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MSSQL Server Reporting Services : Black Belt Components: Manage Nulls in OLAP Reports
November 17, 2004
About the Series ...
This article is a member of the series MSSQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. The series is designed to introduce MSSQL Server 2000 Reporting Services ("Reporting Services"), with the objective of presenting an overview of its features, together with many tips and techniques for real-world use. For more information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the exercises we will undertake, please see my initial Database Journal article, A New Paradigm for Enterprise Reporting.
Basic assumptions underlying the series are that you have correctly installed Reporting Services, along with the applications upon which it relies, and that you have access and the other rights / privileges required to complete the steps we undertake in my articles. For details on the specifics of the adjustments necessary to quickly allow full freedom to complete the exercises in this and subsequent articles, as well as important assumptions regarding rights and privileges in general, please see earlier articles in the series, as well as the Reporting Services Books Online.
This article also relies upon MSSQL Server Analysis Services ("MSAS") for a sample cube that will be used as a data source by the report with which we work in our practice exercise. For information surrounding the installation of MSAS and the sample OLAP databases and cubes that accompany the typical installation of MSAS, see the associated Books Online.
About the BlackBelt Articles ...
One of the greatest challenges in writing tutorial / procedural articles is creating each article to be a freestanding document that is complete unto itself. This is important, because it means that readers can complete the lesson without reference to previous articles or access to objects created elsewhere. A casual visitor to any article within a given series, who has presumably found it via a search, should have no more difficulty completing the article (and meeting immediate needs) than a visitor who is completing the articles in sequence, to learn the concepts presented in an ongoing manner. To meet the needs of both types of readers, while keeping articles concise and yet complete, becomes particularly challenging when we set as an objective the coverage of a specific technique that surrounds one or more components of a report, a given administrative function surrounding all reports, and other scenarios where the focus of the session is not the creation of reports, per se, but where a report or reports has to be in place before we can begin to cover the material with which the article concerns itself.
Many other factors add even more preparatory baggage, including the need in a given lesson to have a particular condition (such as null fields in a data source, for example) for which we set about providing a remedy, or providing a means of exploit. When we combine the overhead involved in just "setting the scene," the focus of the article is drowned in myriad steps simply to get to a reasonable starting point.
The BlackBelt articles represent an attempt to circumvent this. We will attempt to use existing report samples or other "prefabricated" objects that either come along as part of the installation of the applications involved, or that are readily accessible to virtually any organization that has installed the application. While we will often have to make modifications to the sample involved (we will actually create a copy, to allow the original sample to remain intact), to tune it to provide the backdrop we need to proceed with the object or procedure upon which we wish to concentrate, we will still save a great deal of time and distraction in getting to our objective. In some cases, we will still have to start from scratch with preparation, but my intention with the BlackBelt articles will be to avoid this, if at all possible.
As we discuss in my article MDX Essentials: Logical Functions: The IsEmpty() Function in working with multidimensional data sets, we are often confronted with empty cells - data is often sparse in these sets by their very physical nature. Because, as a simple example, every product might not be sold at every store in every time period (to cite an instance from the dimensions of the FoodMart2000 sample environment), we will see empty cells in abundance in a data set that contains intersects of these dimensions. (Particularly in working with crossjoins of any magnitude, we will encounter many empty cells, as a general rule.) Empty cells mean nulls, and nulls can mean incorrect results in using MDX to support analysis in reporting.
Issues that range between failure of the report to execute and mere inconveniences (such as inordinate white space, bizarre characters, and other formatting gaffes) can be the consequence of entraining these nulls into a reporting application. Reporting Services is no exception, and sooner or later, most report authors are going to find themselves facing a need to manage null fields. While one of the many beauties of the MSAS / MSSQL Server / Reporting Services combination is the fact that this is easily done within more than one layer (for instance, within the OLTP database, OLAP cube, or the report itself), we may find ourselves working with a combination or environment where we do not have all of these options.
It is the type of scenario where we have to manage the nulls within Reporting Services, for a report whose data source is an OLAP cube, which this article addresses. Management of nulls in reports based upon relational sources can be accomplished in similar ways. (My tendency to focus on OLAP reporting is based upon the fact that references abound that teach reporting for relational sources in Reporting Services, but virtually no references to OLAP reporting exist in any of the new books that have recently appeared; articles on the subject are also universally, well, sparse.) In this session, we will:
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Judge Strikes Down NY Wine LawA U.S. District Court judge ruled yesterday that a New York state law prohibiting out-of-state wineries from shipping to New York consumers is unconstitutional.
The New York law, similar to laws in 29 other states, requires that imported liquors be distributed only through licensed wholesalers and retailers to ensure accountability and responsibility and that taxes are paid. But Judge Richard Berman said the law interferes with interstate commerce.
"That the New York direct shipping ban on out-of-state wine burdens interstate commerce and is discriminatory on its face is clear from the very wording, let alone the impact of the exemptions favoring in-state wineries," he said, adding that the law "constitutes a cut and dry example of direct discrimination against interstate commerce."
His decision resulted from a lawsuit in February 2000 by Juanita Swedenburg of Swedenburg Estate Vineyards, Middleburg, VA; David Lucas of Lucas Winery, Lodi, CA; and New York residents Patrick Fitzgerald, Cortes DeRussy and Robin Brooks-Rigolosi against New York's State Liquor Authority. The Coalition for Free Trade and attorney Clint Bolick of the Washington-based Institute for Justice coordinated the plaintiffs' case.
The judge also found the law discriminatory because New York lets in-state wineries ship directly to New York consumers, and rejected arguments by the state that the law is needed to regulate liquor sales and keep alcohol away from minors.
A hearing deciding what remedy the court will order is set for Dec. 5. Berman could end the interstate shipping ban, or he could bar intra-state shipping to level the playing field, insiders said. He also could throw out the state's three-tier system for selling alcoholic beverages, dating from the end of Prohibition, which says producers lawfully may sell only to wholesalers, who sell to retailers who, in turn, sell to consumers.
The decision is similar to rulings this year in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. It also follows a favorable ruling for direct wine sellers Nov. 4. In that case, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida must show why its felony prohibition on interstate direct-to-consumer wine shipments is required for it to collect taxes from out-of-state wineries when these same laws do not apply to in-state wineries.
In addition, a Justice Department appropriations bill, signed into law Nov. 2 by President Bush, permits people physically visiting an out-of-state winery to have wine shipped to them at home.
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Most Americans adamantly oppose both increasing the amount of legal immigration to the United States and legalizing those immigrants now here illegally, the two key elements in President Bush’s immigration overhaul proposal.
On no other foreign policy issue do average Americans disagree more with government and business leaders and other “elites” than on immigration.
“The number of people who want immigration increased is very small,” said Steven A. Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies. “If 55 or 60 percent of the public wants less immigration, a third wants it the same and 7 percent wants it more — [Mr. Bush] is going for that 7 percent.”
The issue cuts across party lines, but already yesterday opponents in Congress were lining up.
Mr. Bush proposed allowing illegal aliens already in the United States and foreign residents to apply for legal work status here, as long as an employer has certified he would employ the person and no U.S. worker is readily available.
The president also proposed increasing the level of overall legal immigration, and though he didn’t specifically guarantee that the guest workers would get legal permanent residence, members of Congress said they expect the two will have to be tied together somehow.
But a Gallup poll from June found only 13 percent of Americans thought immigration should be increased, while 47 percent said it should be reduced and 37 percent said it should be kept at its present level.
Opposition has remained high for several years. A Zogby poll from 2002 found that 58 percent of Americans wanted to reduce immigration, 65 percent disagreed with amnesty and 68 percent felt the United States should deploy military troops to the border to curb illegal immigration.
Meanwhile, 60 percent of Americans believe present immigration levels are a “critical threat to the vital interests of the United States.” But when the poll asked the same question of government officials, business leaders and journalists, only 14 percent thought so.
When asked whether immigration levels should be kept the same, increased or reduced, 55 percent of Americans opted for a reduction, while 18 percent of the poll’s sample of “elites” thought so, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Also, proposals that are seen as soft on illegal immigrants have come back to bite politicians before.
Just last year, California Gov. Gray Davis was hurt in his bid to stave off a recall when he signed a bill to let illegal immigrants obtain state driver’s licenses. The new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, pushed a repeal of that provision through the legislature.
An exit poll commissioned by the Federation for American Immigration Reform showed that 30 percent of California voters said they were somewhat or much more likely to vote against Mr. Davis because he signed the law. Only 8 percent of voters were somewhat or much more likely to support him because of it.
“How did Davis get it so wrong?” Mr. Camarota said. “The reason is, he and people like George Bush live in an echo chamber of elites, where the received wisdom on immigration is all the same.”View Entire Story
By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
How does our 50th state view D.C. politics?
Political centrist who tells it like it is
"Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you're thinking in order to make your thinking better." - Dr. Richard Paul
Life lessons, adventures, people places and observations as I undertake my personal quest to travel to 100 or more countries before I die.
Benghazi: The anatomy of a scandal
Vietnam Memorial adds four names
Cinco de Mayo on the Mall
NRA kicks off annual convention
California wildfires wreak havoc
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Location and General Characteristics
Diamond Lake neighborhood is located on the south side of Minneapolis and is bound by Interstate 35W and Second Avenue South on the west, by Highway 77 and Cedar Avenue on the east, by Highway 62 (which runs along the city limits) on the south, and by 55 th Street East and Diamond Lake Road on the north. The Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport is located directly to the southwest, and the City of Richfield is directly south. The neighborhood takes its name from the lake found in its western end. The neighborhood's northeastern tip connects to Lake Nokomis recreation areas and parks.
Diamond Lake in south Minneapolis is surrounded by 40 acres of parkland. The park was created in 1926.
Last updated Sep. 27, 2011
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The idea was spearheaded by Imogene "Vickey" Johnson, a nine-year employee and two-time breast cancer survivor, who wanted show support for others who are going through treatment or who have lost someone to the disease.
Every October, Johnson can be seen around town wearing her signature pink earrings, bracelet and other novelties as she picks students up and drops them off at various sites within the district.
She shares those items with her co-workers, passing out buttons and bracelets to each one. But this year, Johnson added something new - T-shirts.
The pink shirts feature the district's symbol on the back and a patch that reads, "Redlands Unified School District Transportation Department" on the front.
The department of 50 pitched in to purchase the shirts to spread awareness, and the excitement has been overwhelming, she said.
"Actually our manager, Bill McKinney, was excited when the suggestion came up, and then I just followed through with it to make sure it happened," Johnson said.
McKinney, transportation manager for RUSD, said Johnson had his support by phone Thursday.
"The love and courage Vickey provides to fighting cancer is really a blessing to our community," he said. "And I think it's fantastic that we're able to show such support."
In addition to the Friday Pink Shirt Campaign, Johnson will be out volunteering for the fifth annual Believe Walk on Sunday in downtown Redlands.
She has volunteered at the event for several years, first at its survivors booth and now at its registration booth.
She also founded her own organization - The Servants Reward - which goes around the area to deliver care packages to those going through cancer treatments.
Johnson knows the toll cancer and treatment take on one's body. She was diagnosed with breast cancer twice within a five-year period.
Her aunt died from complications of cancer, while two other aunts are survivors of the disease, and so is her mother.
"I'm the only one that's a two-time survivor," she said. "I hear so many of my friends, family members and co-workers' families who have been affected by breast cancer. And that's why it runs so deeply in my heart. And I also speak about breast cancer at different events."
This year, Johnson buses special education students, but does not talk about her disease or why she wears pink with her current route because she feels that is the parent's duty to do so.
But when she drove around high school students last year, they bombarded her with questions and she was willing to answer.
"We did talk about it because they knew why I was out (and) they knew why I wore pink," she said. A number of her students walked a Relay for Life event at Redlands East Valley several years ago in her honor.
Johnson was first diagnosed with cancer at age 44.
She is now 49 and in remission.
"If it wasn't for God, my husband, my daughter, my friends and family..., the support was so great, and I never wavered," she said. "I knew God has a purpose for me, just like now. And my only mission is to get the word out for people to be aware and for women to get checked every year.
"The earlier the detection, the earlier the survivor rate."
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Businesses that depend on the flow of goods are warning of billions of dollars in economic damage if the 14,500 members of the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) go on strike at 12:01 a.m. Sunday as threatened. But despite federally mediated talks taking place this week, efforts to reach an 11th-hour deal -- or at least a contract extension to keep workers on the job -- appear to be a long shot, as the union continues to balk at a key negotiating demand of management.
If a strike does start, tens of thousands of other workers at railroads, trucking companies and warehouses handling freight that moves through the ports could find themselves out of work. And shipping costs will rise on a wide variety of consumer goods. The ports also accept many items crucial to keeping U.S. factories running, such as auto parts and heavy machinery.
The U.S. Maritime Alliance, known as USMX, representing management at the shipping lines, terminals and ports along the East and Gulf Coasts, says it can no longer afford the per-container payments, known as royalties, that go to the unionized workers. It says those payments average $15,500 a year per worker, which takes the total cost of wages and benefits to an average of $124,138 per worker.
The union, which has not gone on strike since 1977, says the wage and benefit estimates being given by USMX are inflated. It vows it won't consider any changes in the royalties, and will only grant the extension being requested by USMX and the federal mediator if the issue of royalties is taken off the table.
"USMX seems intent on gutting a provision of our master contract that ILA members fought and sacrificed for years to achieve," said ILA President Harold J. Daggett.
Businesses that ship goods through the ports are banding together to ask the Obama administration to take legal action under the Taft-Hartley Act to order the union to stay on the job. The business alliance includes umbrella groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers, as well as trade groups representing retailers, automakers and makers of a wide range of products including chemicals, toys, food and clothing.
"Just the threat of a shutdown impacting the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports creates a level of uncertainty in a fragile economic climate which has forced many businesses to once again enact contingency plans that come at a significant cost to jobs and our economic competitiveness," said a letter the business group sent to the White House on Dec. 18.
But the unions are typically opposed to being ordered back to work. President George W. Bush went to court to order port workers back on the job during a 2002 West Coast strike. But the Obama administration declined to use those powers earlier this year to end an 8-day strike at the nation's busiest container ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Those two ports between them handle more than a third of the nation's container traffic. So it appears pre-emptive action by the president is unlikely.
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|30 yr fixed||3.66%||3.58%|
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Today's featured rates:
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Life in Christian County, Kentucky... More About Trees and Plants...
It's such a beautiful time of the year. Wild plums (above) are in bloom here and there on the hillsides. They have a lovely fragrance that takes me back to my childhood. I may write about wild plums later today (or tomorrow, because I'm about to get very busy.) I have an abiding affection for this native fruit tree.
Daffodils still come up and bloom beneath the oak trees at this old homesite near Highway 68/80 east of Hopkinsville (below.) It's not too hard to imagine a little log cabin sitting on this knoll at the head of a draw* just above the Russellville Road. The ridge would have sheltered the house on three sides, especially to the north, and the trees behind would have helped to break winter winds. This building site had good feng-shui, I think.
*It occurs to me that I may be speaking some kind of a dialect when I say "at the head of a draw." I mean, at the upper end of a small valley.
Update: I noticed when I drove by there today that the old barn is still there, back in the trees just to the right of the area in the photo.
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The Wake Schools Community Alliance has weighed in with campaign mailers for all for its endorsed school board candidates.
Each mailer mentions that only 54 percent of Wake's low-income students are graduating from high school and that the district didn't make Adequate Yearly progress under No Child Left Behind in 2008-09. (Wake is one of the state's 60 districts that are in school improvement status for not meeting NCLB for at least two years in a row.)
But most of the mailers also mention material specific to that individual district.
The District 1 mailer says only two of the 19 elementary and middle schools in that district performed above the county average on the state end-of-grade tests.
The District 2 mailer says only two of the 18 elementary and middle schools in that district performed above the county average on the state end-of-grade tests.
(Both District 1 and District 2 have a large chunk of the district's high poverty schools.)
The District 7 mailer talks about the cost of converting Leesville Road Middle School to a year-round calendar and the negative impact of reassignment on PTAs.
The District 7 mailer also found a way to get around how Karen Simon and not Deborah Prickett was endorsed by Wake NCAE. The mailer says that Prickett was "endorsed by all major parent and citizen advocacy groups."
Of the mailers, the one in District 9 is least specific to that district. It talks about the decline in graduation rates. But the rest is stuff that can be found in the other fliers.
Click here for the District 1 mailer.
Click here for the District 2 mailer.
Click here for the District 7 mailer.
Click here for the District 9 mailer.
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28/10/2004 - The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) welcomed the significant reforms in the Austrian aid system since the last Peer Review in 1999, including the Development Co operation Act, adopted in 2002 and amended in 2003, and the Three-Year Programme 2004-2006 to guide Austria's aid priorities. The DAC commends Austria's commitments to poverty reduction and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and hopes that they will be fully operationalised and reflected in the allocation of resources. This will require strong political support and staff capacity.
The creation of the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) in January 2004 to address the issues of effectively delivering an increased aid programme, presents new opportunities and challenges. ADA is responsible for administering the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' (MFA's) bilateral aid programme. The foundation of ADA will strengthen the MFA's role as the focal point for development strategy and policy leadership within the Austrian aid system, though there is still a need to operationalise the division of labour between the MFA and ADA.
Austria's net official development assistance (ODA) was USD 505 million or 0.20% of Austria's gross national income (GNI) in 2003, the third lowest among the 22 member states of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The Committee welcomed Austria's plans to achieve its 2002 Barcelona Summit commitment of 0.33% of GNI by 2006, which will require it to raise the currently projected 2004 expenditure of €573 million by €222 million, or about 40%. This will have to be matched by mobilising public support.
The DAC recommends that Austria set out a clear strategy, including a growth path, as it prepares for increases of its development assistance funding. This is particularly important since the Austrian aid programme is characterised by a high share of debt relief, which is expected to diminish over the medium term. Long-term financial planning is needed to make Austrian aid more predictable. The Committee welcomed Austria's intention to move towards further country and sectoral concentration, building on its comparative advantage, particularly in South East Europe.
The MFA directly administers 22% of Austrian ODA; seven other federal ministries are also involved in development co-operation spending. Austria's Three-Year Programme helps the MFA to co-ordinate those activities not in its direct responsibility. The Committee felt that over time a more formal system of inter-ministerial co-ordination might be needed. With respect to policy coherence for development, the new Development Co operation Act provides an explicit legal basis for improvement. The MFA, which is responsible for enforcing the Act, needs a prioritised coherence agenda and sufficient resources to pursue this task. The DAC urges Austria to continue its efforts to support private sector and development activities that maintain a clear focus on the economic development and welfare of recipient countries. Furthermore, the Austrian parliament and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can play an important role in raising public awareness of the need for policy coherence for development.
Austria's support to local civil society is appreciated by partner countries. New instruments have been developed for support to NGOs - important in Austria's aid delivery - which should permit greater alignment to partner country strategies and systems while respecting NGO roles, for example in advocacy. The DAC encourages the Austrian authorities to strengthen dialogue and consultation with partner governments including on issues of harmonisation and alignment.
The Committee recommends that the MFA takes the lead in forming a clear position on programme aid and its conditions. Personnel and procurement policies need to be updated to meet the requirements of a growing and increasingly professional bilateral aid programme. It is important to ensure the organisational independence of the Austrian aid system's evaluation function and to maintain the high standard of Austria's statistical reporting, which since the 1999 Peer Review has been brought fully into line with DAC norms.
The DAC Peer Review of Austria's development co operation policies and programmes took place on 27 October 2004. The discussion was led by the DAC Chair Mr. Richard Manning. The Austrian Delegation was headed by Dr. Georg Lennkh, Director-General for Development Co-operation, Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The examiners for the Peer Review were Finland and Germany. The Czech Republic participated in the Peer Review as an observer.
The main findings and recommendations of the DAC regarding this review will be published on the OECD web site, at www.oecd.org/dac, during the week of 2 November 2004. For further information journalists are invited to contact Helen Fisher, OECD Media Relations Division, (tel. 33 1 45 24 80 97).
See table and graphs
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Allison Benner, College Relations Associate – Media, 610-740-3790
CEDAR CREST STAGE COMPANY EXAMINES THEMES OF CONFORMITY, REPRESSION AND PASSION IN "THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA”
Allentown, PA (January 25, 2006) – "The House of Bernarda Alba," a dramatic play by Federico Garcia Lorca and adapted by Emily Mann, explores the disturbing effects of upholding tradition and strict morality on family relationships. The play will open on Thursday, February 23, 2006 at 8:00 p.m. in the Samuels Theatre at Cedar Crest College.
Set in a rural village in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century, Bernarda Alba and her daughters live a sheltered existence following the death of their father. Bernarda forces an eight-year mourning period on her daughters to keep them under her control and protect the family's reputation. The tensions build rapidly among the imprisoned women, who soon find themselves searching for a means of escape from Bernarda's tyranny.
"Though originally written in 1936 and set even earlier, the themes that spark and crackle through "The House of Bernarda Alba" – conformity, repression and passion – still smolder in today's society," says Tim Brown, director of the play. To help translate that to the audience, the company has endeavored to create a contemporary feel to the production. They have also added an ensemble of chorus members to represent the ever-judging eyes of the community in which Bernarda and her daughters live.
This adaptation comes from "La Casa de Bernarda Alba," a play written by Federico Garcia Lorca as a social criticism of the pressures of convention and the repression of female sexuality. Widely considered one of Spain's greatest poets and dramatists, Lorca based the play on a real-life neighbor of his family. Lorca, due in part to his fostering of public theatre, was murdered by Nationalists at the start of Spanish Civil War just after the play was completed.
The play has most recently been adapted into a new musical that will open on March 6, 2006 at Lincoln Center Theatre with Phylicia Rashad as the iron-willed Bernarda Alba.
The show runs February 23, 24 and 25th at 8:00 p.m., and February 26th at 2:00 p.m. in the Samuels Theatre in the Tompkins College Center. Admission is $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. For more information, please contact the Cedar Crest College Box Office at 610-606-4608.
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Russian indigenous group seeks letters of support
"This an attempt to divide the indigenous peoples' movement in Russia and replace it instead with a subservient organization"
The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North is asking concerned people and organizations around the world to send letters of support to Russia’s president, prime minister and justice minister.
“The Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North needs your support regarding the unjustified suspension of its activities by the Russian Ministry of Justice,” said its vice-president, Dmitry Berezhkov, in an open letter circulated Nov. 27.
Berezhkov wants to see these officials reinstate RAIPON, which represents more than 250,000 indigenous peoples in northern Russia and sits as a permanent participants in the Arctic Council.
Russia’s move to suspend RAIPON’s activities on earlier this month on the grounds that its activities are “illegal,” has already received criticism from Canada, Norway, Greenland and international non-governmental organizations, including the Arctic Council, which also asked for RAIPON’s reinstatement.
The letter-writing campaign is the only option left to RAIPON to protest its suspension, Berezhkov said.
“We consider this an attempt to divide the indigenous peoples’ movement in Russia and replace it instead with a subservient organization willing to agree to decisions that are in fundamental contradiction with the vital interests of indigenous peoples,” he said.
Berezhkov also said he hopes the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation will impartially consider RAIPON‘s appeal against the Russian ministry of Justice’s decision and that RAIPON will be permitted to resume its activity.
Berezhkov suggests sending a letter of support for RAIPON to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which can be sent online in English here.
Greenpeace International also has mounted an online letter-writing campaign to protest RAIPON’s suspension.
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Is this really a hate crime?
August 7, 2007
by Jason Rantz
Family Security Matters
As you may recall, I twice discussed
the questionably anti-Semitic behavior of Pace administrators in mistreating the campus student Jewish organization, while kowtowing to demands of the student Muslim groups. After I was contacted by Pace’s flack Christopher Cory, the school’s Executive Director of Public Information, it was clear they were spinning events so fast it made me
In the columns, I make it clear that the campus administration took radically different approaches to anti-Semitic behavior and anti-Muslim behavior.
When a Menorah was desecrated on campus and a swastika was drawn on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the University’s president David A. Caputo labeled the events as “bias incidents.”
When a paperback
Koran was tossed in a toilet—resulting in minimal water damage—Caputo labeled the incident as a “hate crime” that outraged him.
To realize the great lengths to which the University mistreated both these incidents, I highly recommend you read my column
from January of this year. The treatment of both incidents gives the following news greater context.
Now, police have discovered who was responsible for the Koran-toilet incident: Stanislav Shmulevich, a Russian Jewish immigrant who was a student at Pace while anti-Semitic vandalism was occurring and going unpunished. He is being charged with felony hate crimes
that could land him in jail for up to four years—just for putting a book in a toilet
Before we discuss whether or not that is a hate crime, I’d like to remind you of the following events that did not warrant being labeled hate crimes (and shouldn’t):
- The Brooklyn Museum of Art opened a new exhibit that included “Yo Mama’s Last Supper," “which depicts Christ as a nude woman standing with her arms outstretched and 11 black men disciples sitting or standing on either side of her and one white man as Judas.” (Catholic News).
- Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was a piece of “art” that dipped a crucifix in a jar filled with urine (World Net Daily).
- Northern Kentucky University professor Sally Jacobsen and some of her students removed crosses from a social commentary/protest installation on campus and threw them in the trash, because she was against the anti-abortion message it was representing. (FOX News).
The above incidents are just a few of many where liberal causes—protecting abortion rights and criticizing Christianity—are on display. The perpetrators are seldom, if ever, punished and certainly not punished with hate crime legislation. Yet liberals are quick to condemn anything that criticizes Islam or Muslims. For example:
- Muslim students at Brown University successfully prevented an on-campus speech by Nonie Darwish, who criticizes the hatred preached by radical Islam. (Front Page Magazine).
- San Francisco State University put conservative students on trial “for hosting an anti-terrorism rally at which participants stepped on makeshift Hezbollah and Hamas flags.” (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).
- Pace censored a screening of Obsession, a film critical of radical Islam, after Muslim students complained (Family Security Foundation).
Now, back to the paperback Koran and its unfortunate swim in a toilet bowl. Is this really a hate crime? No one was physically hurt. The damage to the Koran was minimal. The Koran in question was a paperback copy—not a priceless religious document. There was no personal target of the demonstration—the target was a paperback book. This was a constitutionally protected act of free speech, regardless of what New York’s hate crime bill states, the same way dropping a crucifix in a jar of urine was protected speech. I suspect that eventually the law will be decided unconstitutional, and Shmulevich will be punished only for simple vandalism.
PC liberals kowtow to anything Muslim because they are both scared of Muslim groups like CAIR (which has pushed the legal troubles against Shmulevich) and they suffer from white guilt—they must do what they can to give minority groups more power because their ancestors were bigots. Unfortunately, people like Shmulevich get thrown under the bus for acting out against something the PC liberals seek to protect.
View this article at Family Security Matters.
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|February 20, 2012||Posted by Guest Author|
Today’s guest article was written by Gnome Stew reader Adam Meyers, the Modern Bard. Adam is starting a third party Pathfinder supplement publishing company, but he took the time out to write this passionate piece on how RPGs can be more than just games. Thanks, Adam!
Warning: This article gets into the philosophy of RPGs and mentions the ’80s. You have been warned.
I’m not a first generation D&D player, but I’m a pretty close second. Back when I was a kid my dad taught all of us to play 1st and 2nd edition and I literally grew up on the game. My childhood is full of awesome RPG memories, but the best part was that it wasn’t just fun — my dad, sneaky guy that he is, would use the game as possibly the best and most entertaining teaching tool I ever saw. All sorts of life lessons, from look before you leap, to think outside the box, to never insult a priest, all found their way into our games. You’d be surprised how well a kid internalizes something when it’s presented through deadly traps and elaborate monster battles.
So when I sometimes see people talking about the problems with RPG social skill checks and say they want them to be more mechanical and less about player skill, I find myself wanting to speak up. I know every table’s different, and yes this gets a bit philosophical, but I’d like to propose a counter-argument to that. Something I call the “Tracy Hickman” approach to gaming.
See, back in the ’80s, when the world was convinced Dungeons and Dragons was some sort of gateway drug to the occult, it fell to D&D pioneers to not only explain how RPGs weren’t evil, but how they could actually be good for you. Gary Gygax compared D&D to a chair once on 60 Minutes, and Tracy Hickman wrote a three-fold essay on RPG Ethics.
Now what follows are my words, not his, but I’m a big Tracy Hickman fan, and if I had to sum up my own takeaway from the third section of his essay, his XDM book, and other places I’ve read his words, I’d say this: RPGs aren’t just about having fun, but about stepping into the shoes of heroes and experiencing their life in order to make your own better.
To contrast, think of a computer RPG. In a computer RPG all the choices have been made for you. You can only do what the programmers decide you can do, and the only choices available are the ones they’ve given you. In a table-top RPG, however, you don’t just watch the story, you in fact make the story. It’s that element of player ingenuity that lets you decide not just what to do, but how to do it, whether it’s fast-talking a guard, swinging from a chandelier, burning an inn down around you, or scaling a giant’s leg using a dagger and short sword (yes, that happened).
So when I see people trying to limit player ingenuity by making things more and more mechanical, especially social skills, I feel like it’s doing an injustice to the players. Firstly, because it’s impossible to separate player and character completely without taking away all of the players’ freedom, and secondly because, with the above philosophy in mind, letting the players live the characters and have that level of freedom is kind of the point.
Yes mechanics determine how well you succeed at a negotiation and making them roll is not a problem, but unless you were to literally script out the players’ speeches and give them only the choice of what option to use (in which case I’d just play Mass Effect), then player skill will always be important because it’s not just the SUCCESS of the venture that’s important, but the HOW. What do you barter with? What are your arguments? Who exactly will you befriend and who will become enemies? As long as those choices are in the hands of the players, then you can’t completely separate the player and the character.
And why should we try so hard to separate them? Yes we’re playing a character, but in the end it’s the player that’s really overcoming the challenges and solving the puzzles. We could make it purely mechanical and just watch the characters overcome the situation, or we can be the ones stepping into the shoes of the heroes and actually do those things ourselves. That’s not only the soul of RP, but that’s how we learn something through that imaginary world we can then take home with us. Does that mean a social player will do better at social situations? Yes it does, but it also means a non-social player rolling someone with amazing social skills gets to not only be effective, but actually get to stretch his own social muscles in a way that’s not only fun, but that he can then take home with him.
Now I’m not saying RP should take the place of mechanics. The point of rolling a character, after all, is using his stats and skills to determine success. What I am saying, though, is that letting the players stretch their own mental and social muscles to help solve the encounter can not only be fun but also make a better game. Sure my players aren’t coming to me primarily to improve their social skills, but if my games can not only rock my players socks, but also give them something to ponder and use in their own lives, than I consider that a pretty successful campaign.
About Guest Author
The article you just read was written by a Gnome Stew reader. We can’t say which one in this bio, since the bio appears with all guest articles, but whoever they are we can all agree that they possess supernatural beauty and magical powers, and are generally awesome. Gnome Stew readers rock!
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Apple Day observance set for March 7
February 28, 2013 12:44PM
Pittsburg State University will observe Apple Day on Thursday, March 7, but the week is filled with activities that honor the university’s oldest tradition.
Events begin on Monday, March 4, with an Apple Scavenger Hunt that runs through Wednesday, March 6. At 11 a.m. on Wednesday, March 6, judges will sample entries in the annual Apple Dessert Contest.
On Thursday, March 7, this year’s Distinguished Service Award recipients will be honored at a reception at 2 p.m. in the Wilkinson Alumni Center. The annual Apple Day Convocation will begin at 3 p.m. in the Sharon K. Dean Recital Hall in McCray Hall. PSU alumnus Lee Tafanelli, adjutant general for the State of Kansas, will be the keynote speaker.
At the convocation, the university will recognize the Distinguished Service Award recipients as well and the Golden Gorilla Award recipients for student leadership. This year’s Outstanding Faculty Awards will also be announced.
At the conclusion of the convocation, members of the PSU Faculty Association will distribute apples.
Randy Roberts, PSU archivist and curator of special collections, said that although Apple Day is among the university's oldest and most recognized traditions, not many people know the story behind the celebration or its association with apples.
Roberts recounted the events that led to the first Apple Day in his book, "Pittsburg State University: A Photographic History of the First 100 Years."
"In 1905, Russell S. Russ, school founder, and the school's supporters in the Kansas legislature secured an appropriation to purchase land for a campus. In 1907 Russ returned to the legislature lobbying for funds to construct the first building on the new campus. While the legislature was in session, Russ sat in the chair of one of the legislators. Faculty members from the State Manual Training Normal (which would become PSU) and Clarence Price the mayor of Pittsburg, were also on the floor. For these improprieties, the Pittsburg delegation was fined a barrel of apples, which was purchased and distributed among the members of the legislature.
"History is clear, however, that when the triumphant Russ returned to Pittsburg with news of the appropriation, he called a school assembly at which the student body fined the faculty a barrel of apples...
"The commemoration of the building appropriation was celebrated the following year in 1908 and a tradition was born. Commemoration Day, always known as Apple Day, became a major event on campus and throughout Kansas."
©2013 Pittsburg State University
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County Judge Joel Baker said a committee made up of county officials and certified public accountants determined maintaining 17 percent of the county’s annual budget would cover 60 days of expenditures in the case of an emergency, which he called a “standard in government.”
A 25 percent minimum reserve policy, which could cover 90 days of expenditures, was being considered. Baker said the county has up to 25 percent of its budget, roughly $17 million, in reserve now.
Baker said the balance began gaining momentum after commissioners made tough spending cuts, adjustments to its benefit and insurance in 2010. He said the continuation of cost saving measures, such as coordinated efforts to lower out-of-county prisoner counts, and conservative budgeting made the rainy-day savings possible.
“We think about the worst case scenario on spending and are conservative on revenues,” he said. “The balance goes into the reserve.”
Baker said the reserve gives the county a “safety net” in case there are emergencies such as natural disasters or revenue lags as property taxes are collected.
Mrs. Fleming said the county also has a strong credit rating and is financially stable, relative to other parts of the state and country.
Beyond the 17 percent reserve, “This is a constructed solution in search of a problem,” she said.
A grassroots member questioned court members regarding the intended use of surplus dollars in September when discussion about raising the reserve policy began.
Ernie Clark, a former city manager and grassroots member, said the group would not support money being used to fund land purchases or public works projects, including a civic center.
Mrs. Fleming told commissioners they should have short- and long-term plans to address county needs with expected cash flow rather than expanding a healthy reserve.
“Don’t hold more of our money than necessary,” she said.
Commissioner Jeff Warr said the county is in rare economic condition to have a healthy reserve and that maintaining “more, than less” is responsible planning in today’s economy.
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White Dolphin is the second awesome book by Gill Lewis. It is set in a fishing village in Cornwall and a lot of the action takes place on the beach, the cliffs or in the harbour. Many of the people in the community depend on the sea to earn a living.
- Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
Kara and her Dad are depressed, upset and confused. Kara's mother, who was a marine biologist and conservationist, disappeared while she was on a research trip, and Kara and her Dad are living with his sister Bev, but Bev is expecting another baby and the house is already overcrowded so Kara and her Dad will have to move out soon.
They have so many debts that they are going to have to sell their beloved boat Moana which is particularly special as Kara's parents restored it together.
They are at war with Dougie Evans and his son Jake who have a grudge against them. Dougie employs a lot of people in his fishing fleet and he wants to get the ban on dredging in the harbour lifted, so that he can make more money easily, but Kara is determined that it should be kept, so that the seabed and all its creatures will not be destroyed.
The white Dolphin plays an important part in the story and it is a precious link with Kara's mother.
This book has lots of things in it that remind me of Sky Hawk, such as the endangered animals, the sick or disabled friend, the rather strange old person that the villagers don't like very much, and the professional environmentalists.
In both books the mean characters change for the better.
There are lots of very strong characters in this book. As well as Kara who was so determined. I liked Miss Pendula who many people think is mad. She lives alone on the cliffs and cares for sick birds.
There is also Felix who achieved amazing things in spite of his disability and Daisy, Kara's cousin who stood up to the bullies who were making fun of Felix even though she is only five.
I admired the Head teacher who was kind and understanding to Kara even though she did something really bad at school.
In the end, Kara achieves something that no adult has been able to do.
Read the book to find out how she does it!
I would recommend this book to anyone from seven to seventy plus , especially if they care about the environment.
Want to tell the world about a book you've read? Join the site and send us your review!
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Australian Bureau of Statistics
5232.0 - Australian National Accounts: Financial Accounts, Mar 2008
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 27/06/2008
|Page tools: Print Page Print All RSS Search this Product|
Deposit liabilities increased to $1,234.8b at the end of March 2008, following transactions of $37.4b during the quarter compared with transactions of -$31.9b in the previous quarter. The major contributors were other depository corporations which accepted $18.1b and banks which accepted $8.7b (down $19.1b on that accepted last quarter). Domestic sectors deposited a net $11.7b with the rest of the world, of which deposits by banks was $6.6b and the central bank, $4.0b.
Short term security liabilities increased to $648.5b at the end of March 2008. There were net issuances of $18.0b, comprising $4.0b in issues of bills of exchange and $14.0b in one name paper. Total long term debt security liabilities increased to $994.4b, following net issues of $47.2b during the quarter. Banks issued bonds worth net $41.2b, of which $11.8b was issued domestically and $29.4b offshore. Financial intermediaries n.e.c.had net issues of $4.7b, of which $10.5b were issued in the domestic market and $5.7b were redeemed offshore. Private non-financial corporations, national general government and the rest of the world issued net $2.7b, $0.8b and $0.5b respectively.
The value of derivative contracts on issue increased by $56.1b to $278.9b. Components of the increase were net settlements of $3.6b and valuation increases of $59.7b.
Loan liabilities rose to $2,757.3b at the end of March 2008, following transactions of $12.8b during the quarter. Households borrowed $20.5b, private non-financial corporations, $10.1b, rest of world, $8.3b and financial intermediaries n.e.c, $5.6b.
The listed share market decreased by $257.7b to $1,371.1b at the end of March 2008, with valuation decreases of $266.5b and issues of $8.8b. Private non-financial corporations issued $7.4b, banks issued $0.8b and financial Intermediaries n.e.c. $0.7b. The value of the unlisted share market decreased by $67.5b to $1,114.4b at the end of March 2008, with issues of $12.1b and valuation decreases of $79.6b. Rest of world issued $10.4b and private non-financial corporations issued $3.4b during the quarter.
At the end of March 2008, the reserves of life offices and pension funds were $1,115.5b following transactions during the quarter of $14.1b and valuation decrease of $105.7b. General insurance prepayments and reserves were $68.9b.
These documents will be presented in a new window.
This page last updated 25 September 2008
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I've dealt with groundhogs/woodchucks for years, and the only thing that worked for me was to remove them from the property like the previous poster stated, then I made sure where they were living was covered with chicken wire, so no new ones could move back in.
They usually eat within a short distance of where they are living, so I'd suggest figuring out where that is, then set up a live trap in front of the hole they have dug. Generally they are living under a shed, garage, porch, deck, something like that where they can dig under it pretty easily.
Once you are sure that you've caught them all, staple chicken wire to the base of each outbuilding on your property, lift the sod in front of it, about a foot, then lay the chicken wire under the sod. This will prevent them from digging close to the building.
I have never found peppers or repellants to work, and you have to be careful what you use around food crops.
Fencing your garden would work, if you can prevent them from digging under the fence. Good luck!
Okay, as a vetern of many groundhog invasions I can offer some advice. However, I am sorry to say that the best way to stop a gourndhog is to remopve it from your property, either humanely or not. These animals do not share or stop feeding.
That said, here are some tips that work for awhile at least;
1. Fence the garden, dig down about a foot to bury the fence to discourage the citter. You may also consider electric fence, a string about 2 inches above the ground gives a shock to the nose that won't wound, but still trains them to stay away.
2. Black pepper, ground up and sprinkled liberally. The smell can make some animals sneeze which they dislike. Red pepper flakes work for more persistent animals, but this must be reapplied after rain.
3. Have your dog or a friend's dog wander round the garden at least once a week. The smell of a predator will often discourage the groundhog.
