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Osprey's examination of Germany's home front situation during World War II (1939-1945). At the outbreak of war in 1939 Germany was committed to the concept of Blitzkrieg - a swift and decisive war. Yet, the reality became something very different as every corner of German society was hit by the realities of war.
This book details the critical civilian support that was necessary to maintain Nazi control of the civilian population and includes first-hand accounts of the experiences of civilians who suffered at the hands of their own government as well as enduring the deprivations and fears of wartime life. With analysis and descriptions of civil and home services, from air raid wardens to postwomen, this book provides a detailed, lavishly illustrated description of wartime life in Germany, exploring the tentacles of the Nazi state as they affected every man, woman and child.
"Brian L Davis' The German Home Front 1939-45 chronicles German civilian life during the war and the duties and challenges of living in a Nazi state..." -California Bookwatch (December 2007)
"Author Brian Davis takes what seems to be a very confusing mix of bureaucracies and makes sense of them... A truly interesting and somewhat unique look at warfare and the organization of the German state during the Second World War. Highly recommended." - Scott Van Aken, modelingmadness.com (October 2007)
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|
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| 0.959136
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| 3.34375
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|
What Is A Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT)?
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) fosters the development of Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs). A DMAT is a group of professional and para-professional medical personnel (supported by a cadre of logistical and administrative staff) designed to provide medical care during a disaster or other event. Each team has a sponsoring organization, such as a major medical center, public health or safety agency, non-profit, public or private organization that signs a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the DHS. The DMAT sponsor organizes the team and recruits members, arranges training, and coordinates the dispatch of the team.
To supplement the standard DMATs, there are highly specialized DMATs that deal with specific medical conditions such as crush injury, burn, and mental health emergencies. Other teams within the NDMS Section include Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams (DMORTs) that provide mortuary services, Veterinary Medical Assistance Teams (VMATs) that provide veterinary services, National Nursing Response Teams (NNRTs) that will be available for situations specifically requiring nurses – and not full DMATs. Such a scenario might include assisting with mass chemoprophylaxis (a mass vaccination program,) or a scenario that overwhelms the nation’s supply of nurses in responding to a weapon of mass destruction event. Others teams are the National Pharmacy Response Teams (NPRTs) that will be used in situations such as those described for the NNRTs but where pharmacists, not nurses or DMATs, are needed, and the National Medical Response Teams (NMRTs) that are equipped and trained to provide medical care for potentially contaminated victims of weapons of mass destruction.
DMATs deploy to disaster sites with sufficient supplies and equipment to sustain themselves for a period of 72 hours while providing medical care at a fixed or temporary medical care site. In mass casualty incidents, their responsibilities may include triaging patients, providing high-quality medical care despite the adverse and austere environment often found at a disaster site, and preparing patients for evacuation. In other types of situations, DMATs may provide primary medical care and/or may serve to augment overloaded local health care staffs. Under the rare circumstance that disaster victims are evacuated to a different locale to receive definitive medical care, DMATs may be activated to support patient reception and disposition of patients to hospitals. DMATs are designed to be a rapid-response element to supplement local medical care until other Federal or contract resources can be mobilized, or the situation is resolved.
DMAT members are required to maintain appropriate certifications and licensure within their discipline. When members are activated as Federal employees, licensure and certification is recognized by all States. Additionally, DMAT members are paid while serving as part-time federal employees and have the protection of the Federal Tort Claims Act in which the Federal Government becomes the defendant in the to provide interstate aid. event of a malpractice claim.
DMATs are principally a community resource available to support local, regional, and State requirements. However, as a National resource they can be federalized.
What kinds of Missions will DMATs respond to?
In the event of a significant man-made or natural declared disaster, NDMS can activate individual DMATs, which are locally organized volunteer medical teams, for any of a number of missions for which they train: the establishment and staffing of a Patient Field Treatment site; A Regional Evacuation Point, where patients will be managed as they are prepared for flights to other cities when the ability of the local EMS/hospital system cannot cope with needs; or a Patient Reception Point, where patients who have been flown to another city will be received and examined, by a DMAT in a receiving city, and integrated into the new local EMS System. In addition, if the entire primary care system of an area is destroyed, DMATs can be activated to deliver regional primary care until the local area can restore such a critical function. When hospitals have been severely affected, or damaged, DMATs can respond to perform hospital staff relief, or they can assist in hospital evacuations.
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| 0.940321
| 863
| 2.859375
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William Thomas Sampson, born on 9 February 1840 in Palmyra, N.Y., entered the United States Naval Academy on 24 September 1857. After graduating 1st in his class four years later, he served as an instructor at the Academy. In 1864, he became the executive officer of the monitor Patapsco of the South Atlantic Blockading Station and engaged in sweeping torpedoes off Charleston. He survived the loss of that ironclad on 15 January 1865, when she struck a torpedo, exploded, and sank with a loss of 75 lives. Following duty in the steam frigate, Colorado, on the European Station, another tour as instructor at the Naval Academy, and in the Bureau of Navigation of the Navy Department, he served in the screw sloop, Congress. He then commanded Alert, practice ship Mayflower, and Swatara while on duty at the Naval Academy. During the next years, he was Assistant to the Superintendent of the Naval Observatory, then Officer-in-Charge of the Naval Torpedo Station, Newport, R.I. On 9 September 1886, he became Superintendent of the Naval Academy. He was promoted to Captain on 9 April 1889, reported to the Mare Island Navy Yard to fit out San Francisco, and assumed command when that protected cruiser was commissioned on 15 November 1889. He was detached in June 1892 to serve as Inspector of Ordnance in the Washington Navy Yard and was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance on 28 January 1893. He assumed command of battleship, Iowa, on 15 June 1897. On 17 February 1898, he was made President of the Board of Inquiry to investigate the destruction of battleship, Maine. On 26 March 1898, he assumed command of the North Atlantic Station, with the temporary rank of Rear Admiral. The United States declared war against Spain on 21 April 1898; and, eight days later, Admiral Cervera's fleet sailed from the Cape Verde Islands for an uncertain destination. Admiral Sampson, in flagship New York, put to sea from Key West in search of the Spanish Fleet and established a close and efficient blockade on that fleet in the harbor of Santiago on 1 June 1898. On the morning of 3 July 1898, Cervera's fleet came out of the harbor and was completely destroyed in a running sea battle lasting five hours. The next day, Rear Admiral Sampson sent his famous message: "The Fleet under my command offers the nation as a Fourth of July present, the whole of Cervera's Fleet!" He was appointed Cuban Commissioner on 20 August 1898 but resumed command of the North Atlantic Fleet in December. He became Commandant of the Boston Navy Yard in October 1899 and transferred to the Retired List on 9 February 1902. Rear Admiral Sampson died in Washington, D.C., on 6 May 1902 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
(DDG-10: dp. 4,500 (f.) ; l. 432'; b. 47'; dr. 16'; s. 30 k.; cpl. 354; a. 2 5", Tart., ASROC, 2 21" tt; cl. Charles F. Adams)
The third Sampson (DDG-10) was laid down on 2 March 1959 by the Bath Iron Works Corp., Bath, Maine; launched on 14 May 1960; sponsored by Mrs. John S. Crenshaw; and commissioned at the Boston Navy Yard on 24 June 1961, Comdr. Forrester W. Isen in command.
Following shakedown off Guantanamo Bay in September, Sampson tested and evaluated the Tartar Missile System off Puerto Rico. Homeported at Norfolk, she conducted further tests and trials in early 1962 before joining Destroyer Squadron (DesRon) 18 and Destroyer Division (DesDiv) 182 in July. Composed completely of missile ships, DesRon 18 was then the most modern squadron in the Navy. Further radar and missile tests followed in 1963; and, in July, Sampson operated in the Midshipman Training Squadron. Finally, in January 1964, Sampson fired two Tartar missiles under simulated combat conditions. During 1964, she also underwent her first regular overhaul, and received missile replenishment at sea from helicopters.
In January 1965, Sampson sailed for her first Mediterranean deployment, but an electrical fire on the night of 14 January caused extensive damage to her fire control capability and forced her to abbreviate her deployment and enter the Norfolk Naval Shipyard for repairs on 15 March.
The destroyer returned to fleet duties on 24 June. While conducting gunnery exercises, on 17 July, Sampson spotted the 50-foot sailing sloop, Cecelia Anna, flying distress signals and rescued her 6 crewmen and mascot puppy moments before the sloop sank. In 1966, Sampson conducted gunnery exercises and escort duties near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; then, in March, she deployed to the Mediterranean for extensive operations with the 6th Fleet. She returned to Norfolk in August. On 28 November, following three weeks of exercises in the Caribbean and additional tests, Sampson got underway to participate in exercise “Lantflex 66” in which she provided ASW and AAW services for the ASW carrier, Wasp (CVS-18), and conducted exercises in the Puerto Rico operating area before returning to Norfolk in December.
Sampson deployed to the Mediterranean in mid-1967. While there, a Sampson radarman rescued a German seaman from the harbor at El Ferrol de Caudillo, Spain. Leaving the 6th Fleet at the end of August 1967, Sampson steamed back to the United States, and soon shifted to her new home port of Charleston.
Sampson operated out of Charleston in the Atlantic and Caribbean during 1968 until again deploying to the Mediterranean in October. She returned to Charleston in January 1969 and resumed operations in the Atlantic and the Caribbean until redeploying to the Mediterranean in October of that year. After six months with the 6th Fleet, she returned to Charleston on 28 March 1970.
Sampson operated out of Charleston in the western Atlantic until 23 September, when, after only two days notice, she got underway for special operations in the Mediterranean. She spent the month of October cruising first with John F. Kennedy (CVA-67), then with Saratoga (CV-60), during the latest Levantine crisis. On 1 November, she stood out of Barcelona, Spain, to return to the United States. Sampson entered the mouth of the Cooper River on the 12th, moored at Charleston, and began a leave and upkeep period.
She ended 1970 and began 1971 in Charleston. During the first three months of the new year, she operated in the vicinity of the British West Indies; then prepared for overseas movement. On 9 April, following exercises and type training, Sampson steamed out of Charleston, passed Fort Sumter, and headed for the Mediterranean. She cruised with the 6th Fleet for six months, participating in exercises with both American and NATO forces. By 16 October, the guided missile destroyer was back in port at Charleston. She spent the rest of 1971 preparing for regular overhaul.
For four months, from 4 January until 4 May 1972, Sampson underwent the first Compressed Regular Overhaul ever attempted on a DDG. From mid-May until 9 July, she was underway for post-overhaul trials, exercises, and refresher training. She was in Charleston during the period 9 July to 18 August, at which time Sampson stood out for her new home port, Athens, Greece. She stopped at Rota, Spain, ten days later and entered Phaleron Bay on 3 October. The guided missile destroyer remained in the Mediterranean, based at Athens, throughout 1973 and into 1974. In April 1974, she was in port at Athens.
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| 0.96925
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Create an indoor picnicChildren will love preparing for an indoor picnic - choosing the perfect spot to spread the blanket as well as the yummy picnic foods is just as much fun as the picnic itself.
What You Need:
- Food such as sandwiches, chips, biscuits, drinks
Activity:Prepare some light food that is easy to eat such as sandwiches, biscuits, cookies and a drink.
Spread out a blanket on the floor.
Sit down on it and enjoy your lunch.
- Indoor picnics are the perfect setting for some natural imaginative play - kids can get out the fancy dress box and dress up for their picnic, perhaps as princesses, fairies, pirates or animals.
- If you're dressing up, maybe think about creating picnic food to match the theme.
- Half the fun of having an indoor picnic is making the food. Kids will love to plan the menu, make and pack the food. Perhaps try and find a small basket where you can store the food, cutlery, plates and cups ready for the perfect picnic.
- This activity has been brought to you by The Natural Confectionery Co.
Related natural imaginative play activities:
- A rainy day activity box
- Shaving cream play
- Car wash
- Backyard camping
- Backyard hose water play
- Have an outdoor bath
|
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| 0.950824
| 278
| 2.234375
| 2
|
Freedom of Information issues and concerns
These are misplaced fears based first of all on a secrecy mindset that deny the fundamental right of the citizenry to knowledge of government transactions, decision-making, and policy. They also ignore the crucial role an informed citizenry can and has played in exposing corruption and bringing its sovereign power to bear on eliminating or at least minimizing it.
By LUIS TEODORO*
(Published by the Policy Study, Publication and Advocacy of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, July 28, 2012)
Mr. Aquino and his allies in Congress led the campaign to remove former Chief Justice Renato Corona on, among others, charges of betrayal of public trust, with Aquino being openly and loudly critical of Corona’s bias for the past administration, against the former officials of which corruption and other charges would likely have been dismissed once they reach the Corona Court.
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|
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| 0.961735
| 185
| 1.78125
| 2
|
26 Jan 2012, 14:47
Reviewed FIT factors in energy efficiency
From 1 April homes must need an energy performance certificate (EPC) at grade D or above to qualify for higher feed-in tariff rates.
On 9 February the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released its comprehensive review of feed-in tariffs (FITs). Phase 1 of the review confirmed the new energy-efficiency requirements to be introduced from 1 April. Phase 2 focused on making the scheme sustainable for the long term, proposing to link future tariff reductions to the rate at which the industry grows.
Making the grade
The good news is that, for many homes, an energy performance certificate at grade D is a lot more achievable than grade C, which was originally put forward.
DECC states: "We have listened carefully to concerns raised in response to the consultation and have decided that the energy efficiency requirement should be based on an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of level D or above, not level C or any other option as previously mooted."
The rating will apply to both homes and non-domestic buildings installing and registering a PV system from 1 April 2012. Homes that fail to qualify will receive the much lower tariff of 9p per kWh - unless they can get their install completed before the 1 April deadline.
A gradual reduction for FITs
In the last quarter of 2011, the number of new solar PV installs soared as thousands rushed to cash in on the 43.3p tariff before it was whipped away on 12 December. It seems DECC has learned from this episode and is looking to put a more sustainable - and less damaging - funding system in place. According to climate change minister Greg Barker: ‘Instead of a scheme for the few, the new improved scheme will deliver for the many'.
In the second phase of the 9 February review, DECC suggests flexing the FIT budget depending on the level of uptake, so the more systems are installed over one set period, the deeper the tariff cut for the next.
After 1 July the review suggests the tariff may fall to between 13.6p-16.5p per kWh, with further cuts expected in the succeeding months.
Tom Craig heads up the marketing team at one of the UK's most successful installers of solar panels, Nottingham-based EvoEnergy, and says the new measures should give people an incentive to install sooner rather than later.
"We need to remember the rates are subject to consultation at this stage. But for now, the message is clear - those thinking about installing PV should make their move sooner rather than later. For those who install before April, you'll also be spared the extra costs that may come with reaching EPC grade D."
This sponsored content is provided by EvoEnergy
ABOUT INDUSTRY VOICE
BusinessGreen's Industry Voice blog offers experts from across the low carbon economy the opportunity to present their views, opinions and analysis on the latest green business developments
Browse posts by date
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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|
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|
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| 0.952974
| 617
| 1.890625
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|
Significance and Use
5.1 As a comparative test, this practice can be used to determine the damage caused by creasing paper, that is, damage to paper, coatings or images affixed to the paper and the loss of image quality and legibility that can result from creasing.
1.1 This practice describes a procedure for hard creasing paper in a uniform and reproducible manner.
1.2 The crease is positioned across the image and the amount of image degradion is determined.
1.3 The effect of creasing on the paper surface can also be determined.
1.4 The values stated in inch-pound units are to be regarded as standard. The values given in parentheses are mathematical conversions to SI units that are provided for information only and are not considered standard.
1.5 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory limitations prior to use.
2. Referenced Documents (purchase separately) The documents listed below are referenced within the subject standard but are not provided as part of the standard.
D528 Test Method for Machine Direction of Paper and Paperboard
D685 Practice for Conditioning Paper and Paper Products for Testing
D5039 Test Methods for Identification of Wire Side of Paper
image permanence-creasing; paper damage-creasing ;
ICS Number Code 37.100.10 (Reproduction equipment)
ASTM International is a member of CrossRef.
Citing ASTM Standards
[Back to Top]
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CC-MAIN-2013-20
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http://www.astm.org/Standards/F1351.htm
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| 0.904229
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| 2.65625
| 3
|
Norwood, New JerseyNorwood
is a borough located in Bergen County, New Jersey
. As of the 2000
census, the borough had a total population of 5,751.
Geography\nNorwood is located at 40°59'40" North, 73°57'21" West (40.994442, -73.955866)1
According to the United States Census Bureau
, the borough has a total area of 7.1 km²
). 7.1 km² (2.8 mi²) of it is land and 0.36% is water.
Demographics\nAs of the census
, there are 5,751 people, 1,857 households, and 1,563 families residing in the borough. The population density
is 807.4/km² (2,091.4/mi²). There are 1,888 housing units at an average density of 265.1/km² (686.6/mi²). The racial makeup of the borough is 77.86% White, 0.83% African American
, 0.02% Native American
, 18.99% Asian
, 0.00% Pacific Islander, 0.94% from other races, and 1.36% from two or more races. 2.99% of the population are Hispanic
of any race.
There are 1,857 households out of which 41.5% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 73.8% are married couples living together, 7.8% have a female householder with no husband present, and 15.8% are non-families. 13.7% of all households are made up of individuals and 6.0% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.97 and the average family size is 3.26.
In the borough the population is spread out with 25.8% under the age of 18, 5.4% from 18 to 24, 26.9% from 25 to 44, 26.4% from 45 to 64, and 15.6% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 41 years. For every 100 females there are 88.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 84.4 males.
The median income for a household in the borough is $92,447, and the median income for a family is $100,329. Males have a median income of $70,000 versus $37,059 for females. The per capita income for the borough is $40,039. 4.9% of the population and 2.3% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 6.4% are under the age of 18 and 2.9% are 65 or older.
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|
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| 0.951739
| 602
| 1.695313
| 2
|
View more videos at: http://nbcmiami.com.
The Hanukkah menorah is a sign of peace and joy, symbolic of a miracle in the Jewish religion.
But a menorah in Miami Beach, Fla., has also become an attraction for hate speech, with someone scribbling "you killed Jesus" on the base of the prominent Chabad Hanukkah display.
Rabbi Zev Katz, who put up the menorah, is disappointed.
"I hoped that people from other religions, we could all get along, we all have what we believe in, respect each other and live with each other," said Katz, of Chabad House in Miami Beach.
At Temple Beth Torah, in the Wellington community near West Palm Beach, there was more anti-Semitism this past weekend. In that incident, somebody painted a swastika along with some offensive words on a dumpster.
The Anti-Defamation League condemned both incidents and reported them to the authorities. Desecration cases like these sometimes go unsolved, but authorities use such reports to track any possible hate crime trends.
Unfortunately for Rabbi Katz, this isn't the first anti-Semitic attack against his giant menorah.
"Twelve years ago someone smashed it, terrible, and we weren't sure if we're going to actually light the menorah the first night of Hanukkah," he said.
But they did then, and they will again this Saturday night as Jews ring in the first night of Hanukkah. Organizers said they are expecting 1,000 people to attend.
More content from NBCNews.com:
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- Passengers killed when tour bus hits Miami airport overpass
- Women warriors pass elite Army training course
- Teacher lured boys online to get nude pics, cops say
- 66 species of coral proposed for protection by US
|
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|
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| 0.950369
| 424
| 1.570313
| 2
|
Review: This is largely the story of one fourth grade classroom where children's sense of wonder is both developled and supported. The window of this classroom is where a great deal of observation of birds takes place and this becomes the topic of the student's long term inquiry. The Whitins use examples from the classroom to elaborate on inquiry learning in very helpful and clear ways. The book includes children's work, classroom dialogues and explanation of links to many members of the local community.
Other Information: Inquiry at the Window is available from Heinemann, PO Box 5007, Portsmouth, NH 03802-6926. Call 800-225-5800. Online at http://www.heinemann.com
I notice two styles of guiding whe a group os birding. I think of them as: "point and shoot" and "manual focus." Inevitably, someone on a bird walk will ask " What is that?" The response, "marsh sparrow" is of the point and shoot variety. the more measured manual focus response might sound like, "notice the black wings and back, the white belly, and especially the white band across the end of the tail. Oops and see how it just flew out from that branch to grab a flying insect? it's a fly catcher. The name is eastern kingbird."
My teaching tends toward the manual focus approach. I believe this is the best way to open the natural world to children in urban and suburban schools.
For years, competing arguments for computer use in education have been swirling around schools, with no clear winner. Some argue that computers should be used as writing tools, some as data manipulation tools, and some as research tools. The recent explosion of Internet use in schools has only added to the uncertainty. Just what should we be using the computers for?
As classroom teachers we have heard the call from the National Science Education Standards, the Benchmarks for Science Literacy, and numerous state and local curricula to teach science through inquiry. Yet with our hands already full, how can we get started? If you are ready to teach science in some new, inquiry-based ways, here are relatively easy-to-implement ideas that helped my colleagues, my students, and me.
This profile of effective student practice is the result of teachers and administrators applying the knowledge and methods of the Vermont Elementary Science Project, and then reflecting upon their classroom experiences with each other. This collaborative view of "ideal" student outcomes is particularly relevant to the development of new programs and to the assessment of inquiry-based, elementary science.
Ive been thinking about this question of how teachers can meet the challenge of raising standardized test scores while continuing to engage students with authentic, inquiry-based, hands-on learning. This question reminds me of how I first taught science ten years ago. We werent preoccupied with standards back then. When I was hired, I asked what I should teach and was told, Reading, writing, math . . . you know, first grade.
The educational pendulum, which has become powered by standardized tests, seems to be swinging away from the theory of teaching students the skills they will need in the real world to teaching students the information they will need to pass state and national tests. Educators know that teaching isolated skills is futile unless they are attached to something that has real meaning for the student. Yet standardized tests measure only a command of isolated skills.
|
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| 0.956433
| 700
| 3.34375
| 3
|
JAMES A. GARFIELD
1881 - 1881
1881 - City of Phoenix, Arizona incorporates.
1881 - Gunfight at O. K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
1881 - The Women’s Christian Temperance Union ( WCTU) organizes in Arizona and begins a long campaign against alcohol and saloons.
James A. Garfield was born in
1831 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio,
the last president to be born in a
log cabin. He served as a Major
General in the Civil War,
resigning in 1863, when he was
elected to the House of
Lucretia Randolph Garfield was
born in 1832 in Ohio. She met
James Garfield in 1851 and they
were married in 1858. They had
seven children; two died in
infancy. After Garfield's military
service, the family stayed together
with homes in the capitol and in
While serving in the House of Representatives, President James Garfield's oratorical and parliamentary abilities made him the leading Republican. In
1880, he was elected to the Senate, but instead became a presidential candidate and defeated Democrat General Hancock. Almost four months into his
presidency on July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker. Garfield died on September 19, 1881.
Lucretia Garfield was not particularly interested in a First Lady's social duties, but her genuine hospitality made her dinners and receptions enjoyable. In
May of 1881, she became gravely ill. She was a convalescent at a seaside resort in New Jersey, when Garfield was shot. Her devotion to her husband for
the remaining weeks of his life won her the respect and sympathy of the country. Lucretia died in 1918.
