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What: METRO Transit Center open house, 631 S. Broadway, Akron.
When: Noon to 4 p.m. Jan. 10
Rides: A free loop bus will run from downtown on Main Street or people can drive to the center.
Opens: Jan. 18
Routes: On Jan. 18 all METRO bus routes will have changes. To learn more about the routes or the center go to Akronmetro.org or call 330-762-0341.
Lining the roof are 432 solar panels, the largest single array in Ohio, which will provide about 33 percent of the facility's annual needs. A geothermal heating and cooling system includes 45 wells drilled 305 feet into the earth.
"We want to be a leader in alternative transit and alternative energy," said Kirt Conrad, director of planning and development for METRO RTA. "This 'green' building developed as we were going along."
Forty-six of the transit authority's 136 buses run on compressed natural gas.
The new center, on South Broadway, opens Jan. 18. It replaces a downtown transfer area on South Main Street, an outdoor site that is controlled chaos as people try to find their buses or have to dash across four lanes to catch another bus. There are no public restrooms or indoor waiting areas, said Molly Becker, spokeswoman for the agency.
Each day about 4,000 of METRO's 22,000 daily bus riders need to transfer buses, Conrad said. Roughly 32 bays at the new center will be used for bus routes. Electronic signs will announce departure times.
The city's Greyhound bus station will move to the center and use four bays. The company will pay $40,000 a year. About 600 people take one of Greyhound's 18 daily trips, Becker said.
METRO had sought land and worked on plans for a center for 10 years. The city donated 8.3 acres worth $2.3 million at a former Conrail railroad yard. The Federal Transportation Administration provided $12 million, the Ohio Department of Transportation allocated $2 million and the remaining $1.7 million came from METRO and other local matches.
Besides installing the solar panels and geothermal system, officials made sure the project included other "green" features. For instance, rainwater will be stored to use in restrooms and landscaping. And about 75 percent of the construction waste was recycled.
Conrad said officials wanted to be environmentally friendly, but not at too high a price or with untested products. While the geothermal system is expected to break even on cost, compared to natural gas, it will take about 10 years to recover the cost of the $1.1-million solar panel system, he said.
The solar project was the biggest one to date for Third Sun Solar and Wind Power in Athens, said owner Geoff Greenfield.
Each 108-pound panel has 310-watt modules, he said. The total array is 133.9 kilowatts. The average house with solar panels has a 6 kilowatt array, he said.
People will be able to monitor the solar system's performance online through METRO, Becker said. In fact, since the facility has free Wi-Fi, they can use their laptops while waiting for the bus. The center also has a meeting room that any organization can use and public art space. METRO hopes to lease 1,100 square feet for a caf /gift shop.
One thing the center does not have is parking spaces.
"We are not a park and ride," Becker said. "We will not even allow employees to park here - they have to take the bus." | <urn:uuid:83232134-00c8-47b9-a9c0-7e922e3be4cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/12/solar_panels_make_akrons_new_t.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942381 | 757 | 1.515625 | 2 |
President Nasser of the United Arab Republic in recent years has been losing ground in his efforts to bring all Arabs under his leadership. His aggressive "Pan-Arabism" has alienated most of the Arab governments in Asia.
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Or enjoy 100 FREE Archive articles every four weeks with a Times Digital Subscription. Try it now for just 99¢ for your first four weeks. | <urn:uuid:d648f412-1795-4a6b-bf07-0813ddf7ed95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50711FE3F5E147B93C6A8178BD95F468685F9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946915 | 108 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Rig Runs Aground in Alaska, Reviving Fears About Arctic Drilling
One of Shell Oil’s two Arctic drilling rigs is beached on an island in the Gulf of Alaska, threatening environmental damage from a fuel spill and calling into question Shell’s plans to resume drilling in the treacherous waters north of Alaska in the summer.
Fiscal Cliff Deal Extends Wind Tax Credits One Year
The wind energy industry in the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief as Congress passed a fiscal cliff deal on Tuesday that included an extension of the wind energy tax credits for wind projects that start in 2013.
West Antarctic Ice Sheet Warming Twice Earlier Estimate
US researchers say they found the first evidence of warming during the southern hemisphere's summer months. They are worried that the increased melting of ice as a result of warmer temperatures could contribute to sea-level rise.
Gas Prices Hit Record High in 2012
Annual gas prices hit a record high in 2012, the AAA motor club said Monday. On average, the national gas price for the year was $3.60 per gallon, eclipsing last year’s record of $3.51 per gallon. AAA attributed the increase to weather events and global turmoil.
Chernobyl Mammals Tracked in Snow
Scientists studying the ecology of the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine have made the most of freezing conditions there - using footprints in the snow to study the population of mammals. (Slideshow)
Emerald Coal Sued In Pennsylvania For Allegedly Polluting Waterways
A citizens' group has sued a longwall mining company in southwestern Pennsylvania, claiming it is polluting key waterways — including at least one high-quality fishing stream — that feed the Monongahela River.
12 Eco-Stories to Restore Your Faith in Humanity
We often hear people complaining that there is much more bad news in the media than good news. This is even frequently the case with eco-news. Looking back over 2012, it turns out that there were plenty of upbeat eco-stories this year that demonstrate how individuals, schools, companies and even cities are making positive impacts. Click through to see a dozen stories that might just help restore your faith in humanity.
Leading Environmentalist Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network Dies at 39
In case you missed the sad news, Leading environmentalist and human rights champion Rebecca "Becky" Tarbotton, executive director of the organization Rainforest Action Network (RAN), has died at the age of 39. Tarbotton was vacationing in Mexico with her husband and passed away after a swimming accident. | <urn:uuid:5545d52d-8315-45ab-9dad-59434edc6bd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/taxonomy/term/14483 | 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 | 0.930787 | 534 | 1.601563 | 2 |
I’ve got a little paperback book, “Saints Galore” – can’t put my finger on it right now so I can’t tell you who wrote it – but it offers something of an offbeat slightly irreverent look at saints. That’s not a bad idea for an age, ours, in which saints have been made into rigid stained glass figures of improbable holiness or demoted to everyone without distinction.
Most Protestants will emphasize Paul’s assertion that all who are baptized into the Christian faith are saints, at least in a generic sense. What we need to do is move from the generic to the particular. One duty of a pastor is to participate in guiding the formation of his or her flock toward a more particular sainthood, but that too often is turned into a pursuit of sentimentalized and saccharine goodness challenging reality.
Many Catholics simply cannot get around the idea that unless the pope canonizes there is no saint, and so saints become so particular and so remote that they enter a realm of otherness not open to ordinary human beings.
I wonder if we can accommodate two ideas at once. First, that each of us is called to sainthood, which can better be understood as a process of learning how to become a follower of Jesus Christ rather than one who simply accepts him as her or his savior. Second, that there are among us certain persons, flawed persons, whose lives and words have exemplified what it means to become a follower. They are worthy of being remembered, and honored in special ways because they are our elders in the faith and have helped make the path more clear for us.
Two of many examples come to mind right now. My dad was one such person for me. His politics were way too conservative for me, and some of his social attitudes and practices were straight out of the ‘30s and ‘40s. How could it be different? Those were the decades of his growth to the fullness of adulthood. But he was also a man of strong faith, committed to live in the community of the Church, and he struggled throughout his life to better understand what the bible was trying to teach him. It was a fine legacy to leave to his children and grandchildren. In a different way, so were the monks of the Anglican Benedictine Order of the Holy Cross who, though I doubt they would know it, taught me enough of the Benedictine way to have formed the way I have approached my preaching and teaching, and my own spiritual disciplines. These then are saints, and we are called to become bearers of their legacies in the name of Jesus Christ for the generations yet to follow.
Where do you find saints? | <urn:uuid:6e1aca70-d260-4868-99b1-38522187fb8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://countyparson.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985974 | 559 | 1.710938 | 2 |
While we're on this subject I have a question. I'm getting ready to order another hakama for iaido use (love my Bujin, but the aiki-koshita gets in the way of sayabiki), and plan to have this one embroidered. Is there a specific way to break up consonant combinations that don't work in Japanese? In other words, is there a preferred way to represent the Sn sound in my last name? I'm thinking su-ni-do - does that sound right?
That is indeed the way it would be. "u" is sometimes unvoiced in Japanese, so it's typically used to represent combinations. E.g., "sky" "sukai". "Class" "kurasu".
I expect to it get it to sound right, you'll have to put lengthing bars after the "ni" and the "do". Japanese vowels are quite clipped. I recommend:
スニードー su ni - do - | <urn:uuid:714a8f7e-5c94-49ad-ad91-a506c9bbf57f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=201800&postcount=17 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942469 | 208 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Good afternoon from T.I.G.E.R.S.! I hope you are having a great Friday and will have a safe weekend.
Dr. Bhagavan Antle of T.I.G.E.R.S. Preserve in Myrtle Beach strives to save Cheetahs. Dr. Antle and eight exotic animal trainers from T.I.G.E.R.S along with their veterinarian Dr. Sherri Duncan, decided to go and teach the staff of Savannah Cheetah Foundation how to train cheetahs to our lure system and make a video and photo documentary of this amazing event. Some of the T.I.G.E.R.S. staff have over twenty years experience working as professional videographers and photographers and are continually working with endangered wildlife species. It is our hope that the sight of a beautiful cheetah pelting across the grass up close and personal both live and on DVD would help inspire their visitors and those who view the video and pictures, towards a more ecologically friendly way of life.
The Foundation was created as a breeding facility for cheetahs, and also as a place for people of all kinds to come and learn about the plight of cheetahs in the wild. Most of the visitors to the preserve are local students, many of whom have been raised with the idea that cheetahs are nuisance animals that need to be eradicated in order to protect livestock. It is to these children of Africa that the message of conservation is most essential.
We came to film and train cheetahs in a place with no name that is a mere ninety minutes drive from the airport, but is as far removed from anything resembling a city as somewhere can be.
Visit one of the best Myrtle Beach attractions, T.I.G.E.R.S. and enjoy a Myrtle Beac Safari for yourself.
The Rare Species Fund is currently developing a program to reimburse farmers for livestock lost to wild predators, including jaguars. This initiative ensures that the predators do not become a financial liability for the farmers and are therefore less likely to be illegally poached. The RSF rewards farmers in the program who set aside a minimum of twenty percent of the land to be kept in its natural wild state. This ensures that viable habitat will remain for the jaguar as well as other indigenous wildlife, including: tapirs, monkeys, toucans, sloths, caiman and spectacled bears.
Click here for more information on T.I.G.E.R.S. and the RSF. | <urn:uuid:9bcf91ee-9483-4e5e-9ad4-d2dc97716160> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.tigerfriends.com/blog/endangered-tigers-species | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955455 | 533 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Hi everybody. First of all: Sorry for my english, but I hope someone can understanding me.
Well, I want to work with Fireworks in the future because I think that this programm keep in some situation more efficience as Photoshop... So I was trying to learn how this programm is working.
Since some days I make some experiments with Path's, because I like to work with Illustrator as well. But now, I am still going crazy because I don't understanding 2 options. I don't know the english names but In the path palette does they have this Icons:
The first option (Pfade teilen) is "path share" and the second one (Pfade ausschließen) is free translate "path exclude"
My question is: When I can use this 2 Options? I really did everything but nothing was working
Here are a few tips:
Rectangles are a special type of shape: They can be quickly resized by dragging on corner points, or rounded using the Properties inspector. However, they often need to be converted to simple paths (using the Modify > Ungroup command) to perform other vector operations. Similarly, if you attempted to apply Exclude Paths to a "grouped" selection of objects, you'd need to click on the Exclude Paths option more than once—the first click would serve to ungroup the objects.
I hope this helps. Incidentally, the Paths panel was created by developer Aaron Beall, who's created many other interesting and useful extensions for Fireworks:
Alright! First of all: Thank you very much for your answer. The first hint was very easy to follow and it's in the end that, what you had wrote.
The second Hint well.... I think my english is a little bit to bad, so can't realise the second part, exactly the convert part: "Once to convert the rectangle to a simple path"
I did something like this now:
So, how can I convert the rectangle to a simple path? - I understand this like to get the minimal number of Pathpoints, but that is not right I think
To convert a rectangle to a path, you can choose Modify > Ungroup.
To use the Exclude Paths (Pfade ausschließen) option in the Paths panel—as in your graphic—select both rectangles and click twice on the Exclude Paths option: The first click will ungroup the rectangles, the second click will perform the "exclude paths" operation.
You don't need to do both of these things. The first suggestion is a general one, intended to help explain why you need to click twice on the Exclude Paths option when applying it to rectangles.
I'm just now noticing that Divide Paths doesn't work on rectangles but does work on circles (which are simple paths). These may be bugs that need to be submitted to Adobe or to the developer.
One more question: What version of Fireworks are you using (and what platform)?
Well dude, you don't know actually how much assuaged I am now, as I read "I'm just now noticing that Divide Paths doesn't work on rectangles". Because, I know my english is extrem horrible and when I am still have to talk about technical things (and general xD), so I am extrem arguable when I have to...
Well: It doesn't work when I have use Circles. No matter what kind of Pathforms I use, it doen't work .__.
And the Option left of the "Exclude Path" works.
And I am still Using Fireworks CS6, Version 188.8.131.52, WIN, 7, 64 Bit, SP 1
Thanks for posting about this issue! I've taken a look at the "Combine Paths" operations in the Paths panel in both Fireworks CS6 and CS5 on my Mac, and noticed several bugs. Between you and I, here's a summary of what we've found:
Fireworks CS6, Version 184.108.40.206, WIN, 7, 64 Bit, SP 1
Exclude Paths - Does not work.
Fireworks CS6, Version 220.127.116.11, Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)
Divide Paths - No effect on rectangles.
Exclude Paths - Requires 2 clicks for rectangles - one to ungroup rectangles and another to apply path operation.
Fireworks CS5, Version 18.104.22.168, Mac OS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)
Divide Paths - Works like Exclude Paths.
Undo - Deletes previous unrelated non-path operation. For example:
You can submit a bug report to Adobe about the "Exclude Paths" issue, and include the URL for this discussion within your report:
In the meantime, I'm going to send an e-mail to the developer about these issues. I know that he's working on a fix for another problem with this panel and planning on releasing a fix at some point, so hopefully these issues can get fixed as well.
Again, thanks for being so persistent. It is challenging to understand your writing at times; however, the animated GIF was very helpful—and very well done. Have you tried composing your posts in your native language and then using something like Google Translate to convert it to English? I don't know if the results would be better; it's just an idea.
... Damn. X'D Okay extrem nice to know . It seems general that "my" CS6 have a lot of Bugs. For example: the Import of AI-files.
Well I had contact Adobe now :3 thank you very much for the link
And well.. I know myself. I'm not the brightest candle on the birthday cake, but I am very creative to found ways to achieve my goal :3. I am very extremly sorry that you had read this, and thank you very much, that you had accepted the challenge
And no... I didn't use the google translater. I translated just some words when I had didn't know them on http://dict.leo.org/... but... if we both are honest: the results can't be worse than that, what I had wrote here X'D
It's a good point that the commands handle rectangle primitives inconsistently. Some commands will automatically convert rectangle primitives to path, while others won't, and that can be confusing. I think the best solution would be to go through all the commands and make them all auto-convert rectangle primitives to paths, which would probably be the most intuitive behavior.
The CS5 version of Exclude Paths handles this automatically—so I imagined that a bug must have crept in to disrupt that.
(It took me a while to realize there was a problem with the CS6 version. I hadn't used the Path panel recently, so I thought two clicks was the normal behavior at first. And as it turns out, that command seems to be broken entirely in Windows, according to Black-Hat.)
Well I use Fireworks CS6, Version 22.214.171.124, WIN, 7, 64 Bit, SP 1.
-> If you Import a Illustrator datei, so it will open a Window, where you can decide on "Dateikonvertierung" (file Conversion, middle of the left window), how the Path should be imported.)
The first 2 option have the same effect.
-> By the "Photoshop Live Effects" Category "Drop Shadow" don't works the "Ebene spart Schatten aus" Checkbox. If I read right on the Adobe help side, so controls this checkbox the behavior of the Shadow, when the Filling is for example filled with a 35%-transparent-colour. Nothing at all happen.
I don't found more bugs, but I works since 1 1/2 weeks with this program xD.
I just posted an update that should improve the handling of rectangle primitives in regards to Exlcude Paths and Divide Paths, as well as some other commands not mentioned in this thread. You can get it here:
(If you installed the extension from the website already, you can just open Extension Manager and update the extension from there.)
Europe, Middle East and Africa | <urn:uuid:64f00069-62af-498f-b282-8bf0da3f703e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.adobe.com/message/4504910 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944217 | 1,762 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. I am not a poet, but I am a lover of poems and this one really made my heart vibrate when I read it early this morning.
This MAILART made it's way across one wide ocean blue and across 2 continents to land in Morocco recently. I like imagining her final resting spot. Maybe she can see out a window into the North African countryside. I like to close my eyes and imagine I'm seeing what she sees.
Michelle has worked her Street Team into a frenzy with this lastest CRUSADE #10 . Go check it out! And while you're at it, check out her new flame stencil/mask.
This large floral number below is the latest stencil I cut. I like it very much. The truth is it makes me clap my hands together and screw my face up in a very unattractive way. It also makes me want to curse. A lot. A weekend guest from out of town was forced to sit and look at every possible color variation of my new stencils. Even when his eyes began to glaze over my enthusiasm didn't wane one bit. Nope. As I said before, the heart loves what it loves. And I am head over heels with these babies.
This is more cardboard from my dwindling stash. While I think about the form of my next visual journal I spray these.
You've seen my stag before and you'll see him again. Look out your window tonight. He may trot past. I may be flying out behind him on a magic carpet. You never know what sorts of things you'll see on a hot summer night in the middle of July.
Okay. I'm a reasonable person. I'll admit these colors are a little over the top. A little garish. I can't help it. I don't plan these things out. Really. But do look for a bouquet of these flowers in the stag's mouth when he pokes his head in your window tonight to see if you want to come out and play. | <urn:uuid:34d86b42-a0a3-46e7-b1aa-c35515c73128> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dispatchfromla.com/dispatch_from_la/2007/07/crusade-nmero-d.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960554 | 735 | 1.679688 | 2 |
CTA President Forrest Claypool, Wilmette Village President Chris Canning and members of the Wilmette Chamber of Commerce, Wilmette Historical Museum and North Shore Community Bank will mark the 100th anniversary with a celebration at the historic Linden ‘L' station. Linden is the northern terminus of the Purple Line, which serves Wilmette, Evanston and Chicago.
"For a century, CTA has been helping Wilmette residents get to and from their destinations quickly and conveniently," said Claypool. "We're proud to help celebrate the village's rich history and the important role the CTA has played in Wilmette's development over the years."
‘L' service to Wilmette was introduced in April 1912 by the Northwestern Elevated Railroad. Though Wilmette opposed the extension of the rail line north from Evanston, a Northwestern crew, under the cover of night on April 1, 1912, built a small platform just east of 4th Street. The first train arrived just before 7 a.m. on April 2, according to historic news accounts.
The Linden station was built in 1913 and was used until the early 1990s, when a larger station was built to the east, opening in 1993. A few years later, the station was leased to North Shore Community Bank, which performed a careful exterior renovation. The station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated as being historic in a Memorandum of Agreement between the CTA and the State Historic Preservation Office.
Today, the Linden station is the third-busiest among the eight Evanston branch Purple Line stations, with more than 1,000 riders on an average weekday. The station saw more than 319,600 passengers in 2011. | <urn:uuid:9051b14c-a72a-4f32-bc46-36a26e5064f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rtands.com/index.php/passenger/rapid-transit-light-rail/cta-wilmette-to-mark-a-century-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97664 | 358 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, as it works to elect Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate, is inviting volunteers from around the country to work a “Weekend in Wisconsin.”
The initiative takes place on weekends until the Nov. 6 election.
In 1998, Baldwin became the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin and the first and only lesbian ever to serve on Capitol Hill. She also was the first openly LGBT candidate in U.S. history to win election to Congress as a non-incumbent.
On Nov. 6, Baldwin, a Democrat, could become the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the U.S. Senate.
The Victory Fund, which exists to help elect LGBT candidates to elected office, said it will train volunteers and also provide housing if needed.
An announcement said, “Pick a weekend! Participants will travel to Madison, Wis., during weekends from now until the November election. There you will meet with a Victory Fund field organizer who will train you on canvassing, phone banking, and other activities designed to help our Wisconsin LGBT candidates, including Tammy Baldwin.”
The Victory Fund also is seeking volunteers to help make phone calls to Wisconsin to support Baldwin.
The initiative has the backing of the National Stonewall Democrats.
For more, go to victoryfund.org. | <urn:uuid:de7d8837-c4b1-48b8-abbf-6b4d72e4eb15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisconsingazette.com/breaking-news/victory-fund-launches-weekend-in-wisconsin-for-baldwin-campaign.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960733 | 276 | 1.75 | 2 |
In news that may not come as a surprise to too many folks, Samsung has announced that its next-gen memory chip, the 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000, is already in production. As we know, this technology is among the fastest moving in the world, so chips becoming smaller, faster, and running cooler is no huge surprise, but the speed at which they evolve is mind-boggling.
These little 10nm fellas rock a 20 percent smaller physical footprint, and Samsung claims 30 percent advantages in both performance and manufacturing productivity compared to their last generation chip. The chips will have a write speed of 2,000 IOPS (input/output per second) and a read speed of 5,000 IOPS. That’s a 33% increase in write speed and a 42% increase in read speed compared with the previous generation. Seeing as these chips are already in production, they’ll be coming soon to a device near you. Hit the break for the full press release. » Read the rest | <urn:uuid:545c775c-627b-47e0-abb0-37a312829f6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.talkandroid.com/tag/chips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946788 | 209 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|Iran launches first drilling rig at Azar oil field||
As part of plans to develop the Azar oil field jointly owned by Iran and Iraq, the Islamic Republic has launched the first drilling rig for operation at the field.
Drilling at the “Persia 1” rig was launched on Tuesday in the presence of Iranian first Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi and Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi.
Drilling Manager at Iran’s Oil Industries Engineering and Construction Company Fazel Jamalzadeh said 19 oil wells are scheduled to be drilled in the Azar field, adding that each well is expected to yield 4,000 barrels of oil daily.
Jamalzadeh went on to say that with the completion of the Azar development project, Iran’s crude oil production will increase by 65,000 barrels each day.
In October 2011, Iran's Oil Ministry inked a USD 1.9-billion contract with a consortium of domestic companies for the development of the Azar oil field.
Before assigning the project to the domestic consortium, Iran was negotiating the development of Azar oil field with Russia's Gazprom Company. However, Gazprom was dropped from the project due the company’s failure to meet its commitments.
The Azar oil field spans an overall area of 482 square kilometers in southeast of Mehran town in the western Iranian province of Ilam.
Iran shares oil and gas fields with most of its neighbors in the Persian Gulf region. In July 2011, Iranian energy officials said that as much as 35 percent of the country's energy development budget would go toward the development of joint oilfields.
Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay in touch and receive all of TT updates right in your feed reader | <urn:uuid:d744a792-c30c-42c2-bf84-1a5234b1fff2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tehrantimes.com/economy-and-business/101998-iran-launches-first-drilling-rig-at-azar-oil-field | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965267 | 357 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Friday Harbor/San Juan Island Day Cruises
The Perfect Day Trip!
Rated #2 on New York Times List: 41 Places to Go in 2011 and designated as a National Monument in 2013 by Presidential Proclamation, you won’t want to miss this national treasure.
The National Monument designation covers approximately 1,000 acres in the San Juan Islands, spread over 75 different sites aimed at permanently protecting already-managed federal Bureau of Land Management lands such as recreational areas enjoyed by locals and visitors, cultural sites used by local tribes for thousands of years, historic lighthouses, shrinking habitat and much more.
Vacation in your own back yard…..
The journey to Friday Harbor is breathtakingly scenic, and there is always the chance to see some of our “locals” – Orca who frequent the area between Port Angeles and the waters around San Juan Island. Other marine mammals in the area include the River Otter, Steller Sea Lions, the Minke Whale or maybe even a Humpback, and Dall’s Porpoise – all that and a great variety of sea birds as well!
Once ashore, you’ll have time for exploring museums, galleries, shops, or to get a bite to eat…. Or, join some of your fellow travelers on a popular van tour if island highlights.
Experience ‘island time’ and explore the Whale Museum.
The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor has been promoting stewardship of whales and the Salish Sea ecosystem for 30 years…be sure to check it out during your visit.
Advanced reservations highly recommended. | <urn:uuid:5e1ffb38-cec4-4a33-b405-30679245c499> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.expeditionsnw.com/san-juan-islandfriday-harbor-day-cruises/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933475 | 328 | 1.648438 | 2 |
- Violence... can be found... in all humans... some are just... more eager to embrace it... than others...
- -- Swamp Thing
Appearing in "The Eye of the Needle"
- Dr. Eric Neiderman
- Constance Sunderland
- Lester Boudreaux
- Benjamin Barron
- General Sunderland (In a photograph only)
- Lady Jane
- Tefé Holland
- Arthur "Otter" Dole
- Professor Clark Johnson (Dies)
- John "Jo-Jo" Jones
- Carl Vinter
- Troy Washington
Synopsis for "The Eye of the Needle"
Doctor Eric Neiderman owes the Sunderland Corporation his livelihood. He received a scholarship from them, when he knew he was undeserving. The General took a specific interest in him, and Neiderman knew that when Sunderland asked for a favour, he would be required to do what was asked of him, and he did - without complaint. Dr. Neiderman is The Needleman.
In Houma, the monkeywrencher activists visiting with Chester Williams await the arrival of their professor - the man who encouraged them towards environmentalism. Otter comments that Chester reminds him of Professor Johnson. The Professor arrives, the kids explain what happened that wrecked Spike's car, and got Otter injured. The Professor is quietly angered by this, but he is happy to meet the people who helped them. Abby Holland introduces herself, explaining that her husband, the Swamp Thing was key to saving the kids from further injury.
In the Louisiana swamp, Swamp Thing decides to step outside and create a jungle-gym for his daughter Tefé. He is interrupted by her governess Lady Jane. She is having difficulties with juggling Tefé's control over living flesh with her connection to The Green. She leads him out into the garden, where Tefé has surrounded herself with a ring of anthropomorphic flowers, singing and dancing around her.
With the young activists safely seen off with their professor, Abby and Chester decide to go for a drink at Jo-Jo's bar. While there, however, they are verbally abused by a man who is opposed to Chester's having a gay couple living under his roof. Abby and Chester attempt to leave, but the man makes a comment suggesting that Chester's ex girlfriend Liz left him because he couldn't satisfy her. Angrily, Chester socks him in the mouth. He immediately regrets resorting to violence, but the man is angry, and swears revenge.
At Tulane University in New Orleans, the monkeywrenchers decide to take a more covert approach to activism by hacking into the Sunderland Corporation mainframe directory. There, they discover something called Project Proteus. Unfortunately, they are not unnoticed by their victim, and Constance Sunderland is informed. She in turn calls Dr. Neiderman and identifies Arther "Otter" Dole as his next patient, however, she points out Professor Johnson as the real danger.
Elsewhere, Lester Boudreaux - Chester's neighbour - calls representative Ben Barron. Barron is the republican contender for Governor of Louisiana, but he is also a bigoted white supremacist. Lester complains of Chester's homosexual housemates, Carl Vinter and Troy Washington. He also complains of Abby's comings and goings. Barron's interest peaks at the thought of causing some hurt to the Swamp Thing, and promises to look into it.
Back at home in the swamp, Abby expresses surprise at Chester's actions. Swamp Thing responds that the capacity for violence is inherent in all humans. Abby is suddenly surprised by a movement at her feet. Swamp Thing plucks the creature up, and reveals that it is one of Tefé's "pets." He explains that they are not actually sentient. Rather, they are like three-dimensional cartoon characters; the product of a young child's imagination. While they allow the little flowers to stay around, something about singing daisies gives Abby the willies.
At Tulane University, Prof. Clark Johnson receives a visit from Dr. Neiderman, who pulls out a long, threatening looking needle, and demands to know where Otter is.
Early in the morning, Carl Vinter wakes to the sound of voices from people out on the lawn. He wakes Troy and Chester, and they go to investigate. Opening the front door, they are dumbstruck to see a flaming cross planted on Chester's lawn.
Otter intends to visit Professor Johnson with some information, but upon opening his mentor's office, he discovers that the professor has been murdered.
- No special notes.
- No trivia.
- Write your own review of this comic!
- Discuss Swamp Thing Vol 2 122 on the forums
- Cover gallery for the Swamp Thing series
Links and References
- No external links. | <urn:uuid:77af7f06-85e5-467d-bcca-775f817aa72e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Swamp_Thing_Vol_2_122 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953811 | 995 | 1.632813 | 2 |
This was not an exaggeration. The government ignored the issue of HIV/AIDS for years before anything was done. Gay and Queer communities had to form their own clinics because no government agencies cared for them. Back then, being diagnosed was equivalent to a death sentence or extreme debt and poor quality of life/a significantly shortened lifespan.
Things got so desperate that people literally had “Die-Ins”— in contemporary usage this refers to masses of people simulating death in order to protest something (like the War in Iraq). In this case, however, fatally sick people would literally lie down in public places and protest with what little energy they had left until they died. There is some footage of a church Die-In in the documentary Beyond Stonewall. The middle image here of that person’s jacket is not an extreme political statement; it’s what people had to do because they had no other options.
The horror of the AIDS epidemic gives me chills. It was a truly despicable and inhumane period of inaction.
To learn more about the politics behind the 80s AIDS epidemic, check out And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts.
Ok, this? This is so sickening, I just need to share it…
A while back I read the article about the man who they believe has been cured of AIDS. This is a big deal. I am so excited about this, it’s incredible. So I’ve been telling everyone who will listen all about it, and how maybe soon they will find a cure for everyone. While I was working I told a woman coming through my line and her response was - and I quote - “Oh, well I would rather see them find a cure for cancer. Everyone knows someone who has had cancer!”
Bitch, no. Just shut the fuck up. People still look the other way and try to pretend aids and HIV aren’t a problem. Like it’s not really a big deal.
Get real people. This isn’t a GAY disease or an AFRICAN disease, it doesn’t only happen in poor countries or wastelands. It’s not God’s judgment on the wicked. IT IS A PANDEMIC. Let’s not play the pity game and decide which disease is worse and why, or who deserves to be cured first. This isn’t about who you think should get to live the longest! Yeah, cancer is bad. No one ever said it wasn’t. AIDS IS ALSO PRETTY MUCH THE WORST. I just pray they find a cure. | <urn:uuid:1e043bd4-6605-4ff6-bd97-184f93c069cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://drakansa.tumblr.com/post/26749678877/lacigreen-fromonesurvivortoanother-this-was | 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 | 0.973592 | 547 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Help save Millie’s life
BEXHILL’S animal lovers are being asked to dig deep to help a three month old Labrador puppy who needs lifesaving medical treatment.
Millie, a Red Fox Labrador, is no longer responding to antibiotics for lung problems and now needs a CT scan at a specialist veterinary hospital, which costs in the region of £1,000.
The local branch of the charity Labrador Rescue says the scan is essential if Millie is to survive and is urging people to donate to save the little dog’s life.
The charity’s area coordinator Julie Hammond said Millie was originally sold by a puppy trafficker to a couple and was suffering dehydration and severe breathing difficulties from the outset.
She was diagnosed with chronic pneumonia and was given a 40 per cent chance of survival.
The Bcouple who bought Millie could not afford the vet’s bills so called in the Labrador Rescue charity, which has been able to cover the cost of treatment up to a point, and relinquished their ownership of her.
Charity workers say Millie clung to life and with financial help from Labrador Rescue stayed in hospital for five days before getting strong enough to be moved to a loving and committed foster home in Bexhill for nursing and convalescence, where she still is.
Since then she has been treated at St Anne’s Veterinary Practice in Gorringe Valley Road, Lower Willingdon, but is still very poorly and no longer responding to antibiotics.
Julie said, “It hasn’t been a smooth ride for Millie and her health has been taking peaks and troughs for the last five weeks.
“The next step is a scan and the cost of treatment will run into thousands so we are asking for help from members of the public to help save Millie’s life.
“She is an absolutely beautiful dog, a little bundle of mischief with a fantastic temperament and a huge personality.
“She deserves a chance to begin a life of fun and excitement as most puppies of her age do.”
Donations can be made at St Anne’s Veterinary Practice, Gorringe Valley Road, Lower Willingdon or direct to Labrador Rescue.
Julie said, “If people feel they could help, even in a very small way, donations are being accepted by me, the coordinator of Labrador Rescue South East at 62 Cranston Avenue, Bexhill On Sea, TN39 3NN, in the form of cheques payable to LRSEC or as cash donations at the vets in Lower Willingdon.
“She really is a lovely dog and we just want to see her get the best chance possible and for her to get better,” said Julie.
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Weather for Bexhill-on-Sea
Monday 20 May 2013
Temperature: 12 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North
Temperature: 8 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North | <urn:uuid:e4a4b000-8883-4e47-ac16-801fa45eabf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bexhillobserver.net/news/bexhill-news/help-save-millie-s-life-1-4815018 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954577 | 641 | 1.507813 | 2 |
CFS reluctant to change fire season dates
The Country Fire Service (CFS) is consulting with bushfire management committees about possible extensions to fire danger season dates.
Last year, the fire ban season finished early in some regions, due to a cool, wet summer.
However, total fire bans were declared in three of the state's regions yesterday.
The CFS's manager of prevention services, Leigh Miller, says local knowledge will be sought, although the organisation is reluctant to change season dates.
He says fire danger can still be dealt with on a needs basis.
"Just one day at a time is not really a problem, we can impose total fire ban days when we know these types of days are coming, so even if the fire danger season does finish at a normal time we have the opportunity to have fire bans after the close of the season," he said.
"Currently we're consulting with bushfire management committees around the state to get their local feedback.
"Now we are moving into an autumn cycle now - we're getting higher relative humidities and we're getting rainfall from time to time, so there's a fair chance there won't be a problem closing the fire danger season at the normal time." | <urn:uuid:37ae87e4-4325-49e3-b7d9-b6c2d14d40ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-03/cfs-reluctant-to-extend-fire-ban-seasons/3929906 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956457 | 250 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Young Northeast Ohioans Report Negative Feelings About Region
The Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, you know, the organization that’s supposed to fix all our problems (I actually mean that literally), recently conducted a study about Northeast Ohioans’ attitudes about the place where they live.
The group is emphasizing the fact that 90+ percent of respondents said they thought it was important for the region to be sustainable. Duh! I bet 90+ percent want the region to be prosperous, too!
Not to give these guys too hard a time, but there were other aspects of the study I found more interesting.
First, check this out:
Northeast Ohioans are generally satisfied with where they live. Except this: “The percent very satisfied increases with age. Only 22% of those 18-24 are very satisfied with Northeast Ohio.”
My only qualm about this is I think it is a biased sample (though not in the scientific sense). These guys surveyed a statistically significant, random sample of the population. The problem is, it’s all folks who live in Northeast Ohio and theirs aren’t the only opinions that matter. I just wonder how people who aren’t from Northeast Ohio — potential residents, ostensibly — would rate it. More interesting even would be how people who used to live here but left would rate it.
Moving on. This seems a little less rosy.
Even worse: “Those least likely to continue living in their current area are 18 to 24 year olds (41% not very or not at all likely) and those who have lived in their current area for 10 years or less (30%).”
Those surveyed were about evenly split on whether the region offered opportunities and advantages to keep young people here.
I also really liked this one:
To me, this study is a mandate to address the issues that are concerning young people. I think the way to do that is to adapt to change. | <urn:uuid:91c1429e-a5ff-4ebc-b694-3ed6a6882199> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rustwire.com/2012/05/31/young-northeast-ohioans-report-negative-feelings-about-region/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972759 | 405 | 1.695313 | 2 |
OVER the last couple of years, all of us have grown familiar with the gruesome story of the "ghost estates". Over the same period, it has been extremely difficult to quantify a more extraordinary story -- how it could have been much worse.
During the boom, the building frenzy affected more than bankers, developers, politicians and manic investors. It affected councillors. Estimates of their crazed activities have grown worse with time. The final figures procured by this newspaper are higher than anything previously feared.
The councillors rezoned an incredible 44,000 hectares of land -- equivalent to half the size of Co Louth -- in the last decade. This amounted to almost four times the official estimate for the quantity of land needed to meet the country's housing needs until 2016.
It would have meant enough land to accommodate almost 1.5 million houses and apartments. These could have housed more than four million people, nearly equal to the present population. In Roscommon, the councillors zoned 12 times the necessary land.
Safeguards for the future have now been put in place. The councillors face a deadline for deciding the future use of swathes of almost worthless land. Colossal sums of money have been lost. The manic zoning helped to lead to perhaps as much as €20bn of the banks' stupendous losses, for which the taxpayers will foot the bill. Have the taxpayers any redress? Probably not, but An Garda Siochana might do well to look into whether brown envelopes ever changed hands. | <urn:uuid:10ce03e4-9aba-4880-b6e7-5b55a6aac427> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://buckplanning.blogspot.com/2010/10/editorial-manic-zoning-cost-us-dearly.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959452 | 308 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Whatever the next emergency or crisis, institutions are increasingly positioned to respond quickly and efficiently to protect people and property.
By Sandra R. Sabo
Once upon a time—say, 16 years ago—Loyola University Maryland's campus safety force consisted of three officers who strolled around wearing green blazers. They undoubtedly could not have fathomed how complex campus safety and security would become at the Baltimore campus, where the night shift alone now employs 16 officers.
True, the numbers of residential students and buildings have grown since 1993, but the biggest increase has come in the number of crisis situations that Loyola must be ready to address at a moment's notice, says John Palmucci, vice president for finance and treasurer. He notes, “We have to prepare ourselves to protect our students, faculty, and staff from any of the many disasters that could confront them. That means dealing with theft, a shooter, roommate issues, love-hate romances, young people who may have difficulty understanding the limits to how much they can drink. ... The list goes on and on.”
To address the wide range of incidents that could compromise safety and security at Loyola, administrators developed a campuswide, all-hazards emergency preparedness plan. That puts the college on a par with the majority of respondents to NACUBO's 2008 security survey conducted as part of the National Campus Safety and Security Project, which Palmucci chaired. Of the colleges and universities that responded to the survey, more than four out of five (85 percent) had an emergency preparedness plan. Of the remaining 15 percent of responding institutions, three out of four (76 percent) had at least reached the halfway point in developing such a plan.
“Those are impressive numbers. They confirm that institutions are taking the preparation of a plan seriously,” says James A. Hyatt, senior vice president for business and finance and chief financial officer at the University of South Florida, Tampa, who served as the project director.
Count Rollins College as one of those institutions whose plan is a work in progress. Given its location in Winter Park, Florida, the college has long had an emergency plan for dealing with hurricanes and fires—but little else.
“We didn't have an all-hazard, comprehensive plan for the institution,” explains Maria J. Martinez, assistant vice president of human resources and risk management. “The opportunity to develop one presented itself two years ago when our insurance group invited us to participate in a risk reduction agreement.” In addition to realizing it needed to update its emergency plan, the college found a financial incentive—maintaining advantageous insurance premiums for three years—simply too good to pass up.
For the past two years, Martinez and three other campus leaders have met once a week to review existing campus policies, research best practices in emergency management, and draft a unified plan for the campus that reflects a “worst case” perspective. Perhaps the group's biggest decision was to remain small; previously, Rollins' emergency operations planning team numbered about 30, with representatives from food service to facilities to academics.
“That's fine for a hurricane, when you might have three to five days to prepare. But pulling together 30 people isn't the most efficient way to deal with an active shooter or a tornado that destroys half of a residence hall at 3 a.m.,” says Kenneth H. Miller, director of campus security. “We wanted a way to be more nimble and respond quicker to emergencies.”
Now Rollins has an emergency policy-making group, consisting of the president, vice president, and the small emergency operations group. The four members of the latter group chose to implement the National Incident Management System (NIMS) at Rollins. The NIMS model, which features a common command structure and terminology, is designed to enable various public and private agencies, organizations, and departments to work together seamlessly when an emergency occurs. More than three quarters of the survey respondents (78 percent) have adopted this type of system.
“Higher education favors consensual consultation, a model that is fundamentally in conflict with the NIMS command structure, which is more military in nature,” notes Steven S. Neilson, special assistant to the president. Nevertheless, Rollins' president not only approved use of the NIMS model but also asked the college's deans to join him in attending a three-hour executive training session on the subject.
The city provided the NIMS training at no cost to the college, underscoring Martinez's observation that “small colleges shouldn't be fearful about emergency planning because they lack resources or staffing.” She continues, “Although we spent our time on this project, we didn't have a specific budget. Each of our departments chipped in to help us come up with a good plan for the entire college.”
Put to the Test
As Rollins College developed its plan during the course of two years, says Brad McKown, director of environmental health and safety, “We realized we had to go back and rewrite the earlier parts as we analyzed more information, interviewed more people on campus, and tested small parts of the plan.” Field exercises will take place in spring 2010, with the entire emergency plan scheduled to take effect in June. Even then, the plan will be reviewed annually and remain subject to change. “I don't think the plan will ever be finished,” says Martinez. “Everything can change.”
“Higher education favors consensual consultation, a model that is fundamentally in conflict with the NIMS command structure, which is more military in nature.”
Steven S. Neilson, Rollins College
Just ask Carol A. Shelby, senior director, environmental health and public safety, at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. Like 40 percent of the institutions responding to the survey, Purdue conducts tabletop emergency training exercises annually. In addition, every three months, Shelby convenes a small group to review incidents that have occurred at high schools, colleges, and universities around the country. “We walk through, in detail, how our plan would work if the same situation happened at Purdue,” says Shelby. “The discussion is similar to, but not as formal as, a tabletop exercise, and it sometimes leads us to change our approach.”
This year, for example, reviewing Purdue's readiness to handle pandemic flu prompted the group to update its influenza Web site and launch a new Web site specifically for faculty members. There, faculty can learn the latest about H1N1 prevention as well as download emergency preparedness templates and language that they can easily paste into a course syllabus.
“We know it's hard for faculty to focus on things that probably aren't going to happen,” says Shelby, “so we make it easy for them to explain to their students where the shelter is in the building and how to evacuate their specific classrooms.” Purdue and Rollins were among six campuses that participated in comprehensive site visits conducted as part of the National Campus Safety and Security Project. Others were Arizona State University, Tempe; Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Tulsa Community College, Oklahoma; and University of Maryland at College Park.
Unfortunately, these and all other institutions of higher education also have real-life events that keep emergency preparedness plans primed for revision. Sometimes, the plan works well but still needs to be communicated more effectively.
Arizona State University, for example, had many procedures in place to manage students who exhibited troubling behavior before a 2005 incident in which a student shot another student off campus. After that, says Nancy E. Tribbensee, general counsel for the Arizona University System, “The university worked hard to make sure information about individual student conduct and potential concerns are reviewed centrally and not just by individual academic or other units, such as athletics.”
In addition to centralizing information to coordinate an institutional response, adds Tribbensee, “The university had to broadcast more completely the policies it already had in place—such as what people should do if they felt threatened and how the institution would respond to such perceived threats.” According to the survey, institutions most commonly communicate information on campus safety and security to students via new student orientation (90.9 percent), Web site (84.8 percent), and the student handbook (83.9 percent). Similar percentages also communicate this information to the entire campus community (77.8 percent) and during faculty/staff orientation sessions (77.8 percent).
Recover and Reboot
Acts of violence grab the most headlines in the press, and they also top the list of emergencies simulated by colleges and universities. More than half (57 percent) of survey respondents have conducted exercises that revolve around an act of violence.
Loyola tackled the active-shooter scenario this past summer, replicating the exercise for each of its eight-hour security shifts. Because it employs unarmed officers, Loyola included city police in the tactical training, which also tested the college's mass-notification, closed-circuit television, and access control systems. The exercise helped Loyola zero in on how to best control the situation should it ever play out in real life, such as closing down particular areas and preventing students from entering harm's way.
“Although we can lock down portions of the campus and most of the classrooms, I'd challenge any campus to completely lock down-unless it has a moat and a stone wall,” observes Timothy F. Fox, Loyola's director of public safety.
Still, after completing the exercise, Loyola invested in an enhanced access-control system for the entire campus. “Now, in two or three strokes of a mouse, we can lock down most of our 400 controllers and classrooms,” says Fox. “That enables us to isolate a building or series of buildings.” The access controls are housed in one command center, along with all of Loyola's security cameras, burglar alarms, and fire-detection alarms.
But what would happen if a hacker breached the college's computer system? Or a freak accident destroyed its main power supply? Those are the type of questions likely to be raised by Rodney J.Petersen, government relations officer for EDUCAUSE, and director of the organization's cybersecurity initiative. Petersen finds it surprising that only slightly more than half (51.9 percent) of survey respondents include cyber disruption in their emergency plans and far fewer (14 percent) conduct exercises that simulate such an incident.
“What's different about cyber disruption is that it isn't a discrete category of emergency—it can happen in conjunction with and complicate any other type of event,” explains Petersen. Consider a hurricane or flood; the rush of water could flood an institution's data center, crippling its ability to post updates on its Web site, send e-mail notifications, or broadcast via closed-circuit TV. Or, Petersen adds, “One way an active shooter could increase mass casualties would be to shut down the campus communications system, so information couldn't be shared. It may sound far-fetched, but it's certainly possible.”
Getting the power back on and returning computers to full functionality are top priorities for the disaster-recovery portion of Purdue's emergency preparedness plan. As far as addressing business continuity, Purdue places in the minority of survey respondents; fewer than one in three institutions (28.7 percent) reports having a campuswide plan for returning to normal business operations after an emergency. Approximately one in four (22.8 percent) has a business continuity plan for some parts of campus.
Those findings surprised several members of the project steering committee, including James Hyatt. He'd like to see more institutions formulating plans to bring back campus operations, such as power and IT services, as well as addressing academic continuity, such as keeping students on track with their educational goals even when a campus is physically devastated.
“During the site visits,” says Hyatt, “we found that institutions with good business continuity plans had boards that emphasized the need for one. Some boards enforced the idea by making the continuity plan part of the annual internal audit process.”
Free for the Taking
Realizing that a full-scale emergency could put Rollins completely out of business, Steve Neilson and his colleagues continue to craft the business continuity portion of the college's emergency preparedness plan. It's a huge undertaking, he acknowledges, but one made easier by the number of resources readily available to emergency planners.
“There's a wealth of information out there and an impressive number of people willing to share,” says Neilson, who gives especially high marks to the Disaster-Resistant University resources from FEMA as well as the members-only listserver discussion groups maintained by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. “Most of what we've done isn't original; it's taken from best practices in the field.”
With that in mind, here are some institutional initiatives from which you might borrow ideas for your own campus:
Text for all. Rollins College automatically downloads all of its students' contact information into the text-messaging system used during emergencies. Students can opt out, rather than opt in (the method used by 70 percent of survey respondents with text-messaging systems). “Since communicating during an emergency is so important, we're thinking we should make it an opt-out system for faculty and staff as well,” says Neilson.
Peer sharing groups. Two years ago, Shelby called 10 of her emergency planning peers and invited them to Purdue for a day of casual, yet confidential, discussion of emerging issues. Thus was born the Big Ten Campus Emergency Preparedness Directors group. It meets annually for two half-days, with a different university hosting each year.