These are techniques that I've used successfully in the past, sadly though some groundhogs will go to great lengths to eat your garden.
Add your voice to the conversation. Click here to answer this question.
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The Day of Defiance was initiated by the Massachusetts grassroots conservative groups MassResistance and the Massachusetts Federation of Conservative Bloggers to stand up for taxpaying parents' rights in public education, while also offering an alternative view of the issues to Massachusetts students (a rare occurrence, undoubtedly the first for many). The Day of Defiance will feature events outside of a number of Massachusetts high schools with picketers, sign holders, and guest speakers during free periods, lunch time, and after school (when the Breaking the Silence event commences). Supportive conservative students, parents, and teachers, are encouraged to join us in this effort to protest the rampant cases of educational malpractice in our public schools, while also providing students with the other half of the story on family issues and conservative ideas which have been censored, stereotyped, and belittled during the course of their 'education'.
Of course, none of this happened. Even the Massresistance website states that no students were involved (but they keep trying to tell us that the "students" wink, wink, organized it):
To our surprise, none of the students who organized the Day of Defiance actually participated. They said were afraid of retribution by the school, particularly certain faculty members. (And they didn't think of this when they started organizing it?)
And most of the parents who had enthusiastically committed to protesting also chickened out at the last minute. For example, twenty parents had committed to be at Lexington (above), but only two showed up that day. (Hmm...even David Parker didn't show up, things must be bad!)
Bob Parks, former candidate for State Representative, who also ran for Chairman of the State Republican Party, went on the MassResistance radio show describing how he was going to make a speech at a high school as a Day of Defiance protester. He also agreed to send out press releases. But as the day approached, he suddenly backed out. (Maybe Massresistance can get CJ Doyle to come back on and tell us what really happened since he's such a regular on the radio show)
The whole debacle just sounds a lot like the typical Article 8/Massresistance/Brian Camenker sideshow that Massachusetts is so used to seeing from the crazies in Waltham. The "parents" who supposedly went to these school to incite pandemonium were so proud of their work that they list themselves as Bruce C. or Roger S. (I guess they go to the Amy "from Article 8" school of last names).
They must be heartbroken that no local news station picked up their antics although I expect the pictures will turn up on some crazy right wing site (I hope there's video too because I got such a rush off the dizzying "acid trip" video of the Vote on Marriage Protest they recently posted)
I'm anxiously awaiting May 17th too. If history is any indicator, Massresistance will have some "big" announcement about something that happened to somebody months ago yet they will twist and bend the story to make it appear like it happened yesterday and of course blame it all on the gays.
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Rebuffed after seeking a meeting with the new owners of an Iowa kosher meat plant that was devastated by an immigration raid last year, a social justice group is using the upcoming Jewish New Year to send a message from the marketplace.
Peace & Justice
What is the first principle Catholics should consider when thinking about the current health care reform debate? Three Midwestern bishops recently offered two conflicting responses to this question.
KANSAS CITY, MO. -- Late summer and fall is a busy time for Lisa Ousley and Bernard Schneider. They have green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers and zucchinis to rescue. Tons of them.
Ousley and Schneider aren’t farmers. They’re gleaners. They take teams of volunteers into fields and orchards to pick fruit and vegetables that otherwise would be left to rot. Then they distribute the produce to food banks and agencies that serve the hungry.
Ousley and Schneider are the executive director and program coordinator respectively of the Society of St. Andrew’s Western Headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.
“Basically our goal is to get produce that is not marketable for cosmetic reasons and get it to people who cannot afford to buy produce,” Ousley said.
Commercial food producers have exacting standards for size, color and appearance. Zucchinis that grow too large, potatoes that didn’t grow big enough, blemished tomatoes or oddly shaped cucumbers can’t be sold.
Welcome signs to Lao Family Community Development are printed in eight languages: Thai, Chinese, Bosnian, Mien, Arabic, Spanish, Vietnamese, English -- and that’s just the beginning. This Oakland, Calif., office houses the energy and diversity of Pentecost. The works of mercy are practiced here daily.
I know honesty is dangerous, but let’s try it: I know it’s Labor Day and time for salutes to American labor and workers. But the American labor movement is dead or dying, take your pick, and American workers have, in the main, little power, often none. And the thing is, nobody -- well, almost nobody -- cares or, at the least, pretends what I say is untrue or exaggerated.
After winning the first contested election as president of the AFL-CIO in the fall of 1995, John Sweeney opened the important winter meeting of the labor federation’s executive council with a long discussion of plans to organize more workers into unions. For decades the union share of the work force had been shrinking, but Sweeney’s predecessors had given the decline only scant attention.
If you watch enough cable news you would think the fight over health care reform has been reduced to protestors screaming about socialism, "death panels" and the evils of government. A new campaign, organized by Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations united behind health care reform as a moral imperative, offers a stark contrast to the anger and misinformation distorting this critical debate.
Our coalition, 40 Days for Health Reform, hosted a national conference call with President Obama last week that featured religious leaders and engaged citizens sharing painful stories from the front lines of a broken health care system. One hundred and forty thousand citizens participated. Instead of shouting and demagoguery, there was thoughtful reflection, civil dialogue and factual analysis. Ministers and rabbis spoke about values that transcend partisan politics or narrow ideologies.
The “Great Recession,” we are told, is over. We pray this is true.
Walter Brueggemann (see story) forcefully reminds us, however, that there will be a reckoning; that a failure to learn the lessons of this economic crisis will have severe consequences for us, our children and their children.
Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the use of microcredit lending -- the making of very small loans with low interest rates -- to help the poor step out of poverty. With a 98 percent repayment rate, Yunus figured out that small Bangladeshi villages possess rules in which all borrowers are expected to repay their microloans for their own benefit and for the benefit of the community.
But can such organic, ground-up “banking for the poor” work in the United States? In Belleville, Ill., a Society of St. Vincent de Paul council thinks it can.
Foxtrot Seven brooded in its concrete silence near a grove of cedar trees perched on a glade overlooking a tiny stream. On a bright October day, the glade was colorfully spotted with wildflowers -- goldenrod, morning glory and mullein. I lay in the breeze-nudged grass and watched a flock of chickadees move through the cedars, then walked back to the Minuteman missile silo.
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The U.K.’s financial industry will lose 43,000 jobs in six months, according to a forecast from the Confederation of British Industry, as companies shrink and reduce costs.
Banks, insurers, asset managers and other finance firms probably cut 25,000 positions in the last three months of 2012 and may eliminate 18,000 jobs in the first quarter of this year, according to a study by Britain’s biggest business lobby group and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, published today.
Global cuts at financial firms have exceeded 115,000 since 2012 as they seek to control compensation expenses and retreat from capital-intensive businesses, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Morgan Stanley, with securities operations in London, plans to eliminate about 1,600 jobs from its investment bank and support staff in the coming weeks, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said on Jan 9. New York-based Citigroup Inc. said in December that it will cut more than 11,000 jobs and pull back from some emerging markets to curb costs.
“What you’re seeing is exiting of certain product lines, geographies or restructuring their activities, on the other end you have demands on them for regulation,” said Kevin Burrowes, U.K. financial-services leader at PwC.
Tougher capital requirements mean banks such as Zurich- based UBS AG are shrinking risk-weighted assets at their securities units. HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s biggest bank, has sold businesses to improve profitability and Barclays Plc said it may trim operations that don’t return enough profit or harm its reputation.
The cuts in the U.K. industry will mean about 132,000 financial-services jobs have been lost since the peak in the final quarter of 2008, when it employed about 1 million people, the CBI said.
In addition to firings, bankers have been retiring earlier and younger would-be recruits are shunning finance for less- tainted industries, said Burrowes.
For young professionals, “it’s not an attractive place to go,” he said. Banking and capital markets at his firm, PwC, “is not a sector they’re attracted to any longer,” Burrowes said. “It used to be our most popular sector.”
The survey found 25 percent of firms saw sales rise in the three months to December and 30 percent recorded a fall. The CBI questioned 94 banks, insurers, customer-owned lenders, investment managers and securities firms from Nov. 19 to Dec. 6.
Separately, vacancies in London’s main financial district, known as the City, and elsewhere in the British capital fell 36 percent to 1,323 in December from 2,079 in the month-earlier period, recruitment consultant Morgan McKinley said in a statement today.
“Hiring was postponed at the end of 2012 so that headcount could fall into the new calendar year,” Hakan Enver, operations director at Morgan McKinley Financial Services, said in an e- mail. “Based on this, we also anticipate that job volumes will rise in January 2013 and then level out over the remainder of quarter one.”
The cuts come as securities firms with employees in London and New York pay bonuses to bankers for the 2012 year. More than half offinancial-services professionals surveyed by Morgan McKinley said they expect their base salaries to be unchanged in 2013.
The responses are comparable to last year’s survey “suggesting that economic instability and performance challenges faced by many organizations in 2012 will see compensation remaining similarly restrained over the course of this year,” Enver said.
Meanwhile, recruitment company Astbury Marsden said in a separate survey the proportion of workers not expecting a bonus this year has doubled to 22 percent, citing increasing regulation of discretionary payouts. Managing directors expect to receive the largest bonuses, at 88 percent of their income, the survey found.
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Obituary: Sir David Money-Coutts KCVO, banker
BORN: 19 July, 1931, in Somerset. Died: 25 June, 2012, in Henley-on-Thames, aged 80
Sir David Money-Coutts was the seventh generation of the family who was connected with the famous bank, Coutts & Co. It has looked after the monarch and the Royal Family’s financial affairs for centuries and also acts for many aristocratic and wealthy customers. Coutts is proud of its traditions and, now owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, provides a discrete and private financial service. Money-Coutts, always the essence of tact and diplomacy, throughout his years as chairman was keen to preserve that image and insisted that all gentlemen members of staff continue to wear tail coats, striped trousers and smart white shirts. Money-Coutts regarded such formal attire as “good for morale, because everyone looks smart”.
David Burdett Money-Coutts spent his early childhood in Ayrshire where his parents were living at Swinlees, Dalry. His father was a lieutenant in the 4th/5th battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers.
Money-Coutts was educated at Eton and, after national service with the 1st Royal Dragoons, read politics, philosophy and economics at New College, Oxford. Many members of the family had worked in Coutts & Co but his father was a director of Imperial Tobacco Company. Money-Coutts joined the bank in 1954, becoming a junior director four years later.
The bank has ancient connections with Scotland. Campbells Bank was formed in 1692 by a young Scots goldsmith-banker, John Campbell of Lundie in Angus. His business prospered and he moved south to open a branch on the Strand, in London, under a sign of the Three Crowns. Coutts continues to have its headquarters in that building and its logo is still the Three Crowns.
In 1990, Coutts and National Westminster decided to expand internationally and the Coutts Group was formed. In 2000 when NatWest Group was taken over by Royal Bank of Scotland Coutts became the private banking arm of the organisation.
Robert Louis Stevenson mentions Coutts & Co in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as being the bank of choice for Dr Jekyll.
Money-Coutts preserved a strict routine and worked unstintingly to preserve the bank’s international reputation. He was keen to expand the number of wealthy customers whose affairs the bank manages. Throughout his time as chairman he ensured that financial experts were available within the bank to provide specialist advice to clients. To this end he was enthusiastic when Coutts & Co opened an office in Geneva and maintained a presence at the Cannes Film Festival.
But Money-Coutts was adamant that the bank should provide a traditional and reliable service to its clients. Coutts urged his staff to communicate to all clients that the bank fulfilled the old-fashioned job of providing a solid bank account along with a professional and prudent service.
Money-Coutts seldom altered his daily schedule. After dealing with the morning post he attended a meeting regarding internal administration matters at 10am, loans at 11:30 and trustee business at noon. After lunch he had further meetings and attended to private family matters. Money-Coutts was never, however, a remote figure. He did not have his own private office but insisted that the chairman was always on hand to discuss matters with his staff. To this end his desk was in an open-plan office, making him readily available to colleagues.
A major event during Money-Coutts’ chairmanship was the modernisation and complete refurbishment of the Strand building. After a lengthy consultation period the designs by Sir Frederick Gibberd – incorporating the first glazed atrium and internal garden in a London office – were completed and ready to be opened in 1978.
The Queen formally opened the new bank and Money-Coutts commented in his speech of welcome that his great-great-great-great-grandfather Thomas had been a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to hers, George III. “With all those greats on both sides,” Her Majesty replied, “I do indeed agree that this is very much a family occasion.”
He was on the board of several established City institutions, such as Charifund and Gerrard Group. Away from his banking duties Money-Coutts devoted much time to various charities. These were principally concerned with healthcare and he was a governor of Middlesex Hospital, a member of the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Area Health Authority, chairman of the Medical Schools Council and a trustee of the Multiple Sclerosis Society. He was also chairman of the Scout Foundation and the Old Etonian Trust.
Money-Coutts, a keen countryman and gardener, was made a KCVO in 1971. In 1958 he married Penelope Todd, who survives him with their son and two daughters.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Saturday 25 May 2013
Temperature: 6 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: West
Temperature: 9 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: South west
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Some officials and voters are angry. They say the changes will have a negative effect on the election.
Some community members say these changes will not only inconvenience voters, but they will also hinder some elderly and disabled voters from taking part in the election.
"Chaos, absolute chaos, it's gonna be crazy," says Darrell Springstead, 1st ward committee member.
Several polling places have been consolidated, and some community members say it's going to be a mess.
"You're gonna have a building filled with 11 districts, some 9 districts. When your bringing in hundreds and hundreds of people, there is gonna be mass confusion," says Lawrence Joseph, 1st ward committee member.
But the Board of Elections says changing polling locations was necessary.
"To make it more feasible for our guys to address issues that arise. And again when you have tables that are very clearly specified, people will be able to figure it out where they need to vote. They're physically going to a new location. That's the extent of the change," says Pamela Mandryck, Republican Election Commissioner at Board of Elections.
But chairperson of the fifth ward says it's more than that.
"We have a lot of low income families. It's not just where people can jump in a car and drive a few extra blocks, a lot of the people walk to the polling areas and when you remove them from the heart of the ward and put them technically outside the ward, your disenfranchising many people from being able to vote," says Mark Mazzo, 5th ward chairperson.
The committee members say many 1st ward constituents are elderly and disabled. They say changing their polling place even by a few extra blocks will make a difference.
"Being handicapped or elderly, they're not gonna try making the walk to get over there," says Springstead.
And Joseph fears the changes will bring lower voter turnout.
"Because of the disenchantment, because of physical reasons, because they don't have vehicles. People have comfort zones and with that comfort zone comes ya know, security," says Joseph.
Pam Mandryck says the Board of Elections was asked to reduce the number of polling locations to cut costs. But committee members say they don't see where the county is saving any money.
For a complete list of New Polling Places, visit:
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Public Information Notices
Kingdom of the Netherlands-Netherlands and the IMF
Free Email Notification
On September 8, 2004, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the Article IV Consultation with the Kingdom of the Netherlands—Netherlands.1
The Dutch economy is starting to recover from a period of weak performance. Following several years of rapid expansion, GDP growth averaged only 0.2 percent during 2001-03, and turned negative in the latter year for the first time in twenty years. However, growth has strengthened in recent quarters, and staff expects the economy to grow by 1.1 percent in 2004 and by 1.8 percent in 2005. Improving exports are the main driver; domestic demand is expected to take longer to recover. Meanwhile, given soft labor market conditions and economic slack generally, price and wage pressures are likely to remain subdued for the period ahead.
In the context of the nascent recovery, downside risks to the outlook for growth are a concern with those stemming from domestic sources especially pronounced. Near-term growth is unlikely to make a significant dent in still rising unemployment, so even relatively minor changes to the wage and employment outlook could prompt a reassessment of income and therefore consumption plans. High household debt accentuates income risks, including those associated with higher interest rates.
The fiscal balance deteriorated markedly. Between 2000 and 2003, the general government balance worsened by almost 5 ½ percentage points of GDP, resulting in a breach of the 3 percent Maastricht ceiling in 2003. While part of the deterioration reflected the working of automatic stabilizers, another part—amounting to roughly 2 percentage points of GDP—was structural. The policy measures announced by the authorities should bring the deficit down to just under 3 percent of GDP in 2004. Risks—which, to avoid another breach, would need to be addressed if they were to materialize—stem in particular from health care costs and the budget situation of the local governments.
On the structural front, the authorities have plans for a number of key reforms in the period ahead. The disability scheme is to be reformed by restricting access only to those fully disabled, while introducing stricter criteria and examinations, and strengthening work incentives for the partially disabled. Also, fiscal incentives for early retirement are to be fully removed, while participation in collective early retirement plans is to be made voluntary. In the area of unemployment insurance, follow-up benefits (which had added 2 ½ years to the maximum of 5 years of main benefits available) have already been phased out. The authorities plan to eliminate short-term benefits as well, and tighten the eligibility requirements for the main unemployment benefits. To reduce inactivity traps, the earned-income tax credit is being gradually increased. The Netherlands has generally been at the forefront of product market reform in Europe, although some sectors (e.g., construction and nontraded services) have remained sheltered.
Over the past year, the Netherlands took part in an IMF Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). During this period, the authorities were in the process of concluding a substantial overhaul of the institutional setup for financial stability policy by moving to a new cross-sectional structure of supervision by objective (prudential and conduct of business) and revising the laws that underpin financial supervision.
Executive Board Assessment
Executive Directors noted that the Dutch economy is emerging from an extended downturn, with continued low inflationary pressures contributing to increased external competitiveness. Directors expressed concern, however, over the depth of the downturn, the significant weakening of the public finances in recent years, and the prospect of falling potential growth if slowing productivity growth were to continue at a time when the population is aging. Directors therefore commended the authorities for their efforts to restore fiscal balance and to strengthen the foundations for a broad-based growth. They emphasized the need to sustain such efforts, especially those geared to raising potential output growth through reforms to labor and product markets.
In light of the Netherlands' earlier record of sound fiscal and structural policies, which underpinned economic success, Directors were confident that the authorities would continue to pursue appropriate policies in these areas. While expressing concern about some of the recent structural increases in spending, they concurred that fiscal policy seems to be on the right path and praised the government's determination to hold the deficit in 2004 to below 3 percent of GDP.
Directors observed that, while a recovery is in train, growth is expected to be slow this year, and downside risks, from both domestic and external sources, are a concern. In particular, Directors were concerned about the rapid increases in house prices and household debt, and their potential impact on income and consumption. Against these downside risks, they viewed fiscal policy in 2004 as appropriately balanced between needed fiscal adjustment in structural terms and avoiding excessive tightening. However, in view of possible fiscal slippage, Directors supported measures to limit public spending through closer cooperation between the central and local governments and, if necessary, direct budgetary controls on health care spending.
Directors pointed to the benefits of an ambitious medium-term fiscal adjustment, recommending a structural improvement of at least half a percentage point of GDP per year through the government's term. They considered that such an adjustment would put fiscal policy on an appropriate path toward ensuring fiscal sustainability and dealing with the impact of population aging, while also bolstering confidence. Directors were in broad agreement with the authorities' emphasis on debt reduction to save on interest payments to cover aging costs, but stressed that stronger and more concrete medium-term fiscal consolidation plans are needed. In identifying measures, they encouraged the authorities to improve incentives for work, including measures in the tax-benefits system. Some Directors favored a gradual phasing out of mortgage interest deductions, though these Directors and others stressed the need to consider carefully the impact of this measure on the housing market and the financial system.
Directors commended the broad features of the fiscal framework, particularly the emphasis on medium-term expenditure ceilings, but noted the importance of strengthening certain aspects. In this context, they welcomed the decision to devote revenue windfalls solely to debt reduction, thus avoiding a procyclical bias. Directors also urged the authorities to eschew spending cyclical expenditure savings. In addition, they stressed that enhancing the transparency of the expenditure ceilings and the ability to monitor them would strengthen clarity and discipline in the system.
Directors were encouraged by the authorities' efforts to reform the labor market. They welcomed important reforms to raise labor force participation and work effort, including the envisaged abolition of fiscal incentives for early retirement and the plan for a major overhaul of the disability scheme, supported by tight enforcement of any stricter disability criteria. However, while acknowledging the difficulties in building consensus for reform, Directors cautioned that reforms should also include the unemployment insurance scheme, to avoid having workers shift from one category of inactivity to another. Directors also urged the authorities to address inactivity traps, including by adjusting the minimum wage, which would also enhance the demand for low-skilled labor. To further raise participation, Directors stressed the importance of taking into account changes in life expectancy in determining the retirement age.
Directors were encouraged by efforts to raise productivity growth, noting that while overall productivity is high, its growth has slowed considerably in recent years. They therefore welcomed the establishment of the high-level Innovation Platform, the efforts under way to significantly reduce administrative burdens and improve corporate governance, and the work of the competition agency. Nevertheless, with a view to facilitating more efficient resource allocation, Directors felt that overly stringent employment protection hindered flexibility and implicitly taxed new hiring. In addition, Directors noted that greater wage differentiation would be helpful in attracting labor to higher productivity companies and sectors and in opening a channel to realize returns from investment in human capital. Directors also urged regulators to persevere with efforts to open new avenues for competition.
Directors welcomed the analysis of the FSAP and agreed with its conclusion that the financial system is sound, resilient to potential shocks, and well supervised. They commended the pending new financial supervision legislation, which will further strengthen the supervision system and account for the cross-sectoral nature of financial institutions. To prevent procyclical effects, Directors also felt that the authorities needed to allow sufficient flexibility for making up shortfalls in pension fund coverage ratios without unduly prolonging adjustment. More generally, they encouraged the authorities to continue with their commendable efforts to strengthen securities settlement arrangements and the financial stability policy framework. Directors welcomed the implementation of strong AML/CFT measures.
Directors applauded Dutch support of trade liberalization and strongly praised the generosity of their overseas development assistance, even in the face of budgetary pressures.
IMF EXTERNAL RELATIONS DEPARTMENT
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Ten big drug companies shared today that they have created a non-profit organization to help speed up the R&D of new drugs. These companies are Abbott, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Roche, and Sanofi. Together, they are unveiling TransCelerate BioPharma Inc. This is the largest initiative of its kind, and it is designed to identify and resolve common issues that can delay R&D. Read the release here. By participating in TransCelerate, each of these companies will combine financial and other resources, such as personnel, to work out industry wide challenges in a team work atmosphere. Back in June, Ernst & Young released its "Beyond Borders: Global Biotechnology Report 2012," which addressed some of the problems in R&D and suggested that companies, academia, and nonprofit groups should strive to share noncompetitive data in networks called HOLnets to improve drug development.
Glen Giovannetti, Ernst & Young Global Biotechnology, Leader says today's announcement is encouraging because it is unique. "We haven’t seen one quite like this before where 10 pharmaceutical companies paired up of sort of their own volition in a way," he says. "They join other consortia. This seems to be more of a real commitment of their resources and their effort. I think it’s great. They’re going to concentrate on getting some standardization around the clinical trial process. Perhaps more important in the long term, how data is gathered and assembled it really could move toward greater standardization of data so that trial results downstream could be more easily pooled and shared and investigated for insights."
Giovanetti said in the HOLnet concept detailed by E&Y, these networks would help create standards and pool data around those standards so there could be greater sharing.
"If I were to relate back to directly to what we were writing about, this is a step in the direction of what we were putting out there," he says. "I wouldn’t expect it to be fully implemented immediately. What we were putting out there was that medicine in general is entering the world of big data. There’s a lot more data out there, both with the data that companies have traditionally credited in R&D and clinical trials, and also data that will be increasingly gathered through the delivery of healthcare….electronic health records, social media. I think that we’re a ways from seeing a true holistic network of being able to bring in data from multiple sources in the health ecosystem." According to a report by the Battelle Organization and the E&Y "Beyond Borders" report, both released in June at the annual BIO Convention in Boston, R&D spending and revenue are up, when adjusting for some large acquisitions, but financing remains tough. Though the employment picture has improved, it remains soggy when compared with the world before the Great Recession began in 2008. Battelle's study found that biotech, which was defined to also include medical devices, research and testing, and agricultural chemicals and feedstocks, gained 96,000 total jobs in the U.S. from 2001 to 2010. But how are biotechs doing? According to E&Y, those in established biotech centers – the U.S., Europe, Canada and Australia – generated revenue of $83.4 billion in 2011, a 10 percent increase from 2010 on a normalized basis, after adjusting for the acquisition of three large, U.S.-based biotechs by non-biotech buyers. After slashing R&D spending in 2009 and increasing this expenditure by just 2 percent in 2010, the industry grew R&D by a 9 percent, on a normalized basis, last year. (Read more here.) As for TransCelerate, newly appointed acting CEO Garry Neil, M.D., said, “There is widespread alignment among the heads of R&D at major pharmaceutical companies that there is a critical need to substantially increase the number of innovative new medicines, while eliminating inefficiencies that drive up R&D costs." Dr. Neil is also a partner at Apple Tree Partners and formerly corporate VP, Science & Technology, Johnson & Johnson. Members of TransCelerate have pinpointed clinical study execution as the initiative's initial focus area. Five projects have been selected by the group for funding and development. These areas include development of a shared user interface for investigator site portals, mutual recognition of study site qualification and training, development of risk-based site monitoring approach and standards, development of clinical data standards, and establishment of a comparator drug supply model.
TransCelerate was incorporated in early August 2012 and will file for non-profit status this fall. The board of directors includes R&D heads of the ten member companies. Membership in TransCelerate is open to all pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies who can contribute to and benefit from these shared solutions. TransCelerate's headquarters will be located in Philadelphia, PA.
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Remarks as prepared for delivery.
Remarks as prepared for delivery.
Good afternoon and thank you. I am very happy to be joining you today on behalf of the Department of Justice. It is great to see Bill Modzeleski continuing to lead the effort to make our schools safer, as he was the last time I served in government. Bill and his office are doing great work, and I’m pleased to be with all of you here today.
I am very happy to be at here for two reasons. First and foremost, I’m a parent. I have two sons, and, like all parents, I want them to have every opportunity in life. Although they aren’t of school age yet, I know that education will be their key, as it was for me. What all of you in this room are doing matters to me personally.
What you are doing also matters to me professionally. It isn’t often that, as Associate Attorney General, I get to walk into a room full of educators and education advocates. I think that in many communities, and for many Americans, what the Department does and what so many of you do are thought of as opposite ends of the spectrum. The theory goes that students have had to make choices and they can either make good choices, and succeed in school, or they can make bad choices, and end up in the criminal justice system. The theory would follow that you take care of the good kids and get them to college, and we take care of the bad kids and get them off the streets.
One of the reasons I am here today is because you and I know that that’s not how the world works. People who actually work in law enforcement, and people who actually work in our nation’s schools, know that our jobs are closely interwoven. When their neighborhoods and homes don’t feel safe, our children have a tough time paying attention in school. And when our children are not engaged at school, they’re going to be much more likely to get into trouble outside of it.
Attorney General Janet Reno really drove this point home to me when I worked for her back in the 1990s. Attorney General Reno had been a prosecutor down in Florida, where she had taken a leading role in reforming the juvenile justice system there, and had worked actively on issues that affect children. I remember that once, when she was on a long plane flight, she took out a pen and paper and started to outline the elements of law enforcement policy, all the factors that go into making a community safe.
A number of the things on that list focused on what we think of as traditional law enforcement issues: Do we have enough officers on the streets? Are those officers using the right techniques? Are we being smart in how we prosecute crime?
But what stood out to me about that list was how many of the elements on that list were things that most people never think of as law enforcement issues. On her list – Head Start, available childcare for working families. Indeed, she started her list with pre-natal care, which she viewed as the first step in ensuring safe communities. Wherever one thinks we should start, we all know that it takes a lot more than police, prosecutors and prisons to make a community safe. You need people who watch out for each other and who have a stake in their community. You need an economic base that keeps people engaged and relatively free from need. And you need safe schools.
Much of what we are doing in today’s Justice Department is based on our recognition that we need broad partnerships to make our communities safe, and that good law enforcement is essential to building healthy communities. That means revitalizing the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services – or COPS – which was so successful at bringing down crime in the 1990s and which, in those years, also funded School Resource Officers (SROs) to help make our schools safer. That means re-building the partnerships with state and local authorities who are the first responders to most crime in this country and who are best positioned to make our communities safer. And that means re-engaging with our partners in health care, education, and other areas not traditionally thought of as part of law enforcement.
We are lucky to have, in Eric Holder, an Attorney General who has always understood these connections. Some of the best things we are doing today on this issue are things that Eric Holder started ten years ago, when he served as Deputy Attorney General. He started up the Justice Department’s Safe Start Initiative, which looks to find new, evidence-based ways to deliver better services to children who are exposed to violence. That program takes a multi-dimensional approach to protecting our youth, creating partnerships among all the people who have interests in protecting children. Improving the services being offered to children who are exposed to violence takes more than our law enforcement and judicial resources. It requires us to tap into our early childhood education, our mental health, and our prevention-of-substance-abuse resources.
Attorney General Holder really drives home to all of us that when we think about law enforcement, we need to think broadly. You all practice that lesson every day, working hard to keep kids safe at school. I know that your goal is education, but schools also play a key role in law enforcement in any number of ways. I want to focus in today on one aspect of what you do in particular, that evidence shows is critical both for future student success and for overall community safety: the challenge of keeping kids in school.
Keeping kids in school matters because as we all know, excessive absence is a predictor of poor achievement and higher dropout rates. That matters not just because we want every child to have every opportunity to succeed, but because we want our communities safe. The evidence is clear: truants are at greater risk of facing a lifetime of problems. Missing school is a good indicator that a student will become delinquent, use alcohol and drugs, commit violence, or become involved in a gang. These aren’t just young people out having some harmless fun. Though they may not realize it, their behavior and actions have serious – and destructive – consequences. As one California prosecutor put it, "I’ve never seen a gang member who wasn’t a truant first."
The prosecutor knew what she was talking about, because the research bears out her concerns. A study of 12- to 15-year-olds in Denver, Colo. for the American Society of Criminology found that even so-called minor truants are four times as likely to commit serious assaults and five times as likely to commit serious property crimes as other students. For chronic truants – students who miss more than nice days in a given year – the numbers are even starker. A student who misses more than nice days in a year is 12 times as likely to commit serious assaults and more than 21 times likely to commit serious property crimes.
Truancy is a similarly strong indicator of drug use. A study in Rochester, N.Y. from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs found that minor truants are seven times as likely to begin using marijuana by age 14, and chronic truants are 16 times as likely.
And it doesn’t stop there. Truants are more likely to go to prison, they’re more likely to become pregnant as teenagers, they’re more likely to have marital problems as adults. And the list goes on.
And if you’re thinking that these figures just affect a few troubled kids, think again. Habitual or chronic truancy is all too common. A recent Open Society Institute analysis of students in Baltimore, Md. found that 9 percent of all public school students were deemed habitually truant, meaning they were illegally absent 20 percent or more of the time. In Wisconsin, where habitual truancy is defined as five or more illegal absences in a semester, 45 percent of students fell into this category according to news reports.
So what do we do about it? How do we get kids back in school? And not just back in school, but engaged?
The first thing we need to do is to get the message out that school is important. This means making sure that parents understand the risks of truancy, and holding them responsible when their kids are absent. And I’m aware that it’s not always sheer parental apathy that’s the problem. Often, it’s an issue of trying to meet other needs, particularly in some difficult economic times – whether it’s a parent relying on an older child to babysit a younger child so the parent can go to work, or maybe even concern about the safety of a child who has to walk through a dangerous neighborhood in order to get to school. We know that parents are facing tough choices and priorities. We need to work to make sure that when they have to make those choices, they understand and appreciate the consequences of staying away from school – and that they have the services they need, so that they can make the choice to come to school.
I don’t want to make excessive demands of our school administrators and educators, because I know that we already expect so much of them, but it’s important that school officials reach out to parents. They need to let them know, first of all, that their kids aren’t coming to school. We can’t forget that, in many cases, parents don’t know what their kids are up to. And schools also need to let parents know that they will be held accountable and that there will be consequences if their children skip school. This is, after all, not just an issue of one child’s occasional absences; it’s a serious matter of public safety. What we learned in the 1990s was that, for most young people who end up in the criminal justice system, there were dozens and sometimes more than a hundred opportunities for intervention – warning signs to which we could have responded, and points at which, with a proper response, we might have been able to change the future of that young person for the better. We have to do a better job of responding to these warning signs.
While parents are perhaps the most important part of the solution, they are not the only ones who need to get involved. We need a multi-tiered approach, involving school officials, community agencies, and, yes, law enforcement. School Resource Officers – or SROs – are an important part of this, and not just because having an officer close by the scene of the crime can make a difference. SROs are also doing classroom teaching on subjects from how to resist gangs to the consequences of shoplifting. They’re mentoring students. Sometimes they are just going jogging with the track team. And we see that where you have a SRO, you have increased levels of trust in the police. What you’re getting, among other things, is one more adult that the child knows and trusts at that school – and one more adult who the child knows cares whether the child shows up for class each day.
We need these School Resource Officers and school officials and parents all right on top of the problem, because we need to identify our future truants the first chance we can get. There’s often a disconnect between our perception of truancy’s causes and the reality. Many people ascribe truancy to the mercurial behavior of adolescents. They suddenly become bored with school or fall in with the wrong crowd. So some administrators and policymakers assume that there is no way to predict if a child will become a truant.
In fact, research shows just the opposite. There’s a study that some of you may know about involving about 14,000 students in Philadelphia, called "An Early Warning System." Researchers followed these students from the time they entered the sixth grade until the time they would be expected to graduate six years later. They specifically looked for signs that would show at least a 75 percent probability of dropping out of school. The findings are fascinating. What the researchers found is that there were four signals that indicated that a student had a three in four chance of dropping out in those next six years. The signals were – and this is in the sixth grade, remember – that these students had:
A final grade of F in math;
A final grade of F in English;
Attendance below 80 percent for the year; and
A final "unsatisfactory" behavior mark in at least one class.
If a student had just one of these indicators, there was a 75 percent chance that he or she would eventually drop out of school. Students with more than one of these signals had an even greater probability of dropping out.
So let’s put all of this together, and figure out where we have to go: We know that when a child misses school, the likelihood that the child is going to go on to commit serious crimes starts increasing pretty quickly. And we know that there are things we can look at in sixth grade to figure out whether that kid is going to end up dropping out. Let’s put it simply: If we’re going to keep kids out of jail, we need to get to them while they’re young. And we all have a role to play in that. The question is – how do we do it?
We know that there are strategies that work in identifying truancy problems early, and in finding solutions. We know that continual monitoring, contact and home visits of families can be enormously effective in reducing chronic absenteeism. We know that a continuum of long-term, multi-disciplinary services, including family support and case management, is essential. And we know that using the monitoring authority of the courts can be very effective in some circumstances.
I’ll highlight a couple of programs that have shown us some positive results. The Truancy Reduction Demonstration Program is one. That program, I should mention, is funded by our Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, in partnership with our hosts here, the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. It employs all these strategies – monitoring, contact, home visits, family support, and yes, the authority of the courts – and has shown some great successes. The average unexcused absent rate for truants dropped by half after three months of intervention – a drop that we now know is correlated with reductions in crime. To take one sample site – the truancy and diversion program in Jacksonville, Fla. – over a 10-year period, the number of juveniles sentenced to state prison dropped from 47 to 5, and the number sentenced to jail dropped from 201 to 22. Again, this program and others like it are successful because they rely on a range of strategies, and they involve partners from across the spectrum.
I should emphasize here that I’m not trying to put the solution off on educators and social workers. Just as truancy has consequences over in the legal system, there also ways to address it in the legal system. I want to highlight one program in particular here. It’s the Truancy Intervention Project – or TIP – in Fulton County, Ga. This isn’t one of the Truancy Reduction Program sites being funded by the Justice Department and the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, but it’s a great example of how the justice system, working with schools and the community, can be effective in getting at truancy and keeping kids out of trouble.
TIP is a partnership between the Fulton County Juvenile Court and the Atlanta Bar Association, aimed at providing early intervention to children in Atlanta Public and Fulton County Schools who are chronically absent and who either become involved with the court or are referred to early intervention at the school level.
TIP gets referrals from school social workers, and then pairs trained volunteers, some of whom are attorneys, with children and their families. The social workers and the TIP volunteer then meet with the student and the family to develop a plan designed to lead to solid attendance. TIP has served more than 5,000 children over the years, and has had some remarkable success stories – like for the third-grader who was having attendance problems. TIP and its volunteers worked out arrangements for the third-grader to spend school-weeks with her grandmother, who could make sure that she got to school on time. This is a student whom TIP caught early, before the full implications of truancy had become apparent. But TIP has also worked later on: like the young woman who had sporadic attendance for over a year, and whose truancy had escalated to some pretty serious offenses. Hers had become a familiar face around Juvenile Court. She got involved in TIP, and there, she said, "You have to decide for yourself that your life is worth something, and for me that meant getting an education." She graduated from high school and went on to college on a full scholarship.
TIP has had an incredible impact on many lives. One of its most notable aspects is its Early Intervention program, which they instituted in elementary schools. The success rate – which is based on the number of children who are not referred to juvenile court after their involvement with TIP – is greater than 95 percent.
And let me emphasize, this focus on truancy has had real consequences for the criminal justice system. It is estimated that by keeping these kids out of juvenile court, Fulton County has saved more than $4.2 million in court-appointed attorney fees alone, not to mention the other more indirect costs associated with juvenile crime and delinquency.
We need more programs like these, programs that identify problems early on and jump in to help with all available resources.
And while you are working to keep kids in school and out of the criminal justice system, we in law enforcement need to be keeping your kids safe so they can focus on learning.
On the whole, schools remain a place of relative safety. Students experience fewer crimes on school grounds than away from school. But the numbers are still too high. About 1.7 million students age 12 to 18 were victims of crime at school in 2006, 767,000 of them victims of violent crime. And according to the 2005-2006 School Survey on Crime and Safety, almost 80 percent of public schools have had a violent crime incident during the year.
So while you are working overtime to keep tabs on students, to talk to their families, and to make sure that the kids who are most at risk get the support they need to help them come to school, we in law enforcement are watching for the next threat, preventing every harm we can, and helping heal the harms that have been done. We know that the greatest threat is no longer just the biggest kid on the playground. That’s why we’re taking an expansive view of what it takes to keep kids safe and in school.
It’s why, together with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, we recently awarded almost $33 million in grants under the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative to prevent violence and to improve attendance, achievement and mental health in our nation’s schools. That’s a program that takes a coordinated, integrated approach from the state. Educational agencies partner up with local law enforcement to apply for these grants, which they then use for anything from anti-bullying programs to rehabilitative justice programs, where a prosecutor comes into the school to develop the kinds of peer juries that are used to help groups of young people come to terms with the harms they inflict on each other and themselves.
It’s also why the Justice Department is developing task forces to fight the internet predators who seek to do our children harm. It’s why we’re developing curriculum, like the Gang Resistance Education and Training Program, to help keep kids out of gangs.
We do all of this because we know that just as good schools are part of keeping a neighborhood safe, safe neighborhoods are a key part of keeping our kids in school and learning. We know this is a team effort, and if we try to divide things up as education issues or law enforcement issues, we are going to lose our children. If you want to keep kids out of jail, let’s do what it takes to keep them in class. It’s the right thing for our and their futures, and it’s the right thing for our cities, towns and villages.
I want to thank those of you who have seen the importance of this issue, and who have been working to get kids back in school and engaged. Your work will pay huge dividends – for thousands of young people, for the safety of your communities, and for the future of our country.
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States Finances Go From Bad to Worse, NCSL Says
By Jason White, Assistant Staff Writer
Just three months into the current fiscal year, nearly every state government is reaping less tax revenue than predicted, leading over two dozen states to mull cuts to programs and services, according to a report released Thursday (11/1) by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"The news is not good. With only a few exceptions, state fiscal conditions have taken a dramatic downturn," says the report. "Moreover, as legislative fiscal analysts look ahead, the outlook is bleak."
The report's major findings are troubling:
- State revenue growth has slowed dramatically. Forty-four states report that revenues were below forecast levels in the opening months of fiscal year 2002.