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Press Release 10-127
Birth of a Hurricane
Researchers will fly into tropical weather disturbances and observe their transition into tropical storms
July 27, 2010
View a video of Chris Davis, lead scientist for PREDICT.
Summer storms are a regular feature in the North Atlantic, and while most pose little threat to our shores, a choice few become devastating hurricanes.
To decipher which storms could bring danger, and which will not, atmospheric scientists are heading to the tropics to observe these systems as they form and dissipate--or develop into hurricanes.
By learning to identify which weather systems are the most critical to track, the efforts may ultimately allow for earlier hurricane prediction, and add several days to prepare for a hurricane's arrival.
With primary support from NSF, the Pre-Depression Investigation of Cloud Systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) mission will run from August 15 to September 30, 2010, the height of hurricane season.
Flying aboard the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V (G-V) research aircraft, formerly known as HIAPER, researchers will make observations from close proximity, and above, storm systems. In addition to deploying dropsondes--parachute-borne instrument packages--the researchers will use remote sensing and cloud physics instruments to gather data on temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and characteristics of ice particles and their nuclei, which may include African dust.
"We hope to test recently developed hypotheses about flow features of tropical waves that help distinguish which ones will develop into tropical storms," said Christopher Davis, of the NSF-sponsored National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a principal investigator on the project. "These hypotheses require measurements across hundreds of miles, but with details in places down to one mile or so, and even less when we consider the ice particles themselves."
The NSF/NCAR research team will coordinate their observations with two concurrent, but independent, missions in the region: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project known as GRIP (Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) IFEX (Intensity Forecasting Experiment).
"The NSF/NCAR G-V offers us unprecedented capability to collect critical atmospheric measurements over regions far larger than has been practical for traditional ‘lower-and-slower' turboprop hurricane-hunter aircraft," added Bradley Smull, NSF program director for Physical and Dynamic Meteorology. "The G-V will allow our investigators to sample the inner workings of a large number of towering tropical cloud systems, and ultimately to better discriminate those that will develop into full-blown hurricanes from those that will not."
In addition to researchers from NCAR, the project will include collaborators from the Naval Postgraduate School, University at Albany-SUNY, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Miami, NorthWest Research Associates of Redmond, Wash., New Mexico Tech, Purdue University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Read more, including specific details about the flight, in the NCAR press release "Hurricane study to tackle long-standing mystery".
Joshua A. Chamot, NSF (703) 292-7730 firstname.lastname@example.org
David Hosansky, NCAR/UCAR (303) 497-8611 email@example.com
Rachael Drummond, NCAR/UCAR (303) 497-8604 firstname.lastname@example.org
Bradley F. Smull, NSF (703) 292-8524 email@example.com
Stephan P. Nelson, NSF (703) 292-8524 firstname.lastname@example.org
Christopher Davis, NCAR (303) 497-8990 email@example.com
Lance Bosart, University of Albany-SUNY (518) 442-4564 firstname.lastname@example.org
Michael Montgomery, Naval Postgraduate School Professor (831) 656-2296 email@example.com
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget was $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.
Get News Updates by Email
Useful NSF Web Sites:
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LOGAN—With a dense smog covering Cache Valley, many residents are concerned about the health effects of air pollution—the worst air pollution in the United States in recent weeks, according to federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Specifically, much of northern Utah is buried under smoggy inversions that hold particulate matter (PM 2.5) in freezing fog trapped at the bottom of bowls made of surrounding mountains. Cache Valley, along with parts of Davis, Utah and Salt Lake counties, have exceeded the EPA maximum 35 micrograms of tiny particles in the air—from vehicle emissions, livestock, home heating, fireplaces and industry—more than a dozen times so far this winter, the EPA reports.
• Utah air pollution makes NBC nightly news
Cache County and Utah County have vied for the unenviable title of the very worst particulate levels in the nation over the past weeks, and at least another week of ugly air is expected. Dr. Robert Gillies, director of the Utah Climate Center at Utah State University, says anything greater than 50 micrograms of pollution is considered unhealthy. Utah Climate Center data shows that Cache Valley pollution levels reached 120 micrograms last week, while Utah County reached levels of 147 micrograms— more than four times the maximum level set by the EPA—just a few days ago.
Many wonder when Cache County officials will to do something about it. For months, the Cache County Council has discussed options to put a dent in air pollution while resisting implementation of emissions testing, which many local residents consider invasive government meddling.
But after the EPA rejected a Cache County proposal for a vehicle sticker regime in an effort to reduce emissions, the County Council is now aimed at implementing a countywide vehicle emissions testing program like that in place on the Wasatch Front. Cache County has resisted the state and EPA’s approved emissions program, but a threatened $50,000/day fine changed officials’ minds.
The Council discussed emissions testing again last week, and may adopt the emissions testing plan as soon as Feb. 12, says County Executive Lynn Lemon. “If not, then at the Feb. 26 meeting,” he said, but “it’s not going to fix the problem—that’s the hard part.”
Emissions testing on cars and trucks could reduce pollutants by as much as 6 percent, he said, but that’s not enough to clear the air. “It’ll do something, it’ll improve some.”
Gillies says physicians and environmental regulators dispute the health effects of breathing the bad air.
“A lot of physicians attest to the fact that the foul air is forcing the young, the old and the sick to essentially smoke cigarettes,” Gillies said. “Physicians say it’s akin to smoking, but that assertion by physicians is disputed by the regulators.”
Gillies said medical studies have shown that air pollution can play a role in strokes, heart attacks, congestive heart failure and even infant mortality.
But Dr. James Davis of the USU Student Wellness Center said that while there are similarities between breathing the polluted air and smoking cigarettes, the key is in the concentration.
“The solution to pollution is dilution,” Davis said. “It’s a concentration issue with cigarettes. Both can cause you to cough, or be a little short of breath, but you’re talking about a dense concentration inhaled directly from the cigarette, as opposed to something that’s been dispersed quite a bit.”
Lemon says that in order to clean up the air, residents should stay home and not drive on red air days—that would be 100 percent more effective than the emissions testing for vehicles, he said.
Meanwhile, while the air pollution has been worse, the number of respiratory-related cases among students has increased also.
In 2011, the Student Wellness Center had 280 respiratory-related cases, compared to 313 in 2012. Davis says there has been a slight increase in January this year.
Given this year’s severe inversions and high pollution levels, growing numbers of health problems reported, and the lack of other options, Lemon and the County Council have little choice but to adopt vehicle emissions testing. Despite being named worst air in the country, however, Lemon says that overall Cache Valley air is not as bad as elsewhere in the state and country.
“We have episodic cases where that [high PM 2.5 levels] happens,” Lemon said, “but we don’t have the worst air in the nation when you look at the total package. If you look at the air over a long period of time, we have the episodic cases where we have an inversion and we have bad air, but overall, our air is much better than the Wasatch Front.”
Once the vehicle emissions testing ordinance is approved, Lemon said public hearings will be held. He says the ordinance will probably go into effect by December 2013.
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Google’s dominance of internet search has been uncontested for more than 12 years now. Before Google, search engines such as AltaVista indexed web pages and allowed for keyword search with an interface and functionality superficially similar to that provided by Google. However, these first-generation search engines provided relatively poor ordering of results. Because an internet search would return pages ranked by the number of times a term appeared on the website, unpopular or irrelevant sites would be just as likely to achieve top rank as popular sites.
Google’s PageRank algorithm used the number of links to a page to determine relevance. The more links a site had, the more relevant it was in results, and the more its links would determine the relevance of other sites. PageRank resulted in radically more useful search results, and Google search rapidly dominated AltaVista and other search engines.
Variations on the PageRank algorithm are still a significant part of Google’s approach. But over the years, PageRank has been supplemented by collective intelligence algorithms which take into account the links actually selected by web searchers, and the relative popularity of search results. Because of its massive search traffic, this “wisdom of the crowds” approach allows Google to outperform other search engines.
Competitors to Google—notably Bing and Yahoo!—have largely attempted to beat Google at its own game: refining the essential Google search approach rather than attempting to innovate radically new algorithms. And, since Google has access to a greater volume of search traffic for analysis, Google often can overcome these competitors using brute force data crunching.
Facebook's "Graph Search"
Facebook’s recent announcement of “Graph Search” may represent the first significant innovation in web search for which Google lacks a competitive response. Facebook’s graph search rates the relevance of searches using—among other factors—“like” ratings from your friends and the Facebook community at large. For some categories of web searches—most notably those seeking commercial goods and services—the results of such a sort could be superior to those from Google. After all, the number of “likes” accumulated by a restaurant probably speaks better to the quality of the food than the number of links from other pages.
Google has been trying to achieve similar results from the members of its Google+ social network. However, the participation in Google+ is only a fraction of the participation in Facebook, and is heavily weighted toward a highly technical community (aka “geeks”). If the Facebook system generates superior results and gains in popularity, Google may not have much defense.
Of course, the massive brand recognition of Google means that it will be hard for Facebook to replace Google as the default search engine. After all, “Google” is as much the verb that means “to search the internet,” as it is the name of a company. But, if we’ve learned anything from the history of technology, it is that disruptive change can take down even the mightiest incumbent.
Whatever happens with Google, it seems likely that as Facebook rolls out its new search (which was in limited beta at the time of this writing) companies will become strongly motivated to obtain “likes” for their Facebook properties. Not only that, but as “liking” a company or a brand becomes a more effective way of rewarding good service and quality, we may all feel more strongly motivated to hit that like button.
I’m drawn to the idea of allowing search results to draw on the feedback of my friends and the wider community. It certainly beats the current situation, where providing very poor service can actually improve your PageRank by increasing the number of negative reviews that point to your property. If Facebook Graph Search catches on, Google may have its first serious competition in a decade.
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||This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2013)|
Stockholders are granted special privileges depending on the class of stock. These rights may include:
Stockholders or shareholders are considered by some to be a subset of stakeholders, which may include anyone who has a direct or indirect interest in the business entity. For example, labor, suppliers, customers, the community, etc., are typically considered stakeholders because they contribute value and/or are impacted by the corporation.
Shareholders in the primary market who buy IPOs provide capital to corporations; however, the vast majority of shareholders are in the secondary market and provide no capital directly to the corporation.
|This finance-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|
Here you can share your comments or contribute with more information, content, resources or links about this topic.
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[This post was modified on September 19, 2012]
What’s the difference between NJDOT’s Final Transportation Capital Program for Fiscal Year 2012, made publicly available this month, and the agency’s draft program released in March 2011? A lot. And although the agency’s yearly capital programs are commonly considered “fluid documents,” the fluidity between this year’s draft and the Final Capital Program is a cause for a concern.
While overall funding is still largely the same between the two documents – both documents outline a $3.5 billion spending plan, with NJDOT receiving $2.3 billion (in the draft plan) and $2.37 billion (in the final plan) and NJ Transit receiving $1.164 billion in the draft and final plan – there are significant differences between the two documents, most alarmingly in spending on road new capacity projects. The Final Capital Program includes an additional road new capacity project, and two road new capacity projects funded in the draft program received considerably more money in the final program.
According to TSTC’s analysis, the Final Capital Program spends an additional $18.69 million on projects that increase road capacity. This growth in spending is not insignificant – with the increased spending on these projects, spending on road new capacity projects grew to over 11% of the final program, up from 10.95% in the draft program. That draft program would have committed the department to spending the highest percentage of funds on new road capacity in nearly a decade. This further increase from the draft program is extremely troubling.
The final program also decreases funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects by $2 million. This means that total bike/ped funding in the final program is 2.58% of total NJDOT funding, down from 2.74% in the draft program, although new projects have been added. New to the list are: Essex County’s Rahway River Corridor Greenway Bicycle and Pedestrian Path ($400,000), Hudson County’s 6th Street Viaduct Pedestrian and Bicycle Pathway ($1.4 million) and a bike and pedestrian path along the Delaware River between Stacy Park and Assunpink Creek (Mercer County, $944,190). But it does not fund the New Brunswick bikeway (Middlesex County, $7.1 million) or a project to make pedestrian improvements at Route 322 and Woodland Drive in Atlantic County ($600,000).
One new road capacity project in the 2012 Final Capital Program that is not in the Draft Program widens Gloucester County’s Egg Harbor Road. The two other capacity-adding projects that receive more money in the Final Capital Program than they did in the draft program address parts of Route 17 in Bergen County, funded at $14.7 million, up from $2 million; and Route 295/42/I-76 in Camden County, funded at $101.7 million, an increase from $96.7 million.
While there was opportunity for public comment on the draft program, no such opportunity exists for the final document. But the changes between the Draft and Final Capital Programs are notable and not immaterial, exacerbating the existing trend towards new road expansions. Even as the amount New Jersey spends on roadway expansion is growing to levels not seen in years, spending on transit is shrinking.
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|The Humility of Good Design|
I take most things in life for granted. Turn the key, the car starts. Hit the "popcorn" button… done. Want a song? Download it. Need any – any – information? Fingertips. Things have gotten "easy," in a sense, because of how they are designed.
We only notice the things that are broken.
There are a million things that go into good design that no one will ever see.
If something is designed well:
- it cannot advertise all the problems it solved.
- it cannot advertise the process needed to get to where it is.
- it cannot advertise all the design of other things needed to create the design of this thing.
- it cannot advertise waste, failure, and experimentation.
Good design can only be itself, a reflection of its creator, and a service to its user. Good design cannot say how good it is (this would kill its intended purpose). It must remain content at simply being good.
Good design fundamentally requires humility.
This is a pill many people are still not willing to swallow. Look at the billboards around you. Look at some popular websites. Look at the cable box remote. These are often not humble designs. Therefore, their effectiveness wanes. The business goal is missed. And there's more clutter and less beauty in the world.
"Good design is as little design as possible," says German designer Dieter Rams. Good design gets out of the way and just feels inevitable and leaves us wondering, "How can this be anything other than how it is?"
P.S. The ideas in this post are inspired by the documentary Objectified, "a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them" (IMDB). Below is a clip of Apple's Senior Vice President, Jonny Ive. It is formative and normative for the work we aspire to do at Blue Ocean Ideas. Check it out!
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Gray Brick, New Tricks
November 17, 2007 — It's a blustery Saturday, and I'm in an East Village café with two musicians and a Game Boy. Jeremiah "Nullsleep" Johnson and Josh "Bit Shifter" Davis are taking a break from making final arrangements for Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of chip-based art, music, and performance, to discuss the utilitarian design of 1989's must-have portable gaming device.
Johnson and Davis, both based in New York, are part of an ever-growing international scene comprising artists who teach old gaming consoles new tricks. Versed in the two most popular programs for Game Boy music composition, Little Sound DJ and Nanoloop, they show me how both allow users to set various parameters and create original music within the full range of the Game Boy's four channels of sound.
While LSDJ and Nanoloop ingeniously maneuver the console's framework to maximize a composer's creative capabilities, the particular design of the console itself is equally crucial to the rise of this branch of the chiptune movement. It is the choices the Game Boy's designers made (without considering its possibilities as an audio composing device), coupled with the homegrown efforts of LSDJ and Nanoloop's programmers, that have made it easy to record, circulate, and amplify to 11 one's own chip-based music. And thus a thriving scene was born, each new artist striving to create more audaciously original combinations of sounds on an old, familiar toy with a limited palette.
The 3.5" x 5.8" x 1.3" gray brick that Davis pulls out of its checkered case looks spectacularly clunky at first glance. With just a directional pad and four buttons, and a thick plastic shell with rounded corners, it's an unassuming device without flourishes or pretensions. Johnson and Davis walk me through the various design features that make their weapon of choice everything from a portable music workstation to a pocket 8-bit boombox to the perfect companion onstage.
Lynette Chiu: Explain which aspects of the Game Boy allow it to be used for musical purposes.
Jeremiah Johnson: The Game Boy has a headphone jack, something which none of its predecessors had, from what I can remember.
Josh Davis: For live performances or recording, the sound comes out of the headphone jack. I also think the use of stereo sound was pretty unusual [when the Game Boy was designed]. You play the Game Boy without headphones and you don't know that the sound is stereo, but with headphones you realize that all the music and sound effects are.
JJ: It has stereo capabilities but a mono speaker, so when things are only playing in one channel they come out of the mono speaker at half the volume. I think this was their way of simulating stereo sound with only a single speaker.
So when you plug the Game Boy into a PA you get the full stereo effect.
JJ: Yes. Putting the jack on there was a pretty forward thinking move on the designers' part.
JD: They were probably giving thought to what would be useful on a portable game device, like if you're a kid on a car trip, and want to just be in your own little world and not drive your parents crazy with the music from the game.
JJ: There's also a link port on the side of the Game Boy that was originally intended for two-player games. You can connect two Game Boys up to one another and play games head to head. Sometimes I perform with a PC keyboard that's connected to the Game Boy through this link port. You can actually take a keyboard and splice its cable into a Game Boy link cable to improvise and control LSDJ in real time. And LSDJ and Nanoloop are cartridges you plug into the Game Boy, so you can compose music anywhere.
JJ: Yeah. The Game Boy was a coup for the whole portable electronic game industry because it was by nature superior to previous devices in that you could switch out games on cartridges. That's given it a pretty long life.
JD: I've been really spoiled now by making music on a Game Boy. LSDJ and Nanoloop are really incredible models of interface economy. To look at the Game Boy you'd think the limited controls would only slow you down; there's just a directional pad and four buttons. But these programs' interfaces are so well thought out that it's much faster now for me to sketch out songs on the Game Boy than on computer-based music software or any other sequencer I've used. Plus it's portable and totally self-contained — it'd be hard for me now to go back to other tools.
What else about the original Game Boy's design is noteworthy?
JD: There really isn't much; it's very basic. There's a contrast dial for the screen, since the screen is by today's standards kinda crappy. It's not backlit, so this is a fairly clever workaround to compensate for different lighting conditions. There's a volume knob and power switch. I think that [the designers] did a good job of taking a utilitarian, no-frills approach to the usefulness of the console, but with some interesting provisions.
JJ: The original Game Boy seems to have the ideal size and weight. It feels a bit more substantial and it's satisfying to perform live with it. It's just the right size for a pair of adult hands rather than the Game Boy Color, which is a bit smaller.
What would you change about the Game Boy's design as it relates to making music?
JJ: If there's one complaint about the original Game Boy, it's the lack of lighting [for the screen]. During live performances you're not always in ideal light situations, and [without a lighting solution] you find yourself bending towards whatever light you can get, which looks really awkward and uncool when you're trying to perform.
JD: Jeremiah has a cool backlight modification feature, while I rely on third-party attachments that clip on and illuminate the screen. The drawback to those is you have another device to worry about. They can be kinda top-heavy, and the one I use takes four batteries, so you can imagine the thing becomes a bit unwieldy, like it's trying to do a nosedive. The most elegant solution I've seen is what Jeremiah has. You open up the Game Boy and remove the front shell from the screen, install a light, reassemble, and add a switch to turn the light on and off.
Does the Game Boy ever slip out of your hands? Do you wear gloves onstage to prevent this from happening?
JD: There's a texture to the plastic. I don't think I've ever severely dropped a Game Boy.
JJ: I think these grooves [on the surface of the plastic] are intended to offer some sort of grip.
JD: [deadpans] Any gloves worn onstage are purely for style and serve no practical purpose.
November 30, 2007 — In the cavernous space of EYEBEAM, over 1000 people are noisily enjoying the second day of Blip Festival, the largest gathering of chiptune musicians in the world. The featured artists have re-appropriated Nintendo systems, the Commodore 64, and Atari for new artistic purposes. Huge video screens loom behind each performer, as live projections complement the musicians' aural onslaught.
Hally, a Japanese chiptune star who rarely performs in the US, invigorates the crowd while wearing a shirt that declares, "I [heart] RETRO GAME." People crowd surf, dance on stage, pump their fists, and hold up laptops, tree branches, and other carefully considered props. Davis and Johnson seem at once ecstatic, anxious, and awed by the spectacle.
The word "nostalgia" feels on the tip of my tongue, but I know from my conversation with Davis and Johnson that the appeal of this scene is not so easily explained. For one, a lot of the attendees look too young to have experienced firsthand the advent of gaming, but they're as gleeful as the older folk. As my friend and avid chiptune fan Ian quipped, "Nostalgia? I'm not nostalgic for throwing the controller across the room." Perhaps some people are here because there is something in the aesthetic that reminds them of their pasts. Others may have stumbled upon the scene because of the aesthetic's promotion to retro kitsch status. Goth types, candy ravers, and indie rockers are all enjoying these starkly simple sounds and images for reasons I imagine could read like the index to the DSM-IV.
Personally, I find something very comforting and emotive about what I'm hearing and seeing tonight. I don't know if I'm romanticizing the past, or just caught up in how energetic the crowd is, but what is clear is that I'm experiencing a community that is vibrant and refreshingly supportive (not to mention unabashedly nerdy). Immersed in a world where white squares represent stars in the galaxy, squares built on squares become ghosts, clouds, and mushrooms, and seasoned musicians and curious kids alike are pushing sonic boundaries, I think I'd like to stay awhile.
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Angelina Jolie urges more focus on reintegration for former Afghan refugees
News Stories, 2 March 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 2 (UNHCR) – UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie on Wednesday called for greater focus to be put on the reintegration of former Afghan refugees as she wrapped up her second visit to the western Asian nation.
During her two-day trip, the acclaimed actress met internally displaced people and refugee returnees still struggling to survive and reintegrate almost 10 years after returning to Afghanistan from years of exile.
More than 5.5 million refugees have returned since 2002, mainly from Pakistan and Iran, and now make up 20 per cent of the population. UNHCR is concerned that too many of these former refugees continue to live without jobs, shelter and other basic needs.
"It's clear travelling through the country that what needs to be done is a very focused approach in places of return. We need to revisit the idea of what return is and the difference between just returning and reintegrating," said Jolie, who last visited Afghanistan for UNHCR in 2008.
"The focus needs to be put now on reintegration, and that means not just putting up shelter but making sure there is water, job opportunities, a school for the children and medical clinics," she added.
On Wednesday, Jolie returned to visit families living in a dilapidated warehouse in Kabul that once served as a storage facility for the national bus company. The Tamir Mili Bus depot is now one of 30 UNHCR-identified sites in the Afghan capital where returned refugees and internally displaced people can live while they eke out a living.
The Goodwill Ambassador caught up again with Khanum Gul in the small damp room she shares with her husband and eight children. A UNHCR plastic tarpaulin covered a gaping hole in the front wall, providing some shelter from the wind and snow. On Jolie's first visit in 2008, Khanum had just given birth to her son Samir.
"It was very distressing to see that, because of the poor conditions, Samir seems to be suffering some form of developmental delay due to malnutrition or lack of medical care. He can't walk and is barely surviving in what can only be described as a very cold and damp warehouse," Jolie said.
Khanum's husband, Eshan, tries to earn a living as a daily labourer. He waits for hours every day but is rarely picked for work. The couple also support Khanum's ailing 70-year-old mother, Bi Bi Zamo Jan, who also met Jolie on her first visit.
"This old woman was so upset, because she feels like a burden. She watches her grandchildren go onto the streets every day to wash cars for a dollar a day so the family can eat. Often they earn nothing," Jolie said. "Everyone I have met on this visit has been very clear. The Afghan people don't want to become beggars. They want the opportunity to work for a living with dignity so they can provide for their families."