“We spent much of this year's meeting talking about H1N1 and emergency preparedness in football stadiums. We also talk about incidents that have transpired on our individual campuses—and what is discussed in the room stays in the room,” says Shelby. “Any group of similar-sized institutions can do this, either statewide or regionally, and share how they address safety and security issues.”
Student involvement. Purdue's student government appoints a Student Campus Safety Task Force, which meets approximately four times per semester. Several student leaders, as well as two religious leaders from the local community, also serve on the university's Campus Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee. The 39-member group meets monthly, primarily for education purposes. Several meetings, for example, have focused on what actions are—or aren't—allowed under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Clery Act, and the USA PATRIOT Act.
“The other impetus for the committee is relationship building. We want to get key people from the university and the community together before a crisis hits,” explains Shelby, who chairs the committee. “That way, when something happens and I pick up the phone to make a request, the person on the other end not only knows me but also understands what I'm asking for.”
Coordinated preparation. Cornell University developed its Emergency Planning and Recovery (EPR) system to provide administrative units with online tools for developing their own emergency and business continuity plans; each unit is expected to “return to normal” within 30 days of an emergency interruption.
“It has information relative to pandemic preparedness, for example, to ensure units take an all-hazard approach to their planning,” says Allen J. Bova, Cornell's director of risk management and insurance. The highly secure system also contains the names, responsibilities, and contact information of the key employees needed during and after an emergency. Because the EPR system integrates into the university's HR, facilities inventory, and identity management systems, says Bova, “everything is automatically updated with current information, which reduces the burden on individual units.”
Cross-campus consultation. At Loyola, the director of public safety and the director of student life meet once a week to review the previous weekend's incidents, the response to those incidents, and any ongoing implications.
Similarly, the dean of student affairs at Rollins College maintains a password-protected database that tracks students who have been involved in residence hall altercations or judicial hearings or identified by academic advisers as potentially having problems. Once a week for about an hour, representatives from student affairs, academia, athletics, and campus security meet to review the current list of students and decide who is the best person to reach out to each one. The database is updated regularly, as students are referred to the counseling center or situations are otherwise resolved.
Community policing. Since 2006, Loyola University Maryland has augmented its security force by hiring off-duty Baltimore police officers. As part-time college employees, the officers typically work four- to six-hour shifts and focus on the area of campus that tends to generate more problems.
“The other impetus for the committee is relationship building. We want to get key people from the university and the community together before a crisis hits.”
Carol A. Shelby, Purdue University
“The city police officers ultimately develop a better appreciation for and understanding of life on a college campus,” says John Palmucci. “As a result, when our students get into difficulty off campus, the city and the Baltimore Police Department work more closely with us.” An added benefit: The officers' familiarity with the Loyola campus reduces their response time to 911 calls because they already know the locations of various buildings.
A big-picture view. Taking a tip from corporate America, Indiana University, Bloomington, has appointed an associate vice president for information and infrastructure assurance to serve as the equivalent of a corporate chief security officer. “The technologies used to protect the three types of assets—human, physical, and cyber—are increasingly converging,” says Rodney Petersen, “so it makes sense for one person to focus on integrating the protection of information, infrastructure, and people. Appointing a chief security officer may be an effective way to coordinate campus safety and security.”
Ready for Anything
Petersen encourages every institution to think of emergency preparedness exercises not as tests but rather as training for faculty and staff who, after all, receive training in other aspects of their jobs. Tabletop or field exercises will increase their comfort level—and help build interjurisdictional relationships—when the next crisis occurs.
Petersen served as director of IT policy and planning at the University of Maryland, College Park, when a tornado ripped through the campus in 2001, just weeks after 9/11. “Before then, the university hadn't spent a lot of time talking about natural disasters, but serious planning went on as a result of those incidents,” he remembers.
“The reality is that natural disasters, such as [hurricanes] Katrina and Rita and the floods and fires we've had in the last few years, plus the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois, force campus administrators to either develop or update their plans.”
So what's the next major event to influence emergency planning? No one knows. But being ready for whatever it turns out to be—and its short- and long-term consequences—is at the core of emergency preparedness.
“I once read that 90 percent of all emergency plans are useless. The emergency that actually happens is the one you probably haven't planned for,” says Cornell's Bova. “But what is beneficial in that case are the relationships, the communication links, and the culture of teamwork established during the planning itself.”
SANDRA R. SABO, Mendota Heights, Minnesota, covers higher education business issues for Business Officer. | <urn:uuid:94608483-c847-49a4-86f1-0e137772b085> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nacubo.org/Business_Officer_Magazine/Magazine_Archives/November_2009/Ever_Ready.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957152 | 4,113 | 1.625 | 2 |
Stand for Children starts affiliate in Oklahoma
Stand for Children's immediate goal is to encourage lawmakers to fund public school measures that were approved the past couple years.
A national education advocacy group says it's time Oklahoma lawmakers provide money to implement standards imposed on public schools the past couple years.
It's a good organization with good motivation. They're not planning on taking the side of reformers like myself; they're not planning on taking the side of superintendents; they're not planning on taking the side of teachers' unions; they're going to try to take the side of what works.”
Sen. Clark Jolley,
Chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee
Stand for Children has opened an office in Oklahoma with the goal this year to get money to pay for programs intended to improve learning for students, such as better reading instruction and end-of-high school exams in public schools, said Jonah Edelman, founder and chief executive officer of the nonprofit.
The group, founded in 1996, has affiliates in 10 other states. Its long-term goal in the state is to get parents more involved with public schools, Edelman said.
The group decided to come to Oklahoma because it feels it can help improve educational outcomes, he said.
Brian Hunt, hired as executive director of Oklahoma's Stand for Children's affiliate, said this year's goal for the group is simple.
“Funding the reforms that are on the books,” said Hunt, a former president of Tulsa's school board.
Legislative budget leaders said they applaud the group's efforts, saying the Republican-controlled Legislature seems to be in favor of setting aside money to pay for the public school changes. Public schools, which this fiscal year gets about one out of every three dollars appropriated by lawmakers, received no additional funds in the budget approved last year.
Public schools in Oklahoma, near the bottom nationally in the state's share of per-pupil funding, got $2.3 billion, the same amount as last year, even though the amount lawmakers appropriated increased from $6.6 billion to $6.8 billion. Common education received about $40 million less in the 2012 fiscal year compared with the previous year.
“I'm incredibly excited to see them come here,” said Sen. Clark Jolley, chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee. “It's a good organization with good motivation. They're not planning on taking the side of reformers like myself; they're not planning on taking the side of superintendents; they're not planning on taking the side of teachers' unions; they're going to try to take the side of what works.”
Jolley, R-Edmond, said lawmakers should consider funding public school measures that were passed earlier.
“As these reforms go on, many of them are going to be more expensive the further implementation we go,” he said. “I'm going to fight for increased funding specifically on reforms. … We have passed significant reforms over the last few years to our educational system and we're kidding ourselves if we think that those reforms are going to be free.”
Rep. Scott Martin, chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee, said he is encouraged by the support he's heard for improving funding for public schools this year. | <urn:uuid:4b6bd27b-f09c-418a-bb30-37043489b536> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsok.com/stand-for-children-starts-affiliate-in-oklahoma/article/3745499/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977773 | 682 | 1.648438 | 2 |
No-Carve Pumpkin Decorating
Halloween pumpkin decorating is a fun and creative way to celebrate this spooky holiday. Carving pumpkins can be fun too and while they look incredible when lit at night, they do not last as long. It may also not be a suitable activity for young children. No-carve pumpkins make for easy craft for kids and look great day and night! | <urn:uuid:0d2f8750-3e0d-4437-b4c9-a4c6c53dc19b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toronto4kids.com/October-2012/No-carve-Pumpkin-Decorating/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937308 | 83 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Our View: Early voting
Posted: October 9, 2012
It used to be so easy, so clean, cut-and-dried, and straightforward. With the usual — and reasonable — exceptions made for absentee voting, we cast our general-election ballots as one nation, on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
“Early voting” is now in vogue here in America — so much so that a staggering 85 percent of American voters can, if they’re of a mind to, vote before the last presidential debate (Oct. 22) and 15 percent were able to do so before last Wednesday’s initial debate. It’s been estimated that 40 percent of eligible voters will have cast their ballots before the first precinct opens Nov. 6 — all because 32 states (Virginia not included, thankfully) and the District of Columbia now allow voting as early as late September. Election Day has morphed into Election Six Weeks.
Is this really the way to go?
We don’t think so — and not, as some may be quick to think, for partisan reasons. We recognize the necessity of some absentee voting — particularly for our armed forces deployed overseas who, oddly enough, seem to be facing heightened restrictions on participation this year — but we don’t fathom the need for widespread early voting, not when October is the guts of the campaign season.
Why would anyone wish to vote before this season plays out, before seeing the nominees make their respective pitches mano a mano before a national audience? Is doing so just a rationale for muting the endless political ads on TV?
Seriously, voting should be a communal event, the act that binds. It should not be done willy-nilly, whenever the spirit strikes. For those healthy in mind and body, voting shouldrequire some exertion, some effort — even it means getting up a bit earlier on Election Day, or stealing away on your lunch hour to vote.
In short, we should give the act the respect it deserves. | <urn:uuid:0b430ddb-e9d1-4fcc-8e14-e662346727a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winchesterstar.com/articles/print_preview/our_view_early_voting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949131 | 417 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Moreland detailed a program at Washington Hospital Center that offers a real perspective on what happens when bad choices are made. The program shows the attempt used to save a life and the instruments used in the process. Youth are then taken to the morgue and shown the bodies of the dead in close relation to the age of the youth. After the tour they are taken to an auditorium and given a graphic presentation of the trauma witnessed in the hospital's emergency room.
Ron Harris, an advocate for DC Jobs or Else, voiced his concern that opportunities for employment are not being given to those who desire work. African-American men seeking construction work are being told they need to be trained to move dirt from one spot to another or to put a flag up to halt a truck or stop traffic.
He spoke of the construction projects in southeast and the amount of money being dispensed for those projects without African American employees. It is Mr. Harris' belief that "as African Americans in DC we are being pushed to Prince Georges County. If you don't have a job you can't pay your rent and all of the safety net programs have been cut which means you can't get any kind of rent assistance" and so this "is telling us we have to get the hell out of here."
Our forefathers who were enslaved African Americans built the U.S. Capitol and people come from all around to marvel at this great sculpture and they weren't train and didn't go to a training center. Now, they are telling us that we can't build apartment buildings unless you go to training. I see hypocrisy in that. As long as we can do it for free it is okay but when we want a job with benefits -- a life sustaining job where I can feed my family, I need training. All I want is an opportunity."
Most notable at the Town Hall were the number of men who attended. Rev. Dr. William H. Bennett, II, a minister at Good Success Christian Church and Ministries in Ward 7, who will be announcing his candidacy for Ward 7 Council in September, said "Black men do care despite what is reflected in the media."
As for the solutions raised at this meeting, Prince Taylor, 42, says "people are hurting at the core of their being. Meetings like this is a starting point and the follow-up and follow-through must be intentional in order to bear the fruit." | <urn:uuid:a4965492-7342-4da6-abd5-fc7fbbfb05c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtoninformer.com/index.php/education/item/822-ward-7-town-hall-meeting-searches-for-answers-to-violence | 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 | 0.974824 | 491 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Looking around, especially at this time of year, knitwear is everywhere. Hats, scarves, sweaters, mittens and other cozy winter gear are knitted from thick, soft yarns, mostly on machines. Even though you can easily buy a pair of gloves almost anywhere, there are lots of reasons to learn how to knit. Here, I’ll give you the top ten reasons you should think about taking up knitting.
When you buy a knitted item from a store, in all likelihood it’s made by a machine. Knitting machines are effective at churning out large quantities of items, but simply from the detailed nature of knitting, the chances for error are very high. Unraveling, mainly at seams, is a major problem that can be difficult, if not impossible to fix.
Unless the knit item is being advertized as wool, cashmere or other natural fibers, what you are getting is acrylic. Acrylic is a man-made plastic fiber that runs the gamut from soft and plush to scratchy and dense, with most commercial products somewhere in between. Items that are advertized as a natural fiber are typically blends of natural fibers and acrylic, with the actual percentage of natural fiber so low it certainly does not justify the extra cost.
Depending on what you make and what type of yarn you use, knitting your own gloves, hats and scarves is almost always cheaper. A pair of mittens hand knit from luxuriously soft 100 percent pure merino wool will cost about $12, as opposed to a similar pair for $30 from a department store. Of course, depending on what yarn you use, the price can be quite expensive, but you’re still getting a much better quality product for your money.
Once you learn the basic stitch, knitting is intuitive. This means
you can either choose to focus on the work and forget your thoughts for a while, or you can let your mind wander while keeping your energy centered on doing something positive.
Knitting is currently having a moment in popular culture. Dakota Fanning knits scarves for costars like Tom Cruise, Amanda Seyfried knits while working out an the elliptical machine and Katherine Heigl knits for her dogs. Last year, the high end online store Net-a-Porter sold kits to knit your own hat or scarf. In 2013, knitting is not just your grandmother’s hobby.
6. Giving Back:
Hand making items to donate to different organizations is a great way to give back without a huge sacrifice of your time. Hats for preemies, blankets for homeless teens, mittens for soldiers and more are always in need of donations. Be sure to stay on the watch for current needs such as last year’s nationwide drive for winter gear for Hurricane Sandy victims.
7. Social Responsibility:
It was only in the past 100 years knitting became a mechanized process. Imagine having to knit socks, sweaters and every piece of winter gear by hand. In other parts of the world, this is still true. Knowing how clothes are manufactured is an important part of being an informed consumer.
8. Internet resources:
Learning to knit is a snap with the Internet. Sites like Knitting Daily and eHow offer written and video tutorials to teach beginners and experienced knitters alike the basics, new tricks and special techniques. The site Ravely is a social network just for people who knit and crochet, full of patterns, help forums and groups for everyone from teens to professional designers and lots of options to share photos of your projects.
Love sweaters but not the crazy multicolored yarn they’re made from? Love hats that would be perfect if only they didn’t have huge pompoms on the tops? When you knit it yourself, the customization options are limitless. Even if you’re just learning, personalizing a pattern with a different color or yarn texture than the one featured will make it uniquely your own.
Handmade gifts are always appreciated: The quality of the product is better, you know the recipient’s favorite color and the time and thought put into the gift will always be appreciated.
This winter, take the time to learn to knit. It only takes minutes,
and it will definitely become your new favorite hobby.
To learn more, visit www.vogueknitting.com.
I'm 5'10 and 130 lbs yet all nearly all of their clothes ...
They mean "revenue enhancement zones" cause that's ... | <urn:uuid:91219bd7-7a09-4830-8903-fbd94b3617c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.easternecho.com/article/2013/01/katies-craft-corner-12-knitwear | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938402 | 927 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (The Recovery Act) was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. The Department of Labor is investing $333.2 million to help meet the needs of workers in Minnesota through both Recovery Act and regular appropriations. In addition, Minnesota shares a $2.1 million multi-state energy training partnership grant.
Department of Labor investments in Minnesota include:
- The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes $64.4 million for Minnesota:
- $17.8 million for Workforce Investment Act youth activities, including summer youth employment;
- $2.5 million for YouthBuild grants awarded in Bemidji, Cass Lake, and St. Paul;
- $7.0 million for Workforce Investment Act adult activities;
- $21.0 million for Workforce Investment Act dislocated worker activities;
- $9.3 million for administrative support for unemployment compensation; and
- $6.9 million for Wagner-Peyser Act services.
- The Department is investing $74.5 million in Minnesota through ETA program year 2010 formula allotments to the state agency and grantees within the state:
- $14.3 million for Workforce Investment Act youth activities;
- $12.5 million for Workforce Investment Act adult activities;
- $18 million for Workforce Investment Act dislocated worker activities;
- $12.2 million for Wagner-Peyser Act services;
- $606,706 for Workforce Information system;
- $1.2 million for Migrant and Seasonal Farmworkers services;
- $267,248 for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit program;
- $2.8 million for the Senior Community Service Employment Program allotment to the state agency;
- $11.1 million for Senior Community Service Employment Program grants to national sponsors;
- $244,155 for Workforce Investment Act Indian and Native American youth activities; and
- $1.3 million for Workforce Investment Act Indian and Native American adult activities.
- Trade Adjustment Assistance The Department has released an additional $6.4 million to the state of Minnesota to assist trade-impacted workers. Combined with the original fiscal year 2009 allocations, Minnesota now has $9.3 million in TAA funding available. Through Trade Adjustment Assistance, workers can receive job training, income support, job search support, health insurance assistance, and wage supplements (in the case of certain reemployed trade-affected workers who are 50 years of age and older).
- National Emergency Grants Since the start of this Administration, the Department has released a total of $15.7 million through seven National Emergency Grants in Minnesota. Two grants are creating approximately 190 temporary jobs related to the Red River flood recovery effort and to continued clean-up efforts as a result of past flash floods. Five grants will assist more than 4,000 workers affected by layoffs at Seagate Technology, Target, IBM, Celestica, Hutchinson Technology, BAE Systems, Northwest Airlines, and in the declining automotive industry.
- UI Modernization The Department has released $130.1 million in unemployment insurance (UI) modernization incentive funds to the state of Minnesota. Minnesota qualified for its full share of total UI modernization funds available under the Recovery Act by enacting new provisions that assist recent entrants to the workforce (by allowing workers to use their more recent earnings to qualify for benefits) and assist part-time workers and people who become unemployed because of compelling family reasons.
- Re-employment and Eligibility Assessment Grant $2.3 million for Minnesota to implement or enhance the Re-employment and Eligibility Assessment Initiative for unemployment insurance recipients. Funds will allow one-stop career centers in Minnesota to conduct in-person assessments with individuals receiving unemployment compensation and allow for a more focused job search.
- Health Care and High Growth Training Grants $5 million for the American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center, $4.2 million for Pine Technical College, and $4.5 million for South Central College to deliver training that leads to employment in the health care industry, plus $5 million for Northland Community and Technical College to deliver unmanned aircraft systems training.
- Green Jobs State Energy Sector Partnership and Training Grant $6 million to provide workers with technical and occupational skills necessary to obtain industry-recognized credentials in the green economy and to support statewide energy efficiency strategies. Funds from this award will serve communities impacted by auto industry restructuring.
- Green Jobs Pathways Out of Poverty Grants $4 million for the City of Minneapolis and $3.1 million for the White Earth Band of Chippewa to help disadvantaged populations find ways out of poverty and into economic self-sufficiency through employment in energy efficiency and renewable energy industries.
- Green Jobs Energy Training Partnership Grants $5 million for the Blue Green Alliance to provide training that prepares workers and leads them to job placements in energy efficiency and renewable energy industries. Funds from this award will serve communities impacted by auto industry restructuring. In addition, Minnesota shares in a $2.1 million multi-state investment awarded to E.C.I.A. Business Growth, Inc.
- Green Jobs State Labor Market Information Improvement Grant $1.2 million to improve labor market information, which will be the foundation to build and implement effective workforce development strategies for energy efficiency and renewable energy industries.
- Green Jobs Veterans' Workforce Investment Program $815,098 for RESOURCE, Inc. to provide occupational, classroom and on-the-job training, as well as job search, placement assistance and follow-up services for veterans.
- Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program $720,000 for the Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans to provide occupational, classroom and on-the-job training, as well as job search, placement assistance and follow-up services for homeless veterans.
- Mine Safety and Health Administration's State Health and Safety Training Grant $269,624 for Minnesota to provide federally mandated training to miners. The grants cover training and retraining of miners working at surface and underground coal and metal and nonmetal mines, including miners engaged in shell dredging or employed at surface stone, sand and gravel mining operations. | <urn:uuid:b2172aed-c9f2-4cd8-b206-f18627fc884c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dol.gov/laborday/states/MN.htm | 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 | 0.930724 | 1,267 | 1.703125 | 2 |
It took less than 13 minutes of screen time to earn James Bond's 1964 Aston Martin DB5 the title of "the most famous car in the world." On the 46 year anniversary of Goldfinger's American release, where is it now?
It was exactly 46 years ago today when Goldfinger was released across America. With every showing, a little bit more of the American public was introduced to James Bond's now famous 1964 Aston Martin DB5. The film was well received critically and at the box office. Goldfinger grossed over $51 million dollars, easily making back it's at the time astronomical budget of $3 million dollars. While the movie is arguably the best of the Bond franchise, the Aston Martin and its gadgets remain perhaps the most memorable thing about the movie. When Thunderball, the next movie in the Bond franchise, was produced the DB5 returned to the screen. Despite having less screen time in Thunderball, the DB5 still managed a memorable performance.
Equipped with bullet proof windows, revolving number plates (naturally), a variety of defense mechanisms and perhaps most famously, an ejector seat, it isn't surprising the car left an impression on the movie viewing audience. Even without the gadgets the Aston Martin DB5 was a beautiful car, but on the big screen, in the hands of the world's most famous spy, the Silver Birch DB5 was an absolute knockout. The DB5's first movie appearance immediately launched the car into permanent dream car status, and the Aston remains the subject of many a car lover's fantasy to this day. So where is it now?
The correct question to ask is actually where are they now? Aston Martin hesitantly gave EON productions, who produced both early Bond movies the DB5 appeared in, two 1964 Aston Martin DB5s to use for filming. Aston Martin had initially pointed the production company in the direction of a dealership in response to their request for cars. One of the two cars Aston Martin provided, chassis number DP216/1, started life as a pre production test mule for the DB5 model before appearing on the big screen. The other car, chassis number DB5/1486/R was standard DB5 (if there is such a thing) delivered to the production company in the same condition it would have been delivered to a customer.
DP216/1 was the DB5 that was actually outfitted with all of the gadgets that made Bond's DB5 so memorable. Known as the "Effects Car" all of the modifications required for filming were made to DP216/1. Interestingly enough, with no concept of the future pedigree the cars involvement with the Bond films would bring DP216/1 was converted back to a standard DB5 and sold when EON Productions returned the car to Aston Martin. The car's famous gadgets were reinstalled at a later date and DP216/1 did promotional appearances for decades. In 1997, the Effects Car was stolen from an airport hangar in Florida where it was stored. No one has seen the car since it was stolen and after an exhaustive search it is now generally accepted that the Effects Car may be lost forever. The Insurance Company's payout for the car in the late 90s was rumored to be around four million dollars.
DB5/1486/R was used for filming driving shots and was not originally outfitted with any of James Bond's signature gadgets. Now referred to as the "Road Car", DB5/1486/R was strictly used for road scenes which did not require any special effects. Aston Martin held on to the road car until 1969 when the Road Car was sold to broadcaster Jerry Lee for $12,000. At some point after the movies were filmed the Road Car was fitted with all of the special effects and features seen on screen. Jerry Lee owned the car until October of 2010 when the DB5 was sold for $4.1 million dollars. The road car's new owner, Harry Yeaggy currently displays the car in his private Ohio car museum. You can see the sale in the Youtube video below.
Two other Aston Martins are frequently referred to as James Bond's DB5 even though they never appeared in the movies. Chassis number 2008/R and 2017/R were bought and outfitted with the movie gadgets by EON Productions for American promotional appearances around the time of Thunderball's release. One of the press cars, 2008/R, was sold for $2.09 million dollars in 2006 at auction to an anonymous purchaser. The car has been seen publicly a few times since its sale and subsequent restoration. The other press car, 2017/R, currently resides in the Dutch National Motoring Museum where it is currently on display.
Although one of the movie cars is likely gone forever and the other has been out of the public eye since the 1960s, James Bond's DB5 remains "the most popular car in the world". Other Silver Birch DB5s have had small roles in several later James Bond films, neither of which have compared to the originals. Thankfully, the original DB5s have been preserved forever in the two classic films in which they were featured. For most of us, watching these old Bond films are the closest we will ever get to piloting one of Bond's DB5 (or any DB5) down the road. Even so, the dream of piloting an old silver DB5 through the English countryside for an epic game of golf or through the Swiss hills in pursuit of smugglers is enough to keep the Bond DB5s in the dreams of car lovers for generations to come. | <urn:uuid:3de61d61-0ac3-449b-a569-e73160c27d98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jalopnik.com/5728724/where-is-james-bonds-aston-martin-db5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977022 | 1,132 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Charles Dickens fathered 10 children. But his most beloved offspring was David Copperfield.
He dumped his wife for a teenager. But he imagined himself Sydney Carton.
The more you learn about the personal life of the revered author, eminent Victorian and permanent resident of Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, the more he seems worth a serialized novel himself.
Dickens’ 201st birthday was Feb. 7, the culmination of a bicentennial that has been celebrated grandly. And his love life has gotten some attention, too, from three books.
“The Great Charles Dickens Scandal" (Yale University Press, $30) by Michael Slater is a sharply focused examination of Dickens’ affair with actress Ellen Lawless “Nelly" Ternan. Seventeen when she met the author, Ternan was the age of his youngest daughter.
Slater, a Dickens biographer and emeritus professor of Victorian literature at Birbeck College, University of London, delivers a terse, lively account of the relationship that dominated the last decade-plus of the writer’s life — and the intricate cover-up that went with it.
By now, the Ternan tale isn’t exactly news. But Slater masterfully tells it, with considerable detail and clarification about what’s known and what isn’t, what’s speculative and what’s true. In recent years, the Dickens-Ternan affair has fueled sensational headlines in the London tabloids, from “Dickens’s Romps with Naughty Nelly" to “Dickens Kept a Keen Eye on Fallen Women."
The story is especially juicy and ironic because Dickens remains “our great national celebrant of hearth, home and family love. ... Radiant domesticity is also the dominant mood at the end of most of his great novels ..." The creator of Oliver Twist, Little Nell and Tiny Tim, however, wouldn’t have been at his best at a PTA meeting.
Slater deftly separates the gossip from the research into Dickens’ “wild indiscretion."
Dickens’ actual children are the subject of Robert Gottlieb’s “Great Expectations: The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25).
“Why was I ever a father!" Dickens wrote two years before he died. Gottlieb, former editor of The New Yorker and a former editor in chief at Alfred A. Knopf, writes a vivid, entertaining, enlightening story about children never living up to what their driven, domineering, fanatically orderly, self-made father wanted.
“Certainly, their lives, however unfortunate, were far from disgraceful," Gottlieb writes. One, for example, was a respected editor; another, an admired jurist.
Dickens’ surviving children protected his image. But after his last son died, the revelations about Ternan started to become part of the legacy.
Robert Garnett’s “Charles Dickens in Love" (Pegasus Books, $28.95) covers the Ternan affair as well as the impact of Hogarth and Beadnell. Garnett is a professor of English at Gettysburg College.
His account is exceedingly earnest and unduly sympathetic, as well as repetitive, equivocating and, to use one of his favorite words, “vexing." Garnett is better at discussing the classic fiction than the elusive facts. That’s magnified with Ternan, with whom “he entered the labyrinth." Beadnell “taught him how passionately he could love, and how hard he could work."
“Mary Hogarth, in fact, became his religion." They were his “muses and teachers in the school of love."
Wince away. And when Garnett compares Dickens with Faust or sets a scene with “Let’s imagine ...," you’ll be ready to write your own ending to his unfinished “The Mystery of Edwin Drood." | <urn:uuid:9edc00b5-8774-46f4-bfd7-0226f23bffe7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130210/NEWS0107/302100311/1023/1023 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966377 | 860 | 1.679688 | 2 |
It seems like a bad season for New York City megaprojects. The proposed BJs in the Bronx and Wal-Mart in Queens are history. The Jets stadium in Manhattan and Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn are facing new roadblocks every day. But even if all these projects were to join the pantheon of Big Apple deals that went rotten, what follows in their wake could be more of the same. The groups who oppose these projects because of the impacts they would have on surrounding communities still have to live with land use and zoning rules that make possible the emergence of new versions of the same old deals.
BJs and Wal-Mart
Organized labor was a key force in killing the proposals for a BJs in the Bronx and Wal-Mart in Queens even before they got to the formal approval stage. The labor practices of these retail giants would have lowered the wage bar for the entire retail economy. But labor paid very little attention to the land use and environmental impacts of big box stores and could very well look the other way when the next megastore proposal hits the streets. They’ve already taken the heat off the Rego Park developer who was going to play host to Wal-Mart. The alternative to Wal-Mart in Rego Park and elsewhere is likely to be a different brand of suburban-style mall with the same acres of parking and traffic snarls, a mammoth building that looks like a fortress, and price gouging practices that undermine local businesses. The city’s land use regulations allow such planning disasters that destroy public spaces, undermine public transit, endanger pedestrians, and destroy neighborhoods.
The zoning code is crying out for an overhaul to deal with these issues. The idea of a one-year moratorium on new superstores that’s being proposed by some City Council members makes sense because it would give the City Planning Department and City Council time to come up with sensible rules that require giant retailers to adapt to our cosmopolitan city of developed neighborhoods. The City Council should also require that all large-scale projects be consistent with official neighborhood plans.
Reports are that Wal-Mart is cruising for another New York City site and this time could come with its guns loaded. Since the demands of labor and their allies don’t extend to neighborhood impacts, Wal-Mart could make a few concessions to mollify labor critics so they can get their foot in New York’s door. The world’s biggest retail corporation could buy neighborhood support in areas long neglected by the city and private sector. Neighborhoods like Red Hook in Brooklyn are vulnerable because the city has let huge swaths of industrially-zoned land sit vacant for decades. Ikea already plans to take over a chunk of prime waterfront land to sell its tables and chairs. Red Hook and outer-borough neighborhoods like it could get inundated with megastores, creating weekend traffic jams and environmental disasters in once-quiet communities.
Another scenario is that Wal-Mart and its competitors will follow the example of the Chelsea Home Depot and limit themselves to sites where customers have to use mass transit or walk. These stores can add to the city’s lively sidewalk culture instead of killing it. But the city’s land use and zoning policies don’t encourage such comfortable fits.
The Jets Stadium
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has opened up its Hudson Yards site on the west side of Manhattan to competitive bidding and put aside for the moment the deal with the Jets football team to build their stadium there. State legislative leaders have declared that any plan for the Hudson Yards site requires their approval. Local community and business groups could hold up the stadium proposal in court long after July of this year, when the International Olympic Committee will decide whether New York will be the site of the 2012 Olympics.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg could have overplayed his hand on the stadium when he insisted on linking approval of the Jets stadium to the city’s Olympics bid. He could still decide to cut his losses and announce before July that the Olympics stadium will be in Queens (though a few Queens neighborhoods may have something to say about this), or he could privately assure the Olympic committee that he’ll switch to Queens later on if he has to. But right now he’s painted himself into a corner by declaring that it’s Hudson Yards or bust.
The Nets Arena
Since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority set a precedent by calling for competitive bidding on the Hudson Yards site, how can they make a sweetheart deal with Forest City Ratner for the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn? This logical question has punctured the public debate about Ratner’s idea of putting a 19,000-seat Nets basketball arena, at least 4,500 apartments and a million square feet of office space over an active rail yard and surrounding blocks. Ratner is facing stiff community opposition, could have trouble fulfilling his promises to the local groups that support him, and may have to take a look at an alternative plan put together by his critics.
Added to all of this are all the unanswered questions about financing these huge projects. The public tab for the Manhattan stadium, including direct and indirect subsidies, could reach in the billions. A recently released study of the Atlantic Yards project by the Pratt Institute Center for Community & Environmental Development guesses that deal could cost taxpayers another billion. And all this coincides with an announcement that $1.3 billion will be cut from the School Construction Authority. More city schools will go without athletic facilities and childhood obesity will spread while season ticket-holders for the Jets and Nets get comfortable seats. In the meantime, the City Council is now considering bills that would require council approval for all subsidies, prevent the use of the city’s capital funds for land acquisition, and require that payments in lieu of taxes go into the city’s general revenue fund. This latter item could limit the use of the mayor’s “creative” financing approach that would rob the city budget to pay back bonds to finance the megaprojects.
So it’s bad news time for big projects. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think bigness is necessarily bad. The problem is that the city doesn’t plan in partnership with its neighborhoods to deal with new development, large and small. The big projects just have much bigger impacts and the consequences of poor planning are more dramatic. Too many giant projects are driven by corporate developers that have rigid business plans and suburban-style designs, and at best buy off potential opposition with meaningless promises and palliatives. How about having community plans that incorporate the kind of new development that’s needed? Let the giants conform to our rules if they want to play in our ballfield. That way New Yorkers and not the Nets can control their destiny.
Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning. | <urn:uuid:618e6e00-1222-43fb-8710-965cfd491afb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/topics/health/2787-big-projects-and-bad-news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959696 | 1,425 | 1.734375 | 2 |
8 a.m. ET: Just as President Obama is seeking to unify Democrats behind his health-care proposals against a solid wall of GOP opposition, he may be forced to do the opposite if he decides to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Many Hill Democrats will back resources for training and supporting Afghan forces, but not for adding more U.S. troops. "The emerging Democratic consensus is likely to constrain the president as he considers how best to proceed with an increasingly unpopular war," The Washington Post writes, explaining that Obama "could be forced into the awkward political position of turning to congressional Republicans for support." The president's party is wary, with House Democrats elected in 2006 and 2008 watching Obama closely on Afghanistan, Politico reports. They, like Obama, emphasized during their winning campaigns that they supported the war effort in Afghanistan even as they criticized the Bush administration's actions in Iraq. Now, those back-bench Democrats and their leaders and committee chairmen must decide whether they would be willing to publicly break with their new president on one of his first major military decisions.
Complicating the situation for Obama is the fact that some Republicans who would be inclined to support him on Afghanistan are growing concerned at the pace of his decision-making. “What we want to know right now is what the commander-in- chief says,” said Richard Lugar, Obama's closest foreign policy ally on the GOP side, according to Bloomberg. He added that he wanted Obama "to move on a little bit more decisively." Lugar's comments came after Jim Jones gave senators a classified briefing on the state of play in Afghanistan, during which he reportedly said Obama would make his troop decision in the coming weeks.
At the White House, Obama met for three hours Wednesday with his divided war cabinet, and appears set on convening the group again twice next week. The Wall Street Journal reports that Robert Gates -- "the key link between the White House and the military -- is among those undecided about the right approach." The story cites an unnamed senior defense official as saying Gates "now worries that counterinsurgency might no longer be a viable approach for countering the Taliban violence roiling once-stable parts of north and west Afghanistan." Elsewhere in the Journal, Karl Rove writes on the "troubling revelation" that Obama has spoken to Stanley McChrystal only once since June and takes it as evidence that the president has "outsourced" the troop decision to advisers like Vice President Biden. "Mr. Biden has a record rare in its consistency and duration of being wrong about big national security questions," Rove says.
The Iranian foreign minister, meanwhile, arrived in Washington Wednesday for what the New York Times called a "curiously timed visit." Can Obama publicly chastise Iran for keeping a second nuclear plant secret one week, and then resume a policy of engagement the next week? In Geneva, "U.S. officials are skeptical that Tehran will act decisively when its diplomats sit down for long-awaited discussions with world powers," the Washington Post writes. Laura Rozen reports, "One diplomat said it was a concern that it could become a distraction that the Iranian foreign minister was coming to Washington one day before the Geneva talks, creating the impression that Washington and Iran may be exploring a separate bilateral channel." Iran's neighbors in the Middle East "are growing increasingly anxious" about the country's nuclear program, the New York Times reports. "But they are concerned not only with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran but also with the more immediate threat that Iran will destabilize the region if the West presses too hard."
While the public option dominated the health-care debate Tuesday, abortion was the main event Wednesday. Republicans failed in their effort to convince the Finance Committee to add tougher language preventing the use of federal subsidies to pay for abortions covered by private insurance plans. ""This is a health-care bill. This is not an abortion bill," Max Baucus said during committee deliberations, but that doesn't mean the issue won't raise its head again, either on the Senate floor or during Bart Stupak's separate negotiations with House Democratic leaders. After altering a provision of the Senate bill on tax deductions for medical expenses, Democrats now believe the finish line is in sight for their bill. Baucus suggested he has the votes to pass the measure out of committee and bring it before the Senate in the next two weeks. It won't include the public option, but Tom Carper is now floating a compromise proposal that would allow each state to decide whether to offer a public plan. Politico calls the idea "a so-called third way that several key senators said Wednesday could provide the blueprint for compromise in the Senate bill."
October 1, 2009; 8:00 AM ET
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Perhaps best known in conjunction with her husband Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter was the only significant female singer/songwriter to emerge from the mid-'70s "outlaw" movement. Born Miriam Johnson on May 25, 1943, in Phoenix, AZ, Colter in fact affiliated herself with outlaw imagery long before the musical movement blossomed, adopting her stage name in honor of ancestor Jess Colter, a real-life train robber and counterfeiter who rode with Frank and Jesse James.
Raised in a strict Pentecostal home, Colter was just a teenager when she left Phoenix to tour as a vocalist with twang-guitar innovator Duane Eddy, whom she met through her sister Sharon, the wife of producer "Cowboy" Jack Clement. In 1962, she and Eddy married, and after several years of extensive touring (mostly throughout Europe), the couple settled in Los Angeles in 1966. Under the name Miriam Eddy, she wrote songs for Don Gibson, Dottie West, and Nancy Sinatra.
In 1968, she and Eddy divorced, and Colter returned to Phoenix. There she met Waylon Jennings, who was so taken with her voice that he invited her to record a duet with him. After helping secure Colter a record deal with his label, RCA, Jennings co-produced the tracks that would make up her 1970 debut, A Country Star Is Born; by the time of the record's release, the couple had already married. Under the name Waylon and Jessi, they also issued two Top 40 singles, a 1970 cover of the Elvis Presley hit "Suspicious Minds" and 1971's "Under Your Spell Again." Colter's commercial breakthrough came in 1975 when her composition "I'm Not Lisa," a single from the LP I'm Jessi Colter, hit number one on Billboard's country charts while also making the Top Five on the pop charts; the album spawned another hit in "What's Happened to Blue Eyes." In 1976, she released two more highly successful albums, Jessi and Diamonds in the Rough.
Also in 1976, Colter teamed with Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Tompall Glaser for the album Wanted! The Outlaws, which at the time of its release was the biggest-selling album in country history, and the first country album certified platinum in sales. In between spending much of the remainder of the decade on tour with her husband and Nelson, she also released the albums Miriam in 1977 and That's the Way the Cowboy Rocks and Rolls in 1978.
Colter and Jennings reteamed in 1981 for Leather and Lace, an album of duets featuring the hits "Storms Never Last" and the medley "Wild Side of Life/It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." In the same year, she released the solo album Ridin' Shotgun, which produced her final chart hit in 1982's "Holdin' On." As the 1980s progressed, Colter's success tapered off; 1985's Rock and Roll Lullaby, produced by Chips Moman, was released only on a small label. By the early '90s, she began directing her energies toward performing children's music, and starred in the home video Jessi Colter Sings Songs from Around the World Just for Kids, which featured a guest appearance by Jennings, who recited some of his poetry. Capitol released the An Outlaw...a Lady: The Very Best of Jessi Colter anthology in 2003. It was followed by Out of the Ashes on the Shout Factory label in 2006. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi | <urn:uuid:d9674113-11d8-484f-a66e-e2eeef4e019b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pandora.com/jessi-colter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96488 | 752 | 1.625 | 2 |
Q: Is an aspect from Jupiter “debilitated” when it affects the cusp of Capricorn?
An aspect doesn’t have dignity, a planet has dignity. You have to understand that dignity is about the relationship of the guest to the host. The planet is a guest and the owner of the sign the planet is in is the host. Next you have to understand what an aspect is. It is a “dhristi” – it is a line-of-sight, by which a planet can cast a glance upon a different place. The glance is the glance of the host, it is not the host itself. The glance is not received by the host of the sign it lands in, because the glance is not a guest, it is just a glance. If someone looks at your house, it is a hell of a lot different than if they come into your living room. If they look into your house you get affected by that, but if they are actually in your house they are a guest. The aspect is a glance. it is the power of the planet transfered by a glance.
So the dignity of a planet is decided by it’s relationship to the planet who hosts the sign it is in. Therefore the glances that planet casts by aspects carry that dignity with them wherever they land.
If you are reading a chart, there are three considerations to make for each planet:
- What does the planet promise – what positive or negative intentions does it have towards you?
- How strong is the planet?
- When would the planet get an opportunity to act on it’s promised intention?
Here’s how you answer the questions.
Answer the first question by seeing what sign
the planet is in. Not just in the main birth chart, but in the 10 harmonic divisions (see Differences Within a Single Sign (Part II)
) – this will tell you the planet’s overall positive or negative intentions towards you.
To understand the specific areas they will be positive or negative in is a delicate art and science. But basically you do so by assessing the houses they own and occupy and the planets they interact with.
A person may want to kill you, but may be extremely weak and powerless to do so. So their intention is malefic, but because they have such little strength it is not such a big deal. Just a slight trouble. Planets can only fulfill their promises dramatically when they are strong.
There are six factors you have to take into account to judge the planet’s strength.
- The natural strength of the planet
- The strength gained by its placement in various signs
- The strength gained by it’s direction in the sky (n, e, s or west)
- The strength gained by the time of year, month, week, day and hour
- The strength gained by the planets speed of motion
- The strength gained as a result of declination to the north or south of the ecliptic
There are elaborate and precise rules for evaluating these six strengths. Almost any Vedic astrology program will tell you this strength as “shad-bala” (which means “sixfold strength”) expressed usually as a decimal number, where any decimal over 1 is increasingly strong, and any decimal below one is increasingly weak.
Even if person who wants to kill you and has the power and guts to do so – there’s still a chance you will escape the assassination if you don’t wind up in the “wrong place at the wrong time.”
A strong planet will be able to fulfill it’s promised intentions towards you only when it gets the right opportunities to do so. You mainly have to consult the dasha cycles – the planetary rhythms (see New Video – Rhythms of the Planets) to know when the planets get their opportunities to act.
- Vic DiCara | <urn:uuid:b621c3c6-0375-4d66-99cf-f8ee92798da2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vicdicara.wordpress.com/tag/dignity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953431 | 818 | 1.804688 | 2 |
|Character classes||Arcanist, Paladin (Dragons), Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Scout, Gladiator, Priest (dragonspawn), Scalebane, Wyrmkin|
|Breath||Frost, Ice, Arcane|
|Racial leader(s)||Malygos the Spell-Weaver (formerly), Kalecgos|
|Racial capital||The Nexus|
|Primary language||Draconic, Common, Titan (language)|
|Secondary language(s)||Any, usually Darnassian, Dwarven, Goblin, Thalassian|
|Average height||Varies by species and age|
|Alignment||Usually lawful neutral|
The blue dragonflight, formerly ruled by Malygos, the lord of magic, was all but devastated by the evil Deathwing and his black dragonflight. The Blue Dragonflight is now ruled by Kalecgos. Though there are few great blue dragons left in the world, their magical powers are awesome to behold. Native to Northrend, the few blues stay relatively close to the great Dragonblight, where they commune with the ancient dragon spirits who died in ages past. Their freezing breath and gargantuan claws have been the death of many hapless travelers in Northrend.
The blue dragonflight includes the blue dragons themselves as well as all other blue dragonkin such as dragonspawn and drakonids.
- Blue wyrm
- Blue dragon (mature)
- Blue drake
- Blue whelp
- Blue dragonspawn
- Blue drakonid
The Blue Dragonflight encompasses both the literal descendants of Malygos — the blue dragons — and their loyal servants and companions, the blue dragonspawn. For the thousands of years between the Sundering and the destruction of the Demon Soul, blue dragons were all but unheard of, but they have begun to emerge in the world once again.
Historically, dragons have had a reputation for spending their days in solitary contemplation of the secrets of the world, but in recent times blue dragons have proved to be more social due to the growing threats to all living creatures. In addition to their noted obsession with magic, blue dragons also enjoy researching other subjects. They could be called the academics among dragons; they have begun to serve more and more as the teachers of younger members of other species. While in humanoid form, many dragons also notice the scientific discoveries of other races and take an increasing interest in the development of engineering and similar studies.
Adult blue dragons most often have names ending in "gos", or "gosa" for females. Sometimes synonyms of the word "blue", or terms relating to spellcasting find their way into a blue dragon's name as well. When taking humanoid form blue dragons most often choose gnomish or high elven forms.
Malygos is said to have established magic itself and created all the spells that set the sky and earth into motion. While he is not revered as a god, for blue dragons see no godhood in scientific fact, he is considered the greatest scientific mind ever to have existed in the multiverse—or, at least, his flight considers him so. Blue dragons have a natural affinity for spellcasting, and most powers of sorcery are instinct even to young drakes. Because of their natural propensity for magic, they have high magic resistances and can withstand many magical attacks. They are also the masters of frost, their breath weapon can drain enemies’ magic energy, an effect the blue dragons term “withdrawing Malygos’s favor.” Blues find all forms of ice and water welcome, most making their lairs in the frozen peaks of mountains or in caverns near, or under, freezing water.
Their traditional home is Northrend, where they remain close to the great Dragonblight, the final resting place of dragons. The blue dragons once communed with the dead there to ensure that each draconic spirit made its way into the Beyond. Northrend lies much in control of the Scourge, but blues still make pilgrimages to the dark northlands, seeking answers hidden among the bones of their dead. The most powerful blue dragon sorcerers claim that the spirits of the dead tell them a new upheaval is on its way, a cataclysm that will outweigh any trouble the world of Azeroth has yet endured. The blue dragons say this often, no matter what disaster the world suffers, so few have given their words much credence this time. More and more dragons however, migrate to the caverns of Mazthoril in Winterspring on Kalimdor. This migration occurs for two main reasons: First, because of the growing concern about another imminent attack on the World Tree; and second, to retreat from the Scourge, which some dragons see as a threat the dragonflight is not prepared to conquer.
Blue dragons are a bit xenophobic, keeping to their territories and maintaining their own studies without interference. They are highly territorial, largely due to their paranoia that any intruder wandering into their lairs are probably agents of the black dragonflight, and won't hesitate to attack if his territory is invaded. Under such circumstances, a blue dragon is as violent and destructive as any black dragon. In previous years, blue dragons even attacked each other over territorial disputes, but such conflicts are unlikely now that so many dragons have adapted to living in groups for protection.
In modern days blue dragons are rare and difficult to find, thus their society does not have a rigid hierarchy. Although some great blue dragons remain in the world, they are few and far between, studying their magic almost to the exclusion of all else. All blue dragons serve Malygos with roughly equal standing, although there are some ancient dragons who are considered authority figures simply due to their great knowledge and mastery of magic. In essence, it is a society ruled by the powerful, but in a group of intellectuals such as these any real ranking system would do nothing but cause endless debate. Males and females have equal standing in blue dragon society, although usually it is the female who chooses her mate. With a few exceptions, blue dragons usually take only a single mate, and they are immensely protective of their mates and children. Female blue dragons sometimes stalk and observe a potential mate in a number of different forms to gauge the male’s worth before revealing themselves.
