than he makes, once the check is split nine ways. But now, the small gigs have taken on a missionary tint.
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, which Tuba Phil idolizes and which revolutionized the sound of brass band music by incorporating contemporary R&B sounds (which the Rebirth has taken even further), has graduated from the street, sticking to the studio and big festivals. But Rebirth still lives off the land. They are truly the people's champion--not just a studio or festival band. They will play everything from baby showers to jazz funerals: As Shorty Frazier says, "When you're born and when you die and everything in between. 'Will you guys come play my bathroom while I take a bath?' Yeah, we'll do it. There's no gig too big or too small for Rebirth. It's good to stay plugged in."
In my ten days in New Orleans, I see them play everything from a second line in the Quarter, sponsored by a local sanitation company, to the Rock Bottom Lounge, where food consists of smoked pork chops you can order from a grill on the bed of a curbside pick-up truck. It's a place where there's no stage, and the band is partly obscured by a brick column. When I ask the bartender for a receipt, Tuba Phil mocks me: "Ain't no receipts here. Boy, you in a real ghetto bar."
I watch Rebirth play a Jefferson Parish Mardi Gras ball at a senior center, where the gig has to be delayed for two and a half hours because some of the seniors are still getting their hair done and are out buying king cakes. And I miss a gig (after being told the wrong restaurant) where Rebirth plays a Hermes krewe party in an upper room at Antoine's, while strippers go at each other. "It was nice," Freaky Pete says grinning. "Excruciating and exuberating--there's no word that can describe it."
New Orleans, of course, had a lot of problems before the storm. And these, too, touched Rebirth. When I go to interview Tuba Phil at his Gentilly home, I notice a framed portrait of a rapper--the kind of severe "Scarface" art you often see on MTV's Cribs. It's his stepson, Soulja Slim, who was gunned down in Phil's front yard four years ago. And that's not all. Drummer Derrick Tabb was shot twice at his half-brother's funeral ("Still got a bullet in my shoulder," he says). Rebirth's late snare drummer, Kenny "Eyes" Austin, died from a blood clot after getting hit in the head by a frying pan while breaking up a bar fight.
I take a tour of the Treme one day with the wickedly talented trombone player and belter Glen David Andrews. He fronts a band called the Lazy Six, and can break your heart doing guts-on-the-floor renditions of standards like "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." He isn't in Rebirth, but Tabb is his half-brother, and trumpet player Glen Andrews is his cousin.
Just over Rampart Street from the Quarter, he gives me a crash course in the old neighborhood. There's no need to hunt for the roses or the thorns, they're all right in front of you. Drug deals go down around us as if we were invisible. And yet, music legends walk the streets that run between shotgun shacks and old Creole cottages. You're just as likely to run into the Treme Brass Band's Uncle Benny Jones, or Henry Youngblood of "I Got a Big Fat Woman" fame, as you are some wino with cracked teeth muttering to himself in a drunken tongue.
That is changing, however. Big Sexy Tabb, Andrews's brother, tells me the "culture is dying." One mayor's office estimate said that only 10 percent of the city's musicians had returned full-time. In the Treme, the storm dispersed people (Andrews is now living in a broken-down FEMA trailer in Carrollton), and the institutional memory is drying up. There used to be so many musicians around that second lines were apt to break out at 3 A.M. Now, Andrews tells me, the Mexican laborers and white real-estate opportunists who are snatching up damaged property as "timeshares" complain about the noise. It's killing the music, says Tabb. "To learn, you got to hang around the older cats that were in brass bands. But now, you don't have that community."
When Tabb was a kid growing up in the Treme, "if you played a horn, you wanted to get out there and shine." But the old musicians would box your ears, and make you wait your turn as you learned. The Olympia Brass Band's Milton Batiste made sure "you didn't play no funk till you learned the traditionals--you ain't never bigger than this here music. You might bring something new, but it's all been played before." Those who think the music will stay, even as its incubator is unplugged, are sadly mistaken. The continuum's been interrupted. If Tabb were a doctor, he says, "I don't go tomorrow, put on some scrubs, and do an operation. There's a process, going to work on somebody's body. And here, the whole process has been f--ed up. You got to learn it. You got to feel it. You can't write what we do."
As Andrews walks me around the streets, he calls out to everyone he sees, "Where y'at, Uncle," and many of them actually are his uncles. (The Andrews clan makes the Marsalis family look feeble when it comes to breeding musicians, boasting everyone from James "Satchmo of the Ghetto" Andrews, to Revert "Peanut" Andrews of the Dirty Dozen, to Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews--the list goes on.)
Glen David Andrews shows me the Backstreet Cultural Museum--a monument to brass band musicians and Mardi Gras Indians housed in an old funeral home. He introduces me to many of the neighborhood characters, who like to hang out and drink on Dumaine and Robertson. On this corner, Andrews's 21-year-old cousin, Trombone Shorty, who's been praised by Wynton Marsalis and who has toured with Lenny Kravitz, later tells me some of the old men driven away by the storm still come back to hang out. So he goes to soak up their company while the soaking's good, "though most of them are drunk by the time I get there." Sometimes, one of the codgers will hum a lick in his ear, which he'll end up using. "Everybody around there, in some way, is in touch with music even though they might not play," he says. "I'm afraid that's the last bunch of them. I try to get as much as I can."
As Andrews walks me through an intersection near Louis Armstrong Park, he grows morose. "Bittersweet place," he says. It's where his cousin Glen "The General" Andrews's mom was murdered. "I was about 15," The General tells me one day when we're sitting in the Candlelight Bar in the Treme, one of the last neighborhood bars left standing. "I was right down the street, saw the ambulance, and didn't know it was for her."
One afternoon, after the Rebirth has played an outdoor gig by the Mississippi, The General introduces me to his wife, Ingrid, and lets her tell tales out of school. She relates lively stories about everything from the jazz-funeral groupies to how he's always lying to her to go hang in the Treme. He walks a few paces ahead, clutching the hand of their six-year-old daughter. He periodically turns around, rolling his eyes and smiling like he's been trapped in a bad sitcom. "I got to go on a six-month tour," he jokes. Ingrid says she actually doesn't like the Rebirth's music (she prefers Mary J. Blige), but their girl already has it bad. She's taking trombone lessons and probably never had a fair chance, since The General, when Ingrid was pregnant, used to put his horn up to her stomach and blow Louis Armstrong tunes to his unborn daughter.
Ingrid tells me The General's a beautiful person who'll do anything for anyone, that he cares for her and is never mean, but that he's struggled with heroin addiction. When Katrina hit, he was doing a six-month prison hitch on a drug charge. She knows, she says, that it's his mom's death that did it--"he suppressed it with drugs"--though only the shrink knows what he's really thinking, since he won't talk about the murder with her.
Back at the Candlelight, I ask The General if he plays better when he's using. "Sometimes," he answers, "sometimes not." But he knows he doesn't need it, since the rest of the band doesn't touch it. I ask him to describe the music that comes out of him. "Lotta pain, sometimes," he says, taking a hit off his straight Hennessey. "I don't talk to people too much, so that's how I express myself. Through my horn."
One day, I ask bandleader Tuba Phil how he can handle the one-two punch of the Katrina aftermath, plus all the murder and mayhem. After all, his stepson was gunned down in his own front yard, also because he'd been involved in drugs. I love New Orleans, too. But isn't he ever tempted to chuck it all and move to Tulsa?
"Look," he says, "New Orleans people are strong.The ones who came back, I got to pat them on the back. 'Cause it was a s--hole [before Katrina], and it was a s--hole after. But they believe, like I believe, that we can turn this thing around. I feel I owe this city. I love the music. I love the people. Everybody's so free-hearted. Then you got 24-hour drinkin'," he says, belly-laughing. "If I wasn't living in New Orleans, I probably wouldn't be doin' what I'm doin' now. A tuba player! Makin' a living playing tuba! I'm 41 years old, never punched a clock. Making people happy, and they're making me happy."
"Other s--t goes on," he says. "But when you come to our show, man, you forget about your problems, the mortgage, the insurance, the housing. You come, you release. The 4R's: Rebirth, Relax, Relate, Release. Forget about all this other stuff. The music takes you to another level. You might go home to half a house, but you sleep better that night. That's what I hope our music does to people. That's our obligation. The bad and the good stand side by side. I have tragedy. But I'm a stronger person. I can take it. Keep on goin'. Try to make it better. When I play in New Orleans, I play like this is the last time I'm ever going to play again. What if the city really is sunk? I play like the hell with it. I play like I might never come back to this again. I play like it's my last year of livin'. That's how I play."
His brother, Keith "Bass Drum Shorty" Frazier, is less sanguine. One night at dinner at Tujague's in the Quarter, Keith tells me that what ails this place you can't "solve by blowing a trumpet or hitting a drum." After the levees broke, "I lost everything--it was gone. There's not enough money in the world to get me back here. I'll never come back [to live]. Never, ever." He evacuated to Dallas, where he's stayed.
Sure, he misses Two Sisters soul food restaurant, and the people. And when they play New Orleans music to the diaspora (in Houston or Atlanta or wherever), he's physically moved. It's like bringing them a photo album that they thought had been destroyed. But the people who are still here are "walking wounded," he says. "They don't even know it. They think they're all right. Phil had a barber friend who committed suicide. Black people don't commit suicide. It just doesn't happen. Man, that s--t is crazy. People think it's over, but it ain't gonna be over for a long, long time."
Besides, he's seen the future of this place--it'll be Disney World, or some dipsomaniac version of it. Donald Trump's already planning a residential and retail project on Poydras--the beginning of the end. His new home is cleaner and safer. He's a Cowboys fan anyway, and his daughter goes to a better school. "Everything's done by the book," Keith says. "You go to work, get off at 5, eat dinner, go back to work. It's not as laid back. It's very boring." When he's there, he doesn't even think about playing music, or the storm, or the things he's lost. He almost sounds convincing. Though sometimes, he admits, when he's walking around in this foreign environment, he does have one thought: "How the f-- did I end up in Dallas?"
I try to spend Mardi Gras day like a good tourist--on Bourbon Street. But I am quickly fatigued by all the other tourists: fat and pink and naked and drunk. They pour out of karaoke bars and clip joints into the street, where the bottoms of their shoes will grow sticky with the residue of spilled drinks and body fluids. They will have fistfights over imaginary grievances, proving yet again that Jager shots and testosterone don't mix. They will applaud the gospeler who holds the "I'm sorry" sign, apologizing for the other street preachers who are telling them they'll go to Hell. It never occurs to them, however, that Hell would be a redundancy under the circumstances. They're already on Bourbon Street.
For respite, I go back where I started--the Maple Leaf--for the Rebirth's Tuesday night gig. During a break between sets, I go up onstage to bid farewell to the musicians, who like to split right after the show. The General and I take a seat on a stage step, and something comes over me. I feel compelled to tell him that he's an exceptional talent, that he makes people happy, and that's better than most of us will ever do. Then I caution him not to waste himself, not to get enveloped in the darkness that surrounds him.
I prattle on in this vein for awhile, and am, of course, way over the line. I half expect him to tell me to get bent, or to make a quick getaway to Smoker's Alley outside, but he doesn't. Instead, he tucks his head and nods intently. He claps my back, and repeatedly reaches to shake my hand, as if to signal me that though we both know I've overstepped my reporter/subject bounds, he appreciates the effort.
I go back to my place in the audience. It's a Fat Tuesday crowd, so there isn't room to breathe. The band likes to joke that the surest way to get Phil not to call a song is to request it. And all week long, I've been requesting "Blackbird Special," an old Dirty Dozen number that the Rebirth does better. When I do, Phil says to me, "I don't know what I'm gonna call. I gotta feel it in here," as he pounds his chest. Maybe he feels it now, or maybe he's just humoring me. But they play it.
The song is one of my near-and-dears. When my first son was just old enough to sit up, I used to plop him in front of the speakers and play it off Rebirth's "Live at the Maple Leaf" album--much like The General blowing his horn for his unborn daughter. My son would swing his arms wildly, and his hips would vibrate as the Frazier brothers' bassline rolled up his spine.
The band is cooking tonight--everybody doing his part. Phil bumps and pumps with his sousaphone, twisting sideways while simultaneously firing up and down like a piston. Bass Drum Shorty is throwing rocks in the lake, booming with his right hand while his left rides the high-hat with a flathead. Big Sexy is banging like he's trying to bore a hole in the floor. The front line has hoisted the black flag; there will be no hostages taken this evening. Khabuki and The General, in particular, are on fire. Almost literally, in Khabuki's case. The room is so hot, even with the doors open in winter, that he has stripped to the waist, and is slicked with sweat like a welterweight fighter doing twelve rounds on a heavy bag.
I watch The General, in his tank T-shirt and his blue Kangol hat, aim his horn toward the sky as he gets lost in the song. It feels like I'm watching New Orleans itself: raw and rude, bold and brilliant, improvisational and soulful and damaged. And maybe it can't save itself, but it's a grievous mistake to think it's not worth saving.
The crowd pitches and rolls and rattles and stomps. Humidity droplets form on the walls, while Rebirth's horns ricochet off the ceiling and out into the back courtyard/cemetery where the Maple Leaf's poet laureate rests in peace--at least the part of him that hasn't washed out to the Gulf of Mexico. Amidst the controlled chaos, I wonder what New Orleans will look like if I visit in 15 years.
I strongly suspect I won't be seeing Rebirth at funky dives, standing next to gold-toothed second liners with names like The Busdriver and Chocolate Swerve. I suspect that if the city hasn't by then collapsed on itself, I'll be taking in "The New Orleans Experience" by monorail. Our tour guide (from Appleton, Wisconsin) will direct our attention to the overlit streets of the Treme, now studded with Banana Republics and Panera Breads. He will tell us how all the spirited black people used to march behind men with giant sousaphones, as we are served heavily breaded fried shrimp, harvested fresh from Ore-Ida bags, with a ketchup remoulade. The soundtrack on the speakers will be from the Big Easy Tribute Album: Josh Groban sings "Rebirth Got Fire"--with strings! I will be a good sport, and nod my head in time with the other tourists, as I die a little inside.
But those are tomorrow's worries. Because tonight, Tuba Phil has called my song. And some of the baddest men on the planet, the Rebirth Brass Band, are playing it. They play in a fever. They play loud and hard and fierce. They play like they're avenging a death.
And who knows? Maybe they are.
Matt Labash is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. | <urn:uuid:94e35c7f-ab6d-4c91-9674-c6e1a392a3b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/427dewzr.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981399 | 11,360 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In light of the recent publicity surrouding the Buckley Jeppson case, I thought that some readers might be interested in this post from a couple of years ago. It goes, I think, to the question of the significance of the Canadian-sanctioned marriage of Jeppson and his partner. I am not offering this post as a theological gotcha to homosexual-rights activists. I am well-aware of the pain and difficulty caused by the current stance of the Church toward homosexuality. I would like to see a better resolution than the one that we currently have. However, it seems to me that any such alternative has to begin by taking the doctrines of the Restoration seriously.
What follows is a post on homosexuality. I am deeply sorry about this, because by and large I think that this is a very stale topic. Accordingly, I hope that any discussion that follows this post will focus on the particular questions that I pose, rather than spinning off into another SSM free for all.
Ignore politics. Ignore law. Ignore the social implications of same sex marriage. Let’s ask the question of whether same sex marriage can be reconciled with LDS theology. Imagine, for example, that next conference the Prophet were to announce that the Church was dropping its opposition to same sex marriage and would begin solemnizing gay unions. What impact would this have on Mormon theology? Ignore the political and legal arguments and think about it in terms of our theology.
Affirmation, which is an un-sponsored group for gay Mormons and post-Mormons seems largely committed to the position that the Church should sanction gay unions. Their site has an essay by H. Wayne Schow that purports to provide a theological reconciliation of Mormon doctrine and gay unions. In my mind, Schow’s essay completely misses the point.
Schow central purpose in the essay is to reconcile same sex unions with the scriptures. He does this in a couple of ways. First, he historicizes the scriptures, noting that we must necessarily acknowledge that they represent at least in part the norms and ideas of an ancient society and that hence we cannot take them literally. Writing in the same vein he argues that the scriptures themselves are contradictory on the issue of sexuality, contrasting Paul’s pro-celibacy stance with the Genesis story. His second line of argument is to reduce the issue to one of ethics, claim that ethics are a matter of social consequences, and then argue that same sex unions are unlikely to have negative social consequences. Third, he makes the Christian move of exalting the “weightier matters of the lawâ€? — love and service — over the outward performances. One may affirm same sex unions without denigrating love and service, ergo same sex marriage is consistent with Christianity. Finally, he notes the Mormons believe in continuing revelation, which ought to allow them to accommodate changes in practice.
All of this is fine, as far as it goes. I do not have a problem with historicizing the scriptures at some level. I am not persuaded that same sex unions will cause the breakdown of society. I am in favor of the “weightier matters of the law.â€? My problem is that Schow has simply shown that same sex marriage is compatible with some version of liberal Christianity. He has not really — aside from the bromides about continuing revelation — interacted with Mormon theology.
It seems to me that any Mormon discussion of same-sex unions should quit mucking around with Sodom and Gomorrah, the Mosiac law, or the New Testament. The real issue is what does one do with sections 131 and 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. These are the sections that link the concept of exaltation with the concept of marriage. Here we learn that in order to reach the highest order of the celestial kingdom, a man or woman must be married, for without marriage there can be no “increase.� It is here that we learn that marriage is the pathway to exaltation and glory,�which glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of their seeds forever and ever.� (132:19) I take these passages to link marriage with exaltation and exaltation with divine fecundity. Furthermore, the fecundity seems to be explicitly tied to the fecundity of heterosexual union. These are the doctrines that Schow and others interested in offering a reconciliation of between Mormon doctrine and same sex unions must address. Otherwise, it seems that we are left with little more than liberal Protestantism with a thin veneer of Mormonism. Schow has arguments showing how an Episcopalians could support same sex unions. He has yet to really engage Mormonism.
Of course, there is one obvious response to the claim that I am making, but it is less compelling than it seems. That response is to point out that the passages that I quote from were originally given in the context of polygamy. The new and everlasting covenant of marriage meant plural marriage. Mormonism has abandoned plural marriage without necessarily rejecting the ideas of celestial marriage and exaltation, why couldn’t it do the same thing with same sex unions? To put the argument in its strongest form, let us concede that plural marriage really has been renounced; it is not some hovering requirement held in abeyance to be reimposed in the hereafter. (As it happens this is also what I personally believe.) In my mind the problem for Mormon advocates of same-sex unions remains. The reason I don’t think that the abandonment of plural marriage eases the row that theological advocates must hoe is that one can jettison the sexually asymmetric hyper-fecundity of plural marriage without necessarily jettisoning the idea of exaltation as (at least in necessary part) sexual fecundity.
Return to my hypothetical Prophetic announcement. What would be the theological significance of the unions thus solemnized? It seems to me that by virtue of the hermeneutic offered Schow we could sanction such unions as chaste. We could perhaps even sanction them as eternal — perhaps same sex couples would become ministering angels. The real question, however is whether they could be sanctioned as exalting. Until the would-be Mormon partisans of same sex unions can provide an answer to that question, it seems to me that their argument is tantamount to claim that Mormons must reject the uniqueness of their soteriology in order to accommodate same sex unions. Stripped of that soteriology, however, we might as well become Episcopalians. | <urn:uuid:39f4b1f0-ea60-48a7-9405-456ca04ad72d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2006/03/from-the-archives-the-real-issue/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961795 | 1,357 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Classes promote healthy families
Published: Monday, January 21, 2013 at 10:16 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, February 2, 2013 at 11:33 p.m.
The Bayou Council on Alcoholism is offering “Families in Focus: Prevention in the Home,” a program to help families become healthier through life-skills education.
Families in Focus gives attention to characteristics of a healthy family, including decisions, pride, values, feelings and communication. The program includes 12 weekly sessions in the family’s home.
There is a $25 enrollment fee. Call 446-0643.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:03264cc0-ecf5-4021-9d78-31824ed03134> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20130121/HURBLOG/130129978/0/Author?Title=Classes-promote-healthy-families | 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 | 0.931398 | 170 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Russ B. Altman and Mark Gerstein
We present a procedure for automatically identifying from a set of aligned protein structures a subset of atoms with only a small amount of structural variation, i.e.. a core. We apply this procedure to the globin family of proteins. Based purely on the results of the procedure, we show that the globin fold can be divided into two parts. The part with greater structural variation consists of the residues near the heme (the helix and parts of the G and H helices), and the part with lesser structural variation (the core) forms structural framework similar to that of the repressor protein (A, B, and E helices and remainder of the and H helices). Such a division is consistent with many other structural and biochemical findings. In addition, we find further partitions within the core that may have biological significance. Finally, using the structural core of the globin family as a reference point, we have compared structural variation to sequence variation and shown that a core definition based on sequence conservation does not necessarily agree with one based on structural similarity. | <urn:uuid:85287e59-6740-4470-97cd-419a91becd6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aaai.org/Library/ISMB/1994/ismb94-003.php | 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 | 0.937337 | 221 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Five years ago, a Republican-controlled Senate approved an amended bill that would have made the children of illegal immigrants eligible to pay in-state tuition.
The bill, which passed 34-1, closely resembles an immigrant-tuition bill introduced this year that could be debated in the Senate as early as today.
The current bill's sponsor, Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, said he doesn't know whether he has enough votes to get it passed or how the bill might be amended to make it more palatable.
Among the Republicans who voted for the 2004 measure were the sponsor, then-Senate President John Andrews, R-Centennial, and Sen. Doug Lamborn, now a congressman from El Paso County.
Andrews said Sunday he has never supported in-state tuition for illegal immigrants and voted for the bill solely as a procedural move but that some GOP colleagues did back the measure.
Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, who voted "yes" in 2004, admitted that bill looked a lot like the bill he now opposes.
"I am very surprised at how much they are alike," he said. "But I can't support it now because I don't have any constituents who like it."
Kester is one of seven lawmakers in the Senate who also served in 2004. The other six are Democrats, and they all supported the measure, including Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge.
But Keller opposes this year's measure, Senate Bill 170, which is before the full Senate. She declined to comment.
Senate Bill 170 allows in- state tuition for illegal immigrants who have recently completed at least three years of high school in Colorado.
Romer said he has been approached about amending the bill to allow each college to decide whether to allow in-state tuition or to tie it to the federal Dream Act. That proposed act would open the way for children of illegal immigrants who go to college or serve in the military to gain legal status.
When Democratic lawmakers met informally Friday to discuss the state bill, Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, urged support of it.
Groff, who is black, recalled the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and said it was unfair for Latinos to be continually told no, Romer said.
"It was a pretty amazing speech," Romer said. "I'm hopeful we will get to 18 votes (a majority), but it's tough for the suburban lawmakers in my party because this is an emotional issue for their district."
Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thorn ton, said she's not sure yet how she'll vote but believes the bill has "a lot of problems."
In 2004, Andrews and then-Rep. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, sponsored a bill allowing in-state tuition for foreign nationals but prohibiting it for illegal immigrants. At the time, Republicans had an 18-17 majority in the Senate and also controlled the House.
The bill passed the House and then went to the Senate, where it was amended to make an exception for illegal immigrants who had graduated from a Colorado high school or attended at least three years of high school.
Andrews opposed the amendment, but enough of his Republican colleagues joined Democrats in supporting the amendment that it passed.
Andrews said some influential Republicans, including former state party chairman Bruce Benson and GOP über- donor Alex Cranberg, supported in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants and that that "was persuasive to some of my colleagues." He said then-Gov. Bill Owens' office also appeared to support the measure.
The amended bill passed on a 34-1 vote, with Sen. Jim Dyer, now an Arapahoe County commissioner, casting the lone "no" vote.
"I voted for the bill to buy time, to keep it alive," Andrews said. "We were trying to get the bill back to the House to see if they could strip the amendment."
The bill died in the House, but Harvey, now a senator, can't remember the details.
"I just remember that I was furious because they hijacked my bill," he said.
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327 or firstname.lastname@example.org
Senate Bill 170
The Democratic-controlled Colorado Senate could as early as today debate the bill, which would grant in-state tuition, regardless of immigration status, to:
"A person ... who attends a Colorado high school for at least 3 years and enrolls in a Colorado institute of higher education within 5 years after either graduating from a Colorado high school or earning a general education diploma in Colorado."
Source: Colorado legislature | <urn:uuid:b79b0ae8-c67e-4b7e-afe4-ca1cf55ac707> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12079730?source=pkg | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976071 | 970 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had traveled across a desert of living sand. First he had died, he said, and then–snap!–the desert. He told the story to everyone who would listen, bobbing his head to follow the sound of their footsteps. Showers of red grit fell from his beard. He said that the desert was bare and lonesome and that it had hissed at him like a snake. He had walked for days and days, until the dunes broke apart beneath his feet, surging up around him to lash at his face. Then everything went still and began to beat like a heart. The sound was as clear as any he had ever heard. It was only at that moment, he said, with a million arrow points of sand striking his skin, that he truly realized he was dead.
Jim Singer, who managed the sandwich shop in the monument district, said that he had felt a prickling sensation in his fingers and then stopped breathing. "It was my heart," he insisted, thumping firmly on his chest. "Took me in my own bed." He had closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was on a train, the kind that trolleys small children around in circles at amusement parks. The rails were leading him through a thick forest of gold-brown trees, but the trees were actually giraffes, and their long necks were reaching like branches into the sky. A wind rose up and peeled the spots from their backs. The spots floated down around him, swirling and dipping in the wake of the train. It took him a long time to understand that the throbbing noise he heard was not the rattling of the wheels along the tracks.
The girl who liked to stand beneath the poplar tree in the park said that she had died into an ocean the color of dried cherries. For a while the water had carried her weight, she said, and she had lain on her back turning in meaningless circles, singing the choruses of the pop songs she remembered. But then there was a drum of thunder, and the clouds split open, and the ball bearings began to pelt down around her–tens of thousands of them. She had swallowed as many as she could, she said, stroking the cracked trunk of the poplar tree. She didn't know why. She filled like a canvas sack and sank slowly through the layers of the ocean. Shoals of fish brushed past her, their blue and yellow scales the single brightest thing in the water. And all around her she heard that sound, the one that everybody heard, the regular pulsing of a giant heart.
The stories people told about the crossing were as varied and elaborate as their ten billion lives, so much more particular than those other stories, the ones they told about their deaths. After all, there were only so many ways a person could die: either your heart took you, or your head took you, or it was one of the new diseases. But no one followed the same path over the crossing. Lev Paley said that he had watched his atoms break apart like marbles, roll across the universe, then gather themselves together again out of nothing at all. Hanbing Li said that he woke inside the body of an aphid and lived an entire life in the flesh of a single peach. Graciella Cavazos would say only that she began to snow–four words–and smile bashfully whenever anyone pressed her for details.
No two reports were ever the same. And yet always there was the drumlike thumping noise.
Some people insisted that it never went away, that if you concentrated and did not turn your ear from the sound, you could hear it faintly behind everything in the city–the brakes and the horns, the bells on the doors of restaurants, the clicking and slapping of different kinds of shoes on the pavement. Groups of people came together in parks or on rooftops just to listen for it, sitting quietly with their backs turned to one another. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum
. It was like trying to keep a bird in sight as it lifted, blurred, and faded to a dot in the sky.
Luka Sims had found an old mimeograph machine his very first week in the city and decided to use it to produce a newspaper. He stood outside the River Road Coffee Shop every morning, handing out the circulars he had printed. One particular issue of the L. Sims News & Speculation Sheet
–or the Sims Sheet
, as people called it–addressed the matter of this sound. Fewer than twenty percent of the people Luka interviewed claimed that they could still hear it after the crossing, but almost everyone agreed that it resembled nothing so much as–could be nothing other than–the pounding of a heart. The question, then, was, Where did it come from? It could not be their own hearts, for their hearts no longer beat. The old man Mahmoud Qassim believed that it was not the actual sound of his heart, but the remembered sound, which, because he had both heard and failed to notice it for so long, still resounded in his ears. The woman who sold bracelets by the river thought that it was the heartbeat at the center of the world, that bright, boiling place she had fallen through on her way to the city. "As for this reporter," the article concluded, "I hold with the majority. I have always suspected that the thumping sound we hear is the pulse of those who are still alive. The living carry us inside them like pearls. We survive only so long as they remember us." It was an imperfect metaphor–Luka knew that–since the pearl lasts much longer than the oyster. But rule one in the newspaper business was that you had to meet your deadlines. He had long since given up the quest for perfection.
There were more people in the city every day, and yet the city never failed to accommodate them. You might be walking down a street you had known for years, and all of a sudden you would come upon another building, another whole block. Carson McCaughrean, who drove one of the sleek black taxis that roamed the streets, had to redraw his maps once a week. Twenty, thirty, fifty times a day, he would pick up a fare who had only recently arrived in the city and have to deliver him somewhere he–Carson–had never heard of. They came from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. They came from churning metropolises and from small islands in the middle of the ocean. That was what the living did: they died. There was an ancient street musician who began playing in the red brick district as soon as he reached the city, making slow, sad breaths with his accordion. There was a jeweler, a young man, who set up shop at the corner of Maple and Christopher Streets and sold diamonds that he mounted on silver pendants. Jessica Auffert had operated her own jewelry shop on the same corner for more than thirty years, but she did not seem to resent the man, and in fact brought him a mug of fresh black coffee every morning, exchanging gossip as she drank with him in his front room. What surprised her was how young he was–how young so many of the dead were these days. Great numbers of them were no more than children, who clattered around on skateboards or went racing past her window on their way to the playground. One, a boy with a strawberry discoloration on his cheek, liked to pretend that the rocking horses he tossed himself around on were real horses, the horses he had brushed and fed on his farm before they were killed in the bombing. Another liked to swoop down the slide over and over again, hammering his feet into the gravel as he thought about his parents and his two older brothers, who were still alive. He had watched them lift free of the same illness that had slowly sucked him under. He did not like to talk about it.
This was during a war, though it was difficult for any of them to remember which one.
* * *
Occasionally one of the dead, someone who had just completed the crossing, would mistake the city for heaven. It was a misunderstanding that never persisted for long. What kind of heaven had the blasting sound of garbage trucks in the morning, and chewing gum on the pavement, and the smell of fish rotting by the river? What kind of hell, for that matter, had bakeries and dogwood trees and perfect blue days that made the hairs on the back of your neck rise on end? No, the city was not heaven, and it was not hell, and it certainly was not the world. It stood to reason, then, that it had to be something else. More and more people came to adopt the theory that it was an extension of life itself–a sort of outer room–and that they would remain there only so long as they endured in living memory. When the last person who had actually known them died, they would pass over into whatever came next. It was true that most of the city's occupants went away after sixty or seventy years, and while this did not prove the theory, it certainly served to nourish it. There were stories of men and women who had been in the city much longer, for centuries and more, but there were always such stories, in every time and place, and who knew whether to believe them?
Every neighborhood had its gathering spot, a place where people could come together to trade news of the other world. There was the colonnade in the monument district, and the One and Only Tavern in the warehouse district, and right next to the greenhouse, in the center of the conservatory district, was Andrei Kalatozov's Russian Tea Room. Kalatozov poured the tea he brewed from a brass samovar into small porcelain cups that he served on polished wooden platters. His wife and daughter had died a few weeks before he did, in an accident involving a land mine they had rooted up out of the family garden. He was watching through the kitchen window when it happened. His wife's spade struck a jagged hunk of metal, so cankered with rust from its century underground that he did not realize what it was until it exploded. Two weeks later, when he put the razor to his throat, it was with the hope that he would be reunited with his family in heaven. And, sure enough, there they were–his wife and daughter–smiling and taking coats at the door of the tea room. Kalatozov watched them as he sliced a lemon into wedges and arranged the wedges on a saucer. He was the happiest man in the room–the happiest man in any room. The city may not have been heaven, but it was heaven enough for him. Morning to evening, he listened to his customers as they shared the latest news about the war. The Americans and the Middle East had resumed hostilities, as had China and Spain and Australia and the Netherlands. Brazil was developing another mutagenic virus, one that would resist the latest antitoxins. Or maybe it was Italy. Or maybe Indonesia. There were so many rumors that it was hard to know for sure.
Now and then someone who had died only a day or two before would happen into one of the centers of communication–the tavern or the tea room, the river market or the colonnade–and the legions of the dead would mass around him, shouldering and jostling him for information. It was always the same: "Where did you live?" "Do you know anything about Central America?" "Is it true what they're saying about the ice caps?" "I'm trying to find out about my cousin. He lived in Arizona. His name was Lewis Zeigler, spelled L-e-w-i-s…" "What's happening with the situation along the African coast--do you know, do you know?" "Anything you can tell us, please, anything at all."
Kiran Patel had sold beads to tourists in the Bombay hotel district for most of a century. She said that there were fewer and fewer travelers to her part of the world, but that this hardly mattered, since there was less and less of her part of the world for them to see. The ivory beads she had peddled as a young woman had become scarce, then rare, then finally unobtainable. The only remaining elephants were caged away in the zoos of other countries. In the years just before she died, the "genuine ivory beads" she sold were actually a cream-colored plastic made in batches of ten thousand in Korean factories. This, too, hardly mattered. The tourists who stopped at her kiosk could never detect the difference.
Jeffrey Fallon, sixteen and from Park Falls, Wisconsin, said that the fighting hadn't spread in from the coasts yet, but that the germs had, and he was living proof. "Or not living, maybe, but still proof," he corrected himself. The bad guys used to be Pakistan, and then they were Argentina and Turkey, and after that he had lost track. "What do you want me to tell you?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. "Mostly I just miss my girlfriend." Her name was Tracey Tipton, and she did this thing with his earlobes and the notched edge of her front teeth that made his entire body go taut and buzz like a guitar string. He had never given his earlobes a second thought until the day she took them between her lips, but now that he was dead he thought of nothing else. Who would have figured?
The man who spent hours riding up and down the escalators in the Ginza Street Shopping Mall would not give his name. When people asked him what he remembered about the time before he died, he would only nod vigorously, clap his hands together, and say, "Boom!," making a gesture like falling confetti with his fingertips. Excerpted from The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Brockmeier. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpted from The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Brockmeier. Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. | <urn:uuid:abb4acea-6811-4039-bdc4-33c478346722> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.randomhouse.com/book/18635/the-brief-history-of-the-dead-by-kevin-brockmeier/ebook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992571 | 3,039 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Venables, Chindamo and the ‘arms race’ filling jails
Documentary maker Richard Symons exposes a poisonous relationship between tabloid editors and politicians
When criminologist Roger Graef was advising the government on criminal justice policy, Justice Minister Jack Straw asked him what their priority should be. Graef said: "Reduce the prison population." Straw replied: "I completely agree, but the Sun would have us for breakfast."
The exchange illuminates the state of the criminal justice debate in Britain - or lack thereof. It has become nothing less than an "arms race" between the tabloid press, which sees crime reporting as an effective way to sell more papers, and politicians desperate not to be seen to cede the "tough on crime" moral high ground to their opponents.
The result has been a doubling of our prison population in little more than a decade and a widespread misconception that violent crime has risen.
This weekend, we saw the latest example of the tabloids' outrage at the early release of a high-profile young criminal. Learco Chindamo, now aged 29, has served 14 years of the life sentence he received as a 15-year-old for stabbing to death headmaster Philip Lawrence outside a London school in 1995.
Chindamo's life sentence "tariff" expired last January and after a staged release, he faces a parole hearing which could see him freed within weeks.
Needless to say, the tabloids are revolted, the Mail on Sunday labeling Chindamo a "thug" in its online edition, and the News of the World, under the headline "sickening crime", inviting its readers to vent their anger. Sure enough the first comment posted was:
life should mean life
this man is killer
then let him rot in jail for the rest of this life.
But the 'arms race' is still best exemplified by the reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993.
The Sun, which was as outraged as the toddler's mother at the 10 years handed out by the court to the two ten-year-old killers, petitioned the Home Secretary for a longer sentence and in an unprecedented move, Michael Howard intervened, extending it to 15. But not before Tony Blair, then shadow home secretary, had coined the slogan "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" – and swept the crime agenda from under the Tories' feet.
Earlier this month – 17 years on - Jon Venables, one of Bulger's murderers, was recalled to prison for breaking the terms of his parole, and the 'arms race' was back in full swing - the tabloids asking why he was ever released in the first place, and politicians making soothing noises in sympathy.
It doesn't matter that the politicians agree with the experts, knowing the current situation is unsustainable, ineffective and against the public interest. It doesn’t matter that Britain has the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe – and yet re-offending rates are as high as 90 per cent. It seems we have learned nothing from the past.
This month, politicians and officials from the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and almost every criminal justice organisation attended a screening of our documentary, The Fear Factory. The film (see a clip from it above) is heavily critical of the government's youth justice policy, with particular reference to the Bulger murder and the way it was handled by the press and politicians.
Venables was recalled to custody the day after our screening and the ensuing media frenzy could not have illustrated our point better.
When we interviewed former Sun deputy editor Chris Roycroft-Davis for The Fear Factory, he was refreshingly straightforward with us over the press's priorities: "I don't know that a newspaper has a responsibility to educate or to lead. A newspaper has a duty to its shareholders".
The position of the politicians in the arms race is much less clear-cut. Rather than make a moral case for rehabilitation of the suspect, Jack Straw opted for the 'my hands are tied' defence to demands for information on why Venables was recalled.
The public has a right to know, he said - but not yet: "We mustn't risk prejudicing a fair trial." He has learned from both the voter-friendly intervention of Michael Howard and his subsequent humbling. After increasing the sentences of Bulger's killers he was slapped down by the House of Lords for "playing to the gallery".
Straw chose to reinforce his 'tough on crime' credentials when the children's commissioner, Dr Maggie Atkinson, recommended raising the age of criminal responsibility. Denise Fergus, the mother of James Bulger, called for Atkinson’s sacking and a spokesperson for Straw's department said: "We do not intend to raise the age of criminal responsibility. It is not in the interests of justice, of victims or the young people themselves to prevent serious offending being challenged.
"Custody for under-18s is always a last resort and is only used for the most serious, persistent and violent offenders".
This is untrue: serious and violent offences by youths under 14 have dropped to 60 per year. But as a result of Bulger, and the age of criminal responsibility being effectively lowered to 10, for the last three years Britain has sent 500 children aged between 10 and 14 into custody for "non-violent or serious offences".
The government may lay blame for this sentencing with our independent judiciary. But judges can only choose from what the government has made available when it comes to sentencing. In 'tough on crime' UK there's nothing like the alternative programmes you'll find in Scandinavia for dealing with young offenders, so a judge may well opt for custody rather than a community or suspended sentence.
The Conservative Party's contribution to the law and order debate in general has been predictably tabloid-friendly. The British crime survey, which was trusted by previous Conservative governments as well as the current Labour one, shows violent crime has fallen by 41 per cent since 1997. But Tory leader David Cameron has never forgotten the hiding he took when Labour and the tabloids painted him as a "hug-a-hoodie" kind of guy.
Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, claimed in February that violent crime had risen by 70 per cent. After much criticism, he came up with a new figure, suggesting violent crime had increased by 44 per cent – a figure described as misleading by the UK Statistics Authority. It seems nobody – least of all those who wield power - wants to believe that crime may have fallen.
In fact, the public perception of various kinds of crime is consistently eight times higher than that actually recorded. The media-political 'fear factory' is as efficient now as in 1993.
When we interviewed Dominic Grieve, the shadow minister for justice, for The Fear Factory, he claimed crime had risen since Labour came to power in 1997, offering no statistics to back up his position. A Tory three-line whip later prevented him from attending our screening and he has since refused interviews regarding his contribution.
If there is hope, it lies in the future, after the general election. Dr Atkinson's office told us they intend to raise the issue of increasing the age of criminal responsibility at a later date. Unfortunately we cannot hope to have that debate during a general election campaign. It seems the Tories are as scared of crime as the general public – except that, unlike the public, they have good reason.
Comments are now closed on this article | <urn:uuid:ae02cec6-cb5b-4d4f-b198-eb4775405de5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/15825/venables-chindamo-and-%E2%80%98arms-race%E2%80%99-filling-jails | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974111 | 1,549 | 1.5 | 2 |
Creepy New Images from The Thing, Plus Make-up and Effects Talk from the Creators
Posted 09.18.11 by BrentJS
The shapeshifting alien in John Carpenter's The Thing is easily one of the most terrifying monsters in cinematic history — we get goosebumps just thinking about the scene where the infected Norris' (Charles Hallahan) head tears itself apart from the body, sprouts spider-like legs, and skitters away — and it was created by creature designer Rob Bottin well before the advent of CGI technology. In fact, the "thing" in The Thing has become such an iconic creature that producers Marc Abraham and Eric Newman made the decision to use as many practical effects as possible when depicting the creature in the upcoming The Thing prequel.
We only get to see a few glimpses of the creature in the trailer and TV spot that recently began airing, but some close-up shots of the creepy critter appeared in a recent article in Make-Up Artist Magazine (via director Matthijs van Heijningen's Facebook page). The article also contained a brief interview with Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. of Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc., creators of the make-up effects that brought the new "thing" to life, as well as with Linda Dowds, make-up department head of the production.
Gillis said that "the reasoning for choosing a heavy practical load" was to stay true to the signature look and feel of the 1982 movie.
Because Bottin's work [on the original] was obviously the cornerstone of that film...they didn't want to go with a digital fest and not feel as though they were working in the language of the Carpenter film.
Woodruff agreed, adding that "the big difference about a movie like The Thing" is that "it recognizes the impact of the first movie and stays true to it."
As for designing the look of the human cast members, Dowds said that the setting of the movie made it an interesting challenge.
We had a lot of men and just two women, including Mary [Elizabeth Winstead], our leading lady. A lot of those men also had a European sensibility to them, so we knew we were going to be dealing with a lot of facial hair ... we wanted them to be individuals, but there still had to be stuff going on that indicated that they were at this station, so we went through the characters and tried to mix up the facial hair a little bit so not everybody had a beard but everybody had some meausre of facial hair. We had to create a little chart to keep track of everybody.
With our women, Mary is an attractive girl and there was nothing to say that she couldn't look like that, but a little could go a long way. We didn't want to glam her up, so she agreed to have a no-make-up look about her. She got dirty and sweaty and stressed-looking, so we tracked all of that, not only for her but for everybody to see where they were at in the story. When would they look the freshest? When were they under the most stress? There were different stages for all of that.
And finally, we were shooting exteriors as interiors, so we wanted to rough up the skin and bring some rosiness to it and break up textures so that it reflected the fact that these people were in a cold climate. So it was all about when to do those things and when not to in the most realistic way.
The Thing also stars Joel Edgerton, Eric Christian Olsen, Jonathan Walker, Dennis Storhøi, Trond Espen Seim, Jørgen Langhelle, Stig Henrik Hoff, Jan Gunnar Røise, Kristofer Hivju,, and Jo Adrian Haavind.
Next Showing: The Thing
opens October 14 | <urn:uuid:d96a38f2-fb80-4d7b-b383-66cb9977058d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reelz.com/movie-news/11812/creepy-new-images-from-the-thing-plus-make-up-and-effects-talk-from-the-creators/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979234 | 803 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Emergency officials in seven Mississippi counties were dealing Monday with widespread damage after a swarm of storms swept through the area Sunday evening, injuring scores of people.
No deaths have been reported.
Two people in Lamar County were critically hurt, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said.
A tornado struck Hattiesburg, a southern Mississippi city that straddles Lamar and Forrest counties. The Weather Service described the storm as packing 170 mph winds -- an EF-4 on the service's tornadic scale.
The scale ranges from EF0 to EF5.
Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree reported major damage to a number of buildings. "If there is a good thing about this, it happened on a Sunday when most of these structures were vacant," he said.
Tornado sirens were activated 20 to 30 minutes before the twister touched down, DuPree said. "I think that was enough for people to find shelter, to go to a place in their house that was safe," he added.
Several homes were destroyed in Marion County, and numerous structures -- including businesses and public buildings -- sustained "significant damage," the state emergency management agency said.
As of Monday morning, 4,000 power customers were without electricity, down from the approximately 14,000 who had lost power, Mississippi Power spokesman Mark Davis said.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency for the affected counties. The declaration means state resources and assets can be used to support local response efforts. Some 63 people were treated at area hospitals, most of them for minor injuries, he said. | <urn:uuid:e50510c2-3fcd-491e-8651-14e95a0ad07c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlwt.com/news/national/Southern-Mississippi-cleans-up-after-storms/-/9837944/18492802/-/i1po0oz/-/index.html?absolute=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981108 | 323 | 1.5625 | 2 |
There's a discussion going on about Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, probably prompted by the release of Jerry Beck's book, The Hanna Barbera Treasury. (Mike Barrier talks about them here and here; Thad K talks about them here.) For baby boomers, there's a strong nostalgia for Hanna-Barbera's early work such as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat. Hanna and Barbera are undeniably important to TV animation from a historical standpoint as they were the first to crack prime time with an animated series and their studio was able to work with TV budgets and schedules while creating successful shows.
Furthermore, many boomers in the animation industry had direct contact with Hanna and Barbera and have pleasant memories of them as individuals. By all accounts, Joe Barbera was an expert salesman, so his ability to charm people should come as no surprise.
As theatrical animation collapsed in the 1950s and '60s, Hanna-Barbera was there to offer employment to animation artists who suddenly found themselves jobless. While no one claimed that TV work was the same quality as theatrical shorts, it did allow many animation veterans to close out their careers doing work that they were familiar with. They were spared the upset of re-inventing themselves in middle age or later.
Those are the good things that can be said for Hanna-Barbera. There are, however, many bad things that can be said about them. In some ways, it's amazing that animation managed to survive them.
There is no question that TV budgets and schedules were and are brutal for the creation of animation. Hanna-Barbera did nothing to fight this. That is their single biggest failing. Rather than attempt to reform or beat a system that was clearly stacked against the production of good work, Hanna-Barbera embraced that system and milked it for their own personal gain. They expanded the number of shows they produced and with each expansion, the quality of the product suffered. They opened studios overseas in order to take advantage of cheaper labour. The savings went into their pockets, not onto the screen. After their initial decade, when they had the opportunity to work in prime time or in features where budgets were better, the projects were only marginally better than the low-budget work they turned out for Saturday mornings. The thinking and procedures behind their Saturday morning shows infected the entire company. In their hands, the art of animation (and here I'm talking about the entire process from writing to post-production), was degraded and debased without apology.
Some might argue that Hanna-Barbera did not have the leverage to change the way the TV business dealt with animation. I disagree and my evidence is Walt Disney and the movie business. In the early 1930s, Disney was a small company that was not affiliated with a major studio. Theatrical shorts were not all that lucrative, which is why live action comedians in the 1920s like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, worked hard to graduate to feature films. Walt Disney re-invested his profits, including those from merchandising, into improving the quality of his cartoons. By raising his standards, he forced other animation studios to raise theirs in order to compete.
Hanna and Barbera were no worse off than Disney at the time they entered TV. If anything, they were in a better position having won multiple Oscars for the Tom and Jerry series. They entered TV with a greater reputation and more experience than Walt Disney had in the early 1930s. As Disney expanded his company in that decade, the quality of the studio's work went up. As Hanna-Barbera expanded in the 1960s and beyond, their quality went down. Like Disney, they had merchandising revenue coming in from early on, but that money was never redirected to the cartoons. Where Disney increased his budgets with the hope that quality would lead to increased revenues, Hanna-Barbera never increased theirs. Walt Disney exceeded the expectations of his distributors and his audience. Hanna and Barbera were satisfied with meeting their minimum requirements, and often failed to do that.
Regardless of what you think of Disney's films, there is no question that Walt Disney enriched the animation industry by raising standards for the entire field. Hanna and Barbera impoverished animation by strip mining it, taking all the wealth for themselves and leaving behind an industrial disaster. There is no question that the animation industry suffered a major blow with the death of theatrical shorts and the rise of television. It took the industry more than 25 years to recover from that blow. Hanna and Barbera had no part in that recovery and if anything, they probably delayed it. | <urn:uuid:1cff99d1-f3f9-4635-8e82-300d07b915cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/2008/01/hanna-and-barbera.html?showComment=1200051660000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986457 | 957 | 1.75 | 2 |
Lockheed to tailor SMSS vehicle for UK forces
Lockheed Martin is looking to adapt a robotic vehicle that carries combat troops’ equipment for use by UK forces.
The autonomous Squad Mission Support System (SMSS) vehicle can carry up to 545kg – the equivalent of kit for seven soldiers – and is due to be trialled by the US Army in Afghanistan in the first or second quarter of 2011.
The US-owned defence and security firm is now hoping to win a UK government competition by developing the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to meet the British Army’s security and safety needs at its facility in Ampthill, Bedfordshire.
Dr Paul Townsend, research and technology lead for LMUK, said: ’Because SMSS is autonomous, it can be placed into a hide prior to an incursion, given some way points and be called forward without operator intervention to resupply the team.
‘Casualty evacuation is a futuristic concept at the moment but SMSS can travel faster than two men with a stretcher, so if it carried a casualty you wouldn’t have two guys taken out of battle.’
The six-wheeled open-top UGV is powered by a diesel engine and has a range of around 100 miles. Lockheed Martin is also planning to develop hybrid and full electric versions of the SMSS.
It navigates using GPS, a video camera and the optical remote sensing system LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) and, when autonomy isn’t required, a teleoperator can control up to four vehicles using a handheld unit.
Townsend said that adaptations were needed because the US and UK had different philosophies regarding autonomous vehicles.
‘Safety has to be built into such a platform at a very fundamental level and we are looking to understand – we’ve got some internal research and development – the UK needs,’ he said.
This article was amended on 11/11/2010. Lockheed Martin intiailly told The Engineer the SMSS was currently being trialled in Afghanistan. However, a spokesperson later said this was incorrect and the trials were not due to start until 2011. | <urn:uuid:f68e92a1-dabf-4c89-a273-804c6d888ad6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/lockheed-to-tailor-smss-vehicle-for-uk-forces/1005962.article | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961812 | 446 | 1.757813 | 2 |
World of Warcraft maker Activision Blizzard is the latest target of a lawsuit by serial suer (or professional plaintiff) Erik Estavillo.
Filed this morning in the Civil Division of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, the civil complaint charges Activision Blizzard with “deceitful” business practices, as it “continues to maintain a harmful virtual environment to many of its customers by forcing them to follow the game’s sneaky and deceitful practices.”
Among Estavillo’s claims is that WOW is designed for a gamer “to walk or run at a calculated slow pace, resulting in the player taking longer to get where he or she needs to go in the game.” This slow pace, says the plaintiff, leads to a longer time needed to finish game play or quests, in turn leading to more subscription revenue for Activision Blizzard.
Estavillo also complains that faster transportation is not available until a player levels up accordingly, or purchases an expansion pack.
The plaintiff then likens his health problems (OCD, Agoraphobia, Panic Disorder, major depression and Crohn’s Disease) to the afflictions that ailed the late EverQuest gamer Shawn Woolley, who took his own life on Thanksgiving morning in 2001. Estavillo stated that he “doesn’t want to end up like Shawn did as he [Estavillo] relies on videogames heavily for the little ongoing happiness he can achieve in this life.”
Estavillo subpoenaed Depeche Mode founder Martin Lee Gore and actress Winona Ryder to provide testimony on his behalf regarding the subject of alienation.
Gore was subpoenaed because “he himself has been known to be sad, lonely, and alienated as can be seen in the songs he writes,” and Ryder because of her and Estavillo’s common interest in the J.D. Salinger book The Catcher in the Rye. Ryder would be able to, “explain the significance of alienation in Catcher in the Rye and will also testify to how alienation in the book can tie to alienation in real live/video games such as World of Warcraft.”
Estavillo is seeking punitive damages of $1.0 million and a court order that WOW implement changes that address the issues of his complaint.
Other lawsuits filed by Estavillo include one against Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), following a banning from the PlayStation Network, and a recent suit that targeted Microsoft and Nintendo—the former over an Xbox 360 red ring of death and the latter over a firmware update that disabled his Homebrew Channel. | <urn:uuid:835c6a89-d8b4-44e1-8a56-1b0f078b927a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gamepolitics.com/2009/11/24/winona-ryder-depeche-mode-factor-wow-lawsuit?page=1 | 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 | 0.955214 | 549 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Sometimes the only way to play is to jump in over your head but the border between fearlessness and foolishness is slim. I have been transformed by my exposure to matters of duplicity in theory and practice and I still find it fascinating for the same reason I stated several years ago in my Normblog Interview.
Who are your cultural heroes? > I confess that I am drawn to spies and, to a lesser extent, priests. They hold in their heads ideas that are worth killing and dying for, and yet unlike writers and intellectuals of other sorts, they are restrained by ethical virtues from gaining any notoriety, wealth or respect from the dissemination of said ideas. Anyone can blurt the beautiful and be blessed, but there is nothing so frighteningly powerful, I think, as an idea whose time may very well never come. They are the reverse of us who clamour for glory and vindication.
I should probably add hackers to that. Hackers of all sorts. It's a layer of understanding I haven't applied most of my adult life because I have spent a great deal of time and effort being a team player and expecting the leverage of corporate entities to pay off. They do. But what I didn't realize was how flexible they are, and it is that combination of flexibility and dynamism of individuals within the constraints of corporate frameworks that can be their downfall. It's something that hackers can exploit and proves the fundamental vulnerability of all collective enterprises. (I was thinking 'corporate' in reflection on my own ambition, but you can read 'collective' in defense of the principle).
Organized decentralization is not even the thing here, but individual initiative. We are much more beholden to personal ethics than I had previously considered. There are many implications, some of which just make sense.
- Don't hate.
- Talk what you know.
- Mind your own business.
- Be diplomatic.
- Do it yourself.
- Don't lie.
- Assume they know.
- Fakers get killed.
The impetus for this post is the startling piece over at Ars Technica. Not since I was much younger and obsessed over more simple stuff like Guy Kawasaki's Tsutomu Shimomura's old tale of intrigue has the impact of a hacker's handiwork smacked me in the head. Anybody can be owned.
As I write this, and in reflection of a couple things, I wish I could remember a piece of verbiage I came across with its apporpriate acrimony to script kids about a particular hardened version of OS that a certain kind of individual would need. It's my new mind splinter. Because other than Sandmonkey, 'we' know very little about who was communicating at what level with the outside world as Egypt flipped. And it certainly would have been the aim of an appropriated armed individual to use this particularly secure distro as government forces would have been on his ass.
Note to Alex and the dude to my left: The name of the detective show was 'Touching Evil'. So that settles *that* mind splinter. | <urn:uuid:d7638a03-bebc-4409-9440-913287b7becf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/2011/02/playing-with-fire.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966933 | 637 | 1.625 | 2 |
An Elm Grove company that offers online speech learning for children said Wednesday it has raised $300,000 of funding from angel investors.
SpeechTails Inc. raised the money from Angels on the Water Fund and individual angel investors earlier this year, said Patrick Walters, the company's chief executive officer and an investor in the company.
The deal represents the first investment for the recently-started Angels on the Water Fund, which is led by Al Hartman, former University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh business school dean.
Angels on the Water Fund was attracted by the large potential market for SpeechTails' products and the ability of the business model to grow, Hartman said.
"There are 20 million kids who need speech therapy and only 50,000 to 60,000 speech therapists who work with kids," said Amy Reno, the company's founder and president.
SpeechTails' "very innovative" idea for online speech learning gives the company the potential to reach many more kids without spending incrementally many more dollars, said Al Zeise, a DePere entrepreneur who heads ZyQuest Ventures and ZyQuest Inc., an information technology services company.
ZyQuest Ventures contributed some of the funding, and as part of its investment is providing software development services to the company.
SpeechTails is using the money it raised to enhance its products and bolster marketing and sales, Walters said. The money was invested in the form of debt that will convert to equity when the company raises more funding, he said.
SpeechTails helps parents with early detection of speech issues through a free website assessment parents can take with their children. Then it helps parents, educators and professionals deliver a set of services to manage and correct issues.
If they choose to use the company's services, customers pay $25 a month for unlimited access to fun, engaging lessons, mouth exercises, homework and daily activities, Reno said.
SpeechTails is working on developing a brandable version of its software that professional speech therapists could use for record keeping and caseload management, Reno said. The company is also developing another product to help school systems manage the speech needs of all of their students, she said.
SpeechTails won second place in the information technology category in the 2011 Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest.
Walters is a former executive at Saris Cycling Group in Madison. Before that, he started four angel-backed companies in Ohio and Wisconsin, he said. Reno previously had a private speech therapy practice in Elm Grove.
The Angels on the Water Fund has about $1 million of commitments and is planning to add to that, Hartman said. | <urn:uuid:2f9c6554-8150-4406-9d69-a175c8b3545e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jsonline.com/business/online-speech-therapy-business-raises-300000-from-angel-investors-a458kua-149839835.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966856 | 544 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Beautifully built Jewish homes in a settlement near an Arab village in Judea and Samaria, where a Jew-free "Palestine" is proposed.
By Tovah Lazaroff
Israel reiterated Friday that it would refuse cooperation with a a UN Human Rights Council fact finding mission to probe Israeli West Bank settlement activity and Jewish building in east Jerusalem.
The Geneva-based council appointed three international jurists to the mission on Friday, eliciting a rebuke from Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.
"The fact finding mission will find no cooperation in Israel and its members will not be allowed to enter Israel and the territories. Its existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UNHRC treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non democratic countries," he said.
The three jurists are: Christine Chanet of France, Unity Dow of Botswana and Asma Jahangir of Pakistan.
“I have appointed three highly distinguished individuals to carry out the Council’s fact-finding mission to investigate the implications of Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem,” said UNHRC President Laura Dupuy Lasserre.
She spoke to the council of the settlement probe as it wrapped up its 20th session in Geneva. The council ordered the probe at its 19th session in March.
At the time Israel said that it did not plan to cooperate with the probe and cut its ties with the council in protest.
On Friday, Lasserre called on Israel “not to obstruct the process of the investigation and to cooperate fully with the mission.”
Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva based non profit group UN Watch, immediately attacked the announcement. “While there are genuine human rights victims on all sides, this inquiry’s mandate is imbalanced and lacks credibility,” Neuer said.
“Its terms were framed in a four-page resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab and Islamic groups, that omits any reference to Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians, including the hundreds of rockets fired recently from Gaza and Sinai into Israeli towns and villages."
The UNHRC on Friday provided background on the the three panel members, however, which showed that they had a distinguished history of judicial credentials.
Chanet, who chairs the committee, was part of the Round Table Conference at the Peace Palace at The Hague in November 2001, in which the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct were finalized. She has been a member of the UN Human Rights Committee since 1996 and was twice its chairperson.
Jahangir is the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan and has twice chaired her country's Human Rights Commission. She directs the AGHS Legal Aid Cell which provides free legal assistance to the needy. She has also served as UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief of the Council of Human Rights. In 1983 she was imprisoned for for her activism against her country's military regime.
Dow has been Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists since 2004. She was re-elected in 2009. She is a practicing lawyer in Botswana. From 1998 to 2008 she was Botswana's first female High Court judge. She is also novelist and has authored books such as Juggling Truths, The Screaming of the Innocent and Far and Beyond. | <urn:uuid:1ae747f2-93c5-4835-999a-440400d17a0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.israelifrontline.com/2012/07/israel-says-it-wont-cooperate-with.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971175 | 703 | 1.742188 | 2 |
In the current hectic culture, there is no query the reason why individuals possess considered consumer electronics as well as devices to make daily actions faster and much more handy. Not really a day time passes whenever somebody does not take their own smartphone very first thing each morning to check on their own e-mails during sex, or even whenever individuals do not jump on the pc in order to kind upward a study or even document as well as produce a demonstration. Past which, devices possess developed to incorporate everything you can actually picture. Through pastimes in order to sports activities, to operate as well as perform, devices as well as consumer electronics took more than the world.
Buying for top devices is actually undoubtedly absolutely no simple duties. Brand new devices as well as consumer electronics appear available on the market each day which makes it difficult maintain using the most recent as well as finest versions. For those who have become injured through the “tech” irritate, and also have chose to buy a few brand new “grown-up toys”, after that there are several points you will have to think about prior to pay cash on a single.
Exactly what are you searching in order to get free from the actual device?
Would you like something which can make performing duties simpler for example automated dog feeders or even drinking water dispensers, or even are you searching for some thing that will help you carry out your preferred pastime much better like a golfing variety locater? Having a apparently unlimited choice of various types of devices as well as consumer electronics, it will last greatest to consider exactly what it’s you’ll need carried out, after that visit a item which will give a means to fix which issue.
When you determine the kind you want, it is time for you to find items.
Through carrying out a fast search on the internet upon something similar to “cooking gadgets”, an array of various items that will help within the kitchen area. Grain cookers, electrical sodium as well as spice up mills, juicers, as well as such things as blenders can come upward within the search engine results. | <urn:uuid:1b2115ee-ab9a-4a00-84f9-c9dba66e06dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://happyecommerce.com/tag/electronics-stores | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97625 | 437 | 1.75 | 2 |
VIEWPOINT: IEDP Editor, Roddy Millar, is not convinced that another series of The Apprentice is what business needs right now.Further Information:
This Spring the BBC brings back to our screens the eighth series of The Apprentice, fronted by Lord Sugar. The format, first established by the US version with Donald Trump, is to pit 15 ambitious candidates against one another to establish which one displays the greatest business talent. One candidate leaving each week until the final three battle it out for the winner’s prize of, originally a £100,000-a-year job working for Lord Sugar, and now a joint-business venture into which Lord Sugar invests £250,000.
It is undoubtedly great television and compelling viewing – and presumably has drawn in the viewers so consistently that the BBC cannot resist the temptation to commission further series.
What the programme is not is an education in how to run a business, or indeed what skills or behaviours are to be valued in the business world. Lord Sugar himself is not exactly a great role model – a man who has undoubted sales ability but appears to display very little management or strategic ability. From having built his consumer electronics company into the lead player in the UK in the mid-1980s he then failed to capitalise on the brand and leverage its opportunities as the market expanded dramatically in the 1990s. It is reported that the vast proportion of Lord Sugar’s wealth has in fact come from property speculation – which perhaps underlines the weakness of the programme, Sugar is a trader at heart, buying cheap and selling high, but not actually a creator of anything. There appears to be little left behind from his business ventures that have added value.
The Apprentice is a gladiatorial contest of sales machismo and hubris. The challenges the participants have to compete on, are largely evaluated on short-term cash results. They are the equivalent of City traders who close their books each evening without having any regard to long-term impact. Research for products and markets is conducted in half a morning (is that any template for an entrepreneur?), suppliers are haggled and berated for the lowest price (with no idea of building a sustainable, mutually beneficial relationship for both parties), customers are flogged product at whatever price and low level of service can be achieved (with little attention given to the idea that it might be worth cultivating some loyalty in the client-base to make them want to come back). But above all these negative business approaches it is the characters of the participants that are so damaging for anyone hoping that today’s youth might want to run their own businesses or will want to become managers at all.
Whether it is the programme’s editors or Lord Sugar himself, the choice of participants and the way they are portrayed champions aggressive, dictatorial, egotistical and entirely individualistic management and leadership styles. These are completely the reverse of what business research tells us – and can prove – is required to build strong, innovative teams that achieve greater productivity over the long-term.
Organizations are consistently shown to perform better when there is a strong element of trust amongst employees towards their managers; when there is an environment where mistakes are tolerated if honestly made in the pursuit of better practice and innovation; where leaders can admit their weaknesses and build on others strengths – and where strong positive relationships are built with other business stakeholders, critically suppliers and customers, but also employees, directors and the surrounding community. Happy workers are much more productive workers.
None of these aspects are encouraged in The Apprentice, in fact they are actively refuted in the old-fashioned cartoon-world type portrayal of the dog-eat-dog businessman out to screw every penny from everyone he (although in The Apprentice, it is frequently a ‘she’) can.
The BBC has run several programs that do display the nurturing and growth of leadership and entrepreneurialism in a really effective way – Gareth Malone’s transformation of a run-down housing estate in The Choir – or Jimmy Doherty’s A Farmer's Life for Me. It is just that Lord Sugar, who extraordinarily was appointed the last government’s Enterprise Tsar in the dog-days of Gordon Brown’s premiership – is not the role model for business that the country needs.
The Apprentice should come with a viewer’s health warning ‘This programme bears no connection with reality, and any action taken by viewers to emulate those portrayed could seriously damage the health of your business’.
The Apprentice series 8 airs on BBC1 on 21st March. The Apprentice website
The BBC's series The Choir
The BBC's series A Farmer's Life For Me
For some alternative approaches to leadership
The Introverted Leader - article in Developing Leaders
Mindfulness - article in Developing Leaders
Neuro-science for Neuro Leadership - article in Developing Leaders...and some selected leadership programs that may give a better insight into how to do it....
IMD's High Performance Leadership program
Rotman's Integrative Thinking program
Henley's Developing Leaders program
IESE's Developing Leadership Competencies | <urn:uuid:45fe6224-8db4-4aad-bd30-81ee630e139c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iedp.com/Blog/The_Apprentice_A_Leaders_How_Not_To_Do_It_Guide | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956977 | 1,045 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Dive operators, dive guides and seasoned divers may soon have a new “toy” to play with – contributing details of diving hot spots around the world right down to the water conditions and maybe, just maybe to the species of corals and the residents living there.
Rumor has it that Google is brewing an exciting 3D ocean map with the help of marine experts and in selected areas, providing us with high-resolution pictures.
Google’s foray into the ocean comes as no surprise really – with the (Google) Earth and (Google) Sky already covered, it’s probably the next best extension of the project.
I’d say the guys behind Asia Dive Site would definitely have plenty to contribute. So would many, many other websites.
And for those who do not fancy descending 70 feet into the deep blue sea, it’s time to get ready to take a tour underwater – all dry. | <urn:uuid:a61eff60-102f-4032-bd23-385ec3f8e017> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hiptechblog.com/2008/05/04/google-takes-a-splash-into-the-deep-blue-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939101 | 193 | 1.8125 | 2 |
(This is part of 3 posts. Click here for the first post and here for the second.)
We got to laugh.
We got to eat some good food.
We got to take home some really good treats.
And we got to make a difference in the life of others.
Together 17 women and 1 man pulled their resources, each giving what they could and if they could and we raised $130.
We bought a goat and 2 chickens.
Goats nourish hungry children and families with healthy milk, cheese, and yogurt. Chickens provide fresh eggs that are rich in protein and nutrients, and extra eggs and chicks can be sold to pay for basics. To learn more about what one goat and two chickens can do for a family, click here.
We also were able to give to help mothers in Afghanistan.
Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies of childbirth-related complications. In fact, tragically, almost half of all deaths of women age 15-49 in Afghanistan result from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Most of these deaths could be prevented with increased access to maternal health services. To learn more about what just a little less than a dollar a day can do for other women, click here.
To see how you can make a difference both in the United States and around the world, visit World Vision’s Gift Catalog.
My hope is that someday me and a bunch of women from the Midwest will have built a school. Till then maybe we’ll just start with this or this.
I am so excited to share a post I did for Frosting for the Cause today. It’s in tribute to my mother, in celebration of who she is, being 9 years cancer free, and for her her delicious banana puddin’, which of course has my own twist on it.
Here is just the start …
This past year I’ve grown an obsession with baking. Baking things I find. Baking things I create.
My husband just shakes his head when I bring home a new cook book. How many is too many? At one point should I seek professional help?
I’m not sure exactly where this new found love came from. My mother can’t make cookies to save her life. She often came to class parties with a bag of Oreos. I always thought it was because she worked at home and outside the home and there simply wasn’t enough time in the day. As I look back now, I realize it probably had more to do with the fact that she really couldn’t bake a batch of cookies without burning them. Ever.
Head on over to Frosting For the Cause to read the rest …
Last night my padres joined us for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. This year we will be spending Thanksgiving with Nana and Pa so Grandma and Poppa joined us for some yummy, homemade broccoli/cauliflower/cheese soup, accordion potatoes, and these yummy, mini apple pies.
This is a really ingenious idea. Personal mini apple pies. Great portion control … unless of course, you eat like 4 at a time. Fun for the kids too. There are a couple steps – bake apples, make dough, chill dough, roll and cut dough and then bake – which can seem at first a bit overwhelming but once you do it you realize they are easy steps to do. You can do one and go to work on something else and come back and finish that step and start another. And then go do something else again.
And I actually found these less intimidating to make, the dough part, than an actual standard pie (which I’ve only done once). I am always nervous at the thought of making homemade pie crust and struggling with the kneading and rolling. But when you are just making smaller versions … well it just seemed more doable to me.
And they turned out great!
Thank you to Momma’s Gotta Bake for sharing. | <urn:uuid:d2435c43-0e35-4419-ac8b-cb4ca908a8ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://messyjessyskitchen.com/tag/chefs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960189 | 828 | 1.5 | 2 |
Literature as Pure Mediality: Kafka and the Scene of Writing by Paul DeNicola.
Abstract: Literature as Pure Mediality: Kafka and the Scene of Writing by Paul DeNicola.
The utilization of an instrumental model which sees language itself as a means capable of bringing us towards what might be called fixed "meaning," is one of the greatest limitations in the human attempt to establish an authentic understanding of the dynamics of communication. An acceptance of language from this perspective constricts our ability to have an adequate confrontation, or more accurately, experience of/with an aesthetic work.
This text explores the impact of conceiving the literature of Franz Kafka in light of what will be referred to as "Pure Mediality" — an a—teleological approach that calls upon the thinking of Nietzsche, Deleuze, Guattari, Barthes, Adorno, and Derrida — among others. My reading of Kafka presents him as profoundly skeptical of instrumental language, very much influenced by the Vienna School language critics of the turn of the century. Kafka recognizes the inherent violence in any conceptual understanding of language, and therefore conceives of literature, or more precisely, literary or poetic language, as capable of an "un—judging" that deconstructs any previously "judged" version of the real. His literary work thus constitutes an embrace of infinite relation, suspension of judgment and radical undecidabilty.
Pure Mediality is not to be confused with an aesthetics of the autonomy of l'art pour l'art; rather it is suffused with an inherent ethical aspect insofar as it constitutes freedom from truth as the tyranny of univocity and teleology towards the truth of an a—topical, endlessly de—territorializing and metamorphosing world. As such, this truth is always already other in relation with itself, and thus ethical in its irreducible self—less—ness, its inherent openness to, and interrelatedness with, the other. It is the ethical structure of the "given" — not the anthropomorphically instrumentalized world — in which its interpenetrating parts exist "poetically," as metamorphic units. The text argues that Kafka's art of Pure Mediality is an art of alterity, constituting a "wounding" or "opening" by alterity that demands a response. It is this character of responsiveness to the other that implies ethical potentialities. | <urn:uuid:538301b3-0452-4601-960d-96edebed30f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.egs.edu/media/research-database/paul-denicola/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938194 | 500 | 1.585938 | 2 |
I had a discussion about the legalization of marijuana, and the person reminded me that marijuana is actually rather easy to grow, especially because once you buy a pack of seed, you no longer need to buy any more seeds, making it very hard to tax if legalization of personal growth happened.
So he and I formulated a possible idea specifically for growing: a growers license.
Restrictions on the license would be simple:
a) You do not have to have a reason to get the license. If it's for medical purposes, you note that only to get a discount.
b) The license itself is $10, but you also have to pay to grow a certain amount of plants. We came up $5 for every 5 plants or something like that (for a medical license, it'd be, like, maybe $3 for every 5 plants).
c) You must be at least 18 for the license. (My friend thought that you should have to get parental permission [from 18] until you turn 21, but I'm not so sure about this, especially since some 18-year-olds still declare independence these days, so it would suck if they, no longer being dependent on or living with their parents, still had to get permission to get a growers license.)
This would ensure the ability to tax the growing of marijuana, because what you're paying for the license and the number of plants you can grow would be that tax.
Obviously, there would have to be rules just to ensure societal pressures are met. This is what we came up with:
You suffer consequences for the following:
-Driving while stoned (it's a hell of a lot safer than driving drunk [I have yet to hear about a driving accident caused by marijuana], but it's still a hell of a lot more dangerous than driving sober)
-Missing a significant amount of time of work or school for no obvious reasons (that is, you miss something like two weeks straight and the best excuse you have is a cold)
These are the only two we thought of, really.
There's a 4-strike system:
1st offense: A week's suspension on the license
2nd offense: A month's suspension on the license and a fine
3rd offense: A year's suspension on the license and a larger fine
4th offense: Marijuana is now fully illegal for the offender; being caught with it after this would result in all the same punishments marijuana users deal with now
I should note that major companies could still sell their "marijuana cigarettes", even though, admittedly, being able to grow would cut their business on this.
For me, I'd rather grow my own then purchase hat comes from Big tobacco, so this is something I would not only be interested in, but if this license (or something similar) ever did come out, I would be one of the first to purchase it.
But what do y'all think? Any other offense you could imagine falling under the 4-strike system? Would you purchase the license? Is it too restrictive? Let me know your thoughts.
I only want to comment on this:
or no one will hire you if use cannabis etc..?
If marijuana is legalized, then just as drug tests don't test for alcohol or tobacco, they also would no longer test for marijuana, which means a company wouldn't [i]know[/i] whether or not you use it. Just don't be stupid and show up to the interview or your job stoned.
An yet they don't test for alcohol and tobacco, and can't fire you for using either of those.
All the conditions you speak of now were true during alcohol prohibition, as well. We ended that, and it barely took a year for the positive differences to show up. The capitalists will get over it when they realize that legalized pot is a hell of a lot more lucrative than criminalized pot.
You don't even have to tell them you drink or smoke tobacco! The drugs tests don't test for either, so unless you insist on taking smoke breaks or you somehow manage to bump into your boss's boss's boss's boss's boss (and the previous bosses) at a bar, how, exactly, would they know?
On the flip-side, not matter what you do, a company is going to know whether or not you smoke marijuana. Legalize it, and that's gone. It can't be tested for anymore.
As far as quality alcohol not being easy to produce at home... I never said it was. I'm not even sure where that came from. I have first-hand experience into how hard alcohol can be to produce at home.
As far as the power players, the main difference between the prohibition-era and today is mass communication. They didn't have TV, On Demand, or the internet.
And legalized cannabis would be a hell of a lot more lucrative. Marijuana is the black market's most lucrative product. In the black market, it outsells OTC and prescription drugs. What makes you think it wouldn't do the same when legalized?
You're not going to start talking about the New World Order, are you?...
Thats bullshit if they had a prescription for anything else that would normally get fired for taking without it then it wouldn't have been a problem.
I agree that is their problem... but instead of thinking about the money they couldn't make legalizing maybe they could think of the money that they would save not fighting it.... and I would be willing to pay $50 dollars for 5 plants... hell I would be willing to pay $50 a plant every year with a cap on 10 plants a cycle, from seed to fruiting.... which would be at least 2 times a year for an indoor garden... that would be the growers fee... you could also buy a permit to supply for other people, that would require them to by a users license and pay for the growers license with a labor fee. Not everyone would want to hassle with growing, or maybe they wanted better quality then they could grow themselves. I am just saying that the government is not doing it because of religion.
I'd probably support legalization, but I can't stand the idea of any government having to issue permits or licenses to grow or smoke it. I wouldn't have room to grow my own in my tiny apartment, and the way it works now is super convenient - cash for goods, zero paperwork involved. It's just very unfortunate that right now a lot of the money ends up in the hands of gangs and criminals. | <urn:uuid:7066550f-008d-4700-bf06-a64f9941cbe6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/legalizeit/forum/topics/an-idea-on-legal-growing?commentId=2182797%3AComment%3A1831677&xg_source=activity&groupId=2182797%3AGroup%3A236044 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978781 | 1,347 | 1.679688 | 2 |
DETROIT (AP) - General Motors is recalling nearly 27,000 Buicks and Cadillacs in the U.S. to fix a problem with the automatic transmissions.
The recall affects Buick LaCrosse full-size cars and Cadillac SRX crossover SUVs from the 2013 model year.
The company says a software problem can cause the transmissions to inadvertently shift into sport mode. That can unexpectedly override any slowing effect from the transmission, increasing the risk of a crash.
GM says no crashes or injuries have been reported.
GM will reprogram the transmission at no cost to the owners. The recall is expected to start March 28.
The Buicks were built from April 25, 2012 through March 6, 2013. The Cadillacs were built from May 29, 2012 through Feb. 18, 2013. | <urn:uuid:53b9d57a-34d5-4fee-9aff-45ecba131e3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wusa9.com/rss/article/249999/37/GM-Recalls-About-27K-Vehicles-To-Fix-Transmissions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956048 | 168 | 1.640625 | 2 |
I’m with Amanda on this one – abortion is, in fact, a moral good.
I’ll clarify a little bit. I don’t think that the people who make the “abortion is a tragedy” argument are always trying to undermine women’s rights. But there does seem to be a huge difference in how we discuss abortion and how we discuss all other medical procedures.
The “I think abortion should be legal but I would never have one” argument grates on my nerves. You don’t know what you would do if faced with an unwanted pregnancy. You don’t know how the circumstances of your life will change, and what will influence your future decisions. Saying that you think the little ladies should have the right but you are morally superior enough to never terminate a pregnancy is condescending and completely unhelpful to the abortion rights movement. It feeds into positioning the conversation around fetal rights rather than women’s rights. It supports the idea that abortion is more an issue of personal morality than one of medical access.
There’s a difference between the circumstances under which a woman goes in for an abortion and the abortion itself. The circumstances that lead to abortion are almost always bad ones. Unwanted pregnancy. Fetal abnormality. A wanted pregnancy gone wrong. Economic status. Rape. Incest. Intimate partner violence.