- Nineteen states report that current spending is exceeding budgeted levels, with another seven reporting that overspending in some programs is likely.
- Medicaid continues to exceed budgeted levels, proving to be an ongoing problem in many states.
- At least 28 states have implemented or are considering budget cuts or holdbacks.
- Twenty states may tap reserve funds to balance their current budgets. Most of these states are eyeing their rainy day funds, although a handful may tap tobacco settlement funds.
- Fourteen states have implemented belt-tightening measures that include hiring freezes, cancellations of capital projects and travel restrictions.
- Seven states will convene or have convened special sessions to address budget problems.
- Several others are considering special sessions.
The budget outlook for the rest of the year is worrisome because economic conditions are expected to get worse before they get better.
NCSL's "State Fiscal Outlook for 2002 - October Update" takes a comprehensive look at state finances over the first few months of the current fiscal year, which began July 1 for all but four states. The information was gathered from mid- to late-October and does not fully reflect the impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, an apostle of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes referred to as the “Mormon Church” by the media), addressed students at the Harvard Law School as part of a Mormonism 101 event sponsored by LDS Students. There was a question-and-answer session following his remarks. Elder Holland fielded a variety of questions regarding Mormon beliefs and practices.
Below is the transcript for their question and answer session:
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Thank you for your courteous attendance. I will be pleased to devote the remaining time to your questions. I love you and leave my witness and blessing and thank you for this invitation. Please, if you have questions let me take the next little while to try and answer them.
Question: Thank you very much for that. Would you mind elaborating a little more on the nature of Christ. You had said earlier how there are several characteristics where Christ is similar to the Father, one [attribute] I did not hear was divinity.
Answer: Clearly divinity, absolutely. I guess that was a given for me. Good question; that would be my point of departure. In fact, I think we’ve done a disservice. I don’t know what your faith is or whether you have any religious faith, and that doesn’t matter, but I think we [Latter-day Saints] may have done ourselves a disservice. I think we have not taught as well—and by the way, we take responsibility for the fact [that] there’s a lot of confusion about who we are and some emotion and some error. Some of it’s justified in that I don’t think we’ve done a very good job in explaining our own doctrine, explaining our own position, mea culpa. I think one of the issues that we have strained—not strained, just declared—the separate nature of the Father and the Son physically; that’s a very big issue for us. We believe that Christ prayed to somebody, that this was not divine ventriloquism. This is really a Father and a Son. But having said that, I think that’s kind of what’s lingered in the public collective religious mind. And I think we have done a great disservice in then not reaffirming and emphasizing, insisting on the unity in virtually every other aspect of their nature and their being and certainly at heart forever and forever their divinity, absolutely. And that’s an error on my part to have even missed a word like that, thank you.
Question: One thing you alluded to in [the] distinction between the Father and the Son that I think many more mainstream traditional Christians have… Mormon faith, is the nature of the trinity, and what role if any do the Latter-day Saints teach about the Holy Spirit?
Answer: Thank you, thank you. Great question, terrific question. We have avoided the word “trinity” because there’s so much ecclesiastical history attached to that. So we haven’t used the word “trinity,” but we do talk about a tri-partite God and we do talk about this unity that I hope people understand we really are committed to and that our scriptures are committed to. I suppose maybe nowhere, nowhere that I know of in the New Testament is it taught more powerfully than it’s taught in the Book of Mormon. I think most people would not know that. And quickly and emphatically included in that would be our devotion to, our reverence for, the Holy Spirit as the third member of that Godhead. Again we’ve just kind of assiduously not said “trinity” because so often that tends to blur this matter of substance. And so we’ve tried to come up with a slightly different vocabulary. But in that tri-partite figure, and in that three-part relationship certainly, forever and always, would be the Holy Spirit. And I’m grateful. I think they’re not scriptures we use enough, but those are scriptures taken from our own Latter-day Saint canon as well as traditional New Testament documents, [or] New Testament texts.
Question: You spoke about Joseph Smith’s very American-ness, does national character at all play a role in the Church’s teachings?
Answer: Well, I think inevitably, certainly in the beginning, in the origins; we’re now global, we’re in 140 nations. We teach our—I don’t know if we have missionaries here in the back of the room, but—we send our missionaries out in 110 languages and publish the Book of Mormon in about that many languages. So, we’re now very global, but I think there’s no question… that there was a cultural, national, political, social, context for the 1820 origins, the restored later origins of the Church that clearly carried American significance and consequence.
And part of the thing we’d be very quick to say [is that] we don’t know anywhere else in the world that a concept of religious freedom would have existed that would have allowed this to happen in 1820, and [then] he’s [Joseph Smith] murdered by age 38. So, he was playing that about as close to the edge of the envelope as he could. And it hadn’t been that many years earlier that we were looking for witches. So, I think in terms of timing, I don’t know anywhere else, in my limited study of world history, I don’t know anywhere else that we could have had this religious opportunity except in the climate in America, in the aftermath of the Great Awakening, especially the Second Great Awakening. And a tolerance for this—at least a tolerance for a few years, and then of course he was martyred—but I don’t think it could have gotten off the ground anywhere else and probably that kind of opposition, that kind of fatal, mortal opposition probably would have come quicker and sooner.
So yeah, that’s a long way around a short, good answer; there was an American climate and that certainly proceeded West with us. Brigham Young’s often called the American Moses, you know there’s a lot about that.
In this century, in the last 120 years, it’s been much more global. Our growth is much greater internationally than domestically now. Simply because there’s more out there to do, and our lines have crossed in terms of the percentage of Church membership. Where our missionaries serve, where our congregations are, [growth is] greater now internationally than [it is] in the United States.
Question: Are all other churches, churches in name only?
Answer: No; this is a tough issue and it’s a good question. But I think the issue comes down, not to the lack of Christian teaching, not to the lack of compassion and mercy and Christian characteristics, but when it comes down to the ordinances, we believe there has to be some sort of documentable identification and line to that authority to perform that ordinance. That’s not a comment, that is not a statement about churches not doing good or not having truth, and not having grand truths, great truths. But when it comes to the sacraments, when it comes to an ordinance, we do press this matter of authority. Somebody somewhere has to say, “I’m authorized to do this;” and I just threw in the little exchange between the Wesley brothers because that’s something that divided in that case a very very famous Protestant family over the issue of authority. I’m very sensitive about the idea that it would sound like; “well I guess the Latter-day Saints think they’re the only ones who have said a good thing or done a good deed, or performed any kind of appropriate Christian act.” That is the farthest thing from our mind and the farthest thing we’d want to leave from any thought with you. But it is an issue with us about priesthood authority, about priesthood authorization.
Question: A relating question I think to [the previous] one: could you say a bit more about the status of the churches or believers between, say, the end of the first century and the restoration. Were there any reflections of the Church between those times?
Answer: I think there would have been threads of the truth [in the world] always. There were spiritual manifestations. I think people were having legitimate spiritual experiences. I do think you have to go along and find these moments when this priesthood issue came to surface. And when there is to our view, in our minds, an authorized sacramental ordinance. But there clearly would have been spiritual experiences, gospel truth, people searching in the scriptures, people having private spiritual experiences. Not only then, but in these vast periods in the Old Testament, you’ve got all kinds of people living all kinds of lives, for great segments of the Old Testament where there doesn’t seem to have been an authorized prophet on the earth at the time, or a period of some Babylonian captivity or the Syrian occupation. We think divine experience, divine care, that kind of religious experience would have existed all the way down through. We [have] just finally come to this point of finally getting it institutionalized and authorized. But we would never diminish or minimize religious experience all the way through for all kinds of people.
Question: I have more of a political question than a doctrinal question. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit on the LDS view on women, specifically in light of the recent war on women and Mitt Romney’s comment that he would get rid of Planned Parenthood.
Answer: I won’t speak on Mitt Romney or his campaign, we are apolitical in the Church in the partisan sense. So I won’t comment on any candidate or any political party. But I can say that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is more committed than any institution, any religious institution that I know of, to the dignity and standing and worth and merit and glory of a woman in any way that I know to say it to you.
My wife, where are you honey? Stand. My wife was a general officer of this Church before I was, and I don’t know very many churches that do that. But she was the general officer over a global organization, years before anybody thought I had anything to offer. And that may or may not be exactly what you have in mind in asking the question, because some of those come down to social issues, contemporary, political issues of the day, and you referred to one.
In principle, I can simply say that we believe that the creation of a woman was the crowning and final and most glorified moment of human creation. We start with light and dark, and land and sea, and we move through fish and fowl, and beasts of the field and we get to Adam and it’s still not good enough. And only when Eve was created—this is our theology; you say this is political, but for me it is theological—that the crowning creation and the glory of the human experience came with the creation of Eve.
Now, we need to do better, everybody needs to do better, I think society needs to do better, this Church probably needs to do better, maybe your church does. I think we all need to do better, to make sure that dignity comes through, to make sure that kind of communication is conveyed. With one of you in this audience I sat a couple of hours ago and we talked about this. How to do it better, how to be more explicit, how to find a better vocabulary. And how to make actions follow our language, our vocabulary and our sermons, I think that’s a task that’s in front of all of us. But certainly doctrinally, theologically—I don’t mean this to be overly boastful or patronizing in any way and in any other tradition—but I would put the position of a woman in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints up against the dignity, worth, merit, and wonder of a woman anywhere on this planet. We just need to do better to be able to convey that. We need to be able to make sure that everybody understands that, including the women in our Church, which I don’t think we have done well enough yet.
Question: I have a question. How do you square the office of a prophet, that you have nowadays, with the Old Testament prophets? As I understand, the Old Testament prophets are called in a very special way, not affirmed by a democratic process—like Moses with the burning bush. And also, in the Old Testament, if the prophet spoke falsely [then] he was not a prophet at all. And I don’t know if the status of Joseph Smith’s and others’ teachings about Black people and polygamy have changed.
Answer: That’s a good question, a great question. First of all, I think the idea of how a prophet is called is still honored today. In fact, in modern time, we kind of have blended the prophet and apostle role. But we believe that a man is still called of God, by prophecy—that is one of the Articles of our Faith, literally an article of our faith—that we believe a man is called of God by prophecy, and that when one is called now, in the post–New Testament era to the Apostleship, that is by prophecy. That is the way Moses was called with or without a burning bush. It’s the way Isaiah was called, or Jeremiah, who didn’t have a burning bush, but were still called. And we come into the tradition of the New Testament, an Apostolic vacancy is filled exactly the way it was in the first chapter of Acts. That with Judas’ demise, that with his compromise, a vacancy existed in that Quorum. It says that they drew lots. Mathias and Barnabas were considered [to fill the vacancy], and [then] Mathias was called to the Twelve. That is exactly the way it happens today. That’s the way I was called, though I didn’t know it. I wasn’t in the room; I didn’t know anything about it. But there would be that long tradition that I was called—I don’t mean this to be personal, but it’s the only example I can offer you—I was called by prophecy, and called to fill a vacancy like Mathias was called to fill. I was called when Howard W. Hunter, a name you don’t need to know, but when he left the Quorum of the Twelve, there was a vacancy; so I was called to fill it.
And the idea about error; let’s try to be generous about human service. As far as I know, it is still a doctrine of most post–New Testament life that Christ was the only perfect person who ever lived. Moses, you mentioned him, had a challenge or two, and [he] was not, in fact, allowed to enter the Promised Land. But we still believe that Moses was a prophet, and we still believe before and after and since that he carries that kind of prophetic and leadership significance.
To study the Old Testament is a bit of a rehearsal in the humanity and mortality of great men and women. I don’t think that removes them from prophetic capacity. Peter had about as tough a moment and as dark an hour as anybody could have had. I don’t know that I understand everything about the denial, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience for him because he wept. And whatever he was going through and whatever was calculated, and whatever that meant, he had a limitation or two. But then he becomes the man who people will bring their cots into the street in order that they might have the shadow of Peter pass over them. So part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the ability to bounce back, and correct, and make change and alter what needs to be altered.
The Prophet Joseph Smith said once, and I think he could have been speaking for all prophets, “when I speak as a prophet, I speak as a prophet.” Then I suppose, that’s the simple terse phrase, but I suppose that means then that if he has Coca Cola and you have Pepsi, you know, that’s negotiable. Maybe he’ll change his opinion about that and think that you made the better decision. I don’t want to trivialize the question because it is a great question, but I do think that we have to see that humanity in real-life people who have given real-life service [have] still worked it out. [Another example, when] Peter and Paul [were] going at each other in the Great Jerusalem Conference, in the fifteenth chapter of Acts; it is a fist fight. You know, they are down on the floor with this. You know, that’s because I think we are mortal. That’s because God isn’t going to give it to us all easily at once, maybe not all that clearly. So if we can concede that, then I would be willing at our leisure to try to answer specific questions or specific incidence, but as a backdrop I would hope that that would matter.
Question: You touched on this briefly [earlier], but I was wondering if you could talk more about the role of missions and missionaries in the Church? And whether, or how, having generations of young people go abroad and return has changed the character of the Church at all?
Answer: What a great question! And one about which I am totally, totally biased. I am so prejudiced; you are talking to the wrong guy. I am the product of a mission from a family that had never served a mission of any kind, [with] kind of complex and slightly chaotic religious history and background. And in my generation, in my day, and in my life I had the chance to serve a mission. It has shaped, and formed, and fashioned, and underscored everything that has happened to me since that hour. I hope that isn’t hyperbole, because I have thought about it a lot, and I really believe it’s true. [Serving a mission] affected my educational decisions; it affected certainly the consequence of my education that led to professional decisions. It’s affected our marriage, who we each married, and how we’ve raised our children, and now their missions. And now we have a granddaughter who is thinking about a mission.
[Serving a mission] is voluntary service; they go at their own expense. We simply ask them to put everything on hold: put education, put professional opportunities, put marriage, put whatever for 18 months or 24, or whatever period of time is, and go voluntarily and pay your own way and have the experience of a lifetime. Ostensibly, theoretically, and truthfully it is for the Church, it is service to the Kingdom and religious principles, to spread Christianity. But in fact, I would do it, and I would institutionalize it, and I would include and encourage everyone to go, who can go and wants to go, if not a single solitary person joined the Church. If not one joined the Church, I would still say do it, simply because of what it meant to me. I think no young man in this Church was ever more affected by a mission than I was. And that partly is simply the context of which I had come in my childhood, in my life, in my youth. And so I’m just a horribly biased responder here.
And we are out to the tune of 56,000 missionaries, probably soon, our trajectory, just [the way] our demographics are, we will probably be around 70,000 [missionaries] in just three or four years. They’re supposed to go give service; they’re supposed to go love people where they are. If they join the Church fine, but if they don’t, fine. If they can do anything, anything they can do, anything single solitary Christian decent worthy thing they can do, they are supposed to go do. And if people join the Church great, and if they don’t [missionaries] have left a nation, or a community, or a family, or a person better than they found them. And that’s our call to be a missionary. And that can’t help but do good to the individual. And it can’t help but have changed the face of the Church in the 21st Century, because it has. There is no question about it. And some in this room have had that experience.
Question: You’ll have to forgive my basic question, but what does the afterlife look like for both Mormons and non-Mormons?
Answer: Well I think [this] is [a] very common [question] for everybody. “In my Father’s house [there] are many mansions” (Doctrine and Covenants 98:18). Paul had a vision of the afterlife, and he compared it to the sun, the moon, and the stars. I guess [there are] a lot of options out there. But we do believe, and I quoted the little Longfellow piece, which is sort of clichéd now, but it’s still terrific theology, that there is an afterlife.
We [Latter-day Saints] spend a lot of our time getting ready for [the afterlife]; [we believe] that this life ought to be devoted to eternity. A strange doctrine that you have all heard about, but we believe is representative of the commitment that God makes to be just and merciful to all of His children, [is that] we busily try to do ordinances in the spirit of 1 Corinthians 15. We busily try to do ordinances, these sacraments, for our family who are deceased.
[We do it] simply on the basis that we don’t believe that God loves me anymore than he loves my great-grandparents who did not know one single solitary thing about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And in many, many cases, and in many, many eras, and in many portions of dispensations [people] didn’t know anything about God, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit or anything else. And yet we believe that [if] these [ordinances] are essential for you or for me then [we also believe] they must be essential for everybody. And so we have this afterlife pursuit where we perform ordinances, that are not binding, that are voluntary—as I guess all ordinances are and have to be—but we do this work so that if somebody cares in what we know to be, believe to be, and declare to be that the afterlife and the reality of that existence, if somebody wants to claim those privileges of salvation and redemption, then at least the sacramental part of that is taken care of. That’s kind of a unique doctrine for us, and it gets ballyhooed in the press, and there [are] some awkward moments about it if people don’t understand. But you’re attorneys; it’s an offer. And unless somebody accepts, [the] deals off. But we do believe that God in His grace and in His goodness and His universality would always make an offer, and that’s what that doctrine is. And that’s only one example of our commitment to the afterlife. But it is one that gets in the press a lot, so I chose to pursue it.
Question: Could you elaborate on the instances in which the Church will take a political stand? One that immediately comes to mind is the often-cited, sort of, material impact the Church had on the passing of Proposition 8 in California? And then also, how whatever that political involvement would be, squared with the notion, for instance, the American’s ability to have people exercise their beliefs freely?
Answer: First of all, let me work backwards, all we asked was the right to exercise our vote. We just asked for a religious privilege to cast a vote. We did not want to be disenfranchised. Institutionally not a single dollar, not one red cent, of money from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went into Proposition 8 or any other comparable proposition that I know of. Now, a lot of Latter-day Saints got involved. And a lot of Latter-day Saints, particularly in California, donated their time and money to do it. I am not being coy; I am not dodging the fact that there was a terrific involvement, and a fairly heavy price to pay—people being fired from their jobs, people being blackballed in services they had rendered and were asked to no longer render—but that’s okay, that’s the price you pay for a lively democracy.
So we choose very carefully what we see those moral issues to be. And we saw that as a moral issue, we saw that not as a political issue; and never, ever, ever did we say that somebody could not express his or her vote in a contrary way. Nobody was blocking the ballot box, nobody was slashing tires, you know, as you approach the precinct. I’d really be disappointed if somebody thought there was some kind of effort [on our part] to deny somebody his or her free exercise. But again, all we were asking was the chance to have our free exercise, and some seem to think that was not right, that we ought to sit down and shut-up. We sit down and shut-up quite a bit. But on some things, on that one, we chose to be a little more vocal, a little more visible. And by we, I just emphasize, this is a voluntary lay participation with no money and no formalization institutionally.
[It is] something we all cared about, I am not minimizing that we cared about it. We’ve taken issues on gambling. We’ve been quite visible when legislation comes along to put casinos places and various kinds of gambling. That flops over from political to moral for us, and so we’ve been kind of visible on that. We have this health code; we see some of the damage that comes from alcohol, drugs and whatever, and so we’re pretty visible about that; that doesn’t tend to get down to legislation as much as we’re kind of vocal about it. We talk about the damage that [it] does to homes and families and parents and kids. There aren’t a lot of [issues we stand up for], but where we have them, we haven’t been shy. We hope it’s always appropriate. We hope it’s allowing everybody else exactly what we’re asking for, and that is the freedom to express an opinion and cast a vote. And we’ll all go where democracy takes us. But we do feel pretty obligated to stand up for what we believe, and you kind of let the chips fall where they may.
Question: First of all, thank you very much for coming in today. Can you speak on the Church’s view on personal and professional moral obligations of whoever holds political offices?
Answer: Part of the American question that was asked earlier is this devotion we have to the Constitution. I don’t know whether you know that, but… we have latter-day scriptural canon that refer to what we consider to be the divinity of the United States Constitution. And that really is a belief we have. We really do believe in the founding liberties of this nation, and that they were divinely guided and they were for a reason. We believe that anybody that takes public office and puts his hand on a Bible to declare loyalty to that Constitution, for us that is a moral, religious, political, social, call it what you will commitment; if there is inherent in that the idea that some Latter-day Saint would take his direction from Salt Lake as opposed from the electorate, or from the law, or from whatever it is he is sworn to, that would be as large a compromise, that would be as dramatic a compromise for a Latter-day Saint as it could be for anybody else in the United States of America.
Jack Kennedy made that clear in an earlier day regarding Rome, and I’m not going to talk about Mitt Romney, John Huntsman, or anybody else, but I can say in principle and in truth that the last thing, the last thing, this Church would do would be to tell an elected officer [what] to do, because that runs contrary to the very commitment we have made to the principle of that government by law. Call Harry Reid and ask him how many times we’ve told him anything. You’ve got Orin Hatch and Harry Reid, end of conversation. We really couldn’t, wouldn’t and don’t [tell public officers what to do]. This is a fiction, and I want to take it out of this election year and you can make it for the next 90 years. It’s a legal fiction; it’s an imaginary anxiety, though honestly asked, because a lot of people are asking it, whether somebody’s loyalty would somehow be to the president of the Church. His loyalty is to that oath of office that he takes with his hand on scripture that we espouse. He is supposed to do what his conscience and what the elected officials and the electorate of his constituency tell him to do. And that would be a pretty adamant position for us to take.
I love you. You’ve been very, very courteous. Thank you.
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Oneonta Job Corps Academy students in the Military Career Preparation program assisted Otsego County with its annual hazardous waste collection day on September 15th. The 15 Oneonta Job Corps Academy students were among many volunteers that assisted with the day. It was estimated that 400 cars dropped off hazardous materials on collection day.
In April 2012, students at Oneonta Job Corps Academy received an unexpected opportunity. A local elementary school was looking for mentors for the elemntary classes. Oneonta Job Corps Academy students were excited by the prospect. OJCA students signed up in their academic classes and went to an orientation with the elementary school principal and found [...]
On April 24th, Mike Blair, Underground Residential Distribution (URD) Instructor at Oneonta Job Corps Academy shared his knowledge with his daughter’s 4th grade class at Greater Plains Elementary School in Oneonta, NY. Mike went to the elementary school and set up a mock URD area in order to show the children safe ways to handle [...]
On April 18th, Mr. Jeremy Riemersma, Northland Job Corps’ Urban Forestry Program Manager, loaded two students, personal protective equipment for all three individuals, chainsaws, gas and oil for the saws and an overnight bags in a truck and made the four hour drive from Vergennes, Vermont to Oneonta, New York. Once Mr. Riemersma and the [...]
On February 8th students in two academic classes at Oneonta Job Corps Academy went to SUNY Oneonta to participate in a live video chat with NASA astronaut, Colonel Ron Garan. Oneonta Job Corps students were part of a crowd of nearly 400 students from Oneonta City School District and SUNY Oneonta. The live chat was [...]
Faces of Job Corps: Amanda S. Amanda came to Oneonta Job Corps Academy at the age of 17, hoping to get away from a dramatic home life and be able to focus on getting an education that would allow her to be successful. After enrolling Amanda accomplished the following: – Earned her General Education Diploma. [...]
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When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally, I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced; and the bountiful blind girl doth most mistake in her gifts to women. "Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.
The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles one encounters on the road to fortune are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance. Peril is the element in which power is developed.
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The Washington Redskins are based in the nation’s capital Washington D.C. and have played in more than 1,000 games since 1932. In that time frame, the
team has sold millions of Redskins tickets, captured 12 NFL Divisional titles, and won five NFL
Championships including three Super Bowls.
The Redskins are a team that is true to the expression “having ups and downs.” The team won all
their championships and divisional titles in two different 10 year spans. The first and more
successful period was from 1936-1945, and the second was from 1982-1991. In between those
two runs was one of the worst periods in Redskins history. The team went a whole decade
starting from 1956 in which they didn’t achieve one winning season and saw an equal decline in
sales of Redskins tickets.
After their last run at a championship, the Redskins have consistently been a mediocre team
that enjoyed a brief upturn in the sale of Redskins tickets when former great coach Joe Gibbs
returned in 2004 to coach the team for four seasons before once again retiring. After Gibbs’
retirement, the team continued to draft successful NFL players yet were never able to turn the
corner and become a consistent playoff team.
During the team's lost history starting from their induction in the NFL, they have played and sold
Redskins tickets at five different home fields, including a short four year stint at the historic
baseball field Fenway Park in Boston.
FedEx Field is the current home for the Redskins since 1997.
From 2005 to 2011, Redskins fans set the regular season
home game paid attendance record filling a stadium that can seat 79,000 fans that purchase Redskins tickets.
In their 2007 home game vs. the Dallas Cowboys, the “Skins” were able to sell
90,910 Redskins tickets, making it the highest attended game in Redskins history.
The reason they are able to sell so many Redskins tickets and seat so many fans is helped by
the five levels of seating at the field. The field is designed with two different levels
of suites and three levels of general seating. However, in a rare turn of events, FedEx field's seating capacity was
expanded to over 91,000 seats in 2009, and reduced to 79,000 in 2012.
Like many other professional stadiums around the country , FedEx field sells more than just
Redskins tickets and has hosted many other entertainment and sporting events.
The most notable events include two performances by the Rolling Stones, multiple
sold out college football games, and D.C. United professional soccer games.
Although FedEx Field has undergone many upgrades and expansions, the fans still claim it
does not compare to their previous home at RFK Stadium. Thankfully owner Daniel Snyder has
listened to these comments by the fans and has begun talks with city officials in an attempt to
return the team to the D.C. District.
12-4-12: Coming off a huge and emotional win against the division rival Giants on Monday Night Football, the Redskins have won three in a row and are closing in on a playoff berth. Up next for them is their local rival, The Baltimore Ravens in what should be a marquee matchup for sure. Robert Griffin III has been on a tear as of late and has a great QB rating of 104. Division games against the Cowboys and Eagles will likely make or break the Redskins season.
1-9-13:-Redskins-Not much more than RGIII needs to be said when speaking of the Redskins impressive season. A playoff loss that featured Griffin III getting injured, requiring surgery will be the dark ending. But Redskins fans fear not, surgery was recently successful and he is on the mend for next season. Griffin III is going to be in a tight race for rookie of the year with Andrew Luck but whether or not he wins is will not change the fact that he had a stellar rookie season and is slowly budding into a great leader. The Redskins won the division and had a signature Monday Night football win against the rival New York Giants which sparked a hot streak and carried them into the postseason.
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As the holiday shopping frenzy descends upon us, a new season of gift giving is in full swing. According to the stats, traditional holiday sales in North America are expected to increase 2.8 percent this year, with nearly half of shoppers buying online. This means that as online and in-store shoppers begin checking off their lists, FedEx estimates that more than 260 million shipments will pass through its global network between the end of November and Christmas – a 12 percent jump from last year.
A significant portion of the increase will likely be driven by online retailers and cataloguers who ship items such as books, apparel, personal consumer electronics and luxury goods.
The shipping giant anticipated their busiest day would be December 12th, and they were right. On that Monday, more than 17 million shipments were made around the world and goes down as the busiest day in the company’s history, beating last year’s record by 10 percent.
And though it pales in comparison to the estimated two billion presents delivered overnight by Santa and his trusty reindeer, it’s a remarkable feat of logistical planning.
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If you’ve been paying attention to celebrity gossip this week, you’ve probably heard that manufacturers have been accused of using what amounts to slave labor in products sold by the Kardashian family’s labels. Though everyone, including the Kardashians, have been justifiably horrified by the allegations, it’s important to take a step back and realize that slavery is already present in many of the products that we buy. Just because it’s common doesn’t mean that we can’t take a stand on it and make sure that the products we buy are slave-free.
There’s just a little over a week left in the Slavery Footprint Campus Challenge, and this week’s task is simple, but no less important than previous tips. This week, try…
Sending letters to companies: 1 Free World point.
While you’re doing your last-minute holiday shopping, check in to stores using the Free World app, and send the companies a letter letting them know that you’re concerned about modern-day slavery. Here’s how to do it:
+ Download the app.
+ Get shopping.
Forget to get your mom a present (oops)? Going to buy yourself the present that you really want? While you’re at the mall, check in to the store you’re in, and then select the brand you’re interested in knowing more about.
+ Send a letter.
Next, send the company a pre-populated letter telling them that you love their brand, but want them to make sure that their products are slave-free. Quick and easy, and a great way to let brands know that you’re passionate about this issue and want them to be too!
+ Keep shopping.
Forget to get your sister a present (double oops)? Decide to do some more holiday shopping for yourself? Keep using the Free World app every time you go shopping; you’ll be able to earn points and make some noise about modern-day slavery on a daily basis.
Have you taken action to end modern-day slavery as part of the Slavery Footprint Campus Challenge? We would love to hear about it, and possibly feature you online! Email mtvU’s Against Our Will Campaign and tell us your story.
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(CBS/ AP) President Bush plans to keep U.S. troop levels in Iraq near their current level through the end of the year and will pull home about 8,000 U.S. troops by February when the next president will be in charge of wartime decision-making.
If security in Iraq keeps improving, Mr. Bush says, "additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009."
The president's decisions amount to perhaps his last major troop strategy in a war that has come to define his presidency.
He was to announce the details in a speech Tuesday, the text of which was released in advance by the White House.
One Marine battalion, numbering about 1,000 troops, will go home on schedule in November and not be replaced. An Army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will leave in February. Accompanying that combat drawdown will be the withdrawal of about 3,400 support forces.
The measured reduction — slower in scope and pace than many Democrats in Congress would like — gives the military some flexibility to shift forces into Afghanistan.
"Here is the bottom line: While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becomingly increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight," Mr. Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Washington.
Mr. Bush argued that Iraq is in a better place now by almost any measure. He said violence is at its lowest point since the spring of 2004, "normal life is returning to communities across the country," and political reconciliation is moving forward.
The president cautioned that progress is still fragile and could be reversed. But he said his top commander and diplomat in Iraq assure him that the gains made there now have some durability.
But all this emphasis on progress and improvement belied the fact that his announcement is likely to be a disappointment to many who wanted — and even expected — bigger drawdowns sooner.
Nowhere did Mr. Bush acknowledge this, instead highlighting his announcement as one of "additional force reductions."
The Iraq war has drained the country's spirit during Mr. Bush's second term, and the future course of the conflict is a major point of division between the men who want to replace Mr. Bush, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.
More than half of Mr. Bush's address is devoted to Afghanistan.
He outlined what he called a "quiet surge" of additional American forces there, bringing the U.S. presence to nearly 31,000, compared with about 146,000 in Iraq.
"For all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," the president said.
He announced that a Marine battalion that had been scheduled to go to Iraq in November would go to Afghanistan instead, and that that would be followed by one Army combat brigade.
Commanders repeatedly have asked for more troops in Afghanistan, where there has been a resurgence of the Taliban and a growth in violence. The president acknowledged that the challenges in Afghanistan remain huge.
"Unlike Iraq, it has few natural resources and has an underdeveloped infrastructure. Its democratic institutions are fragile," Mr. Bush said. "And its enemies are some of the most hardened terrorists and extremists in the world. With their brutal attacks, the Taliban and the terrorists have made some progress in shaking the confidence of the Afghan people."
In other developments:
# Cholera has broken out in a province south of Baghdad and at least 20 cases of the waterborne disease have been confirmed there, a Health Ministry official said Monday.
# The U.S. military has announced a pretrial hearing will be held Sept. 20 at a U.S. base in Tikrit for an Army lieutenant from Oklahoma charged in the death of an Iraqi detainee.The military says 1st Lt. Michael Behenna of Edmond is being charged with premeditated murder, assault, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice in the death of Ali Mansour Mohammed. Staff Sgt. Hal Warner of Braggs faces the same charges in the case.
# Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri has accused Iran of working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq in his latest video message. Excerpts of message have appeared on Arab news channel Al-Jazeera and it is timed to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Commissioned by ABF Valuation, Delft.
See the painting as it grows.
Delft, August 18th 2006.
Here, you're looking through the glass window of a real old Dutch house.
The mirroring shows the location at a canal (gracht) in the center of Delft.
The wooden frame of the window is colored in a typical Dutch green.
They wanted a portrait of Bayes, because they use his maths alot.
Just like google and all statistics freaks.
He's dead for such a long time now.
They even don't have photographs of the famous geek.
His most important work was published posthumusly in 1763.
I'm better at painting than at stats.
He was also a clergyman.
Someone complained about the green in the painting,
But how can you avoid green in a clergyman?
King: Yellow, (cause he uses the services of the former)
Clergyman: Purple and Green.
(Sadly, sadly: No Bimbo's for Clergymen and Scientists.)
(At least officially, so it's sorry for all of you.)
And in the beginning .....
.....God created Black.
Welcome to Holland!
A close scrutiny of the procedings of the artist.
(Everybody wants explanations.
It's an art in itself.)
Business as usual.
The show must go on.
"Hundred phone calls a day,
keeps the growing pain away",
Geffen, Entertainment entrepreneur.
As a Math master:
He got the stars, moon and a broken heart.
Nothing can start without blue.
...If God created the God Earth and God Sun.
.....He must have glued them in blue of the Holy Sky.
And you know,
Blue is quite sticky,
Especially if it's wet.
All photo's by Elizabeth.
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My partner and I were in Vancouver over the weekend celebrating his birthday. It wasn’t a milestone birthday celebration like last year’s when we toured the Mediterranean and soaked up the culture of Italy as if we were pieces of bread ready to dive into extra virgin olive oil. But we ended up experiencing a surprising and unintended milestone. We reached the top of Vancouver’s famed Grouse Mountain by climbing it via a path known as the Grouse Grind.
According to the media, stylish women are on the rise in Silicon Valley. And if you want to know whether or not I agree with that assessment, I do – for once. This is one of the most exciting developments to happen in Silicon Valley, maybe since the invention of the iPhone. Seriously. I put this development on that level because when stylish women are on the rise in Silicon Valley, it means that women are insisting on being seen for who they are and who they want to be.
The key elements of personal style are revealed through studying your personal coloring and how style is related to your personality and goals. Managing the key elements of personal style can be tricky but very rewarding. If you’re not careful, your style could race along too fast or too slow. Without having a language for understanding the key elements, you have clothes and a look with no context.
This post, about how to wear a men’s suit in Silicon Valley, ties in to the last post about how to buy a men’s suit in Silicon Valley. Once you’ve bought the appropriate suit or suits for business and social occasions, it’s time to put one on and wear it. But there are some cultural rules about how to wear a mens suit in Silicon Valley.
The question about how to buy a men’s suit in Silicon Valley always comes up with my male clients. Admittedly, not every man in Silicon Valley even thinks he should own a suit. I’m not trying to encourage people who live a more laid back work and lifestyle to change how they work and live. But one thing is for sure. Every man should invest in at least one good suit. The more often a man has the need for a suit, the more of them he should own.
A number of people have been asking me this year how and why I came up with the names of my personal image development programs. The term breakout has particularly generated the most interest, and maybe not so coincidentally, it’s my most popular program. Breakout is a word that describes the resultant place we arrive at when we forcefully escape or emerge from being confined, restrained, or trapped.
Many people think that image is fluff but they would be completely wrong. Now I know that what people think when they take on this view is that it’s selfishly self-focused to be image conscious. People think that image is fluff because it feeds the ego, that it’s a self-indulgent excuse to dress better, and to look like you’re showing off or that you’re trying to one-up someone else.
Do you think that it is hard to ask for help? Well, I sure as hell think so. It’s so engrained in me that it took having an all-out breakthrough moment to realize that, for me, it is hard to ask for help. This was such a ground shifting epiphany that I’m going to share the story with you so that we can all no longer have the belief that it is hard to ask for help.
Famed London retailer Harry Gordon Selfridge had a way with words. He also had a way with business, and with people. My favorite saying of his is, “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” In a nutshell, Selfridge’s comment explains exactly what clients experience as we’re developing their brand.
If there’s a message to take away from the current exhibit The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde, 1860-1900, soon to close at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, it’s that the colors and styles you wear do matter.
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All News & Blogs
The Plumb brothers could use a little help
DUCHENNE muscular dystrophy is no easy card to draw in the game of life. The genetic disease, which causes muscle wasting and weakness, shows up early, gets serious quickly, and has no known cure. But Duchenne MD has not stopped Orange County's Plumb brothers from living productive lives. Now, with a little help from the rest of us, those lives can be enhanced.
Most Duchenne MD patients are diagnosed early, by age 6, and end up in wheelchairs by age 12. That was true for GW Plumb, now 26. But it didn't stop him from getting a job at Faulconer Hardware in Orange when he was a junior in high school. He still works there today, and his boss calls him "invaluable." Observes one customer, "He's right on the ball, knows everything, and is the first to say 'Can I help you?'" Brother Ben, 24, managed to stay on his feet until he was 21. His goal was to walk across the stage at high-school graduation. Now he uses a wheelchair and works in the service department at Virginia Tractor, where co-workers say he finds things no one else can and call him "a great guy."
The pluck of the Plumb brothers is no doubt due in part to their parents, who, from the beginning, wanted the boys to have lives as normal as possible. "We always, always, always treated those guys as if nothing was wrong," their mom, Jane, told a Free Lance-Star reporter. "They played T-ball. They walked for a while. They fish and hunt with equipment they've adapted. We always made them think they have to do everything like everyone else, that they have responsibilities and obligations." Though Mr. and Mrs. Plumb could probably qualify for federal aid, they haven't asked for it. They pay their sons' health insurance on their own, care for them, and provide transportation to their jobs.
And that's where the community could help out. The Plumbs aren't looking for a handout. But right now, transporting the brothers involves their mother carrying them to and from the family van and placing them in wheelchairs staged at their workplaces and at home. How much easier life would be if they only had a lift-equipped van capable of transporting the young men in their chairs.
The Plumb brothers unfortunately didn't win a nationwide contest for such a vehicle, but Doris Waugh, a nursing-home resident who has been paralyzed for 30 years, has picked up the baton. With the help of a minister, she's set up a bank account to receive funds for the young men. Others have placed collection jars at the Plumbs' workplaces. Half of the $50,000 needed has been gathered so far.
A little help from the rest of us could finish the job. It's not charity--it's simply appreciation for the inspiration provided by two hardworking overcomers and their parents. Donations can be sent to Virginia National Bank, Box 709, Orange, Va. 22960. Be sure to note the money is for the "Van Fund for GW and Ben."
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The US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada, in cooperation with IKEA Home Furnishings, of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, have recalled about 26,000 (6,000 in Canada) SINGLAR cribs. The four bolts provided with some SNIGLAR cribs to secure the mattress support are not long enough. This can cause the mattress support to detach and collapse, creating a risk of entrapment and suffocation to a child in the crib. No incidents or injuries have been reported.
Do You Own This Product?
This recall involves SNIGLAR non-drop-side, full-size cribs with model number 60091931. SNIGLAR, IKEA, and the model number are printed on a label attached to the mattress support. The crib frame and mattress support are made of natural/light-colored wood. The cribs sold at IKEA stores nationwide from October 2005 through June 2010 for about $80. They were manufactured in Romania.
Whom to Contact
Consumers should stop using the crib immediately and check the crib. If the mattress support bolts extend through the nut, the bolts are the proper length and the crib is not included in the recall. If the bolt does not extend through the nut, the crib is included in the recall. Contact IKEA for a free repair kit for recalled cribs. In the meantime, find an alternate, safe sleep environment for the child, such as a bassinet, play yard, or toddler bed depending on the child's age.
For additional information, contact IKEA toll-free at (888) 966-4532 anytime, or visit the firm's website at www.ikea-usa.com.
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It’s About What’s Good For The Kids
AYSO is a volunteer-run organization. Coaches, referees and administrators are volunteers. Over 220,000 parents, neighbors, relatives and friends lend their time and talents so that each child gets a terrific AYSO experience.
AYSO’s volunteer foundation ensures that it’s all about what’s good for kids. It also makes AYSO very affordable. AYSO operates in a business manner, but volunteers ensure its “profits” are happy, healthy kids playing a sport they can enjoy for life.
AYSO has developed special training that helps parents who may have little or no soccer experience quickly gain the age-appropriate knowledge and skills they need to be effective coaches and referees. It also has unique administrative and management training. This ensures that each community program:
- Abides by the AYSO philosophies
- Offers a great AYSO experience
- Continues to grow, offering the AYSO opportunity to more children
It only takes a few hours to become qualified as an introductory-level coach or referee. But if you’re not able to commit even that much time, there are many small jobs you can help with. Even a couple of hours each season are an important contribution to your team and Region!