Blue dragons are the undisputed masters of magic, their culture revolving around the study and cataloging of magic and spells, primarily but not exclusively arcane magic. They focus on advancing in spellcasting ability, and the acquisition of knowledge and greater magical power to the exclusion of almost everything else, but this is not to say they are single minded. Rather, the dragons are extremely loyal, and know that the Titans gave their master his domain so that they would use their magic to keep the world safe. As such, the “proper” use of magic is a matter of great importance to the dragons — while blue dragons are naturally curious about the use of warlock magic and the like, they consider such forms of magic to be perversions of nature. For this reason, warlocks and necromancers are considered enemies of the dragonflight, although the dragons have higher priorities on their hit list — namely every living black dragon. In their pursuit of magic, blue dragons infiltrate mortal societies in humanoid forms to learn more about how mortals practice spellcasting. While some dragons have engaged in this activity for centuries, it has been widespread only since Malygos's recent recovery from years of insanity.
While the dragons are primarily interested in arcane magic, other forms interest them as well, especially those that do not require the worship of a divine being. For this reason, a number of blue dragons engage in a scholarly study of the Holy Light. It isn't surprising to find blue dragons in the ranks of many mortal orders: the Kirin Tor, naturally, but also orders dedicated to the Light such as the Argent Dawn and the Knights of the Silver Hand.
Blue dragons are scholars and often learn many languages, posing as mortal wizards and even paladins to better study the magical progress of the younger races. Many strive to impress their master, Malygos. Members of the blue flight value other thinkers such as writers, artist, spellcasters, academic types, and engineers. They have associated with the elves for the centuries, and more recently they study the unique skills of dwarven, gnome, and goblin engineers. They delight in knowledge and in samples of new crafts.
Blue Dragonspawn, more often than the dragonspawn of other flights, become proficient arcanists and rise to positions of power and authority within their broods, General Colbatann of Mazthoril being a prime example. This is credited to the unusual intelligence and disposition towards magic associated with the blue dragonflight. Many other dragonspawn are warriors, rogues, hunters, scouts or gladiators. A few dragonspawn priests worship the blue dragonflight or Malygos, contrary to most blue dragon beliefs, but shamans and druids are almost unheard of among the blue dragonflight.
The blue dragonflight’s belief system is scientific; they seek proof of everything, and take little on faith or word of mouth alone. The dragons revere Malygos as a creator of magic, but not as a god; rather, they feel Malygos is simply the greatest scientific mind that has ever existed. Those dragons that know of the Titans respect them as powerful users of magic and as creators, but they consider the Titans good examples and mentors, not divinities to be worshiped. Likewise, the dragons respect the followers of Elune, Cenarius and the other Ancients, but they do not worship these entities.
The blue dragonflight is focused on the pursuit of ever greater power and knowledge. This doesn’t make them completely egocentric; the dragons share what they learn to help others of their kind as well as the world in general. Many blue dragons strive to impress their master, Malygos, with their knowledge of magic, or invent new spells or magic items. Members of the blue dragonflight value other thinkers, including spellcasters, engineers, writers, artists and general academic types. If a mortal shows a blue dragon a spell he has never seen, they earn that dragon’s respect. If they teach the dragon that spell, the mortal likely gains the dragon’s gratitude for a lifetime — and blues live a very long time. Generally, members of the blue dragonflight consider adventurers in general to be kindred spirits, but they highly favor those who are clever, inventive and powerful.
While blue dragons are slowly growing in numbers again, they lack the power to take on the children of Deathwing, such as Onyxia and Nefarion, directly. As such, the blues entrust favored mortals with the task of fighting against these powerful black dragons, and reward their mortal allies with magical secrets and objects of power in return for risking their lives to aid the dragonflight. Generally, the blue dragonflight likes the mortal races, especially those that practice arcane magic, but there are a few exceptions. Most blue dragons dislike goblins, since many goblins serve the black dragonflight, and it was a group of goblins that outfitted Deathwing with the adamantine armor attached to his scales. Also, blue dragons are wary of orcs, due to their role in enslaving the red dragonflight in recent years. Relations between the blue dragonflight and the other dragonflights have dramatically improved since the fall of Deathwing at Grim Batol; many of the other dragons felt that the blues abandoned them after the construction of the World Tree; but now red, bronze and blue dragons guard Nordrassil together once again. Now, it should be noted however that several Blues are somewhat bitter after the events of the Nexus War.
Blue dragons are some of the foremost arcane spellcasters on Azeroth. As such, some are concerned that the demons’ taint may touch and corrupt the dragonflight. These concerns are unfounded; blue dragons, blue wyrmkin, and the rest of the dragonflight are immune to arcane corruption — though no one yet understands why. Perhaps they have mastered magic to such an extent that they surpassed the danger. If this is true, perhaps arcanists of other races can achieve similar transcendence.
HistoryThis section concerns content exclusive to the Warcraft novels or short stories.
Charge of the Dragonflights
Before the Titans departed Azeroth, they charged the greatest species of the world with the task of watching over it. In that age, there were many dragonflights, yet five flights, one of which was the blue, held dominion over their brethren, and were chosen to shepherd the budding world. The greatest members of the Pantheon imbued a portion of their power upon each of the flights' leaders.
Norgannon, the Titan lore keeper and master-magician, granted the blue dragon, Malygos, a portion of his vast power. From then on, Malygos would be known as the Spell-Weaver, the guardian of magic and hidden arcanum.
The time following this came to be known as the Age of Dragons, when the civilization of dragonkind was at it's peak. For thousands of years, his children prospered and experimented with the eldritch powers of the universe, unrivaled in their mastery of arcane power. The blue dragons were numerous and co-existed peacefully with the other dragonflights, working together to safeguard their world. But this age would not last forever.
War of the Ancients
When the night elves inadvertently called the Burning Legion to the world, the blue dragons were among the first to realize the potential threat; and when the Aspect of the Earth, Neltharion, suggested creating a magical artifact to aid in the destruction of the demons, the blues were some of the first to agree to the plan. Malygos himself was one of Neltharion’s closest friends, and he gave much of his own essence toward the creation of this object, called the Dragon Soul.
When each dragon had contributed a portion of his or her essence to the artifact, Neltharion deemed it complete, and brought it to bear against the demons — but only for a precious few moments. Soon, he turned the artifact against the terrified night elves as well, and finally his own brethren. The shocked dragons were helpless to resist the power of the Dragon Soul, for it contained a fraction of the essence of each — with the exception of Neltharion himself. All the dragonflights, save Neltharion’s own, were paralyzed in the air until the timely intervention of Korialstrasz, one of the mates of the red dragonqueen, who had been absent from the initial use of the artifact. While Korialstrasz was no match for the might of the Aspect of Earth, he was powerful enough to interrupt Neltharion’s concentration for a moment, which freed the other dragons from their paralysis and allowed them to act. Malygos, infuriated at the betrayal by one of his closest companions, struck first, but at a great price. As the blue dragonflight flew into formation to attack Neltharion, the mighty black wyrm unleashed the full fury of the Dragon Soul against them, and the power instantly slew nearly every one of them. Malygos narrowly managed to raise a protective spell fast enough to survive, and only a handful of others reached the safety of his barrier in time. As the other dragons turned to act, Neltharion retreated, leaving the blue dragonflight broken in his wake.
Following the betrayal, the surviving red, green, and bronze dragons secluded themselves, hoping to recover from the Dragon Soul's powers. Korialstrasz teleported himself to the icy caverns of the blue flight to search for any remaining life. He found none, save a few nearly frozen, but still intact, eggs. Knowing these eggs were the only hope of a future the blue flight had, he placed them in a pocket universe, where time ran ever so slowly, until he could pass them on to someone he could trust. The Kaldorei and their allies managed to defeat the legion, but at great cost. Azeroth was sundered.
After the Sundering
The loss of most of his children and mates drove Malygos out of his mind. Malygos continued for some time in the war against Neltharion, who now called himself Deathwing, but Malygos’s presence in the world diminished over time. Perhaps Malygos’s last sane act was placing many of his surviving dragons in the caverns of Mazthoril to hold eternal vigil over the sacred site of Mt. Hyjal, location of the world tree Nordrassil and the second Well of Eternity.
Malygos, in his rage and grief, split his home from the rest of the land, creating the gap later known as the Westrift that separates Coldarra from what had become mainland Northrend. The few survivors settled on Coldarra, carving their own caverns out of the Nexus. For 10,000 years the Aspect Malygos fell deeper and deeper into his madness. He isolated himself in his lair and refused all visitors. Blue Dragons were rarely seen, and most of the survivors had gone into hiding from the blacks. For thousands of years, none but a few of the most ancient dragons knew of Malygos’s whereabouts, and much of his dragonflight hid in solitude, realizing their fight against Deathwing was doomed without their leader.
After having nearly wiped out the flight, the black dragons were not ready to leave the last few blues in peace. The survivors of the blue flight had fled to Northrend, when Deathwing attacked, slaughtering them by the dozens. The survivors fought back but were no match for Deathwing's ferocity. In the process their homes were destroyed and the land so damaged it could never recover. The area became the Dragonblight. Over what is now Crystalsong Forest another battle between the blacks and blues was waged. The dying blues released their magic and it sprinkled down to cover the landscape. Finally a elder blue wyrm, beset by many blacks, released a spell to turn his attackers into stone, but the magic blanketing the area amplified the spell and crystallized the landscape.
The drawn out war between the black dragonflight and the other flights decimated the species, with all flights losing members, the blues losing many of what few they had left. The dragonflights hunted the blacks to the brink of extinction, but were greatly weakened by their sacrifice to the Demon Soul. Ultimately the blacks were nearly wiped out, though the other flights never truly recovered from those dark times and were never again seen in the same numbers as before. The Age of Dragons had passed.
Guardians of Magic
A few remaining members of his flight continued their mad masters job of studying magic throughout the millennia in attempts to keep the mortal race's abuse of it in check. The Arcanomicon, a map of the world's ley lines gifted to Malygos ages ago by the titan Norgannon, has been continuously updated and revised by the blue dragons over the long years of Malygos's seclusion. Other blues, such as Sapphiron and Azuregos, continued to search for and hoard artifacts of great magical power, keeping them from inexperienced hands. When the legion was planning its second invasion of Azeroth, another agent, Arcanagos, attempted to sway the Guardian Medivh away from the path he was taking under the control of the Dark Titan, Sargeras.
War of the Shifting Sands
A thousand years before modern times, the almost-extinct blue dragons still managed to lend their aid to the night elves and the bronze dragonflight during the War of the Shifting Sands. Led by Arygos, child of Malygos, the blues fought the Silithid and their Qiraji masters furiously and ultimately helped push them back to their city where they were sealed away from the world. The dragons suffered few casualties but the progeny of Malygos, Arygos, was until recently believed lost, having charged deep into Ahn'Qiraj during the final push. After the war a shard of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands was entrusted to the blue wyrm Azuregos by Anachronos the bronze.
Battle of Grim Batol
In the events leading up to the Second War, Deathwing led a powerful orc warlock named Nekros to the Dragon Soul — now renamed the Demon Soul — and instructed him how to use it. Nekros used the Demon Soul to force the red Dragon Aspect, Alexstrasza, into submission, and forced the rest of the red dragonflight to serve him or risk the death of their queen. Korialstrasz, who escaped by faking his death and taking the identity of an archmage of the Kirin Tor, sought the other Aspects for help. Though each Aspect was difficult to convince, he eventually succeeded, and the dragons battled Deathwing in the sky near Grim Batol. Korialstrasz’s human apprentice, Rhonin, defeated Nekros and used one of Deathwing’s scales to destroy the Demon Soul. The destruction of the artifact released the ancient power that had been sealed inside for millennia, and allowed the Aspects to defeat Deathwing and force him to retreat. This final battle was known as the Battle of Grim Batol.
Malygos had seemed almost indifferent to the news at first. When Korialstrasz asked for Malygos' assistance in his queen's rescue he hinted to the lord of the blues that as the aspect of life, there could be something Alexstrasza could do for him and his nearly-extinct flight. After heavy consideration and some coaxing from Ysera, he agreed.
After having his powers restored to him, Malygos regained his sanity and his agents became more active in the world. The blue dragonflight, still recovering from the events that occurred ten thousand years ago, nevertheless continued to safeguard the world from corrupting magic and those who would wield it. Since the blue dragonflight was so long secluded from the affairs of mortals, most were pleasantly surprised at the progress humans and high elves had made. Their pride in the accomplishments of these races allows them to justify taking humanoid form to trade secrets with the mortals.
Since Deathwing’s disappearance, the black dragonflight is less organized, and this chaos allowed the blues the chance to strike back against the murderous dragons who hunted them for millennia. General Cobaltann, one of the eldest and most powerful of the blue dragonspawn, organized an army to protect all creatures against the threat of the black dragonflight — and if he has his way, his army will grow strong enough to obliterate the black dragonflight.
Aftermath of the Third War
The blue dragonflight was nearly absent from the battle against the second coming of the legion, also known as the Third War. In the aftermath of the Battle of Mount Hyjal, blue dragon guardians were stationed at Hyjal Summit, where they, along with the Reds, Greens, and Bronzes, guard the World Tree from another attack by the remnants of the Burning Legion in Darkwhisper Gorge.
During the war the fabled Sunwell had been lost to the Elves of Quel'thalas. Malygos and the blues felt a great flaring of power, coming from Lordaeron. The Spell-Weaver, with no elders at his disposal, sent the young Kalecgos to investigate. Tyrygosa, Kalecgos's intended mate, followed soon after, arriving just in time to save Kalecgos from the Scourge. In their company was a strange young woman by the name of Anveena Teague. On a visit to Tarren Mill they were joined by the paladin Jorad Mace. The four journeyed together, their exploits eventually leading them to Quel'thalas where after being assaulted by Dar'Khan Drathir and an enslaved Korialstrasz they discovered Anveena was the new avatar of the Sunwell. Dar'khan was defeated and Anveena was left in the care of Lor'themar Theron and Halduron Brightwing. Kalecgos, having sworn to look after her, remained in Quel'thalas as Anveena's guardian.
The Burning Legion survivors of the third war, led by Lord Kazzak were ultimely able to reopen the Dark Portal. Once the initial demonic onslaught was subdued, a number of nether dragons attempted to cross into Azeroth, only to be met by a force of blue dragons whom quickly destroyed and prevented all but one in entering. The lone survivor, Zzeraku, was however quickly captured by Sintharia. Since that time the blue dragons monitor the portal from their sanctum, and nothing crosses in or out without their knowing.
In World of WarcraftThis section concerns content exclusive to World of Warcraft.
The icy caverns of Mazthoril in Winterspring teem with blue dragonkin under the Matron Protectorate, Haleh, and General Colbatann. These dragonkin are fierce enemies of the black flight and desire to strike out against its new leaders; Nefarian and Onyxia. They also keep an eye on the demons to the south in Darkwhisper Gorge. The dragons are concerned the demons there will soon launch another attack against Mount Hyjal and the dragons stationed there. Recently they have come under attack by Nefarian's dragonriders, coming in the darkness of night, and kidnapping whelps to be used in experiments to create a new chromatic flight.
Azuregos and his brood of dragonspawn guard the ruins of the ancient night elven city of Eldarath. The city is rumored to hold many powerful highborne artifacts scattered throughout the ruins. Azuregos will stop at nothing to safeguard these artifacts from falling into mortal hands.
Arygos, thought to have been lost during the War of the Shifting Sands, was recently found to be alive inside Ahn'Qiraj, as a slave of C'thun, along with Caelestrasz and Merithra. The dark master of Ahn'Qiraj used the tortured dragons to power his new creations: Moam and the other Obsidian destroyers. Andorgos came to Ahn'Qiraj after sensing his trapped brethren within, but dares not travel into the temple from fear of falling under the old god's control.
In Burning CrusadeThis section concerns content exclusive to The Burning Crusade.
Tyrygosa, princess of the blue flight, has traveled to the shattered realm of Outland to study the mysterious Nether Dragons. The nether dragons are the spawn of Deathwing, who as eggs were exposed to the arcane energies of the twisting nether when Draenor was shattered by Ner'zhul's portals. Tyrygosa seeks to better understand the rogue nether dragons, under the control of Veraku, and ultimately take control of them and keep their temperament, inherited from their sire, under control.
Kalecgos had until recently remained guarding Anveena on Quel'Danas. The return of the Sun King, Kael'thas Sunstrider, fresh from his defeat in Tempest Keep, has brought the Burning Legion to Azeroth, and Kalecgos has been taken as their slave. Malygos has sent Madrigosa to assist Kalecgos in combating the demonic horde.
Wrath of the Lich KingThis section concerns content exclusive to Wrath of the Lich King.
Having awoken from the madness that engulfed him, Malygos quickly assessed the state of magical affairs on Azeroth and concluded that magic was running amok throughout the world, blaming the mortal races and their reckless pursuit of magical power. Determined to forestall a catastrophe, the blue aspect decreed that the world's unbridled magic must be reined in by any means necessary. Determined to manipulate all existing magic to serve his own purposes, he now seeks to divert Azeroth's ley lines to his own home, the Nexus by the use of giant constructs known as Surge needles. The blue dragonflight has been ordered to maneuver the colossal machines into key positions over magical ley line clusters, their work has already begun in the Dragonblight. Malygos' actions however carry disastrous consequences, splintering the world's crust and opening unstable rifts in the twisting nether. If successful, his tampering could result in an ecological and magical catastrophe that would threaten not only the stability of Northrend, but ultimately the equilibrium of the entire world. The red dragonflight and the Kirin Tor now fight against Malygos in this Nexus War.
In their campaign to rein in the world's umbridled magic, the blue dragonflight has diverted much of the ley lines' magical energy to the Azure Dragonshrine, empowering the flight and altering their appearance. With this power the blue flight has boldly began to launch attacks against Wyrmrest Temple, what was once considered neutral ground. The other flights have formed the Wyrmrest Accord, and fight back to defend the temple against their misguided brethren.
In CataclysmThis section concerns content exclusive to Cataclysm.
With the death of Malygos, the black dragonflight has invaded Azshara to hunt down Azuregos. Azuregos, along with Kalec, will help low level Horde players repel the invasion. Kalecgos has also been confirmed by Christ Metzen at Blizzcon 2010 to be made the Blue Dragon Aspect.
In Mists of PandariaThis section concerns content exclusive to Mists of Pandaria.
Blue dragonflight has effectively disbanded during the events of Tides of War, with most, if not all, dragons leaving their Coldarra home. It is stated in the novel they were driven by desire to find new place in the new world where Hour of Twilight has passed. Their former Dragon aspect has joined the Kirin Tor.
|Kalecgos||Agent sent in search of the Sunwell's remnant magic. Finds Anveena, avatar of the Sunwell, and vows to defend her. Played a critical role at Sunwell Plateau. Named the new Aspect of Magic after the death of Malgyos. In the novel Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War, he falls in love with Jaina and later becomes a member of the Kirin Tor. Leader of the Blue Dragonflight after the defeat of Malygos.||Dragon/Aspect||Alive|
|Malygos||Former Leader of the blue dragonflight. Blessed by the Titans as the Aspect of magic, and called the Spell-Weaver. Has declared war on Azeroth's spellcasters.||Aspect||Killable, Deceased (lore)|
|Andorgos||Agent which came to Ahn'Qiraj after sensing his trapped brethren within. Found at the entrance to the temple.||Dragon||Alive|
|Arcanagos||Agent who confronted the guardian Medivh at Karazhan, and was burned from within, remains littering the area. Reincarnation known as Nightbane.||Dragon||Undead-Killable|
|Arygos||Son of Malygos. Fought in the War of the Shifting Sands and taken prisoner by C'thun. Found deep in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. Later betrayed the Blue Dragonflight to Deathwing and played a role in the defilement of the Chamber of the Aspects.||Dragon||Alive|
|Azuregos||Guardian of the ruins of the ancient highborne city of Eldarath in Azshara. Blue Scepter Shard holder.||Dragon||Killable, Alive|
|Balacgos||Son of Malygos. Slain in ancient times by his own creation, a cerulean cube designed to absorb latent magic now known as Balacgos's Bane.||Dragon||Deceased|
|Cyanigosa||Sent by Malygos to the Violet Hold of Dalaran under orders to free all prisoners and launch an a full scale invasion of the city.||Dragon||Killable|
|Eregos||The Ley-Guardian. Can be found in upper reaches of the Oculus.||Dragon||Killable|
|Haleh||Consort of Malygos. Matron Protectorate of Mazthoril in Winterspring, guarding Hyjal Summit from the demons in nearby Darkwhisper Gorge.||Dragon||Alive|
|Madrigosa||Dragon sent to Quel'Danas alongside Kalecgos. Flys over the Dead Scar, taunting Brutallus, whom eventually kills her. Reincarnation known as Felmyst.||Dragon||Undead-Killable|
|Sapphiron||Ancient servant of Malygos. Lair invaded by Arthas who slew and raised him as a Frost wyrm. Serves Kel'thuzad, guarding his inner sanctum in Naxxramas.||Dragon||Undead-Killable|
|Saragosa||Consort of Malygos. Guardian of Coldarra. Killed when lured into a trap set in motion by her former prisoner Keristrasza.||Dragon||Killable|
|Sidragos||Sent orders to Goramosh directing him to move all forces under his command to the Azure Dragonshrine.||Dragon||Alive|
|Sindragosa||The Frost Queen, first of the Frostbrood. Former prime consort of Malygos. Perished in the War of the Ancients, and remains were once found in Icecrown.||Dragon||Undead-Killable|
|Tyrygosa||Kalecgos's intended mate. Assisted restoring the Sunwell's power to the Elves of Quel'Thalas. Found at the Celestial Ridge studying the nether dragons.||Dragon||Alive|
|Vyragosa||A wandering blue dragon found in the Storm Peaks.||Dragon||Killable|
|Azurous||Drake who patrols the region of Winterspring.||Drake||Killable|
|Indigos||Drake found in Dalaran Crater in the Hillsbrad Foothills.||Drake||Killable|
|Manaclaw||Drake found inside the caverns of Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable|
|Scryer||Drake-Champion of the blue dragonflight. Located inside the caverns of Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable|
|Spellmaw||Drake who patrols the area outside Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable|
|Awbee||Whelp abducted to Blackrock Spire by Nefarian's agents for his chromatic experiments. Sends adventurers to Haleh in Winterspring.||Whelp||Alive|
|Cerulean||General of the blue dragonflight forces found in Coldarra.||Dragonspawn||Killable|
|Colbatann||General and military leader of the blue dragonflight forces on Kalimdor. Resides in Mazthoril. Staunch enemy of the black dragonflight.||Dragonspawn||Killable|
|Drakos||The Interrogator. Winged dragonspawn found in the Oculus.||Dragonspawn||Killable|
|Goramosh||Dragonspawn in charge of the blue dragonflight forces found at the Moonrest Gardens.||Dragonspawn||Killable|
|Goredrak||Azure-Lord of the blue dragonflight. Found in Coldarra.||Drakonid||Killable|
|Insivius||Curator of the blue dragonflight. Leads the mage hunters in Coldrock Quarry in digging up sacred tuskarr artifacts.||Drakonid||Killable|
|Varos Cloudstrider||Azure-Lord of the blue dragonflight. Can be found in the Oculus.||Drakonid||Killable|
- ^ a b c d e f Lands of Mystery, 116.
- ^ a b Lands of Mystery, 119.
- ^ Lands of Mystery, 121.
- ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos manual, 82.
- ^ a b c d e Lands of Mystery, 114.
- ^ Manual of Monsters, 31.
- ^ a b c Lands of Mystery, 115.
- ^ a b c d Lands of Mystery, 117.
- ^ Lands of Mystery Web Bonuses, 2.
- ^ Lands of Mystery, 95.
- ^ "Charge of the Dragonflights" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site, History, Chapter 1. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
- ^ The Well of Eternity, 193.
- ^ Monster Guide, 39.
- ^ The Sundering, 25.
- ^ a b Lands of Mystery, 96.
- ^ Lands of Mystery, 97.
- ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos manual, 142.
- ^ The Well of Eternity, 245.
- ^ a b "The Nexus" (HTML). Wrath Of The Lich King Official Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
- ^ "Legacy of the Damned: The Return to Northrend", Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment.
- ^ a b "Raid Encounters" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
- ^ "War of the Shifting Sands" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
- ^ Day of the Dragon, "19-21".
- ^ Lands of Mystery, 17.
- ^ Dark Factions, 147.
- ^ Dragon Hunt, "1".
- ^ Ghostlands, "6".
- ^ Night of the Dragon, 98.
- ^ Lands of Mystery, 124.
- ^ "Monsters of Ahn'Qiraj: Moam" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.
- ^ "The Dragonblight" (HTML). Wrath Of The Lich King Official Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. | <urn:uuid:cc560297-d974-47ff-99bc-cb69b84c2597> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wowwiki.com/Blue_Dragonflight | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946334 | 8,061 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The circumstances at the utmost beginning of the world are wholly unknown to us. It may be that great civilizations rose and died leaving no trace we can tell, or that Sosaria was simply barren for eons. Whichever be the case, it eventually came to pass that two intelligent species dwelled in Sosaria: the Juka and the Meer. Known only recently to us, the Juka are a war-like reptilian race with a highly developed code of honor, while the Meer are feline, strongly gifted in magic, and have values centered upon reverence of ancestors. For millennia, they played out a war in ancient landscapes, yet never shifting the balance of power between them. Humans and gargoyles also existed in this world, but they were not of this world, having entered through moongates from places unknown. They were mere savages, though, and played no important role in history.
Whether early or late in the reign of the Meer I cannot tell, but they did come into contact with creatures long known in Britannia: the wisps. The wisps are actually more properly called Xorinia, for it is in actuality but a single intelligence with many manifestations spanning countless worlds. In fact they seem not wholly convinced by the concept of individuality, and have been known to assume all the individuals contacting them from any given dimension as parts of a vast entity like themselves. There is much more to tell about wisps, but at this point what is important is that the wisps provided to a Meer named Zog the spell known as Armageddon. Zog subsequently employed this spell, eradicating all life from Sosaria. It was not the wisps’ intent to end all life - the spell was merely offered as an example of the extent of the wisps’ knowledge. "Misuse of the sample information is suspected," according to the wisps.
Only wisps know how many lonely eons passed until life rose anew. It is said that the first new life in Sosaria was a great Yew tree, though one can only imagine how this could be known. Humans once again encountered the moongates that brought them to Sosaria. Rising out of some dark and primitive past these humans began to form tribes, and then kingdoms. At this time there were also other races: elves, dwarves, and bobbits, but their numbers were small. The gargoyles also returned, but lived underground, largely unknown to humans. Eventually one kingdom rose in might above all the others and became an empire. This was the Esidin Empire. Esidin's power began by its will and martial prowess, but its greatest achievement and its sustainer was the Ancient Liturgy of Truth. This tradition was both a system of philosophy and of magical power that became the cornerstone of Esidin culture. The symbol of these beliefs was the ankh, and the Esidin built many shrines to Truth. The sum total of magical knowledge available today pales in comparison to what was known to the Esidin, but their knowledge was not perfect. Many magical creatures, including gazers, headless, reapers, corpers, and harpies, are believed to be unintended consequences of their ancient spells.
The continent of Ambrosia was at one time during the reign of the Esidin assaulted by meteorites and earthquakes to such an extent that it disappeared beneath rock and ocean. Yet, miraculously, some part of Ambrosia remained intact as a vast cavern beneath the earth. The Esidin took it upon themselves to craft magic to light the subterranean continent and to provide transportation to it, and so Ambrosia was repopulated. However, the means of transport were lost to the kingdoms of later centuries. In its long isolation, Ambrosia gave rise to Terathans and Ophidians. The secret of these races' origin is known only to the Ophidian matriarch and her successor, and the two races war incessantly upon one another on account of this secret.
The reasons are not known in full, but over time the empire fractured and collapsed from within. More than one city of the Esidin simply vanished all at once leaving no trace. Among these the city of Wind. In various parts of the world, new feudal kingdoms rose to fill the vacuum of the empire. The shrines and moongates that the Esidin built remained fixtures of the landscape, but few reflected on the fate of their builders. Soon the Esidin were barely a rumor; however, the Liturgy of Truth was not abandoned, but rather sustained by dedicated believers who founded the city of Moon. During this time, some dissented from the Liturgy of Truth, believing that true enlightenment does not consist only of abstract ideas, but also in concern for fellow beings. This group became the Brotherhood of the Rose, and they settled in Yew.
The time of the rising of the new kingdoms leaves the first definite maps of the physical geography of Sosaria. The continents were entirely unlike those existing today. The main continents were these: Akalabeth, the Land of the Feudal Lords, the Land of Danger and Despair, and the Continent of the Dark Unknown (and Ambrosia.) On Akalabeth were founded these cities: Akalabeth (which became Britain), Moon, Montor, Paws, Fawn, Tune, Grey, and Yew. The other kingdoms were Olympus in the Continent of the Dark Unknown, the White Dragon Kingdom in the Land of Danger and Despair, and the kingdoms of Randorin and Barataria in the Land of the Feudal Lords.
In the time of the new kingdoms, a particular phenomenon occurred, which was the appearance of unusual moongates from entirely different worlds. Through these moongates came a number of unique individuals. Through both their qualities of character and enduring lifespans (through differences in the passage of time between Sosaria and their homes) these people grew to positions of great prominence. They include, at the least, Lord British, Lord Blackthorn, their jesters Chuckles and Heckles, Iolo, Gwenno, Shamino, and Dupre. When Lord British arrived in Sosaria, he found himself in Akalabeth, ruled by King Wolfgang. Wolfgang's second son had an evil heart and was called Mondain. Mondain slew his father and stole the inheritance intended for Wolfgang's first son: the Sun Ruby. Through dark arts, Mondain transformed the Sun Ruby into the Gem of Immortality. Aided by the gem, Mondain gathered armies of creatures created or summoned by magic to plague Akalabeth. The monsters created by Mondain included the lizardmen and ratmen, while his apprentice Minax created orcs, trolls, ettins, and ogres. For driving Mondain and his hordes from Akalabeth, Lord British was hailed as the proper ruler of Akalabeth, which became known as Britain; however, his strength was not enough to destroy Mondain. As Mondain's understanding of the Gem grew, he became well nigh invincible. Seeing that hope was nearly lost, Lord British employed his silver serpent medallion to summon a new champion.
The hero who answered this call is known to us only as "The Stranger." The Stranger was a mighty warrior and a spellcaster, but even he could do no harm against the power of Mondain, since Mondain had reached full mastery of the Gem. Yet, the Stranger prevailed by traveling backwards in time, and putting an end to Mondain by shattering the Gem just as Mondain was realizing its power. As his life was bound with the Gem, Mondain died immediately upon its shattering.
At the death of Mondain, the future that had seen his rule disappeared, utterly, and a new future began its story. Yet, this story plays itself out not in the Stranger's Sosaria (of which we know but little) but inside each fragment of the shattered Gem of Immortality. In fact, in every facet of every shard there exists another Sosaria. Many are similar, but no two identical. Some are even so similar that the same individuals live in them and perform the same deeds. | <urn:uuid:84a4bb98-3d7e-45f2-95e1-a4c6034943f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://home.hiwaay.net/~carrot/history/chapter1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979707 | 1,701 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Dr. Johnson has a 25% extension appointment. She has developed a pro-active extension program to provide sound science for clientele to utilize when formulating programs, educational tools and assessment / audit criteria to ensure farm animal well-being throughout the entire marketing process (from conception to consumption). These programs provide production expertise, timely information, and applicable educational materials. The goals of these programs are to enhance modern livestock well-being knowledge base and comfort level of county / agricultural educators, field staff, and producers. The expanded knowledge is designed to keep Iowa and the U.S. livestock operations profitable and enhance their competitiveness. The candidate actively participates with industry, government agencies, and commodity groups to be an important voice for Iowa livestock producers.
Dr. Johnson has trained to become a member of the Iowa Instructor Training Team (ITT). The PQA Plus program was developed by the National Pork Board in an effort to insure the highest level of food safety and high quality animal care in the pork industry. This voluntary program includes educational programs for producers and on-farm assessments. These steps will ensure that the US swine industry continues to address swine well-being and it will help assure customer confidence in pork products. Dr. Johnson looks forward to helping Iowa pork producers become comfortable with this program. More information about the PQA Plus program can be found at the Iowa Pork Producers website and the National Pork Board. | <urn:uuid:7c7df6d7-385b-4284-8f19-26fd04a71878> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ans.iastate.edu/research/animal_behavior/extension.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944952 | 284 | 1.5 | 2 |
Posts Tagged ‘housing’
The Seren Group, which includes Charter Housing, is considering developing co-operative housing on part of the old Pirelli Factory site, just off Corporation Road in Maindee. Before the group moves forward with this idea, it needs to find out whether Newport residents would be interested in living in co-operative housing. Seren is working with the Wales Co-operative Centre and the Chartered Institute of Housing to identify whether there is any demand for this form of housing in the City.
What is co-operative housing?
Co-operative housing is a form of housing where members (either tenants or owners) democratically control and manage their homes and play an active role in the life of the communities they live in. Co-operative housing is very common in other parts of Europe. There are a number of different types of co-operative housing, either for rent or for sale but they have one fundamental thing in common: they put democracy and community ownership at the heart of housing.
Some of the advantages of co-operative housing are:-
• An affordable form of home ownership
• A democratic and safe community
• Long term financing and security
• Flexible to meet occupiers needs
• Potential of shared benefits of communal energy
What is the plan for co-operative housing in Newport?
Seren’s plan for the old Pirelli site is to create a community of around 200 homes which will be a mix of homes for rent and to buy. The vision is of an ‘urban village’; bringing the community benefits of village life to the heart of the City. Seren would like to include an area of co-operative housing in this development, if there are enough people interested.
Why are we reaching out to you and what should you do next?
We are trying to find out whether you are interested in knowing more about the development of the Pirelli site and whether you are interested in being a part of the co-operative Seren wants to support on the site.
If you are interested in finding out more, please go online using this web address
You’ll be asked to answer a few questions about yourself, your family, your current housing situation and to provide your contact details.
We will then write to you with more information about co-operative housing and an invitation to attend an event to tell you more about Seren’s plan and the types of co-operative housing that may be possible.
If you have any questions about this matter, please contact Dave Palmer from the Wales Co-operative Centre on 029 2055 6169.
Written by marksmithc20
April 10, 2013 at 1:51 pm
This week sees Wales’ ‘premier housing conference and exhibition’ swing into town.
Held across Cardiff City Hall and the nearby Hilton Hotel, TAI 2013 will look at current challenges in the Welsh housing sector as well as future opportunities.
On Wednesday, our Co-operative Housing Project Manager Dave Palmer will be running a workshop that will look into this emerging theme. Dave will provide an outline of the eight ‘pioneer’ co-operative housing projects across Wales, along with details of research that is being carried out into the topic and information on three ‘focus’ projects in Cardiff, Newport and Llanelli.
On the same day, Jocelle Lovell – Project Manager of our Tackling Homelessness through Financial Inclusion project – will be involved in a session that will look at the potential impact of the forthcoming Welfare Reforms and what they mean from a financial inclusion and social housing perspective.
We will also have staff on an exhibition stand at the event (Hall B, stand 42), on all three days, promoting the work of the Centre, including the recently launched Money Made Clear Wales website. If you’re attending the event, find out how the Wales Co-operative Centre is working with the housing sector in Wales and how we can support you and your organisation, to lay the foundations for future success, across the projects that we run.
North Wales Social Enterprises scoop the 2012 Social Enterprise Awards Wales
Three North Wales social enterprises have won categories in this years Social Enterprise Wales Awards which took place today (Friday 19th October) at the Scala Cinema and Arts Centre in Prestatyn.
The awards were hosted by Wales Co-operative Centre and Wales Social Enterprise Coalition and was sponsored by not for profit internet registry company Nominet.
The full list of winners reads as follows:
Social Enterprise Leader of the Year
Kelly Davies of Vi-ability
Kelly Davies has been Managing Director of Vi-ability for nearly three years. Kelly has succeeded in positioning Vi-ability as one of the leading personal development/employment facing sport industry programmes in UK and Europe for socially disadvantaged participants It produces consistently positive outcomes in relation to engagement, retention and progression.
Kelly was delighted to win the award, “I’m overwhelmed! I really didn’t expect to win after our success in these Awards last year. It shows that we haven’t stood still and we’re still doing something right!”
Social Enterprise Start up of the Year – North Wales Credit Union
North Wales Credit Union is a financial co-operative which provides a wide range of ethical financial services across North Wales. Regulated by the Financial Services Authority, it is the fourth largest financial mutual in Wales. It was formed in January 2011 through the merger of five credit unions. Since then it has been looked to as a model of excellence by credit unions and policymakers from across the UK.
Mac McCarthym from the North Wales Credit Union, commented, ”Wow! From our persepective, this award is fantastic. Creating North Wales Credit Union took 18 months of really hard work by both staff and volunteers, and we’re accepting this Award on their behalf.”
Social Enterprise Supporter of the Year – St Illtyd’s Communities First Partnership
St Illtyds Communities First is part of a Welsh Government anti-poverty campaign which has been established for 10 years. The team consists of 5 individuals who are dedicated to supporting and encouraging initiatives that make positive changes to the social economy. They work in Llanhilleth Institute supporting communities from Brynithel, Swffryd, Aberbeeg and Llanhilleth. St Illtyd’s Communities First has been responsible for starting up and supporting 3 social enterprises and creating 16 jobs in a socially deprived area of Wales.
Anna Chard from St Illtyd’s Communities First Partnership stated, ”Its a real honour to accept this Award on behalf of the Communities First Partnership Board, the staff team and the social enterprises we support.”
Social Enterprise Supporter of the Year – Special Mention
The City & County of Swansea, Housing Renewals & Adaptations Department was singled out for a special mention as an example of a Local Authority who have made a major contribution to supporting the development of a social enterprise. City & County of Swansea has provided support and been available to reflect, counsel and steer changes to other organisations that resulted in the development of social enterprises such as Swansea Care & Repair Services.
Social Enterprise of the Year – Crest Co-operative
Crest Co-operative operates a number of recycling enterprises including , a food poverty project that distributes in-date food from food manufacturers to the homeless and vulnerable across North Wales; a textile recycling operation throughout Conwy County Borough Council; and finally Crest Co-operative work with North Wales housing associations to clear empty properties and save kitchens/bathrooms from landfill. Crest Co-operative’s work primarily focuses on social and environmental purposes, working to promote social inclusion and at the same time work to save materials and food from landfill. Sharon Jones from Crest Co-operative recieved the award, ”I’m speechless. This is a real surprise and its great to win such as prestigious award.”
Wales Co-operative Centre Chief Executive Derek Walker commented, “The quality of nominations this year demonstrated not only the breadth and versatility of the sector but the importance the sector has to communities across Wales. The judges this year had a tough task deciding between a number of very dedicated people and a number of extremely deserving nominees. The winners chosen demonstrate an impressive commitment to their area of expertise and a level of service that is outstanding. We congratulate Crest Co-operative, St Illtyd’s Communities First Partnership, North Wales Credit Union and Kelly Davies and all of the other excellent social enterprises who were shortlisted.”
Not for profit Internet registry company Nominet sponsoredthe Social Enterprise Awards Wales 2012. Nominet run one of the world’s largest Internet registries and manage over ten million domain names. They are entrusted with the safe, stable and secure management of the .uk Internet name space and recently submitted applications for the new .cymru and .wales top level domains. For more information visit www.nominet.org.uk
Written by davemadgecoop
October 19, 2012 at 2:59 pm
When a leading housing developer embarked on a mission to build Scotland’s first sustainable village, a social enterprise model offered the best opportunity to combine innovation, partnership and social purpose. Claire McBain reports
In 2008 Wayne Hemingway, one of British’s best-known designers, reinvigorated the centre of Gateshead in Newcastle, transforming redundant buildings into a thriving business district. He believes it takes people to build solid housing and successful communities. Bricks and mortar come later. Hemingway predicts that house purchases will no longer be based on investment potential. Instead, people will seek homes in communities in which they want to lay down roots.
Kincluny Development Trust is taking Hemingway’s vision north, with plans to build Scotland’s first sustainable village. Inspired by the north-east housing shortage, intricate new technologies and a clear passion for social purpose, the development trust has proposed a new village in the heart of Aberdeenshire’s Royal Deeside. Expected to be the country’s largest sustainable construction project, the village will blend social enterprise principles and practices with 32 years of building expertise to harness the most up-to-date technologies and produce comfortable, desirable, affordable properties across the entire housing spectrum.
The development trust, a social enterprise incorporated as a limited company by guarantee, was set up to complement the growth of the village. It was initiated by CHAP Homes, a well-established north-east housing developer.
Bill Burr, managing director at CHAP Homes, says he then brought on board Aberdeen Foyer, who operate a portfolio of successful social enterprises. “It was clear that the village’s resources would need to be managed. I had heard about social enterprises and approached Aberdeen Foyer who suggested the development trust model.”
Leona McDermid, commercial director at Aberdeen Foyer, then produced a feasibility study on how the development trust might work. “Since then, we have recruited many local ambassadors,” says Leona. “Eventually, the development trust will be made up of property owners, developers, local authorities and businesses. Each householder and business will be a stakeholder through a formal ‘share’ agreement in the development trust.”
“This group is key to gaining momentum,” explains Bill. “The physical place still has to be built but the foundations of the community are well underway. The working group has a clear, shared vision of what the village will look like and what it could be like to live there. It’s truly inspiring.
Leona adds that the development trust is already writing the social history of the village by thinking through how it can develop and manage shared resources for the benefit of the community that will one day arrive. “We’re setting the culture of the place, embedding sustainability and creating the potential for outstanding social impact.”
This vision has become the Kincluny mission, which is about much more than having objectives. Social purpose is at the heart of Kincluny. The development trust business model means that the village will be financially stable with the micro economy ‘locked in’ so that the community-owned social enterprise can unlock and build social capital for its people.
More than a parish council or committee, Kincluny will turn sustainability principles from rhetoric in a glossy brochure to a day-to-day community reality. CHAP will initially invest £400m towards land, building work and amenities, such as a school, shops and renewable energy. But the village will take responsibility for managing its own income and amenities, promoting community life and securing future development. This is real sustainability.
Kincluny will enhance local amenities, not only for the new village but for surrounding communities too. A primary school and leisure facilities will be developed. Employment and entrepreneurial opportunities will be created. Approximately 150 construction jobs will be generated each year over a ten year period and permanent employment will be available in the community itself. Training will be available in modern sustainable construction techniques and new technology as the build develops. The village will incorporate low cost workspace for start-up local businesses. Tangible revenue will be generated from business unit rentals, allotments and renewable energy sources. All profits generated through Kincluny Development Trust will be reinvested in the village to sustain and develop the village according to need. This, coupled with CHAP’s donation of £1,000 from the sale of each of the 1,500 properties, will provide a solid, long-term income for the development trust.
With prices ranging from approximately £90,000 to £500,000, this genuine community housing development aims to be truly open to all. Kincluny promises at least 30% of the mixed tenure homes will be affordable to those on low incomes, which is particularly attractive due to rural issues and high levels of homelessness.
The organisations involved in leading the development of Kincluny see this as an opportunity to pioneer how housing is developed, says Leona. “You can build a village or a town with the best designs in the world but it’s people who make it a desirable place to live and work. Our experiences of operating social enterprises and working with young people have now given us the opportunity to influence the development of a new community. For us, the most exciting aspects are the creation of affordable housing for our young people and the new jobs that will be created, not just around the creation but also the upkeep of the village.”
Kincluny will be built on a former quarry, a brownfield site, and will designed to the highest specification in terms of renewable energy, conservation and environmental technologies. For Bill, the timing of the development was ideal given that the quarry site is nearing the end of its operational use. “To be able to develop the quarry as a catalyst for sustainable design was an exciting option for us and, unlike other developers, we are promising a carbon neutral target. But most of all, it’s the chance to develop much needed mixed tenure housing in the north-east. I hope other developers will follow suit – Kincluny could be very replicable.”
There is no doubt that Kincluny challenges how new developments are thought through. “It has a vision for community involvement that goes way beyond the obligatory public consultations,” adds Bill. “The project has the potential to alter the perception of creating and managing community life.”
Leona agrees, maintaining that social enterprise has paved the way for Kincluny to pioneer a new era of housing developments: “I think it has the potential to influence how new communities in particular are thought through and managed. Normally, development trusts start because there is an issue. This development trust has started because it values the social capital of the community just as much as the bricks and mortar and infrastructure.”
Facts and figures:
Who is involved? CHAP Homes and Aberdeen Foyer.
What will be built? 1,500 mixed tenure homes, business and amenities.
Where did inspiration come from? Other development trusts and the Garden City Movement.
What is the investment? £400m from CHAP Homes to go into land, building work and amenities, such as a school, shops and renewable energy. CHAP will also donate £1,000 from the sale of each property.
Source: Social Enterprise Live | <urn:uuid:98fd159e-dba7-4c17-9317-0c57f885ac61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://walescooperative.wordpress.com/tag/housing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950123 | 3,419 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Jeremy Siegel on Politicians, Prices and a Potential 'Buying Opportunity of the Decade'Published: March 05, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton
The U.S. Presidential race has reached a critical juncture. The Republicans have a confirmed nominee in John McCain; as for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton has bounced back, while Barack Obama retains a marginal lead in terms of delegates. How the presidential race evolves will be shaped in part by the increasingly worrisome state of the U.S. economy. Though it has not yet gone through two consecutive quarters of negative growth -- the common definition of a recession -- signs of a slowdown are evident everywhere. Meanwhile, consumer prices are rising, oil has crossed $103 a barrel and gold is nudging $1,000 an ounce -- suggesting that the economy could be entering a phase of 1970s-style stagflation. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, however, told Congress last week that he doesn't anticipate stagflation, and he continues to indicate his willingness to keep cutting interest rates. What lies ahead for the U.S. and world economies? What is the right strategy for investors in this environment? Knowledge@Wharton discussed these questions and more with finance professor Jeremy Siegel, author of The Future for Investors.
Knowledge@Wharton: Given all that is going on in the primary elections, what do you think a President Clinton, or Obama, or McCain would mean for the U.S. economy?
Siegel: We certainly had some exciting primaries last night. Hillary came back and could be a factor. If the Democrats beat themselves up, that might improve the chances of Republicans a bit. A lot of people talk about what kind of policies [will be made], and I think that whoever is president, or whatever party wins, that the question of taxes is going to necessarily come up first. The reason is that under current law, all of the Bush tax cuts will expire in 2011. That means that if nothing is done, we go back to taxation under the Clinton administration.
And of course, what is also very important is the fact that no matter whether McCain or a Democrat wins, as long as Congress remains Democratic -- and that is considered over 90% now -- they will draft the tax legislation. Even if McCain vetoes it and says, "I don't want these rates to increase" -- taxes will automatically go up anyway. So, they are going to be wrestling about taxes.
Health care, which everyone talks about, will probably have to play second fiddle to taxes. The home mortgage situation -- I think that is going to be done during this year, the last year of the Bush administration. Although all of the presidential candidates are really talking about that issue now, I think that any legislation that might come out of it will come out this year. But, I think that the first priority really is going to be taxes, and the battle will be fought on that front.
Knowledge@Wharton: Many have been saying that we are entering a period of 1970s-style stagflation. Do you agree with that assessment?
Siegel: No, not at all. In the 1970s, inflation went up to 14%; interest rates up to almost 20%. We are certainly moving to slightly higher inflation rates, but nothing like the 1970s. So, if you want to call it a tiny, little touch of stagflation, I would tend to agree with that, because we have a soft economy with some rising prices. But, we have to realize that we're not going to be in the 1970s situation. I look for inflation topping out, at most, at maybe 5% or 5.5%, and that's with oil prices. On the core rate of inflation, I think we won't go above 3%.
