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Whose arms are they anyway? The smuggling routes of Syria supply international weaponry to rebels
The new armaments, including anti-tank weapons and recoilless rifles, have been sent across the Jordanian border into the southwestern Governorate of Daraa. The Washington Post cited Arab and militant officials as saying on Sunday.
The officials, however, declined to disclose the name of the foreign countries supplying the armaments, the first heavy weapons, according to the report, supplied by foreign powers to militants so far.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US and its major European allies, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are some of the major supporters of the militants in Syria.
The new influx of weapons supplied to the militants in Syria was first publicized this month by British blogger Eliot Higgins, alias Brown Moses, who tracks the militants’ activities by watching their videos on YouTube.
Higgins witnessed the militants’ use of new weapons, including M-79 anti-tank weapons and M-60 recoilless. He noted that the Syrian government does not possess such weapons and the armaments must have been supplied by foreign countries.
The Syria crisis began in mid-March 2011. Many people, including large numbers of security personnel, have been killed in the violence, and several international human rights organizations say the foreign-sponsored militants have committed war crimes.
The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants fighting the Syrian government are foreign nationals.
Who's resonsible for these foreign arms getting into the Syrian rebel hands? Fingers are pointing at certain Arab states. Do you think it matters at this point where the weapons are coming from?
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Washington was a sea of smartphones snapping photos on Monday throughout the pomp and circumstance of Inauguration Day. Between the glamorous gowns, the presidential oath, and the parade of marching bands, it was a day meant to be documented.
But we made a discovery during it all: Just as interesting as the photos themselves were the people taking them.
Back in 2009, the inauguration was a huge deal -- an estimated 1.8 million people packed the National Mall to see America's first African-American president make history. Not surprisingly, CNN iReport saw a record number of contributions that day: nearly 12,000 submissions of "the moment," when President Obama took the oath of office.
This time, things were different. There were fewer attendees -- officials estimated between 800,000 to 900,000 people attended Monday's inauguration. But, more importantly, the social media landscape has dramatically changed in the past four years. So this time around, we invited our audience to document the inauguration through Instagram, the mobile photo-sharing site that was launched in October 2010 and now boasts an impressive 90 million monthly active users.
The call to action was simple -- we invited attendees to take an Instagram shot of themselves during the inaugural festivities, tag the photo #cnn, and share why they made the trek to Washington -- and the end result was fantastic. Between Sunday and Monday, we received more than 10,300 photos and showcased some of the best submissions in a custom interactive. Others uploaded photos to iReport, CNN's global participatory news community.
Together, the photos tell you a story about the people assembled for Obama's second inauguration.
The crowd was diverse, made up of people old and young, black and white. There were families and groups of friends. For some, it was their first inauguration. Others were back to see Obama's inaugural speech a second time. It was cold and sunny, as evidenced by the number of winter hats and sunglasses in the crowd. At least one attendee, though, used her shades to block more than just the sunshine. "I was a total crybaby out there," she wrote.
American flags were the other accessory du jour. "Don't even think about going without a flag," advised iReporter Lisa Clemans-Cope, mother of two young girls. At least one attendee made a point to stand out among the rest -- in a clever homemade "Obama Care Bear" costume.
There were notable attendees in the crowd -- "Glee's" Darren Criss, Rep. Grace Meng, D-New York, and comedian Hal Sparks all joined the Instagram + iReport project -- alongside average citizens. And most everyone was grinning ear to ear, except for one man who documented his frustration with the glitchy Mall television feed.
Finally, there were the stories behind the photos. Renee Chrisman shared a photo of her husband, Gunnery Sgt. Bradley Chrisman, who was chosen to escort inaugural VIPs onto the stage. Renee and their children were glued to the television set at home in North Carolina hoping to see Bradley in action. "We caught a glimpse of him standing to the right of the president," she gushed.
Political science student John White took notes during the ceremony. "I plan on pursuing a career in national politics," he said. "Now that I am beginning to lay out the work for my future career, this inauguration is my first step."
And for Becky Primeaux, attending the inauguration meant she could cross off an item on her "bucket list."
"To be part of something that is so patriotic and historic is so exciting," she said. "I think every American should (attend an inauguration) in their life."
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The first half of 2011 has seen dramatic events — some tragic, others encouraging — take place across the globe. From revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia to an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan, breaking news has been reported by individual citizens as well as professional journalists. And explaining the complex nuances of unfolding events has shown the power of civic media in informing local communities and the wider world.
In this session, we'll talk with two individuals who've been part of efforts to share perspectives from civic media with a global audience.
22nd–24th June 2011
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Sekolah Tinggi Muar or High School Muar (HSM ) as it is popularly known was founded in 1902. It is one of the oldest school in Muar district and is situated close to the Muar river together with several prominent buildings."
Sekolah Tinggi Muar, or Muar High School as it is popularly known, was founded in 1902 and is one of the oldest schools in Muar district. The school began as a Government English Sschool Muar (GESM). The current Muar High School building was constructed in 1914. Around 1957-1959, it became the centre for DTC Teachers Training Centre and between 1965-1967 it became the centre for RTC Training. In 1965 the school took in Form Six students for the first time, to cater to the needs of students from Northern Johor.
In 1997, two blocks of buildings were added including the present school hall and 'surau' as an expansion programme. The school is situated close to Muar River, together with several prominent buildings such as the Muar Supreme Court, Government offices and Muar District Police Headquarters. Due to its strategic location, the school's hall is used for many district and state level functions, including the annual district level Teachers Day celebration.
As the premier school in Muar district, Muar High School has produced generations of successfull graduates. Some of the prominent figures include YAB Dato Hj.Abdul Ghani B.Othman our Johor state Menteri Besar, YB.Tan Sri Muhyddin B.Hj.Mohd.Yassin (Minister of Local Trade and Consumer Affairs), YB. Dato Chua Jui Meng ( Minister of Health ) and Tan Sri Jaafar B.Husin (ex Governor of Bank Negara).
Last viewed - May 26, 2013
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Bringing Up Baby: Why Raising Hope Gives Me Hope (and Modern Family Doesn't)
Nothing pushes my buttons more than a TV series that’s supposed to be "unconventional" or "risqué" or "quirky" when it’s actually the acme of conventionality but with a gay or non-white or disabled or mentally ill character in a title role. Cases in point: Glee, The Big C, and Modern Family.
I think enough has been written about the walking stereotypes that comprise the Glee cast, but please indulge me a brief tangent about Showtime’s insipid series The Big C, which stars Laura Linney as an uptight suburban housewife diagnosed with terminal melanoma. In an effort to live life to the fullest, she indulges in recklessly defiant activities like building a swimming pool and having an affair with a black man. Her husband is a stereotype, her son is a stereotype, her black teenaged student is a stereotype (she’s sassy and proud!), her best friend is a stereotype (promiscuous career woman), but wait! Her other best friend is gay and her brother is bipolar! Her brother’s mental illness features no discernable symptoms of bipolarity, but he is disdainful of materialism (must be a disease?), and moves into a suburban house when he starts taking his meds.
Anyway. A commonality of these “unconventional” programs is that the adult characters learn life lessons from the child characters, I suppose because the parents are irresponsible, pot-smoking Baby Boomers or existentially confused Gen Xers. These TV parents are totally clueless, which is supposed to add some veneer of wackiness but is actually a rotted cliché. You know how Modern Family mom Claire (Julie Bowen) was a wild child in high school and fears her eldest daughter will turn out the same? Well, instead of teaching her daughter anything in particular (except "don’t sleep around"), it’s always the daughter who teaches the mom: to be less controlling, to be more trusting, etc.
This dynamic is evident with baby (now toddler) Lily, the adopted daughter of gay male partners Mitchell and Cameron. During the first two seasons, Lily acted as convenient catalyst for moments of indulgent quibbling and reconciliation between her dads. When Lily started daycare, Mitchell asked Cameron to tone down his “gayness” in public, but when they realize that gay dads are cool, Mitchell learns his lesson. And when they build Lily a princess playhouse in the backyard, it’s all about Mitchell’s insecurity with manual labor and his relative "manliness." In the current third season, Lily is played by an older actress who can talk, yet displays of actual parenting still take a backseat to Lily’s dads’ efforts to grow up. Yawn.
Babies on TV serve as props for their parent’s character development. On reality TV, babies are dreams come true and cute fashion accessories (for celebrity moms) or evidence of bad behavior (teen moms). On Dexter, toddler Harrison exists solely as a plot device to anchor daddy Dexter to the non-sociopathic world, and on Up All Night, baby Amy helps her hard-partying parents embrace adulthood. So, who exactly is doing the parenting here? Will the real parents please stand up?
Enter Raising Hope, a Fox sitcom about Jimmy (Lucas Neff), a twenty-something who discovers he's father to a motherless child (his baby’s mama was a serial killer who was executed). Jimmy lives with his working class parents (Virginia and Burt) and his senile great-grandmother, so Hope’s upbringing becomes a multi-generational effort. The show is quirky and unconventional, but it doesn’t strut itself as such; its quirkiness is a natural by-product of unique characters and creative plotlines. And since none of these characters are clichéd, baby Hope isn’t fodder for predictable character struggles. None of the scenes point at the parenting, as if we’re supposed to learn something about the adults by how they react to changing a diaper. (The dad’s grossed out but mom plays is cool! That’s so funny.) Instead, Hope’s caretakers make home videos and read and sing and talk to her. They even offer life advice, like when Jimmy tells Hope that “you don’t have to spend money to get somebody the day they’ve always dreamed of,” (in reference to Burt's recent romantic gesture to Virginia), or when Burt warns, “rich people don’t like to hear no. And since that’s the only word you know, keep it zipped.”
Ironically, the premise is that Hope’s caretakers are negligently irresponsible. Jimmy has no idea what he’s doing, and Virginia and Burt had Jimmy when they were teenagers and still don’t have their life together. Many of the show’s jokes derive from haphazard efforts at parenting. But the lesson isn’t always “What did Jimmy learn from today’s antics with his daughter?” Often, it’s about teaching Hope to live an honest and fulfilling life. The show’s very talented writers must realize that infantile, narcissistic parents aren’t the only route to comedic parenting. Instead, they brought a confident moral compass into the nursery. How very risqué.
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Whether you are a business executive who travels the country and the world for that matter, or you are just your ordinary vacationer who wants to get away from time to time by yourself or with family and friends, social media can be a good friend.
As more travelers are finding out these days, using social media to help in finding the best places to go, can be very helpful.
In order to put social media to work for you, visit a number of the better-known sites in order to get ideas on where to travel, how to save money when traveling, what specials and deals are out there, and much more.
According to a recent infographic from MDG Advertising, the following can be said of social media and travel:
- Fifty-two percent of travelers turn to social media to locate vacation inspiration;
- Twenty-nine percent of travelers use Facebook in such pursuits, while 14 percent go to TripAdvisor;
- About 25 percent of travelers utilize their smartphones and mobile devices in order to compare airfares, along with checking out flight schedules, locate phone numbers for travel resources, and research and review airport details;
- When the trip has been booked, more than 50 percent of travelers go on Facebook to tell others of their soon to be vacation status, along with “liking” pages tied to where they are going;
- Lastly, 72 percent of adults indicate there is a good chance they will utilize their mobile devices while traveling, with 74 percent of social media users checking their social sites.
Whether you travel regularly or infrequently, using social media to help you with your trips is becoming more commonplace.
In the not so distant past, many travelers would spend hours or more dealing with research through books, visiting travel agents, and relying on word-of-mouth experiences from friends, families, and co-workers when it came to learning about a travel destination.
With social media in play, travelers more recently have been able to touch base with other travelers through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and other such sites to compare notes, get recommendations, and avoid spending hours and hours researching where they were going just in order to make an airline or hotel reservation.
Quick to travel over to social media, more and more travel companies, airlines, hotels, rental car establishments and such now use social sites to inform business travelers and vacationers of what they have to offer. While the information may seem a little overwhelming at times, the traveler benefits from having a sizable amount of details to choose from.
If you are a traveler who wants to use social media to assist you in your plans, you should turn to the company or companies you are interested in and view their Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and any other such pages they offer.
Look to see if their information is updated and correct, whether or not they respond to public questions in a prompt amount of time, and if they offer any special deals to those consumers who visit their social media sites.
If you plan on traveling in 2013, becoming more social about it could very well land you the deal you are looking for.
About the author: Dave Thomas covers consumer and small business topics, including finding the best Hawaii hotels.
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The Gospel of Obama
Michael Gerson (a former speechwriter for President Bush) has an interesting analysis of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent speech on religion and politics. Gerson had some words of caution for those who would use religion to baptize a specific set of policy proposals:
Obama’s criticism of the religious right for baptizing the agenda of economic conservatism — making tax cuts their highest legislative priority — had some justified sting. But then he proceeded, in the typical manner of the religious left, to give a variety of more liberal causes a similar kind of full-immersion baptism: passing a “universal health care bill,” withdrawing quickly from Iraq, approving comprehensive immigration reform. Agree with these proposals or not, none is a test of true religion.
The whole enterprise — there are examples on the right and left — of asking “What Would Jesus Do?” on the earned-income tax credit or missile defense is presumptuous. Jesus, were he around again in the flesh, would probably be doing sensible things such as healing the sick, embracing outcasts and preaching sacrificial love. After all, he showed little interest in issuing a “Contract With the Roman Empire.” But his followers eventually found that “love your neighbor” had political consequences, leading them to challenge slavery, infanticide and the mistreatment of women and children.
This has been the Christian compromise on faith and politics. The essential humanism of Christianity requires an active, political concern about human dignity and the rights of the poor and weak. But faith says little about the means to achieve those ideals. The justice of welfare reform or tax cuts or moving toward socialized medicine is measured by the outcome of these changes. And those debates cannot be short-circuited by the claim “Thus sayeth the Lord,” spoken by the Christian Coalition or the United Church of Christ.
Obama is clearly more fluent on religious issues than most in his party. But to appeal broadly to religious voters, he will need to be more than the candidate of the religious left.
(HT: Get Religion)
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Extracts from insights on Radiohead
We are often stunned and we are often distracted, and we are bewildered almost all of the time. And the only weapon we have—as individuals and as a scatter of grouplets—is the delicate brain now so perilously balanced in the struggle for public sanity. . . . We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor.
Our ever deepening dependence and engagement with the technologies of modern life, therefore, may lead to changes in our selves, to ourselves, that we might in fact reject or regret were we to understand them and see them for what they are. We might all collapse in shock or despair were we to face some truths about ourselves—truths that we never paid attention to, that no one ever talked about, even though they were obvious and in front of our faces all along. What would really hurt, of course, is realizing that that we’d done it to ourselves.
If you accepted the constant promiscuous broadcasts as normalcy, there were messages in them to inflate and pet and flatter you. If you realize this chatter was altering your life, killing your privacy or ending the ability to think in silence. It was up to you to change the channel, not answer the phone, stop your ears, shut your eyes, dig a hole for yourself and get in it. Really, it was your responsibility.
It doesn’t name a single enemy. It doesn’t propose revolution. It doesn’t call you to overthrow an order that you couldn’t take hold of anyway at any single point, not without scapegoating a portion and missing the whole. This defiance—it might be the one thing we can manage, and better than sinking beneath the waves. It requires the retention of a private voice.
Meanings are fluid and just as we think we’ve gotten something into focus, it seems to dissolve before our eyes. It often derives in a kind of anxiety not because meaning our own lives are continually challenged by an indifferent world. It is caused by never quite succeeding in bringing into focus what those meaning might be. Given every body as itself a part of the world, there cannot be firm boundaries to calm us. But if boundaries are uncertain and meanings fluid, there’s also the possibility of establishing new boundaries and constructing new meanings. Opening the possibility for reconstruction.
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Someone Asked me Why I Hate my Country
The question was meant to be facetious, not insulting. But still, it caused me think about the issue – what it means “to hate” or “to love one’s country”.
It is an issue on which the elites who control our country – our elected politicians, as well as those who pay them to do their bidding – place a great deal of emphasis. More specifically, they use it to marginalize those who disagree with how our country is run.
These are the elites who refer to those who express opinions against the wars that they generate or support as “unpatriotic” or “treasonous”. They are the people who use the term “class warfare” to attack those who believe that the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes, commensurate with what their country does for them. They are those who use the epithet “socialist” to describe anyone who believes that government should play an active role in providing opportunities for the most vulnerable of our citizens. They coined the term “loony conspiracy theorist” to describe anyone who expresses serious disagreement with their own version of history. They wield the term “big government” to express their ideology that only private individuals and corporations are capable of making contributions to society, thereby advancing the argument that the government that governs least is the government that governs best. They use the term “bleeding heart liberal” to describe anyone who expresses empathy for the unfortunate.
The United States exhibits the greatest level of income inequality of any of the rich nations of the world. Consequently, as of 2007 a study showed that more than a third of the wealth in the United States was held by the top 1% of households, while about 15% was held by the lower 80%.
Income inequality in the United States plunged during the 1930s with the onset of FDR’s New Deal. It then remained quite low for several decades, until the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. It then began a precipitous climb, with a sharp decline beginning during the last year of Clinton’s Presidency, but then another sharp increase beginning at about the time that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy first went into effect, so that by the end of 2006 we exceeded even the peak ratio of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression.
Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrate in their book, “The Spirit Level – Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger”, numerous non-economic consequences of obscene income inequality that are independent of absolute income or wealth. These consequences include more mental illness, greater use of illegal drugs, higher imprisonment rate, higher infant mortality rate, more homicides, lower educational performance of our children, lower index of child well-being, lower trust in our fellow citizens, and lower status of women, among other adverse societal effects.
A nation’s level of income and wealth inequality is largely a product of its laws and policies. A high level of national income and wealth inequality generally means that its elites have been successful in arranging its laws and policies to enhance their own wealth and power at the expense of everyone else.
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It's the job of state probation and parole officers to keep a close eye on convicted criminals, but in some cases the people they claimed to be watching were actually dead.
That is just one of several findings in an audit critical of the way Tennessee is supervising its released criminals.
It also found workers were not providing adequate supervision to those violent criminals who were still living, and the comptroller said the findings jeopardize public safety and show a waste of taxpayer dollars.
"They were wasting taxpayer dollars, in our opinion, or at least an abuse of taxpayer funds by spending time on dead offenders," said Deborah Loveless, assistant director of state audits.
In 82 documented cases, the probation and parole officers were actively monitoring people who were dead - some for as long as 19 years. At times, the parole officers were merely checking on arrest records for the deceased parolees, while in other cases the officers claimed to have actually made contact with the person after their date of death.
Also, some of the most violent offenders and sex offenders are on GPS monitoring. Those GPS devices trigger an alarm if the offender goes somewhere he shouldn't be or if the device has been tampered with.
In 80 percent of those cases, the audit shows, workers didn't follow up on the alarms in a timely fashion.
Overall, state auditors said a separate problem they found could have contributed to some of the others.
Supervisors are supposed to review every case every year, but only half of the cases had actually been reviewed.
"If the supervisors were doing their annual review of cases, they would have found where parole officers were not doing their job," Loveless said.
The Tennessee Board of Parole had no comment on the audit Monday. However, the audit was prepared in advance of a Wednesday legislative hearing in which board leaders will likely face some questions from state lawmakers about the findings.
Copyright WSMV 2012 (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.
Kaitlyn Hunt's supporters say she is being prosecuted because she was in a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex. Authorities say it isn't a gay rights issue at all, but rather a simple case of an adult inappropriately involved with a minor.More >>
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Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi gave Ahmadinejad a red-carpet welcome on the tarmac at Cairo airport, shaking the Iranian's hand and exchanging a kiss on each cheek as a military honor guard stood at attention.
Ahmadinejad's three-day visit, which is centered around an Islamic summit, is the latest sign of improved relations between the countries since the 2011 uprising ousted Egypt's longtime ruler President Hosni Mubarak and brought an Islamist government to power in Cairo. Such a visit would have been unthinkable under Mubarak, who was a close ally of the U.S. and shared Washington's deep suspicions of Tehran.
Shortly after his arrival, Ahmadinejad and Morsi held a 20-minute talk that focused on the civil war in Syria, security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. Iran is Damascus’ closes regional ally, while Egypt is among those that have called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down.
In September, Morsi offered a package of incentives to Tehran to end its support for Assad. The proposal included the restoration of full diplomatic ties, which would be a significant prize for Iran given that Egypt is the most populous Arab nation and a regional Sunni powerhouse.
Such diplomatic overtures have raised concerns among Sunni Gulf nations, who are keeping a close eye on the Iranian leader's visit. The Gulf states, who are opposed to Iran's regional policies and wary of the Shiite nation, accuse Iran of supporting Shiite minorities in the Gulf, and harbor concerns about Tehran's disputed nuclear program.
Morsi and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails have sought to ease Gulf concerns about its improved ties with Iran, and have stressed that the security of the Gulf nations — which Egypt has relied upon for financial aid to help prop up its faltering economy — is directly linked to Cairo's own.
Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr Kamel reiterated today that “Egypt's relationship with Iran will never come at the expense of Gulf nations.”
During his visit to Egypt, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to meet with Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world's premier Islamic institution. He is also scheduled to attend the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Cairo, which starts Wednesday.
Security officials said Ahmadinejad is also going to tour the Pyramids in Giza.
Once close, Egypt and Iran severed their relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution when Cairo offered exile to Iran's deposed shah. Relations further deteriorated after Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.
Morsi's rise to power out of Egypt's own revolution complicates his ability to pursue better ties with Iran when it is seen as suppressing a revolution in Syria. Cairo is home to the offices of the main Syrian opposition council, which has a strong presence of members of the Brotherhood's Syrian chapter.
The Egyptian president also faces pressure on the home front not to cozy up to Tehran.
Today, Egypt's hardline Daawa Salafiya, which is the foundation of the main Salafi political Al-Nour Party, released a statement calling on Morsi to confront Ahmadinejad on Tehran's support for the Syrian regime and make clear that “Egypt is committed to the protection of all Sunni nations.”
Mohammed Abbas Nagi, an Egyptian expert on Iran, said Morsi may be trying to restore some level of diplomatic ties with Tehran in order to show that Cairo is pursuing a more independent foreign policy than that of his predecessor and to keep the door open to the Islamic Republic in case the Gulf states’ support dwindles.
“Despite the fact that restoring relations is a sovereign decision fully belonging to Egypt, I don't see that Egypt will make a decision separate from the course of its relationship with the U.S. and Israel, for whom Iran is now the main issue,” Nagi said.
Morsi visited Tehran last year to attend an international summit in the first visit by an Egyptian leader to Iran in years. He held a brief one-on-one talk with Ahmadinejad then and discussed Syria's civil war. But Morsi also used the opportunity in Tehran to lash out at Iran's ally, calling the Damascus regime “oppressive.”
Egypt's leader has spearheaded an “Islamic quartet” of nations to try and resolve the Syrian crisis that includes Iran, as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are two of the most vocal critics of the Syrian president.
While Saudi Arabia has largely abstained from the group's meetings in an apparent snub to Iran's Syria policies, Egyptian officials say they will try to revive those talks on the sidelines of this week's OIC summit.
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Poll results from the recent Ag Executive Forum
Even though the official program of the Ag Executive Forum, hosted by Farm Journal and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, was off the record, we used our networking event to conduct an informal opinion poll of agriculture’s leaders.
Using handheld, immediate-response polling devices that allow each attendee to quickly voice his or her opinion with the push of a button, we surveyed the agribusiness executives and top-level producers in the crowd.
While the majority of the group—88%—said they believe the U.S. will be the world leader in agricultural production in 2020, they voiced several concerns for the near term:
- The good times may not last; 60% were bearish on the overall outlook for agriculture.
- There is too much red tape and government bureaucracy. When asked to identify the most positive change that could be made to help agriculture be more competitive and bring innovation to market, 47% answered: reduce red tape and government bureaucracy.
- Thirty-five percent responded that significant changes need to happen in Washington, D.C., in order for U.S. agriculture to stay competitive in the world market.
- March 2012
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A Happiness Economy?
Last week on National Public Radio’s The Diane Rhem Show, Ms. Rehm dedicated half of Tuesday’s show to how humans will (or won’t!) adapt to climate change. Among the three guests she had on her show, perhaps the most interesting was Paul Gilding, author of the book The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World . Gilding is certain the climate crisis will get much, much worse, but is also confidant that once we are faced with no other choice, humankind will rise to the occasion and figure out new ways of living that are more compatible with sustainability and conservation. In fact, Gilding surmises that rather than an economy focused on material wealth, we will create one based on attaining happiness, not goods.
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The Year of the Rabbit is quickly coming to a rather anti-climactic close. Over the past year, the world continued to wait for some cataclysmic event in China that either would launch it as a global superpower or bring the whole nation to its knees. But instead China calmly and strategically scripted out its next moves. This is not to say that no major events transpired in 2011. However, where the Year of Rabbit came and went with few conspicuous bumps, the Year of the Dragon looks to be a more turbulent.
Sino-U.S. relations enjoyed an increase in communication via high-level diplomatic exchanges. Chinese President Hu Jintao toured the U.S. in January while Vice President Biden reciprocated with a trip to China in August. Both visits helped increase ties between the countries’ leaders and sought to expand mutually beneficially economic investment. The exchanges also helped dampen the negative affects of U.S. military shipments to Taiwan and facilitated important dialogue with Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent of the Communist Party. Though certainly significant, nothing drastic resulted on either side of the Pacific from these largely symbolic meetings.
Throughout 2011, news sources reported on the gradual tapering of China’s hyper-economic growth as import and export data continued its decreasing trend. But this came to no surprise as experts predicted the trade surplus could only decrease from its 2008 record of $298 billion. Chinese policymakers did not expect to maintain this level of exports either. Accordingly, officials pursued a conservative fiscal policy to create a “soft landing” for the economy as trade with a teetering Europe slowed and housing prices fluctuated. A deliberately undervalued renminbi ensured a steady, uneventful cooling as well.
However, large protests held in the northeast city of Dalian somewhat bucked the trend of predictability in 2011. In August, thousands of citizens rallied outside a local municipal building in response to fears of a chemical leak from a local factory. In response, the government swiftly deployed riot police to confront the protesters though no significant conflicts resulted.
Two important factors should be noted from this incident. The first was the sheer size. Reports say the area outside the government building, Renmin Square, overflowed with demonstrators. Having been to Renmin Square, it is obvious that in order for it to be filled, estimates of tens of thousands of people would not be hyperbolic. The second was the protests lack of spontaneity. Had the protesters gathered immediately following the leak, it could be dismissed as simply a reactionary response caused by personal safety fears. But, in fact, protest organizers used social media outlets to mobilize a week after the perceived breach. They produced signs and shirts sporting protest slogans and put forth clear demands. Also significant, the government responded with the appropriate level of peacekeeping measures and actually listened to the protesters, promising to shut the factory down. It was a unique example in China and may have lasting influences. This was arguably one of the most surprising incidents in China in 2011.
Comparatively, the Year of the Dragon seems to have more challenges in store. First, and most notably, 2012 will begin the long awaited shift in power from President Hu to Vice President Xi. This will be the sixth transition of power in the CPC’s history and its smooth completion will be incredibly important to the future of the country. Hu’s appointment was arguably the first stable transition as past transfers of authority were marred by purges or suspicious political dealings. This doesn’t provide the approaching succession with much of a precedent and therefore the world will be scrutinizing Xi’s ascension.
Next, relations between the U.S. and China may sour from levels reached this year. Just as China is facing a leadership transition, the U.S. is entering an election cycle. This will undoubtedly lead to tough talk on how best to deal with China. GOP hopefuls and Obama have already increased their stern rhetoric especially on China’s economic controls and military escalation. Both Obama’s Marine deployment to Australia and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Malaysia are unambiguous signs of America’s increased interest in addressing Chinese expansion and serve as harbingers for U.S. policy in 2012. In addition, Xi is known to be more critical of the U.S. than Hu and less likely to tolerate strong-armed US policies.
To add to this strain, Beijing will face more popular criticism over pollution concerns as the American consulate continues to monitor air quality levels and post them on Twitter. The U.S. equipment accounts for smaller pollutant particles, thus publishing higher pollution levels than the Chinese. Towards the end of 2011, Beijing officials had to repeatedly deflect accusations from its own citizens of underreporting. Public intolerance of dangerous pollution levels and demand for government action will sharply increase.
The job market will be another crucial aspect in 2012. As rural farmers continue to migrate to cities in the millions and the number of college graduates increases dramatically, the nouveau urban and educated will demand quality jobs. Signaling this focus, Beijing lowered bank reserve requirements hoping to increase domestic production, consumption and, most importantly, job growth throughout 2012. The government has to concentrate more on job creation next year or risk facing a disgruntled, overqualified and underutilized population.
While certain trends provide us clues for how China will navigate 2012, questions abound on issues we have few, if any, precursors on, making it impossible to even offer predictions. Therefore we wonder, what surprises lie ahead? And to take it a step further, will these surprises catch China off-guard or just the rest of us? Only the Dragon Year can say.
Photo Credit: futureatlas.com
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RA Magazine Winter 2012
Issue Number: 117
Mariko Mori: Rebirth
The Japanese artist Mariko Mori is re-imagining ancient myths, using state-of-the-art technology to create mesmerising sculptures and installations. Rachel Campbell-Johnston spoke to her as she prepared for her show at the RA’s Burlington Gardens space.
Mariko Mori at the fabrication studio in New York where work for her RA show is being cast, 2012. Photo © Graham Macindoe When Mariko Mori first emerged on the art scene she was hailed as the ultimate cyber star. Born in Tokyo in 1967, this former fashion model, who moved to London to study at Chelsea College of Art at the end of the 1980s, made her name as one of the best-known Japanese artists of this era by taking the starring role in her own multi-media shows. Dressed as a cyborg, a mermaid, an out-of-this-world alien, she stalked hi-tech dreamscapes, computer-game stores and subway carriages in photographs and video pieces that asked their viewers to ponder such themes as the construction of identity or the role which technology can play in the development of the human race.
But by the late 1990s she was moving into more nebulous territories. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t want to use my body anymore,’ says Mori, ‘it was that I was becoming interested in something more inner.’ Buddhist and Shinto beliefs are part of her cultural background, she explains, and at that time she felt the lure of the deep consciousness which is a key to explaining the mechanism of reincarnation in Buddhist philosophy.
In 1999, melding traditional Buddhist iconography with futuristic technology, she created Dream Temple, shown at the Royal Academy’s ‘Apocalypse’ exhibition the following year. Visitors were invited to climb, one at a time, into a glass ‘vision dome’ and, kneeling at the centre, to stare entranced at the unspooling computer-generated patterns that flowed all about them. Art and technology were brought together in a visual – and visceral – experience intended to awaken a sense of some universal spiritual consciousness.
It is this universality that Mori has explored ever since. And now in ‘Rebirth’, her exhibition in the RA’s Burlington Gardens space, she displays works produced in the past decade – including some completely new works – through which she sets out to evoke her ever deepening fascination with the integration of all things, of the flowing movement that draws all creation into its eternal continuum.
It can all get pretty complex. But basically, Mori explains, this exhibition arose out of her research into prehistoric cultures. ‘I was looking for a universal language that we could all relate to,’ she says, ‘something that our remote ancestors, who lived in a time when there were no borders or nations, who all shared a common faith, would have known. It is relevant now to rediscover the relationship between man and nature from our primal history and fundamental culture. I would like to encourage us to reconnect with nature.’
Mariko Mori, 'Tom Na H-Iu', 2006. Glass, stainless steel, LED, real time control system, 427 x 156.3 x 74.23 cm. Mariko Mori Studio Inc. © Mariko Mori. Photo: Richard Learoyd
‘Rebirth’ is timed to coincide with the winter solstice, she says, which this year, according to certain ancient calendars, will either mark the end of our world or the birth of a new era. ‘The exhibition will take the form of a journey,’ says Mori. It will begin with a great glass monolith – ‘like a Celtic standing stone’ – called Tom Na H-iu II (2006), named after a mythical Celtic realm where the souls of the dead linger for a hundred years, awaiting their eventual rebirth. To guide the returning souls back to Earth, the ancient Celts created special monuments and stelae that were intended as places for spiritual transmigration. Mori’s monolith will glow with vaporous pinks and otherworldly yellows, ghostly greens and pastel blues. The colours are constantly changing because the LED lights within them are linked via the internet to a computer at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan, an underground cosmic ray research station which monitors the primal, low-energy electronic particles known as neutrinos that are emitted in vast quantities during the explosive death of a star. The changing light patterns in Mori’s monolith will respond directly to their presence. And since these neutrinos are essential to life, coalescing once again to become a part of anything from new stars to the earth and the water of our planet to our own bodies, our freshly heightened awareness of them will also alert us to the fact that, as Mori puts it, ‘we are part of a whole, part of the life cycle of the entire universe.’
‘This show is primarily about connectedness,’ she explains. It finds its roots in the Buddhist idea that our lives are linked together like the string that holds beads. The exhibition will lead its viewers past drawings that Mori made in front of the ocean and which respond to her sense of the sea’s eternal rhythms. It continues past computer-generated images of strange fragile bubbles and ethereal hazy glows that capture her vision of a deeper consciousness. It concludes with a giddying installation, White Hole (2008-10) which, bringing the viewer full circle, speaks of the rebirth of a star.
‘We live in an age that has detached itself from spiritual feelings,’ Mori says. ‘We have abandoned our knowledge of the importance of nature.’ But instead of returning to a lost primitive age, she uses state-of-the-art technology to try to rebuild our relationship with our environment. ‘I want to show how technology can be used to make a better world,’ she says, ‘how it can share a vision of spirituality.’
So is space travel the next stop? ‘No,’ she laughs, ‘though I think it would be good if you could see Earth from outer space and feel that you belong to this planet and not to a specific country. Considering the world’s current situation, it is essential. I want to develop this Earth consciousness.’
This delicate woman with a mannequin’s slip of a figure and unsullied face to match becomes a model for our lives in an increasingly complex technological future. She is on a mission to do nothing less than save the world.
- Mariko Mori: Rebirth
Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington Gardens, London, 13 Dec–17 Feb, 2013. Supported by JTI
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NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – The American Red Cross has helped find housing for residents left homeless after emergencies for well over 100 years; now it’s the Staten Island Chapter that finds itself searching for shelter.
Over the weekend, the chapter moved out of its home at the Joan & Allan Bernikow Jewish Community Center in Sea View because it could no longer afford the rent.
The chapter moved to the community center a little over a year ago. It was previously stationed on Richmond Avenue in Graniteville.
Greater New York spokeswoman Marianne Darlak said they just lost an anticipated $1 million in city funding.
“We have been experiencing some financial weakness as have all the not-for-profits,” Darlak said.
Denise Bloise, community director for Staten Island/Brooklyn, says the chapter would need an office with a few cubicles, closet space for disaster supplies, telephone and data hookups, a restroom and up to three parking spaces.
For now, an emergency response vehicle and a van are parked at Sea View Hopsital Rehabilitation Center and Home and a jeep and a box truck containing disaster supplies are still at the community center.
“The Red Cross is there to help the community, however, we also need the community to support us,” Darlak said.
To donate office space or to learn about volunteer opportunities visit www.nyredcross.org.