Abortion itself, though, can be a savior for women, and a positive choice. Abortion is a medical procedure and, like most medical procedures, is preempted by some sort of negative event. And yet the discourse around abortion is focused on how “tragic” it is. Is open-heart surgery “tragic”? Is an appendectomy “tragic”? Obviously the circumstances leading up to open-heart surgery and appendectomy are bad. But the procedures themselves, I would argue, are good responses to bad situations. As is abortion.
Some on the Pandagon thread argue that procedures like heart surgery are morally neutral. I don’t think so. Having access to that surgery in the first place is a moral good. Deciding to take the course of action that is best for you is a moral good. That’s true whether the issue is terminating a pregnancy or fighting cancer.
Choosing to have a baby is just as much of moral good. In contrast, I’m not so sure that being legally forced to carry a pregnancy to term is morally good at all (just as being legally forced to terminate a pregnancy would not be a moral good). We can’t evaluate the morality of an individual’s choices if they don’t have agency. Abortion rights offer individual autonomy to give birth or to not give birth. The right of an individual to make their own choice about whether or not they will offer their body in the support of another organism is a moral good. The individual making a choice which will be most beneficial to them is a moral good, whether that choice is abortion or birth or both (and most women who have abortions, it should be noted, make different choices at different times in their lives). The abortion procedure itself, like most other medical procedures, is a moral good. And like most other medical procedures, it is bad when done without consent, or when coercive. As is childbirth.
- If you love seeing babies in the park, punish rape survivors by Jill October 10, 2006
- Can You Be a Feminist for Life? by Jill August 15, 2005
- Shocker: Sam Brownback supports forced pregnancy for rape and incest survivors by Jill June 11, 2007
- “Progressive” McCain by Jill November 20, 2006
- Amnesty International supports human rights; conservative groups shocked. by Jill August 19, 2007 | <urn:uuid:0ddcb7c6-2be5-482a-98a7-089bcac64e08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/02/23/abortion-is-a-moral-good/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94559 | 783 | 1.84375 | 2 |
By Isaiah Abraham
November 27, 2012 — Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to disagree. The two countries were made to sign an agreement known as Cooperation Agreement two months ago in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the very agreement sponsored by the African Union. The agreement at the moment is running into trouble when the devil (s) emerged in the details. The Security Agreement in particular is overshadowing others in the process of implementation.
Each country has struck to its old school of finger pointing. The euphoria that was created as a result of the deal (Cooperation Agreement) is quickly turning to anxiety, apprehension and uncertainty. South Sudan is being denied oil transportation through the Republic of the Sudan as there are reports of aerial bombardments by Khartoum against South Sudan. The United Nations Mission on the ground is conspicuously in the hiding, while the African Union is lip tied on accusation and counter accusations between the two countries of the Sudan.
Chronically, the Sudanese leaders from day one have all along charged that South Sudan is supporting and harboring their dissidents and are arming rebels fighting their government. The world has also stack odds against Juba on this matter of SPLA-North; that Juba should severe its link with the rebels fighting Khartoum regime. The United States of America in (USA) in particular was critical, a confirmation of which that led to scandalous alleged apology written by President Salva to President Barrack Hussein Obama of the USA. South Sudan Information Minister has since attempted to undo the damage to no avail. What on earth could it be that a leader of another country will have to kneel down to another leader in another part of the world? South Sudanese conscience was wounded if the purported letter was indeed written and dispatch to Washington.
But the sequence of theories helps us understand where did things go wrong in the first for the Government of the Republic of South Sudan. Before any jumps to poke blame against the Republic of the Sudan for A and B matters and condemn it, there is an urged need to reexamine our approach toward Sudan and see whether there is somewhere we can find accommodation for our needed relationship. We should also be active solution oriented partner than struck in our comfortable closet of being dismissive of Khartoum. Therefore the charge that our country is supporting SPLM/A-North must not be thrown out of the window just because Sudanese were our enemies.
By the way, I don’t like this name call ‘South Sudan’, it confuses us with the Sudan. Who are the Sudanese and who aren’t. After July 9, 2011, I should have name my country something else. Nile or Azania remains my favorites name, not amorphous thing call ‘South Sudan’. Anyway we are straying.
Our differences with Khartoum were all about our political destiny and that was squarely achieved on July 9, 2011. It was the hardest part of it all! The Sudanese to their credit made a bold move to recognize us, and the rest of the world joined them. We parted ways in a manner that was decorum something that surprises many. We are no longer enemies with the Republic of the Sudan but just neighbors. They need us and we need them. Differences that are there are normal between and among neighbors. Neighbors quarrel and still maintain their socio-economic ties. Even Israel is doing the same with Egypt and others. We must not let SPLA-North spoil our relationship with the Sudan.
For the sake of peace between the two countries, time to ask the rebels fighting the North to stop their activities is now. Someone has alluded in writing something closer to what am saying here- the other day. We want borders open and movement of goods, people and services to flow. We need South Sudan and Sudan relations to thaw; we are historically one people divided by politics and ideologies.
The argument by South Sudan leaders that the matter of SPLM/A-North is an internal matter doesn’t hold water. It is not enough in itself. How about our charge that Dr. Lam Akol of the Democratic Change and Major David Yau Yau are supported by Khartoum, isn’t that not an internal affair of our country? Why do we call their differences with their rebels ‘internal affair’ and never call ours the same? We must choose between peace and war and not both. Peace is what our people want, not war.
Khartoum will continue to find a reason to disturb our hard won peace. They will go for feeble hearted ones and apologists like Dr. Lam to press their case against us. Khartoum might not be realistic in their demand on disarmament of their dissidents, but we aren’t being truthful . One of the Azania’s (South Sudan) strategic goal is peace and development so to improve the living standards of our people. Our leaders must demonstrate to Khartoum their willingness to open a new chapter, so for our people to enjoy peace and development after ages of neglect.
Denying must be flavored. South Sudan isn’t doing its diplomatic right. Khartoum has stolen the show there. Everything is upside down as we chase after rotten image. The United Nations Mission in our land is breathing fire on our necks. They are everywhere wiring nasty things against us. When it comes to issues like the bombardment of South Sudan unfortunately they are nowhere and when it comes to negativity on anything against South Sudan they in hand to report to New York and Brussels. But also the United Nations Human Right Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) decried one moment when they spotted soldiers of Revolutionary Forces in Yida Camp. No single leader from South Sudan who came out to deny or refute what the UNHCR was saying, a proof that something is indeed going on right there.
Our leadership in Juba should not live the lie that the world doesn’t know who arms rebels fighting Khartoum. UN Mission is informing them about every activity in our land. Moreover Khartoum has their own informers, Southerners whose loyalty is divided, especially those on the payroll of Khartoum, those that claim to be opposition groups but they aren’t. The Democratic Change of Lam Akol is on top of things. We have also many Northerners around that are doing the dirty job against the Republic of South Sudan. What is more or new?
May be there is no hard proof that Juba is in indeed supporting rebels, but the simple truth that we never severed our link with the SPLA-North more radically keeps some doubt hanging that South Sudan is backing rebels fighting the regime in Khartoum. It will be painful to do just that radical however; these people (Nuba Mountain, Fur, Masalit, Zangawa, Funj etc) are closely associated with South Sudan. We will have them on matters of peace and development. The world should have helped them in their political predicament.
But we are also not any better; we ought to talk to Northern rebels to join the march for peace and stop using our territory as spring board to topple our neighbor. We can go further to pledge material support for their development and not guns and ammunitions (if that is the case). Through force a change will not be meaningful in Khartoum, after all rebels have no unified agenda for change there. Dr. Khalil Ibrahim outlook was more unifying than our current tribal warlords. South Sudan would have been available then if they had joined our struggle to effect change in Khartoum. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) particularly after independence of South Sudan, we have evolved into a different entity.
As for Khartoum, they must show maturity and patience against the Republic of South Sudan. They got to kick out Lam Akol and stop supporting David Yau Yau or any other clandestine groups. Time for harmony is here. They got to respect the agreement they have signed with the Republic of South Sudan. They should cease fire on the air against innocent civilians. Their rebels aren’t Southerners and our people can’t die again like that. They should allow oil production to resume and stop their rogue media from inflammatory remarks against South Sudan leaders or the ruling political party (the SPLM). The President of our Republic however must not join Khartoum belligerency path, but go for peace where he may find it. I was glad that he wanted to pursue it, and if that is the case then he should talk less and work hard for it. If Juba is wrong Khartoum must not go wrong also.
Isaiah Abraham writes from Juba; Isaiah_abraham@yahoo.co.uk | <urn:uuid:c503ef18-0142-4d49-81bb-f7fb093966f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=44657 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969663 | 1,805 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Animator Glen Keane had been working on Disney films for about a decade when he became part of an unexpected “golden age,” a revived respect for the Mouse House’s animated movies, a widespread admiration the studio hadn’t enjoyed for decades. The year was 1987, The Little Mermaid was about to win over audiences, and Keane was asked to create the lead male character for an upcoming project called Beauty and the Beast. Of course, that film would set new standards at the time, and earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
For Beauty and the Beast‘s 20th anniversary, Disney has just released a Diamond Edition of the movie, including the first-ever Blu-ray version. To celebrate, Keane has been reminiscing about his creation and we joined him one evening.
When Glen Keane tells his behind-the-scenes tales, he reminds fans that Beauty and the Beast was a story Walt Disney himself wanted to bring to the screen—and couldn’t. Keane recalls a conversation with the late Joe Grant, the man who created the witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and worked on Beauty at the age of 79.
“I said, ‘Did you already work on Beauty and the Beast?’ explains Keane. “He (Grant) said, ‘Oh yes. We tried to crack that nut but it was just too difficult. I mean the whole story just takes place in one dining room, where the Beast asks Belle every night if she’d marry him. And there’s just not a lot of story in that. And we tried to figure it out. Finally we just put it on the shelf.’”
When it was time for Keane and team to take the idea back off the shelf, they had plenty of motivation, fresh ideas, and a creative resource Keane can’t say enough about: Howard Ashman, the composer who won two Oscars with co-writer Alan Menken before dying of AIDS at age 40.
“This story … really needed Howard Ashman in a big way,” admits Keane. “There is something about (his) approach to breaking something down musically and describing story … that really started to give us a structure.”
In fact, the creators of the film’s famed ballroom dance scene felt it wasn’t good enough—until Ashman added his work. “There was a feeling like the movie wasn’t working. ‘We haven’t earned this moment for Belle and Beast to fall in love. It feels like we’re forcing it. Feels like the artist’s hand is sort of making people believe this, trying desperately, but it’s not working.’”
Then Ashman added the song “Something There.” And something changed. “I think (it) really turned the corner for us,” explains Keane. “It was really cool just to see how you suddenly believed the story after that. Before that song was written, you didn’t.”
But long before the Beauty and the Beast team got hung up on story issues, Keane had a big question to answer: What should the Beast look like? After loads of research, artistic exercises, and the drive to draw the “definitive” Beast, here’s what Keane told himself about his lead:
• He can’t look like an alien; he has to look like a creature that’s actually from this Earth
• He has to be an appealing character, but he has to be frightening
• People have to believe that Belle would fall in love with him
There was plenty of trial-and-error, and sketches from other artists, but no luck. “Nothing seemed to be clicking for me,” says Keane. “If you would come into my office, you would see all sorts of photos on the walls of, like, a gorilla. What is it about that gorilla that I love?”
Keane realized it was the gorilla’s brow, specifically, and he began identifying aspects of particular animals that meant something to him. And they all became part of The Beast.
“Bruce Johnson, one of the animators working with me, said, ‘So Glen, what’s the Beast going to look like?’” recalls Keane, six months into his drawings at that point. “I said, ‘I don’t know, Bruce,’ and I grabbed the sheet of paper and started drawing… I went through all these different elements.”
“And suddenly it was like, ‘That’s him. That’s the Beast. That’s what he looks like.’” Keane had instantly, with a few strokes of inspiration, found his character.
In the decade that followed Beauty and the Beast, Disney Animation achieved a level of recognition last experienced in a bygone era. “There was quite a while there it felt like the Golden Age was over and we missed it,” says Keane. “The Little Mermaid opened that door up for us. And we realized, wow, this really can happen for us too.”
“We were desperately trying to just get the (film) so that it would look good so people didn’t throw tomatoes at us. And then to see how it all came together, that’s what was amazing. To realize how all of these elements together just coalesce towards the end of the picture, and there it was.”
And a new era began. Starting with Beauty and the Beast, Disney’s animated theatrical features won nine Oscars in the 1990s, and were nominated for six more. Nearly all of those were focused on music, but Beauty and the Beast helped establish that the modern Disney film could be recognized by the critical world.
When it’s suggested to Keane that his team initiated a “new Golden Age,” his reply is typical, part pride, part perfection: “Yes. Yes, it was. Now we want another one.”
(Note: Glen Keane is a directing animator for the upcoming Disney film Tangled, a take on the Rapunzel story coming November 24.)
Images courtesy Disney | <urn:uuid:47ce3f65-1893-41b5-b5ad-d7344899d29a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://meetinthelobby.com/building-a-beast-interview-with-disney-animator-glen-keane.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976712 | 1,329 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Rules of the Road
This is a planet where we reap what we sow. By knowing what we want to harvest in our lives (the dreams we want to see come true) and by planting the seeds at the appropriate time, we can manifest the dreams of our heart. This book teaches you how to determine the most powerful timing for making wishes using the magic released during potent astrological cycles. By looking up the New Moon for each month, you will be able to see the exact date and time, as well as the sign it’s in (see the “What to Wish for When the New Moon Is in Each Sign” section, page 47). New Moon tables through the year 2050 begin on page 35.
Wishes don’t always come to full fruition in the approximate twenty-nine-and-a-half-day cycle between New Moons, but once the seeds are planted, they will come true in the months ahead. Experience has shown me that wishes can be made up to forty-eight hours after the exact time of the New Moon; however, the most potent time is within the first eight hours.
DO write down your wish list within eight hours following the exact time of the New Moon, whenever possible.
For New Moon Power Wishes to come true they must be handwritten on paper, not typed on a typewriter or a computer. I have no idea why this is important, but years of experience with wishes have shown me what does and doesn’t work.
The wording of the wishes is also very important — they must be clearly stated so that the “feeling” behind the wishes comes though the words. Use your intuition. If, after you have written a wish, it feels “right” to you and evokes feelings of harmony and happiness, your wish is “on target.” However, if it doesn’t “feel right,” I would suggest changing the wording or even waiting until a different time to make that particular wish.
You may make a maximum of ten wishes on each Power Day. You may make less than ten, but it is important not to exceed this number, as it would disperse the energy too much for your individual wishes to have the power they need to come true. The more wishes, the more dispersed the energy becomes. It is, however, important to make more than one wish to activate the energy of the day, even if your second and third wishes involve the same issue. Perhaps the most potent method is to make several wishes in one or two areas where you want to see some major shifts and progress, approaching each issue from several different directions (see the “Ongoing Wishes” section for more explanation, page 213).
As the energy of each month changes, and as your own life progresses and your areas of focus change, you may find that on some Power Days you are inclined to focus on shifting one or two areas very strongly. In other months it may seem more appropriate to wish for changes and improvement in diverse areas of your life.
Another important factor is to use every New Moon Power Day to make wishes. Depending on your individual astrology chart, some Power Days will be extremely potent for you personally, and others will operate to a lesser extent. This is because your specific astrology chart isn’t mathematically duplicated for over twenty-five thousand years, due to the planets’ traveling at different speeds around the Sun. Sometimes, due to the changing planetary alignment, the monthly Moon cycle will more vigorously trigger your individual wiring than at other times. Therefore, it is critical to use every Power Day, so as not to miss those that are the most powerful for you.
Clients often ask me what to do with their wish lists after writing them down, and I tell them to do whatever they like, short of throwing them away. I have one client who puts her wish list under her mattress — I don’t know why, but if it feels right to her, it can’t hurt. Wishes don’t operate like affirmations, so after you’ve written them down you never have to see the list again — the outcome will still occur. But some people like to read their wish lists every morning. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable.
Personally, at the end of each Power Period I date my list and put it away and don’t look at it again unless a series of things begins to unfold that seems strange to me (“What’s that all about? That’s not a normal pattern in my life...”), and then I’ll go back to my wish list and realize: “Aha! That had to happen in order for wish number eight to come true!” You don’t have to do anything special with your list for your wishes to come true, but don’t resist the new you that begins to emerge and express itself in response to the wishes you have made!
DO write your wishes down by hand each month. DO NOT write more than ten wishes on any one Power Day. DO write more than one wish on each Power Day. DO date and keep your wish lists.
On each of the New Moon days listed, not only do you have the power to make wishes that will come true in the days or months ahead, but also the wisdom to make “proper” wishes: wishes that, when they come true, will bring you true joy. So pay attention to your inner feelings and trust them. After writing down each wish, check to see how you feel inside. If you feel happy and peaceful, then you’re on the right track. If you feel troubled or uncertain, it would be best to erase that wish until a later time.
The ideas that come to you on these days will not be based on linear thinking, the past, your subconscious, or what others say you should have in order to be happy. The Angels hover close to the Earth during these time periods, and if you listen to your intuitive feelings with an open and innocent mind, on this day ideas about what will truly make you happy will come to you. It’s an extraordinary day!
DO trust yourself in writing down those wishes that truly make you feel harmonious on the exact day of the New Moon.
The Role of Destiny
All wishes, when made repeatedly over an extended period of time, will come true — unless a wish is in direct conflict with your destiny. What you yearn for in your heart IS your destiny and worthy of pursuit. If a wish blatantly doesn’t come true, then it may be because it was a wish that didn’t take into account the good of everyone involved, perhaps including your own best overall interests.
The impulse to ardently wish for something that goes against one’s destiny is extremely rare, and I have seen it occur only one time. I had a client who was writing a book on working with juveniles to increase their self-confidence in saying no to drugs. The book was an outgrowth of a successful program he had developed in the local schools. We made wishes together on a very potent Power Day: that the book be published by a reputable publisher, that it receive national acclaim, and that it lead to seminars and public-speaking opportunities for him to promote his ideas. All of the wishes came true; his ideas for helping kids spread into other school systems and he became a public figure in his field. This client, who was initially a skeptic, became an ardent believer in the power of wishing!
The same man returned to me some months later for wishes involving a new book he wanted to write on male-female relationships. This time his motive was different — now he wanted to be famous with the general public, become rich, and be on national talk shows. We made all of the appropriate wishes, and this time none of it came true. Perhaps a different slant would have been more productive: i.e., that he be filled with right ideas about male/female relationships that would truly benefit others and effectively answer a public need. Or perhaps the book itself went against his destiny.
As it happened, he was called to help reorganize a rape prevention program, which was a huge success and had a major impact. He is currently developing a national training program for therapists on treating domestic violence, and again, his work is being hailed and he is influencing a large number of people in a very crucial area. Perhaps in the universal scheme of things, his talents were needed in this specific area and the book on relationships would have kept him from doing this important work.
DO trust your own process. The Universe wants you to be happy. If a wish doesn’t come true immediately, keep repeating it, or watch to see what unexpected benefit comes in its place.
Wishes Involving Others
You can’t make wishes that will affect the behavior or self-determination of another — experience has shown me that it simply doesn’t work. However, you can make wishes for changes in your own behavior relative to that person that will open the way for a change in them. For example, wishes like: “I want Steve to fall in love with me” are not likely to come true. However, you can say: “I want to easily find myself saying the right words to Steve that evoke feelings of love in our relationship”; or “I want total clarity in my relationship with Steve, leading to my taking those steps that result in a happy, loving relationship”; or “I want all inner resistance to experiencing happiness and love in my relationship with Steve easily lifted from me.”
If the other person is unavailable due to an involvement in another relationship, then it would be more appropriate to take a deeper look at what it is you actually want, rather than limiting your focus to that particular person. Are you looking for a romance, a life partner, a marriage? Are you looking for a person you are intensely attracted to for a fling ... or for the purposes of building a stable family base? Once you are clear about what it is you would actually like to experience, then you can make wishes drawing a person to you who is available and wants the same kind of relationship. For example: “I want to easily attract, recognize, and begin a happy, healthy romantic relationship with the right man (woman) for me”; or “I want to easily attract the right marriage partner for me, someone who also wants a home and children, with whom I can build a stable, happy relationship.” (For more wishes dealing with romance and marriage, see the sample wishes in the “Ongoing Wishes” section, pages 279 and 259).
If you want to make wishes pertaining to a child or a family member whom you want to help, the rule remains the same. Regardless of how altruistic your motive, it doesn’t work to make wishes for other people. However, you can make wishes to alter your own behavior in order to affect in a positive way the person you are concerned about. For example, the wish “I want Johnny to do his homework and get good grades” will not work. But the wishes “I want to easily find myself saying the right words to Johnny that result in his doing his homework and improving his grades in a happy way,” or “I want total clarity, correctly seeing how I can best support Johnny in getting better grades,” will work because they are wishes for altering your own behavior and perspective.
The wishes “I want my children to be happy” or “I want my daughter’s marriage to improve” will not work. Instead make wishes like “I want to easily find myself saying the right words to my children that help to increase their happiness”; or “I want to be an open channel, providing fresh, workable ideas to my daughter that will help her improve her marriage”; or “I want right ideas to occur to me to share with my daughter that will result in her improving her marriage.”
If you are interested in helping a loved one with their health, you might make wishes like “I want to easily find myself being a channel through which information is provided that will help Betty with her health”; or “I want to act as a vehicle for healing energy for my son, Kenneth.” The idea is to open yourself to be a channel for the goodness you seek for others.
DO NOT make wishes for other people. It won’t work.
DO make wishes shifting YOUR approach to other people whom you want to influence.
Spring Equinox Treasure Maps
Another exciting way to use the power of astrological timing to help make our wishes come true was pioneered by fellow astrologer Buzz Meyers. His idea was to use the visual potency of a Treasure Map (a collage) in combination with the Spring Equinox — the first day of Spring — a traditional time of new beginnings! Use the time of the New Moon following the Spring Equinox for creating your Map. You can determine that special day each year by locating the date of the New Moon in Aries (New Moon tables are on pages 35-45.
For your Treasure Map, you will need to have the following materials ready in advance: magazines containing pictures of the kinds of events or experiences you would like to have in your life; scissors; glue sticks (paste or rubber cement); and a poster board (the standard 22” x 28” is recommended). Have your materials ready, but for maximum success, the process of creating your Treasure Map (including the selection of the pictures) must not begin until the New Moon in Aries actually occurs.
At the appropriate time, leaf through the magazines and cut out all pictures, photos, or headlines that attract you and set them aside. When you are ready, begin to paste the images and headlines onto the poster board. There are no “rules” for how your Map should be laid out, only that it be filled with images and headlines that feel happy to you and are in alignment with what you would like to manifest in the year ahead. You may find it natural to put different areas of life on different parts of the board. For example: the pictures of what you would like to occur in your love life on the upper left section; your work desires on the upper right corner, etc. OR, you may prefer to paste the images in a less structured, more flowing way on your Map. Let your subconscious mind, your intuition, and your heart guide you.
As you are creating your Treasure Map, it’s fine to return to the magazines for more images or headlines. In the moment of creative choice, you may find you select images that you hadn’t anticipated as particularly important to you. Of course, the dreams you have wanted for a long time should also be represented on your Map. Feel free to type out your own headlines or draw your own images on your Treasure Map.
Excerpted from New Moon Astrology by Jan Spiller. Copyright © 2001 by Jan Spiller. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. | <urn:uuid:02ee4452-5108-4d9c-a7c4-d35ef2b1dea5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.randomhouse.com/book/171163/new-moon-astrology-by-jan-spiller/ebook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964334 | 3,187 | 1.578125 | 2 |
FDLE Announces Lowest Crime Rate in 41 Years
Florida’s crime rate dropped 0.8 percent last year compared to 2010, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced today.
The 2011 Annual Uniform Crime Report released Monday indicates that crime is at its lowest rate in 41 years. The total number of crimes dropped 0.1 percent last year. The number of violent crimes (murder, forcible sex offenses, robbery and aggravated assault) was down by 3.7 percent.
“While it is good news that Florida’s crime rate is at a 41-year low, we must continue to remember that each crime represents a victim whose rights must be protected,” said Governor Rick Scott. “On behalf of all Floridians and visitors to our state, I applaud the dedication and hard work of our law enforcement officers who risk their lives every day to make our state safer and our communities more secure.”
The report showed a 0.2 percent decrease in the number of murders, a 0.1 percent decrease in forcible sex offenses, a 1.8 percent decrease in robberies and a 5 percent drop in aggravated assault.
“Overall, the 2011 Uniform Crime Report is good news,” said Commissioner Gerald Bailey. “Since FDLE began tracking crime statistics in 1971, citizens are safer today than any time in the last four decades.”
According to the report, non-violent crime (burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft) increased 0.4 percent. Burglary and larceny each rose 0.7 percent. The number of motor vehicle thefts decreased by 4.4 percent. | <urn:uuid:381f444a-5663-4bf1-84e5-eb5db5ca3126> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westorlandonews.com/2012/04/30/fdle-announces-lowest-crime-rate-in-41-years/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936436 | 341 | 1.75 | 2 |
Excerpts from Sesshu Foster Interviews
"For years - maybe decades - I felt that I'd been avoiding the form of the prose poem because I felt that it was middle-of-the-road: not fiction and not poetry. But I have always been interested in it because I'm a continual reader and writer of both fiction and poetry. The prose poem was a voice that kept calling. So I decided to use this form for CTFM."
"Prose poems allow me to use a voice and voices to structure lines and language. Rather than have paragraphs and chapters in prose or lines, phrases and diction in poetry, I could work all the voices more directly. I could have a variety of voices, a community of voices. This is important. because CTFMs poems take on the voices of people I knew growing up (although) some are fictionalized because I didn't want a portrait gallery. I wanted to create something like a human landscape."
"CTFM has a personal basis. [. . .] I have a background that I often have had to simplify for people. When people first meet me, they ask, 'Who are you? What's your background?' I have a white Dad and Nisei mom and grew up in a Chicano barrio. I grew up with Asians, Chicanos and people with mixed heritage - but I've always had to simplify for people who come from outside that experience."
"I've been writing for as long as I can remember. My first publication was in a Little Tokyo newspaper published by activists called Gidra (a Japanese cartoon of monster). Gidra was published by community activists fighting the urban renewal of Little Tokyo in which Japanese capital pushed the Issei (first generation Japanese immigrants) out of Little Tokyo. The New Otani Hotel replaced buildings where Issei retirees lived. And these activists' newspaper was where I was first published. And so that was what I knew as I grew up. On the one hand, I grew up with the Vietnam War and its associations, the continual turmoil in the country; on the other hand, I grew up in a neighborhood where activists were dealing with community issues. In East L.A., there were student activists protesting the wars, dealing with drug dealers and trying to stop gang killing."
"And because I grew up in a Chicano barrio, part of my coming of age was the Chicano movement, reflecting a change in consciousness among the community. The Chicano movement came in part from anti-Vietnam activism. The 1970 Chicano Moratorium mobilized thousands of people in the streets protesting and calling for an end to the draft. Because it was primarily the poor who were being drafted, blacks and Chicanos were dying disproportionately in Vietnam versus their percentage of the U.S. population. The protesters were attacked by sheriffs and three people were killed, including a Chicano journalist, Ruben Salazar. Vietnam provided a main impetus and example to the anti-war activists. In CTMF, there is a deliberate blurring of which war is being addressed by some of the poems - whether Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, urban renewal or community-related wars - because many activists became involved with one war and then another, right on up to the Gulf War."
"There was a nationalism going an at the time. The Chicano movement was founded on the idea that Southwestern United States was part of Mexico that was taken over by the U.S. and so should constitute its own separate nation. Blacks were calling for Black Power and Black Liberation."
"East L.A. was right across the river from Little Tokyo - I went back and forth; I had family and friends in both places. But because there was a nationalism going on at the time, there were feelings of exclusiveness and the fact that I was going back and forth bothered some of the people I knew. But I could never not deal with people just because they were of different ethnicities. I could never deal with turning Little Tokyo into a Bosnia, its own enclave."
From Eileen Tabios, Black Lightening: Poetry-in-Progress. Asian American Writers Workshop / Temple University Press, 1998.
"I'm interested in voices - especially in the rhythm of the spoken language. To me, that's a kind of poetry; that's an important part of this aesthetic of how working people talk.
[. . . .]
There are all kinds of combinations of spoken dialect and tones of writing; therell be language that's obviously media-driven language, journalistic kind of language, fictional or literary kinds of description mixed in with spoken expression. I was looking at the juxtaposition and interplay of all these different types of language in CTFM.
One of the things that interests me is that something is happening with those kinds of tones. Definitely there's a recycling of combined tones of language throughout all the (prose poems). I feel that's reflective of an urban experience, that we're continually enveloped in media-driven language and street expressions and workplace discourse. We're continually thinking on all these levels, and I feel like one of the ways my writing can evoke the city is by evoking these rhythms. Those kinds of technical things, that's what I like to do when I'm writing. If there aren't interesting technical questions happening all the time when I write, I get bored."
From an Interview with Amy Uyematsu, in disOrient Journalzine (Volume 5, 1997).
Return to Sesshu Foster | <urn:uuid:43b04dfb-fd09-42bb-b549-c009f6436859> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/foster/interviews.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980975 | 1,138 | 1.734375 | 2 |
After Sister Williams read the announcements during our Sunday morning worship services, she made a plea to the congregation soliciting prayer and support for a church member who lost all of her possessions in a weekend house fire. Everything she worked for went up in horrific flames within a matter of minutes. To add insult to injury, she was informed that the job she worked on for the past eighteen years was being eliminated. I couldn’t imagine what my emotional or psychological state would be if I were in her shoes.
Oddly, I began recalling excerpts of media reports from past devastations. I felt saddened by the floods along the gulf coast of the United States, the mud slides and wild fires in the West, twisters hitting the Midwest, earthquakes and the Tsunami shattering life in India and Asia. Thousands of people watched as their homes and life possessions were swallowed up, washed, burned or blown away. In practically all of these cases, people fled their homes with just the clothes on their backs. Often, there was not enough time to go through and pick out the things they wanted to take with them.
Generally “home” represents a place of familiarity, comfort and safety that you yearn to return to when you’re away. Even if you live alone, there are elements of things you love and cherish displayed all around, giving you a warm and fuzzy feeling. If the home where you grew up brings back sad and unhealthy emotions, you now have the ability to rise above the people and things that caused the pain and alienation.
Suddenly, the choir shattered my reminiscing moment with the song “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.” As they sang the second verse and refrain, amazingly this song was appropriate for the adversity our church sister and other members of the congregation were experiencing:
We are often destitute of the things that life demands,
Want of food and want of shelter, thirsty hills and barren lands;
We are trusting in the Lord, and according to God’s Word,
We will understand it better by and by.
By and by, when the morning comes,
When the saints of God are gathered home,
We’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome,
For we’ll understand it better by and by.
All too often we take for granted the creature comfort of our homes. We collect stuff year after year, believing that “things” make a house a home. However, if there’s no heart in a house, warmth, sentimentality and comfort will remain absent from it ever becoming our humble abode.
Everyone’s current circumstances, good and bad, are not permanent. I believe our heavenly home will be an authentic place of comfort, rest and security. As long as our heart is grounded on the promises of God, we will never have to worry about being displaced or loosing everything we own.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
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JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel. | <urn:uuid:dfbe822b-3de5-4fce-88c1-c4b233303e01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.faithwriters.com/wc-article-level3-previous.php?id=5644 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964362 | 654 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Child Care Industry
|About this Item||Subjects||Child Care; Wage Rises
||Speakers||West The Hon Ian
||Business||Adjournment, Division, Motion
The Hon. IAN WEST [4.03 p.m.]: Child care industry workers are some of the least well-paid and least appreciated employees in Australia despite the important, fundamental and essential work they do. They work in an industry where publicly funded and private operators compete to provide child care for the many families who cannot survive without this important service. Providing quality child care requires trained staff who deserve proper remuneration. Unfortunately many private providers deem it unnecessary to employ trained child care workers or to remunerate them appropriately. ABC Learning Centres, for example, is a large private child care provider that recently merged with another large provider called Peppercorn.
The new entity will be worth more than $700 million and will control 895 day care services across Australia. This situation gives Eddie Groves, the wealthy owner of ABC Learning Centres, control of 90 per cent of long day care places in Western Australia, 80 per cent in South Australia and 60 per cent in Queensland. Such a competitive advantage is of concern to other providers, to consumers, and to employees of those child care centres. The Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union [LHMU] has referred this issue to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. It certainly seems unfair that Michael Gordon, the head of Peppercorn, will get an incredible payout of $190 million as a result of the merger. That figure compares with the annual earnings of a child care worker of around $25,000 a year, or hourly rates of between $12.70 and $16.50 for those with a Diploma in Child Care, which takes from two to four years to obtain.
All the while ABC Learning Centres has used Australian workplace agreements to hold down wages and conditions to an obscenely low level. It claimed in the Industrial Commission that costs meant that it could not agree to a pay rise. This so-called incapacity to pay is outrageous given the importance of the care of children in the early years of life and given the huge dollar returns the child care centres report. Last year, for example, the profit of ABC Learning Centres increased by 77 per cent to $21.4 million and Peppercorn's increased by 193 per cent to $116 million. What must not be forgotten is the corporate subsidies that are involved in the industry where taxpayers money goes directly into the corporate pockets of the organisations. As LHMU industrial officer Sue Bellino pointed out about many private child care centre owners:
These are people in no-loss situations. They have been made into multimillionaires by taxpayers who heavily subsidise their businesses but they will not share their wealth with childcare workers who actually provide the services. The average childcare worker earns around $25,000. These are poverty level wages being paid by taxpayer-funded millionaires.
We have been continually encouraged by the Howard Government over the last nine years to be responsible citizens and accord with the idea of mutual obligation. It is time that applied not only to Centrelink clients but to the corporate elite, who hold in their hands the future lives of many working people. The reality is that private child care operators know they have an incredibly large market: as many as three million working Australians are parents of young children and nearly 800,000 children are in child care. The cost of child care in the past two years has risen by 32 per cent, about six times the increase in the child care benefit over that period.
Even the Federal Minister, Larry Anthony, admits that a low-income family is facing gap fees of $57 per week for one child in centre-based long day care. That adds up to $2,736 per child annually. The child care benefit remains too low, the waiting lists are impossibly long and the quality of child care is under threat from many operators who compromise facilities and expertise in the name of making the almighty dollar. According to the union, some of these private centres have to report an annual profit of at least $100,000. The State Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, has done the best she can in this area. Recently she successfully lobbied for a review of the Federal Government child care benefit. Through Minister Tebbutt's work a budget of $99.1 million was allocated to children's services from the Department of Community Services budget this year. That is a major contribution from New South Wales and currently it is not being properly supported by the Federal Government. [Time expired.]
Question—That this House do now adjourn—put.
The House divided. | <urn:uuid:11457ed7-357c-4522-b219-0565de2fd337> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LC20040923043?open&refNavID=HA8_1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95576 | 964 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Of all the websites used by political journalists, one is the endless source of frustration and angst: that of the Electoral Commission. This is the treasure trove with all the donations and loans made to every political party in Britain over the last decade or so. There are updates every three months on all new financial gifts made to the political world.
I have worked out how to navigate the site to find out who has given donations to which party – but only by calling the EC’s press office and asking for guidance some time ago. A member of the public wanting to find out these statistics faces a gruelling journey through the commission’s online maze.
If you go to the Electoral Commission site you can see what looks like an open and transparent breakdown of the Q2 donation figures, published yesterday. “Latest donations and borrowing figures” is up in highlights at the top of the page. So far so good.
That leads you to a summary of trends, total donation numbers and so on. All very useful. But how do you find out which individuals have given money to a certain party, for example Labour?
First you have to go down the right hand column of the main page until you find a tiny heading: “finance of parties”.
That takes you to a different page full of sprawling red and blue text. Click here on “search the PEF online registers”.
This takes you to a new page, which has a blue box on the top left with half a dozen options. One of these – probably “advanced donations search” – is your Holy Grail.
But it is not plain sailing now that you are on the final page. Here you are presented with a drop box of four options. Instead of clicking the one you want (political parties) you have to delete other three; third parties, regulated donee, permitted participant. Frustrated yet?
There is then a similar process for “entity name”. But this time there are hundreds of parties, including the Pensioners Party, the Pirate Party, the Old Read more | <urn:uuid:da494915-0f06-4d38-a611-54c7f6b73213> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/tag/electoral-commission/ | 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 | 0.936935 | 432 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Did you know?
Did You Know? Adults and Communities is making it personal
We provide services that help adults in Birmingham to live as independently as they can and to be part of their local community. We support people to live the life they choose.
New CQC Monitoring Standards
The Care Quality Commision (CQC) have stopped conducting annual performance assessments of social care services. Now we have to demonstrate locally to the people of Birmingham how we are improving outcomes for those who require care and support. We will do this by publishing annual local performance accounts.
From 1 April 2011 we assess and report on our performance using the four quality statements (domains) in the new Adult Social Care Outcomes Framework.
The four domains are:
- Enhancing quality of life for people with care and support needs
- Delaying and reducing the need for care and support
- Ensuring that people have a positive experience of care and support
- Safeguarding adults whose circumstances make them vulnerable and protecting them from harm.
CQC will continue to monitor standards of quality and safety in care homes, home care services and the Shared Lives scheme that we provide. It will also carry out adhoc inspections of social care services if concerns are raised about the quality of service provision.
A more personal approach to care
People in Birmingham who use our services are asking for more choice and control over the type of care they get, when they get it, who provides it and how it is managed.
We have been listening to you, and by changing the way we support you to get your care, we are able to give you more independence, choice and control in your life.
This approach to adult social care is called personalisation and is in line with the Government’s commitment to transforming adult social care. You can find out more about this in the Department of Health document Putting people first: a shared vision and commitment to the transformation of adult social care. (published 2007) and on the Putting People First website.
Self-directed support is part of personalisation, and is a new way of providing social care which puts you in control.
Self-directed support means you can choose how you want to manage your care services, giving you more control over the social care support you can get. In this way, we are providing a much more personal approach to adult care services.
How do I get help from Adults and Communities?
You may need help in your day-to-day life because you, or someone you care for:
- is vulnerable due to old age
- has a physical disability
- has a learning disability
- has a mental health difficulty
- is affected by HIV
- is affected by drug or substance misuse.
If you have difficulty with living independently, we can support you with:
- advice and information about services available to all adults, such as leisure, transport, health and education
- advice and support to help you live as independently as possible in your own home. We may be able to provide you with equipment to prevent you having a fall and keep you safe
- personal care, for example help to wash, shower, have a bath, dress, use the toilet and eat meals.
To find out if you, or someone you care for, is eligible for our services, we will need to talk to you and assess your social care needs. You can ask us for an assessment by contacting the relevant service on the adult social care services page.