AYSO training doesn’t stop as long as you’re having fun. Referees, coaches and administrators have clinics, workshops and other advanced training available to advance their skills.
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ARTINFO has a short interview with JR on their site that is worth checking out. Here is an extract related to his recent series, The Wrinkles of the City, which he presented at 18 Gallery, Galerie Magda Danysz’s Shanghai outpost, this past October.
AI: You recently returned from China. Was it harder than usual to produce your art there?
JR: China is a very ambivalent country. Not to forget the human rights problem discussed in the European media, but the feeling that prevails there is that nothing is really impossible, especially sticking up a few posters that aren’t political or advertising. My work in China is part of a new project called “The Wrinkles of the City.” It’s a project based on making portraits of older people who hold the memory of a city that I chose. Alongside the portraits, I collect stories from these people, who have seen great changes to their city. These portraits are then put up in the city on surfaces that inspire me and also represent the city’s memory and history. Shanghai has an extremely rich history in the 20th century.
Read the rest of the interview here.
JR, The Wrinkles of The City, Shi Li, 2010, B&W print on basic paper pasted on corrugated sheet mat varnish, ed of 1, 190 x 300cm.
Image via Galerie Magda Danysz.
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Is Narmada water being made to flow in Sabarmati not supplied to city of Ahmedabad? This has furthered the idea of river...
I have been selling glass for commercial buildings talking about light, thermal/solar heat gain etc.etc..but I...
Dear Saxena ji,
Thank you for inquiry.
West facing windows can be a big source of heat, first measure which you...
The European Court of Justice ruled recently that economic requirements need not be considered while allocating and defining the boundaries of an environmental special protection area. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ( rspb ), uk , had challenged the UK environment secretary's decision to designate the Medway estuary and marshes in Kent as a special protection area excluding a mud-flat saying that its economic value excee-ded its conservation value. The rspb argued that the secretary was not entitled to take account of economic considerations when classifying a special protection area.
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Sulla controversa questione del “diritto di anonimato sul web” 22:30 May 16 0 comments
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Recent articles by Jonathan Payn
Recent Articles about Southern Africa Miscellaneous
Amandla! Ngawethu! Feb 01 12
Riding to Work on Empty Promises
southern africa | miscellaneous | opinion / analysis Thursday September 09, 2010 20:57 by Jonathan Payn - Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front zacf at zabalaza dot net
The promise of safe, reliable and affordable public transport comes as welcome news for the majority of working class and poor South Africans and immigrants to the country. The segregated town planning left behind by the system of racialised capitalism known as apartheid has meant that the majority of the population – also those who can least afford it – are often the ones who have the furthest to travel to work, schools, hospitals and so on.
Riding to Work on Empty PromisesJonathan Payn
(Published in Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, Issue No.11, September 2010)
Ever since former transport minister Jeff Radebe announced that the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit system prototype would be implemented in time for the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup hosted in South Africa, we have been hearing a lot about Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Needless to say the dead-line was missed, but the hype continued up to the launch in August 2009 and far beyond.
The promise of safe, reliable and affordable public transport comes as welcome news for the majority of working class and poor South Africans and immigrants to the country. The segregated town planning left behind by the system of racialised capitalism known as apartheid has meant that the majority of the population – also those who can least afford it – are often the ones who have the furthest to travel to work, schools, hospitals and so on. The burden of having to walk long distances to one’s destination or to a taxi route is all the more difficult for pregnant women, disabled people and the elderly. The lack of affordable public transport often means that, because there are not enough schools in poor communities, children either have to walk long distances to school, or maybe just don’t go regularly if their parents cannot afford the transport – not to mention the cost of school uniforms, books, stationery and school fees. Unemployed workers cannot afford the transport necessary to go out and look for work, and many workers must spend what little savings they may have – or be forced to borrow from ruthless loan-sharks – in order to pay for the transport needed to go back and forth to the Department of Labour trying in vain to get their Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) paid out. People who suffer from treatable diseases and injuries die because they cannot afford the transport needed to take them to a hospital or clinic to get treatment, and the public ambulance system is insufficient.
Most people would agree, then, that safe, affordable and reliable public transport is absolutely necessary to fighting poverty and unemployment (and all the social ills that come with it) in South Africa and securing a decent and dignified life for all. Let us then look at what BRT really is, how our so-called leaders plan to implement it – since, as usual, there has been very little popular involvement – and whether our leaders, or BRT, can serve the needs of the poor and working class. One thing is certain: if BRT or any other public transport system is going to be made to serve the needs of the popular classes – the poor, peasantry, lower middle class and working class – then it will re-quire the involvement of those classes to see to its proper implementation. We have now been promised decent public transport by the political rulers of this country, although for the last fifteen years the popular classes in South Africa seem to have lived on not much more than promises. But people cannot live on promises forever – as shown by the recent upsurge in township rebellions and protests which are undoubtedly, at least in part a response to the ANC’s failure to live up to its election campaign promises, starting just two months after Jacob Zuma was inaugurated president of South Africa and growing all the more rapidly in recent months.
BRT IN BRIEFBRT has been described as a "high quality, customer oriented transport system which will deliver fast, comfortable, and low cost urban mobility" involving "the construction of ‘bus way corridors’ on segregated lanes and modernised technology". It is said that BRT will not only service the central business districts of South Africa’s main cities, which were hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup, but also surrounding townships such as Soshanguve, GaRankuwa and Mamelodi; and Rea Vaya stations are already in service in Soweto and elsewhere.
BRT is a road-based public transport system. It mimics rail systems through the use of dedicated bus lanes (trunk routes) that run, or will run, on what are now or were major taxi and bus operator routes. Smaller subsidiary corridors (feeder routes) feed into these routes. Instead of having to first travel to the central parts of the city to get another bus or taxi to one’s destination, people will, in theory, be able to avoid travelling via the CBD. Presumably being able to take a more direct route to work with fewer transfers will mean a quicker and cheaper trip. It is also claimed that BRT will provide commuters with a high-frequency all-day service, which means that people should not have to queue for long periods during peak hours, nor should they have to wait for ages during off-peak times for scarce transport.
Among other benefits cited by those behind the implementation of BRT are physical provisions to ensure easy access for disabled people, the elderly and pregnant women; low-emission technology, which means less pollution; clear route maps and signage; increased reliability; and secure bus stations. Going by what we’ve been told, then, BRT should definitely be in the interests of the poor and working class, and worthy of our support. But, as with so many of the things that the government supposedly does for us – instead of with us – there has been very little public participation and consultation. Indeed, this lack of involvement has been one of the reasons why the taxi industry, which is also supposed to benefit from the implementation of BRT, has not been supportive.
TAXI TROUBLESAt present, ‘public’ transport in South Africa consists of the insufficient rail and bus systems, which are owned by the state but run for profit; and the unsubsidised and informal privately owned, gangster-operated minibus taxi systems – all of which compete for business. The idea of BRT, they say, is to incorporate bus and taxi operators into the new system, which will be run by a company jointly owned by the municipality and taxi owners; but the way in which this is being done has been contested by the taxi industry. Early on, the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) raised concerns when government asked taxi associations to register their routes and then went on to place the BRT system on those same routes without consulting the taxi industry. Taxi drivers are thus justifiably angry and believe that the BRT system is an encroachment on their livelihood – a livelihood that was deeply troubled even before BRT came onto the scene.
Taxi drivers do not usually own the vehicles they drive, but hire them from a taxi owner – who very often will own a whole fleet of vehicles – at a certain fixed rate, regardless of income generated, which they have to pay the owner at the end of the day or week. Having paid the taxi owner to use his vehicle, the driver is left with very little at the end of the day, and is thus compelled to drive faster, endangering lives, in order to fit in more trips and thus, hopefully, ensure that he can pay for the use of the vehicle and have a little extra to take home. Certainly never enough to save up for a vehicle of his own, however. This is the reason why taxi drivers overcrowd vehicles, as the more people they squeeze in the more money they can make from a single trip. The long hours, strenuous conditions and poor pay are some of the reasons why many taxi drivers become abusive and intolerant towards both their customers and other road users. This is not to excuse the dangerous driving and abusive character of some, but by no means all taxi drivers – many of whom are very reasonable people – but merely to suggest that it is the nature of the industry that is the cause of the problem, and that for people to be able to enjoy a safe and reliable service, it is the industry itself that needs to be changed. As both the taxi operators and their passengers stand to benefit from a less ruthless and exploitative industry, it stands to reason that both parties have an interest in working together to transform the industry.
But if this is the interest of taxi drivers and taxi users, the state has done little to help. The ANC government has guaranteed that no "legitimate jobs" (how they define this is open to question) in the taxi industry will be lost. But both taxi drivers and owners are adamant that there has not been a meaningful process of engagement and, as is so often the case, government drove the BRT ahead without the consultation of those it will most affect, particularly those who fear their livelihoods will come under threat. In response to government’s failure to properly engage the taxi associations around BRT, the industry embarked on a series of strikes to force government to come to the negotiating table. The result was that some prominent taxi owners and association bigwigs have bought into the BRT idea, and stand to profit considerably from these new interests, whereas the smaller taxi associations and small-scale owners, who were not seen as powerful enough players for government to want to integrate into the BRT project, are left out in the cold. While the municipality aims to integrate some of the larger associations into BRT, concerns are that others will be forced to give up their routes; to compete with the much more competitively priced BRT buses for passengers; or to operate on the periphery, away from the more lucrative routes, taken over by BRT.
A SOLUTION TO OUR TRANSPORT NEEDS?When the first BRT system, Rea Vaya, was finally launched on Sunday 30 August 2009, most taxis did not move from their ranks despite the calling-off of a strike by the taxi industry leaders. The fear felt by many working class and poor taxi users, many of whom have been affected by taxi violence in the past, that taxi operators would resort to violence against the new bus system was soon realised. Just a few days after the launch of BRT, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a Rea Vaya bus near the Nancefield hostel in Soweto, injuring one police officer and one passenger. More recently one passenger was killed and several others injured when gunmen, allegedly travelling in a minibus, opened fire on a Rea Vaya bus in Orlando West. There was a second instance of gunmen opening fire on a Rea Vaya bus, also in Soweto, the same evening.
In more recent strikes, taxi drivers have both acted as scabs on other striking drivers, and formed cross-class alliances with the taxi owners, the very people who exploit them, by continuing to provide a taxi service by driving private vehicles – still owned by the bosses – during the strikes. In-stead of targeting commuters, perhaps they should go after the scabs undermining the strike by continuing to work for the taxi bosses – and more importantly, the strikes should be organised by drivers alone, without the alliance with the owners that crosses the line of class interests.
Despite the fear of violent reprisals against commuters for using BRT, and the long queues people waiting for Rea Vaya buses have had to endure as a result of the increased pressure the taxi strikes put on the new system, many poor and working class commuters expressed their support for BRT and said they would continue to use it. At the same time, the system is nowhere near sufficient: it only runs along one or two roads in Soweto, so most still have to take a taxi to get to the bus stop. A much more affordable, safer and more reliable transport system is desirable. The fact is that the taxi industry, perhaps because of the virtual monopoly on public transport that it has enjoyed for so long, and that people are fed up with the expensive taxis and the disrespectful and abusive way in which many taxi operators treat their customers - even to the point of a blatant disregard for life and safety - has lost the confidence and support of a large proportion of its users by virtue of the fact that it is run by a bunch of gangsters, and thus failed to win their sympathy and solidarity as taxi drivers struggle to keep their livelihoods in the face of BRT. BRT is never going to phase out the taxi industry as a whole, and the more taxis are replaced by BRT at the expense of at least some taxi industry workers, who are not integrated into the BRT system, the more we can expect protest, disruption and even violent resistance. All this will affect poor and working class commuters, who will be caught in the crossfire between the taxi drivers and owners on one side, and the government and BRT on the other.
CYCLE OF EXPLOITATIONTaxi drivers are exploited by the taxi owners because they have to sell their labour (driving) to the taxi owners in exchange for the use of their vehicles in order to earn a living. Because the taxi drivers do not own the vehicles they cannot keep all the money they make and must give most of it – an amount determined by the taxi associations, which are controlled by the owners – to the taxi owners. Bus drivers are exploited by the bus companies because they have to sell their labour power (driving) in exchange for a market-related wage, which is negotiated between the bus companies, government and union bosses who do not even transport people for a living, but get their salary from the union dues of the transport workers they supposedly represent. Because the bus drivers do not own the buses, they too receive only a fraction of what the service they provide generates. Most of the rest goes to the bus company bosses.
Working class and poor public transport users are also ripped off by the transport industry. Because they do not own the means of private transport, they are compelled to use so-called public transport, paying high market-related fares which are determined by the transport industry bosses and government. Thus those who have the most to gain from transforming the public transport industry are the taxi drivers, who have nothing in common with the rich and powerful taxi owners who exploit them; working class and poor transport users, who have no control over what kinds of transport are available and how much fares are; the new BRT bus operators, who are also exploited by the BRT bosses; and public transport workers in already established sectors.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT FOR A BETTER FUTURE: BRAZIL’S ‘FREE PASS’ MOVEMENT AND THE CNT IN REVOLUTIONARY SPAINContemporary social movements in Brazil: The struggle for a free public transport system
Those championing BRT will often say that the BRT system was successfully implemented in, amongst others, the Brazilian city of Curitiba. Ironically, while the bosses look to Brazil for ideas on how to build a for-profit transport system, it is also to the Brazilian Movimento Passe Livre (MPL – Free Pass Movement) and its struggle for free public transport in cities including Curitiba – that the popular classes in South Africa can look for a way forward. In 2003 in Salvador, the capital of Bahia state in Brazil, thousands of students, youth and workers shut down public roads in protest against the increase in transport fares – much like when highways are barricaded in South Africa during "service delivery protests", except on a larger scale. The event, which became known as the “Revolt of Buzu”, paralysed the city for 10 days. Initially, official student unions attempted to lead the revolt which they had not initiated. When they failed to seize control, the union leadership turned against what, from then on, became a spontaneous and autonomous social movement. Then, in 2004 in the city of Florianópolis, another revolt took place, inspired by the events in Salvador the previous year. Students and teachers, together with residents’ associations, trade unions and the general population, shut down the city in the "Revolt of Catraca", demanding, once again, reduced bus fares. These two mass mobilisations of the class in struggle were so significant that, at the World Social Forum in 2005, the Movimento Passe Livre was officially launched. There, people from various cities across Brazil came together to discuss their visions for, and experiences of, the struggle for freely accessible collective transport. Wanting to escape the opportunism of the official student organisations, which had attempted to bring the movement under their control, they decided to organise Passe Livre around a set of basic principles, which were adopted at its founding in 2005: autonomy, independence, non-partisanship, horizontalism and decision-making by consensus. Later, at the Third National Encounter of the Movimento Passe Livre in 2006, federalism was added as a principle.
What this means is the following: that all the resources of the movement are administered by the movement itself; that it should not rely on donations from political parties, companies, NGOs or other organisations; that its affiliated collectives are independent in their local actions, provided they respect the national organisational principles; that it is independent of political parties, NGOs, governments and ideologies; that everyone in the MPL has the same decision-making powers and rights to voice and vote; and that it relies only on those that constitute the movement. Passe Livre is thus a popular social movement, organised from below, that fights for the decommodification of transport, for "real public transport, outside of private initiative" and for the replacement of the system of private transport by a genuinely public system that would guarantee universal access – free passes – to all sections of the population. Among the principal methods by which this struggle is waged is through mass direct action and popular mobilisation to pressurise government to meet people’s demands. On the question of parliamentary versus direct action, Passe Livre says, in its charter of principles: "The parliamentary road should not be the mainstay of the MPL, on the contrary, the impetus must come from the streets." While anarchists would reject the possibility of the parliamentary road being useful at all, we can only agree that the driving force for transformation in transport must come from the streets.
A working class in the driver’s seat: Collectivisation of transport in revolutionary Spain, 1936-39
Another example of a popular movement driven from below – by the working class – which also dealt with the question of transport, is the Spanish National Confederation of Labour (CNT – Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), and, within the CNT, the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI – Federación Anarquista Ibérica). When right-wing generals attempted to overthrow an elected reformist government in July 1936, the CNT (at that time the biggest union federation in Spain, with 1.7-million members) called a general strike, and within hours of the fascist assault, workers had taken control of thousands of enterprises around Spain, particularly in the province of Catalonia. Workers recognised that they needed to keep production going in the absence of the bosses, who had fled the cities in the face of a workers’ revolution, and that they needed to take control of the transport system and get it going again so that worker militias and supplies could be sent to the front to fight the fascist army. All public transport services in cities like Barcelona were thus collectivised; until the revolution was finally crushed in 1939, rank-and-file workers directly ran the trams and other means of transport, through their revolutionary workers’ committees and the CNT – not for profit but to meet the transport needs of the revolutionary economy, a civil war, and the daily needs of the working class. They did this without bosses, highsalaried managers or state support, and yet many who lived through the revolution testified that the collectivised transport system, placed under worker self-management and run under the joint banner of the CNT and the FAI, was more efficient than at any other time.
About the Barcelona tramways, Deirdre Hogan writes: "Just five days after the fighting had stopped, the tramways lines had been cleared and repaired and seven hundred tramcars, which was a hundred more than the usual six hundred, appeared on the road, all painted diagonally across the side in the red and black colours of the CNT-FAI. The technical organisation of the tramways and the traffic operation was greatly improved, new safety and signalling systems were introduced and the tramway lines were straightened. One of the first measures of the collectivisation of the tramways had been the discharge of the excessively paid company executives and this then enabled the collective to reduce the fares for passengers. Wages approached basic equality with skilled workers earning only 1 [one] peseta more a day than unskilled labourers. Working conditions were greatly improved with better facilities supplied to the workers and a new free medical service was organised which served not only the Tramway workers but their families as well."
But the CNT and Spanish working class did not gain the strength to take control of industry and run it in the interests of the people overnight. Spanish workers had, through their organisations such as the CNT, been engaged for decades in a bitter and protracted class war against the state; against the bosses and the landlords; and against their hired thugs and hitmen. Both above and below ground, the CNT organised workers across industries, both on the factory floor and in their communities, and was subject to grave and often violent repression for decades leading up to the revolution. But it was only through the process of developing a working class counterculture of popular education and class struggle from below, informed by the revolutionary ideas of anarchism, that the Spanish working class and peasantry were able to gain the strength to effectively challenge the ruling class and – for a time – take their rightful place at the steering wheel of their own destiny. Similarly, it is only by building working class organisation that is based on the principles of direct democracy, horizontalism, accountability, participation and direct action – the principles of anarchism – that we, in South Africa as elsewhere, will be able to develop the capacity to effectively mount an offensive against capitalism and its state, and take our place at the driver’s seat.
CONCLUSION: MAKING TRANSPORT SERVE THE POOR AND WORKING CLASSIt must be made clear that both the taxi companies and the new BRT systems are privately owned businesses that provide crucial services for no other reason than to make money. Hence we must not expect either the taxi bosses or those of BRT to have the best interests of the public at heart. As with all the other public services that have been privatised or commercialised by the ANC government, such as the provision of water, transport provision is seen as a profit-making venture. Thus transport industry bosses try to get away with paying workers as little as possible, cutting corners in costs (for example safety standards) and charging users as much as they can get away with – all to increase profits. Because of the neo-liberal logic of the incumbent government, and all competing parties waiting in the wings for their day in the sun, this for-profit method of service delivery is defended by government, which represses workers’ and peoples’ demands to have more of a say in how the transport industry is run. The point, however, is that unless we struggle for a public transport system that is both affordable and tailored to our needs, it will not be long before working class and poor people are forced back onto dangerous and unroadworthy taxis, while the rich, who already have cars of their own, enjoy systems like BRT, which will have become too inaccessible for many ordinary people to use.
We need to build a popular mass movement that will fight for safe, affordable, reliable and sustainable public transport that is tailored to the transport needs of the poor and working class, and not to the business and political interests of the taxi and public transport bosses, the transport ministry, or government and private capital. In building such a movement we should demand that the people who are most in need of affordable public transport be involved in deciding where and how this transport should be implemented. We should demand to know why government went ahead with BRT without holding mass meetings to hear from the communities what their transport needs were. Why, for example, was Rea Vaya built from Soweto to Ellis Park when there are already many taxis travelling these routes? Why wasn’t it built from Sebokeng to Johannesburg? – Since it is much more expensive and time-consuming to make this journey. Why is government prioritising the transport requirements of those tourists that came to South Africa (and took the Rea Vaya from Ellis Park stadium to go sightseeing in Soweto, or the Gautrain from the airport to Sandton) for a few weeks during the World Cup over the needs of the workers and poor living in South Africa? There are many questions that could be asked, but when we begin to look at its track record thus far, it becomes painfully evident that the implementation of BRT is not to serve the immediate transport needs of the popular classes in South Africa, but to make money – even at the expense of the people it is supposed to serve.
FORWARD! TO POPULAR TRANSPORTIn its Charter of Principles, Passe Livre talks about its strategic perspectives: "MPL is not an end in itself; it must be a means for the construction of another society. In the same way, the struggle for free passes to students does not have an end in itself. It is the initial instrument of debate about the transformation of the concept of urban public transport, rejecting the concept of marketing transport and opening the struggle for free, quality public transport, as a right for the whole of society; for collective transport outside of private initiative, under public control (of the workers and users). MPL should have the perspective of mobilising the youth and workers for the expropriation of collective transport, removing it from private initiative and, without compensation, putting it under the control of workers and the population. Thus, we must build MPL with demands that exceed the lim-its of capitalism, adding it to the revolutionary movements that challenge the existing order. Therefore it must participate in spaces that allow for articulation with other movements, always analysing what can be done according to the local situation [...] The MPL must fight to defend freedom of expression, against the repression and criminalisation of social movements" Thus, for Passe Livre, the struggle for free student transport is just one means to building a popular mass movement, through struggle, that has a revolutionary perspective and character by making demands that are beyond the means of capitalism. Thus it puts forward the alternative of a collectivised transport system under worker and community control, while at the same time struggling for improvements in the existing transport system that directly benefit its users. Similarly, anarchists today, like the anarchist workers in Spain – who had the revolutionary perspective of seizing all the means of production, distribution and transport and putting them under worker control – view the struggle for day-to-day improvements in the material and social conditions of the popular classes as a "revolutionary gymnasium" in which the working class develops the capacity and perspective for revolutionary struggle that transcends capitalism.
Transport is a vital service that affects millions of working class and poor people across the country. A popular movement for safe, reliable and affordable collective transport offers the prospect of building a long-term united front of the exploited and oppressed. A movement united not by political ideology, party-building or political aspirations, but rooted in struggle around a real and persistent social need. In South Africa we also have a tradition of struggle around transport: the tradition of bus boycotts. We should be talking to those who participated in them about what happened and how these struggles were organised so that we can preserve the historical memory of the class. If BRT is to mean anything for the poor and working class, it will be through our direct intervention, drawing from the experience of other past and present struggles.
If we want to have a free, accessible and reliable public transport service in South Africa, then we need to start now to mobilise workers and commuters to compel government to continue to develop and expand BRT and other public transport infrastructure after 2010, while at the same time providing subsidies to taxi drivers, maintaining and upgrading their vehicles, and requiring taxi bosses to pay workers a decent wage. We should struggle to ensure that this process is driven from below, through federated community, worker, student, and commuter associations with the strategic vision of seizing the buses, taxis and trains, putting them under the collective control of the workers and users, to be run not for profit, but to meet our needs.
1. "Bus Rapid Transit" system planned ahead of 2010,
www.sa2010.gov.za/node/861, 13 July 2007, By: David
Masango and Themba Gadebe
Wed 22 May, 08:28
Anarchism, Ethnicity and the Battle of the ANC Clones 15:18 Tue 28 Oct 0 comments
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Making the 2010 World Cup work for the poor and working class Jan 26 2 comments
The South African Elections, Neo-Liberalism and Working Class Strategy Apr 23 0 comments
Zimbabwe’s Party-Political Stitch-Up Apr 06 0 commentsmore >>
Anarchism, Ethnicity and the Battle of the ANC Clones Oct 28 Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front 0 comments
Real Human Freedom Not Fake Human Rights Mar 21 0 comments
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If managed properly, the United States naval presence in the oil-rich Persian Gulf could reap political benefits for American interests in the Middle East. U.S. engagement could boost Washington`s sagging credibility after the Iran-contra scandal. Benefits can accrue in our relationships with Arab states and with Moscow. If mishandled, we could find ourselves running from the region as we did after sending Marines to Lebanon in 1982.
The U.S. could help assure the territorial integrity of moderate Arab states while maintaining the flow of oil from the gulf at a reasonable price. Our presence puts us in a position to embargo shipping to and from Iran. It gives us a physical presence in the region on a par with the Soviets in Afghanistan. It tells the Iranians that public trials or inhuman interrogation of American hostages held in Iran or by proxies elsewhere will have definite consequences.
Arab states outside the gulf who previously were reluctant to be overt in their military and strategic cooperation with Washington may realize that neither are we neo-colonialists nor are we identified only with Israel`s well- being in the region. This can only have a positive influence upon our decade- long effort to have moderate Arab states engage in, or at least tacitly support, the Arab-Israel peace process.
The Ayatollah Khomeini and his clerical colleagues are masters in media evangelicalism. If we allow each small incident in the gulf to affect us disproportionately, we shall have played into the ayatollah`s hands. If we allow ourselves to be pecked and nibbled at by the Iranians without calibrated responses to their actions, then domestic and congressional pressure will mount for the extrication of our forces.
If a major calamity is perpetrated against our presence or against us elsewhere in the world by the Tehran regime, and if we respond meekly or cut and run, then America`s prestige in the Middle East will not have regained anything in the aftermath of arms sales to Iran. In broader terms, American resolve in other regional areas may be similarly tested. Undoubtedly, how we ultimately disengage from this commitment will influence the substance and tone of next year`s presidential election.
In crafting our foreign policy, we must finely tune its implementation to the basic realities of the Arab Middle East: a gnawing sense of national insecurity, fierce cultural pride, an anxiety of foreign domination and insufficient military capability to resist external threats. Arab leaders fear the aggressive nature of the Khomeini regime and the continuous shadow the Soviet Union casts over the area.
Arab states remain in dreaded fear of the Khomeini regime. Recent Iranian disruptions in Mecca were instigated by Khomeini and his colleagues.
Disadvantaged in terms of quality and quantity of military hardware, Tehran uses its most abundant resources to confront its adversaries: people power, rhetoric, zeal and dynamism. It seeks the maximum political impact from a minimum of material input. It supports small actions to cause major results. Mining of shipping channels and the use of small speed boats against warships is commensurate with operational policies that support hostage-taking, kidnaping, terrorism and incitement to insurrection.
The U.S. has no formal treaty obligations with any countries in the Middle East. Furthermore, Arab states do not want permanent U.S. bases or ports on their territory. Their preference is the over-the-horizon deterrence a flotilla provides. If we obtain logistical assistance-clearing of mines, overflight and landing rights, port of call privileges-from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, then forged, not forced, cooperation will result.
While in the gulf we can work with the Soviet Union, too. Moscow wants to curb Islamic fervor lest it adversely influence political allegiances of large Moslem populations in the Soviet Union. American presence in the gulf allows a better monitoring of events in Iran and of Soviet actions in Afghanistan. At some future point, a phased American withdrawal from the gulf region may be tied informally to Moscow`s timed withdrawal from Afghanistan, when and if such a regional issue is part of the Soviet-American arms control agenda.
Though Iran has agreed to use the Soviet Union as an outlet of its foreign oil, a general or carefully selected blockade of Iranian oil exports will limit Iran`s access to foreign currency earnings and strategic imports. Such economic disruptions could have serious repercussions in the nature of clerical dominance and the succession struggle within Iran.
The last two times the U.S. sent military forces to the Middle East, the American presence was opposed because we took sides in inter-Arab issues and were seen as protecting Israel. Unlike those occasions in 1958 and 1982 when the U.S. dispatched marines to Lebanon, now American action is tied to neither motivation. Rather, the U.S. is welcomed as protector against a common external threat. As long as our presence is not permanent, Washington, with delicate handling and military vigilance, can enhance American credibility in the Middle East.
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French troops in Mali to fight extremists
By BABA AHMED
and SYLVIE CORBET
THE Associated Press | January 12,2013
France’s President Francois Hollande delivers a speech Friday on the situation in Mali at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
BAMAKO, Mali — France’s military started an air operation Friday to help Malian soldiers fight radical Islamists, drawing the former colonial power into a military intervention to oust the al-Qaida-linked militants nine months after they seized control of northern Mali.
The arrival of the French dramatically ups the stakes in a conflict taking place in a swath of lawless desert where kidnappings and brutality have flourished.
It also comes as the Islamists advance ever closer toward the most northern city still under government control and after they fought the Malian military for the first time in months.
French President Francois Hollande said Friday that the operation would last “as long as necessary” and said it was aimed notably at protecting the 6,000 French citizens in Mali. Kidnappers currently hold seven French hostages in the country.
“French army forces supported Malian units this afternoon to fight against terrorist elements,” he said.
The foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said, “To the question of whether there was an aerial intervention, the response is yes.” He wouldn’t comment on troops on the ground, arguing that such information would give “hints to terrorists.” He said France had discussed the move with U.S. officials earlier Friday.
France’s announcement comes after residents in central Mali said they had seen Western military personnel arriving in the area, and that planes had landed at a nearby airport throughout the night.
Col. Abdrahmane Baby, a military operations adviser for the foreign affairs ministry, also confirmed in the Malian capital of Bamako that French troops had arrived in the country. He gave no details about how many were there or what they specifically were doing.
“They are here to assist the Malian army,” he told reporters in the capital of Bamako.
France has led a diplomatic push for international action in northern Mali but efforts to get an African-led force together, or to train the weak Malian army, have dragged.
The French quickly mobilized after the Islamists seized a key town on Thursday, pushing closer to the army’s major base in central Mali.
The United Nations Security Council has condemned the capture of Konna and called on U.N. member states to provide assistance to Mali “in order to reduce the threat posed by terrorist organizations and associated groups.”
France’s position has been complicated because for months, Hollande has said France would not send ground forces into Mali.
The French foreign minister insisted that the recent advances by the extremists made intervention necessary, and said the aim of the operation is to “stop the advance of criminal and terrorists groups on the south” of Mali.
Late last year, the 15 nations in West Africa, including Mali, agreed on a proposal for the military to take back the north, and sought backing from the United Nations.
The U.N. Security Council authorized the intervention but imposed certain conditions. Those include the training of Mali’s military, which has been accused of serious human rights abuses since a military coup last year sent the nation into disarray.
The fighting Wednesday and Thursday over the town of Konna represents the first clashes between Malian government forces and the Islamists in nearly a year, since the militants seized the northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.
The Islamists seized the town of Douentza four months ago after brief standoff with a local militia, but pushed no further until clashes broke out late Wednesday in Konna, a city of 50,000 people, where fearful residents cowered inside their homes. Konna is just 45 miles north of the government-held town of Mopti, a strategic port city along the Niger River.
“We have chased the army out of the town of Konna, which we have occupied since 11 a.m.,” declared Sanda Abou Mohamed, a spokesman for the Ansar Dine militant group, speaking by telephone from Timbuktu.
A soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, acknowledged that the army had retreated from Konna. He said several soldiers were killed and wounded, though he did not have precise casualty figures. “We didn’t have time to count them,” he said.
While Konna is not a large town, it has strategic value as “the last big thing ... on the road to Mopti,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.
“I think the real target here is to seize the airstrip in Mopti, either to hold it or blow enough holes in it to render it useless,” Pham said. “If you can seize the airstrip at Mopti, the Malian military’s and African militaries’ ability to fly reconnaissance in the north is essentially clipped.”
Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Africa has been a shadowy presence for years in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger. Most Malians adhere to a moderate form of Islam, where women do not wear burqas and few practice the strict form of the religion.
In recent months, however, the terror syndicate and its allies have taken advantage of political instability to push into Mali’s northern towns, taking over an enormous territory they are using to stock weapons, train forces and prepare for jihad.
The Islamists insist they want to impose Shariah only in northern Mali, though there long have been fears they could push farther south.
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A top Pentagon official has acknowledged that the Defense Department is more than $1 billion short of what’s needed to repair decrepit public schools on military bases that were the subject of a recent iWatch News investigation.
The official, Jo Ann Rooney, principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in an interview with iWatch News that the Pentagon will be able to start renovating or replacing only about a dozen of the public schools on bases with the $250 million that Congress appropriated this year for the upgrades. A recent Pentagon report, however, found that about 62 of the 160 civilian-run schools are in “poor” or “failing” condition.
“There is a lot of work that needs to be done. Two hundred and fifty million dollars will not cover it,” Rooney said. “Depending on whether there is additional money coming forward, I can’t predict when those next group of schools would actually be addressed.”
An investigation by iWatchNews in June found that many of the schools attended by children of military personnel are in poor shape. Where military children go to school depends on circumstances often beyond families’ control. More than 500,000 children, the largest proportion, live off base, attending local schools in urban or suburban communities that often have significantly more resources.
But families who live on military installations — either for economic, career or security reasons — send their children to one of 194 base schools operated by the Pentagon around the world, or 160 base schools in the U.S. operated by local school districts.
Rooney’s sober assessment deals with those base schools operated by local districts, which are attended by about 150,000 students . Funding fixes for these schools is especially complex. For one thing, the Pentagon can't use its own funds for civilian schools on military bases and must obtain a special congressional appropriation. These schools are also required to cover 20 percent of the repair bill themselves. But school districts also frequently have trouble raising money for construction work on base schools through new local taxes or bonds because military families often don’t vote or pay taxes in their communities. If districts cannot meet the 20 percent requirement, the Pentagon will sometimes step in to help. If that happens, though, fewer schools on the list will get funding for repairs this year.
The districts with schools that have the greatest needs will be meeting with Pentagon officials from the Office of Economic Adjustment, which is overseeing the process, next month. Three school districts face an additional challenge of having two schools in the top 12 in need of repair: those at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California; Fort Sill in Oklahoma; and Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
Some of those schools will most likely have to wait — and hope —for an additional congressional appropriation.
“The big issue on future congressional appropriations is the larger deficit discussion,” said Joyce Raezer, executive director of the National Military Families Association. “If everything is on the table and there are many folks on the Hill who do not believe school construction is a federal responsibility, then getting more could be problematic.”
John Forkenbrock of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools said there has been discussion on the House side of adding another $250 million for school construction to this year’s appropriation but no one knows whether the funding will ultimately go through.
“There is support there but it’s just a matter of whether the budget will allow,” Forkenbrock said. “Right now it’s still kind of a question mark.”
The 194 schools that are actually run by the Pentagon have their own problems. The iWatchNews investigation found that three in four Pentagon-run schools are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards. But the Pentagon has already made plans to renovate or replace 134 of those schools with the worst problems over the next five years.
So far 28 projects at those schools are underway and Rooney said the Pentagon will be able to find the money to cover them all.
But however long it takes, Rooney said that getting funding for all schools on military bases “is not something that’s going to be dropped.
“We want to make sure that the children of our military families are taken care of and given the best opportunities for education,” she said.
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Why can't the media treat the Pope fairly?
I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: "This is not fair!" And it isn't fair, or reasonable. Intelligent journalists who are normally capable of mental subtlety and of coping with complexities have abandoned their critical faculties. There is an atmosphere of unreason.
I cannot help feeling that a lot of it is down to sheer, blind hatred. It amounts to the demonisation of a whole institution and its leader. We have come to a stage where nothing good whatever, no good faith can be assumed of anybody involved in the Church – however senior, however greatly respected, loved, admired, including the Pope.
In this hysteria, everybody is tainted. Here Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, writes as though the entire priesthood is corrupted by sexual repression and they're all, every single one of them, covering up for each other.
They cover up for one another; they fear that if one of them falls, they will all fall; even those who are not totally screwed up about sex are eager to prevent the church's secret from being exposed. But the more they cover up, the bigger the calamity when it all emerges. And when it's clear that at the center of this kind of pathological secrecy and shame is the current Pope, then it is clear that the entire institution is corrupt from the top down. These men are too objectively disordered to run a church.
Look at the newspaper cartoons, usually a reliable index, if you doubt the unreasoning quality of prevailing attitudes. The cartoons caricaturing Pope Benedict XVI in recent months – with corks stuck in his ears in one paper, with a condom on his head in another – have been pure bile, designed to poison the imagination. Today Gerald Scarfe in the Sunday Times depicts the Pope as a skeletal figure, a sort of memento mori, sheltering under his voluminous robes a group comprised of diabolical, leering priests with horns on their heads and cowering boys in pyjamas. Underneath the word "Hell" is scrawled in big letters.
Consider also India Knight's column today in the same newspaper, headed "Holy Father, I can no longer stay in this Church of Disgust". This is the work of a sophisticated writer, with a half-page weekly column in the top-selling quality Sunday newspaper. A lot of people will tend to believe what they read here. Among other charges, Knight repeats the general gist of the New York Times story. But she does it in a slightly opaque fashion that seems calculated to do utmost harm to the Pope.
She claims that Murphy, an abusing priest in Milwaukee, "avoided justice after an intervention by Cardinal Ratzinger, now the Pope". In the next breath, she writes: "Murphy was moved to another parish in 1974 and spent his final two decades working with children. " She also says Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee "twice wrote to Ratzinger requesting that Murphy be defrocked".
But surely this juxtaposition of facts could be a bit misleading. Ratzinger could not have done anything about Murphy's crimes in the 1970s because he didn't know about them. Knight does not mention when Archbishop Weakland got around to writing to Ratzinger. Murphy's crimes were first reported in 1974 and Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee didn't write to Ratzinger until 1996 – 20 years later, when Murphy was on the point of death and beyond harming anybody. That's relevant, is it not? So why does Knight not mention it?
Wouldn't it be more pertinent to ask what Archbishop Weakland was doing about child abusers in his diocese in the intervening years before he decided to write to the Vatican? One can't help thinking it's all about nailing the Pope and to hell with what really happened.
As for Archbishop Weakland, the media have seized on him as a prime witness against the Pope. On Radio Four's PM last Thursday, Eddie Mair trumpeted "an extended interview" with the archbishop, who was asked more about what Ratzinger did or didn't do.
The archbishop sounded humble, eminently reasonable, definitely believable. But is he a reliable witness? Apart from a vague expression by Weakland of personal failing, the average listener to Radio Four would be none the wiser about his checkered history and any of the facts that might make him a biased or less-than-reliable witness. (For more on Rembert Weakland, start with his Wikipedia page.)
The average listener would not know, for instance, how Archbishop Weakland first responded to accusations from parents about child abuse – by muttering about libel. Or that he admitted routinely shredding copies of reports about "problem priests" in his diocese. Or that in 1988 he said the following about sex abuse victims: "Not all adolescent victims are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often quite streetwise. We frequently try such adolescents for crimes as adults at that age."
Or even that he forked out $450,000 of diocesan funds to buy the silence (and ward off a legal action) of a former graduate student named Paul Marcoux with whom he had carried on an inappropriate relationship.
I am not asking for special treatment of the Pope, by the way. I think he must be held accountable the same as all Church leaders. I think the Press is entitled to ask questions and to subject a secretive institution to scrutiny.
I have read the Irish reports into child abuse and I must say they are eye-openers. They are heart-breaking. The idea that individuals who claimed to be acting in the name of Christ, the embodiment of all gentleness and mercy, could behave with such monstrous corruption and brutality towards innocent children is almost impossible to comprehend. It appalls me to think of the fear and pain of a little child seeking help and relief from torment at the hands of some abusing priest or brother, only to be disbelieved by the authorities or even punished. I have read Occasions of Sin, Diarmaid Ferriter's masterly account of the modern Irish Church and the choke-hold that institution had over Irish society.
I am suggesting only that some of the untruths that keep getting repeated should be checked. It's only what journalists are supposed to do every day of their working lives. Hold the claims up to the light. Speak to people who don't have an axe to grind. Apply the principle of fairness.