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“Unfortunately, people here have to live with bomb shelters. We’re here
doing a little something to bring some color to something that’s here
for an ugly reason,” said American graffiti artist Cycle, summing up
perfectly the aim of the Artists 4 Israel mission to Israel.
Tuesday was the group’s third day in Sderot, where urban artists from
the United States, Spain, Mexico and Israel have been busy beautifying
the bombarded city’s public bomb shelters.
The “Murality Project” is all about sending a message of support to the residents of Sderot.
“We couldn’t be here to build the bomb shelters or fight in the war,
but we can help the people fight the debilitating effects, which are
just as bad,” said Craig Dershowitz, president of Artists 4 Israel, a
nonprofit advocacy group. “We can step in and help reignite the city
that has suffered for so long, with our artwork.”
Participating in the project are 25 artists, including some of the top
names in New York City’s urban art scene. In Sderot, the group of
non-Jewish, American and international artists joined Israelis to
contribute their talent to beautify the city.
“Some of the artists here are used to being flown first-class and
housed in five-star hotels for commissioned work. Here they sleep on
the floor, six people to a room at the local yeshiva building,” said
Dershowitz. “They contributed valuable time and art that can sometimes
be sold for as much as $10,000, expressing their support for Sderot and
“There tends to be a misconception that the arts community is liberal
and as such doesn’t support Israel. The truth is that those who do are
oftentimes silent,” said Dershowitz.
“The graffiti community is never silent,” he continued. “Israel as
victim doesn’t resonate with the machismo mindset of graffiti artists,
but Israel as a strong, proud defender of its freedoms does… The
message of ‘don’t f*** with us!’ sits well with the graffiti mindset.”
Sderot spokesman Shalom Halevi said that the artists’ “can-do” attitude was apparent from the start.
“On the first evening after their arrival, once we’d welcomed them,
they were eager to hit the streets. At 10:30 at night, after landing
from a nine-hour flight, they were roaring to go and immediately went
to work on nearby walls. They painted into the night and only finished
at two o’clock in the morning,” said Halevi.
“That’s the kind of attitude you can’t help but admire. Their work here
is extremely welcome, both for the aesthetic benefit for the city and
the moral support.”
Halevi said that ever since the rockets stopped falling regularly,
Sderot has been neglected by both the government and many of the
philanthropic organizations that had assisted the city in the past.
“It feels good to see that people in faraway countries are still thinking about us,” he said.
Keeping Sderot in the headlines is the main goal of the Sderot Media Center.
“We’re constantly on the lookout for creative initiatives and the
Artists 4 Israel Murality Project was a perfect fit for us,” said Jacob
Shrybman, an activist with the center.
Shrybman said the media coverage that the project generated was a
throwback to the days of Operation Cast Lead and the months leading up
to it, when Sderot appeared in the papers daily.
“It’s important for us to let people know that as the world fixates on
Gaza, in Sderot, 3,000 new bomb shelters are being constructed in
anticipation of the next round of combat,” Shrybman said.
“You can still feel the tension in the air. People aren’t at ease,”
said Saul Schister, a graffiti artist from Texas, who is currently in
Israel as part of a Young Judea one-year program.
“One of the artists was working with headphones on, listening to music,
and a resident came up to him and yelled at him. He told him that it
was dangerous because with the headphones on, he wouldn’t be able to
hear the sirens,” said Schister. “I guess that for them, these bomb
shelters on every street are a constant reminder that they live in a
Even for the Israelis in the group, the visit to Sderot was a first.
For the young man working under the moniker Psycho, painting public
buildings with the permission of the municipality was something of a
“I used to paint illegally, but then I was caught by the police. Since then I’ve been doing commissioned work,” he said.
“I don’t really care about the politics. For me it’s more about the
art. But I know that the people here have had a rough time and if my
work can help, I’m happy to do it. So far people’s reactions have been
really positive. Some people have even asked if we can come paint their
Dershowitz said he hoped that after their time in Israel the artists
will be able to go back to where they came from as strong advocates for
Israel and with a better understanding of the reality on the ground.
“After spending more than a week working side-by-side with Israeli
artists – living with them, eating with them and traveling the length
and breadth of the country with their Israeli peers – the New Yorkers
are going to have a lot of positive experiences to share when they get
home,” he said.
“We hope they will then tell people about a different side to Israel
than usually gets reported in the media, a country not defined by past
conflicts but filled with a vibrant youth culture looking towards a
bright future for everyone in the region.”
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Is your cellphone starting to look a little battered around the edges? Do you have multiple old phones that are doing little more than taking up space or collecting dust? If so, you may want to consider recycling them. Don’t take them to the recycle center, however, as believe it or not you can actually trade them in for cash by using a cellphone recycling envelope.
The components in cell phones are notoriously bad for the environment, and many old phones can even be donated to other countries or to people who are less fortunate, but many people never think to recycle. In order to encourage this, many countries now offer ways to recycle your old phone for money. In the United States, there is a program and website for a company called Cell for Cash that will recycle your phone AND give you money for it.
So if you have an old cell phone or two in your drawer at home that isn’t doing anything, you may want to think about whether you are willing to recycle it. You'll be doing a world of good for someone less fortunate with yourself, and having a little extra 'pocket money' from recycling your old phone can help you do good things for yourself - such as helping to pay your current cellphone bill.
Find your unlocked cell phones at UStronics.com. Your source for unlocked phones, cellular phones, gsm phones, unlocked cell phones and satellite phones at best prices and quick service. So avail the advantage of our limited offers at UStronics.com.
The material in this article is for informational purposes only. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Local.com. See Additional Information
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Tidying up the language, the winter that wasn't, faceless, breastfeeding backlash, and last call for a polar bear.
1) THE LINGUISTIC WISH LIST
This is the time of the year to evaluate what was hot in 2011 and what won't be in 2012. The Washington Post, for example, has its What's Hot/What's Not list. Tim Tebow is out, we're told, while hunting for the "God Particle" is in. Hand-me-down sweat pants are coming in, which is enough to wish the next few days would last forever.
Yesterday, I repeated -- via Twitter - my death wish for the hot 2011 phrase, "reach out." We don't phone people any more. We don't contact them. We don't talk to them. We "reach out" to them now. Reaching out is something you do to a drowning person, or an enemy. Kill it. Kill it while we still can.
That, as you might expect, kicked off our pent up linguistic death wishes:
Some other nominees submitted via email:
Weigh in -- Should be reserved for boxing or TV shows about fat people trying to lose weight. You can find this phrase in a headline almost every day, like today, for example, in the Fargo Forum.
It's lazy, a fact proven by substituting "said something." We're guilty of this, too.
If this were the '80s, headline writers might write, "Reagan weighs in on Berlin Wall."
Ideate -- Which, conveniently, rhymes with "hate."
Socialize -- As in "Let's socialize that plan and see what happens." Let's just not use it and see what happens.
Ask -- As a verb. "I have an ask to add..."
NPR's Steve Inskeep committed a language foul this morning with this tweet:
Hopefully, someone will have set him straight by the time he's dinnering.
Piggyback on that idea -- Why be effective in using one word when you can signal your bad idea by using four to introduce it?
Noodle -- As in, "I'll have to noodle on that for awhile.'
Going forward -- "From now on." Usually used by politicians caught in scandal who can't bear to go backwards.
Kick the can down the road - First of all, nobody plays kick-the-can anymore. Nobody. Second, if you've got a problem and only one way to describe it, how big a problem do you really have?
Add yours below.
2) THE WINTER THAT WASN'T
This is wrong. Sure, winter inconveniences most of us, but this is a state -- and an economy -- built on winter, like it or not. Many ski areas can't make snow, few people are able to ice fish (a good-sized gap opened up on the eastern edge of Mille Lacs Lake yesterday), the St. Paul Winter Carnival usually works better with winter, and people in the Northland are starting to wonder whether the Beargrease dog sled race is doomed this year, the Duluth News Tribune reports.
"We're still keeping our fingers crossed -- we can still have the race if we get one of those good old-fashioned northern Minnesota blasts of snow," said board President Geoff Vukelich said.
The paper says businesses that depend on snowmobiling are starting to suffer.
But there are more traditions at risk. What about the beautiful City of Lakes Loppet? And having the Art Sled Rally without snow is like having it without art. Saint Paul will be the only U.S. city this year with the Red Bull Crashed Ice. How are we supposed to do that in the slush?
No, this is all wrong.
What would it be like to not be able to recognize a face? The New York Times provided this fascinating video of a woman with the affliction.
Reader/Twitter pal @RadioNed called our attention to a 2010 Radioab broadcast about people with "face blindness," and people who have to try decode who it is speaking to them. It is a more common situation than most of us may think.
Scroll ahead about 2:10 to avoid the pledge drive message...
4) BREASTFEEDING BACKLASH
Target is trying to defuse a backlash from nursing mothers who've organized "nurse-ins" in response to a complaint at a store in Houston.
"Guests who choose to breastfeed in public areas of the store are welcome to do so without being made to feel uncomfortable. Additionally, we support the use of fitting rooms for women who wish to breastfeed their babies, even if others are waiting to use the fitting rooms," a Target spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times yesterday .
The protest started after a suburban Houston woman said she was harassed.
5) LAST CALL FOR A POLAR BEAR
Around the country, and probably somewhere in Minnesota too, otherwise intelligent people will jump into freezing water this weekend. Garth Gaskey of Wisconsin will be one of them, but this is the last time he'll participate in the oddest of New Year traditions.
"I'm getting old," Gaskey tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I've got four stents in my heart. My toes turn black from staying in the water too long. My daughter is having a conniption fit. It's time I hang it up."
He's 82, and he's the oldest "polar bear" in Wisconsin.
Bonus: At least he didn't make the cover. Sports Illustrated provides an early assessment of Ricky Rubio.
We're just two days from the end of 2011. Today's Question: In six words, how would you describe 2011?
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) - First hour: The pros and cons of consumerism.
Second hour: The year in astronomy.
Midday (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.) - First hour: Jane Kirtley of the U of M Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law looks at the year's developments in media.
Second hour: American Radioworks documentary, "State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement."
Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) - First hour: New rules for home care aides.
Second hour: Erik Larson, author of "In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin."
Would people please stop using "impact" as a transitive verb? Please?
"Physicality" - Ugh. ESPN commentators need to stop with this one.
Also "Deja vu all over again." Google this one. It's everywhere! So annoying.
"Disrespect" used as a verb.
I know the OED has documented that usage as far back as the 1600s, but it still seems inappropriate.
I was exceedingly pleased to see 'going forward' among your listed phrases that must die. ANY variation of this phrase, such as 'moving forward,' needs to be killed.
I also really despise the phrase 'go live,' as in 'May is our 'go live' date with X information product.'
'The build.' 'The install.' Die, die, die.
I have my own phrase for such phrases, but I won't write it here.
please let's retire "shooting" an email.
Please, please, please kill the phrase "ping" someone. It's even worse than "reach out".
Use of "absolutely" when a simple "Yes" will suffice. Just about everyone interviewed on MPR responds this way - drives me crazy!
I'm with you on that, AnneT.
I'd like to see "go ahead" die -- as used by many supervisors to ask or tell you to do something, no -- everything. And as used at the beginning of almost every sentence by some people giving instructions.
"Go ahead" as in "Don't wait for XYZ; just go ahead and do ABC" is an appropriate use. The others are icky.
Bob tasked me with something my skillset can not handle.
And for music critics - stop using "sonics" and "sonically" to refer to how something sounds.
"No problem" as a response to "Thank you". If it was a problem , wouldn't you let know? A nice, "you're welcome" should be sufficient.
How about words we should use more? I like Busking.
2 months ago I had never heard of it before but now have have seen it used once and heard it used in an interview once.
Speaking of "Thank you" and "You're welcome," I'd like to add to the list all those vairiations of what field reporters, pundits, and politicians say when the host of a news show says "thank you" to them. As in:
"Thank you Mr. Pundit..."
"Good to be with you, Robert."
- O R -
"Thank you for filling us in on the latest developments, Ms. Field Reporter."
"Great to be with you, Kathy."
- O R -
"Thank you, Mr. Reporter..."
"Thank you, Bob."
Whatever happened to "You're welcome"? Why can't these people just say "you're welcome"?
They shouldn't be saying anything. Hosts shouldn't say "hello" to a reporter and they shouldn't say "thank you" at the end. It's not meeting a chum for drinks, it's people doing their jobs... or if they do say "hello" or "thank you," they shouldn't be waiting for a reply. This is one of the things that has driven me crazy.
I notice Brian Williams on NBC ends ever live shot the same way.... "(Name of reporter) reporting from (name of place). (Name of reporter), thank you."
While he, smartly, doesn't wait for a response, it's exactly the same every time.
It's sort of the son of "happy talk.'
Coincidentally, BJ, I just heard "busking" for the first time yesterday, because of this video.
This one has been around for a few years, but I think it's worth a mention...
"I know, right?" as a phrase of agreement.
It's even been shortened to the more annoying "...right?"
I occasionally find myself using this phrase and have to resist the temptation to wash my mouth out with soap.
Along with "no problem" please stop using "no worries." I prefer the standard, "Your welcome" myself.
"Thanks much". I really can't justify it, but this phrase drives me crazy.
"Throw under the bus" because it's cliched and used primarily by hypocrites.
"Job creators" because it doesn't refer to people who create jobs in any meaningful way. It's just a euphemism for "rich people" who have been doing a particularly lackluster job when it comes to job creation, despite their historically favorable tax environs.
-people have always done this and have never made a big deal out of being able to change course without going ballistic with the added responsibility.
thinking outside of the box
-simply implies chicanery and specious intentions of manipulation and scheming-a better term for thinking outside of the box. Thinking outside of the box is the birth canal to white collar crime.
-I swear I will projectile vomit in the face of the next person to snap this two syllabler at me. (Nothing is Perrr-fect)
"I want it all"
That comment along with it's originator can be locked up for an eternity.
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Life there was very hard! We didn't have what to live on. We truly went hungry
Top: Arye Gurwitz (extreme right), Micha Baron (second from left)
Second row: Nechama Patz (second from right), Sima Abelson-Baratz (middle)
Bottom: Miryam Slep (extreme left)
I joined the hachshara of Hashomer Hatzair at Kibbutz Chaim in Ponevez (Panevezys) where the hard times began I only spent several months on hachshara, and life there was very hard! Not everyone had work, and we didn't have what to live on. We truly went hungry, but we were stuffed to the gills with Zionism
Meir Yaari came as a shaliach (emissary) from Eretz Yisrael and told us about the land, and Yaacov Gottlieb also came.
Certificates were hard to come by, and the only way around this was by means of fictitious marriages Every such couple would receive a certificate along with a ketuba (Jewish marriage certificate).
Before making aliya, I came home to take my leave. I remember my father warning me not to leave my luggage unguarded When we arrived in Berlin, the gang decided to wander through the streets, but I hesitated about leaving my luggage, and only half-heartedly went to tour the city without it
Do I remember leaving home? I remember that they all escorted me. All my relatives came. It was a festive moment. In the movement they held a farewell party for me.
First Encounter with a Poel Yehudi in Eretz Yisrael
On Purim 1934 I reached Jaffa port. Such a colorful port; the porters with their black turbans! They came out in boats to the ship anchored at a distance from the harbor, and from the boats they carried us to the shore on their backs. It was a very strange sight
I stayed at the immigrant hostel in Jaffa for a few days, and from there I went to my brother Yosef in Ramat-Gan. I was walking in a lane when I suddenly saw a laborer in work clothes carrying a hoe, and I was all excited at my first encounter with a Poel Yehudi (Jewish laborer) in Eretz Yisrael. I asked him if he knew someone called Yavnai, and heard him say: That's me. I was so surprised!
Yosef had left the shtetl when I was still a little girl, and fourteen years had gone by since then, so it was no wonder that we did not recognize each other, especially since it was so unexpected
I can't forget that moment of coming face to face with life in Eretz Yisrael: my first encounter with a Jewish worker, the scent of the citrus groves
From there I went to Haifa and lived for a while in the home of the Zahavi family in the Nahla quarters (today Michael Street). Their home frequently absorbed new immigrants who would stay for a night or two, and then continue on their way
I was fluent in Hebrew, and my beautiful handwriting roused admiration, so that I immediately found work in the Anglo-Palestine Bank (today Bank Leumi). I quickly realized that I was using very literary Hebrew. When I said puzmeka'ot (hosiery), they didn't understand me. In addition, when I said zeh harah li, they corrected me saying, here we use 'it made me angry'. I laugh now, as I did then, when they told me how funny I sounded.
In the shop they asked me where I was from, and I answered and this also makes me laugh from the Diaspora... I remember the shopkeeper responding: We're still in the Diaspora, sitting between the British and the Arabs. He told me that his ancestors had come from Lithuania, and as always, when Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) meet, we immediately felt as though we were family.
When I made aliya to Eretz Yisrael, I toured it extensively, and the fact that I saved a train ticket from the Valley Train, from September 9, 1934, is a sign that that was a special experience.
Return Train ticket: Palestine Railways Haifa-Shatta L.P. Mils 0.125
January 8, 1941
Miryam is in a dark suit standing next to the middle door of the bus
I think that the last letter I received from home was after the Russians entered Lithuania. The regime became a communist one (June 1940).
My sister Henia, who worked as a cashier in a mercantile enterprise in Rakishok (Rokiskis), became the 'boss', and the former bosses became her workers.
JewishGen, Inc. makes no representations regarding the accuracy of
the translation. The reader may wish to refer to the original material
JewishGen is not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in the original work and cannot rewrite or edit the text to correct inaccuracies and/or omissions.
Our mission is to produce a translation of the original work and we cannot verify the accuracy of statements or alter facts cited.
Dusetos, Lithuania Yizkor Book Project JewishGen Home Page
Copyright © 1999-2013 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 27 Sep 2009 by LA
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Libya-Italy: By boat to Lampedusa and a new life
|Publisher||Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)|
|Publication Date||16 June 2011|
|Cite as||Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), Libya-Italy: By boat to Lampedusa and a new life, 16 June 2011, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4dfb0b782.html [accessed 20 June 2013]|
|Disclaimer||This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.|
LAMPEDUSA, 16 June 2011 (IRIN) - When Sonny Johnson left Tripoli for the Italian island Lampedusa in a wooden fishing boat, he feared he might never set foot on dry land again. But for Johnson, from a small village in eastern Sierra Leone, it was worth the risk.
"I had been working in Tripoli for four years, after travelling there overland from Freetown [Sierra Leone capital]," he told IRIN shortly after arriving on the island. "I had a well-paid job, but when the situation broke down in Libya, I started to suffer abuse because I was African. I started to get tired in my soul. Then I knew I had to leave, and I decided to try to come by boat.
"On the boat, nobody talked about where we were going," he said. "I don't think anyone wanted to jinx our arrival. We talked about other things, like family and football. All we knew was that we were going to Italy."
Johnson left on a boat with 110 other migrants, among them several women and children, at 4am on 11 June. After being tracked by Lampedusa's coastguards, the boat was escorted into port at midday the following day. "The sea was a little bit rough," he said. "But I believed we would arrive."
Johnson paid US$800. The boat captains are usually also migrants who have paid a slightly reduced rate to agents who ask them to operate the boats. Often they have limited experience at sea and are treated like the other migrants. The boats are often impounded and a "boat graveyard" is appearing by the port.
There is also a small museum on Lampedusa where local artists have turned belongings that were previously owned by migrants - shoes, korans, photos, letters, fuel containers, life jackets - into an art collection.
Lampedusa's sandy shores have been a landing point for migrants from North Africa for centuries. But the island was overwhelmed by a surge of more than 30,000 migrants between February and April this year. Aid workers based on the island say the situation, although difficult, has since improved.
"Lampedusa's two processing centres are crowded but the situation is not critical," said Barbara Molinario, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Lampedusa. "But logistically it is difficult when we receive large influxes."
In the 10 days prior to 12 June, Lampedusa had received no boats from North Africa, but on 12 June UNHCR registered 1,500 migrants in seven boats during a 12-hour period.
As each boat arrived at the port, anxious smiles were clearly visible on the faces of the migrants. Some dropped to their knees and prayed on the edge of the dock. "There is a kind of euphoria," said Johnson. "We cannot believe we have arrived."
But arriving on Lampedusa is only the first step in a registration process that can take up to one month. Of this week's 1,500 new arrivals, 1,000 departed on 12 June after undergoing registration by Italian immigration officials and police.
"The two processing centres on Lampedusa are quite small and people need to be identified by police in a short period of time," said Molinario. "For the migrants, that usually means long waiting hours. It can be quite harsh for them when they have to wait for an entire day to shower and change their clothes, after coming by sea all the way from Libya."
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Yesterday, Reuters described how workers from collapsed French car parts manufacturer New Fabris threatened to blow up their plant to increase redundancy payouts. This follows a series of "bossnappings" earlier this year when workers held company executives hostage in a bid for better compensation.
This being England, it simply wouldn't be cricket to do things like that. But, seriously, if you are made redundant you need to know your employee redundancy rights, make the most of your payout, and try to get the best deal possible.
What is redundancy?
Redundancy occurs when an employer needs to reduce the workforce for some reason unrelated to the conduct or capability of the individual(s) concerned.
Generally, your job must disappear for you to be made redundant, but it can also happen if someone else's job disappears and they are moved into your job, making you redundant.
This is known as "bumping," which often happens when a more senior employee is prepared to take a more junior role to avoid redundancy. An employer may find it hard to justify bumping as fair, however, which could lead to a claim for unfair dismissal.
Employee redundancy rights & redundancy rules
- right to consultation before redundancy to discuss alternative
- right to fair and objective redundancy selection criteria and procedure
- right to an explanation of the reasons for dismissal and the basis of selection
- right to appeal against redundancy
- right to try any alternative offer of employment for four weeks
- right to notice period or payment in lieu of notice
- right to take reasonable time off, with pay, to look for alternative work or training
- right to redundancy payment, provided the employee satisfies eligibility requirements
What if my employer is declared insolvent or cannot pay redundancy?
If an employer is declared insolvent or cannot pay redundancy pay, the redundant employee can apply for a direct payment from the National Insurance Fund. First, the employee must write to the employer asking for redundancy pay. If the employer's unable to pay, the employee should fill out Form RP1 available from the Insolvency Service.
Additional Information & Advice
You can obtain further information about your employee redundancy rights on FindLaw.
Depending on the circumstances of your case, however, it may be better to speak with an employment law solicitor. You can be matched with an employment law solicitor in your area for free via solicitor matching services, which can also help you to understand the best course of action for your situation and whether you are ready to hire a solicitor.
And, again depending on your situation, they may be able to help you find a solicitor who will agree to take your case on a "no win no fee" basis, which means you don't have to pay for the solicitor's services unless you win your case.
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This ebook will teach you several mentalism effects, all of them related with music. Here is Nefesch in his own words:
Let me tell you a REAL story:
I received a call from a producer who asked me to meet him for an interview to discuss the chance of me being the OPENER for some MUSIC concert tours that would take place in Greece. So I went to the appointment he had several questions, he asked me to perform which I did, and he was truly impressed, after that he told me: "ok, I want you, but the last word on whether or not we will hire you is on the singers hands". So he gave me another appointment in which I will meet the singer (who is very famous here in Greece) in which I will have to perform, and convince her that I fit in her show. I decided to perform something related to music, and make the singer believe that I have skills that allow me to hypnotize people by using music, and skills that allow me to influence people by using music. The result: A FULL SUCCESS.
Since then I have developed several methods, routines, techniques and effects that fall into that category: using music to influence people to make the decisions I want them to take.
Another real story:
While discussing with the owner of a Bar if I could not perform there, he told me: "you know the only issue I see, is that in this bar we are always playing music, and in order for me to have you here I would have to stop the music, and people could complaint about it, they might think it is boring".
"Oh, I think I didn't tell you this, but there is no reason to stop the music, you'll see I perform with music, I actually use the music in order to hypnotize people and place them into trance, I also use music to influence them and perform my acts, I am sure you have heard about "suggestive music" haven't you?"
The result: I was hired and performed in that bar without any inconvenience.
One final story (from many I have):
I go to an interview in a Bar, and I ask for the owner (who had asked me to met him there), when he sees me he says:
"I thought you were a mentalist"
"yes I am" I said
"Then, why are you carrying a guitar with you?"
I made immediately a demonstration of how I can influence people with music, he was so impressed, I was performing in his bar next Friday.
In my Musical Influences, I will show to you several ways of how to use music to create predictions, or to use it as a mind reading tool. What is important here is that this ebook will teach you how to make your audience truly believe that you are capable to use music to hypnotize people or to influence them.
How many of you play an instrument?
This is the ebook that will show you how to put that instrument into your performance.
I'll be honest with you, this is one of my biggest acts in my theater show, most of the time I use it as my big finale, and what I do is I take my guitar with me on stage, I play and sing a song, and I show the result of how by singing that song I influence the audience who listened to it...
...BUT WHAT IF YOU don't HAVE ANY SKILLS TO PLAY ANY INSTRUMENT?
NO NEED TO WORRY, I will also teach you how to perform Musical Influences without needing to learn anything about music, nor anything about any instrument.
This ebook will teach you from impromptu effects to stage effects with no big set up needed, from using your own guitar to perform huge miracles, or your drums, or any other instrument to using your CD player or IPAD to make people believe you really have musical abilities that all musicians would like to have to: INFLUENCE people.
In this ebook, I am teaching you some unique techniques, methods, routines, that you can use to truly improve your performances, and show something unique in your theater show, bar performance, or even performing just for friends.
1st edition 2010; 100 small pages.
This product is listed in the following category:Magic > Mentalism & Spiritism
This author has products in the following categories:Magic > Cards
Magic > Liquids & Chemicals
Magic > -Video clips (download)-
Magic > Coins, Chips & Buttons
Magic > Balls, Eggs & Dice
Magic > Mentalism & Spiritism
Magic > -DVD (download+stream)-
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I wrote my oldest son a letter this past weekend, even though he only lives a few miles from me and I see him regularly.
You see he was hitting a milestone, one that has to do with age, and he seemed worried about it.
It told him not to worry.
For those of us over 50, any age under that sounds pretty good, because we know the pitfalls and the problems.
That doesn't mean we wouldn't take the same chances or make the same mistakes again. As I told my son, young people always think they are smarter than they are, and old people always think they are wiser.
There is a lot of talk in our society about ages being different today. Statements like "50 is the new 30" and "30 is the new 20" seems to ring true to many people. But personally, I believe nothing of that kind of banter. It is just the ramblings of people being an age that they don't want to be and trying to be younger.
Let's face it 50 is still 50. It is still a half a century.
True people live much longer today than they did 100 years ago. The average death of a man who lived in the United States in 1900 was at 40 years old. Today, even those of us who were born 50 years ago, can expect to live into our 80's for the most part. And longevity charts I have seen says that if a person reaches age 85 today, there is a good chance they will live into their 90's, an age that relatively few people in history have seen.
But let's not get too full of ourselves about this whole thing. Medical science has done wonderful things to extend our lives, but it has also extended lives many lives in a way some of us don't want to live. The growth of long term care centers in this country isn't only due to the large bulge in the population that is getting older, it is also due to the fact that our doctors can extend lives to the point where some people feel existence becomes meaningless, even torturous.
There is a big moral debate about that. I think each of us have our own feelings about when life should end, but I know I personally am not so scared of dying as I am about the journey it will take to get there. I've never liked long good-byes.
This idea that an older age is now actually a younger age really bothers me. Sure, we may feel better because most of us aren't physically wearing our bodies out as our ancestors did in hard labor jobs, but the pressures of todays life provide a strain that is different too. Our science cured most of the major infectious diseases in the last century (and also found some new ones that we haven't cured yet) but the chronic diseases, like cancer and heart disease, continue to plague us. And some of the things that have made life easier for us, have also complicated our health as well, such as riding in cars all the time and eating fast food.
There's a group of advertisements on television that puts out the word about financial investments that use my generations past to promote their future. It shows scenes from the 1960's up through the 70's and 80's saying that we were the generation that changed the world and now we can change our old age because we are so influential.
Let's face it, we have had our triumphs and our tribulations. But we owe a lot of what we are to our parents who survived the biggest war this world has ever scene (so far) and an economic downturn that sent most of them scurrying just to find food to eat. As a group we haven't suffered those things; however the last few years we have found our own set of demons, many of which come from the past that the commercial likes to tout. The seeds of these problems were sewed long ago and we must face up to them or our children will have to do it.
I told my son in the letter that at one time I could play basketball anytime I wanted without my knees swelling up so bad that I couldn't walk for three days. I also could lift a lot of heavy stuff and had the endurance of a horse.
Now I realize I never did play basketball very well, nor could I lift what I thought I could. And my endurance was a legend in my own mind.
Turning a decade older is a hard thing to do for some people, but it has never bothered me. However, I remember when I turned 40 that I realized for the first time that my life was probably about half over. But then I said to myself, "Yeah but you also have half of it to go, too."
Time does exist, but man is the one who devised a way to measure it. I don't think it matters whether we are eight or 80, as long as we have our minds and fairly good health. In my life I have known people who were 20 that acted like they were what society traditionally thinks of as a 90 year olds though process. And I have also known 80 year olds who think like they are 20. I just hope I am in that second group when I get there in 25 years.
`As for my son, I told him he would be okay. Getting older isn't the end of the world, but it is what you make of it.
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Those who made New Year's resolutions to quit smoking have had two weeks to contemplate the decision.
Is it worth the hassle? Can they stick to it?
Similarly, Lawrence itself is experiencing the effects of such a decision nearly two years after banning smoking in "all enclosed public places."
"It wasn't my idea, and I wasn't on board at first," said Lawrence Mayor Boog Highberger. "But I think this is the most popular decision I've made since I've been on the City Commission. I know in certain circles it's not, but it is if you count the population as a whole."
While the commission instituted the ban based on public health concerns, the main opposition continues to stem from those citing economic fallout. Three types of businesses seem to be the most vulnerable: bars, restaurants and music venues.
"Downtown is taking a major hit," Nick Carroll said. "There are a handful of places right now that are contemplating, 'Is it even worth being in business?'"
He said Replay's inside bar revenue was down about 60 percent and the outside up about 60 percent since the ban.
"It used to be even in the summer," he said. "Now, even though it's winter, the back bar is stronger."
Though Replay was the first music venue to feature an outdoor area, he said the amount of smoking clients gained by this setup didn't offset the overall financial decline.
"Everything else is going up," he said. "All expenses are going up. The city is growing. The sales should be up 5 to 10 percent. But they're not. If you don't have growth, you're losing."
Lawrence's ban is still among the harshest in the nation, falling in line with cities such as Los Angeles and New York. Unlike smaller towns (such as Ames, Iowa) that allow smoking at restaurants and bars after a certain time in the evening, the law is no more lenient toward indoor businesses than if the establishments were within a commercial airplane.
A number of venues created an outdoor patio area or expanded an existing one.
More about the smoking ban
- 6News video: Report spurs talk of state-wide smoking ban (06-27-06)
- On the street: Do you think Kansas should adopt a statewide smoking ban?
- Ban could snuff smoking statewide (06-28-06)
- Report: Dangers of secondhand smoke more pervasive than previously thought (06-28-06)
- 6News video: Judge rejects smoking ban suspension (06-06-06)
- Judge again upholds city's smoking ban (06-07-06)
- 6News video: Smoking ban remains contentious 18 months in (01-15-06)
- Effects of city's smoking ban still in dispute (01-15-06)
- 6News video: Judge rules in favor of city smoking ban (12-22-05)
- Judge upholds city smoking ban (12-23-05)
- 6News video: Suspension of smoking ban in hands of judge (12-17-05)
- Smoking ban now in judge's hands (12-17-05)
- Kansas Health Foundation Grant
- Douglas County receives grant to expand anti-smoking efforts (12-05-05)
- More stories about the smoking ban »»
"I have a lot more people on the patio now, but I had to spend a lot more money on the patio, putting the roof on, getting the heaters and that kind of stuff," said Rick Renfro, owner of Johnny's Tavern.
Renfro said his sales were down 15 to 20 percent from 2003, yet he was able to recoup most of that by raising his prices. That and the ban combined to drive away some regular customers - a group he prefers to call "professional drinkers."
"I think a lot of them don't like people telling them what to do as much as anything," he said. "It's not just the smoking. I raised my prices so now they can go to the liquor store and buy a six-pack for what they can buy two beers here.
"I think only 20 percent of the national population smokes now. My little, small Johnny's universe of people, it's probably more like 60 to 70 percent. ... Johnny's is going to survive, and I'll get by, but it just makes it a heck of a lot harder to do that."
What about the music?
Some claim Lawrence's music scene has borne the brunt of the smoking ban.
"I can easily say we're not the same music scene," said Carroll, whose clubs feature live music several nights a week. "Look at Bottleneck's calendar and tell me if it's the same. Look at the Jackpot; we're not doing what we were a year and a half ago. We know we can't pay those big guarantees because we're not certain we can fill the room."
Carroll said many of the national acts that played at one of Lawrence's many concert spots their first time through the Midwest are now bypassing the city to play at similar clubs in Kansas City.
"This (smoking ban) is the worst-case scenario: We're the first ones who are doing it and we're the only ones who are doing it in the state," he said.
Rick McNeely, longtime owner of The Jazzhaus, disagreed that bands were skipping Lawrence for more smoker-friendly locales.
"We had a pretty rough couple of months at first, but it seems to all be sorting itself out," he said. "Everybody is getting used to it. That's the way people say it is everywhere. Whenever there's a smoking ban, the clubs really get hit hard for a few months, then it all kind of works itself out."
But he said the club's out-of-town crowds were thinning because of the ordinance.
"We did lose a lot of our south Johnson County business that we were getting," McNeely said. "For those Blue Valley kids and those at 135th and Roe, it's faster and safer to come to Lawrence than it is to go to Westport, in addition to a whole lot more fun. But I do think it's gradually starting to filter back - so to speak."
Regardless of the economic repercussions, he approved of the prohibition.
"It makes it better for everyone," he said. "Who wants to smell like an ashtray?"
Measuring the short-term health benefits of the ban is a little more tricky.
"In order to see the difference from an environmental change like the indoor smoking ban, you have to have organized research both before and after the ban," said Dr. Steve Bruner of Lawrence Family Medicine & Obstetrics.
"Several good studies now have shown that an indoor smoking ban dramatically reduces the incidence of heart attack (27 to 40 percent) within the short time of the institution of a ban. In Lawrence, it's very difficult to study that, because we're not an isolated community. People with heart disease go to multiple hospitals around the area, and that's further complicated by the fact that Lawrence Memorial has a new heart program that occurred simultaneously with the ban."
As for the long-term benefits, Bruner cited statistics by the National Cancer Institute that attribute 3,000 deaths from lung cancer per year attributed to secondhand smoke.
"I'm not like an anti-smoking Nazi at all," Jazzhaus owner McNeely said. "I'm not crazy about sitting around people smoking cigarettes, but I don't get up and tell them to move or put it out. As far as an individual health issue, I know I'm going to be 55 in a few months. How healthy can THAT be?"
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Three months after the San Bruno gas explosion, the disaster has officially claimed three more homes.