The day after arriving on Monday evening, the Goodwill Ambassador travelled to the village of Qala Gadu, which lies north of Kabul on the Shomali Plain, the scene of fierce fighting during successive waves of conflict in Afghanistan since the late 1970s. Among the 2,500 families in the area, almost everyone is a returned refugee or was internally displaced before 2002.
Jolie met a group of young girls who will study at a new primary school that is being built in the village with funding from the actress. She also paid for a school in the remote returnee settlement of Tangi in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province. The girls in Qala Gadu currently study next to the local mosque. The lack of a proper classroom means most girls can't study beyond 4th Grade.
Ten-year-old Sahira presented Jolie with flowers on behalf of her classmates, saying: "If you build this school, I promise I will work really hard and study until the 12th Grade." Sahira, who wants to be a doctor when she grows up, is the youngest of five daughters and the first of them to attend school.
UNHCR is currently rallying support from donors and humanitarian and development agencies to redouble efforts to help returning refugees integrate in Afghanistan.
By Ariane Rummery in Kabul, Afghanistan
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What is Ogg
Why OGG?
OGG is free (as in beer) and OGG is free (as in speech). This fits in with the OLPC's goals far better than the proprietary and sometimes costly .wma or .mp3. OGG is also highly compressible, meaning you can achieve high quality at the same or smaller filesizes than other codexs. OGG is also very well supported in Gstreamer which most of the media on the XO is ran by.
What Flavour? Theora, Vorbis, FLAC, Speex ...
OGG is a container format, there are various types of media that can be stored inside of a .ogg file using various codexs. Video is encoded in Theora, general audio (music) is encoded in Vorbis, human speech is recorded in Speex and lossless audio is encoded in FLAC.
Theora is a video codec that is commonly stored in .ogg, or .ogv formats. It is the preferred form of video on the XO. See the Theora page to learn how to encode video for the OLPC and suggestions for quality.
Usage Cases
Colingo encodes their video in Theora.
Dailymotion encodes too their video in Theora.
Vorbis is a standard lossy audio codec, similar in usage to mp3. Comparing mp3 to ogg, ogg can attain smaller file sizes at the same level of quality. All music on the XO will likely be in Ogg-Vorbis format. Files can be stored in .ogg and .oga formats.
The Speex is a little used codec (outside of the OLPC) that is optimized for voice recording. It is possible to shrink voice recordings to a significant fraction of their original size by using this codec.
Usage Cases
In particular, the ability to record OGG/Speex files would allow the OLPC to be used for taking voice notes of classroom sessions. These can be used in two ways. One is for the student to review again at home if they have had difficulty in understanding it all the first time. The second is to send these files to students who were unable to participate in the classroom. These may be students who are ill or they may be students who live too far from the class to travel there daily. In such situations there are generally adults who are able to travel back and forth on a daily basis using some means of transportation (animal-drawn cart, bicycle, scooter).
FLAC is a lossless audio codec, comparable to wav. It is known for it's exceptional auditory quality, but comes at the price of high file sizes. Because of relatively low quality of the output speakers, and because of space restraints, it is unlikely that the FLAC format will be used much on the OLPC.
Mime Types
Right now the File types on the XO (pre Update.1) are a little fuzzy. Vorbis-.ogg's work but Speex-.ogg's and FLAC-.ogg's do not. It is unknown if Speex-.spx works ATM. This SHOULD work before G1G1 users get their XO's
The OLPC project needs to leverage these travelers, following the example of the Motoman project, to distribute content more widely and OGG recording capability will help in that effort.
Links to information on loading and playing OGG media (especially audio) from within activities (Python) would be very helpful.
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Jonah Lehrer is editor-at-large for Seed Magazine and a contributing editor at NPR`S Radio Lab.
Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate or we blink and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the minds black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, theyre discovering this is not how the mind works.
Jonah Lehrer, author and editor-at-large for Seed Magazine, suggests that our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason and the precise mix depends on the situation. The trick is to determine when to lean on which part of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.
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In an effort to combat potential cyber threats, the Air Force Research Laboratory is looking to develop a rapidly-shifting computer network infrastructure, according to a solicitation for white papers on the FedBizOpps.gov website.
The Air Force is looking to dish out around $49 million for the development of the network system.
Under the anticipated Cyber Assurance Technologies program, the force was expected to spend an initial $4 million in 2011, $12 million each year between 2012 and 2014 and $9 million in 2015 on the system.
Key network features the Pentagon is looking to deploy include the ability to regenerate after an attack while detecting and defending against future threats, according to the post.
White papers will be accepted until September 28, 2015.
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Equi-Sense Day 2: Brandy
Yesterday was my second day working with horses at Equi-Sense. We started out by reviewing what we’d learned to do yesterday. This time, I started off in the big pen working with a mare named Brandy. I began by trying to have her walk along side me, but she had a tenancy to break into trot and walk into me. Twice, she bore her teeth as if preparing to bite me as I’d put put my hand up to keep her from running me over. I had a lot more trouble controlling her than I had with Thunder the day before, but I did eventually get the hang of it and eventually convinced her to walk straight and slowly at my side.
Afterworlds, our whole group was given a new and interesting task. One of the helpers drew a small rectangle in the dirt in the large pen. Our task was to coax one horse at a time to stand in the rectangle for five seconds, and only the leader amongst us was allowed to talk. It was harder for us to convince any given horse that we were in charge since there were three other horses in the pen. Some horses could be guided in after being separated from Boots, the mare in charge of the herd. Others simply followed a human that had earlier established himself as leader. Boots was the hardest to convince, because first there were always other horses around her, then there were too many people around her so the poor horse didn’t know what we wanted.
That done, we spent the rest of the day working one on one with Brandy in the round pen. We’d put the horse on the lead, then use rope signals to guide her. Walk this way, go faster, slow down, turn around, stop. Then it got harder. A helper put three cones in a triangle inside the pen for us to guide the horse around and through. I had trouble with this at first because I couldn’t get a hang of the pattern. Since I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I couldn’t clearly communicate to the horse what I wanted, and she got a bit cross with me.
She bore her teeth at me again, which is not OK with me. I stopped her and took a second to consider what I was doing. I decided to not worry about the pattern and just take it all one cone at a time as I pleased. After that, the horse and I had no trouble at all.
- Whether working with horses or people, in order to be an effective leader, you have to be clear about what you want. In order for others to know what you want, you first have to know what you want yourself.
It’s only been two days but I think I’m already a lot more confident and comfortable around horses. It’s almost funny, looking back, how frightened I’d been of Lota, a horse that never showed me any aggression at all, to calmly handling Brandy, a more difficult horse who did show mild aggression.
By the end of the day, I think Brandy and I came to an understanding. She too, joined me in the center of the pen for a nuzzle.
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Well Tuesday November 2, 2010 is Election Day, and in California it means it's also time for Prop-A-Palooza!
Isn't that everyone's favorite part of the election....or is that the piece which makes you want to run and hide? This time around there are 9 State Measure/Propositions on California's ballot.
California residents know now confusing and brain munching understanding these props can be.
Admit it, how many times have you voted "Yes," only to realize you mean to vote "No" or vice versa!?!?
Most of us just want to know what "YES" means and what a "NO" means, so we can make the best decision we feel comfortable with. Our voter Info packet makes me feel like Taxi's Jim Ignatowski before I barely begin to trudge through it. "What does a yellow light mean?"
In an effort to help readers learn about the propositions MAYOR SAM is rolling out a post per prop to support you in making your voter decisions. We're trying to be as fair as possible giving you the arguments supporting and opposing, and being clear what a YES or a NO really means.
This election is important. Make sure you get out and vote on Tuesday!
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The main focus of the content is normal muscle function. The core of the product is a collection of interactive 3D animations that you can move and manipulate with your mouse. The animated 3D models can be rotated and moved to show the function of agonist and antagonist muscles during common movements such as raising arms, bending, flexion of spine and neck etc.
It features an interactive 3D skeleton with bones, ligaments, muscles and vessels. Select from a menu of views that allow you to focus on a particular region such as upper body, add and remove anatomy from the model and rotate to view and label all visible structures.
This is great for learning anatomy of bones and muscles and their role in normal muscle function and common gross motor movements.
Contains over 70 muscle function animations. Animations can be played, rotated and all visible structures can be labeled (a new addition for the 2009 version).
Animations can also be exported from the software as short movie files.
DVD drive required
Please note that because the screen resolution required to run this product is 1024 x 768 this product will not run on a Netbook.
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Improving Career Prospects With Online Courses
Online courses are appealing to many people because they offer flexibility and convenience. You can schedule online courses around existing work and family commitments. You don't need to waste time commuting to a classroom and sitting around waiting for your next course to begin; a computer and Internet access are all that you need for online learning.
According to The Sloan Consortium, growth of enrollment in online courses far exceeded general higher education enrollment figures during the fall 2006 term. Online courses are especially appealing to working professionals and others who cannot or do not want to enroll in less flexible courses, but instead just want to take one or two courses for professional development purposes.
Determine What Career You Want
Taking online courses, no matter how good they are and how much you learn, is not going to improve your career prospects if you don't know what kind of job you want. Deciding after you've already completed an online course to get your paralegal certificate that you actually rather be an accountant wastes both your time and money.
Before committing yourself to an online course, first make sure that it relates to the career that you want. If you are unsure about what you want to do with your life, there are many career assessment tests that you can take online. Also, there are numerous career books that you can buy or rent from the librIdentify ary that help you figure out what you are passionate about and good at. What Color is Your Parachute? is just one book that has been popular for years for its ability to assist people who are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives (RandomHouse.com).
Most importantly, ask yourself what makes you happy and what you can see yourself doing for hours every day for many years.
Identify Needed Skills or Requirements
If you already know what kind of job you want, identify the skills or requirements that you still need for that position. Going through job postings are an easy way to get this information since many employers and placement agencies list out the necessary credentials and skills.
If you want to advance to a higher role in your company, ask your supervisor or mentor what will help you get promoted. Ask friends with jobs that you want what you need to do to increase your chances of getting a job like theirs. Once you have identified what skills and/or credentials you need or should have, choose online courses that correspond to them.
Choosing a Program
Some online courses are offered by private stand-alone companies while others are tied to a college. Programs vary by price, prestige, requirements and accreditation. Choose a program that matches your wants and any requirements of your desired job as much as possible to receive the greatest benefits.
Online Nation: Five Years of Growth in Online Learning. (2007) The Sloan Consortium.
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Aalst (älst) [key], Fr. Alost, city (1991 pop. 76,382), East Flanders prov., W central Belgium. Aalst is a commercial and industrial center. Manufactures include textiles, clothing, and footwear. Known since the 9th cent., Aalst was held by France from 1667 to 1706 and was the capital of the county of Flanders under the Austrians in the 18th cent. Of note are the city hall (13th cent.) and the Church of St. Martin (15th cent.), which contains a painting by Peter Paul Rubens.
More on Aalst from Fact Monster:
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Benelux Political Geography
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Under pressure for years now as the main target in the war on how women are portrayed in the fashion industry, Vogue Magazine announced a new policy for models on Thursday that might shake up the industry.
Vogue's new standards for models sets an age minimum, sees the magazine vowing to use only models it deems of "healthy" weight, and asks designers to stop limiting their clothing lines to unrealistically small sizes.
1. We will not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder. We will work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help to promote a healthy body image.
2. We will ask agents not to knowingly send us underage girls and casting directors to check IDs when casting shoots, shows and campaigns.
3. We will help to structure mentoring programs where more mature models are able to give advice and guidance to younger girls, and we will help to raise industry-wide awareness through education, as has been integral to the Council of Fashion Designers of America Health Initiative.
4. We will encourage producers to create healthy backstage working conditions, including healthy food options and a respect for privacy. We will encourage casting agents not to keep models unreasonably late.
5. We encourage designers to consider the consequences of unrealistically small sample sizes of their clothing, which limits the range of women who can be photographed in their clothes, and encourages the use of extremely thin models.
6. We will be ambassadors for the message of healthy body image.
Is this enough to change the industry?
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Here we are in 2011, with our federal, state and local governments having the technological ability to track and store in massive databases what we say on the phone, in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter and the myriad other digital means in which we communicate....
Moreover, as I and others have reported, the Department of Justice's Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative, or NSI, enlists We the People to spy on possible seditious Americans among us and report them to the FBI and local and state police. We are ordered to do this in obedience to the "If You See Something, Say Something" campaign. It's up to you to define "suspicious." This is what our America has become. Jefferson's ghost might want to start another revolution. (Read entire article.)
Is Facebook spying on you? Some people think so.
Facebook has admitted that it has been watching the web pages its members visit – even when they have logged out. In its latest privacy blunder, the social networking site was forced to confirm that it has been constantly tracking its 750million users, even when they are using other sites. The social networking giant says the huge privacy breach was simply a mistake - that software automatically downloaded to users' computers when they logged in to Facebook 'inadvertently' sent information to the company, whether or not they were logged in at the time. Most would assume that Facebook stops monitoring them after they leave its site, but technology bloggers discovered this was not the case. In fact, data has been regularly sent back to the social network’s servers – data that could be worth billions when creating 'targeted' advertising based on the sites users visit. (Read entire article.)Share
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Sleepy old Harrisburg a happenin' place today
Share with others:
Click image above to a multimedia slideshow about Harrisburg's vibrant new chapter.
HARRISBURG -- The martini crowd gathers at Cafe Fresco as college students line up for an Ice T concert at The Dragonfly, theater-goers take in "Steel Magnolias" and wannabe hippies puff hookahs at Skewers, a kabob restaurant sandwiched between an Irish pub and a still vacant storefront.
This is Harrisburg, 2007.
Twenty years ago you'd be more likely to find porn shops and boarded-up buildings here than vibrant clubs, pubs and sidewalk cafes. That was then.
"People are saying how alive Harrisburg is now. They come back and say, 'This isn't the Harrisburg I remember growing up.' It's a vibrant city," said Jeff Murison, executive director of the Downtown Improvement District.
Built on the east shore of the wide, shallow Susquehanna River, the capital city was one of the first industrialized cities in the Northeast and played a critical role in American history as a stopping place on the Underground Railroad, a Civil War trading post and home to the Whig convention that nominated William Henry Harrison for president in 1839.
Harrisburg has long been a city abuzz during daylight hours when elected officials, government workers, lobbyists and lawyers are conducting business.
More recently, it's become a place where you can take in a minor-league ball game after work, sample sushi, see an IMAX movie, take a painting class and dance the night away, all within walking distance of downtown.
Hop in a car or call a cab to visit the National Fire Museum, Wildwood Lake Sanctuary or the National Civil War Museum, which opened six years ago and already has a reputation for its evenhanded treatment of the Union and the Confederacy.
"It's a small city that has a lot going for it," Mr. Murison said. "The negative is that people don't know it."
Entertainment, recreation and history are only a few of the puzzle pieces put together over two decades to produce Harrisburg's revitalization.
"To have a really good, vibrant downtown there has to be a healthy balance of all services and activities and opportunities people are looking for. You need places to work and be successful, interesting and convenient places to live, a healthy variety of nightlife, arts and culture, retail and amenities like parks," Mr. Murison said. "Harrisburg excels at nearly all of that."
Harrisburg has been especially successful at attracting the food-and-beverage industry, arts ventures and the education sector, where the newest project, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, opened last year in temporary quarters while its 16-story classroom building is under construction.
Only the retail sector is lacking, say residents, developers and business owners. There are few options for grocery shopping downtown and only one chain clothing store, Dress Barn.
"There are a few little specialty shops but not many," said businessman Ron Kamionka, who owns several Harrisburg businesses including pubs, a new diner and Hardware Bar, the city's hottest club, where scantily clad women dance on the bar Coyote Ugly-style.
More retail would help draw more customers to all downtown businesses, Mr. Kamionka said.
That will come eventually, said Mayor Stephen Reed, who is widely credited with orchestrating the city's rebirth.
"Retail is the last thing to happen. You can't bring about urban renewal by starting with retail. No. That's the last thing that comes into place," Mr. Reed said. "First you have to have more homes, more jobs and more activities taking place."
Mr. Reed says he knew that from the start.
He laid out his aggressive redevelopment plan as soon as he took office in 1982, standing up to pessimists who said mid-sized cities were lost causes.
"People said I was crazy with these big, bold, daring goals ... but I always believed in what [poet] Robert Browning said: that a person's reach should exceed his grasp. That's true for cities, too," he said. "We're proving the viability of American cities."
A 'happening' place
Redevelopment began with Strawberry Square, a complex of retail stores, small eateries and office spaces completed in 1988.
Next came the four-star Hilton Hotel, the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts and the addition of parking garages, which made downtown a viable location for Stocks on Second, an eatery that kicked off the establishment of an area now known as Restaurant Row.
"It's been a long and determined course of economic development," said Brad Jones, vice president of commercial development for Harristown Development Corp., which was involved in the Strawberry Square, Hilton, Whitaker Center and other projects.
"The table has been set by all these determined efforts to build a critical mass and get to a tipping point, specifically for the food and beverage industry," he said.
Then came Harrisburg Young Professionals, a network of energetic and civic-minded residents that came together in 2004 with an eye toward making the city livable for the white-collar crowd.
"The group flourished very quickly and its members became the patrons for a lot of the downtown businesses," Mr. Jones said. "That helped the continued restaurant boom."
A recent addition is the restaurant Bricco, a collaboration between the Hilton Hotel and Harrisburg Area Community College's culinary department, whose students operate the business and use its kitchen as a real-world classroom. On the upper floors is International House, an 86-bed dormitory for foreign and American students interning at the Capitol or attending college in the city.
In all, 16 new restaurants opened last year, including The Quarter with its Cajun-style frogs legs, 405 Jazz on Walnut with its groovy jams, and Tom Sawyer Diner and Entertainment Complex with its outdoor pool table and fire pits that patrons gather around on cool evenings.
"There are more things opening right before your eyes. It's a happening place now. Harrisburg is upgrading itself," said longtime resident Richard Hadley, 31, during a break from a bike ride around City Island, Harrisburg's centerpiece park and home to the Senators, farm team to the National League Washington Nationals; and the City Islanders semi-professional soccer team.
The island had been overgrown and unused until 1987. That's when the city began converting it into a social hub with batting cages, a video arcade, a miniature golf course, two ice cream stands, a small beach, sand volleyball courts, a carousel, a kiddie train, a stable providing horse-drawn carriage rides and a riverboat offering murder-mystery dinner cruises on the Susquehanna.
"There's a lot to do here now," Mr. Hadley said. "There's a lot going on all over Harrisburg."
The city is home to two micro-breweries, five gay bars, a four-star hotel, high-end metropolitan restaurants, a planetarium, two swimming pools, five professional sports teams, a symphony orchestra, a ballet company, several theater companies, a 20-mile greenbelt and the area's No. 1 tourist attraction, the Capitol, where people come from all corners of the globe to view its 277-foot-high gold-leafed rotunda, stained-glass windows, marble staircase and Violet Oakley murals.
Harrisburg has a lot to offer, and it's frustrating to Mr. Reed that outsiders don't know it.
Then and now
When Mr. Reed became mayor in 1983, it was a rundown industrial city that hadn't fully recovered from the devastation of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. By 1981, the federal government named it the second-most distressed city in America. Only East St. Louis, still troubled today, had a worse rating.
The federal government shut down Harrisburg's access to community-development grants because the city's bookkeeping was so bad. Downtown had more vacant storefronts than occupied ones. A new city hall had just been built, but there was no money to pay the construction bills.
"This city was in bad shape," said Brian Long, who operates Broad Street Market in the Midtown section. "It used to be filled with so much bad element -- drugs, prostitution and pornography."
Fast forward to now.
Midtown now is a diverse, up-and-coming neighborhood renowned for its collection of used-book stores, galleries and charming row houses.
Nearby, there is the affluent and picturesque Shipoke neighborhood with its Queen Anne-style homes and river views.
In another part of town, the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex is home to the nation's largest agriculture exposition. When the grounds aren't full of farm animals, the complex plays host to gubernatorial balls, flea markets, dog shows, boat shows, the Pennsylvania Garden Expo, cheerleading competitions and other events. Recently, it hosted the Eastern National Antique Show, an alpaca show and a rodeo -- all in the same weekend.
Downtown's Riverfront Park heats up between Memorial Day weekend's Greater Harrisburg ArtsFest and Labor Day weekend's Kipona, a food and music festival marking the end of summer. In between, there's the Susquehanna River Celebration, Harrisburg Symphony's annual concert aboard a barge, the Pride Festival of Central Pennsylvania and the American MusicFest, which last year closed with fireworks and a Beach Boys concert.
Reservoir Park, the highest point in the city, includes a band shell and four stand-alone studios that make up an artists' colony where the Harrisburg Art Association holds pottery and sculpture classes. The park also hosts annual Shakespeare in the Park performances, the African-American Family Festival, the Women's Music Festival, a Reggae Festival, talent contests, outdoor movies and the city's annual Easter egg hunt.
"This is a new day in Harrisburg," Mr. Murison said. "This is a modern state capital that rivals any city in the region."
Dominic Nacci, 20, who moved from Moon to attend Harrisburg University, wouldn't go quite that far, but still he's glad he chose the capital city for college.
"It feels like a slow small city," he said. "I'm used to Pittsburgh," which, recently was named America's most livable city by "Places Rated Almanac."
Justin Dickson, formerly of Dormont, who also moved to the capital to attend school, has a different impression.
"It's a lot better than I thought it would be. It's not too big, but it's definitely lively," Mr. Dickson said between customers at the swanky Cafe Fresco, where he tends bar when he isn't taking classes at Harrisburg Area Community College.
"When I said I was coming here, people who haven't been here recently were like, 'Why are you going to Harrisburg? It's a dump.' So I didn't have very high expectations," he said.
"There's a lot here. You can go to Ceoltas [Irish pub] for dinner and then go dancing or hang out," he said. "I do wish it was a little bigger. It's a small city."
Harrisburg used to be home to nearly 90,000, according to the U.S. Census. That was in 1950 before white flight sent many residents to the suburbs. It was also before the 22 percent population drop that followed Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
Population now is 49,000, according to the latest census, showing that redevelopment efforts have slowed, but not stemmed the migration.
"We have a human scale," Mr. Reed said. "We're a size where people make a difference. Here, you're not a faceless number amid a mass of humanity."
A constant struggle
Still, Mr. Reed wants more growth.
Already, there are plans for a 3-million-square-foot office complex, two boutique hotels, a $100 million federal courthouse, three luxury condominium complexes, a new classroom building for Messiah College's Harrisburg Institute, an expansion of Harrisburg Area Community College's midtown campus and more.
"We're in a big period of growth now. We're in a boom period," Mr. Reed said.
"We could rapidly accelerate the pace here with more resources," he said. "We do not lack ideas or the will to carry them out. The vision, the will and the spirit are all in place. "
Mr. Reed is determined to keep Harrisburg well positioned for the future.
"It's a constant struggle. You've got to be constantly struggling to advance the city's progress or it will regress," he said. "If you're not fighting to move forward, all the other forces and factors will force you backward."
First Published May 12, 2007 10:46 pm
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"Africa’s economic growth is creating substantial new business opportunities that are often overlooked by global companies,” said Damian Hattingh, an associate at McKinsey & Company, which produced the report “The Changing Face of the African Consumer” last month.