The business about the so-called "pontifical secret" and the letter of 2001, touted as a "smoking gun" which implicates the Pope in cover-up, is an object lesson in the way the media repeats a "fact" and yet barely examines it. Christopher Hitchens held this up as uniquely damning evidence and so has the BBC and now a dozen other journalists have parroted the same thing. This is a misreading, as John Allen explains here and Sean Murphy in detail here. If you want to understand amid all the fury, read these articles. They make sense.
Essentially, Ratzinger's 2001 directive made it easier to act against sex abusers. The secrecy that's mentioned is hardly different from the secrecy that obtains in all sorts of sensitive hearings and investigations in the secular world such as those of the Family Court. What happened in 2001, actually, reflects to the Pope's credit. That year saw Ratzinger's moment of "conversion" as it has been termed.
He reviewed all the files on every priest who had been plausibly accused of abuse anywhere in the world and he took responsibility for what he called the "filth" that had infected the Church. At last there was someone high up in the Vatican who really got it. As John Allen says, "beforehand, he came off as just another Roman cardinal in denial", but suddenly he and his staff became "energetic" in pursuing abusers.
The newest accusation concerns the abusive priest from the diocese of Essen named Peter Hullerman. It looks as though then Archbishop Ratzinger of Munich approved for Hullermann to be transferred to a rectory in Munich for therapy in January 1980, in the knowledge that he assaulted children in Essen.
Incidentally, when considering this case keep in mind that the Archdiocese of Munich at that time had 400 secular employees, more than 1,700 priests and more than 6,000 religious – monks and nuns. And that Fr Gerhard Gruber, the Vicar General at the time, has said the Archbishop, who'd spent most of his life in a university, "left many decisions to lower-level officials". (Not everyone agrees with this. The Dominican Fr Thomas Doyle says: "Pope Benedict is a micro-manager". But then he would say that, wouldn't he, since he is a longstanding, and by his own admission inflammatory, critic of the Vatican.)
Anyway, in a catastrophe for the children who became his further victims, Hullermann was returned to pastoral ministry and had more contact with children. He was convicted for sex crimes in a Grafing parish in 1986. Amazingly, he was allowed to return to ministry even though he barely engaged with the treatment and only agreed to it to save his job.
How does this reflect on the Pope? Well it's one thing to approve Hullermann's accommodation in a rectory in Munich to undergo therapy, and another to say he can be released freely into a trusting parish with children. Fr Gruber, the Vicar General of the diocese, is the one who authorised Hullermann's return to parish work with access to children, not, I think, the Pope. He has said this was a "serious mistake". But he also said the Archbishop did not know and, as above, that he left decisions to lower-level officials. “The cardinal could not deal with everything,” Fr Gruber said.
Precisely what the future Pope was told is still not clear and may never be. But, at its worst, this aspect of the scandal is no worse and possibly less severe than the one that engulfed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor soon after he arrived at Westminster as Archbishop.
While Bishop of Arundel and Brighton he transferred an abuser priest, Michael Hill, to work as chaplain at Gatwick Airport. Hill had been suspended and the Church had been clearly warned by doctors and therapists that he was dangerous to young people.
He assaulted more boys, was finally convicted and served three years in prison (out of a five-year sentence) in 1997. In 2000 Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor said: "We were not aware at the time of [paedophilia's] addictive nature."
It's hard to say how the Munich scandal will pan out. What we can expect is more revelations from all over the world. But there's a crucial distinction to be made, surely. There is such a thing as a mistake made in good faith. This does not deserve punishment. On the other hand you have dishonesty, deliberate negligence and incompetence; bishops should be punished for any of these failings.
About those who harm children, Christ's teaching is explicit: "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
Waist to height ratio: is it better to be an apple than a pear?
May 14th, 2013 16:57
Back pain, heart disease – how infections could be to blame
May 8th, 2013 13:07
Chris Christie was dangerously fat: this gastric band may save his life
May 8th, 2013 11:50
Now William Roache is arrested: are 'they all at it'?
May 1st, 2013 13:04
It's easy to attack to Christopher Hitchens now he's not around to defend himself
April 3rd, 2013 16:24
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French developer The Bakery hit the news earlier this year when co-founder Arnauld Lamorlette won an Academy Award for his work on GI: research carried out at DreamWorks Animation in the early 2000s.
But Lamorlette isn’t the only key Bakery figure to have worked at that level in the industry. Executive director Erwan Maigret is also a Hollywood veteran, and their first product, relighting and rendering tool Bakery Relight, is designed to address the way real artists work in production.
Bakery Relight replaces conventional final-quality renderers like RenderMan or mental ray in the production pipeline, enabling artists to view changes to the lighting and shaders in close to real time.
We spoke to Maigret about what his software can do, the challenges of creating an artist-centred lighting pipeline, and why the revolution in rendering will begin in the Far East.
CG Channel: What made you feel the time was right for a dedicated relighting solution?
Erwan Maigret: For 20 years, you had the rendering engine on one side [of the production pipeline] and the DCC tool on the other. You would create a 3D scene and then render it out. Then everybody tried to replicate what we used to do with the CPU, but with graphics cards, which was much much faster, but you had to cut down on the quality. That was not very successful, so everyone moved back to the CPU for rendering.
My partner [Arnauld Lamorlette] and I were working in production at the time, and the reality there is that people are not looking for the fastest rendering engine, but quality control and management of complexity: the aim is to ramp up during production in such a way that [workflow] stays linear. When you are a small production, you can do everything, but when you get bigger you need to get more organised, and the software on the market just didn’t [allow you to do that]. It was fine for commercials but not for movies or 3D TV series. The rendering times were very high and you didn’t have control of the final image direct in the [renderer].
Relight is about being able to work on the final image, and second, to be able to scale up regardless of the complexity. The point is to optimise the workflow based on how [artists really work]. What we sell is not super-fast, but people perceive it that way because now they can get some artistic work done: they’re not being paid for wasting hours in front of a screen.
CGC: So how would you sum up what Bakery Relight does?
EM: It’s a software technology aimed at very high-end 3D CG animation but in a way that you can do everything using the mix of [lighting and rendering] techniques that already exist. We don’t impose anything on the user. People can work on an image without really having to think about technique any more.
CGC: How does it fit into a pipeline: if you’re using Maya, for example?
EM: Relight takes whatever a standard render engine takes, which is usually simple geometry, UVs and textures. That asset information and the camera position is taken into Relight and the whole shading and lighting [process] is done there. We don’t get shaders out of Maya because those aren’t Maya-specific: they’re from mental ray or whatever traditional render engine you’re using. All that has to be done in Relight.
We specialise the export plug-in to [a studio's pipeline] in such a way that they can get from Maya to Relight by clicking a few buttons. We do that with Maya, with [Softimage], with Max. [That process] is dealt with my team, because it has no interest for artists.
Even if you have a single licence of Relight, you get that support, and you get a bunch of examples showing how you can integrate from Maya: export scripts, and so on. But then it really depends on how you do your asset management and asset organisation, so it’s usually back and forth with our team.
CGC: I see that Relight has some fur and fluids tools. Are you expecting simulation to be done inside Relight?
EM: When you’re inside of Relight, it’s about static per-frame image control. Everything to do with simulation comes first, outside. But we still need to be able to render fluids, volumes, all those types of things. So that all has to be baked out [for import into Relight] – The Bakery is all about baking anyway. We bake a cache so we become completely independent of whatever happened before.
It’s true – and this is maybe what you’re referring to – that we have particle trees [inside Relight]. They’re complementary [to the lighting and rendering toolsets]. With some clients, we specialise those tools so they can do those things in Relight without having to go back and forth between software packages.
We’re starting to do some fur painting, and we’re going to do some dynamics because people don’t want to have to script it out. We don’t plan to become a full-blown traditional animation package: just to give the lighting people [a suite of tools] to do everything they want.
CGC: Relight also contains compositing tools. Do you envisage it replacing packages like Nuke?
EM: Studios have this habit of using compositing to do relighting by baking layers so they can reassemble them in a 2D package. You don’t need a very complex compositing tool to do that. If you do post-production with effects and live-action integration, it makes more sense. But Relight is more about people who do full 3D CG. If they just need to assemble layers [they don't need Nuke or Toxik] – what we have in Relight can do that.
CGC: So your clients are working mainly on cartoon animation, not photorealistic effects?
EM: It’s a mix. Hawaii Animation Studios works on dinosaurs, creatures with fur. But I have to say that more people are more inclined to do the 3D CG stuff.
CGC: Relight replaces a studio’s existing final-quality renderer. Isn’t it a tough sell to persuade facilities to ditch all the work they’ve done on RenderMan?
EM: Of course: it’s a big change. People want to use one renderer at a time, and if they want [to do that] they have to substitute it completely. For studios that have been around for a long time, it’s going to take time [to switch over], and they know that. So for us, this is more complex. We need to work together on the way they handle their pipeline.
But if it’s a smaller house, they usually have multiple render solutions, in which case it’s easier to bring in another renderer. They usually use [each renderer] for one specific solution: to raytrace, for example, or if they have a lot of fur or vegetation. We bring a solution that can do both at the same time, so it’s very sexy for them.
CGC: So what size are your current clients?
EM: Some of them are larger studios – I think there are around 40 people in Hawaii – and some of them are just ramping up. We work a lot with [international] co-productions. It’s fun to look at how you share data between sites, and how you can optimise them using our technology.
There’s a lot going on in Asia, so I think I’m going to spend a lot of time over there. We’re working with several clients in Japan, including NHK, and a studio in China working on a 3D TV series. That’s pretty heavy.
Look development for the animated feature Ana, conducted in Bakery Relight by Mexico’s Lo Coloco Films.
CGC: You mentioned GPU acceleration earlier. Relight is purely CPU-based. Can you explain why?
EM: We do some GPU acceleration when you’re in the UI [and] to bake shadow maps, but we try to avoid it, and we guarantee that everything can be done in CPU. That means [the hardware] you need is pretty limited. You don’t need much RAM – though the more processors the better, obviously – and you don’t need a good graphics board. So clients save $500 to $1,000, just on the graphics, and then they’re guaranteed that everything is going to work [in the renderfarm] just like it does on their workstation. That’s a pretty big deal.
CGC: How does what you’re doing with Relight compare to The Foundry’s work on Katana?
EM: Katana, in some respects, is pretty similar to Relight: not in the rendering, but in the architecture. Katana is a big scene-management system – a render asset manager, to some extent – so the scene graph for presentation, which is usually the biggest part of the pipeline in a studio these days, is exactly what we do.
But those aren’t the competing aspects. Katana is a render asset manager that can let studios with multiple types of renderers [control how they fit together in a pipeline]. It’s a good complexity manager. But we’re not taking that approach: the reason the interactive aspect of Relight is important is that it’s not about complexity management – that’s something we do well, but you can only do relighting if you have a very tight relationship with the render engine, which in our case is fully integrated into the tool itself.
We developed a lot of techniques for caching sub-pieces of the rendering so instead of going 100 times faster, we only [have to] do one per cent of the rendering. That’s not what Katana is aiming at: they just want to be able to deal with multiple renderers, no matter what they are. On our side, we guarantee that you can do lighting on very complex scenes from the get-go and get to the final render in seconds, which is different from managing the complexity of the scene.
CGC: So where next for Relight? What new features are you working on at the minute?
EM: The big new features have to do with the way we’re integrating cloud computing. Most of our clients just want to cut down on their costs, and to do that, they don’t want to invest in the hardware initially: they want to rent it per diem. That’s the reason we’re starting a partnership with Microsoft and with another cloud-computing system in Europe: so that we can propose to the client that you have access to a whole cloud-computing renderfarm from Relight. It’s like a virtual studio to some extent, but without the initial investment.
As a renderer itself, it’s still in development; there are some things that are going to be added. But the next big things for us are cloud computing and [extending] rendering from pre-viz through to the end of the pipeline. It’s a technology about how we see the future.
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What if we put our collective technical expertise and resources to creating something more impactful than the next incremental addition to Twitter? Developing nations have an untapped potential to become regional hubs for research and development. Ideas are in abundance, but how can we help fuel this drive with essential tools and make them a reality? How can the cloud revolution enable these nations to grow into global think tanks?
In this session, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Winston Damarillo will address the reason he sees the scarcity of computing resources as a matter of national security. The implementation of cloud has the potential to turbo-charge entrepreneurship in developing nations around the world – through allowing aspiring organizations to access high capacity computing power without the need to invest in hardware, software, network, and real-estate space, maximizing scarce energy resources.
The session will include the benefits of the cloud with respect to social development, indigenous innovation and economic growth, as well as the ways that we can leverage our Silicon Valley resources and expertise to change the world in ways that parallel the impact of Facebook and Twitter on our global network.
Founder & CEO, Morphlabs
Winston Damarillo is a proven serial entrepreneur with a track record of building successful technology start-ups. His past entrepreneurial endeavors include several companies which Winston grew to profitability and subsequently sold to major IT players: Gluecode Software, an open source application infrastructure company which was acquired by IBM in 2005, Logicblaze, acquired by Iona Technologies in 2007, and Webtide, acquired by Intalio in 2009. Winston is also the chairman of the board of directors for Exist, an award-winning leader in enterprise software development, and MaestroDev, a collaborative software development automation company. Prior to his entrepreneurial endeavors, Winston was among the highest performing venture capital professionals at Intel, having led the majority of his investments to either a successful IPO or a profitable corporate acquisition. In addition to leading Morphlabs, Winston is also involved in several organizations that are focused on combining the expertise of a broad range of thought leaders with advanced technology to drive global innovation and growth. In 2011, Winston was selected as a Commissioner in the TechAmerica Foundation Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in the U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2)/State and Local Government (SLG), which will enable state and local governments to better serve their citizens by optimizing their use of cloud technologies and solutions. As one of the prestigious Young Global Leader (YGL) honorees for 2010 and an active participant of the World Economic Forum, Winston is working with other leaders in business, government, academia and other disciplines to understand global challenges and trends and create a brighter future through the Open Cloud Initiative. Winston is a trustee of the Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev), an organization committed to social development initiatives for Filipinos in the Philippines and around the world by developing programs and supporting partnership initiatives in science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. Winston holds a B.S. in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering from the De La Salle University.
Sign in to add slides, notes or videos to this session
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Falls could add 42 nonresident students
District plans increase of Open Enrollment kids
Menomonee Falls - The Menomonee Falls School District is considering adding 42 Open Enrollment seats for the 2013-2014 school year.
Superintendent Patricia Greco said the state is requiring districts to declare the number of seats available in January, even though it used to be a spring deadline. Once the board approves the number of Open Enrollment seats, that number of students legally has to be accepted.
Should enrollment be lower than projected, the district can add seats by selecting them off the wait list.
"We have far more demand than we have space available," Greco said.
The determination of enrollment for the next school year is based on historical data. Though it is never possible to predict exactly how many students will enter into kindergarten, Open Enrollment numbers are decided based on this data.
Enrollment for the 2012-13 school year was 58 students higher than projections based on the total number of students educated in the district, including those who require off-site education, said Director of Pupil Services Kathy Zarling during a School Board work session Monday.
The goal of the board is to have no more than 10 percent of the student population be Open Enrollment and Chapter 220 students. Approving 42 seats would put nonresident students at about 9 percent of the student population.
A balance is needed when it comes to Open Enrollment. On the one side, Open Enrollment students bring in additional dollars to help solve the budget shortfall, Business Manager Jeff Gross said. However, those seats need to be within reason because the district does not want to accept too many students where increased class sections are necessary.
Open Enrollment seats will be discussed further at the January board meeting before action is taken.
Also discussed during the work session is a need to market the district to residents who seek education outside of the district.
"We look at capturing them in 4K (4-year-old kindergarten), but how do we show them opportunities we have as a system?" Zarling said.
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- Olive Garden backs out of Germantown development
- Falls, Germantown host Memorial Day events
- Flipping to the future: Teaching technique gains ground
- News & Notes: May 21
- Menomonee Falls approves pet boarding, retail business
- Police Report: May 20
- Amnesty Club hosts benefit for the Water Project
- Menomonee Falls downtown hosts art walk, duck derby
- Menomonee Falls girl honoree of Arthritis Walk
- Menomonee Falls School District prepares for assessment changes at state level
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Your guide to events in Nelson, New Zealand
Sunday 1st–Saturday 21st July 2012
For the first time ever, children in the Nelson Tasman region were offered the unique opportunity to enter a competition where they can exhibit and sell their artworks in Reflections Art Gallery.
Richmond Picture Framers floated the idea for the show after noticing how little exposure there is for children’s artwork in Nelson.
Throughout May over 400 children entered artwork for the exhibition. Their paintings, collages and drawings poured in from all over the Region, including Golden Bay, Motueka and Tapawera. Local schools also got on board and offered children extra opportunities to be creative.
Many thanks to Lloyd Harwood, Anne Rush and Steve Fullmer for giving their expertise and time to sift through all the artworks and arrive at the 31 framed pieces on display in the gallery. Selecting so few artworks from so many was an extremely hard task as each could be seen and enjoyed on many different levels.
My Kid Could Do That! , results in an affordable exhibition packed with spontaneity, energy, humour, thoughtfulness and skill.
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Pablo Picasso
‘My Kid Could Do That!’ is kindly sponsored by Richmond Picture Framers and Richmond Glass
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EuroVelo 6 has a section between Angers and Saumur. The route leaves Angers, riders tour past long abandoned mines, and water filled quarries then through rolling hills and vineyards.
At Gennes EuroVelo 6 is split into an east only path and a west only path. Things are made more complicated as there are several “local” velo routes that are not shown on the EuroVelo 6 map set. Using Michelin touring maps, the few signs and a compass we were able to navigate our way through the maze of minor roads.
While getting lost is part of cycle touring, most tourers prefer getting lost on their own terms.
Another problem is navigating into large towns and smaller cities. If possible, you obtain a map in advance, if not then you follow the signs to “City Centre” and hope for the best.
On a recent tour many of the European cycle tourists use GPS to assist in navigation. The most common were the lower end mapping units. See https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=145 for some examples.
Garmin now offer a cycling specific GPS, the Edge 705 (See https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=160&pID=10885). This GPS is normally used for training and racing but can be used for cycle touring. Some functions such as heart rate monitor would need to be turned off.
Given that even the most detailed European road maps do not show every country lane and that the EuroVelo 6 maps do not show every detail, then would a GPS be useful?
How useful would a GPS in navigating the Central and Eastern portions of EuroVelo 6?
Does anybody have firsthand experience of using a GPS while cycle touring?
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We have recently completed a job for Quarry Faces, the Mendip Hills Community Heritage Project which has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Quarry Faces gave us 20 u-matic video tapes that were commissioned for a corporate video in the 1980s.
The Quarry Faces project aims to tell the industry’s story, produce teaching materials for both educational purposes and general interest, and create an archive to preserve images and memories of quarrying over time.
This video we digitised was shot by Coloroll Films of Kilmarnock in 1985, and was delivered to us on u-matic tape. It features a giant walking crusher at Foster Yeoman’s Merehead Quarry (Torr Works).
The video tapes we were sent were high band recordings, rather low band and of very good quality. One AMPEX U-matic tape however was problematic as the tape shell / mechanism had degraded over time and needed careful hand rewinding and reshelling in a known good and newer cassette shell.
When faced with damaged tape, often people automatically assume it needs dehydrating, a process that forces the moisture out of the tape through stable, precise, low temperature baking. However if this is not what is wrong with the tape, dehydrating or ‘baking‘ as it is more commonly called, may in fact damage the tape. If you bake acetate tape that was commonly used in the 1950s and 1960s for example, it would be destroy it.
The simple truth is, there is no all encompassing answer to know what happens to tape when it degrades, or when the cassette shell mechanism malfunctions, and each tape that is sent to us is of course individual. Digitisation and the art of restoring old tape is a relatively new area, and no one has yet made a machine that is able to precisely diagnose what is wrong with each individual tape when problems occur. Is the tape suffering from sticky shed syndrome or binder hydrolysis, or is it ‘vinegar syndrome’, a condition which afflicts acetate tape? Only through careful diagnostic work, which at Great Bear includes using our range of in-house test tapes, can the correct remedy be found.
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Archive for system boot order
If your experiencing extremely slow process of the program opening up resulting in you staring at your screen blindly. Than you need to fix that problem of yours because it could lead you to losing of eye sight, losing of patience, or losing up of sanity. So you see there is a lot of loss which I am sure you would want to save on as it would cost you your fortune. A number of people are impatient and usually turn off their computer directly when your system, according to you goes bonkers. But this is harmful and leads to loss of data, to avoid this you simply must either use freeware or lose some place in the registry.
It is recommended by the wise geeks of tech to rather download software which a number of people are unwilling to do so. But it’s better than editing your registry because some of us aren’t even naturally gifted with common sense. So if one wrong keystroke is performed it could lead you to troubles such as crash down of system or start-up problems.
Keep in mind before you set foot on the path of changing your start-up make sure there is a System restore point. Following are some steps which you might want consult and consider:
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Life: Via dolorosa
Though her cross came with a drip bag and her nails were needles, Janine Denomme saw in the stations of Jesus' suffering and death her way of sorrow.
Church: What does the church say about the death penalty?
Conversation and questions about the death penalty are evergreen as Catholics in a society that permits state executions as punishment continue to ponder the church's say in this. James Dinn answers in this Glad You Asked from the archives.
Culture: Down and out of sight
Some people have been out of work for so long, they're no longer included in the job numbers reports. But Kevin Clarke writes that they're exactly the people we can't forget about.
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Margin Notes: On Trayvon: Is the issue of race distracting us from the real issue? Scared, angry people with guns
Wading through a disturbing morass of arguments about whether George Zimmerman is white or Hispanic, whether Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman before Zimmerman killed the unarmed 17-year-old, and, stupidest of all, how much anxiety should be produced by the sight of a hoodie, I'm a bit dumbstruck that few seem to want to argue about the obvious: The direct cause of this tragedy was a frightened (and unbalanced) man with access to a handgun.
The Examined Life: Pontifical academy cancels stem-cell conference: Is that a good thing?
The Catholic News Agency reported earlier this week that the Pontifical Academy for Life has cancelled its third annual conference on ethical stem cell research because, according to two anonymous sources who are academy members, the roster of speakers would "have confused the faithful for decades to come." Oh dear.
The Examined Life: Bad news, good news about the death penalty in the U.S.
People usually want the bad news first, right? Well, here it is: According to a recent Amnesty International report, the U.S. was the only Western democracy to execute prisoners last year.
Catholic Tastes: May the odds be ever in your favor: The Hunger Games and religion
Where post-apocalyptic narratives and dystopian narratives are fertile ground for the exploring or re-imagining of the roots, purpose, and role of religion, this weekend's box office record breaker, Hunger Games, makes nary a mention of God, gods, or practices of any mystical or spiritual nature.
Read more blog posts
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Good job bringing this to light. People won't realise how huge the problem is and municipalities are woefully ill equipped to...
Agreed; mining can never be sustainable, but then how do you get the metals to make all the things you need in the course of...
Very good piece.
After suffering years of war and tyranny, the Cambodians are facing a new threat: an aids epidemic . An alarming rise in aids cases has been recorded ever since screening for the disease began in 1991. According to the World Health Organization ( who) , an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 hiv cases have been recorded in Cambodia against 50,000-90,000 cases registered last November. In addition, who says the country has now around 2,000 full-blown aids cases and maintains that by the turn of the century there will be 40,000 cases, with up to 12,000 new cases every year.
Experts believe that the disease is spreading faster in Cambodia than in any other nation in Asia, with the exception of Burma and India. They have warned that unless the authorities take immediate steps to check the disease it would result in devastation similar to the one witnessed during the Pol Pot regime.
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Let me ask you something, are you happy with the search results you receive from Google?
If you were to guess how often Google gives you exactly the result you were searching for–on your first search query–what would that look like? 40% of the time? 60%? 90%?
I’d say that for me, Google gives me precisely what I was looking for, less than 50% of the time–at least out of the gate. I find I have to refine my query before I get the desired set of search results.
70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.
So, if you stretch it here, almost 85% of Aardvark users were satisfied with the answers provided to them by their network of peers. That’s not too shabby, right?
It’s even more impressive when you consider that Aardvark users tend to use the service for those really complex search queries:
The average query length was 18.6 words (median of 13) versus 2.2-2.9 words on a standard search engine…98.1% of questions asked on Aardvark were unique, compared with between 57 and 63% on traditional search engines.
Combined with the revelation that more people use Aardvark on their cell phones than their desktops–which some predict is the future hot area for search–and you could easily surmise that Aardvark is poised to kick Google’s butt.
Ah, but this wouldn’t be a Marketing Pilgrim post if there wasn’t at least a little cynicism.
For Aardvark, its Achilles heel is something I’ve dubbed "participation fatigue."
You see, what happens when the novelty of Aardvark wears thin? What happens when the site’s user base grows beyond the current 90,361? What happens when the thinly sliced group of users that answer questions, get overwhelmed and start dropping out?
86.7% of Aardvark users had been asked by Aardvark to answer a question, of whom 70% actually looked at the question and 38% could answer. 50% of all members had answered a question (including 75% of all users who had ever actually interacted with the site), though 20% of users accounted for 85% of answers.
Google doesn’t suffer from participation fatigue–it’s spiders and algorithms never grow weary of answering your questions. Aardvark’s future is bright, but the dark cloud on the horizon is its reliance on humans. Humans that have a tendency to get bored easily and move on. If it can overcome that, then it might have a shot.
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Last week we started a series on fears, a lot of them spinning out from the events of 9-11. As a nation, we're living in a different situation, different times, not new, but different. We've known the fear of war and terror which was our first subject last week - fear of terror and war-because we've been there before. How many of you remember the air raid practices and preparations as school children of World War II? How many remember the fear of nuclear annihilation in all of the drills getting underneath the tables and chairs? So it's nothing new. How do we respond to them? How do we cope with them? Well the answer is, and last week we talked about it, faith. Faith plays a big role, an important role. It played a greater role in our culture in the '60's. It always played a great role in the Middle Eastern church, and that's how they are able to survive there.
Today we are talking about another stress that has appeared, again it's not new, but it's different recently. That's the fear of financial insecurity. It is no accident that the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. It was their intention to destabilize the U.S. economy, and actually we were in an economic downturn even before then. We have been, the last four years, in economically unstable times, and if your emotions follow the economy or the stock market, it has been an up and down ride almost daily. It goes up, and daily it goes down. That has been how our emotions have run. In the last three years, three million jobs have been lost - many of our own members. Recently we've probably lost 50 or 60 members simply because of relocations due to job loss and the need to find work. How do you cope with that? How do we cope with that as a people? How do we cope with that as a church? Again, it's not unique. We have been here before, haven't we? Some of you are old enough to remember Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. Some of you have experienced or probably all of you have experienced financial pressure, haven't you, financial, stressful times?
My first experience with financial stress was when I was probably five or six years old. I remember opening the basement door and hearing my father pound the furnace, "I don't have the money!" And I remember people taking truckloads of furniture out of the house. I remember distinctly the mini bike, and saying, "Why are they taking our mini bike, Daddy?" It's a difficult thing to go through. I saw my father go through bankruptcy three times. I've seen him waken from a dead sleep because of the pressure of finances, and I've experienced that myself. We've all experienced them. Sometimes our troubles, our financial pressures, are caused by ourselves - our mistakes that we make, and sometimes they're just no fault of anyone. They just happen. Being a construction family, it hinges on the economic growth, and when there's economic downturn sometimes the construction market goes down and things are lean. That's kind of part of life. How do you deal with life? How do you deal with that kind of pressure? If you let it, it can make you very cranky. It can cause you to do some very dumb things, like neglect your family and work some obscene hours. It can cause you to lose sleep, lose your health. It can even cause you, and has caused some people, to take their own lives, which is a permanent solution to a very temporary problem. That is indeed not the answer. Well what is the answer?
Well, one thing that's clearly not an answer, is more. More is never an answer to financial stress, and yet everyone concludes when they're having financial problems, that all they need is more. All they need is a new job or better job that pays more. Larry Burkett who was probably one of the leading financial advisers in our nation, and just recently passed away, has counseled thousands of people, people from every economic strata. What he noticed is this, that those who made "30", thought the answer to their problems was just ten thousand more, and those who made $40,000 thought all they needed was another $20,000. He had lawyers who made $100,000 who thought the answers to their problems were $25,000 more. Heart surgeons who believed the answer to their problems was another $100,000 or a few more hundred thousand dollars than they were making. What he discovered is: it's not true. We always spend what we make, and as a result financial stress always has this way of following us. Has that been your experience? The more you make - has it solved your financial problems or the issue of financial stress or instability? Well, the answer is, no.
Well, what's the answer? We're going to look at Philippians 4:11-13, 18-19, and I'm going to use also, 6-7. It's not an exhaustive list, it won't be an exhaustive message because there are so many things that could be said, so I included a Scripture list and also a resource list for further reading if you're going through economic problems, you need to get counseling on it or you may need some additional resources. I encourage you to look at those and read those. Here's what it says (reads text). (Prayer).
Well, what's the answer? I'm going to put it in very simple one-word statements. First, key to financial peace or coping with financial instability is contentment - learning to be content. What contentment is, is simply being happy with whatever God provides you, little or much; simply being happy with what God provides you. It's interesting that Paul says it's something he learned. It's not automatic. It doesn't come naturally because the natural inclination of us all is to want more, to have better, to increase. Paul says he had to learn to overcome this human tendency to covetousness, to desire, to wanting what we do not have. If you pursue that longing, if you pursue that craving, it's an endless pursuit. You will crave it for the rest of your life, and your life will become very devoid of meaning, and you will always feel, for your entire life, pressure caused by finances. There's a better way, and the better way Paul says is to learn to be content.
Well, what does he know about money and everything, he's a preacher?! Well, it's interesting. You look at Paul's life. What do you find out about him? Well, you know that he is born into a Jewish family. His mother is Jewish. His father is Greek. It says that he is born a Roman citizen, meaning his family, at one point, paid for or gained Roman citizenship, which was extremely costly, so he came from a wealthy family. You know he's also coming from a wealthy family because he's a scholar. He went to the best institutions and read a lot of books. Only those from rich families were able to do that then. He became part of the Pharisees' tradition of scholarship, and what we know about the Pharisees' tradition is that they were very well paid. In the rich sections of Jerusalem, all those houses were owned by Pharisees and Saducees, religious leaders of the day. So, it was an extremely well-paid position, but you come to Acts 9 when Paul encounters Christ and with what he discovers, he gives it all up for the sake of the gospel, and the gospel ministry. In Corinthians when he encounters Aquila and Priscilla, you notice that he is now making tents. He had to take up another profession. The budget wasn't being met. He needed some more income or needed some income, period. So he supplements his income by tent making. You come to this text and you come to the end of Acts and you find that Paul's wealth is gone. He's been part of the court system. He has had the endless pursuit of appeals to save his life. What we know about that time is that the Roman court system was extremely expensive. You come to Philippians, and he is living off of the good will and charity of others. His wealth is gone. How would you feel if that was your life? Everything's gone. And yet he said , and I know it had to have been hard because he said, "I had to learn this." But he learned to just say "It's o.k., it's o.k. I've learned to live within God's limits." He learned that if God supplied money for a Jaguar, he drove a Jaguar, but now he's driving a used Yugo. He used to eat at La Bourgeois Café, now he's eating prison food. He shopped at Lord and Taylor's for the best of suits, and now he's shopping at Goodwill, and yet through it all, he says, "I've learned to be content." "I've learned that that's not what life is all about." "I've learned there's something more important." "I know that God is far more important and brings much greater meaning, and I'm at peace with it." Paul, you notice, is happy. He's a very content man because he has learned to live within the limits of God's provision, and if you want to deal with stress caused by finances, that's the secret.
Learning to live within the limitations of God's provision may take, for many of us, a lifestyle adjustment. Doesn't it? It takes a lifestyle adjustment. In fact, every great financial advisor, and there are a lot of good ones, Ray Linder, Mary Hunt, Joanne McCovey, would agree. Mary Hunt, at one point, was over $40,000 in debt, just in credit cards, and things were just out of control, and they lived with incredible pressure. Read her story. It's a tremendous story. What she discovered was that she needed a lifestyle adjustment, and a tip that all of them give, is learn to live on seventy percent of your take-home income. If you are in high debt, particularly in credit, stop using credit cards, because you are spending future money. You are not living on God's present provision for your life. It's not easy. It takes some creativity. It takes some patience. Two areas of savings that were discovered are in entertainment and housing. If your entertainment bill is over six percent of your monthly income, then you need to make some changes. Try eating at home (usually, people spend it on restaurants). Cook from scratch more. If you're in a house and your monthly payment is over 32% of your monthly income, then you will never experience freedom from financial stress unless you downsize. You've got to get into a house which fits your income. How many rooms do I really need? Do I really need two dining rooms? Do I need a family room, a living room and a finished basement? Do I really need three bathrooms? You've got to ask those hard questions, and learn to live within God's provisions. Sheryl Crow sings a wonderful song. She really defines what contentment is. She is kind of a secular artist, and this is what she says, "I don't have digital. I don't have diddly-squat," it's not great English but, "I don't have diddly-squat, it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got. I'm gonna soak up the sun, gonna tell everyone to lighten up." The key to freedom from financial stress is just that - not longing to have what you want, but wanting what you actually have. It's something that God provides, and lighten up. Lighten up on your debt. Lighten up on yourself. Don't be so driven. Enjoy life. Life is more than the substance of things.
Secondly, Paul mentions, there is something it takes to live a lifestyle that's adjusted this way, to live contentedly. It takes tremendous trust which is the very underpinning of contentment. It is the basis of Christianity; it's what we do when we gain our salvation. We basically trust God. "God, I've run my life the way it is, it's not working well. I submit my life totally to you. I accept your provision for Jesus in my life. I thank you for forgiving my sins. I cling to the gospel for the promise of Heaven." That's basic Christianity. That's the basic commitment we make, and we give everything to Him. Well, part of that is our finances. Have you given God your finances? Have you said, "You know what, God, I know that money is not it. Money is something we use and helps us get by, but it's not the meaning of life. It's not what's most important. You are. You are, God. You alone are God, and I trust You. I submitted my life to You, and I trust You, and I give you my finances. I give You my future. I give You the meaning for my life. I give You my contentment. I give You it all. Lord, teach me to focus and trust You with everything." Have you done that? Paul was able to do that.
Financial worries, though, are the direct opposite of that because when you are feeling financial pressure, where is your focus? Is your focus on God? No. Your focus and our focus is on money; is that really the proper focus? If you're focusing on money all the time, then indeed, stress builds up and you forget about God. Jesus even warned us about this. You cannot serve God and money because if your focus begins to shift towards money, you begin to forget God. God gets replaced by money. Jesus even warned if you try to serve both, you will give your greater allegiance to one and it usually is money, because that's the power of wealth. Deuteronomy 8, 1 Timothy 6, Proverbs 30:7-9, all tell us this basic same thing. Here's what Proverbs says, (reads text) . That's the power of money, if it's your focus it will ultimately replace God and you will be forever stressed about it. Money is a terrifying god to serve! Why? Because it's capricious. It's fickle. It goes up and down. It's here and it's gone. Where is the dot.com wealth today? Think about it. Where is the dot.com wealth? Where has the stock market been? Up and down, up and down. If that's your focus, that's your emotional roller coaster, then. That's why you're feeling up and down, up and down, because the market is not constant. It's always changing. It always fluctuates, which is exactly what God says about money. "Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone. They sprout wings, and they fly off to the sky like an eagle, therefore, do not wager yourself out to get rich. Show some wisdom of restraint." And that's money. If you put your confidence in money, and your self-esteem and self-worth is based upon your success financially, what happens when the market goes up and down, or you lose your job, what happens? Well, your self-esteem goes up and down, up and down. It's never constant. You feel awful, and if you are going through financial hard times right now, you feel like a failure! And you're not, because that's not the proper basis for who you are. You are more than what you do nine to five. The basis for who you are, your personal self-esteem, is based on two constants. One, you are created by God in His image and as a result you have intrinsic worth; and two, God loves you. Romans 8:35-39 reminds us, this was our memory verse for this past week (reads text). If your focus is on this life, troubles can separate you from God. But if your focus is on God, who is constant, what you're sure of, no matter what happens, up or down, lose my home, or become unemployed, it doesn't matter. I know there is one constant in my life: there is a God and He loves me. The problems are temporary things. The economy goes up and down. Jobs come and go, God doesn't. I'll make it. I'm not a failure. This too will pass, and Jesus reminds us of that very thing, and He encourages us in Luke 12, listen (reads text). Where's your treasure? Where's your heart? If you want to experience peace even during financial downturns, then put your hope in God. God has promised in verse 19, "and my God will meet all your needs according to His riches, in Christ Jesus." If you want to soak up something, soak up that. Soak up the sun. Not the S-U-N, but the S-O-N. Rest in His promises.
Now, "Pastor that sounds real good, but I have fits of panic and worry, and it climbs on me from time to time, and I just can't overcome it." Well, again Paul gives us a very practical help when you're going through that stress that wakes you up at night, that takes away your taste buds, when you experience that, PRAY . "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your heart (and the words guard your heart means guard your heart like a military sentry) and your mind in Christ Jesus." In your bulletin take out the bulletin journal and turn to where it says, "Make the unafraid prayer your own." This is the basic model, a help for all of us as we go through these financially difficult times, when you feel the stress, I encourage you to pray. You can use your own prayer, but if you don't know what to say this is a good prayer to use. It has two blanks to fill in:
"Lord, I know that when I feel afraid, you want to calm my heart. Yet at this moment, I'm not at peace about _________________. The enemy wants me to be consumed by this fear. But your Word reminds me: (fill in Romans 8:35-39, for example) . Thank you that I can face my fears unafraid, knowing you are always with me. Amen."
Pray things like Luke 12. Life is not about things. (Reads text). I encourage you to take that and pray that, and take that scripture passage, scripture lesson and use a different scripture each time. Re-focus and see whether or not indeed you become quiet and at peace. Now, it won't happen magically. A magic wand is not going to appear and just wave all your problems away, but with time and patience, things will improve. You will be able to cope with the pressure, and if you're unemployed right now or if underemployed, it's important to accept it. Then humble yourselves, and take whatever work comes for the time being. Knowing that something is better than nothing. Have a support system. Notice Paul continued to utilize his support system which was the church. I encourage you to share your problems with others. Everyone has gone through the same exact thing you have gone through. You can't deal with that pressure alone, and we're here. The church is here. Let us bear that burden with you, and then be willing to receive help. Notice that Paul humbled himself enough to receive help. Don't rob your fellow parishioners from living out their faith, and then wait and relax and let God's joy come upon you. Like the song says, "I'm gonna soak up the sun, gonna tell everyone to lighten up." Lighten up, lighten up, enjoy what God has already provided, and His promise that He will indeed provide and take care of us and all of our needs. Rest in that. (Prayer).
Financial Resource List
(By Trusted Authors)
By Larry Burkett:
The Complete Financial Guide for Young Couples
Any book by Larry is good! Also go on line and see what services his ministry, "Crown Financial Ministries," provides. You can even call a 1-800 number and get free advice on money matters . www.crown.org
By Mary Hunt:
The Financially Confident Woman
Debt-Proofing Your Marriage
Mary Hunt understands financial stress and instability. Mary and her husband racked up $40,000 in credit card debts. They barely made the minimal monthly payments. Though both worked they had little to show for their wealth and the constant stress was unbearable. Discover how she went from debt to debt-free living. www.cheapskatemonthly.com .
By Ray Linder:
Seven Secrets to Reduce Financial Worry
What Do I Do With My Money?
By Jonni McCovy
The Frugal Family: How to Live on One Income
Coping with Financial Insecurity Scripture List
||Proverbs 3:9, 21-26
||I Peter 5:6-8
||I Timothy 6:6-10
Read the Bible Online:
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Oregon governor bans death penalty for rest of term
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber on Tuesday imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for the remainder of his term, saying he’s morally opposed to capital punishment and has long regretted allowing two men to be executed in the 1990s.