A 30-inch transmission pipeline owned by PG&E exploded Sept. 9, and the initial blast and fire killed eight people and injured dozens more.
It took an hour and 46 minutes for PG&E to shut off fuel in the line, during which time first-responders tried to keep the fire from spreading. In the end, 35 homes were completely destroyed and were demolished this fall. Fifty-eight other homes were damaged.
On Tuesday night, the San Bruno City Council approved a plan to demolish three more homes that had been yellow-tagged, meaning they were too damaged to occupy but not so damaged that they required bulldozing.
Additional inspections by insurance companies determined that the homes were so damaged it would be more expensive to repair than replace them.
The city will receive $90,000 from PG&E to pay for the demolition by a private contractor.
One of the homes that will be demolished is owned by Arturo Vasquez, who was home the night of the fire but escaped unscathed. When he returned to his home, almost everything in it had been licked by flames.
The home was initially red-tagged, which meant no one could enter it. After a reassessment, it was downgraded to a yellow tag, so Vasquez and his wife could enter.
“If you could name a piece of furniture in your home, from a chair to a lamp, it was destroyed,” he said. “But there were nooks and crannies where there were little surprises, mementos that didn’t burn.”
Now Vasquez is ready for the home to be demolished.
“It’s been kind of an ongoing source of angst. There’s so much mold in it now. We’re ready to have it torn down,” he said. “It’ll be a relief to have that out of the way and feel like we’re moving forward.”
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Free Markets, Free People
A post I did in September of 2006, originally entitled “September 11th, 2001 – “We Lost David”. It is the ongoing fulfillment of a promise made in the last sentence of the post. This is what 9/11 should be about.
Each week I do a tribute on Boston’s WRKO 680am called “Someone You Should Know” about a Soldier, Sailor, Marine or Airman who’s been awarded a medal for valor in combat. Those medals represent their actions above and beyond the call of duty. But, as we all know, valor and courage aren’t exclusive to the military or combat. And no better example of that is what the courageous men and women of fire, rescue and police did that awful day in September of 2001 when terrorists attacked our country by flying commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
A few weeks ago I signed on to an effort called the “2996 Project” organized by a blog to do a tribute to each and every one of those who died on that day. Three thousand bloggers are participating. The names were assigned randomly. When you signed up, you got whoever was next.
I was honored to draw the name of David Halderman Jr.
Of course, I never knew David Halderman. I’d never previously seen his name or if I had, it never registered beyond that of a person who’d died that day in those barbaric attacks. But when I began to research David, I found a man for whom my admiration and respect knew no bounds.
You see, David Halderman was a firefighter with Squad 18 of FDNY.
On that grim day in September, FDNY lost 343 of its finest who, disregarding their own safety, rushed toward the scene of the disaster while others were running away. It is estimated they saved over 20,000 souls that day. In the finest tradition of firefighters everywhere, they never hesitated. David Halderman, Jr. was among them.
Squad 18 is located in Greenwich Village. When the towers were hit, Squad 18 responded immediately. All seven firefighters on duty that morning were lost.
A visitor to New York just prior to 9/11 happened to remember Squad 18 for a particular reason:
This past Labor Day weekend, one of the youngest attendees, my nephew Beau, was walking with his mom and aunt past Firehouse #18 in Greenwich Village. Beau asked if they could stop. Three firefighters took the time to show Beau and his sister the fire truck and posed for some pictures.
Among the three firefighters who so made those visitors feel so welcome was David.
After returning home to Alaska, and following the terrible events of 9/11, Beau asked his mom if the guys in the picture were OK. After checking back with Squad #18, and showing them the picture, my sister in New York learned that “Chris and Harry made it. We lost David.” The photograph was the last picture taken of him.
As I looked further and further into the life of David Halderman, I found a man who was worthy of love, admiration and respect. He was a 2nd generation firefighter, following in the footsteps of his father and namesake who had very recently died. His brother also was with FDNY.
The fact that he’d taken time out of his day to spend with a young visitor from Alaska seemed something completely in character for him. The fact he’d responded immediately to the disaster of the World Trade Center came as no surprise either. His mother remembers the night before:
On Monday night, David Halderman called his mother in Brentwood to comfort her, as he has done regularly since his father died on Aug. 8.
“I asked him to have a good night, to be careful, to be safe, and I told him I loved him,” his mother, Geraldine Halderman, said. “That was the last time I spoke to him.”
“I love you, take care of yourself.” That was how David Halderman always ended his telephone conversations with his mother.
The next day fate and tragedy took David Halderman while performing the duty to which he’d dedicated his life:
On Tuesday morning, Halderman, a firefighter with Engine-Squad 18 in the West Village, entered the World Trade Center to help victims escape. He is now among the missing city firefighters.
“He was in the building when it collapsed,” Geraldine Halderman said. “They found his helmet. That’s all they found.”
The helmet was identified by its badge – No. 10652, the same badge number used by Halderman’s late father.
Where do we get such men? In the face of every human instinct which tells us to flee, they resist that and walk into danger, risking their lives to help others escape and live. Courage and valor are rare commodities. That’s why we revere and reward them. Those attributes were displayed by hundreds of the fire and rescue people who responded with David Halderman Jr. on that grim and horrid day in September of 2001. As a nation watched in stunned horror, men like David were saving lives.
A few days ago, David’s mother left this message on his memorial site:
Dear David, Five Years! My son you are in my thoughts and prayers every day. I have moved from the house where you grew up,it was too much for me alone. I carry all my memories in my heart. I know you are with me always, you are the voice within me that says “don’t be afraid” when I am sad or anxious. The ache in my heart remains, dulled with time but always present even through the laughter and happy times. There have been weddings and a birth since you left us,and you have been missed so much and remembered at those times. I love you forever.
Life goes on but the hurt never goes away, and mothers suffer a special agony which comes with losing their children. But we are all poorer for the loss of David and those like him. It is they who define what is good and right about us. It is they who show us what man can be. It is they who give us hope for the future.
September 11th is the day to remember those, who like David Halderman Jr., gave their lives in the service of others. I didn’t know David Halderman before this year. But I do now. He was a man to both admire and respect. And every subsequent September 11th I will remember and honor his name. It is the least we can do for the heros among us.
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To know more about this project, and for image credits for the button, please read the Travel with books project page.
Over 6 months after my trip to Lisbon, I am finally ready to tell you about what the city and the books held for me. As with Vienna, Lisbon is not a once-in-a-lifetime destination for me, and you may notice that my take on this post is a little different from previous ones: this time I took the books as suggestions of what to go and discover in Lisbon. Because of that, this post also fits Libby‘s new event, the Book Pilgrimage.
It is hard to keep my eyes fresh after visiting a place so many time, but books do help to discover new facets even of the best-known town.
My reading list (links are to my thoughts):
- José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
- Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
- Eric Orsenna, The Indies Enterprise
First, following the example of Gregorius in Night Train to Lisbon, I intended to take a ferry to cross the Tagus — except, I was sidetracked, because I found a convenient river cruise leaving from the same terminal! It clearly does not have the same feeling, but I appreciated the experience.
The good thing about the cruise is that we managed to reach and see the Belem Tower, which wold not fit our earlier programs. When you visit the tower (which we did on a previous occasion), you see a nosy sculpture and you learn about the first rhinoceros to be brought to Europe by Portuguese explorers in early 16th century. You can read the full story here on Atlas Obscura. It was interesting to recall it because in The Indies Enterprise Orsenna gives a good fictionalized account of the rhino’s arrival and of the reaction of people in Lisbon. Unfortunately I cannot share the scene with you because I only have the French version of this book, but if you happen to have the English translation, I’d be grateful if you shared the quote in the comments!
The best part of the day, though, was following the indications given by Saramago and retrace Raimundo Silva’s steps on what was once the Moorish line of fortifications around the city. I have to admit I never felt the charm of this part of Lisbon as strong as on that day. (Following quotes are from the English translation by Giovanni Pontiero, taken from Google Books.)
The idea, which came to him as he watched the roof-tops descending like steps as far as the river, is to follow the lay-out of the Moorish fortifications according to the scant and rather dubious information provided by the historian, as he himself had the good grace to acknowledge.
Raimundo Silva will peruse more slowly whatever remains to be inspected, another section of the wall in the Pátio do Senhor da Murça, the Rua da Adiça, where the wall rose up, and that of Norberto de Araújo, as the street was recently baptised, at the summit an imposing stretch of wall, eroded at the base, these are truly living stones, they have been here for nine centuries, if not longer, from the time of the barbarians, and they survive, they intrepidly support the bell-tower of the church of St Lucy or St Brás, it makes no difference, at this spot, ladies and gentlemen, opened the ancient Portas do Sol, facing eastward, the first to receive the rosy breath of dawn, now all that remains is the square which took its name from this landmark…
But here, right before Raimundo Silva’s eyes is a fragment, if not of the indestructible rampart itself, at least of a wall occupying the same space where the other stood, and descending all the way down the steps beneath a row of broad windows surmounted by tall gables.
As usual, here’s a list of more books set in Lisbon I wish to read sometime soon:
- Antonio Tabucchi, Pereira Maintains
- Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem: A Hallucination
- José Saramago, Journey to Portugal
- José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
- Camilo Castelo Branco, Mysteries of Lisbon
- José Rodrigues dos Santos, The Einstein Enigma
- Richard Zimler, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon
Have you read any of these? Any title that you wish to suggest/suggest to avoid? And have you ever visited Lisbon?
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Reception highlights historical architecture book
Nov. 19, 2001
KALAMAZOO -- Just hours before her surprise 1896 New Year's Eve wedding to Dr. Augustus Crane, young minister and prominent Kalamazoo resident Caroline Bartlett took photos in her well-decorated Sill Terrace apartment.
Today, the picture at Sill Terrace is very different. The historic building remains at the corner of Rose and Lovell streets where one of its more prominent occupants is a street-level lingerie store.
That's just one of the things readers will discover in "Kalamazoo: Lost & Found," a new architecture book that will be the focus of a special book-signing and reception from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 29, in the Meader Rare Book Room of Western Michigan University's Waldo Library.
Authors Lynn Smith Houghton and Pamela Hall O'Connor will join their editor, Maria Perez-Stable, and local photographer John Lacko in presenting their work. It is the first major book on Kalamazoo architecture to be printed since the early 1980s.
Published by the Kalamazoo Historic Preservation Commission, the first half of the book focuses on buildings that have been torn down. But unlike similar books about Boston, Chicago and New York, there is a second half that celebrates historic buildings that are still standing.
"I hope that when someone reads this book, they'll think about how a community has changed," says Houghton, a local historian and WMU alumna. "Certainly it never ceases to amaze me that so many of these buildings gave way to parking lots.
O'Connor, a preservationist, wants readers to gain a special "sense of place" from the book.
"This has been the most wonderful education I could ever hope to have," she says. "It has firmly attached me to my community, and if other people can get the same feeling, I'll consider my job well-done."
The "job" has lasted seven years. Houghton and O'Connor teamed up in 1994 to research, write and raise money for the book. And before settling on the book's 500 photos -- most of which have never been published before -- the two sifted through more than 100,000 local pictures and negatives, including thousands in the WMU Archives & Regional History Collections.
In doing so, the authors became the first to examine carefully 26,000 negatives in the archives' Ward Morgan Collection. The images document Kalamazoo life from the 1930s to the 1980s and were given to WMU by a local commercial photographer.
"As a staff we haven't had time to look at each of the 26,000 negatives," says Sharon Carlson, director of the WMU archives. "It's all very exciting when you see the images in the book, and just realizing that there are thousands of other images like them in our archives means there are many more books and articles to be written."
The book also examines how some new businesses help preserve the past.
"The American mentality of 'knock it down, build it bigger, build it better' is slowly changing," says Perez-Stable who edited the book and heads Waldo Library's central reference desk. "Communities are learning that it isn't always necessary."
One example is the Oaklands, a 1869 Italianate villa on West Michigan Avenue that once housed some of Kalamazoo's most elite families. Today it is part of WMU and is used for University receptions and small meetings. The book also features the former Grace Reformed Church now occupied by Diekema/Hamann/Architects, and a former gas station that now is the Water Street Coffee Joint.
"We have maintained and restored a number of places in Kalamazoo," says O'Connor, who chairs the city's Historic Preservation Commission. "Hopefully readers will think differently about what we still have and gain a greater appreciation for it."
Because the book was completely funded before it was published, money from sales will go directly to funding local historic preservation projects, O'Connor says. She and Houghton tapped the city of Kalamazoo, local organizations, businesses and individuals for the $100,000 needed to underwrite the project.
Hardback copies are $46.95, and soft cover copies are $34.95. The book is available at the Heritage Company, Athena Book Shop, John Rollins, Michigan News Agency, Norman Camera, Golden Bough Books, Wild Goose Chase and the Kalamazoo College bookstore.
For more information about the book, contact Lynn Smith Houghton at (616) 381-2006 or Pamela Hall O'Connor at (616) 342-4608. For more information about the archives collection at WMU, contact Sharon Carlson at (616) 387-8490.
Media contact: Gail H. Towns, 616 387-8400, email@example.com
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It looks like Microsoft is working with Prometric to put out a different way of testing for certification. Basically, it's an emulation, there are tasks to complete, and the emulation grades based on how well the tasks are completed when all is said and done. This is different than from what Microsoft calls a simulation where there's only a limited number of paths. Having seen the various Cisco router/switch "sims" I guess those are better described as emulations, especially the more robust ones where you can set up several switches and routers and issue almost the entire set of IOS commands. But in any case, it sounds like a step in the right direction. More here:
Performance Based Testing Pilot
The pilot is just that: a pilot. It's not a beta exam, there's no score, it's to test out how well the new mechanism works. However, the first 3000 folks to participate will get an exam voucher out of the deal. One proviso, the pilot is based on simulating Windows Server 2008 Active Directory configuration.
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Did you see the awesome video of the Canadian meteor from this weekend? Incredible. The meteor streaked across the night sky, growing brighter as it descended. When it reached the denser parts of the atmosphere it grew bright enough to light up the entire sky. It then may have broken apart – as of this writing the meteorite or pieces of it have not been found.
What is even more incredible than the meteor itself is that there is so much footage of it. This was a completely sudden and unexpected event. No one could have prepared for it. It lasted only a matter of seconds. And yet multiple people happened to have cameras running and were able to catch the full event with reasonably high quality video.
It reminded me of this amateur video of a tornado in Miami. Actually, there are multiple such amateur videos – all descent quality. Just follow the links from YouTube.
In fact YouTube and other similar sights are filled with amateur video of all kinds of weird things and unexpected events. There are many videos along the theme of “What is this weird thing?”
The point is – we are entering an age of nearly ubiquitous video, and the quality and ease of use is getting better at a steady rate. Any phenomenon, even rare ones that strike with little warning, will eventually be captured on video of sufficient quality to allow for meaningful analysis.
And yet, no such video exists of bigfoot, chupacabras, any alien or their spacecraft, the Loch Ness monster, or Kevin Trudeau’s ethics – probably because none of these things exist. Of course, the absence of evidence does not constitute proof that something does not exist. But, absence of evidence becomes increasingly compelling the more thoroughly something has been looked for. As our world becomes increasingly blanketed in video recorders and cameras, the absence of convincing images of a phenomenon argues more and more strongly against its existence.
There are low-quality videos of most of the things I list above, and other things like ghosts (although the argument here is complicated by the fact that ghosts are purported to be insubstantial). But never high-enough quality to have a really good look – good enough to see sufficient details to tell whether or not the bigfoot is actually a guy in a costume, or if Nessy is actually a large floating log. Videos of such thing are usually little more than good enough to spark the imagination, but not useful as evidence.
During our investigation of the Warrens – famous local Connecticut ghost hunters, Ed Warren showed us a video (he would not give us a copy) that he took of the White Lady of Union Cemetery. The video showed a human figure shrouded in flowing white walking through a graveyard at night. The figure was at that perfect “sweet spot” distance so that you could make out a walking human form, but not close enough to tell if it were a person in a sheet.
While video cameras and digital cameras become more and more common and better and better quality, I look forward to seeing compelling video of aliens dissecting a chupacabras, or bigfoot riding Nessy.
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Class examines Malcolm X's legacy
December 11, 2007 2:13 PM
About 70 people gathered Tuesday in Rosa Parks Hall to take part in the final presentations from students of Oba T'Shaka's class on Malcolm X.
Topics included Malcolm X's relationship with Islam, his ongoing influence on hip-hop, and three missing chapters from the acclaimed autobiography of Malcolm X. The class was split up into eight groups of about five members each and this was their final foray into the mind of Malcolm.
"We basically had the second half of the semester to work on it," said Aaron Salazar, 19, whose group focused on parallels between John Coltrane and Malcolm X.
Jasmine Conner, 23, is a group member of Salazar's and said that she was satisfied with her performance and learned about other militant groups like the brown berets and rap philosophy.
Professor T'Shaka, who has taught the course at SF State for about seven years, told his class afterward that he had learned some things he didn't know.
"That's a good thing," he said. "That's what I wanted."
T'Shaka said that they did a good job with the diversity and the impact of Malcolm X in their presentations.
"Look at the diversity of the class," he said. "It speaks to a broad impact; he was the most important thinker the 20th century ever produced."
Salazar, a sophomore, said he was surprised by the number of people that were in attendance.
"It was mostly people from the class at the beginning," he said. "But more people kept coming in later on."
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Copyright © 2008 [X]press | Journalism Department - San Francisco State University
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When it comes to your financial future, do you believe in fate and destiny? Do you believe your future is predetermined by God, nature or some other form of destiny?
Imagine a group of kids making toy paper boats they are going put into a river or a stream. Toy boats are pretty simple. Many do not have rudders to provide direction or engines to give power.
When simple toy boats are put into a powerful river or stream, they are really left to the force of nature to determine it’s course of action. Some boats will hit lots of rough waters and have a greater potential for capsizing.
Related article: Economic forecast: Cloudy with a chance of a hurricane
Choice or destiny?
Life is similar in many ways. Sometimes we find ourselves in tough situations and the forces of nature seem to move us in ways that we cannot control. That being said, do we have the choice to make decisions to take different paths in life? When things get rough in life, was it because of certain choices that we made in the first place?
I can’t help but believe that we have more say and control over our destiny through every choice we make. Today, we have many tools, different technologies and the information to make better decisions. If you think about it, today, we can build powerful boats to get us to our destinations safer and help us avoid troubles. We have the ability to see the weather for the next few weeks to help us plan our decisions. We have GPSs and maps to give us direction. We have rudders in our boats so we can steer away from trouble. And we have powerful engines to help us move us against the current and the herd.
Related article: Are you ready for change?
Do you believe in yourself?
When it comes to personal finance, I think we have to believe we have the power to take control of our finances.
For most people, the biggest hurdle to wealth comes from lack of belief that it is possible to achieve wealth. If you don’t think you are worthy of wealth, you have a problem. If you start with negative beliefs about money, it is difficult to get more of it.
Related article: Do you believe you can become wealthy?
Belief alone is not enough
Just because you believe in yourself, you will not automatically become wealthy.
The mind is very powerful. It operates at both the conscious and the unconscious level. Some people try to believe it is possible to become rich but it sits at the conscious level. For example, I know many people who read books on wealth, attend seminars, and believes they will become wealthy. Yet they still have money problems. True success comes when your belief moves from the conscious to an unconscious level and then motivates you to action.
Related article: Implementing your financial resolutions
It takes action to take control of your money
The key to taking control of your money is to take action. It’s about moving from belief and planning to actually doing something different. It’s about changing your habits because the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.
It’s about changing your course to get different results or making changes to your boat that will help you overcome the forces of nature.
I can’t help but think we have more control over our financial future and our destiny. What do you think?
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Rocky Ridge’s Path: Through the Past to the Future
The recently established Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association wants to share what they see and why they call Rocky Ridge the “best kept secret in the city”. Located in Youngstown, Ohio, Rocky Ridge like many local neighborhoods has experienced its fair share of hard times with the deindustrialization of the late 1970’s and the recent economic recession. But that doesn’t stop these neighbors from loving their place any less!
“Rocky Ridge’s Path: Through the Past to the Future” is a walking discussion lead by neighborhood residents who will share the stories and experiences surrounding the neighborhood, and present initiatives that are helping to maintain it. Inspired by the late urban visionary Jane Jacobs and her philosophy of placing people and their neighborhoods above all else, the Rocky Ridge Association is sharing how their community has influenced their place; and in turn how place has influenced their community. By exploring its social, historical, cultural and environmental characteristics the Rocky Ridge neighbors will establish the aspects both past and present that shape their neighborhood identity.
This walk will consist of 4 stops. Each stop will be hosted by a different neighborhood resident bringing their unique perspective to the discussion. We invite anyone and everyone to come learn about Rocky Ridge!
Date: Saturday May 5, 2012
Route: The walk will begin and end at the same place in the parking lot of Shrine of Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted, located at 517 Belle Vista Ave, Youngstown OH.
Host Organization: Rocky Ridge Neighborhood Association
Accessibility: This event is accessible and welcoming to children and seniors.
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Planes, trains and automobiles -- all these modes of transportation were affected Saturday by Hurricane Sandy, even with the storm many hours away from making landfall.
The storm is expected to cause massive flooding and widespread power outages when it hits the East Coast, in full, late Sunday and into next week. But before that happens, transportation companies and government officials are allowing -- and, in some cases, urging -- people to plan for the worst.
A number of airlines, for example, are allowing customers to change their flight plans without paying any fees due to Sandy.
Delta will let those ticketed to fly between Sunday and Wednesday, in and out of airports in 15 states and the District of Columbia, to reschedule by November 4. United's offer applies to travel to-and-from 29 airports, for the same dates.
Other airlines, such as American, are offering a similar process, with slight variations. And at least in U.S. Airways' case, the weather is already keeping airlines busy: The airline apologized to customers on its Twitter feed for long waits to get through to agents due to a high call volume tied to Sandy.
Amtrak announced Saturday that it will cancel some of its train runs on Sunday to and from Richmond and Newport News, Virginia; Chicago and Washington; Miami and New York; and Washington and New York. In addition, a train scheduled to run Monday between Washington and Chicago will also remain in the station.
"Passengers are encouraged to travel on earlier available trains on Sunday," Amtrak said in a news release. "Additional cancellations might be necessary in the coming days as this major storm moves north."
Even New York's vaunted, round-the-clock subway system could shut down due to flooding and other issues tied to the storm.
Officials say they'll decide Sunday whether to suspend service on the subway, as well as on buses and commuter rail, depending on Sandy proceeds. For now, New Yorkers should plan their lives as if such a suspension will happen, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
"New Yorkers need to take action now to protect themselves, and as the transportation system prepares to possibly suspend service, no one should wait until the last minute to prepare," said Cuomo, who has declared a state of emergency in the state.
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KnowBe4 Announces 5 Cyber Security Predictions for 2013
CLEARWATER, FL, Feb 04, 2013 (PRWeb.com via COMTEX) --
According to the New York Times, the top American military official responsible for defending the United States against cyberattacks recently stated that there had been a 17-fold increase in computer attacks on American infrastructure between 2009 and 2011, initiated by criminal gangs, hackers and other nations (1). In 2012, cybercrime against banks and businesses proved to people that such attacks would not be ending anytime soon. Stu Sjouwerman, CEO and founder of KnowBe4, an Internet security awareness training firm, foresees that cyberattacks will continue to become more and more advanced, and will continue to steal money and personal information via the Internet.
Sjouwerman has over 30 years in the IT industry and is a member of the FBI's esteemed InfraGard program. InfraGard is one of the fastest-growing networks of government and private sector individuals united by a strong commitment to national security. Because of Sjouwerman's experience and expertise, he has been able to help businesses learn how to protect themselves against cyberattacks. Realizing that the computer is not the only avenue for hackers out there, Sjouwerman's predications are based on the technology that people use every day. He also found that in most cyberattacks, humans are often the weakest link. His company, KnowBe4, is dedicated to educating the public of impending cybercrime tactics that may be easily guarded against, rendering such attacks unsuccessful.
Sjouwerman's 2013 Cybersecurity Forecast:
1. First Quantity, Now Quality: Cybercrime will focus more on quality than in previous years. Criminals will use increasingly smart malware, and engage in more focused attacks.
2. BYOD Target Number One: As part of cybercrime's focused attacks, they will be looking to infect employees' private mobile devices that have access to company networks.
3. Multiple Devices: People are now using various sizes of computing devices (phones, tablets), each with its own operating system. Hackers rejoice with a million Android-based malware variants.
a- With the increased number of smartphones in use--at least 165 million active Android and Apple iOS devices in the U.S. used by 78% of the adult population (2)--it is especially important that people know the dangers that come with their mobile technology.
4. The Password is Dead. In 2013, you will see a wave of organizations that deploy a form of two-factor authentication for both customers and employees. It will be a web-based login with a password together with a secondary passkey that will be sent to a user's phone.
5. Mobile Commerce: 2013 will be the year of mobile shopping, and within the next twelve months, most retail companies will enable mobile commerce with mobile wallets.
Protecting Against Cybercrime
KnowBe4 uses knowledge of the latest cybercrime tactics to train its clients' employees, ranging from banks, credit unions, defense contractors and hospitals to insurance corporations. Most recently, his partnership with former hacker Kevin Mitnick ("The World's Most Wanted Hacker") led to the development of Kevin Mitnick Security Awareness Training. Mitnick, the renowned computer hacker-turned-security-consultant, collaborated with Sjouwerman to create security awareness training that is interactive, web-based, and includes case studies, live demonstration videos and short tests.
KnowBe4 offers cybercrime prevention resources to help organizations determine their susceptibility to cyberattacks, including a free phishing security test and a free email exposure check (EEC) which reveals publicly available company email addresses that cybercriminals can use to target staff with spear-phishing attacks.
"Cybercrime prevention and protection is all about getting businesses, employees and people to know what to look for and what to expect. In this way, they can protect themselves by understanding how hackers operate," Sjouwerman commented.
For more information on KnowBe4, visit http://www.knowbe4.com.
About Stu Sjouwerman and KnowBe4
Stu Sjouwerman is the founder and CEO of KnowBe4, LLC, which provides web-based Internet Security Awareness Training ISAT) to small and medium-sized enterprises. A data security expert with more than 30 years in the IT industry, Sjouwerman was the co founder of Inc. 500 company Sunbelt Software, an award-winning anti-malware software company that he and his partner sold to GFI Software in 2010. Realizing that the human element of security was being seriously neglected, Sjouwerman decided to help entrepreneurs tackle cybercrime tactics through advanced security awareness training. He and his team in KnowBe4 work with companies in many different industries, including highly-regulated fields such as healthcare, finance and insurance. Sjouwerman is the author of four books, with his latest being Cyberheist: The Biggest Financial Threat Facing American Businesses Since the Meltdown of 2008. Visit http://www.knowbe4.com or http://www.knowbe4.com/cyberheist-the-book/.
(1) Sanger, David and Schmitt, Eric. NYTimes.com, July 26, 2012. "Rise Is Seen in Cyberattacks Targeting U.S. Infrastructure," nytimes.com/2012/07/27/us/cyberattacks-are-up-national-security-chief-says.html
(2) Blodget, Henry. BusinessInsider.com. September 13, 2012. "Actually, The US Smartphone Revolution Has Entered The Late Innings," businessinsider.com/us-smartphone-market-2012-9
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/2/prweb10383587.htm
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Smartphones have been getting lots of attention lately what with Google's introduction of the Nexus One and all the ballyhooing going on over at CES this week. The world is seemingly poised for yet another "year of mobile" (I'm losing count, but it seems as if that scorecard is well into its second decade). So what are the opportunities? Where are the changes?
A new Questus study sponsored by AOL and Universal McCann takes the temperature of 1,800 smartphone users - because if any audience is not only receptive to, but equipped for mobile marketing messaging, it's very obviously these technology early adopters.
The findings? Heartening, but hardly earthshaking. Herewidth, some of the findings:
- 1 of every 7 minutes of media consumption is via a mobile device.
- 80 percent of mobile users are satisfied with their ability to access the internet on their mobile device.
- Smartphones are used everywhere: 95% - "downtime"; 82% - at work; 81% - shopping; 80% - at home; 65% - commuting to work.
But what are users doing on their smartphones? Mostly, and unsurprisingly, it's quick-hit stuff: looking up maps and directions, social media, and getting news updates. Fifty-five percent say they seeking local listings (e.g. movies and restaurants), which appears to remain the low-hanging fruit of marketing opportunity to these users. But national franchises excepted, we're unlikely to see a rush to mobile advertising from local mom 'n' pop businesses - the ones that barely manage to maintain an online presence at all.
Word-of-mouth marketing has much more potential. Seventy-four percent of users say they use social networking apps to share photos, news, videos and recomendations. Overall, most prefer emailing or texting to calling. And there's plenty of what the study calls "media meshing," or simultaneous use of mobile with other media, and a push-pull effect that drives users to mobile, the web, other media, and back again.
The younger you are the heavier your mobile usage. Particularly if you own an iPhone. The young and iPhone equipped spend roughly twice as much time on mcommerce, mobile social networking and concurrant mobile/tv usage than do older demos and/or the iPhone-less.
The survey, which is very obviously biased toward selling mobile advertising solutions, stakes a claim for mobile engagement: that mobile users are less likely to be distracted from the mobile channel than using most other media. Twenty-seven percent of mobile users report themselves "completely focused" versus 13, 17 and 19 percent respectively for TV, radio and reading the paper. But personal computers, interestingly, account for still more engagement with a 33% "completely focused" rate.
And over a third of respondants say they've taken action after seeing a mobile ad, be it seeking more information, opting-in to email or coupons, buying. But while 44 percent are buying things for their mobile in the mobile channel (think apps, ringtones), only 24 percent have conducted other types of mcommerce.
Couponing could help change this behavior. Seventy-four percent of smartphone users are very receptive to the idea of mobile coupons, as well as to mobile becoming an even deeper part of their lives. Mobile users expect their use of digital channels to increase over the next two years, while anticipating a drop in their use of traditional media channels.
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Gamesharing. As the Nintendo DS does with its DS Download Play, the PSP allows one user to share their game with a third party, usually—but not necessarily—as a precursor to multiplayer gaming. A self-contained version of the game being shared is sent to the remote PSP over the wireless network, whereupon it boots and runs as though loaded from a UMD disc. Such 'Gameshare versions' of software usually have their featureset reduced and are intended, for example, to allow the multiplayer aspects of the software to be used while holding back single player or bonus functionality.
The UMD disks are small enough to fit comfortably in a short, and superficially analogous to Sony's past invention, the MiniDisc, but for the need of a protective secure and vaguely different cartridge structure. There is also a row of derived reins along the audio off and on in sport or selecting different equalizer presets in the OS), monitor brightness, reaching the system's core menu, as well as the pennant Start and limited buttons, a digital 4-directional pad, and an analog store. The PSP's opinions are geared for controlling book, harmony settings (either switching the bottom of the project, for gaming quite than multimedia, with two shoulder buttons (triggers), the iconic PlayStation face buttons birth and Select buttons.
First party European titles Fired Up and Wipeout Pure both shipped with Gamesharing features; subsequent titles have followed suit.
The graphics and audio capabilities of the PSP lie somewhere between those of the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 2. While most of the available games are less complex than games available on PS2, the graphics nonetheless tend to be much closer in quality to the PS2 than the PS1. This is probably in large part due to the small size of the screen, combined with the fact that unlike the PS1, the PSP's graphics chip performs texture filtering.
OS ANGELES — Nintendo dominates handheld video games now, but its biggest competitor and a number of other companies are getting into the business.
Sony announced yesterday that it will start selling a handheld video-game machine, called the PSP, by the end of next year. The company, appearing at a news conference before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), didn't give many details about the device, but the PSP is expected to compete with Nintendo's Game Boy game players.
Nokia disclosed more information about the N-Gage, its combination cellphone and handheld video-game player, which is scheduled to go on sale Oct. 7 for $299.
A company called Tapwave recently said it will debut a handheld gaming device by the end of the year that can also play music and videos and display photos. The company was formed by former executives from Palm, the maker of the popular handheld computers.
1 Generation of Chaos 2 Splinter Cell Essentials 3 Daxter 4 Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children 5 Pursuit Force 6 Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX 7 Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror 8 Metal Gear Acid 2 9 Mega Man Maverick Hunter X 10 Monster Hunter Freedom
1 Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories 2 Generation of Chaos 3 Splinter Cell Essentials 4 Daxter 5 Need for Speed Most Wanted 5-1-0 6 Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children 7 SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 8 Pursuit Force 9 Prince of Persia Revelations 10 Ape Escape Academy
The PSP's analog input, often called the "analog nub," is not a traditional analog stick, but rather a sliding flat panel. Its odd placement initially led to speculation that it was a speaker (there are two holes on the front of the PSP that are also not speakers, but are made to look like them, the actual speakers are on the bottom). Concerns existed regarding the practicality of the input (its position requires a slightly asymmetrical grip on the unit to adequately use, with the left hand being lower than the right). While it is used in the same way as the analog thumb stick of a modern console, the resistance springs are calibrated differently: They are softer, making quick, coarse adjustments a bit easier, but fine-grained ones a bit more difficult.
With all of these developments, this could be the year the video-game industry hits the road. No longer content to follow the traditional console model, companies are looking to new devices to move game playing away from the television set and are showing them off this week at the industry's big trade show at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
These companies are intent on cutting into the dominating lead Nintendo and its Game Boy line have had in the handheld-gaming market, particularly with younger players who are content to trade more sophisticated game technology for a small device that can be brought to school or to a friend's house.
Nintendo said yesterday it does not feel threatened by the new competition, particularly the Sony PSP, which does not have a price yet and will not launch until late next year. "We don't feel that there's anything in particular that we need to be worried about right now," said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.
The PSP promises to be more technologically advanced than Nintendo's portable game players. It will play games stored on an optical disc about half the diameter of a compact disc but which holds an enormous amount of data. The devices will have a backlight and will be able to connect to each other and to PlayStation 2 systems.
It "is the Walkman of the 21st century," said Ken Kutaragi, chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Nokia said yesterday that its N-Gage mobile phone features a digital music player and an FM radio. It is set to launch with 10 titles, including "Tomb Raider," "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" and "Rayman 3." The games will cost about $30 to $40.
Major retailers have agreed to sell the N-Gage, including Best Buy, Circuit City, Electronics Boutique, GameStop and Target.
"Mobility is where gaming is going, and nobody owns mobility like Nokia," said Nada Usina, a general manager for entertainment and media at the company.
Sega is developing four games for the N-Gage, including "Super Monkey Ball" and "Virtual Tennis." The company has for years had a mobile gaming group, and said it is working with the N-Gage because the device has enough graphic speed and screen colors to meet Sega's standards.
"Teens and 20- to 30-year-olds, they just can't live without their cellphone," said Sega spokeswoman Jennifer Walters. "We found that there's this need to fill time, and entertainment is always there."
Tapwave said it was founded to create handheld products focused on mobile entertainment, mainly for the tech-savvy 18-to-34 age group. It has not yet disclosed the games to be offered with its first product, code-named Helix.