For more about Did You Know? you can see three short films on YouTube about people in Birmingham who are being helped or supported by Adults and Communities.
Adult Care in Brum
Putting you in touch with organisations that can help you.
Putting People First
Information about Transforming Adult Social Care | <urn:uuid:55409f37-7297-496a-ae05-5967c69b60d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://birmingham.gov.uk/cs/Satellite?c=Page&childpagename=Adults-and-Communities-General%2FPageLayout&cid=1223328602486&pagename=BCC%2FCommon%2FWrapper%2FInlineWrapper&rendermode=liv%2CQ%C3%83%C2%A8e | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960024 | 776 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The letter written by Mr. Kane from Pine is an insult to every American serving in Iraq and every Jew.
He's either too young to know what went on during Hitler's time in power, or very sadly misinformed. Remarks such as his are so easily leveled, and show such ignorance. He evidently hasn't talked to very many American soldiers who've voluntarily served in Iraq, who have come home thankful for the opportunity to help the Iraqi people and who have been praised by the majority of Iraqis.
He sounds more like the people from Iran and North Korea who are now interested in blowing us and everyone off the face of the earth with nuclear weapons.
The American people haven't been silent either -- as he seemed to think. We were at war with Iraq last year when President Bush was handily re-elected. No one has said that what President Bush has done has been perfect, but time will prove him to be one of the great leaders and presidents.
Mr. Kane, I would hope you would apologize for your remarks comparing anything we've done to Hitler atrocities.
Pamela Newton, Payson | <urn:uuid:2b7db216-13a8-4144-8ccc-f97584f83bb4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2005/dec/26/nazi_comparison_is/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991241 | 227 | 1.523438 | 2 |
You are here
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility -- "a national non-profit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and other professionals dedicated to upholding environmental laws and values" -- is charging the National Park Service with stalling on a promised review of a creationist book sold at the bookstores at Grand Canyon National Park.
The historian of creationism Ronald L. Numbers was interviewed (free site pass required) by Salon (January 2, 2007). His interviewer, Steve Paulson, summarizes: "Numbers says much of what we think about anti-evolutionism is wrong. For one thing, it's hardly a monolithic movement. There are, in fact, fierce battles between creationists of different stripes.
After Selman v. Cobb County, the case that challenged the constitutionality of a textbook warning sticker that described evolution as "a theory, not a fact," was remanded to the trial court, the legal team for the plaintiffs recruited three expert witnesses for the possible retrial: McGill University's Brian Alters and Brown University's Kenneth R. Miller, both of whom served as expert witnesses in Kitzmiller v. Dover, as well as NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott. The case was settled, so there will be no need for their testimony. | <urn:uuid:d2e94385-c647-4d9a-8ac4-b881b30f019f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncse.com/news/2007?page=13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956402 | 269 | 1.539063 | 2 |
These related publications have been grouped together under the later title Labour Statistics, Australia (Catalogue number 6101.0) although the title has changed over the period of publication.
Period Covered 1922-1973
Related Links: Continued by: Labour Statistics; Continues: Labour and Industrial Branch Report
"This volume relates to the two years 1941 and 1942 and omits a considerable number of pages of standing matter, which can readily be found in the thirty-first issue for the year 1940. In view of the shortage of staff and paper, insertion of an account of war-time organization of labour, etc., has been deferred until the next issue."
"The tables and pages in this issue have been numbered to agree generally with those appearing in issue No. 31 for 1940. Each such page bears two numbers - that at the top is identical with the numbering of issue No. 31 while that at the bottom of each page (in brackets) runs through the present issue in sequence."
This publication has been scanned from the paper version using character recognition software. This provides a full-text searching capability once downloaded.
This page last updated 1 August 2008 | <urn:uuid:0be3674a-7166-414b-83d5-1314eccd8f66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ProductsbyReleaseDate/433D186B64C6655ECA257498001E2CAF?OpenDocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939578 | 234 | 1.625 | 2 |
The inaugural STEM Week Awards were given out yesterday, celebrating the achievements of 14 high and middle schools in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). For the first time, diverse fields like VEX Robotics, FIRST Robotics, Science Olympiad, the Hawai‘i State Science & Engineering Fair, and CyberPatriot were recognized in a single awards ceremony.
In his keynote address, Senator Daniel K. Inouye recognized the importance of STEM and its contribution to the competitiveness of Hawaii’s students. He reflected on his humble public school upbringing and how, only in America, he could fight the stereotype of a Japanese-American during WWII to achieve his current position as the President pro tempore of the Senate.
Inouye said in a statement: “I arrived home to Hawai‘i last night and was pleased that my first event was to participate in the STEM Week Awards Lunch. It warmed my heart to see bright young students and their committed teachers and principals. Hawai‘i has much to be proud of and to be hopeful about. We should not sell ourselves short. Our future is in good hands.”
On stage to hand out awards with Sen. Inouye were Neal Atebara, Chairman of the Board of the Hawai‘i Academy of Science (HAS), HAS President Kerry Kakazu, Robbie Alm, Executive Vice President of Hawaiian Electric Company, and Morgan Kapololu, Verizon Retail Manager.
The following schools were recognized for their commitment to STEM education:
High School State Champions
- Mililani High School
- ‘Iolani School
- Waipahu High School
Middle School State Champions
- Highlands Intermediate School
- ‘Iolani School
- Punahou School
Island High School Awards
- Oahu Island: Moanalua High School
- Big Island: Waiakea High School
- Kauai Island: Waimea High School
- Maui County: Baldwin High School
- Independent High School: Punahou School
- Oahu Island: Waipahu Intermediate School
- Big Island: Waiakea Intermediate School
- Kauai Island: Waimea Canyon Middle School
- Maui County: Maui Waena Intermediate School
- Independent Middle School: St. Andrew’s Priory School
The inaugural STEM Week Awards also featured the first Daniel K. Inouye Award for Commitment to STEM Education, which went to Hawaiian Electric Company. The award is given to an individual or organization that demonstrated leadership in Hawaii’s STEM educational initiatives by ensuring continued access to STEM programs statewide.
The STEM Week program also featured an Industry Exposition and Job Fair that gave local businesses and organizations the opportunity to showcase their technology and services to students, educators, and job seekers. For more information on STEM Week, visit STEMWeekHawaii.org. | <urn:uuid:c091f3d5-3d5e-4f50-92e1-991f4ca1e772> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hawaiistar.com/2012/04/stem-week-hawaii-awards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951444 | 593 | 1.6875 | 2 |
SQL/DB Error -- [Unknown table engine 'InnoDB']Morocco | Western Sahara
Politics | Economy - Development | Society
EU-Moroccan deal "illegal"; UN expert
afrol News, 9 December - The former UN Legal Counsel, Ambassador Hans Corell, calls the EU-Morocco Fisheries Partnership Agreement (FPA) illegal, because it includes the waters off Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara.
EU vessels have since 2006 trawled the waters offshore occupied Western Sahara under a Moroccan-EU fisheries agreement, in disregard of the wishes of the people of Western Sahara. These waters are known to contain some of the richest fish resources in the world.
The EU has previously claimed that the controversial agreement is legal, referring to an opinion that the erstwhile UN Legal Counsel and Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Hans Corell, wrote in 2002. But the former UN legal expert himself, having left office, clearly criticises what he sees as an EU mis-interpretation of his text.
Mr Corell, who is considered the world's foremost authority on the matter after writing the opinion to the Security Council, said it is "obvious that an agreement .. that does not make a distinction between the waters adjacent to Western Sahara and the waters adjacent to the territory of Morocco would violate international law".
Mr Corell added: "As a European I feel embarrassed." He is himself a Swedish citizen, and Sweden led the internal EU fight to stop the inclusion of Western Sahara in the EU-Morocco fisheries deal.
The clear statement from Mr Corell was given at a law conference hosted jointly by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs and the University of Pretoria, which in particular looked into the situation of Western Sahara.
South African Deputy Foreign Minister Sue van der Merwe at the same occasion said her country supported the demand of "non-exploitation of natural resources of the illegally occupied territory," of which the EU-Morocco fisheries deal has been named a prime example, along with phosphates and oil.
The pro-Saharawi network Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) has headed the fight to stop foreign exploitation of Western Sahara's natural resources. In 2006, WSRW tried to have Western Sahara specifically excluded from the agreement. Today, it received Mr Corell's statements with approval.
"It proves that our interpretation of the international law in this matter has been correct all along. The fundamental breach of law and ethics which the EU is engaged in, must now be rectified immediately", said Cate Lewis, International Coordinator of WSRW. "This can only be done by amending the agreement to exclude Western Saharan waters from the Agreement, and by immediately revoking any European fishing licences authorizing trawlers to enter Western Saharan waters."
Following Mr Corell's statement, WSRW urges all European fishing companies to immediately cease fishing activities in Western Saharan waters "to minimise legal exposure through possible litigation in EU courts."
"Given that this illegal practice has been ongoing for years, WSRW demands that all prior financial transfers made by the EU to Morocco to secure access to Western Saharan fisheries resources be returned immediately. In order to ensure consistency with international law, this money must be allocated directly for the benefit of the Sahrawi population, including those living in forced exile," Ms Lewis said.
By staff writers
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On the Afrol News front page now
|Kenyatta secures tight victory in Kenya|
afrol News - The official election results in Kenya have finally been announced, and Uhuru Kenyatta managed to win the first poll round outright with a narrow 50.7 percent. But the main opponent, PM Raila Odinga, is filing a vote rigging complaint to the courts. | <urn:uuid:84b2971b-93eb-4b49-b131-8ab7a3203529> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.afrol.com/articles/31946 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94171 | 839 | 1.5625 | 2 |
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) -- A Virginia artist has admitted to copying and selling works by other artists.
Norfolk artist Rashidi Barrett posted an apology on his website and on Facebook over the weekend after a Harrisonburg blog, OldSouthHigh.com, broke the news. Barrett told The Virginian-Pilot (http://bit.ly/YAISTk ) in a story published Tuesday he copied other pieces after getting a bad review of his work while facing deadlines for new shows.
Barrett has exhibited in numerous galleries, including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach.
Barrett says he'll reimburse galleries that sold his paintings, ranging between $80 and $1,000.
Image theft is more prominent in the pop surrealism, or Lowbrow, style because that art scene engages extensively on the Internet. The underground movement uses imagery from graphic novels, punk music, tattoo and other subcultures. | <urn:uuid:0a17c1eb-742b-47e0-a2e3-0c1dff08e4ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whsv.com/home/headlines/Va-Artist-Admits-Copying-Selling-Others-Work-188890201.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943423 | 192 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The lone Republican on the Montville Town Council, Dana McFee, has a problem with the council having the authority to investigate allegations of ethical misconduct, even conduct involving council members. We do as well.
Mr. McFee recently filed an ethics complaint against council Chairwoman Candy Buebendorf, a Democrat, alleging she sought legal advice from the town attorney on a personal matter. The charge was a bit moldy, Ms. Buebendorf's request for a legal opinion in 2007 as to whether applying for a job in the town's public schools would present a conflict of interest. And, frankly, we see no problem with a council member seeking such an opinion.
But the larger issue is the appropriateness of an inherently political body, the council, providing what should be an objective decision. Ms. Buebendorf and Mr. McFee sat out the ruling, their conflicts too obvious for anyone to deny, but the four other Democrats voted to dismiss the complaint, while the lone unaffiliated council member found probable cause to proceed.
In other words, Democrats in control of the council joined forces to dismiss a complaint against a fellow Democrat, their chairwoman no less. While the decision is probably the right one, the process still stinks.
Mr. McFee wants the town to explore the creation of a nonpartisan ethics commission, which an increasing number of towns are using to evaluate allegations of unethical behavior. Democrats voted down Mr. McFee's motion to discuss the idea, though Ms. Buebendorf deserves credit for being the long Democrat to vote in favor. An independent ethics commission would certainly be preferable to current policy.
But we also take this opportunity to raise an idea we have floated in the past, and which has gotten no traction - creation of a regional ethics commission, probably under the auspices of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments. Participating municipalities would have to pass enabling ordinances ceding authority on ethical issues to a regional commission. Such a commission would have the ability to provide true impartiality. The representative from the town in which a complaint stems could sit out the vote, leaving outside observers with no conflicts of interest to judge.
The commission could also set common ethical standards for all participating towns.
Is this too radical a step for staid southeastern Connecticut? We don't think so. | <urn:uuid:b674b862-6854-4c15-b7a2-8bb7c931cca6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorepublishing.com/article/20120917/OP01/309179981/1044/Welcoming-a-Regional-Ethics-Commission | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960383 | 477 | 1.523438 | 2 |
of the Modern Firetruck
Carl Morgan (co-author & publisher of "Pioneering the
Auto Age" (available in local bookstores) and former editor
of The Windsor Star).
you happen to have a soft spot in your heart for historic old buildings
- and an extra $350,000 gathering dust in your pocket - take a closer
look at a long, narrow, two story red-brick building on Walker Road
between Richmond and Niagara streets.
the vast majority of people who travel Walker Road on a regular
basis, you have probably seen it without really seeing it - or,
more importantly, without knowing that it was home of the first
company to produce a motorized fire engine in Canada.
recently, it was believed that the building had been erected sometime
between 1895 and 1904. However, a search of the Town of Walkerville
assessment rolls by Municipal Archivist Linda Chakmak, reveals that
as late as 1904, a row of six private homes (lots 37 to 47) were
located on that stretch of Walker, or 5th Street as it was known
at that time. A year later, the registry shows the lots were owned
by W.E. Seagrave, the head of W.E. Seagrave Fire Apparatus Company
of Ohio (established 1881).
far, no records have surfaced showing precisely when construction
began or finished but we can surmise that it was Seagrave who built
the building as the Canadian subsidiary of his successful Ohio fire
truck company. Walt McCall, retired Manager, Public Relations at
Chrysler Canada, is one of this country's leading authorities on
fire apparatus equipment and companies. According to McCall, the
Canadian Seagrave operation was essentially an assembly company,
using materials shipped to Walkerville from the manufacturing plant
1907 Seagrave assembled its first motorized fire apparatus, shipping
three engines to Vancouver. In 1910 the city of Windsor bought a
Seagrave aerial truck and in 1914, bought a Seagrave motor powered
pumper which was in use until 1947.
turned out hundreds of fire engines for fire departments across
Canada. When the Seagrave combination truck purchased by the City
of London was heavily damaged in a train collision in 1913, the
fire department thought so highly of the vehicle that, instead of
scrapping it, the truck was sent back to Walkerville to be rebuilt.
sixteen years, Seagrave produced air and water-cooled fire engines
but found himself in financial trouble when rival American-LaFrance
set up in Toronto in 1915. To save his company, Seagrave tried merging
with Loughead Machine Company in Sarnia and produced a line of heavy-duty
trucks. The move failed and the company locked its doors in 1923.
owned by Germail Mann, the principal building of the Seagraves site
(the middle portion of the site which is comprised of three attached
structures) houses a cabinet making operation and a body shop.
the building appears to be down-at-the-heels, its historical importance
overrides its physical condition. It is one of the last known industrial
buildings still standing in Walkerville that can trace its roots
back to the early years of the 20th Century (despite the fact that
in its heyday, Walkerville was the site of dozens of different industrial
fate awaits this nearly 100 year old building is uncertain. In larger
urban centres, it would probably be snapped up for converting into
fashionable condos, studios, boutiques or a combination thereof.
Now if I only had an extra $350,000!
here to read about the Ghost of Seagrave | <urn:uuid:f9f54978-4798-4d0f-821c-a029da5d8194> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://walkervilletimes.com/seagrave.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951353 | 791 | 1.734375 | 2 |
More and more lawmakers in Washington are lining up to say we don’t have a spending problem and are ready to defend their massive deficits that add trillions to the debt. But a new poll from Public Notice shows that the vast majority of Americans disagree; the best way to improve the economy is by cutting spending and exercising some fiscal restraint. At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is warning that the debt is unsustainable without “significant” changes to entitlement spending, and the federal government is still wasting billions. Washington can keep telling themselves spending isn’t a problem all they want, but everyone else knows it’s time for an intervention.
LAWMAKERS ASK: WHAT DEBT CRISIS?
More Lawmakers Reject The Idea That Washington Has A Spending Problem. ”Call them the debt crisis dissenters. The two parties are miles apart on how to cut the deficit and national debt: Republicans want to slash spending even more. Democrats want to raise revenue. And then there are the other Democrats — the ones who reject the entire premise of the current high-stakes fiscal fight. There’s no short-term deficit problem, they say, and there isn’t even an urgent debt crisis that requires immediate attention.” (Ben White and Tarini Parti, “Democrats Ask: What Debt Crisis?” POLITICO, 4/28/13)
“Democrats Such As Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine And Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen Are Coming Around To The Point Of View That Fiscal Austerity, In All Its Forms, Is More The Problem Than The Solution.” (Ben White and Tarini Parti, “Democrats Ask: What Debt Crisis?” POLITICO, 4/28/13)
Democrats Now More Likely To Oppose Spending Cuts In Exchange For Debt Ceiling Increase: “This intellectual shift away from the need for more immediate deficit reduction is likely to make this summer’s debt ceiling fight even tougher. Democrats are now increasingly likely to revolt against GOP demands, which could include a dollar of spending cuts for each dollar increase in the nation’s borrowing limit.” (Ben White and Tarini Parti, “Democrats Ask: What Debt Crisis?” POLITICO, 4/28/13)
They Aren’t The First In Washington To Say Spending Isn’t A Problem:
President Obama: “We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next ten years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.” (President Barack Obama, Interview with George Stephanopoulos, ABC News – Good Morning America, 3/13/13)
Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “[I]t is almost a false argument to say we have a spending problem, we have a budget deficit problem.” (Cameron Joseph, “Pelosi: ‘Almost a false argument’ to say US has spending problem,” The Hill, 2/10/13)
Sen. Tom Harkin: “I want to disagree with those who say we have a spending problem. Everyone keeps saying we have a spending problem. And when they talk about that, it’s like there’s an assumption that somehow we as a nation are broke.” (Tom Harkin, C-SPAN, 2/14/13)
Rep. Steny Hoyer: We Have A “Paying-For” Problem. “The country has a paying for-problem. We haven’t paid for what we bought. We haven’t paid for our tax cuts. We haven’t paid for the war. … If we don’t pay, we shouldn’t buy.” (“Dem Leader Refuses to Say We Have a Spending Problem—U.S. Has a ‘Paying-For Problem,” Fox News, 2/12/13)
Sen. Mary Landrieu: Washington Spending Not “Out-Of-Control”: “I am not going to keep cutting the discretionary budget, which by the way is not out of control, despite what you hear on Fox News.” (Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), “Dem. Senator: Washington’s Spending Problem Exists Only On Fox News,” Fox News, 1/29/13)
BUT A NEW PUBLIC NOTICE POLL SHOWS AMERICANS DISAGREE
New Public Notice Poll Shows Americans Say Fiscal Responsibility Will Improve The Economy:
Public Notice Poll: Two-Thirds Say Spending Cuts, Tax Cuts Will Improve The Economy: According to a Tarrance Group survey released by Public Notice, two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) believe the federal government should cut spending and 62 percent believe taxes should also be lowered to create jobs and grow the economy. (“New Tarrance Group Survey: Majority Of Americans Want Spending And Taxes Cut To Balance Budget,” Public Notice, 4/22/13)
70 Percent Say A Balanced Budget Will Lead To Economic Growth: A significant majority (70 percent) also believes that a balanced budget would help the nation’s economy. (“New Tarrance Group Survey: Majority Of Americans Want Spending And Taxes Cut To Balance Budget,” Public Notice, 4/22/13)
After Sequester, More Than 60 Percent Want More Spending Cuts: “In the wake of the sequester, more than 60 percent of Americans still say the first thing Washington should do is find more spending to cut. This included a majority of Independent voters (63 percent) and a plurality of Democrats (40 percent).” (“New Tarrance Group Survey: Majority Of Americans Want Spending And Taxes Cut To Balance Budget,” Public Notice, 4/22/13)
THE CBO SAYS THE DEBT IS UNSUSTAINABLE WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT CHANGES TO ENTITLEMENT SPENDING
CBO Director: Debt Will Be Unsustainable Without “Significant” Changes To Entitlements. “Under questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson, who highlighted the dire state of Medicare and Social Security finances, Elmendorf stated that putting the budget on a sustainable path would require major reforms to entitlement programs or massive tax increases that would hit the middle class.” (Philip Klein, “CBO director: Debt will be unsustainable without ‘significant’ changes to entitlements or broad tax hikes,” The Washington Examiner, 2/12/13)
Social Security Will Be Insolvent In 20 Years (Everyone Under 45). (Social Security Administration, The 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds, 4/25/12)
The Medicare Trust Fund Will Be Exhausted In 11 Years (Everyone Under 44). (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2012 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, 4/25/12)
CBO Estimates Entitlement Spending Will Double In The Next Decade. “Spending on Social Security and healthcare will double to $3.2 trillion a year over the next decade, threatening a sharp rise in national debt unless Congress acts to avoid the danger, congressional researchers warned on Tuesday.” (David Morgan, “Social Security, health spending to hit $3.2 trillion a year,” Reuters, 2/5/3013)
Entitlements To Become More Expensive, More Unmanageable In Long-Term: “[B]arring a major fix by the president and Congress, the government’s finances will start to worsen again as the three major entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – become more and more expensive and unmanageable under the increasing weight of retiring baby boomers.” (Tom Raum, “Gov’t Fiscal Outlook Improving – But Only For Now,” Associated Press, 3/12/13)
“Untenable Budget Situation Unless Addressed.” “During this decade and the next, the number of Americans over the age of 65 will jump by 75 percent while those of working age — the people who fund entitlements through their tax contributions — will nudge up by just 7 percent. On top of that, entitlement benefits typically grow faster than both inflation and wages, and can pay out significantly more than people pay in. The median lifetime Medicare taxes paid by new retirees in 2030 will be $180,000; while the median paid benefit will be a staggering $664,000. Vastly more elderly, combined with steadily larger retiree benefits, and relatively fewer taxpayers to fund them create an untenable budget situation unless addressed.” (Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler, Editorial: “Entitlement reform key to U.S. future,” POLITICO, 2/26/13)
AND WASHINGTON CONTINUES TO WASTE BILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS
Taxpayers Suffer Loss In Auto Company Investment: “Fisker Automotive Inc. spent more than six times as much U.S. taxpayer and investor money to produce each luxury plug-in car it sold than the company received from customers, according to a research report. … Fisker has spent $1.3 billion in taxpayer and venture capital money, or $660,000 for each car it sold, the report said.”(Angela Greiling Keane, “Fisker Spent $660,000 on Each $103,000 Plug-in Car,” Bloomberg, 4/18/13)
- “The potential loss of $171 million would be largest loss of federal loan money since the 2011 failure of solar panel maker Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy and laid off all its workers after receiving a $528 million loan from the Energy Department.” (Matthew Daly, “Obama Adminsitration Had Advanced Warning On Fisker,” The Associated Press, 4/24/13)
FAA Tech Upgrade Running Nearly Half A Billion Over Budget “With No End In Sight:” “For more than a decade the FAA has promised to modernize and make the civil aviation system more efficient and reliable, but the only things it has reliably generated are delays or cost overruns or usually both. The project, known as NextGen, is four years off schedule with no end in sight. … A 2011 investigation found that one part of NextGen ran $330 million over budget—or half of the FAA sequester—and then the FAA paid the contractor responsible $150 million in bonuses…. The overruns are now approaching $500 million, and that’s merely one item.” (The Wall Street Journal, “Flying the Government Skies,” 4/23/13)
IRS Overpaid Upwards Of $13 Billion In Tax Credits: “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) overpaid between $11.6 billion and $13.6 billion in tax credits designed to help low-income families in fiscal 2012 , the Treasury Department announced in a report released Monday.” (Julian Hattem, “IRS overpaid up to $13.6B in low-income tax credits, report finds,” The Hill, 4/22/13)
Postal Service Hemorrhaging $25 Million A Day: “The U.S. Postal Service could become ‘a significant burden to the taxpayer’ if it does not get needed flexibility to change its business operations, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe told Congress Wednesday. … ‘We are losing $25 million dollars every day and we are on an unsustainable path.’” (“USPS losing $25 million daily with ‘broken business model,’” The Washington Post, 4,17,13)
Redundant Federal Programs Wasting Billions: “Redundant federal programs are leading to billions in waste, congressional auditors say, and the government is slow to adopt reforms to fix the problem. The White House says President Obama recognizes the problem and will propose eliminating redundant programs in the budget plan he releases Wednesday. … Over the past three years, the Government Accountability Office found 162 areas where agencies are duplicating efforts, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. How many billions? No one knows.” (Gregory Korte, “Report: Redundant Federal Programs Waste Billions,” USA Today, 4/9/13)
- Billions For New Mapping Data: “Government agencies are spending billions on new mapping data — without checking whether some other government agency already has maps they could use.” (Gregory Korte, “Report: Redundant Federal Programs Waste Billions,” USA Today, 4/9/13)
- Duplicative Renewable Energy Programs: “At least 23 different federal agencies run hundreds of programs to support renewable energy.” (Gregory Korte, “Report: Redundant Federal Programs Waste Billions,” USA Today, 4/9/13)
- Lack Of Coordination Between Branches Of The Armed Services: “Each branch of the armed services is developing its own camouflage uniforms without sharing them with other services.” (Gregory Korte, “Report: Redundant Federal Programs Waste Billions,” USA Today, 4/9/13)
- Overlapping Research At The Department Of Homeland Security: “29 Department of Homeland Security contracts that partly or completely overlapped with research being done by another part of the same department. Five contracts funded research into the detection of the same chemical.” (Gregory Korte, “Report: Redundant Federal Programs Waste Billions,” USA Today, 4/9/13)
Stimulus-Funded Condom Study Creates Zero Jobs. The details of a stimulus grant awarded to Indiana University to study condom use have now been released on a government website. The study, titled ‘Barriers to Correct Condom Use,’ is now completed, according to the website, and the university received $423,500 of stimulus funds to perform the study. The stimulus project yielded a total of 0.00 jobs created, according to the federal government. ‘No jobs created/retained,’ the form says under ‘Description of Jobs Created.’” (Daniel Halper, “$423,500 Stimulus Program on ‘Correct Condom Use’ Yields Zero Jobs,” The Weekly Standard, 4/4/2013)
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Report Finds Unimplemented Recommendations Could Have Saved Taxpayers $67 Billion. “The Committee’s review found that the backlog had grown to a high of 16,906 open recommendations. Using the most conservative cost-saving estimates, implementing these recommendations could save taxpayers $67 billion per year.” (House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Report, “Staff Report: Open and Unimplemented IG Recommendations Could Save Taxpayers $67Billion,” 3/5/13)
Energy Department Approved $3.5 Million in Bonuses to 10 Employees, Some As Much As 82 Percent Above The Market Rate. “Federal employees are facing unpaid days off and salary cuts due to the sequester, but several contract workers inside the Energy Department are still raking in the cash. Ten individuals at the department’s Oak Ridge nuclear laboratory are set to make an extra $3.5 million above and beyond their normal pay, according to an Energy Department inspector general investigation that exposes a lavish bonus system. The 10 people are executives at the company UCOR, which the department hired for environmental clean-up. And despite watchdog warnings that the executives’ salaries are as much as 82 percent above the market rate, Energy Department officials continue to pay out the bonuses.” (Phillip Swarts, “Energy Department approves lavish bonuses: $3.5 million to 10 workers alone,” Washington Guardian, 3/29/13)
IRS Video Production Unit Costs Taxpayers $4 Million A Year: “The Senate’s top tax-writer wants answers from the IRS about a ‘Star Trek’ spoof that the tax-collecting agency has now apologized for making. … Baucus also questioned why the IRS had a video production unit at all — especially at its reported $4 million a year price tag. The ‘Star Trek” parody and a separate takeoff on “Gilligan’s Island” cost around $60,000 in tandem, the IRS has said.” (Bernie Becker, “Baucus to IRS: How did the ‘Star Trek’ video happen? Who’s responsible?” The Hill, 3/27/13)
Energy Department Mismanaged More Than $90 Million In Stimulus: “The Energy Department’s (DOE) internal watchdog is attacking DOE management of a $1.5-billion stimulus program to help develop technology that captures industrial carbon dioxide emissions. An Office of Inspector General (IG) audit made public Tuesday examines $1.1 billion in funding for 15 projects. The audit notes three project recipients together received $90 million even though reviews of the proposals ‘identified significant financial and/or technical issues.’” (Ben Geman, “Report: Energy Department Mismanaged Stimulus-Backed Climate Program,” The Hill, 3/22/13)
“Pentagon Handed Out $419 Million In Improper Travel Reimbursements Last Year.” “While making improvements in some spending areas, the Defense Department was singled out this week for failing to trim unnecessary travel reimbursements. In fact, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog concluded that wasteful travel spending actually grew last year to a total of $419.3 million, accounting for roughly five percent of the Pentagon’s mammoth $8.4 billion travel budget.” (Phillip Swarts, “Pentagon Handed Out $419 Million In Improper Travel Reimbursements Last Year,” The Washington Guardian, 3/21/13)
Before jumping into the state-by-state news, take note of this current polling chart from RealClearPolitics which the Democrats are hoping you will overlook because it shows Republicans currently in a position to win back a Senate majority in November….
In Virginia, more troubling news for the Democrats as a new poll from NBC/WSJ/Marist poll finds that former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine has lost 6 points since their last poll back in May and is now under-performing President Obama on the ballot by three points, while George Allen is over-performing.
- And Virginia Watchdog reports that George Allen continues to remind voters in the Commonwealth that Tim Kaine was the number one cheerleader for President Obama’s failed policies. Allen, for his part, has used numerous ads highlighting Kaine’s term as chairman of the Democratic National Committee to tie him to President Barack Obama, hoping a tepid economic recovery will provide a distinctive choice in voters’ minds.
- Meanwhile, the NRSC reminded Virginians of Tim Kaine’s liberal, job-killing record on energy. Despite Kaine’s election year posturing, he’s actually been a staunch supporter of President Obama’s job-killing cap-and-trade proposal. Additionally, Kaine has also fought against offshore energy exploration, which would create thousands of jobs and lower the price of gasoline. “Former DNC Chairman Tim Kaine’s ad is incredibly misleading, because not only does he oppose offshore energy exploration – which would create jobs and lower gas prices – he also supports President Obama’s job-killing cap-and-trade proposal,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) spokesman Brian Walsh. “With a record like that, it’s clear Chairman Kaine’s record on energy is wrong for Virginia.”
In Connecticut, today released its newest ad entitled “Pattern.” The ad highlights Congressman Chris Murphy’s disturbing pattern of behavior as an elected official by revealing several questionable facts about his inability to handle his personal finances and his lack of attention to the demands of his taxpayer-funded job in Congress.
- And Murphy is still playing defense into the weekend as the CT Mirror reports that he’s refusing to release his credit score or any documentation related to his sweetheart mortgage loans. The U.S. Senate campaign of Democrat Chris Murphy says it will not release his application for a $43,000 home-equity credit line that Republican Linda McMahon claims was a sweetheart deal from a political ally, Webster bank. Murphy’s campaign spokesman, Ben Marter, responded with a one-word answer when asked by The Mirror if the candidate would disclose the application, related documents or his credit score: “No.”
- Meanwhile, Hearst News reports that McMahon is winning the news cycle day-after-day while defining her opponent as Chris Dodd 2.0. Politics 101: define your opponent before he can define himself. Linda McMahon is following the syllabus. After a week of winning the news cycle against Chris Murphy thanks to opposition research that the congressman was threatened with foreclosure, McMahon is overtly trying to tie Murphy to fellow Democrat and former Sen. Chris Dodd. In a news release this morning, McMahon labels Murphy “Chris Dodd 2.0,” harkening back to the Countrywide VIP loan scandal.
In Massachusetts, it’s a bad sign when even your hometown newspaper turns on you but even the Harvard Crimson is lamenting the state of their Professor Elizabeth Warren’s campaign these days – Warren Struggles In Home Stretch….
- The Harvard Crimson: “Almost a year to the day since Elizabeth Warren declared her candidacy for the U.S. Senate outside a South Boston MBTA station, Democratic political consultants and professors said that the Harvard Law School professor still faces the same uphill battle that has beguiled her campaign since its earliest days.”
- The Crimson: “Now, with a year of campaigning behind her, Warren is anything but inexperienced, but political consultants and political science professors said she has failed to grasp the heart of the problems facing her campaign.”
- The Boston Globe’s Joan Vennochi: “Agreed: Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren wasted millions on ads that turned her into every man’s worst nightmare: a smarter-than-thou older woman sporting granny glasses and sensible hair.”
- Democratic Strategist Dan Payne in the Crimson: “My critique of it is simple: it’s not about Massachusetts. … It’s as though she’s running a national campaign. Brown, on the other hand, his advertising is very attached to the state.”
- Meanwhile, Worcester Politics reports – Republican Senator Scott Brown announced another addition to his “Democrats for Brown” coalition on Friday, former Democratic Mayor and current Lowell City Council, Rita Mercier. Mercier has sat on the City Council since 1996, and she was the third woman ever to hold the office of Mayor in the City of Lowell when she took on the role back in 2002. Mercier joins the likes of former Democratic mayors Konnie Lukes of Worcester, Ray Flynn of Boston and Charles Ryan of Springfield in crossing the aisle to support the Republican Senator this November. Brown has now picked up support from former Democratic mayors in the Commonwealth’s four largest cities.
In Ohio, The Hill reports that Josh Mandel is reminding voters that liberal Democrat Sherrod Brown has missed over 350 votes, while voting to increase his pay 6 times. Republican Josh Mandel’s campaign is out with a new ad in his fight for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-Ohio) Senate seat, this time attacking the senator’s attendance record during his tenure in Congress. The ad points out that Brown missed over 350 official votes, a tally that comes from the site GovTrack, which keeps record of all congressional votes. It also highlights his votes in favor of bills that would result in a pay raise for members of Congress.
In Florida, the Orlando Sentinel reports that Connie Mack is up with a new ad that reminds voters that Bill Nelson voted for ObamaCare. Republican U.S. Senate nominee U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV has released a new TV commercial in which he focuses on what he says are the three differences between himself and incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson: ObamaCare, taxes and belief in free enterprise. Mack’s take: Nelson voted for ObamaCare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, and he votd against. Nelson voted for tax increases, whiile Mack voted for tax cuts. Nelson believes in government, while Mack believes in “you, free enterprise, and the spirit of the American people.”
- Meanwhile, the Palm Beach New Times reports that on October 17, Connie Mack will debate Bill Nelson’s job-killing record. The Bill Nelson-Connie Mack race is pretty much America’s most closely watched Senate race. And now incumbent Nelson — the Democrat — and Mack — the Republican — have agreed to the only confirmed statewide televised debate on October 17.
In North Dakota, The Hill reports that Rick Berg is calling on Heidi Heitkamp to pull a false political assault ad. Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.) slammed Democratic challenger Heidi Heitkamp on Thursday for what he called a “false political assault” in a new ad from her campaign that attacks his business record, calling for her to remove the ad from the airwaves. Berg flew back from Washington, where Congress is currently in session, to North Dakota on Thursday — the same day the ad was released — to address the claims made in the ad. “North Dakotans know that political campaigns are hard-fought, but expect them to be fought fairly. Heidi Heitkamp’s claims are 100 percent false. I’m disappointed in Heidi, as I’m sure so too are the people of this state,” Berg said during a press conference held Thursday morning to address the ad.
- Meanwhile, Huffington Post reports that while Heidi Heitkamp tells North Dakotans she’s for fracking, her #2 contributor is an anti-fracking law firm based in New York. According to campaign records tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics, Heitkamp’s second-largest group of contributors are employees of Weitz & Luxenberg, a mass tort law firm that has represented those arguing the harms of fracking in the past. The law firm’s employees have given Heitkamp at least $22,400.
In Montana, the Associated Press reports that Denny Rehberg is demanding that we get the farm bill passed. U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg is increasing his criticism of party leaders and demanding a farm bill amid pressure from state agricultural groups. Rehberg says he is signing onto a bipartisan resolution to force GOP House leaders to bring the farm bill out for a vote. Without it, many programs popular with farmers will expire. Rehberg says he understands the move will put a “burr under the saddle” of his party leaders, but says election year politics can’t get in the way of a farm bill.
In Nebraska, where Deb Fischer has a very comfortable lead, the Associated Press reports that Fischer continues to hammer Bob Kerrey for his time in New York City. With roughly 35 million head of cattle grazing on nearly half the state’s land, ranching retains an iconic status in Nebraska. So it’s no surprise that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Deb Fischer’s campaign ads show her leaning up against fence posts while she’s described as a rancher who is “sharp as barb wire, tougher than a cedar fence post.” Her opponent, Democrat Bob Kerrey, is a former governor and senator who for a decade was president of a university in New York. Fischer’s campaign frequently emphasizes the contrast between their occupations, clearly betting that it will play well with Nebraska voters who have become more conservative and suspicious of government since Kerrey left the Senate in January 2001. … Polls indicate she retains a solid lead in the race.
- Meanwhile, the Weekly Standard reports that Deb Fischer is out where a new ad telling Nebraskans where she stands on the important issues. Republican Senate candidate Deb Fischer of Nebraska has a new television ad out. “In Nebraska we solve problems by governing responsibly and sticking to our principles,” Fischer says in the ad. “Time Washington did the same.” Watch the ad below: “Here’s where I stand: Let’s repeal Obamacare and replace it with a fair market system that doesn’t raise taxes,” Fischer says. “Raising taxes will only hurt job creation. And besides, you pay enough already.”
- Finally, Roll Call reports that Deb Fischer has agreed to the third and final debate against New York liberal Bob Kerrey. State Sen. Deb Fischer (R) and former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) have agreed to a third debate, according to the Associated Press. The debate will take place on Oct. 1 and will air statewide on public television, radio and online.
In New Mexico, a monkey made an appearance at Martin Heinrich’s office to symbolizes his vote for the failed $825 billion stimulus, which spent money to see how monkeys would react to cocaine. As KOB-TV in Albuquerque reports: Well the guy in the monkey suit is to represent two things – first he’s to represent that we’re tired of politicians like Congressman Heinrich who are monkeying around in Washington – but the other thing he’s to represent is specifically some of the foolish money that was spent for the 800 billion dollar stimulus bill that was spent to observe monkeys fighting.
In Arizona, the Lake Powell Chronicle reports that Jeff Flake hammered President Obama and Richard Carmona for their war on coal. Rep. Jeff Flake, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, spoke to a packed house at the Page Community Center Sept. 5 about issues surrounding the Navajo Generating Station. Currently the future of the plant resides on how the owners choose to handle the proposed ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to hand down soon. “There is a war on coal at the EPA. Let’s call it for what it is,” Flake said. “And they’re going to use anything they can, it seems, to push forward that war on coal.”