Kitzhaber’s decision gives a temporary reprieve to a twice-convicted murderer who was scheduled to die by lethal injection in two weeks, along with 36 others on death row. It makes Oregon the fifth state to halt executions since 2007.
His voice shaking, the Democratic governor said he has repeatedly questioned and revisited his decisions to allow convicted murderers Douglas Wright and Harry Moore to be executed in 1996 and 1997.
“I do not believe those executions made us safer. Certainly I don’t believe they made us nobler as a society,” Kitzhaber said. “And I simply cannot participate once again in something I believe to be morally wrong.”
Death penalty proponents criticized the decision, saying the governor is usurping the will of voters who have supported capital punishment.
A typically cool and unemotional Kitzhaber fought tears as he said he spoke to relatives of Haugen’s victims, saying they were difficult discussions and his “heart goes out to them.” He declined to discuss them further, calling them “private conversations.”
“We’ve been dealing with this since 1981,” said Ard Pratt, Archer’s first husband. “It was almost over. And then he changes it because he’s a coward and doesn’t want to do it.”
Kitzhaber is a former emergency room doctor who still retains an active physician license with the Oregon Medical Board, and his opposition to the death penalty has been well-known. In a news conference explaining his decision, he cited his oath as a physician to “do no harm.” Kitzhaber was elected last year to an unprecedented third term as governor after eight years away from public office.
Oregon has a complex history with capital punishment. Voters have outlawed it twice and legalized it twice, and the state Supreme Court struck it down once. Voters most-recently legalized the death penalty on a 56-44 vote in 1984. Since then, two men have been executed, both of whom voluntarily gave up their appeals during Kitzhaber’s first administration.
“It is arrogant and presumptuous for an elected official, up to and including the governor, to say, ‘I don’t care with the voters say, I don’t care what the courts say,”’ and impose his own opinion, said Josh Marquis, a death penalty proponent and the Clatsop County district attorney. Marquis has prosecuted several capital cases and written about capital punishment.
Prison officials had been preparing for the Dec. 6 execution of Gary Haugen, who also had waived appeals. Haugen was serving a life sentence for fatally bludgeoning his former girlfriend’s mother, Mary Archer, when he was sentenced to death for the 2003 killing of fellow inmate David Polin, who had 84 stab wounds and a crushed skull.
Kitzhaber said he has no sympathy or compassion for murderers, but Oregon’s death penalty scheme is “an expensive and unworkable system that fails to meet basic standards of justice.”
Over a three-decade political career, Kitzhaber has built a reputation for charting his own course, sometimes to the frustration of fellow Democrats and others to the chagrin of legislative Republicans.
Kitzhaber’s moratorium means Oregon joins, at least temporarily, four other states that have halted executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. Illinois this year outlawed the death penalty after the discovery of wrongful convictions. New Mexico voters abolished it in 2009, two years after New Jersey’s Legislature and governor did the same. A New York appeals court struck down a portion of the death penalty statute.
Politicians are often hesitant to discuss abolishing the death penalty for fear it will anger voters, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Kitzhaber’s decision might give confidence to leaders in other states, he said.
California is considering a ballot measure next year to abolish capital punishment, and death penalty opponents are also hoping legislators in Maryland and Connecticut will repeal it.
Oregon prison officials said last week that they’d spent $42,000 preparing for Haugen’s execution, not including legal fees, including $18,000 spent on lethal drugs. Kitzhaber said he wanted to wait until the legal process played out before announcing his decision.
One of Haugen’s lawyers, Steve Gorham, said Haugen was still committed to being executed on Tuesday morning. Gorham said he hadn’t spoken with the inmate since learning of the governor’s decision.
“I’m sure he’s not very happy right now. He was committed to exercising what he thought were his rights,” Gorham said, noting that he was personally pleased with the governor’s decision and calling it “courageous.”
Prosecutors have long complained that death penalty cases take decades to make their way through the courts, but efforts to change the law have been stymied in the Legislature. Eight condemned inmates have been on death row since the 1980s.
“I do not believe for a moment that the voters intended to create a system in which those condemned to death could determine whether that sentence would be carried out,” Kitzhaber said.
Oregon’s constitution gives Kitzhaber authority to commute the sentences of all death row inmates, but he said he will not to do so because the policy on capital punishment is a matter for voters to decide.
Kitzhaber’s reprieve will last until he leaves office. His term ends in January 2015, and he has not said whether he’ll run for re-election.
Kitzhaber said he hopes his decision will prompt a public re-evaluation of the death penalty in Oregon and said he will advocate for a ballot measure that would make it illegal. The governor said he prefers murderers be given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
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Personable robots, advanced prosthetics and entrepreneurship figure prominently in campus visit.
Services were held Tuesday, Jan. 28, at Temple Emunah for Martin A. Abkowitz, professor of ocean engineering and an international authority on ocean vehicle hydrodynamics and on the motion and control of ships, who died Sunday, Jan. 26 of cancer after a short illness.
Professor Abkowitz, who for many years was the director of the MIT Ship Model Towing Tank, was born in Revere in 1918. He received the SB in naval architecture in 1940 and the SM degree in 1949, both from MIT, and the PhD in physics from Harvard in 1953.
From 1940-42, he was a naval architect with the US Navy's David Taylor Model Basin in Washington, D.C. During World War II he served with the US Army's Transportation Corps and had the rank of captain. After the war, from 1946 to 1949, he was a physicist at the David Taylor Model Basin. He was appointed to the MIT faculty in 1949 in what then was called the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. He became associate professor in 1954 and professor in 1959.
His teaching and research focused on ship hydrodynamics, particularly ship motions in waves and the stability of
ships and submarines. He was responsible for the design, construction, and operation of the MIT Ship Model Towing Tank. There, and in classrooms and other laboratories, he taught and inspired many students, several of whom are currently on the faculty of what is now the Department of Ocean Engineering at MIT and on other faculties throughout the world.
His formal retirement occurred in 1988, but he continued to be active in professional activities until he became ill last year.
He was a Life Member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, and a regular participant in the International Towing Tank Conference. He travelled and lectured extensively throughout Europe, Israel, and Asia.
He was awarded Fulbright fellowships to the Technical University of Denmark (1962-3) and the University of Nantes, France, (1971-2), and a von Humboldt fellowship to the University of Duisburg, Germany (1990-91).
A resident of Lexington, Mass., since the mid 1950s, Professor Abkowitz is survived by his wife Davette, an educational consultant at Tufts University; three children; Dr. Janis Abkowitz Miller of Seattle, Wash.; Professor Mark D. Abkowitz of Nashville, Tenn.; and Dr. Suzanne Abkowitz Crawford of Newburyport, Mass; and seven grandchildren.
A memorial week will be observed as his residence, 28 Peacock Farm Rd., Lexington, evenings through Sunday, Feb. 2.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Martin A. Abkowitz Memorial Fund and mailed to Sharon Trohon, Rm. 5-228. Her phone is x3-4330.
A version of this article appeared in the January 29, 1992 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 36, Number 18).
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Number of malicious e-mails with bad links balloons 10-fold
- — 28 September, 2007 08:17
The percentage of threats arriving in e-mail that rely on links to malicious sites -- rather than arriving as a file attachment -- has ballooned 10-fold since the first quarter of the year, a UK security company said today.
In a report published Thursday, U.K.-based MessageLabs said that 35 percent of the e-mail threats it now detects use embedded links to infect computers instead of the more traditional file attachments. In the March-June time frame, that figure was 20.2 percent, said the company. And in the opening quarter of 2007, a mere 3.3 percent of the intercepted threats carried links.
MessageLabs' data jibes with recent analyses by other security vendors, which have all noted the rapid increase in Web-based attacks -- often from legitimate sites that have been compromised by criminals. Such trusted sites make perfect lures for drawing in users, whose browsers are then typically attacked through one or more unpatched vulnerabilities, allowing rogue code -- often spyware or a Trojan horse that hijacks the PC to add it to a growing botnet -- to be installed.
"The bad guys know that most people have learned not to open attachments," said Wood. "E-mail is still the preferred attacker vehicle for getting their 'message' across, but now they're using links. They know people still follow links."
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|See Also||Lore version|
|Found in the following locations:
Initially, though the Imperial legions and navy were widely considered undefeatable, House Indoril and the Temple hierarchy proposed to resist to the death. Redoran and Dres stood by Indoril, with Telvanni remaining neutral. Hlaalu proposed accommodation.
Contrived border incidents in Black Marsh ended inconclusively, but the swampy terrain did not favor legion and navy coordination. Against the legions massed west of Silgrad Tower and Kragenmoor, and the legions west of Blacklight and Cormaris View, Morrowind had pitifully small militias stiffened by small companies of Redoran mercenaries and elite units of house nobles and Temple Ordinators and Armigers. Further complicating matters was the refusal of Indoril, Dres, Hlaalu, and Telvanni to garrison the western borders; Indoril and Dres proposed, rather than defend the western border, instead to withdraw to the interior and fight a guerilla war. With Hlaalu advocating accommodation, and Telvanni remaining neutral, Redoran therefore faced the prospect of standing alone against the Empire.
The situation changed radically when Vivec appeared in person in Vivec City to announce his negotiation of a treaty with Emperor Tiber Septim, reorganizing Morrowind as a province of the Empire, but guaranteeing "all rights of faith and self-government." A shocked Temple hierarchy, which apparently had not been consulted, greeted the announcement with awkward silence. Indoril swore they would resist to the death, with the loyal support of Dres, while Redoran, grateful for a graceful excuse to avoid facing the legions unsupported, joined with Hlaalu in welcoming the agreement. Telvanni, seeing which way the wind blew, joined with Hlaalu and Redoran in supporting the treaty.
Nothing is known of the circumstances of the personal meeting between Septim and Vivec, or where it took place, or the preliminaries which must have preceded the treaty. The public reason was to protect the identities of the agents involved. In the West, speculation has centered around the role of Zurin Arctus in brokering the agreement; in the East, rumors suggest that Vivec offered Numidium to aid in the conquest of the Altmer and Sumerset Isle in return for significant concessions to preserve self-rule, house traditions, and religious practices in Morrowind.
The Lord High Councilor of the Grand Council, an Indoril, refused to accept the treaty, and refused to step down. He was assassinated, and replaced by a Hlaalu. House Hlaalu took the opportunity to settle some old scores with House Indoril, and a number of local councils changed hands in bloody coups. More blood was shed in these inter-house struggles than against the Imperial Legions during Morrowind's transition from an independent nation to a province of the Empire.
The generals of the legions had dreaded an invasion of Morrowind. The Dunmer were widely regarded as the most dreadful and fanatic foes, further inspired by their Temple and clan traditions. The generals had not grasped the political weaknesses of Morrowind, which Emperor Tiber Septim recognized and exploited. At the same time, given the tragic depopulation and destruction experienced by the other provinces conquered by Septim, and the swift and efficient assimilation of Morrowind into the Imperial legal systems and economy, with relatively small impact on lower or upper classes of Morrowind's citizens, the Tribunal also deserves some credit for recognizing the hopelessness of Morrowind's defense, and the chance of gaining important concessions at the treaty table by being the first to offer peace.
By contrast, many Indoril nobles chose to commit suicide rather than submit to the Empire, with the result that the House was significantly weakened during the period of transition, guaranteeing that they would lose much of their influence and power to House Hlaalu, whose influence and power was waxing with its enthusiastic accommodation with the Empire. The Temple hierarchy more skillfully managed their loss of face, remaining aloof from political struggles, and earning the good will of the people by concentrating on their economic, educational, and spiritual welfare.
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Archive for the ‘Fashion’ Category
Among so many issues that happen in the world today, environmental issue still become one of the biggest issues that needs to be handled right away. As you can see the, the environment is getting damaged day by day. If we care about the earth, we should also take the responsibility to protect this earth for the sake of our next generation. People should think under one umbrella now. People should work together to save the environment and make the world beautiful as before. There is one thing that you can do, reducing the accumulation of plastic waste. Plastic cannot be degraded easily plus it contains harmful substances for the earth. That’s why we should reduce the usage of plastic by using biodegradable plastic bags.
If you use eco-friendly bags, you can take part in reducing the plastic waste on your environment. By doing this act, your environment will be healthier and cleaner. This bag is designed with high technology so that it can be degraded under the sun quickly. You can get this bag from Polyc Packaging with a cheap price. It is a Canada plastic bags wholesaler. It provides friendly plastic bags in many forms.
If you want to take part in saving the earth, please use this bag. You can visit Polycpackaging.com to get information about Toronto bags wholesaler.
Buying women clothing can be a difficult task especially for those men who have no idea of what their loved ones put on. There are those men in such situations, where they have no idea on the kind of clothing their women put on.
First, know her sizes. This might seem like something so simple every man would think of it. But, you would be surprised how many men don’t know if their wife wears a size 6 or a size 12.
There are a couple ways to go about doing this. For one, you could always ask her; and this is always the most accurate option. But, if you’re trying to keep your shopping a secret, you can always go online and look up a handy size chart like this one. Of course, if you use this method, you’ll still need to know her measurements.
Therefore they will not be having the slightest idea over what to get for them since they do not know what size she is. This type of men might end up buying only those trendy outfits which are on offer or what seem to look good to them. The other common group is of those who do not know the details but have an idea of what their women love or look good in. They end up not buying a certain item because they would not know how it would be received. Better still there are men who know all the details of their women including the measurements, cup sizes, and what styles they look good in.
The middle group of those who know some details which might not be of much help during purchase would wonder of the reception the item would get, if it would fit, or how the item will be taken. Would it be acceptable to her? What impressions will the item give? With some strategies and a little preparation in place such a person would be able to make a perfect purchase for their ladies. Most people even the women will not be in a position to tell if an item is of the best or perfect fit until they try it on. It is important for one to keep the receipt and better still be prepared for any outcome. In case the item does not fit for whatever reason, one should be in a position to return it for an exchange or for a refund.
Women like clothing that they would like to see themselves in. One must choose an item they will be pleased with and not one that will be despised and thrown into the back of the closet where it is hidden and unworn. A man should not go for what seem to be pleasing to them but what would impress the owners and many others.
Know where she likes to shop. There are two reasons for this. First, if you go into a store she frequently shops at, you know they carry styles she likes. More important, unlike most men’s sizes, women’s sizes tend to vary a bit by brand. In other words, a size 12 in one brand might actually be a size 10 in another. By shopping at the same store for the same brands, you’re more likely to get the right fit.
Pay attention to what she likes to wear. I’ve seen plenty of dresses and skirts that would look great on my wife. But, even though I know she likes wearing those things, I also know she rarely does. Keep mental notes of the types of things she wears. Does she prefer blouses or t-shirts; pants or skirts? Focus on those things when you shop for her.
While many working women choose to buy authentic designer handbags for themselves, they are able to do so because they are earning their own salary. For fashion-conscious girls who still depend on their parents for their allowance, however, designer handbags are probably well beyond their price range. Instead, wholesale handbags are perfect for girls who still wants to look good. Replica handbag wholesale designer handbags are available at low prices that even many girls are able to afford, without compromising on looks.
As most girls have never even held a job or earned money of their own, it would be ridiculous for them to even think of spending the sums of money required to purchase designer label handbags. That sort of money should only be spent by someone who has earned their own money and knows that they are able to afford such a lavish purchase on their own.
The problem that many girls face, however, is peer pressure. At school, there will inevitably be some girls toting the latest designer label handbags, bought with their parents’ hard-earned money. And in teenage society, the pressure to fit in with the popular crowd is enormous. This usually means dressing the same way the rest of the accepted population dresses, in order to fit in. It would hardly be reasonable for any girl not from an immensely rich family to ask her parents to spend such large amounts of money on something like a handbag.
This is where replica handbag wholesale designer handbags come in. These are wholesale handbags that have been designed according to the most popular designer label handbags, and yet do not cost nearly as much, as they do not carry any form of designer label. In terms of looks and style, however, you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between wholesale handbags modeled after designer handbags and the designer handbags themselves.
This is the kind of compromise on designer fashion accessories that many girls come to accept and even treasure. This is because wholesale accessories such as wholesale handbags allows even girls from lower income families to dress like their favorite celebrities, strolling around town with a designer handbag on their arm. No one needs to know that their handbag which looks so much like a designer label handbag is really one of the replica handbag wholesale designer handbags that are easily available online. The differences are almost unnoticeable unless someone were to examine the label on the inside of the handbag.
Girls come to appreciate the low cost of these replica handbag wholesale designer handbags, because they can afford to buy them on their own. Whether they use pocket money that they have managed to save up or perhaps some money from a summer job, many girls treasure the independence of being able to buy their own fashion accessories without having to ask their parents to buy sponsor their purchases.
This is the reason why wholesale handbags and the replica handbags wholesale designer handbags available at sites like Huafu are perfect for teenage girls who still want to look and feel good when they go out.
Lace wigs are great for any women who is suffering from thinning hair either because it is a part of the natural course or because you are suffering with an illness that is causing you to loose your hair early. It is ideal for women who are just sick and tried of fussing with their hair every morning before they leave the house. Or simply want to have a new look without going through all the trouble of going to the beauty salon and spend hours sitting in a chair to get the look you want. When deciding on which lace wigs are right for you there are some things you should keep in mind. Lace wigs, can be custom or ready made. It is preferred that these types of wigs be custom made to order. This is always the better choice than ready made wigs. Remember that wigs come in different shape, color and sizes and it is important to pick the right one that works for you.
The fit of the lace wigs is very essential because the way the wig fits on your head can either make or break the way you look. The whole idea of having a wig in the first place is to have a natural look of beautiful hair. If you do not have the right fitting of your wig, it defeats the whole purpose of buying one in the first place so take care in measuring the size of your head. The next thing you should know, that there are two kinds of lace wigs to choose from. The first is a full lace wig, Full lace wigs are very breathable and comfortable to wear. They can be styled anyway that you like and be parted anywhere on the scalp. The second type of lace wig is a front lace wig. Front face wigs have the lace at the forehead of the wig and are very natural looking and comfortable to wear, but the down side to this type of wig is that it cannot be put into a ponytail.
You can also choose the kind of hair that your lace wig is made of. There are two kinds of hair. There is the human hair that is natural and is easier to manage just like your own hair. You can restyle the lace wigs as you do your own hair. Your wig can be dyed, premed and heat treated, however, you must take care of your wig so that it will not be damaged while you are treating it. It is recommended that when you place your order that you pick the way you want to style and the color of your hair. Once you have your lace wig, you can have it for six to twelve months or even longer depending on how well you take care of it. To get the most out of your wig, you can wear them up to one to two weeks, but how long you can wear them depends on some other issues. How long you can wear your wig depends on your skin type, the type of adhesive you use and the climate.
A model is a person who positions himself/herself in front of a camera or film camera for the picture to be displayed for purposes of fashion, art, or commercial publicizes of products and services.
Modeling is famous from other types of public performance, such as acting, dancing since many do not agree to it but it is an art. Many models can express themselves as actors and so many have acted in movies as well. Modeling is somewhat close to acting, as the model has to show feelings and emotions even use their voice in front of the camera.
Fashion model is used mostly to advertise cosmetics, apparel and accessories. Fashion model are differentiated as a commercial model and high fashion model.
High fashion modeling is an expertise form for fashion. The photographer pictures the models in creative themes that relate to promoting dress and dress accessories. Here the model uses their face and physical attribute to show different emotions needed. High fashion is characterized for work on collections, magazine editorials and campaigns for high fashion design. High fashion model have powerful and enigmatic features.
Commercial modeling is less lucrative than high fashion modeling, but both are well paid. There are various forms of commercial modeling like cosmetics, catalogue, swimsuit and commercial print. Catalogue models differ in weight and height as in contrast to high fashion models. Commercial modeling also has plus-size model category.
Glamour photography highlights the model instead of products, environment or fashion. Mostly the sexual attributes of the model are a highlight in glamour photography. This form of modeling is usually for advertising the services, which wish to hold on to customer loyalty.
Fitness model is display an athletic and sporty structure. Fitness models look like bodybuilders, but are less concentrated on muscle size because they have a less fatty body due to muscle mass in proportion to fat. They are normally very muscular.
Bikini Model stands for bikini products for so many companies. Bikini is additionally recognized as two-piece and is famous swimwear on the waterfronts and other beaches and of course swimming pools.
Body part Model
Few modeling agencies have category, which stand for male and female model with especially appealing body parts. For example, leg models are used for showcasing tights. Hand models may be used to advertise nail care products;
Teen model are on high demand as teens are attractive, young, exude youthful charm, and have virgin sex appeal. Hot teen model with a unique beauty is a main attraction in the field of modeling and economically worthwhile. Teen modeling is demanding, high energy, and very popular category.
Adult model need magnetic sex appeal. They have to be sexy apart from being attractive and handsome. They have to have a great and usually a voluptuous figure.
This work is for a model who are comfortable with displaying themselves in nude. Models are erotic and posture in sexual attractive way. Some models select to do uncovered –open leg nudity, some do not. The economical rewards and volume of work present make open leg an attractive proposition.
Every morning we have to fight with making our hair look just right before we leave out of the house. The way our hair looks tells other people how we feel and what we think about ourselves, but a lot of days we cannot get our hair look as we want them to look. No matter how much product or heat we place on our hair, it still refuses to behave. It can become a real pain on some days. Sometimes we may think that we are better off if we cut all of our hair off and forget all the trouble of trying to make our hair look decent enough to go to work. So what can we do to make the morning routine to go a little more smoothly? A full lace wig maybe the solution for you and for those who may want to cover up their thinning hair.
Lace wigs for years have been on the scene, but we never knew it. For years celebrities have been wearing lace wigs and all the while we have been admiring their crown of hair, wishing that we could have the same flawless look. Now, that the truth is out about the use of lace wigs by many celebrities like singer Beyonce and model Tyra Banks, many ordinary people like you and me are catching on to them. We can also have the prefect looking hair with a quality and correctly applied lace wig. We can style and part lace wigs even part them anywhere we want and put them into ponytails to achieve the look we are aiming for. The best part is that no one will be able to tell even upon close examination. Lace wigs have more than the benefit of great looking hair – it also a good investment. Lots of us go to the salon and give our hairdresser hundreds of dollars every month or more to add extensions to our hair, bur with a one time payment for a lace wig, you can save money and have a quality wig that will last a good while as long as you take careful care of it. Not only that full lace wigs, will save you a lot a time. No longer will you have to spend hours in the stylist chair and spend your mornings fooling with your unmanageable hair. All you have to do is apply the wig correctly, style it the way you want and leave the house looking like you have spent all day at the salon.
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This is the third installment of Locked Up for Writing, in which I highlight stories of African journalists who are silenced and restricted from practicing press freedom in their respective countries. Part 1 featured Fasil Yenealem Agegnehu, part 2 Aaron Berhane and now part 3, Dawit Kebede. The Video Journalism (VJ) Movement, a worldwide collaboration of journalists, went to Addis Ababa to meet Dawit and learn about his work. He says,
Reporting the truth should not get you labeled as an enemy of the state.
I’ve had the pleasure to meet Dawit since he left Ethiopia this past November. His experience has made me realize how much we take journalists and the press for granted in the U.S. Here, all kinds of psychos like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and countless others sound off on their own controversial tangents on a daily basis. But the American government does not label and persecute them as terrorists, enemies of the state, or persons who commit treason. Because they’re not. They’re ordinary people who have something to say about something. A seemingly simple concept right? Not so in the Horn of Africa. Voltaire’s famous quote is appropriate for this context:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Contrary to his wishes, as we hear in the video, Dawit now lives in exile. He is a stubborn journalist. He applied for a new newspaper license two days after he was released from a 21-month prison sentence. How many people do you know that would do that? Most recently freed prisoners would probably be found sleeping, eating, spending time with family, perhaps shopping for new clothes and all of the things they were deprived of in prison, and just enjoying their new freedom. Dawit’s seemingly simple act speaks to his level of dedication for his craft. In May, he launched the website version of his popular independent newspaper, Awramba Times. He refuses to give up and for that, I believe a lot of people greatly appreciate him, myself included.
Living in exile and living here in a repressive situation, both are the same.
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JBU Students to Present Gen Y and Z Research at NWA NOARK Luncheon
Siloam Springs, Arkansas (March 8, 2011) — Students from John Brown University will present research on how the presence of Generation Y and the incoming Generation Z affect the workplace to the Northwest Arkansas Society for Human Resource Management (NOARK) members at their monthly luncheon on March 10.
“We believe that presenting our study will provide insight about the young workforce,” said Jessica Smith, senior Management major. “So far little research has been done about this new generation and we hope to give perspective on who they are and what they bring to an employer.”
The presentation will showcase the strengths of each generation, as well as the differences between them, and hopes to provide solutions that will allow employers to both manage and use these differences to create unity in the workforce. Their information is based on results from surveys they conducted at John Brown University and area high schools as well as research they have conducted throughout the school year.
Presenters Jessica Smith, senior management major; Chuck Cheng, sophomore business administration major; Ryan Perkins, fifth year senior family and human services major and Kelly Wan, junior management major are part of JBU’s Gathering Opportunities for All our Lives (GOAL), a student human resources club.
NOARK luncheons draw around 120 HR Professionals from NWA. The event begins at 11:30 a.m. at the Springdale Holiday Inn and is open to the public. Tickets are available at www.noark.org.
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Some years ago, when I tested how long the battery of a mobile phone would last when a mobile device was connected to a 2G or 3G network (PDP context established) but not transferring any data for most of the time. At the time, the result was quite clear: I could almost watch almost in real time how the battery level decreased. Looks like things have changed pretty much in the meantime.
When repeating the test these days with a Nokia N95 and a Nokia N82, one being connected to an EDGE network and the other to a UMTS network over the course of the day while transferring almost no data, there seems no difference anymore to the device not being connected throughout the day. The picture on the left shows a screenshot of my N95 that was connected to an EDGE network throughout the day. Note that at the time the screenshot was taken, the mobile was also connected to a Wireless LAN network (i.e. some applications used the EDGE connection, others the Wifi connection). The same test with the N82 that was connected to a 3G network showed the same result.
Very good, one thing less to be concerned about! No more advice about disconnecting from the network due to the fear of running the battery into the ground quickly.
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Thank you for visiting. It is through the kindness and generosity of caring people like you that we are able to inspire the world's most desperate children, needy families and struggling communities.
Who We Are
We are 34,000 Priests, Brothers and Sisters serving in the spirit of our founder, Don Bosco, an Italian Catholic priest who devoted his life to fulfilling the needs of orphans and vulnerable children. Since our beginnings in 1859, the Salesians of Don Bosco has become the second largest order in the Catholic Church.
What We Do
We enable poor and suffering children to live better lives and build brighter futures. We operate 5,000 schools and technical training centers, 23 colleges, 216 clinics and hospitals, 225 orphanages and shelters, and a wide variety of social and economic development activities. We are regarded as the single largest provider of vocational and technical training in the world. And when disaster strikes, we are among the first on the scene with relief supplies, temporary housing and medical care.
Where We Work
We have an active presence in more than 130 countries spanning five continents. Our work takes us to some of the most impoverished and dangerous locations on the planet. We serve in big cities with thousands of homeless and runaway children. And we reach out to remote corners of the globe that have been forgotten and neglected by the rest of society. Quite simply, we work where we're needed most.
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Bold and Courageous
By Jared Bowen
BOSTON — Through performance, photography and film, consider those who fight for love, for peace and for family.
The Lily's Revenge
Plays through October 28 at the American Repertory Theater’s Oberon
A thirty-person ensemble weds dance, film, theater, and music into five unique acts that span over four hours and explores how love should transcend all differences. Become immersed in the event from the seats in the audience to the intermissions, where actors spend time in the crowd and offer tours through backstage. This is a new way to experience the theater.
Kennedy to Kent State
At the Worcester Art Museum through February 3rd
See some of the most powerful American photographs of the 1960s, collected by Howard G. Davis, III and now part of the museum's permanent collection. The images reflect upon Davis's memories of the era with images from 1958 to 1975, including the presidency and assassination of John F. Kennedy, as well as the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War.
Read about Jared's recent visit to the Worcester Art Museum.
Premiers tonight on HBO
The life and times of Robert F. Kennedy have been well documented. But it's his wife Ethel who has always been the backbone of the family — raising 11 children and carrying on a tradition of activism. Now her youngest child, Rory Kennedy, has made a documentary, "Ethel," telling this lesser-known story. It's an intimate view of a family that lived through (and sometimes created) historic moments.
Read excerpts of WGBH's Bob Seay interviewing Rory Kennedy.
Comment on This Article
About the AuthorJared Bowen
Jared Bowen is an Emmy-winning reporter with WGBH-TV’s nightly news magazine program, Greater Boston with Emily Rooney.
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Stop the Abuse of the Akha people by Christian Missions!
In village after village in Northern Thailand's Chiangrai Province the Chinese Baptist Church and other Churches are removing large numbers of girls from Akha villages in the name of protecting them from the possibility of going into prostitution.
According to the Geneva Convention on Genocide it is illegal to remove a people from their group and make them a part of another group.
Throughout northern Thailand, telling families that their daughters will be educated, the Chinese Baptists, and numerous other protestant and catholic groups are stripping all the girls of marriageable age from Akha villages by using the ploy that they will be educated in town at churches where the population usually is not dominantly Akha, but rather
Thai or Chinese or another hill tribe group. Foreigners are being told that the girls are at high risk for going into prostitution but the net result is that there are no girls in the villages for Akha boys to marry and the villages are being torn apart in this fashion.
The battle is on in northern Thailand for the life of Akha villages.
This battle is over the right of the Akha to remain in the mountains without being under seige of every wannabee protestant organization that has a "adopt an unreached people group" program to force a church into every ethnic village on the planet by the year 2000.
There are currently hundreds of girls in the "protective custody" of Christian missions in northern Thailand and the numbers increase as these groups find it easy to get funding from the western church peoples for "protecting the virginity" of these girls. The attitude is that the Akha environment is only a PAGAN ENVIRONMENT and that therefore the pulling of the girls out of these villages by promising their families that they will be educated is justified.
No thought is given to the ramifications on the birth rate of AKHA CHILDREN and the sustainablility of the culture in the already highly marginalized environement that Akha villages live in.
It is generally unknown what these groups are up to as they continue to repeat the practices of removing children from their tribal environment as has been done in Australia and the Residential schools of Canada.
Denmark students groups blocked from building non religious school in akha village by chinese baptist church of maesai, chiangrai, Thailand!
A group of teachers and students who came from Denmark to help assist in an Akha village were confronted by aggressive men from the Chinese Baptist mission that was located more than 100 kilometers away and were told that "this was to be a Christian village" and no school for learning to read and write Akha would be allowed to go on. These men were Lisaw, did not live in the village but threatened the villagers that they had to stop the construction and that the regional Lisaw headman would be contacted threatening their already delicate ability to hold onto that village land on that much coveted mountain in Hua Mae Khom.
The Denmark students group from a project in Denmark called "The Small Schools" had already received permission from the Akha Headman to build a school in traditional Akha style, in a clearing on the steep hillside where one family had volunteered to remove their house and move up one terrace so that the Akha school could be in the center of the village, accesible to all, and where parents could easily spot their children. According to non traditional learning, in an Akha village the center gathering area often has a small open air building with no walls, only benches around the edge where children can come to learn, play, older villagers gather for a smoke, drink of tea or a meeting and so forth. These buildings exist in many Akha villages. Mission after mission have fabricated the falsehood that these open terraces are where Akha young people come for sex in plain view and that they must not be allowed and that churches must be built there instead and then kept locked.
These terraces that serve as central meeting areas for the villages are crucial to Akha children having a place to come in the safety of the village and learn their language.
Most villages have this place to gather but due to the steep hillside this village did not.
The Denmark students group had already made the more than 200 kilometer round trip back out of the mountains to purchase the required building materials and had them trucked adjacent to the building site, for use in the morning. That night two aggressive men from the Chinese Baptist Mission in Maesai came into the village and began going from hut to hut telling the villagers that they could not build "without the MISSION'S permission" and that the regional Lisaw headman would be contacted and that the mission head would be brought out to stop the project. The villagers became frightened at this time and asked that the construction be stopped. Hundreds of dollars had already been spent by the students for these materials and they would not be able to return. The materials had to be left with the headman with no idea how construction would go on.
This village had been pushed into conversion to Christianity only a couple of months before and already radical changes were being imposed on the village.
Numerous girls had been gotten from families for "education" at the mission in Maesai even though there are Thai schools that other students go to, but these are not boarding schools.
On the following day we went to the Maesai Chinese Baptist Church and as luck would have it, there the same young men were. We asked the officials of the church why they had the right to stop the construction?
They told the woman from Denmark she would have to get the police. She did. The police told her that they couldn't make the church give back the money but that the church had no right to do that and we could build. But the Denmark teachers and students had to get back on the bus and the materials were left in the village, the project unfinished.
We are seeking anyone who has the qualifications to document human rights abuses as per the indigenous, who would be willing to come here and document these many cases. Without this kind of help it will be very difficult to stop this tragedy.
Please Contact your foreign ministry about this abuse of the Akha People and their right to their indigenous culture. Request that they contact the Thai Embassy in your country and find out what is being done to protect the indigenous culture of the Akha people from agressive foreign missions.
Please protest to the head office of the Maitrichit Chinese Baptist Church in Bangkok.
Phone: 66-2-222-5056, fax: 66-2-225-0299
Regarding Endangered Language:
For the Akha Weekly Update it must be added that the very kind people from Denmark and the small schools program have donated the three last toner cartridges that we so seriously needed to finish the "in progress" 50 copies of the Akha reader and these will be done in a few days.
From there we will continue our effort to get the deposit money on the building paid and get the printing press paid for and get the first large printing of 20,000 copies of the Akha Reader printed. After that there will be the currently finished Akha Children's Workbook and a host of other books already in the rough draft stage.
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James E. Tierney, the director of Columbia Law School’s National State Attorneys General Program, appeared before Congress in March to advocate for increased state authority over the regulation of banks. The issue is at the center of Cuomo v. Clearing House, which was argued before the Supreme Court in late April.
Tierney testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection regarding the roles of state law enforcement officials, including attorneys general, and the Federal Trade Commission in protecting consumers from fraudulent and misleading lending practices. “Consumer fraud in the area of credit has spawned an epidemic with millions of victims,” Tierney said. “And the country needs to remove the restrictions on the ability of states to combat that fraud.”
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http://www.law.columbia.edu/magazine/162090/tierney-testifies-before-congress
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Flipside 53 Pick of the pix
8. When sharks attack
Egypt's Sharm El Sheik resort terrorised in December by five shark attacks in less than a week. Across the world, since 2000, only about five humans have been killed each year by sharks but each year we kill about 75 million of them. This one's a short-finned mako.
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Building and Updating Accurate Project Budgets
Title: Building and Updating Accurate Project Budgets
Phase(s): Preliminary Engineering, Final Design and Construction
Date: September 16, 2008
The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) South Corridor Light Rail Project (SCLRP) is located in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and links Uptown Charlotte’s Central Business District to the I-485 Station. The light rail line operates within the existing Norfolk Southern Railroad (NSRR) Right of Way (ROW) for approximately 9.6 miles.
A number of items impacted the schedule and budget of the SCLRP since the start of the construction package procurement process in September 2004. In late 2004, two contract packages (approximately $125 million total) were advertised for public bid and awarded. Both of these contract units (CU-3 – Vehicle Maintenance Facility and CU-4 – Roadbed Bridges & Track) came in 30% higher than the estimated cost and both of these bid packages received less than three bids in response to the bid advertisements. These events caused both bid packages to be re-advertised and re-bid ten days after receiving the initial bids. This short re-advertisement period is outlined in the NC General Statutes; however, on a contract this size (over $90 million), it was not conducive for new bidders to enter into and participate in the bidding process, virtually guaranteeing that the same bidders would return and deliver their new bids.
In October 2005, the PMOC, in the process of monitoring the construction phase of the SCLRP observed that, as a result of the single bid for the Station Finishes Contract (Contract Unit 03), the FFGA amount for this line item would be exceeded by nearly $30 million. FTA requested the Recovery Plan (October 2005) as a result of the sole bid for the Station Finishes Contract (Contract Unit 03). Other factors contributing to cost increases included:
- No schedule impact cost was included in the project Budget or forecast prior to the RPCE.
- Delays caused by changes and different site conditions (129 calendar days)
- NSRR access and flaggers availability (90 calendar days)
- Interface milestone access date conflicts between the facilities and the system (49 calendar days)
- Impact of the above facility contracts impacts on the system contracts
The Project Recovery Plan Cost Estimate (RPCE) determined by CATS and the PMOC for presentation to FTA was $462.7 million with $8.9 million in unallocated contingency. The RPCE had good durability to absorb some expected and some unknown, unidentified risks. From September 2006 to December 2006, the RPCE absorbed approximately $2 million in risk events ($300,000 in unidentified known risk and approximately $1.7 million in identified known risk) and contained $2 million for unknown delays occurring between November 26, 2007, and December 31, 2007. It was determined that CATS needed the proper amount of staffing to successfully execute the project within the RPCE budget and schedule and that it also needed to be diligent in its project management activities and reporting of impact events throughout the remainder of the project to insure successful execution of the project within the RPCE budget and schedule.
2. The Lesson
Project cost analysis requires all aspects of the project to be addressed and considered in detail. Project cost evaluation needs to have an accurate estimate of all the known issues or changes plus the risks and unknowns allowances. It is also essential to have a detail procedure and guidelines for development and maintenance of project cost.
FTA/PMOC/Grantees have the ability and means to look at existing technical issues and estimate their cost reasonably. However, other elements exist that are much more difficult to estimate, such as:
- Schedule delays and impacts
- Project potential risks
- Project and contract contingency
- Evaluation of various options
All available options should be used to consider the project variable and account for them in budget and EAC.
A detailed and accurate project budget is important to managing any project cost and to amend it effectively when it is necessary.
Documented in PMOC reports
Project FFGA Amendment
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Many small business owners we have met have misconceptions about marketing. They think of marketing as doing flashy advertising with catchy pictures and some coupons in newspaper insert or with a direct mail company. This underestimates the power of marketing and the value good marketing can bring to your small business.
We ourselves have fallen into this trap when we owned businesses in the past. The reason many small business owners, including ourselves, do this is because of lack of time and lack of understanding of what marketing is all about. We have thought long and hard about this when we operated small business and afterward. Based on that we have come up with 5 fundamental rules of marketing that when used properly are sure to improve your sales. Here they are in no particular order:
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http://www.smallbizviewpoints.com/2010/06/
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Where traditional consortia often focus on combining forces for the purpose of purchasing goods and services at reduced rates, TBC goes a few steps further. Our distinction is that we also provide informal forums for leaders and managers from non-academic functions to explore similar interests and concerns. TBC participants embrace the principles of sharing best practices, utilizing systems thinking, and engaging the intrinsic motivation to excel. They use TBC to augment and expand their on-going efforts to reduce costs and improve operations on their individual campuses.
A not-for-profit organization, TBC:
- Facilitates communities of practice, dialogue, innovation, shared effort, and learning between and among its member schools
- Advances initiatives and programs which are quality-enhancing, practical, and cost-effective
- Supports the creation of economies of scale and intellect to push administrative costs down and drive quality up
- Enhances individual and organizational capacity by encouraging work-based learning and professional development opportunities through such programs as the Professional Development Series
The Boston Consortium can address specific member school needs by delivering professional development programs for your institution. Please contact June Kevorkian at email@example.com or 781-292-4790 for information.
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Sommelier picks white wines to beat the heat
Wine is like a big forest filled with hundreds of all kinds of trees, grasses and plants. They look similar but have their own character. Similarly thousands of different wines have unique flavors.
As there are literally thousands of wines in the world from French powerhouses of Bordeaux and Bourgogne to the rising new world stars of California and Chile, consumers are often confused about which one to choose to go with their dinner.
To this end there are professionals called sommeliers who can provide a map in the forest of wine and make people fall in love with their most appropriate partner. In that sense, a sommelier can be compared to a matchmaker.
During this hot and humid summer, a French white wine from Alsace can cool you from the heat and stress, says Lee Seung-hoon, a sommelier based in Busan. Lee is a two-time winner of a local sommelier competition hosted by the French government.