"For the first time ever, the technology has finally reached a point in time with graphics acceleration where you can create a very sophisticated console experience," said Byron Connell, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley company.
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David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a moving, beautifully written, emotionally taxing, very well-told novel. It’s the kind of book that’s difficult, not because of the way it’s written, but because of the direction you know the story is headed in — you get caught up in the novel’s world and want to stay in it, and yet you know things are going to go bad at some point and you dread the thought.
The novel is a retelling of Hamlet, a fact that shapes your experience of it one way or another. If you are familiar with the play, then you have the pleasure of trying to figure out which character in the novel corresponds to which character in the play, and which plot event is a version of the play’s events. The novel doesn’t follow Hamlet exactly, but it’s close enough that there are plenty of convergences to pick up on. You also have a general sense of the direction the plot will take and it’s satisfying to watch exactly how Wroblewski works everything out.
The risk of retelling a well-known story is that the reader might lose a sense of urgency or feel that what happens is too expected and familiar, and I did feel a laxness now and then when the novel followed the play particularly closely. But the method offers plenty of other pleasures (although perhaps “pleasure” isn’t quite the right word, since we’re talking about a tragedy here), not least the experience of hoping against hope that things will turn out differently than you are afraid they will.
If the reader isn’t familiar with Hamlet, there is another possible risk, which is that some of the plot events may seem a little strange and out of place. I read this book for a book group (which hasn’t yet met) and another member who hadn’t realized that it’s a version of Hamlet was a little startled to find that a ghost makes an appearance in a novel that is otherwise very down-to-earth and realistic. But this friend said it was only a small jarring moment in what was otherwise a good experience.
If you do get the Hamlet reference, there is the intellectual pleasure of seeing just how Wroblewski reshapes a story originally set in a very different time and place. He does this wonderfully well; with the possible exception of ghosts, there is no awkwardness in having a Hamlet who lives on a farm in Wisconsin in the 20th century and grows up raising dogs. Wroblewski handles the relationships among the Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude characters marvelously well, and his take on Ophelia is astonishing.
But to set the Hamlet issue aside, the world of the novel is remarkably well-realized and his main character an appealing one. Edgar’s life is simple — he attends school but spends most of his time working with the dogs his family is known for, the Sawtelle dogs, distinguished by their unusually strong ability to communicate with humans. He and his mother and father raise and train the dogs, pouring their energy into them so that they are among the best-trained dogs available.
Edgar’s life is also shaped by the fact that he was born unable to speak, although he can hear normally. This is a mystery to the doctors, who conducted test and after test on him but could never figure out the problem. Something about this inability to speak gives him an unusually close rapport with the dogs, so close that his ability to train them sometimes suffers. His companion, Almondine, is always by his side; she is trained to keep an eye on him and to alert the others if he is in trouble. Her devotion to him — and his to her — is almost too moving to bear.
The novel’s point of view is most often focused on Edgar, with some chapters that shift to other characters and now and then even to Almondine, and Wroblewski often tells us what Edgar is thinking and feeling, but he rarely tells us what Edgar thinks of his inability to speak. This fact is simply a given, something Edgar seems to accept. (The one exception to this general rule is horrifying, however — all the more horrifying because of this earlier reticence.) We also don’t learn much about Edgar’s life off the farm. We know he attends school, but what his experience is like there we have no idea, and we never hear of any friends or outside interests or future plans. For such a long novel, it’s remarkably focused on just a few people in a constrained setting. This narrowness of focus intensifies the sense of doom that slowly settles over everybody; if things are going to go wrong, they are going to go spectacularly wrong and it will be a horrifying sight. The farm is all that Edgar knows — it’s his whole world, and this gives him a strength and a vulnerability that are wrenching to behold.
This is Wroblewski’s first novel, and I’m very curious to see what he will publish next; this is a wonderful debut from a writer I hope gives us many more books in the future.
(If you decide to read the hard cover version of this book, I’d suggest not reading the front flap, as it gives away way too much of the plot. After all I’ve said about Hamlet, you might think I’ve given away too much too, but the description on the front flap gives many more details than I have here, and I wish I hadn’t known them when I was reading.)
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Lord was born in 1906 in Plainfield, New Jersey to Carroll P. Lord, a New England cotton merchant, and Frances E. Troy of Asheville, North Carolina. The family moved South two years later. He graduated from The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and received a law degree from the University of North Carolina in 1931.
Lord became active in Mercer County politics, first elected to the Lawrence Township committee in 1947. The following year he took control of the Mercer County Democratic organization and became a powerful force in state Democratic politics. He was credited with masterminding the election of Robert B. Meyner as Governor of New Jersey in 1953, after a decade of Republican rule. Meyner appointed Lord to the board of the Port Authority.
In 1960, Lord was the Democratic nominee for United States Senate to face incumbent Clifford P. Case, but he was defeated by a large margin, despite the fact that John F. Kennedy narrowly won New Jersey in that year's presidential election. After the defeat Lord was elected chairman of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee. He continued to play the role of Democratic kingmaker, helping his former law partner Richard J. Hughes win the gubernatorial election of 1961.
Lord and his first wife Margaret Eastburn had one child, Thorn Jr. After a divorce, he married Nina Underwood, ex-wife of David Hunter McAlpin, Jr. They had a daughter, also named Nina. By 1965, the Lords were separated. Apparently depressed by the estrangement, Lord committed suicide by garroting himself with an electric shaver cord at the home of a friend in Princeton.
- "Jersey Party Chief Is Found Hanged". The New York Times, June 17, 1965. Accessed June 8, 2008.
- Office History, United States Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey. Accessed June 8, 2008.
- "Battle for the Senate", Time, October 17, 1960. Accessed June 8, 2008.
- "Died", Time, June 25, 1965. Accessed June 8, 2008.
- "Thorn Lord Case Ruled a Suicide". The New York Times, June 18, 1965. Accessed June 8, 2008.
|Party political offices|
Charles R. Howell
|Democratic Nominee for the U.S. Senate (Class 2) from New Jersey
Warren W. Wilentz
George E. Brunner
|Chairman of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee
Robert J. Burkhardt
|This article about a New Jersey politician is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|
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Historic Cherry Hill
Grand Opening of Historic Cherry Hill's Edward Frisbee Center for Collections & Research
Albany, NY-- September 23, 2003 -- The white pine and leather cradle used in 1749 by Maria Van Rensselaer, daughter of Albany's 28th Mayor, Robert Sanders. The 1835 saddle owned by Solomon Van Rensselaer, military hero, congressman, and Albany's postmaster in the early years of the 19th century. A vast collection of the Van Rensselaer-Rankin family's personal, business and legal papers, including land records, will and estate papers, journals, school papers, cancelled checks, and letters. These are just a few of the Van Rensselaer family attic treasures that will be unveiled to the public for the first time on October 1st at 11:00 a.m. at a ribbon cutting and grand opening celebration for Historic Cherry Hill's Edward Frisbee Center for Collections & Research.
Edward Frisbee, for whom the new facility was named, was a partner in the Cherry Hill family's law firm and founding president of the museum. According to Historic Cherry Hill Director, Liselle LaFrance, the center was constructed to eliminate the weight of storage loads from Cherry Hill's wood-frame 1787 historic structure, and to preserve the museum's diverse collections of 20,000 objects, 30,000 manuscripts, 7,500 textiles, 5,000 books, and 3,000 photographs. "Many of the collections have been moved to the climate-controlled facility," said LeFrance, "and the museum has raised more than $530,000 of the total $625,000 project cost. We are making great progress and so we wanted to give people a chance to view some of the objects that have been stored in Cherry Hill's attic for more than 200 years.
"Each object in Cherry Hill's attic tells a story not only about a prominent Albany family, but about the significance of the times in which they lived," said Priscilla Frisbee. Generation after generation lived, thrived, and struggled to maintain their identities in an ever-changing world. It is crucial that we preserve the collections that illustrate this family's story because it's a story that provides a window to Albany's past."
Michael Beiter, President of Historic Cherry Hill, said that the center would not have been possible without the generosity and commitment of the Frisbee family, the Bender Family Foundation, local elected officials, and others who will be honored at the October 1st event. "Historic Cherry Hill is extremely grateful to the people who helped make the collections center a reality," said Beiter. "Now five generations of the Van Rensselaer family's treasured possessions will get a second lease on life and be properly preserved for future generations to view and enjoy.
Beiter said Historic Cherry Hill is working to raise the remainder of the funding needed--nearly $90,00--to complete the collections center project, and will then turn attention toward restoring the museum. "The storage loads in the attic have taken a toll on the walls of the house," said Beiter. "Once the entire attic collection is settled in the Frisbee Center, we will begin the job of saving the house."
The October 1st event will include remarks by Historic Cherry Hill's President, Frisbee family members, Mayor Jennings, County Executive Breslin, and others. Cherry Hill will offer a sneak preview of attic treasures, behind-the-scenes tours of the Frisbee Center, and free house tours throughout the afternoon. The press and public are invited to attend.
The Edward Frisbee Center, Cherry Hill Street, Albany, New York. Historic Cherry Hill is located at 523 ½ South Pearl Street in Albany, New York, just off of Interstate 787, Exit 2. The Edward Frisbee Center is located behind the museum on Cherry Hill Street. From Cherry Hill turn right, turn right up McCarty Avenue, and right onto Cherry Hill Street. The center is on the right side of the street.[top]
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< / > Click here to embed this graphic on your website
Our Champions League obsession continues. On this piece for New York Times Goal Blog, we take a deep look at the the history of Champions League final matches – all 55 of them played since the 1955-56 season, when the tournament was known as the European Cup. We focused on how the top football nations have performed over time. The timeline of finals appearances provides some insight into the ebbs and flows of football superiority.
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Segara Anak Lake
After a long strenuous hike, relaxing at this hot water spring (approximately 2000 meters above sea l...
Segara Anak Lake views (2.624 meter above sea level) in the caldera of Mount Rinjani, October 1, 2011...
This is half way to Senaru Rim Camp Site. At this point, the altitude is approximately 2600 meters ab...
This camp site is approximately 2650 meter above sea level with the view of Segara Anak Lake and also...
This camp site is approximately 2500 meter above sea level
More awesome Panoramas like that on my website www.bestpanoramas.com
Asia is the biggest continent on Earth, a darling little gem floating around in space.
Hm, what is Asia? Who's in on it?
China and India are safe bets for Asian nations. Korea, Japan, Thailand, you're fine.
Europe? No. Europe would sort of be on the "Asian continent" if not for those pesky Ural mountains dividing things up in the middle, and then also the whole lineage of kings and wealth and nations and the EU and all that "give me my respect" stuff.
Russia would probably be happiest as its own continent, so for now we'll leave it in "Eurasia" and just hope the natural gas supplies keep flowing.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are dang close to Asia, but politically they show up in "Middle East" news stories an awful lot. Verdict: Eurasia.
I guess we'll actually have to consider everything from Turkey on eastward to be "Eurasian", although the moniker seems overlappitory of the territory.
The Asian economy is now officially raging like a wild furnace of lava that consumes everything in its path. Japan has had the largest individual economy in Asia for decades, but it is forecast that both India and China will outstrip Japan within twenty years.
China is the largest holder of United States debt and is positioned to become the world's next superpower, provided that Godzilla doesn't return and decide to stomp everybody back into the Shang Dynasty.
Text by Steve Smith.
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July 10th, 2012
By Jennifer Olin, BSN, RN
Being a traveling nurse can be great fun. There is the adventure of seeing new places and meeting new people. There is the less encumbered life of knowing everything you really need fits in your car. Finally, there is the knowledge that you are good enough at what you do to walk in any door, any where, and hold your own professionally. This is all great stuff.
There are also hurdles. Being a traveling nurse can be lonely. You are often far from home when major life events happen (good and bad) and since you are already the relief worker it may be difficult to get to be with your loved ones. Don’t get sick: traveling nurses don’t get paid when they don’t work.
That last thought brings me to today’s topic. There are quite a few misconceptions about being a traveling nurse and most of those revolve around money.
I don’t think I ever had an assignment where at least one nurse in my unit wasn’t under the impression I was getting paid a boatload of money to work as a traveler. Trust me, it wasn’t even a rowboat.
In general, traveling nurses make about the same hourly wage as staff nurses. Lets take a look. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last released salary numbers for nurses in 2010. The BLS shows that the median annual salary for a staff nurse in this country is $64,690 with $31.10 being the median hourly wage. In a quick perusal of other sites with more recent numbers, the median wage has not gone up significantly in any particular staff nurse field.
Traveling RNs, on the average, make between $30 – $40 an hour. Really not different from what your staff counterparts are making when it comes to straight wage. The variations in that 10-dollar range come from location and cost of living and from nursing specialty area. Not a boatload difference.
Now let’s take into account a few other factors. There is no vacation or sick day pay for traveling nurses. Yes, you can take off as many days a year as you like or can afford between contracts. But, no one will pay you if you aren’t in uniform and at the bedside. Get a cold, your sister’s wedding—you can probably get the days off but there is no money coming in while you are away. Also, if you miss too many days of work (think bad cold) your travel company will dock your paycheck for housing on the days you weren’t earning money.
There isn’t always work available. In early 2009 I was working as a traveling nurse. With a contract nearing completion I was trying to decide if I should stay where I was or move on. The national recession had been in play for about two years. When I went to my company’s job listings I was shocked. In my specialty there were fewer than 10 jobs listed. I was working for the largest travel company in the country at that time and I had never seen so few jobs.
According to the Professional Association of Nurse Travelers, “Mid 2008 saw the numbers of nurse travelers peak at close to 30,000 full time equivalents (the bottom industry estimate is 26,000). In late 2008, travel assignments stopped rising, and there was a dramatic and precipitous drop of nearly half of the travelers on assignment by spring 2009 (some sources estimate an average 55% drop, and a few individual agencies saw a short trough of 70% of the peak). While the economic downturn is still lingering, in late 2010 travel assignments increased by 10 percent over the same period in late 2009, possibly signaling the end of the general employment downturn. However, the total number of travelers on assignment in early 2011 is still only a bit more than half the number in 2008.”
So, don’t be mistaken, when the economy goes downhill, one of the first places hospitals make cuts are in their use of temporary workers—nursing shortage or not. Since I had been invited I stayed put, particularly since another thing you have to remember is there are nurses just like you competing for exactly the same jobs.
Another myth about traveling is all the great bonuses. Yes, some jobs will offer sign-on or completion bonuses for a contracted nurse. They tended to be around $1,000. Keep in mind 33% tax rate on bonus money and you are down to $700 now. And, those offers will all disappear when the jobs disappear. They are employment incentives in times of prosperity.
It is level playing ground when it comes to other benefits. Just like staff nurses the major companies offer health and dental insurance but it’s not free. Just like with other employers, nurses are usually expected to pay a percentage. Some companies offer 401Ks and some may even contribute, but again this is no different than what the staff nurse is receiving.
There is one area particularly that can put a travel nurse ahead of the pack financially. That is in housing money. If you are a traveler and you don’t own a home or keep an apartment then you will have extra money in your pocket compared to staff nurses. Your housing or a housing stipend is provided as part of the job contract. Not paying mortgage or rent and utilities is a definite cost savings and makes the money you earn go a lot farther.
However, many traveling nurses own homes somewhere. They are still paying on a mortgage or rent, just like the staff nurse.
There’s lots of talk about how well you can do with a housing stipend. You can take the money, find your own housing, and pocket the difference. That does give you more cash but there are laws and taxes that come along with that extra money.
For me, the benefit of traveling was the adventure of going places I had never been. Work is work. One OR was like another, more or less. However, that time in New England, the roar of New York City, figuring out why New Jersey is called “The Garden State,” and spending a fall and winter in Colorado were all amazing experiences for this born and raised Texan.
If you are considering leaving your staff job to pursue travel nursing I wish you bon voyage. Those years on the road were some of the best of my life. If you think you will get rich doing it, think again. You could probably do as well financially by taking some per diem work in your area, downsizing your home, or just generally cutting back. What I can guarantee you will get is adventure.
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Companies // Food & Staples
|Max. order size||11,000|
This company is a constituent of the food and staples sector. We all need to eat and drink: essentials such as food, drink and staples sell in any kind of business environment, which is why this sector is strong during economic downturns as well as booms. It also covers those ‘near-essentials’, luxury goods that some people do not want to be without, such as alcohol and tobacco. The food and staples sector now stretches all the way from the growers to retailers. On the retail side, supermarkets and online stores own the lion’s share of the market in developed countries. Shoppers now want to have everything in one place, and a greater choice of goods too. Why be content with only one variety of tomato ketchup? Over the last 20 years supermarkets have just been getting bigger, and expanding outside their domestic markets as well, buying up retail chains in other countries. While price pressure has always been an issue sector-wide, retailers are also well aware that they’re serving everyone – every budget, every age, every taste. Recent trends have included the introduction of organic food and food from farms where workers’ health, safety and fair pay are important. Makers of food supplements form a large part of this industry. They help to make food and drinks taste better, last longer, and add nutritious elements. Watch this space: The food and staples sector can be a highly politically-charged one. For starters, many countries subsidise this sector seeking to protect their farmers and keep them working on the land. Farmers’ unions often exercise enormous influence. Such protectionist measures can also throw up international spats over import duties. Major swings in the prices of agricultural commodities make this picture even more complex.
The relative health of the retail sector and availability of product choice. Other factors include crop reduction through droughts, floods and other natural disasters, worldwide demand for commodities and tax laws affecting imports and costs.
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The addition of .Net to Beanstalk follows PHP support added in March. (Beanstalk's first language was Java.) Amazon is letting developers use Elastic Beanstalk for .Net applications, using Windows Server 2008 R2 and IIS 7.5. Amazon says that Beanstalk will support "any Visual Studio Web project... including ASP.NET MVC projects and ASP.NET Web Forms." This makes it simpler to deploy .Net apps across Amazon Web Services (AWS), and (as with PHP and Java) developers pay nothing for Elastic Beanstalk itself - just for the metered services they use running the applications.
Speaking of Visual Studio, Amazon provides a toolkit for Visual Studio that has been updated to allow developers to publish straight to AWS.
Naturally, if you're deploying .Net apps, you probably want to have Microsoft's SQL Server as well. Amazon has added support for multiple editions of SQL Server 2008 R2. Support for SQL Server 2012 should be coming later this year.
Microsoft's version of cloud SQL is "based on SQL Server," but does not require users to pick a specific version of SQL Server. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on whether developers are looking for features specific to, say, SQL Server 2008 versus SQL Server 2012.
Whether or not Beanstalk constitutes a Platform as a Service, or PaaS (and I still say it does), Amazon continues to branch out at an impressive pace.
This expansion puts AWS even more squarely in competition with Microsoft's Azure and SQL Azure services, though there's some notable differences in how they're set up.
Amazon's pricing is a lot more complex than Microsoft's for SQL Azure. The SQL Azure pricing is based on size of the database. Microsoft offers two types of databases, Web and Business. The price is based on the size of the database, and starts at a flat $4.95 (just call it $5, Microsoft!) per month up to 100MB. After databases reach 1GB in size, it's billed by size, per day. Microsoft does make it a bit complicated by doing a per-day variable calculation. Azure also has bandwidth costs, but they're not specific to SQL Azure. See Microsoft's pricing page for all the details.
Amazon, on the other hand, charges by the size of the database and the size of the SQL Server instance in use, plus data storage, plus I/O rate, plus data transfer out. Amazon's storage rate is much lower ($0.10/GB per month), but you're also paying for the SQL Server instance and more.
If your shop already has SQL Server licenses, Amazon offers Bring Your Own License (BYOL) pricing, too. There's also the option of backup storage, and developers can choose reserved instances at lower prices if the services they're using will run long-term.
Playing with the pricing calculators for both services, it looks like Amazon does well if you're using Express or Web but gets pricey if you add the Standard SQL Server license. A large DB instance runs $0.59 per hour with the Web license but $1.07 per hour using the Standard license.
For developers interested only in Microsoft services, Azure is probably the way to go. But for organizations using .Net and SQL Server as just a portion of their stack, AWS is now the obvious choice.
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Skip to Main Content
Unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) has shocked economies world over and is threatening the productivity. In this paper, an attempt has been made to classify email spam by combining Bayesian network and neural network classification approach. The header information like sender details and origin IP etc. was analyzed by centered Bayesian network, whereas the content and subject of the email were separately analyzed to classify the e-mail by neural network as a classifier trained by genetic algorithm (GA).
Date of Conference: 26-28 Nov. 2010
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TIMES UNION, Albany, N.Y.
WEDNESDAY, May 16, 1990
SOME RELATIVES ENCOURAGED, OTHERS BITTERCombined wire services
The relatives of Pan Am Flight 103 victims, armed with a presidential commission's finding that the explosion of the airliner may have been preventable, vowed Tuesday to pressure world leaders into action against countries that sanction or harbor terrorists.
Emotions ranged from encouragement to bitterness for the 250 family members who came to Washington to hear the report.
At the White House Tuesday, Joanne Hartunian's thoughts were filled with her daughter, Lynne.
Hartunian, a 21-year-old student at the State University at Oswego, was returning from a semester in London on Dec. 21, 1988, when the plane exploded over Scotland. Joanne Hartunian recalled that she was in their Niskayuna home, making shish kebab - Lynne's favorite dish - in anticipation of her homecoming. The phone rang. Lynne's boyfriend said, "'There's been a crash.' Then I turned on the news. I knew she was gone."
After the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism released its report on the disaster, faulting the Federal Aviation Administration and Pan Am for security lapses, Hartunian said she felt encouraged.
"I think (the commission) is trying to fulfill its commitment by finding out the truth," Hartunian said at a news conference called by relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. "The system (for preventing terrorism) has to get better. It was completely inept."
"I feel better about the government's response," said Georgia Nucci of Claverack, whose son, Christopher Jones, 20, was returning with a Syracuse University group after studying in England. "But let's see what they do with it."
Nucci said she believed that commission members, including Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato, R-N.Y., had "their consciousness raised. They ended up being as angered and disillusioned as we were, without the grief added on."
But she added, "The question is: Will it convey to the people whose job it is to make changes?"
Family members were most critical of the State Department's action prior to the Pan Am 103 bombing in circulating to diplomats, but not the public, a warning of a possible terrorist attack.
Prior to the report's official release, family members received a White House briefing on its contents from commission Executive Director James B. Weidner. President Bush also appeared briefly and promised vigorous pursuit of the terrorists responsible for the bombing. The families received flags from the President.
"For many of us, this has been the most satisfying day since Dec. 21, 1988," said Bert Ammerman, head of one of the two formal relatives' groups formed after the explosion. Ammerman's brother, Thomas, died on the flight.
Many of the relatives wore buttons - "Iran killed them," some said - and many had pictures of their loved ones pinned to their chest.
The relatives of the victims lit candles at Washington's Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in memory of the victims. The candles were labeled "justice, security, warning," - the three themes the families have stressed.
For Paul Hudson of Albany, who lost his 16-year-old daughter Melina, the report brought a feeling of accomplishment: "One of the other family members said it very well," he said. "Life is an epic poem. Each of us gets a chance to write maybe one verse. We tried to write this one."
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Jewish World Review Dec. 14, 2010 / 7 Teves, 5771
Language and Its Discontents
By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Dear Foreign Student,
It was wholly a pleasure to get your letter asking for the definition of a word that mystified you in one of my columns: bloviation.
What the heck does that mean, you asked -- in the politest way, of course, as befits a visitor. Sometimes the manners of foreigners puts ours to shame here in the land of the free, the home of the brazen.
You add that you often run across words in my column that you can't understand, or even find in your dictionary.
You needn't be embarrassed; I get the same comment from native English speakers.
A confession: Sometimes I make up a word to get my meaning across, confident that readers will get it from context. Or that they'll be able to puzzle it out. And might even derive some satisfaction from having a new word at their disposal. There's nothing like having a word for something previously unarticulated. It comes in handy as a pocket on a shirt.
Coining words is another way to connect with Gentle Reader, and a newspaper columnist can't make enough such connections. The aim is to make the column as much a part of your morning as breakfast.
Whether you agree or disagree with the opinions expressed in a column matters less than whether I'm communicating in good faith, and good fellowship--and giving you something to think about, even laugh about.
From time to time, I'm told, "I don't agree with a word you say, but you certainly write well." I'd much rather hear that than the other way 'round. ("I agree with everything you write, but how poorly you express it!")
Bloviation is one of my favorite words, which may not come as a surprise in a member of the chattering class. It goes back at least as far as H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), an American journalist whose work appeared mainly in the
Bloviation's similarity to 'blow,' as in blowing up a balloon or blowing in the wind, is no coincidence, connoting as it does empty rhetoric. Another of Mr. Mencken's informal words, similar in meaning, was gasbaggery. Which I hope is self-explanatory. Both will surely remain relevant as long as politicians give speeches.
Mr. Mencken could be a pretty fair bloviator himself, at least in his old age. But when he was still young in years and spirit, he was a matchless critic of all things American. Consider his classic summary of
"He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
Mr. Mencken's description of Harding's oratorical effect, or lack of same, approaches art. That president's prose brings to mind any number of editorials I've read and, much more frightening, some I've written. The only sure cure for bloviation is a sense of humor, which tends to take the wind out of rhetorical sails and give the craft some balance.
Mencken's best stuff had both biting criticism and good humor, and the ideal column should have both. Unfortunately, too many of them have only one dull tone, and nothing is more boring than a piece of rhetoric that never varies in style.
Only when he grew old and bitter, and his reactions reflexive, did Mencken cease to be interesting, that is, cease to be Mencken. Living too long can be an awful thing.
All the best to you. I wish Americans were as curious about other languages as you are about ours.
Glad to be of service ,
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
=<< © 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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Our directory is intended as a resource for people with peanut and nut allergies. It contains foods, helpful products, and much more.
- What is a Peanut Allergy
- Foods to Avoid
- The Allergic Reaction
- Recognizing and Treating Anaphylaxis
- Epinephrine Auto-Injectors
- Medical ID Bracelets
- Support Groups
Peanut Free and Nut Free
Other Food Allergies
If you live in Connecticut please read
The State of CT passed a bill authorizing rescue squads to carry and administer epinephrine. However, this doesn't mean that all rescue squads now automatically carry and administer epinephrine. I was just on the FAAN website, which said that the rescue squads still have to apply for authorization from the state. Apparently the law authorized EMTs to carry and administer epinephrine but does not automatically require that they do so.
So call the rescue squad serving your town and see if they now carry epinephrine. If not, convince them to become authorized.
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Rather than unpacking all our stuff as it came out of the boxes, I decided to reorganise all my genealogy research into folders in alphabetical order by surname. This is the beginning of a grand project. It was inspired by a talk I went to at the local genealogical society. The lady who gave the talk began at the very beginning of the family history journey and she shared how she organises her stuff … in lever arch folders. So off I went to Officeworks!
Part of the process involved putting every piece of evidence in plastic sleeves and then placing them in the folder. While this may sound tedious to some, for me, it is a joy that I repeat over and over. It drives my hubby crazy. It may seem pointless but it often gives me an opportunity to revisit the documents and notes and view them with fresh eyes.
Amongst all the family history stuff is the odd letter or note written by one of the ladies who started this project before me. My great great Auntie Ethel, who I never met, has written out a lengthy description of her english aunts and the intricacies of the relationships that formed their lives. She also speaks of their niece who moved to America who Ethel met at one point. The niece’s daughter shared family research with my great aunt, Joan in England and then later with me.
Then there are the notes my grandmother has passed down. Early computer printouts of the family relationships with her hand written notes and questions in the margins. My Nan and I have talked our way through much of our shared history but reading through her research adds that little something extra. Included in these notes are verbal stories and hints that have been passed to her verbally that she couldn’t quite make sense of. When I read back over them they sometimes offer me directional hints which aid my own research.
I feel connected to these ladies and know that there is another little person, who may yet to be born, who will follow me. My job is to hand on the information that was passed to me (along with what I have added) to the next person. To leave my thoughts and impressions as this will add a richness to the tapestry that we have all been weaving.
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All tankless use a system to detect flow, and only turn on when that flow exceeds a certain value (differs by brand and model). You may have a super saver showerhead, or you like it cool, because it sounds like you aren't getting the flow needed to keep the thing turned on. That's why, when you also turn on a sink, the increased flow triggers it to turn on. You might try a different showerhead.
A thermostatically controlled shower valve is nice, but it can't magically generate hot water...if it isn't coming in, it can't adjust. But, if the temp varies while the shower is going on, it will try.
Also note that many tankless systems have a flow restrictor in them, and this can mess up both pressure balanced and thermostatically controlled valves. Read the info carefully, and check with the manufacturer before investing in making a change.
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Have we gone too far in worrying about “conflicts of interest,” as I argue in my Findings column?
The immediate peg for this question is the flap surrounding Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who has been accused of reaping financial benefits from hyped warnings about climate disaster, most notably the I.P.C.C. warning that glaciers could disappear by 2035. Dr. Pachauri has denied the accusations and the I.P.C.C. has retracted the glacier warning, but the controversy doesn’t seem to be abating. The Sunday Times of London reported that, before the glacier warning was retracted, Dr. Pachauri’s research institute used “bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
I’ve previously wondered why so many on the green side of the climate debate were so willing to play the conflict-of-interest card, as Dr. Pachauri was doing quite recently himself. It struck me as a risky political strategy — because there seemed to me to be more money to be made on the green side — as well a needless diversion from the scientific debate. So while I see some justice in this argument coming back to bite Dr. Pachauri, I still wish both sides — and the journalists who cover any kind of scientific dispute — would pay less attention to money.
Conflict-of-interest accusations have historically been used selectively to marginalize dissenting opinions, as Gary Taubes nicely illustrates in his book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” Scientists who disagreed with the accepted wisdom on the evils of fat in the diet were accused of being corrupted by industry grants even if they had received most of their money from government agencies that were looking — unsuccessfully — for evidence to back the fat-is-bad theory. Meanwhile, scientists who went along with the conventional wisdom on fat weren’t criticized for the corporate money they’d received from food companies. Read more…
Do you want New York’s mayor and health commissioner leading a nationwide initiative to halve the salt in your food?
In my Findings column, I cite some of the scientific uncertainties about the benefits of reducing salt. Doctors, organizations and federal agencies have been advising people to cut back on salt for decades, but the evidence has hardly been clearcut. In his extensive chronicle of this topic in 1998 for the journal Science, Gary Taubes called the debate over salt reduction “one of the longest running, most vitriolic and surreal disputes in all of medicine.” He noted that advocates of salt reduction had been accused of “Bing Crosby epidemiology” — accentuating the positive findings that suited their thesis and eliminating the negative ones.
Since then the vitriol and the epidemiological disputes have probably only gotten worse. You can see skepticism about salt’s risks (or at least about the strength of the evidence of those risks) from Michael Alderman, Norman Hollenberg and the Cochrane Collaboration. You can see arguments in favor of a salt-reduction policy from Stephen Havas and at the New York City health department’s Web site. The city’s health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, defends the city’s salt-reduction initiative in a Q&A with Times readers.
“If we reduce salt slowly across the board,” Dr. Frieden explained in that Q&A, “our taste buds will adjust, we won’t notice the difference and we won’t need substitutes. Our food will still taste good and our hearts will be healthier.” His serene confidence mystifies me. Read more…
The bigger the bag, the bigger the mistake made by Lab readers in underestimating its contents, especially when the bags expand in three dimensions, as above.
We have statistically significant results from our popcorn experiment, now that two marketing researchers at the Insead business school, Nailya Ordabayeva and Pierre Chandon have finished analyzing your answers. The bottom line is that Lab readers, despite their relative shrewdness (and possibly their tendency to cheat), still fell for the 3D supersizing illusion — a problem that contributes to our tendency to overeat.
We started the experiment by asking readers to estimate how much popcorn was in the Medium, Large and Extra large bags pictured above, which get larger in all three dimensions. Then, after collecting enough responses in that “3D condition,” we changed the image and showed a set of bags that get bigger in just one dimension — height — while the width and depth of the bags remain the same. You can see those towering 1D bags in an image farther down.
Whichever set of bags you saw, the correct answers were the same. There were 40 ounces of popcorn in the Medium bag, 67 in the Large, and a whopping 112 in the Extra Large. Just as Dr. Chandon and Ms. Ordabayeva had predicted, people systematically underestimated how much extra popcorn was in the larger sizes: the larger the bag, the more people underestimated its contents. And, just as predicted, the errors were more pronounced for the bags that expanded in all three dimensions. Read more…
Thanks to many readers who responded to the popcorn experiment, we’ve got plenty of data and should have results for you soon. While the researchers, Pierre Chandon and Nailya Ordabayeva. are crunching the numbers, let me address some questions raised about the “health halo” I described in my Findings column and Lab post about Dr. Chandon’s research.
Some readers (like swann and Mark) questioned whether the experiments I described involving Subway and other well-known brands demonstrated the general phenomenon of a health halo causing people to underestimate the calories in foods and restaurants with a virtuous image.
Dr. Chandon and his collaborator, Brian Wansink, found that this effect wasn’t limited merely to well-known national brands. In one experiment, they created menus from two fictional restaurants. Although the menus were different, they both included an Italian sandwich containing salami, pepperoni and bologna. Some people in the experiment were given a chance to order that sandwich from one menu; other people were given a chance to order it from the other menu. Here’s Dr. Chandon’s description of what happened:
One of these restaurants was called “Good Karma Healthy Foods” and its menu included healthy choices such as cream of carrot soup (90 calories). The other restaurant was called “Jim’s Hearty Sandwiches” and its menu included high-calorie foods such as “Beef on a Wick” (800 calories). Read more…
How many total calories would you say are in an Applebee’s chicken salad, two crackers and a 20-ounce regular Pepsi with 25 percent ice? (Pierre Chandon/Insead)
Those “Trans Fat-Free” crackers pictured at left seem to have magical calorie-reducing properties on the whole meal, as I found in an experiment described in my Findings column. Foods or restaurants with virtuous reputations seem to be imbued with a “health halo” that makes us underestimate calories, and I’d like to hear Lab readers’ thoughts on how to deal with this effect.
With the help of a 9-year-old research assistant (my son, Luke), I asked people in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood to estimate the total calories in the pictured meal of chicken salad, crackers and Pepsi. I also asked other people to estimate the calories in a meal containing just the salad and Pepsi. The results were analyzed by my collaborators, Pierre Chandon, a professor of marketing at the Insead business school in France, and an Insead graduate student, Nailya Ordabayeva.
We found that people made lower calorie estimates for the meal with crackers than for the meal without crackers — a logical impossibility, but precisely what Dr. Chandon had predicted because of the crackers’ health halo. Read more…
How long until there’s a drug that makes it easy for anyone to be thin?
My question is prompted by a a report in the Lancet from a team of Danish researchers who found that a new appetite-suppressing drug, tesofensine, was twice as effective as existing drugs in helping people lose weight. (If you’re not a subscriber to the Lancet, you can read a summary of the work in Science Daily.
In the experiment, which involved 203 obese Danes, some people received daily doses of the drug along with instructions on cutting calories and increasing exercise, while a control group received only the instructions. The control group on average lost about 5 pound by the midpoint of the six-month study and then leveled off. The group taking .5 milligrams of tesofensine daily lost weight more quickly and kept losing it steadily until the end of the study, at which point the average person had shed about 25 pounds. The researchers say the drug appears to be twice as effective as existing drugs and should be tested further in clinical trials.