For those who are used to headlines about Africa that include “war” or “rape” or “child soldiers” – let’s exclude readers of The Christian Science Monitor, who know better – all of this may come as a bit of a shock. First, how can Africa grow when the rest of the world is shrinking? The answer is that a number of African countries have gotten better at managing their own fiscal affairs, avoiding crazy social spending or loose credit schemes that load up public debt. Some countries with massive oil deposits, such as Angola, Nigeria, and Uganda, have been watching the cash roll in as the global price for oil hangs steadily around $100 a barrel. Others, such as Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda, have diversified their economies into technology and services, so that they aren’t so dependent on commodity prices for their economic future.
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Many of us read poetry to feel a connection or to bring about an emotion. For many people poems represent themes of love, loss and friendship. Many poems are not uplifting in nature; rather, they often are filled with sadness. Because of this, a little uplifting poetry can go a long way. An ode or expression of love has quite an impact, even if it is intended for someone else. Poetry often is an expression of loss, so when uplifting poetry comes along it can offer an upbeat alternative to traditional poetry.
Uplifting poetry can come in many forms. It can be a motivational poem, where the idea is to inspire you to be your best and keep you on the path toward achieving your goals. These poems tend to be inspirational in nature, so it can be beneficial to read and repeat them out loud in order to gain the most benefit.
Uplifting poetry also can come in the form of a eulogy. With a eulogy, someone who has died is being remembered, often by a close friend or family member. Many eulogies are sad, but there is an alternative. A positive eulogy that fondly remembers the deceased can help people remember all of the good things about that person.
Other forms of uplifting poetry include haikus, which offer a fun way to play with words and verses; short inspirational poems, which are designed to lift the spirits; and sonnets, ballads, and odes, which offer a musical spin on the beauty of a person or object. Odes often pay tribute to a person, while sonnets and ballads are more lyrical in nature. All offer a unique way to relate the poet’s thoughts and feelings in a positive way.
Uplifting poetry is a great way to find balance in your life as well. If you have hectic days that do not always go well and find that there is too much negativity in your life, then a nightly dose of uplifting poetry can help make you happier. Poems of this nature typically are short and easy to read, so you can read a few and then walk away and do something else for a while, then you can come back to them when you are ready. You can read them when you need a little boost or when you are not having a great day. They can bring joy to your life when you need it most.
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For more than one reason, actually. She sent me a copy of her new book, Awakened, and it is absolutely terrific. I read it and felt like she was speaking to me personally. My review is coming soon.
Today, however, I’m thinking Angela’s a genius because of the section of her book, The Cornerstone, that is about handling paper. She breaks down the avalanche of paper that comes into a classroom each day into a lot of different categories (more than I had come up with on my own), and emphasizes that “there is ONE place for EVERY paper.”
That’s the rule I live by at home — every single thing that comes into my home has a place where it belongs — but I hadn’t quite figured out how to make that work at school. I still haven’t completely figure it out, but I am getting there. Here are Angela’s seven steps for avoiding the paper trap:
Step 1) Temporary Places for Incoming Papers
Step 2) Binder for Lessons, Grades, and Reference
Step 3) Frequently-Referenced Forms and Papers
Step 4) Student Papers
Step 5) Activities and Worksheets You’re Using Now
Step 6) Teaching Resources for All Skills Taught
Step 7) General Files
I’ve managed to get through steps one and two, and it is awesome. PLUS, I actually have a clean desk. I clean it off every day when I leave school, and have maintained an orderly desk for an amazing three whole weeks. My assistant teacher says it’s pretty different from last year, and every other person who has worked with me would not recognize my desk at all. I even have room for a flowering plant on it!
So I’m a big Angela Watson fan. If you haven’t checked out her blog yet, you should! Better yet, buy the Cornerstone.
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Dial a Coach for Parenting Advice
Having trouble honing your parenting skills? Some parents in the same boat consult a parenting coach.
When Coaching Should Be Counseling continued...
Richfield, author of The Parent Coach: A New Approach To
Parenting In Today's Society, takes a different approach when he
coaches parents. He has developed a social and emotional coaching program that
includes cards with different scenarios, which include one in which a child is
being teased on the bus because she just got braces and one in which a child is
overly frustrated by homework.
"Each one of these cards targets a typical, compelling
encounter that gives a child information about what to do and not do when these
things happen," he says.
So what should frustrated parents do?
"If you talk to a family member, you know more about their
backgrounds so you have context to evaluate the advice, but you have no context
when advice is given over the phone by a stranger with ambiguous
credentials," he says.
"There are plenty of people to go to including
pediatricians who run parenting groups or can make appropriate referrals to
community-based professionals and services," he says.
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An Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim man gashes his forehead with a sword during a ceremony marking Ashura in Baghdad's Sadr City. Shi'ite Muslims beat themselves during Ashura with steel-tipped flails or slash their bodies with knives to mark the death anniversary of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, who was killed in the 7th century battle of Kerbala.
The Courant is using Facebook comments on stories. To comment on courant.com articles, sign into Facebook and enter your comment in the field below. Comments will appear in your Facebook News Feed unless you choose otherwise. To report spam or abuse, click the X next to the comment. For guidelines on commenting, click here.
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Today, guest historian Cathy Patterson gives birth to a cat. The University of
Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run,
and the people whose ingenuity created them.
In 1569, Agnes Bowker, an English servant girl, told an
unsettling story. Agnes had, she said, after a long and difficult pregnancy,
given birth to a cat. Impregnated by magical means, by figures that came to her
in the form of animals, this poor young woman experienced a birth of a monstrous kind.
Was Agnes delusional? A liar? Today, we assume she must have been one or the
other. But in the 16th century, people were not so sure. A woman giving birth
to a cat was not normal, but it was not thought impossible, either. It might be
a work of witchcraft, or it might be a portent of God's wrath.
Educated gentlemen and illiterate serving girls alike considered magic -- both
good and bad -- to be very real. Monstrous births, lucky charms, and acts of
malicious magic were all believed to exist and to have supernatural meaning.
So how did contemporaries interpret Agnes's disturbing tale? We might assume
that Agnes's story of magical intercourse with the devil's minions would lead
to an accusation of witchcraft. But in fact, this was not the case.
The women who attended her in the birth room at first fled in terror, but later
they doubted whether the cat had actually come forth from Agnes. Was the midwife
in cahoots? Had she duped everyone? A group of local men, a practical-minded
lot, examined and disemboweled the "monster". It was, they declared, just a
dead cat. Yet because of its strangeness, they reported the case to higher
A church official, Anthony Anderson, questioned Agnes and her neighbors closely.
While he could not pin down all the details of girl's story, he investigated
the cat thoroughly. Wild tales of the monstrous cat had made their way rapidly
into print, and Anderson took pains to quell the rumors. The so-called monster
was simply a barnyard cat, he said. To prove his point, he drew a detailed
picture of the animal, saying that it "containeth the full length, thickness,
and bigness of the same . . . measured by a pair of compasses." He also
experimented by having another cat autopsied and comparing the two. They
were, he stated, precisely the same, except for eye color.
This image -- a 16th-century Crime Scene Investigation -- reveals Anderson's
"scientific" perspective. He did not assume that the girl was bewitched, or
a witch herself. Instead, he sought to untangle real from unreal. Agnes's
story was strange, but he clearly thought her pregnancy resulted from human,
not supernatural, means. Magic had a place in his mental universe, but it
was not the only explanation for strange events.
We tend to tell one another that people of long ago were driven by superstition
until the Enlightenment gave us science. But the story of Agnes Bowker and her
cat reveals far more complicated thinking. Even 400 years ago, skepticism could
trump the supernatural. And given the popularity today of the National Enquirer
and psychic hotlines, are we really so far from those English villagers?
I'm Cathy Patterson, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
For more on changing beliefs in magic in the early modern period, see Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971
[and reprinted many times since])
The image, above and right, of a supposed monstrous birth from a book by Bowker and
Anderson's contemporary, Ambroise Paré, On Monsters and Marvels, 1573.
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One roll would suffice. It was on the list of supplies for this crafty kitsch!
Last week in Pittsburgh, granddaughter Anna saw a pot of flower pens that Aunt Lala made years ago. They are corny but cute and definitely appealed to an 8+ year old.
The old pens still wrote after all those years!!
Anna was fascinated with the pens in the pot and asked if we could make them when I came to Ohio. After a fun trip to the Crafts store for the supplies and brief instructions from Laura, we set up shop. Didn’t even use a full roll of floral tape.
There are rolls and rolls left. We made a pot for her mom, her other grandma, for Aunt Lala, for Anna’s desk and a new one for me which I might take to school again for our sign-in counter. Laura made some for me to take to school years ago, too.
If you seriously want to make them for any reason I found instructions just now online here at show
After making them with Anna and looking up instructions, I see people create them as favors and as pens for wedding guest books and such.
You can see her peeking through the finished pots of pens.
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- With Mayo Clinic health education outreach coordinator
Angela Lunderead biographyclose window
Angela LundeAngela LundeAngela Lunde is a dementia education specialist in the education core of Mayo Clinic's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the Abigail Van Buren Alzheimer's Disease Research Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The transfer of information about dementias, as well as understanding the need for participation in clinical trials, is an essential component of the education core.
Angela is a member of the Alzheimer's Association board of directors and co-chair of the annual Minnesota Dementia Conference. She is a member of the Dementia Behavior Assessment and Response Team (D-BART), a multidisciplinary outreach service assisting professional and family caregivers in understanding and managing difficult behaviors often present in dementia. She facilitates several support groups, including Memory Club, an early-stage education and support series, and more recently, helped to develop and now deliver Healthy Action to Benefit Independence and Thinking (HABIT), a 10-day cognitive rehab and wellness program for people with mild cognitive impairment.
Angela takes a personal interest in understanding the complex changes that take place within relationships and among families when dementia is present. She is particularly interested in providing innovative and accessible ways for people with dementia and their families to receive information and participate in valuable programs that promote well-being.
"Amid a devastating disease, there are tools, therapies, programs and ways to cope, and it is vital that families are connected to these resources," she says.
- Alzheimer's support group gets lift from humor, sharing
May 14, 2013
- As caregivers, support each other without judgment
May 1, 2013
- Alzheimer's individual living in the moment — in happiness
April 16, 2013
- Take the time to find gratitude: You'll be happier, healthier
April 3, 2013
- Gratitude is the one pill everyone should be prescribed
March 19, 2013
Jan. 24, 2012
Negative thoughts make Alzheimer's caregiving harder
By Angela Lunde
This morning I went to teach a yoga class at a local studio. Each month, The Karma Yoga Project offers a yoga instructor the opportunity to guide a class for the community with a free will donation collected for a charity or non-profit. The Alzheimer's Association was my non-profit of choice. I arrived shortly before the 10:00 start time only to discover that is was actually an 8:00 start time.
Almost before my next breath my mind raced: "Am I a complete idiot, how could I be so irresponsible?" Followed by my cynical self thinking, "Well, given the week I've had wouldn't you know something like this would happen." Like an automatic switch, my mind was drawn into negative self talk. Remember, our mind believes what we tell it, so in those next several minutes I felt miserable and defeated.
I bring this up because last time we talked about setting intentions and daily affirmations. In this situation, it didn't matter what my intention was, or the daily affirmation I was particularly mindful of. Something bad still happened. Or so it felt.
Similarly, Deborah replied to the last blog with this: "I do try to have a positive attitude but I have to tell you just telling yourself each morning that this day is going to be really good does not change a thing." And I have to imagine that many of you may feel like Deborah — believing it to be an impossible task to think positive when you're living the life of a caregiver. Bad things will happen even with the best intentions.
Whether or not you understand or buy into the power of intention and affirmations, maybe we can all agree that there is a connection between what we think and how our thoughts make us feel. Our thoughts shape who we are. Behind every situation there is a thought, and how we perceive that situation and respond determines how we cope, or not.
In other words, the stress you feel is not only the result of your personal caregiving situation but also your perception of it. Caregivers are uniquely susceptible to unhelpful thought patterns. One example is that of over-generalizing. Let's say the one you're caring for is repeating the same question over and over. Negative thinking would be, "When is this going to stop? This will go on all day. No one understands how difficult this is."
Positive self talk on the other hand sounds more like, "This doesn't go on all the time. After a while he usually gets distracted by something else. I can remain calm and patient for a while longer. This is a symptom of his disease."
The fact is that we can control our thoughts and our mind believes what we tell it. So, when we channel thoughts in a more positive direction, things are better. More often than not, we gain a sense of control and the resilience to cope more effectively with the stress and demands of caregiving.
Why is this concept of positive self talk, affirmations, and perceiving the glass half full rather than half empty one I speak about frequently? Because these ideas and tools give us the power to change what we can change. We can't change many of the realities of Alzheimer's, but we can change our thinking and that changes how we feel. Perhaps most importantly, you may find you become kinder and gentler with yourself.
So, how do you begin the practice of fighting off these negative thoughts? First off, know that negative thoughts happen automatically — remember my immediate negative thoughts about the yoga class. The key is to become an expert in identifying your negative thoughts quickly and not let them linger and find refuge in your mind.
Instead of fighting with your negative thoughts, just be aware and observe them. Don't get sucked into them. Recognizing that you are having negative thoughts is vital. It's at that point that you can choose to replace negative thoughts with positive ones and take control of how you feel.
As I got into my car after leaving the yoga class I never taught, I thought to myself, I can make mistakes, I'm human, I'm not perfect and I'm OK with that. Later that day, I received an e-mail from the organizer of the Karma Yoga Project. He wrote that he found it refreshing to know that I could make such a mistake — feels good to know we all share such imperfection he said.
"It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."
- William Shakespeare
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At Hampton Scott we offer a full line of CATIA V5 and Pro/E training courses. Whether you are seeking a beginner’s class to introduce you to the fundamentals of parametric CAD systems or you are looking to build upon the knowledge you already have, we have a course that’s right for you.
Basic Design Course
Our basic design course is geared towards entry-level CAD users and students who seek a better base knowledge of CAD fundamentals. In this course students will learn how to: use a parametric based CAD system, how parent/child relationships work, model 3D parts from 2D sketches, and how to create assemblies.
Advanced Design Course
This course will introduce students to advanced techniques that will help them progress far beyond basic modeling. Our instructors will discuss, in detail: best modeling practices, best way to modify a solid, simplification of models (for downstream users) and surfacing as it applies to solid modeling.
Basic & Advanced Lofting Courses
Our lofting courses are taught by one of foremost lofting experts in the United States who truly understand the history, theories and mathematics involved in creating usable, high quality loft surfaces. Our Basic and Advanced Lofting courses are only offered to students who have completed both the Basic and Advanced Design Courses.
Custom Tailored Courses
Hampton Scott can design custom training courses and manuals to suite your company’s special needs. Whether your company designs satellites or race cars, we will work directly with your engineers to produce the highest quality training course and materials specific to your needs.
© 2010 Hampton Scott. All rights reserved.
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Fur was the name for the body hair of non-Human mammals.
One example of a creature with fur was the Tarcassian razor beast, which was a winged, furry animal noted for the spines on its wings and its loping way of locomotion. When she was a child, Guinan had an imaginary one as a pet. In her mind it had dark brown fur, gold eyes, and enormous wings that let it fly so fast no one but her could see it. (TNG: "Imaginary Friend")
When discussing tribbles in 2268, Spock noted to Dr.McCoy that while they were "nice, soft, and furry and they make a pleasant sound", a violin covered in ermine would be the same, and he would "see no advantage in having one." (TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles")
One of the youths living at the settlement on Gaia, Gabriel, told Worf that he wanted to join the "Klingons" so that he could ride a wild torga, hunt, and trade furs for the things he needed, as the other "Klingons" did. (DS9: "Children of Time")
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English 394 – Young Adult Literature
Grant T. Smith, Ph. D.
Discussion Questions for Joey Pigza Loses Control
Write your own discussion questions for the novel that are “age appropriate” for the following issues:
· Difference: how do you respond to someone who is “different?” In this case, how do you respond to a person who has Attention Deficit Disorder Syndrome?
There are several issues at play regarding the family in this
novel: divorce, separation, father/son
relationships, role models. How does a child
survive in a "dysfunctional" family?
How does a child survive in a "dysfunctional" family?
· Identity: Definitions of masculinity, “normal.”
· Choices: Making moral decisions.
· Literary Style: The author’s use of humor, characterization, point of view
True Believer – Feminine Discourse?
For the feminist reader there is no innocent or neutral approach to literature: all interpretation is political.
Four main directions of present-day feminist criticism: biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic and cultural criticism (Elaine Showalter)
Naming: Feminists have consistently argued that “those who have the power to name the world are in a position to influence reality.” Women have historically lacked this power and as a consequence, many female experiences lack a name. Definitions can certainly be constructive, but they can also be constraining. Definitions stabilize, organize, and rationalize our conceptual universe.
Many French feminists argue that language systematically forces women to choose between adopting the male-dominated discourse or opting out—and thereby remaining silent. Women may either imagine and represent themselves as men imagine and represent them (in which case they may speak but will speak as men)or they can choose “silence”—becoming in the process “the invisible and unheard sex,” as Ann Rosalind Jones argues in her essay “Inscribing Femininity: French Theories of the Feminine.” (1985)
These feminists suggest that women not only have different life experiences than men but also write differently, which leads them to advocate embracing and developing a “feminine language” l ecriture feminine: women’s writing
Julia Kristeva has characterized feminine language as semiotic (not symbolic) discourse. By semiotic she means that feminine language is rhythmic and unifying; it does not rigidly oppose and rank qualities or elements of reality, nor does it symbolize one thing but not another in terms of a third. If from the male perspective it seems fluid to the point of being chaotic, that is a fault of the male perspective.
Feminine language is associated with the maternal rather than the paternal, it poses a threat to patriarchal culture. Kristeva’s central claim—that truly feminist innovation in all fields requires an understanding of the relation between maternity and feminine creation—came paired with a warning, however; feminine or feminist writing that resists or refuses participation in “masculine” discourse risks being politically marginalized in a society which still is, after all, patriarchal.
Helene Cixous: She explores the connection between women’s bodies, whose sexual pleasure has been repressed, and women’s writing. “Writing in the feminine is passing on what is cut out by the Symbolic, the voice of the mother, passing on what is most archaic.” Cixous sees as models those women who have operated on the edge of culture; their voice is the most authentic—witches, madwomen, hysterics. “The hysteric is a divine spirit that is always at the edge…She’s the unorganizable feminine construct.”
Women must write, must speak out of an authentic sense of their own differentness, their own body. “Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.”
For Cixous, feminine texts are texts that “work on the difference,” strive in the direction of difference, struggle to undermine the dominant phallogocentric logic, split open the closure of the binary opposition and revel in the pleasures of open-ended textuality
Luce Irigaray argues that women’s sexual pleasure cannot be expressed by the dominant masculine language. She explores the connection between women’s sexuality and women’s language. Just as women “jouissance” is more multiple than men’s unitary, phallic pleasure (“woman has sex organs just about everywhere”), so “feminine” language is more diffusive than its “masculine” counterpart.
Irigaray suggests the mother-daughter relationship may be the source of a reenergized authentic feminine Imaginary, a revolutionary feminine ideology. The “desideratum,” she specifies, is that “as women become subjects, mothers and daughters may become women, subjects and protagonists of their own reality rather than objects and antagonists in the Father’s drama.”
The French feminists urge that women affirm their otherness, their differentness as a means of destroying, subverting, or deconstructing the patriarchal order—despite the fact that such an orientation, separatism, may mean perpetual relegation to the marginal world outside history, outside the realm of public discourse.
Since women’s differentness is located in their bodies, it is the female body and female sexuality that must be the source of an authentic, disruptive, “feminine Imaginary.” In particular, it is the sexual mother, “la mere qui jouit,” that has been repressed and who must be resurrected.
Language, institutions, and social power structures have reflected patriarchal interests throughout much of history; this has had a profound impact on women’s ability to express themselves and the quality of their daily lives. (from Literary and Cultural Theory by Donald E. Hall)
Gerda Lerner defines “patriarchy” as the “manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and…in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power.”
Terry Tempest Williams: “Women’s language is like connective tissue…detailed and circuitous; it goes in and out.” According to Williams, the language of women knows no time. “A woman’s language is about meanderings, like a river. You may go through eddies and spiral in one place again and again. You may enter white water, full of risk and danger…You may just decide to take the flat water very slowly. It is a language without self-consciousness.”
Discussion Questions for True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff
How does LaVaughn deal with life struggles: crime, drugs, the future, sexuality, parenting?
LaVaughn is in pursuit of an authentic identity--what issues are raised as she seeks a legitimate "self"?
Friends are important to any teenager. What specific problems arise from LaVaughn's friendships?
How do you respond to the author's representation of "Christians" through Myrtle and Annie? Are you satisfied with how Wolff addresses religious issues such as the existence of evil, God, faith?
How does the Language Discussion Group add to the development of the novel?
Discuss the title of the book.
Discuss the jacket cover of the book.
How are adults represented in this novel?
Change is difficult. What specific problems arise as LaVaughn deals with the changes in her life?
How does LaVaughn deal with "difference"?
Questions about “style” in True Believer
1. What is your “image” of a narrative?
2. What is your definition of a novel?
3. Is True Believer a “subversive” text? How does the book subvert our assumptions about the following:
· Religion – What is a “true believer”?
· Identity “Definitions of Self”
· Gender (masculinity and femininity)
· Language and Discourse
4. Is Wolff’s narrative public discourse or private discourse? What are the implications of your answer to the “legitimacy” of the novel?
5. Many of you believe that “race” as a meaningful political issue is removed from the narrative. Is gender also removed from the text? Does the text address these questions: (1) What does it mean to be an adolescent girl? (2) What does the text say about gender relations? (3) How are women and girls represented in the text? How are men represented?
6. Read this excerpt from an interview with Virginia Euwer Wolff and consider the following:
· Is the “sense of plot” difficult to discern in True Believer? Is the novel in any way “non-linear”?
· Wolff says that True Believer is not poetry…but it is how LaVaughn talks. Can you detect a personal voice in the narrative? Is there a cadence to her speech? Is there a uniqueness to her language?
· Wolff intentionally omits last names, ethnicity, and place in the novel. What effect does this have on the reader? What effect does this have on the characters?
· Wolff suggests that this is a “girls’ book.” She says there are girls out there who need to read this book. She is writing for them. How do you men read this novel?
When I was writing Make Lemonade, it began to occur to me that I couldn’t be doing what I was doing. I was not allowed to do this. You can't write a book in this pretentious form that looks as though it's pretending to be poetry. Lord love us, we are not trying to write poetry. It's not that presumptuous. It's not that arrogant. Also, nobody in the book has last names. The ethnic group is not identified and the state is not identified. All these things that I knew you had to do, I wasn't doing. I was just doing a really different thing.
Gradually the question came up from my stomach
and made its way to my
cerebrum and got asked, "How are you going to feel when reviewers say, she can't do this?" I really had to think about that. The answer was, there are girls out there who need this book, I hope, and I'm writing it for them. I'm not writing it for reviewers. That was very freeing. With True Believer, that question has crossed my mind again.
And True Believer uses the same line format.?
Yeah, because that's how LaVaughn talks. She's the narrator. We revisit Jolly and the kids, and they're a bit older. This time I tried to take on a yet more challenging set of things.