Knowledge@Wharton: Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has indicated that he is willing to keep cutting interest rates. Do you agree with that approach?
Siegel: I've been a big fan of Bernanke through his two years. I'm a little bit disturbed recently, because I don't think that he is acknowledging the inflationary threats. Now, I just said that I don't think that inflation is going to get as bad as the 1970s. But we have had a tremendous rise in commodity prices, we've had a large fall in the dollar, imported costs are going up -- there's even a possibility of revaluation of the Chinese currency, and that will raise import prices.
I worry about the international community losing faith in Bernanke's anti-inflation credentials, and that is not good. I think we're going to get a 50 basis-point reduction in rates on March 18th, the next FOMC meeting. But I would like for him to say at that point that we're signaling an end to the cuts, to see how much they are going to work. Otherwise, open-ended cuts could revive inflationary expectations and just make it harder for Bernanke, down the road, to stabilize the economy.
Knowledge@Wharton: You mentioned the rising of commodity prices. What impact will those have on the U.S. and world markets?
Siegel: If the dollar continues to sink downward -- and that, of course, is partly the confidence in Bernanke's policy -- that will raise import prices, particularly for energy and all imported materials. I am particularly concerned that China may revalue the yuan, because their inflation (they've pegged their currency, or are sliding their currency slowly against the dollar) has reached a nine-year high.
There's pressure in China to revalue, to lower their prices, and that would just raise the prices of everything that we import from China. The falling dollar does have inflationary consequences here in the U.S. Although it will improve our trade balance, when we take all of the positives and negatives, we don't want the dollar to keep on going down; that will not be good.
Knowledge@Wharton: How does the falling dollar affect the European business market?
Siegel: That makes it a little bit harder for the Europeans to compete, because the U.S. manufacturers have now become more competitive. And they are complaining a little bit now that the euro has gone over $1.50.
The interesting thing is that Europe has been able to compete. Even with a strong euro, on average, their trade balance is pretty near balanced, while ours is very much still in deficit, although improving. The world out there is very, very competitive. A falling dollar does help our competitiveness. But I think that the downside of higher import prices is something to be considered very seriously.
Knowledge@Wharton: Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector seems to be contracting. What does this mean for the economy in general?
Siegel: The manufacturing sector has been contracting for thirty years now. We've lost 50% to 55% of manufacturing jobs over the last three decades. So, this is something that is continuing. It is happening in all of the developed countries of the world, as well as in the United States -- and it's irreversible. It has to do with the patterns of global trade and wages.
And, if it isn't China, it's going to be India; if it isn't India, it's going to be Indonesia, it's going to be Vietnam and then maybe even Africa. We have to learn how to be a service economy. We have to learn about using intellectual capital and using our strengths. Except for some specialty items which we will manufacture and require a higher technical expertise, in general manufacturing jobs will continue to be lost.
Knowledge@Wharton: The Employment Report should be out this Friday...
Siegel: That's a very important report. We just got this morning data called the ADP [Automatic Data Processing] Report which gives you a little preview, and that showed a loss of jobs. The expectation of Wall Street is for a gain of maybe 20,000 -- that's very low, but positive. Yet, we did have a surprise loss last month, and there could very well be a loss. This is an important announcement. If we're going to have a recession, you've got to have a loss of payroll jobs. And, by the way, [a loss of] 20,000, 30,000 is usually not enough bring about a recession; you need 100,000 to 200,000 jobs lost, and you need that for several months. We haven't experienced that yet.
We are still skirting the recession, just barely, at this juncture. I also look at jobless claims, which come out every Thursday. They have been ratcheting upward -- again, not quite into recession levels, but close to recession levels.
Are we going to have a recession? I think that we're going to skirt it, but just barely. We are certainly having a slow down; whether it's technically a recession or not is perhaps secondary.
Knowledge@Wharton: What about the threat of prolonged inflation?
Siegel: Well, there is an inflationary threat if we have a continually falling dollar and if commodity prices continue to rise. I have been concerned that despite the tremendous slow down in the U.S. economy, which is usually coupled with a slowdown of commodity prices, we have not seen prices go down. Now, it is true that the emerging markets have still been strong. Europe has slowed down, but not a lot. Nonetheless, the fact that oil and all of these commodity prices are so strong in face of a declining economy is even more evidence that the Fed and Bernanke must take inflation into account.
We're going to have fiscal stimulus with the rebates, starting at the end of the second quarter and into the third quarter. This is going to boost spending, and that may cause another boost to commodity prices. If we don't get some sign that the Fed is going to stop lowering rates, I'm afraid that inflationary expectations may worsen. Even the Fed claims that we don't want inflationary expectations to get out of hand. That's one of the hardest things to eradicate in the economy. I think we're not going back to the stagflation of the 1970s -- those were mistakes that made inflation much worse than anything that we face today. But the fact is that we have to nip inflation in the bud. We can not let those inflationary expectations get anchored -- and I think that that's a top priority of the Bernanke Fed.
Knowledge@Wharton: Bernanke also spoke yesterday about providing relief to homeowners who are facing foreclosure. Do you agree with his approach of having banks write down loans?
Siegel: We're already seeing all sorts of accommodations. I would rather that the private market do it. If the government or the Fed wants to provide a few blueprints, that's fine. But, we're getting the mortgage service industry moving and making deals ... some [involve] interest rates, some might be forgiveness of a certain amount of principal.
Remember, a lot of these mortgages are selling in the open market at 50 cents on the dollar. If a bank could actually say "we'll forgive 10% or 20% of the loan" and actually then get the interest they are due, they're going to be making a huge profit on this. So, in a way, the incentive is there for them to do it. I don't think that we need legislation. I don't think that we need governmental action. I think that the private sector can handle this and is beginning to handle this now.
Knowledge@Wharton: You have written in the past that when the U.S. and Europe are in trouble, emerging economies such as China and India could come to the rescue. Do you think that that's the case?
Siegel: The U.S. is an important engine of the world economy, but it's not the only engine. We're about 20% of the world GDP at the present time. That's going to be shrinking, and it's much less than it was 30 years ago, when we were one-third of the world GDP.
In essence, it used to be said that "the U.S. sneezes and the rest of the world catches a cold." I don't think that happens anymore. That being said, if there is a significant slowdown in the U.S. and a recession, it's almost impossible that India and China will not be affected by that. There are just too many goods that they are exporting here. But will our slowdown necessarily trigger a worldwide recession? No, not necessarily.
There's a huge middle class, certainly, in India and even in China. And the truth of the matter is -- because China is providing us a lot of goods -- that if consumers feel pinched, those cheaper Chinese goods are going to be in demand. So, my feeling is that China might go from an 8% to 10% growth down to 4% to 5% growth, but no recession as we define it here in the United States.
Knowledge@Wharton: Given all that's going on, what do you think investors should be doing?
Siegel: Right now, I've turned cautious on the stock market. I think that there could be some more downward adjustment, until Bernanke makes a stand and the international community begins to say, "The U.S. is going to be fighting inflation." We could see, short run, another 5% or even 10% decline in the market. I see a maximum 10% downside risk. If we should see that decline, I think that it could be the buying opportunity of the decade for investors -- because long term, I'm bullish, and long term, I think that valuations still are very attractive.
Short term, still, it's going to be a little bit rocky until the inflation situation gets clarified. Anyone that has their stock position long term, they're going to be fine. If you have a little cash, you might decide to put some of that to work in the next couple of weeks. As stock prices decline, you might be getting some very good bargains. | <urn:uuid:6df529b7-33be-4120-8503-527ec079ef7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1913&source=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974589 | 2,911 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The false faith of scientific reason
Published in: Jewish Chronicle
It is an article of faith (except, of course, among those who actually have a faith) that the dethronement of God by the apostles of secularism has ushered in an age of reason. Belief in the Almighty is now widely held to be a priori evidence of primitive stupidity.
In fact, we are living in a deeply irrational age, where millions are putting their faith in such mumbo-jumbo as astrology, parapsychology, paganism, witchcraft or conspiracies between sinister groups and extra-terrestrial forces. All of which goes to prove the truth of the old adage that when people stop believing in God, they will believe in anything.
Nevertheless, the belief has taken hold that religious faith is inimical to reason, as defined and exemplified by the scientific mind. Such belief expresses itself in the near God-like status afforded to Professor Richard Dawkins -- the Savonarola of atheism -- on the basis of his aggressive contention that evolution accounts for the origin of life, and that anyone who believes the world had a creator and a purpose should be exiled altogether from intelligent discourse
Interestingly, over the past few months Dawkins has been meeting his match in a remarkable Oxford mathematics professor called John Lennox, who argues for the existence of a creator on the basis of science -- and demonstrates that, on his own scientific terms, Dawkins's arguments fail the test of reason.
Next week, the two of them will slug it out in a debate freighted with historic resonance at Oxford's Natural History Museum -- the very place where, in 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, tried to pour scorn on Darwin's Origin of Species, only to be savaged by 'Darwin's bulldog' TH Huxley. I wouldn't put money on the same outcome this time.
The fact that secularism has taken on the characteristics of religious fanaticism, in espousing dogma inimical to human flourishing and punishing dissenters in order to slam the lid on debate, is explored in a timely monograph by Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute, the influential American think-tank.
This institute is a front-line combatant in America's culture wars, in which it seeks to defend the values of western civilisation against the onslaught from those trying to destroy it. In his book, America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion, London argues that the rise of secularism has so hollowed out Western society that it has left it acutely vulnerable to the predations of radical Islam.
The decay of religion, he says, has given rise to moral relativism, which regards all beliefs and principles as being of equal value and truth as a relative concept. This has given rise to multiculturalism, which masquerades as the promotion of equal rights but is actually a disguised form of cultural and national self-loathing.
This in turn lies behind the idea that nations are illegitimate or passé, and that the world's problems can all be solved by everyone on the planet coming together to harness the power of reason to arrive at a solution. But, in robbing people of their national identity and capacity to believe in anything except the fiction that reason trumps all, this is an essentially irrational negation of self-interest.
No less irrational is the overreach of science which, as London writes, has been hijacked by secular fundamentalists who want to supplant religion by asserting that only in science can truths be found.
Such 'scientism' -- as this overreach is termed -- goes beyond the ability of science to explain the nature of the world around us and claims to tell us how life began. Yet the assumption that science provides a complete theory of knowledge is itself fundamentally unscientific.
Science generates more questions than it can answer. The more science unravels the mysteries of the world for us, the more mysterious it becomes. And, as the many scientists who are also religious believers demonstrate, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science.
The dogma that science provides the answer to every question and so supplants religion has led to a junking of the moral codes deriving from Judaism and Christianity that underpin western society.
This loss of cultural nerve has created an unwitting collusion between secular zealots and the Islamists who have declared war upon western civilisation, and who believe -- correctly -- that a secular west will be unable to resist them.
Science, rationality and the pursuit of truth are intimately related to the religious traditions of the west. If those traditions are not defended from within against the threat from without, this will be how the west was lost. | <urn:uuid:abe9c0d7-8d42-4dfc-84d2-2d74e976abfa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://melaniephillips.com/the-false-faith-of-scientific-reason | 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 | 0.948335 | 953 | 1.828125 | 2 |
JRC conference Scientific support for growth, jobs and sustainability: the example of eco-industries, held on Tuesday 15 May in Brussels, emphasised the unique role eco-industries can play in Europe's economic recovery and sustainable future.
Opened by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, and Hannes Swoboda, President of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats at the European Parliament, the conference welcomed high level speakers from businesses, research organisations, governments and EU policymakers. They shared experience from their fields and discussed how scientific support can boost the growth of eco-industries.
In his closing remarks at the end of the conference, JRC Director-General Dominique Ristori emphasised the need for action. Science and innovation are crucial for technologies to meet the new challenges in this process. Eco-industries can be an answer to the challenge of combining growth and protection of the environment. He also stressed the need to propose integrated solutions, as air, water, waste and energy challenges (the fields in which eco-industries work) are closely interlinked. He highlighted that the JRC will support focused innovation in close co-operation with key partners from public administrations, industry and the science community. He also raised the challenge of costs and risks of developing and introducing new technologies and suggested they should be shared by public and private partnerships.
Malcolm Harbour, a MEP and Chairman of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) pointed out at the success of joint technology platforms, which include companies, universities and researchers creating bridges between researchers and consumers. He said standards need to be applied more consistently and globally, indicating as a good example JRC’s agreement with the US on interoperability between e-vehicles, smart grids and recharging systems.
He also emphasised the need for more co-operation between customers in the public sector and inventors. The completion of the reform on public procurement, he said, will be a new tool that public customers could use to drive innovation.
The day long programme attracted more than 350 participants. It revolved around five main sessions, focusing on water management, air quality, waste management, renewable energies and energy efficiency. Eco-industries develop technologies and offer products and services that reduce environmental risk and minimise pollution. These activities measure, prevent and limit environmental damage to water, air and soil. In addition they tackle problems related to waste management and preservation of eco-systems. The European eco-industries are very diverse with strong potential for further development.
Some of the topics discussed were the need to tackle water management together with energy, the challenges of urban areas for air quality, the potential of clean transport and smart cities policies and the need to better address availability of resources, especially rare earth metals. In the field of renewable energies, key sectors highlighted were off-shore technology, photovoltaics, biomass and biofuels. Further development of these and energy efficiency are critical in making the European economy more competitive. | <urn:uuid:9df941fe-58e1-4619-9296-219ea54726a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=5970&lang=en | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943905 | 625 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The Science of Protein Treatments on Afro Textured Hair
I wanted to change it up a little and add a little something about afro textured hair care today.
The scalely thing to the left is not a reptile. That is a strand of hair. It is a strand of hair with the cuticles lifted. On healthy hair, this should be a TEMPORARY state. That means, that lifted cuticles on a hair strand, that has been washed and conditioned and styled usually indicates the hair is not healthy. Conditioned hair will have cuticles that lay flat and tight agains the hair strand.
So, what's going on here? This is a depiction of the protein treatment process. Protein treatments should be done on hair that is recently been washed. Hence, the lifted cuticles come about from the use of soap or some kind of alkaline/basic cleanser.
Once the cuticles are lifted, then a deep and heavy protein product can be applied. Protein molecules are the circle things with the plus sign in the middle. Those are positively charged molecules. The protein molecules tend to be larger molecules and they are attracted to the negatively (-) charged hair! It's always about attraction, heh heh!
The protein molecules are in solution, or in some kind of water product or resin. It is placed on the freshly washed hair, with the cuticles raised, and the molecules gravitate toward the hair.
The protein molecules fill in the gaps, cracks, tears and missing cuticles on the hair strand. This fortifies the hair strand. How?
By filling in the missing scales of the cuticle, on the hair strands, the protein mimicks the undamaged hair structure (cuticle, cortex, medulla). The protein fortifies the natural structure of the hair strand. It does not rebuild it - literally - it sort of coats and fills in. Once you damage a hair strand, it is not very likely you can fix it or heal it.
Thus, protein treatments done on schedule that fits your hair, can be beneficial for your hair. I prefer to use protein treatments that require heat. Why? Because they tend to be in a base that fuses the protein to the strand.
I use protein treatments on my natural hair. They fortify the hair strand and the natural structure of the hair. It is this structure that you must preserve if you want to retain healthy, longer, afro-textured hair. | <urn:uuid:1db603dc-af40-4bc8-aea9-e856a47fca77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beautifybitbybit-chicoro.blogspot.com/2009/04/science-of-protein-treatments-on-afro.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948764 | 514 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Hospital Receptionist Claims She Was Fired for Smelling Like Cigarette Smoke
A Fridley woman named Stephanie Cannon believes she's the victim of discrimination -- fired because she smelled like cigarette smoke.
Cannon, a smoker for 18 years, says she smokes almost a pack a day of Camel Menthols. But when she landed a job in June as a medical receptionist at Park Nicollet Health Services, in the Frauenshuh Cancer Center, she says she followed the hospital's clearly-stated "no smoking" policy. (There is no smoking allowed at any time on the premises.)
"There were never any performance issues at all," Cannon insists.
Yet six weeks after she started she says her supervisor told her, "We don't want you smelling like smoke when you come here."
Cannon says she did everything she could to get rid of the stench. "I stopped smoking on my breaks, I wouldn't smoke in my car, I bought new clothes," she claims. At home, she would keep her work clothes in a sealed plastic bag and then spray them with air freshener after she put them on before work.
It wasn't enough. Cannon claims she was told to "avoid my husband in the morning" because he also smokes. She says she was also encouraged to shower at the hospital--before work--instead of at home. And she says she was given a list of resources for people trying to quit smoking, even though she wasn't trying--or interested. "Not now," she says. "The time isn't right."
Last week, Park Nicollet told her, "We have to let you go."
The law in Minnesota states that an employer can't refuse to hire you (or fire you) if you do something that's not against the law (like smoking) if it takes place off the premises during non-work hours.
That means even if smoking isn't allowed at work, you can't be fired for smoking at home on your own time.
Or does it?
Turns our that under the law, employers can restrict the use of legal products like tobacco if they believe it's creating an occupation-related hazard.
According to Chuck Samuelson of the American Civil Liberties Union, "Basically your rights as a a smoker end where other people's noses begin. In fact you can make the argument that your rights as a smoker end when other people breathe in the air that comes off of you."
The ACLU believes private employers, like the hospital, can restrict smokers' legal activities outside of work. "Private employers can do things that governmental agencies cannot, to their employees," Samuelson says. "The Constitution simply does not apply in the same way. If she worked for Hennepin County or Ramsey County Hospital she would be better protected than if she worked for a private hospital, which she did."
And while the ACLU says it has concerns that smokers' right to privacy are being infringed upon by some smoking policies, the situation boils down to this: "You've got one person's desire to indulge in a legal activity versus the government's duty to protect the population as whole from known bad things (like second-hand smoke)," Samuelson says.
Smokers' Rights Advocate Mark Wernimont says, "She as a receptionist really had nothing to do with the hands-on health care. It's just one more nail in the coffin of freedom."
As Cannon searches for a new job, she says she's talking to an attorney. "What I do in my home or outside of work when i'm not punching into that little clock is what my business," she says. "I shouldn't have to be made like I'm a leper."
Park Nicollet wouldn't talk to us about its smoking policy, or about Stephanie's case, simply saying it doesn't comment on personnel matters.
Mark Saxenmeyer can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:8211534e-7964-4470-9a71-1712379843b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kstp.com/news/stories/S2703953.shtml?cat=127 | 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 | 0.982153 | 819 | 1.546875 | 2 |
April 6, 2011
Redlands, CaliforniaRealtors and others interested in the residential real estate market are invited to visit the Spatial Roundtable blog to discuss the impact that smart applications have on helping customers find their dream house. Esri director of commercial solutions Simon Thompson began the conversation by asking, "Do you think lifestyle search and smartphone apps will change the way we buy homes?"
"In the United States, we've been accustomed to buying homes based on their physical characteristics instead of our lifestyle and neighborhood preferences," says Thompson. "While the number of bedrooms and the size of the garage are important features, more and more people want their dream home to truly reflect their needs, aspirations, and social connections."
Using the latest technology, Realtors and their clients can take to the streets searching for homes that match their lifestyle based on information including demographics, psychographics, and neighborhood attributes. Using this type of "lifestyle search," the best candidates can be highlighted and ranked according to how many client preferences are met. This gives those interested in buying a home the ability to quickly understand the areas they are looking in and compare similar homes.
What do you think? Share your point of view on Esri's online forum. Visit spatialroundtable.com to join the conversation.
# # # | <urn:uuid:9a8621a9-28d7-43d2-b6c9-dabd164476b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esri.com/news/releases/11-2qtr/matching-your-home-to-your-lifestyle-topic-of-esri-spatial-roundtable.html | 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 | 0.956755 | 264 | 1.570313 | 2 |
U.S. stock markets have been at the forefront of the global advance, with the Dow Jones index recording a series of highs during a 10-day winning streak—its best run since 1996—and the broader S&P 500 on the cusp of its own historic peak.
The run of U.S. economic data did not alter the flat tone that had prevailed in markets through the day as investors cashed in following a stellar run. However, the Dow remained within striking distance of a higher close, which would be its eleventh consecutive.
A stronger-than-expected increase in February industrial production figures offset a surprisingly big fall in consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 0.7 percent at 6,483 while Germany's DAX fell 0.2 percent to 8,042. The CAC-40 in France was 0.7 percent lower at 3,844.
In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.2 percent at 14,497 while the S&P fell 0.1 percent to 1,560, about five points from its all-time high.
Developments on Wall Street and the U.S. economy have largely dominated market sentiment this year despite ongoing worries over the global economy, particularly in Europe.
"Among the investor community, the idea that, economically
A summit of the 27 European Union leaders in Brussels failed to deliver any fundamental change in economic strategy though there was more talk of the need to promote growth rather than just cut debt.
"Despite the previously entrenched positions, there are signs from the tone and language of the meeting that there may be a slight softening of their austerity position," said Rebecca O'Keeffe, head of investment at Interactive Investor.
The soft tone in stock markets was echoed in the currency markets as investors booked some recent dollar gains. The euro was up 0.3 percent at $1.3055 while the dollar fell 0.8 percent against the Japanese yen, to 95.47 yen.
One currency that has been in the ascendancy over the past day has been the British pound after Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said he suggested the currency was "properly valued."
Traders took his remarks as a sign that the Bank does not want to see further falls in the currency, which has been in retreat for the past few weeks on expectations of another monetary stimulus from the central bank. His comments Thursday pushed the pound back above the $1.51 mark.
Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 1.5 percent to 12,560.95—its highest close in more than four years—after both houses of parliament endorsed Haruhiko Kuroda, the current president of the Asia Development Bank, to head the Bank of Japan.
The vote allows Kuroda to stand in for current Bank of Japan governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, after he steps down on March 19. Another vote is required to make Kuroda's appointment permanent.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.4 percent to 22,533.11. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 advanced 1.8 percent to 5,120.20. Benchmarks in mainland China, Thailand and Indonesia rose.
Oil markets were relatively subdued, with the benchmark New York rate up 43 cents at $93.44 a barrel. | <urn:uuid:d964e06a-c2f9-435c-93e7-87601621fd4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbsun.com/ci_22796860/world-stocks-flat-ahead-us-production-data.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963082 | 706 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Germany has said former communist countries joining the EU should face long delays before their workers get the right to take jobs in western Europe.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder wants the eastern Europeans to wait up to seven years before they get full employment rights, allowing them to work anywhere within the EU&s boundaries.
Correspondents say Germany wants to cushion the extent to which its own workforce is undercut, especially by low-paid Poles and Czechs, but that this is the first time the details have been spelt out.
Poland, by far the biggest nation seeking membership, has been the first to react to Germany&s calls.
Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek said he did not want to see any delay in the free movement of its workers.
Smaller countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia are more relaxed on the migrant labour issue.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already said that all the Hungarians who want to work in Austria are probably already there.
In Slovenia, a government spokeswoman said Slovenia did not expect to be subject to a transition period.
We believe the EU will differentiate among candidates, she
The EU is expected to make a final decision on the freedom of movement of workers from new Eastern European member states next year.
A similar transition period to that proposed by Germany was applied to citizens from Spain and Portugal when those countries joined the EU.
Mr Schroeder says similar transition rules are needed for the EU&s enlargement towards the eastern Europe to fill certain vacancies.
He added those rules should be flexible, to allow current EU members to lift restrictions in certain sectors in the event of labour shortages.
Mr Schroeder also said some countries could be granted shorter transition periods, either after a five-year review or at the request of an individual country.
The plans were outlined by Mr Schroeder in a speech delivered in Bavaria, not far from the border with the Czech Republic.
At a summit in Nice a week ago, the EU&s 15 existing members agreed reforms aimed at allowing up to 12 applicant states to join the bloc from 2003 onwards. | <urn:uuid:998e167d-60b1-4f3c-88c0-7aefe8cfce76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/124.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9687 | 432 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Union Pacific Railroad Invests More Than $3 Million for Track Improvements to Its Line from Near Jefferson City to California, Mo.
Omaha, Neb., May 04, 2010 Union Pacific will improve part of Missouri's transportation infrastructure with a more than $3 million investment to its rail line that runs from near Jefferson City to California, Mo.
The projects include removing and installing more than 22,000 ties, spread more than 11,000 tons of rock ballast to ensure a stable roadbed and renew the surfaces in 31 road crossings. The tie replacement project began April 25 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of June. The road surfacing improvement projects began in February and are scheduled to be completed by the end of May.
Union Pacific plans to spend approximately $2.5 billion in 2010 to support America's current and future freight transportation needs and enhance the safety and efficiency of the railroad's 32,000-mile network. Investment in rail capacity benefits everyone. It allows freight rail service to grow, helping to build a cleaner environment. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, freight trains are nearly four times more fuel efficient than trucks. Motorists also benefit from reduced congestion on highways as a single Union Pacific train can remove up to 300 trucks off our roads.
About Union Pacific
Union Pacific Corporation owns one of America's leading transportation companies. Its principal operating company, Union Pacific Railroad, links 23 states in the western two-thirds of the country. Union Pacific serves many of the fastest-growing U.S. population centers and provides Americans with a fuel-efficient, environmentally responsible and safe mode of freight transportation. Union Pacific's diversified business mix includes Agricultural Products, Automotive, Chemicals, Energy, Industrial Products and Intermodal. The railroad emphasizes excellent customer service and offers competitive routes from all major West Coast and Gulf Coast ports to eastern gateways. Union Pacific connects with Canada's rail systems and is the only railroad serving all six major gateways to Mexico, making it North America's premier rail franchise.
Media contact: Mark Davis at 402-544-5459 or firstname.lastname@example.org
The statements and information contained in the news releases provided by Union Pacific speak only as of the date issued. Such information by its nature may become outdated, and investors should not assume that the statements and information contained in Union Pacific's news releases remain current after the date issued. Union Pacific makes no commitment, and disclaims any duty, to update any of this information. | <urn:uuid:32627b70-558a-424d-b55c-2c1c5259f0a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/capital_investment/2010/0504_sedalia.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948123 | 508 | 1.539063 | 2 |
LAS CRUCES — To hear it from the National Weather Service, Tuesday was apparently the quiet before the storm.
The "storm" is expected to reach Las Cruces Wednesday, as there is a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms.
"Thunderstorms, in November. I'll believe it when I see it," said Las Crucen Carla Garcia. "Geez, when was the last time we had a thunderstorm in November; I can't remember that we've ever had one."
But, with the combination of low-level moisture coming from the Gulf of Mexico and high-level moisture from the Baja of California coming this way, National Weather Service meteorologists said showers and even a few thunderstorms are likely Wednesday, and into Wednesday night, in Las Cruces and southern New Mexico.
Although Tuesday's temperatures were in the lower 70s, the wispy clouds overhead should have been the indication to Garcia and other Las Crucens that a change in the weather was on its way. Clouds were suppose to increase overnight, and Wednesday should be mostly cloudy.
While there are questions about the last time there were thunderstorms in Las Cruces in November, the only question for meteorologists is how much rain will fall.
"Total precipitation from this system will generally be from .20 to .50 inches from (Tuesday night) through early Thursday morning," said a portion of the National Weather Service forecast, early Tuesday evening.
"It's still too dry," said Herbert Tucker, a retired Las Cruces construction foreman.
Because the moisture is coming from the Gulf of Mexico and the West Coast, temperatures in Las Cruces are anticipated to be fairly mild. Wednesday's high temperature is supposed to be in the upper 60s.
The chances for rain will gradually diminish as the day passes. By Wednesday night, the chance of rain should drop in half, to 20 percent.
This will be a quick-moving storm, as clear skies and a daytime high in the low to mid 70s are expected Thursday. But a cold front, dropping temperatures 10 to 12 degrees, will move into Las Cruces on Friday.
No precipitation is expected with the cooler temperatures, but it could be breezy on Friday, with daytime temperatures in the upper 50s to lower 60s. Dry conditions and gradually warmer temperatures are expected this weekend and into early next week.
Steve Ramirez can be reached at email@example.com; (575) 541-5452. Also follow him on Twitter: @SteveRamirez6.
("National Weather Service" and "Weather" links at "Helpful Links" at www.lcsun-news.com)
Wednesday: A 40-percent chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 69. Light northeast wind becoming south-to-southeast this morning. The chance for rain drops to 20 percent Wednesday night as skies become partly cloudy. Overnight low near 49.
Thanksgiving Day: Sunny, with light and variable winds, with a high near 73. Mostly clear Thursday night, with a low near 42.
Friday: Sunny, but cooler, with a high near 61. Mostly clear Friday night with a low near 34.
Saturday: Sunny, light southeast winds, with a high near 64. Mostly clear Saturday night with a low near 38.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 71. Mostly clear Sunday night, with a low near 39.
Source: National Weather Service | <urn:uuid:74df4e54-f9c6-4c45-803f-6b27c1b6b54a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_22036065/gorgeous-day-but-rain-and-cooler-temps-are | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959432 | 721 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Seven months before elections, criticism is growing louder of the lack of preparations by donors and the government alike. On Friday, the new head of the election commission - Daniel Mulunda Ngoy - opened a seminar on the electoral process in Lubumbashi. In the meantime, the national assembly is debating changes to the electoral law. There are rumors that there will be a delay in the electoral calendar and that the presidential elections may be held before the legislative polls, but we will have to wait for probably another week to have any confirmation of this.
In the meantime, where do we stand in terms of the financing of the elections?
The total budget for the elections is $618 million, which includes the regular operating budget of the electoral commission between 2007-2013. The Congolese government is supposed to supply $350 million and donors $265 million. MONUSCO is also supposed to give $80 million in logistical support.
I am not sure where we stand on government support (by January they had disbursed $113 million), but here's where I think we stand on donor support. The figures might be a little outdated, as they stem from a few months back:
Amount asked for: $265 million
Amount pledged: $171 million
Amount signed for: $98 million
(By far the largest contributor is the UK government, with Belgium and Canada following. The US is nowhere to be seen, as it is only providing $5 million to NGOs for civic education).
That leaves us with a shortfall of $94 million if all the pledged money comes through. However, donor officials suggest that most of that shortfall (around $78 million) will be for the local elections, currently scheduled for 2013, and for the operations of the electoral commission in 2012/3, so it is not an emergency. However, they have also pointed out that the funding needs may change depending on what the electoral commission decides this week. Also, MONUSCO's mandate to support the elections may not be extended beyond 2011, which would also affect funding - PACE (the UN-managed basket fund for election support) has submitted a new budget to take this into consideration.
While it appears that the funding situation may not be as dire as some thought, there are other risks regarding the elections. First, the civil society monitoring groups do not yet appear to be as organized
as they were in 2006. The Open Society Institute is trying to get funding for a monitoring network, but this is still in the works with only seven months to go. There has been no independent evaluation to my knowledge of the electoral registration process, which has been ongoing for months now.
Secondly, the donor community has not moved on creating a coordination body - even an informal one - on election monitoring. Donors need to be able to speak with one voice if they are confronted with election abuses and concerns.
Lastly, the electoral institutions are already politicized, in particular the commission itself, but also the constitutional court that will preside over major electoral disputes. This could seriously compromise the electoral process in case of major problems.
See here for a good list of recommendations put forward by OSISA and AfriMap (from the Open Society Institute family) on elections (in French for now). | <urn:uuid:adacec15-942f-4503-bddf-4c2508f4ce90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://congosiasa.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/is-congo-prepared-for-elections.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970551 | 660 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Artefacts from the Titanic, the reign of George III and the Second World War will go on sale at a militaria and antique fair I have jointly organised at Stratford Armouries on Sunday 15 January. As a prelude to the sale we invited the media along today to see a cap belonging to Frederick Fleet, the lookout on the ill fated vessel. Fleet didnt have his pair of binoculars on watch with him and consequently failed to see the iceberg until it was too late. He survived the disaster but committed suicide in 1965, always haunted by the tragedy. 2012 is the 100th anniversary of the sinking and we therefore anticipate a lot of interest in the cap which is valued at a cool £50,000. Unfortunately it doesn’t belong to me but Conrad Chin-See (pictured), the other organiser of the show. The story made the front page of the Stratford Herald and the Stratford Observer. Expect it also to be picked up by the national press.
The fair will be the first in a series of monthly events to be held at Stratford Armouries which is on the site of a Second World War training base, RAF Snitterfield. Among the other Titanic memorabilia on sale will be an original front page of the Northern Echo newspaper about the sinking and a memorial scroll which was sold to raise money for the survivors. There will also be a longcase clock made by a Stratford clock maker dating back to 1800 and various items from the First and Second World Wars including a copy of Reach for the Sky, the life story of Douglas Bader signed by 9 Spitfire pilots. They include Geoffrey Hulett, a spitfire pilot who flew with 225 group in the Far East in 1944/45 and came into Stratford Armouries today to sign the book after reading about it in the local paper! Despite the Titanic prices many of the artefacts on sale will be less than £100 so it is a chance for everyone to own a piece of history. A contribution from each fair will go to the Soldier’s Charity, formerly the Army Benevolent Fund.
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The power of words
How you communicate can make a real difference to your business. Watch this inspirational video to show the power of words. | <urn:uuid:235f6d31-9ef0-45a2-9fae-274b877110ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nicholas-milton.com/2012/01/cap-worn-by-titanic-lookout-goes-up-for-sale/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9593 | 473 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Know Your Starting Hair Color & Tone – Get Better Color Results
START WITH THE BASICS
Getting the hair color you really love starts with two basics: your starting color, which is your current color, and your tone. Here you’ll find an explanation of both to help you find your perfect shade for gorgeous color results.
YOUR STARTING COLOR
Knowing where to start anything is half of the proverbial battle, especially when it comes to hair color. Like the way we sort our makeup application into steps, hair color can be divided into similar categories, making what seems like a puzzle that much easier to put together.
To determine where you can take your hair in terms of color, the most important factor is what your hair color is right now. If you already color your hair, this means that you need to go with the current color as your starting color, not the one you were born with.
For instance, you may be medium brown naturally, but if you’re currently coloring your hair to a light brown shade, light brown should be the color you use as your starting color. So what does all this mean in terms of changing your hair color? The general rule of thumb in regard to hair color is that if you have not previously colored, you can successfully change your hair color up to two levels lighter or darker than your starting color.
If you currently have medium brown hair, for example, you could lighten it to a light brown, or a dark blonde, or go darker to a dark brown.
However, if your hair is previously colored, you can go two levels darker, but only up to one level lighter to avoid off-toned results.
As always, if you have highlights or desire to go more than two levels lighter or darker than your current color, we suggest that you call 1.800.777.1052 for expert Clairol advice, or visit a salon.
Tone has different meanings in different contexts. In music, when the tones of a composition are harmonious, when they are written in the same key, the resulting sound is pleasing. Conversely, when unharmonious tones are heard in unison, the sound could be less than pleasing.
We can use this as an analogy to discuss tone in hair color. In terms of hair and skin tone, there are warm and cool tones. The way to determine if you are warm or cool is by your skin tone and eye color. A good place to begin is to think about the colors you feel really great in—the ones that garner many compliments when you wear them. Chances are that those colors are in the same family as your own tone.
As you will see below, setting the tone to be in harmony with your coloring, whether cool or warm, is crucial to the composition of your look.
People with warm coloring look best in warm tones, which are based in the gold/copper color family. Warm coloring includes a variety of skin tone and eye color combinations, including golden brown hair with fair skin and hazel eyes, golden blonde hair with fair, peachy skin and blue eyes, and golden olive skin with black hair and brown eyes. Redheads generally fall into this category. Skin will have a yellow undertone.
Do you look better in peach than pink? Do you look better in gold jewelry than silver jewelry? Then you are probably warm. Some words that will help you determine if a shade of hair color is warm and will work with your coloring are “golden,” “bronze,” and “copper.” Warm tones in hair color will add warmth to your hair color, which is often seen as red or gold.
People with cool coloring look best in cool tones, which are based in the blue/violet color family. Cool coloring includes a variety of skin tone and eye color combinations, including dark hair with fair skin and blue eyes, blonde hair with fair, rosy skin and blue eyes, and very dark to black skin with black hair and deep brown eyes. Skin will have a pink undertone.
Do you look better in navy than camel? Do you look better in silver jewelry than gold jewelry? Then you are probably cool. Some words that will help you determine if a shade of hair color is cool and will work with your coloring are “ash,” “platinum” and “champagne.” Cool tones in hair color will decrease the warmth of your hair color and are often used to tone down brassiness. | <urn:uuid:94915e7e-c7d6-4272-8f43-6e85135480e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clairol.com/en-US/how-it-works-page.aspx?categoryId=3295&articleId=3290 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952011 | 934 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Hi everyone, I hope I have choosen the right forum to post in!
I have to write an application based with Processing based on maps(e.g. Google Maps), but I do not know anything about how to interact with them. I will have to draw shapes on the map in certain places based on a function.
Is there a way to communicate with google maps? Where should I start from?
Any help will be appreciate. Sorry for my bad english. | <urn:uuid:8bba9a36-d066-46c2-94ab-ca8b90e73589> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.processing.org/topic/processing-and-maps-e-g-google-maps | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952622 | 97 | 1.632813 | 2 |
DHHS: Be wary of topical creams relating to Mass. distributor
DOVER — The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services is now advising against the use of topical creams distributed by a Massachusetts pharmacy at the center of a widespread outbreak of fungal meningitis. State health officials, however, are saying their primary focus will remain on injectable medications produced from the pharmacy and concerns regarding these topical creams are minimal.
On October 18, the Food and Drug Administration generated a state-by-state breakdown of healthcare providers who received injectable products after May 21 from the New England Compounding Center — a Framingham, Massachusetts-based pharmacy accused of shipping tainted medications to 23 states. As of Thursday evening, 328 cases — with 24 deaths — were reported throughout 18 states.
In New Hampshire, two cases of fungal meningitis were confirmed last weekend, state epidemiologist Dr. Sharon Elroy-Preis said Thursday. There have now been a total of 10 confirmed cases in New Hampshire.
Although the outbreak has been spurred by the contamination of Methylprednisolone Acetate — an injectable steroid used primarily to treat back pain — the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services has encouraged all healthcare providers who both received and treated patients with any injectable medication from the company to subsequently contact these patients and inform them of potential health risks. To date, there have been no cases of fungal meningitis linked to any medication other than methylprednisolone acetate.
On October 18, the DPHS posted the names of 24 health care facilities throughout the state that received injectable steroids from the Massachusetts pharmacy. Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, Exeter Hospital, and Portsmouth Regional Hospital were among this group of health centers.
“We do recognize that there is a great deal of confusion around the medications and who is at risk during this quickly evolving situation,” said Dr. Jose Montero, Director of the Division of Public Health Services. “We do not yet have confirmation that other medications have been contaminated, but it is important that New Hampshire residents who received these injections be informed and watch closely for any change in their health status possibly related to these drugs.”
According to Debra Vasapolli, Director of Public Relations for Exeter Hospital, roughly 800 patients are estimated to have been treated with five injectable medications produced by the pharmacy. The hospital began making calls to this group of patients on Tuesday and follow-up letters were slated to be sent out by the end of the day Thursday. “None of these medications are linked to the initial contaminated steroid,” Vasapolli stressed. “This is a precaution we’re taking at the FDA’s recommendation.”
“Our staff is working as quickly as possible to reach out directly to unidentified patients and inform them of the expanded NECC recall,” said Claudette Lavigne, Coordinator of Exeter Hospital’s Information and Referral Center. “We are hopeful that by providing this information via phone, we are able to lessen the anxiety people may experience when learning of this expanded recall as patients have an opportunity to get answers to their questions and if necessary, speak directly with a clinician.”
Noreen Biehl, vice president of community relations for Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, said 475 patients have been notified as a result of this expanded recall. Wentworth-Douglass Hospital received two medications from the pharmacy — Betamethasone, an injectable steroid used in the hospital’s pain center, in addition to Alcain, a form of eye drops administered during surgery.
“We didn’t receive the medication which caused the original recall,” Biehl clarified. “We’re notifying patients through an abundance of caution.” This group of patients, who received letters from the hospital a few days ago, have also been encouraged to call the hospital with any further questions.
Portsmouth Regional Hospital received a single medication from NECC — Isosulsan blue — but did not distribute it to patients, according to hospital spokeswoman Nancy Notis.
Joining them on this list of healthcare facilities that received NECC products are Concord Hospital, Chesire Medical Center in Keene, Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia, Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth, and Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough.
The three facilities in New Hampshire that received the actual steroid shot linked to the widespread outbreak are PainCare clinics in Somersworth, Newington, and Merrimack.
For patients who received back injections, symptoms to be aware of include headache, fever, nausea, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light, and signs of stroke such as weakness or numbness in any part of the body along with slurred speech.
Patients who received joint injections should report to their provider if they have local symptoms including increased pain, swelling, and redness or warmth at the site of injection.
Patients who had eye surgery should monitor for visual changes, pain, redness, or discharge from the eye. Patients who have had chest pain should monitor for chest pain or drainage from the surgical site.
Patients should contact their healthcare provider if they experience any of these signs or symptoms.
NECC has voluntarily recalled all products it produced since January 2012. The FDA is asking medical practitioners to stop using the products, but to hold onto them in case they are needed for sampling. A complete list of the products can be found at http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm322752.htm.
DHHS has set up an information line for people to call with questions about this outbreak at 603-271-6617. For more information, visit the CDC website at www.cdc.gov/hai or the DHHS website at www.dhhs.nh.gov. | <urn:uuid:fb5ee539-eb70-4d59-9675-c328ee9657e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121026/GJNEWS_01/121029348/-1/FOSNEWS0307&template=PortsmouthRegion&CSProduct=fosters | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959538 | 1,217 | 1.710938 | 2 |
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Monday Nights with Ethan Nichtern - Ask Ethan Anything! - 01/07
Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask
Mon, 1/7/2013, 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Is Karma fate? Does "emptiness" mean nothing exists? Why do I feel terrified when I meditate? How can I get my partner to become a Buddhist? How can I use my practice to change politics? Do Buddhists have to be vegetarians? I've been meditating for years, how come I still get sad and angry? I hate my father, what do I do? How does yoga differ from Buddhism? Why do I have to pay to attend Buddhist classes and meditations? How can I get my boss to stop being such a jerk?
Begin the New Year at IDP with a special evening by IDP Founder and Senior Teacher Ethan Nichtern. He'll answer all the questions you've been meaning to ask about Buddhism, meditation, contemplative practice, and the true nature of reality. Please join us for what's sure to be a lively, exciting, and fun night of community and conversation, created for students of all levels.
This event will be streamed live, and Home Study students are encouraged to participate by posting their questions via the IDP Facebook page or emailing them in advance to firstname.lastname@example.org.
Drop-in students are always welcome, though pre-registration is highly recommended to guarantee your seat.
This event will be streamed live at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/theidproject !
As a not-for-profit organization, IDP is supported by the generosity of our community. Please become a Member today! | <urn:uuid:6c853b3f-633c-47d0-b3a5-ffc834034cee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theidproject.org/events/2013/01/07/monday-nights-ethan-nichtern-ask-ethan-anything-0107 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94688 | 373 | 1.53125 | 2 |
When it comes to making music that speaks to a generation, famed artist Emmylou Harris certainly fits the bill. The crooner, who's been making records for decades, has proved her passion throughout her entire career.
Harris spent much of her childhood in North Carolina, before moving to Woodbridge, Va., where she graduated at the top of her class. Despite being book smart, Harris decided to take a dramatic scholarship at the University of North Carolina to hone in on her true love - music. There, she was able to listen to and learn how to play songs by the legendary Bob Dylan, before moving to New York to sing folk and club music on her own.
After a shaky start to her career - she got pregnant while making her first record, Gliding Bird, before her label went under - she was able to eventually make a name for herself in 1971. Since then, she's released more than 10 albums and worked with icons including Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Peter Gabrielle, U2 and Neil Young. With such a seasoned and impressive resume, it's no wonder crowds buy Emmylou Harris tickets to see this legend perform live. | <urn:uuid:9c0f6fe9-fd5e-462c-88ff-5343ce8719fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ticketsnow.com/emmylou-harris-tickets/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976579 | 243 | 1.546875 | 2 |
04.Emotions and fertility treatments
Couples who undergo fertility treatments can experience a wide range of feelings. The inconvenience and stress of being tested, having daily injections, being on medications with often intolerable side effects, having regular blood tests and procedures and constant vaginal examinations by specialists or providing sperm as the man, can feel very invasive, making it hard to keep motivated if pregnancy does not occur within a few cycles.
Many couples talk about the merry-go-round of fertility treatments and how it seems to take over their lives, impacting on their relationships, work and social activities.
Once fertility treatments are completed each cycle, then the couple must endure the long two week wait to find out if a baby has been conceived. This can be a highly emotional, frustrating and agonising time, as a pregnancy test is not done until 14 to 16 days after egg collection.
If the treatments were unsuccessful and a period arrives, then the couple need to decide if and when they will try again using assisted conception techniques, often based on how they are feeling.
For many couples a pregnancy does start and there is elation and relief, to then sadly end in a miscarriage a few weeks later bringing intense grief and disappointment.
People who attend fertility clinics for treatments usually have access to a trained counsellor or social worker as part of their treatments. However, you may prefer to seek independent counselling to talk over your issues.
In Australia there is an independent consumer run organisation called ACCESS - Australia's National Fertility Network. This organisation provides information, support and guidance and contacts for support groups and counselling, for couples of any age who are experiencing infertility. To find out more you can visit their website: http://www.access.org.au
Sourced with permission from birth.com.au | <urn:uuid:dd8dba19-cd66-41be-90fa-0700b9f4fbad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/babies-and-kids/fact-sheets/well-being/assisted-conception/page/emotions-and-fertility-treatments.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967237 | 364 | 1.632813 | 2 |
By Genker Parcours
- Steegperen was the name I gave my final assignment in my second grade as a bachelor student. We had to create a concept around something that caught our attention within the area we live. It had to be an event to attract tourists or other people to our town. In my town, Genk, there's a history of mining. So there are these social neighborhoods with little alleys behind all houses, like a maze. This was the subject that interested me. As driving through these alley is so difficult, and almost impossible, my friends and I always joked about racing through them. So my concept was born: I wanted to organize a race through the alleys.Steegperen means in dutch (free translated): racing through alleys, but it's rather a saying we use in Genk. A sort of dialect if you will.
- We had to create an organization for which we had to create a sort of branding. A logo, business card, envelope and a letter head were the required elements. Then there also had to be a poster and an invitation or entrance ticket for publicity. On the event itself there had to be something to hand out, so our final task was to design some gadgets.I started with the logo, and did that by investigating the look and feel of the race world. How their logo's are designed, what typical elements they use, what colors, … So I discovered that they almost always use heavy typography, which is slightly slanted to create a perception of speed. Also black, red and white were the most prominent colors, which was very convenient because this were the colors of the former football team of Genk: FC Winterslag. And as image you had the finishflag or illustrated cars. As I didn't wanted a car of silhouette of a car in my logo, I decided to use the flag, and add some movement in it to make it more dynamic.This a applied to the other elements to create a unity.