Whatever becomes of this drug, there’s so much promising research going on with obesity drugs now — and so much money to be made by whoever finds the right formula — that I think it’s only a matter of time until there’s an easy way to remain slim. I know others disagree and argue that obesity is too complicated to yield any easy cures anytime soon. Do you have any predictions for when, if ever, there’ll be an easy way to control your weight? And if anyone could take a pill to be thin, how many people would want to? Would being “overweight” lose its stigma?
After I published Gary Taubes’s view that a new diet study in Israel offered good news on saturated fat, Dean Ornish asked if Lab readers would like to hear another interpretation of that same study. I assured him we welcome debate here.
Dr. Ornish, the well-known diet expert, is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, the president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and the author, most recently, of “The Spectrum.” He argues that new Israeli study supports an emerging consensus on what a good diet is — and it doesn’t exactly jibe with Mr. Taubes’s view. (Dr. Ornish also has some more general objections to Mr. Taubes’s arguments, and I’ll publish those objections in a later post.) Here is Dr. Ornish’s take on the Israeli study:
Recently, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in Israel purporting to show that people lost more weight and had more improvements in their cholesterol levels on an Atkins diet than on a Mediterranean diet or on what they termed a “low-fat” diet. I’m concerned about the scientific validity of this study, which I’ll save for the next post.
What I’d like to focus on here is an encouraging phenomenon that I’ve been predicting for some time: the convergence of dietary recommendations. While people who promote different diets like to accentuate the differences between them, there is actually an evolving consensus of what constitutes a healthy way of eating for most people. While some significant differences remain, a greater agreement is emerging among nutrition experts than most people realize. Read more…
Many readers took issue with the good news on saturated fat, as I described Gary Taubes’s take on a new Israeli study that compared an Atkins-like low-carb diet with other diets. Mr. Taubes, the author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” noted that the people eating the low-carb diet ate more saturated fat than the other dieters but ended up with an improved cholesterol profile. He called it perhaps the best evidence yet that saturated fat has been wrongly condemned by the American Heart Association and the federal government.
Some readers argued that there wasn’t that much difference in saturated-fat consumption among the dieters. Saturated fat constituted a little less than 10 percent of the calories consumed by the people on the Mediterranean and A.H.A. low-fat diets; it constituted about 12.5 percent of the low-carb dieters’ calories. Some critics said that’s a difference of only 2.5 percentage points; others noted that it represents an increase of 25 percent. Both, of course, are right.
Here’s Mr. Taubes’s reply:
In an ideal world, it would be great to have significantly larger differences in saturated fat content. It would also be great to have studies that looked at heart disease endpoints and, ideally, overall mortality. That’s what I argued for in the epilogue of “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” while acknowledging that studies of health outcomes (rather than just change in cholesterol numbers and weight) would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more. It’s unlikely they’ll ever be done. And if they are done, they would take years to plan and the better part of a decade to accumulate enough hard endpoints, as they’re known in the lingo — heart attacks, deaths, new cases of cancer, etc. — to generate statistically significant results. I still think they’re worth it, but the folks at the National Institutes of Health do not, or at least not yet. Read more…
Should we be reconsidering the conventional wisdom on saturated fat? Yes, according to Gary Taubes’s interpretation of the new report in The New England Journal of Medicine on a two-year diet experiment in Israel.
The Israeli researchers found that people on a relatively low-fat diet lost less weight (6 pounds) than those who ate a low-carbohydrate or Mediterranean diet (10 pounds). These relatively modest weight losses were interpreted as discouraging news for dieters, and they also set off a debate on whether the whether the low-carb diet was really an Atkins-style diet, as my colleague Tara Parker-Pope reported.
Mr. Taubes prefers to focus on another aspect of the study: perhaps the best news yet about saturated fat. As I wrote last year, in a column about Mr. Taubes and his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” the medical establishment originally warned people to avoid all kinds of fat, but subsequent studies kept failing to produce evidence of the benefits of a low-fat diet. Then the supposed experts said the villain wasn’t just any fat but specifically saturated fat. But now their recommendations are being undermined yet again by research, Mr. Taubes says. Here’s his take on the new experiment and a series of similar trials:
These trials are fundamentally tests of the hypothesis that saturated fat is bad for cholesterol and bad for the heart. They’re not just about which diet works best for weight loss or is healthiest, but what constitutes a healthy diet, period. (This is the point I made in my Times Magazine story six years ago). Specifically, these low-fat/low-carb diet trials, of which there are now more than half a dozen, test American Heart Association (A.H.A.) relatively low-fat diets against Atkins-like high-saturated-fat diets. Read more…
Comfort for the stressed? (Credit: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)
What makes you go on eating binges? What makes calories of carbs and fat so appealing when you’re in the mood for “comfort food”?
There may be as many answers as the number of potato chips in the last bag I polished off. But let’s consider the factor explored in my Findings column on the link between stress and junk food. Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center found that low-status female monkeys couldn’t resist loading up on sugary, high-fat food and kept eating it into the night, whereas the dominant monkeys weren’t nearly so tempted by the treats. The subordinate monkeys, who had higher levels of stress hormones in their body, apparently found some sort of comfort in the high-calorie foods.
It would be simplistic to conclude that this is the grand explanation for higher rates of obesity among humans of lower socioeconomic status. People respond to stress and foods in complicated ways. Some C.E.O.’s are a lot more stressed-out than blue-collar workers; not all people react to stress by eating comfort foods. But the results from the monkey study do suggest that there’s some truth in the notion that stress leads to eating binges. As the lead author, Mark Wilson of Emory University, told me, “While there are many causes for obesity, these data suggest that individuals exposed to adverse social situations may be at risk for excess food consumption and developing obesity.”
Studies with humans have shown that dieters are particularly prone to binge once they give in to the first forbidden bite. As I mentioned in the column, Debra Zellner of Montclair State University found that women were more likely than men to eat M&Ms when under stress, a disparity she attributes to more of the women being “restrained eaters” — i.e., on a diet. Read more…
As someone who commutes by bicycle into Manhattan, I would normally applaud any scientific rationale for more bike lanes. But some calculations in the new issue of the Lancet make me uncomfortable. The authors argue that policies promoting cycling and walking are good for the planet because they could reduce obesity — and obesity, the authors calculate, contributes to global warming.
Do we really need to give fat people one more reason to feel guilty?
The Lancet authors, Dr. Phil Edwards and Dr. Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, crunch the numbers and conclude:
Compared with the normal weight population, the obese population consumes 18% more food energy. Additionally, more transportation fuel energy will be used to transport the increased mass of the obese population, which will increase even further if, as is likely, the overweight people in response to their increased body mass choose to walk less and drive more.
Urban transport policies that promote walking and cycling would reduce food prices by reducing the global demand for oil, and promotion of a normal distribution of B.M.I. [Body Mass Index] would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food. Decreased car use would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus the need for biofuels, and increased physical activity levels, would reduce injury risk and air pollution, improving population health.
Sure, exercise has lots of benefits. But would more exercise really lead to less obesity, or would the exercisers just get hungrier and eat more? Check out this article by Gina Kolata, my Times colleague and the author of “Rethinking Thin.” Or see this summary of the scientific literature by Gary Taubes, the author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” They both question the notion that exercise promotes long-term weight loss: Some exercisers do lose weight initially, but they tend to regain it.
And even if exercise would reduce obesity, should it be promoted by blaming global warming on what is already the most stigmatized group in Western society?
During the trans-fat debate here, readers criticized me for quoting the American Council on Science and Health, arguing that it wasn’t a credible source and that I should have pointed out it receives donations from corporations. Some accused it of not doing peer-reviewed research and getting most of its money from corporations, and said they’d trust the Harvard School of Public Health over ACSH any day.
The reason I cited the report is that I’ve found ACSH to be one of the most reliable debunkers of junk-science health scares over the past few decades. The reason I didn’t mention where it gets its money comes is that it didn’t seem to me to more significant in this case than where the researchers at Harvard and other voices in this debate got their money. But now that accusations have been made, I’d like to deal with them. You read a critical analysis of ACSH here at SourceWatch. And here’s a response to the readers’ criticism from Elizabeth Whelan, the president of ACSH:
I would like to respond briefly to wildly off-base remarks made by some of the commenters. Read more…
In my post complaining about the food police, I approvingly quoted Jeff, a reader who argued for our right to order what we want at McDonald’s even though we know it’s unhealthy. That prompted a rejoinder from Gary Taubes, the author of “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (which I wrote about in a Findings column about cascades).
Here’s the response from Mr. Taubes, a correspondent for the journal Science, to Jeff’s assertion that McDonald’s food is certainly unhealthy:
I have two comments about Jeff’s post. First, anyone who can tell you “with certainty” that MacDonald’s is bad for us is the kind of zealot who can be dangerous if taken seriously. He might believe it, and he might have good reason to believe it, but telling us “with certainty”? I don’t think so. I can give him numerous examples of populations with epidemics of obesity and diabetes that were fast-food-restaurant free. McDonald’s may be serving up foods or nutrients that are bad for us (as may be Starbucks, for that matter), but the negative effects will depend entirely on what people order and what they then eat.
Secondly, of course, Jeff’s assuming that saturated fat, sodium and calories are bad, all of which can be (and probably are) the victims of the same kind of cascade you’re talking about with trans fats. My concern about [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg’s ban of transfats is: What happens if the nutrition research community should actually get its act together, do the necessary research, and conclude that sugar (sucrose) and high fructose corn syrup, for instance, are considerably worse for us than trans fats? They’re no more natural, even if the former has a slightly longer pedigree.
Would Bloomberg ban the use of sugar in New York restaurants? That would be fun.
After seeing the reaction to my post on trans fats, it occurs to me that there’s been a weird trajectory in public health policy since the Surgeon General’s report on tobacco in 1964: The science has been getting weaker, but the policies have been getting stronger.
That 1964 report was based on thousands of studies showing a clear link between smoking and disease. But public officials didn’t seriously try to ban smoking as a result. They contented themselves with warning people of the dangers.
Today they’re more inclined to ban a supposed menace on much less evidence. The danger of second-hand smoke is nowhere near as firmly established as the danger of first-hand smoke, but the scientific uncertainties haven’t prevented cities from banning it even in private restaurants. (I personally enjoy smoke-free meals, but that doesn’t mean there’s a scientific justification for the public policy.) The risks of consuming trans fats are nowhere near the risks of smoking even if you believe the most extreme (and highly uncertain) estimates of the peril of trans fats, but they’ve been banned from New York restaurants anyway — and this policy seems so natural by now that some people don’t understand why it bothers anyone. Matt reacted to the last post by asking: “Why does everyone act like banning this artificial cooking oil is like telling NYC that we can’t eat what we want?”
Well, maybe because that’s just what a ban does. Read more…
I’m not sure if this is a mixed metaphor, but Harvard and the mayor of New York have gone logrolling in the trans-fat cascade.
The Harvard School of Public Health announced that it’s giving its highest honor, the Julius B. Richmond Award, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg for demonstrating “extraordinary leadership in protecting and promoting the health of New York City’s residents.”
How much good Mr. Bloomberg has done for New Yorkers’ health is debatable. But there’s no question he’s been good for the Harvard School of Public Health by promoting the trans-fat notions of its researchers, notably Walter Willett, the epidemiologist who has been the leading critic of trans fat. Last year, as part of the successful campaign to banish trans fat from restaurants, Dr. Willett appeared at a “Trans Fat Free NYC” rally outside the New York City Department of Health.
Dr. Willett’s views, though, are less popular with scientists than with activists, as my colleague Gina Kolata reported in article contrasting the trans-fat “panic du jour” with the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences and other groups of experts. These experts concluded that trans fats haven’t been proven to be significantly worse than saturated fats.
But now the trans-fat scare has become a cascade, as officials like Mr. Bloomberg go along with the questionable science and are rewarded for it in turn — which will only encourage more public officials to join in. Meanwhile, scientists are becoming afraid to speak up. I found that out when I wrote about it last year and kept getting requests to speak off the record. The American Council on Science and Health, a private advocacy group, encountered similar fears, as Elizabeth Whelan, the president of ACSH, told me: Read more…
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that’s a lot of butter.
there are fucking google eyes staring into your soul from every angle and you comment on the butter
to be fair it is a lot of butter
Archaeologists in Guatemala say they have discovered the 7th-century tomb of warrior Queen, Lady K’abel, one of the greatest queens of classic Maya civilization.
The most powerful person in Waka’ during her lifetime, Lady K’abel is known in Maya archaeology because of a beautiful and detailed portrait of her in a stela dated to 692 A.D. The carved stone slab was looted from Waka’ in the 1960s and is now in the Cleveland Art Museum.
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Choosing a Major
Any degree seeking student at WKU must complete a major of study. This is an area of concentration which your studies will focus in depth. Each major has different requirements. For example, there could be a major that requires a minor. On the other hand, other majors may require large numbers for completion of major requirements that no minor is required. To view information about major requirements, please do consult with the Undergraduate Catalog, your academic advisor, and/or iCAP.
When Should I Declare a Major?
Many students enter college knowing exactly the field they would like to major in while attending WKU. Other students, however, do not know what they want to major in so they may spend time at WKU as an Exploratory student. With the 44 credit hours of general education requirements, students really do need to have a major chosen by the time they enter the second semester of the sophomore year.
Regardless of field, many students do change their major while in college. That is part of the learning and exploratation process. Although there is potential for outside pressure from family and friends regarding what you are majoring in, you shouldn't feel pressured to make that decision quickly. Take time to explore your options, and then make a well educated decision of your field of study.
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Oodles of Noodles
Hoffman, Susan. "Oodles of Noodles." Daily Republic, 19 March 2002.
FREEMAN, SD - Anyone who has ever cooked a batch of pasta knows
how hard it can be to come up with exactly the right amount of noodles.
But members of the Freeman Academy Women's Auxiliary have learned
after many years of noodle-making for the annual Schmeckfest celebration
that there is no such thing as too many noodles - especially when
the noodles are homemade.
"We never have enough," said Arlyss Brockmueller, a member
of the Auxiliary and one of seven women on the noodle committee.
Schmeckfest, set for April 4-6, is Freeman's annual fundraiser
for the Freeman Academy. Schmeckfest is a celebration of ethnic
food, traditional crafts and music celebrating the cultures of the
three ethnic groups that settled the Freeman area - the Hutterites,
Low Germans and Schweitzer Mennonites.
"The Freeman Academy Auxiliary has organized and produced
this festival for 44 years," said Marlan Kaufman, president
of Freeman Academy. "The funds that come from Schmeckfest help
to fund the general budget of the school."
This year's Schmeckfest will feature evening meals, as well as
the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel," which
will be presented Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, and during
a special afternoon matinee on Sunday, April 7.
Approximately 26 Auxiliary members spent Monday making noodles
to sell in the Schmeckfest Country Kitchen. Noodle soup also is
served during the Schmeckfest's family-style evening meals.
"These are strictly to sell," Brockmueller said. "There
are other people who are assigned to make homemade noodles for the
Each evening during Schmeckfest, approximately 1,000 people dine
in the basement of Pioneer Hall on the Academy campus. "They
serve a thousand guests every night for three nights," Kaufman
said. "We're probably looking at close to 5,000 people that
would be here in a three-day period."
Auxiliary members usually devote two or three days prior to Schmeckfest
to making noodles to sell. It takes about 230 pounds of flour and
three cases of eggs to make the noodles.
The Auxiliary hopes to have at least 300 pounds of noodles ready
The noodles are packaged in one-pound bags. Demand for the noodles
is so high that patrons are only allowed to purchase 5 pounds per
person. "It takes so terribly many noodles to make a pound,"
Brockmueller said. "There's no weight to noodles. They dry
and there's nothing there."
The process of making noodles involves several steps. First, the
dough is mixed in a giant, commercial mixer, then kneaded to just
the right texture and rolled out into thin strips, which are laid
out to dry.
After just the right amount of time, the dough is ready to be cut.
"If they're (the strips of dough) too dry, it doesn't work
very well. They break and they don't go through very well. If they're
too wet, they stick," said Gertie Graber.
The cut noodles are then laid out on tables where they are gently
turned after a period of time. The noodles must be allowed to dry
for a couple of days so they don't get moldy when placed in plastic
bags to be sold.
In addition to the homemade noodles, the Country Kitchen features
a variety of German treats for sale. "(It's) all local home-grown
and home-prepared items," Kaufman said. "They have little
things called fruit pockets, kuchen, poppyseed rolls, cheese pockets."
The entire Academy campus is transformed during Schmeckfest into
a bustling venue for demonstrations ranging from soap making, to
weaving, to stories told by local historians.
The quality of the musical production often rivals that of those
put on by troupes of traveling professionals, according to Kaufman.
"It's just an amazing pool of talent that's in this area,"
A small percentage of the money raised during Schmeckfest is also
used by the Auxiliary to upgrade and maintain the school's kitchen
in Pioneer Hall. The Auxiliary also donated money to assist with
the hall's lobby renovation that is currently being completed. "They're
considering a new sound system and new stage curtains," Kaufman
Those planning to attend Schmeckfest are advised that the evening
meals and musical often sell out. "The evening meal is by advanced
tickets only," Kaufman said. "The meal tickets are sold
out for Friday and Saturday and very few are left for Thursday."
There are a few general admission tickets available for the musical.
"All reserved seats for the musical are sold out on Thursday,
Friday and Saturday. There are a few remaining for the Sunday matinee
at 2 p.m.," he said.
Kaufman said Schmeckfest is a great example of community spirit.
And even though many of the volunteers who help organize the festival
are getting on in years, it's still worth every day spent making
noodles, cheese buttons, or homemade sausage.
"It's still pretty good," Brockmueller said. "There
may be a different story in five to 10 years from now. I feel as
long as that many ladies are willing to come, it's worth the effort."
Reprinted with permission of The Daily Republic.
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Young women's empowerment centers
There are about 60 young women's empowerment centers in Sweden, from Malmo in the south to Kiruna in the north. A young women's empowerment center, tjejjour, is a non-profit organization aimed to support and strengthen young women.
Young women work on a voluntary basis and confidentiality applies to everyone working at the organization so you can be completely anonymous when contacting us if you so wish. Solely women will answer the phone and respond to your questions or thoughts via e-mail or online chatting.
Some of the centers arrange summer camps, girl groups and workshops in schools. Anyone who identifies as a young woman can turn to a young women's empowerment centre with any thought or crisis.
No matter if you have an eating disorder, are sick of school, have just fallen in love, experience pain while having sex or if you are angry with your aunt who drinks too much, women working at the centers listen to you without judging, without telling you what is right or wrong and without making any medical diagnosis!
Many of those who contact the centers have been subjected to violence and abuse or are feeling low or depressed of various reasons.
At some of the young women's empowerment centers there are only a few people working while other centers have much more capacity and members. The centers often have a small premises with space for computers, telephone and maybe some couches.
The women who work at the centers are neither experts nor professional psychiatrists but they can listen, encourage and can tell you where to turn to or even go with you to the police station to file a report.
Most of the centers apply a feminist approach.
Tjejjouren.se is a gateway for all young women's empowerment centers in Sweden. Here you can find your nearest center or search among the information texts in the Girl Guide.
The web page is primarily intended for you who identifies as a young woman, but also turns to you as a relative to a young woman or if you are just curious about the young women's empowerment centers.
As a young woman you can pose a question right here on-line and it will be answered within 48 hours. Connected to tjejjouren.se there is also a great intranet where the women working at the centers can exchange thoughts and experiences.
There is a great interest in the young women's empowerment centers, yet many people are still not aware of their existence. Tjejjouren.se is a way to reach all young women who are in need of support. This includes all the young women living in areas where there are no centers.
We know there is a need for this kind of web site since the statistics show that there are many young women who, on a daily basis, face a tough environment. They are subjected to insults, harassments and sexual violence to a much greater extent than boys of the same age.
Many also experience anxiety and thoughts of suicide and suffer from self harming behavior. Tjejjouren.se is also a way to visualize a large and important movement which is still unknown to many.
Illustrator Sofie Kindahl has done all the illustrations on the web site.
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KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- Killings, rapes and indiscriminate attacks driving tens of thousands of people from their homes continue in Darfur with perpetrators including soldiers who fired at civilians from helicopter gunships, the United Nations reported on Friday.Those enlightened and peace loving Arab Islamists are at work again.
A 42-page report from the Geneva office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights chastised the government of Islamist-minded coup leader Omar el-Bashir, saying promises to end centuries of discrimination and marginalization of black African minorities were marked by "token gestures" while murder and torture go unpunished.
There has been growing pressure for stronger sanctions to be imposed by the U.N. Security Council, to be chaired beginning in February by the United States, which accuses Sudan's government of genocide.
The report details numerous cases of rape of African women -- some told "so you will have Arab blood," others because they were "slaves" -- and said victims who tried to get justice were instead abused.
One was beaten by three army officers, others were told they were lying and, in one case, a state doctor said rape was impossible because the woman was not a virgin.
Truly, Islam is a religion of peace.
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Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there s no place like home;2 A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which sought through the world is neer met with elsewhere.
An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain, Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gayly, that came at my call, Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.
Home, Sweet Home. (From the opera of Clari, the Maid of Milan.)
The cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she pressd, The babe was sleeping on her breast.
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to sport ever since.
“It’s great fun once you learn the ropes. The best thing about water skiing is the speed at which you travel on the water. The experience is different every time,” says Gunja, who learned to water ski over a year ago at the H2O Water Sports Complex at Chowpatty, Mumbai.
The long and squat of it
Waterskiing has a person wearing one or two skis being pulled on water by a motorboat while holding on to a tow rope. The skis help the person glide over the water’s surface and allows him to stand upright while holding on to the rope.
So far, so graceful. Now, if you have dreamy visions of water skiing for hours on the Arabian Sea, banish them at once. The most you will be able to stand on the water when you water ski for the first time is 15 minutes. Yes, you read that right. Anything beyond that will be pure torture unless you have superhuman lower body strength.
“Water skiing is mostly about being able to stand with your knees bent, starting very, very slowly from a squatting position and then doing the reverse, which requires tremendous lower body strength,” says Pradeep Pathade (42), a water skiing instructor at H2O Water Sports Complex. Pathade has been skiing for more than 20 years.
Which is why, of H2O’s eight-day water skiing course, the first two days are spent on the ground doing exercises for lower body strength. “When you go into the water for the first time wearing your skis, holding the rope and trying to get up to a standing position takes some practice. But you are all set to ski once you can stand,” says Pathade.
Making a splash
As the boat starts pulling you, there is a set of a hand signals you use to communicate different commands such as speed up, slow down and stop to the motorboat driver.
Of course, the grand fall follows suit. But for skiers, that’s part of the thrill that makes water skiing so exciting in the first place. The real fun begins when you finally learn to balance yourself on the skis and start enjoying the ride.
“Once, when I was still a beginner, the motorboat that was pulling me suddenly swerved but I managed to keep my balance and took the swift turn nicely. I didn’t know anything about tackling turns then so I was really thrilled that I could take that turn!” recalls Shriya Parikh, 13, who has been water skiing since she was 10 years old.
Like with all water sports, how good your water skiing experience is depends on where you do it.
The right time and place
Skiing on the coast usually means more waves, choppier waters and therefore more challenges, whereas skiing on the calm and flat waters of a lake or a river can be easier and more fun for beginners.
Even the time of the day you choose to ski can affect your ride. “Early mornings are the best time to water ski because there are no strong winds that cause the water to swell. It’s an awesome feeling to be gliding on peaceful waters with the spray coming out on all sides,” says Philip Dartnell, a 50-something water sports enthusiast from Goa.
When 43-year-old Sarosh Cooper decided to learn water skiing a few years ago, he took a course at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam at Asandharaj Lake, near Dehradun.
“Since I was already into alpine skiing, I picked up water skiing easily. And the absolutely flat waters of the lake let me ski at great speed, which made it even more exciting,” says Cooper.
Follow the rules
There are a few rules that even experienced skiers live by when they are going out to the water.
“Always wear a lifejacket, even if you can swim. Apart from keeping you safe, it also adds to your buoyancy and aids in keeping balance,” says Pathade. A lot of your skiing experience also depends on the motorboat that pulls you on the water. “A 60 bhp boat is powerful enough and should have an experienced driver who knows when to speed up or slow down as per the skier’s needs,” says Dartnell.
Once you master the fine art of balancing yourself though, the sea is your playground.
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VAN BUREN Charlotte Patterson enjoys selling poinsettias this time of year for Parks Brothers Farm near Van Buren.
“I like the bright colors, the Christmas-y look. And people are in the Christmas spirit when they come in,” said Patterson, who has worked for the company since 1999.
There’s just one downside worth mentioning for many large-scale poinsettia growers like Parks Brothers, which will produce more than 110,000 pots of the red, pink and white Christmas flowers this season.
There’s often little or no profit.
“A lot of growers only grow poinsettias in the back half of the year to offset overhead,” said Jason Parks, operations manager for the family owned Parks Brothers. “Very few growers approach it as a profit center.”
Just about two miles away from Parks’ operation, Pleasant Valley Farms was packing up the last of 100,000-plus poinsettia pots for Christmas 2012.
“It’s something that helps us keep our employees working through the year,” Tim Owen, president of the family-owned company, said this week. “If we did not do them, we would have to lay people off.”
Poinsettia sales have been troubled by years of oversupply and low-price competition, especially from “big-box” stores, Arkansas poinsettia growers and other experts say.
James Robbins, a professor with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, called poinsettias “a tough crop because it’s hard today to be competitive.”
Chain retailers sell the plants at cost or below, as “loss leaders,” said Robbins, who specializes in greenhouse plants.
Poinsettias are the nation’s best-selling potted plant. Despite myths to the contrary, they aren’t a poison threat to humans or animals. Red varieties are overwhelmingly the most popular, experts say, and California is the top producing state.
Because of supply and price issues, some growers nationwide have recently cut back on poinsettia production.
Greenhouse Grower magazine reported in January that about 31 percent of nursery operators who took part in the publication’s annual “Poinsettia Season Recap” said they dialed back poinsettia output by 5 percent or more last year. Another 15 percent reported increasing production by at least 5 percent. The publication serves ornamental greenhouse growers.
The magazine’s survey of 150 growers nationwide also showed wholesale prices fluctuating in recent years. For 6.5-inch poinsettias, the most popular size, average wholesale prices hit $6.44 in 2009 then dropped to $6.08 in 2010. Last year they were back up to $6.87. Average wholesale prices for this year weren’t available.
Prices vary by area of the country. Average 2011 wholesale price nationwide for a 10-inch poinsettia, the size of a beach ball, was listed at $21.80 nationally, according to the survey. Parks Brothers Farm sold that plant in its retail greenhouse Friday for $14.97.
The magazine’s survey also asked growers for their “final impressions of the 2011 Poinsettia market.” Though 91 percent said they would grow the plants again this year, only about a dozen of the 49 comments described the season as “excellent” or “good.” About the same number of growers offered opinions such as: “Not real good,” “Stunk” and“Slow.”
Pleasant Valley Farms was among greenhouses that reduced production this year. Owen said his company cut off sales at the lowest price points.
“We appreciate all our customers,” he said. “But we made adjustments in some areas where we were not making money.”
His greenhouse has sold out its poinsettias this season. Neighboring Parks Brothers Farm can’t say the same and expects disappointing results.
“The margins are pretty thin” in the poinsettia growing business, Parks said. “You may think you’re going to make money. But if we have a heater go out and have a house freeze, or if you don’t sell those last 10,000 or 15,000 poinsettias, you won’t make any money.
“This year,” Parks added, “we didn’t sell the last 10,000 or 15,000.”
Even so, 48-year-old Parks Farms expects to produce poinsettias again next year, he said.
Besides keeping employees on the payroll, selling the big bright flowers at Christmastime has other rewards. “No matter how the season ends for the growers,” Parks said, “it’s always great to hear someone tell us how good our poinsettias look.”
Business, Pages 29 on 12/08/2012
Print Headline: Profit on poinsettias Lilliputian
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How do you do....it? Thread, Encrypt the Server??? in Technical; A Governor at one of our schools is pushing for us to encrypt the server. We've installed a security cage ...
9th November 2011, 03:30 PM #1
- Rep Power
Encrypt the Server???
A Governor at one of our schools is pushing for us to encrypt the server. We've installed a security cage to the server to fix it to the floor but they want to go a step further.
Has anyone actually done this? I imagine rebuilds or repairs to the server would be problematic post-encryption and also that there would be a performance overhead to take into account.
Anyone have any other suggestions why this is a bad idea?
Thanks in advance
IDG Tech News
9th November 2011, 04:11 PM #2
I await correction from another member, but I have never encountered a single school that encrypts their onsite servers. There would certainly be a performance hit, and disk maintenance on servers is hard enough due to RAID complexities without throwing encryption in as well. Most encryption systems will require a password to be entered at the server on reboot, with the exception of BitLocker.
If the governor is concerned about physical theft, the cage and normal building/server room security should be more than sufficient. If it isn't, you need to think about why the building security is so bad. Who do they think is going to go to that much trouble to steal the server? They are harder to fence than projectors, desktops, and laptops, most of which will be far easier to remove by the car-full before they even get near the server room.
I suspect the governor may think that encrypting the server will prevent against remote intrusion, which of course it won't.
To be blunt, a governor should not be able to make this sort of operational policy decision without (at the very least) strong evidence to back up the need for it.
9th November 2011, 04:29 PM #3
Personally, I'd be telling the governor where he can take his opinion (and it won't be very bright there either). It is not their role to push for things like this - that's why the school employs you.
9th November 2011, 04:49 PM #4
There will be a performance hit (probably reasonably small and easily absorbed) and additional complexity involved in server backup / restore and credentials management. Encryption could make you more vulnerable to any physical disc corruption, so the risk that you will need to fall back on a backup increases.
On the other hand, if the server IS stolen then you perhaps won't be explaining to the ICO why all your data fell into the hand of Daily Mail journalists. I don't think the suggestion is as whacky as others seem to think. If it was suggested at my place of work I'd be delighted that a governor was that interested in the IT infrastructure and I'd try and have a constructive conversation about the pros and cons and what real security benefits we might get for what trade off in operational complexity.
9th November 2011, 04:53 PM #5
Think that sums it up the best!
Originally Posted by Hightower
9th November 2011, 05:12 PM #6
I'm less of the opinion that it's a whacky idea in principle, but I think it's definitely the wrong solution for the problem (if a genuine problem even exists).
Originally Posted by pcstru
I'd also be delighted to have an interested Governor, but not a paranoid one, which on the face of it seems to be the case here.
9th November 2011, 05:20 PM #7
Someone on the inside? Perhaps poor disposal practices? Maybe just a very very determined and skilled thief? As good as physical security of such important assets tends to be, it's not impossible that they will end up in the wrong hands. And the problem here is that risk is probability AND consequences. We are custodians of some very very sensitive information. If some of that ended up in the wrong hands, the consequences for the data subjects could be very serious. Can you really be too paranoid?
Originally Posted by AngryTechnician
9th November 2011, 05:22 PM #8
Ok so anybody using "cloud services" for email etc... should be asking if Microsoft/Google encrypt their servers?
9th November 2011, 05:25 PM #9
Based on "the server" (singular) and "security cage", I would say the governor has valid security concerns regarding the safety of the data, but his proposed solution will have a hardware and training cost. Is this a "server sat in a classroom / random office" scenario?
Having the data stored in a secure manner (locked server room with audited and limited access) meets data protection obligations.
Having the data sat unencrypted in a classroom / office where anyone can walk in and touch the server doesn't. If I can poke it with a finger, I can get your data if it isn't encrypted.
Talk to the bloke and ask about his concerns.
9th November 2011, 05:28 PM #10
I'd guess that the level of physical security between a Google data center and a primary school server (which is what OP sounds like) probably differs.
Originally Posted by plexer
Decently configured encryption (with appropriate precautions and encrypted backups) might be cheaper in the primary school scenario.
9th November 2011, 05:29 PM #11
Anyone using cloud services should be doing due diligence to satisfy themselves that security and resilience is appropriate for the task. It's one of the problems with "cloud" - how do you actually tick those boxes and provide the evidence to back up that box ticking. I think a lot of people are buying into cloud services and they think that merely writing a cheque somehow guarantees that services providers are behaving responsibly or that simply writing the cheque absolves them of responsibility - "well, I was paying for the service, surely the data WAS safe??".
Originally Posted by plexer
9th November 2011, 05:51 PM #12
It sounds like you have pretty good physical security in place already - (better than many others in fact).
Using Bitlocker would require a TPM chip in your server (in an ideal situation at least) and this would prevent the need for a password on boot - all the same you would have a small (few percent) drop in disk performance.
Backup shouldn't be a problem as your backup system will be backing up the files/folder while the server is running and as such just sees the data a normal.
Once you run into any kind of issues with your server (say the OS won't boot and you need to use Windows PE to change something) encrypting it will case MASSIVE problems in getting anything fixed.
So as others have said I would speak to your Governor and find out what he is actually looking to achieve - the way I see it SMTs/ect are there to give you problems to solve/ideas to implement but are not there to decide how you do it.
One other thing to throw into the mix would be notebook PC encryption - they are a lot more portable than any server and as such present a much greater risk to data loss.
9th November 2011, 06:20 PM #13
If I was going to implement this, I'd go for a block-level encryption system that could provide standard-looking storage volumes for virtual machines running on the server. That way, once you'd booted the server and typed in the passcode or whatever to enable the encrypted volumes, you could start / restart virtual machines as much as you liked.
Originally Posted by InspireICT
9th November 2011, 06:35 PM #14
To be blunt, and speaking as a governor, a governor is supposed to be involved in strategic decisions regarding the school not operational ones.
Originally Posted by AngryTechnician
It is not the governor's role to recommend encryption of the server. The Governing Body, or a delegated committee, may investigate IT security, but it should not be a governor acting alone.
@InspireICT I've attached a part of the "Academies Financial Handbook" regarding the risk register every academy is required to have. The GB puts this together as a strategic document to work out the impact of risks to the academy. There's an explanation of how it works first
I suggest that you do a mini version detailing the various risks to your area... You need to think about threats to network and data security at your school and what their impact would be.
e.g. "Virus risk/corruption of data risk" might have a likelihood of 3 and an impact of 5 (say)... definitely a "Treat" situation.. with the Control Procedures giving info on your monitoring of anti-virus and backups
Other risks you could have are:
Failure of 1 or more servers,
theft of 1 or more servers,
Hacking of 1 school network,
Loss/theft of laptop/computer/flash drive
It doesn't need to be a massive document. Submit it to the Governing Body via the Clerk and offer to come and talk to the GB so that they ask questions. Hopefully it will manage this governor out of the way. (All communication with the GB should be through the Clerk. Your office staff will tell you who/how)
I would suggest you show it to your line manger/HT before you pass it to the clerk. It will at least show that the risks have been considered and are being managed.