As always, it was hard. I'm always on thin ice, not because I'm so daring, but because I'm so inept. I couldn¹t write most of the stories you and I read in kids' books. I was reading something recently and thinking, this person has more sense of plot than I'll ever have in my life. But I just went ahead and wrote True Believer.
Was it fun to go back to these characters and pick up their stories?
I loved being back with that family. I was rejoining my friends. I felt they were unfinished. Also, being able to write in those funny-shaped lines once more freed me. I would much rather write in those funny-shaped lines than in any other form.
But as always, I did all the wrong things at first. Usually I have to go back to scratch and start again. True Believer took me another year-and-a-half to write because what my editor asked didn't seem easy at all. When she first saw Bat 6, she was utterly flummoxed. It was like a blind date with acne, bad breath and three legs who's drunk. We managed together over a few years to make the book into something more acceptable.
Belsey, Catherine and Jane Moore, Eds. The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989.
Donovan, Josephine. Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions of American Feminism. New York: Continuum, 1991.
Hall, Donald E. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Routledge, 1986.
Richter, David H. Falling Into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000.
Warhol, Robyn R. and Diane Price Herndl, Eds. Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. New Brunswick: Rutgers U P, 1991.
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Alex van Galen //
Notovich is a world famous pianist thanks to his virtuoso interpretations of Franz Liszt (1811-1886), the greatest pianist of his time who composed some of the most challenging piano music ever. But then Notovich’s great love Senna disappears. That night he gives a concert in a trance, while covered in blood. He is released for lack of evidence, but then collapses.
Then one day he sees a woman who looks very similar to Senna walking down the street. It appears to be the lover of the mysterious pianist Valdin, who challenges Notovich to a piano duel. Valdin too plays marvellous interpretations of Liszt. And he also claims to have new evidence about Senna’s mysterious disappearance. As Notovich decides to enter Valdin’s game he is slowly drawn into the madness and emotion of Liszt's music and when Valdin plays Franz Liszt’s hidden Devils Sonata, history seems to repeat itself.
This book makes you want to read, read read. Alex van Galen makes you feel you want to know Notovich in person. As the story unravels, it’s difficult to follow the way he thinks and after a while you realise Notovich is losing his grip on reality and increasingly identifies himself with Liszt as the story continues.
Liszt was one of the first 'devil artists', a pianist with an unprecedented mastery of his instrument. As Liszt played, women fainted in mass numbers. This was partly due to the hype; he was a kind of pop idol avant la lettre. Notovich and Valdin, the competitors in this book are both playing Liszt, and they look a lot like him too. They both charm their audience with his music, particularly the women.
But there is one of Liszt’s sonatas that has never been found in a book or a piece of paper. Notovich dreams repeatedly about it, but once awake from his dream he never seem to remember how to play this magical sonata. Valdin challenges Notovic to a piano duel in which Valdin plays the magical sonata...and called it The Devil’s Sonata.. This magical piece of music influences the pianist, the audience, everyone, or is it all just in Notovich’s head?
text by Rosalie van der Meulen / photo by Dauvit Alexander
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- Social Security: It’s currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation is accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon. We could make it solvent far into the future if we simply raised the payroll tax cap — meaning that income above $106,000 would be taxed just like income below that amount is. Lifting the cap would require the wealthy to pay a tiny bit more so that the program would be safe and secure. Even a majority of self-identified Tea Partiers find this to be a good idea versus cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age.
- Medicare: According to the Medicare Trustees’ annual report that was released in April 2012, “the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund has sufficient reserves to pay out the full amount of Medicare Part A benefits until 2024 – the same projection made in last year’s report. Should nothing else change, and the Trust Fund reserves be depleted in 2024, the Trust Fund would still receive sufficient income from the payroll taxes and other revenue through which it is funded to pay 87% of anticipated Part A expenses.” And all of that is based on a projection based on a poor economy — as the economy improves, so will the projection. ”Medicare is not going bankrupt. Medicare would still have most of the necessary funds to pay those expenses and other parts of the program would be unaffected,” says University of North Carolina health policy expert Jonathan Oberlander in reference to the 2024 date. ”Medicare won’t go bankrupt in the literal sense in 2016 or 2024 or 2064—or ever.” Although Medicare’s financial state is secure well into the future, we can always improve it by stopping drug companies from ripping it off. We could save tens of billions of dollars every year — as Vice President Biden suggested during the debate — if we stood up to Big Pharma lobbyists by simply allowed Medicare to negotiate for drug prices.
October 13, 2012
Why Social Security and Medicare are not going bankrupt
From Bold Progressive:
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DOHA, Qatar (AP) — The world's poorest countries, inundated by rising seas and worsening disasters, made a last ditch plea for financial help early Saturday as negotiators at United Nations climate talks struggled to reach an ambitions deal to combat global warming.
The two-week U.N. conference in the Qatar capital of Doha was never meant to yield a global climate pact to curb emissions of greenhouse gases — that has been put off until 2015. But many developing nations said they were increasingly frustrated with the lack of ambition from rich countries on everything from climate aid to the emissions cuts they will make until 2020.
Talks were set to end Friday but they continued into early Saturday with negotiators set to meet in several hours to assess progress.
"The expectations we had for a great deal in Doha is no more. That is dust," said Mohammed Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi who is a lead negotiator for a coalition of poor nations called the Least Developed Countries or LCD.
"We are facing day in and day out the adverse effects of climate change," he said. "Nobody is nearby to rescue them. You see President Obama asking for huge funding for Hurricane Sandy ... But we won't get that scale and magnitude of support."
The biggest fight early Saturday swirled around what is called "loss and damage," a relatively new concept which relates to damages from climate-related disasters. Island nations and LCD have been pushing for some mechanism to deal with this but the United States has pushed back over concerns they might be held liable for the cleanup bill since they are the world's second biggest emitter behind China.
Many scientists say extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Sandy's onslaught on the U.S. East Coast, will become more frequent as the Earth warms, although it is impossible to attribute any individual event to climate change.
"It's becoming the last straw for the small island states, the least develop countries," said Alden Meyer, of the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists. "Seasoned negotiators are coming out of that room in tears, very emotional. They are starting to say what are we doing here? What is the point of these negotiations?"
And with the negotiations on the brink of failure, activists said they were giving up hope that any deal would include tough measures to protect the planet from the effects of global warming.
"The deal in Doha is a recipe for disaster. The deal in Doha is a coffin for the planet," said Michael Dorsey, a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, speaking outside the negotiations. "We will see the failure to have emission targets sufficiently high enough. We are going to see the failure to move critical resources to countries on the margin in the developing world who desperately need resources to get out ahead of the unfolding climate catastrophe that is playing out around the planet."
Most of the key disputes revolved around money.
Poor countries, especially a coalition of island nations and African countries, came into the talks demanding a timetable on how rich countries will scale up climate change aid for them to $100 billion annually by 2020 — a general pledge that was made three years ago — and how they will raise the money.
But rich nations, including the United States, members of the European Union and Japan remain in the midst of a financial crisis and were not interested in detailed talks on aid at this meeting. The current text on financing agrees only to continue "scaling up" aid until 2020 and delays most detailed decisions until 2013. It includes no midterm targets or mechanisms — such as a tax — for raising the revenue.
Negotiators were also trying to finalize an agreement to formally extend the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions reduction pact for rich countries that expires at the end of this year. One of the sticking points was whether to allow countries to carry over surplus emissions allowances into the next phase as well as to extend it for five or eight years and whether there would be a trigger requiring countries to commit to more ambitions emissions targets at a certain date.
The U.S. never joined the Kyoto accord, while Japan, New Zealand, Canada and Russia don't want to be part of its extension, meaning it would only cover about 15 percent of the world's emissions of greenhouse gases.
Governments have set a deadline of 2015 to agree on a wider deal that would include both developed and developing countries, which now produce a majority of the world's emissions. As part of that, delegates were also trying to make progress on the 2015 work plan and close loopholes that would bring all countries into one negotiating path.
On paper, these issues seemed routine.
But throughout the day, countries took advantage of these meetings to fight over a wide range of issues that included technology transfer to poor, emission commitments by rich countries in the next eight years as well as a demand from Saudi Arabia to discuss ways of helping countries diversify their economies under a new deal.
The Chinese were among the most vocal, at one point trying to insert language into the text that backtracked from the agreement in Durban that requires both rich and poor countries to take binding action to combat climate change when a new deal is set to take effect in 2020.
"We're doing ridiculous things," Chinese delegate Su Wei said, before backing off his demand.
The negotiations were also hampered, delegates and activists said, by a lack of leadership from Qatar. Draft agreements were not ready until the last second and Qatar did nothing to bring together key ministers to hash out a grand deal as past presidents have done.
Still, the talks remained alive and nobody was talking of walking away from the table.
The goal of the U.N. talks is to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 Celsius), compared to preindustrial times. Temperatures have already risen about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 Celsius) above that level, according to the latest report by the U.N.'s top climate body.
A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to rise by up to 7.2 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) by the year 2100.
"There is a huge lag between the international policy response and what science is telling us," U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres told The Associated Press. "We know that science tends to underestimate the impacts of climate, and so if anything, that gap continues to grow."
AP reporter Karl Ritter contributed to this report.
Follow Michael Casey on www.twitter.com/mcasey1 and Karl Ritter on www.twitter.com/karl_ritter
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Suling Wang (b. 1968, Taiwan) grew up in rural Taiwan and moved to London in 1993, where she studied fine art at Central St. Martins. She completed her Master’s degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in 1999. The cartoon-like and calligraphic forms in Wang’s paintings are overlaid atop others and suggest trees, stems and mountains. The imaginary settings with meticulously detailed layers are rhythmic and explore her sense of uncertainty relating to her identity within Eastern and Western cultures. The geography of Taiwan is a recurring theme in Wang’s paintings and her depictions are influenced by the oral traditions she experienced as a child.
Suling Wang has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions worldwide, including Passion for Paint, Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery, The Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, and the National Gallery, London (2006); Red Hot: Asian Art Today from the Chaney Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas (2007); Guggenheim Collection 1940’s to now: New York-Venice-Bilbao-Berlin, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2007); The Mountain where Whales Once Lived at UNION, London (2010). Suling Wang’s work can be found in public and private collections, including the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pinchuk Art Collection, Kiev; Rubell Collection, Miami; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and UBS Art Collection, among others. The artist lives and works in London, England.
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Most evolution/creation controversies in public schools involve questions of whether "creation science" will be presented to students in the classroom or at assemblies. However, libraries are also a target of creationist efforts. For example the Idaho School Boards Association recently voted down a resolution that called for including "creation science" materials in school libraries (RNCSE
18(4):7), and some state party platforms have included planks like this one:
3.38 We support the stocking of CREATIONIST produced resources in ALL TAX funded public and school libraries. We OPPOSE the current censorship of CREATIONIST resources. (Iowa Republican Party, 1998)
NCSE has assisted school districts that were being pressed to add "creation science" books to their libraries. In 1998, we evaluated books that had been suggested for use as library "resources offering [theories] considered contrary to evolution" in a Michigan school district (RNCSE
18(3):5), and advised a New Mexico parent whose local schools were being pressed to purchase creationist books because supposedly "libraries must have materials on all controversies."
What are the facts? Is your school or public library required to purchase or accept donations of books presenting "creation science" or "arguments against evolution"? How can the appropriateness of such books be evaluated?
The Role of Libraries
: No public library is currently required
to accept donated materials, though they should use consistent policies to assess donations. A good illustration is the case of the Athens Regional Library in Oconee County, Georgia. When the library refused the donation of a subscription to the Answers in Genesis publication Creation Ex Nihilo
in 1996, there was considerable public controversy, and the would-be donor announced that he was considering a lawsuit. However, the library's decision prevailed because it had been made fairly: the library staff was not attempting censorship, but had applied the same standards to the donation as they did to possible purchases. They judged that the magazine's content was too specialized for their limited shelf space. They had consulted the American Library Association (ALA), and had been advised that such decisions are generally legal when they follow policies applied to all library materials (NCSE Reports
: Like public libraries, school libraries have space and budget constraints, and must carefully evaluate materials whether they are purchased or donated. A school library also differs
from public libraries in two important respects: it serves a less diverse community — a specific age group — and
it must further the school's educational mission. According to the American Library Association:
School library media professionals cooperate with other individuals in building collections of resources appropriate to the developmental and maturity levels of students. These collections provide resources which support curriculum and are consistent with the philosophy, goals, and objectives of the school district. (ALA, 1990)
While the library should have some materials that satisfy the general reading and learning interests of students, a large proportion of material must support classroom curricula — for example, if students in the school study early American history, the library should have biographies of leading figures of the time, historical novels set in that time, and material covering various topics in greater depth than do textbooks — both to provide supplementary readings and to support research assignments. The number of such books related to any given topic is limited by the need to provide similar selections supporting other courses and teaching units.
Both civil liberties organizations and many individual school districts emphasize the importance of providing students with diverse collections that prepare them to debate social issues responsibly. However, these concerns must be understood in the context of a district's legal responsibilities and educational goals, and the school librarian's responsibility to provide materials of high quality. The ALA puts it this way:
Members of the school community involved in the collection development process employ educational criteria to select resources unfettered by their personal, political, social, or religious views. Students and educators served by the school library media program have access to resources and services free of constraints resulting from personal, partisan, or doctrinal disapproval. (ALA, 1990)
Proposed "creation science" or "evolution/creation" materials must be evaluated within this context. Even citizens who support putting such materials in the school library will not want to change district policies in a manner that would lead to filling school libraries' shelves with third-rate novels and tabloids that report UFO sightings. They can also see why it is untrue that "All
controversies must be heard." "All controversies" could include everything from disagreements in neurology journals over whether pallidotomy or hypothalamic stimulation is the better treatment for Parkinson's disease, to disagreements within militias over the best way to "resist" the federal government.
Again, considerations of age appropriateness and educational value apply. To take American history as our example again: There was
a controversy about adopting this country's constitution, but a book containing the Federalist Papers is at the wrong reading level for an elementary school library. It might be appropriate for the high school library — but teachers and the librarian might have good reasons to choose other controversies.
The fact is, scientific
controversy over evolution died in the closing decades of the nineteenth century; it is now a political
controversy. Even people who believe that there is still a scientific
controversy about evolution cannot deny that many "creation science" books discuss long-dead "controversies" — like the Piltdown hoax that scientists uncovered decades ago — which are too dated for library use. Books presenting religious
arguments against evolution should not be brought in as part of the science
curriculum; they might be considered to support critical thinking curricula in other classes, depending on the advice of teachers who may have found that other topics or materials fit better into the curriculum.
Evaluating proposed books — lessons from experience
School administrators and elected officials face many decisions and balance many legal, financial and curricular concerns while trying to satisfy a varied constituency. Some districts try to compromise by suggesting that the library obtain "nonreligious", purely "scientific" critiques of evolution. What then?
Then comes the hard work! Neither librarians nor advisory committees can evaluate proposals unless they have copies of the books in question, or substantial book excerpts and reviews from reliable sources such as scientific publications or library journals. Such information can be very difficult to obtain, and the information that is most easily available may be confusing (see sidebar, "You Can't Judge a Book by Its Number"
NCSE has published a book containing scientists' reviews of forty-two "creation science" books that are frequently suggested for school use. (See sidebar for a list of books reviewed.
) In addition, we can provide reviews of other books, from our own periodicals and from other journals. Also, in some cases we can provide information about "creation science" children's books that are in the NCSE library.
Even when such information is unavailable, evaluators can use criteria and procedures based on NCSE's experience advising school districts:
* Is the book genuinely scientific, or primarily religious? How can this be determined?
In some instances, the religious emphasis of a book is obvious: It is explicitly stated on the cover, in the fly leaf or introduction, in a publisher's catalog or on the website of the publisher or another organization promoting the book. Often, however, it is necessary to review the text itself. For example, the cover of one book in NCSE's collection makes no mention of religious views; it says: "...a new approach to biology in plain language.... spectacular breakthroughs in molecular biology can be combined with the widely used laws of probability reasoning.... Topics include... How DNA Duplicates Itself." The text
, though, contains numerous examples of religious advocacy, such as: "The materialist must never have stood at dawn and watched the pink light begin to tinge the sky.... 'If you can see a sight like that and not worship God, you don't deserve to be called a person!" (Coppedge, 1973: 279)
When evaluators lack time to read an entire book, using the index can be a big help. Reading pages cited with these key words can help determine whether the book advocates religious views: abrupt appearance, creator, design, God, intelligence, intelligent design, purpose, teleology, teleonomy
. Do not
assume that finding such words in the index means the book is primarily religious! A page indexed by the word "intelligence" might discuss the evolution of intelligence, or it might argue that DNA is proof of an "intelligence" that "designed" living cells.
* Is scientific content of the book accurate and current?Any
library book about science needs to be up-to-date, unless it was specifically chosen for its value in the history of scientific thought — for example a book of readings from pioneers in their fields such as Mendel (genetics), Copernicus (astronomy), and so on. NCSE has found that many books critical of evolution do not discuss current
scientific views; one book we evaluated this year had not been revised since 1982, and contained no citations more recent than the early 1960s! Checking a book's bibliography and footnotes is very helpful in assessing whether it is up-to-date. You may also find that, while a book lacks religious rhetoric, ostensibly "scientific" arguments in the book — such as claims that human tracks have been found alongside dinosaur tracks — are standard, inaccurate creationist claims for which NCSE can provide scientific refutations.
* Is the book age-appropriate and suited to students' educational level?
Ask science teachers whether students have the knowledge they need to understand and evaluate statements in a book. For example, a book requiring high school reading skills might be donated to a middle school, or a book criticizing methods for determining the age of the earth might be suggested for use by students who have not yet studied earth science.
* Does the book meet general selection criteria such as sturdy construction and reasonable availability?
NCSE has found that some books suggested for adoption are no longer in print. Evaluators can check on the book's availability by consulting Books In Print
or on-line book services such as "amazon.com". Some "creation science" books in NCSE's collection — especially those that are self-published — are so poorly bound that they literally fall apart in a reader's hands.
It's no news that evolution/creation controversies can become heated and emotional. In the heat of controversy, "creation science" proponents may complain in all sincerity that their views are being "censored". They may also ask rhetorically, "What are you afraid of?" The answer rests on common grounds that all parents can share, "I'm afraid the library will spend its limited budget on low quality books. If we aren't careful about library policies, the good books our kids need will be crowded out by junk!" Your school library can select books in a way that avoids censorship without sacrificing quality, and common-sense application of the criteria suggested here helps assure that your school's students will have access to the best science books available.
|
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|
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| 0.955046
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I just bought an Anker Astro 5600 mAh backup battery. It powers devices via a standard 5V USB port. However, it does not have 5v X 5600 mAh = 28 Wh of joules. It has 3.7v X 5600 mAh = 20.7 Wh of joules. That's 26% fewer electrons than advertised.
The 3.7v comes from the battery technology used inside, and doesn't even include the efficiency of the DC-DC converter (probably 85-90%) needed to boost 3.7v to 5v.
I looked all over their website, but never found the true Wh, only the mAh of the Li-Poly battery inside. Some manufacturers I've seen do list the true Wh capacity of their products.
If I ever start a business selling electronics for the field, you can be sure I will be more informative as to what you can actually expect from my products.
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|
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|
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This guide addresses serious youth gun violence, describing the problem and reviewing factors that increase the risks of it. It then identifies a series of questions that might help you analyze your local problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem, and what is known about them from evaluative research and police practice.
Criminal misuse of guns kills or injures tens of thousands of Americans every year. This violence imposes a heavy burden on our standard of living, not only on groups that have the highest victimization rates, but also on the community at large. By one estimate, this burden amounts to $80 billion per year. 1 Although overall U.S. homicide rates declined between the 1980s and 1990s, youth homicide, particularly gun homicide, increased dramatically. Between 1984 and 1994, juvenile (younger than 18) homicides committed with handguns increased by 418 percent, and juvenile homicides committed with other guns increased by 125 percent.2 During this time, adolescents (ages 14 to 17) had the largest proportional increase in homicide commission and victimization, young adults (ages 18 to 24) had the largest absolute increase, and there was much crossfire between the two age groups.3 Gun homicide accounted for all of the increase in youth homicide. The youth violence epidemic peaked in 1993 and was followed by a rapid, sustained drop over the rest of the 1990s.4 However, in 2000, more than 10,000 Americans were killed with guns, and guns are much more likely to be used in homicides of teens and young adults than in homicides of people of other ages.5
In urban areas, gun violence takes a particularly heavy toll, as vastly disproportionate numbers of young minority males are killed and injured, and increasing fear drives out businesses and disrupts community social life. Research has linked urban youth gun violence to gang conflicts, street drug markets, and gun availability.6 Youth gun violence is usually concentrated among groups of serious offenders and in very specific places.7
The police can prevent youth gun violence by focusing on identifiable risks. While gun violence seems to pervade our society, it is remarkably clustered among high-risk people, in high-risk places, at high-risk times. This concentration of violence provides an important opportunity for police to strategically address a seemingly intractable problem.
For police agencies, the most pressing concerns regarding youth gun violence are why offenders target particular people, at particular places, at particular times. However, it is also important to recognize that youth gun violence is often linked to a variety of risk factors beyond the scope of problem-oriented policing. For example, it has been linked to changing demographics, adverse economic conditions, family disruption, media violence, and poor parenting skills.8 These are sometimes considered the “root causes” of the problem. However, by the time gun violence problems come to police attention, the broader questions of why youth offend are no longer relevant. While police often help people access social services, they are best positioned to prevent youth gun crimes by focusing on the situational opportunities for offending rather than trying to change those socioeconomic conditions on which other government agencies primarily focus. Thinking about how likely offenders, potential victims, and others are to make decisions based on perceived opportunities is more useful in designing effective problem-oriented policing interventions.9
Youth gun violence is only one of many youth-related problems police must handle. The following require separate analysis and response:
Understanding the factors that contribute to your youth gun violence problem will help you frame your own local analysis questions, determine good effectiveness measures, recognize key intervention points, and select appropriate responses. Research has shown that crime problems tend to cluster among a few offenders, victims, and places. Youth gun violence is similarly concentrated among a few offenders in a few places. This section reviews what is known from criminal profiles of youth gun offenders and victims, addresses the importance of gangs and criminally active groups in youth gun violence, and discusses the clustering in location and time of youth gun violence. It is important to note that the problem frames vary across the studies described below. In many jurisdictions, an initial interest in “juvenile violence” or “gun violence” shifted, as the problem assessments proceeded, to a focus on understanding and controlling violence, regardless of age or weapon type. However, in all cities, youth gun violence was the most important component of the problem. For example, in Minneapolis, problem-oriented research conducted on an emergent total homicide problem found that homicide was largely committed by youth ages 24 and under, who used guns and were known to the criminal justice system.10
Youth gun violence is concentrated among serious offenders well known to police and other criminal justice agencies. In Boston, an interagency group of law enforcement personnel, youth workers, and researchers examined the criminal histories of youth ages 21 and under killed by gun or knife in the city between 1990 and 1994, and of the youth offenders responsible.11 Of the victims, 75 percent had been arraigned for at least one offense in Massachusetts courts, and 20 percent had served time in a youth or adult detention center. Nearly 50 percent had been on probation in the past, and many were on probation when they were killed. Of the offenders, a little over 75 percent had been arraigned for at least one offense in Massachusetts courts, 25 percent had served time, over 50 percent had been on probation in the past, and 25 percent were on probation when they committed the crime. Victims and offenders known to the criminal justice system had an average of nearly 10 prior arraignments, and nearly 50 percent had 10 or more arraignments. They had been arraigned for a wide variety of crimes, including armed violent offenses, disorder offenses, and drug offenses. In gang literature, this wide range of offending is described as “cafeteria-style” offending.12
A number of other jurisdictions have reported similar findings. In Minneapolis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, and Stockton, Calif., gun violence was largely committed by and against youth with extensive criminal backgrounds.13
Youth gun violence is concentrated among feuding gangs and criminally active groups. The Boston interagency group examined the circumstances of the youth gun and knife murders and found that nearly two-thirds were gang-related.14 Most of the murders were not linked to drug dealing or other “business” interests; instead, most resulted from relatively long-standing gang feuds. In Minneapolis, nearly two-thirds of youth murders between 1994 and 1997 were gang-related.15 In the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles, slightly less than two-thirds of youth gun homicides were gang-related. Another 25 percent involved gang members as victims or offenders, but were motivated for reasons other than gang rivalries.16
Even in neighborhoods suffering from high rates of youth gun violence, most youth are not in gangs and criminally active groups. In addition, some gangs are more dangerous than others. To better understand the city’s gang problem, the Boston interagency group mapped gang turf and estimated gang size.17 They identified 61 different crews with around 1,300 members. Gang members represented less than 1 percent of all Boston youth, and less than 3 percent of youth in high-risk neighborhoods. The mapping also documented rivalries and alliances among gangs. Gangs had identifiable “beefs” with particular rival gangs, not all rivalries were active (i.e., shots were not currently being fired), and certain gangs were much more involved in conflicts than others. In Minneapolis, researchers identified some 2,650 people in 32 active street gangs as being central to youth gun violence; they represented less than 3.5 percent of Minneapolis residents between the ages of 14 and 24. The gangs tended not to be territorial; they operated fluidly across Minneapolis and nearby jurisdictions. In Boyle Heights, researchers identified 37 criminally active street gangs as being involved in youth gun violence.