In Hawaii, the Honolulu Civil Beat reports that Congresswoman Mazie Hirono voted against funding the Tsunami Warning Network. U.S. Senate candidate Mazie Hirono earlier this year voted against funding the Tsunami Warning Network that provides Hawaii with early tsunami detection and warnings. The high-tech buoy network faced $4.5 million in cuts in February, and Hirono opposed bipartisan House legislation to fully fund the critical system for FY2013. “Hirono voted against the best interest of our state — a state in a Tsunami high-risk zone — and against one of our most important life-saving tools, by voting against fully funding the Tsunami Warning Network,” said former Director of Hawaii Civil Defense and Linda Lingle Campaign Manager Bob Lee.
NOTE: “It speaks volumes when Tim Kaine is criticizing President Obama, of all people, for not taxing and spending nearly enough,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Walsh.
From the Washington Examiner:
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine isn’t sold on the so-called “Buffett rule,” legislation that would raise taxes on millionaires even President Obama makes a strong sales pitch for it in Virginia.
Speaking on a Charlottesville radio station, Kaine said the Buffett rule, named after billionaire Warren Buffett who once famously complained that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, would hardly make a dent in the closing the nation’s growing deficit.
“Tripping over dollar bills to pick up pennies is pretty much what they’re doing,” Kaine said.
The Senate is scheduled to vote next week on the bill, which introduces a minimum 30 percent tax rate on anyone making more than a million dollars. Republicans have called it a political stunt aimed at highlighting the low tax rate Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nomiminee, pays despite his wealth.
“What worries me is that they’re going to have a big fight about the Buffett rule, then they’ll have a big fight about some other little one-off proposal that somebody throws on the table and they’ll get to year end and they won’t have talked about the issue that’s on the table that needs a resolution,” Kaine told WINA.
Congress should instead focus on letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for those making more than $500,000 a year, said Kaine, the lone Democrat running to replace retiring Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.
Unprecedented Social Media Campaign Will Educate Voters About Candidates’ Support For Failed Obama Policies
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — ForAmerica, the largest active online conservative organization, today launched an unprecedented social media campaign to educate voters in key Senate races for the 2012 cycle. Operation ObamaClone will educate voters on how U.S. Senators like Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Bill Nelson (D-FL), as well as candidates such as Tim Kaine of Virginia, have embraced President Obama’s failed policies. Such policies include the Stimulus bill, ObamaCare, and other initiatives that have taken our country down the path to skyrocketing debt, increased job losses, and Big Government expansion.
“For too long, these folks have been cheering on President Obama and his destructive policies at every turn,” said ForAmerica Chairman L. Brent Bozell. “The people of Missouri, Montana, Florida, and Virginia need to know how deeply into denial these officials and candidates have fallen when it comes to worshipping this failed president.”
At the new ForAmerica web sites www.obamaclonemccaskill.com, www.obamaclonetester.com, www.obamaclonenelson.com, and www.obamaclonekaine.com, voters will get valuable information about the candidates’ records, their quotes and comments, press clippings, and videos illustrating how they have morphed into ObamaClones. ForAmerica’s campaign will utilize a cutting-edge social media effort, including online advertising, videos, and more, to keep voters in those four states updated in real time about their incumbent Senators and declared Senate candidates.
Bozell said it is highly likely Operation ObamaClone will expand to other states. ForAmerica, which launched just 18 months ago, has a total budget of $5 million for the 2012 cycle.
ForAmerica (www.foramerica.org) is an online army of over 2 million people. The group is a non-profit 501(c)4 organized to educate Americans about traditional and contemporary American values, to relentlessly fight the growth of government, to oppose any substitute to freedom and self-government, to promote individual liberty and excellence, to promote economic opportunity, and to move America toward her founding principles. ForAmerica is chaired by L. Brent Bozell III, one of the most outspoken and effective national leaders in the conservative movement today.
# # #
Henrico, VA – On the eve of the third anniversary of the passage of the failed $800 billion stimulus, the George Allen for U.S. Senate Campaign today released its newest web video entitled, “I’m Doing What The President Wants Me To Do,” highlighting Tim Kaine’s loyal, unabashed support for President Obama and his agenda, which has led to an unprecedented spending binge in Washington over the last three years.
Chairman Kaine campaigned across the nation claiming the $800 billion failed stimulus would “help jumpstart the economy” as well as “create or save over 3 million jobs.” Instead, Americans have endured 36 straight months of unemployment over 8%, Washington is now borrowing $48,000 a second, and we have seen the first ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating.
“’I'm doing what the President wants me to do,’ those are Tim Kaine’s words, not mine. On every major issue over the past several years, Chairman Kaine has been in lockstep with President Obama and out of step with Virginia families and small business owners,” said Dan Allen, Allen campaign senior advisor. “And now he’s running to be President Obama’s Senator, not Virginia’s.”
“I’m Doing What The President Wants Me To Do”
TIM KAINE: Hello everyone, I’m Tim Kaine.
PRES. OBAMA: Former Governor of Virginia and one of my greatest friends.
TIM KAINE: I’m an unabashed supporter of the President.
SUPER: President Obama’s Senator. Tim Kaine. Unabashed support for the $800 billion failed stimulus.
TIM KAINE: … a stimulus plan that will help jumpstart the economy …
PRES. OBAMA: … a major milestone on our road to recovery.
SUPER: MAJOR MILESTONE
SUPER: 36 straight months. Unemployment over 8%.
TIM KAINE: We’ll create or save more than 3 million jobs.
PRES. OBAMA: It will save or create more than 3.5 million jobs over the next two years.
SUPER: Factcheck.org [MASTHEAD]: “Stimulus Has FAILED To Live Up To Initial Expectations”
TIM KAINE: I’m doing what the President wants me to do.
SUPER: “I’m doing what the President wants me to do”
SUPER: We know, Tim. But what about us?
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch (editorial)
As former governors, George Allen and Tim Kaine have lengthy records to run on — and, sometimes, to run from. Both of their tenures were mixed. But Allen can claim to have improved Virginia immeasurably through one of his most controversial proposals: abolishing parole.
That reform now is widely accepted. At the time, though, it was hugely controversial. Democrats fought it bitterly. The NAACP tried to portray it as hostile to African-Americans — the Richmond chapter went so far as to say it resembled “Hitler’s annihilation of the Jews and the principle of modern-day ethnic cleansing.” The ACLU attacked it on a variety of grounds, including cost — a rare detour into fiscal conservatism for the civil-liberties group — and its effect on children and families.
Many also challenged the idea that holding offenders longer would cut crime rates. When Richard Kern, the late state criminologist, produced a study showing parole abolition could prevent more than 100,000 serious crimes over a decade and benefit racial minorities the most, skeptics scoffed. One Democratic delegate pointed out that the study “doesn’t say that others are not committing offenses,” and predicted that “the overall impact on the crime rate” from abolishing parole would be “minimal.”
Parole abolition was enacted in 1995, when criminologists were anticipating a crime tsunami. That wave never materialized. Violent crime rates nationwide are at 40-year lows, despite a recession. A variety of explanations have been offered, from community policing to the availability of abortion. Many also credit a nationwide get-tough approach after decades of what Allen used to call “liberal, lenient” criminal-justice policies.
They would seem to have reason to. During debate on Project X, as it was called, Allen predicted that abolishing parole would prevent crime not only by preventing hardened thugs from re-offending but also by deterring those not yet incarcerated from committing offenses of their own. Skeptics continued to insist crime rates would not change. If the skeptics had been right, then crime rates should be much higher today than they are.
From The Washington Post:
President Obama arrives in the state Tuesday as part of three-day North Carolina and Virginia bus tour to talk about the economy, but it’s not clear how many Virginia Democrats will be with him.
As we reported today, Democratic state legislators are none too eager to support Obama, let alone be seen with him.
The state’s top Democrats will be not be around, either.
Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner will be in Washington, where Congress is in session. (Warner is holding his first online forum today. He will start doling out video responses to questions at 2 p.m.)
Tim Kaine, former governor and Democratic National Committee chairman, is spending the day in Northern Virginia, in part to help legislative candidates who are on the ballot next month. Kaine, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate next year, appeared with Obama at the University of Richmond in August.
“We fully expect him to attend other events with the president throughout this election cycle, just as we expect our opponent will appear with the eventual Republican nominee for president,’’ Kaine spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said.
The White House would not release a list of elected Democrats who would be with Obama in Virginia.
The president began his bus tour Monday in North Carolina and will continue Tuesday and Wednesday in Virginia — two critical swing states he carried in 2008 that remain just as important in 2012.
The White House had considered stops in Danville, Newport News, Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. But prominent Democrats in Virginia — where Obama’s approval rating hovers around 50 percent — encouraged the White House to alter the schedule so he would no longer visit districts where members of his party were involved in tight races.
Instead, Obama will speak at a high school in Emporia on Tuesday and at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton and a fire station in Chesterfield County, outside Richmond, on Wednesday. He will be joined by first lady Michelle Obama in Hampton. All three events are closed to the public.
Dems and a fawning media salivating over Obama’s pick to lead the DNC. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the perfect fire-breathing partisan hack to lead the DNC since she’s never let the facts or reality get in the way of her failed philosophy
National and local coverage of President Obama’s choice to lead the Democratic National Committee | <urn:uuid:e0819679-fed3-48d7-9f01-f34a5181abe4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/tag/tim-kaine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937632 | 9,016 | 1.65625 | 2 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 26, 2012
Contact: HHS Press Office
HHS announces new Affordable Care Act options for community-based care
Medicaid and Medicare introduce greater flexibility for beneficiaries to receive care at home or in settings of their choice
New opportunities in Medicaid and Medicare that will allow people to more easily receive care and services in their communities rather than being admitted to a hospital or nursing home were announced today by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
HHS finalized the Community First Choice rule, which is a new state plan option under Medicaid, and announced the participants in the Independence At Home Demonstration program. The demonstration encourages primary care practices to provide home-based care to chronically ill Medicare patients.
Both are made possible by the Affordable Care Act. Studies have shown that home- and community-based care can lead to better health outcomes.
“We know that people frequently prefer to receive services in their own homes and communities whenever possible. The rule and demonstration announced today give people choice and provide states with flexibility to design programs that better meet the needs of beneficiaries,” Secretary Sebelius said. “Prior to passage of the Affordable Care Act, many families had few choices beyond nursing homes or other institutions for their loved ones. The actions taken today will help change that and can lead to better health for these individuals.”
The final rule released today on the Community First Choice Option provides states choosing to participate in this option a six percentage point increase in federal Medicaid matching funds for providing community-based attendant services and supports to beneficiaries who would otherwise be confined to a nursing home or other institution.
Also today, the first 16 organizations that will participate in the new Independence at Home Demonstration were announced. They will test whether delivering primary care services in the home can improve the quality of care and reduce costs for patients living with chronic illnesses. These 16 organizations were selected from a competitive pool of more than 130 applications representing hundreds of health care providers interested in delivering this new model of care.
The Independence at Home demonstration, which is voluntary for Medicare beneficiaries, provides chronically ill Medicare beneficiaries with a complete range of in-home primary care services. Under the demonstration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will partner with primary care practices led by physicians or nurse practitioners to evaluate the extent to which delivering primary care services in a home setting is effective in improving care for Medicare beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions and reducing costs. Up to 10,000 Medicare patients with chronic conditions will be able to get most of the care they need at home.
The demonstration is scheduled to begin on June 1, 2012, and conclude May 31, 2015.
HHS is also seeking comment on a proposed rule that describes a separate Home and Community-Based Services state plan option, which was originally authorized in 2005 then enhanced by the Affordable Care Act. Like the Community First Choice Option, this benefit will make it easier for states to provide Medicaid coverage for home and community-based services.
“Our goal is to provide person-centered support to every Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary, regardless of their physical ability or chronic health conditions,” Acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said. “These services and programs will help keep these individuals’ health stable, and keep them home where they want to be, while giving us even more tools to achieve better care for the patient, better health for the population, all at lower costs.”
The announcements made today are one part of the Obama administration’s efforts to help people with disabilities and those living with chronic illness stay in their own homes when they wish to do so. Earlier this month, Secretary Sebelius announced the creation of the new Administration for Community Living, bringing together key HHS organizations and offices dedicated to improving the lives of Americans with functional needs into one coordinated and stronger entity. This new agency will work on increasing access to community supports and achieving full community participation for seniors and people with disabilities.
For more information on the Administration for Community Living visit: http://www.hhs.gov/acl/.
For more information on the Community First Choice Option visit: http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/fact_sheets.asp.
For more information on the Independence at Home demonstration and the organizations selected to participate visit: http://innovation.cms.gov/initiatives/independence-at-home.
The rules may be viewed at www.ofr.gov/inspection.aspx.
Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.
Follow HHS on Twitter @HHSgov and sign up for HHS Email Updates.
Follow HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Twitter @Sebelius .
Last revised: May 2, 2012 | <urn:uuid:1bbedc06-7094-4882-9c51-4c2789b0be3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/04/20120426a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941501 | 984 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Syria has granted the International Atomic Energy Agency permission to inspect the site bombed by Israel last September. Word has since leaked out that the site contained a North Korean designed nuclear reactor:
Syria will allow in U.N. inspectors to probe allegations that the country was building a nuclear reactor at a remote site destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei did not say whether his inspectors would be granted access to the site during the planned June 22-24 visit. But a senior diplomat familiar with the details of the planned visit said agency personnel had been told they could visit the facility. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The building was flattened by Israel in September. Neither the United States nor Israel gave the IAEA information about the site until late April, about a year after they obtained what they considered to be decisive intelligence: dozens of photographs from a handheld camera that showed both the interior and exterior of the compound in Syria's eastern desert.
Since that time, Syria had not reacted to repeated agency requests for a visit to check out the allegations, using the interval to erect another structure over the site - a move that heightened suspicions of a possible cover-up.
This is all for show, of course, since our satellites caught the Syrians cleaning up the site in the aftermath of the bombing. it's not likely there is much left for ElBaradei and his nuclear enablers to find that would be incriminating.
We've been down this road before with Iran and the IAEA; first comes denial, then comes the invitation to inspect (after they've had time to scrub the site), then comes praise from ElBaradei for the apparent cooperation, then the inspectors find nothing and the country - Syria in this case - is given a clean bill of nuclear health.
Why we continue to go through this charade is beyond me. | <urn:uuid:7095c8bd-9101-49aa-9949-90f09d6974ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/06/syria_to_allow_probe_of_nuke_s.html | 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 | 0.964344 | 396 | 1.773438 | 2 |
PERNOD RICARD USA
PERNOD RICARD USA is rolling out a series of video messages as part of an effort to broaden the reach of its Accept Responsibility campaign a public service initiative to increase awareness of responsible drinking. The campaign was launched in August 2OO7 to address three critical beverage alcohol issues: drunk driving, underage consumption and binge drinking. Since the campaign’s inception, Accept Responsibility messages have been featured in national newspapers and magazines, as well as in public service announcements. The campaign encourages individuals to accept responsibility for their decisions by highlighting common excuses used to justify irresponsible alcohol consumption. The new online messages have been placed on such websites as MySpace, Facebook, iVillage, and Veoh. The messages will be hyperlinked back to the Accept Responsibility homepage – www.acceptresponsibility.org. In conjunction with the new messages, Pernod Ricard has debuted an interactive feature on the website called The Wheel of Excuses. Users will be able to spin the wheel, and when it lands on an excuse, a video recreates a scenario in which the excuse is often made. | <urn:uuid:a3909602-193f-450c-97ad-c3faafc1f24c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.beveragebusiness.com/archives/article.php?cid=8&eid=59&aid=789 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949613 | 227 | 1.5 | 2 |
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson's decision keeps in place an existing injunction against a section of Proposition 35 that requires registered sex offenders to give authorities a list of their Internet providers and screen names.
The ruling does not affect other portions of the November ballot initiative, which toughened penalties on those convicted of human trafficking.
The San Francisco-based judge ruled that opponents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are likely to prevail in their argument that the provision violates the First Amendment.
Had Henderson not acted, more than 73,000 registered sex offenders would have had to provide their online identities to law enforcement. The initiative also would have required them to report any new account or screen name within 24 hours.
The initiative passed with 81 percent support. However, Henderson ruled that the state attorney general was not able to show that the reporting requirements were narrowly crafted so they would solely be used to fight online sex offenses.
"The government has a legitimate interest in protecting individuals from online sex offenses and human trafficking,"
The injunction will stand until the state proves otherwise.
Chris Kelly of the Safer California Foundation said in a statement that he is confident the provision will eventually be upheld by the courts, as similar measures have prevailed in other states. | <urn:uuid:42e46268-8d81-49cb-bddf-48528ba39d83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailydemocrat.com/ci_22360755/judge-continues-block-part-state-trafficking-initiative | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961334 | 261 | 1.570313 | 2 |
April 18, 2006
Participants in Clinical Drug Trial Sought Continued Treatment Based on Contract Theories
What if an individual who participates in a clinical trial of a drug wants to continue to receive that drug when the study is completed? Does the trial participant have a right to continued treatment based on theories of contractual obligation or promissory estoppel? Seems that the answer depends on whether, in addition to the clinicians, the drug company made any promises.
A group of individuals who suffer from Parkinson’s elected to participate in a clinical study of a drug to treat the disease. The company that developed the drug essentially commissioned the study, which was conducted by researchers at a university. The drug company entered into a "Clinical Trial Agreement" with the university and researchers, which included a "Protocol" for the trial. Among other things, the "Protocol" provided that the participants could elect to continue treatment up to 24 months after the study was completed. The Protocol also allowed the drug company to terminate the study in specified circumstances.
At some point during the clinical trial, the drug company terminated all clinical use of the drug, citing (1) a study that some trial participants developed neutralizing antibodies that caused irreversible damage to vital organs and (2) a long-term toxicology study of primates using the drug which found that the primates developed lesions on their brains. Some of the trial participants, however, believe that the drug is effective and that their physical, cognitive and emotional faculties have improved. These participants sought an injunction, requiring the drug company to continue to administer the drug to them. They sought the injunction, at least in part, based on breach of contract and promissory estoppel. The court did not issue the injunction and the Sixth Circuit held that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying the injunction.
The participants claimed that the drug company was contractually obligated to supply them with the drug. The court held that no contract ever existed between the participants and the drug company that required the company to continue to provide the drug. The participants primarily relied upon an "Informed Consent Document." The participants had signed the consent form, but this document did not contain a drug company signature. The court held that this document, therefore, did not bind the drug company. The court also held that the Clinical Trial Agreement did not bind the drug company to continue to provide the drug to the participants because the participants were not signatories to that agreement -- rather, it was solely between the drug company, the researchers and the university. Moreover, the court held that the researchers and university did not make promises to the participants on behalf of the drug company -- because the researchers were independent contractors and did not have apparent authority to bind the drug company.
The participants also claimed that the drug company was required to provide them with the drug based on promissory estoppel – that is, the researchers informed the participants that they would make decisions based upon the patients’ best interests and, if the drug proved to be safe and effective, the participants could continue to receive the drug beyond the trial period. Again, however, the court held that there was no evidence of a promise made by the drug company, and the promises of the university and researchers could not bind the drug company.
[Note: original post updated for clarification].
Abney v. Amgen, Inc., __ F.3d __ ( Mar. 29, 2006 6th Cir. 2006).
[Meredith R. Miller]
TrackBack URL for this entry:
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Hunt for Ohio filmmaker who went missing while filming BEARS in Canadian woods
Missing: Ohio man Warren Sill, pictured, disappeared in the Canadian woods on July 5
A 26-year-old Ohio man has disappeared in the Canadian woods while filming a documentary about bears.
Search and rescue crews are scouring bushland in northern British Columbia for Warren Sill, who has been missing since July 5.
The case has similarities to Grizzly Man - a documentary chronicling the life and death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, who was killed and eaten by a grizzly bear in 2003 when filming the animals in the wild.
Police have not said whether they suspect Mr Sill was attacked by a bear but are growing increasingly concerned about his safety.
The man's car was found abandoned at the entrance of the Whiskey Creek Trail, near New Hazelton on July 10.
It contained the man's cell phone and tent.
Mr Sill's parents told police the filmmaker, known as Andrew, only planned to spend five days in the woods and was not an experienced hiker.
'The concern is that this young man was out there and not equipped for the terrain,' Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Const. Lesley Smith told Canada's Metronews.
'It could be a case of him not being able to get his bearing right. In that case, being dehydrated will affect his well-being.
Spirit: Mr Sill was in British Columbia filming a documentary about spirit bears, pictured
Movie: The case has similarities to Grizzly Man, a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, who was eaten by a bear in 2003 while filming the animals
'He’d be disoriented if he hasn’t kept up with fluids and nutrients.'
A helicopter, police dogs and scores of volunteers are helping search for the young man and his sister, Maureen Sill, is appealing for help on her Tumblr website.
'My brother, Warren Sill, is missing in British Columbia,' she wrote.
'He is thought to be in a forest near New Hazelton. Any information on his whereabouts, please contact the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.'
Novice: Mr Sill, pictured, only planned to spend five days in the woods and was not an experienced hiker
Worried: Mr Sill's sister, Maureen Sill, pictured left, is appealing for help on her Tumblr website
Police described the terrain where Mr Sill went missing as 'dense and very challenging' forest, which features ragged drops and hazards that the 5'10" man could have slipped down.
Const. Smith said rescue workers would continue to search for Mr Sill until they've exhausted all resources and covered the area.
Ms Sill was filming a documentary on Kermode bears, a group of white-coated black bears also known as 'spirit bears' that inhabit the area. | <urn:uuid:42954b84-d69c-47e6-a861-c8ed68307559> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174645/Hunt-Ohio-filmmaker-Warren-Sill-went-missing-filming-BEARS-Canadian-woods.html?ito=feeds-newsxml | 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 | 0.976347 | 600 | 1.625 | 2 |
Portuguese magnate Joe Berardo established this museum after being persuaded by the government. Although other major cities ... More
The Berlado Collection Museum
Portuguese magnate Joe Berardo established this museum after being persuaded by the government. Although other major cities were interested in providing a space for his esteemed collection, the museum eventually landed up in Lisbon. The museum features the best in contemporary and modern art and you can find works of legends like Picasso and Bacon hang on the walls. Overlooking the River Tagus, one couldn't have found a more scenic setting to host the brilliance inscribed on canvas. The museum hosts various events throughout the year attracting enthusiasts from world over. Please check the website for exact visiting hours.
Situated in the Convento Madre de Deus, the Tile National Museum has an original Azulejos collection of the 15th century.
It is possible to enjoy traditionally decorated Moorish mosaics and beautiful walls here. You'll also get an insight into ...
The Military Museum presents a rich collection of items related to a history that goes back to the foundation of
the Portuguese nation. The exhibitions are specially focused on the most important episodes of Portugal's history. There are also ...
The National Coach Museum or Museu Nacional dos Coches is one of the most popular museums in Lisbon. Museu Nacional
dos Coches is located in the area of Belem, a neighborhood with pretty gardens. The museum is teeming with ...
*Terms & Conditions: Savings calculation is based on Flight + Hotel vacation package bookings for a 3 month period for 2 adults with a 2+ night length of stay compared to price of the same components if booked separately during same period. Savings will vary based on origin/destination, length of trip, travel dates and selected travel supplier(s). Savings not available on all packages. | <urn:uuid:77f349ec-1cfd-4020-a69c-2f5c84b49f4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide-27530619-museu_coleccao_berardo_lisbon-i | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934224 | 382 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Friends from Pattaya came to visit Siem Reap and we toured them around town. On of the places we brought them is Tonle Sap, an important lake in Cambodia with many communities relying their livelihood. It is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia and is connected to the Mekong River.
One can hire a boat for about an hour of tour in the lake.
It supports a huge community of people that have adapted to living on floating houses. It is dubbed as the 'floating village'.
The tour wouldn't be complete without saying hello to the crocs. Cambodian crocodiles or Siamese crocodiles is a freshwater croc native to Indonesia and is largely extinct except in Cambodia. This is once instance where commercial farming has actually saved the species from extinction. Wild ones are largely known to be extinct, though.
It reminded me of 'Water World'. It feels like a different world there.
I don't think I'm built to last in a watery world.
top - Seven Heaven tee
bottom - DP drop crotch
shoes - Timberland
bag - ArtBerg | <urn:uuid:09fa924d-772b-4a0c-ad82-6668e10a4dbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fuchsiaboy.blogspot.com/2012/05/tonle-sap.html | 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 | 0.958167 | 227 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Nelson Mandela is ‘Invictus’
Nelson Mandela Invictus by William Ernest HenleyOut of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
By Niele Anderson Sentinel Religion Editor Nelson Mandela had been a free man for only five years and president for one year in 1995, after 27 years in prison for opposing apartheid. The 1995 World Cup Final was, to most people around the world, little more than a thrilling rugby match. But to the people of South Africa, it was a turning point in their history, designed by the nation's president, Nelson Mandela, and built by South Africa's rugby team and their captain, Francois Pienaar.
This remarkable story is chronicled in the film "Invictus," starring Morgan Freeman as President Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar. Freeman and his producing partner, Lori McCreary, had been developing a movie about Nelson Mandela for years based on his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, but capturing the entire span of his story in the timeframe of a feature film proved to be impossible.
McCreary says, "I was devastated, but Morgan reassured me, 'Lori, when a door closes, a window opens,' and literally the next week I received a four-page proposal on John Carlin's book about the '95 World Cup, which eventually became Playing the Enemy. We thought it was a great way to get a sense of the soul and character of Mandela in a story that takes place over less than a year's time."
Coincidentally, author and journalist John Carlin later met Freeman in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where the author was researching a story about poverty in the Deep South. His local contact turned out to be a friend of Freeman's, who introduced them. The author recalls, "I said, 'Mr. Freeman, I've got a movie for you.' He asked me what it was about, and I told him, 'It's about an event that distills the essence of Mandela's genius and the essence of the South African miracle.' And he said, 'You mean the rugby game?' I was astonished. That's when I found out that he had already read the book proposal I had written."
Before they proceeded, however, McCreary and Freeman went in person to get the blessing of Mandela, known in South Africa as "Madiba." "Morgan started off by saying, 'Madiba, we've been working a long time on this other project, but we've just read something that we think might get to the core of who you are...' And before he even finished the sentence, Madiba said, 'Ah, the World Cup.' That's when I knew we were heading in the right direction."
Freeman sent the screenplay to his friend Clint Eastwood, who immediately responded to the material. "The story caught my imagination. I thought it was a natural for a movie, and I really liked the way the script was written," said Eastwood. Freeman remarks, "The entire project was like magnets coming together-right people, right time, right place, right issue. Everything just clicked into place, which doesn't happen very often. But when it does, it's like destiny."
Long before the production of "Invictus," Freeman had been chosen for the role of Nelson Mandela by the one person that mattered most. The actor reveals, "Madiba was once asked who he would want to play him in a movie and he said 'Morgan Freeman.' When I first met him years ago, I told him I was honored that he had mentioned me to portray him." Eastwood affirms. "I could not imagine anyone else in the role of Mandela. They have the same stature and same kind of charismatic nature. Morgan also has a similar vocal quality, and he worked very hard to capture Mandela's inflections. I think he did it quite well."
Freeman, who has spent time with Mandela over the years and considers him a friend, points out that the most important part of his performance could not be practiced. "I wanted to avoid acting like him; I needed to be him and that was the biggest challenge. When you meet Mandela, you know you are in the presence of greatness, but it is something that just emanates from him. He moves people for the better; that is his calling in life. Some call it the Madiba magic. I'm not sure that magic can be explained." "Invictus" opens in a theater near you on December 11, 2009. | <urn:uuid:b88b88b0-175a-4a29-87a8-1bb58bc07055> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lasentinel.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4794:nelson-mandela-is-a-invictusa&catid=97:religion&Itemid=187 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980729 | 1,064 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Chief Marshal Abbas Khattak, NI(M), SBt, (born 16 July 1943)
served as Chief of Air Staff of the Pakistan Air Force from
8 November 1994 to 7 November 1997.
Khattak came from the humble beginnings in his village of
Jehangira near Peshawar. One of four children, he graduated
from Cadet College Hasan Abdal and then joined PAF Academy.
He entered the Pakistan Air Force on 20 January 1963 in the
35th GD(P) Course. Thereafter, he went to the United States
Air Force where he got commission from Maxwell Air Force
Base, Montgomery, Alabama.
During his career, Khattak took part in three wars. The
first was the 1965 war, in which he was one of the eight
fighter pilots who took part in the famous attack on
Pathankot airfield led by Squadron Leader Sajjad Haider from
the No. 19 Squadron (Sherdils). During the 1971 war, he was
based in Sargodha Airbase.
Khattak is a graduate of Pilot Training Course, USA; Flying
Instructors' School Course, Risalpur; Air Command and Staff
College, USA; Armed Forces War Course at National Defence
College, Rawalpindi; and Royal College of Defence Studies,
His command appointments include; Officer Commanding No. 15
Squadron; Officer Commanding, No. 33 Wing; Officer
Commanding, Combat Commanders' School; Base Commander,
Faisal Airbase and Masroor Airbase; and Air Officer
Commanding, Southern Air Command.
His staff appointments include; Director of Flight Safety,
Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Plans), Deputy Chief of Air
Staff (Training) and Deputy Chief of Air Staff (Operations).
Abbas Khattak was appointed as Chief of Air Staff on 8
November 1994. At promotion, he superseded at least two
senior officers; Air Marshal Shafique Haider, then Vice
Chief of Air Staff and Air Marshal Dilawar Hussain, then
Chairman Pakistan Aeronautical Complex. During his tenure as
the Air Chief, Khattak tried to acquire the French Dassault
Mirage 2000-5 as an alternative to the F-16, after U.S
military embargoes. Unfortunately for him and the then
Government, the President of Pakistan dissolved the national
assembly on charges of corruption - a major arms deal was
averted. During his tenure, Pakistan worked with China to
develop the K-8 Karakorum. After his retirement he was
succeeded by Air Marshal Parvaiz Mehdi Qureshi.
He is married and has two sons. | <urn:uuid:120a9f80-4e36-4cdb-a85b-f3c817444e49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paffalcons.com/cas/abbas-khattak.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96446 | 573 | 1.5 | 2 |
The London stage version won 2 Olivier Awards; it picked up 6 Tony Awards in New York.
But will you like the movie?
“War Horse” finds director Steven Spielberg melding together the two genres he’s most well known for: children’s fairy tale and epic, tragic war story. Under any other circumstances, a film about the improbable, family-friendly journey of one sad-eyed boy’s sad-eyed horse during the Great War would be a perfectly respectable by-the-numbers entry in the expansive catalogue of the 65-year old master.
Except that, unlike Joey, the film’s unkempt and hot-tempered equine star who trots from the Allies to the Germans and back again over the course of the story, “War Horse” is bred from a far too impressive pedigree. The original 1982 children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo was runner-up for Britain’s prestigious Whitbread Award. And of greater significance, the book’s stage adaptation, which debuted in London in 2007 and made its way to Broadway this year, has already become a touchstone of 21st-century theater, racking up Tony awards and ticket grosses like so much hay.
All this grand acclaim can be traced primarily to the unique experience War Horse provides on stage, through nontraditional, eye-popping production design that communicates the expansive sweep of the story. And, most crucially, to the horse itself, a massive, lifelike skeletal puppet controlled by people encased within Joey’s hide.
But Spielberg’s film version is compelled by some sense of motion-picture traditionalism to eschew the puppets. This is the cinema, dammit, not some streetside marionette show. There’s a soaring John Williams score, for God’s sake. Who would want to watch human-controlled fake animals when they could be watching human-trained real animals instead? (Pay no attention to that man behind the Kermit.)
And so the movie of “War Horse” of course uses actual horses, thereby compromising the fundamental hook (or gimmick, or whatever you want to call it) of the play. What’s left is “Black Beauty”; it’s “National Velvet”; it’s “Seabiscuit” and “Secretariat”; it’s any number of those other “that’s a mighty fine horse you got there” movies, without ever becoming its own beast. Ironically for a filmed adaptation of a play, the sudden intrusion of reality over abstraction renders the action less engaging.
This is not to speak ill of the human performers, a committed all-European cast including stage actor Jeremy Irvine as the emotionally fragile boy who initially trains Joey, Tom Hiddleston (“Midnight In Paris”) as the army captain who forces Joey to serve his country by diving headlong into battle and standout Niels Arestrup (“A Prophet”) as a French grandfather whose touching performance complicates the issue of horse ownership.
It’s also not to speak ill of Spielberg’s impressive commitment to old-school grandiosity. Even though this is his first film to be edited digitally, the movie contains only three seconds worth of special effects, quite a rebellious feat for such a big-budget production. Such a commitment to old technologies helps to highlight the film’s central absurdity: that the steeds of World War I were absurdly outmatched, charging into dense swamps of bombs and automatic weapons, their riders armed with every expectation they would not emerge.
All in all, though, the strongly enforced traditionalism amounts to little more than a dewey-eyed historical re-imagining, like something that might be played on a continuous loop in the background of a museum exhibit on the role of equestrians in World War I. Spielberg didn’t necessarily have to bring the puppet back for the big screen, but it would have been nice if one of the most grandly imaginative directors in Hollywood had seemed fit to make this adaptation a bit more … fantastical.
Well, at least that’s still one mighty fine horse.
“War Horse” opens Christmas Day, 2011 in wide release throughout the area.
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis; based on the book by Michael Morpurgo
Starring Jeremy Irvine, Tom Hiddleston, Emily Watson
In wide release
Richard Seff reviews the stage version of War Horse calling it a “Must See” for its direction and puppetry, but notes “ the play itself is more or less “Lassie Come Home” minus dog, plus horse.” | <urn:uuid:57fdf95a-1848-495d-b43b-d80122b4b4be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dctheatrescene.com/2011/12/24/war-horse-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932434 | 1,009 | 1.640625 | 2 |
In 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. In 1972 Gene Cernan was the last. Two years later I was born. In my lifetime, man has not walked on the moon.
I never got to crowd around a black and white TV and watch fuzzy images of the one small step. I never had the opportunity to buy a newspaper with “MAN ON THE MOON” screaming across the front page.
Everything I know about man being on the moon is all second-hand knowledge. Because I wasn’t alive back then and have no memories of it, it seems very distant.
There was space exploration back when I was growing up. But you know what the big space-related event for me was? Yes, the 1986 Challenger disaster. Even Apollo 13 made it back safe. Challenger just blew up.
People say that it’s not the space age anymore, that it’s the information age. Well, maybe so, but “MAN VISITS WEB SITE” just doesn’t excite or inspire me.
All that seems to be happening in space at the moment is people living on space stations, probes going to Mars and telescopes taking photos of stuff. Nothing as exciting as a walking on the moon.
Is it too much to ask for another moon landing? We’re so much more technologically advanced now. Maybe it could be the first woman on the moon? First trangendered person on the moon? First man who likes to dress up like a naughty school girl on the moon? Just something, someone, anyone. Just get a person up there so I can experience the joy of watching a moonwalk that doesn’t involve Michael Jackson.
Back in 1961 President Kennedy made a famous speech where he said that America should send a man to the moon, just ‘cos it would be cool. So, taking inspiration from this, I am making this statement:
I believe that a nation with more money than New Zealand, probably America, but if China or someone else wants to give it a go, then good luck to them, should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man or woman on the moon and returning him/her/it safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to me, or more important for my short-term attention span; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish, but y’know, you can achieve anything if you really try. P.S. Hurry up and do it soon ‘cos I’m bored. | <urn:uuid:d3a1cebc-f5b9-4d02-8b8a-2ed968f42af4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.robyngallagher.com/tag/space-exploration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957601 | 543 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Life can change for millions of families in an instant: natural disasters can take loved ones and the outbreak of war drive families from their homes. When the unthinkable happens, Mercy Corps delivers rapid, lifesaving aid to hard-hit communities.
All stories about Emergency response
Pakistan: Another year of flooding in Sindh September 15, 2011
After barely getting back on their feet from the historic 2010 floods, Pakistan's monsoon season has deluged the same region again creating a health and housing crisis for over 5 million people according to the UN.
Somalia: Delivering clean water in Mogadishu September 15, 2011
Mercy Corps is trucking desperately needed water to camps for the displaced in Mogadishu. In response to the outbreak of water-borne diseases, such as cholera, we will also be starting hygiene and sanitation programs in the camps.
Kenya: A stimulus plan for Wajir September 15, 2011
In Wajir West and Wajir South, many of the people make their living as pastoralists. This means that men and boys often travel with the animals to look for water and grazing land for the herd.
Haiti: A step forward for some, a step back for others September 12, 2011
This was my fifth trip to Haiti.
Japan: Six months after the quake September 11, 2011
Six months after the massive 9.0 earthquake struck eastern Japan on March 11, Mercy Corps continues to work with our partner agency, Peace Winds Japan, to bring relief and recovery to people in need.
Remembering 9/11, honoring Comfort for Kids September 9, 2011
As the difficult anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001 looms, those of us old enough to remember it cannot but think to where we were and what we were doing when the planes hit, and in retrospect, how our individual lives as well as our country has changed.
Kenya: Collecting water in West Wajir September 9, 2011
In towns that are lucky enough to have boreholes, Mercy Corps is providing fuel subsidies so that pastoral families can water their herds and protect what livestock they have left.
Colombia: New hope for flooded-out families September 8, 2011
Somalia: Update from Mogadishu September 8, 2011
I just returned from Mogadishu, where we're trucking clean water to three tent camps in Mogadishu, reaching more than 13,000 people every day.
Libya: Metamorphosis of a parking lot September 7, 2011
During the holy month of Ramadan, kids here had an opportunity to leave their homes after months of instability and enjoy the evenings with friends and family. | <urn:uuid:f07d44e8-7b89-4d6a-9d90-32c73bd9303c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mercycorps.org/emergency-response?page=13&%24Version=0&%24Path=/&%24Domain=.mercycorps.org | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962344 | 550 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Three years after the collapse of Nova, there is finally some closure on the matter. Teachers are being paid the money owed them when the company went under, and ex-president Nozomu Sahashi will at last be behind bars after the Osaka High Court sentenced him to two years in prison for "corporate embezzlement."
The former president of English conversation school Nova was handed a two-year prison sentence for corporate embezzlement by the Osaka High Court on Dec. 2.
Nozomu Sahashi, 59, had been convicted of the offence by a lower court and sentenced to a three-year, six-month prison term in August last year. The high court decision on Sahashi's appeal confirmed his conviction for embezzling money from employees, but reduced the sentence as the funds were used to pay back customer deposits and Sahashi did not himself profit from taking the money. Sahashi intends to appeal.