“In hot weather, white wine is better than red. And I recommend an Alsace Riesling from Weinbach,” Lee said in an interview with The Korea Times in a Seoul hotel last month.
The owner of the wine restaurant VINAfo also recommended another Alsace Riesling Cuvee Sainte Catherine. “I feel like one glass of Cuvee Sainte Catherine blows away my fatigue. It’s really good for this hot weather.”
Lee’s love for Alsace wine did not stop there. He expected that sales of Alsace and Rhone wines will increase in Korea as they match well with the country’s foods as well and are sold at reasonable prices. In particular, a Grenache blended with Chirac harmonizes well with Korean foods, he added.
“More and more consumers recognize wines produced in these regions. They may grow and compete with other traditional powerhouses such as Bordeaux and Bourgogne.”
In terms of the future of wine business here, he was optimistic about it though the sales of wines have dwindled for the last few years. The wine industry boomed in the early 2000s, but has lost steam recently as people moved to Korean traditional rice wine, “makgeolli” after the government promoted it emphasizing that it was healthy.
Lee said that it is inevitable that the wine industry will enjoy another boom because Korean culinary patterns are becoming more westernized. The issue is to embrace it as part of the culture on the table not a social accessory.
“It is at the bottom. Now, the only thing left is to go up,” Lee said.
Lee defined wine as his friend who shares his joys and comforts him during sorrow. And that’s why he is satisfied with the title of sommelier which he interprets as an evangelist of wine.
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It appears that on most compact digital cameras, the macro mode (flower symbol) works best (or only) when the zoom lens is at the widest setting (comparable to e.g. 35 mm).
What is the reason? Is this even a valid observation?
Each camera has its own arrangements as set by its manufacturer.
Each one works the way it does because of decisions made by its maker and there is no one generic reason that applies. Some cameras work at maximum or minimum. Some at both and some across the range.
eg the Minolta 7Hi (old, still almost wonderful) has two macro settings which nominally occur at max and min zoom BUT all locations in between also work OK.
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/26009/macro-mode-should-i-make-sure-the-lens-is-all-zoomed-out
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British Army manoeuvres in rural area; 1924.
Soldier in fortress (?) lowers container into opening in floor and pulls up water for horses. CU Soldier eating at small table. Shot of British children sitting on hill by side of country road looking down at troops resting in the road; w/ horses...
Army at training in the countryside.
Large American gun is demonstrated - shells are loaded and the gun is fired.
Duplicate story about an Australian dog joining the US army as a mascot - use this version.
Good shots of mass production of army uniforms in factory in the Midlands.
Truce called by Army Chiefs during Irish Civil War (Ireland ?).
Unidentified senior military figures.
The Polish Army
Army boot clad feet march past the camera.
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Because of recent legislation, tax deductions may be awarded for part or all of the costs associated with new construction and/or equipment installations or retrofits that improve the energy efficiency of commercial buildings. On Oct. 3, President Bush signed H.R. 1424, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which extends the benefits of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 through Dec. 31, 2013, into law. Section 1331, Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings Deduction, of the Act establishes energy-efficiency commercial-building tax deductions for expenditures related to interior-lighting, HVAC, and hot-water systems and building envelopes. This opportunity potentially allows for the immediate expensing of costs that otherwise would be capitalized and recovered through depreciation over 27½ to 39 years.
Section 1331 makes provisions for a tax deduction limited to $1.80 per square foot on new construction after Dec. 31, 2005, if total annual energy and power costs of interior-lighting, HVAC, and hot-water systems and the building envelope are at least 50-percent below the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.
If an entire building does not qualify for the $1.80-per-square-foot deduction, partial allowances may be made for individual systems. If within the scope of Standard 90.1-2001, HVAC and hot-water systems and building envelopes may qualify for deductions of up to 60 cents per square foot. However, building owners are encouraged to focus on lighting systems first because they are easily available to upgrade and their potential energy-efficiency achievements are known. Owners may receive a deduction of 30 cents per square foot for reductions in lighting-power density of 25 percent of the minimum requirements in tables 220.127.116.11 or 18.104.22.168 of Standard 90.1-2001 and 60 cents per square foot for reductions in lighting-power density greater than 40 percent. Prorated partial deductions may be permitted for reductions in lighting-power density between 25 and 40 percent.
Deductions are permitted in the year in which a property is placed in service. For tax purposes, “placed in service” generally refers to the time at which a property is ready for its intended use.
Certain certification requirements must be met to qualify for deductions. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Notice 2006-52, Deduction for Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings, and IRS Notice 2008-40, Amplification of Notice 2006-52: Deduction for Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings, describe methods of calculating and verifying energy and power costs using the performance rating method, the Nonresidential Alternative Calculation Method Approval Manual, and approved computer software.
Notice 2006-52 requires that a taxpayer must obtain certification for updates made to the property before he or she can claim a deduction. Certification must be provided by a “qualified individual” (i.e., a professional engineer/contractor properly licensed in the jurisdiction in which the building is located who is not related to the taxpayer and represents in writing that he or she has the proper qualifications to provide the required certifications and inspections). The certification process determines whether deductions are available but not the cost of the qualifying energy-efficient property. Therefore, a professional knowledgeable in cost-segregation services should verify the proper deduction amounts. Those seeking deductions are encouraged to look for a tax firm that specializes in energy-efficiency deductions and can provide representation and documentation in the event of an IRS audit.
WHO CAN BENEFIT?
The person or organization that pays for construction is generally the recipient of the tax deductions. This usually is a building owner, but could be a tenant for some HVAC or lighting-efficiency projects.
Notice 2008-40 allows tax deductions for government-owned commercial buildings, such as public schools, to be allocated to the person primarily responsible for designing the property in lieu of the public entity.
WHAT CAN BE WRITTEN OFF1
Although a property's base value is reduced by the tax-deduction amount and the property's remaining asset value depreciates over its tax life for the property class, the good news is that many cost components can be written off. This includes anything that can be capitalized, even labor.
Deducting the cost of a capital investment is not special. However, with energy-efficiency tax deductions, taxpayers potentially can write off the entire cost of a commercial-building improvement in the tax year in which it is placed in service, instead of the addition being capitalized and depreciated/amortized over time.
Director of cost-segregation and energy-efficient building-tax-deduction services for SourceCorp, Matthew Rader began his career at Arthur Andersen LLP. He received a bachelor's degree in construction science from Texas A&M University. Upon graduation, he worked as a consultant specializing in cost reviews, due diligence, construction monitoring, and representation of banks and investors regarding real-estate development and construction loans. He can be contacted via his company's Website at www.sourcecorptax.com/contact/contact_srcp.htm.
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Cats on Stamps
Articles in Feline Philately are written by
[ Home | Philately index | Famous | Featuring | Fans | Fabled | Folios | Fun | Fragments | Flotsam ]
From the Archive
January/February 2001 Review
Thanks are due to several readers, especially Barbara Flanagan, for kindly providing information on the cat breeds that I had some doubt about in an earlier article. They all exist, even the Alaskan Snow cat.
Not all of the new issues I noted earlier seem to have reached us here yet. The Nicaragua one has, and consists of two single stamps one being the Norwegian Forest cat illustrated here and a sheetlet of six. All are on the same greenish background, and there is a large tabby in the sheet margin. There's also a pinkish-coloured miniature sheet (MS), showing a most elegant Cream Burmese. The whole set bears a remarkable resemblance to the Liberian one reviewed in July; maybe it had the same designer, although that information is not yet to hand.
From the Ghana set I mentioned, so far the only ones to have arrived are the two colourful singles shown here: a Russian Blue and an African Shorthair. (I don't know whether the latter refers to a specific breed; if so, that also is unfamiliar to me.)
Antigua & Barbuda produced a new set of designs; after the marvellous 1999 group of kittens, these are certainly 'different'. As you can see from the MS, there seems to be a marine theme rather odd, when you consider how much our average feline friend dislikes water! The accompanying sheetlet has six portraits of rather cross-looking cats (because of the water, maybe?), while the colours used bring to mind the word 'garish'.
The watery theme is repeated in a new collection from Tuvalu, but this time as a pleasant background, of blue Pacific seas and green islands, to the delicate pictures of six cats. One sheetlet has close-ups of their heads, while the second shows entire portraits of the same breeds. Both sheets bear the same text telling us a little about the island nation. There's a separate MS of a rangy, red tabby Oriental Shorthair, apparently on a beach.
In February 1999 Tanzania began a long series of Cats of the World, and the last part of this has finally become available, nearly two years later, as a sheetlet of six as well as this nice little MS of an American Shorthair and kitten. The whole series runs to thirty-four stamps and five MSs.
Another sheetlet of six, which seems to be almost the standard format for new issues at the moment, comes from Angola. It consists of what appear to be Victorian-style paintings of mischievous cats and kittens, of which one is shown here. I'm afraid I have no information at all about this issue.
Rounding off the new African sets, another one has emerged from the Republic of Guinea, although the stamps are actually dated 1999. There is a strip of three showing a Bengal, a Birman Sealpoint and a Cornish Rex; then in addition there are three pretty MSs. Each has one of the stamps from the strip, but with different-coloured borders and more cats in a uniform margin design. However, a fourth MS (pictured) has an additional stamp a Sorrel Abyssinian and a different surrounding design with some rather exotic cats (including what is printed as a Japanese Boptail), two butterflies and a couple of rodents! This is a very attractive and well-designed group.
There have been some more 'doubtful' (or illegal) stamps supposedly from ex-Russian republics such as I have mentioned before, but one small sheetlet is worth picturing, I think. It bears the name Kosova, with postage rates A, B and C on the three stamps. Whether you could go to the Balkans and actually find or use these stamps I very much doubt, but the cats are nicely pictured.
Finally, Japan is well ahead with advertising the international philatelic exhibition PhilaNippon '01. The accompanying illustration of a puppy and kitten is one of ten, free-form, self-adhesive stamps that have been issued on a panel promoting that event. The others include three birds, some pansies, two Japanese people and some 'kiddie cartoons'.
If you would like to comment, provide additional information,
or bring any cat stamps to my attention,
please contact me,
Drop in at our Facebook page
Feline Philately index
for more reviews of recent and past issues of cat stamps
from our archives
Fans of Felines
or visit the Purr 'n' Fur home page
Our featured feline Chico (see head of the page) belonged to a lady in the Swiss village of Chesières who lived near the ground-floor office where I worked in the mid-1980s. Every so often he liked to pass by, spend a little time with us and check we were doing everything properly.
Copyright © Patrick Roberts & Purr 'n' Fur UK 2003-12
All rights reserved
Images and content (whether original or used at Purr 'n' Fur with permission) may NOT be reproduced
at another website or otherwise copied or used without prior permission.
Direct linking (hotlinking) to ANY images on this site is strictly forbidden.
If you want something, !
Article written and first published during 2001: reproduced here by the author from June 2005
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The personalities and scandals of a juicy slice of Rhode Island history are the subject of a new opera being performed in July and September. “William Sprague and His Women,” written by local historian Richard Vangermeersch, has been set to music by composer Geoffrey Gibbs, using a mix of original pieces and authentic period songs related to the covered events. Both men are Kingston residents and retired URI professors.
A performance reading of selections, with discussion by the composer, will be presented on Sunday, July 15 at 8 p.m. in the URI Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, 105 Upper College Road, Kingston. Rene de la Garza, Kate Norigian, Deirdre Donovan, Mark Conley and Billy Ray Poli will perform with MIDI accompaniment. Civil War re-enacters Co. B 2nd R.I. Regiment will participate in several selections. The work covers roughly 100 years, from mid-19th to the mid-20th century, focusing on Civil War hero Sprague, the second by that name to serve as governor of Rhode Island, and his wives, daughters and later generations, telling their stories in a non-linear fashion. Residents of Cranston and Providence, Sprague and his celebrity wife Kate Chase built the famous mansion Canonchet in Narragansett. His second wife Inez and their descendants were responsible for much of the development in that town.
Admission is $10 general public, $5 students. Admission proceeds go to support the University of Rhode Island Music Scholarship Fund. Donations toward the restoration of the Governor William Sprague portrait that hangs in the State House will also be accepted by check to: the RI State House Preservation—The Sprague Fund.
The debut performance of the entire opera is slated for Sunday, Sept. 30 at 4 p.m., also in the URI Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, with full cast, Chamber Music Ensemble directed by Brian Cardany and Chorus directed by Mark Conley.
The URI Concert Hall is handicap-accessible. Parking is available in the lot behind the Fine Arts Center, off Bills Road.
For more information, contact Geoffrey Gibbs at 783-1682.
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Their home is a 65’ trawler; their “car” is a Sea Eagle Explorer Kayak
Do you ever wish you could quit your job, quit the rat race, get off the corporate treadmill, and sail off into the sunset? Diane and Ted Greene dreamed it…and then they did it.
Ted was a Director of Information Technology in regional Canadian government; Diane managed big accounts in the software industry. Both grew tired of the stressful grind. And in 2004, they changed their lives by stepping off the corporate treadmill and into their new home, a 65’ custom-built trawler.
Now the Greenes are “live-aboards,” living full time on the water…and loving it. No lawn to mow, no property taxes to pay. “We prefer a living on a boat,” says Ted. “It’s a lifestyle,” says Diane. “We love living on the water. We can move anywhere we like.”
Summers in Toronto, they open their floating home to travelers as “Making Waves Boatel,” Toronto’s only floating Boat Bed & Breakfast. Docked full time at Toronto’s Harbourfront, the Greene’s “boatel” offers unique accommodations for visitors…and great breakfasts.
In the Bahamas, Sea Eagle Explorer Kayak is their “car”
At summer’s end, Diane and Ted take down their boatel shingle for the season and sail their trawler to the Bahamas where they anchor offshore in Georgetown’s Great Exuma Harbor. Just as land-dwellers need cars to get around, the Greenes need a yacht tender – a smaller boat to go between shore and their big trawler. They have an inflatable dinghy and a Sea Eagle Explorer Kayak. “The dinghy is our work boat,” for supplies and groceries, says Diane. “The Explorer Kayak is our pleasure boat.”
And the pleasure may be anything from exploring in the mangroves, to fishing, snorkeling, or spearing a lobster for that evening’s dinner.
“We go to Conception Island Land and Sea Park in the Bahamas,” says Diane. “No motors allowed, paddling only. We go into the inner lagoon through a series of shallow channels. We see turtles there.”
“We wanted a kayak but didn’t know what we needed,” said Diane. “Ted’s brother-in-law has a Sea Eagle. He described it, recommended it, and we bought one. We’ve been real happy with our Explorer Kayak.”
“Every time we go out in the Explorer Kayak, people ask us ‘What is that? Where did you get it?’ I think they have kayak envy.” Diane says, “Our kayak has the web address printed on it, SeaEagle.com , and we tell people to go there to see them.”
The Greenes found a way to make their Sea Eagle pay its own way. “We rent our Sea Eagle to our Boatel guests,” says Diane. “They’ll boat from where we dock along the Toronto waterfront through the harbor and out to an island where they go swimming.”
Winters in the Bahamas, summers operating a one-of-a-kind, floating B&B, all the while tooting around in a Sea Eagle Explorer Kayak “pleasure boat.” Wouldn’t you quit your job for a lifestyle like that?
Do YOU have Sea Eagle STORIES to tell and PHOTOS to share? Our blog readers want to see! Email us your STORIES and PHOTOS today.
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(CNN) -- She has eyelashes but no eyebrows. She has all her fingers but is missing four nails. Her skin is so taut now that she can no longer frown.
But she can still smile.
Her face tells a story of suffering. Her name, Shakira, tells a story of a new journey.
Shakira means thankful.
Last week, 4-year-old Shakira arrived in the United States for what her caretaker, Hashmat Effendi, hopes will be the start of the rest of her life.
Shakira, discovered with severe burns in Pakistan, will undergo reconstructive surgery in January.
She will never look fully normal, but Effendi hopes the surgery will make it easier for Shakira to grow older and help others see what Effendi has seen all along: an effervescent bundle of love.
In 2009, Effendi was on a medical mission with Texas-based House of Charity in Pakistan's Swat Valley. The region's natural beauty was once compared to Switzerland's, but by then it was a Taliban-infested area rife with violence.
One of the doctors found three little girls left in a trash bin.
"Who are they?" the doctor asked.
Where were their parents? Where were they from?
All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack, though U.S. officials say that drones have never struck targets in Swat.
It was not known how the girls came to be where they were but one thing was clear: they'd suffered horrific injuries.
The doctor, who was traveling with House of Charity, took them back to a clinic. They were in grave condition. Two of the girls died, but the littlest one had a chance of making it if she were treated right away.
She was only a year old, Effendi guessed, but small for her age. She was skinny. Dirty. Very bloody. She had fresh burns all over her face, her scalp and on her arms.
Effendi began searching for the little girl's family. She needed their consent before doctors operated on her. But when no one stepped forward, doctors proceeded anyway to treat the burns. Otherwise, they would have to amputate her arm. Otherwise, she might not survive.
Effendi named her Shakira.
"Life," she said, "was a gift for her."
Effendi continued to look for relatives, even scattered posters of Shakira everywhere and solicited the help of the Pakistani army and a government official. But still, no one claimed her.
Shakira was finally taken to Shalimar Hospital in Lahore, where she spent the next three years in a charity ward. Until last week.
Effendi was finally able to bring Shakira back to Houston, where Effendi lives.
When the Qatar Airways flight landed, Shakira turned to Effendi, whom she calls Mummy.
"Are we in America?" she asked.
"Yes," Effendi replied.
Shakira put her hands together and clapped.
On the plane, Shakira had learned to count from 1 to 27 in English. It was a good start, Effendi thought.
House of Charity has helped thousands of children with congenital birth defects or those who have been disfigured in war, but Shakira was special.
Effendi raised three sons, who are grown. Her house once again filled with the mirth of a youngster.
"She's like my tail," Effendi said. "She follows me around all day."
She took Shakira to McDonald's. Shakira gobbled up chicken nuggets. She learned that in America, chips were called French fries and tomato sauce was ketchup.
Effendi was ironing her clothes Tuesday when Shakira ran up to her.
"Mummy, do you love me?" she asked. "How much?"
"This much," Effendi said, gesturing.
Shakira ran into the bathroom, stood in front of the mirror and started screaming.
It was then that Effendi realized Shakira was overwhelmed.
She had gone that day to meet her doctor, Robert McCauley, at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston. He volunteered to do the reconstructive surgery.
Shakira arrived in a turquoise striped dress, black leggings and white lacy socks. She wore beads around her neck and a big pink ring that House of Charity volunteer Larry Maxwell gave her. She called him "Nana," the Urdu word for grandfather.
At the hospital, Shakira touched McCauley's coat buttons; the nurse's stethoscope. She referred to McCauley as her doctor and understood as best a child could that he was trying to make her well.
"It's not easy and it's not a single-day procedure," McCauley said about the surgery. He will start January 16 with her right hand.
He will never be able to give her eyebrows or restore the missing nails on four of her fingers. Sometimes, when Shakira eats spicy food, her flesh feels raw and irritated. She will have to always be careful about that.
He will never be able to fix the severe discoloration on her forehead. But he hopes to reconstruct her nose, fix her eyes.
Shakira took it all in stride at the hospital. But it was that sense of belonging and being loved that was alien for her, Effendi realized. It was overwhelming.
"She needs security," Effendi said. "Yesterday was a very emotional day for her."
Effendi had been working with children for 25 years. But Shakira was teaching her new things.
Effendi hopes Shakira will be adopted by a family in the United States. It would be unfair, she said, to send Shakira back to Pakistan. She has no one there.
For now, Shakira will adjust to life in America in Effendi's home.
Effendi may never know where Shakira came from or who claimed her as a daughter.
But she knows she was able to give Shakira new life -- and a name that could not have been more fitting.
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|Photograph : Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Archive via Flickr Commons|
An odd little photograph this week. It clearly states that it is "The Orchestra, Town Hall Section, Southern General Hospital, Oxford". The Southern General Hospital was one of the many special military hospitals established during the First World War. Based in the Examinations School of Oxford University, it provided care for some 336 officers and 1,210 other ranks. The "orchestra" featured in the photograph looks a rather grand chamber, but whether it is in the Examination School or perhaps Oxford Town Hall, I am not sure. We have guests coming to visit us from Oxford this weekend, so I will see if they can identify the exact location. I doubt even they will be able to shed light on how this photograph found its way into Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Archives. Whatever the reason, there are an abundance of possible prompts for the "themers" amongst us. Just help yourself to a theme and post your post on or around Saturday 21 May 2011.
SEPIA SATURDAY is a weekly meme which encourages bloggers to publish and share old images and photographs. All that is required is for contributors to post an old image (it doesn't have to be in sepia) and provide a few words in explanation. If you could provide a link back to the Sepia Saturday Blog and visit as many of the other contributors as you can, it would also be appreciated. There is no weekly theme, as such, but some people like to use the archive image published with the weekly call as a kind of theme. There is no requirement to adopt such an approach : the choice of image is entirely up to you. Once you have published your Sepia Saturday post, add a link to that post to the Linky List published each week and leave a comment to let everyone know you are joining in.
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Eager for more Endeavour? A new exhibit celebrating Mission 26 opens at the California Science Center.
It's hard to top a mega orbiter that's been into space, but visitors to the California Science Center have felt multiple pulls beyond the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Well, that welcome movie for one. We're referring, of course, to the one that depicts the shuttle's journey from LAX to Exposition Park in time-lapse. It's a crowd favorite; people have hung around for multiple viewings which means they are delaying seeing the real thing, which comes after the film is screened.
Now a new facet to the Endeavour experience has debuted, and it furthers our fascination with its epic, Inglewood trip. It's called "Mission 26: The Big Endeavour," and it opened on Monday, March 11 at the California Science Center.
Picture over 80 photos of that 68-hour journey, many taken by our town's most accoladed photojournalists. Even if you became something of a shuttle buff during its October 2012 journey, you're likely to see some new perspectives in the mix. (Which are your favorites? We like the snapshots of people reaching up to touch a wing, or at least trying -- something rather moving about that.)
In short, the whole spectacle of pulling a gargantuan piece of space transportation through suddenly tiny streets will forever grip us, even if we've now made multiple trips to the Center to see the shuttle in person.
And many of us have: Over one million people have now visited Space Shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center's Samuel Oschin Pavilion, all in under six months.
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Imagine a disability that renders you unable to work. Now imagine you have no income, no savings, and no employer-sponsored insurance. You apply for federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI), only to find that the application process is long and complex. Chances are, you will have wait for a year or two, if not longer, before your first federal disability check comes. And in the meantime, how do you get by?
In the District, as in 37 states, you may qualify for temporary aid. DC’s Interim Disability Assistance is a temporary cash assistance program that provides $270 per month to individuals with disabilities who have applied for SSI and are awaiting a decision. If the SSI application is approved, the federal government reimburses the District for assistance paid during the application period. Not only does IDA help reduce reliance on costly emergency services like homeless shelters and hospital visits, but it facilitates access to pro bono legal representation during the SSI process – all with no administrative costs.
Despite these benefits, funding for IDA has been slashed in recent years, from $5.6 million in FY 2008 to just $1.5 million in FY 2013. As a result, the number of individuals served by the program dropped 80 percent, from 2,900 to 550, even though the need has remained the same. The mayor’s budget has only a modest increase of $125,000 for IDA in FY 2014, enough to provide benefits for only 38 additional individuals. IDA is a good investment in the well-being of residents with disabilities and for the city as a whole. The District can ensure an additional 1,200 residents get this critical assistance in FY 2014 by adding ad additional $3.8 million to the modest budget increase in the mayor’s budget.
For a look at who benefits from IDA and how, check out this short video by DCFPI and So Others Might Eat.
We are eager to support your advocacy efforts. You can reach us at email@example.com or 202.797.8806 ext. 2112.
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As Hurricane Irene plowed its way up the eastern seaboard last weekend, banks and financial institutions turned to their increasingly favorite means of communicating information to customers: social media.
FIs kept the tweets and status updates coming fast and furious during Irene to keep their customers abreast of branch closings, service updates and other issues.
That's no surprise, considering banks' increasing use of social media. According to a report issued by Corporate Insight, almost half of the firms it tracks have multiple Twitter accounts, and 38 percent have more than one Facebook page.
Before Irene hit, many banks already had specific guidelines or a set policy for using Twitter and other social media during emergency situations.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo used its three Twitter channels, Facebook page and company blog to interact with its customers during Irene.
"Social media allows us to interact and serve customers in a more personal way," said Doug Caldwell, social media program manager for the bank. "In the event of an emergency, our social media channels offer us an additional resource to help get our customers the information they need."
Portland, Maine-based TD Bank was another FI that used Twitter heavily during the hurricane.
"Our customers knew to come to Twitter for information during Hurricane Irene," said Rebecca Acevedo, spokesperson for TD Bank. "We were tweeting constant updates."
Acevedo said the company encouraged its customers to go to Twitter for service updates during the storm. In fact, the bank's use of the microblogging site during Irene is part of its larger mission to make Twitter an interactive service channel rather than as a one-way conduit of information.
"We have a team of dedicated tweeters -- that's their sole responsibility," she said. "We try and respond quickly to questions, and will direct message with a customer if there's sensitive information involved. "
TD Bank has also began experimenting using Twitter to host educational seminars, where a bank expert addresses questions for two to three hours on a certain topic. For example, on Mondays the bank has one of its mortgage experts field questions via Twitter for three hours in the afternoon.
"We started it in March and it really has begun to grow," Acevedo said. "We keep getting more and more questions."
Wells Fargo's Caldwell said the bank also uses social media for wide range of purposes, from helping customers find the right student loan to providing information on the integration process during its merger with Wachovia.
"We’ve developed an approach that both allows direct participation in social communities but also the ability to take any personal or account-specific conversations offline, to protect the customer’s privacy and security and leverage other existing customer service channels," he said.
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|Technical Shirts||Technical Polo Shirts||Women's Technical Shirts||Women's Technical Polo Shirts||Rash Guards||Junior Technical Shirts & Rash Guards|
Technical Shirts and Rash Guards
Nothing can ruin a day of sailing faster than uncomfortable or inappropriate clothing. From technical shirts to rash guards, sailing clothing can make a big difference. By wearing active shirts designed for sailing, experienced sailors can prevent any number of potential issues that come as a result of wet, chafing clothing. There are many kinds of active shirts designed for sailing; the most widely used are technical shirts and rash guards. More durable than regular clothing, active shirts are comfortable and wicking. Constructed of a stretch material for the greatest range of motion. Active shirts that are designed specifically for sailing generally provide more water protection than others, and are constructed of fibers that dry extremely quickly.
The most basic type of active shirt is a technical t-shirt or polo and come in a short and long sleeve shirts. We have technical shirts from Crügear, Gill, Henri Lloyd, Camet, SLAM, Patagonia and Musto. Technical shirts come in a variety of styles and materials, both natural and synthetic. Designed for athletic activity, technical shirts can be worn as a base layer to wick away moisture from the body, or on their own, as many have a water resistant finish. Many technical shirts designed for sailing also include anti-microbial technology and are mildew resistant, a must for any serious sailor. Extremely importantly, technical shirts also provide UV protection far beyond that of regular shirts, some even up to 50 SPF, making them great for sailing.
Another essential, especially for dinghy sailing, rash guards protect the body from irritation caused by a harness or PFD. We carry high quality brands like Zhik, Gill and APS. Also called rashies or chafe shirts, rash guards provide a high degree of UV protection, and can be worn in place of technical shirts--some even layer technical shirts with rash guards for warmth. Typically made of Lycra or a similar water resistant material and have flatlock seams rather than the usual seam that stick up. This prevents any possibility of irritation or chafing from the seam. Also, most rash guards are made with a six panel construction, which allows for a greater range of motion.
With all of their benefits, active shirts are simply essential for sailors. Through their high degree of functionality and design, they keep sailors comfortable and dry without sacrificing fashion.
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"And that's when he bit me. Right there." Cristina Jones extends her hand to show the teeth marks below her thumb on her left hand, where alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid bit her in their struggle aboard Flight 63 high over the Atlantic last December. Hermis Moutardier bears wounds from her battle with Reid too. They're just not so visible.
One minute they were flight attendants who adored flying to glamorous destinations for American Airlines. The next, they were on the front line of a war. For Jones and Moutardier, that transformation happened the day two planes from their airline were used in the biggest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. They simply didn't know it then.
In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Jones, a single mother, tried to comfort her 7-year-old son Ian, telling him that the chances of something like that happening on one of her planes were "slim, so slim." It was harder to reassure herself. But she had to work and within two weeks was back in the air. Moutardier, in a chilling instant, remembered working with one of the crew members killed. A month after she returned to work, she suffered a panic attack so paralyzing that she didn't want to get on another flight. Her supervisor told her to go home, but Moutardier willed herself on board. "As a flight attendant, you learn to leave your feelings at the door," she says.
The flights each woman flew last fall were largely uneventful, but many passengers were scared and jittery. "Even if they didn't say anything, you could see it in their faces," says Moutardier. Others, Jones recalls, reacted to the attacks by being "really very respectful and cooperative." But as time passed, Jones says, "it went back to business as usual," with some passengers flouting the rules and behaving rudely. Attendants traded tips on how to distinguish potential terrorists from passengers with air rage.
Those tip-trading sessions proved useful on Dec. 22, when the two flight attendants boarded Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. Although both live in Florida, each holds French citizenship, speaks French fluently (Jones spent part of her childhood in Antibes, Peruvian-born Moutardier is married to a Frenchman) and flew the Paris route often. Flight 63 was jammed with 185 passengers that pre-Christmas Saturday morning. Baggage problems delayed takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport an hour, but everything seemed routine once the plane was airborne. Then a passenger aroused the flight attendants' curiosity. He was a "huge" man, 6 ft. 4 in. and more than 200 lbs. He refused to eat or drink anything, even water, odd behavior on a transatlantic flight that could last up to 10 hours. Jones had been cautioned by another flight attendant to be wary of passengers who didn't accept food on a long flight, so she asked the man three times if he wanted anything. "Usually I think, 'Yeah! Less work for me.' But something about him...seemed strange," she recalls.
Moutardier joked that maybe he was on a diet, but she too asked him if he wanted to eat. "I talked to him in French, assuming he was French. He said he didn't speak French. I wanted to be nice, so I asked where he was from, and he told me Sri Lanka." She didn't believe him. And she was right. For he turned out to be Reid, now 29, a British citizen who investigators believe was an operative in the al-Qaeda network.
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Drug use and upper gastrointestinal complications in children: a case–control study
- Manuela Bianciotto1,
- Elena Chiappini2,
- Irene Raffaldi1,
- Clara Gabiano1,
- Pier-Angelo Tovo1,
- Sara Sollai2,
- Maurizio de Martino2,
- Francesco Mannelli2,
- Vincenzo Tipo3,
- Roberto Da Cas4,
- Giuseppe Traversa4,
- Francesca Menniti-Ippolito4,
- and the Italian Multicenter Study Group for Drug and Vaccine Safety in Children
- 1Regina Margherita Children's Hospital, Turin, Italy
- 2Anna Meyer Children's University Hospital, Florence, Italy
- 3Santobono Paediatric Hospital, Naples, Italy
- 4National Centre for Epidemiology, Italian National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy
- Correspondence to Dr Francesca Menniti-Ippolito, National Centre for Epidemiology, National Institute of Health, Viale Regina Elena 299, Rome 00161, Italy;
- Received 26 March 2012
- Revised 25 October 2012
- Accepted 26 October 2012
- Published Online First 21 December 2012
Objective To evaluate the risk of upper gastrointestinal complications (UGIC) associated with drug use in the paediatric population.
Methods This study is part of a large Italian prospective multicentre study. The study population included children hospitalised for acute conditions through the emergency departments of eight clinical centres. Patients admitted for UGIC (defined as endoscopically confirmed gastroduodenal lesions or clinically defined haematemesis or melena) comprised the case series; children hospitalised for neurological disorders formed the control group. Information on drug and vaccine exposure was collected through parental interview during the children's hospitalisation. Logistic regression was used to estimate ORs for the occurrence of UGIC associated with drug use adjusted for age, clinical centre and concomitant use of any drug.
Results 486 children hospitalised for UGIC and 1930 for neurological disorders were enrolled between November 1999 and November 2010. Drug use was higher in cases than in controls (73% vs 54%; p<0.001). UGICs were associated with the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) (adjusted OR 2.9, 95% CI 2.1 to 4.0), oral steroids (adjusted OR 2.9, 95% CI 1.7 to 4.8) and antibiotics (adjusted OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.8 to 3.1). The duration of use of these drug categories was short (range 1–8 days). Paracetamol showed a lower risk (adjusted OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.5 to 2.6) compared to ibuprofen (adjusted OR 3.7, 95% CI 2.3 to 5.9), although with partially overlapping CIs.
Conclusions NSAIDs, oral steroids and antibiotics, even when administered for a short period, were associated with an increased risk of UGIC.
What is already known on this topic
Gastrointestinal toxicity in association with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and corticosteroids in adults is well documented.
There are only a few studies describing the association between gastrointestinal toxicity and NSAID use in children.
What this study adds
Our study confirms a threefold increased risk of upper gastrointestinal complications (UGIC) associated with either NSAID or oral corticosteroid use.
A twofold increased risk of UGIC was estimated for paracetamol and antibiotics.
Mucosal damage to the gastrointestinal tract may lead to a wide spectrum of disorders, from asymptomatic minimal lesions, to severe, potentially fatal, complications.1 Upper gastrointestinal complications (UGICs) such as bleeding are often associated with drug use, especially non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), oral steroids and oral anticoagulants.2 ,3
NSAIDs inhibit the cyclooxygenase enzymes catalysing the production of prostaglandins and thromboxane, with consequent reduced release of gastric mucus, inhibition of bicarbonate production and alteration of local microcirculation.4 Steroids can also enhance gastrin secretion and induce parietal cell hyperplasia with increased acid production.5
In adults, a small number of studies have specifically examined the association between corticosteroids and gastrointestinal toxicity6–8 and there is an extensive body of literature on gastrointestinal complications related to drug consumption, but few studies have focused on children.5 ,9–13
Since 1999 active surveillance of the role of drugs and vaccines in the occurrence of specific clinical conditions responsible for the hospitalisation of paediatric patients has been conducted in Italy. This surveillance is useful for highlighting or confirming adverse effects associated with drug and vaccine use in children.14–17
In the present article we focus on the occurrence of hospitalisation for UGIC in association with drugs frequently used in the paediatric population, with particular emphasis on antipyretics/analgesics, steroids and antibiotics.
The study population consists of all children admitted through the emergency departments (ED) of eight Italian paediatric hospitals in Genoa, Turin, Padua, Florence, Rome (two hospitals), Naples and Palermo between 1 November 1999 and 30 November 2010. Children were enrolled regardless of drug and vaccine use, if they had the following conditions: endoscopically confirmed UGIC (or clinical haematemesis and melena); neurological disorders; non-infectious muco-cutaneous diseases and vasculitis; or thrombocytopenia (platelet count <100 000/µl). Children with concomitant diagnoses of cancer or immunodeficiency and age less than 1 month were excluded.
Information on the reason for hospital admission was derived from the ED records, and the final diagnosis was retrieved from the clinical records after discharge. UGIC cases comprise all children whose reason for admission included haematemesis/melena and children who had received an endoscopy during hospitalisation and were discharged with a diagnosis of gastroduodenal lesion. The following conditions were defined as gastroduodenal lesions on endoscopy: gastric and/or duodenal ulcer, and gastric and/or duodenal erosions (with or without bleeding).
Parents were interviewed, using a structured questionnaire, during the hospital admission of their child. All medicines administered in the previous 3 weeks and all vaccines received in the previous 12 weeks were noted. Information on drug use, including indication, dose, duration of treatment, prescriber (physician or self-medication) and other personal data (age, gender, weight, height, chronic diseases, parents’ education) was also collected.
ORs of clinically defined (haematemesis and melena) or endoscopically confirmed UGIC associated with drug use were estimated according to a case–control study design. Drug exposure to specific drugs or drug categories in children admitted with UGIC (cases) was compared to exposure in children admitted for neurological disorders (controls). This control group was chosen because drug exposure in children hospitalised for neurological disorders accurately reflects drug exposure in the population from which UGIC cases were derived.
Pre-existing chronic diseases were divided into six categories: allergies, gastrointestinal diseases (gastroesophageal reflux, coeliac disease, ulcerative colitis), haematological disorders, recurrent infections, neurological problems and birth defects. Indications for drug use were classified into nine groups: allergy, asthma, pain or headache, fever, gastrointestinal diseases, otitis, upper respiratory tract infections (URTI), prophylaxis and other indications. The use of oral steroids was categorised as appropriate or not, according to the approved indications; we considered as appropriate prescriptions for asthma and allergy, while all prescriptions for other indications (eg, fever, cough, otitis, pharyngitis) were classified as inappropriate.
Categorical variables, presented as numbers and percentages, were compared using the χ² test, while continuous variables, reported as median (range), were evaluated using the Mann–Whitney U test. All tests were two sided and significance was set at p<0.05.
To estimate the adjusted ORs and related 95% CIs, we used the multivariate logistic regression model. ORs were adjusted for age, clinical centre, calendar year, presence of chronic diseases and concomitant use of any other drug. Year of inclusion in the study and chronic diseases did not modify the estimates and, thus, were not included in the final logistic model. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS V.17.0 (SPSS, Chicago, Illinois, USA).
Organisation and ethics
The protocol of the study was approved by the ethics committee of each clinical centre. Informed consent for the use of data for research purposes was obtained before parents were interviewed. The study was coordinated by the National Centre of Epidemiology of the National Institute of Health.
A total of 486 children hospitalised for UGIC and 1930 for neurological disorders were enrolled in the study. Of the children hospitalised for UGIC, 324 (66.6%) were admitted for haematemesis, 31 (6.4%) for melena, and 29 (6.0%) for both haematemesis and melena. The remaining 102 children (21.0%) who were admitted for symptoms compatible with gastroduodenal lesions (other than haematemesis/melena), such as abdominal pain and vomiting, underwent endoscopy during hospitalisation and were discharged with a diagnosis of UGIC. An endoscopy was performed in 248 (51%) of the 486 UGIC cases.
The most frequent diagnoses in the 1930 children included in the control group were afebrile convulsions (822, 43%), disturbances of consciousness (such as syncope, faintness, dizziness, somnolence) (530, 27%), peripheral neuropathy (78, 4%) and extrapyramidal symptoms (65, 3%).
The majority of cases (302 children, 62.1%) were admitted to Santobono Hospital (Naples). The main characteristics of cases and controls are summarised in table 1. Males were equally represented in both groups, and cases were 5 months younger than controls (p=0.01). However, age did not have a confounding effect when taken into account in the logistic model. Seventy-five of the 486 cases (15.4%) had concomitant chronic diseases versus 265 of the 1930 controls (13.7%) (p=0.37).
Chronic gastrointestinal diseases were uncommon, although more frequent in cases than in controls (2.5% vs 1.1%; p=0.06). The presence of such conditions was an independent risk factor for UGIC manifestations with an adjusted OR of 2.3 (95% CI 1.1 to 4.9). However, after adjustment for the personal history of pre-existing gastrointestinal diseases, no confounding effect was found on the estimates. The number of children who had received at least one drug within the 3 weeks preceding the hospital admission was 353 among cases and 1042 among controls (73% vs 54%; p<0.001). The mean number of drugs per child was 1.7 among cases and 1.1 among controls (p<0.001). Approximately 17% of these drugs were consumed without medical advice in both groups. The drugs reported in the personal history were those most frequently prescribed in the paediatric population in Italy, that is, antibiotics, paracetamol, NSAIDs and steroids.
Duration of use was quite short and similar for all study drugs. The median duration for NSAID administration was 3 days in cases and 2 days in controls (p=0.41). One child (4 years old) admitted with haematemesis had been treated for 80 days with indomethacin and ibuprofen for arthritis. The median duration of use for steroids was 3 days in cases and 4 days in controls (p=0.16). The indication was reported in 79 of the 87 steroid users (91%); in 17 children (21.5%) it was an approved indication (eg, asthma, urticaria).