However, gangs are not always behind youth gun violence. In some cities, criminally active groups who are not considered “gangs” are major gun offenders. In Baltimore, violent groups active in street drug markets were involved in numerous homicides in 1997.18 Most of the murders occurred in or near a street drug market, and many victims and suspects were part of a drug organization or a recognized neighborhood criminal network. Researchers identified 325 drug groups that ranged in nature from rather sophisticated organizations, to structured neighborhood groups, to loose neighborhood groups. While drug disputes and street drug robberies contributed to Baltimore’s gun violence problem, homicides often resulted from ongoing, non-drug-related disputes among people in drug-selling groups.
In thinking about the nature of your youth gun violence problem, it is important to recognize that the direct links between youth gangs, drugs, and violence are usually overstated.19 Even in Baltimore, where most youth gun violence occurs in a drug market setting, most youth gun homicide is not drug-related. Gang and group violence is usually retaliatory or expressive (defending gang honor, status, and members). Today’s offenders are often tomorrow’s victims, and vice versa. Youth gun violence victims treated in Boston emergency rooms often had scars from past gun and knife wounds.20 Youth gun violence in many cities appears to be a self-sustaining cycle among a relatively small number of criminally active youth. They are at high risk of being confronted by gun violence, so they tend to try to protect themselves by getting, carrying, and using guns; forming and joining gangs; acting tough; and so forth.21 This behavior adds to the cycle of street violence.
The research confirms a high degree of overlap between victim and offender populations. It is important that you determine whether this overlap exists in your jurisdiction.
Like most crime problems, youth gun violence is clustered in specific places. Between 1987 and 1990, half of Chicago’s gang-related homicides occurred in only 10 of its 77 communities.22 In Minneapolis, nearly two-thirds of homicides were clustered in only eight of its 95 neighborhoods. In Boston, gang turf covered only 3 percent of the city’s total area, but over 25 percent of the city’s youth homicides, gun assaults, weapons offenses, and shots-fired calls for service occurred there. In Boyle Heights, spatial analyses revealed that youth gun homicide was concentrated in specific hot spots, in and around gang hangouts. Most of the Boyle Heights youth gun homicides were considered to be predatory, as perpetrators invaded rival gang territory to commit them. 23
Youth gun violence often clusters in time. For example, in Boston, most youth gun violence occurred in the afternoon hours immediately following school release, as well as during weekend evenings. In Kansas City, Mo., computer analysis of gun crime hot spots within a beat revealed that most gun violence occurred between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m.24
You may order free bound copies in any of three ways:
Phone: 800-421-6770 or 202-307-1480
Allow several days for delivery.
Send an e-mail with a link to this guide.
Error sending email. Please review your enteries below.
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|This GenWeb includes the Gaspé
Peninsula & Magdalen Islands,
also known as Gaspésie & Îles - de - la - Madeleine
||The Gaspe Peninsula is located on
the eastern tip of the province of Quebec, north of New
Brunswick. It is mostly a coastal region being surrounded by the
St. Lawrence estuary and gulf as well as by the Bay of Chaleur.
The Magdalen Islands are located southeast of the peninsula,
north of P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
The areas history is rich and diverse, from early beginnings of fishing and shipbuilding up through the years. Families and individuals have combined to create the interesting history of the region.
Let's maintain the interest and share the history with others that have roots to the GASPE and MAGDALEN area. Please feel free to contact the co-ordinator to share sources or information.
7 Apr 2007 Minor changes to web site so that it will work better in various browsers.
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|
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|
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| 0.944727
| 226
| 2.96875
| 3
|
The ‘high-tech lynching’ of Sarah Palin.
In 1991 Clarence Thomas was nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court by then President George H.W. Bush. The attacks on Thomas that ensued were astounding and sought not only to defeat his nomination but to destroy his reputation and character. Never mind that the outrageous accusations were unproven, they were tools to try to stop Thomas from being on the Court. The ends justify the | Read More »
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| 0.991637
| 95
| 1.640625
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|
By Jennifer Martin - email
John Cockrell was 19 years-old when he decided to enlist in the military.
"I joined the National Guard in Clinton, MS, the 114th Military Police Company. I was assigned there roughly four years. I decided I wanted to go active duty and then went and saw the active duty recruiter and he put me on a bird to Germany," said Cockrell.
His specialty: handling dogs trained to sniff out explosives. "While I was in Germany, I deployed to the Balkans, Kosovo, which was a 6 month deployment," Cockrell added.
It was a peacekeeping operation. "Then after 9/11, the OIF was in a good run for about 6 months. Then they requisitioned that some dog handlers be sent over there. And they sent out the tasker and I was assigned to the 6th MP Company, FT Rucker, AL, where I got the task to serve with OIF," said Cockrell.
He'd be part of Operation Iraqi Freedom for 10 months.
"There I was assigned to the 1st fleet which is the Marine Corp as they worked at the embassy," added Cockrell.
"It was kind of touchy at first. They were infantry background, us being MP. They didn't really know how to support the canine aspect. I was assigned to them searching all the vehicles that went in and out of the embassy grounds," Cockrell recalled.
He says mortars were always going off in the distance but he remembers one incident that was too close for comfort.
"We're on a checkpoint, searching vehicles at that time. It was right before the liberation of Iraq, right after they did the changeover for the government. I guess they decided to do a lot of mortar attacks that evening and one of 'em hit about 50 yards from our checkpoint," said Cockrell.
"Up until that time our mission was pretty docile, not a whole lot of stuff going on, doing the same thing over and over, searching vehicles, so I guess complacency may have overwhelmed us a bit. But the mortar rounds were hitting that close, it makes you step back and think about why you're here. "
He developed a close relationship with his dog, Billy.
"Everyday I was happy he was there with me. A dog's nose is a lot better than any computer equipment you have as far as finding explosive devices." Cockrell explained.
After Cockrell left Iraq, Billy was hurt, but their camaraderie continued.
"I got a call said Billy got hurt. Kennel Master Sergeant there was like I just wanted to know if you're interested in taking him home and at that time I wasn't even worried about the extent of his injuries. I just wanted to be sure I could get him and bring him back to the states," Cockrell said.
Cockrell now serves as a Drill Sergeant at Ft Leonardwood, Missouri. Billy is OK and they are still together.
WLBT 3 - Fox 40
715 South Jefferson Street
|
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This talk analyzes the process of the end of the anecdotes tradition, and what replaced it.
Texts from the Warring States Period to the Western Han Dynasty are full of anecdotes, or brief accounts of events involving actual historical people. The wording of these anecdotes may differ from text to text, and they may use them for different rhetorical purposes, but the basic events remain the same. After the Western Han Dynasty, references to those events became increasingly rare. It seems that as the Western Han Dynasty came to an end, so did a long tradition of discussing and arguing through anecdotes. At the dawn of the Eastern Han Dynasty, a new history was created, with little room for the ancient anecdotes. This work-in-progress paper analyzes the process of the end of the anecdotes tradition, and what replaced it.
Paul van Els is associate professor of China Studies at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He specializes in early Chinese thought; that is, in thinkers, texts, and traditions from the Warring States Period to the Western Han Dynasty (roughly: the first five centuries BCE). At Leiden University, he offers lectures and tutorials on early Chinese thought, as well as Classical Chinese language courses. Dr. van Els recently finished a monograph on an ancient Daoist text, the Wenzi, and a two-volume textbook of Classical Chinese titled Van orakelbot tot weblog [From Oracle Bones to Blogs]. More information is available at www.paulvanels.nl.
Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies
© 2013. The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
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|
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|
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| 0.915493
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| 2.59375
| 3
|
NOTICE: Account creation on the wiki has been temporarily disabled until the wiki is moved to OpenID. If you need an account before then, please request one here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=165868
|XBMC Media Center|
XBMC Media Center Home Screen
|Stable release||12.1 (Frodo)|
|Written in||C++ core, with Python scripts as add-ons from 3rd parties|
|OS||Android, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Windows, iOS|
|Platform||ARM, PPC (PowerPC), x86|
|Available in||40+ languages to date|
|License||GPLv2 or later|
XBMC Media Center is an award-winning free and open source cross-platform software media player and entertainment hub for digital media for HTPCs (Home theater PCs). It uses a 10-foot user interface designed to be a media player for the living-room, using a remote control as the primary input device. Its graphical user interface (GUI) allows the user to easily browse and view videos, photos, podcasts, and music from a harddrive, optical disc, local network, and the internet using only a few buttons. The XBMC project is managed by the non-profit XBMC Foundation, and developed by volunteers located around the world. Since its creation in 2003 more than 60 software developers have contributed to XBMC, and 100-plus translators have worked to expand its reach, making it available in more than 40 languages.
XBMC was originally created as a media center application for the first-generation Xbox game console (no longer supported) but is now officially available as a native application for Android, Linux, Mac OS X, iOS (iDevices and Apple TV 2), and Windows operating systems, running on most common processor architectures.
1 Video demos
Check out this excellent introduction video by Lifehacker.com:
- Additional video demos
- XBMC beginners guide - an introduction and tour by XBMC.org forum user fredphoesh
2 Overview of features
Currently XBMC can be used to play almost all popular audio and video formats around. It was designed for network playback, so you can stream your multimedia from anywhere in the house or directly from the internet using practically any protocol available. Use your media as-is: XBMC can play CDs and DVDs directly from the disk or image file, almost all popular archive formats from your hard drive. XBMC will scan all of your media and create a personalized library complete with boxcovers, descriptions, and fanart. There are playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast feature and many audio visualizations. Once installed, your computer will become a fully functional multimedia jukebox.
Add-ons are packages that add features and functions not normally included with XBMC. Add-ons are developed by people on Team XBMC and third-parties. XBMC has a growing list of community driven add-ons for online content like YouTube, Hulu, Grooveshark, Pandora Radio, as well as skins (themes) and more available from a common official repository, while still enabling third-party developers to also host their own unofficial repositories for add-ons that any user can choose to add themselves if they like.
For additional information about specific add-ons, see Category:All add-ons.
2.1 Language support
XBMC includes full support for many different languages by default. XBMC's structure is such that if the language is not available, or not up-to-date, it can be made by signing up at XBMC Main Translation Project (Frodo), Currently the existing supported languages are Afrikaans, Basque, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, American English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.
3 Hardware requirements
XBMC needs a 3D capable GPU graphics hardware controller for all rendering. The required 3D GPU chips are common today in most modern computers, and even some set-top boxes. XBMC runs well on what (by Intel ATOM standards) are relatively underpowered OpenGL 1.3 (with GLSL support), OpenGL ES 2.0 or Direct3D (DirectX) 9.0 capable systems that are IA-32/x86, x86-64, or ARM CPU based.
When software decoding of a Full HD 1080p high-definition video is performed by the system CPU, a dual-core 2 GHz or better CPU is required in order to allow for perfectly smooth playback without dropping frames or giving playback a jerky appearance. XBMC can however offload most of the video decoding process onto GPU graphics hardware controller that supports one of the following types of hardware-accelerated video decoding: Intel's VAAPI, Nvidia's VDPAU, AMD's XvBA, Microsoft's DXVA, Apple's VDADecoder/VideoToolBox, OpenMAX, and Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator. By taking advantage of such hardware-accelerated video decoding, XBMC can run well on most inexpensive, low-power systems which contain a modern GPU.
4 Official Team-XBMC ports of XBMC
Through the processing power of modern computer hardware (by CPU or by hardware video decoding), XBMC is able to decode high-definition video up to and beyond 1080p resolutions, bypassing hardware limitations of the original (now discontinued) Xbox version of XBMC.
However in the latest official release of XBMC there is hardware accelerated video decoding for DXVA, VDPAU, VAAPI, VDA, and VTB GPU hardware video decoding, as well as hardware accelerated video decoding via ARM NEON, OpenMAX, and Broadcom Crystal HD.
- XBMCbuntu is a free Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with XBMC for Linux already installed and pre-configured, providing a complete packaged media center software suite for all IA-32/x86-based personal computers. XBMC Live uses XBMC Media Center for all media playback and is implemented as a bootable Live CD primarily designed for bare-metal installations to achieve instant on type boot. As of version 11.0 (Eden) XBMCbuntu will be based on Lubuntu instead of Ubuntu Desktop, (this is because Lubuntu is "lighter, less resource hungry and more energy-efficient" than the standard Ubuntu distribution).
- XBMC for Android
- XBMC for Android is a full port of the complete XBMC application to Google's Android operating-system, was first announced and its source code released publicly on 13 June 2012. This is a full port of XBMC's C++ and C source code with all its dependencies to Android with a build-system that was designed to handle multiple processor architectures, like ARM, MIPS, and x86 with the Android NDK (Native Development Kit for Android) without using a single line of Java, and the XBMC.APK is running natively under Android as a Native Activity application. Hardware accelerated video decoding on Android is currently only officially available for Amlogic AML8726-M SoC based devices, such as Pivos XIOS DS Media Play which have been used as the reference hardware platform during the development so far. XBMC source code for Android must be compiled with CrystaX's unofficial fork of the Android NDK which includes additional Glibc (GNU libc) features like wide character, off_t, C++ exception handling, and more, which XBMC for Android code currently requires to compile correctly but is not supported by Google's Android NDK. This is also the real reason why XBMC for Android does not support Google TV, since the Android NDK is yet not available for the Google TV it means that XBMC can not be compiled for it today.
- XBMC for iOS
- XBMC for iOS, which is a full port of XBMC to Apple's iOS operating-system, was first announced and released publicly on 20 January 2011. It supports both 720p and 1080p hardware accelerated video decoding of H.264 videos, and is compatible several Apple's iDevice's and Apple TVs (black) that uses Apple A4 or higher SoC processors with a jailbroken iOS operating-system.
- XBMC for Linux
- XBMC for Linux is primarily developed for Ubuntu Linux. Third-party packages for most other Linux distributions are however available, and it is also possible to compile XBMC Media Center from scratch for any Linux distribution as long as the pre-required dependency libraries are installed first. Hardware video decoding is achieved via the VDPAU API on Nvidia's GPUs, and via the VAAPI API for AMD/ATI Radeon, S3 Graphics, and Intel's newer Integrated Graphics Processors, as well as hardware accelerated video decoding via OpenMAX, ARM NEON, and Broadcom Crystal HD on systems with supporting hardware.
- XBMC for Mac
- XBMC for Mac runs natively on Mac OS X, as well as on the Apple TV 1. 1080p playback can be achieved on Apple computers either via software decoding on the CPU if it is powerful enough, or by hardware accelerated video decoding via Apple's VDA API or Broadcom Crystal HD.
- 1080p playback on the first-generation Apple TV (a.k.a. "ATV1") can only be achieved by hardware accelerated video decoding via Broadcom Crystal HD, the user must replace the ATV's internal WiFi adapter with a Broadcom Crystal HD PCI Express Mini (mini-PCIe) card in order to activate this functionality.
- XBMC for Windows
- XBMC for Windows runs natively on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, it is a 32-bit application but runs on 64-bit Windows and hardware as well, however it is not yet optimized for that architecture so there is no performance gain when running on 64-bit Windows. 1080p playback can be achieved on Windows based computers either via software decoding on the CPU if it's powerful enough, or by hardware accelerated video decoding.
- Hardware video decoding via DirectX Video Acceleration is now supported although this enhancement currently only runs on Windows Vista and Windows 7 since it utilizes the DXVA 2.0 API which is not supported in Windows XP.
5 Commercial XBMC systems
The developers of XBMC state that as long as the GPL licensing of the XBMC software is respected they would love for XBMC to run on as many third-party hardware platforms and operating systems as possible, as "Powered by XBMC" branded devices and systems. With XBMC being pre-installed as a third-party software component that commercial and non-commercial companies and ODM/OEM's can use royalty-free on their own hardware, hardware such as set-top boxes from cable-TV companies, Blu-ray Disc and DVD players, game-consoles, or embedded computers and SoC (System-on-a-Chip) built-in to television sets for web-enabled TVs, and other entertainment devices for the living room entertainment system, home cinema, or similar uses.
6 Third-party forks and derivative work of XBMC
XBMC Media Center source code have over the years become a popular software to fork and use as an application framework platform for others to base their own media center software on, as if XBMC were a GUI toolkit, windowing system, or window manager. Today at least Boxee, MediaPortal, 9x9 Player, and Voddler are separate derivative products that are all openly known to initially have forked the GUI and media player part of their software from XBMC's source code.
- See: History of XBMC
8 XBMC Foundation
The "XBMC Foundation" is the non-profit organization that operates the XBMC Media Center project. The XBMC Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization, registered in the US.
XBMC won two SourceForge 2006 Community Choice Awards. In the 2007 Community Choice Awards, XBMC was nominated finalist in six categories. Also in the 2008 Community Choice Awards XBMC won an award for Best Project for Gamers.
10 Programming and developing
XBMC is a non-profit and free software community driven open-source software project that is developed only by volunteers in their spare time without any monetary gain. The team of developers leading the development of XBMC, "Team-XBMC", encourage anyone and everyone to submit their own source code patches for new features and functions, improve existing ones, or fix bugs to the XBMC project.
XBMC's source code for all its supported platforms is made publicly available by Team XBMC under the open source GNU General Public License Version 2 license. The group currently maintains a Git repository for this source code.
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Health and Healing
The 3HO lifestyle puts the “health” into “Healthy.”
Over the years, Yogi Bhajan shared a lot of practical, traditional wisdom about how to stay healthy. From food and herbs; to the science of Ayurveda; to the healing properties of gems; to the subtle healing power of Sat Nam Rasayan; all these traditions date back to ancient practices. Before modern medicine, people consciously took care of their physical bodies. They worked with their own healing power, and with the gifts of nature, to maintain their health. The systems they created have much to teach us, even today.
We hope you enjoy an introduction to some of these traditions.
You may also be interested in:
- Kundalini Yoga and Healing:
- Meditation to Alleviate Your Stress:
- Staying Healthy in High Altitude:
- Overcoming Cold Depression:
- Preserve your Prostate:
- ‘Low Points’ in Chronic and Critical Illness and What to Do:
- The Medicine of the Naam:
- Healing Hands:
- Eggbeater to Recharge Yourself:
- Flu Season Ginger Lemon Drink:
- 1 of 9
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Treatment for bladder cancer depends on the stage of the cancer, the severity of your symptoms and your overall health.
Bladder Cancer Treatment By Stage
Stages 0 and I: surgery to remove the tumor and chemotherapy of immunotherapy directly into the bladder.
Stages II and III: radical cystectomy (removal of the bladder); surgery to remove only a part of the bladder, followed by radiation and chemotherapy; chemotherapy to shrink the tumor before surgery; or a combination of chemotherapy and radiation in patients who choose not to have surgery or who are not candidates for surgery.
Stage IV: in most patients, the malignancy has progressed too far for a cure. Chemotherapy may be considered for some patients.
Immunotherapy for Bladder Cancer
In immunotherapy, a medication is used to trigger your immune system to attack and kill the cancer cells.
Immunotherapy for bladder cancer is usually performed using the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine delivered through a Foley catheter directly into the bladder. If BCG is not effective, patients may receive interferon, a protein made and released by host cells in response to the presence of viruses, bacteria or tumor cells.
Clinical Trials and Research
Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center offers access to innovative cancer treatments and technologies. Patients who qualify also have the opportunity to participate in clinical trials of treatments that would not otherwise be available to them.
About Bladder Cancer
Bladder cancer starts in cells, called transitional cells, which line the bladder. The tumors are classified based on the way they grow:
- Papillary tumors have a wart-like appearance and are attached to a stalk.
- Nonpapillary (sessile) tumors are much less common and more invasive.
What are the Causes of Bladder Cancer?
Although the exact cause of bladder cancer is uncertain, certain things put you at higher risk:
- Cigarette smoke
- Contact with cancer-causing chemicals, or carcinogens, in the workplace. People who work with dye, rubber, aluminum, leather and pesticides are at highest risk.
- The chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan)
- Radiation therapy to treat cervical cancer
- A long-term bladder infection or irritation may lead to a certain type of bladder cancer.
How is Bladder Cancer Diagnosed?
Physicians may use the following tests to confirm a diagnosis of bladder cancer:
- Complete medical history
- Physical exam
- CT scan
- PET scan
Your physician may also order blood tests to help determine the diagnosis, including a complete blood count (CBC), liver function and tumor markers.
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Today we can hardly imagine that 65 years ago the victorious Allies were in the process of dismembering Germany, tearing down its economy and starving out its population. Older Germans remember the postwar winter of 1946/1947 as a dreadful hunger winter. In his book The German Question and the Origins of the Cold War (Milan 2008) Nicolas Lewkowicz notes that “Germany was given the most comprehensive treatment ever dispensed to a vanquished nation in the modern history of the international political system.” (p. 11) The question is how this treatment came to be and which forces played a pivotal role in these developments.
In 1942 the war was far from decided as German submarines were cruising the American Eastcoast and German tanks were relentlessly advancing in Russia and Africa. This did not stop (or maybe actually encouraged) Jewish exiles from dreaming about Germany’s demise after the war. Tens of thousands of Jewish exiles from Germany had found refuge in New York and even had their own newspaper —Aufbau (German word for ‘build-up’). They were not sitting idle awaiting the end of hostilities, but were active in canvassing the public opinion to lobby for imposing a hard peace on Germany. The most active and outspoken among them was Emil Cohn, better known under his German pen name Emil Ludwig.