4 Thanks to elsiegee40:
AngryTechnician (14th November 2011), GrumbleDook (14th November 2011), InspireICT (14th November 2011), pcstru (9th November 2011)
14th November 2011, 04:04 PM #15
First and foremost can I just point out that a number of members here are governors or have been governors. From speaking with governors in schools they range from those who have an interest in IT through to people designing infrastructure to run data centres which house MOD systems. Try not to jump to conclusions and definitely do not take the attitude that they should keep out of *your* server room. It is not yours ... it is the school's and governors do have a strong line around the strategy of schools.
However, there is a difference between a governor deciding something and a governor working on the strategy for something.
Encryption is not out of the realms for consideration, but the DPA principle 7 says all ...
If the risk assessment shows that you have taken all reasonable action (security cage, etc) and it is still felt that encryption is needed then you can also make sure you also assess the other things which introduce risk ... insecure buildings (the location of the machine is in an area which it could be snatched by a visitor, the room is on the ground floor with a window next to the street, etc) are sometimes a risk and the school can balance out the cost of an improved server (or servers) which means there would not be a performance hit against the cost of improve building security. An assessment by the school insurers will also help here. If the building is insecure then there are more problems than just the server not being encrypted ...
Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.
Remember ... it is often not just a single problem when people talk about encryption or security ... and any solution should be part of a whole school strategy / policy.
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Accusations that President Alvaro Colom helped orchestrate the murder of a prominent lawyer continue to intensify – deepening divisions in a country still recovering from a 36-year civil war.
Guatemala City and Mexico City
The scandal surrounding accusations that Guatemala's president orchestrated the murder of a prominent lawyer is intensifying – deepening divisions in a country still recovering from a 36-year civil war. It is also, according to some analysts, handing the country its greatest threat to democracy since that war ended in 1996.
Tens of thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets since a video emerged in which Rodrigo Rosenberg, the lawyer, accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom and three others of murder and corruption.
Mr. Rosenberg, who was shot dead while riding his bike on May 10, recorded the video days earlier, saying in it that: "If you are watching this, it is because I was murdered by President Alvaro Colom, with the help of Gustavo Alejos," the president's secretary.
Mr. Colom denies any involvement and says the protests are politically motivated. His critics maintain that they are not out to topple any president but merely are seeking the truth.
On Monday, they presented a petition to Congress signed by more than 35,000 Guatemalans that calls for Congress to strip Colom of his prosecutorial immunity.
The scandal comes as Guatemala is threatened by rising levels of lawlessness, with street gangs terrorizing residents and drug traffickers taking over wide swaths of the country.
"This is a crisis. When the people lose confidence in the authorities, what comes next is ungovernability and with it more corruption and violence," says Mario Polanco, director of the human rights organization Mutual Support Group in Guatemala City.
Vast right-wing conspiracy?
Colom, the nation's first leftist president in 50 years, says the scandal is a right-wing political conspiracy designed to bring down his government.
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Snow School Closings
A Pre-Halloween snowfall in eastern Kentucky has kept thousands of school children home. The snow comes as a spinoff to Hurricane Sandy. In Pike County, where classes were canceled Tuesday, Personnel Director Ralph Kilgore says an October snow day is highly unusual. “I can remember when I was a young man in school, we had snow and we were practicing football in the snow, but that was back in the 60’s. That’s been a long time. Since I’ve been in the school system, I cannot remember calling school off in October, for snow,” said Kilgore.
An official with East Ridge School in Pike County near the Virginia border says about five to six inches of snow fell in that area. Kilgore, who was principal for four years at East Ridge, says it’s not unusual see snow at higher elevations, but have none in Pikeville.
“We have a lot of geography to cover. Our school buses run approximately 14 thousand miles a day. It’s over different types of terrain. So, it’s a major task to take care of the logistics to get children to and from school,” added Kilgore.
Kilgore says they have some 94 hundred students in East Ridge High School near the Virginia line, which was closed today. Last year’s mild winter had students heading home for summer vacation in mid May. But, even with this pre-Halloween snow day, Kilgore says it’s hard to say it’s an indication of rough winter weather ahead.
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(Great Books Edition)
Winner of the National Book Award, White Noise tells the story of Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and four ultramodern offspring as they navigate the rocky passages of family life to the background babble of brand-name consumerism. When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event," a lethal black chemical cloud floats over their lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys-radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings-pulsing with life, yet suggesting something ominous.
Introduction by Richard Powers ix
White Noise 1
The Whiteness of the Noise
On a bright April morning thirty years ago, I stood on the balcony of my upper-story apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, looking out on a plume full of ten thousand gallons of deadly phosphorus trichloride that rose hundreds of feet into the air, listening to the television spew a steady stream of dire speculation, and wondering whether to head in to work or call in sick. Five years later—just weeks after a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, released almost 100,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate into a densely populated area, killing many thousands of people—I picked up a just-published novel whose "airborne toxic event" triggered a broad spectrum of symptoms including heart palpitations and an intense feeling of déjà vu.
The publication of White Noise in 1985 placed Don DeLillo at the center of contemporary cultural imagination. I can think of few books written in my lifetime that have received such quick and wide acclaim while going on to exercise so deep an influence for decades thereafter. I can think of even fewer books more likely to remain essential guides to life in the Information Age, another quarter century on. As a result, like the book's "MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA," this relentlessly pored-over masterpiece of "American magic and dread" faces the risk of death by promotion to Classic. Yet even after twenty-five years, White Noise remains deeply disconcerting, prophetic, hilarious, volatile, enigmatic, and altogether resistant to containment or antidote. The world of Jack Gladney, his colleagues, and his family grows more estrangingly familiar, more recognizably alien with every subsequent cultural bewilderment.
The book's surface seductions are clear enough. Its dizzying kaleidoscope of genre parodies—domestic intrigue, Kmart realism, pulp disaster, psychological thriller, obsessive crime fiction, cycling nouveau roman—begins with a send-up of an academic novel and quickly plunges into dysfunctional family sitcom. From page one, DeLillo captures the drop-dead hysterical terror of the human cortex in full flight. Every thought, every traded commodity of tottering words passed between the members of this ad hoc family—Jack and Babette Gladney and their four "children by previous marriages," with walk-ons by half-sibs, wayward parents, and semi-ex spouses—teeters on the brink of dada. The makeshift Gladney clan raises its monument to unhinged information in a place somewhere between the Sunnis and the Moonies, Tennessee Ernie Williams and Sir Albert Einstein, a land where "forgetfulness has gotten into the air and water [and] entered the food chain."
No part of the Way We Think Now escapes skewering, and the Gladneys' demented family chatter—the torrent of "true, false, and other kinds of news"—threatens to pulp the mind of even the idle listener. Burlesque so merciless—the page-after-page pleasure of collective humiliation—could, all by itself, keep such a book thriving long after most of its coevals are on life support.
But DeLillo's mordant satire of the fissile and refused nuclear family serves only to launch his surprising care for these "fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts." In the overload of deranged Gladney babble, Jack marvels at the "colloquial density that makes family life the one medium of sense knowledge in which an astonishment of heart is routinely contained." And I marvel, too, on this late rereading, at a naked earnestness hiding inside a style that I years ago mistook for pure postmodern irony. Or rather, the marvel lies in that sound of human speech hungering for a time before irony and earnestness split into two strangers that deny their shared genes. What shocks me now is the book's terror-stricken tenderness. With whiplashing jump-cut between lampoon and compassion, DeLillo turns a hilarious domestic travesty into one of the great, unlikely family romances of the past hundred years. "Watching children sleep," Jack says, in a moment that peels contemporary cool back to its hottest core, "makes me feel devout, part of a spiritual system. It is the closest I can come to God."
Alongside that surprise warmth, the book's brutal accuracy has kept it current far beyond the moment when the best pure satire would have dated and staled. DeLillo's ear astounded me a quarter of a century ago; now it seems almost otherworldly in its resolution. On every other page, he's hearing the universe in all its subaudible frequencies. He retains everything; it's as if Borges's Funes, the man who forever remembers the slightest detail and minute change in angle, has taken a stroll around Anytown, USA, and retired to a cork-lined room to assemble the terabyte streams of waves and radiation into a panoramic survey. The inspired set-pieces of familial and academic babble read less like grotesque parodies than as exact replicas—the déjà vu symptoms of toxic residue, perfectly recorded simulations of waking dreams. We've all had those crazed conversations, all been bombarded by that exact static of shared inanity and never fully heard the soundtrack until DeLillo transcribed his high-gain recordings. Read the book, and you can't escape hearing all the old, overly familiar daily blare with new ears.
"I realized the place was awash in noise," Jack Gladney says of the supermarket, that pilgrim's chapel of the commodified world that cradles him like an innocent in the grip of a bipolar and raucous God.
The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.
But if the aisle is full of noise, it's also teeming with signals. Jack's colleague Murray serves up a paean to that same deafening supermarket:
This place recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it's a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It's full of psychic data…Everything is concealed in symbolism, hidden by veils of mystery and layers of cultural material…All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. It is just a question of deciphering, rearranging, peeling off the layers of unspeakability.
That same tone of Gnostic wonder infuses the book, weaving a counterpoint around the Gladneys' unshakable fear of death. Wonder and fear: the two incommensurate human emotions strike and collide, throwing off sparks that might equally well burn or warm. Secret messages float everywhere through the town of Blacksmith, filling the air with disembodied product names and ad copy liturgies. Jack's sleeping child—that closest approach to God—chants the now-famous shibboleth, Toyota Celica, two words that strike her listening father "like the name of an ancient power in the sky…a moment of splendid transcendence." How are we to take this startling pronouncement? Is it bleak, defeated mockery or genuine spiritual prayer? White Noise pushes down into a primal place, toward the parent impulse beneath both awe and terror. As Jack puts it, after the Airborne Toxic Event drives his family away from every former safety, "Our fear was accompanied by a sense of awe that bordered on the religious."
These pages are littered with such spiritual impulses. Throughout the book's three arched parts, dread and dread's send-ups sink Jack Gladney deeper toward life's central mystery. I'm struck, in reading a work that has become synonymous with grim postmodernism, one that so perfectly nails the Zeitgeist of the past-stripped present, by how often the book employs the word "ancient." DeLillo has described this novel as an attempt "to find a kind of radiance in dailiness. Sometimes this radiance can be almost frightening. Other times it can be almost holy or sacred." Yes, the book is a condemnation of somnambulist, consumerist co-optation, a savage look at the epileptic brainstorm induced by broadcast culture. But its full achievement may lie in its connection, underneath the litanies to Waffelos and Kabooms, with the long past. Something in co-opted consciousness is still stabbing away, trying to find forever.
Even the "narcotic undertow and eerie diseased brain-sucking power" of television is, according to Murray, filled with
coded messages and endless repetitions, like chants, like mantras. "Coke is it, Coke is it, Coke is it." The medium practically overflows with secret formulas if we can remember how to respond innocently and get past our irritation, weariness and disgust.
Maybe this cabalistic rapture is just more of DeLillo's academic burlesque, a death-rattle chuckle in the back of his throat as the billowing gas cloud rolls over us. Or maybe he puts forward Murray's hymn with all the sincerity of Saint Augustine. As with all great narrative art, White Noise suggests polarly opposed readings that nevertheless do not negate each other. For me, the book's brilliance lies not just in its castigation of commodity culture but in its portrait of the magic, cult religiosity that drives that culture—the brain's sacramental impulse to create all this stuff and noise in the first place. Only a short, blocked loop stands between consumption and consummation, between a chanted product name and the world's re-enchantment. Our tidal wave of toxic informentation means something, if only in revealing us. The landfills of escalating material miracles that we industriously amass form, in themselves, the most significant monument to our sickness unto death.
At the book's heart is the naked question: what to do with a fear of death that leaves every human action doomed and pathetic? The story's "routinely panic-stricken" cast chase after cures and take their evasive actions. Jack surveys all possible responses and resolutions to his death terror, but is satisfied by none. "Death is in the air," his friend Murray reassures him. "It is liberating suppressed material. It is getting us closer to things we haven't learned about ourselves." Well, perhaps. Jack isn't buying that particular offering, not entirely. But he does, in his panicked orbit, work his way to what may be the most mature available conclusion on the matter: "Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level." Just that: awful, awe-inspiring, real-releasing fear. Death, the thing that we work so long and ingeniously to avoid, may or may not be the mother of all this beauty. But fear of death is the engine that renders "every word and thing a beadwork of bright creation."
In her own frantic attempt to evade the reach of the toxic cloud, Babette reasons with Jack's son Heinrich:
Every day on the news there's another toxic spill. Cancerous solvents from storage tanks, arsenic from smokestacks, radioactive water from power plants. How serious can it be if it happens all the time? Isn't the definition of a serious event based on the fact that it's not an everyday occurrence?
Folded inside her question is something close to the definition of DeLillo's art: we must learn to retrieve from the banal and quotidian the singular and cataclysmic.
White Noise, DeLillo's eighth novel, appeared at a whirlpool moment in the permanent turbulence between those two broad streams of American literature—call them telescopic and microscopic, the whaling ship and the carved scrimshaw. The book straddles the fantastic, maximalist experiments of the '60s and '70s and the stringent, intimate miniatures of the '80s and '90s, exploring the terrain between the two. In doing so, it has spawned an academic industry while still reducing pleasure-seeking readers to laugh-out-loud tears of recognition. Very few novels are both so deep and yet so fordable. White Noise makes a mockery of both "realism" and "surrealism" as terms descriptive of anything but their own sets of conventions, conventions that the twists of human need will always exceed. In fusing together inimical styles into something sui generis, DeLillo confirms J.B.S. Haldane's famous maxim: the everyday world is not just stranger than we suppose; it's stranger than we can suppose.
It's hard to think of a late-twentieth-century big theme that White Noise doesn't sound: the time-shared family, broadcast-addled consciousness, mediated violence, psychopharmaceutics, nascent biotech, information overload, runaway simulacra, terminal consumerism, eco-collapse, and the technological sublime. But how has the portrait aged over a quarter of a century? How much has the American mystery deepened? Since the book's publication, Bayh-Dole has turned even the College-on-the-Hill into one more market engine and patent-hungry profit center. Reality TV renders SIMUVAC's attempts to "use the real event in order to rehearse the simulation" almost sweetly nostalgic. The Internet—my God; imagine Heinrich editing Wikipedia, Jack writing a death blog, or Babette perusing offshoredrugs.com—has left us all drowning in so much spectacular sound and light that even eyes and ears as acute as DeLillo's must despair of rendering it. If you thought the world was awash in noise then, half a decade before the first Web browser, just put your ear to today's Twitter.
But the book has long since affixed itself dead center at the collision of everyday nonsense and ancient signals. Take any one of the hundreds of aphorisms that populate every chapter, and Google it. Say: "We still lead the world in stimuli." You'll get at least a cloud full of hits, often enough to fill the horizon.
In its search for the daily radiance inside our standing terror, White Noise has survived long beyond any reasonable use-by date. You might substitute SUVs for station wagons, add nanotech gray goo to the list of looming toxicities, info-dump some tables of stats on digital information sickness, spend a few nanoseconds describing YouTube, briefly cite the final destruction of attention by multitasking, reference the Institute for Paris Hiltonomics, and swap Homeland Security for SIMUVAC, but no conceivable updating of the book could better catch the torrent of late capitalism's wall of death-defying noise or the signs and wonders still pooling just behind it. The book has exercised profound influence on two generations of world novelists. It now has great-grandchildren, babbling away in all kinds of codes.
To read the book is to be awash in signals, unsure of what's profound and what's banal, what's asserted and what's denied. It's harder still to say what all the signals signify. "All plots tend to move deathward": another of Jack Gladney's aphorisms that now proliferate across thousands of the world's exploding blogs.
This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the target of the plots.
In short, a family plot, from the Old English: a slice of ground. His friend, the monklike—or maybe Mephistophelean—Murray, insists on exactly the opposite: "To plot is to live." Plot as escape plan, from the Old French, for vital, secret schemes. Which will it be? Which plot has our name on it?
DeLillo's art, of course, hovers over the unresolvable divide. A good story, at its best, does much better than decide; it embodies. It contains in itself the very nub of being's contradictions. It catches us in the act of plotting, wherever plot might lead. White Noise mixes incommensurable modes of tenderness and burlesque, awe and despair that will neither cohere nor concede, modes as conflicted and concurrent as the simulating, dissimulating mind forever plotting to consume eternity and evade its own end.
Near the finish of this braided plot, astonished by a series of toxin-intensified, transcendental, postmodern sunsets, Jack is at a loss for exactly what he ought to feel:
[W]e don't know whether we are watching in wonder or dread, we don't know what we are watching or what it means, we don't know whether it is permanent, a level of experience to which we will gradually adjust, into which our uncertainty will eventually be absorbed, or just some atmospheric weirdness, soon to pass.
And at story's end, we, too, are left transfixed in the supermarket of Blacksmith, under the perpetual shadow of the Airborne Event, suspended between satire and sacred ritual, straddling the real and hyperreal, caught between dread and wonder, ill-equipped for knowing, dwarfed by the billowing cloud hanging perpetually on the horizon, but unwilling to give up even a day of our bewilderment.
The future always changes the past, and twenty-five years of constant upheaval should have sufficed to change both me and this book beyond recognition. But reading it again now, I feel much as I did as a young man first coming upon it—déjà vu all over again. I come out of the book feeling like the Gladneys' child Wilder, after his epic, superhuman, daylong crying jag:
it was as though he'd just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges—a place where things are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingled reverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions.
That place is as near and as foreign as speech. To get to that place—to reanimate words and free the dead souls inside them—DeLillo employs a brilliant palette of estrangement. The prose swells with weird, discontinuous wormholes of thought, chanted trademark trinities, exquisite abandoned corpses, sudden cut-ins, floating particles of voice, whatever comes after free indirect discourse, chains of causality and cross-purposed connection with random bits elided or dropped or injected suddenly from another train of thought. Every non sequitur and attention deficit articulates a little death. But through the narrative aporia and amnesiac gaps, words push forward, words as near-palpable things, and "things as facts and passions."
DeLillo's great theme is speech—its coded traces and intimations. In everything he writes, he's intent on laying bare what words enable and prevent. At every turn in White Noise, one or another of his characters mistakes the map for the place. Not surprisingly, the ultimate side-effect of Dylar—the drug designed to eliminate fear of death—is to turn words indistinguishable from the things they mention. His people scramble for words that might contain their fright; they seek out incantations and spells real enough to solidify their days and infuse their lives with sense. But life and death remain irreducibly strange, infolded processes that defy all the rationalizing of grammar. The force that words seek will not yield to meaning, yet it is still signal. It hides deep in the background hum, but never quite disperses into noise.
Another famous Haldane utterance: "I wish I had the voice of Homer to sing of rectal carcinoma." DeLillo, ventriloquizing through his terrified, rambling cast, comes close. "It's language," DeLillo has said, "the sheer pleasure of making it and bending it and seeing it form on the page and hearing it whistle in my head—this is the thing that makes my work go. And art can be exhilarating despite the darkness." Indeed, sometimes, in these pages, reader, writer, and characters alike make a mass jailbreak from the prison house of language and wind up in some beachside bungalow, where words turn almost better than comfort. "Is there something so innocent in the recitation of names," Jack wonders aloud, "that God is pleased?"
As prescient as the book was, twenty-five years ago, White Noise offers no particular prediction of life another quarter century in the future. We may stagger on, bathed in the waves and radiation of our splendid invention. We may extract from the noise some saving signal or transforming word. We may well cook ourselves, sitting paralyzed in the self-made, self-sealed pressure cooker, like the proverbial habituating frog until the atmosphere itself boils away. And on the pedestal of humanity's monument, these words may appear: "The bodies weren't in the places they would have been, in an actual simulation." Whatever our endlessly delayed real-life denouement, DeLillo's work remains that most cunning of planned mock-ups, the kind that, in representing, re-presents us, returns us to ourselves, to this moment, to our standing panasonic racket, only now without filters, briefly mindful again after long sleepwalking, and ears wide open to the sound that passes all understanding. As Jack discovers, even in the run-up to total nothingness, "There is just no end of surprise."
In one of their many urgent, noise-dulled, crosswise dialogues of dread, Jack and Babette compete to outbid each other in naming their fear of death. "What if death is nothing but sound?" she asks him, in her moment of maximum terror. Indeed: what then? "You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful." And how full of awe. But until the day when we discover where the plot is dragging us, we're left here to listen to the awful hum, a grim and wildly funny and ancient and sometimes even sacred static at pitches beyond anyone's ability to shut out altogether: the radiance in dailiness, the language of waves and radiation, the sounds the dead use to speak to the living.
Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Group (USA) Inc., from White Noise Copyright © Don Delillo, 2009.
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History of Inn on Church
- Historic Downtown Hendersonville Hotel & Inn
Downtown Hendersonville and the village of Flat Rock have been a destination retreat for well over 100 years for those desiring the cooler and less humid climate of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The area has become a four season’s destination with a lively downtown and year round festivals and events.
The Inn on Church is Hendersonville NC’s only downtown hotel, located just one block off historic Main Street. With 21 individually decorated rooms and an excellent restaurant, Inn on Church is a comfortable retreat for out-of–town guests and a choice restaurant for locals and guests alike.
The property has been a lodging facility since its inception.
The Inn was built in 1919-1921 as a hotel to serve visitors coming to Hendersonville and Flat Rock. In February 1989, the Inn on Church gained official certification as a National Historic building. An extensive renovation was completed in 2006 with every effort made to preserve the charm of the historic building.
The former Aloah Hotel, called the Hendersonville Inn since the 1930s, is a large, three-story, relatively severely designed brick hotel on a corner lot at 201 Third Avenue West, just west of downtown Hendersonville. The only stylistic elements are the modest Classical Revival porch and entrance. The rectangular building, with shallow T projections on the east and west sides, has a flat roof, overhanging boxed and molded eaves, and an ample one-story frame porch extending around three sides of the building. Porch entrances face Third Street and Church Street. The northernmost bay of the east side porch is enclosed as a sunroom. Six-over-six pane windows occurring singly or in pairs or triplets, generously illuminate the building. The main entrance, facing Third Avenue, is a single beveled glass door with four pane beveled sidelights. The building rests on a low stone foundation, and a low rough quarried stone retaining wall outlines the narrow grassy lawn on the two street sides. The hipped roof porch is supported by paired square posts, occurring in triplets at the corners, with a plain wooden balustrade. The hotel is remarkably unaltered on the exterior. The only obvious change is the metal awnings which shelter the south side of the porch, probably replacements for earlier canvas awnings.
On the interior, the hotel is equally well-preserved. Like the exterior, the interior treatment is spare and utilitarian, with a slight Craftsman flavor to the dark stained woodwork and the fireplace in the lobby, a simple arched brick design with a heavy dark stained bracketed shelf. The lobby occupies the south half of the first floor, and this large space is supported at intervals by wooden paneled and plastered posts and exposed ceiling joists. The closed-string stair rises in two flights with a landing along the south front wall to the second floor. It has a handsome dark stained railing, with heavy square newels and simple balustrade similar to the front porch railing. A dark stained paneled registration desk, apparently original, is nestled beneath the staircase facing the entrance. French doors open from the lobby into the dining room and kitchen area, which occupy the rear half of the first floor. The dining room space has paneled wooden posts and exposed boxed ceiling joists. The entire interior retains its original doors, with five horizontal panels, dark stained woodwork, and wooden floors and plaster walls. Each of the guest rooms bas a louvered door in addition to the solid paneled door.
The Aloah Hotel is one of the few hotels in Hendersonville still operated as a hotel. Known later as the Carson House and since the early 1930s as the Hendersonville Inn, the Aloah is one of the last of the town’s hotels, and its plain sturdy brick design and ample wraparound porch reflect comfort and continuity. It is representative of the Inns, Boarding Houses, and Hotels property type.
Originally, this section of Hendersonville was filled with other hotels catering to the tourism boom: most notably the Hodgewell Hotel, which was at the corner of 4th Avenue West and Church Street, a block north of the Aloah Hotel; and the Kentucky Home at the northeast corner of Washington and 4th Streets, a block northeast of the Aloah Hotel. Both of these structures have been demolished. Aside from its historical associations, the Aloah Hotel is also notable for its continuous use as a hotel.
The 90′ x 150′ rectangular lot on which the Aloah Hotel sits was originally owned by Dr. Columbus Few, who sold the property for $1,500.00 to his son C. Few, Jr. in 1914 (Henderson County Deed Book 84, p. 257). The deed mentions the lot only with no mention of improvements. Few, Jr. sold the property to J. O. Bell in 1910 for $10,000.00 with a bank note of $1,800.00, indicating the balance due. It appears that J. O. Bell was the builder of the Aloah and sold the property in 1921 to Mrs. Etta Carson. The building’s name was changed to the Carson Hotel or Carson House. Apparently, Mrs. Carson lost the hotel during the Depression, because it was sold on the Courthouse steps at auction in 1932.
At this time, Mr. W. H. Britt bought it for $25.00 from the Green River Manufacturing Company (Henderson County Deed Book 203, p. 134). Once again, it experienced a change of identity, becoming the Hendersonville Inn. In 1943, the hotel was sold to Ira E. Johnson (Henderson County Deed Book 249, p. 305). Finally, in 1985, I. E. Johnson deeded the property to his son, E. Leland Johnson. Mike and Rhonda Horton, the Inn on Church owners until 2007, lovingly renovated the property. The current owners and innkeepers are Joe and Stephanie Carlton.
Source: National Register of Historic Places, Registration Form, dated December 28, 1988.
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Clio is the largest and most celebrated festival of its kind. For 44 years, they have sought to attract the best work from agencies and production houses all over the world. They have then submitted that work to a jury of leading professionals, who have distinguished themselves in their fields, who represent the very best of their craft, and who take the responsibility of judging very seriously.
Clio does not instruct the jury, other than to encourage it to award ideas rather than mere execution. Clio supports an honest, democratic and non-poliitcal system of judging. Each piece is judged on its own merits. First the jury votes a shortlist of the best work. From those finalists, the jury then determines which pieces, if any, are worthy of a statue. They present three statue levels: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Occasionally, the judges honor particularly outstanding work with a Grand Clio, the best of show.
To look at a Clio reel or to visit a Clio gallery is to see some of the world's most powerful ads. The winner's reel is sent to their representatives in 39 countries - and those representatives seek to screen the reel for interested groups. Part of their effort is to acknowledge greatness, part to instruct students of the craft, and part to celebrate one of the most interesting and influential art forms in modern culture.
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October 2002 marks the fourth annual Christian Higher Education Month. The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) first designated the month in 1999 to celebrate the impact Christian campuses are having on their students and on society. "My life has been deeply impacted by my choice to attend a Christian liberal arts university," said Gloria Gaither, alumnae of Anderson University and nationally recognized lyricist, author, speaker and recording artist. This year’s Christian Higher Education Month focuses on how alumni from CCCU institutions found their purposes and have made extraordinary contributions to society.
"In the last few years, government leaders have been pushing for more ‘outcomes-based assessment’ of higher education," said CCCU President Dr. Robert C. Andringa. "One of the best methods is to have a good assessment of alumni after several years away from the campus. Based on our national comparative survey of CCCU alumni, we have much to feel good about. Our campuses prepare students for life, not just for work."
An overwhelming 90 percent of CCCU alumni surveyed reported that their college experience was very or extremely effective in helping them develop a sense of purpose in life.
"I had to work harder, be more accountable, make larger commitments," added Gaither. "I also—I believe—got a better academic education. I had full professors from the first day of my freshman year, most with earned Ph.D.s. The classes were smaller so there was little chance of ‘hiding’ or getting ‘lost through the cracks.’ These people cared about me. My peers during those years were focused on finding an intentional mission in life. I was taught ‘be’ and ‘do’ had to be equally mixed with ‘learn’ and ‘think.’"
Many CCCU alumni continue with graduate work at schools such as Rutgers, Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Purdue, Drew and Cornell. Their education and strong commitment to values help them make significant contributions as leaders in government, medicine, media, law, art, music, engineering and more.
"We are grateful to have a prominent place among the outstanding faith-based colleges and universities of this country. Anderson University graduates tell us we are doing a good job of preparing them as they compete professionally or academically," said Dr. James L. Edwards, president of Anderson University. "I often ask our graduates in various graduate schools around the country, ‘How are you doing? Did we prepare you well for your next challenge?’ And I often hear, ‘I've been well prepared.’ Of course, the lives of service across the years tell the success story of the Christian college mission."
Member institutions of the CCCU have seen a surge in enrollment in recent years – an increase that far exceeds that of other private and public institutions. From 1990-1997, enrollment of full-time undergraduate students in CCCU schools rose 32 percent, compared to an increase of just four percent among the same population in public and private American colleges, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
"We established Christian Higher Education Month to raise awareness of and increase recognition for the vital role that Christian higher education plays in the process of transforming culture," said CCCU President Dr. Robert Andringa. "It's time to highlight the contribution our member campuses are making in the world around us."
The CCCU is an association of 101 member institutions with comprehensive curricula rooted in the arts and sciences. The Council exists to advance the cause of Christ-centered higher education and to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth. CCCU member campuses offer more than 300 undergraduate majors and more than 80 graduate degrees. Based in Washington, D.C., the Council also serves 53 affiliate campuses in 18 countries.
Anderson University is a member of the CCCU and is a private, liberal arts, institution of approximately 2,400 undergraduate and graduate students. Established in 1917 by the Church of God, the university offers more than 60 undergraduate majors and graduate programs of study in theology, religion and education.
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The Learning Lab is committed to providing educational support for student success. Students are empowered to succeed academically in their classes through instructional facilitators, computer facilitators, student tutors, and computer-assisted instruction. In addition to help in students’ courses, we provide computer access to students, study skills coaching, and resume and cover letter writing workshops upon faculty request. The staff strives to meet the needs of individual learning styles and to help students develop self-reliance and build self-esteem.
The Learning Lab is part of the Division of Arts and Sciences and is under the direct supervision of the Dean of Arts and Sciences.
Assistive Technology (AT) is available for students to increase functional capabilities. Disability Services attempts to insure that the AT is available to meet the needs of students with documented disabilities. The following Assistive Technology is available at CFCC by clicking here.
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Good News for the Royal Navy
There has been a lot of controversy in recent months over the level of defence spending and whether all of our commitments and current equipment plans are affordable. Despite this, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is pressing on with some very big ticket purchases for the Royal Navy. Just this week, a further £80m of sub-contracts for the two giant aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales were placed. Around 40% of the value of the build of the two carriers is now committed and full-scale production is proceeding.
The carriers, which will be known as the Queen Elizabeth Class, are being constructed by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) which consists of Thales UK, BAE Systems, BVT Surface Fleet, Babcock and the Ministry of Defence.
The carriers will each weigh 65,000 tonnes, be 280m long and 70m wide. A ship of this size is necessary to deliver the quantity of air power required. They will be capable of 25 knots and will have a total complement (with air group) of approximately 1500 people. Their flight decks will support an air wing capable of delivering significant offensive air power to support the battle ashore for prolonged periods of time and will be capable of carrying the widest possible range of aircraft in support of operations. They will be specifically developed to provide a base for the US/UK partnership designed Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
They will be truly impressive ships and only the US Navy will have anything bigger or more effective. They will put the Royal Navy back on the maritime map but at a huge cost. In order to afford these mammoth ships the rest of the fleet continues to be pared back. The number of frigates and destroyers is likely to fall below 25. They are the backbone of the fleet and do the donkey work of patrolling the high seas and protecting shipping and British interests across the world. They are also necessary to provide defence for the highly vulnerable aircraft carriers. At the time of the Falklands War in 1982 the Royal Navy could muster over 60 frigates and destroyers.
As well as the further orders to build the carriers the MoD this week announced the laying of the keel of nuclear-powered submarine HMS Audacious. The number of subs has also been cut back from about 30 at the time of the Falklands War to 10 now (I am not counting the Trident missile boats). However Audacious, which is the fourth boat in the “Astute” class is an impressive piece of kit.
Weighing in at over seven thousand tonnes, Audacious – which is currently under construction by BAE Systems Submarine Solutions at Barrow-in-Furness – will join sister boats Astute, Ambush and Artful to become a cornerstone of UK defence capability. Astute-class submarines will displace 7,400 tonnes dived and are 97 metres long. Capable of circumnavigating the globe in a single 90 day patrol without resurfacing, they will have six weapons tubes and massively increased firepower (including Tomahawk cruise missiles) compared with earlier attack submarines.
It is great to see these orders being placed but the MoD is facing a cash flow crisis. It simply cannot afford all of the programmes it has on the books. Unfortunately it is likely that some programmes will be delayed and trimmed in order to balance the books in the short term but a full-scale defence review after the next General Election is probably unavoidable. Without a big increase in defence spending the sums simply don’t add up.
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In times of users being pulled away to smaller screens, TV providers are trying to keep their medium fresh and exciting. Through social tv, users can experience something they can’t if they were watching the programme online – participation. Joining the conversation has become as important as watching the programme itself.
The reality is that people are watching more videos than ever, but not all these videos are coming from a TV set.
What effect does this have on the TV business model, and how can service providers change along with it? Well, they have already started, with increasing on-demand capacities, online video supplementation and a generally more ‘a la carte’ user viewing system.
In the digital age the commercial value of content is increasingly important.
Those of us who download each episode of Grey’s Anatomy almost immediately after its release (did you SEE the finale of Season five?!) have no reason to watch the show on normal TV. This means that we will never see the adverts that various companies have paid for, which means that these companies are losing revenue and are therefore less likely to invest in television ads in the future. Those of us who still watch normal TV can use our PVR decoders to fast-forward through the ads anyway.
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Peter Carey's dazzling new novel, The Chemistry of Tears, encompasses heartbreak, the comfort of absorbing work, the transformative power of beauty and the soul of an old machine. If you've never read the Australian-born, two-time Booker Prize–winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang — or, most recently, Parrot and Olivier in America — his 12th novel is a terrific introduction to his work. Once again, Carey demonstrates an artful ability to capture a two-way interplay between past and present that is part historical, part fanciful and completely wonderful.
The day after BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, Catherine Gehrig, a tall, elegant, 40-something London museum conservator specializing in horology — clocks and windup automatons — learns of the sudden death of her beloved, miserably married lover. Because their blissful 13-year affair was a secret, there is no one she can turn to in her grief. Her boss, a friend of her darling Matthew who condoned their relationship, sets her up with a new project in the museum's isolated annex, away from prying eyes. He hopes the complex reassembly of a magnificent, mid-19th century automaton of a silver swan will distract and buoy her. He also provides a phenomenally able if unbalanced young assistant, whose spying presence Catherine resents from the get-go. Catherine and the pretty girl lock into exquisitely rendered terse, tense battles over the import and control of their project.
Boxed up with the swan's hundreds of screws, rods and rings are 11 notebooks densely filled with "handwriting as regular as a factory's sawtooth roof." These are the journals of Henry Brandling, a British railroad heir who, desperate for a divertissement for his sickly young son, traveled deep into the land of expert clock makers in the German Schwarzwald in 1854 to commission a mechanical toy duck. "High on grief and rage," Catherine becomes increasingly caught up in Henry's fantastical tale about his dealings with Herr Sumper, a mechanical genius and probable con man, and his strange household — a story that alternates and ultimately intertwines with her own. "Eviscerated by love," she wonders if Henry is "building some mad monument to grief, a kind of clockwork Taj Mahal? Or was that me?" Her unhinged anguish evokes the state of mind Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking.