While he intends to appeal, he doesn't appear to have a very strong case. Sahashi has long maintained that he took money from the Shayukai employee welfare fund to pay refunds and save the company. The problem with companies like Nova, where every aspect of their operation is controlled by the president, is that they have no concept of corporate governance. The company is theirs and any money in it can be used for any purpose. This is the essence of Sahashi's defense:
Sahashi's defense counsel argued that "The Shayu-kai did not exist as an independent entity, but was just one part of the company. The entire sum withdrawn was set aside for refunding customers, and thus was not embezzled." Furthermore, "If Nova had not been able to refund its customers, it would have gone bankrupt, and Mr. Sahashi fully intended to return the funds once the company attracted new investment."
That's some strange logic given that the game was over the moment Nova's fraud was exposed. Nova had close to $1 billion in debts and liabilities when it went bankrupt. Using the money from the Shayukai didn't stop the collapse. While Sahashi's lawyers did manage to knock 18 months off the sentence, I think it's safe to say that the final chapter of the story of Nova has been written, but like many drawn-out dramas, a lot of people will be disappointed with the ending. | <urn:uuid:ae577e23-86e6-4ee5-9f34-2932d0ef0b53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://letsjapan.org/comment/23174 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986557 | 484 | 1.5 | 2 |
Volunteer opportunity posted by: Winooski Teen Center
Posted on: December 10, 2012
The Winooski Teen Center offers academic tutoring to local youth on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. Tutors assist with high school math, biology, and language arts projects on Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday evenings. We provide the supplies, you provide the patience and guidance.
Tutors spend their shift assisting youth with their homework. They may work one-on-one with students or in small groups of 2-4, as needed. Tutors and students will have access to academic supplies, including calculators, geometry tools, computers, dictionaries, etc. Typical assignments include, but are not limited to: English papers, fractions, biology projects, multiplication, geometry, driver's ed., etc. Most of the youth we serve are refugees and New Americans; be prepared to work with youth for whom English is a second language.
Teen Center Tutors are focused and patient. They are creative problem-solvers who are able to adapt to various learning styles and English proficiency. They may have a subject specialty, but this is not a requirement.
Duties and Responsibilities
Benefits to Volunteer
Qualifications and Requirements
Teen Center Co-Directors
Orientation and Training
Arrive early on your first day of service to be introduced to the Co-Directors and the space, fill out forms, and become acquainted with the program.
Times Needed and Location
One session a week.
Please contact the Volunteer Coordinator at email@example.com to request an application. | <urn:uuid:3eb31923-660f-4793-8cec-0c30919e4c49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.idealist.org/view/volop/dP7g577644FP/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937188 | 336 | 1.671875 | 2 |
PLEASE DONATE NOW TO JESUS CARITAS EST - WE NEED YOUR HELP
Thursday, July 28, 2011
TODAY'S GOSPE: JULY 29: JOHN 11: 19-27
John 11: 19 - 2719and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house.21Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.22And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you."23Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."24Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."25Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,26and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"27She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world." | <urn:uuid:680f93ba-74ed-43a4-bd5c-1ae1b6760c5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jceworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/todays-gospe-july-29-john-11-19-27.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979012 | 249 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma and Indiana Senate President Pro Tem David Long, both Republicans, announced that they will delay any action on a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage until 2014. This will put it after any ruling regarding such amendments and the Defense of Marriage Act to come from the US Supreme Court.
The proposal would then have to go before the voters. Bosma stated, last week, that “Personally, I think it’s inadvisable to move forward with the United States Supreme Court having the issue before it.”
Of course, anti-gay advocates are not happy with this. The ill-named Advance America has condemned the move with their director, Eric Miller, stating “I think it’s important to let the people of Indiana know and let the Supreme Court know that Indiana is going to continue to move forward to protect marriage between a man and a woman.” | <urn:uuid:ff92d051-38f2-49f8-bbc4-e2fc94a8123d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lezgetreal.com/2013/02/indiana-assembly-to-delay-vote-on-marriage-equality-ban/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968346 | 188 | 1.59375 | 2 |
When was the last time your family spent some time wandering around downtown Atlanta? If it’s been a while, then the new Public Art Audio Tour is one enticing reason to venture into the heart of the city. The free walking tour features art placed in 22 locations throughout the downtown area. Revitalization projects are ongoing downtown; a goal is a more family-friendly experience, and the new “artwalk” is just one step in that direction.
The self-guided tour begins at Andrew Young Plaza and winds through Woodruff Park. Each piece of art along the way bears a plaque with a number that corresponds to an audio clip. The tour’s phone number allows visitors to listen at each stop via their cellphone. Pieces on the tour include the expressionist sculpture Threshold by Spanish artist Robert Llimos (No. 20) and the “chicken wire” columns in Margaret Mitchell Square by artist Kit-Yin Snyder (No. 11). Other stops include Folk Art Park and the blue steel sculpture The River Sings. The brief audio pieces provide information on the artist and the history behind each artwork.
Stops 1-20 on the tour are all within 15 blocks; plan on two hours if you’re going to be ambitious and visit them all. Stops 21 and 22 are located just beyond downtown in nearby Freedom Park; best to drive there rather than walk. While the tour might better hold the attention of older kids, younger kids will appreciate the chance to run wild at the new play structure in Woodruff Park.
The art walk was in planning stages for about a year, says Courtney Hammond of the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs. More art pieces will be incorporated, as well as educational tours for school groups.
“So far, we can see that around 300 to 400 people per month are listening to the tour,” Hammond says. “We look for people to explore the city. This tour gives them historical conceptions to the monuments that surround them.”
To access the audio components of the tour, call 404-260-5532. Patrons are encouraged to follow the prompts to listen to interviews and other information regarding the artworks. For a more in-depth look at stops on the tour and a map, visit ocaatlanta.com/public-art-audio-tour.
– Kate Wallace | <urn:uuid:3698e768-b559-4c88-9fa6-01942f639e09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atlantaparent.com/article/detail/for_arts_sake | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934746 | 489 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Kids from the Lake Stevens community listen to a worker from
Puget Sound Energy explain how energy gets to their homes.
The Lake Stevens Fire District picked a great day for their annual Health & Safety Fair. The long awaited sunshine brought out Lake Stevens’ families to this fun and informational event which included over 20 local vendors.
Lake Stevens Family Center, Lake Stevens Lions Club, Team Fitness and other local favorites were on hand with plenty of great ideas to keep families safe and healthy.
The Lake Stevens Police helped kids know what size their life jacket should be and Lake Stevens Fire taught them how to fit a bike helmet.
The Lions Club had their health screening van which offered vision and hearing screenings, they also brought along their hot dog trailer so folks didn’t go hungry while educating themselves on ways to insure their family’s safety.
Puget Sound Energy always has one of the more exciting displays. Showing how electricity works. The kids loved looking at the small village and hearing how the power gets to their home.
This year the Health & Safety Fair included information on keeping pets safe and healthy too.
A sound mind, healthy body, a safe home environment and insuring your family is secure for the future is what the Health & Safety Fair is all about.
Getting to walk inside an ambulance and having Watermelon Wilma create a balloon animal right before your eyes are just the unexpected surprises that were found at this year’s Health & Safety Fair. | <urn:uuid:9bdc9de9-4cf1-406b-8d44-3548adaaddbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lakestevensjournal.com/news/article.exm/2010-06-14_families_learn_how_to_stay_safe_and_healthy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956271 | 303 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. I never had any formal educationnot even a nursery school certificate. But sometimes I know more than Ph.D.s because as a military man I know how to act. I am a man of action.
The wise can often profit by the lessons of a foe, for caution is the mother of safety. It is just such a thing as one will not learn from a friend and which an enemy compels you to know. To begin with, it's the foe and not the friend that taught cities to build high walls, to equip long vessels of war; and it's this knowledge that protects our children, our slaves and our wealth.
Well then, I agree, let us first hear them, for that is best; one can even learn something in an enemy's school.
What sort of government is it that permits so many children to go to school hungry, without even a morsel of food in their stomachs? It cannot be! It must not be!
Living in a multicultural society, we cross into each others worlds all the time. We live in each others pockets, occupy each others territories, live in close proximity and in intimacy with each other at home, in school, at work. We are mutually complicitous - us and them, white and colored, straight and queer, Christian and Jew, self and Other, oppressor and oppressed. We all of us find ourselves in the position of being simultaneously insider/outsider. The Spanish word nosotras means us. In theorizing insider/outsider I write the word with a slash between nos (us) and otras (others). Today the division between the majority of us and them is still intact. This country does not want to acknowledge its walls or limits, the places some people are stopped or stop themselves, the lines they arent allowed to cross. . . . [But] the future belongs to those who cultivate cultural sensitivities to differences and who use these abilities to forge a hybrid consciousness that transcends the us vs. them mentality and will carry us into a nosotras position bridging the extremes of our cultural realities.
He was from the old school of those who would differ vigorously with you, but be able to present his different views with dignity.
The school is not quite deserted, said the Ghost. "A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.
The day I became a poet was a sunny day of no particular ominousness. I was walking across the football field, not because I was sports-minded or had plans to smoke a cigarette behind the field house the only other reason for going there but because this was my normal way home from school. I was scuttling along in my usual furtive way, suspecting no ill, when a large invisible thumb descended from the sky and pressed down on the top of my head. A poem formed. It was quite a gloomy poem: the poems of the young usually are. It was a gift, this poem a gift from an anonymous donor, and, as such, both exciting and sinister at the same time. I suspect this is the way all poets begin writing poetry, only they don't want to admit it, so they make up more rational explanations. But this is the true explanation, and I defy anyone to disprove it.
And the crazy part of it was even if you were clever, even if you spent your adolescence reading John Donne and Shaw, even if you studied history or zoology or physics and hoped to spend your life pursuing some difficult and challenging career, you still had a mind full of all the soupy longings that every high-school girl was awash in... underneath it, all you longed to be was annihilated by love, to be swept off your feet, to be filled up by a giant prick spouting sperm, soapsuds, silk and satins and, of course, money.
You picked me up from school
You attended all my sporting functions
You bought me a car
Gave me use of a credit card
But how can I feel pain,
How can I feel pain,
How can I feel pain
When you're being so supportive?
I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.
Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
It is true that for us art is not an end in itself, we have lost too many of our illusions for that. Art is for us an occasion for social criticism, and for real understanding of the age we live in...Dada was not a school of artists, but an alarm signal against declining values, routine and speculations, a desperate appeal, on behalf of all forms of art, for a creative basis on which to build a new and universal consciousness of art.
Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that traveleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
The health care bill is reparations. It's the beginning of reparations. He's going to give if you want to go into medical school, the medical schools will get more federal dollars if they have proven that they are putting minorities ahead.
I took an estimated two thousand years of high school French, and when I finally got to France, I discovered that I didn't know one single phrase that was actually useful in a real-life French situation.
Nature herself supplies us with an ascending scale or Alphabet of angles for half a degree up to 60 degrees, Specimens of which are placed in every Elementary School throughout the land. Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. These are absolutely destitute of civic rights; and a great number of them, not having even intelligence enough for the purposes of warfare, are devoted by the States to the service of education. Fettered immovably so as to remove all possibility of danger, they are placed in the class rooms of our Infant Schools, and there they are utilized by the Board of Education for the purpose of imparting to the offspring of the Middle Classes that tact and intelligence of which these wretched creatures themselves are utterly devoid.
I'm not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten what high school was like.
When a young woman tells me that she wants to become and actor, I say, 'No, be a writer. Or go to business school and learn how to run a studio.' The only real change will come from behind the scenes.
For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.
The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall. ... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldnt do if your life depended on it.
Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.
He that will teach himself in school, becomes a scholar to a fool.
Freedom means having the right to freely educate your children, and freely means no obligation to send them in a public school, where teachers want to inculcate principles different from the principles that their parents want to inculcate them in a familiar context.
Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.
The Pledge of Allegiance, ultimately, is coffee for elementary school students. "...And to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. FUCK, I'm at SCHOOL! Can we say it again? I need a second cup." | <urn:uuid:dc48d01f-add3-4668-aea5-f92fc52e5471> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finestquotes.com/quotes/on/School/4 | 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 | 0.974681 | 1,971 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The private equity industry gave itself high marks in a new report that found that companies under private equity ownership were half as likely to default on their loans as their counterparts during the recession.
The study by the Private Equity Council, which examined firms purchased between 2000 and 2009 and held through 2008 and 2009, found that the default rate for firms controlled by buyout shops was 2.8 percent through the two-year period of the financial crisis, compared with a default rate of 6.2 for companies not owned by a private equity firm during the same period.
“This study is an important contribution to an informed discussion about private equity ownership,” the council’s president, Douglas Lowenstein, said in a statement. “The low default rate is another indicator that undercuts popular myths about private equity ownership and suggests that private equity firms are effective at steering companies through troubled times.”
The council also took a swipe at reports from ratings agencies that had calculated higher default rates for private equity-owned firms.
The findings of its study, the council said, are at “odds with forecasts made by credit rating agencies Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s and by the Boston Consulting Group that the default rate for private equity-backed companies would rise significantly during the recession.”
Moody’s, for example, found that the default rate for industry-owned firms through the recession as 19.4 percent, compared with a 18.6 percent default rate for those who weren’t owned by a private equity firm.
A deeper look at tornadoes in a changing climate.
Why do communities fail to secure the buildings that house their children against momentous hazards?
There are affordable ways to live more safely in tornado zones.
Dan Bartlett, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, will succeed Leslie Dach, a former Clinton White House staffer, as executive vice president of corporate affairs.
The agreement is subject to court approval. Penguin settled a similar claim with the Justice Department in December.
The sitcom, which is likely to have additional episodes produced, has Mr. Crystal playing a once-great comic who tries to revive his career.
A federal judge’s ruling could halt the resale of digital music as well as other digital good like e-books.
A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?
The Winklevoss brothers have moved on from their battle with Mark Zuckerberg and are more active than ever.
The law made the procedure illegal if performed about 18 weeks after fertilization, earlier than the time recognized by Supreme Court precedents.
A small experiment finds that family members are more comfortable with the phrase “allow a natural death.”
An important new study suggests that statins, the cholesterol-lowering medications that are the most prescribed drugs in the world, may block some of the fitness benefits of exercise, one of the surest ways to improve health.
Jamie Dimon’s victory in a JPMorgan Chase shareholder vote was aided by months of lobbying. | Timothy D. Cook mollified lawmakers who had been furious over Apple’s taxes. | After Warren E. Buffett, will Berkshire Hathaway be able to negotiate such sweet deals? | A lawyer for Rajat K. Gupta argued that wiretap evidence should not have been admitted.
Sign up for the DealBook Newsletter, delivered every morning and afternoon, and receive breaking news alerts throughout the day. | <urn:uuid:4571a958-76f6-4a9a-b168-8fe720239b5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/p-e-backed-firms-less-likely-to-default-industry-says/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973876 | 739 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Smart design is the ingredient to successful change in the packaging and shipping industry. Our design team has a comprehensive background that encompasses years of experience both within the shipping industry as well as in the industrial design and manufacturing sectors. Let us help re-design the way your products are packaged and shipped. We understand the entire production process from raw material to final delivery.
Eco Ship is examining a different approach to the products used in this industry, one that takes polymer recycling out of the equation and instead designs the products in a cradle-to-cradle methodology. It is an emphasis on bio-based carbon-neutral raw materials that simply go back to mother-nature. Think of the day when your Amazon shipment comes and you simply wash the packaging materials down your drain or throw them in your garden to provide nutrients back to the environment.
Although bio-based polymers are still more expensive than petroleum based counterparts, global legislation is quickly moving to outlaw various petro based polymers or make them more difficult to use. It is this global shift in legislation that will open the door for new alternatives. | <urn:uuid:13599f3e-867e-4d16-8484-d8f1878e9c6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eco-ship.com/design.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949621 | 220 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Q: I run a small business on Long Island with nine employees. I heard that the law in New York has changed concerning employee pay check deductions. Does this change affect my business and my employees?
A: While this new law has not yet taken effect, upon approval by the Governor, it will affect employers and employees in New York in a number of ways.
Last month, the New York State legislature passed a bill, S7790, that will provide increased flexibility in making deductions from employee’s paychecks. Currently, no deductions from an employee’s paycheck are allowed except for a few categories such as Social Security, insurance premiums, health benefits and union dues. Upon the Governor’s approval (followed by a 60-day waiting period), this bill will establish new categories of permissible wage deductions that may be taken with employee consent. In addition, the law will allow employers to make wage deductions for the purpose of recovering wage overpayments caused by clerical error, or for the purpose of repaying wage advances made by the employer to the employee.
The bill will also permit wage deductions that are expressly authorized by the employee for a number of purposes. The new categories of permissible wage deductions include expenditures associated with prepaid legal plans; purchases for charitable organizations; discounted mass transit passes; gym membership dues; cafeteria and pharmacy purchases made at the employer's place of business; tuition, room, board and fees for pre-school through post-secondary education; childcare expenses; and payments for housing provided by non-profit hospitals. These new categories will not disturb wage deductions already permitted under current law.
The employer and/or employee may set a limit for each pay period on the total amount of certain employee-authorized deductions made for expenditures benefitting the employee. Once deductions are made, the employee will have access to account information regarding expenditures and deductions.
When making deductions, employers must comply with regulations promulgated by the Commissioner of Labor. Before recovery or repayment is initiated, the regulations require an employer to give notice to the employee and implement a procedure through which an employee can dispute the amount to be recovered or repaid. Finally, the regulations will limit the size of recoverable overpayments and delineate the appropriate timing and method for recovery or repayment.
In sum, this new legislation significantly will change long-standing New York law by authorizing the application of earned wages to a broad spectrum of purposes by way of paycheck deductions. | <urn:uuid:d6316cf0-3a2b-407a-b858-5cde8c3b7844> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.liherald.com/westhempstead/stories/Employment-Law,44873 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951038 | 494 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A woman arrives at the hospital with a condition called pulmonary hypertension. The arteries supplying her lungs are unable to deliver enough blood, which threatens their ability to delivery oxygen throughout her body. Making matters worse, she is 11 weeks pregnant, which puts additional strain on her weakened body. If the pregnancy continues, the woman surely will die.
This was the situation confronting doctors last November at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. Despite the fact that the hospital was owned by Catholic Healthcare West and its directives do not permit abortion, doctors terminated the woman’s pregnancy to save her life.
The procedure was carried out after the hospital’s Ethics Committee met to discuss the case. The committee approved it because another of its directives allows doctors to provide necessary medical treatment even if the result is the loss of a pregnancy, according to this report posted on the website of the National Catholic Reporter.
Although the patient in Phoenix got life-saving treatment, the American Civil Liberties Union is concerned that other women in similar circumstances might not have the option of ending their pregnancies if they are treated at religious hospitals. On Thursday, the ACLU sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking the agency to clarify that hospitals receiving government funds may not deny patients “emergency reproductive health care."
"Religiously affiliated hospitals are not exempt from complying with [the law], and cannot invoke their religious status to jeopardize the health and lives of pregnant women seeking medical care,” the letter states.
The law in question is the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which “requires hospitals to stabilize or transfer patients who are facing an emergency,” according to the letter. “An emergency medical condition is one that, absent proper treatment, places the health of the patient in serious jeopardy, risks serious impairment to bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part.”
In some extreme cases, proper treatment involves terminating a pregnancy. With 15% of the country’s hospital beds operated by Catholic hospitals, the risk that some of them may be violating the law is real.
The ACLU outlined three cases in which women already in the midst of miscarriages were denied necessary care by Catholic hospitals; one of those women “developed pulmonary disease, resulting in lifetime oxygen dependency” as a result, the letter says.
Future patients treated at St. Joseph’s in Phoenix might fare worse than the woman who went there in November. Sister Margaret Mary McBride, a nurse and nun who served on the Ethics Committee and consented to the emergency abortion, was excommunicated by the leader of the Phoenix diocese, Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted. Her punishment “sends the message to other hospital employees, at St. Joseph’s and at other Catholic hospitals around the country, that they risk punishment if they provide life-saving pregnancy terminations in the future,” according to the ACLU.
In a statement available online, the Phoenix diocese says that “an unborn child is not a disease. … The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic.”
-- Karen Kaplan
Photo: St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center. Credit: Matt York / Associated Press | <urn:uuid:b2074592-78df-40ee-aeb3-776f329f38a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/07/aclu-letter-to-cms-regarding-abortion-rights.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954063 | 685 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same as follows:
SECTION 1. ection 5 of chapter 183A of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting after the word “units”, in line 5, the following words:- and may include determinations of whether and how to weigh a restriction relating to value imposed on 1 or more, but fewer than all, units by covenant, agreement or otherwise.
SECTION 2. Said section 5 of said chapter 183A, as so appearing, is hereby further amended by inserting after the word “therefrom”, in line 17, the following words:- ; and provided, further, that readjustment of 1 or more unit’s percentage interest solely to reflect release or termination of a restriction previously imposed on the unit by covenant, agreement or otherwise that was a factor for reduction of that percentage interest, with proportionate adjustment only to each other unit’s percentage interest, if not otherwise provided for in the master deed, may be made by vote of 75 per cent or such other percentage of unit owners as is required to amend the master deed generally, whichever is less, and the consent of 51 per cent of the number of all mortgagees holding first mortgages on units within the condominium who have given notice of their desire to be notified as provided in clause (5) of section 4 is obtained; provided further, that any such re-adjustment shall be effective on the date the amendment is recorded in the appropriate registry of deeds or land registration office or such later date as may be stated in the amendment; and provided further, that in the case of readjustment following expiration of a term of years stated in the restriction, that readjustment shall be effective on the date as aforesaid or 1 year after termination of the restriction, whichever is later.
SECTION 3. Paragraph (i) of subsection (a) of section 6 of said chapter 183A, as so appearing, is hereby amended by striking out the first sentence and inserting the following sentence:- Except as provided in paragraph (ii), all common expenses shall be assessed against all units either in accordance with their respective percentages of undivided interest in the common areas and facilities or, if stated in the master deed or an amendment thereto duly recorded in the approximate relation that the area of the unit bears to the aggregate area of all the units, which may take into account unit location, amenities in the unit, and limited common areas and facilities benefiting the unit; provided, however, that such an amendment shall require the consent of all unit owners whose common expense assessment is materially affected.
Approved July 26, 2010 | <urn:uuid:e09e228d-7720-48fc-ba82-ac7ab130a43e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2010/Chapter183 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958018 | 561 | 1.585938 | 2 |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Does a good role model talk about using illegal drugs?
Was Sen. Barack Obama's answer about drug use too honest?
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama started the debate when he admitted to a high school audience in New Hampshire that he had experimented with drugs while he was in high school.
"There were times when I got into drinking, experimenting with drugs. There was a stretch of time where I did not really apply myself," Obama said.
He added that when he left for college he realized he wasted a lot of time using drugs.
"It's not something I'm proud of," Obama said. "It was a mistake as a young man."
What a change from Bill Clinton's 1992 admission that he had smoked marijuana a time or two and didn't like it. "And I didn't inhale and didn't try it again."
"I never understood that line," Obama said, who said he did inhale marijuana when asked by a student. "The point was to inhale. That was the point." Watch Obama admit he inhaled »
Clinton's admission has become a cultural joke. Obama's comments? If you ask Republican rival Mitt Romney, Obama's comments were too honest.
"I think in order to leave the best possible example for our kids, we're probably wisest not to talk about our own indiscretions in great detail," Romney said.
Romney isn't alone in that belief. When George W. Bush was governor of Texas in 1999, he talked briefly about his use of alcohol, but refused to talk about other drugs because he feared kids might think what he did was "cool."
Bush said at the time, "It is irrelevant what I did 20 or 30 years ago. What's relevant is that I have learned from the mistakes that I made."
So what's a role model to do? Should he be discreet or open about past indiscretions?
According to Steve Pasierb, president of Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Obama is right on the money. Pasierb says kids are not naive; they know people in high places have experimented with drugs.
"The key is to be honest and to put it the context of saying I did this and it was a dumb choice," Pasierb said. "Obama talked about how it wasn't the right thing to do. When he got serious about his life, he left it behind. If he were to lie, I think most kids would know."
Pasierb says the worst thing to do is feed kids a story they're not likely to believe. In other words, never tell them that you tried it, but didn't inhale.
"Most kids are going to see right through that and will ask themselves, 'How could you know if you didn't like it if you didn't inhale?'" Pasierb said. "Clearly not recognizing something when you did it is probably not the best course."
Pasierb says role models and parents should not be afraid to admit they did the deed.
"Really the truth works best. You owe your kids honesty," he said. "But you don't need to tell them every little detail. You don't have to give them blow by blow."
Is talking about past drug use the best thing for a someone running for president? That's a question much harder to answer.
According to a 2007 Pew Research poll, 45 percent of Americans would be less likely to support a candidate for president who had used drugs.
Obama has to hope his honesty with kids translates in a good way to the adults deciding whether to vote for him. E-mail to a friend
|Most Viewed||Most Emailed||Top Searches| | <urn:uuid:d17aaa39-2649-44ff-a2be-ae85aa845f09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/27/costello.drug.use/index.html?iref=nextin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989621 | 770 | 1.570313 | 2 |
You’ve perhaps heard of surgeons using robotics to perform surgery on someone in another city, state, or even country?
Well, psychiatrists can also evaluate and treat patients remotely. Called telepsychiatry, it’s a relatively new method of connecting providers with clients when distance is a limiting factor.
I’ve never done telepsychiatry, but know colleagues who have. I’d imagine it could be challenging, considering we use all our senses (including smell) to evaluate clients. On the other hand, a client usually has a therpist or case worker present with them, while the psychiatrist communicates via camera/TV.
So, writers, if you have a character in an isolated location and they need a therapist/psychiatrist, make sure they have access to the interwebz and maybe even Skype.
Let me know if you have any writerly mental health questions, and I’d be happy to answer them here on Mental Health Monday. Check out Lydia’s Medical Mondays as well and Sarah Fine’s blog, The Strangest Situation for more psych related topics.
Remember, these posts are for WRITING PURPOSES ONLY and are NOT to be construed as medical advice or treatment. | <urn:uuid:6e424c9a-060a-41d7-b611-921c87f90c97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lbdiamond.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/mental-health-monday-telepsychiatry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948277 | 258 | 1.640625 | 2 |
WELCOME TO BERRY-GO-ROUND #24! Let’s start with a Berry-go-Round Amusement.
January is such a good month for plant blogs probably because there’s so little else to do, at least here in the northern Temperate Zone. But to avoid some seasonal affective disorder head way down south to Sao Paulo and say olá! to Ricardo and his fellow tree bloggers. This time he’s in Rio and presents some nice pictures of the cannonball tree and their bizarre flowers, which the Phactor showed you some time back.
Here's more tough winter duty. Over at Arboreality, Jade Blackwater has been hanging out on the beaches of Santa Barbara CA. Head on over and see the many beautiful images of trees and commentary, and then express you sympathy for such making the best of it in what is clearly a place hardly fit for human habitation.
Let me broaden your horizons by introducing a bit of botanical illustration and some botanical art. The Phytophactor was an art minor in college, somewhat strange for a biology major, or so everyone said. However he now understands that the combination of genetic pattern varied by environmental influences produces great design, and so we find plants aesthetically pleasing to the point that failing to appreciate their attractiveness is a sign of clinical depression.
Oh no! More dam yam confusion, but ocas are pretty (and we’re not talking killer whales either) over at the Love Plant Life Blog, but no complaints if it becomes fodder for the Phytophactor's blog.
At the Natural History Blog, David Ingram calls our attention to lichens, symbiotic organisms consisting of algae growing within a fungus mycelium producing an organism that looks nothing like either partner. And if you like these images and figuring out what some of these tough little organisms are, then the Lichens of North America is the book for you. It includes an identification key and great illustrations.
The Festival of the Trees blogroll #43 (How could this have escaped my attention 42 times before?) is up at Xenogere. Don’t be a stranger.
Tim Enwistle (Director of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney) at Talking Plants blogs about frangipani, Plumeria, a nice winter diversion for us Northern Hemisphere residents. Frangipani has the most wonderfully fragrant flowers and is one of my favorite components of UTF (ubiquitous tropical flora). This correspondent heartily endorses his recommendation to visit the Mt. Coot-tha Botanic Gardens the next time you’re in the neighborhood of Brisbane to see their collection of over 100 varieties of frangipani. And the Sydney Botanic Gardens should not be missed either.
Michele at the From Seed to Table blog provides harvest data and a nice image of some less well known carrot varieties, but if she were my student she'd be explaing whether she weighed the whole plant or just the part she eats? This correspondent is an avid gardener, but weighing all your garden produce is a bit anal retentive. There are only two amounts: enough and not enough. Enjoy already!
The Watcher at Watching the World Wake Up has way too much energy; you can get exhausted just reading this blog, but it’s part of my exercise regime (watching others exercise). You simply have to admire how someone can notice they’ve picked up a hitchhiker on a morning jog and turn that into a blog about nature’s Velcro™, burdock.
Later in the month The Watcher treats us to a pictoral visit to the Sonoran desert and a nice explanation of plant spacing. Then the Watcher starts out by scaring us a bit with thought experiments, which are easier after the morning coffee, but he finally makes his point or two or more about plant spines.
While it may be that deserts are loaded with prickly plants, neotropical rainforests have a surprising number of spiny plants too, enough so you learn not to just grab hold of stems. And a good example of this was provided by John at Kind of Curious whose late December posting tells you about kapok, that oh so useful waterproof fiber that they used for the stuffing of May West life jackets. So come on up and see his blog sometime.
Over at the Wild Plant Post my botanical colleague Joseph Craine asks what limits plant productivity? Water or nitrogen? This is a devilishly tricky problem to solve as one may influence the other making it impossible to tease the individual affects apart. This is real science well explained.
Here's a pretty good story. A wild tobacco gets pollinated by hawkmoths, so it flowers in the evening. But the hawkmoth also used the wild tobacco as a brood substrate for its caterpillars. Plants being attacted by the hawkmoth larvae switch their flowering time to mornings attracting hummingbird pollinators. This is pretty cool, but the real question is why bother with the hawkmoths anyways? The authors reason that perhaps the hawkmoth is a better pollinator, so the plant benefits from the interaction until the hawkmoth herbivory becomes too great, and then it's better to switch to a less effective pollinator. Now how to test this hypothesis?
Here's another flower story from the Human Flower Project. The strange looking flowers of Pedilanthus, usually called something like the "little bird flower" are supposed to bring luck so they are popular in SE Asia around the lunar new year (Feb. 14th) in places where that is celebrated like Malaysia. Hmm, no easy way to explain that these are really inflorescences that look like flowers, something that is fairly common in the euphorb family.
Lastly this carnival cannot close without mentioning that plants, specifically trees, should play a prominent role in helping get Haiti back on its feet again. Deforestation and the accompanying loss of soil has been a problem leading to poverty in many countries. You might consider a contribution to Plants with a Purpose, a charity devoted to helping with agroforestry. Ht to Casaubon’s Book blog and her nice discussion of the role reforestation plays in redevelopment.
Thanks to all the contributors, witting or not; keep up the good work.
Umbilicaria section Polymorphae
3 hours ago in Variety of Life | <urn:uuid:cfdea119-3235-4f19-947b-3af9e2ba5a2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phytophactor.fieldofscience.com/2010/01/berry-go-round-24-january-2010.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942984 | 1,324 | 1.695313 | 2 |
RIO DE JANEIRO -- High atop the peaks that surround Rio de Janeiro, rust-hued rooftops and balconies jut out at all angles. Canopies of electrical wire tangled with clotheslines hang above kids playing pickup soccer in sandals. On narrow, graffiti-lined streets, pedestrians compete for the right-of-way with motorcycle taxis that zip through traffic over roller coaster roadways. On some corners, a wrong step could send you tumbling into an open canal filled with floating garbage.
A far cry from the famous Christ the Redeemer statue or the luxury Copacabana hotel, these crowded slum communities called favelas on the hillsides of Rio are becoming unlikely stops for visitors who are looking to get a glimpse of life beyond the bars and beaches in Brazils tourist hot spot.
Foreign tourists and increasingly Brazilians themselves are flocking wide-eyed to Rios favelas to spend a night at a bed and breakfast, sample local cuisine, take graffiti workshops or play paintball. In some cases, visitors are settling into these neighborhoods for weeks at a time at venues such as Casa Alto Vidigal, a favela home-turned-hostel that lures crowds with its bar and rooftop deck overlooking the city.
Most of the tourists come for just a few hours, long enough to see what its like to live in places that have reputations for crowding, crippling poverty and clashes between drug gangs and police.
Home to millions of Rios poorest residents, the favelas have long been viewed as off-limits even to Brazilians. Made infamous by films such as City of God and Elite Squad, the mere mention of them sometimes provokes looks of apprehension and dread.
Those who call them home beg to differ.
Rocinha is a normal place, an interesting place, an average place, 22-year-old Erik Martins said of Rios largest favela, where he lives and works part time as a tour guide.
Until last year, drug gangs largely controlled Rocinha. But last November, authorities in Rio wrested control of the community through a process dubbed pacification, which has been under way for several years in other favelas across the city. Now hulking military police vehicles are parked on Rocinha curbs and men in bulletproof vests are scattered across street corners, weapons slung across their chests.
Martins who spends much of his time working as a health aide, nursing neighbors with tuberculosis and other ailments said he couldnt blame people for coming into favelas expecting to find danger or misery, but he hopes that by the time they leave they find common ground instead.
We have a story, said 25-year-old Davila Pontes, who lives in Rocinha. There are those who want to know us, but others who just want to pay and come and go out.
She thinks tourism could serve as one tool to end the stereotypes that often are projected onto communities such as hers. But she worries about the kind of tourism that offers only a surface-level view of Rocinha, instead of promoting interaction between tourists and residents.
Rocinha doesnt need to change, Pontes said. What must change is the relationship between the community and the tourists.
A veteran of the favela tourism industry, Marcelo Armstrong runs a twice-a-day tour. For about $35 per person, white, air-conditioned minivans pick up patrons along a stretch of hotels in the heart of downtown Rio, shuttling no more than 12 visitors to Rocinha and a smaller neighboring favela for a part-driving, part-walking tour. | <urn:uuid:14cc6bd8-a884-4ee9-8404-9ef3aa0feb4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/19/2857336/brazils-newest-tourist-attraction.html | 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 | 0.956733 | 763 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The far-reaching impact of family caregiving
It’s no secret that with people living longer, there continues to be an increase in family caregiving for parents and other loved ones. This trend also has a domino effect on the impact in the workplace. Just take a look at the following statistics:
61 percent of family caregivers over the age of 50 have other jobs — 50 percent full-time and 11 percent part-time.
64 percent of workers with eldercare responsibilities most commonly arrive late, leave early or take off time during the day to provide care; 17 percent are reported taking a leave of absence and 9 percent have to go from full-time to part-time work.
19 percent left the workplace entirely because of having to care for a spouse or other family member.
According to the MetLife Mature Market Institute, family caregivers (50 and older) who leave the workforce to care for a parent lose, on average, almost $304,000 in wages and benefits over their lifetime. These estimates range from $283,716 for men and $324,044 for women.
These challenges will continue to rise. By 2020, one in three total U.S. households is expected to be involved with caring for an elderly relative, up from one in four today.
Even with this ongoing increase in working family caregivers, some might say that it is not too different than childcare while the baby boomers were born between the years 1946 and 1964. Let me tell you some of the key differences:
The beginning of eldercare and the duration is unpredictable. The need can develop suddenly and often involves many family members. Having a number of family members involved can lead to disagreements among siblings and these emotions can play a significant role when caring for a parent.
The physical demands on eldercare can be greater since it may include intimate personal assistance of activities of daily living, like bathing or toileting, for a grown adult. Additionally, the financial costs for eldercare can add to the strain of caregiving and the effects it has on one’s job. The distance between where the adult child and parents live adds to the stress and complications associated with logistics, additional expenses and the job when long-distance travel is involved.
Talking about your children and showing pictures of them on Smart Phones are commonplace today. Showing pictures of your elderly parents who need care is not. Some years back when you heard that someone died in their 70’s, it was not a big surprise. Now, the comment would be, “he (she) was so young!” Today, we hear more about people living until their late 80’s, 90’s and even 100’s.
Unfortunately, most people don’t want to face the fact that their family members are aging and may someday need care. Both the parents and adult children would rather not think about it. Since most are living longer because they are beating heart disease, cancer and other diseases, families have to change and openly discuss the facts and plan appropriately. Topics include financial matters, Durable Power of Attorney, insurance matters, parent’s wishes (if family cannot provide the hands-on care)… the list goes on.
Here are just a few of many questions I ask adult children when a parent is going to need some level of care, whether at home or outside the home:
Do you know how much your parent has coming in each month? Is there any long-term care insurance? Who has Durable Power of Attorney? Do they have an Advanced Health Care Directive?
When the answer is “I don’t know,” that adds to their stress level. Now is the time for family members have to work together to get things done. Plan. Plan. Plan.
Employers can play an important role. A recent study from the National Alliance for Caregiving, Workplace Eldercare shows by implementing eldercare programs can benefit employees and employers with worker retention, productivity, stress levels and health among workers. Some examples of programs include:
Referral to caregiver resources including in-home care companies, senior placement companies, health care advisors, senior move managers and more.
Having caregiver resources speak to working caregivers and provide information at the workplace.
On-site support groups for working caregivers.
These workplace benefits can help working family caregivers balance their work and personal lives while attending to the necessary caregiving responsibilities. The company can benefit from improved employee retention which saves money as well as recruitment efforts to attract the most talented individuals.
Frank M. Samson is a Certified Senior Advisor and founder of Senior Care Authority based in Sonoma (Seniorcareauthority.com.) The company provides support to families throughout California in helping them locate the best In-Home Care, Dementia Care, Independent and Assisted Living for their loved ones. Frank also hosts “The Aging Boomers” on KSVY 91.3FM and Sunfmtv.com. Reach him at .939.8744 or Frank@seniorcareauthority.com. | <urn:uuid:b335e95c-2c2f-4f3f-aa51-e52149b045aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seniorcare.sonomaportal.com/2013/02/07/the-far-reaching-impact-of-family-caregiving/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965147 | 1,049 | 1.65625 | 2 |
So how does this 25-year-old car beat so many modern ones and why don't we have more like it today?
The Sprint was a rebadged Suzuki that was originally designed for the Japanese market. It was Chevy's attempt to supplant the unloved Chevette. Barebones doesn't begin to describe the car, but it was light, around 1600 poundsabout 1500 pounds less than a similar car weighs todayand had a tiny 1.0-liter three-cylinder engine.
That's a recipe for dynamite fuel economy. Unfortunately, there wasn't room for anything else, like, for example, acceleration. The Sprint needed over 15 seconds to reach 60 mph, which made merging a real exciting endeavor. If that wasn't enough of a safety risk, the words "tin can" do a pretty good job describing that car's structure. You don't get 1600 pounds and side-impact door beams, crush zones or, of course, airbags. Neither did it have power steering, cup holders, power windows, sound deadening or any of the other amenities we take for granted these days.
Thanks to a combination of tougher emission and crash regulations and higher buyer expectations, the Sprint has no chance of resurfacing. Nowadays, carmakers try to deliver the same or better fuel economy as the Sprint but without the unacceptable sacrifices. They do it with technology such as hybridelectric and diesel powertrains.