Cohn delivered an important speech in New York in 1942, which was noted in the New York Times (6th of July 1942) and printed in Aufbau (July 24th 1942): “Was soll mit Deutschland geschehen?” (What should happen with Germany?). Ludwig advocated that Germany should be totally occupied and not be able to exercise self-government for a long time. Germany should go through a ‘probation’ and should be ‘re-educated’. Another contributor to Aufbau, Manfred George, made no secret about his his primary allegiance when he noted in Aufbau (March 19, 1943) that “onetime German-speaking Jews consider this problem [of Germany’s fate after the war] as Jews and not as Germans.” There were many similar voices but Cohn was not a mere commentator as he was summoned to testify before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives on March 26 1943. He proposed a partition of Germany and a long period of Allied control. In order to spread his radical ideas among the American public he published a book with the title How To Treat The Germans (New York: Willard, 1943). Note that there is no question mark in the title.
In Jewish circles there was little room for a distinction between National-Socialist policies and the German people, which was contrary to the American public opinion of Germany as I will illustrate below. The idea of collective punishment based on collective guilt was paramount among Jews. During a protest rally at Boston Garden on May 2 1943 assistant secretary of state Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. exclaimed: “This guilt now generalized throughout the German people must constitute one of the basic considerations in dealing with the German people in the hour of their final defeat.” Berle was not Jewish, but his family was strongly pro-Zionist and philo-Semitic. His father, Adolf Augustus Berle Sr., was the author of the book The World Significance Of A Jewish State (New York: M. Kennerly, 1918). The World Jewish Congress promoted Berle’s speech at this rally in the Jewish Comment (May 28, 1943).
Knowing that Jewish activists were advocating harsh measures to be imposed on postwar Germany, it is not surprising that a harsh peace was being drafted long before the end of the war. In April 1943 the American journalist Kingsbury Smith revealed the blueprint for a defeated Germany under the title “Washington’s Plan for Postwar Germany” in the American Mercury 56 (April 1943). This plan was entirely congruent with the ideas of Cohn and Berle: 1. The decentralization of Germany as a political and economic unit; 2. The reduction of Germany’s heavy industry by the removal of machinery, and then placing the remaining industries under Allied control for an indefinite period of years; 3. The establishment of an Allied commission for the investigation of war crimes and the trial of Germans who were “responsible for sponsoring or condoning the barbaric slaughter and persecution of Jews in Europe as well as other war crimes.”
This plan meant that the abandonment of the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter of August 1941, which stipulated that no territorial changes would be made without the consent of the people concerned. Moreover, the plan was highly criticized in the media and did not have any significant support among the American public. A public opinion-poll of June 1943 showed that only 11% of the people in the poll were in favor of carving up Germany (“Germany in the Dock,” Fortune, June 27, 1943). In a poll of September 1943 only a quarter of the American public responded that Germany was inherently warlike (50% thought Japan was inherently warlike).
Apparently the American public did not hate (or fear) Germans. In order to achieve this the Society for the Prevention of World War III was found in December 1943. At a first glance non-Jews like the German pacifist Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and the American fiction writer Rex Stout were in charge, but the advisory committee was stacked with Jews like Paul Winkler, Louis Nizer and Clifton Fadiman. Jews were also overrepresented among the contributors and writers, because they were mustered in Jewish circles (S. Casey (2005), “The campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944–1948,” p. 11) The Society was the vanguard of advocates for Germany’s dismemberment. In 1943 Paul Winkler published a book called The German Conspiracy: Secret Germany Behind the Mask (New York: Charles Scribner’s sons, 1943). In 1944 Louis Nizer published his book What To Do With Germany (Chicago: Ziff-Davis) in which he advocated that Germany’s sovereignty as a nation should be forfeited. The society was not very successful among the public. Indeed, its hatred for the Germans as a nation caused indignation among some writers and editors, who accused the society of “bad history, bad logic, and inverted racism” (Common Sense, June 1944 p. 207–212).
In the summer of 1944 the defeat of Germany seemed imminent and Roosevelt felt confident enough to propose an official postwar plan for Germany to his Anglo-Saxon ally Churchill during the Quebec Conference of September 1944. This time it was the Treasury Department of Roosevelt’s long-time confidant Henry Morgenthau Jr. (also from the above mentioned Brain Trust) who drafted the plan, circumnavigating the State Department. Before Morgenthau submitted his plan during the conference he visited the front in France in August 1944. He was horrified to find out that in London and among the American generals “plans were afoot to administer a conquered Germany not as a madhouse full of psychopathic killers but as a defeated nation in need of rebuilding.” (J.M. Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries, Houghton Mifflin 1967). Churchill ultimately agreed to adopt the plan in exchange for a large loan which Great-Britain desperately needed at this stage of the war. The plan was again leaked to the press, causing indignation and criticism towards the Roosevelt administration. Even from within the administration secretary of state Henry L. Stimson criticized the “Carthaginian peace.”
Morgenthau envisaged the dismemberment of the German state and decimation of the German people. A quarter of Germany’s territory was to be given to neighboring countries and ethnically cleansed from Germans. The rest was to be politically divided into several pieces, which were under the control of the Allied nations. Germans were deprived of any form of self-governance and political self-determination. Economically, the remaining German territory was to be stripped of all its industry and the German people were only to be fed on a subsistence level. Germans were not allowed to emigrate and were liable to be conscripted for forced labor abroad. Access by relief organizations was not allowed, and any charity from abroad was forbidden. Germany was to become the largest concentration camp on earth. Goebbels described the plan as followed: “The Jew Morgenthau wanted to make Germany into a giant potato patch.”
The “Morgenthau Plan” has often been downplayed: Morgenthau’s role was diminished by the suggestion that it came largely from the pen of Harry Dexter White (also Jewish, a target of Sen. Joe McCarthy, and later shown to be a communist spy), that the plan was executed after Morgenthau’s term of office, and that the Allied occupation in fact ended in the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1948. However, it should be noted that Morgenthau was committed to the execution of his plan and published a book Germany Is Our Problem (New York: Harper, 1945) to personally promote the plan. The Allied occupation regime until 1948 largely executed the Morgenthau Plan by Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 imposing a division of Germany into four zones, restrictive food distribution which caused starvation in 1947, and by dismantling German industries. Millions of Germans were submitted to forced labor abroad and millions of Germans were on the brink of starvation at home as pointed out in Herbert Hoover’s report “German Agricultural and Food Requirements.” Eventually, it was the Cold War that hastened the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany and its merging into the camp of the Western Allies.
As outlined above, the Roosevelt administration’s postwar plan for Germany did not stem from the sentiment among the American public, or even its generals at the front. The American public did not believe in the inherent evil of the Germans, nor did it desire a harsh peace. They did not hate the Germans, nor did they believe in collective guilt/punishment. It was the desire of small minority of Jewish activists and policy makers with access to President Roosevelt. The Morgenthau Plan did not come out of the blue; its outline was in place long before September 1944. It stemmed from the same group of Jewish activists and policy makers who had advocated its basic principles for years in many publications. Morgenthau himself was deeply committed to his plan and advocated its execution after his leave from office. The Morgenthau Plan became the official Allied occupation policy of Germany until Cold War reality forced its abandonment. Still, it should be noted that at least until 1991 German chancellors were forced to sign a ‘act of submission’ to the Allied victors before entering office.
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You are here
Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was 50 years old before he began what was to become his first symphony. It was not, strictly speaking, his first attempt at a symphony: he had actually composed a symphony modeled on Mozart as an exercise 30 years earlier (only one movement survives), and in 1898 took a stab at a programmatic symphony based on the life of the English military-imperial hero General Gordon, which, fortunately, did not get far.
Any composer approaching the symphony after Beethoven might well have had some trepidation about it. Brahms’ difficulties with his first symphony were legend. By the early 20th century, there was the additional problem of whether the symphony’s day had passed. Though some composers of Elgar’s generation were moving away from the symphony, Elgar remained convinced that it was still viable. In a 1905 lecture at Birmingham University, he said
“It seems to me that because the greatest genius of our days, Richard Strauss, recognizes the symphonic-poem as a fit vehicle for his splendid achievements, some writers are inclined to be positive that the symphony is dead… but when the looked-for genius comes, it may be absolutely revived.”
A few years later, Elgar took it upon himself to be the “looked-for genius,” and the result was a staggering immediate success: the Symphony was performed about 100 times worldwide within a year after its premiere in December 1908. It has not done so well since, and is now only an occasional visitor to the standard repertory.
The Symphony might be regarded as a battle, a study of opposites in conflict: the stately versus the agitated, the singable diatonic melody against the sinewy chromatic theme, the foreboding against the triumphant. At the very outset, Elgar pens one of his most stately melodies (he already had four of the five “Pomp and Circumstance” marches behind him). Elgar uses the unusual key of A-flat major for this introduction and “motto” theme, but does not stay there long. The tumultuous Allegro begins in D minor, a key as far as possible from A-flat (Elgar wrote to his friend August Jaeger that he had “thrown over all key relationships as formerly practiced” but that he “was not silly enough to think (or wish) that I have invented anything” in the process), with the motto inserting itself, and its mood, into the storm, and eventually establishing calm at the end. Throughout the symphony, Elgar uses a peculiar device to insinuate motifs such as the motto in an almost subliminal way: he writes them as “solos” for the players on the last stand of a string section. He commented:
“I have employed the last desks of the strings to get a soft diffused sound: the listener need not be bothered to know where it comes from — the effect is of course different from that obtained from the first desk soli.”
The second movement is another kind of battle. A turbulent main section, (in another distant key, F-sharp minor) features a driving perpetual motion figure and an ominous quick march. It modulates to B-flat major, where gossamer strings, flutes, and harp play an idyllic interlude that Elgar said should be played “like something we hear down by the river.”
The perpetual motion figure reasserts itself, but gradually slows until, improbably, it becomes, note for note, the principal theme of the Adagio third movement. Both Hans Richter, who conducted the premiere, and August Jaeger, a longtime champion of Elgar’s music, compared this movement to the adagios of Beethoven, though to modern audiences it will more likely recall Mahler in its breadth, heart-on-sleeve passion, and richness (a richness which is due considerably to Elgar’s subdividing the strings into nine parts instead of the usual five).
The finale begins with another slow introduction, in D minor, in which a foreboding opening gives way to a minor-key march figure in the low strings and bassoons, and then to the motto theme. Elgar gives the march figure a series of startling transformations, including thundering it out fortissimo and turning into a lush cantabile. At the end, the motto theme emerges triumphant over hammer blows from the brass and percussion, the battle clearly won.
— Lawyer and lutenist Howard Posner has also annotated programs for the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra and the Coleman Chamber Concerts. His notes have appeared in the program of the Salzburg Festival.
Length: 50 minutes
Orchestration: piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, two harps, and strings
First Los Angeles Philharmonic performance: July 29, 1926, Sir Henry Wood conducting
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Disadvantages in site
Arno River creates visual experience between Florence. Yet visual experience is only positive thing the river is offering. Arno river might seem beautiful, it is a wall between two sides of the city; the discontinuity of culture and social experience. The new design for Botanic Garden is to create an environmental and social experience for the tourists and residents by attract and lead them in closely to the river. By physically interact with water and gather people with architectural space it gives people more chance to newly experience the site from nature and people.
This is resolved by threading two sites together, by threading it, creates translucent extension of river edge which making more opportunity for people to experience water. The space between the thread will create attraction space for people to experience not only the garden but the social interaction space. The maximum water level of the river; - 8 feet of street level, acts to be a border line of heavy and light structure, which is the border line for existing heavy structure versus visual transparency of light structure.
Status: School Project
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Creating a fairer Britain
If a worker says that you or another worker employed by you or your agent have unlawfully discriminated against them in a work situation, your responsibility is to deal with the complaint in a way that finds out if there has been unlawful discrimination and, if there has been, to put the situation right.
This guide focuses on the equality law aspects of dealing with a complaint from a worker. If a worker makes a complaint (which is often called ‘bringing a grievance’) about something else at work, which is not related to a protected characteristic, then you can get advice from the Arbitration and Conciliation Service (Acas) about how to deal with this. Contact details for Acas are found within Further sources of information.
A worker may:
These are not alternatives, since the person complaining still has a right to make a claim in the Employment Tribunal even if they first complained to you.
Pages in this section include:
A worker who believes they have experienced unlawful discrimination has a right to make an Employment Tribunal claim.
Defending an Employment Tribunal claim can be lengthy, expensive and draining, and it can have a damaging impact on the reputation of your organisation.
It is likely to be in everyone’s interest to try to put things right before a claim is made to an Employment Tribunal.
If you have good procedures for sorting out complaints about discrimination, you may be able to avoid the person feeling it is necessary to bring a claim against you.
An important factor will be for your workers to be sure that complaints about unlawful discrimination will be taken seriously, even if they are raised less formally, outside your formal grievance procedures, and that something will happen to put the situation right if someone has discriminated unlawfully.
Tell your workers what the options are for bringing unlawful discrimination to your attention, and how to use your procedures, including:
Make it clear what will happen if, after investigating, you find out that someone has discriminated unlawfully against someone else:
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So a couple of weeks ago the Nonprofiteer received a press release announcing “Redefining [of] the Nonprofit Model.” Doubtless you’re all familiar with the genre: a group of business people get together and decide that the nonprofit sector hasn’t cured cancer or ended poverty because people in the nonprofit sector are stupid and lazy, and that an infusion of good old hard-headed American for-profit business practices will compensate for that. Voila: instant Great Society!
One hundred advisors, including many of Silicon Valley’s elite, are coming together to disrupt the nonprofit space. . . . [They] have committed to one full year of serving on the board of a nonprofit. . . . [and] attending monthly salons where they will discuss the specific pain points of their assigned nonprofits and attempt to find solutions as a team. . . . [This] is part of a larger movement . . . to make the non-profit world more efficient. . . . “This is just the start of how [we] will disrupt the nonprofit sector and create new, innovative ways for business leaders to contribute . . . . Before [this], there was no easy path for nonprofits to find experienced leaders to help them at a board management level. A board role is not just about fundraising, but includes developing growth plans, operational efficiency, cause marketing, customer relationship management, event planning, and much more.”. . . . In order to maximize results, [the group] carefully matches advisors to nonprofits based on their skills, interests and a nonprofit’s needs.
Tags: 501c3, Advocacy, Board of Directors, Boards of Directors, charity, governance, Marketing, Mission, nonprofit, Nonprofit management, nonprofits, not for profit, philanthrocapitalism, philanthropy, Poverty, Private Philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, volunteer
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Shortly after a bill banning guns on college campuses passed the State House, it appeared UCCS posted 10 new tips on how to defend yourself from an attacker.
The webpage from the Department of Public Safety offered suggestions including vomiting, urinating and being passive.
This sparked social media outcry and prompted an article by the International Business Times.
The webpage had a time stamp of Feb. 18 at 6:30 p.m. But university officials said the page was actually created in 2006 and was in connection to a self-defense course.
"It was part of supplemental information intended for women who had completed a self-defense class on campus that we call RAD, Rape Aggression Defense," said spokesman Tom Hutton.
"I do feel safe here, I feel like it is a safe campus," said student Lauren Russ.
Russ took a self defense course before she started college and said she was surprised by some of these suggestions. "It is kind of weird, it wouldn't be my gut instinct to say I'm going to throw up on this person, but in that situation I wouldn't hold back," said Russ.
"I've never really heard of that before," said student Anna Clauson. She said she regularly carries mace with her for protection.
"Tell your attacker you have a disease or are menstruating? I don't understand how that will keep someone from attacking you," questioned student Leah McFann.
Cpl. Lisa Dipzinski teaches RAD on campus and knows there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to fighting off an attacker.
"As women we have to cheat to win. We have to go for eyes, we have to go for ears, we have to go for the throat, we have to go for a groin strike," Dipzinski said.
Dipzinski defended the more unusual suggestions that surfaced on the public safety webpage. "If you can use anything to your advantage, which would be to say that you are going to urinate, that you're menstruating, that you're going to vomit, that you have a disease ... I know it sounds way off the wall, but why not use something to your advantage. You could possibly get a perpetrator that is disgusted by one of those things and that could ultimately make them walk away," she said.
UCCS has updated its website adding a statement on these suggestions. Those suggestions have been removed.
These are the suggestions they had listed:
1. Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself
2. Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
3. Kick off your shoes if you have time and can't run in them.
4. Don't take time to look back, just get away
5. If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense
6. Tell you attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
7. Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
8. Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
9. Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
10. Remember every emergency situation is different, only you can decide which action is the most appropriate.
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What makes an applicant for a software engineering job an attractive candidate for hire? This is a perennial question that is likely to be uppermost in the minds of both employers and their prospective employees. Software engineering is highly competitive job market where, on the one hand, industry expectations run high, and on the other hand we have hundreds of “education providers” professing to deliver a sound education in computer science. It can get confusing to aspiring software development professionals as to what exactly is required of them to secure that first salaried position… and it can be frustrating to employers when newly hired staff are not performing up to modest expectations simply because they have not approached the trade with the right mindset.
Let us try to outline the measurable skills of an “ideal” software engineering candidate who presents herself for interview. First and foremost, she’d be very strong in her software engineering concepts. An in-depth knowledge of OOP concepts would be evident. She’d be thorough with the architecture of at least one development platform of choice, and be aware of how the various sub-systems and libraries of the platform work in cohesion. For example if we consider .NET as the development framework, a savvy software engineer would be aware of the high-level workings of the CLR and common language infrastructure. The candidate would have the essential background technical knowledge to develop Web applications such as an understanding of the lifecycle of a Web Request. She’d be familiar with Lifecycle Management concepts like Continuous Integration, Unit Test Driven Development and Configuration Management.
A “good” software engineering candidate would know about industry-recognized Design Patterns, and ideally have adopted a few patterns into their experimental project code. Conceptual knowledge of widely used Design Patterns like Singleton, Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Facade, Proxy etc is essential knowhow, since these concepts tune the programmer’s mindset to leveraging best of breed solutions to standard design problems, without reinventing the wheel (and reinventing it rather poorly perhaps). Whilst generally having a modern, agile, paperless, code-design based approach to programming, a budding developer must have enough sense to initially whiteboard any non-trivial implementation, and seek peer review from her teammates. At an interview, this skill could be displayed through one’s ability to represent a simple design problem as a UML class diagram.
In this day and age of vastly scalable non-relational databases and cloud computing, one might be tempted to frown upon knowledge of plain old-fashioned relational database concepts like ER diagramming, SQL, Normalization and Optimization. However, these concepts are still very much in use in most enterprise applications, and must be studied and understood. Woe to the interview candidate who cannot answer a question like “Why would one sometimes need to de-normalize a database? Can you think of an example?” or “What is the use of an Index?”.
Some conceptual knowledge of how people work together to deliver a project to a client is mandatory for beginners. Familiarity with a lightweight team-engagement paradigm like Scrum would be ideal to have.
Successfully facing a test for conceptual knowledge is of course not the only indicator of potential success at an interview. But the concept-savvy candidate is the quintessential software engineer. The era of concept-blind “code monkeys” working principally through trial and error (“copy-paste coding”) is to be frowned upon by any respectable software engineer or employer. Of course, we are speaking of engineering graduates who have had ample time and guidance to perfect their attitude to programming. The story might be different if one is a job applicant fresh out of high-school. In a sense, the evaluation that such trainees would have to face would be harsh, because employers would have to simply rely on the rather controversial concept of “a high IQ”. It has to be admitted that a good developer will almost certainly have strong innate logical reasoning capacity, usually expressed as a gift for providing algorithmic solutions to real-world problems. This is the sort of test that one who has had no formal training in computer science would face at an interview (e.g. “tell us the steps to sort a randomized list of numbers from 1 to 100” etc).
Having said this, possessing a high IQ, being knowledgable about engineering concepts and being a great team-worker still does’t complete the picture of a “good” software engineer. At the heart of a successful developer lies an appreciation of the end user’s objectives for the system under development. No matter how “smart” a software developer is at codifying algorithms or grasping new frameworks, she only succeeds when she has met the end user’s expectations. So “well rounded” developers are also great end users – those who tryout new apps as hobby. Unless you use software freely in your own life, its unlikely you know what is a user-friendly, defect-free app. Along with an appreciation for usability comes an appreciation for testing one’s code.
So from the perspective of a job applicant, what does one do as prep for that first interview? Ask oneself the question, am I aware of the basic concepts? OOP-check. Design Patterns-check. Web Request Lifecycle-check. Logical reasoning and writing of algorithms-check. Configuration Management concepts-check. Relational Database design-check. And so the list goes on. Freshers preparing for an interview should master the ability to clearly demonstrate one’s knowledge of these concepts, by giving both textbook metaphors of their use and purpose, as well as recounting how one has used or encountered these concepts in past projects (at University or elsewhere, perhaps within common development frameworks itself).
Let us now look at the other side of the coin – how does a potential employer spot someone who has great potential as a software developer? At the heart of making a good hire lies the ability to gauge if a candidate can reason from first principle, literally thinking on her feet. After making a candidate comfortable, its an excellent idea to present a simple real-world problem on the board, and see how far she can get with providing a solution in design / pseudo-code. Give the candidate ample time, support and encouragement. Once the initial jitters are at bay, a good candidate will always make a genuine attempt to answer the problem. A weak candidate will always stall early with algorithms or design problems, because of a lack of critical reasoning capacity – an essential trait for becoming a good software engineer.
It might sound like a harsh reality, but software engineering is not for everyone, just like any other “trade” like art or music or management is not for everyone. However everyone must be given the opportunity to try their luck at this fascinating trade, and it is likely that those who succeed will be those who approach solving real-world problems logically from first principle, with great diligence. The sooner aspiring software engineers learn this, the better their career prospects. This is, and must be, a transparent truth between the industry and the thousands of prospective new entrants.
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MR. MORAZZINI: Yes, Justice Ginsburg. With regard to fighting words, the -- the societal interest in preventing acts of violence is -- is different than the concern at issue here today.
Eric says: Justice Ginsburg is referring to "Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire" (315 U.S. 568), a famous case involving one of the very few regulations of speech held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court. The case took place in 1942, when people were a lot more conscious of social gentility and such, so New Hampshire had a law stating that anyone who called out another person in a public place and directly insulted him in a way that was intended to inflict injury or incite the person to violence could be arrested for a breach of the peace. A Jehovah's Witness named Walter Chaplinsky was passing out literature in a public square -- and when the cops showed up to make him stop, he called them some bad words (like "fascist") and they arrested him under the law. He argued that the law violated his free speech rights, but SCOTUS said that very narrowly defined circumstances, such as those involving "fighting words" (words that would incite other parties to violence against the speaker) can be regulated.|
This is tenuously related to violent video games, because in this case, the words were provocative and mean spirited -- and were ostensibly intended to incite the listener to violence against the speaker. Video games may be described, at worst, as "inspiring" violence, but not as inciting it in anywhere near the same way. That's my opinion, though. It's what I would argue if I were arguing against this law, and it's why I think the Chaplinsky reference is problematic. Good thing Morazzini agrees with me!