- The organization I came up with, was Genker Parcours (track of Genk), which could be abbreviated to GP. This normally stands for Grand Prix, a well-known fact in racing. They would organize the event Steegperen, so I needed two logo's. One for the event, and one for GP. For the latter I used both characters, and created a kind of racetrack out of them. They were also slanted, to create that same speed as in the logo of Steegperen. Also an interesting fact was that both characters appeared in the word Steegperen, so to highlight this I used red and placed them in capitals, but made them look like descenders.The extra gadgets I designed are a goodiebag, which contains some badges, a t-shirt and a supporter flag. | <urn:uuid:f909949c-2a66-4e87-add5-95362eed62d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.behance.net/gallery/Steegperen/2573145 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98354 | 590 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Jeff Davis, the former Platte Canyon Fire
Protection District chief, died Wednesday night at home nearly two years
after having a brain tumor removed.
Flags in the Bailey area are at
half-staff Thursday morning in remembrance of the first paid Platte
Canyon fire chief, who retired on March 9, ending his 20-year career, 12
of them as chief, with the Platte Canyon Fire Protection District.
Davis started as a volunteer with Platte Canyon Fire
in 1985. In 1991 he took on a paid administrative role, and in 1999, he
became the district’s first paid chief.
Davis underwent an operation to remove a brain tumor
in August 2010. Since then, he continued his work as fire chief up until
his March 9 retirement.
Lieutenant Dan Ross, a spokesman for the fire
district, said funeral services are being planned for April 28 at Platte
Canyon Community Church in Bailey. | <urn:uuid:491e9e16-10a9-4fcc-be6d-6f8cf846cf50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firefighterclosecalls.com/news/fullstory/newsid/161449 | 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 | 0.972225 | 198 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Mr. President, late last night the Senate finished work on what I call the Clean Energy Act of 2005. For Americans who watch the legislative process, this is not likely to have been the front-page news, but it is by far one of most important things we have done in this Senate because it affects millions of Americans. Our final vote is on Tuesday. I anticipate it will be a strong, bipartisan vote in support, just as the work that was done here was strong and bipartisan. The first thing the bill will do, and most important, in my opinion, is to stabilize and lower natural gas prices. We hear a lot of talk about $60 a barrel oil. No one likes to pay high prices for gasoline at the pump. The bigger problem is the price of natural gas. In North Carolina and Tennessee, all across this country, there are millions of blue-collar workers who work in plants where the cost of natural gas is driving their jobs overseas. Natural gas used to be in this country the lowest price in the industrial world at a unit price of $2 or $3. Our economy was geared to it. Today it is at $7, and headed up.
If you are working at the Eastman plant in Tennessee, where 10,000 or 11,000 people work, and 40 percent of the cost of your product is natural gas--because they make chemicals there; and you can buy natural gas at $7 here, and you can buy it at $5, $4 overseas--those jobs are going to be headed overseas if that keeps up for very long.
If you are a farmer in North Carolina or Tennessee, the cost of fertilizer has gone up $200 to $500 per unit. That is a big pay cut for you if you are a farmer.
If you are a homeowner across this country and you rely on natural gas to heat and cool your home--and natural gas heats and cools more homes than any other kind of fuel--you might find your bill going up 50 percent recently.
So for blue-collar workers, for farmers, and for homeowners, this legislation we will be voting on Tuesday stabilizes and potentially lowers the price of natural gas. That is one of the single most important things we can do for our country.
The second thing, in my view, the bill does that is important is it recognizes that global warming is a problem. There is not a complete consensus about that in the Senate, but the bill has a different kind of consensus that makes more difference, in my opinion, than the mandates that we did not adopt because the bill changes the way we produce electricity toward ways that are low carbon and no carbon. If you produce less carbon, then you have less global warming, if you believe carbon makes a difference in global warming.
So there is a big difference in the conversation and debate in the Senate this year over last year, in my judgment. While the McCain-Lieberman amendment was rejected--I voted against it myself--there was adopted the Hagel amendment, which has significant new incentives for producers of carbon across this country to reduce the amount of carbon they emit.
We did pass the Bingaman sense-of-the-Senate resolution, which I voted for, which says we expect one day to have mandatory controls that lead us toward a lower carbon production economy. But I, for one, am not yet ready to impose mandatory controls on this big, complicated economy because I do not think we know enough about what it would do to the economy, and I do not think it is wise.
Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman have said they will begin, in July, to hold hearings about this complicated process and to assess how the incentives we may enact--or likely will enact--in this bill operate. Over the next year or two or three or four years, we may learn more.
We may learn enough where a majority of us are willing to have some system of mandatory caps, just as we have in other areas of clean air and acid rain, for example. But in my opinion, we are not there yet.
But the second most important thing in this legislation, in my view, is a shift in attitude toward global warming, a recognition by a majority of the Senators that it is a real problem and taking significant steps to change the way we make electricity so that we make it in a low-carbon or no-carbon way.
The third big change, I believe, is the technologies we use to meet those objectives of lowering natural gas prices and of producing low-carbon or no-carbon electricity. I would call it a new realism about energy in this country. This is a big country. We produce 33 percent of all the money. We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world. We are not some desert island. We use a lot of electricity for our computers and our jobs and our homes. If we have any disruption in that--whether it is a blackout or it is a price that is too high or a lack of supply--it has devastating consequences for us.
So there is a new realism, I would say, about exactly what is available to help us get where we want to go. First is aggressive conservation. That is new about this bill. It is twice the amount of conservation that was in the bill that we passed a year ago which never became law. By conservation, I mean new efficiency standards for appliances. The estimate of our committee is that these new efficiency standards for appliances will avoid the building of as many as 45 large gas electricity plants. That is significant conservation.
There is a provision in the bill that would give 300,000 Americans a $2,000 deduction to buy a hybrid or an advanced-diesel car. That reduces the use of oil. That is aggressive conservation.
There is an amendment in the bill that would have the President mandate a million-barrels-a-day reduction in the use of oil. That is aggressive conservation because that amount of oil equals about the entire production onshore of the State of Texas or the entire projected production from ANWR in Alaska. So we have aggressive conservation. We start there because that is the first thing we can do to save oil, increase supply, and reduce prices.
The second thing this bill does is recognize we need new supplies. We have taken steps to make it easier to bring liquefied natural gas into this country. Some may say: Oh, we don't want to go down that road. We are already bringing in too much oil.
We all agree with that. But if we do not bring the natural gas in, we are going to be sending the jobs out. And for the foreseeable future, for the short term, if we want to reduce the cost of natural gas, we need to bring a lot of it in from overseas. And having a few more terminals, as provided in the streamlined provisions in this bill--which still give States and communities input into where it goes--is a very important provision.
This legislation basically relaunches the American interest in nuclear power. That is realistic, too. There is a growing interest in global warming. That is caused, many say, by carbon in the air. So we need energy that has less carbon. Seventy percent of the carbon-free electricity we produce in the United States today comes from nuclear power. So if we care about global warming, we better care about nuclear power. There is no other way around it.
There are incentives for advanced nuclear power, the kind of reactors that do not cost as much to build. We know how to operate them. Twenty percent of our electricity is already from that. We invented the technology. Dozens of our Navy vessels operate with nuclear reactors. They have, without incident, since the 1950s. France is now 80 percent nuclear power. They are the European country most likely to meet the Kyoto standards because they have adopted the technology that is likely to produce the largest amount of carbon-free electricity--nuclear power.
We also have come to a consensus within the last year--I think I am accurate on this--that waiting in the wings behind nuclear power is coal gasification and carbon sequestration. Long words, but it simply means we take this several-hundred-year supply of coal that we have and we find a clean way to burn it. The way we are encouraging that in this legislation is to turn the coal into gas and then burn the gas. That gets rid of the nitrogen and the mercury and the sulfur, but it leaves the carbon.
There are also provisions, incentives in this bill, and loan guarantees and authorization, then, to have large demonstrations of carbon sequestration, taking the remaining carbon dioxide--the major residue or pollutant from coal gasification--and putting it in the ground.
Now, this is the strategy that is preferred by several important environmental groups. That sounds like a surprise. They would prefer coal? Here is the reason. They have some concerns about nuclear--the proliferation problems, the storage of waste--but if coal can be burned in a clean way and the carbon can be recaptured and put in the ground, that is a solution to global warming without mandates.
That is a solution, and not just in the United States but around the world. Because we might clean up our air, but if China and India and the rest of the world build hundreds of coal plants that are dirty, it will not matter what we do because the air just goes around the world, and we will be breathing it, too. So a very important way for us to help the world have clean air and an adequate supply of electricity is coal gasification.
So I call that the new realism: conservation; increased natural gas supplies, including from overseas; relaunching nuclear; and coal gasification and carbon sequestration. If we do that over the next 10 years, we will have an adequate supply of American-produced, reliable, low-carbon electricity. And the debate about global warming will be off our desks because we will not be producing enough carbon to affect global warming, and we can argue about something else.
Now, there is also generous support in this legislation for renewable energy. I am especially pleased that for the first time, we have support for solar energy in a useful way. Up to this time, we have had a renewable tax credit that solar could not take advantage of. But the Finance Committee changed that. Solar shows some promise, as does biomass, as does some geothermal, as does wind. I think my colleagues know I think wind is heavily oversubsidized and overestimated, but it is supported in here.
But there is a realism about that. We are not going to run the American economy on windmills and solar panels. They will provide a few percent of what we need by the year 2025. If we want carbon-free adequate supplies of American-produced energy, we are going to have to conserve, launch nuclear again, do coal gasification, and bring in supplies of natural gas. Renewables are fine, but they are a very small part of the answer. While we do not all agree on that here in the Senate, there is still a consensus.
There is also generous support for longer term technologies. I think we are realistic about that as well. There is a great deal of excitement about the hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle.
When I was in Yokohama a year ago, I visited a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle filling station. There were seven SUVs parked, all of them from different manufacturers in the world, many of them American. I filled up the Nissan hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle. Carlos Ghosn is the chief executive of Nissan. He drives that vehicle around Tokyo every weekend. He is spending $700 million of Nissan money every year on hydrogen-fuel-cell research. And Toyota is doing the same. Others--Ford, General Motors--are all interested.
But the potential of hydrogen is down the road. It's several years away. We are going to be talking about it, working on it--and hopefully it will come to fruition. But it is several years down the road. When we produce enough hydrogen to run our automobiles, we will have to use nuclear power or natural gas or coal gasification to produce that hydrogen.
So I would say of special note--to reemphasize some of the points I made--is the serious interest in conservation. This is a bipartisan bill. You do not hear the word ``conservation'' come out of the mouths of every Senator first. You might not think Republican Senators would start out talking, first, about conservation. But we know if we want to reduce the cost of natural gas, if we want to reduce our reliance on oil, that the quickest and easiest way to do that is aggressive conservation.
Nuclear power--Senator Domenici, our chairman, mentioned to me we had something like 167 amendments offered to this bill at one time, and so far as we could tell, not a single amendment was antinuclear, not a single amendment was antinuclear. There is a growing awareness that if we want carbon-free electricity, we are going to have to have some nuclear powerplants to do that. That is a big change even just from last year.
Another big change, as I mentioned, is the emergence of coal gasification and carbon sequestration and support and research for that in a very serious way, both in industrial sites and in freestanding plants, and sequestration demonstrations. None of that was being discussed broadly by the Energy Committee last year. A few Senators understood that, but most of us, I think it is fair to say, did not really see the significance of this technology. Now we do, and we have strong support for it.
The importance of liquefied natural gas and the streamlining of siting--that may be the most important provision in the bill in terms of an immediate impact because there are large amounts of natural gas that can be brought in.
Another important development is the serious discussion of new supplies of natural gas here at home. Now, this is a very controversial subject. But last year we could not even get an inventory of what supplies of natural gas we have offshore. We have plenty of natural gas; we just have rules that say you cannot drill for it. There was no serious discussion of giving States the opportunity--other States, such as Virginia--the option of drilling in Federal waters offshore for natural gas, as Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana now do.
We couldn't get a vote on that because of the controversy, but I believe there were 51 votes in the Senate for giving States the option of deciding for themselves whether they wanted to allow natural gas drilling offshore, take a share of the money for the State, put a share of the money in a national fund for wildlife preservation, put the rest in the Federal Treasury, and put the gas into our system so we could lower the cost of natural gas. There is a lot of progress there.
Finally, I pay tribute to two parts of the Senate. One is to the Finance Committee for what it did with the tax title. The total amount of money of incentives is $14 to $16 billion. But rather than the amount of money, it is what it is for because it is completely consistent with clean energy objectives for low-carbon and no-carbon, new technologies. There is money for clean energy bonds for certified coal products, consumer incentives for hybrid and diesel vehicles, incentives for energy-efficient appliances and buildings, incentives for coal gasification powerplants, incentives for solar energy development in an important way for the first time in a long time, incentives for the deployment of advanced nuclear power, incentives for cogeneration projects. All of these will change the way we produce electricity.
I compliment Chairman Grassley and his staff for this. I hope very much that the Senate version of how we spend our tax dollars in support of research and development for clean energy is dominant in the conference rather than another version. That will be something we will have to work out with our friends in the House of Representatives.
I think a great deal of credit needs to go to Chairman Domenici and to Senator Bingaman, ranking Democrat on the committee. This bill came out 21 to 1 in favor from our committee. For those who are not in the Senate, this may sound like inside housekeeping. This body operates only by consensus. Nothing happens here--because of the unique nature of this body, where every Senator is an equal, every single one of us can stop anything at least for a while, unless there is a consensus. The consensus came because of the kind of leadership, beginning with Chairman Domenici, who personally visited all the members of the committee, including the Democratic members, in their offices, took their advice, incorporated their ideas, and we came to a consensus.
Senator Bingaman pointed out in our hearing that we had many votes, but he didn't remember a single party-line vote. We had close votes, but we voted our convictions and our regions of the country and our backgrounds and attitudes. We didn't line up and say: This is a Republican view and a Democratic view.
I am glad we have waited until next Tuesday morning to vote on the Clean Energy Act of 2005, until Chairman Domenici and Senator Bingaman can be here. They had to be in New Mexico yesterday for a BRAC hearing. They deserve to be here. I want the full Senate and our country to see the result that they have led. I believe their being here and the big vote we have will get us off to a big start.
I feel very good about what the Senate has done. I hope there is a big vote on Tuesday. For the American people, the result will be stabilized and lower natural gas prices for homeowners, for blue-collar workers, and for farmers; No. 2, a recognition that global warming is a problem, and the beginning of aggressive conservation and a variety of technologies to deal with that by producing low-carbon and no-carbon electricity; and, finally, a realism about the base load that we need to encourage in this country to produce that kind of electricity, aggressive conservation, new supplies of natural gas, relaunching nuclear power, coal gasification, and carbon sequestration.
I thank the Chair.
The Senator from Mississippi.
- June 21, 2005
- July 28, 2005
- June 14, 2005
- May 17, 2005
Nomination Of John Robert Bolton To Be The Representative Of The United States Of America To The United Nations—ContinuedMay 26, 2005
- June 21, 2005
- June 16, 2005
- February 6, 2006
- June 19, 2007
- September 28, 2005 | <urn:uuid:d16d252a-17bf-499e-98f1-aa249fe01386> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://capitolwords.org/date/2005/06/24/S7385_energy-policy-act-of-2005/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966539 | 3,850 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Editor's Note: On March 10, 1987, at 9:00 in the evening, a 14-year-old boy sat down and started writing his thoughts about his soul, the nature of our relationship to God, and what man's existence is all about. This young man would go on to attend Harding University with the dream of working with retarded children and becoming a teacher who could change the lives of people who did not understand their uniqueness as a creation of God. He had done campaign work with Owen Olbricht and had maturity and wisdom beyond his years. In December, 1993, this young man was killed in a tragic automobile accident. His mother was going through her son's things and came upon this paper. It is so unique and unusual for a 14-year-old that we thought our readers would like to read it. Pat Layton, the mother of the author, lost her husband in 1992 and has begun her own ministry to people who have suffered incredible losses. She can be reached at PO Box 10604, Palm Desert, CA 92253-0604.
Tonight I sat in my room and pondered for a glimpse of insight to fill this paper, and I felt like discussing "The Journey of the Soul." In the Bible, it states that God knew us before we were born so, therefore, we were a new soul at that time--freshly molded by God's work. We had no knowledge or wisdom and were then placed in a form of flesh, our second stage of the soul. We went from the spiritual realm into a fleshly realm to be tested for a short duration compared to our spiritual life. Our soul is then living in a fleshly state and is interactive between the spiritual and flesh. The soul is bound to the fleshly realm and, therefore, must deal with fleshly problems and thoughts. Yet those close to God can be given hope and glimpses of the spiritual plane that is the third stage. When the flesh dies, the soul escapes the flesh and accomplishes spiritual unity with the third realm. There it spends eternity. So to summarize, there are three stages: First stage--new soul with no knowledge or wisdom. Second stage--the soul is placed in a fleshly form bound to the flesh's problems and interactivity with other souls in the flesh. Third stage--the soul escapes the flesh when it dies and returns to where it came from. If it lived its fleshly life the way it should, it is blessed; if not, it is put away and cast forever into torment. As I see it, a soul is a member of God. God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and all our souls are one and the same and God takes parts of Himself and puts them in the flesh. Often those parts (souls) forget where they came from, forget who they are, and are caught up in the fleshly thoughts and feelings and lose touch with that much larger part of themselves. The body is only a tool that the soul uses to carry out his needs in the life. My soul is writing this right now, not my hand, nor brain, nor eye; they are only instruments which my soul uses. When I die, my soul will go back to join God again and will be wiser and wholer . The soul grows through its stages, becoming wiser and wiser. So when those parts of God stray and forget who they are, then it is my duty and others' duty to guide them back to the Maker and Source. My soul is young now and has much to gain, yet I feel God has put it in me to write these insights of mine for others to better understand and never lose contact with who they are, where they came from, and where they're going. This stage is short, and we should remember to always stay in touch with God so that we will spend eternity with Him rather than lose our souls for a moment's passing pleasure.
Back to Contents Does God Exist?, Sep/Oct 1996 | <urn:uuid:3b2d331d-0f4d-4efe-9f69-10b414516b2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct96/ThoughtsFromAMindOfA14YrOld.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975242 | 809 | 1.5 | 2 |
Official website of Newfoundland author Robert
Robert C. Parsons is one of Newfoundland's most
popular and prolific writers specializing in
stories of shipwrecks, rescue and survival in
the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador, as
well as Canada's Maritime Provinces. In his
twenty-three years of research and writing of
North Atlantic ships and sailors, survivors and
victims, especially those of Newfoundland and
Labrador, his sea stories now number in the
hundreds and he has published twenty-two books.
Beginning as a hobby, Parson's passion for the
history and heritage of the sea led to his
interviews with sailors and fishermen who "stood
before the mast" on all-sail wooden ships.
Although their numbers are now greatly reduced,
Robert has continued his research through oral
history supported by archival materials.
Retired from his teaching career, Robert devotes
much of his time to researching, writing and
promoting the sea-going history of Canada’s
eastern provinces, of the ships, and the people
who sailed them. | <urn:uuid:3e43f923-97b7-4314-9917-fb56ca1d867b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atlanticwrecks.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951884 | 230 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Judge Sides With Cell Phone Ban, Parents To Appeal Decision
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The cell phone wars could go on, as parents say they may appeal the ruling of a judge who sided with the city in its ban on cell phones in public schools.
The lawsuit by eight parents claimed the Department of Education policy violates the constitutional rights of students and parents, who say cell phones are needed in case of emergencies.
Some students NY1 spoke with said they believe they should be able to have their cell phones on hand, as long as they are responsible with them.
"I really need my cell phone to get in contact with my mother because she's always calling me and I need to call her to tell her where I'm going, what I'm doing,” said one student. “And I think it's going to be a giant loss if we lose our cell phones, not because so we can talk to our friends, but for basic responsibility purposes.”
“If I take the bus in the morning they'll call me in the morning and they like for me to call them when I get out of school,” said another student.
Norman Siegel, a lead attorney in the failed parent lawsuit, could not agree more.
"We never argued for the right to use the cell phone in the classroom,” said Siegel. “What we want is for someone to be able to possess it."
But the DOE says the policy preserves a safe learning environment for students, arguing cell phones are disruptive and can be used for cheating.
The judge agreed saying the decision on whether cell phones should be permitted in schools should be left up to the DOE, and not the court.
"I said from the beginning I think the policy is sound and legal and obviously I'm pleased by the court's decision,” said School Chancellor Joel Klein.
There has been a longstanding ban on electronic devices in city schools going back to the days of beepers. Earlier this year, when the mayor repeated the specific ban on cell phones, there was a crackdown. Carrying a cell phone can still bring consequences.
"My cell phone dropped out of my pocket and fell on the floor and I put it on the table and my teacher yelled at me and took it away," said a student.
Last year, the DOE confiscated over 12,000 cell phones and returned most of them to students' parents.
In September, a pilot program at 15 schools will allow students to place their cell phones in lockers for a minimal fee, like a quarter. If it works, say school officials, they will think of doing it citywide. | <urn:uuid:fb654cbb-d510-4e98-9cc5-7f1b4878bc74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/69479/judge-sides-with-cell-phone-ban--parents-to-appeal-decision | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9733 | 571 | 1.84375 | 2 |
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Mark Zuckerberg, founder of TheFacebook, is interviewed by VC, Jim Breyer, Managing Partner of Accel. Mark describes what it was like to leave Harvard to venture into a business to build a social utility tool for college students around the world.
Kauffman Foundation Senior Fellow Ted Zoller challenges Stanford students to engage in entrepreneurship as a practice of action. Based on his research into dealmaker density and network development, Zoller details the power of seizing opportunities and the pathways to developing an entrepreneurial career.
Steve Young, former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, describes the lessons he's learned in negotiating with teammates, agents, and in his personal life. Interviewed as a guest in Stan Christensen's Negotiations course, Young provides insight through humorous anecdotes across a broad range of experience. In particular, he describes different negotiation tactics that were useful throughout his career as a quarterback, lawyer, and entrepreneur. While earning his spot as the fiery leader of the 49ers, balancing life with children, and undergoing multiple business ventures, Young highlights the use of accountability, soft skills to deal with personal feelings, and working hard with no excuses, to achieve success.
Evan Williams, Co-founder and CEO of Odeo, discusses his views on the opportunities and challenges in the quickly emerging technology of Podcasting.
Steve Westly, Founder of clean tech investment firm The Westly Group and former Controller for the state of California, paints a landscape of the present and future opportunities in emerging alternative energy.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of the online matchmaking service eHarmony.com, describes the essential components of a successful entrepreneurial career. He believes that working with great people, taking risks, adaptability, passion and timely execution of plans can lead to success for entrepreneurs. He draws parallels between the satisfaction found through finding the right career path and a fulfilling relationship.
Accenture's Liz Tinkham interviews salesforce.com's Polly Sumner about entrepreneurship that occurs in both large and small companies. They both agree that innovation and risk-taking occur in any-sized company where the culture emphasizes "no idea is a dumb idea." Sumner advises young entrepreneurs to not fear risk: every failure teaches you a valuable lesson, and once learned, success is that much sweeter.
Instagram Co-Founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger challenge many of the myths surrounding startups and the lives of entrepreneurs. Both former Mayfield Fellows with the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Systrom and Krieger share their first-hand experiences of the entrepreneurial process, including identifying good problems to solve and the value in building simple solutions and minimum viable products. Systrom and Krieger also discuss aspects of their co-founder working relationship and their efforts to maintain a balance between work and life.
In this lecture that parallels his book Good Boss, Bad Boss, Stanford professor Bob Sutton unpacks the best habits of beloved and effective managers, and details the worst habits of those who fail to lead. The best leaders develop and nurture those who work for them. However, when bosses gain more power, they can easily grow oblivious to the needs of those they lead.
Entrepreneurship is an emotional and economic roller coaster, says venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur Mark Suster. In this candid and informative lecture, Suster defies some of Silicon Valley's conventional wisdom. Based on his extensive experience with multiple companies, Suster shares his thoughts on the real day-to-day life of startups, smart ways to raise the right kind of funds, and offers honest advice in making your way as an entrepreneur.
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© 2013 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:1c845880-d4b2-4325-9e61-3231383f5ac4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.entrepreneurship.org/en/Resource-Center/Topics/The-Entrepreneur/Types/Audio.aspx?start=&sort=authorlastname&dir=desc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939467 | 1,096 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Motor Trend is out with its official review of the Tesla Model S, done on Elon Musk’s own car. The performance focused magazine notes of the ‘Signature P85’ version of the car that “measured by our classical methods, the Model S P85 is now the fastest American Sedan.” Perhaps more interesting than how impressed the reviewers are with the fast accelerating Model S, which does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, is the diagram the magazine shows describing the five key attributes of EVs—range, recharge rate, price, MPGe, and 0-60 mph. The diagram compares the Tesla to the other major EVs and the Model S exists in a different world where price is sacrificed for range, recharge rate and acceleration. Overall Motor Trend was very positive on the car and the influence of the magazine will pique the interest of die hard Porsche, Mercedez and BMW loyalists. It does note that in testing the range came in 11 percent below what Tesla has quoted, but at this point I think consumers have come to discount those figures in the way they discount miles per gallon figures from standard cars. | <urn:uuid:36232b4b-deae-432c-8b28-861e5b815dec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pro.gigaom.com/blog/motor-trend-positive-on-model-s/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941808 | 233 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Published in Surgery Litigation and Law Weekly, June 3rd, 2005
According to a study from Taiwan, "An accurate staging system is required to assess hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients in order to benefit from hepatic resection before surgery. Cancer of the Liver Italian Program (CLIP) score was considered to be better than the Okuda staging system to predict survival. Japan Integrated Staging Score (JIS score) includes tumor, nodes, metastases (TNM) stage and Child-Pugh grade as a new staging system for HCC. The purpose of the present paper was to compare the CLIP, Okuda, TNM and JIS staging systems for HCC patients undergoing...
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NewsRx also is available at LexisNexis, Gale, ProQuest, Factiva, Dialog, Thomson Reuters, NewsEdge, and Dow Jones. | <urn:uuid:84d9113e-4f3e-4de9-bca0-be87ac573c85> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsrx.com/newsletters/Surgery-Litigation-and-Law-Weekly/2005-06-03/053020053331179SLL.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937825 | 217 | 1.632813 | 2 |
updated 10:05 am EST, Fri December 14, 2007
Zumobi today unveiled its first public beta for its new interface which it hopes will replace the slow and at times cumbersome experience of web browsing with Windows Mobile. Originally known earlier this year as ZenZui, the software is based entirely around the concept of visual tiles instead of long addresses that are hard to type on a handset: users hand-pick a set of relevant feeds that automatically update over the cellular link, letting users browse content by zooming into different tiles without the load times that often come with completely loading a page. Many tiles themselves are broken down into several categories.
The platform is currently free and works by including a set of sponsored tiles, including ones from Amazon, AccuWeather, FlightStats, and other companies; developers will also be able to add their own tiles, while users themselves can share tiles with others. The software is relatively device-independent and works regardless of the control mechanism, allowing both conventional directional pads and touchscreens to use the same interface.
Downloads are available starting today for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 users; versions for BlackBerry and certain Java-capable phones should be available by spring 2008, while third-party support comes at the start of the year. | <urn:uuid:a8525ca1-2a42-414f-8ca7-2821a66e59f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/12/14/zumobi.beta/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936223 | 256 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Vets Day 2012: Thank Them by Hiring Them
ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – Veterans Day is this weekend; a time to remember the service and sacrifices of our military men and women. But for some, life after the military continues to be difficult, especially when it comes to finding a job.
The unemployment rate for veterans is a staggering 19 percent. That’s more than twice the average for civilians. That’s why the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Defense have been sponsoring a series of job fairs in Missouri called “Honoring Our Heroes.”
One such fair was held Friday morning at America’s Center downtown, with more than 50 companies set up to meet and interview vets looking for work.
There are many reasons why that number is so high, including a fear by some employers that combat veterans may develop post traumatic stress disorder. But there are other considerations too, including the fact that because of their military careers, many vets have no experience looking for work.
“Not everybody is able to put on a uniform and serve our country but by supporting those who do and supporting their families, they actually are serving their country,” said Brandy Scheer, the Missouri lead for a group called Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.
Sgt. Patrick Wade, a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, is one of those looking for work, but having a hard time finding it, despite having gotten both an MBA, and a bachelor`s degree in computer technology after getting out of the Army five years ago.
“It is kind of hard to get access to employers,” Wade said. “Back in the old days you`d send in a resume and they`d call you back for an interview. These days it`s all on the internet and it is really hard to distinguish yourself from the other candidates that way.”
Friday’s job fair was a one day event, and while there have been several held over the past year, this was the final one for this year. Another is planned for the spring. | <urn:uuid:0111624f-edfa-405c-8175-8290e6037750> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fox2now.com/2012/11/09/vets-day-2012-thank-them-by-hiring-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971319 | 443 | 1.742188 | 2 |
12/17/2012 - Preparing for Next Year's Tax Season
Now is the time of year when people begin to think about peace, generosity — and taxes? While it may seem to be much too early to worry about filing your tax return, the end of the year is a great time to get your records in order and take other steps that will minimize the hassles when tax time does roll around. It’s also often your last chance to take advantage of deductions or other tax-saving opportunities for the year. The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) provides this advice on getting a head start:
12/4/2012 - Smart Tips on Charitable Giving
’Tis the season of goodwill to all, a time when people take time to think of others. In addition to giving gifts and planning holiday get-togethers, that means many people are also dipping into their pockets to make donations to worthy charities. While that’s a good impulse, it’s important to do your charitable giving wisely. The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) provides this advice on ways to make your money most productive:
11/30/2012 - Six Ways to Teach Children About Sensible Spending
Have you talked to your children about the value of money and the importance of managing it wisely? All parents hope that their children will grow up to make prudent use of their money, yet few actually spend time talking to them about how to accomplish these goals, a new study has found. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, parents are more likely to have talked with their children about good manners, smart eating habits, the importance of good grades, the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and the risks of smoking than about sensible spending. If you’re not sure how to get started with your kids, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) has this advice:
11/29/2012 - Growing Your Small Business
Just because your small, home-based business started in your garage, doesn’t mean you have to stay in your garage. Think Apple. Think Amazon. Think Disney. OK, so maybe your goals aren’t quite that big – yet – but you’ve got a successful home-based business, and you’re ready to grow. What should you do first?
11/28/2012 - Five Tips When Considering an Assisted-Living Facility
According to government estimates, more than 1 million people nationwide live in assisted-living facilities. There’s no commonly accepted definition for these facilities, but they all offer some level of assistance to people who don’t need full-time attention but who may need help with personal care, taking medications or other concerns. If you are considering an assisted-living arrangement for yourself or a loved one, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) offers this advice on issues to address:
10/29/2012 - Four Tips for the New Retirement
A recent study found that 67 percent of middle-income baby boomers are expecting a retirement that is different from the one their parents enjoyed. For one thing, the study, performed by the Bankers Life & Casualty Company Center for a Secure Retirement, found that roughly three-quarters of the generation born between 1946 and 1964 believe that financial factors, not their age, will determine when they will retire. Despite these new uncertainties, more than half are looking forward to retirement. If you’re trying to navigate plans for the new retirement landscape, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) offers these four key pieces of advice.
10/22/2012 - Understanding What Taxes You Pay and Why
There are few topics in life that provoke as much worry and uncertainty as taxes. For most people, taxes are a mysterious thing – a sum of money just disappears from every paycheck. Then, every year, sometime before April 15, there’s that time when you have to gather information from various sources and prepare a tax return. And maybe you get lucky and get some money back. Maybe you didn’t withhold enough and you have to write a check.
10/15/2012 - Understanding Life Insurance
When you think about life insurance, you may dismiss it as something that only older people need. A life insurance policy is taken out on someone's life that pays out when he or she dies, helping to financially protect dependents and loved ones. Insurance proceeds are used to pay ongoing expenses, educate children, pay off mortgages or cover final expenses.
9/14/2012 - Donít Make These Three Common Small Business Mistakes
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), a small business is one that employs fewer than 500 employees, a definition that applies to a wide swath of companies. In fact, the SBA says that small businesses account for 99.7 percent of employer firms, making them a significant sector of the economy. There are many challenges for small businesses, however. If you are a small business owner or have plans to be one, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) offers these tips on three common mistakes to avoid:
9/7/2012 - Avoiding Family Business Conflicts
According to Family Enterprise USA, there are 5.5 million family owned businesses in the United States. These companies often unite family members behind a common purpose, but conflicts can arise when professional and personal lives overlap. If you are involved in a family business, the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) offers this advice on how to sidestep some of the internal squabbles that can affect these companies:
8/27/2012 - It's College Textbook Time
Buying college textbooks used to be simple: Professors told you what books to buy. You went to the college bookstore and bought them. At the end of the course, you had the option to sell them back. These days, it’s a little different and a lot more expensive – the average estimated cost per student for textbooks for the 21012/13 academic year is $1,121.
8/21/2012 - Live Well in Retirement
Are you concerned about being able to pay for a secure and happy retirement? The good news is that there are many costs that retirees typically don’t face, such as job commuting, buying a business wardrobe or saving for their children’s college tuition. Many other expenses will stay the same, and the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) advises that you can make some smart choices in order to live well on a fixed retirement budget:
8/6/2012 - Don't Miss Out on Free Stuff (and Great Bargains)
Are you taking advantage of offers for discounts or free merchandise? Many people are watching their spending these days, and your dollar will go a lot farther if you can get more for less money. The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) offers these tips on how to do it:
7/23/2012 - Avoiding an Early-Withdrawal Penalty on Retirement Plans
The money that you’ve accumulated in a retirement savings account can look awfully tempting at times, particularly in an uncertain economy. If you feel you have no choice but to withdraw from a retirement account, you may find that it’s a costly option because of the potential taxes and penalties involved. The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) explains the price you’ll have to pay and the exceptions to the rules:
6/29/2012 - Financial Tips for Single People
Almost half of all adult Americans — or nearly 100 million people — either have never been married or are divorced or widowed. Many of these people incorrectly decide that financial planning is something that only married people do, but it’s always advisable to make sound financial decisions that will pay off now and in the future. The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) offers the following tips:
5/29/2012 - Dealing with Identity Theft
Nearly 12 million adults were victims of identity fraud last year, up 13 percent from the previous year, according to Javelin Strategy & Research. Identity fraud or theft occurs when thieves use your personal information to commit a crime, whether that means stealing your credit card details or using your Social Security number to create a fraudulent bank account. The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) recommends these steps to take after, and even before, identity theft happens:
5/14/2012 - What You Can Learn from Your Tax Return
Tax time may be over, but before you store your return in the attic, take a moment to review it. According to the New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA), you’ll find that you can discover a lot about your financial situation and identify changes that will improve your tax outlook before it’s time to file next year’s return.
5/8/2012 - Steps to Improve Your Financial Literacy
Do you wish you had more control over your financial situation? The good news is that you don’t need to read a textbook to improve your financial literacy. In fact, according to the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA), there are a few simple steps you can take to begin getting your financial house in order:
4/9/2012 - Don't Miss These Tax-Saving Opportunities
The tax filing deadline is upon us, and many people are rushing to finish their returns. If you are one of them, are you certain that you’ve taken all the deductions and used all the credits to which you’re entitled? The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) discusses just a few of the money-saving steps that many taxpayers miss:
4/2/2012 - Tax Concerns for the Unemployed
What are your tax obligations if you lost your job during the last year? The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) answers some common tax questions for those who are out of work:
3/27/2012 - What You Should Know About Estate Tax Laws
When most people hear about estate tax planning, they assume it is only for the wealthiest taxpayers. However, recent changes in the estate tax laws have been so advantageous to those passing wealth to another generation that it is worth knowing about the basics of these laws to ensure you make the most of them. Since crucial aspects of these laws are set to expire in 2013, it’s especially worth finding out about them now, according to the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA):
2/21/2012 - Tax Tips for Military Personnel
Are you or a loved one serving in the military? If so, you should be aware that there are many tax laws designed to make it easier to meet your tax obligations while serving your country. The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) covers some key tax regulations affecting those in the armed forces:
2/3/2012 - What Is the Kiddie Tax?
We all know that everyone has to file a tax return and pay their taxes, but does that apply to children, too? Many people may have heard of what is often referred to as the kiddie tax. The New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) explains who is subject to it and what it may mean for your family’s tax planning:
2/1/2012 - Five Mistakes People Make in Choosing a Tax Preparer
Did you know that you are legally responsible for everything on your tax return, even if another person prepared it for you? Did you also know that your tax return paints a unique picture of your financial situation that you can use to make smart financial decisions throughout the year? Those are a few of the many reasons it’s so important to choose a tax preparer who really knows his or her stuff. The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJSCPA) points out common mistakes people make in making this choice and offers helpful solutions:
1/16/2012 - Understanding Medicare
There have been some important changes in laws affecting Medicare during the past year, but some other program aspects remain the same. With a new wave of Baby Boomers reaching age 65 each year, the New Jersey Society of CPAs (NJSCPA) offers these tips on what you need to know to ensure your coverage and minimize potential added costs.
We currently have individuals licensed to offer securities in the states of New Jersey, California, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Delaware,Florida, Maryland, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin and to offer investment advisory services in New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Maryland North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. This is not an offer to sell or provide investment advisory services in any other state or jurisdiction. Securities offered through 1st Global Capital Corp., Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through 1st Global Advisors, Inc. | <urn:uuid:49ee5066-a2b0-451f-9cb2-2ff7d3e2d9eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alloysilverstein.com/temporary_static_pages2/resources_money_management_tips_archive.asp?year=2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950928 | 2,718 | 1.59375 | 2 |
BLAMING HOLLYWOOD – AT 9:30 A.M. ET: As readers know, I am no fan of today's Hollywood. In fact, there really isn't a Hollywood any longer. Those "studios" out there are just plaster palaces housing business offices and a few soundstages. The Hollywood of the golden age, with glorious movies and larger-than-life stars, disappeared decades ago.
But I also don't think it's right to put so much blame on Hollywood for the violence in our society. My experience has been that Hollywood follows the culture. It doesn't create it. From The Hill:
A national effort to get at the root of gun violence following the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. last week is putting a spotlight on motion picture studios.
While the majority of the attention has been focused on gun control laws and violence in video games, lawmakers and industry groups have also targeted the movie and television industry for producing shoot 'em up thrillers and other bloody content.
Movie studios have been conscious of the sensitive climate in the wake of the tragic shooting that claimed the lives of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including 20 young children.
Paramount Pictures delayed the Pittsburgh premiere for the action film "Jack Reacher" after it was originally scheduled to take place the day after the shooting, and offered its condolences to the families in Newtown in a company statement.
The Weinstein Company cancelled the premiere for Quentin Tarantino's new film "Django Unchained," opting to to hold a private screening instead, The New York Times reported. Even 20th Century Fox chose not to hold the premiere for its upcoming comedy film "Parental Guidance," according to the Times.
The lobbying organization that represents the movie studios in Washington, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), publicly stated this week that it stands ready to take part in the national conversation following the tragedy.
Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) issued a statement saying the industry wants "to do our part to help America heal" after the shooting.
Dodd represented the Connecticut for more than 30 years before taking the helm of MPAA. Last Friday, he participated in a nighttime vigil on the National Mall that honored victims of the shooting.
Dodd butted heads with gun rights advocates, including with the National Rifle Association (NRA), when he was on Capitol Hill.
COMMENT: The 1930s, the gangster era in America, actually saw a decline in crime. In 1932, the height of the gangster period, with films to match, there were 579 murders in New York. In 1990, a time of relative quiet, there were 2,245. The population size was roughly equal.
The same movies are shown all over the country, no matter how rotten they are, but murder rates vary dramatically. As much as I dislike today's Hollywood, I think blaming movies is an excuse for the criminal class, which is why people love to do it.
December 27, 2012 | <urn:uuid:044123e1-5ccc-4394-950f-3cddba780af6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://urgentagenda.com/PERMALINKS%20VII/DECEMBER%202012/27.MOVIES.HTML | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957345 | 619 | 1.765625 | 2 |
[EDITOR'S NOTE:] This guest editorial comes to us from Vivian Benge, President of the Indiana Transgender Advocacy Alliance. Vivian is a long-time transgender activist and a personal friend of several of our contributors.
Last week, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is abandoning its "No Match" enforcement procedures policy which is outing transgender people in the workplace. This has caused thousands of transgender people to lose their jobs and suffer great emotional turmoil and economic distress on top of the rampant employment discrimination we already face.
DHS policy seems more like religious based bigotry, fear and ignorance wrapped in the legitimacy of government regulation while advancing our nation toward a national ID card. As a transgender woman, it is so very sad to be an American and have to endure this. While our gay/lesbian brothers and sisters face the “don’t ask don’t tell” burden, transgender people have been ‘officially’ targeted in their workplaces by our conservative government’s “kinder and gentler” bigotry.
This DHS policy had been challenged in the courts by labor, immigration, transgender, civil liberties and other groups on the grounds that it would have required employers to either fire employees or face stiff penalties when employee records do not match information in the Social Security Administration (SSA) database, especially name, Social Security number, or gender. Many transgender employees, who are listed as one gender in SSA records, but who live and work in another gender after state court ordered name and gender status changes, would have been one of the groups at greater risk of losing their jobs as a result of the DHS enforcement procedures.
All this is particularly egregious because most transgender people don’t have the money to have surgeries that are required by SSA in order to change gender markers. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church and its fundamentalist Protestant allies assure us we will go to Hell if we have surgeries at all. It’s one of the many “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” catch 22s that trans people face every day.
According to NCTE, on October 10th, the enforcement procedures were dealt a severe blow when the presiding judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the rules, finding that the rules would cause irreparable harm to both innocent workers and employers. DHS signaled its abandonment of the present incarnation of these rules on November 25th by requesting that a judge put the lawsuit on hold until March 2008. DHS plans to introduce new, replacement enforcement procedures, which DHS believes will have a better chance of standing up to legal scrutiny, in December 2007.
Though the DHS enforcement procedures have been pulled, SSA will continue to compare their database against employer-submitted information, as it has for years before the issuance of the DHS rules. SSA has stricter standards for changing gender markers than departments of motor vehicles, which has led to employers of some transgender workers receiving notification of gender ‘no-matches.’ For many of those transgender workers this notification has effectively revealed them as transgender in their workplace, without their consent, thus leading to firings.
I was actually caught in the Social Security Administration (SSA) enforcement of their policy while I was still working, and even after I semi retired. On three separate occasions my employer demanded that I work out the ‘problem’ with SSA and SSA threatened that I would not be able to receive the social security I worked all my life to earn if my employer didn’t change it back. My employer, the State of Indiana, finally decided to ignore my Indiana court order and change my gender status back to what SSA wanted in their records because SSA was threatening them.
What a waste of my money to legally change my name and gender so I could get on with my life. That was before my surgery, but now that I have done that, I would rather not give SSA the satisfaction.
I was lucky for reasons of my own ‘coming out’ strategy, so didn’t lose my job, my retirement or, later, my inheritance when my spouse died, though I was threatened over each. With support of my Union and colleagues, as well as the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and others, I dodged those bullets though it has not been without personal cost.
The Indiana Transgender Advocacy Alliance (INTRAA) has also received many complaints from transgender employees about the consequences of DHS/SSA’s destructive policy. I have personally worked with several employees in Indiana to ameliorate the impact of Indiana’s lack of concern for its transgender citizens while they do their knee jerk enforcement of DHS policy. Interestingly, many states have opposed and even refused to implement many of the DHS requirements that are moving the states toward a quagmire of new regulations and a national ID card.
One recent example I had the privilege to help impact was that of a technology professional at an Indiana company. The company had no idea she was transgender and was very happy with her performance, until Social Security informed them that her SSA gender marker didn’t match the person’s legal name and social security number.
A gender marker SSA refuses to change, by the way, despite the fact that if DHS ever had a reason to look for her in her birth configuration, they would never find her. Despite her legal name and gender marker changes through the court, SSA has refused to change their records because of their outmoded thinking that ‘biology is destiny.’
She was saved, interestingly, by the fact that her employer’s parent company was based in Chicago where Illinois law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and expression. Her local HR people were told, “What is the issue here? She is a good employee so just ignore the SSA issue as an employee retention factor.” She ended up keeping her job, which she was well on her way to losing because her local branch of the company presumed they should do as DHS advised and fire her since it had became an intractable problem with SSA and DHS.
Interestingly, since a local HRO had been defeated by Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants bent on keeping LGBT people vulnerable to job loss, the local supervisors believed they were safe in firing the person (who they had no idea was transgender until DHS/SSA outed her).
Ironically, Illinois law saved the job of this Indiana employee (one less brain drained from Indiana) and helped her Indiana supervisors come to grips with their own fears about gender expression and identity. The local office personnel for the company were actually apologetic after the fact and admitted that the corporate policy of the Illinois parent company helped them to see their fear.
It reminds me of the impact of other civil rights laws in the US that gave impetus to many people coming to their senses about discrimination and its impact on millions of people who were victims of irrational fears and prejudice. This case is a microcosm of how Indiana’s state and federal leaders could help business competitiveness by passing civil rights protections for LGBT people.
My personal favorite irony of the DHS policy, supposedly imposed to meet the needs of national security under the “Patriot Act,” is that it strives to force government and employers to require a gender marker on documents that is opposite to that which law enforcement would need to be looking for in order to apprehend all the transgender desperados out there – you hear about us all the time in the press, robbing banks, killing and raping our way through life, following the lead of heterosexual males. Laughable, if it weren’t so sad.
Fortunately, this travesty may change in the future because it is so unfair to the business needs to find and keep good employees. Isn't it interesting how greed can motivate change when love and acceptance of diversity can’t? It seems that God works in mysterious ways to help people learn. | <urn:uuid:80276479-9c29-4c5a-8815-29949198868d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bilerico.com/2007/12/god_works_in_mysterious_ways.php | 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 | 0.974347 | 1,641 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Stay Focused Towards Process Instead of Outcome!
Boxers became wealthiest, not because they were concerned about money they would be getting, after coming out of the ring BUT they were more focused on how to stay inside the ring? How to protect ourselves from opposite one? In return they were reward with huge money & sponsor’s trust. So one should know the ART, to stay Inside the Ring. Wealth will kiss your feet.
Don’t Miss! Prove your Idea of Business Earliest!
In order to build the successful & wealthy empire without being failure with proven techniques…Follow the IMP sequences of events…
- Proof of concept begins when you recognize a market prospect, outlook & crack
- Outline the product or service which can be used to cram the recognize crack
- Take trial or end user feedback of product to make sure they best fit for market principle
This second stage is small sized preview of final show. Here you can crosscheck the consequence of plan before investing the capital & then realising that the show is flop!
Spread & extend the Business!
Flush off your idea if it has not cleared even a single step of proof of concept. But if it has crossed all the stages successfully then simply go ahead & multiply your fortune. Expansion of business is not as similar to overstretching your resource. It is more of a right planning of process. It’s up to you that you expand it vertically or horizontally. The former says extending the biz in its “CORE” zone. The latter says growing your fortune by diversification into different sectors. Within both of these growth techniques, two sub processes needs to be taken care of which are critical too, one is, building & maintaining the peaceful customer relation services, and second is also needs to maintain peaceful & pleasant relation with your employee.
Provide the Customer What He Desirers!
If you are ready to go into the market without knowing the need of consumer you will be in danger, market will simply refuse to accept your solutions. So in order to avoid risk, you should identify the consumer need or gap then launch the solutions & fill the gap. And this should be nonstop process because requirement keeps on changing frequently.