There's a point to be made that a modern car is a tad overbloated and could stand to lose a few pounds. In the future they will, but weight reduction costs money. The top car on the list, the 2000 Honda Insight, had an aluminum unibody that cut weight to 2100 pounds. No modern car, save for the Lotus Elise, matches that figure. But an aluminum unibody is expensive, which is why only premium cars employ it for the entire structure. Yes, the Insight had it, but Honda lost money on every one it sold, which is why the current Insight uses steel.
Maybe some folks would endure the Sprint's spartan interior, dreadful road noise, and dubious safety for high mileage, but we'd bet that figure is small. And if you're one of them, you can probably still find a few Sprints out there. Here's a tip: It continued as the Geo Metro and it'll be worth what you paid. | <urn:uuid:2fbc2da5-fbfc-489f-b8e3-604117310f56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/fuel-economy/epa-fuel-efficient-cars-chevy-sprint | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967975 | 494 | 1.554688 | 2 |
It has barely been 48 hours since the horrific events unfolded in the villages of Mohawk and Herkimer.
Now, area organizations are figuring out ways how to help those affected. Area charitable groups and public officials got together to talk about the needs of those affected by the tragic events in the Valley.
They talked about the resources that have been met and services that still need to be available.
The United Way of the Valley and Greater Utica area facilitated the meeting today- and the executive director says they're developing a long term plan for the community.
"Moving forward, the need will be a forum for how to deal with the stress of the incident. I'm talking about the more general community. It may not be that serious. It may be just someone to talk to and just talking to each other about how you're feeling about what is happening about normal reactions to crisis and grief type situations," said United Way's Executive Director, Brenda Episcopo.
Area non-profit groups are expected to put together a community education session. The United Way says it will be working on ways to help people deal with grief and trauma.
If you have any questions about the different services available, such as counseling or getting financial help for property damage you can call the United Way at 315-733-4691 or visit www.unitedwaygu.org. | <urn:uuid:2a74d82d-8137-407b-9b73-0d9b2ec97b12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cnyhomepage.com/keeping-healthy-fulltext?nxd_id=175272 | 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 | 0.962374 | 277 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Governor Rick Scott announced his commitment to developing more Florida manufacturing jobs in the upcoming legislative session by eliminating taxes on the purchase of equipment to encourage manufacturing companies to grow in Florida. The Governor said building up the state’s manufacturing sector is critical to strengthening the state’s economy because it creates stable jobs for Florida families.
Governor Scott said, “We have 17,500 manufacturing companies in Florida today that employ more than 300,000 Florida families. In the upcoming legislative session, we are committed to building up Florida manufacturing jobs by eliminating the tax barriers on companies who purchase equipment."
“Florida’s current policy puts our state at a competitive disadvantage because most states do not force manufacturers to pay taxes on the purchase of equipment or require them to adhere to regulations for tax exemptions. In order to build up our manufacturing jobs in Florida, we must remove these barriers to investment. We know that when manufacturers purchase equipment in our state, they are investing in Florida workers for years to come. We want more manufacturers to move to Florida, and our existing manufacturing companies to buy the equipment they need to grow and create more jobs to support Florida families," said Scott.
“Eliminating the barriers on investment for our manufacturing industry will also benefit our ports and the many small businesses that support manufacturers. Manufacturing accounts for almost 90 percent of Florida exports that depend on our ports. Small businesses make up nearly 96 percent of the state’s exporting firms and produce 67 percent of the state’s total exports. Building up Florida manufacturing is about building up Florida jobs all across our state," said Scott.
Governor Scott will propose legislation this session to fully eliminate an outdated “productive output” requirement, currently at 5 percent, required for businesses to receive a sales tax exemption on equipment. Until January 1, 2013, manufacturers were required to show proof of meeting a “productive output” requirement of 10 percent. Governor Scott reduced this 10 percent requirement down to 5 percent in the 2012 legislative session, according to Lane Wright spokesperson for the Office of Gov. Rick Scott.
The Governor’s commitment to Building Up Florida Manufacturing Jobs will also utilize Quick Response Training (QRT) funding to train workers to transition from other sectors of the economy, such as construction, into manufacturing. In November, Governor Scott announced that he would work with the Legislature to double QRT funding to $12 million, according to Wright. | <urn:uuid:c3862a5b-e9a6-4f91-ba3c-6ecb13fba1dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.examiner.com/article/gov-rick-scott-wants-to-develop-more-manufacturing-jobs-florida?cid=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956458 | 492 | 1.789063 | 2 |
In late May – early June 2010 Canadian artist James Lahey and his brother rode the length of the legendary Route 66 on their BMW motorcycles.
Canadian artist James Lahey rode the length of Route 66 on a BMW motorcycle
Starting in Chicago and ending in Santa Monica, the epic journey took eight days.
Of course, Lahey observed the landscape and the riders’ place in it with both a painter’s eye and a camera lens.
Click to enlarge; Navigating Man, 2010 © James Lahey
He subsequently produced a brilliant body of paintings and photographs based on the trip, titled Eight Days.
A brilliant body of paintings and photographs based on the trip titled Eight Days
At top is a detail of Red Rider, Mule Trading Post – Missouri from the “Navigating Man” part of the Eight Days series, a 7 ft. tall mixed media work on canvas.
The juxtaposition of the motorcycles, riders and road signs is rendered in vivid splashes of color lending the paintings a Pop Art feel, yet this is no mere Warholian homage.
Click to enlarge; Orange Rider, Missouri, 2011 © James Lahey
Perhaps because Lahey actually laid the rubber rather than merely using motorcycles as a motif as many do, the work has an alluring authenticity and the real spirit of the famed road.
An alluring authenticity and the real spirit of the famed road
Naturally the fact that he’s exceptionally talented has something to do with it.
Exhibited at a number of museums, Lahey’s work can be found in numerous private and public collections.
Click to enlarge; © Michael Cullen / Trent Photographics, courtesy James Lahey
In 2001 he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy.
The Nicholas Metiver Gallery in Toronto has some of Lahey’s work
The Eight Days series, accompanied by a catalogue and limited edition folio of photographs, was on view at the Nicholas Metiver Gallery in Toronto (above), and some of Lahey’s pieces are currently available there.
The prices are on request, but we honestly don’t think you can afford not to buy one….
Click to enlarge; 66R50/2 California, © James Lahey
- Posted September 29, 2011
- Share on
- © James Lahey | <urn:uuid:04568007-8f0c-4cec-9ac1-1fbaea4c61d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://driven.urbandaddy.com/2011/09/29/spotlight-james-lahey/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940097 | 477 | 1.53125 | 2 |
As that Tuesday morning dawned bright and crisp, I heard about the “plane that hit the World Trade Center” on the radio on my way into the Sun Newspapers Medina office at state Route 18 and Interstate 71. In fact, I may have been driving past the tiny Medina Municipal airport as the first reports came in.
A television in the corner of the office was already on when I arrived. Strangely, I somehow never remembered there even being a TV in the office before. It was a deadline day and by 9 a.m., time was wasting.
I noticed three things right away; one, this was no puddle jumper but a passenger airliner that had hit the first tower; two, my co-workers stood and watched the TV in utter stunned silence; and three — was that the same footage from another angle, or had another plane just flown into the second tower?
Within an hour, both towers had crumbled. I sat at my desk and said, to no one in particular, “the Twin Towers are gone.”
A statement so matter-of-fact it was shocking. I had just witnessed my country change in the most sudden irrevocable way imaginable, right before my eyes.
On this 11th anniversary of 9/11, those feelings can still be found surprisingly close to the surface. So as the nation remembers, we ask you to post your own where-you-were-when recollections.
It won’t change a thing. But it could help — for we truly should never forget. | <urn:uuid:e8af1428-99a6-4b35-b395-709b1a42c3cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cleveland.com/brunswick/index.ssf/2012/09/brunswick_sun_question_of_the.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980191 | 320 | 1.664063 | 2 |
During Dick Dauch’s illustrious career in the automotive industry, he launched Volkswagen’s U.S. manufacturing operation in 1976; played a key role in Chrysler’s revival in the early 1980s; and led an investment group that purchased five former GM plants in 1994, forming American Axle & Manufacturing.
Richard E. Dauch, Co-founder and executive chairman of the board, AAM
If Dick Dauch had stopped working at 50, he would have had a legendary career. By then, the Ohio farm boy had played football at Purdue, gone to work as an engineer at General Motors Co. (IW 500/4) and become the youngest (30) plant manager in the Chevrolet division.
In 1976, Dauch left GM to launch Volkswagen's (IW 1000/10) U.S. manufacturing operation. When VW's board decided to pull back on U.S. expansion, Dauch soon linked up with Lee Iacocca to help save Chrysler. Dauch spearheaded the changes in production, included rolling model changes and applied statistical process control, that improved quality and made the launch of the first minivan in 1983 a huge success. Dauch hoped to succeed Iacocca as Chrysler's CEO. When he was passed over, he retired and wrote his first book, "Passion for Manufacturing."
But Dauch was only 50 and he still wanted to run a company. In 1994, he led an investment group that purchased five former GM plants employing 7,500 associates. American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. (IW 500/310) was born.
Dauch began a relentless drive to upgrade the rundown facilities, instill a more productive culture and invest in new machinery and lean manufacturing processes. He also spent millions to buy up crime-ridden properties in Detroit surrounding his factories and turn the waste-littered land into a manicured campus.
AAM was an immediate success, but more challenges awaited Dauch. In 2008, believing the company could not survive with its present labor costs, he took on the UAW in a bitter strike. Then Dauch led AAM through a painful downsizing and reorganization necessitated by the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler. At one point within five days of bankruptcy, AAM survived and today is again a profitable global manufacturer.
For a full list of the Manufacturing Hall of Fame inductees, click here. | <urn:uuid:a6b1be54-5536-4f9a-92e5-27836956d96a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.industryweek.com/richard-e-dauch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974226 | 502 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Do you want to be the life of the party? Do you like clever word jokes? This is the lesson for you! Learn to understand five easy jokes that use double meanings to be funny. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn.
Learn English for free with 516 video lessons by experienced native-speaker teachers. New classes are added three times a week, covering grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, TOEFL, and more. Join over ten million ESL students worldwide who are improving their English every day with engVid. | <urn:uuid:bdede3b2-0ae6-4579-91e4-e25b08df30a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.engvid.com/topic/comprehension/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93991 | 117 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Buck Brannaman deals with "horses with people problems" in the new documentary Buck.
Buck Brannaman deals with "horses with people problems" in the new documentary Buck. Silverdocs
I thought it might be fun to take a moment out of Silverdocs 2011 to talk about a movie that you may actually be able to see! At a local theater! Soon! Maybe even now!
I'm exaggerating, of course: There will certainly be others with theatrical releases (I saw Page One here — that's the one about The New York Times — and that's certainly around), and you'll be able to see many if not most of them sooner or later. But this is a very fine film that I encourage you to seek out if you can find it. It's playing in the D.C. area starting today (over in Bethesda), but it's rolling out in a bunch of places, and you can look for a theater near you that might be showing it here.
If you read about Buck, the most prominent words you may hear are "horse whisperer." DON'T PANIC.
You hear those words because Buck Brannaman, the central figure, trains people to work better with their horses, and helps train horses to work better with people. He does indeed have some kind of crazy horse mojo that leaves people slack-jawed after they work with a horse for months and get nowhere, and in five minutes, Buck has it following him around, as one person notes, "like a dog."
What's more, Buck did work as a consultant on The Horse Whisperer movie — an experience that leads to one of the documentary's best moments, in which Buck tries to hold in his disdain while explaining that movie people think you're supposed to use horses that are actors, while Buck thinks you can ... you know, use horses that are horses.
The fear I had going into Buck was that it would be some kind of a leaden, woozy, reverential attempt to convince me that Buck can secretly communicate at a molecular level with horses; that he's doing some kind of magic. This, happily, is not the case at all. Buck's philosophy, if anything, is shown to be rigorously logical, as he demonstrates in one of his classes when it takes him about 30 seconds to condition a man to act like a scared horse. (You sort of have to see it.)
What he's telling you is that the way horses react to people isn't unknowable: it makes sense, and very often, the way people get in trouble with their horses is by expecting them to react in a way that's senseless — to become calm and cooperative by being hit a lot, for instance. From Buck's opening description of how it looks to a horse when someone tries to ride it for the first time, you become aware that this guy knows something, and he knows how to translate it in a way that other people can understand.
We talked earlier in the week about the documentary The Swell Season and the fact that true stories can sometimes more effectively convey lessons that are difficult. Buck demonstrates that they can also sometimes be the most effective way to convey lessons we could be inclined to consider too easy if they were fiction. As it turns out, Buck was a child performer who did rope tricks with his brother — they were even on What's My Line? — and their father punished them brutally when they didn't perform. Buck was beaten for years before he was rescued and placed in a foster home, and those experiences are central to his philosophy of handling animals. He believes that trying to change behavior with physical punishment, as well as a constant attitude of disapproval and negativity, destroys trust between people and animals just like it does between parents and their children.
The straight line from his experiences as a kid to the ethic that has become the focus of his adult life would have seemed heavy-handed as a story someone made up, but when you see him, and when you hear him explain it, it makes sense and doesn't seem forced. And it's hard to argue with his successes, which have put his classes in such high demand that he travels around the country for most of the year giving seminars.
Having said all this, as fascinating as Buck and his family are (he has a wife and kids, including a pistol of a teenage daughter who travels with him some of the time), and as moving as the arc of his life may be, the film has a crucial dose of humor that rescues it from being at all maudlin. Buck has a fabulously dry, often self-deprecating wit, and without it, things could have turned pretty syrupy, simply because so many people in the film admire him so much. Director Cindy Meehl clearly admires Buck, too, but she's very wise to infuse his story with light, and to make it primarily a chronicle of a great teacher. (Buck's wonderful and loving foster mother, who essentially became his second mom, is also hilarious and one of my favorite people not just in this movie, but in anything I've seen at Silverdocs.)
Buck is a very well-made film in other ways: the scenery is stunning, the horses are beautifully and lovingly shot, and there's a steadiness to the pacing that moves the story forward while giving it room to breathe. It's a fine, thoughtful film, and one I really loved and strongly recommend. | <urn:uuid:6dbdc728-6009-4ea2-be46-cb89aaaa743e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/06/24/137390327/buck-a-great-teacher-of-horses-and-people | 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 | 0.988572 | 1,125 | 1.65625 | 2 |
IT friend Roger Hamilton just returned from a trip to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, where a battle between birds and beachgoers is brewing…
Driving down Highway 12 on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, I sense that something is wrong. “Save a bird, kill an island,” someone had scrawled across an SUV rear window. “Piping plover tastes like chix,” advertises a restaurant on its menu marquee.
Pretty strong stuff. Better find out what’s up.
My first stop was the legendary Red Drum Tackle Shop, in the village of Buxton. “They” have closed down miles of beaches to off-road vehicles and everything else, says Bob, the owner. All for the sake of three little birds: the piping plover (pictured, above), the least tern, and the American oystercatcher. “They” are conservation groups, a U.S. district judge, and the National Park Service. The conservationists contend that people and vehicles on the beaches prevent the birds from nesting.
“Ridiculous,” Bob scoffs. “You know where the biggest least tern nesting sites are on the Outer Banks? On the roofs of three Food Lion super markets.
“And they closed off the Point,” he explodes. He means Cape Point, one of North America’s legendary fishing holes, which is normally lined with ORVs laden with rods and coolers, and friendly people—no matter that many miles of other beaches remain open. For a 4×4 fisherman, it’s like going to New York City and being told to forget the Empire State Building because endangered pigeons are nesting on the 96th floor.
“Visitors are staying away; businesses are going bankrupt,” Bob says.
I decide that a full-blown environmental controversy is a lot more interesting than roasting on a beach, so I head off to a refuge and come across a birdwatcher named Anna. She has heard stories of baby plovers falling into tire ruts and not being able to escape. I squint and imagine a big F-250, headed right for the little ball of fluff. The rod rack on the pickup’s front bumper bristles with black graphite shafts bearing names like “Slammer,” “Striker,” “Eliminator,” and “Ugly Stik.”
Next I go to the visitors center at Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
“How does it feel to be a public enemy?” I ask a park ranger. “Awful,” replies the young woman. Even the birds are a headache. When they move their nests, her colleagues have to rope off yet another 300-yard buffer.
My week is over and I stop by the real estate office to hand in my keys. Yes, there’s a lot of anger, says Kim. But the Outer Banks has seen many conservation battles, and in the end, people have learned to live with nature. “As far as I’m concerned,” she says, “if we can save these birds, then let’s do it.”
Read More: Stay apprised of current conservation issues and beach closures at the official website for Cape Hatteras National Seashore. (Daily updates on closures can be requested from Cyndy Holda.) Learn more about the controversy from the Outer Banks Preservation Association and the North Carolina Beach Buggy Association.
What’s your take on the controversy? Let us know in the comments below.
Photo: William Dalton via Flickr | <urn:uuid:8300c91d-1520-4bf2-bf00-95447e5ff9c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2008/07/29/save_a_bird_kill_an_island/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946104 | 777 | 1.507813 | 2 |
What is ModelFit? It's the group fitness answer to personal trainer Justin Gelband's main gig — helping supermodels get into tip-top shape (seriously: his client list includes half of the Victoria's Secret Angels). "It’s about letting people understand what they are, who they are, how they can work their own bodies," Gelband explained. "We want to get the best body we can for you."
What does it do? Justin builds programs for his clients based on their body types, and in the group setting, no two students are given the same exercise during the rotation. His main objective is to strengthen each individual's weak areas by using slow, deliberate movements to let the sensories in your brain connect to the rest of your body. This attention to targeting problem areas is what helps to tone the muscles and achieve a lean look.
How does it feel? The careful movements that cover every major muscle group will have your core and limbs trembling during class, but without too much soreness in the days that follow.
How can you get the workout at home? Gelband swears by stretching — especially using resistance bands — as well as using light weights and your own body weight as resistance. Keeping in line with his "it's all about you" philosophy, he suggests that students pick out a cardio workout that they like to do — and that they'll commit to doing. "Get an exercise video, go for a walk with your friends, or find a class nearby your house that makes you feel good about yourself inside," Gelband advises.
For rates and more information, visit www.modelfit.com. | <urn:uuid:cd103846-6b09-4e15-9722-cc569fab682e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marieclaire.com/health-fitness/news/best-of-boutique-fitness-modelfit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975756 | 336 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Firms are getting increasingly creative in the methods they use to cut costs and shift retirement responsibility to employees—maybe a bit too creative.
It seems IBM has attracted the ire of Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, both Democrats of Vermont (Sanders is actually a Socialist, but caucuses with Democrats). Essex Junction, Vt., happens to have a major IBM campus.
At issue is the business giant’s decision to match employee contributions to their 401(k) in a lump sum at the end of the year, rather than matching on a biweekly basis, which is now the norm. It means any employee who leaves will forgo the match for the entire last calendar year, even if they worked to, say, December.
The announcement caused an uproar, and employees enlisted the help of their unions and politicos. Sanders and Leahy wrote Ginny Rometty, chairman and CEO of IBM, a strongly worded letter in a direct appeal to reverse the new policy. A copy of the letter was then obtained by CWA Local 1701, the union representing IBM workers.
TechWire, a blog run by radio station WRAL in North Carolina, which also has an IBM presence in Charlotte, posted the letter, which the station notes is short and direct, in its entirety.
Here's the letter, dated Feb. 25:
Dear Mrs. Rometty:
"We are writing to express our strong concerns with recent changes in IBM's match and automatic contribution to employees' 401(K) Plus and Excess 401(K) Plus plans. We respectfully request that IBM review this decision and reinstate matching funds on a biweekly basis as soon as possible.
Over the last decade IBM has greatly reduced pension benefits for tens of thousands of loyal and hardworking employees, despite the fact that the same period yielded 40 consecutive quarters of growth in earnings per share from the previous year. Given IBM's reported earnings in 2012, this most recent decision to terminate biweekly contributions in favor of one annual payment at year's end seems severe.
In the last decade IBM has cut its U.S. workforce by nearly half. Due to this policy change, employees who leave for any reason other than retirement or who are laid off before December 15 will not receive any annual contribution from IBM to their 401(K) plans. As is consistent with dollar-cost averaging, employees will also lose a year of interest which could have been gained by these contributions.
If this change remains, we are concerned that IBM will benefit greatly at the expense of thousands of loyal employees in Vermont and across the country. When a company makes a promise to its employees regarding their pension, it must not renege on those commitments by cutting or deferring their retirement benefits, especially when employees who have worked at IBM the longest have already seen their benefits reduced. Given that reality, we respectfully request that you reconsider this policy.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter. We look forward to receiving your prompt response. | <urn:uuid:a2832299-a4f9-421b-8505-a24755f48b5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.advisorone.com/2013/03/15/ibm-draws-senate-heat-for-401k-changes?t=etfstlife-planning-ltc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969871 | 610 | 1.625 | 2 |
Jeff Biagini, project manger for Idaho-based Portage Inc., said work has been found for 85 of the 112 employees on the project. Portage holds the U.S. Department of Energy contract to haul 650,000 tons a year of contaminated material from the site to a permanent holding facility near Crescent Junction about 30 miles north of Moab.
“It worked out much better than we had originally anticipated,” Biagini said of winter employment opportunities.
He called the 27 workers at Moab and Crescent Junction facilities who will be laid off “a significantly lower number than we thought. For the most part, those 27 people preferred to take that time off. They had other plans or had enough finances.”
“Nobody who wanted to keep working will be laid off,” said Lee Shenton, Grand County’s liaison to the cleanup project.
He said those remaining on the job will either work at Moab or at Portage’s other facilities in the Four Corners region.
Some of the people remaining at the Moab site will continue radiation monitoring, dust control and site security, according to Biagini.
“We want to make sure we are well in compliance to keep people safe and secure,” he said.
Shenton noted that workers will continue to run well-field operations during the curtailment to prevent tailings contaminants from moving from the subsurface to the Colorado River. He called keeping the river uncontaminated “the key to the whole thing.”
Other workers will install permanent liners in each container used to transport material to Crescent Junction. Until now, Portage has used disposable liners in containers to make sure no residue comes back to the former mill site after dumping.
The permanent liners, made of half-inch plastic, will do the same job while saving $3 million through the end of the project in 2025, Biagini said. It is so slippery that no contaminated dirt can cling to it, he explained.
“It’s a specialty product generally used in industry,” he said.
The permanent liners will pay for themselves in four years, when Portage’s current contract with the DOE expires, Biagini said. He added the liner work will take the full three-month period during which the tailings relocation project is being curtailed.
Meanwhile, three other workers will stay at the Moab site to do maintenance work on heavy equipment. Some of the machinery’s bigger components need to be removed and rebuilt, Biagini said.
Four subcontractor workers found jobs in Nevada that coincide with the three-month slowdown, while three construction workers are going to jobs in Huntington and one construction worker will be employed in Grand Junction, Colo.
Biagini said two other workers’ employment ended with the curtailment, including a temporary employee hired on a part-time basis and a temporary worker hired until curtailment began. Another worker resigned in November.
Details of the layoffs and the project’s progress will be discussed Tuesday, Nov. 27, during a meeting of the Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action steering committee. It will be at 3 p.m. in the Grand County Council chambers, 125 E. Center St. in Moab.
Portage announced in April that it would suspend the cleanup project from December through February as the most efficient schedule based on its federal contract. The company receives $24 million each year for five years, and officials decided a nine-month schedule was the most cost-effective. | <urn:uuid:28cd568f-e94c-49a5-98cb-7a5e149d1e2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moabtimes.com/view/full_story/20909422/article-Officials--Most-Moab-UMTRA-workers-to-remain-employed-through-winter?instance=home_news_bullets | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96097 | 742 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Citizens Advisory Committee, which serves as a sounding board for Barnstable Comprehensive Wastewater Plan for the western part of town, working has met for about 18 months. It’s received volumes of information about wastewater management, nutrient loading and the options available to mitigate known issues.
The CAC has been impatient at times wondering about getting down to brass tacks and determine some direction for the town’s plans for big sewers. Members have deferred to the consultants and town staff suggesting that all information needs to be in and available for consideration. It’s tough to argue with that, but it’s also tough to meet and meet wondering just where it’s heading.
Working with just enough members for a quorum April 25, the CAC agreed to recommend an allocation for the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the shared western watershed for Shoestring and Popponesset Bay, or at least the methodology prepared for the Town of Mashpee in 2009. For the committee, it’s among the first solid targets amid a lot of discussion.
What’s interesting is that Mashpee itself, which is in the process of creating a water and sewer district, has yet to take a similar vote. Add to that concerns that Sandwich, which contributes to the watershed that emerges distant from its border, may not be a willing partner. The Cape Cod Water Protection Collaborative has funds to work on bringing all three towns to the table, but has yet to act.
The CAC’s eagerness to take action that may help move the needle was nice to see. It’s with equal eagerness that we will look to see how other parties respond.
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Click HERE to subscribe to e-mail updates from barnstablepatriot.com. | <urn:uuid:b6c8bc33-b6a8-4cde-8dcf-891cb5823353> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24630&Itemid=112 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949854 | 376 | 1.5 | 2 |
From M., 18 January 2010, Marinating meat in booze and soda – does it work?
Q: Traveling in Korea this week, I at copious amounts of marinated beef. A couple friends of mine commented, the best beef marinade they have ever had was a mixture of Coca-Cola, Orange Juice, and Bourbon. Why would this be a good blend? I also heard that the Coke breaks down the meat, is this true?
A: Thanks for your question. This is an interesting one, and I may revisit the question in the future when I have an evening to experiment with a couple of Cokes and some bourbon in a controlled environment. I can make some educated comments right now, though.
Coca-Cola, like all carbonated drinks, is slightly acidic, as it contains carbon dioxide and phosphoric acid. It also contains sugar (whether in the form of sucrose – table sugar – or high fructose corn syrup). Acids tenderize meat somewhat by breaking down the fibers, so a marinade including Coca-Cola (or any other carbonated soft drink) would have a mild tenderizing effect. Not much, though, because marinades don’t penetrate more than about 1/8″ into the meat. At the same time, the sugar in the drink would promote caramelization when the meat is roasted or grilled. Orange juice also is acidic (and slightly sweet) – it long has served a purpose in marinades. Think of Cuban roast pork, marinated in a sour orange mojo.
Bourbon is sweet and contributes other flavors as well, like vanilla, caramel, tobacco, and citrus. Despite the other flavors and the caramelization potential of the sugar in the bourbon, I’m not always crazy about adding a lot of alcohol to marinades. Unless you flame off the alcohol first – by burning it off in a pan on the stovetop – it can contribute that alcohol taste to the food, especially if you leave the food in the marinade for a long time. My advice when using alcohol in marinades? Leave it in for a short time only, or burn off the alcohol before adding it to the marinade. Place the alcohol in a pan on the stovetop. Using a long match, light the alcohol. Allow it to burn until the flame dissipates, indicating that the alcohol has burned off. I usually burn off alcohol for braises as well. | <urn:uuid:4b1c2475-ab15-4374-b623-0d8530ee0c25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://upstartkitchen.wordpress.com/answers/jack-and-coke-and-meat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94113 | 503 | 1.5625 | 2 |
You’ll Love This Telemedera Book If:
- You love creating art pieces that blend fabric and wood for fun collage results
- You love the look of Telemedera and you want to create your own unique pieces
- You want to learn more about artist Alma de la Melena Cox and her Telemedera style
Originally developed by Alma de la Melena Cox, Telemedera refers to the blending of fabric and wood in collage. With 20 great mixed media collage techniques and 10 start to finish Telemedera projects, Collage Fusion is great for any artist looking to bring this unique art form to life. With vibrant colors, interesting textures and surprising details, Telemedera is as beautiful as it is fun.
Learn new collage art techniques for using a variety of materials including stencils, dimensional paint, fabric, beads and personal items provide you with a finished piece that is inspirational and lively. Use wood-burning tools to add detail lines and other materials to create a variety of effects. With clear photos and welcoming fabric collage tutorials you’ll be able to recreate the effects seen in Collage Fusion in your own work.
In the Collage Fusion eBook You’ll Learn:
- Collage art techniques for adding Telemedera to your works
- Telemedera projects that include clear instruction & photos for great results from start to finish
- Tips for safely & successfully creating wood and fabric art pieces.
A Word From the Author:
"As the ideas for this book developed, I saw that each idea led to the next one; it was like opening a gift and finding another one inside. I am grateful for the opportunity to hand the box to you so that you may unwrap it and add to all the possibilities. I hope you have fun as we navigate the path together." — Alma de la Melena Cox
Check Out This Excerpt From Collage Fusion:
Telamadera Fusion brings fabric and wood together by fusing them. Although many projects were inspired by this technique, not all of them require fabric or wood. You’ll find projects on canvas, fabric and cardstock, and you can create with paper and paint if you prefer.
Wood My love of trees has required me to ask myself if creating art with wood is in the best interest of our planet. I think it is important to know our wood sources and to make sure it is not coming from precious, endangered rain forests. We should use sustainable and engineered wood products as much as we can and buy from suppliers that are committed to preserving this valuable resource.
It can be a little daunting to walk into a fabric store for the first time and face thousands of options. I have found that 100 percent cotton fabrics work best. Most metallic fabrics work, too, although they are delicate (we will get to that later). I love using metallic fabrics and I encourage you to venture to the section of the store that I call "the Junior Prom Shiny’s" to find the fabrics that are used for fancier dresses for weddings, proms, etc.
The smallest amount of fabric you can buy (have cut) is 1⁄8 yard (11cm). You may also buy fabric in increments of ¼, ½, 5⁄8 and ¾ of a yard (23, 46, 57 and 69cm) or entire yards. Many fabric stores sell fabric already cut into "fat quarters." This is fabric that is a quarter of a yard cut into a larger square shape instead of a long, skinny strip. You can ask a salesperson to cut a fat quarter for you, however you’ll pay slightly more if you take this route. The advantage to this cut is that you have a piece of fabric that is wider, which can be beneficial if you have a larger pattern that you want to use.
Steam-A-Steam 2 This is fusible webbing found online and in fabric stores. I have found that this particular double-sided fusible webbing fuses to wood very well. You’ll find it sold in small packages with sheets sized 8½" × 11" (22cm × 28cm). In some fabric stores you can find it in a large roll; bring the entire roll to a salesperson to have it cut for you. There are many fusible webbing products on the market today and many may work for this process, however, I have not tried anything
besides Steam-A-Seam 2 (SAS2).
Paints Acrylic-based paints work best for this type of artwork. Acrylic paint comes in a huge selection of colors, and with paint mixing, the color possibilities are truly endless.
Liquitex High Gloss Varnish The last step of the Telamadera Fusion process requires a lot of varnishing. I like the Liquitex High Gloss Varnish because it is made for fine art, is archival, does not yellow and has UV protection. It is self-leveling and polymer-based. Pour the varnish into a clean plastic container when varnishing a piece— the unused varnish can be poured back into the original bottle as long as it is clean.
Use an exterior water-based varnish for artwork you want to hang outside. Simply apply two final coats over the ten coats of Liquitex High Gloss Varnish.
Telamadera Fusion art can be as fun and artistic as you want it to be. This book features Additional Techniques (see pages 26–64) that expand the
Telamadera Fusion process to give your art extra depth, texture and beauty.
Love the Collage Fusion Book? Let us Know! Leave a Review Here! | <urn:uuid:41ee9d00-a97f-4f98-8f8f-fa9e2dd64d11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mydesignshop.com/collage-fusion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939226 | 1,183 | 1.679688 | 2 |
ABC and The CW commit to competing Beauty And The Beast pilots, as the gypsy's curse demands
It’s barely been a week since The CW confirmed a pilot pickup for its revamped version of ’80s drama Beauty And The Beast, and so—as the cackling gypsies decreed—a competing Beauty And The Beast project must be hatched before the moon fully reaches its next phase, lest the soil turn sour and the cows begin milking rusty blood. Fortunately we have all been saved from dying twisted, vulture-pecked skeletons by ABC, who has just similarly given a pilot order to its own previously announced Beauty And The Beast project from Jericho and Human Target writer Jonathan E. Steinberg. Inspired by both a will to live and its current hit Once Upon A Time, ABC’s Beauty And The Beast is described as a “reimagining of the classic fairy tale set in a mythical, dangerous world,” but hews relatively more faithfully to the story of a “a beautiful and tough princess” and her unexpected commingling with a beast. Relative, anyway, to The CW’s Beauty And The Beast, its "procedural spin," and its exploration of the mythical, dangerous world of the New York City sewer system.
Anyway, both projects are currently moving ahead with pilot orders, ignoring the omens of the disappointing performances of last year’s Beastly and this month’s Beauty And The Beast 3-D that would suggest America is all good on Beauty And The Beast stories right now, thanks. But what America wants and what America needs are two different things—and if you think you’re tired of fairy tale adaptations now, just wait until you collapse from starvation. | <urn:uuid:ffb568c9-67d1-4e88-833b-431407732562> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.avclub.com/articles/abc-and-the-cw-commit-to-competing-beauty-and-the,68251/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940932 | 361 | 1.539063 | 2 |
[color="#0000ff"]Deer Harvest in 2008 Already Third Highest Ever Recorded[/color] [font="arial"]
Dec 23, 2008
[/right] [/font][font="arial"]Frankfort, Ky. With several weeks still left in the season, deer hunters have already recorded one of the state's highest harvest totals ever. Kentucky hunters telechecked 117,124 deer as of December 22.
"The late muzzleloader wasn't so hot because of the weather, but we are already at our third highest harvest ever," said Tina Brunjes, big game program coordinator for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. "We have the free youth deer weekend coming up and also the January harvest and we should end up near 120,000. If we get good weather this weekend and the archery and crossbow hunters do well, we could squeak into second place."
The all-time deer harvest record is 124,752 set in 2004, followed by 122,233 in 2006.
"The free youth deer hunting weekend is this coming weekend and we encourage our youth to participate," Brunjes said. "They usually average about 970 deer for that weekend, but we would like to see it higher for this year."
Resident and non-resident youth ages 15 and under who are accompanied by an adult may hunt Dec. 27 - 28 without a hunting license or deer permit. Deer bag limits, zone and equipment restrictions and telecheck requirements remain in effect.
"It is a great avenue to get youth involved in hunting," Brunjes said. "Plus, it doesn't cost anything."
For all hunters, crossbow season for deer closes on Dec. 31, while archery season continues through Jan. 19.[/font] | <urn:uuid:95e07624-2642-4247-a1f5-6d3fb7306f6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=31126 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943365 | 357 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Nearly every Sept. 11 since Sept. 11, Hadidjatou Karamoko Traoré has made sure that her three children were dressed in their best clothes, and taken them from their tidy brick home in the Bronx to the pit where the World Trade Center stood, and where her husband, their father, worked and died.
Other Collapses in Perspective: An Examination of Steel Structures Collapsing due to Fire and their Relation to the WTC by Adam Taylor.
This paper discusses the failure due to fires of a number of steel-framed buildings and other structures that have been cited as evidence that the World Trade Center buildings that “collapsed” on 9/11 could well have done so because of damage and fire alone. Of the buildings cited by those who adhere to the official story of 9/11, almost none are high-rise skyscrapers, a point brought out by the author. This paper provides a solid basis and a photographic reference for rebutting the claims of the official story of fire and damage-induced collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. You can read and comment on this paper at:
John D. Wyndham
April 28, 2013
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
Published: April 26, 2013
Land surveyors working just north of the former World Trade Center site have discovered a piece of an airplane’s landing gear, apparently from one of the two planes that crashed into the twin towers more than 11 years ago, the police said on Friday.
A part of a landing gear, apparently from one of the airplanes that crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, was found on Wednesday in Lower Manhattan.
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The landing gear part was found on Wednesday in a narrow space between two buildings, 51 Park Place and 50 Murray Street, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said in a statement.
The police were treating the area as a crime scene, Mr. Browne said. It is possible that the medical examiner’s office will decide to sift through the soil there in search of human remains, he said.
The surveyors, working for a property owner in the area, were inspecting the rear of 51 Park Place when they found the piece.
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave senators a thoughtful argument this morning in favor of helping French troops in their mission to help stabilize the government in Mali, arguing that the United States has to act in advance to protect the American homeland. But she forgot two important event in making her case.
"People say to me all the time, well, AQIM hasn't attacked the United States. Well, before 9/11, 2011, we hadn't been attacked on our homeland since, I guess, the War of 1812 and Pearl Harbor. So you can't say, well, because they haven't done something, they're not going to do it," she said. "This is not only a terrorist syndicate; it is a criminal enterprise."
That's not entirely accurate. The World Trade Center in Clinton's adopted home state of New York was bombed in 1993 when her husband was president of the United States. In addition, although it was homegrown terrorism, most people would agree that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was also terrorism on the homeland".
Milo is the host of Touch, a daily program from 5:00-6:00 PM Pacific on The Bridge, 95.1 FM in Guerneville. Milo has invited me (Brian Romanoff) to be a regular guest on his show to try to bring more light into the events of 9/11. I appreciate the opportunity and I hope you enjoy the show.
This week we discuss the big NIST lie of finding no evidence for explosions during the WTC collapse investigation.
Available as a live-stream every Monday 5:00-6:00 PM Pacific at the website provided below:
The World Trade Center Buildings were built to last. Plane impacts and fires alone could not have accounted for the destruction in New York at the WTC complex.
This version in 6 parts has well synchronized audio - video.
The film features Richard Gage AIA, Dr. Stephen E. Jones, David Chandler and members of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, with original music courtesy of Eva James.
The presentation proves the world trade center buildings were demolished with explosives. It shows why a new scientific investigation and judicial inquiry is needed.
This edited compilation is presented under terms of "Fair Use". The intention of this creation is for non-profit, educational and personal use. Portions of copyrighted material may be included under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching and research. Any other use may require that permission be obtained from the original copyright owner.
The new book National Swindle of the World Trade Center recently posted online by
Crockett Grabbe has just started selling overseas, with copies sold to Netherlands & Czech Republic
Many Europeans definitely have interest in major happenings in the US, and of those there
are probably a large proportion that cannot believe the flawed conclusions by the US government
studies. Recall that the international group of scientists who determined that nano-thermite
REALLY brought the Towers down was head by Neils Harrit, a chemist from Denmark. Quite a number of Europeans have a strong interest in this issue, & should receive copies of this book.
Here is a link to 10 Youtube videos from the recent 9/11 Hearings of Sep. 2011. They include addresses by 9/11 researchers like Kevin Ryan, David Chandler, Graeme MacQueen, Neils Harrit and others.
Here is one of the videos: David Chandler on WTC 7: A Refutation of the Official Account
Relics, Artifacts and Memories: A Year Spent With World Trade Center Steel
Truthout, Amanda Lin Costa, September 11, 2011
I didn’t set off to become an expert in World Trade Center (WTC) steel but recently it occurred to me I was becoming one. The thought first dawned on me about a month ago, after I spent the day filming at The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) as part of a documentary I have been working on about WTC steel.