Automatons (also central to Martin Scorcese's recent film Hugo) are fascinating in their eerie, lifelike realness. Carey raises questions about "what is alive and what cannot be born," intense identification with machines, and the damage caused by industrialization — including the Gulf oil spill. Catherine rails at her well-meaning boss that "it was highly 'inappropriate' to give a grieving woman the task of simulating life." As for souls, she and Matthew, "conceited about [their] ecstatic pragmatism," had no truck with them. Carey's narrator adds beautifully, "That we were intricate chemical machines never diminished our sense of wonder, our reverence for Vermeer and for Monet, our floating bodies in the salty water, our evanescent joy before the dying of the light."
Liberally adorned with descriptions such as a sky "black and bleeding like a Rothko," Carey's gorgeously written, intricately assembled book runs as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. It considers what it means to search for "deep order" in a random universe and "attempt to give meaning to a mess." Yet as tightly engineered as it is, The Chemistry of Tears also leaves room for "fuzziness and ambiguity," mystery and wonder, especially in the realm of our bodies and feelings.
Watch a video of the mechanical Silver Swan housed in the Bowes Museum in Northern England, which inspired Peter Carey.
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It might not be the best time for a car manufacturer to be requesting a government loan, on account of GM’s CEO being forced to resign by the Obama Administration, but that isn’t going to stop Tesla Motors from doing everything in their power to get their new electric sedan, the Tesla Model S, to market. Tesla is confident their request for $450 million from Washington will go through, and will allow the Model S to be the first mass-manufactured all electric car. The only thing that may keep the Model S from being a huge success is its price point: $57,400, or $49,900 after tax credits.
Although the price is a bit steep in this economic climate, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk states that after gas-savings are accounted for, the price is closer to $35,000 – a price in the range of the Ford Taurus.
The Model S can drive 300 miles on one charge, and can charge its battery back to full in only 45 minutes. The $450 million Tesla is asking for from the government is in addition to the $186 million its already raised from investors, including both founders of Google. Regardless of whether the loan goes through, Musk and Tesla are certain the car will eventually make it to market. Would you drive one?
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(Reuters) - Cycling's world governing body is disbanding the Independent Commission which investigated the Lance Armstrong doping scandal in favor of a "truth and reconciliation process", the UCI said on Monday.
The UCI said the commission was being disbanded following talks with World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president John Fahey.
"He (Fahey) confirmed WADA's willingness to help the UCI establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), as well as saying that WADA had no confidence in the existing Independent Commission process," UCI president Pat McQuaid said in a statement.
The three-member independent commission set up last year to look into allegations against the world body complained last week it had not received any documents from the UCI and had met resistance from athletes and stakeholders.
"We have listened carefully to the views of WADA, USADA and cycling stakeholders and have decided that a truth and reconciliation process is the best way to examine the culture of doping in cycling in the past and to clear the air," added McQuaid.
The TRC process, in which McQuaid expects WADA to be "fully engaged", is expected to launch later this year with a report to be published in full. A management committee meeting is scheduled for Friday to further discussions.
McQuaid made it clear last week that the UCI could not afford two separate inquiries, particularly as one involving WADA would likely be longer and broader.
Indications that WADA would share the costs with the UCI, given that it wanted Armstrong to testify, were ruled out by McQuaid.
"There is still a huge amount to discuss before we can finalize a detailed legal framework, including how such a TRC, which is completely unprecedented in sport, should be funded now that WADA contrary to earlier indications refuses to contribute financially," he said.
"I would stress that, while I am committed to a TRC, it needs to be a process which is in the best interests of our sport and our federation - and which also does not bankrupt it."
Armstrong, seven-times Tour de France champion from 1999-2005, was found guilty of cheating his way to victory by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in October and the American's titles were stripped by the UCI.
McQuaid reiterated his determination to help cycling move forward after Armstrong's confession to using performance-enhancing drugs and lying about it for over a decade.
"I hope the lessons learned from the truth and reconciliation process will help in particular to educate young riders and to help eradicate doping in its entirety from cycling," McQuaid said.
(Writing by Tom Pilcher, Editing by Ed Osmond)
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(CNN)– Former President Bill Clinton was hesitant to characterize Barack Obama as a "great man" Sunday, a phrase he had no qualms using last week to describe Obama's rival John McCain.
Clinton told NBC's Tom Brokaw that it was only earlier this month in Harlem that he and Obama had their "first conversation." He said he had spoken with Obama before, but only in passing.
Clinton then explained what he meant in characterizing McCain as a "great man."
"I think his greatness is that he keeps trying to come back to service without ever asking people to cut him any slack or feel sorry for him or any of that stuff because he was a POW," Clinton said of the Republican presidential nominee.
Clinton, who successfully ran his own 1992 presidential campaign on the now commonly used phrase "it's the economy, stupid," said that he believed the current economic crisis "left [Obama] in a position of leadership that he's now in."
Clinton said he thought Obama "saw and imagined" how the economic situation could develop.
"And I think that the rest of us should admire that. That's a big part of leadership, being able to sense, as well as see the future," he said.
Clinton said he and Obama are developing a "really good relationship," and the Democratic nominee has the potential for greatness. Explaining, he said Obama has many personal accomplishments, but none that exemplify his greatness to the country.
"When he becomes president, he'll be doing things for the American people and for the world and he is-and the greatness will then become apparent because of the good he'll do...That's what I very much believe is going to happen."
Some have questioned Bill Clinton's support for Obama following the protracted primary battle between the Illinois senator and Hillary Clinton. The former president praised Obama during his speech at the Democratic National Convention and declared Obama "ready to be president of the United States," as both sides tried to bring an end to the "Clinton-Obama rift" storyline.
Clinton himself was among the most outspoken critics of Obama's readiness during the primary season.
The reason it has taken him so long to hit the trail for Obama was the need for him to return to work on his foundation after the long primary season, Clinton explained Sunday.
He is expected to campaign for Obama in Florida, Ohio, northeast Pennsylvania, and Nevada after the Jewish holidays.
"I'm going to do my very best to do every single thing he asks me to do," Clinton said.
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Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, is calling for a recount after narrowly losing the country’s presidential election.
President Obama won 69 percent of the Jewish vote according to an exit poll.
In a society that has become less and less informed about politics and government, Jews remain a deeply attentive political community. Intensely concerned about Israel and the protection of the Jewish community, but alert to so much more, Jews offer a candidate a tough audience on policy
"The clear choice for president of the United States for the American Jewish community is Gov. George W. Bush of Texas." Four years ago in a similar article, I argued for our community to support then-Gov. Bush in the 2000 presidential election.
I urge you to look back at what has transpired over the past 48 months. Now, as we approach the 2004 election, the choice we must make to support our president is even clearer.
The following are key events in the Ronald Reagan presidency focusing on his Middle East policy and relations with the American Jewish community
Considering where he's been, it seemed unlikely that Craig Wyckoff would have been the man inducted on July 12 as president of Valley Outreach Synagogue (VOS).
The entertainment agent was once so disillusioned with Judaism that he flirted with Eastern religions, until his wife Mary reconnected him to Judaism.
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The Youth Entrepreneurs of Syracuse Conference is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.
The Whitman School and The Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship are hosting the event with help from Paul V. Moore High School DECA club. The conference is a full day conference for people aged 13 to 25 years old to learn how to become successful entrepreneurs.
People attending the conference will have the opportunity to listen to incredible true stories of the entrepreneurial journey, have lunch with successful entrepreneurs and experience lessons from some of the country's top faculty. There will also be an opportunity for individuals attending to win prizes, including a $1,000 prize for the best business idea.
The registration deadline is Nov. 7 and the cost is $10. For more information or to register, go to www.YES-SYRACUSE.com or call Lindsey Wickham at 443-3550.
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Sichuan’s Earthquake, Six Months Later
The Boston Globe has published a moving photo essay on life in the areas hit by the May 12 earthquake, six months later:
Six months ago, China suffered its worst earthquake in a generation. The magnitude 8.0 Sichuan Earthquake erased many mountain towns and villages from the face of the map, with destruction radiating outward leaving millions homeless, over 300,000 injured, nearly 70,000 dead, and over 18,000 people still listed as missing. Now, as winter approaches, reconstruction is well under way, with priority placed on building houses for survivors still living in temporary tents.
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Federal Way's community garden movement cultivates education opportunities for schools
By ANDY HOBBS
Federal Way Mirror Editor
September 22, 2010 · 5:30 PM
With community gardens, Federal Way can cultivate more than just food.
The Federal Way Senior Center Community Garden, which opened in May 2009, has fueled a small movement to spread gardens across the city. The volunteer-driven senior center garden has supplied more than 10,000 pounds of produce to feed local residents and stock food pantries. The garden also sets an example for forging connections that raise Federal Way's quality of life.
On Sept. 22, a groundbreaking ceremony at Truman High School welcomed the city's second community garden. Modeled after the senior center garden, the Truman garden will occupy a 10,000-square-foot parcel near Interstate 5 at South 317th Street.
The Truman garden marks a partnership between the recently formed Federal Way Community Gardens Foundation and the Federal Way School District. Mike Stanley, executive director of the nonprofit foundation, praised the new garden as a place for learning as well as bringing people together.
"We're looking at building up to 20 of these gardens in Federal Way," said Stanley, a master gardener who runs the senior center garden. "This is kind of a major step."
Bulldozers will begin clearing land for the garden this week, and fruit trees will be planted this winter, Stanley said. In April, Truman students will start planting vegetables and eventually choose where to donate their harvest.
Community gardens have the potential to supplement education in all subjects, said Nancy Hawkins, the school district's director of career and technical education. For example, culinary students can grow their own food, while science students benefit from lessons in botany. The gardens relate to topics in social studies such as sustainability, and also promote community service among the students' families.
Hawkins has championed the idea for Federal Way schools ever since the senior center garden opened last May.
"I just thought, why can't we do this?" she said. "The time is right."
Plans are under way to build gardens at Camelot Square mobile home park as well as Enterprise, Nautilus and Green Gables elementary schools, Stanley said.
Dozens of businesses contributed toward the cost of materials to establish the senior center garden. Each garden costs about $15,000 to start, according to an April 2010 Mirror report.
The Federal Way Community Gardens Foundation, which formed this past spring, held its first fundraising event Aug. 26 at the Federal Way Senior Center Community Garden. The event raised $3,275. To learn more, e-mail Mike Stanley at Michael_stanley@usa.net or visit www.federalwaycommunitygarden.org.
Watch a video featuring the Federal Way Senior Center Community Garden:Contact Federal Way Mirror Editor Andy Hobbs at email@example.com or 1-253-925-5565 (ext 5050).
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Shots - Health Blog
Sun June 24, 2012
Countdown To The Supreme Court's Ruling On Health Care
Originally published on Thu June 28, 2012 8:46 am
Anticipation has reached a fever pitch, and the waiting is almost over.
This week, the Supreme Court is almost certain to issue its decision on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law. The decision could have far-reaching implications for the legal landscape, the nation's health care system and even the Supreme Court's legacy.
The court will have to answer four distinct legal questions raised by the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The threshold question is whether the court may decide the case now, or whether it must wait until 2015, when all of its provisions — including the individual mandate — have gone into effect.
At oral argument in March, the justices seemed uniformly inclined to decide the case now.
The second question for the court is the one most politicians and political pundits have focused on exclusively: Is the provision requiring virtually all Americans to have health insurance constitutional?
The court will have to determine whether Congress exceeded its powers to regulate commerce by creating a mandate that would force most Americans who aren't otherwise insured to buy coverage,
Third is the question of the law's expansion of Medicaid, which adds 17 million more people to the rolls. The states challenging the overhaul law have argued that even though the federal government will pay almost all of the cost, it is still impermissibly coercive.
Finally, the court will decide whether, if any part of the law is unconstitutional, it can be separated out, or whether the entire law has to be invalidated.
How the court will settle these various legal questions is only the first uncertainty. The entire health care system, including insurance companies, is anxiously awaiting a decision that is almost certain to have fundamental ramifications for their business.
Indeed, the only way the court's ruling would have no effect on the health care system would be if the law were upheld in its entirety.
Even striking down just a small piece could have numerous consequences --both intended and unintended.
Many provisions of the law are extremely popular, such as a ban on insurers denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and the rule, already in place, that allows adult children to remain on their parents' insurance plans until age 26. If the law is struck down,therewill be enormous pressure to keep those provisions in place.
The problem is that without the mandate, insurance companies say they could not afford to accept all comers, especially those with previous medical conditions. As for including adult children on parents' policies, that too could be problematic, for different reasons.
True, some of the biggest insurance companies have vowed to keep this provision in place, but if the court invalidates the law, those additional benefits might be taxable. The law waived a key tax provision to ensure that health insurance benefits are not taxed as income. But without the law, parents may have to pay income taxes on those benefits and employers could face higher payroll taxes.
This scenario would cause "utter confusion" for employers, explained James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, which represents large-employer health plans and companies that provide services to those plans.
"Because after all, there would be some 24-year-old kids who are legal dependents, for whom there would be no income tax owed. And then there would be others for whom they're not legal dependents and so there would be tax that would be owed," he said. "It would be extraordinarily confusing."
The decision could also have a big impact on the court's legacy. If it strikes down the mandate as exceeding Congress' powers under the Constitution, this would be the first time since the New Deal that the court has invalidated a major piece of regulatory legislation.
Already, the case has exposed a major shift in conservative legal thinking. For the last half-century, conservatives, and particularly congressional Republicans, have championed the idea of judicial restraint, arguing that the courts should usually defer to the elected branches. But now, conservatives are explicitly calling for judicial activism. Conservative columnist George Will, for example, wrote this week that "judicial deference to elected representatives can be dereliction of judicial duty."
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm David Greene, in for Rachel Martin.
After months of anticipation, this week the Supreme Court is finally expected to issue its decision on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law. This is what everyone has been waiting for since the case was argued back in March.
For those of you who might have forgotten what the actual issues are, we've invited our NPR brain trust on this, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg and health policy correspondent Julie Rovner, to join us for a bit of a refresher. Thank you both for coming in.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Good morning.
JULIE ROVNER, BYLINE: Our pleasure.
GREENE: Nina, let's start with you. as we get ready for this decision, remind us what the legal questions are that the Court is really grappling with.
TOTENBERG: OK, here's the four-point quick and dirty. First, there's the threshold question: Can you the Court can decide this now or does it have to wait until the whole thing goes into effect. And it was pretty clear at the oral arguments that they think they can cite it now.
Second, is the mandate requiring virtually all Americans to have health insurance. Is the mandate constitutional?
Third, is the expansion of Medicaid constitutional? The states have challenged the expansion, saying it's coercive even though the Feds pay for most of the bill. And finally, the Court will tell us if any of these parts is unconstitutional, can it be separated from the rest of the law, or does the whole thing have to be struck down?
GREENE: So, a lot of options for the Court. And, Julie Rovner, we've been talking about how this decision really could have a major impact on the nation's health care system?
ROVNER: Absolutely, it could. About the only thing that wouldn't have much of an impact is if the Court upholds the law in its entirety. Even striking down just a small piece could have lots of consequences; some intended, some perhaps unintended. There's this perception that most of the law hasn't taken effect yet and that's true. But even just striking down the mandate, which of course has not taken effect yet, and portions of the law that go with that mandate could prove disruptive to people's current coverage.
GREENE: But, Julie, let's clear something up. I mean, isn't it possible that some pieces of the law that have gone into effect already are going to stay if the Court strikes this down?
ROVNER: Well, yes. I mean, for example, some of the big insurance companies said that they liked to keep the coverage for young people under age 26 who are allowed to stay on their parents' health plans. But it turns out, even that's not so simple. The law waived a key tax policy, so those parents of those young adults could end up owing both income and payroll taxes on the value of that coverage. And their employers would face a huge mess trying to figure out who owes what.
You know, everyone hates the fact that this was a 2,700 page piece of legislation. But that's because health care is complicated, and it's hard to take pieces out of what really was envisioned as a whole.
TOTENBERG: You know, David, I really didn't know what was in this bill before it got to the Supreme Court. And I was struck by what a complete and interwoven overhaul of the health delivery system it is. You can like or dislike parts of it, but it truly is an attempt to make the system more rational.
GREENE: The Court might say you can separate it, but actually separating it could be an incredibly complicated thing to do.
GREENE: Nina, is this one of those big decisions that could really define a Court and its reputation?
TOTENBERG: Well, in short run and the longer run are two different questions, and I'm not quite sure how it shakes out. If the Court strikes down the mandate, for instance, it would be the first time in three-quarters of a century that the Court would have struck down a major piece of regulatory legislation.
And you know, for the last half century or so, the battle cry of conservative has been judicial restraint and criticism of judicial activism, meaning essentially that the Court should defer more to the elected branches. And now, suddenly, we're seeing conservatives calling for activism - and they're calling for it overtly. Conservative columnist George Will, for instance, has recently embraced the notion of judicial activism as the ideal.
So, where we are going to perceive this Court in the long run is very unclear to me.
GREENE: Julie, how will this be perceived on the campaign trail? I mean, President Obama, Mitt Romney already talking about health care a lot. I mean, could this change the conversation in a big way?
ROVNER: You know, there's been a ton of speculation on this. There's one camp that says that the president will be helped if the mandate, particularly, is struck down - that's the least popular part of this law. And, of course, the rest of it is relatively popular. On the other hand, this was the president's signature domestic achievement, and I think it never looks good to have a piece of your major accomplishment summarily canceled.
Just late last week, House speaker Boehner put out a memo telling his troops that, should the Court strike down all or part of the law, that there will be no spiking of the ball. Because basically that would be win for them. So I think we will see Republicans, if not gloating, at least celebrating if any part of this law is struck down.
But how it will ultimately play out at the polls, I think it's pretty soon to tell.
TOTENBERG: In fact, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Indiana, who beat Richard Lugar, he cut three different ads celebrating the Court striking down the decision. They were to be released depending on which variations on a theme happened, but somehow they got leaked. And now they're all over YouTube.
GREENE: Wow. Oh, so then, we now politicians are getting ready to talk about this one way or the other.
Well, Nina, when do we expect this decision. I mean it's not the only case that the Court still has left to decide on.
TOTENBERG: Oh no, there is more, much more. There's the constitutional test of the Arizona Show Me Your Papers law. There's a constitutional challenge to sentencing juveniles 14 and younger to prison for life without parole when they commit murder. And there's a constitutional challenge to the federal law making it a crime to lie about having received a military medal.
I really do, David, expect the Court to have all this decided by the end of the week. But I'm reminded of the time many years ago when I asked the late great Justice Lewis Powell if I was safe booking a plane flight to go home July 4th to visit my folks. And he said, oh, I would be fine. And at about this time, the phone on my desk rang and I picked it up. And this voice said, Nina, this is Lewis Powell, I'm afraid that I misled you.
GREENE: You might not be booking plane tickets this week either.
TOTENBERG: Well, the justices have plans to leave town at the end of the week. So we probably are safe saying it's this week.
GREENE: NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg and health policy correspondent Julie Rovner, thank you both for coming in.
ROVNER: You're welcome.
TOTENBERG: Our pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
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This is some interesting speculation: The Once And Future Republic. A cogent excerpt:
The fact is that the remnant Lilliputian West has long depended on the Brobdingnagian stature and power of the United States to ensure its solvency, security, and ultimate survival. Absent the United States, what we like to call Western civilization would long ago have become a diorama in the vast Museum of History to pique the interest, perhaps, of Chinese high school excursions. And this is why, naturally, everybody loves to hate Americans, those “ignorant cowboys” and “loud vulgarians” whom Europeans affected to look down upon, those “rude mechanicals” that a vanishing breed of Brit, remembering Shakespeare, might have thought, those presumably aggressive conquistadors that so many Canadians, especially under the tutelage of former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, smugly enjoyed dismissing as irredeemable barbarians and moral inferiors.
Envy and resentment of this sprawling and robust — and necessary — giant among the nations were the motivating factors. For without the brawny presence of the United States in the Hobbesian jungle of world politics, neither Europe, Britain, nor the former Commonwealth dominions, as I have argued, could have defended their Enlightenment heritage or relied upon their own feeble military resources to guarantee their longevity. Gratitude, however, does not come easily. Contempt and self-infatuation are far more attractive emotional reactions for the parochial accessories of the grand historical drama. All those in the West who picket American embassies, deplore American ambition, write anti-American articles, columns, editorials and books, and cry “Down with America” are precisely the sycophantic beneficiaries of American strength and munificence.
Be careful what you wish for, as the old adage has it. Europe, for example, responded with unadulterated joy to the election of a statist, far left American president who apologized for American exceptionalism, adopted the socialist model of governance, pledged to reduce military expenditures, and brought his country to the brink of bankruptcy. Europeans did not realize — or did not want to acknowledge — that their “advanced” socialist experiment in welfare governance depended in large part upon American military spending for the continent’s defense, which permitted a liberated fiscal surplus to be invested in social programs, early retirement benefits, and a cradle-to-grave security network.
It’s beyond doubt that America has some serious issues to deal with. Fiscal insolvency, a devalued currency, a weakened military, a tax policy that is discouraging businessinvestment and growth, a failed education system – but we have a lot of strengths as well. We still have vast natural and human resources, we still have a vibrant private sector, even taking into account the downturn of the past 24-30 months, during which time our economy has been lurching along like a 1939 Ford with a blown head gasket.
I’m an optimist. We have time to turn things around. But that time is not unlimited – we’d best get cracking.
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JACKSON, Tenn. – Jan. 26, 2001– Union University's Department of Education will hold two student teacher seminars Thursday, Feb. 8 from 3:30 to 4 p.m. in the Blasingame Academic Complex.
Bill Hedspeth, professor of education at Union, will speak in BAC-44 on the topic of "Elementary Classroom Management." He will focus on classroom management techniques that have been found to be particularly effective at the elementary level. Hedspeth has many years of experience in teaching classroom management in addition to drawing from his own elementary teaching and administration experiences.
Chereyl Crossett, assistant professor of biology laboratories at Union, will speak in BAC-85 on the topic of "Secondary Classroom Management," and will present techniques that are effective at the middle and high school levels. Crossett, who pulls from her teaching experience in secondary science, will offer strategies that have worked in the classroom and which research has supported to be successful.
The seminars are free and open to any educators or those involved in the teaching profession. For more information, contact Union's Department of Education at (901) 661-5383.
Sara B. Horn,
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The Main Street Church of Christ in Milan, TN recently had a really special event for the people of their community. We were encouraged, inspired and just had to share it with you. Love seeing what God can do with people who just want to reflect Him . . .
-Tell us about how the give-away event came to be.
We had gone to the giving stuff away class during GO! CAMP, (taught by Joseph Thomas from Savannah, TN) and during one of the nightly small groups, our group decided we wanted to try "to give some stuff away." When we got back I discussed the idea with the elders and the outreach minister, Taft Ayers. We worked some dates out and spread the word. Within a couple of months we had gone from an idea to a building full of "stuff to give away" and people.
-How did the youth group at Milan get involved?
The youth group was not only the spark behind "Give Away Day," they also helped work the event. It became of a congregational event due to its size but if weren't for a couple of teens willing to go to GO! CAMP the event would have never happened.
-What was it like the day of the event?
A couple months before the event we started sending out letters about we needed. And the Thursday before we set up drop-off times. That gave us 3 days to fill a gym up of GOOD STUFF. Our motto that weekend was "NO JUNK FOR JESUS!" In those 3 days with the help of the congregation, the community and prayer we completely filled the entire gym and by the end on Sunday we had little left and nearly 400 people had been through.
- What do you think doing an event like this reflects to the community about the church? What does it say about God and his people?
We have to let the community know that we care. A lot of these people grew up believing in God but through different circumstances have fallen away. One the saddest parts about this is that many of these times its Christians who have pushed other Christians away. We have to remind them 1 That God loves them & 2 That God's people love them! The community seeing random acts of kindness for no other reason than we love Jesus makes an IMPACT on people! This was a great encouragement to them, to us and most importantly to God!
-What advice would you give to any young people wanting to make this happen with their church family? What not to do ?
DO IT! It won't be easy. But most things that are worth it aren't. Young people have to quit not voicing their ideas and letting them die. If you are going to make a difference, if you are going to change the world then you have to start implementing great ideas!
-Are there any specific stories from the day that stand out to you?
pt1 One my favorite part of the day was at 5PM we stopped for worship anybody in still in line or that decided to stay was invited to worship with us. We had over a 100 families stay! We completely filled our Christian Activity Center. The worship service was designed around family! I know every time we get to worship God but as looked around this one was something spectacular! pt2 one of the ladies who we helped attended church with us Wednesday night. At the invitation she came up in her wheel chair and was baptized into Christ. I don't do these events for numbers or in hope of responses or for the sole purpose of baptizing. I do them because I'm told to love people more than I love myself. The rest is up to them and God. It's an incredible thing to see when someone falling in love with God for the first time!
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Analysis: Carrying key areas gives Keystone State to President Obama
In a choice between “it should have been better,” or “it could have been worse,” Americans definitively rejected Republican Mitt Romney’s call for change Tuesday and instead embraced President Barack Obama.
The hard-fought, often contentious race was called relatively early by CNN and NBC — about 11:15 p.m. Shortly before 1 a.m. today, Romney conceded.
But in a trend that appears to have become routine and reflects the nation’s partisan divide, the president appeared to have won the electoral college, but as of 12:30 a.m. today, Obama and Romney were locked in a seesaw battle for the lead in the popular vote.
The president won Pennsylvania by a solid margin. However, Obama’s victory came down to a handful of pivotal battleground states where he edged the former Massachusetts governor — often by razor-thin margins.
In Florida, the focal point of recent electoral controversies, the president appeared to have slid past Romney by fewer than 50,000 votes.
In Ohio, the all-important state proselytized to deliver the presidency, Obama looked to have also won by fewer than 20,000 votes. And with that result, Ohio retained its prophetic status for GOP presidential candidates. No Republican has won the presidency without carrying the state.
Next door in Pennsylvania, the president won by almost 300,000 votes, but fell short of the 10-point gap he generated four years ago.
Obama carried the commonwealth comfortably, topping Romney 52 percent to 47 percent, with 93 percent of precincts reporting as of press time.
The outcome was so clear-cut that The Associated Press and most television major networks called the state for Obama around 9:45 p.m.
Locally, early returns showed Romney winning Cumberland, Lebanon, Perry and York counties, while Obama carried Dauphin County.
The president’s Pennsylvania win came despite a massive Romney offensive in the state in the campaign’s final days that included the GOP nominee stumping near Pittsburgh on Election Day. Still, Obama carried Allegheny County easily, winning 57 percent of the vote.
Romney also campaigned in Bucks County on Sunday. Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president, stopped at Harrisburg International Airport on Saturday.
But Obama carried the key areas of the Keystone State, winning big in Philadelphia, capturing 85 percent of the city’s vote.
And Obama fared well in the Philly suburbs, winning big in Delaware and Montgomery counties. Obama and Romney ran essentially even in Bucks and Chester counties.
Though Romney spent the last hours of the campaign beating the bushes of Ohio and Pennsylvania for votes, Obama disengaged from the race fully and spent the day with family in Chicago.
While his campaign forces waged a final social media get-out-the-vote effort Tuesday, Obama’s Election Day reserve proved a demonstration of assured confidence.
The comfortable result had been long predicted by the president’s campaign gurus, who were often criticized for waging a mean-spirited campaign about nothing, devoid of inspiration, and lacking vision.
It’s clear that Obama has retained his office through a sustained character assassination of Romney, painting a greedy and aloof caricature of the GOP nominee.
And voters from both sides of the partisan aisle lamented the tone of the race. But ultimately, most Americans agreed with Obama’s negative portrait of Romney.
Among the most influential voting blocs that spurned Romney were Latinos. Some early estimates suggested that the growing American ethnic group voted about 2-1 for Obama in Florida — a likely reflection of that community’s disdain for Romney’s self-deportation immigration position.
Romney also might have lost large among women. Though he was never directly associated with dogmatic positions on women’s reproductive rights, Romney was likely weighed down by a flurry of conservative GOP congressional candidates who found it difficult to discuss abortion without somehow equating it to rape.
Those elements contributed to a definitive victory for Obama, but it’s unclear whether the victory will translate into a mandate.
The president struggled to find common ground with the cabal of rabidly conservative House Republicans in his first term.
And it’s this group and Obama’s ability to work with them, that will define the president’s second term.
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Do you fit in? Are you average height? Can you cook a perfectly acceptable dinner? Are your sales figures firmly in the middle of the bell curve? Do you lead from the front or ride in the middle of the pack? There is great value in difference, but there can be great comfort in being the same. Whilst we revere expertise, we often reward the mediocre. I want to think about how we recognise and reward the average, to think about whether we drive towards mediocrity and reward people just for being the same. And if this is a good thing or not.
I’m working on a section for the book about the value of being the same. It’s easy to focus on how to drive towards performance, towards success, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes just enough is ok. Sometimes we actively reward the indifferent. It’s a strange section to write, because instinctively we want to think about how things can be improved, how we can win, but this is not always where we need to be.
Not everyone wants to stand on a pedestal, to be the leading light, the top dog or the winner. For some people, it truly is the game that counts, not the winning. For many of us, this isn’t a matter of ambition or success, failure or reprimand: it’s about what needs to be done to do the job well enough, and one could argue that this is an efficient and effective approach to learning.
Think back to maths lessons. I don’t know how many hours of purgatorial algebra i sat through, but rest assured that it was 2 (a + b) where (a) equals the number of confused children in the class and (b) equals the number of minutes till it’s all over and you can go and play Star Wars in the playground. I was never going to excel at maths, but nether was i failing. I sat firmly in the comfortable space where nobody was shouting at me, even if they should have been. This suited me just fine, as it allowed me to focus my spare energies on English, which i enjoyed. Or on Star Wars, which i also enjoyed, although in a less structured way.
Fitting in allowed me to get away with this. If I had dragged myself up to the higher echelons of arithmetic (humour me on this), then i would have drawn the spotlight of expectation. If i had slumped to the depths of the truly innumerate, i would have been hoisted off for remedial geometry. But no, i was comfortably invisible alongside and within the camaraderie of my equally disinterested and distracted classmates.
In this instance, there was great value to me in being the same, even if it’s subsequently cheated society of the benefits of my mathematical genius. Not only did the system tolerate my indifference and ignorance, it virtually rewarded it.
But you’ll note that my lack of interest in maths wasn’t driven purely by laziness (honestly…). I spent my energies elsewhere. It’s rare for people to excel in all fields and sometimes they excel in the strangest places. With limited time and limited resources, we sometimes need to decide where we are going to be the same and where we are going to focus our efforts.
Sometimes being the same can count for a lot.
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We aim for a more virtuous society by transforming media and money. Our ideology-driven methodology is replacing speculation, volatility and greed with cooperation, stability and rewarding of goodness. Our first goal is creating a smartphone-based infrastructure which is capable of withstanding all known government attacks on media freedom and privacy. Second, based on this self-organizing infrastructure we are designing our bank-of-bits, aiming to alter the essence of capitalism (rich get richer) by abolishing compound interest rates and facilitation safe zero-cost money transfers plus lending.
During this talk the first prototype will be unveiled of our attack-resilient QMedia app for microblogging. QMedia goal for future versions is news dissemination from a single smartphone to an audience of millions in the form of microblogging, enriched with pictures and streaming video which is guarded against all known forms of government censorship such as cyberspace sabotage, digital eavesdropping, infiltration, fraud, Internet kill switches and especially lawyer-based attacks. We hope new Open Source developers will join our Internet-deployed project and help realize our QMedia goal for the end of 2012: building next-generation anonymity technology, founded on social networking, traffic hiding and a global reputation system.
For over a decade Delft University of Technology has been measuring and building P2P systems, aided by millions of Euros in research funding from the European Union and Dutch government. We are continuously improving our own attack-resilient sharing software called Tribler. With one million downloads, Tribler provides us with vital behavioral feedback of novel algorithms. Tribler is not dependent and completely decoupled from unreliable servers such as DNS servers, web servers, swarm trackers and access portals. Using fully self-organising P2P technology we aim to create an overlay which is unbreakable: the only way to take it down is to take the Internet down.
We dream of transforming media and money with five innovations we have developed within Tribler:
There is no downloadable version of the slides for this talk available at this time.
About the speaker:
Dr. ir. J.A. Pouwelse is an assistant professor at Delft University of Technology, specialized in Peer-to-Peer file sharing. He leads the P2P research team of a dozen people which created the Tribler P2P system. The Tribler group is the largest experimental research group in the field of P2P and responsible for several world-first innovations. With over one million downloads Tribler serves as a living laboratory and proving ground for next-generation P2P technology. Dr. Pouwelse is scientific director of P2P-Next and technical leader of QLective, EU projects with a combined research budget of 26 million Euro. Previously Dr. Pouwelse delivered a statement for the FTC in Washington, was a visiting scientist at MIT, and spent several summers at Harvard to study mechanisms for cooperation.
Delft University of Technology
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September 7, 2012
The privately owned Federal Reserve will pump more fiat dollars into the economy as job growth showed a sharp decline in August.
“While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, that was because so many Americans gave up the hunt for work,” reports Reuters.
That number is seriously off the mark, of course. The real unemployment rate is over 20 percent. The government’s U-6, which gives a more complete figure of how many people are really out of work, pegged the rate 14.9 percent at the start of August.
The seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate, however, puts the real jobless rate closer to 23%.
As Zero Hedge notes:
…in August another 8 million Americans were working part time, double what it was at the start of the Depression. Additionally, 5.2 million, also double the number 4 years ago, are marginally attached to the labor force. Combined, this adds up to 25.8 million, which is the real number of interest, even ignoring the nearly 400,000 who mysteriously dropped out of the labor force.
Endemic unemployment, under-employment and “low wage bias” by corporations who are adopting the China slave wage model, is now the rule of the day for those who lost their jobs in the bankster and neo-mercantilist engineered depression now moving along at a steady clip.
“This weak employment report, in jobs, wages, hours worked and participation is probably the last piece the Fed needs before launching another round of quantitative easing next week,” market strategist Joseph Trevisani told Reuters.
During his Jackson Hole speech late last month, Fed boss Ben Bernanke said the privately owned bankster cartel “will provide additional policy accommodation as needed” and may engage in more so-called quantitative easing.
“The costs of non-traditional policies, when considered carefully, appear manageable, implying that we should not rule out the further use of such policies if economic conditions warrant,” he said.
Bernanke also said unemployment will continue unless “the economy begins to grow more quickly than it has recently” and it will remain vexing for some time.
“If zero interest rates and quantitative easing could really solve unemployment, there would be no reason not to maintain such policies in perpetuity. Such policies, however, lead to the formation of asset bubbles,” Rep. Ron Paul warned during the last QE boondoggle. “The next bubble is already forming, although which sector will be hit hardest remains to be seen.”