Earn On Hourly Basis!
A good tailor will stitch 1 or 2 on daily basis. But a tailor who wants to create empire will simple think to expand it by delegating the stitching work to other employee, And this is the only way to extend the biz. By this he will be free to concentrate on his core job i.e. expansion! Following tips to Earn on hourly basis…
- Hiring of people who have skill & will to work
- Go for partnerships
- Make a franchise
- Don’t sell product but sell the “VALUE”
And Last but IMP!
A person who depends on wages or salary will never become financially Independent. Remember, it takes knowledge, Passion & Drive to create fortune, it doesn’t happen accidently. Look for support when you need & then go ahead! | <urn:uuid:fab29401-1a1a-44e1-9502-94c10fa7c8f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digmlm.com/entrepreneurs-informational-points | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947131 | 635 | 1.625 | 2 |
From the halls of the Capitol to the campus of Ole Miss, it was a week of high drama in the campaign.
The tension was driven by the intersection of two major storylines—the Administration plan to bail out the credit markets and the first presidential debate. And the drama of the week suggested that a national crisis and campaign for president do not easily mix. When it was over, the candidate who appeared to try harder to seize the moment may have had the tougher week.
After what the Sept. 28 Washington Post characterized as “A Wild Week on the Trail,” the paper ran a Page One headline that may have summed things up: “McCain Ready for a Change of Subject.”
For the second week in a row, what has been called the gravest economic crisis since the Depression generated more coverage than the election. It filled 40% of the time studied on television and radio and space in print and online for Sept. 22-28, according to the News Coverage Index from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. And it further raised the possibility that the economy may frame the coming days of the election narrative.
Read the full report Media Narrative Whipsaws Between Bailout and Debate on the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism Web site. | <urn:uuid:73c0c746-f041-4ebc-adee-14ecde623ef8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=44560&category=456 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96591 | 267 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Just adding my two cents on the paraben debate. While I feel it's a personal decision whether to use products with parabens or not, one thing is not up for debate: parabens are cheap preservatives. Very cheap. So I'm a bit annoyed by companies that charge an arm and a leg for their wonderfully concocted products, only to find their choice of preservative to be a paraben. It tends to make me a bit skeptical about their other ingredient choices. I mean, is the formula really that amazing if you choose this route to preserve? Just saying. I expect that from a drugstore brand. Not a high end brand.
answered 2 months, 1 week ago
I try to stay away from products with parabens as well. This mask is totally amazing though, and I don't think that the amount of parabens in it are all that bad.
answered 3 months, 4 weeks ago
The big debate about parabens comes from a few years ago when they first started noticing that parabens were found in breast tissue samples from patients with breast cancer. Because of this people started to worry about them for the obvious reasons. However, they are in almost everything that our bodies come in contact with. Everything from skincare, makeup, laundry detergent, toothpaste, etc. the list goes on and on. They have done studies on the acute, subchronic, and chronic effects in rodents to find out exactly how bad they are for us. The studies indicate that parabens are practically non-toxic. Parabens are rapidly absorbed, metabolized, and excreted through the body. However, some studies do show that methylparaben when on the skin and exposed to UVA/UVB rays can increase photosensitivity and increase skins aging. Other studies show that this is only true under extreme conditions where excessive amounts of methylparaben are applied and UV exposure is at a constant high that isn't the common rate of exposure that we are exposed to every day. My point is that science still doesn't have a definitive answer regarding parabens but most scientists and doctors agree that in small amounts they are not bad. In short it's a matter of opinion wether or not you want to avoid them all together, but keep in mind that they are in so many products that we use in our daily life. A product like this that only is on the skin for 10-20 minutes isn't going to harm you, unless of course you are allergic to something else in the product. Hope this helps.
answered 4 months, 2 weeks ago
Parabens may not necessarily cause a bad reaction, but they are known carcinogens.
I wish Sephora would clarify that just because a product is "WITHOUT" some things, doesn't mean that what is in there is any better! | <urn:uuid:6a1adafd-8021-468e-8602-efc79c5790bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://answers.sephora.com/answers/8723/product/P375741/questions.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972263 | 589 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The following information was provided courtesy of Picasso's Basement LLC.
Picasso's Basement LLC is a new art enrichment program for all ages based in Fanwood NJ. Owner and Instructor Paula Cohen-Martin has been an illustrator for 20+ years and a mom who loves working with kids for 13+ years.
Paula has a BFA from Parson's School of Design, a Certificate of Eligibility to teach Art in New Jersey and has been running a home-based art program for 2 years.
She's excited to finally bring Picasso's Basement (which was literally run in a basement!) above ground and into the town park recreation buildings, schools, and homes.
Picasso's Basement is available for schools, kids and tween parties, senior groups, libraries, and scouting groups.
Paula's first two classes being offered through the Fanwood Recreation Department are "Make Your Own Comic Book" class and "Art That's Eco-Smart".
In the Comic Book Class the children will learn to create visual stories, put them in comic book format, get drawing instruction, ink like the professionals, and get their books printed by a real comic book publisher.
In Art That's Eco-Smart kids will learn the hip new art of upcycling, turning the everyday into the extraordinary and making incredible pieces from cereal boxes, detergent containers, cigar boxes, and more.
Classes start the first week of October and registration is going on right now through the Fanwood Borough website:http://www.fanwoodrecreation.org/programs-children/arts-crafts
Keep your eye out for more as Picasso's Basement adds an afternoon preschool class shortly.
For more information please call Paula at (908)889-7656. | <urn:uuid:7420b58e-cc40-4369-a72c-8e00893b29e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scotchplains.patch.com/articles/picasso-s-basement-art-classes-now-offered-through-fanwood-recreation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940053 | 368 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Courtesy of Jake Forsythe
Before you read this, you’ll need to get off your grumpy couch.
You off it? OK, please read on.
It seems that we Americans tend to spend a lot of time on that couch, despite all our advantages. That’s what local high-schoolers found after a life-changing experience in April with the impoverished people of Nairobi, Kenya. They returned to find their classmates to be a comparatively sullen bunch. The Kenyans, despite their lack of material wealth, were full of love and joy.
“The (Kenyan) kids taught me to be happier,” said Haley Cotageorge, a Durango High School senior-to-be. “Coming back to America, so many people were on their grumpy couch. They were just a mood killer. I just wanted to be happy.”
Four youths and trip leader Jake Forsythe gathered last week to discuss their spring break mission to Africa that included work at an orphanage and a school in the slums. The two-week trip was sponsored by Durango’s First United Methodist Church, for which Forsythe serves as equipping and missions director. The team included 12 youths – from Durango, Animas and Bayfield high schools – and eight adults.
The term “grumpy couch” comes from a song the students learned on kazoo just before the trip. The trip to Kenya energized them, underlined the simple basics of life, made them understand the importance of education. Their fellow students, meanwhile, just didn’t get it. They were unmotivated and apathetic, saying “I hate school” and were all about “gossip, gossip, gossip.”
“I feel like we got back, and our lives were changed,” said Carl Sallee, a recent DHS grad who will attend Seattle Pacific University this fall. “Whereas a lot of kids, if they went to Cancun or something, they got back, and they were the same people.”
“Only tanner,” said Cotageorge, eliciting laughter.
Durango’s First United Methodist has sent mission teams for the last four years to HOREC, an orphanage in Nairobi. This was the church’s first youth group to go. The orphanage serves kids younger than 18 whose parents died from AIDS.
Forsythe said, for the last two trips, the teams also have gone to the Spring Valley slum near Nairobi, where 20,000 live on a former dump site.
The students were eager to go to Kenya, but not quite sure how they’d be treated.
Mikayla Jeffryes, a senior-to-be at Durango High, said she expected weird looks and the people to not be welcoming.
“That’s definitely not how it was at all,” she said. “Everyone we met was so nice. They were so excited to talk to us. They were asking questions about America. It was very different than what I expected.”
Sallee said he pictured the people being downcast and lacking hope. “Once again, that wasn’t the case at all.”
U.S. residents may tend to derive happiness from material things. “The people in Africa weren’t obsessed with getting more stuff. They were peaceful and satisfied with what they had already,” Sallee said. “They were all even happier than people in America.”
Sierra Lillard, a recent DHS grad who will attend the University of Colorado-Boulder this fall, said group members were constantly on the go.
They built a patio with pavestones at the orphanage. They played with the kids. They made necklaces of beads. They brought little pedal-less bikes for the kids to ride, as well as kickballs, soccer balls and a parachute.
In a short time, they’d established close ties with the kids there.
An example: The Kenyan kids heard the Americans singing “La Bamba,” and became obsessed with the song. They asked Lillard “100 times” to sing it for them, though it’s not even in English.
“Then the song got stuck in their heads,” Lillard said.
By the end of the trip, they’d walk by and hear even the smallest kids singing, “Da-da da-da da-da-da.”
Kenya’s wealth is not well-distributed. It’s hogged by those few in power. You see this in the Spring Valley slum, the students said, where dirt roads littered with trash and sewage connect tiny corrugated-metal houses that nearly touch.
The 20 Colorado visitors divided into three groups one day to deliver food baskets in the slum. Often, not all the group could fit in the homes. Forsythe said the extreme poverty was eye-opening to the youths.
“Compared to us, they don’t have really anything except each other and prayer,” Cotageorge said. “And they’re just so happy. It’s kind of amazing to see that.”
The visit was an even trade, Sallee figures.
“They need the physical sustenance more than we do,” Sallee said. “But I got the feeling from this trip that we needed the spiritual and emotional sustenance that they are full of.”
When asked if they had second thoughts about their choice of spring break vacations, they all instantly answered “no.” And all would love to go back.
The students suffered from the heat, from the substandard food, from the trickle of water coming out of the shower.
But whatever it was that the 12 youths and eight adults acquired from the trip, it definitely got them off the grumpy couch.
firstname.lastname@example.org. John Peel writes a weekly human-interest column. | <urn:uuid:79310b1f-2c3b-44d2-a4a4-dc620b6cb551> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://durangoherald.com/article/20120709/COLUMNISTS04/707099922/0/Lifestyle05 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980975 | 1,298 | 1.78125 | 2 |
My read is that it is likely that Fukushima is going to get seriously worse . It has the potential to make Chernobyl look minor in comparison. I hope I am wrong but the article I recently sent out about “What they are covering up at Fukushima” and the article below point to dire global consequences.
Published on Thursday, March 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Fukushima Radiation: Some Difficult Truths
by Ritt Goldstein
As radiation counts elevate in Japan, news of nuclear contamination spreading across a widening spectrum of life and its necessities, official pronouncements continue to play down events’ gravity. While some have questioned whether this is being pursued to promote calm, or perhaps the nuclear industry, the result has left many either skeptical of official claims or simply reassured by them. It seems time for some difficult facts.
Reports of false ‘nuclear rain’ warnings have made it to the news; but, just recently, so did valid rain warnings from local Japanese officials. And during the Chernobyl accident radioactive rain did occur, particularly striking some areas in Sweden.
Continue reading at Japan Nuke Global consequences | <urn:uuid:243cacd9-b414-4cf0-8483-fb162e713881> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/atomicage/2011/04/04/japan-nuke-global-consequences-via-malu-aina-center-for-non-violent-education-and-action/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95334 | 232 | 1.773438 | 2 |
- V. to have sex with, to "give it up"; usually used for a girl having sex with a guy and not vice versa.
Did you hear she's going to serve him Friday night?
Last edited on Jan 25 2000. Submitted by Beth from Knoxville, TN, USA
on Jan 25 2000.
- To look good.
I was serving at the party.
Last edited on Feb 01 2003. Submitted by Asia W. from Washington, DC, USA
on Feb 01 2003.
- to lose something and become offended.
You just got served sucka!
Last edited on May 17 2011. Submitted by Nick H. from Baldwinsville, NY, USA
on Nov 21 2004.
- to beat someone in a dance-off or dance competition
Last edited on Feb 07 2010. Submitted by Anonymous
on Feb 07 2010. | <urn:uuid:6f54eab3-4de2-4f24-9280-d524514f582d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlineslangdictionary.com/by-date/2004-11-21 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951461 | 184 | 1.632813 | 2 |
FLORENCE, Italy — After presiding over an early morning funeral, Izzedin Elzir stopped by his leather jacket stall at Florence's bustling San Lorenzo market.
As the 35-year-old Muslim imam and former fashion student held up various styles for passing tourists, he explained how the cut and color people choose depends somewhat on their nationality, but more on their age.
"Young women want a fashionable jacket, something short, sporty but elegant; instead, older women look for a softer, more comfortable jacket, and they often want a particular color — like red."
Although Elzir specialized in designing women's underwear, he has come to know the jacket trade inside-out.
"Thanks to God, business is going pretty well," he said earlier this month, as he sat in his office at Florence's first mosque, a hall in a former commercial property a short walk from the city's famous cathedral, the Duomo.
'An Islamic contribution to fashion'
Elzir, married and a father of two, is an example of the diversified walks of life the country’s growing number of imams.
Born and raised in the Palestinian city of Hebron, Elzir wanted to pursue a career in fashion after graduating from high school, but was uncertain about the decision.
“I was afraid that studying fashion could contradict my faith,” he said.
“I asked various Islamic scholars and they told me that absolutely wasn’t the case; they said fashion is a part of our lives, and in studying it we should try to give an Islamic contribution to fashion; and from that moment, I decided to come here."
The use of Islamic geometric patterns would be an example of Muslim influenced design, he said, adding that hijab-style veils have also appeared on the catwalk recently, fusing Eastern and Western clothing norms.
Elzir arrived in Florence in 1991 with the economic strategy to study here and use his acquired Italian expertise to open a boutique in his Arab homeland.
At the Italian Academy of Fashion and Design, he studied general men’s and women’s fashion for two years, and in his final year focussed on designing women’s underwear.
“The Muslim woman wears a veil, but at her house and under her veil and clothes, she wears Western underwear,” he said.
“I did some market research and found that the Muslim woman spends a lot of money on her intimate clothes because she wears them for her husband, to show off her beauty to him, and for herself too,” Elzir said.
Based on the profit he foresaw, Elzir decided that his future Palestinian boutique would be dedicated to women's underwear.
But, both his work and his religious life led him in another direction.
Florence's first mosque is born
“During my studies, I had a two-month holiday and I decided to stay in Florence and work, so I worked in the market," he said.
Wrapped around the Basilica of the same name, and adjacent to the enclosed central food market, the San Lorenzo market is well known for its leather jackets.
“I saw that there was the opportunity to develop this work, and I got this stand with a few friends," he said.
With a steady flow of American, Japanese, and European tourists hunting for high quality, Italian-made jackets at reasonable prices, his decision has proved profitable.
At the same time, Elzir and a group of around 20 students and workers, all immigrants from across the Islamic world, decided that the city’s nascent Muslim community needed a place to gather and pray.
“With those 20 people, the first mosque in Florence was born in 1991,” he said.
“Over time this mosque has grown, and now more than 600 people come to Friday prayers.”
Every three years, the Islamic Community of Florence and Tuscany elects a “parliament” of 21 people. The leaders then choose a president who also serves as imam. Elzir was first elected to this position in 1992 and has been reconfirmed over the years.
The mosque, which looks like an old storefront from its entrance on Via Borgo Allegri, is no longer large enough to accommodate the Muslim immigrants arriving from Morocco, Tunisia, across the Middle East, Africa, and Albania, as well as Italian converts and second-generation Muslims. During Friday services, many of the faithful must stand in the entrance way and even outside to pray.
Elzir is working with the local government to plan the construction of a larger, purpose built mosque, and hopes to know where it can be built within a year.
In addition to leading prayers, and presiding over marriages, divorces, funerals, and religious events for the Muslim community, he believes that the “imam’s role is to work for society’s peaceful coexistence.”
He has signed and promoted a pact against terrorism, and in speaking to Muslims as well as Jews, Catholics, Buddhists, and lay Italians at interfaith meetings, he said he urges them all to “understand that there isn’t a conflict" between Islam and other beliefs.
While he has seen few instances of discrimination against Muslims in his community, he said that integration would be much easier if the Italian government changed two laws.
Elzir would like Islam recognized as an official religion, and children born in Italy to receive Italian citizenship at birth. Children of immigrants cannot currently receive Italian citizenship until they turn 18.
"Muslims in America are better integrated in society," he said, speaking about a conference he recently attended in the New York.
"I really liked hearing them say: 'We are Muslim Americans,' and this is really important because it shows that they really feel American," he said.
"We in Europe are still working to arrive at this point," Elzir said, adding that even if he tells his children that they are Italian, they actually are not, and it therefore keeps them "on the margins of society."
With a Jordanian-born wife, a 6-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son, and all of his duties as imam, Elzir has had to limit his eye for fashion to altering jacket designs.
“But, opening a women’s underwear boutique in Palestine remains my dream for the future,” he said.
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints | <urn:uuid:a742e783-e8b2-4a61-b9bb-c596291b56f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12928327/ns/world_news-islam_in_europe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984578 | 1,360 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The Master of Science in Environmental Management is designed for graduate students and working professionals who seek or hold careers in the environmental field. HOW TO APPLYINFO MEETINGSREQUEST INFO
The goal of this science-based, management program is to enhance and broaden the skills and knowledge necessary to meet the demands and changes of the environmental marketplace - in industry, government and public agencies, nonprofit and non-governmental organizations and the consulting sector.
The University of San Francisco founded its Master of Science in Environmental Management program nearly 35 years ago. Since then, over 700 graduates have received quality education and training as environmental managers from the program and have established a wide variety of environmental careers at organizations in the United States and throughout the world.
The program is offered at USF's main campus in San Francisco. | <urn:uuid:ce1c8c98-82f8-4751-959a-814b76434c44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usfca.edu/artsci/msem/ | 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 | 0.947062 | 161 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Interview With A Daily Wage Earner Turned Crorepati
March 10, 2013 Leave a comment
You can read the original interview here.
Here is the blueprint the illiterate man used to accumulate his fortune:
1.Ten years ago he was a daily wage worker making 30-60 rupees a day and looking to improve his lot.
2.One day he took a break and thought over what he was going to do to improve his financial situation and live a better life.
3.He understood he had to find a way to increase his income,save more,create wealth and acquire income producing assets.
4.Now he had a plan and took a month to convince his wife to participate.
5.They open a small business and increase income.
7.They focus on doing better in business and increase savings.
8.They start investing in chits and increase the number of subscriptions they make as the business grows.
9.They then use their chit savings to buy a house to live in and save on rent.
10.They buy a few low cost residential plots in areas with good potential for appreciation by taking small loans.
11.His residential property value grew by almost 5-6 times. The value of 2 residential plots which he purchased grew almost 10 to 12 times. Now, he gets a rental income between Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 55,000 per month from all these properties.
12.He continues to operate his small business and his income is increasing year on year.
His message to readers: “I am not a big person to give any message. But surely, I would advice a few things which every one thinks they know it. Increase income, save money and invest wisely. You may not see such high boom in real estate in future, but definitely investment in real estate is good for long term investment. The only asset which can generate fixed income and capital appreciation is investment in real estate”. | <urn:uuid:951c9aac-2c3a-4bb8-b3c5-f147d8036ae1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wealthymatters.com/2013/03/10/interview-with-a-daily-wage-earner-turned-crorepati/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977146 | 405 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Sir,-Thec medical view is that in- ebriates are not criminals, but are very sick patients, who require urgent medi-
Ninety-five per cent of all drinkers are social drinkers, who present no special medical or criminal problem. The remaining 5 per cent, are problem drink- ers, many of whom, especially returned soldiers, are suffering from various types of psychiatric illness. Their treatment is a psychiatric problem.
The first essential in treatment is a psychiatric diagnosis of their condition, for which purpose special alcoholic clinics have been established in many countries.
An essential part of these clinics is a hospital for the treatment of acute cases. The treatment has become so skilful that, for example, the Royal Navy expects a sailor wilh delirium tremens to be back on duty within three days from the onset of his symptoms. Such treatment con- trasts too sharply with the most unsatis- factory treatment of these patients in the Australian prisons and mental hos- pitals.
On recovery from the acute attack after- care treatment by Alcoholics Anonymous and social workers is imperative. In this country, most of these patients are so depressed by their prison and mental hospital experience that they find it im- possible to make the grade alone. Most of them are destitute with nearly every- thing they own in pawn. They require some assistance (which should rarely take the form of cash) for a week or two until they can get on their feet.
Despite all efforts at reform, many inebriates, either from choice or because "they are too far gone," are incurable. Prolonged periods of detention in men- tal hospitals and gaols have failed com- pletely to improve them. The farm pro- posal of the Rev. Robson would have the advantage of making them self-sup- porting and would be such a vast im- provement on present methods that it should be given a trial.
Letters on the subject demonstrate how many organisations are concerned with inebriates. Instead of each organisalion tackling the subject individually with no reference to the others, each body should pool its knowledge and experiences, and send representatives to one central body. Then and then only can a true and com- posite picture of the problem of alcoholism be obtained. Such a central body would work just as successfully here as it does
in England and America. | <urn:uuid:88e0fc66-1eed-41ca-9ef7-11ce28781b0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17978713 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963511 | 490 | 1.773438 | 2 |
With this new feature you can share the joomla files and folders to create totally independent web sites.
This simply the maintenance of Joomla as you have only one instance to update for all the websites.
With JMS you can create website based on website template to create new slave site.
A "maintenance" functionality is also provided to help supervising the extension installed in each website with their datamodel and help you fix the potential datamodel errors.
As each website has its own joomla configuration.
You can decide to use:
- One database for all the websites. In this case, you must specify different database table prefix for each websites.
- Two databases (One master database and One slave database). This architecture is advised when you want to install JMS on an existing website and you are limited in the number of databases you can create (or disk space).
- As many databases than there are websites. This is the most flexible architecture where each websites works with its own database. This is generally the architecture adopted by joomla when you create multiple websites.
The content of each website is totally independent. This means that the content (articles, news, forum, users, ...) are NOT shared.
The setup of each configuration site consists in using the standard joomla installation mechanism.
In the administration of a 'Slave' site, you can re-install/uninstall extension previously installed on the 'Master' site.
The 'Master' site is the one where you have installed the Joomla MultiSite component and where you manage the 'Slave' sites.
Additional controls are performed during the installation/uninstallation of an extension in a 'slave' site.
Before executing the standard joomla installation, it is verified that the extension you request to install has exactly the same name and same version number to avoid inconsistency between all sites.
This additional control is performed to ensure that you will overwrite the current installation with identical files that you originally installed.
On 'slave' site, uninstalling an extension consists in a joomla standard cleanup of the database. The files present on disk for this extension is not deleted to avoid disturb the other sites.
You can also replicate a website into the same database or in different DB to avoid re-installing the extension in each slave site.
On Unix platform, it is also possible to deploy a slave site into a specific folder.
You can also share user and share the content of a limited number of extensions.
The Good: It seems to be a powerful extension. It preforms as described. I received a quick response on the forum to a specific issue.
The Bad: It's very expensive, almost $80 USD. This is not for beginners or even intermediate users, it has a steep learning curve. I would say I am a 6 out of 10 in terms of joomla skill level, and I found it somewhat difficult to get fully operational. After 10-12 hours of working with the extension and watching tutorial videos, it does perform as described.
First, in the process of adding the subsites, in following the tutorial (http://www.jms2win.com/en/tutorial#jms12x-0d) it randomly blew out my main user for the master site and I had to recover that in the midst of me adding this module.
I had to add this module back into Joomla 3 times in the process of adding 6 sub-sites, I haven't added the information I need for the pages for each sub-site, I am hoping that it doesn't blow out again, will update when that is complete.
It is not difficult to set up and use, at least on the basic way I used it today. I had one existing master site and added 6 sub-sites at least the shell, and need to add back in components and pages that I have backed up to make them work accordingly.
The best way to describe this component is hinky...or buggy. I emailed Edwin and he suggested I pay for support, or check the forums. I am pretty sure I brought a few bugs to his attention from his code and he suggested I pay him more.
If you need this it does seem to work to some extent but its buggy, at least in 1.5. We will see what happens when each sub site is complete and if we can link everything up. It seems, this is the only solution to this issue, so hopefully Edwin will take some constructive criticism and fix the disappearing act that his module does randomly and work out the kinks.
This product is very complex and affects large parts of the Joomla Core. Therefor i recommend you to read the documentation before you get to work.
Again, great component!
Very professional sir not only do you have a great product but also the personality and commitment to excellence as well...keep it up!!!
My advise for everyone who starts with this component is: don't try to figure it out for yourself. Don't even bother to read the manual. Go directly to the Video Tutorials on the JMS website. Edwin does an outstanding job in showing multiple JMS cases.
The component does exactly what it should do and after a few tries I began to see the logic of it all.
If there is one thing to improve, it could be the addition of some kind of wizzard.
I also would like to thank Edwin for his fast replies to my questions and compliment him for creating a component that actually works very great.
I must, however, apologize to Edwin for being so slow in submitting this review.
I saw a post that said it took more than 18 hours to configure with no luck. For me it took about 30 minutes to an hour to stumble around the component which is very nicely written to figure out what I was try to do. It might have went faster if I would have taken the time to review the video that gives step by step instruction. The component offers some very useful tool tips that makes the configuration very easy.
I tried to push this component to do multi sites via SSL which was a bit of a challenge because of limitations in Apache and Cpanel. I submitted a request to the developer for an hour of help which was well worth its cost he quickly responded and setup a remote session with me where we were able to find a solution which was not really directly related to Joomla Multisite. Edwin took the time to help me find a solution to a complex problem and also took the time to make sure my Joomla Multisite site configuration was correct.
I would highly recommend this component to anyone looking for a solution to deploy multi sites with a master site this program is top notch.
The time that it takes to deploy a new slave site is worth more than 50 times the cost of the license.
Actually, once I learned how everything works, I find it the product designed magnificently. They made it very easy to update the extension (which is often neccessary, once you update your Joomla core). Setting up new sites is also very easy, once you have learned the proper configuration.
I like to point out, that the support is incredibly fast. Be prepared, that you might have to ask the forum once or twice during your learning experience, but support will come fast.
To sum up, if you are willing to invest a couple of hours of learning and a little trial and error, then this extension provides some great functionality for you.
Having said that, I cannot experience that for myself. This extension requires much understanding that you should confirm you have prior to purchase. I suggest you spend time looking through the forums and reading docs.
I can definitely understand why this extension has no free trial. If it did, most would never result in purchase. I have worked for approximately 18 hours on this one extension and still no closer to making it work for me. The developer assumes a level of understanding in his responses that most people will not have.
The support is forum based only. In my several posts, no users have made an attempt at helping but the developer does respond typically within about 20 hours. Unfortunately, his responses are almost verbatim from the docs and/or point to said docs rather than offer a more simplistic explanation.
The warning I give is just that this is not an out-of-the-box extension. It will require a great deal of learning for most users.
I had a number of presales questions as well as custom one-off requests, and was introduced to Edwin, who shared his insight and answered all of my questions. After feeling completely comfortable with the product and Edwin's timely support/responses, I purchased the full product, Menu and Article mods and began development.
I did run into one Symbolic Link issue working with YooTheme templates, which I shared with Edwin. He was able to troubleshoot, isolate and develop a solution to solve YooTheme’s problem – not his own product limitation. Finding anyone today who is willing to go out of their way to solve a 3rd party issue, is rare. Because of his willingness and support, my project was able to move forward.
Edwin is an amazing developer and provides exceptional support, and Jms2win is an outstanding product, that I would recommend to anyone! | <urn:uuid:82942a8e-c68f-4bcc-864c-67d1fc17de29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/core-enhancements/multiple-sites/5550/reviews2 | 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 | 0.969177 | 1,932 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Along the riverbanks of Rhine and in the midst of the Rheinland forest, sits the ancient fortified castle of Stromburg turned luxury hotel and restaurant. Husband and wife team Sylvia and Johann Lafer, both celebrated chefs, turned the ancient premises into a place of warm luxury and a respected gastronomic destination. To get the castle, guests pass by a 15-minute scenic drive through the Bingen forest. The interiors of the castle are rooted in tradition but provide all the luxurious comforts of a modern hotel. The restaurant serves one of the finest cuisines in the region and is well acclaimed throughout Europe.
A household name in Germany, Chef Johann Lafer pioneered cooking shows in Germany and most of his shows are filmed and produced in the castle. He is frequently shown on German television and is one of the country’s first celebrity chefs. His philosophy revolves around the use of high quality, fresh produce, and noble ingredients with origins that can be traced from production to the very moment it gets to his kitchen. Chef Lafer draws inspiration from tradition and the countryside and is influence by French, Italian, Mediterranean, and Asian cooking. Typically, the product itself is what gets Chef Laher’s imagination going. He believes that besides the flavor and the texture, the terroir itself is what makes the product unique and from there, one can take a journey of the senses.
Some of his specialties include Larded liver served on a rosette of caramelized apples, Roe buck fillet cooked in Indes-verbana vapour, Stuffed mushrooms with bilberries and glazed chestnuts, and the famous Tête de nêgre.
The convergence of tradition and history, the fortified castles, the vineyards, all make of the Rhine banks such a wonderful region. Nowadays, it is The German Embassy in Paris, which appeals to Chef Johann Lafer and calls upon his services to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Berlin Wall Fall. | <urn:uuid:9b0f559f-bfaf-4f80-ad75-8f8962b4b432> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gourmandia.com/lifestyle_travel_tv_video_clip_trailers/stromburg-stromberg-germany- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951808 | 407 | 1.601563 | 2 |
LONDON — Saudi Arabia will send two female athletes to the London Olympics, ending the ultraconservative Muslim country’s record of fielding only all-male teams at the games.
The decision, announced today by the IOC, means every country competing in London will include women athletes for the first time in Olympic history.
The two female Saudi competitors are judo athlete Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani and 800-meter runner Sarah Attar.
The athletes, who were invited by the International Olympic Committee, were entered by the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee by the July 9 deadline.
“This is very positive news and we will be delighted to welcome these two athletes in London in a few weeks time,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said in a statement.
Qatar and Brunei, two other countries that have never sent any female athletes to the Olympics, are also including women on their teams for the London Games.
“With Saudi Arabian female athletes now joining their fellow female competitors from Qatar and Brunei, it means that by London 2012 every national Olympic committee will have sent women to the Olympic Games,” Rogge said.
About 10,500 athletes are expected to compete in London, representing more than 200 national Olympic committees.
Saudi Arabia has been under pressure from the IOC and human-rights groups to include women athletes. The IOC has been in negotiations with the Saudis for months on securing the participation of women. | <urn:uuid:bb81f5f9-bfb4-465e-aba8-dd07c5ee77bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2012-07-12/saudia-arabia-send-two-female-athletes-london-olympics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965703 | 298 | 1.617188 | 2 |
VITORIA-GASTEIZ.- This show contains two exhibitions with the same time. One is linked to the other; there is a dialogue between them and, at the same time, with the spectator, immersed in a permanent reflection about himself/herself and about the times in which we are living. At first sight, it is clear that this is a photography exhibition, a discipline which is of great relevance today and which plays an essential role in almost every aspect of our lives: from biographical and autobiographical works to an in-depth knowledge of social, cultural and political events. But the aim of this exhibition is also to reflect upon concepts such as the author and his/her rights, the original, the copy and replica or the large number of considerations raised by advances in technologies.
It seems that the ability to freeze time and to see this frozen by others is especially attractive to those of us who form part of society. It seems also that the amalgam of events in movement that overwhelm us, preventing us from seeing things clearly, to feel the stillness, the moment frozen in time, the fixed expression, gives us the time we need to try and understand ourselves; to draw at least one conclusion, in short, to imagine that we have sufficient time to see the world at such low speed that it seems to be at a standstill, as in these photographs. For that reason, this exhibition is arranged around the idea of a zoom effect in which human beings are the main players, the key to all our questions. From the close up of faces, where we can still find, according to Walter Benjamin, the last traces of the aura, the experience of the artist, collected like a unique fetish object and which the development of technology has diluted through recollection and multiplication, gradually zooming away from the human being, his actions and the effects these have on his environment, until, in a perfectly vicious circle, we arrive at the electrical and mysterious auras of the Kirlian camera.
We accept that the necessary loss of the almost religious aura of the artistic object due to technological development is inevitable and necessary, and here we enter the second level of this exhibition, as the benefits of universal access to arts, the alleged democratisation of aesthetic enjoyment and the disappearance of creative limits have given rise, as corresponds to the technological revolution of the last two centuries, to intense debates about concepts that had been sacred and immutable until then. The aim, therefore, of this exhibition, is to reflect upon concepts such as the author and his/her rights, the original, the copy and replica or the large number of considerations raised by advances in genetic engineering. We will also attempt to tackle allegories that speak to us of infinite possibilities aborted by marketing mechanisms, of the museum replicated as a result of the replicated art it contains (and the other way around too), in short, we attempt to face up to the intense conceptual conflict in which the world of the last arts and, as a consequence, society itself is immersed. For this reason, the exhibition is full of references that we hope will not conceal, in the end, the enjoyment afforded by the photographic works of our times.
You can read here a story that was the first approach to the project created for this exhibition and should therefore be read as a sketch highlighting some of its more interesting features. Like all good sketches, it contains finished parts and others that are incomplete and missing later contributions. Nevertheless, we consider it interesting for the spectator to imagine the process of planning an exhibition. | <urn:uuid:ef00615c-4108-4fac-9aa2-69d553d1a083> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=25728&int_modo=2 | 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 | 0.970423 | 715 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Many bosses will say that you can't staff for the what if? Most store managers will staff for the number of customers they had a year ago on this date. If it's a holiday coming up, they look at the stats from the year before and stock and staff accordingly. In the hospital you can't do that -- but they still do.
In the hospital you should always staff a minimum number of OB nurses, a minimum number of CCU nurses, a certain number of floor nurses, a certain number of ER nurses, a minimum number of lab techs, a certain number of x-ray techs, a certain number of doctors, and a certain number of respiratory therapists. This is simply the cost of doing business.
Sure some days, many days, people will be sitting around. But when the patient comes in, you need coverage. It's a law suit waiting to happen if you are not properly staffed. And, to be honest, this is the type of thing hospitals should be paying for, not therapies that are only done so the hospital can make money.
Think about it. It's common sense. Hospitals that staff properly have happier staff. Hospitals that have a happier staff make happy patients. It's a win-wins -- staffing for the what if, that is. | <urn:uuid:d8875484-8645-440e-a2d4-3e6cd6596543> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://respiratorytherapycave.blogspot.com/2013/03/can-you-staff-for-what-if.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956173 | 266 | 1.539063 | 2 |
BIG BAY - Workers at the Kennecott Eagle Mine in Michigamme Township contained and cleaned up a spill of roughly 100 gallons of hydrochloric acid this morning, which leaked from a faulty valve into a containment area.
The incident occurred in an isolated storage area of the nickel and copper mine's water treatment plant, where chemicals used in the water treatment process, including the hydrochloric acid, are stored.
Kennecott officials said no injuries were reported. As a precaution, a dozen workers were evacuated from the mine's underground facilities and another two to four employees were removed from the water treatment plant.
"Our team responded promptly and our environmental safeguards worked properly to protect the environment," said Kennecott President Adam Burley.
The leak was detected by workers at about 5 a.m. and the acid was immediately contained within the sealed area. The acid was neutralized with another chemical and was cleaned up by 1 p.m., according to Kennecott.
Powell Township Fire Department personnel were on site standing by as a precaution.
Kennecott Communications and Media Relations Advisor Dan Blondeau said because of the relatively small size of the spill, estimated at 75 to 100 gallons, and because it occurred in an area designed to capture leaks, the spill is not required to be reported to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.But Blondeau said Kennecott planned to inform the agency anyway.
"Any spill, any leak is serious," Blondeau said. "But with precautions in place, the system did what it was supposed to do."
Because the leak occurred in the contained area, mine officials were "not overly concerned" about potential environmental damage, Blondeau said.
The container for the acid has a detection system to alert workers to leaks.
Blondeau said the mine's employees discovered the spill independently.
Kennecott officials said the neutralized acid will be returned to the water treatment system.
Blondeau said this was the first spill to occur at the Eagle Mine or Kennecott's Humboldt Mill. | <urn:uuid:f5d370cf-4e78-4f08-873d-6055428f89a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miningjournal.net/page/content.detail/id/577570/Acid-spill-contained-at-Eagle-Mi---.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974033 | 428 | 1.640625 | 2 |
David C. Noelle, Garrison W. Cottrell
Humans improve their performance by means of a variety of learning strategies, including both gradual statistical induction from experience and rapid incorporation of advice. In many learning environments, these strategies may interact in complementary ways. The focus of this work is on cognitively plausible models of multistrategy learning involving the integration of inductive generalization and learning "by being told." Such models might be developed by starting with an architecture for which advice taking is relatively easy, such as one based upon a sentential knowledge representation, and subsequently adding some form of inductive learning mechanism. Alternatively, such models might be grounded in a statistical learning framework appropriately extended to operationalize instruction. This latter approach is taken here. Specifically, connectionist back-propagation networks are made to instantaneously modify their behavior in response to quasi-linguistic advice. | <urn:uuid:c8200fbb-445b-429a-a78b-57001178d186> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aaai.org/Library/AAAI/1994/aaai94-275.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958531 | 179 | 1.773438 | 2 |
My ratings yielded the following:
- 1 star: 0 books
- 2 stars: 1 book
- 3 stars: 9 books
- 4 stars: 29 books
- 5 stars: 13 books
I thought I would list the 13 books that I gave five stars, starting with my favorite and working down.
- 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Ed by Matthew S Gast: A first-rate technical book that dispels myths by speaking authoritatively and comprehensively.
- Running IPv6 by Iljitsch-van-Beijnum: A close second, this book nicely describes IPv6 in a practical manner.
- Protect Your Windows Network by Jesper M. Johansson and Steve Riley: Yes, really -- a "Windows" book! This book is amazing because the security principles within apply to any platform.
- The Debian System by Martin F. Krafft: I would love to see a book like this written for FreeBSD.
- PGP-GPG by Michael Lucas: This book should be given to anyone who needs to use PGP or GPG, before they create their first key!
- IPv6 Essentials, 2nd Ed by Sylvia Hagen: This book is the perfect companion for the previous IPv6 book, because this title is mostly IPv6 formats and theory.
- Software Security by Gary McGraw: Of the six books I read this year on building secure software, this was my favorite and the only five-star recipient.
- Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, 2nd Ed by Mike Shema, Joel Scambray, and Caleb Sima: I liked this book because it is a thorough update of the 1st Ed, and it covers the subject very well. It still won't win over all you HE-bashers out there. (You know who you are.)
- Apache Security by Ivan Ristic: This is the best book on Apache security, and a good introduction to Web attacks as well.
- Phishing Exposed by Lance James: I liked this book because it seemed to extend the boundaries of knowledge regarding phishing, and not just rehash old attacks.
- File System Forensic Analysis by Brian Carrier: If you do any sort of host-centric forensics, this book is a must-have.
- Pro Nagios 2.0 by James Turnbull: The best Nagios book, thus far.
- Skype Me! by Michael Gough: Wow, I gave a Skype book five stars? It was very well-written.
I have more than 30 books sitting on my shelf waiting to be read now, and another 40 plus books on my Amazon.com Wish List. I've assigned priority values to the Wish List based on projected publication date. In other words, books that are already on shelves or due soon are rated "Highest." Books arriving next year, for example, are rated "lowest."
If you find my reviews helpful, please rate them as such at Amazon.com. I look forward to hitting the 4000 mark for "Helpful Votes" in 2007. I hit 1500 three years ago and 3000 at the beginning of 2006. Since I am not paid for my reviews I appreciate any indication that they are helpful. Thank you. | <urn:uuid:e57acaea-c449-4e82-b559-ad4e1436988f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.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 | 0.937478 | 671 | 1.507813 | 2 |
I've been thinking about Michel Sanner's
ViPEr system. It's a
visual dataflow system for structural biology, akin in some repects to
general purpose tools like
Data Explorer or domain
specific tools like
for chemistry. I started from a point of skepticism and it seems I'm
Visual dataflow programming
I first got interested in dataflow systems back in college. I remember talking to one of my professors about it, and I tried sketching out on paper possible ways to make it work, but I never managed to get good control flow in the system. It turns out there are ways to do it, but they end up looking rather complicated.
I played around with IBM's Data Explorer a bit in the mid-90s. Cornell Theory Center had an add-in package for doing structure visualization. I went there for a two-day workshop with Dorina, another grad student in the group. She's not a programmer but she can write scripts. She was able to make some very nice depictions that I couldn't touch with VMD. The main reason was the support for constructive solid geometry, which is rare for structure programs but pretty common in other tools, but part of it was the ease of changing the dataflow.
(There was an interesting demo at the CRBM workshop showing that CSG really should be more common in structure visualization codes.)
Afterwards I looked for free codes for data-flow coding. The only one at the time was Khorus, then at UNM and now distributed through a company. It was designed for visualizations which can be done on an array, like 2D images and 3d fluid flows, and couldn't easily support data structures appropriate to molecules. (Michel says it's still that way.)
Data Explorer went open source around 1998/1999 and I looked at it a bit; got it to compile under IRIX and looked at the docs. I didn't have anything to test it out on so that's where I stopped.
I also read some reports of people who used dataflow systems. One striking critique was the difficulty in scaling. A small system is easy to understand. When there's only a few nodes - those built during demos - then it's easy to see what's going on. When a system gets large there are a few problems: it's hard to distinguish the transformation nodes, the connection lines dominate the canvas, and the graph simply gets too large to display on a single canvas.
There are solutions, or perhaps just workarounds, for these. Each node could be given a distinct shape, making it easier to see. Pipeline Pilot does this - it looks like they paid a decent graphical designer for their nodes. When the graph gets too large, a subgraph can be collapsed into a single node, much like a function. (But what shape is the new node? How can be be made distinctive?) This also reduces the number of lines in the system, except that if a subgraph can be collapsed into a node then there weren't many overlaps between the internal connections and the external ones.
When the graph gets larger the layout algorithms for the connections become more complex. As I recall, Data Explorer reused algorithms from circuit layouts, to try and reduce overlaps, but I still needed to tweak them to make them easier to understand. Another solution is to use transmitter/receiver nodes to connect regions even on different canvases without laying out a line between them. This helps make module-like systems, but not really. Also, if the canvas is scaled large enough to see everything at once then it's hard to make everything out and if you've zoomed in close enough then you look track of what's in the connections which came in from out of screen.
There are other problems too, like standardizing how certain things are arranged. You can think of this as making the transition from spaghetti code to structured code. Indeed, many of these complaints above have parallels to textual programming.
You could also argue that there are large-scale data-flow based systems; circuits. My Dad did video broadcast engineering and could look at a circuit board and tell what the different parts did, just because of the standard way things were arranged and how they looked. He designed studio layouts by drawing nodes and connecting them with lines; originally on a sheet of paper and later using AutoCAD.
These are both suggestive, but I think that's as far as it goes. Even in the first few years of computer languages, people were able to write interesting programs. I know there's been decades of work on visual programming languages, and believe that if they were good for programming then people would be using them for some tasks; if only from sheer obstinacy.
I take that back. In looking up research in visual programming and workflows, I came across an undergrad review paper which concludes:
Despite the move toward graphical displays and interactions embodied by VPLs, a survey of the field quickly shows that it is not worthwhile to eschew text entirely. While many VPLs could represent all aspects of a program visually, such programs are generally harder to read and work with than those that use text for labels and some atomic operations. For example, although an operation like addition can be represented graphically in VIPR, doing so results in a rather dense, cluttered display. On the other hand, using text to represent such an atomic operation produces a less complicated display without losing the overall visual metaphor.You might also be interested in some comments on the Joel on software site.
Michel's point though is that people don't need to or even want to learn to program, so that iniability to "represent all aspects of a program visually" isn't a problem. Why introduce something with the complexities needed for general programming?
I think that's an interesting viewpoint, but I don't know how realistic it is. There are ways to introduce people to simple programming, as with people who enter things in Excel, then write formulas, then write simple VB functions. This has the advantage that it doesn't dead-end like dataflow systems seem to do.
The dataflow user interface is also quite different than most apps people use. In a normal UI you see the controls and some indicators of how they related, perhaps from grouping or some sort of high-level schematic. The innards are one big black box. With a dataflow system, you change parameters by editing nodes in the network. You can directly see the way those fields iteract. The black box has transparent walls. Is seeing that detail really helpful? Perhaps, but I'm not convinced. (I can think of a system where the nodes can be dragged into a GUI builder, which might help.)
I also believe most people who can't program do know someone who can help configure systems, write macros, etc.. This might be another graduate student, a coworker, or technical support staff. (I've been all of these. :) This doesn't mean a programmer; there are plenty of places which have the house expert for making Excel macros but who isn't a software developer. So I don't think the lack of programming skills in a given user is necessarily a problem.
But visual programming does appear tantalizing for some domains. It seems to work best when it's strongly data-flow oriented, with only a a few different data types but many possible transformations yet where only a few (a dozen or two) transformations are used at a time. Image analysis is the most obvious one, and most of the standard dataflow applications have libraries for that.
The question though is the appropriateness of this paradigm for chemistry or biology. I've seen several data-flow/pipeline projects for bioinformatics, which has many similarities to the style of analyzes in chemical informatics. One is Piper, from bioinformatics.org, which started in 1998 but is now discontinued.
When I was at ISMB in Edmonton a couple years ago, I saw several different companies with dataflow products for bioinformatics. I picked up the literature, and I'm leafing through them now. Let's see:
- Übertool from science-factory.com - web site now says "... discontinue its operations as of August 31, 2003 due to insufficient funding and the inability to attract new investors". Too bad. I rather liked this one. It looked pretty and implemented quite a few algorithms.
- Hyperthesis in gRNA from Helixense - doesn't seem to have done much since ISMB 2002, according to their web site. At the conference they said they had 23 employees then, so I'm suspecting they aren't doing well. Oh, and they used Jython underneath.
When I think about the topic some more, I realize that the style of doing analyzes in chemical and bio- informatics are really not all that different than other fields, at least when expressed in a visual progamming style. This sugggests that if it's useful then there should be more generic libraries for this, both open-source and proprietary. I've been looking around and I can find very few. Freshmeat told me about Taverna and xFloWS, but after an hour or two all told and I couldn't find much more. I really did expect to find a commercial library for Windows using COM. I also looked for academic work, but it seems to have been done in the 1980s and early 1990s, as there's very little available from the last 10 years. The newsgroups are also remarkably empty - a couple posts a years!
I'm left with the conclusion that dataflow visual programming isn't really that effective, despite what Pipeline Pilot and Michel argue.
But I can be wrong about that. I haven't used either system directly nor seen people use Pipeline Pilot so this whole argument is based just on my general knowledge. Suppose I wanted to develop code like Pipeline Pilot, that is, a visual dataflow system for chemical informatics. It would need some way to read and manipulate chemical structures. OpenEye's OEChem is a good choice for that, as is Daylight, if some format conversion tools are available. It needs the GUI framework. Michel's code should do that, but I must say it isn't as aesthetically pleasing as PP's is. (PP looks very pretty!) It needs ways to talk to different servers, but Python code can handle that just fine. I don't think it would be a hard thing; perhaps a couple of months, depending on what you want. However, the result would not, IMO, be commercially viable.
It may be appropriate as an in-house or open source project. the first really depends on a company's needs and the second, well, I just don't have time for the second so it would require volunteers, and most programmers like programming using text, not pictures.