I spent hours with Stephen W. Banovic, a materials research scientist in the Metallurgy Division of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at NIST, and Michael E. Newman, senior communications officer at NIST. Both men had spent more than six years of their lives living and breathing the WTC steel during the intensive investigation into the collapse of the Twin Towers.
06/14/2011 10:35 PM
9/11 A Decade Later: Larry Silverstein Optimistic About Pace Of WTC Development
By: Bobby Cuza
After years of bickering and stalled plans at the World Trade Center site, leaseholder Larry Silverstein said Tuesday he is optimistic about the progress happening there and what it means for the future of Downtown Manhattan. NY1's Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
The power struggle is over, it seems, and now there is tangible progress at the World Trade Center site -- particularly on One World Trade Center, now 68 stories tall.
However, leaseholder Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties told a real estate conference Tuesday he still takes issue with the building’s name.
“They call it Tower 1, but for those of us who were here from the beginning, it’s the Freedom Tower. Always will be the Freedom Tower,” he said.
Official GPS Data Reveal Superior Aviation GPS Service Provided To WTC & Pentagon During 9/11 Attacks
As the aircraft attacks of September 11, 2001 unfolded at the World Trade Center (WTC) and Pentagon buildings, maximum and near maximum augmented GPS positioning quality for the entire daylight period was provided to the geographic coordinates for the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. Based on output graphs generated by Trimble’s free and highly regarded downloadable GPS planning software , which utilizes GPS “almanac” data transmitted by the GPS constellation on September 11, 2001 and now archived at the website for the United States Coast Guard , conditions such as GPS satellite visibility and geometric “dilution of precision” are both shown to be at maximum or within minutes of maximum during the aircraft impacts at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Such augmented GPS service is now in routine use by the U.S. commercial aviation industry to allow aircraft flight management computers to utilize precise aircraft positional information, accurate to within just several meters. This GPS service was activated on a conditional basis by the FAA just one year before the September 11, 2001 attacks . This service provided virtual aerial guidance corridors only 243 feet wide and a 95% confidence that an aircraft's true position will fall within any such designed corridor. The augmented GPS service was also utilized to precisely survey the Ground Zero site immediately after September 11, 2001. Such corridors can be navigated entirely by autopilot and flight management systems scheduled in 1996 and 1998 to be contained by United and American airlines Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft like those used during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
This is raw footage from some of the experts appearing in AE911Truth's upcoming, hard-hitting documentary of evidence for the destruction of the 3 World trade Center skyscrapers -- "9/11: Explosive Evidence -- Experts Speak Out"
Kamal Obeid, C.E., S.E. -- Civil and Structural Engineer
Richard Humenn P.E.E. - WTC Chief Electrical Design Engineer
(more videos after the jump)
Osama Bin Laden never charged for 911 – Inside Job likely
May 2, 2011
Osama Bin Laden’s death is being celebrated, and everyone seems to repeat the old conspiracy theory that he was indeed the mastermind behind the terror attacks of 9/11. But that was never proven, and there is not even evidence hinting at such a connection according to the FBI. It is very well possible that completely different organizations than al-Qaeda were responsible for the planning and execution of 9/11, and that the latter was merely one of the involved parties.
9/11 Experiment: Egg Drop, Equal Collision disproves Bazant's "Pile Driver" Theory NIST cited Zdenek Bazant PhD's "Pile Driver" Theory, whereby the top 10 floors, or so, of the World Trade Centers 1 and 2, collapsed down upon the approximately 90% of the floors below, completely to the ground. We test this hypothesis with an egg falling upon eggs below. Only the falling egg and the top-most egg were cracked. The eggs below were undamaged. There was room enough in the glass for eggs to explode sideways, but they didn't.
Objects of equal construction smash each other equally, upon collision. This goes for eggs as well as WTC floors. The video may have a humorous tone, to make it easy to watch, but has a serious message. We need a New Investigation by the National Institutes of Science and Technology. The NIST report was used as a justification for two wars.
This experiment was replicated at:
You can replicate this experiment with a video of your own. Materials: 4 eggs, tall glass.
9/11: A Decade Later: PTSD Rate Still High Among City's Survivors By: Bobby Cuza
A new study shows many who were exposed to the actions surrounding the September 11th attacks may still suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. NY1's Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
New York City resident Kathleen Waters says it pains her to go back to the World Trade Center site. She hasn’t returned since a single act of terrorism brought the towers down on September 11, 2001. The legal assistant escaped with her life after running down 86 flights of stairs from her Tower Two office.
"I look at the scenes where they show the hole in the building and I’m saying to myself, 'Wow. I was right below that,'" says Waters.
A number of health experts say many survivors are still reliving the horrific events of that day. A joint study by the New York City Department of Health and Columbia University found that over 95 percent of 3,000 survivors surveyed reported at least one symptom of post traumatic stress disorder.
Please find a link to a torrent of Richard Gage's Blueprint For Truth Lecture at New Zealand's national museum Te Papa in November 2009. Delivered to a live audience of over 600, this was Richard's largest speaking engagement yet. The video incorporates 3 cameras and AE911truth's slide show, and was produced by NZ911truth. Please feel free to download and distribute.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE or to the archive after the broadcast.
Live Radio Broadcast_Univ. Colo. Boulder Debate:
9/11 WTC Destruction - Richard Gage AIA Vs. Chris Mohr
Collapse by Fire or Controlled Demolition?
On this week's "9/11 In Context" show, which airs Thursday, February 17, at 3pm ET, Prof. Graeme MacQueen will return to continue the discussion of his superb research. Topics on this week's show will include the eyewitness testimony of first responders about explosions in the Twin Towers and WTC7 before the buildings disintegrated, foreknowledge of the destruction of WTC7, the seismic signals associated with the building disintegrations, and the importance of 9/11 truth for the antiwar movement. Prof. MacQueen is founder of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada.
Listen live at:
or listen to the mp3 which is available at the same link right after the broadcast.
Click "Play" or click on "Download" under the show title ("Graeme MacQueen ...").
A page of links to videos of presentations and key articles by Graeme MacQueen is posted at the Resistance Radio forum show page, at http://www.resistradio.com/forum/4-show-links/299-graeme-macqueen-on-for...
Don't miss the show! It is sure to be worthwhile.
The prominent quest there was "the hunter of the Bilderbergers" Daniel Estulin. He had the principal speech at the meeting and he also had been interviewed by the Czech state TV (27 minutes video in english here or at Youtube).
After the meeting we went for a dinner and then he directed me to his webpage. Among other interesting informations there were links to claims of certain Dimitri Khalezov, who besides believing there were no planes at WTC was confusing Uranium-235 with Depleted Uranium and at the same time asserting he's former soviet nuclear intelligence directorate man.
This experiment is to test the hypothesis that concrete pulverizes in to dust when it falls, as claimed by the official 9/11 Commission Report about the World Trade Centers. If concrete turns to dust so easily, the world needs to find a stronger, non-exploding building material.
Blocks of concrete were purchased and dropped from a 5th floor balcony. It was found that the concrete cracked, but did not create a significant amount of concrete dust. Thus, this ground breaking study is a Myth Buster, as well as a concrete buster.
Evidently, we need a new investigation commission, with scientists not just politicians, to find out what really happened on September 11, 2001.
More info at http://911Experiments.org/FallingConcrete.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Twin towers collapse eyewitness Paul Lemos clearly describes how he witnessed bombs take down the World Trade Center in yet another revealing piece of evidence that NIST was forced to release as part of a recent FOIA request. As we reported in our previous articles, is it really a coincidence that almost every video NIST sat on for years contained bombshell eyewitness testimony of explosives bringing down the towers and Building 7?
ORIGINAL SOURCE FOOTAGE:
9/11: WTC witness - NIST Release #25 - 42A0106 - G25D16
The removal of debris from the crime scene of 9/11 has been looked at as a piece to the other crime of 9/11; the cover-up and censorship of the event and the evidence. Professionals would like to know: If the official story were correct, why would fire collapse WTC #7? This would be the first time in history that office fires could account for a total failure and global collapse of a steel-framed high-rise building. Surely there would be something to learn - imagine if you dropped a ball and it fell up!
If the removal of 9/11 crime scene evidence is new information to you, let me point you to another question you should be asking: If the attacks of 9/11 were a surprise and the collapse of WTC #7 unprecedented in history, why was an army of dump trucks there the same day ready to cart off debris which included human remains and structural evidence?
Trucks entering frame at 1:26 below, seconds after WTC #7 collapsed:
Until recently many members of the 'truth movement' were guilty of speculating wildly as to the identity of this guy (nicknamed 'the harley guy').
From the recent appearance of this extended video clip, we know him to be Mark Walsh, and is apparently a freelancer for FOX.
Personally I'd love to know where he was getting his information from when he casually states ...
"... mainly due to structural failure because the fires were just too intense."
If anyone knows him, or can track him down, it would be really interesting to get him to comment.
We don't need to accuse anyone of being an insider. Potentially, as a freelancer for FOX, he could have been briefed on what to say without being part of a conspiracy.
This video was uploaded to youtube a little over a month ago. I stumbled upon it through a hyperlinked comment under a rawstory.com article about geraldo's recent shift in critical thinking skills. I haven't seen it on this site, so I thought I'd post it.
There's an interesting pocket of bright flame that ignites at the 6:00 mark. Additionally, there's lots of video of the mangled and cut steel beams.. .
9/11 New WTC Ground Zero Aftermath Kurt Sonnenfeld FEMA Video 2010 Release
Newly re-discovered pictures from 9/11. I was sent these from a friend who was living in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn when 9/11 happened. There are 3 pictures, one is the view of the destruction on the morning of 9/11/2001 from their roof. Another is a map showing how far away their house was from ground zero. And finally, on a table in the backyard where we used to have barbeques, you can see the thick layer of dust is. Six miles away from ground zero, to me, this is just more evidence that the towers were brought down by controlled demolition.
Looking through the video from the batch newly released from NIST. Here is a clip titled “NBC News Dub_clip16A” in a folder titled “NBC_News Dub from Jim Remberg.” In the middle of a TV interview, the first Tower collapses. The reporter immediately refers to hearing an explosion and “the reverberations” from that explosion. He repeats this multiple times, and at the end he says that he’s two blocks away and he clearly felt the reverberations. Would you really feel “reverberations” from a gravitational collapse two blocks away? Match that with my previous video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOLsM6BS2r0) in which you can hear a distinct explosion before/just as the collapse occurs.
I noticed something in one of my previous clips (Jim Huibregtse clip_15B) that I thought was interesting. This is a zoomed-in view (and then slowed down) of the pyroclastic flow generated by the collapse of the South Tower. I added two red dots to help you locate two distinct 'white trail' ejections (see my earlier posts on white trails coming from the building pre-collapse) coming out of the pyroclastic flow. Do you see them? That seems odd, no? More thermitic reactions post-collapse?
I've been making my way through the batch of newly released videos by NIST and I thought these were quite interesting. They show multiple 'ejections' (for lack of a better word) from the WTC North Tower with a white trail of smoke burning behind them. Contrast these ejections with multiple other objects and debris falling from the tower that do not have any smoke trails, suggesting that there is something different about the 'white trail' objects. One hypothesis: We know that smoke from thermitic reactions burns white, and we know (e.g., Harrit, Jones, et al.) that thermite is prevalent in the dust from the collapses. Perhaps that's what you're seeing in this video.
In the second clip ("NY1 6 Raw 10"), pay attention to the first ejection, which falls at :32 into the video. It seems that there is no white smoke at first, but that as it's falling, the smoke starts. Perhaps a delayed thermitic reaction? Then you see more of the same on the right side of the video.
September 11, 2001:
A Thermographer's Experience at Ground Zero
Jersey Infrared Consultants
As practicing thermographers, we expect each day to provide new experiences and teach new lessons. September 11, 2001, taught every American a life-altering lesson. This paper presents an account of that day by an ordinary thermographer who was working across the street from the World Trade Center that morning and suddenly found herself in an extraordinary situation. This paper details the thermographer's thoughts and experiences while making the long journey home.
International Center For 9/11 Studies Releases FLIR Tape: | <urn:uuid:2e59e202-c667-428d-b970-7fc99babc841> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://911blogger.com/topics/wtc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956867 | 4,579 | 1.625 | 2 |
A Purer Gene Pool
A Purer Gene Pool Architect Frank Lloyd Wright once famously said that "a doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Windows 98 planted vines to obscure the awkward lines of a graphical environment grafted onto a crude DOS foundation. Its time to bury it. Windows 98 has more than a dozen users, to be sure, but it also does some dreadfully stupid things with memory and task management that we do well to purge from the software gene pool. The reliability and security of the platforms that we offer to future users depend on deep-sixing dead tech.Technology Editor Peter Coffees e-mail address is firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:b6c86927-3f8c-4092-ae9a-169fe2c35405> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Web-Services-Web-20-and-SOA/Good-Riddance-Win-98/1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952638 | 150 | 1.585938 | 2 |
The fashion designer is famed for his dapper appearance and worries not enough people are following his lead. Although he agrees there is a time and place for easy-to-wear pieces, Zac is adamant dressing up is vital too.
“We’ve had sort of an explosion of extra casual dressing. It’s important for Americans to put more effort into what they wear,” he said. “A lot of young people and adults are talking a lot about what they believe in now. It’s important to dress as you believe and to enjoy fashion too.”
Zac was talking to Ruth Finley at a FNW/Trends luncheon in New York City. Ruth is the co-president of FNW/Trends, which is a non-profit organization created to help people in fashion, textiles and other creative industries swap information which might help their businesses.
The designer loves that more people are becoming interested in fashion but is keen that doesn’t dilute its importance.
“So many people are following fashion now. It’s become fashion-tainment. People should dress well again especially for all the great American designers there are. This is a place to dress,” he said, according to WWD. | <urn:uuid:db40077c-10c9-4d86-9f9b-758542ea200d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloginity.com/2012/06/zac-posen-make-effort-style/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985999 | 263 | 1.53125 | 2 |
NOTE: John Allen is in Miami Thursday through Sunday to cover the annual conference of the Catholic Theological Society of America. Watch Allen's daily updates on this site for regular reports.
* * *
In a recent NCR cover story I described a phenomenon in Texas I called "Evangelical transfer," meaning ways in which the state's strong Evangelical Protestant ethos shapes the Catholic experience. (See Texas: new Catholic frontier NCR, April 18.) This week, I want to describe another "evangelical" face of Texas Catholicism, this time in the sense of lives lived in radical witness to the values of the Gospel.
Meet Mark and Louise Zwick, founders of the Casa Juan Diego on Houston's West side, a remarkable center of welcome and advocacy on behalf of the city's mushrooming immigrant population.
In Catholic circles around the world, Mark and Louise Zwick are probably best known for the Houston Catholic Worker, a newspaper and labor of love in which they blend deep Catholic piety with keen social analysis. The paper is legendary for tweaking American Catholic neoconservatives, and anyone sucked into their orbit; in 2004, for example, the Zwicks lampooned the work of a certain Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, who, they felt, had been overly influenced by lunches in the Eternal City with prominent Catholic neo-cons. (In charity, they wrote at the time, they would refrain from saying that I was "out to lunch.")
On the streets of Houston, however, the Zwicks are famed not for literary production, but for love in action. One Wednesday morning in mid-February, Mark was showing me around the property when a mini-mob scene developed. A group of Hispanic men had clustered outside awaiting "Marco," and one by one they came forward to ask him, in polite Spanish, for various kinds of help. I watched as Mark found a jacket for one of the men to wear against the cold, a pair of shoes for another, and explained to a third how to get eyeglasses from Casa Juan Diego's free medical clinic.
Louise told me that this experience of living alongside the poorest of the poor, struggling daily to help meet their material and spiritual needs, fuels Casa Juan Diego's social advocacy.
"We see how the displaced people live," she said. "They're the ones who are uprooted by those economics, and we feel we have to write about it."
In one sense, the Zwicks resemble so many other white couples - in the argot of the Southwest, "Anglos" - who've relocated to Texas from the American heartland. Mark grew up in Ohio, Louise in Pennsylvania; Mark has a degree in psychiatric social work, Louise in library science. The two arrived in Texas in the late 1970s in search of new opportunities. That, however, is where the similarity ends, because the opportunities Mark and Louise sought had nothing to do with suburban living or professional advancement, but rather service in the tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.
Both Louise and Mark grew up Catholic, and both sensed the tug of the social gospel from an early age. In 1977, the couple and their two young children (at the time, a first and a third-grader) relocated to El Salvador, sensing that this would be a way to learn Hispanic culture and to experience another way of being Catholic. As it turned out, they arrived for the opening salvos of El Salvador's bloody civil war.
"We listened every day to the radio messages of Archbishop Oscar Romero," Mark said. "We assisted at the last Mass of Fr. Rutilio Grande," referring to a Jesuit and champion of the poor who was killed in March 1977. Although the couple was in the country for less than a year, Mark said, "It was really an intense religious experience, so we came back with the mindset that we would give our lives in service."
Afterwards Mark and Louise moved to McAllen, Texas, on the border with Mexico, to work with refugee and immigrant populations, and later relocated to Houston, working in a parish. Louise laughingly recalls that Mark used to say at the time, "If we had any guts, we'd start a Catholic Worker House."
The idea gnawed at the couple, and so it was that in 1980 the Casa Juan Diego was born. The original idea was to serve refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua who were streaming into the Houston area because of civil wars in Central America.
"The first thing we did was to rent the ugliest building in Houston," Mark said. "That's all you need to do. People with no place to go will come."
Today, the vast majority of those served by Casa Juan Diego are still Hispanic immigrants, but now they're mostly from Mexico. They're no longer fleeing war, but poverty.
"NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement, launched on Jan. 1, 1994] unleashed 1.2 million farmers in Mexico alone who lost their land," Mark said. "They began to pour in during the '90s, and from then on it's become predominantly a Mexican population."
The Casa Juan Diego complex includes 10 buildings that offer a staggering variety of services: there's a shelter for men, for example, and another for women and children; there's a food and clothing bank, which distributes between 10 and 15 tons of food a week; there's a full-service health clinic, including dental care; and there are residences for sick and disabled people who need long-term care. Casa Juan Diego also pays between $500 and $1000 a month to support 70 other sick and disabled people who live in their own homes.
Casa Juan Diego is also a resource center in a staggering variety of ways. Louise said they field requests that run the gamut from, "Where can I find a Mass in Spanish?" to navigating complex interactions with the legal system. For example, Louise said, not long ago a woman arrived with the following problem: "My son, who's 19, is the only means of support for the family, and he likes to drive fast. There's now a warrant out for his arrest, and I can't work because I hurt my shoulder. Can you help us?"
Louise said that, in her view, a particularly pernicious aspect of current American immigration policy is the way it often drives families apart. She offered the example of a Guatemalan woman who had arrived in Texas with her children, and was deported when she went to an immigration office to apply for an ID card. Somehow she showed up at the door of the Casa Juan Diego after returning to Houston, Louise said, almost entirely on foot, in search of her children, from whom she's been separated for more than a year.
Casa Juan Diego doesn't charge anything for these services, and it doesn't even invite guests to send money later on, once they've settled somewhere. That doesn't mean, however, that they ask nothing in return.
"We don't accept money from the guests, but we tell them they do have to pay," Mark said. "One day in the future when someone in need crosses your path, like a flash from Heaven you'll know that it's time to pay for Casa Juan Diego."
None of their current operations, Louise explains, were really envisioned at the beginning; rather, they've developed organically in response to need. As she puts it, "We don't write five-year plans." Support for long-term disabled people, for example, arose from the experience of a growing number of immigrants who are forced to take low-wage, high-risk jobs, such as working on scaffoldings in Houston's booming construction industry, and who have no protection if they get hurt.
"Every day we get a call from a hospital social worker saying we have this person who has no family to take care of him," Mark said. "He's a paraplegic, or he's paralyzed, or he just needs a few months to get on his feet. There's no government support, there's no disability, no Medicaid, nothing. We take care of him."
Louise said Casa Juan Diego also works with a large number of battered and abused immigrant women, who tend to be especially vulnerable because they're reluctant to seek police protection or medical care. That's true on all sides of the borders, Louise said, pointing to Tecun Uman, Guatemala, a small city where Mexico deports its illegal immigrants, and where desperate women sometimes offer themselves as prostitutes for as little as 25 cents.
Moved by repeatedly hearing immigrants describe these realities, Louise and Mark also helped create centers of hospitality in Matamoros, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, and in Tecun Uman in Guatemala, in both cases with the support of the local bishops.
In the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement, Mark and Louise don't do all this as limousine liberals who commute in from the suburbs. They live at Casa Juan Diego with their grandchildren and a daughter who's sick, sharing the lives of their guests, all the way down to meals and clothing.
Casa Juan Diego has a Mass every Wednesday night, and guests are invited to share their stories of how they arrived in Houston. Perhaps the most awful accounts, Louise explained, come from guests who have described hopping a train to cross the border. Many times, she said, they've watched a friend or family fall asleep atop the train, fall off, and be sliced in half.
In Texas as in other parts of the United States, immigration is a divisive issue. While it's tough to argue with the humanitarian emphasis of Casa Juan Diego, its operations nevertheless sometimes stir the waters for a simple reason: they're breaking the law.
"It's illegal to harbor and transport an undocumented person, which we probably do ten times a day," Mark said. (Technically, he can't be sure of that, since Casa Juan Diego never inquires about someone's immigration status, but it's nonetheless a pretty good bet.)
That has sometimes made Casa Juan Diego a magnet for protest. Last year, the anti-immigrant Minutemen staged a rally in the parking lot of a Jack-in-the-Box across the street. (Mark laughed that he put a brief note about the rally in an issue of the Catholic Worker newspaper, and not long afterwards he got a phone call from Jack-in-the-Box's legal department making clear that the chain wanted no part of the Minutemen's agenda.)
Mark said that Casa Juan Diego has enjoyed strong support from the local Catholic community, including retired Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo. In fact, he said, the archdiocese includes the Zwicks among a set of speakers for an annual "missionary day," so that each year they're assigned a couple of parishes in which to make presentations.
"It's given us not only exposure, but in a sense permission," Mark said, though stressing that Casa Juan Diego is independent of the archdiocese.
Every now and then, Mark said, they experience some push-back at the Catholic grass roots, but usually it's smoothed over. Mark recounted how one parishioner had complained that he didn't want "those Communists," meaning Mark and Louise, to come to his parish. The pastor, Mark said, calmed him down by saying, "It's OK. They may be Communists, but they're our Communists!"
Not every Catholic, of course, will share the political and economic views espoused by the Zwicks. Some would argue that the spread of free-market capitalism around the world, what the Zwicks call "neo-liberalism," has created middle classes in places such as China and India, lifting tens of millions of people out of poverty. Others might part company on some particulars of immigration policy, arguing that efforts to protect national borders are consistent with the tenets of social justice. That's the stuff of legitimate debate.
What is beyond all dispute, however, is that few Catholics anywhere put their money, and their lives, where their mouth is as consistently and completely as Mark and Louise Zwick.
The web site of Casa Juan Diego is: http://www.cjd.org
* * *
In so many ways, Tony Blair is not your typical Anglican convert to the Catholic church.
For one thing, of course, Blair is the former British prime minister. Almost as atypical these days, however, is the fact that Blair does not belong to the traditionalist wing of Anglicanism, meaning Anglicans disenchanted with the ordination of women and homosexuals, the blessing of same-sex unions, and other liberalizing currents, and hence usually most likely to contemplate the "Roman option."
Instead, Blair espouses a theologically moderate, socially engaged Christianity. By the standards of British politics, Blair is a social moderate, and his largely permissive positions on abortion, birth control and embryonic stem cell research have drawn strong Catholic criticism over the years. (Some outraged English Catholics have gone so far as to charge that Blair should not have been received into communion with the church, at least until he recants.)
Last Friday, I attended a press conference at the Time-Warner Center in New York to present Blair's new "Faith Foundation," a global inter-faith coalition designed to mobilize religious leadership to achieve social good. Most immediately, the Faith Foundation intends to enlist religious believers in global efforts to eradicate malaria, estimated to kill one million people each year, primarily in the developing world, and the vast majority are children. A related aim is to combat extremism and terrorism carried out in the name of religious belief.
Interestingly, Blair's Faith Foundation counts a slew of prominent religious leaders among its advisors - Sir Jonathan Sacks, for example, Chief Rabbi of England, as well as Reverend Rick Warren, Senior Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. Yet there's not a single Catholic, though promotional materials say that Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of England will join the advisory council after he steps down as Archbishop of Westminster.
To call Friday's press conference "high-profile" is an exercise in under-statement. It was hosted by CNN's Christiane Amanpour, and featured opening remarks from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who said he had come to "wish my friend well." Richard Levin, President of Yale University, where Blair will be a visiting professor, was also on hand.
Eboo Patel, founder and director of the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago and another advisor to Blair's Faith Foundation, provided the day's sound-bite.
"The worst mistake would be to think that the fault line of the 21st century runs between Christians and Muslims, or between theists and secularists," said Patel, a Muslim. "It's between pluralists and totalitarians."
That line was picked up by other speakers, so much so that it almost became an anthem - with Blair and his admirers clearly on the side of the pluralists.
Blair was careful to say that his foundation does not seek "to subsume different faiths into one universal faith of the lowest common denominator." Nevertheless, it seemed clear that Blair's Faith Foundation reflects what one might call a "center-left" religiosity, with emphasis on tolerance, dialogue, and cooperation in the pursuit of humanitarian objectives.
What future the foundation may have is tough to handicap. From a purely Catholic point of view, however, it's at least worth noting that the church's most high-profile recent convert also seems a natural spokesperson for a more "progressive" or "liberal" form of Catholicism, at a moment when that constituency appears to be, in many other ways, on the ropes.
The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:e99abb43-e77c-4ae6-a232-0402b0af3070> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncronline.org/print/blogs/all-things-catholic/radical-witness-houstons-casa-juan-diego-tony-blairs-new-faith-foundation | 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 | 0.973593 | 3,301 | 1.8125 | 2 |
For those of you who have successfully installed and tested the demonstration version of Maze, included in the Mosaic User's Guide, welcome to the fully functional Internet Maze.
Based on the book Maze, by Christopher Manson, this hyperlinked area allows you to move from room to room of a maze by selecting the door of the room you wish to enter.
This electronic version of Maze, has been made available by Henry Holt & Co. If you enjoyed this book, please let us know!
I invite you to enter my Maze. I say it is mine, because despite who else I might be, I am the architect as well as your guide. Your first goal is to find the shortest route through the Maze - a simple task, I assure you, if you know what to look for. I have planted clues throughout for your interpretation - or misinterpretation. Indeed, you will be fascinated by the Maze's ambiguity, stimulated by its mystery, stymied by its riddle. But fear not! I will be with you all the way. Fear not, that is, if you truly believe that my clues or I can be trusted.
Updated December 3, 1996 | <urn:uuid:3d4ed0ec-44f0-49be-83ac-aa0c58057736> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/german/books/holt/books/maze/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963114 | 237 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Know what you want—and what you don’t. If you’re a number cruncher with dreams of a future in finance, should you bag it all to become a pharmacist? Yes, if you want a job that involves math and working with people. No, if you have no interest in counting pills. Before straying from the field you had your heart set on, it’s important to consider what your interests and passions are. Will moving to a field that is more reliable match well with your personality? Sure, there are sectors that are consistently stable (education, nursing), but if you hate children and faint at the sight of blood, are these really good options? You should also consider your long-term goals. If you’ve dreamed of working for a nonprofit, will you really be content with a career in the insurance biz? Before making a quick switch, it’s important to do some serious soul-searching. After all, a sunken economy is ultimately fleeting, whereas your career is every day for the rest of your life.
Be willing to work for it. It’s true—there are jobs out there, but the competition is fierce. Now is the time to up your game and work as hard as you can for every single lead. Network, practice interviewing, and make sure your résumé is flawless. Apply for every job you can find in the field or related to the field. Remember, there is no perfect job, but every job will teach you something. If you find yourself with a job offer that is below what you’d hoped or involves a ton of grunt work, try to look at the advantages of cutting your teeth in the industry as a hardworking employee with a positive attitude even when the job sucks.
Set up an informational interview. Request a chat session with someone you respect with a job you admire. Ask them for advice: Have they lived through a recession? How did changes in the field influence their career path? Do they think the industry is going to turn around soon, or is it going to be a long road to recovery? Listen carefully to what they say—no matter how brief, the advice could be valuable. Before you walk out the door, make sure they have your contact information, just in case.
Learn all you can. Scour the Internet for professional journals, associations, or clubs. Read everything you can get your hands on about the inner workings of the industry. Pay special attention to articles about things that are new or cutting-edge. A job in a random, up-and-coming sector could be the key to getting your foot in the door and eventually landing your dream job. Plus, reading the info that’s written for the professional provides a helpful perspective. If you find yourself with a consistently wandering mind, maybe this field isn’t actually for you. This is good to know before you invest too much in a job search.
Specialize in something challenging or obscure. Think about honing skills that will make you a more valuable employee: Learn software programs, improve your technical skills, or take continuing-ed classes at night. Not only will it keep you energized and help with networking, but furthering your education is a good way to guarantee that someday soon you will get a job in your field of dreams.
Follow your heart. Andrea decided that she really, really wanted to be a graphic designer, so she found a job doing design work for a real estate agency. It isn’t the cool job she imagined, but she’s getting lots of valuable experience. Maybe a job in fashion will be her next step. But most of all, after some serious research and soul-searching, she knows the hard work of breaking into the field is worth it. | <urn:uuid:72f02546-f831-4a43-af98-de887be70421> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nicolewilliams.com/getahead/no-one-is-hiring | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964313 | 782 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Quote of the Day
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.
It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
So many people prefer to live in drama because it's comfortable. It's like someone staying in a bad marriage or relationship - it's actually easier to stay because they know what to expect every day, versus leaving and not knowing what to expect.
One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.
Bryant H. McGill
Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good friends, fine family - and I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually.
He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.
Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?
Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.
You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.
We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
Robert Louis Stevenson
We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.
I've been actually really very pleased to see how much awareness was raised around bullying, and how deeply it affects everyone. You know, you don't have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.
W. Clement Stone
I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.
You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.
I have died many times. I have actually beaten Jesus Christ because he only died once.
Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.
Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.
H. L. Mencken
I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Nature Quote Feed | <urn:uuid:85f373d0-7f52-49bb-9fcb-c94de2e0d274> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/actually.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 | 0.942252 | 1,297 | 1.609375 | 2 |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Authorities said a suspect has implicated himself in the death of a New York man who was pushed onto the tracks and photographed just before a train struck him -- an image that set off an ethical debate after it appeared on the front page of the New York Post.
The suspect was taken into custody on Tuesday after investigators recovered security video that showed a man fitting the description of the suspect working with street vendors near Rockefeller Center, said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne on Tuesday.
"The individual we talked to made statements implicating himself in the incident," Browne said.
Police did not release his name and no charges were immediately announced.
Witnesses told investigators they saw the suspect talking to himself Monday afternoon before he approached Ki-Suck Han at the Times Square station, got into an altercation with him and pushed him into the train's path.
Han, 58, of Queens, died shortly after being struck. Police said he tried to climb a few feet to safety but got trapped between the train and the platform's edge.
The Post published a photo on its front page Tuesday of Han with his head turned toward the train, his arms reaching up but unable to climb off the tracks in time. It was shot by freelance photographer R. Umar Abbasi, who was waiting to catch a train as the situation unfolded.
He told NBC's "Today" show Wednesday that he wasn't trying to take a photo of the man, but was trying to alert the motorman to what was going on by flashing his camera.
He said he was shocked that people nearer to the victim did not try to help in the 22 seconds before the train struck.
"It took me a second to figure out what was happening ... I saw the lights in the distance. My mind was to alert the train," Abbasi said.
"The people who were standing close to him ... they could have moved and grabbed him and pulled him up. No one made an effort," he added.
Ethical and emotional questions arose Tuesday over the published photograph of the helpless man standing before the oncoming train accompanied by the headline that read in part: "This man is about to die."
The moral issue among professional photojournalists in such situations is "to document or to assist," said Kenny Irby, an expert in the ethics of visual journalism at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit journalism school.
Other media outlets chimed in on the controversy, many questioning why the photograph had been taken and published.
"I'm sorry. Somebody's on the tracks. That's not going to help," said Al Roker on NBC's "Today" show as the photo was displayed Tuesday.
Abbasi said he did not control how the images were used in the Post, but he did tell the "Today" show he has sold the images.
Larry King reached out to followers on Twitter to ask: "Did the (at)nypost go too far?" CNN's Soledad O'Brien tweeted: "I think it's terribly disturbing -- imagine if that were your father or brother."
The Post declined to share the photo with The Associated Press for distribution.
Subway pushes are feared but fairly unusual. Among the more high-profile cases was the January 1999 death of Kendra Webdale, who was shoved to her death by a former mental patient.
After that, the Legislature passed Kendra's Law, which lets mental health authorities supervise patients who live outside institutions to make sure they are taking their medications and aren't a threat to safety.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that he believed that "in this case, it appeared to be a psychiatric problem."
The mayor said Han, "if I understand it, tried to break up a fight or something and paid for it with his life."
Associated Press writers Tom Hays and Tom McElroy contributed to this story. | <urn:uuid:e5114881-61da-430b-8a6f-fece9f2ee577> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tallmadgeexpress.com/ap%20general%20news/2012/12/05/suspect-in-fatal-nyc-subway-push-implicates-self | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988737 | 800 | 1.546875 | 2 |
1999 – 2004
Do turtles go to heaven? I hope so. I envision a paradise where the river meanders lazily between tree-fringed banks. The water is cool and crystal clear; the bottom sandy and voluminous, perfect for turtles to burrow into. Shrimps and little fishes are aplenty. That is turtle heaven indeed.
I pray that is where my pet soft-shelled turtle has gone to. I could not provide him with a proper home, let alone one that was as close to his natural habitat as possible. Still, he made do with what was provided and thrived, until now.
He did not even have a name. I will always remember him as Turtle. I really wish turtles go to heaven. Then he can keep Mum company there. She had single-handedly reared him to maturity from the time when we first got him. He was as large as a fifty sen coin only then.
Farewell Turtle my friend. May you rest in peace.
Why Disabled People Must Vote - Breaking Barriers - The Borneo Post - 13 April, 2013
Adventures Of A First Time Voter - Breaking Barriers - The Borneo Post - 6 April, 2013
Disability Equality Training For Malaysian Advocates for Cerebral Palsy
Unstoppable Fariz - Breaking Barriers - The Borneo Post - 30 March, 2013
Enabling Technology - Breaking Barriers - The Borneo Post - 23 March, 2013 | <urn:uuid:c6cf4540-a0c6-45f5-af13-b0bae2485d5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.petertan.com/blog/2004/02/16/bye-bye-turtle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954145 | 308 | 1.523438 | 2 |
By: Ray West on Friday, February 8, 2008
As a web application gets larger and needs to handle more traffic, special attention is needed to make sure it is running as efficiently as possible. More often than not, that means taking a look at the way that your data is marshaled from the database. I am constantly amazed at how much effort can be placed in making sure that pages are only so heavy and take X seconds to load on the HTML side, when very little consideration is given to how the database is being accessed.
The two things to remember when dealing with the optimization of your database are minimizing network traffic, and the reuse of execution plans. Both of these are accomplished by the proper use of stored procedures. In this article, we will cover a few tips to help you get the most out of your stored procedures. | <urn:uuid:f0b617e1-f4b3-4f0a-ab25-2f86fe5a13b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=D0E2B | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967578 | 169 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Visitors to the New York Botanical Garden can now enjoy the outdoor space as a sculpture park in addition to the center’s plantlife from all over the world and seasonal zombie pumpkins. Valdés erected his seven sculptures, some spanning over 50 feet wide, at the NYBG in a collaboration with Marlborough Gallery. Made from bronze, cor-ten steel and aluminum, the forms will reflect the surrounding flora to change looks with the seasons.
Each sculpture portrays the head of a figure, surrounded with a sweeping headdress. One sculpture features swirls of cor-ten shapes unfolding from the figure’s temples. Silver butterfly shapes float out of the crown of another head on the lawn, while silver fern shapes envelope a featureless face nearby.
As the seasons change, the sculptures will infuse themselves with the groundwork of the garden, mirroring their surroundings as green leaves change to red and yellow, and again when ice and snow set in.
Images ©Lori Zimmer for Inhabitat | <urn:uuid:e464b067-d1f6-434e-add1-bf450a74ecc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inhabitat.com/nyc/photos-manolo-valdes-dramatic-metal-head-sculptures-take-over-the-new-york-botanical-garden/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931417 | 207 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
Have you ever made homemade clay? I clipped a clay recipe long ago and have been wanting to try it out.
My original plan was to leave the clay medallions in their natural white clay color but I hit a snag and ended up painted them. Before I get into that, here’s how you make the clay.
This clay is wonderful. The texture is very fine and it’s easy to work with. You can find the original recipe and more instructions on Woodside Kitchen.
- Ingredients: 1/2 cup cornstarch, 1 cup baking soda, 3/4 cup water
- Cook the ingredients in a medium sized pot and stir over medium heat. Stir constantly until it is smooth and it thickens. Remove from heat and spoon into a bowl and let it cool.
- Once the clay is cool, knead it on a smooth surface dusted with cornstarch.
- Make your creations.
To make these medallions, I rolled small balls of the clay mixture and flattened them slightly with a rolling pin.
I then used a crocheted doily to make these impressions. Lay the doily on the flattened clay and use the rolling pin to press it gently into the clay. Place the pieces on wax paper or parchment paper to dry. Or you can bake them in the oven at 175 degrees for an hour (turn them over halfway through cooking) to avoid curling.
Here’s where I ran into trouble. I used the air dry method and turned the pieces but my medallions started to crack. The original instructions specifically said to knead the clay very well to avoid cracks. I guess I didn’t knead it enough.
The cracked medallions were a breath away from being thrown in the trash when I thought I’d try to fill in the cracks and save them. I used a tiny bit of Mod Podge and a toothpick and carefully dabbed it into the crack.
I used Folkart Metallic paint in Sterling Silver and Taupe and touches of Martha Stewart Glass Metallic paint in Black Nickel.
So there you have it. Homemade Clay – Take 1. I will definitely be making another batch soon (Take 2) and will knead it for much longer. If anyone has made this clay before and has any tips please let me know.
Thanks so much for stopping by ~ and a happy Valentine's Day to all of you!
I link at the wonderful parties listed here | <urn:uuid:c8ee22a9-be23-4940-92be-f7bb12440ed9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://carolynshomework.blogspot.com/2013/02/etceteras-homemade-clay-take-1.html?showComment=1361293501648 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951631 | 517 | 1.507813 | 2 |
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