An increased risk of UGIC was found for the use of NSAIDs, paracetamol, corticosteroids and antibiotics. The adjusted OR among NSAID users was 2.9 (95% CI 2.1 to 4.0). The risk estimates of individual NSAIDs and paracetamol presented largely overlapping CIs (table 2).
On the basis of the number of children who visited the ED of the participating centres in the year 2010, we calculate that around 2.1 million children were treated in the participating EDs during the study period. Thus, we can roughly estimate that during the study period around 2.4 per 10 000 children with ED visits were admitted for UGIC.
In this article we provided evidence of an increased risk of UGICs associated with drug use in the paediatric population.
The proportion of children who had received at least one drug in the 3 weeks preceding hospital admission was higher among cases than among controls. Significantly increased risks were estimated for NSAIDs, steroids and antibiotics. In agreement with our findings, an increased risk for NSAIDs was also observed in a case–crossover study of 177 children with gastrointestinal bleeding.9 The adjusted OR for NSAIDs reached 8.2 (95% CI 2.6 to 26.0), with one third of cases attributable to exposure to NSAIDs administered at analgesic or antipyretic doses.9 However, as underlined by the authors, the study has several limitations and the estimated risks appear higher than those observed in adults,2 since the findings may have been influenced by the limited dataset and a recall bias could not be excluded.9
Among NSAIDs, ibuprofen was the most commonly used drug. Although ibuprofen is safe in most children,18 the association between gastrointestinal bleeding and ibuprofen use is well known in both adults2 and children.10 We estimated an increased risk of UGIC associated with ibuprofen (adjusted OR 3.7, 95% CI 2.3 to 5.9). It has to be noted that our estimate is included in the large CI of the case–crossover study9 and overlaps with findings reported in adults (a twofold to fourfold increase in relative risks).2 It is assumed that gastrointestinal bleeding is associated with chronic use of NSAIDs.19 However, in our study the mean duration of ibuprofen use in cases was 4 days, so UGIC may occur even during a short course therapy. We confirm the lower level of gastrotoxicity, in comparison with NSAIDs, of paracetamol, the most widely used drug in the paediatric population in Italy.
Steroid prescribing was off-label in a large proportion of cases and was mostly used for URTI or fever. This finding underlines the need for educational programmes in Italy to promote the correct use of steroids in children. Notably, the association with UGIC was limited to oral steroid use as no increased risk was observed among users of inhaled steroids.
Although poorly documented in the literature, gastrointestinal adverse reactions, featuring diarrhoea, nausea and abdominal pain, related to antibiotic administration, are usually mild and reversible with treatment cessation.20 ,21 There are very few data on the upper gastrointestinal toxicity of antibiotics. Immune -mediated thrombocytopenia is often implicated in bleeding mechanisms associated with antibiotics, in particular β-lactams.22 In our study, however, children hospitalised for UGIC did not have a concomitant diagnosis of thrombocytopenia. The reason for an increased risk of UGIC among antibiotic users, after taking into account the effect of age and concomitant use of other drugs, remains unclear.11 ,22 ,23
Our study has several potential limitations. Cases were significantly younger than controls; however, the risk estimates did not change after age was taken into account in the logistic model. An endoscopy was performed only in half of the children diagnosed with UGIC; however, all cases without endoscopic confirmation had haematemesis or melena at admission. The risk estimates did not change when the analysis was restricted to children who underwent endoscopy.
As in other case–control studies, the possibility of a recall bias cannot be excluded. However, such a bias cannot explain the observed risk estimates since the ascertainment of exposure was based on the same procedure in cases and controls (interviewing parents during their child's hospitalisation). Children hospitalised for neurological problems are a suitable control group for patients with UGICs. Both cases and controls were admitted through EDs for an acute condition and, consequently, drug use preceding symptoms causing hospitalisation should not differ between cases and controls.
Pre-existing chronic conditions were unlikely to have influenced the results, since the proportions of children with chronic conditions were similar in the two groups. However, the small sample size of some subgroups may have limited our ability to draw definitive conclusions regarding some specific drugs.
Our study indicates that UGIC is a rare event (486 children hospitalised in just over 11 years). Although, given the case–control design, we could not calculate incidence, the number of UGIC patients admitted through EDs can be roughly estimated as 2.4 per 10 000 children with ED visits. Published incidence data are limited to the paediatric intensive care unit population,24 which cannot be compared with children who develop an UGIC as outpatients. Our study suggests that the absolute risk of UGIC is low, nevertheless it remains to be determined if all prescriptions were really necessary. The appropriate use of drugs in children should be promoted in order to prevent the occurrence of serious adverse events.
The Italian Multicenter Study Group for Drug and Vaccine Safety in Children The Italian Multicenter Study Group for Drug and Vaccine Safety in Children: Francesca Menniti-Ippolito, Roberto Da Cas, Luciano Sagliocca, Giuseppe Traversa (National Center for Epidemiology, National Institute of Health, Rome); Fernanda Ferrazin, Carmela Santuccio, Loriana Tartaglia, Francesco Trotta (Italian Medicines Agency, Rome); Pasquale Di Pietro, Salvatore Renna, Rossella Rossi, Bianca Domenichini, Stefania Gamba, Francesco Trovato (Giannina Gaslini Paediatric Hospital, Genoa); Pier-Angelo Tovo, Manuela Bianciotto, Carmelina Calitri, Clara Gabiano, Irene Raffaldi, Antonio Urbino (Regina Margherita Paediatric Hospital, Turin); Liviana Da Dalt, Valentina Favero, Laura Giordano, Maura Baraldi, Federica Bertuola, Eleonora Lorenzon, Francesca Parata, Giorgio Perilongo, Silvia Vendramin (Department of Paediatrics, University of Padua); Monica Frassineti, Anna Maria Calvani, Elena Chiappini, Maurizio De Martino, Claudia Fancelli, Francesco Mannelli, Rachele Mazzantini, Sara Sollai, Elisabetta Venturini (Anna Meyer Children's University Hospital, Florence); Nicola Pirozzi, Umberto Raucci, Antonino Reale, Rossella Rossi (Emergency Department, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Rome); Nadia Mores, Giulia Bersani, Alessia De Nisco, Antonio Chiaretti, Riccardo Riccardi, Costantino Romagnoli (Pharmacology and Paediatrics and Developmental Neuroscience, Università Cattolica S. Cuore, Rome); Vincenzo Tipo, Michele Dinardo, Teresa Pisapia (Santobono Paediatric Hospital, Naples); Annalisa Capuano, Elisabetta Parretta, Concita Rafaniello (Department of Experimental Medicine, Section of Pharmacology ‘L. Donatelli’, Second University of Naples, Naples); Fortunata Fucà, Eleonora Di Rosa (Giovanni Di Cristina Paediatric Hospital, Palermo).
Funding This study was funded by the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) (Fasc. ISS-T7H).
Competing interests None.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
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In a resounding proof of the recent surge in Dubai's economic prospects, the chances of the UAE's second largest emirate defaulting on its sovereign debt fell to less than one in five yesterday, according to CMAVision's Sovereign Risk Monitor.
At the same time, CMA data showed that the American states of Illinois and California were ranked among the 10 highest default probabilities in the world, at 7th and 9th place, respectively, and ahead of Iraq, which is ranked No. 10 in the world.
The cost of insuring five-year Dubai debt against default has plunged to below 300 basis points, and stood at 290.65bp on Monday, below not only certain European and regional economies, but also below that of some economies perceived to be more stable, such as India's and a couple of American states.
With the emirate's economic engine roaring back to life in 2011 and charging ahead full steam in 2012, Dubai's five-year credit default swaps (CDS) have now dropped by more than 50 per cent since peaking at 655bp in February 2010. Dubai, which once featured among the top 10 default probabilities, has been out of the list of riskiest sovereigns since the third quarter of 2011.
On the other hand, the State of Illinois has a default probability of
35.64 per cent, according to yesterday's CMA data, while California's default probability is only slightly lower at 34 per cent.
The world's riskiest nation, in terms of a probability of a default on its sovereign debt, is Greece (no surprises there), which has a 99.89 per cent chance of defaulting on its debt. It is followed by its European peer Cyprus, which has a 57.3 per cent chance of defaulting on its sovereign debt.
Argentina (49.87 per cent), Pakistan (43.28 per cent) and Venezuela
(41.45 per cent) comprise the world's top five riskiest nations in terms of a sovereign debt default, according to CMAVision's data.
Eastern European nations Ukraine (No. 6; default probability of 39.78 per cent) and Portugal (No. 8; 35.23 per cent) comprise the remaining among the world's top 10 default probabilities as of yesterday.
According to the latest available quarterly report, Dubai's cumulative probability of default is also below that of India (29.5 per cent).
India's proxy default risk stood at 381 basis points at the end of the second quarter of 2011.
Since peaking at 655bp in February 2010, Dubai's five-year CDS spread has shrunk considerably despite ongoing global economic uncertainty.
The emirate's real estate sector has seen its fiortunes turn around remarkably this year, with property prices surging back to boom-time levels in some in-demand Dubai residential communities.
The real estate sector's revival is also evident in the number of new projects being launched by property developers in Dubai, a sign that demand has definitely returned for quality projects and developments.
With an obvious improvement in the regional economy, intra-region investment flows are picking up once again, with Dubai being an obvious beneficiary. UAE's banks are now seen active in Dubai's property market again, with recent reports pointing to an uptick in bank lending and mortgages.
Improved bank liquidity conditions and a gradually declining inter-bank lending rate means that the country's financial institutions are once again flush with cash and are back in the business of offering loans, thanks to their comfortable capital adequacy levels.
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Fire demolishes historic Leominster building
LEOMINSTER, Mass. (WHDH) -- Massive flames tore through a former hotel on Main Street in Leominster, collapsing part of the historic building.
The fierce flames consumed the building fast and injured two firefighters.
The building has stood in Leominster for more than a hundred years. It was damaged beyond repair in a matter of hours.
“It’s been here forever, they just renovated the bar around the corner, put 100k into it,” said Joe Ouellette, who lives nearby.
The former Colombia Hotel on Main Street was most recently home to a handful of businesses and a few dozen apartments.
Fire officials said around 11 p.m. Saturday, a fire began in the attic and quickly spread.
“It was burning down the hallway towards the bank, and they were trying to get ahead of it, but they could just never get ahead of it,” said Dep. Chief Scott Cordio, Leominster Fire Dept.
Everyone had already been evacuated when the fire grew out of control.
The blaze soon went to six alarms, ladder trucks from Leominster and several neighboring towns surrounded the giant building.
When the roof collapsed, it knocked out the top part of the brick wall, crushing the cars below and nearly seriously injuring several firefighters.
“They got lucky, part of the wall landed in the bucket, a beam landed on the side of them, they received minor injuries,” said Dep. Chief Cordio.
The two injured firefighters are expected to be okay. The 30 to 40 people displaced are currently staying at a local hotel.
City leaders are already vowing to help them and the business owners who lost their shops.
“The water damage, there was four inches of water when I walked through, so it’s pretty devastating. Some pieces I saw were completely lost,” said business owner, Diane Gariepy.
“We have some insurance, but it's our livelihood in a way, it's just really sad,” said another business owner, Colette Smith.
Fire officials said the building will have to be torn down, but not before fire investigators get inside to figure out what sparked this historic blaze.
“It's gonna leave a big scar when they tear it down, it's been here forever,” said Dep. Chief Cordio.
“The history of the building is something that if it has to come down, you're never gonna be able to replace the history that's been lost here,” said David Cormier, Leominster City Council.
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Pseudo-Religiosity is Leading Human Civilization to Commit Suicide
Irfan Ahmad Khan, Ph.D.
True religiosity, is seriously concerned with human destiny and it invites all conscientious people—even those who have, apparently, rejected all religion—to work together to save humankind. True religiosity is both progressive and authentic. Religion and Science are good friends.
What is the real issue?
I do not think there is war between the East and the West or between the “Muslim” World and the Non-Muslim World. Nor does there exist, in the real world, such an issue as a “Clash between Two Civilizations” i.e. between Islam and the West—as is some times very ignorantly proclaimed. Rather, the ideals and the higher values in Islam and the ideals and the higher values in the West are very much the same. It is so because Islam stands for the Divine Guidance revealed to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and other messengers of God; while “the West” expresses the yearning, in modern times, of the human mind and spirit toward very similar higher concerns. The West as such is a movement which was initiated as an awakening in the geographical west, at a time when the followers of these messengers were failing in their duty to liberate humans from their mutual slaveries and to lead the world toward peace, prosperity and progress.
Perhaps, there is a war between two groups: one of these—in spite of huge opposition of conscientious people of the West—claims to be a custodian and representative of “Western Civilization” without practicing the higher values for which the West stands. The other group, some of whose members are not ashamed of committing a most heinous crime i.e. creating terror through murder of innocent civilians, which according to the Qur’an (25: 68-70), would bring to its doers (unless they repent and correct themselves) eternal punishment of Hell, still considers itself a defender of Islam and Muslims. However, the rest of humankind agrees that they have done the greatest disservice to Islam.
The emergence of such a group within the community which, believes that the Qur’an is its most basic source of guidance, became possible because the present generation of believers has lost its direct and fresh touch with their book. The contemporary believers, instead of deriving—in their own situation and with their own minds—any fresh inspiration from the Divine Words, have, in-authentically, inherited an understanding of the Book, from their various “pious” forefathers. One wonders that it is the case in spite of serious Qur’anic criticism of those who blindly follow their leaders, just as a herd of sheep would follow their shepherd. The Qur’an calls these blind followers, “disbelievers” or “kafirs” (2: 170-171). The believers, on the other hand, reflect upon signs of God or ayat- Allah. They ponder over the signs/verses of the Divine Book. So they continue discovering meanings in the phenomena of nature and human history. Everywhere they see Hands of God, The Wise and The All-Knowing, working all the time. They believe that they have to answer to God for the use of their own intellectual faculties. Only hypocrites do not reflect; their hearts/minds are locked (46: 24).
What is Pseudo-Religiosity?
Thus in-authenticity is the mother of pseudo-religiosity. But what is pseudo-religiosity? While true religiosity is concerned with human life, pseudo-religiosity makes people forgetful of their social obligations and their duty to the Earth and its inhabitants. These pseudo-believers would display great irresponsibility during their manipulation of Earth’s physical, botanical and zoological resources. False religiosity is showy. See the Quranic Surah Al Ma’un (107) which explains that pseudo-religiosity is the real enemy of Religion. Pseudo-worship is merely a social function. It acts like a cover to hide people’s greed for power, wealth and lust.
Pseudo-religiosity sometimes pretends to be other-worldly. The purpose is to make the worshippers neglectful of their duties for which they are accountable to God as well as to their fellow humans! They even do not see that Divine promises of reward in the Hereafter are only for those believers who are seriously engaged, here on earth, in creating a better future for humankind. The love of the Hereafter helps the virtuous in their striving for peace and justice, in the presence of all kind of hardship and in spite of persecution by the unjust powers. They continue their struggle even when there is no hope for success.
The Qur’an reports the presence of a group of activists who falsely claim to be believers. They are further aggravating the situation for the remedy of which the Quranic Movement was initiated. Due to their inability to see the corruption which these pseudo-believers have been creating, they say `we are only setting things right’ (2:11-12). In spite of all the injustice they commit, they say they are fighting for justice. Today’s pseudo-believers also manifest similar traits.
The other cover under which these pseudo-believers hide themselves is that of tradition. They are unable to look forward toward a bright future; so they always look backward and feel proud of a past which they see as their Golden Age. Pseudo-religiosity fails to be progressive.
True religiosity is both authentic and progressive (14:24-25). It is firmly rooted in the Revealed Guidance and it meets the challenges of the existing human situation with wisdom, courage and patience. It is like an ever-growing, evergreen tree, which is firmly rooted in the ground and, all the time, keeps bearing fresh fruits. In this light, Islam is the continuing process of understanding and living the Revealed Guidance. See the Model of Sunnah which is itself a process - 23 years of understanding and living the Text by the first generation of believers under the guidance of the Prophet. The Global Muslim Community keeps this Model before its eyes and continues its striving as reader of the Book, in changing human situations and with its growing abilities to understand, i.e. with the progress in science, technology, philosophy, law, art and literature. Through advancement in human knowledge, God is preparing their minds to develop a better understanding of Divine Words. Likewise, a religiously plural world is another opportunity to learn through interaction with those who carry different religious traditions.
The believing community does need good teachers. However, after the Prophet, no scholar or Imam is above criticism. And every follower of the Prophet is duty-bound to reflect over the signs (ayat) of the Book, building direct relationship with Divine Words, understanding, afresh, their meanings and practical implications from the perspective of one’s own experience, but always welcoming all genuine criticism.
Very much like the progress in the field of science, the progress in Islamic thought, is necessarily the outcome of Ummah’s collective effort to authenticate its understanding of the Divine Text. The Global Muslim Community does not alienate itself from the rest of humankind. It fully shares all of its intellectual endeavors.
True religiosity has a tradition of thinking with open minds. I present Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and the first generation of their believers as witness. That is really our Golden Age. Pseudo-believers alone are people with closed minds.
In our plural world of degenerated faith communities, the West is also conducting itself like an umbrella faith community.
The above is not a picture of our real world. I was dealing only with the ideal world. The world, we want to create. What we want to be. I, therefore, bring myself back to the real world. And this time I will open my discussion with the thesis I presented in 1997 in Granada, Spain in a seminar organized by UNESCO, on “Education for the Culture of Peace”. I presented the idea that faith communities, like those which follow Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are, in fact, peace missions, initiated by great messengers of God. Today these missions are in a state of degeneration. For their regeneration, they need movements on intra-faith as well as interfaith level. Our interfaith work and intra-faith work will enlighten and empower each other. It will give us both authenticity and progress and thus help in the development of true religiosity. Together, we shall work for a world where there is peace, justice, prosperity, freedom and progress.
Work is already initiated on both levels so we do not have to start from scratch.
It was due to the impact of West that so many revivalist movements arose in various faith communities in the twentieth century and in the same century, the present progress of interfaith movements became possible. By the end of the twentieth century, we developed a clear understanding that we have to liberate ourselves from both, pseudo-science as well as pseudo-religion. We realized humanity is not better off after ousting Religion from human life and limiting the role of Religion to worship places. However, there should be no more fighting in the name of Religion. Rather, people of various faiths should develop a better understanding among themselves and work together for common objectives.
God is making all this happen, the way God has been leading the progress in science, technology, art, literature and philosophy, and the way God sent prophets and messengers throughout the world, according to a systematic plan. However, if God has been doing all this, people of good intention should also come forward to work together. This is the call of true religiosity. If we respond to this call, we qualify for more of Divine Help.
The world is going the wrong way because pseudo-religiosity has taken hold of worldly affairs. But pseudo-religiosity does not have any solid ground to stand upon.
When The Reality arrives, the Falsehood will fade away (17:81).
If truly religious people will work together, the pseudo-religiosity will wither away. Contemporary Interfaith Movement has to be a striving toward true religiosity; as such it should focus on the real problems of humanity. The most central of these is wealth being accumulated in fewer hands. Hunger, poverty, and other related issues are only byproducts of increasing economic disparity. Those, who are well-off, have a duty towards those who are economically broken and they are accountable for it to the humankind as well to the Lord of humanity. Charity and relief are not sufficient, systematic-change is required. The next in line is social injustice and discrimination, due to differences in sex, race, etc.
However the other problem which has produced a state of emergency throughout the Globe, has been created by pseudo-religiosity itself—perhaps, to divert our attention from the above real issue. It is “The Terror-War” problem, which calls for our first attention.
Through the First and Second Great Wars, the West changed the meaning and concept of war. Now `war’ necessarily involves killing of innocent civilians—something totally unacceptable to human conscience. The situation became worse after the invention and use of the nuclear weapons on August 6 and 9, 1945—also by some power of the geographical west, in spite of the opposition of all conscientious people of the East and West.
Those who have the ability to think in human terms, who have a real concern with such issues and who can rise above their own sectarian/nationalistic considerations, are, according to my definition, truly religious people - even if pseudo-religiosity has turned them into secularists. This Dialogue is an invitation to all conscientious people to share their concerns, to take a clear stand concerning these issues and to work out a plan for future collective action.
*In the above, I discussed only the development of pseudo-religiosity among Muslims and not its counterpart among Christians. Our Christian friends can explain better how the emergence of the first group became possible among so-called followers of Jesus.—Irfan Ahmad Khan, Ph.D is President Emeritus, World Council of Muslims for Interfaith Relations
Originally published at http://www.muslimsweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1210&Itemid=67
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Dog Lost, based on a true story, is Ingrid Lee's first novel.
Ingrid grew up in East York, and then moved to a northern Toronto suburb. As a young girl, she was very quiet, and she loved to read. She wanted to be like her hero, Madame Curie, so she studied very hard when she wasn't reading.
When she grew up, Ingrid became a teacher. She taught classes and designed curriculum plans for the Board of Education. While she wrote lesson plans and watched her own children grow up, she started writing fiction based on her family and life experiences. Now, her ideas pop upon her suddenly, and she has to scramble "to find a pencil before the ideas evaporate." Ingrid prefers to write about life as it is, nothing perfect but everything unique and special.
Ingrid Lee writes whenever she has a spare moment and lives with her family in Toronto, Canada.
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Don’t Get Tick-eled This Spring
With the onset of spring and especially the outburst of warm weather we had about two weeks ago, ticks are on my mind. We have two great dogs in our household, Ray and Zed. And we love to take them with us either on a hike or brook fishing but they are tick magnets. We’ve already been finding them on our short haired, yellow pups but it doesn’t take much hair for the little tickie buggers to disappear into our pup’s undercoats. And even though we religiously apply Frontline to them, we are always on high alert.
One of my prior posts entitled
“Doesn’t It Just Tick You Off?”
displays a map of tick prone states in the eastern half of the U.S. and there’s a lot of red in New England. But now I’ve just found another tick map, this time of our state showing the occurrences of Lyme Disease per county and it’s very alarming.
Living in Waldo County I’m afraid we are on the doorstep of being the next hotbed of Lyme Disease. And it’s interesting that the cases seem to be moving up the coast.
“the woods are lovely, dark and deep”
but BE CAREFUL when you are enjoying our wonderful (I was going to say marvelous but I guess that word isn’t used much anymore according to someone higher up than me) Maine outdoors.
So please, with a little caution, lets eliminate our red counties..sorry Governor LePage..
Tick ID Game;
You can also find me at:
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Join Chinyere Minott for an exercise that targets the core while working the shoulders, arms and glutes.
Read the full transcript »
Opposite Arm and Leg Lateral Reach Exercise Hi. My name is Chinyere originally from Jamaica. Fitness is not just the physical element but it’s also mental and spiritual. Now living in Calabasas, California. Find something that you’re passionate about, have fun with it and enjoy. Today we’re going to be doing the opposite arm, leg lateral reach. That’s a really good exercise for your thighs and also for the muscles in your hips. To do this exercise, we want to make sure, of course proper alignment of the body, neutral position. I want to make sure that the toes are pointing forward and not outward, okay? You’re going to have one hand on the hip, actually would be this hand and the opposite arm would be out, the other leg about six to 10 inches off the ground. So, lift and down, lift and down, lift and down. And then we’re going to do on the other side because you really keep things balanced here, so you’re going to lift this had which will be your right. I know we get the left and right confused sometimes. So we lift the right hand and it’s going to be left like six to 10 inches off the ground. So that’s up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. To make it even more basic, you can use a chair. You have one hand on the chair, the other hand on your hip and you take your leg out and raise six to 10 inches off the ground, and lower. Raise and lower. And you do the same on the other side, raise and lower, raise and lower. And this is a great way you can do to keep it really, really basic if you think that it’s too much to have one-arm out and the other leg out. And it’s great exercise to do and have fun.
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Dubai may use sovereign fund to repay debt
Dubai could use the $3.8 billion raised by its sovereign wealth fund to pay for its debts, as Dubai entities still have about $10 billion due next year.
December 6, 2011 3:46 by Reuters
…premium on the bonds to reflect the potential risks associated with timely and full repayment.
Jafza’s 7.5 billion dirham ($2 billion) 2.991 percent sukuk, or Islamic bond, maturing next November was yielding 11.996 percent on Tuesday, up from 10.3 percent about a month ago.
DIFCI’s $1.25 billion 0.713 percent sukuk rallied slightly on Tuesday, but the yield has risen over 3 percent on the bonds since the beginning of November.
“We believe it is DIFCI that is most likely to rely on direct government support in conjunction with refinancing its maturing debt obligations in 2012,” ratings agency Moody’s said on Tuesday, noting the Dubai government is directly exposed to DIFCI, which runs the city’s financial freezone, having given it two loans.
The cost to insure 5-year Dubai debt at 415 basis points (bps), was little changed from Monday’s close, according to Markit data. (By Amran Abocar and Mirna Sleiman; Additional reporting by Rachna Uppal, Editing by Sitaraman Shankar)
Pages: 1 2
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Here are the main points raised in Ed Miliband's conference
address that affect small businesses - and under the summary you'll
find reactions to the speech from business lobby groups.
Much repeats the Miliband proposals I summarised in
Monday's blog, though the emphasis on international trade here
is interesting. (And admittedly yesterday I maybe mistakenly echoed
the 'Red Ed' tag being bandied around by the press, when he's
actually positioned himself more centrally than that.)
The promise to business
"I will make Labour the party of enterprise and also the party
of small business."
What it means: This is pretty standard rhetoric
from a party leader. They tend to always give a nod to small
businesses - the real proof is in the proposals pudding.
"This new generation demands responsibility from business."
"We need a tax system for business that rewards responsibility:
to pay a living wage; to provide high quality apprenticeships; and
"I remember during this campaign I met some school dinner
ladies. They had to buy their own uniforms, their shift patterns
were being changed at a moment's notice, frankly conference they
were being exploited."
What it means: As I said on Monday, Miliband is
pro-worker, and expects businesses to live up to his expectations
of a fair society. He wants to make working conditions better for
the individual - with a fair wage (see below), better work-life
balance and generally better treatment of workers. (The sympathy
for the dinner ladies examples highlights all this.) These ideas
are obviously all positives for individuals in society, but will
inevitably cause more red tape and headaches for employers.
The opportunity: international trade
"I want British businesses, large and small, to be able to make
the most of the advantages of globalisation. New Labour was right
to be enthusiastic about the opportunities that come in a more
connected world: the movement of goods and services, the chance to
travel, the new markets for our companies."
What it means: No clear policies laid out yet,
but hopefully this means increased support for small businesses
looking to trade internationally. We think UK small businesses can
benefit hugely from importing/exporting and trading overseas if
they do things sensibly, so this could be great news.
"We have to challenge the old thinking that flexible labour
markets are always the answer. Employers should not be allowed to
exploit migrant labour in order to undercut wages. And if we have
free movement of labour across Europe we need proper labour
standards in our economy, including real protection for agency
What it means: Using migrant workers and
cutting costs by paying them lowly is by no means a standard among
small businesses, but it is something done by a good few. Stricter
regulation in this area could choke things up for small businesses,
even if it means fairer working conditions for agency workers. It's
a painful irony that protecting individual employees through
legislation spells more red tape and difficulty for their
Increase to the national minimum wage?
"I remember a care worker I met in Durham. [...] She told me
that she thought a fair wage would be £7 an hour because after all
she would get that for stacking shelves at the local
"I believe in responsibility in every part of our society.
That's why I believe in not just a minimum wage but the foundation
of our economy in the future must be a living wage."
What it means: Miliband has made it clear he
believes in a higher national minimum wage (which he calls the
living wage and wants to be set at £7). How far he plans to extend
this (will it be for all businesses or just those larger and more
successful ones that can really afford it?) is apparently undecided
- but small business owners could be hit hard if the minimum wage
Reactions from the business world
Richard Lambert, director-general of the Confederation of British
"Companies will worry about some of the issues he raised. For
example, the living wage, agency workers and the bank levy. But he
was careful not to get into detail, so there will be time for
Graeme Leach, director of policy and chief economist at
the Institute of Directors:
"Ed Miliband says that he wants Labour to be the 'party of
enterprise and small business'. How are these sentiments
reconcilable with a commitment to new employment regulations for
agency workers and a large hike in the minimum wage? Both measures
would hurt small and large businesses, not support them. It is
early days, but we detect a drift away from New Labour's efforts to
talk up a pro-enterprise agenda."
Adam Marshall, director of policy and external affairs
at the British Chambers of Commerce:
"During the worst days of the recession, the policies adopted by
the Labour Government - including the Enterprise Finance Guarantee
- helped prevent many small- and medium-sized businesses from going
to the wall. However, with Labour now in opposition, our survey
shows a gap emerging between business and backbench Labour MPs on
critical issues such as deficit reduction and employment
"We urge Ed Miliband to make re-connecting with business, both
locally and nationally, a key priority of his early months in
office. Economic recovery depends on improving business confidence,
and making it easier - not harder - for companies to take new
Read a full transcript of Ed Miliband's party conference
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HAYS, KS -- Fort Hays State University recently received two new grants approved through the Eisenhower Professional Development Program.
Dr. Paul Adams, associate professor of physics, and Dr. Karen Hickman, assistant professor of biological sciences, received a $63,326 grant for a second year of funding for Project IRIS. Project IRIS is a two-week workshop, June 3-14, 2002, Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. The project targets middle and high school teachers and will help them enhance their knowledge and skills in areas such as teaching through inquiry and integrating physical science and biology. The science content of the workshop will focus on the topic of astrobiology - how astronomy, plants and animals interrelate. Participating teachers receive a stipend and technology equipment for their schools. Housing is available for those living outside the immediate Hays area.
Adams, Nancy Costigan-Talbott, retired USD 489 teacher, and Dr. Maurice Witten, retired FHSU emeritus professor of physics, received a $41,062 grant for their project, the ABCs of Science Inquiry. The project focuses on helping teachers become more comfortable with the inquiry model and increase their knowledge in the area of physical science.
For more information on classes offered through the grants, contact Adams by phone at (785) 625-4500 or by e-mail at email@example.com.
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Selectmen, Board of Health Discuss Taking Contaminated Vacant Land
Town Meeting approved purchase or remediation of contaminated properties with homes last year.
After the lengthy fight over capping the 61-year landfill and purchasing or remediating contaminated properties adjacent to the transfer station, the boards of selectmen and health are now trying to finish the job.
At issue: Dealing with the remaining vacant land that also is believed to be contaminated.
The two boards met Wednesday night in executive session for about 15 minutes to discuss the contamination issues.
There was no public discussion after the selectmen returned to open session, except to say the two boards met to discuss the value of real estate property.
The boards would like to resolve the issue so any action or payments can be presented to the spring Town Meeting.
Last year the Town Meeting agreed to spend $18 million to cap the landfill and build a new transfer station.
Over the life of the landfill it has leaked contaminants that spread in the ground water to adjacent properties, mostly on Stonybrook Road.
Jeff and Kate Dinsmore, whose home was purchased last year, wrote at the time in a public letter, "The contaminants found on our property include lead (at eight times acceptable levels), nickel (seven times acceptable levels), cadmium (six times acceptable levels) and arsenic at depths of 7-15 feet deep around and under our house. While this is not considered an imminent health risk to us or others because of its depth, the material must be cleaned up to avoid long-term health risks."
The current landfill must be constantly monitored and reports on its contamination provided to the state Department of Environmental Protection under an agreement between the town and the state regarding the landfill.
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May 1: Illegal Immigration Day
By Vincent Fiore
On May 1, immigrants, both legal and illegal, will purportedly take to the streets to:
Protest organizers are threatening to "shut-down" the economy, and some of America's largest and most populous cities to a grinding halt.
This approach would seem to attempt to catch more bees with vinegar as opposed to honey. See what happens when you don't assimilate, my illegal friends? You get all those great old adages all backwards, and look, in this case, threatening as well.
Organizers and the mainstream media have come to call the protest scheduled for May 1, or "May Day." But in the big town -- Manhattan, New York -- it is more like "They-Day."
Unfortunately for our illegal friends, the cumulative effect of the "spontaneous" protests of a few weeks past coupled with the impending and well-planned civil-disobedience of May 1 have created a sea of resentment across America, numbering many more millions than those who will protest on May 1.
When the topic is illegal immigration or even immigration in general now, people are talking, and they are just full of pronouns, adjectives, and plurals.
Sitting at a downtown bar with stockbrokers, fireman, plumbers, and short-order cooks, one is apt to hear the conversation turn, well, somewhat protective:
"Who do these people think they are?"
"That kind of disrespectful behavior should not be allowed to happen."
"They behave as if they own this country"
"This is the kind of behavior that I'm used to seeing in third-world countries."
"There is a real feeling in some parts of the country that it is "us against them."
"If they are so bold as to fly their country's flag over that of America's, maybe they should go back there, and in haste."
Why? Listen to union official Jorge Rodriguez who helped organize earlier rallies aimed at intimidating Congress as it debates the issue of immigration. "There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno. We want full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here (illegally)," Rodriguez said. "That is the message that is going to be played out across the country on May 1."
So Mr. Rodriguez wants "full amnesty, full legalization for anybody who is here (illegally)." And Mr. Rodriguez further states that his is the "message" that will be echoed across the fruited plains.
Mr. Rodriguez, I think, may be surprised and dismayed to hear another type of message, a message that he and the many others like Mr. Rodriguez helped to create, possibly unknown to themselves.
The American gallery has toughened up, and that will not bode well for the protesters. Nor will it bode well for that mass of self-serving flesh up in Washington that calls itself the Congress.
Even the mainstream media, who have serially labeled these demonstrations as "Immigration Rights," will find out that the coming backlash will be visited upon them as well. People are sick and tired of having the news made-up by those who should be reporting it.
Further, the people are also fed-up with Congress, which actually has a lower approval rating than even President Bush, who, when last polled, had poll numbers that failed to break the 40 per cent mark.
If Congress were to craft a solid and effective border security bill, then it may be possible for all of these illegal aliens calling for amnesty to at least get it in another form, namely President Bush' "guest-worker program."
Although it isn't defined as amnesty, it is for all practical purposes, paid-for or earned amnesty. But anyway you cut it, it is reward for law breaking, and Congress is willfully abetting it.
The American people, the legal ones of all colors, heritage, and culture, see this.
Hopefully, members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who insist on trying to apply a political fix for votes come November will pay a heavy political price and get tossed out of office. But this is America! Land of opportunity! So it is only in America that, besides millions of law breakers crowding the streets, there will be a song to herald their arrival.
Thanks to British music producer Adam Kidron, illegal immigrants can now break the law under the soothing and "patriotic" backdrop of the Spanish "Star Spangled Banner," or otherwise known as "Nuestro Himno," or "Our Anthem."
Indeed. Only in America.
Vincent Fiore is a freelance political writer who lives in New York City. His work can be seen on a host of sites, including the American Conservative Union, GOPUSA, ChronWatch, and theconservativevoice. Vincent is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance and a contributing writer for NewsBusters.org. He receives e-mail at
Get weekly updates about new issues of ESR!
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Race to Top District Finalists Include New Hopefuls
The list of 61 finalists for the latest Race to the Top competition shows that the U.S. Department of Education was successful in enticing high-scoring applications from districts in rural America and in states that had not shared in the Race to the Top bounty before.
But whether the ultimate winners, which will be announced this month, will be successful in increasing personalized teaching and learning in classrooms—a key priority for this competition—is unclear.
The Education Department has not released copies of the finalists' proposals, and most districts had not posted their plans online either as of late last week, making it anyone's guess what those districts would do, collectively, with $400 million in winnings.
But interviews with several of the finalists show that the competition didn't elicit entirely new initiatives from districts, and instead rewarded those already well on their way to tailoring instruction to students' individual needs.
"This will be the gas in the tank to get us there quicker," said Ken Zeff, the chief strategy and innovation officer for the Fulton County system in Georgia, which is a finalist after making its pitch to implement a performance-management system for its educators, among other initiatives.
The finalist list, released late last month from a pool of 372 applicants, is a diverse group of school districts, many of which are among the nation's largest—Boston, Cleveland, New York City, and Philadelphia, for example. But this list is full of medium and small districts as well, with several districts of less than 1,000 students represented.
"This really confirms the emergence and pace of personalized digital learning, and that there are so many districts that have been doing it," said David DeSchryver, the vice president of Whiteboard Advisors, a consulting firm in Washington that is tracking these grants.
While previous Race to the Top competitions have pitted states against each other with a focus on general reform or early-learning initiatives, this latest contest was designed to spur education improvement—particularly in the area of personalized learning—at the district level. The department expects to award up to 25 grants, worth between $5 million and $40 million each, depending on a winner's enrollment. After the finalists were announced last month, teams of outside peer reviewers came to Washington to discuss the applications in detail and revise the scores. The winners are expected to be announced by Dec. 31.
Broken down, seven of the 61 finalists are charter or charter-like schools and networks, 10 finalists are groups of districts, and the rest are traditional individual school systems. In all, the 61 finalists represent more than 200 school districts.
Several on the finalist list, including New York, the Idea charter schools network in Texas, the St. Vrain district in Colorado, and the Miami-Dade school system in Florida, have already won grants as part of the federal Investing in Innovation, or i3, program, another signature competition of the Obama administration.
With this latest iteration of Race to the Top, one of the department's goals was to expand the program's reach into states that have not won earlier contests. And indeed, 40 of the 61 finalist districts are not in Race to the Top states.
The department also wanted to encourage rural schools and created separate categories for those districts to compete. The department has refused to disclose which finalist applications are under the rural umbrella, but a preliminary review of the finalist list by the Rural School and Community Trust shows that about 40 percent of the more than 200 districts are rural.
Even with a special priority given to rural districts, advocates say the finalist list—which is dominated by large and medium-size ones—shows those contests really don't work well for rural America.
"Based on the list of finalists, knowing what we know about them, there's no guarantee that any rural districts will receive resources from this competition," said Robert Mahaffey, a spokesman for the rural trust.
One successful rural finalist is the North Central Educational Service District in Washington state, which is the lead applicant for a group of 47 districts representing about 25,700 students in four states: Arkansas, New Mexico, Washington, and West Virginia.
Their pitch would take $40 million in winnings and implement a comprehensive, college- and career-ready agenda for rural schools that would create—among other things—virtual academies to connect students and professional mentors with similar interests across states, an online "share portal" to link teachers who teach in geographically isolated schools, and project-based-learning programs that cross state lines.
"This brings to these rural and, frankly, geographically challenged districts a level of career awareness that they would not be able to afford otherwise," said Richard McBride, the superintendent of the North Central Educational Service District.
One thing that jumped out at education policy analysts is the number of charter schools on the list, including well-known management organizations such as KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program in the District of Columbia is the finalist) and Green Dot Schools of Los Angeles.
"It's interesting and encouraging," said Andy Smarick, a partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit consulting group in Washington. "It shows [charters] can be nimble and on the cutting edge."
In Texas, Uplift Education operates a network of 26 charter schools in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, with a combined enrollment of 7,500 students, that already prioritizes personalized learning by using individualized education plans for all students. It wants to use $17 million in winnings to expand International Baccalaureate programs, increase parental engagement through efforts such as "parent university" classes in subjects like child nutrition, implement its performance-management system for educators, and enhance its student-data system.
"I think it would be more difficult to accomplish some of our goals without the Race to the Top grant. For example, the education technology and performance-management components are both really heavy on technology acquisition. It's very expensive," said Michael Terry, the communications director for Uplift.
In the 100,000-student Fulton County district, the school system is on its way to converting entirely to a charter system, which the state of Georgia allows for those districts that want more freedom and flexibility. Mr. Zeff said the $40 million in winnings would go chiefly to two main initiatives—partnering with community organizations on a dropout-prevention initiative, and its performance-management system.
"As we do this, we need to make sure the human-capital part is really strong," said Mr. Zeff, who explained that the new performance-management system would be automated and link educators to resources—from video clips to data—that would help them grow professionally. "The U.S. Department of Education is signaling that it wants to invest in districts that know their way forward. We appreciate that."
Vol. 32, Issue 14, Pages 1,24
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