BTW, there are some other alternatives to highly visual programming language. One is to use simple text. Start with the example graphic, shown at http://www.scripps.edu/~sanner/images/work/ViperIntro.jpg. I'll write code for a hypothetical Python API which produces the same result.
mol = load("1crn.pdb") assign_radii(mol) atoms = select_atoms(mol, "selection") surface = msms(atoms, atoms["radius"]) coloring = ColorMap(atoms, atoms["x"]) cpk = CPK(atoms, atoms["radius"] * 0.66, coloring) viewer = Viewer3D() viewer.add(surface) viewer.add(cpk) viewer.show() img = Filter(Scale(viewer.grabImage()), "contour") img.show()
Personally, I find the text easier to understand, but that's in part because I've been doing that for a couple decades. What my text version doesn't do is provide a GUI. Something along the lines of PythonCard might be a useful way to add that.
I've not used PythonCard, but the idea behind it is to make it easy to develop the sorts of GUIs people expect, and something that's easy for beginning programmers to use. And unlike ViPEr, the resulting UI looks normal.
In any case, either of these are interesting projects and something I
would like to work on. If you're also interested in these ideas
and can fund us to help out,
contact me<a/>. We are
available for both consulting and custom software development.
Andrew Dalke is an independent consultant focusing on
software development for computational chemistry and biology.
Need contract programming, help, or training?
Copyright © 2001-2010 Dalke Scientific Software, LLC.
Andrew Dalke is an independent consultant focusing on software development for computational chemistry and biology. Need contract programming, help, or training? Contact me | <urn:uuid:00cf837a-7085-4a97-b678-1c643063b0a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dalkescientific.com/writings/diary/archive/2003/09/22/VisualProgramming.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965873 | 2,660 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Chairman-elect Emanuel Cleaver, (MO-5)Incoming Congressional Black Caucus Leadership Faces Challenges in the Upcoming Republican-Led HouseSentinel Staff ReportAs Democrats look ahead to the 2012 elections, some in Congress are looking to President Obama to better communicate his plans and successes over the next two years. In an interview, Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairman-elect Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) recently echoed these sentiments: "The President is going to have to become a better communicator of what is going on, what needs to be done and of what we've done."Health care, women's pay equity, so-called green jobs that help African Americans and millions of dollars for historically Black colleges and universities-these are Obama victories that should have been highlighted but were lost in the November 2 election. Passionate conservatives raised their voices and effectively drowned out Obama and his Democratic majority in the House of Representatives; the result: a Republican landslide.Cleaver added: "We've done Pell grants and probably the average college student has no idea of what we've been able to do. A part of our job is to get information out." The powerful outgoing CBC Chair, Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), whose term ends in January, will be replaced by Cleaver. As Cleaver assumes the chairmanship of the 42-member caucus, established in 1971, he foresees walking a thin line between the aisles: Republicans will no doubt do everything in their power to thwart an Obama reelection in two years."We operate with no illusion that this session of Congress will be very difficult for Democrats and our agenda. And there are issues that are unique to African-Americans," Cleaver said, citing as an example legislation passed by the U.S. Senate paying billions of dollars, long owed to Black farmers in the Department of Agriculture race discrimination case. Even with warnings by President Obama, that bill could have been easily defeated in a Republican-dominated House. These are real, ominous potentials.That means new alliances must be built. "We realize that if we have to reintroduce that kind of legislation in the 112th Congress, we would have to do so with support from Republicans," Cleaver said. "That means we've got to think in terms of coalitions. We would have permanent interests and not necessarily permanent friends. Our permanent interests will require that we work with Republicans and we have no reservations about doing that."The congressman from the 5th Congressional District of Missouri knows something about building bridges. His district in only 17 percent Black, but he's been elected twice as mayor of Kansas City and to Congress, four times by a decidedly White population. He says, "[This] means when I address issues that are uniquely Black, there is nothing wrong with it."
High on his list of key issues will be the continuing high rate of unemployment among Blacks. "The mantra for the CBC will be jobs, jobs, jobs," he says.He promises to coalesce and even compromise in some cases but never, he says, will he and the 42-member Caucus ever compromise the interests of African Americans. "We will do nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing that would cause us to abandon our mission, which is to protect the interest of African-Americans and to provide them legislatively with opportunities and to move them into every realm of American life," he assures.Angela Rye, who currently serves as Senior Advisor and Counsel to the House Committee on Homeland Security, has been named Executive Director and General Counsel. Says Chairman-Elect Cleaver of her, "It is important that we have strong, innovative, and thoughtful leadership, which we have found in Angela Rye." "Through her political, legal, and nonprofit background, I believe the wealth of knowledge Angela brings to the table is immeasurable and exactly what the CBC needs for the challenges and triumphs we will face during the 112th Congress," adding I am certain that Angela and our team will provide the necessary direction and support for our ambitious agenda."Rye is charged with developing the legislative and outreach strategy for the House Committee on Homeland Security under the leadership of Chairman Bennie G. Thompson. She will focus on assisting disenfranchised, small, minority-owned businesses. Prior to her committee work, Rye worked for the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) as the Coordinator of Advocacy and Legislative Affairs. In addition, Rye is a co-founder of IMPACT, a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to enhance knowledge of the political and legislative processes; foster civic engagement; and enhance economic empowerment opportunities for other emerging leaders of color, ages 21 to 40. Responding to the challenged, Rye declared: "It is an honor to work with Chairman-Elect Cleaver and the Members of the CBC during the 40th Anniversary of the Caucus... I am eager to continue building on the legacy of those who have come before me and look forward to working for and with our outstanding members of this great body." E. Brandon Garrett will be responsible for overseeing the legislative priorities and policy agenda, having been named Policy Director for the CBC. Working closely with the Members and their staff, Garrett will ensure that the Caucus continues the work of ending disparities and continues to create opportunities for all Americans. Presently he serves as the Legislative Director for Congresswoman Marcia Fudge. Prior to that, Garrett served as Legislative Assistant and Policy Advisor to Congressman William Jefferson. Incoming CBC Communications Director Stephanie L. Young served as Press Secretary for Congressman Steve Cohen's re-election campaign and Deputy Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee prior to her new position. The impressive director worked to register more than two million voters for the 2008 Presidential Election as the Communications Associate with Rock the Vote. | <urn:uuid:60bfd1cb-bca2-46cf-8041-7353c22d6c36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lasentinel.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3209:cbc-chairman-elect-rep-emanuel-cleaver&catid=81&Itemid=171 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970185 | 1,162 | 1.515625 | 2 |
You have to hand it to Barack Obama. He has unmasked in the most thoroughgoing way the despotic propensities of the administrative entitlements state and of the Democratic Party. And now he has done something similar to the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church. At the prospect that institutions associated with the Catholic Church would be required to offer to their employees health insurance covering contraception and abortifacients, the bishops, priests, and nuns scream bloody murder. But they raise no objection at all to the fact that Catholic employers and corporations, large and small, owned wholly or partially by Roman Catholics will be required to do the same. The freedom of the church as an institution to distance itself from that which its doctrines decry as morally wrong is considered sacrosanct. The liberty of its members – not to mention the liberty belonging to the adherents of other Christian sects, to Jews, Muslims, and non-believers – to do the same they are perfectly willing to sacrifice.
This inattention to the liberties of others is doubly scandalous (and I use this poignant term in full knowledge of its meaning within the Catholic tradition) – for there was a time when the Catholic hierarchy knew better. There was a time when Roman Catholicism was the great defender not only of its own liberty but of that of others. There was a time when the prelates recognized that the liberty of the church to govern itself in light of its guiding principles was inseparable from the liberty of other corporate bodies and institutions to do the same.
I do not mean to say that the Roman Catholic Church was in the more distant past a staunch defender of religious liberty. That it was not. Within its sphere, the Church demanded full authority. It is only in recent years that Rome has come to be fully appreciative of the larger principle.
I mean that, in the course of defending its autonomy against the secular power, the Roman Catholic Church asserted the liberty of other corporate bodies and even, in some measure, the liberty of individuals. To see what I have in mind one need only examine Magna Carta, which begins with King John’s pledge that
the English Church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate; and we will that it be thus observed; which is apparent from this that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned most important and very essential to the English Church, we, of our pure and unconstrained will, did grant, and did by our charter confirm and did obtain the ratification of the same from our lord, Pope Innocent III, before the quarrel arose between us and our barons: and this we will observe, and our will is that it be observed in good faith by our heirs forever.
Only after making this promise, does the King go on to say, “We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever.” It is in this context that he affirms that “no scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our kingdom, unless by common counsel of our kingdom, except for ransoming our person, for making our eldest son a knight, and for once marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall not be levied more than a reasonable aid.” It is in this context that he pledges that “the city of London shall have all it ancient liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water; furthermore, we decree and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall have all their liberties and free customs.” It is in this document that he promises that “no freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” and that “to no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice.”
One will not find such a document in eastern Christendom or in the sphere where Sunni Islam is prevalent. It is peculiar to Western Christendom – and it was made possible by the fact that, Christian West, church and state were not co-extensive and none of the various secular powers was able to exert its authority over the church. There was within each political community in the Christian West an imperium in imperio – a power independent of the state that had no desire to replace the state but was fiercely resistant to its own subordination and aware that it could not hope to retain its traditional liberties if it did not lend a hand in defending the traditional liberties of others.
I am not arguing that the Church fostered limited government in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. In principle, the government that it fostered was unlimited in its scope. I am arguing, however, that the Church worked assiduously to hem in the authority of the Christian kings and that its success in this endeavor provided the foundation for the emergence of a parliamentary order. Indeed, I would go further. It was the Church that promoted the principles underpinning the emergence of parliaments. It did so by fostering the species of government that had emerged within the church itself. Given that the Church in the West made clerical celibacy one of its principal practices (whether it was honored in the breach or not), the hereditary principle could play no role in its governance. Inevitably, it resorted to elections. Monks elected abbots, the canons of cathedrals elected bishops, the college of cardinals elected the Pope.
The principle articulated in canon law — the only law common to all of Western Europe — to explain why these practices were proper was lifted from the Roman law dealing with the governance of waterways: “Quod omnes tangit,” it read, “ab omnibus tractari debeat: That which touches all should be dealt with by all.” In pagan antiquity, this meant that those upstream could not take all of the water and that those downstream had a say in its allocation. It was this principle that the clergymen who served as royal administrators insinuated into the laws of the kingdoms and petty republics of Europe. It was used to justify communal self-government. It was used to justify the calling of parliaments. And it was used to justify the provisions for self-governance contained within the corporate charters issued to cities, boroughs, and, in time, colonies. On the eve of the American Revolution, you will find it cited by John Dickinson in The Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer.
The quod omnes tangit principle was not the foundation of modern liberty, but it was its antecedent. And had there been no such antecedent, had kings not been hemmed in by the Church and its allies in this fashion, I very much doubt that there ever would have been a regime of limited government. In fact, had there not been a distinction both in theory and in fact between the secular and the spiritual authority, limited government would have been inconceivable.
The Reformation weakened the Church. In Protestant lands, it tended to strengthen the secular power and to promote a monarchical absolutism unknown to the Middle Ages. Lutheranism and Anglicanism were, in effect, Caesaro-Papist. In Catholic lands, it caused the spiritual power to shelter itself behind the secular power and become, in many cases, an appendage of that power. But the Reformation and the religious strife to which it gave rise also posed to the secular power an almost insuperable problem – how to secure peace and domestic tranquility in a world marked by sectarian competition. Limited government – i. e., a government limited in its scope – was the solution ultimately found, and John Locke was its proponent.
In the nascent American republic, this principle was codified in its purest form in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But it had additional ramifications as well – for the government’s scope was limited also in other ways. There were other amendments that made up what we now call the Bill of Rights, and many of the states prefaced their constitutions with bills of rights or added them as appendices. These were all intended to limit the scope of the government. They were all designed to protect the right of individuals to life, liberty, the acquisition and possession of property, and the pursuit of happiness as these individuals understood happiness. Put simply, liberty of conscience was part of a larger package.
This is what the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot. In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think.
In the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.
At every turn in American politics since that time, you will find the hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.
I would submit that the bishops, nuns, and priests now screaming bloody murder have gotten what they asked for. The weapon that Barack Obama has directed at the Church was fashioned to a considerable degree by Catholic churchmen. They welcomed Obamacare. They encouraged Senators and Congressmen who professed to be Catholics to vote for it.
I do not mean to say that I would prefer that the bishops, nuns, and priests sit down and shut up. Barack Obama has once again done the friends of liberty a favor by forcing the friends of the administrative entitlements state to contemplate what they have wrought. Whether those brought up on the heresy that public provision is akin to charity will prove capable of thinking through what they have done remains unclear. But there is now a chance that this will take place, and there was a time – long ago, to be sure, but for an institution with the longevity possessed by the Catholic Church long ago was just yesterday – when the Church played an honorable role in hemming in the authority of magistrates and in promoting not only its own liberty as an institution but that of others similarly intent on managing their own affairs as individuals and as members of subpolitical communities.
In my lifetime, to my increasing regret, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has lost much of its moral authority. It has done so largely because it has subordinated its teaching of Catholic moral doctrine to its ambitions regarding an expansion of the administrative entitlements state. In 1973, when the Supreme Court made its decision in Roe v. Wade, had the bishops, priests, and nuns screamed bloody murder and declared war, as they have recently done, the decision would have been reversed. Instead, under the leadership of Joseph Bernardin, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago, they asserted that the social teaching of the Church was a “seamless garment,” and they treated abortion as one concern among many. Here is what Cardinal Bernardin said in the Gannon Lecture at Fordham University that he delivered in 1983:
Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.
Consistency means that we cannot have it both ways. We cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of the society or are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility.
This statement, which came to be taken as authoritative throughout the American Church, proved, as Joseph Sobran observed seven years ago, “to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical Catholic politicians. If anything,” he added, "it has actually made it easier for them than for non-Catholics to give their effective support to legalized abortion – that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and unprincipled about the very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand consistency and principle.” In practice, this meant that, insofar as anyone pressed the case against Roe v. Wade, it was the laity.
I was reared a Catholic, wandered out of the Church, and stumbled back in more than thirteen years ago. I have been a regular attendee at mass since that time. I travel a great deal and frequently find myself in a diocese not my own. In these years, I have heard sermons articulating the case against abortion thrice – once in Louisiana at a mass said by the retired Archbishop there; once at the cathedral in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and two weeks ago in our parish in Hillsdale, Michigan. The truth is that the priests in the United States are far more likely to push the “social justice” agenda of the Church from the pulpit than to instruct the faithful in the evils of abortion.
And there is more. I have not once in those years heard the argument against contraception articulated from the pulpit, and I have not once heard the argument for chastity articulated. In the face of the sexual revolution, the bishops priests, and nuns of the American Church have by and large fallen silent. In effect, they have abandoned the moral teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in order to articulate a defense of the administrative entitlements state and its progressive expansion.
There is another dimension to the failure of the American Church in the face of the sexual revolution. As, by now, everyone knows, in the 1980s, when Cardinal Bernardin was the chief leader of the American Church and the man most closely consulted when the Vatican selected its bishops, it became evident to the American prelates that they had a problem – that, in many a diocese, there were priests of a homoerotic orientation who were sexual predators – pederasts inclined to take advantage of young boys. They could have faced up to the problem at that time; they could have turned in the malefactors to the secular authorities; they could have prevented their further contact with the young. Instead, almost certainly at the instigation of Cardinal Bernardin, they opted for another policy. They hushed everything up, sent the priests off for psychological counseling, and reassigned them to other parishes or even dioceses – where they continued to prey on young boys. In the same period, a number of the seminaries in which young men were trained for the priesthood became, in effect, brothels – and nothing was done about any of this until the newspapers broke the story and the lawsuits began.
There is, I would suggest, a connection between the heretical doctrine propagated by Cardinal Bernardin in the Gannon Lecture and the difficulties that the American Church now faces. Those who seek to create heaven on earth and who, to this end, subvert the liberty of others and embrace the administrative entitlements state will sooner or later become its victims.
Earlier today, Barack Obama offered the hierarchy “a compromise.” Under its terms, insurance companies offering healthcare coverage will be required to provide contraception and abortifacients, but this will not be mentioned in the contracts signed by those who run Catholic institutions. This “compromise” is, of course, a farce. It embodies a distinction where there is, in fact, no difference. It is a snare and a delusion, and I am confident that the Catholic Left, which is still dominant within the Church, will embrace it – for it would allow the bishops, priests, and nuns to save face while, in fact, paying for the contraception and abortifacients that the insurance companies will be required to provide. As if on cue, Sister Carol Keehan, a prominent Obamacare supporter who heads the Catholic Health Association, immediately issued a statement in which she announced that she is “pleased and grateful that the religious liberty and conscience protection needs of so many ministries that serve our country were appreciated enough that an early resolution of this issue was accomplished.”
Perhaps, however, Barack Obama has shaken some members of the hierarchy from their dogmatic slumber. Perhaps, a few of them – or among younger priests some of their likely successors – have begun to recognize the logic inherent in the development of the administrative entitlements state. The proponents of Obamacare, with some consistency, pointed to Canada and to France as models. As anyone who has attended mass in Montreal or Paris can testify, the Church in both of these places is filled with empty pews. There is, in fact, not a single country in the social democratic sphere where either the Catholic Church or a Protestant Church is anything but moribund. This is by no means fortuitous. When entitlements stand in for charity and the Social Gospel is preached in place of the Word of God, heaven on earth becomes the end, and Christianity goes by the boards.
It took a terrible scandal and a host of lawsuits to get the American Church to rid itself of the pederast priests and clean up its seminaries. Perhaps the tyrannical ambitions of Barack Obama will occasion a rethinking of the social-justice agenda. The ball is now in the court of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, who has welcomed the President's gesture without indicating whether it is adequate. Upon reflection, he can accept the fig leaf that President Obama has offered him. Or he can put Sister Keehan and her supporters in their place and fight. If he wants to regain an iota of the moral authority that the Church possessed before 1973, he will do the latter. The hour is late. Next time, the masters of the administrative entitlements state won’t even bother to offer the hierarchy a fig leaf. They know servility when they see it.
UPDATE: Friday night, shortly after I posted this piece, as Anne Coletta pointed out in Comment 5 below, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a carefully worded statement critical of the fig leaf President Obama offered them. In the meantime, the Rev. John Jenkins, President of the University of Notre Dame, applauded "the willingness of the administration to work with religious organizations to find a solution acceptable to all parties." | <urn:uuid:c92f53ab-ae0c-4cf0-b1b8-dcc7092168cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ricochet.com/main-feed/American-Catholicism-s-Pact-With-the-Devil | 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 | 0.976697 | 4,116 | 1.523438 | 2 |
License to Kill
by David Cortright
David Cortright argues that drones are making warfare cheaper and less visceral — for us. This may sound like a good thing, but it also means that we may be drawn into more wars, and we may inflict more harm on innocent bystanders. This collateral harm is not only immoral, it’s also against our best interests, because it encourages terrorist retribution against us.
Drones Are a Challenge — and an Opportunity
by Benjamin Wittes and Ritika Singh
Benjamin Wittes and Ritika Singh argue that drones certainly do increase the distance at which deadly force can be delivered. In this they resemble the large majority of weapons that have ever been developed. Humanitarians, they add, should welcome drones’ precision, which makes possible a new level of caution in avoiding civilian bystanders. They conclude that the question is not whether the United States can prevent drones from proliferating. It is whether the United States will lead or follow in this new field of military technology.
Drones and the Changing Nature of Warfare: Hold the Presses!
by Daniel Goure
Daniel Goure argues that if drones are making warfare more deadly, it’s certainly not showing up in the aggregate numbers. Casualties and warfare itself have declined substantially in recent years—and, he suggests, drones might be one part of the reason why. Drones remain a small part of our overall military forces to date. They are overwhelmingly used for nonviolent purposes such as surveillance. When they do exert deadly force, they often accomplish objectives that would have been impossible without them, barring a full-scale invasion. Legitimate concerns do exist over specific acts perpetrated via drone technology, but there is at least a plausible case that drones in general are making warfare less deadly, not more.
Drone Proliferation: Other Chapters and Other Challenges
by Tom Barry
Tom Barry argues that the U.S. Congress and other policymakers have uncritically accepted drone warfare as both effective and cheap, with little regard to its actual costs and benefits. Defense contractors obviously stand to gain a great deal, and they have recently been lobbying to ease restrictions on drone technology export controls. The United States should lead the way in forming international agreements to prevent the proliferation of these high-tech weapons. At home, the proliferation of drones in drug enforcement and other local law enforcement tasks is also a worrying trend. | <urn:uuid:0a103552-b899-4897-8be5-3435798a69f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/january-2012/how-drones-are-changing-warfare | 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 | 0.933391 | 487 | 1.742188 | 2 |
AH may keep CD's MS as long as he likes.
Comments on various cirripede species. "I mean now to continue at Systematic Part till I have finished."
Down Farnborough Kent
My dear Sir
I send one line to beg you to keep my M.S. as long as ever you like. I guessed why you did not write; it was wholly unimportant. I am
sorry for the smash; & sorrier the species do not turn out more interesting: it
is, however, as you say curious about the Ranges.—
The Balanus sent (for which many thanks) is the common B. cranchii of Brit. Authors; I have never seen it from north of Tenby in
S. Wales— I will return it hereafter, if required.— I
Have you several specimens of the Madeira little pedunc: cirripede (which I named
Machairis & have now changed into Oxynaspis) &
if so, & w
Many thanks for your letter In Haste | Yours truly | C. Darwin
- f1 1316.f1The conjectured date is based on CD's request for a specimen of Oxynaspis celata, which was evidently received by CD before his letter to Albany Hancock, 15 [April 1850].
- f2 1316.f2See letter to Albany Hancock, [26 January – March 1850], in which CD stated he was sending to Hancock his specimens and notes on Mollusca.
- f3 1316.f3One of CD's nudibranch molluscs is mentioned in Alder and Hancock 1845–55, pt 6, under the description of Thecacera. The geographical distribution is described in ibid., pt 7, pp. 27–32. There is a copy of the work in the Darwin Library–CUL.
- f4 1316.f4A synonym for Balanus perforatus (Living Cirripedia (1854): 231).
- f5 1316.f5Possibly Balanus balanoides (Living Cirripedia (1854): 267).
- f6 1316.f6Living Cirripedia (1851): 133. See also letter to J. J. S. Steenstrup, 3 April . | <urn:uuid:98765b6d-dc73-4e7f-8b0a-afa75d479087> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-1316 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930197 | 482 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The Andrew Dent Scholarship is offered each year to health sector students who need support to undertake volunteer work, electives or study trips that aid people in the Pacific Region. Kasia Michalak, a fifth year medical student at The University of Melbourne, was a recipient of the Andrew Dent Scholarship in 2010. Her account of her time spent in Vanuatu is included below.
Experiences and insights from an elective in paradise by Kasia Michalak
When planning my medical elective, I sought a location which would enable me to gain an
understanding of the care provided particularly to women and children in a community with
relatively limited technology and resources. I wanted to contrast this with my experience in a
major tertiary hospital in Victoria. At the same time, I hoped to experience a new culture and way of life and perhaps even learn a new language. Vanuatu fulfilled all these criteria.
Vanuatu is an archipelago of about 80 islands, 69 of which are inhabited. It gained independence in 1980 after more than 70 years of colonisation by Britain and France and the influences of both
countries remain visible in Vanuatu culture and language - with English, French and native Bislama all spoken. Nevertheless Vanuatu retains some of its traditional 'Kastom' culture and way of life. Despite recent economic growth, Vanuatu continues to face many health challenges, including ongoing difficulties with the provision of essential health and education services to remote rural communities. Some 80 per cent of the population of Vanuatu live rurally and are predominantly engaged in subsistence agriculture. Only 60 per cent of the population have continuous access to clean water. Infant mortality remains five times that in Australia with only 79 per cent of women having skilled birth attendants present and only 84 per cent of pregnant mothers attending at least one antenatal visit.
Australia continues to spend between $3 and $4.5 million on health assistance to Vanuatu each year. For my medical elective and with the assistance of the Andrew Dent Scholarship, I chose to spend nearly five weeks in early 2011 in Luganville on the island of Espiritu Santo in northern Vanuatu. There, the country’s second largest hospital, the Northern Districts Hospital, provides emergency, outpatient and inpatient medical, surgical, paediatric, and obstetric services to a population of approximately 32,000 people.
On arrival I found myself to be one of 8 Australian medical students from three medical schools. We were immediately made to feel very welcome and valued for our skills, but free to choose both our work hours and activities. We were encouraged to attend in the mornings and to observe the 'siesta' between 11.30am and 1.30pm. Afternoons at the hospital
were typically quieter, allowing time for sightseeing and relaxing. My interest lying primarily in
obstetrics, I chose to spend the majority of my time whilst at the hospital in the maternity ward.
Experiences on the maternity ward
The maternity ward at the Northern Districts Hospital (NDH) comprises 16 beds plus a three bed delivery rooms. It also includes a neonatal 'nursery' but in reality even premature low-birth weight babies are roomed in with their mothers. In addition to midwives, the clinical work is currently shared by two obstetrician-gynaecologists – a Ni-Vanuatu male obstetrician and a visiting Chinese female obstetrician (the Hospital has an agreement with the Chinese Government and hosts a variety of Chinese specialists). They take turns doing outpatient, ward and on-call work. The maternity ward is supported by a busy four and a half days a week antenatal clinic which also provides family planning and gynaecology services. Midwives deliver approximately two babies a day, with backup from the obstetricians.
While lacking some of the modern equipment that is commonplace in Australia (for
example, oxygen is housed in enormous cylinders because there is no infrastructure to make gases available via wall fixtures at the bedside, as is the norm in Melbourne hospitals) it was sometimes surprising what was available – for example, the midwives had access to a portable Doppler ultrasound to listen to fetal heart sounds while also being very proficient in using the old-fashioned plastic Pinard stethoscope. Notably, a lack of paediatric (and in fact, adult) intensive care at the NDH means that infant survival is limited to approximately 32 weeks gestation (while in Melbourne it is limited to approximately 24 weeks) – corticosteroids being available but neonatal intubation and pulmonary surfactant being unavailable.
The paediatrician described to me how some time ago she kept the premature baby of a missionary alive via manual ventilation until it was airlifted out – unfortunately such a scenario would be financially unfeasible for the local Ni-Vanuatu. I was surprised to find that the principles of obstetric care were little different at the NDH from those I had learned in Australia, with all the paperwork such as antenatal records and partograms using identical (and notably, English) terminology. However in practice a number of differences became apparent, being both due to cultural and practical reasons. For example, the antenatal clinics are primarily run by midwives, with an obstetrician available only for more complex cases one session a week. Unlike routine care in Melbourne, antenatal visits at the NDH have no fixed schedule. Frequently women present to the antenatal clinic for the first time during the second or even third trimester of their pregnancy and midwife discretion determines how many weeks later their return visit occurs.
First trimester dating scans and 20 week morphology scans are not routine at the NDH, and many women won’t have an ultrasound at all during their pregnancy despite ultrasound
being available in the Radiology department. In turn, no Down’s Syndrome screening is carried out, any fetal abnormalities that won’t otherwise cause external cause for alarm (such as small-for-dates which might be investigated with a scan) are missed and antenatal sex determination is unusual. This also means that the staff rely on women’s recall of the date of their last menstrual period to calculate their expected date of delivery. Subsequently, staff are less concerned about post-dates, blaming any delay in parturition on inaccurate dating: during my elective I saw a number of women in clinic who were 43 or 44 weeks gestation by dates but no woman was induced for post-dates during my time there.
Interestingly, while Vanuatu is a strongly Christian society, it was not unusual
to see teenage and unmarried women presenting to the antenatal clinic. While the midwives quietly disapproved of such women, my impression was that these young mothers tended to be well supported due to the fact that many continue to live in extended families. There is currently no legal option for terminating a pregnancy in Vanuatu.
In addition to differences in antenatal care, I also found several large differences when it came to parturition. It was not unusual for women to arrive at the hospital late in the first stage (or even early second stage!) of their labour, possibly having never presented for antenatal care. These women were typically those from rural locales and may have traveled a full day or two to the hospital. Women usually arrived accompanied by a female companion (often their mother);
husbands arrived only once the baby was delivered and in fact I discovered that the midwives
believed that women did not labour effectively when their husbands were present. Once moved into the delivery room women almost invariably delivered alongside only a midwife – very rarely did they have a support person with them.
Most dramatically, the Ni-Vanuatu women laboured reasonably quietly without any pain relief whatsoever, even for forceps deliveries. Epidurals were entirely unavailable, and I soon found out that it is in the nature of the Ni-Vanuatu to consider crying and 'fussing' to be wasteful and unseemly. Women were scolded by the midwives to labour quietly and to employ their energy to deliver their child rather than to thrash about. Afterwards, the majority underwent suturing without any local anaesthetic; most women received only panadol once removed to their shared ward room. And all this in incredibly hot, humid conditions – though in fact the delivery room was the only room in the maternity ward with an air-conditioner (the ward rooms themselves had not so much as a ceiling fan).
I also witnessed one Caesarian Section, undertaken for a multiparous woman in obstructed labour. This Caesarian was done very reluctantly and only when it became clear no other option was available. It took me some time to understand the significance of this decision - to do a Caesarian on a mother who must return to a rural community potentially several days travel away, with the limitations the inevitable six week recovery has on her wellbeing
and ability to manage a new baby, and the lack of specialist medical care if she should need it, is
quite a different thing to doing a Caesarian on a mother residing in a large urban centre.
Experiences in outpatients, emergency and surgery
In addition to my time on the maternity ward I also had the opportunity to spend some time in
outpatients, emergency and surgery and observe the differences and similarities between our own services. The outpatients department at the NDH is effectively a general practice with patients presenting with all manner of ailments. It consists of several consulting rooms and a large open-air but tiled and covered waiting area. Patients wait patiently on long benches for their number to be called and may wait all day if they are late to arrive, register and pay their small fee.
In outpatients I sat with one of the doctors or nurse practitioners. I was surprised at being allowed to write (and sign) scripts for patients. A big challenge was understanding the patient’s descriptions of their illness; this was where learning some Bislama was a necessity. Bislama is a descriptive language and a mixture of English, French and Pidgin amongst others. For example, ‘constipation’ in Bislama is 'no sit sit', while ‘diarrhoea’ is 'sit sit wota (water)'. It was a pleasure to learn Bislama and not overly difficult – with only 6000 words in the vocabulary it seemed to me that I might be fluent had I the opportunity to spend five months in Vanuatu rather than only five weeks.
The emergency department at the NDH comprises three beds and is run by a Nurse Practitioner. The NDH has no ambulance but does have a transport service in the form of an open-tray truck similar to a large utility vehicle. This was a popular vehicle type in Luganville and it was not uncommon to see two dozen people, including small children, travelling in the back of such a truck downtown. Due to the ongoing belief in 'Kastom' (traditional village) medicine and their distance from the hospital, many patients presented to emergency late in their illness only after they had tried and failed to get relief from Kastom remedies. This sometimes meant for spectacular presentations such as enormous abscesses – I saw several of these drained in theatre. There were also frequent presentations with fever and, unlike in Australia, the obvious first step in Vanuatu was to undertake malaria testing for which there were frequent positives.
Unlike myself and my visiting medical student colleagues, the Ni-Vanuatu do not take malarial prophylactics and my understanding is that it is not uncommon for patients to get malaria a number of times. The surgical ward comprises around 30 beds with no gender division. Surgical ward rounds occurred every morning and the surgical ward was always full. A large number of the patient cohort were there following amputations for diabetes-related peripheral vascular disease; diabetes is a major problem in Vanuatu.
It was also interesting to see two men undergoing traction for trans-femoral fractures – as internal fixation for fractures is unavailable at the NDH (there being no orthopaedic
specialist), this traditional technique was employed instead and meant a very long hospital stay for he men – one had been an inpatient since October of 2010.
It was on the surgical ward that I discovered another interesting aspect of care at the NDH - while the hospital provides food for patients, it was widely acknowledged that this provision was insufficient and that were it not for family bringing additional food, the patient would go hungry. I wondered, what happened to those patients unlucky enough to not have family, or with family too far away to travel to them?
Experiences outside of the hospital
Outside of the hospital there was, unsurprisingly, a wealth of sight-seeing to do and activities to try and everywhere there were friendly and politely curious Ni-Vanuatu who greeted me on passing. The waters around Santo Island are incredibly blue and warm, filled with stunning tropical fish. During my stay I was fortunate to get my scuba diving license and dive one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world – the SS President Coolidge. One weekend a group of us hired a van and visited the aptly named Blue Holes, the pristine Port Olry and the famous Champagne Beach. We were also lucky enough to be invited by the cook at the hospital to spend a day in her village in South Santo, to which we traveled, like real locals, in the tray on the back of a truck. A day spent trekking through the jungle and traversing a cave by torch-light followed by drinking coconut milk directly out of the coconut completed the experience of a lifetime.
All in all, my time in Vanuatu was unforgettable and I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that the Andrew Dent Scholarship, and the wonderful staff at the Northern District Hospital, have
afforded me. It was fascinating to observe both the similarities and the differences in clinical practice in the hospital, especially in my particular area of interest in obstetrics. I had an extremely rewarding and enriching experience and hope that I was able to give back a little through my own limited skills and knowledge.
During my stay there was a Sydney-based GP and his UK-based friend and colleague who volunteered at the hospital for two weeks. They had also spent many years volunteering for short periods in Fiji and intended to return to the Northern Districts Hospital in 2012. I hope that once Iam qualified I may be able to do the same in the future. | <urn:uuid:cb13ba86-bf43-46bb-814d-284b20dd6abf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.svhm.org.au/supportus/pacifichealthfund/Pages/ScholarshipReport2010Vanuatu.aspx | 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 | 0.974783 | 2,993 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Iran is sending a solidarity flotilla to Bahrain, a move that could escalate regional tensions around the island kingdom's crackdown on mostly Shi'ite protesters.
Shi'ite-ruled Iran has been vocal in its dissent of Sunni-led Bahrain's treatment of protesters. The monarchy has used arrests, force and the addition of visiting Gulf troops to crush dissent.
Iran's English-language Press TV reported on Monday that 120 activists - many of them professors and students - were aboard the naval convoy. The Iranian Fars news agency said the flotilla consists of two ships and left from the port of Dayyer.
Press TV said the activists will ask Bahrain for permission to enters its waters, but added the request will not likely be granted.
The Reuters agency reported that the head of Bahrain's Information Affairs Authority told Al Arabiya television that the flotilla is "a blatant interference in Bahrain's internal affairs."
Hundreds have been arrested and dozens put on trial in special courts since protests in Bahrain were crushed in March. A state of emergency is due to be lifted on June 1.
Bahraini officials have said 24 people died in the unrest. According to human rights groups, the government has arrested hundreds in the aftermath of the protest.
Bahrain's top military leader says foreign forces will remain after it lifts emergency rule next month. Led by Saudi Arabia, a 1,500-strong foreign military presence has been in Bahrain since March.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
|Follow our Middle East reports on Twitter
and discuss them on our Facebook page. | <urn:uuid:d4f0f02f-fca9-4730-b064-14890c290760> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/iran-sends-solidarity-flotilla-towards-bahrain----121908209/172947.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963033 | 328 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The basic role of the second row remains the same - to lock and push in the scrum, win line-out ball and secure possession from restarts.
But where the role has developed since my playing days is that second rows have now developed into ball carriers.
They are - because of professionalism - fitter, stronger and more athletic, so they get their hands on the ball to take into contact.
Martin Johnson was the master as the two-jumper
They've also had to adapt a lot at the line-out because of the introduction of lifting. It's a bit more complex and the days of jumping in your one position are over.
There is a lot of movement and deception these days.
The second row that wears the number four shirt often jumps second in the line-out and is usually slightly shorter and is probably the bulkier of the pair.
Because the ball thrown to the two-jumper gets to him quicker, his is usually a more dynamic and powerful jumper, shooting forward.
He must be very quick off the mark and powerful. Martin Johnson was the master of this.
If you ever wanted to see a perfect example of a number two-jumper excelling, it would be during the Lions tour of Australia in 2001.
Justin Harrison famously pinched the line-out ball off Jonno during the third and final Test when the Lions were parked five metres from the Wallabies line.
There is also a difference at the scrum as well.
You either pack as the loose-head lock on the left side of the scrum, or you pack on the tight-head side, which is on the right.
The number four is more likely to be the tight-head lock.
Most of the pressure from the scrum comes through this side, you need your cornerstone on the tight-head side.
He locks out the scrum, he's the cornerstone and will usually be pretty stationary while applying a lot of the pressure. | <urn:uuid:6a7e4859-88ea-4a13-96d0-a076069d47b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/rules_and_equipment/6320407.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976144 | 407 | 1.75 | 2 |
AMT/Ertl The Fast and the Furious 1995 Toyota Supra
December 1, 2003
In the early 1990s the second-generation Toyota Supra was introduced to
the automotive market. With 320 horsepower, this was a car capable of
0-60 mph in less than 5 seconds. It quickly became a popular car for
the aftermarket performance shops. From upgrading turbos and adding
performance exhaust, this car didn't need much to be a rocket ship.
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monthly e-mail newsletter, and manage your account online. | <urn:uuid:a05fff84-3497-4a63-9a47-79898db3d05e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scaleautomag.com/en/Subscriber%20Extras/Kit%20Reviews/2003/12/AMT-Ertl%20The%20Fast%20and%20the%20Furious%201995%20Toyota%20Supra.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930214 | 262 | 1.609375 | 2 |
My child is 2.9 years old. He is very active and restless. He understands everything but can't respond with even a word. He can say just 1 or two words, such as water, car, toy, give me, etc. After ...
My LO will be 12 months old next week, he was born 6 weeks prematurely. My concern is that he doesn't seem to understand what anyone of us says. He does look when I say "look" and he does respond to ...
Both my nephews seem to have speech issues. The 8 year old has major trouble with Rs and is often not understandable. The 3 year old has problems in general so much so that my 3 and 4 year olds ... | <urn:uuid:4bd9005e-c576-4984-8d9a-0c4ab0bed756> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/speech+development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989221 | 146 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Out of idle curiosity, I've lately been turning my reading to Scoutie into a discovery of the source texts for Disney's biggest films. I stumbled upon...moreOut of idle curiosity, I've lately been turning my reading to Scoutie into a discovery of the source texts for Disney's biggest films. I stumbled upon versions of both Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty that were surprisingly close to Disney's Princess movies, and we had much fun with them (I wish old Walt hadn't cut the baby-eating Ogre Queen Mum from Sleeping Beauty, though. What fun that would have been).
Again I was surprised by how closely the Disney company (this time under Katzenberg/Eisner) adhered to the text. All the key elements remain in the movie; they are often altered but they're there: the Enchantress (evil in the book), the rose(s), Belle's father meeting the Beast first, food magically appearing, Belle's release and return. I didn't expect the versions to be so closely related without Walt Disney's personal influence, but they were and that's likely at the root of why Disney's Beauty and the Beast is so successful.
What I found most delightful, however, is how much friendlier Villeneuve's original is compared to the Disney movie (I've since discovered that it is not much friendlier. It is actually the Beaumont adaptation, which is what I read, that is friendlier. I need to get my hands on the original). The Beast is far less the abusive kidnapper and much more a Prince trapped in bestial form. He's kinder from the outset, anonymously providing food and shelter for Belle's father, the tired, cold, passerby, and only reveals himself and takes her father prisoner when the father attempts to pick a rose for Belle. Moreover, there is no apparent clock the Beast is racing against, no nasty Gaston to muddy the waters, and no foolish villagers marching to destroy the Beast in his castle, and less of a feeling that Belle is a kidnap victim who falls prey to the Stockholm syndrome.
It's a straight up tale of love developing through friendship, and a tale of kindness and selflessness being rewarded. Winnie-the-Pooh is next (not a discovery for me, but it is for Scout). One more thing about this version of La Belle et la Bête: the art by Walter Crane is kind of beautiful in its quaint way -- even in an eBook.(less)
A -- Alfheim: It's the place where the elves live. There's lots of elves there with bows, and they have long blonde hair and pointy years. The wear archer clothes and stuff.
B -- Balder: The God of Light (is he the God of Light? Maybe he's just goodness. No, he's the God of Light too). He was always happy. He was never mad. He just smiled the whole time. I can't remember a time when he was mad. He died because Frigg asked everything not to hurt him except mistletoe, then Loki, disguised as an old woman found out it was unsafe, then made an arrow out of mistletoe, gave it to Balder's blind brother, then Loki helped Hod shoot Balder, and Balder died.
C -- Chess and Chessmen: Almost everybody plays chess, the gods that is, and I didn't know that chess was made back then. The gods probably invented it, the god of gold that is because they were golden chessmen. Or maybe it was the Gnomes. They seem more like the building type.
D -- Draupnir: I think it would be cool to have a bracelet like Draupnir. It was cool that Odin put it with Balder in his funeral pyre.
E -- Embla: Embla is one of the first humans created by the Gods. She was the first woman.
F -- Fenris: He's Loki's son who is the big wolf who grows too big to control. He's not scared of anything, so he's fearless, and he's very big, and he can open his mouth so wide his bottom jaw can touch the Earth (Midgard), and he bites off Tyr's hand. Plus, he's stuck at the bottom of Yggdrassil.
G -- Garm: He's the dog who guards the gate to Hel.
H -- Hel: She's Loki's daughter who rules Hel, which is named after her.
I -- Ida: The green field of Asgard with a whole bunch of buildings that I expect are huge, and it is very busy.
J -- Jotuns: The Jotuns live in a very, very cold world on the tree. Instead of their beards being soft and furry, they're cold and hard like icicles. The Aesir and them don't agree with each other. Thor challenges every Jotun he sees, and kills it and stuff, declares war on it, I'd say.
K -- Kvasir: Wasn't that the drink that made people smart? Odin was wise after drinking it or something.
L -- Lidskjalf: That's the seat where Odin sits and he can see everything.
M -- Midgard's Serpent: It's scary. Very, very scary, and it's always angry, and apparently it's not too heavy for Thor.
N -- Nanna: She is the wife of Balder. She is pretty nice, and she is my favourite of all the ladies in Asgard.
O -- Odin: He is the All Father and the ruler of Asgard. He has a very, very, very fast horse with eight legs named Sleipnir. He only has one functional eye, and he pulls his hair down over his missing eye. In the Norse myths, he's my (Miloš') favourite.
R -- Rungnir: He was a pretty big Jotun, really tall, and he had the second fastest horse on the entire World Tree. He's pretty cool, and fairly strong, and Thor beat him in a duel, but his head isn't fairly strong becaues Thor smashed it, right?
S -- Sif: She is beautiful, and she has the best hair. If she was a Charlie's Angels she'd be Jill. Her hair was blonde but it became gold.
T -- Tyr: He is very brave, and he is pretty strong too. Fenris ate his hand, so he has only one hand. He is also pretty nice. He is one of Odin's sons.
U -- Utgardsloki: He was super smart. It was awesome how he made all the tricks, the illusions, to trick Thor. I thought Thor would win. I loved the fact that Thor didn't win and that Utgardsloki won.
V -- Vanir: The battle between them and the Aesir was pretty interesting. They were pretty cool, and some of them joined the Aesir.
W -- War: The Norse Gods fought too much, definitely. They were really violent. Whenever somebody died nobody even cried, except for Balder, or then their wives die too. It's weird the way they were with death and war.
Y -- Yggdrassil: It's a cool tree. I like how it is holding all the Nine Realms in place and stuff. It is there to keep everything in place. I like that Yggdrassil is so important, and trees are because they give us air and stuff, but this tree is more important because it is holding our worlds together in one space so Midgard, Asgard, Jotunheim and all the rest would probably spin off into space without the tree.
Æ -- Aesir: Whenever they said something they promised, they had to do what they promised, so instead of being fierce they did what they said they would, but when they failed to do what they said they would something bad happened, and eventually it caused Ragnarokk.
*I just finished reading this to my twins last night. We start the Greek Myths tonight. (less)
So I think Manny and Beth-Ann have it spot on. Peter Rabbit dies in this book, and his escape is a moment-of-death fantasy. Peter is the Peyton Farquh...moreSo I think Manny and Beth-Ann have it spot on. Peter Rabbit dies in this book, and his escape is a moment-of-death fantasy. Peter is the Peyton Farquhar of kids books.
Farquhar, for those who don't remember, is the Alabama Confederate (gentleman farmer / non-combatant) from Ambrose Bierce's An Occurence on Owl Creek Bridge. He's strung up to a railroad bridge to be hanged by the Union soldiers, but his rope breaks and he pulls of a miraculous escape, only to have his escape end with him still on the rope as he chokes to death.
Well, little Peter doesn't have Union soldiers to string him up, but he has old Mr. McGregor to chase him around the garden, and in Peter's attempt to escape he dives into a watering can -- and I say he drowns. How's that for a cautionary tale? I figure that Peter's death in the watering can is also a euphemism for rabbit stew, and Peter becomes a yummy dinner for Mr. and Mrs. McGregor. Lucky farmers that they are.
But Peter, at least, is able to enjoy a moment-of-death fantasy where he goes home and declares to Mother Rabbit that he's learned his lesson. But even at home, even in his fantasy, death begins to close in, and while his siblings play and the smells of cooking rise up to greet him (Mrs. McGregor's kitchen as she skins his corpse, perhaps?), Peter ends his day (and his life) wrapped in the blankets of his little bed. Shivering from the cold he caught in the Mr. McGregor's water bottle.
Death comes to us all, little bunny, especially when we ignore our parents! Remember that.
Culinarily, I think I need to get my own little rabbit for a stew. It's been a while, and rabbit is de-lish. (less)
This is the first time I've read this book. Hard to believe, isn't it? It's especially hard to believe when I consider my mother -- this is just the s...moreThis is the first time I've read this book. Hard to believe, isn't it? It's especially hard to believe when I consider my mother -- this is just the sort of schmaltzy crap she loved. I probably missed this book because it falls in that range between picture books and chapter books that I skipped in my reading progression.
However it came about, I only just read this book. I shared it with my little Scoutie Kat as our bedtime book. It took a couple of nights, and she loved it, especially the part about the fairy and the painting it was accompanied by. It became, "My own Rabbit," in Scoutie talk. And it wasn't so bad. I certainly enjoyed the experience, although I think most of my enjoyment sprang out of cuddling with my two year old and enjoying her enjoyment.
I was surprised to discover that this book is sort of the Toy Story Pinnochio. Crappy Bunny is made. Crappy Bunny is loved by its boy. Crappy Bunny is tossed out to be burned when the boy has Scarlet Fever. Crappy Bunny becomes mottled real bunny because he was so loving. Real Crappy Bunny and its boy see each other one more time. Tears or giggles or sighs of "...um, yeah," depending on your age and reason for reading.
I can see why it was loved back when it was written. I can see why little kids dig it, especially if they're cuddled up with their Moms and Dads, but for me, for me now, it was nothing special. (less)
Hey you! Yeah. You! How the fuck can you dislike Hamlet?!
I'm not talking about the play here; I am talking about the man. Fuck you a...moreDear Hamlet Hater,
Hey you! Yeah. You! How the fuck can you dislike Hamlet?!