This article was posted: Friday, September 7, 2012 at 7:21 am
Tags: domestic news
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Obama's Promised NAFTA Fixes
As President Obama heads to Canada tomorrow for his first international trip as president, we wanted to take you
back to last year’s Democratic presidential primary. You may remember, that at about
this time last year, then-candidate Obama campaigned strongly on a pledge to
renegotiate NAFTA. On the campaign trail, Obama got it. From Oregon
to South Carolina, Ohio
Obama saw the devastating impact NAFTA is having on communities across the
country, and promised to renegotiate the agreement.
With little prodding, Obama made very specific commitments on NAFTA renegotiation:
"While NAFTA gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection... We should amend NAFTA to make clear that fair laws and regulations written to protect citizens in any of the three countries cannot be overridden simply at the request of foreign investors."
As he heads north, let's hope Obama remembers who won the "anti-NAFTA off" that we all enjoyed last winter.
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Catalyst Project is a center for political education and movement building based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are committed to anti-racist work with mostly white sections of left/radical social movements with the goal of deepening anti-racist commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation. We are also committed to creating spaces for activists and organizers to come together to develop relevant theory, vision and strategy to build our movements. Catalyst programs prioritize leadership development, building grassroots fighting organizations and multiracial alliance building. Catalyst is a project of the Tides Center.
The Challenging White Supremacy Workshop
Catalyst began as a project of the Challenging White Supremacy (CWS) Workshops in 2000. CWS was founded by Sharon Martinas and Mickey Ellinger in 1993. Sharon and Mickey are long-time white anti-racist organizers who were politicized by the Black Freedom struggle in the Civil Rights, Black Power and Anti-War movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 1960s the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which played a leading role in defining the political developments of the period, put forward an analysis and strategy that white people needed to organize other white people to challenge racism as a central barrier to building a multiracial movement for justice. Sharon and Mickey, along with thousands of other white people at the time, committed themselves to that work. CWS was started on the basis of that strategy.
Sharon and Mickey founded CWS after they went through a People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond workshop in New Orleans. The African-American led training program moved them to do similar workshops with white people. The purpose of the CWS workshop was to ‘train principled and effective grassroots anti-racist organizers’ and welcomed all activists who wanted to work for racial justice and challenge white privilege in all their social justice work. CWS believed that anti-racist training for white activists complements and supports grassroots organizing and leadership development in communities of color. Both kinds of work, they maintained, are necessary to help build radical, mass-based, multi-racial social justice movements.
Catalyst Project Emerges
From 1993 to 1998 CWS led two 15-week-long sessions a year in the Bay Area, working with hundreds of social justice activists. Shortly after the mass actions in Seattle that rocked the WTO, Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez encouraged Sharon to develop political education specifically to work with the growing Global Justice movement. Sharon recruited younger generation left/radical anti-racists to build a new phase of CWS called ‘Anti-Racism for Global Justice’. While continuing to run the 15-week workshop series, the new project that became Catalyst quickly developed into a national training program. Over the next 5 years over 5000 participants from local groups and national networks went through Catalyst trainings. Catalyst developed through intergenerational mentorship and a commitment to non-sectarian left/radical movement building. Intergeneration mentorship has been a process by which we have connected to the lived history of social movements before us to draw lessons and inspiration for our work. In addition to sharing insights, movement veterans have been mentors supporting us to reflect on and draw lessons from our work. They have helped us to believe in ourselves, while also providing long-term perspective. Through such mentorship and our own political practice, we developed our commitment to a non-sectarian movement building framework committed to bringing forward the best of many left/radical traditions. We are committed to a praxis-based approach to political education and organizing. Sharon Martinas, Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Paul Kivel, Nisha Anand and our other advisors supported us – Clare Bayard, Ingrid Chapman, Amie Fishman, Kerry Levenberg, Missy Longshore, Josh Warren-White, Molly McClure and Chris Crass – to build Catalyst*
Four Key Political Developments
The political development and work of the Catalyst Project has been shaped by four primary factors since 1999. We focus on these factors here to root ourselves both in the historical conditions in which we work and in the social movements from which we come from and work with.
Building the Global Justice Movement
First, the mass direct actions and mobilizations of the Global Justice movement at the turn of the century. From Seattle ’99 through Washington D.C. ’00, Los Angeles ’00, Philadelphia ’00, Quebec ’01, and Genoa ’01,where the ruling class gathered to advance their globalized profit before people agenda, growing people’s movements in the Global North, led primarily by movements in the South, confronted them. The Zapatistas in Mexico have played a major leadership role in developing the political framework of the Global Justice movement. Not only did they spark a new level of resistance to global capitalism with their uprising in 1994 (the day NAFTA went into effect), but also they brought together thousands of activists from around the world in the late 90′s for gatherings/encuentros against neo-liberalism and for humanity.
Out of these mass meetings, People’s Global Action (PGA) formed in 1998 as a network of global collaboration and coordination among movements with a majority of participating movements coming from the South. PGA identified world economic summits as a strategic site of struggle and called for militant direct action against the WTO in particular. The mass convergences in Seattle and so on brought together many organizations, campaigns, social movements and sectors of society under the common themes of “Globalize Liberation not Corporate Power” and “Our World is Not for Sale”. Running throughout these convergences, which captured headlines and imaginations around the world, was a growing anti-capitalist politic and an ethic of global solidarity.
Members of Catalyst were either in organizations that played a leading role in the emergence of a Global Justice movement in the U.S. or were radicalized in the organizing of the mass actions themselves. In particular, we were rooted in the anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizations that advanced the call to “Shut Down the WTO” and used innovative, democratic strategies to make it happen. We thus approach our work from the position of U.S.-based grassroots activists in a global struggle for justice, self-determination and empowered people’s democracy. We approach our political education and movement building work grounded in the complex reality of building grassroots organizations in a time of Right-wing political reaction and neo-liberal economics. We approach our work deeply inspired and moved by the mass convergences of organizations, campaigns, social movements and different sectors of society demonstrating our critique of what is and beginning to practice our visions of what can be.
White Supremacy and Movement-Wide Discussions on Organizing
Second, the vital critique of white privilege in the Global Justice movement that was initiated by Elizabeth ‘Betita’ Martinez in her essay “Where Was the Color in Seattle”. That essay and others that followed it made race and power burning issues throughout the movement. The debate quickly became a much wider discussion about the historic role of white supremacy as a fundamental organizing principle of the U.S. political and economic systems, as well as how white privilege has strategically been used by the ruling class to cement alliances between white people of all classes and divide and conquer the majority of the people under a profit before people agenda. Out of the mass action convergences a powerful intergenerational dialogue, with people of color and women’s leadership at the center, brought issues of white supremacy, anti-racism, strategy, organizing, leadership and vision to the forefront.
Catalyst members were deeply influenced by these debates and played active roles in both furthering them and working to implement anti-racist strategies in mostly white sectors of the global justice movement. With mentorship from older generation left/radicals, we joined with other activists and organizers of our generation – of color and white – to struggle with the analytical and practical questions before us. We thus approach our work as white anti-racists using political education to ground current activism in history, strengthen vision and strategy and support/develop leadership in mostly white communities to stand for racial justice as core to an overall liberation agenda. We have come to understand the many ways in which leadership operates and we have committed ourselves to support younger generation left/radical leadership rooted in organizations and communities working for justice. We have come to see anti-racism based in a collective liberation analysis and multiracial alliance building based on shared politics as catalysts to building powerful movements for justice.
U.S. Imperialism and the Resurgence of the Anti-War Movement
Third, the ‘permanent war’ launched by the U.S. government in the wake of Sept. 11th and the resurgence of the worldwide anti-war movement on a new scale. With the nation recovering from the tragedy of Sept. 11th, the Bush administration launched war against Afghanistan and then Iraq and gave a green light to Israel to intensify its war against the Palestinians. In the U.S., detentions of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians intensified, rationalized by government officials as a strategy of counter-terrorism. Meanwhile Democrats and Republicans passed the Patriot Act, which is an assault on baseline constitutional rights. Together, the ruling parties mobilized a traumatized society, using fear and revenge to justify racial profiling, torture of prisoners held without charges, pre-emptive war, violation of international law and slashing funds for health care, emergency preparedness and schools so as to pay for occupation of other countries.
In response, millions of people around the world have taken to the streets against war. The largest anti-war mobilization in history took place in February of 2003, with coordinated actions of over 15 million people around the world. In San Francisco, the day after the war on Iraq began, over 20,000 took over and shut down the Financial District using non-violent direct action. At the Republican National Convention in 2004, the largest protest at a presidential convention in U.S. history took place with over 500,000 people in the streets of New York City. As the corporate agenda has increasing become defined by U.S.-led imperialism, a growing anti-imperialist consciousness that links white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism and the state is developing in the grassroots movements for racial and economic justice, for global justice and against war.
We thus approach our work as white anti-imperialists committed to building community power by strengthen our economic, racial, gender and environmental struggles for health and justice in the center of empire. We reaffirm our belief that organization is key to the struggle for liberation. We believe left/radicals have a responsibility to join and strengthen existing organizations and/or build new ones to further our goals. We see organizations as structures to develop shared understanding of the world, shared meaning of one’s role and relationship in the world and a shared culture of justice to make change in the world. We believe organizations are not just a utilitarian tool to get work done, but that grassroots fighting organizations can support people’s political development as leaders and serve as a space to practice our politics while working to transform society. We believe that relationships of respect and accountability built on principles of justice and democracy are the foundation of effective organizations. We therefore approach our political education work as a component in supporting organization-building and developing dynamic and democratic leadership rooted in relationships of respect and accountability.
White Supremacy, Capitalism and Building Grassroots Power After Katrina
Fourth, the man-made disaster in the Gulf Coast of the United States as millions of poor people and people of color struggled to survive in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Social spending, won through a long history of working class struggle in the U.S., has repeatedly been cut and redirected to corporate profits through war profiteering. The basic infrastructure of society is deteriorating, and the broken levees in New Orleans broke open the mainstream consciousness of institutional white supremacy as foundational to the political economy of our society. With poor Black people were left to die in the flooded city of New Orleans, the Bush administration and the state on all levels prioritized protecting property over poor people. The people of New Orleans relied on one another to survive. The stories of people opening their homes, of people risking their lives for one another, of families coming together were ignored in the corporate media. Instead, poor Black people struggling to survive were described as looters and criminals. The systemic poverty and racism of this society, all of which was supposedly ended by the Civil Rights movement in mainstream white consciousness, was up for the world to see.
In the aftermath, community organizations and people in the communities most negatively impacted worked to rebuild. From Community Labor United, People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, Critical Resistance, the People’s Institute and the Common Ground Collective, grassroots relief efforts led by longtime left and radical organizers clarified the tremendous need for social movements of millions of people to create institutions, communities and systems which foster and sustain economic, racial and social justice in our day-to-day lives.
We believe that working-class people, people of color and poor people are the leading forces in the struggle to build a just society. We work to support and join with community-based organizations building power in these communities. We believe that leadership of working-class people, people of color, poor people, women and queer people is central in the overall process of building the infrastructure of liberation. We also believe there is tremendous need for anti-racist leadership and organization in white communities and we work with other white anti-racists and organizers of color to develop this kind of leadership and organization.
We thus approach our work by prioritizing anti-racism work with mostly white sectors of the left with a focus on the global justice and anti-war movements and economic and racial justice movements. Catalyst works with a strategy that prioritizes leadership development, building grassroots organizations and multiracial alliance building. In this we focus on supporting the leadership of those most negatively impacted by the systems of oppression we are fighting. Catalyst works within an informal network of hundreds of anti-racist, anti-imperialists, with the majority of the leadership coming from women, people of color trans and genderqueer folks, working-class people, Jewish people, youth, and leaders from other marginalized and oppressed communities.
We believe in the power of organized communities to make history. We understand that it is often a long and difficult process building effective, healthy organizations along with powerful and democratic social movements. We approach our work grounded in respect for those who have struggled before us and love for the people we work alongside today. We join with millions around the world organizing to build democracy and socialism.
*These are the names of everyone who is and has been a member of the Catalyst Project
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Want to become certified to teach yoga in your organization or community? We come to you for Teacher Training too! We tailor our teacher trainings to fit your needs and schedule. (minimum of 2-3 participants)
Our Yoga teacher training programs are aimed at developing practitioners who encourage and inspire, who demonstrate sensitivity to the needs of individuals as well as the group. We build the foundation to teach skillfully – with compassion, integrity and safety – as you discover your own unique voice and style. Our trainings are designed to fit the needs of your organization or community. We place emphasis on incorporating wellness and a healthy lifestyle into your training.
Students who complete the 200-Hour Teacher Training program will:
• Deepen their practice and understanding of yoga
• Know how to structure and create a cohesive, well-rounded class
• Acquire an understanding of yoga philosophy
• Have the confidence and tools to begin teaching yoga
Students will receive a diploma and Letter of Completion which they can use to register with Yoga Alliance at the RYT-200 level.
Children’s Yoga Teacher Training
RYTC Certification, 95 Hours
Lotus House of Yoga/2UYoga Children’s Yoga Teacher Training is designed for those teachers that want to enhance children’s lives through the practice of yoga. This training is designed to fit all schedules and professions, whether you are a school teacher looking at ways to activate learning opportunities in the classroom or a yoga teacher, nanny, parent or therapist who wants to refine their expertise. All that is needed is a passion for yoga and a mission to make a positive difference in the lives of our children (and have a lot of fun!) It is not required that you are currently a RYT registered yoga teacher, if you are you can add your Yoga Alliance,RYCT to your designation.
Training focuses on teaching yoga to children ages 4 – 15. Training includes sessions on :
- breathing exercises appropriate for children
- a complete list of of child-friendly yoga poses
- relaxation techniques & visualizations for children
- creating and using themes and stories
- how to teach different age groups
- yoga games
- partner & group poses
- kid-friendly songs and chants
- simple creative movement routines
- prop suggestions
- class setting adaptations/considerations
- lesson planning/sequencing
- incorporating music, songs, crafts, books and yogic themes
- how to best prepare for class
- tips for improvising
- adaptations for special groups: special needs children, teens, families, etc.
- behavior management techniques that support a loving, non-competitive environment and encourage respect for self and others
The following workshops count for certification of the RYTC, Children’s Yoga Teacher
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Amr Mohamed Moussa is an Egyptian politician and diplomat who served as Secretary-General of the Arab League from 2001 until 2011. Prior to that, he served ten years as Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs. He is viewed as a top contender for the presidency in Egyptian elections later this month; his prior experience under Hosni Mubarak is seen as both a strength and a political liability. (You can listen to the full podcast in Arabic here.)
Elshinnawi: If you are elected president, what priorities will you set for your first 100 days in office?
The first priority will be to restore security and thus end the fear facing Egyptian families today. To do that, we will need to invite the police force back and rehabilitate police stations so that the force could resume its role with a clear mandate from the president to serve the population, not to suppress or oppress it. All police officers who have either quit or are staying home would be recalled back into service.
The second priority would be to resume services to citizens and provide relief from shortages of fuel and natural gas. Then, I would set up presidential workshops to discuss with experts major issues such as education, healthcare, housing, agriculture, industry, services, et cetera, and call on them to produce lists of recommendations for tacking all of these issues.
Over the next 100 days, once these recommendations are turned into plans and resolutions, I would establish councils to plan and execute these recommendations – including a national security council, a socio-economic council, a council for arts and cultural affairs and a special council to address people with special needs.
Elshinnawi: Social justice is a major goal of the Egyptian revolution, but it requires huge resources to achieve. How would you deal with that challenge?
Social justice is a must at this stage, especially because at least 50 percent of the population is living at or around the poverty line. I would double the tax relief limit to help these people. At the same time, I would introduce progressive taxation to ensure justice in handling tax burdens. As for unemployment, I will offer unemployment compensation of 50 percent of the set minimum income, provided that the unemployed go through a rehabilitation process to acquire needed skills in the labor market.
On top of all that, I have a plan for grand projects, such as developing the Suez Canal area by transforming it into an integrated industrial, agricultural, commercial, maritime and free trade zone project. That way, it would become a magnet for investments. I have similar development plans for Sinai, west of the Nile, and the northwest coast to restore huge wheat production after clearing the mines fields in that area, which is underway right now.
Egyptian, Arab, and foreign investments would flow because all of these projects are concrete, feasible and viable. I would also initiate a national program for small- and medium-sized industries and provide small loans to encourage entrepreneurs. Also, I would establish a new bank to finance agricultural production and reconsider the prices of crops to help farmers.
Elshinnawi: Would you maintain the army's economy as it has been running so far, that is, apart from the general budget?
That issue should not concern people, because the ruling power will be transferred from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to the elected president. Then, the armed forces, whether their leadership or the rank and file, would take care of their own affairs. I would caution that we should deal with these issues wisely, as we are creating a new democratic state with a National Security Council that would discuss such details.
Elshinnawi: What role do you envision for Egyptian expatriates in rebuilding Egypt?
We have to deal with expatriates as Egyptian communities that are actually living abroad with a second, and sometimes a third, generation – in the U.S., Australia, Canada, Europe, and even in Africa.
On our side, the state should take care of their cultural and religious needs and open up investment opportunities to the expatriates. By doing so, we create a permanent common interest. I intend to establish a special ministry for Egyptian expatriates to coordinate their affairs with other ministries, such as education, culture, and the foreign ministry to take on a brand new approach to our expatriates around the world.
Elshinnawi: How can you restore the regional role and prestige to Egypt after 30 years of retreat?
The retreat happened especially in the past ten years. Egypt itself has contributed in that retreat by closing its doors and avoiding getting engaged in any troubles. That was a wrong policy. In order to restore its foreign role Egypt has to reform its domestic role as well. When others, such as Arabs, Africans and Europeans, feel that the ruling regime in Egypt is serious about rebuilding Egypt, then Egypt will restore its foreign strength.
Elshinnawi: Some presidential candidates have pledged to reconsider the Camp David accords or renegotiate some of their articles. What are your thoughts?
Anyone who commits himself to reconsidering Camp David Accords does not understand the facts. There is nothing to renegotiate because, as a document, it fulfilled its role and it is no longer controlling either relations or the Middle East peace process. Quite the opposite, it has been replaced by the Arab League peace initiative and other bilateral agreements. The only portion of that treaty that I would want to reconsider is some of the security appendixes which, in fact, ties Egypt’s hands when it comes to securing the Sinai Peninsula.
Elshinnawi: U.S.-Egyptian relations are considered important to both countries. During Mubarak’s era, their relationship entailed strategic cooperation. How do you see Egypt’s future relationship with the U.S.?
Our U.S.-Egyptian relations will not be about strategic cooperation, but rather about bilateral cooperation, with consultations over regional issues. It is in our national interest that our relationship with the U.S. be good and positive. It is in our national interest not to fall into a superficial trap and judge our relations on negative populist feelings because of the U.S. position toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. That should not be everything.
I call for a solid relationship with the U.S. that would allow us to ask for modifications of the U.S. stance and reformulation of its positions in a way that could help achieve a just peace in the Middle East.
Check Mohamed Elshinnawi's interview with another presidential hopeful, Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh.
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Take young adults seriously to keep them connected, speaker says
It’s not the Presbyterian ‘brand,’ but introducing them to Jesus that matters
July 6, 2010
Presbyterians involved with college ministry gathered at the 219th General Assembly (2010) to discuss their work and those they serve.
The keynote speaker, the Rev. Stephen Hayner, president of Columbia Theological Seminary, has worked with 18- to 25-year-olds for 40 years.
Young adults are motivated people who can change the world, and young adulthood is a time of exploration and discernment, Hayner said. “It’s one of the most energetic, imaginative, critical times in all of our lives.”
But from a Presbyterian standpoint, college students are one of the most underserved groups in the United States, and college pastors and chaplains are often under-resourced, unacknowledged and lonely.
Hayner cited several studies of young adults, especially as they relate to faith. Fewer students entering college say they believe in God, and the PC(USA) has the lowest retention rate of young adults.
Many Presbyterians think of college as a “lost time,” Hayner said. They think young adults leave the church for a few years while they are in college and return once they’re ready to marry and start families. But that’s not true — they don’t come back.
The church has to start taking young adults seriously, Hayner said. Congregations need to find a way to stay connected to college students who move away for school.
Presbyterians also need to stop worrying so much about the Presbyterian “brand.” Leaders often worry too much about reaching out to Presbyterian students or making Presbyterians out of others, but the real concern should be introducing people to Jesus.
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Peter Hogan, headmaster of Loretto School, accused Edinburgh University of discriminating against children from fee-paying schools as part of an experiment in “social engineering”.
He said university staff have made clear they will look more favourably on applications from state schools and have even suggested his pupils should study in England “because they can afford to pay the fees”.
The accusation, which was rejected by the university, comes after SNP ministers published legislation that would introduce heavy fines for institutions if they fail to meet targets for recruiting more youngsters from poor backgrounds.
Earlier this month a senior Scottish government education mandarin admitted this could mean more middle-class students missing out and argued that academic “potential” rather than actual exam results should decide who wins a place.
Mr Hogan said his pupils were being welcomed into all but one of the UK’s leading universities but Edinburgh “has become increasingly difficult”.
Criticising the “lack of professionalism” shown by admissions staff, he said: “It’s been made very clear that those particular individuals were more interested in children from state schools than children from private schools.
“There are some people who we have spoken to at Edinburgh who have seemed to be discriminating against Loretto pupils, saying that children from schools like ours should go to university south of the Border because they can afford it.”
He said some of his pupils have been rejected by Edinburgh supposedly on “academic grounds” despite being accepted at higher ranking universities, including Cambridge.
Mr Hogan said he had been reluctant to speak out for fear of further disadvantaging the children but decided to do so because Edinburgh does not “seem to be particularly motivated to be giving us fair and even-handed offers anyway.”
Loretto, which is near Musselburgh, one the outskirts of Edinburgh, is Scotland’s oldest boarding school. Among its most famous alumni are Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor, and Andrew Marr, the broadcaster.
The school charges senior boarding pupils up to £27,750 per year but the headmaster said “we do all we can” to provide places for children from less well off backgrounds.
“There is a danger of us trying to help a child and then the university blighting their chances because of some sort of social engineering,” Mr Hogan concluded.
Tracy Slaven, the Scottish government’s director for higher education and learning support, has admitted allocating more places for poorer children would result in the “displacement” of applicants who win university entry under the current system.
The number of applications for place at Edinburgh University is up 2,000 on last year and a spokesman warned entry was “highly competitive” and many well-qualified pupils will be rejected.
“The university uses a range of measures to assess the circumstances of an applicant’s school grades but these do not include whether an applicant has attended a state or independent school,” he added.
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Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, politician and commentator whose novels, essays, plays and opinions were stamped by his immodest wit and unconventional wisdom, died Tuesday at age 86, his nephew said.
Vidal died at his home in the Hollywood Hills at about 6:45 p.m. of complications from pneumonia, Burr Steers said. Vidal had been living alone in the home and had been sick for "quite a while," he said.
Along with such contemporaries as Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, Vidal was among the last generation of literary writers who were also genuine celebrities — fixtures on talk shows and in gossip columns, personalities of such size and appeal that even those who hadn't read their books knew who they were.
His works included hundreds of essays; the best-selling novels Lincoln and Myra Breckenridge; the groundbreaking The City and the Pillar, among the first novels about openly gay characters; and the Tony-nominated play The Best Man, revived on Broadway in 2012.
Text & images: AP
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None of the 29 Los Angeles Unified charter schools examined in a study released Monday met state and federal standards aimed at making campuses accessible to disabled students, and some even lacked wheelchair-friendly bathrooms and walkways. Connie Llanos in the Daily News.
The study by a federally appointed independent monitor also revealed that the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, which determines whether schools are compliant with these laws, is not making proper inspections.
An independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee a federal consent decree imposed on the school district to improve special education services. An earlier report by the monitor also blasted LAUSD charter schools for enrolling fewer disabled students overall and fewer with severe disabilities than traditional schools.
he decision by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday to merge the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment into another city agency has raised concern over the future of the city’s decade-old experiment with grass-roots democracy. Daily News.
To Villaraigosa and many city and neighborhood council leaders, the proposal – which will eliminate some two dozen positions and save an estimated $2 million – will help chip away the bureaucracy at City Hall.
Eyeing annual savings of up to a half-billion dollars, the Los Angeles City Council asked Monday for a report on a proposal to consolidate the city’s myriad computer operations in one agency. Daily News.
Similar plans have been proposed over the years, but council members are now feeling pressure to follow through because of the city’s dire financial outlook.
Under the plan, most of the separate computer operations of the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Fire Department would be transferred to the city’s Information Technology Agency over the next five years.
Councilwoman and candidate for Lieutenant Gov. Janice Hahn released a You Tube commercial hitting at San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom showing him admitting he knows little about the office or what it does.
More than 30,000 people applied by last Tuesday’s deadline for the 14 seats on a citizen commission that will redo the state’s allegedly gerrymandered district lines in time for the 2012 elections.
The commission is a key step toward making good on Proposition 11, the 2008 ballot measure that requires California to clean up the way legislative districts are mapped, a change supporters think will lead to less political partisanship.
At times, amid the throng of admirers hanging on to his every word inside the cavernous amphitheater, the silence was enough to hear a pin drop, as the Dalai Lama sat in yoga style on an stuffed chair and proclaimed:Tony Castro in the Daily News.
“The future of humanity ultimately depends on the public,” he said in halting English.
Or when the Dalai Lama issued a beatitude that played on the Golden Rule:
“The destruction of your neighbor is the destruction of yourself. That is the new reality.”
In the continuing effort to reduce city costs, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to announce plans today to fold the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment into another city agency. Daily News.
A recommendation to the mayor on Sunday calls for placing the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, or DONE, within the Community Development Department and reducing its staff from 42 to about a dozen.
A comic book seller opens a second shop. A stained-glass artist bags big commissions. A hair salon treats new locks. A pet boutique grooms more dogs.Dana Bartholomew in the Daily News.
And if that isn’t enough during a strangely topsy-turvy economy, a French bistro stops customers on the sidewalk with a menu stuck to a giant pig.
A year ago, on a small stretch of Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, mom-and-pop stores struggled in the grip of the Great Recession. Today, as the economy begins to rebound, these owners say business is looking up.
As one veteran prosecutor puts it, the infighting, lawsuits and upheaval inside the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has turned it into a veritable “snake’s nest.” Troy Anderson in the Daily News.
A series of legal battles between the prosecutors union and District Attorney Steve Cooley over allegations of anti-labor retaliation has provided a rare and sordid glimpse into the office charged with enforcing the law in the nation’s most populous county.
“There is a lot of apparent acrimony between the administration and the union,” said Tom Higgins, the head deputy district attorney who oversees criminal filings for most of Los Angeles and once ran against Cooley. “I think it’s unfortunate we are fighting amongst ourselves.”
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Underscoring how confusing the patent system can be, touch screen maker Neonode claims it was awarded a touch and swipe gesture patent that sounds strikingly similar to Apple’s own swipe patent for the iPhone and iPad.
Neonode’s patent (8,095,879) application was filed in 2002 and granted this year. According to the company, the patent describes touch-based “sweep gesture user interfaces,” and dovetails with another patent it owns (7,880,732).
Patent 8,095,879, titled “User interface for mobile handheld computer unit,” shows a filing date of December 10, 2002 and an issue date of January 10, 2012. Neonode’s earlier patent, number 7,880,732, describes a touch screen system for mobile phones.
The company claims it is already licensing its touch-based patents to the likes of Sony, Barnes & Noble, and L&I. Neonode says its ” patented touch solution zForce is developed for touch enabled smart phones and tablets, toys and games devices, health appliances, printers and office equipment, e-readers and automotive applications.”
According to TechCrunch, Neonode is now looking for what its calls “friendly licensing deals,” and it plans to start with Apple. Since Apple already has its own swipe-based gesture patent — and has used that patent court — it doesn’t seem likely that the iPhone and iPad maker will welcome Neonode with open arms.
Apple has not commented on Neonode’s patents.
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New York, 21 December, 2009 - Mayer Brown, a leading global law firm, won a significant victory for East River Realty Company, when the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, affirmed a lower court's ruling in favor of East River in its efforts to enforce an environmental cleanup agreement with the State of New York.
In Matter of East Riv. Realty Co., LLC v. New York State Dept. of Envtl. Conservation, the appellate court ruled yesterday that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) must honor a prior agreement with East River for three parcels along the East River it plans to develop. The ruling potentially entitles East River to tax benefits worth approximately $250 million.
East River is pursuing a $4 billion development on the former Con Edison site, located near United Nations headquarters, and applied for participation in the State's Brownfield Program in connection with the site's environmental cleanup. The three parcels were extensively contaminated after a century of industrial use, including as a power generating station. East River's request was initially granted by DEC, but later reversed and by the agency, forcing East River to seek relief in the courts.
A Mayer Brown team led by partner Richard Ben-Veniste and including partner Miriam Nemetz successfully argued the appeal before the appellate court. In its decision, the court rejected DEC's arguments, noting that East River had demonstrated its eligibility for the Brownfield Cleanup Program, and ordered DEC to reinstate East River into the program.
''We are very pleased by the court's decision to require the State to abide by the terms of the statute and provide East River with the benefits to which it is entitled under the Brownfield Cleanup Program,'' said Ms. Nemetz.
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Tag Archives: construction quality
CBC News recently ran several stories alleging many of Toronto’s glass condo towers will fail 15 to 25 years after construction due to problems such as insulation failures and water leaks. One developer quoted in a Nov. 14 article article went so far as to call glass-walled condos “throw-away buildings” because of their short lifespan relative to buildings with walls made of concrete or brick.
According to several glass industry representatives, the CBC News items neglect to consider buildings with properly designed and installed glass units, and to address overall construction quality concerns. “Clearly, there is muck-raking going on at the expense of the glass industry,” says Rob Botman, general manager of Glassopolis, Toronto. “The latest round of stories is about other cheap construction practices and portraying these issues unfairly as glass issues. … You can get properly designed [glass] systems that are watertight, well insulated, and provide excellent solar control and privacy.”
Chris Dolan, director, commercial glass marketing for Guardian Industries, agrees. “In general, window wall systems are appropriate for use on high-rise projects, and [are] an economic alternative to curtain wall,” he says. “Window wall systems have performed well overall. The key is in the details of design, quality, construction and installation.”
Alessandro Fenzi, director of Fenzi Group, with North American headquarters in Toronto, says the CBC News report does address a “real issue” of poor quality IG units finding their way into projects. This becomes much more problematic when the units are part of all-glass wall systems. “Not enough attention has been given to the quality of the glass installed in the building,” he says. “The importance of glass has increased [as glass has gone] from being a small part in a wall to becoming the wall. This means that the performance and quality of the glass—especially insulating glass—are now extremely important.”
The CBC News piece also addressed the energy performance concerns of glass and glazing, something the glass industry is continually improving. “Glass manufacturers have made significant strides in lower solar heat gain low-emissivity coatings, while letting in ample amounts of light to save electricity,” Dolan says. Guardian, for example, recently launched several new products, including SunGuard IS 20, that provide lower U-factor. “We expect more improvement in the future through coatings and other technologies,” Dolan adds.
Fenzi said he welcomes the news articles, if they help increase consumer awareness about the importance of investing in high-quality glass systems. “It doesn’t make sense for a consumer to invest in an energy-saving window and, only a few months after installation, for that window to turn into an energy eater due to faults in the components used in the insulating glass.”
Fenzi says he would like to see the insulating glass industry shift its attention even more to the performance of a product over its life, rather than just on day one. He recommends even more stringent IG standards, and an increased focus on the part of IG manufacturers on components such as sealants to ensure retention of gas fill. “If the insulating glass units [are] manufactured properly, with the correct components, then the CBC report is not correct. Gas retention will be perfect and energy saving will be there for a long time,” he says. “If … design faults will continue to be allowed, then CBC is right—many IGUs [will lose] argon in the first 12 months.”
“Our industry has to be careful,” Fenzi says. “The media have now placed glass in the spotlight. We cannot afford any risk—we all must deliver what our customers have paid for.”
Despite the news reports, industry representatives expect glass to continue to be the envelope product of choice for architects and owners. “Customers like glass curtain walls,” Botman says. “It adds value right away to the project. That’s why they are used everywhere… If you are going to buy a 500-square-foot condo 30 stories up, you better believe that the view is the best part of your unit. Enjoy it.”
Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information – 416−388−1960
Laurin & Natalie Jeffrey are Toronto Realtors with Century 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these articles, they just reproduce them here for people
who are interested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
Incoming search terms
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"Entering the building, we smelled a strong odor of gas," said Christopher Rangel, a paramedic and firefighter.
Outside the building, frantic family members searched for loved ones, and shaken witnesses described the explosion.
Mario Guzman said he was on the 10th floor of the tower when he felt "a very strong blow."
"We felt like the whole building was going to collapse," he told CNNMexico.
Images from the scene showed emergency rescue teams carrying people on stretchers. Authorities said helicopters carried some of the wounded to hospitals.
At least 14 people were hospitalized with injuries, and two of them were in serious condition, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto surveyed the damage Thursday night, along with Osorio Chong and Mexico City's mayor.
Pena Nieto cautioned against speculating over what caused the blast, and said authorities would be closely investigating.
Thousands of people work at the Pemex headquarters, which includes a 54-story building that is nearly 700 feet tall.
The explosion occurred in an annex building just to the east of the tower, Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade said.
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It’s a beautiful thing to watch people tweet. Especially when you try to figure out what they’re tweeting about, how they feel, and where they’re tweeting from — then put that all on a map and animate the changes over time.
Researchers from Northeastern University and Harvard College recently built a pretty and captivating visualization of U.S. Twitter users’ moods, as determined by sentiment analysis. You can watch two days worth of tweeted moods in this video:
Watching the cartogram pulse as it indicates the proportional volume and sentiment of tweets is probably more interesting than the researchers’ conclusions about their data: people are happier on weekends than weekdays; West Coast happiness trends are usually about three hours after East Coast happiness trends. Still, it’s neat to learn that Thursday evening — aka just about the time I’m posting this — is the time of the week Twitter users tend to express the most negative sentiment.
Meanwhile, over at Betaworks, they’ve just posted a visualization of the record-setting sustained volume of tweets from around the world during the World Cup. There’s no sentiment analysis here — just counting of relevant hashtags — but you can see the volume of tweets corresponding with the occurrence of games that people in a country are interested in.
People seem to tweet less about being frustrated than being triumphant; for the championship game, Betaworks noted an “immediate lack of traffic in the Netherlands after losing while the attention in Spain persisted through the next morning.” Or it could be that disappointed tweeters just left off the proper hashtag formulation when lamenting their team’s loss.
These aren’t the first Twitter geography-plus-time visualizations videos, of course. Here’s one from last year that maps tweets with the words “just landed” and “just arrived in”:
Here’s another of tweets from people who were pleased about Barack Obama’s inauguration. And here’s one from the New York Times depicting tweets during the Super Bowl. (Those two aren’t embeddable, so you’ll have to click through.)
Perhaps the data geeks who made these were too busy thinking about the visuals, but for some reason or another none of them include a soundtrack. So it’s up to you to put some trippy music on, chill out, and watch the Twitter visualizations.
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