I'm not talking about the play here; I am talking about the man. Fuck you and your bullshit about his "indecision," that indecision sets him apart. Unlike everyone else in the play -- who slay their foes willy-nilly or embrace their personal ignorance to engage in tacit murder or let their passions o'errule their reason -- Hamlet takes his time with his revenge, refusing to be fooled by a damned ghost, looking for proof, making sure that Claudius is really guilty before he acts.
Yeah, yeah, Hamlet was mean to Ophelia. I don't disagree. But Hamlet can hardly be considered the only factor in her death/suicide. And it's not like she didn't deserve it. Polonius and Laertes, Claudius and Gertrude (and maybe even that sneaky bastard Horatio, the last to see her alive) played their parts in her "madness," and it's not like Ophelia didn't have her own hand in her demise. Hamlet loved her. Hamlet's father dies, he's seeing ghosts, his mother is banging his uncle, and there's Ophelia -- at the behest of her family's patriarchs -- cutting off Hamlet when he needs her most. I'd be pissed if she did that to me. I'd call her a whore and a weakling and mock her until she left me alone. Where's her backbone? Where's her love? Nowhere to be found; hence, Hamlet's anger (not that I blame Ophelia, though. What the hell could she do considering the world she was living in? Considering the power of the men in her life?).
And what about Hamlet's thoughts on the equality of mankind? How can you hate on a guy who thinks the way Hamlet does? This is a cat who spends most of his soliloquys holding an in-head debate about the equality of man in death. This is a guy who puts kings and nobles on the same level as fishmongers and worms. He's a guy who embraces life in death without fliching. He sees the "providence in the fall of sparrow" and knows it is good.
Yet you hate him. Why?
Is it because your high school teacher sucked? Is it because you are daunted by Shakespeare and Elizabethan English? Is it because you are convinced that Hamlet is a whinger? Is it because you've fallen prey to a century-plus of Freudian disassembling? Is it because you expect Mobster-style decisiveness? Would you like it more if RockStar put out a shooter game called Grand Theft Elsinore?
Or are you simply a dumbass?
Go watch Lion King or Strange Brew and get back to me.
p.s. this is a Ceridwen-special: a drunken review.
there is no better way to kick off a semester of literature than a modest proposal. one smart ass student always tries to derail the conversation with...morethere is no better way to kick off a semester of literature than a modest proposal. one smart ass student always tries to derail the conversation with an early declaration of the proposal’s satire, but no one listens, and within moments i have a class of fifty - sixty students angry, frustrated, and sometimes rabid as i take swift’s ironic side and ask the students, with all the seriousness i can muster (which is quite a bit), if we shouldn’t give it a try? i follow that up with “why not?” after “why not?” then smack them upside the head with their universal humanist superiority complex, and force them to think. it’s so new to them they leave hating me or loving me. but they do leave thinking. poor bastards. except that one mormon in the front row. he never leaves thinking anything other than how superior he is. and what a dipshit i am.(less)
iii. Finished, but I need some time to let this sink in. The review is coming.
iv.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is about non-conformity. It is also about the horrors of the mental health system circa the late ‘50s & early ‘60s. I am sure it is about some other things I didn’t pick up this time around. But it is also about metaphor, and that was the theme in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that most spoke to me.
Chief Bromden is the narrator, you see, and he is schizophrenic. Some would say he is an unreliable narrator because of his hallucinations. I think those people are wrong. I don’t see his opening statement as an admission or a warning:
I been silent so long now it’s going to roar out of me like floodwaters and you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.
I see this as a declaration that just because he is schizophrenic, just because he sees the world differently from you, doesn’t invalidate what he’s seen and what he’s been through. It is a declaration of his reliability, and one that I heeded throughout my reading.
Because, you see, like many schizophrenics, Chief is aware that all the things he sees may not be there, or aren’t there for everyone. He knows that people around him will call him crazy when he is fogged in or trying to clean the green filth from the walls of the meeting room. He knows that people will shun him for the way he sees the world, so he – or Ken Kesey – needs you to know that he recognizes your biases before he even starts telling this story, and he needs you to hear him despite that, not just listen with a condescending head pat for the poor crazy Injun. Some of the things he sees may intrude on what you call reality, but reality is still there amidst the "crazy" stuff.
And oh! what he sees. He isn’t just witness to a battle of dominance-submission-freedom. He isn’t just a witness to sadism and selfishness. He isn’t just a witness to hope. He isn’t just a witness to change. He is gifted the ability to see metaphor. For you, metaphor is a tool with which you understand the world. Your brain takes some input, filters it through metaphor, and out comes your meaning. But the Chief takes some input and that input suddenly becomes the metaphor and that meaning is the metaphor. Perhaps that’s what all schizophrenics see. Perhaps that’s their “illness.” Perhaps it’s their gift. An ability to see metaphor as a physical construct, for metaphor to cease being a filter and become reality.
And that was the book for me. Despite all the great characters, despite the battle for control that rages between Ratched and McMurphy, despite the damage done and the control won and lost and won and lost, I was totally focused on the journey through Chief’s mind. I get him. And I love him. And I still love Milos Foreman’s film of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest -- good thing too since I named my son after Foreman -- because the film and the book are two completely different works. They are akin. No doubt. And they are both beautiful. But they are too different (in delivery) to be considered the same.
My mind was blown.
v. I guess I'll have to add this to my "crazier-than-a-lobotomized-mcmurphy" shelf, even thought it isn't crazy at all.(less)
I don’t really know why, but when I think of Siddhartha I think of hippies. I am sure I’ve seen a copy of Steppenwolf or Siddhartha in the hands of a...moreI don’t really know why, but when I think of Siddhartha I think of hippies. I am sure I’ve seen a copy of Steppenwolf or Siddhartha in the hands of a hippy in a movie, or I've read about some hippy being a fan of the book in some bio about a sixties' rock star. Whatever the reason, though, that connection tugged on my reading of Siddhartha like gravity.
People often talk about how the hippies went from being love children opposed to Vietnam to investment bankers approving of the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan, but there is little sadness attached to that talk. If anything it is used as an implied argument for the righteousness of the latter position, as though love is childish and imperialism (or just plain vengeance) is the adult reality.
I, too, have often wondered how one became the other, but I’ve always felt pretty bummed about the shift. I’m even sadder about it now that I’ve read Siddhartha. If my imagination of old tattered, dog eared copies of Siddhartha passing from reader to reader in communes has any kernel of truth to it, the old hippies clearly missed Hesse’s warning.
You see, Siddhartha does precisely what the hippies did. He turns his back on his search for Nirvana and runs smack into the corruption of possession. He grows fat, old, corrupt and poisoned by the comfort that enticed him to give up his search for the way. But Hesse lets him find his way back again. He hears the river, and the river leads him to love and timelessness and peace and living. It’s kind of beautiful, actually. But the important thing is that he sees his move into mercantilism and gambling and societal membership as a failure and returns to the happiness of simplicity.
If the hippies really did read Siddhartha, it’s too bad they didn’t heed Hesse’s message, but then they probably didn’t read it after all. It’s probably nothing but a piece of fancy that found its way into my head through some obscure piece of popular culture.
Ivanhoe. Seriously?! Could there be a more arbitrary title to any famous book in the English language? It would be like naming Lost "Benjamin Linus,"...moreIvanhoe. Seriously?! Could there be a more arbitrary title to any famous book in the English language? It would be like naming Lost "Benjamin Linus," or naming the original Dragonlance Chronicles "Caramon Majere." This isn't a book about Ivanhoe, it's a book with Ivanhoe in it.
Sir Walter Scott must have been sitting around his room with his D&D dice to come up with Ivanhoe.
Random Title List for Unnamed Book I Just Finished Writing About King Richard's Return From the Crusades and the Defeat of His Slightly Crazy Brother Prince John Roll 1d20
1. Lady Rowena 2. Brian de Bois-Guilbert 3. Front de Boeuf 4. Friar Tuck 5. Isaac the Jew 6. The Black Knight 7. Cedric 8. Ivanhoe 9. Richard Coeur-de-Lion 10. Prince John 11. Athelstane 12. Wamba 13. Rebecca 14. Albert Malvoisin 15. Waldemar Fitzurse 16. Gurth 17. Maurice de Bracy 18. Locksley 19. Ulrica 20. Me
It's paradoxically inspiring and frightening that the things the Greek playwrights were writing about still resonate today: inspiring that their insig...moreIt's paradoxically inspiring and frightening that the things the Greek playwrights were writing about still resonate today: inspiring that their insights and idiocies remain relevant to modern readers, and frightening that humanity has made so little progress that the insights and idiocies of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles still concern us.
I picked up the Oresteia because I thought it was about time I put the plays to the tale I thought I knew. I found what I expected:
The children were eaten: there was the first affliction, the curse of Thyestes. Next came the royal death [if we ignore the sacrifice of Iphigenia:], when a man and lord of Achaean armies went down killed in the bath. Third is for the saviour. He came. Shall I call it that, or death? Where is the end? Where shall the fury of fate be stilled to sleep, be done with?
The familiar bloody tale of cannibalism, infanticidal sacrifice, vengeance, more vengeance, and the Gods ordained entrenchment of patriarchy were all there. The three plays of the Oresteia -- Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides -- were brutal, lovely, frustrating, illogical, brilliant and exciting in turns. I spent some of my time trying to suss out a way to stage these entertainingly without wholesale change, and some of my time thinking about the insights and idiocies that the Oresteia offered.
Amongst it all, I was shocked to discover something fresh -- at least to me. We often talk about the stultifying power of patriarchy, how that power has twisted up our cultures into the ugliness we know now, and the blame for that power is widely accepted to be the responsibility of those who made the power, hold the power and don't want to give it up.
What struck me in the Oresteia is that most people, from that day to this, from Ancient Greece to our modern globalized world, are responsible for the power of patriarchy (at least partially) because they desire infantilization. Few, so very, very few, want to be adults (metaphorically speaking). They don't want to make choices, they don't want to accept responsibility, they don't want to face conflict, they don't want to think. They want protection, they want to be told, they want to justify, they want to conform, they want to remain permanent metaphysical children embracing illusory comfort.
In the Oresteia the gods are credited with every act taken, so the players live or die believing that another is responsible for what they've done. They remain willing children of the gods.
It's a human willingness that I see all around me 2,468 years after the Oresteia was written. Is it any wonder the concerns of Aeschylus still plague us today?(less)
When I first met Erika, for some long forgotten reason and situation, someone said, "Do you like my hat?"
I answered: "No. I do not." There was an awkw...moreWhen I first met Erika, for some long forgotten reason and situation, someone said, "Do you like my hat?"
I answered: "No. I do not." There was an awkward pause and I added, "Good-bye. Good-bye again," with some totally bizarre, guttural, kiddie voice. It became a fun inside joke for Erika and me, but for the life of us, we couldn't remember where it came from. It sounded familiar; it didn't sound me-invented, but we couldn't place it.
Then we had babes, and I picked up a bunch of board books -- and there it was.
"Do you like my hat?"
"I do not."
It wasn't quite how I remembered it, not quite the way my mind had twisted it over all those years, but we had finally found the source, and we were stoked.
5 years later my boy is reading it to me. It is a great book to foster reading , but even if I didn't have a prior bond with the book beyond learning to read, I would still love Go Dog. Go because of my son.
That was me, that is your humble commentator, sitting down to pass my glazzies over a book eemyaed A Clockwork Orange...more'What's it going to be then, eh?'
That was me, that is your humble commentator, sitting down to pass my glazzies over a book eemyaed A Clockwork Orange I'd sobirated from the biblio. I was ready to be tolchocked in my litso, to have my mozg pried out of my gulliver, to feel that sickening drop in the yarbles when falling from a great tower block; I expected to be preached to by that nadmenny veck A. Burgess in all his high goloss; I expected to loathe Alex and all his malenky malchick droogs. But by Bog or God I got something much more horrorshow.
I actually enjoyed A. Burgess's nadsat burble. I found veshches -- like all the ultra violence and razrezzing and oobivatting and twisted radosty -- to be oomily delivered. I ponied where little Alex was coming from and raged against the millicents and infintmins and prestoopniks and bolnoy sophistos that were arrayed against him. I actually guffed and smecked at like many veshches. But I nearly platched at how malenky little Alex saw the error of his ways and looked forward to a life of chai and a zheena and malenky vecks of his own.
But once I viddied the story like once I wanted rookerfuls, and I've returned again and again, both to A. Burgess's book and S. Kubrick's sinny.
A Clockwork Orange is one of the five or six true greats ever govoreeted. The nadsat isn't at all gimmicky. The lomticks of philosophy are compelling and grow in relevance with the passing of raz. And I for one, oh my brothers, will always "remember the little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal."
Now he was a chelloveck of malevolently heroic proportions.(less)
The Golden Bird -- If you are the “Chosen One” you can eschew all advice, screw up constantly, and still come out on...moreThe Lessons of the Brothers Grimm
The Golden Bird -- If you are the “Chosen One” you can eschew all advice, screw up constantly, and still come out on top.
Hans in Luck -- Half-wits can be happy with anything.
Jorinda and Jorindel -- You can trespass unreservedly, so long as “the Other” owns the land.
The Traveling Musicians -- Robbing the rich to give to yourself is fine if your victim is a robber.
Old Sultan -- Obey your master to the detriment of your friends, especially if your friends threaten your master’s property.
The Straw, The Coal and The Bean -- Death is the funniest joke of all...and tailors are always nice.
Briar Rose -- Disney can reduce anything -- even a story about slights and righteous indignation -- into a ninety minute indoctrination of the fantasy of good and evil.
The Dog and The Sparrow -- Vengeance is fine if you are the first person wronged, but if you wrong one, then are wronged in return you may not seek vengeance -- even if the vengeance wrought upon you is out of proportion for your crime. This is also known as the “carpet bomb Afghanistan” fable.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses -- Listen to whatever an old hag tells you because her ugliness must equal wisdom.
The Fisherman and His Wife -- Be happy with your station in life. Ambition above your station cannot make you happy. Marx would love this one.
The Willow-Wren and the Bear -- No matter the idiocy of a war and its cause, the defeated should pay reparations, regardless of how humiliating.
The Frog Prince -- Spoiled, nasty, unlikable though one may be, if one is royalty and does what one’s father tells one, living happily ever after is one’s right, and one's inevitable destiny.
Cat and Mouse in Partnership -- The meek will inherit nothing. They will be devoured. No idealism here.
The Goose Girl -- The ideal wife should be meek and mild and of the right station. Also, beauty will out.
The Adventures of Chanticleer and Partlet -- “How They Went to the Mountains to Eat Nuts,” “How Chanticleer and Partlet Went to Visit Mr. Korbes,” & “How Partlet Died and was Buried, and How Chanticleer Died of Grief:” Everyone dies, so live for yourself while you can.
Rapunzel -- Vengeance thy name is woman, but if you’re a Prince everything works out in the end.
Fundevogel -- If you’re going to be boiled by a crazy cook...run. Unless you are a shape shifter...of course.
The Valiant Little Tailor --Make people believe you’re a bad ass and you’ll never have to prove it.
Hansel and Gretel -- If you kill a “godless witch” you will be rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice, and if you are a father who abandons your children at the behest of your second wife but feel bad about it, you too will be rewarded. And if you catch the mouse you can make a hat out of it.
The Mouse, The Bird and the Sausage -- Stick to your proper social roles or you will DIE!
Mother Holle -- If you are ugly you must be lazy. If you are ugly and lazy you will be punished. Your punishment will be having your skin covered in pitch that will never come off, so according to the Grimm Brothers ugly = lazy = black skinned. Yikes.
Little Red-Cap -- Listen to your mother because she is always right, and kill all the predatory wildlife you can because it will eat you otherwise. Oh, and if you are “devoured” by a wolf you can be cut out soon and revived.
The Robber Bridegroom -- Never leave witnesses, and always check for missing body parts.
Tom Thumb -- There’s no place like home is the stated lesson, but the real moral is that cheaters and crooks prosper.
Rumpelstiltskin -- The rich and powerful do not have to honour contracts and agreements. That is the lot of the poor.
Clever Gretel -- Lie your face off to protect the secret of your eating disorder and your alcoholism.
The Old Man and His Grandson (possibly the best story in the tales; it’s certainly one of my favourites) -- Treat others as you’d like to be treated lest you be treated ill.
The Little Peasant -- Lie, cheat, steal and commit murder, even mass murder, and you will flourish, so long as you are preying on the idiocy of your neighbours.
Frederick and Catherine -- Dizzy blondes always prosper.
Sweetheart Roland -- If you love your man and remain faithful, he’ll always come back to you, no matter his own unfaithful transgressions.
Snowdrop (also known as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) -- Creepy men will always come to the rescue of a too-young girl...if she is lovely enough.
The Pink -- Apparently pink has always been the colour of homosexuality (of course, it could just be that I was feeling particularly gay when I read that night).
Clever Elsie -- Divorce is as simple as a fowling net and bells tied around your moron spouse’s neck. At least if you are a Clever Hans.
The Miser in the Bush -- Someone always pays.
Ashputtel (aka Cinderella) -- The Brothers Grimm really made no sense at all, and they must have had a wicked step-mother of their own. These boys had issues.
The White Snake -- Be kind to lesser beasts and you will some day be rewarded, but you can still kill any domesticated beasts indiscriminately.
The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids -- Predators are evil and must die; prey are good and must live. Prey can also torture and kill predators whenever they want.
The Queen Bee -- Be nice to animals and they will make you richer than Daffy Duck in the Genie's lair.
The Elves and the Shoemaker -- Naked dwarf/elves make kick ass shoes.
The Juniper Tree -- Killers should be killed, so their victims will be born again.
The Turnip -- There is virtue in con artistry.
Clever Hans -- THE BEST STORY EVER! The whole crew giggled their brains out at the escapades of Clever Hans. Of course, it could have been my silly Austrian accent. In fact, every Grimm Tale would be better with an Austrian accent.
The Three Languages & Lily and The Lion -- Leave the fairy tales behind for a few days and they are totally forgettable.
The Fox and The Horse -- Domesticated animals deserve much better than wild ones. Haven't I seen that somewhere before?
The Blue Light -- It’s terrible for a Princess to be forced into menial labour. A capital offence, in fact.
The Raven -- Useless men are the perfect men for a wronged princess.
The Golden Goose -- Always feed homeless men, it’ll make you a King. And here I thought the most you could get from such a deed was a dipped ice cream cone.
The Water of Life -- The good guys always win. Silly isn’t it?
The Twelve Huntsman -- Sexism will always help a lady get her man.
The King of the Golden Mountain -- Midgets and dwarves are nothing but magical. Bad people have black faces. Kings can steal anything they want. That's the Brothers Grimm in a nutshell.
Doctor Knowall -- Idiots are fated to riches. See...there was ntohing new about Forrest Gump.
The Seven Ravens -- Father’s are never responsible for their crimes against their children.
The Wedding of Mrs. Fox -- First Story: Genetic anomalies are easy to overlook if you are a fox. Second Story: Racial purity must be maintained. Hey...weren't these cats German?!
The Salad -- Turn a woman into an ass, and she will drop to her knees and do anything you want, making you happy forever.
The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was -- The longer the story (or title) the more idiotic the moral.
King Grisly-Beard -- Any shrew can be tamed.
Iron Hans -- Cursed Kings will help any knob who can help them break their curse.
Cat-Skin -- There are Kings everywhere, and they’re all looking for a Princess who wants to hide her Princessness. I am not sure that PETA would be impressed with this one.
Snow-white and Rose-red -- Every talking animal is a Prince in disguise’ every pretty little girl is just waiting to be made a Princess; every dwarf is evil.
So who comes out ahead in The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales: The super rich, the rich, all nobility, the stupid, and cute animals.
Who ends up looking bad: any woman who isn’t nobility, step-moms, dwarves, the poor. folks with dark skin.
Yep, this book is crap. It is such crap that nearly every Disney adaptation is an improvement -- seriously. The last thing I can say, the thing I need to say, is YUCH. Yuch-yuchity-yuch-yuch-yuch!
Twenty-five years ago I'd have given The Lord of the Rings my highest possible praise. I came to Tolkien's masterpiece on my own, and that meant much...moreTwenty-five years ago I'd have given The Lord of the Rings my highest possible praise. I came to Tolkien's masterpiece on my own, and that meant much to me at twelve. The only books that had been reached by me alone were books on mythology and horror. Everything else I read, from DH Lawrence to Hemingway to Dickens to Shakespeare (and this also included Dracula and Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde because they were "true" classics), was suggested and sanctioned by my mother (for which I will always owe her deeply).
It is easy to forget that The Lord of the Rings was not a pop culture phenomenon in the seventies and early eighties. It was a fringe book (at least in North America), something that was not yet considered a part of the canon, something that was not a name on every boy's lips (even if they were just getting to know D&D) let alone every child's lips. Sure it was respected and loved by those who knew it, but knowing it was not a foregone conclusion as it is today, and its audience was almost completely genre oriented. In my little community (my school and the blocks surrounding my home), I was the first kid to read it.
And that first reading was a revelation. Sure I'd read The Hobbit, but that didn't prepare me for the breadth and depth of The Lord of the Rings. Middle Earth in its grandest incarnation.
To create a fantasy world is one thing, but to breathe life into ages of that world, to keep all the pieces together with such magnificent detail and rigour, to create character after believable character and make us care about most of them, even poor Smeagol/Gollum, that is a literary labour of Hercules. And by pulling it off, Tolkien created the single most important manifestation of Fantasy that has ever and will ever be written. The Lord of the Rings has rightly been named a classic. It is part of the canon, and it deserves its place. It is entertaining, it is weighty, and it is loved by nearly all.
Aye...and there's the rub.
Its indisputable greatness has made it indisputable.
It has become dogma among fanboys and fangirls that the bastions of The Lord of the Rings are unassailable. Criticize Tolkien's work -- academically or otherwise -- and you put yourself in almost as much danger as a chatty atheist trying to engage in a theological discussion in a coliseum full of Jehovah's Witnesses (how many of those folks will make it into the afterlife? Isn't there a limit?).
Feminist critics point out the lack of women in The Lord of the Rings, and that those women who are present fulfill only the narrowest stereotypes. Éowyn's strength is dependent upon adopting male gender qualities, a typical stereotype of "powerful women in fantasy," and she is alone amongst the Rohirrim as a woman who can and will fight. All other women in her culture are present as a reason to fight rather than as integral parts of the struggle. Arwen's place (in the books, at least) as a maiden waiting for the hand of her king takes the "reason to fight" to even greater heights. And the only powerful female, Galadriel as the terrible, beautiful elven Queen, is too far removed from mortality and reality to be anything more than a mid-tale deus ex machina, thereby removing her from the realm of women and men and making her a pseudo-god whose power is allowed only because it is arcane and mysterious.
Post-Colonial critics have latched onto the racism inherent in The Lord of the Rings, pointing out the hierarchies between the races: from the "superiority" of the elves, to the "chosen" role of "European" Men of the West under the leadership of Aragorn, to the lesser races of Dwarves and Hobbits (the former are "lesser" because they are "too greedy" and the latter are "lesser" because they are children). Post-Colonialists look to the "orientalization" of Sauron's forces and the configuration of evil as an inherent quality of Orcs and "the dark folk." They point out Tolkien's family's history as a cog in the mechanism of English Imperialism, and his own birth in one of the most blatantly racist colonies of all, South Africa (while he did leave at three years old, his family's presence there at all suggests that some of the classic colonial opinions about the colonized "dark races" helped form the man who wrote these books), as possible reasons for this racism.
These criticisms further suggest, at least to me, that the archetypal source of all fantasy's entrenched racism -- even those books being written today -- is The Lord of the Rings. Those fantasy authors who have followed Tolkien consistently and inescapably embrace his configuration of the races (yes, even those like R.A. Salvatore who try and fail to derail this configuration) and the concepts of good and evil that go along with them, which leads to the stagnation and diminishment of their genre.
The fact is that these flaws do exist in The Lord of the Rings. They are present. They are easy to find. But few of Tolkien's rabid fans want to hear about them.
And even when the criticism is not necessarily suggesting a flaw in Tolkien's work but merely the presence of some subtext, the dogmatists react with rage and condemnation. A fine example of this is when Queer and Gender theorists point to the overwhelming relationships between men, and how the relationship between Frodo and Sam is homosocial, at least, and possibly even homosexual. The only true intimacy in the book occurs between the men, after all, and to ignore that fact is to ignore one of key components of why The Lord of the Rings is so emotionally satisfying, especially to young men.
Even faced with these ideas supported by convincing arguments, however, many fans either strive for ignorance or attack the messenger. This may have much to do with the worry -- unreasonable though it is -- that to admit that a flaw or something uncomfortable exists in any of these books, which so many people love so deeply, is to accept that The Lord of the Rings is neither great nor worthy of love.
But this is not the case.
I love The Lord of the Rings even though I subscribe completely to the post-colonial criticism, and see the merits in both the feminine and queer criticisms, not to mention the countless other criticisms and subtexts that are floating around.
The books are racist; they are sexist. They are not perfect. And I must criticize the elements of The Lord of the Rings that make me uncomfortable and deserve no praise. But my complaints and the complaints of critics make Tolkien's achievement no less great.
Tolkien created the most magnificent imaginary world ever conceived, and, for good or ill, Fantasy would be nothing today were it not for him. The Lord of the Rings is a triumph on countless levels, but it is not the word of God, nor should it be elevated to such heights.
I love The Lord of the Rings, but I love it with reservations. I love it because of its place in my personal mythology, its genuine originality, its creativity, its power, but I love it with my mind open to its flaws, and I refuse to make excuses for Tolkien or his work.
Twenty-five years ago I'd have given The Lord of the Rings my highest possible praise. Not today. But I am still willing to admit my love. (less)
For me, Meursault is a hero. Not for killing the Arab on the beach -- which was carried out with far more motivation than I expected -- but for his to...moreFor me, Meursault is a hero. Not for killing the Arab on the beach -- which was carried out with far more motivation than I expected -- but for his total refusal to bullshit. He is a human stripped of our indoctrination to seek ease through conformity, leaving him as human as a human can be. For that, Meursault is a hero to me. And so is Camus.(less)
I remember taking this book out of the library at my elementary school, Queensland Downs Elementary School, when I was in Mrs. Sanders' class for grad...moreI remember taking this book out of the library at my elementary school, Queensland Downs Elementary School, when I was in Mrs. Sanders' class for grade three. We were in the library for a library period, and I asked Mrs. Dalgliesh, our groovy librarian, for a book. I can't remember if I was the one who suggested Greek Mythology or if it was she, but I do remember her aiding me at the card catalogues, then she sent me off to the shelves to track down "292 DAU [JUV]."
That little journey changed me irrevocably.
I devoured D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths in what was then record time, and within days I was debating my father on theology. I demanded to know why I couldn't worship Zeus instead of his God; I wanted to know why, if the Greek Gods came first, they had a flood, Heracles was resurrected, and Phrixus was saved from being sacrificed by his father by the presence of a golden ram, amongst other things. I wanted to know how Christianity could have such similar myths.
It was the beginning of the end of my religiosity and the penultimate blow to my catholicism. It was the end of my acquiescence to unjust authority. It was the end of acceptance without questions. It catalysed my constant search for understanding. It was the beginning of my father's disdain for me, and his fear of my mind (the latter, I've always suspected, was close to the root of much of the abuse I suffered at his hands). It was the moment of my enlightenment. And I've loved this book deeply from the second I first closed its cover until today.
I finished reading it to our twins last night. To hear them talk today, they are in love with the book themselves, though I doubt it can be felt as deeply as my love for the book. We encourage them to think for themselves, to question, to seek, to demand that authority earns respect, so their experience with the book isn't as revelatory as mine. They have parents who've been answering their questions -- about gods, life, death, where babies come from, about anything -- since they were asking questions. They haven't needed to find that power for themselves, we've pointed the way to that power from the start. Still, they love this book, and I hope they share it with their kids (if they choose to have kids) in turn.
I hated all The Haunting of Hill House's characters so much that I couldn't stand reading the book, yet Shirley Jackson's need to make us hate all the characters in the book, and her success impressed the hell out of me.
But then I wondered if the reason I hated the characters was not genuinely because of the book, but because of the crappy film version from 1999. Jan de Bont's remake, The Haunting, was abysmal, and the performances of its four stars were some of the worst of their careers (especially Lili Taylor, whose performance as Eleanor was the most insufferable of the lot).
But as soon as I picked up the book Jackson's characters became the actors for me. Liam Neeson was all I could see when I was reading Dr. Montague, despite the fact that Jackson's vivid descriptions of the Doctor don't match the Irishman in any way. And I had the same problems with Owen Wilson (Luke), Catherine Zeta-Jones (Theo) and Lili Taylor (Eleanor). Their performances were the characters for me, and I worried that I wasn't giving Jackson's characters a fair shake.
This hardly ever happens to me. I watch movies all the time -- sometimes before I read the books, although I try to avoid this -- and I've nearly always been able to avoid the actors' performances spilling into my fanciful renderings of the characters. This time, though, all four horrible performances stuck.
So was my disdain for the characters really Shirley Jackson's doing, or was it my personal issues with a bad rendering of her work? I hope it was the former rather than the latter, but I remain unsure.
I also ran into problems with my expectations of the story, and these seem to have been miraculously untainted by the movie. Even odder than my retention of the movie characters was my total lack of recall for the story itself.
Jackson kept me guessing throughout The Haunting of Hill House, but right up until the end I felt like all these false leads and potential "realities" were missed opportunities. She frustrated me again and again. I wondered if the hauntings were being staged as a psychological experiment by Montague, then I hoped that was the case, then it wasn't. I wondered if Eleanor was there at all, then I hoped she wasn't, then she was. I wondered if someone was already a ghost, then I hoped she was, then she wasn't. And so it went: Jackson kept setting me up with the story's potential then knocking me down with an overturning of my expectations.
Then I reached the end of the story, and Chapter Nine actually redeemed the tale for me. It didn't make The Haunting of Hill House one of my all time favourites, but it did bring me closer to believing that Shirley Jackson really expected us to loathe her characters, that she even depended on it, and that the control she exerted over her work was as deliberate and delicate as a surgeon repairing ligaments.
These ingredients may have been put together to tell us how to live our lives in and for every moment, but something tells me Kazantzakis was not writing Zorba the Greek to preach a way of life so much as to celebrate life in all its glory -- seeing everything in life, including death, as worthy of glorification.
Zorba can be a choppy piece of literature at times, moving between moments of glorious prose, dull passages of lounging about, and sudden bursts of frenetic action, but that choppiness could be a brilliant move on the part of Kazantzakis to mimic the rhythms of life itself. Whatever the shortcomings of Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis still manages to imbue his story with an incredible depth of balance.
Humanity is as ugly as it is beautiful, and neither state is superior to the other. They simply are.
I will read Zorba the Greek again in a year. I must. I know that it will require time and meditation to fully savour what Kazantzakis has done. Maybe then, after I've taken the time, I will have more to say.
For now I will simply do what makes me feel most alive. (less)
I want to appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does.
I want to take pride in my work; I want to taste every bite of sausage, suck the marrow...moreI want to appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does.
I want to take pride in my work; I want to taste every bite of sausage, suck the marrow out of every fish bone, enjoy every puff of every cigarette, bask in a sunset, watch the moon cross the sky, fall asleep content; I want to focus on the necessities of living; I want to focus on life, but I have too much. It's not much compared to most everyone I know, but it is still too much.
And because it is too much I can't appreciate life the way Ivan Denisovich Shukov does. Reading about it is not enough, but right now it is what I have.
I giggled, I guffawed, I snorted, and I laughed in turns. I smiled at some particularly insightful bits of satire. I nodded happily when Bierce's wit assaulted his peers or scored a palpable hit on an issue or a word I wanted to see skewered.
I wanted so badly to enjoy Bierce's classic more than I did, but for every entry I enjoyed there was another that made me bored (I should mention, however, that there was nothing that I hated), and I found myself slogging through to the next definition rather than enjoying where I was at.
Bierce was particularly somnolent when he turned to humorous verse to flesh out his definitions. The man had a gift for prose, but he had no gift for poetry. His verse was, occasionally, funny -- I will concede that -- but much of it simply made me yawn.
Some of this could be me, some of this could be the distance in time between Bierce and myself, but some of it must be Bierce too.
I recognize The Devil's Dictionary's place as a classic, and it certainly deserves the title; I also think everyone should have a copy lying around to pick up and put down whenever they need something stimulating to read (it could be the perfect toilet book, and I don't mean that in a bad way). But, sadly, my feelings about the book never surpassed contented enjoyment.
Would you care to riposte, Mr. Bierce?
"CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
There is a land of pure delight, Beyond the Jordan's flood, Where saints, apparelled all in white, Fling back the critic's mud.
And as he legs it through the skies, His pelt a sable hue, He sorrows sore to recognize The missiles that he threw.
I struggled with my star rating for Conan because, despite any mitigating factors, I really love the character of Conan, particularly i...moreAaaaah...Conan!
I struggled with my star rating for Conan because, despite any mitigating factors, I really love the character of Conan, particularly in the hands of his progenitor, Robert E. Howard.
Howard had a fiercely creative mind and a burning work ethic that enabled him to crank out some of the most amazing pulp heroes and anti-heroes, including Kull, El Borak, Solomon Kane, the humorous Breckinridge Ellis, and, of course, Conan before taking his own life at thirty years old.
It is an impressive run, and his characters continue to live and breathe for us almost seventy-five years after his suicide.
Rereading the first Conan book, an attempt by L. Sprague de Camp (Howard's flame holder) to bring together Conan's short tales in something resembling chronological order, was a real treat: a return to my teenage years of sword and sorcery roll playing, pulp comic book madness, and pubescent wish fulfillment that everything could be answered with a strong fist, righteous violence and that women would swoon for the man who could deliver those things.
But there are things that mitigate the quality of the Conan books today, and they are unavoidable. L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, the partners who filled in the gaps in the Conan saga, wrote their own chapters and finished Howard's tales from notes and partially written drafts, are nowhere near as talented as Howard, and their work, which appears in every Conan book of the original cycle, gets in the way.
It is also tough to swallow the sexism and racism underlying much of Howard's work. The former is blatant and Howard made no attempt to hide Conan's patriarchal proclivities; the latter is not as obvious but Howard himself may have been totally unaware of its presence. Howard was fairly forward thinking for his day, but he was writing pulp in 1930s Texas and we can't expect him to share our supposedly "enlightened" opinions or views of the world. Even so, some of Conan's behavior is tough to take.
But there is so much that is entertaining and excitingly creative about Howard's writing that I find myself swinging the other way on the pendulum almost as soon as something bothers me. It's so easy to get swept up in Zamoran intrigue or Nemedian murder mystery or Stygian black magic that all other concerns disappear.
Howard's finest achievement, and one that I have never seen discussed, was the way his Conan narrative unfolded with Conan's role constantly shifting. I'm not speaking about Conan's move from thief to adventurer to mercenary and back again. What I find fascinating is that Howard tells the story of Conan using countless short stories, but Conan isn't always the main character. Sometimes he's nothing more than a peripheral supporting character, yet each occasion of his presence tells us something more about Conan and furthers the chronicle of his life. "The God in the Bowl" and "Rogues in the House" are perfect examples of Conan's shifting narrative role, and these are stories unmuddied by the hands of Howard's followers. The technique of allowing a major character to have his story told through drips and drops is, I think, underused in literature today -- and Howard mastered it with Conan.
This time through I marveled at Howard's creative and narrative genius, cringed at his antiquated social outlook, and moved through my discomfort to simply enjoy what is -- no matter its flaws -- a classic of Fantasy literature. I love Conan, and I probably always will, but tainted as it is, and as a potential recommendation for others, I can't give it more than three stars -- even if its a five in my heart.(less)
I remember hearing a radio version of this when I was young, long before I eve...moreTo Build a Fire is one of the stories that made me want to be a writer.
I remember hearing a radio version of this when I was young, long before I ever read it. My Dad and I were on a camping trip in one of the provincial parks, and he'd brought along a little transistor radio. In the dark of our tent we picked up a radio station that played old radio shows, and that night the story was To Build a Fire. It was wonderful to listen to it in that setting. The old crackly radio hummed, the static mixed with the Yukon wind sound effects, the dog barked, the man talked to himself while he tried to get his fire lit, and all the while our canvas tent creaked in the warm night. It was a full immersion into London's story of Nature humbling man.
A while later, in school, I had to read To Build a Fire in a reading period; I was thrilled to be remembering the story as the words unfolded in front of me. I wanted to go to the Yukon (which I am finally doing this summer). I wanted to face Nature in a way that was smart. I wanted to do what the man failed to do. I wanted to avoid arrogance, swallow my natural hubris, and experience the cold and danger of a Yukon winter just so that I could show the man that he should have listened to the old man's advice and paid attention to his dog's uneasiness.
Now that I teach, I bring out To Build a Fire in any class that calls for short stories. It is one of the greatest short stories ever written, and it always leads to a lively discussion, especially today when so many students are concerned with the environment.
Some students find themselves cheering for the Yukon, some find themselves cheering for the dog, and a few find themselves cheering for the way the man never gives up. Then there are those who scoff at the man for his stupidity, for his lack of imagination, for his arrogance in the face of such raw, frigid power.
I find that, these days, my reaction to To Build a Fire depends on my mood. I can see every side; I can empathize with every perspective, which I am sure has everything to do with the brilliance of London's craftsmanship. This last time I found myself connecting most with the story of the dog. When I reach the Yukon this summer (boy am I glad that it won't be winter), I'm going to read it again. I think it's a pretty good bet who I'll side with in that reading. But one never knows. (less)
--i could have sworn i read this a decade ago, but now i don't know. something tells me i read an excerpt in a class sometime and th...morean html thing!>
--i could have sworn i read this a decade ago, but now i don't know. something tells me i read an excerpt in a class sometime and thought i read the book. i didn't remember a fucking thing other than Hari Seldon
--c'mon ... Lucas is the most shameless thief since Shakespeare. Coruscant = Trantor. Don't even pretend it doesn't. And the Ewoks are stripped straight out of The Word for World is Forest.
--psychohistory is a load of crap, but a fun load of crap.
--Sherri told me that Foundation was all about the intrigue and she was right. i get so tired of violencebeing the tool of victory in ALL literature that it is amazing to read a book without a shred of violence, where diplomacy and intellect rule the galaxy or universe or whatever.
--this shit is one of the true progenitors of sci-fi as we know it. which rocks.
--the guy who sold me this book has all these fleshy pollops drooping off his facial skin. i badly want to see him on the beach this summer. he probably has one under his armpit the size of a giant droopy thing
--the fall, intellectual arrogance, religion, mercantilism, all good things. it's universilization in the fifties.
--fukushima mon amour
--can i get me one of them personal force fields?
--my cover is this amazing, funky green, wannabe-cubism from the Avon edition circa 73. it looks like my mom's old stove.
I know this is supposed to be a scary story, and I know that it is the much lauded Henry James who wrote it, but The Turn of the Screw never grabs me...moreI know this is supposed to be a scary story, and I know that it is the much lauded Henry James who wrote it, but The Turn of the Screw never grabs me the way I hope it will or think it should. It's just not chilling to me, and that's what I want in a ghost story.
That doesn't mean it's without merit -- or perceived merit -- because this is James, after all. When I look at it as the story of an extremely disturbed and unreliable Governess being filtered through a nameless narrator, it takes on so much more depth than the average "scary story." These dual perspectives raise all sorts of questions about the veracity of the tale, whether or not the story-ending death is a murder, and whether the ghosts of Quint and Jessel are figments of an overactive, Romantic/Gothic imagination. And the potential readings spin off from there into politics, intertextuality, psychology, hyperreality and more.
I always wonder, though, if because it's James, I find myself digging much deeper than I was meant to in this tale. Is it possible that James was really just telling a good ghost story? Spinning a yarn? Is it possible that James' reputation, his literary chops, make this tale impossible for me to enjoy as a horror story? Is it possible that I read The Turn of the Screw too deeply?
I think the answer to all these questions is "yes" -- at least for me -- because what I really want when I read a ghost story is a chance to be shivered. I want to be induced to run around the house looking into dark corners and under beds, making sure no one is lurking about and waiting for me to go to sleep so they can paralyze me and gut me with a knife (sorry...I'm okay now). What I don't want is to be so conscious of the writing itself that the shivers never set in -- and that's what happens to me with The Turn of the Screw.
For pure fear, I'll take Poe over James anytime. You're just too damn intellectual to scare me, HJ. Sorry.(less)
Is there a better artistic expression of death's myriad manifestations than Shakespeare's Hamlet? I say no. In my counter-factual universe I see Willi...moreIs there a better artistic expression of death's myriad manifestations than Shakespeare's Hamlet? I say no. In my counter-factual universe I see William Shakespeare as a Lieutenant at the First Somme. Imagine the war poetry that Shakespeare could have written. Perhaps one such war sonnet would have gone something like this:
My subaltern’s eyes will ne’er again see the sun, Exposed hearts are more red than whores lips are red; If we go o’er the top we are sure to face the gun; And those caught on wires are things better off dead.
I have seen bodies gouged open, red and white, And from froth-corrupted lungs seen gas leak; The scent of naturally rotting flesh gives more delight Than the breath of vesicant that from blisters reeks.
I loathe the whine of 5-9s we needs all must know Dying screams hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I ne’er saw an unworthy boy go; My subaltern when he dies rots on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my loss as rare As all the missing and dead I blench to compare.
There is a scene in Act IV, rarely presented on-stage, wherein Hamlet looks upon Young Fortinbras' forces and feels guilt over his own concerns compared with the concerns of the men who go to die: "...to my shame I see / The immanent death of twenty thousand men / That for a fantasy and a trick of fame / Go to their graves like beds..." (IV.iv.59-62). Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori, indeed. (less) | <urn:uuid:f99d58de-436a-42c3-87a4-4a798a01324d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1022982-brad?shelf=classic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971847 | 14,783 | 1.5625 | 2 |
This time, Obama takes the oath of office following a bruising presidential campaign and four years of partisan fighting. He's more experienced in the ways of Washington. He has the gray hair and lower approval ratings to show for it.
For at least the inauguration weekend, the fiscal fights and legislative wrangling will be put aside in favor of pomp and circumstance. Some Obama supporters said the president's second inaugural was no less historic than his first.
"There were people who said they'd never vote for an African-American president," said Julias Cherry, a Democratic activist from Sacramento, Calif., who brought his family to Washington for the inauguration. "Now they've voted for him twice, and he won the popular vote and the electoral vote. That says something about his policies and his team."
The White House sees the call to service as a way for Americans across the country to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. The day Obama publicly takes the oath of office marks King's birthday, and 2013 is the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader's March on Washington.
Also Saturday, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden were hosting the Kids' Inaugural Concert, an evening event paying special tribute to military spouses and children.
The crowds pouring into Washington were expected to be far smaller than they were four years ago, and there will be fewer inaugural balls for the president and first lady to attend. Still, Obama's swearing-in at the Capitol is expected to draw up to 800,000 people, which would make it the largest second.
The president was still working on his inaugural address heading into the weekend. He isn't expected to delve deeply into the policy objectives he'll tackle in a second term, but the tone and theme of the speech will set the stage for the policy fights to come.
Aides said he will make the point that while the nation's political system doesn't require politicians to resolve all of their differences, it does require Washington to act on issues where there is common ground. He will speak about how the nation's core principles can still guide a country that has changed immensely since its founding.
Temperatures were forecast to fall throughout the weekend and be in the 30s on Monday when the crowds gather along the parade route that will take Obama from Capitol Hill to the White House.
Despite scaling back on some of the revelry, the inauguration will be a star-studded affair. Top acts including Beyonce, Katy Perry and Brad Paisley have signed on to perform at the weekend's events. Lady Gaga was also slated to perform at a staff ball Tuesday night.
The inauguration also is bringing thousands of Obama campaign staffers and donors to Washington, with many getting invitations for tours and other events at the White House. On Friday, the president and first lady held two private events for donors who helped finance his 2012 campaign. | <urn:uuid:d14737a9-f571-496d-abcf-8df0df7bfdf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailymail.com/News/NationandWorld/201301190030?page=2&build=cache | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978004 | 580 | 1.695313 | 2 |
On The Daily Show
In the post below David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and author of Blogwars, looks at the roots of The Daily Show in anticipation of his appearance tomorrow night. Read other blog posts by Perlmutter here.
Hi: I am scheduled to be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central this Thursday (May 8 ) to talk about political blogging. Everyone’s first piece of advice for me about being a good guest: Don’t try to be funny. I think I can manage that…
The Daily Show has become an institution of American politics very much linked to a culture where people–especially younger voters–seek out political information from non-traditional sources. [A KU student (Nathan Rodriguez) in our school's master's program is writing his thesis on the show, to some extent based on his time as an intern.] The show is part of the political culture it satirizes and, in some cases, influences it. The show is considered a source of information, an explainer of politics, and of course a “speaker” of (funny) truth to power.
TDS’s effects are hard to quantify: Think in terms of Saturday Night Live’s “effect” on the Clinton-Obama race! However, there is a small but growing area of research that looks at its role in politics and political socialization. A 2004 Annenberg Election Survey found that TDS viewers have “higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers—even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration.” Other research is finding that the show helps explain politics to people who may not know much about politics. Think infotainment with an educational component. Jon Stewart was rated the fourth “most admired journalist in America” in a 2007 survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Another Pew study found that regular viewers of The Daily Show and its sister Colbert Report had among highest levels of knowledge about news and public affairs among any group of new consumers.
Because I’m a political historian I like to find parallels between present and past. Jon Stewart in some ways is performing a very old political function–that of the court jester.
Today, we think of jesters as smart-alecks in dangling-bell hats cracking jokes at Renaissance fairs; but the post of jester at a noble household or government court was long considered a crucial one for good government. The court jester had many names throughout history, but the job profile goes back at least several thousand years. The first century CE Roman statesman, philosopher and writer Seneca tells us that in households of means there would be a slave whose special task it was to taunt and critique his masters and generally be saucy and insolent to the wealthy and powerful.
In the Middle Ages, nobles—and indeed the king himself—employed a jester, or fool. He would have an uncertain and largely uncensored place at the banquet table, in meeting rooms, and in the halls of the court. He could interrupt great counselors of state, making piquant or provoking comments, pointing out fallacies in arguments, reporting his own contrarian observations from experience outside the court, and generally speak wry truth to overstuffed power. The ideal fool is best drawn in literature by Sir Walter Scott in his medieval novel “Ivanhoe“: Wamba, son of Witless, is an equal opportunity infuriator to prince, baron, and banker.
The king could also trust the fool not to be a sycophantic yes-man, and it was the duty of the same to deliver bad news. There is a famous case drawn from the Hundred Years War, when England had defeated France in a great naval battle. The nobles of France were afraid to report the truth to their king, so they incited the court fool, who announced to his ruler that the English sailors were great cowards because they refused to swim in the ocean like the brave French seamen.
I realize that the role of the jesters and saucy slaves has been romanticized: They probably did not have much real power. But I have to think that their influence was also one that few political leaders wanted to admit to. Wouldn’t we have better government today if we had an official White House Jester? (Who, like Supreme Court Justices, could not be fired).
The Daily Show is part of the great modern sweep of interactive media, like blogs, but it has some deep roots. | <urn:uuid:409bdb17-03a4-41d1-bd92-3ece140e8909> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.oup.com/2008/05/daily_sho/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973538 | 971 | 1.734375 | 2 |
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