JUSTICE KAGAN: So could I just make -- make sure I understand that, Mr. Morazzini, because as I understand the State has given up its argument that the interest protected by this law is an interest in preventing minors who see these games from going out and committing violent acts themselves; that the State is not saying that that's the interest in the law; is that correct? That instead the State is saying that the interest in the law is in protecting children's moral development generally?
MR. MORAZZINI: Justice Kagan, we welcome that as -- as an effect of California's regulation, but the primary interest was the internal intrinsic harm to minors. That's what the State of California is deeply concerned with in this case.JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Can I have a point of clarification? Justice Ginsburg talked about the labeling parts of this act. The circuit court struck those portions of the act. You have not challenged that ruling.
MR. MORAZZINI: Justice --JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: There are two sections to the act. One is a criminal act for selling to a minor, and the other is a requirement that you label in a certain way each video. The district court said both were -- I think the circuit court said both were unconstitutional, correct?
MR. MORAZZINI: Yes, Justice Sotomayor. They found --JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: And your brief has not addressed the labeling requirements at all.
MR. MORAZZINI: Well, we didn't, Your Honor, because one holding of the Ninth Circuit hinged upon the other. In striking down the body of California's law, the restriction on the sales, the court found that since it's not illegal to sell these games to 18-year-olds, that the governmental purpose served behind the label itself was -- was in fact misleading. So under the Zadora case law, I don't have the case cite before me, but under Zadora regarding lawyers' advertising of -- of services, it -- the government can require the labeling, so long as it's necessary to prevent misleading the consumer. The Ninth Circuit found that because they struck down the body of our law, that the "18" label would be misleading. So --
Eric says: In case you don't know: The federal court system in the U.S. has three primary tiers. The first is the "District Court" -- this is the local branch of the U.S. court system in your area. Each major city tends to have one, covering a whole big district of the surrounding area. The next tier is the "Circuit Court," which is the one that cases are initially appealed to in the case of an appellate dispute. California (along with most of the west coast and a few other parts of the country) is covered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The SCOTUS is above all of it, and it's the court that this case has gone to.|
The issue here is that when you appeal something to the next level from a previous ruling, you need to challenge everything you think was wrong with that ruling -- no exceptions. If you leave something unargued in your appeal, it's just assumed that you were OK with that part of the previous ruling. In this case, California apparently didn't challenge the Circuit Court's ruling that the labeling portion of their regulatory law (something saying violent games had to be clearly labeled 18+ or something), and Justice Sotomayor is confirming that California is acquiescing to that ruling from the lower court.
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: That's an interesting concession on your part, that the labeling doesn't have a need separate from the restriction on sale. I would have thought that if you wanted a lesser restriction, that you would have promoted labeling as a reasonable strict scrutiny restriction to permit the control of sale of these materials to minors; but you seem to have given up that argument altogether.
|Eric says: For a discussion of what "strict scrutiny" means and how it involves Justice Sotomayor's argument here, please see my earlier discussion of this case in Objection! #3.|
MR. MORAZZINI: Justice Sotomayor, I certainly did not attempt or intend to concede that the Ninth Circuit's opinion was correct in any sense in this case.JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Well, you have conceded it by not appealing it. But we're not -- your case on labeling rises and falls on the sale to minors?
MR. MORAZZINI: At this point, I would agree, Your Honor.JUSTICE GINSBURG: Does --
JUSTICE SCALIA: I gather that -- that if --if the parents of the minor want the kid to watch this violent stuff, they like gore, they may even like violent kids --
JUSTICE SCALIA: -- then -- then the State of California has no objection? Right? So long as the parent buys the thing, it's perfectly okay.
MR. MORAZZINI: Your Honor, under Ginsberg they are entitled to direct the development and the upbringing of their children in the manner they see fit.JUSTICE SCALIA: Yes.
MR. MORAZZINI: It's important to the State of California that the parent -- that we ensure that the parent can involve themselves in this important decision.JUSTICE SCALIA: So that's basically all this is, is a -- a law to help parents, is that right?
MR. MORAZZINI: It's one of the two fundamental interests that are served by this law, yes, ensuring that parents can involve themselves in the front end. California sought to erect a barrier in between a retail sales clerk and a minor with regard to violent material, just as we allow for minors' access to sexual material, because California sees that the developmental harm that could be caused to minors is no less significant than that recognized by this Court in -- in Ginsberg with regard to minors' exposure to sexual material. Now, again, the material at issue in Ginsberg was not obscene.JUSTICE ALITO: Do you think there is any barrier in California to minors' access to sexual material?
MR. MORAZZINI: I believe California has a law, Penal Code Section 3.3.1.JUSTICE GINSBURG: California has a Ginsberg type law.
MR. MORAZZINI: Yes.JUSTICE ALITO: Does your office spend a lot of time enforcing that?
|Eric says: Justice Alito is asking whether or not the cops actually enforce these antiquated "obscenity" laws with regard to sexual material. The clear implication, although Mr. Morazzini tries to weasel out of it, is that they do not -- and therefore, such laws regarding violence would be even more irrelevant.|
MR. MORAZZINI: I'm not aware, Justice Alito. But there is a proscription on the sale of sexual material to minors. It is defined as harmful to minors, similar to California's act. In fact, California's act in incorporating the three prongs of Miller goes even further than the Ginsberg law at issue, in Ginsberg, New York law.JUSTICE GINSBURG: Is there -- you've been asked questions about the vagueness of this and the problem for the seller to know what's good and what's bad. California -- does California have any kind of an advisory opinion, an office that will view these videos and say, yes, this belongs in this, what did you call it, deviant violence, and this one is just violent but not deviant? Is there -- is there any kind of opinion that the -- that the seller can get to know which games can be sold to minors and which ones can't?
|Eric says: Remember that the ESRB and related organizations are, like the MPAA, private institutions that merely work in an advisory capacity. Of course, ratings from these institutions are hugely powerful -- perhaps unfairly so -- and carry an almost government-like regulatory potency, but enforcement thereof is totally voluntary on behalf of sellers, etc. No state has ever tried to create a commission that would rate the appropriateness of video games, or anything like that, because that would be a clear violation of the First Amendment -- and pretty Big Brother-ish, too.|
MR. MORAZZINI: Not that I'm aware of, Justice Ginsburg.JUSTICE SCALIA: You should consider creating such a one. You might call it the California office of censorship. It would judge each of these videos one by one. That would be very nice.
MR. MORAZZINI: Your Honor, we -- we ask juries to judge sexual material and its appropriateness for minors as well. I believe that if -- if we can view the --JUSTICE SCALIA: Do we let the government do that? Juries are not controllable. That's the wonderful thing about juries, also the worst thing about juries. (Laughter.)
JUSTICE SCALIA: But -- but do we let government pass upon, you know, a board of censors? don't think so.
MR. MORAZZINI: Justice Scalia, California's not doing that here. The standard is quite similar to that in the sexual material realm. California is not acting as a censor. It is telling manufacturers and distributors to look at your material and to judge for yourselves whether or not the level of violent content meets the prongs of this definition.JUSTICE KENNEDY: I can see your white light is on. But even if we get past what I think are difficult questions about vagueness and how to interpret this law, isn't there a less restrictive alternative with the -- the V-Chip.
Eric says: The white light means that the speaker has five more minutes to finish their statement. Obviously, this really means that Morazzini has five more minutes to answer the Justices' questions.|
The "less restrictive alternative" language that Justice Kennedy uses here refers to a specific standard that laws involving fundamental rights must conform to. They must be the least-restrictive possible law; if a less restrictive way exists that achieves the goal the state wants to regulate, the law will be struck down. Again, for more info, see Objection! #3.
MR. MORAZZINI: Your Honor, I believe you are referring to the parental controls that are available on some of the new machines?JUSTICE KENNEDY: Yes.
MR. MORAZZINI: As we submitted in our briefing, a simple internet search for bypassing parental controls brings up video clips instructing minors and young adults how to b pass the parental controls.JUSTICE KENNEDY: V-Chips don't work?
MR. MORAZZINI: I believe the V-Chip is limited to television, Justice Kennedy. If I could reserve the remainder of my time.
|Eric says: Yeah, the V-Chip is limited to televisions... and to 1999. WTF, Justice Kennedy.|
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Morazzini.
MR. MORAZZINI: Thank you.CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Mr. Smith.
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Not frying but drying
Solar dryers or also called food dehydrators can be used to dry fruits, vegetables, herbs and even meat. They have many advantages compared to conventional drying in the sun including increase of productivity, more hygienic, less labor intensive. There are many different models. The choice depend on desired capacity and drying speed and to less extend climate.
Options: Indirect dryers with different capacity.
Suggested program: Theory (2h), Construction (4h): Total 6 hours
Estimated material costs: 50-100 Euro, depending on capacity
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http://theturningwheel.org/workshops/solar-dryer/
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Your Credit Report:
What's Your Score?
In the past, all you needed was a handshake to close a deal. But in today's economy, your name is only as good as your credit rating -- so a good credit report is a necessity, not a luxury.
Who checks your credit?
Credit scores affect whether or not you can get credit -- as well as the rate you will pay for credit cards, car loans, mortgages and other kinds of credit.
But your credit rating isn't important only if you want to borrow money. Your credit score might be checked in other situations, too. In fact, for everything from renting an apartment to being hired for certain jobs to how much you have to pay as a deposit on your electrical service and for your car insurance, your credit score may play a role!
How to get a copy of your credit report
To make sure you regularly know where your credit score stands, once a year, you are entitled to a free credit report (in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act), which you can obtain via AnnualCreditReport.com.
Be wary of imitators, who will likely charge a fee for the service or require you sign up for a long-term credit reporting contract.
Furthermore, if you have been denied credit within the past 60 days because of information provided by one of the credit bureaus, that agency will provide you with a free copy of your credit score. You are also entitled to a free credit report if you're unemployed.
Get out of credit card debt >>
You can order your credit report online, by phone or via US mail. To get more information or to order, contact the three major credit bureaus:
Information you need
The fastest and simplest way to get your credit report is via the web -- usually your credit score and report data will be available immediately. But no matter how you request your credit report, you will need the following information:
- First, middle, and last name (including Jr, Sr, III)
- Current address
- Previous addresses (for the past two years)
- Social Security Number
- Date of birth
- Phone number and/or email address
Up next: Finding and fixing credit errors >>
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My correspondent states:
For the past few years I have been working on my own transcription of the Toronto Ontario census for 1861. When the Ancestry.com index and film came online last night I was curious to have a look and found that I could browse the actual film pages.
I was surprised that Ancestry.com only had 8390 images of Toronto, particularly when there were two pages for each folio or household. Thus, Ancestry appears to havecovered only 4195 households in Toronto.
In my inspection I came across one of the pages that the Library & Archives Canada (or its predecessor) used to introduce a ward. This lists the names of the wards and the number of folios used by each:-
St Andrew's 1111
St David's 1460
St George's 489
St James's 1413
St John's 1604
St Lawrence's 749
St Patrick's 1149
This totals 7975 folios.
This infers that at least 3780 households are missing, and since Ancestry has included the introductory and concluding pages around the wards and the divisions within the wards, this must be an under-estimate.
I have inspected Ancestry.com provision sufficiently to know that the whole of St Lawrence's and St Patrick's Wards have been omitted. I am suspicious that a fair section of St Andrew's (divisions 2-4 inclusive) and St John's (divisions 5 and 6) are also missing, but I have not made a complete check on these as yet.
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http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/06/caveat-re-1861-canada-census-online.html
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Team Youth leaders
Become a youth volunteer leader
National Youth Council
The National Youth Council is a committee of 19 college students who have been selected because of their demonstrated leadership ability and their potential for service to the March of Dimes Foundation. The purpose of the National Youth Council is to assist the March of Dimes in the design and implementation of programs targeted to young people.
Chain Reaction & Collegiate Council
Chain Reactions (high school) and Collegiate Councils (college) are student groups that exist to conduct year-round activities to support the March of Dimes mission. These groups provide young people with meaningful learning experiences while building the volunteer force that will help the March of Dimes accomplish its goals today and lead the Foundation into the future.
March for Babies Leadership
Join our signature fundraising event March for Babies as a walker, and take it to the next step by becoming a team captain for a youth team. You can lead a March for Babies Youth Kick Off to motivate youth involvement; work with the March for Babies chair and committee and local staff to increase youth visibility and participation; and serve as a spokesperson for the event throughout the campaign for elementary, middle and high schools or area college campuses.
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http://www.marchofdimes.com/printableArticles/youthleaders.html
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NEW ANTI-TERROR LEGISLATION
Journalists Worry 'Big Brother Law' Will Kill Press Freedom
By Charles Hawley
A new law working its way toward passage in Germany has journalists worried. Certain provisions, they say, could eliminate the ability for reporters to protect their sources. Still, the measure is likely to go into effect early next year.
It has been called the "Big Brother" law in the German media due to its provisions allowing online and telephone surveillance. The Interior Ministry in Berlin describes it as a necessary step to protect the country from the dangers of international terrorism.
But journalists in Germany see the bill -- currently in the parliament's arbitration committee after having failed to get through the country's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, in November -- in a different light. They are concerned the law would make it much easier for investigators to spy on reporters without their knowledge, giving the state access to both their computer files and their sources. That, they say, represents an unacceptable attack on freedom of the press in Germany. Publishers, journalists and media lawyers are up in arms.
German journalists may soon lose certain legal protections.
This law "is one in a series of so-called security laws that have one thing in common: They endanger the freedom of the press and especially investigative journalism," Wolfgang Krach, managing editor of the influential daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, told SPIEGEL. "This is not a case of a profession selfishly looking for extra privileges. Rather, journalists want to be conferred the rights guaranteed them by the constitution and to be able to fulfil their role unhindered."
The Right to Protect Sources
The law in question would significantly increase the investigative powers of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Investigators would be allowed to tap the phones of terror suspects, film their homes, track their mobile phone signals and even send Trojan viruses to suspects' computers allowing investigators to install "Remote Forensic Software" and clandestinely search through hard drives.
WHAT THE BKA LAW ENTAILSThe Background
The lower house of the German parliament has approved a new law that increases the investigative powers of Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament, blocked the law. Now, an arbitration committee is looking for a compromise.
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Is the Bar Council playing politics? — Rueban Balasubramaniam
MAY 18 — The Malaysian government has recently criticized the Malaysian Bar Council for playing politics in reaction to the Bar’s resolution that the police had used excessive force against demonstrators at the recent Bersih rally.
The government argues that the Bar is not being “impartial” in its assessment of governmental action. It alleges that the Bar is now operating effectively operating as a political opposition party.
The objection that the Bar is playing politics is not new. Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has in the past recorded this critique of the Bar. Indeed, he has joined in the government’s response to the Bar’s recent resolution about police conduct during the Bersih rally.
This line of criticism of the Bar displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Bar as articulate defenders of the ideal of the rule of law and democracy.
To start with the rule of law, it is an ideal that is widely contrasted with arbitrary power. A commitment to the rule of law requires that before a government can claim that its actions are legally and politically legitimate, it must show that its actions accord with a sound interpretation of relevant laws.
In Malaysia, this means that the government must show that its actions accord mainly with fundamental constitutional norms. The Malaysian Constitution is the “supreme” law of the land, which means that any exercise of state power can only be legitimate if it is shown to comport with a sound interpretation of what the Constitution requires.
And because we now live in a human rights age, it is important to also keep in mind the relevance of fundamental human rights norms. Indeed, there is good reason to think that the Malaysian Constitution already presupposes such norms within the bill of rights, where we find that the bill protects rights that are widely recognized as human rights.
Of course, the Constitution is not the sole source of law. Other relevant legislation and case law might also apply. But the Constitution has special salience when it comes to the rule of law in the Malaysian context because it is the highest source of law in the land.
To the extent that the Constitution is expressive of the ideal of the rule of law and to the extent that the government derives its authority from the Constitution, all political questions are therefore legal questions.
For the government to enjoy legitimate political power, it must justify its actions by reference to appropriate legal norms. This subordination of politics to law is precisely what makes Malaysia a legitimate rule-of-law state, not a lawless state in which ruling elites manipulate the law to suit their intended political ends.
If the law is subject to constant manipulation, then the law is subordinate to politics and is therefore not a constraint against arbitrary rule. This is not our situation. Certainly, the government has never formally disavowed the rule of law.
And, to the extent that it characteristically asserts legal authority for its actions, the government recognizes that the legitimacy of political decision-making depends upon the legality of its actions. In short, its actions signal the idea that in Malaysia, law operates to tame politics.
If politics is subordinate to law in the sense that all legitimate political power must answer to a test of legal legitimacy — one that requires that the government show how its actions accord with a sound interpretation of the law — then it follows that lawyers have a special role to play within the rule-of-law state.
At one level, this role flows from the lawyer’s expertise in the law. Lawyers know how to interpret the complex body of law to determine whether or not the government is properly complying with the rule of law.
At another more fundamental level, lawyers are under a duty to uphold the integrity of the law as a coherent body of norms that operates to facilitate the interests of those it serves. In the Malaysian context, it is plain that the intended beneficiaries of the law are private citizens.
It follows that Malaysian lawyers are intermediaries between the ideals of the rule of law and democracy, where the ideal of democracy speaks to the notion of a representative government that aspires to protect the fundamental interests of the citizenry.
Democracy is not purely a matter of majority rule. Rather, it is predicated upon the idea that each individual is possessed of fundamental rights and interests that should filter into political decision-making that aspires to serve these interests.
Indeed, this is the impetus behind majority rule — such rule is the best proxy for determining how best to serve these rights and interests. It follows that the ideals of the rule of law and democracy are mutually constitutive of each other because both work together to undergird the idea of official accountability.
The linkage between both ideals is evident in the Malaysian Constitution. The document contains a bill of rights, as well as provisions affirming the separation of powers, and judicial review. More broadly, the supremacy of the Constitution clarifies that politics is beholden to law, an idea that makes sense only on the basis that politics should work in the interests of the citizenry.
Democratic politics in Malaysia is, thus, constituted by a duty to uphold constitutional norms. In this connection, an important role of the Malaysian Bar is to articulate the link between the ideals of the rule of law and democracy and to signal to the government whether or not it is properly observing this link.
With this point in view, it is apparent that the objection that the Malaysian Bar is playing politics is wrongheaded because it assumes that there is a tension between the ideals of the rule of law and democracy.
This assumption is implicit in the objection that the Bar is playing politics and acting like a political opposition party because the corollary to this objection is that if the Bar wants to criticize the state for failing to uphold the rule of law, then it must make an explicitly political argument in the character of a political party in keeping with the norms of democratic politics.
The government reconstructs the Bar’s assertion of the rule of law as a purely political position taken in opposition to the government’s decisions. There is a complete failure to see that the Bar is exercising its proper role by reminding the government that its democratic political authority is constituted by a commitment to the rule of law as mutually constitutive ideals.
This is not to play politics. Rather, it is to remind the government that democratic politics in Malaysia is infused by a commitment to the rule of law and that there cannot be the former without a commitment to the latter.
It seems that for too long Malaysia has been ruled by politicians who fail to understand the interplay of the ideals of the rule of law and democracy. There are complex reasons for this failure but I suspect that a major one is some concern that any acknowledgement of such a link would entail giving power to unelected lawyers and judges to run the country.
However, this is a false concern that once more turns on the mistaken assumption that the ideals of the rule of law and democracy are at odds with each other. The correct perspective is that the Bar and the Bench are empowered to work in concert with the government to ensure that it fulfils it legal and political obligations. Lawyers, judges, and politicians are partners within a broader project of governance that links the rule of law to the ideal of democracy so that the government will be accountable to the people.
I worry that the government’s criticism of the Bar Council not only displays ignorance about the ideals that underlie its claimed authority to rule, it also smacks dangerously of a desire for lawlessness. If the government is resistant to the Bar Council’s efforts to remind the government of its obligations under the rule of law and democracy, then the government is resisting the demand to be accountable to the people.
Here, the government cannot for long engage in such resistance without risking the appearance that it is a lawless government. Indeed, history shows that such resistance is likely to lead to the dismantling of very important institutional features of the legal and political order put in place to ensure governmental accountability in keeping with its commitment to the ideals of the rule of law and democracy.
One important stick of furniture that has already been rendered rickety is an independent judiciary. As is well known, the courts have been significantly weakened after the onslaught against the judges in the late 1980s by Dr Mahathir’s government in resistance to the judiciary’s efforts to control the government via judicial review.
The attempt to smash the judiciary has considerably weakened the government’s credibility as respectful of the rule of law and democracy because its actions were widely seen as an attempt to entrench an authoritarian executive power.
In light of this history, the current government should be troubled by the fact that it now finds itself falling in line with Dr Mahathir’s position against the Bar Council, for Dr Mahathir’s government was implicated in the assault on the judiciary.
In this vein, I am nervous that the government’s present criticism of the Bar and its talk of setting up a Legal Academy as an alternative to the Bar will lead to similar results. This would be to make exactly the same kind of mistake that was made with respect to the judiciary. I do not think the country can afford another such mistake.
* Rueban Balasubramaniam is an Associate Professor of Law with the Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.
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So the shrinking Arctic ice will make it easier for us to tap the Arctic's oil and gas reserves (21 January, p 24). That's oil and gas that we will burn, producing carbon dioxide that will cause the ice cap to shrink even further. Since less polar ice means less sunlight is reflected from the Earth's surface, and hence more energy is absorbed, the melting of polar ice is already starting a positive feedback mechanism leading to global warming. Do we really need to add to the problem?
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
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From The Telegraph April 22, 1987I wondered for so many years if I would ever see current research that discussed a possible cure for the kind of liver cancer my very dear father died of in 1992. Finally, on Sunday, I found an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that reported a new treatment for Primary Liver Cancer using small pox vaccine. It's a sad and interesting story that my father contracted Hepatitis from a tainted yellow fever vaccine administered to soldiers in preparation for being shipped overseas in 1941 for the war. In 1990, he was diagnosed with Primary Liver Cancer.
Liver cancer is not common in the United States, although rates of the disease have been climbing about 3.5 percent every year in the past decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 29,000 cases of liver cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year and more than 20,000 people die.
But worldwide, it's the most common cause of cancer death, mostly because the primary cause of liver cancer is hepatitis B or C, both of which are widespread in parts of Asia and Africa. More than 700,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with liver cancer each year, and 600,000 people die, according to the American Cancer Society.Who would have ever thought that fifty years after the tainted vaccine, he would die of liver cancer? I remember being told that he still had hepatitis cells present in his liver in 1991. Does that mean it was chronic? I have no way of knowing. Still it's a little heartbreaking to think his death may have been a result of a long-ago error. Had he not contracted Hep B, would he still be here turning 94 on his next birthday on December 19th? Who knows?
Thinking about my father getting to be a very old man, and not dying at 73, reminded me of a very sad trend we've noticed lately. Many of our friends are losing their parents, one by one. Just in the past few months five friends have bid a farewell to a much-loved mother or father. That news makes me cherish every conversation and laugh I still get to have with my mother, everyday. And yet it occurs to Roger and me that we are inevitably becoming the elders, and it is a rather sobering and unsettling thought. Roger at 70 is now the oldest member of his family. It seems inconceivable that such a thing is true, but it is. We are the new old guard, keepers of the stories, ad-hoc teachers of what ever experiential wisdom we have gleaned over the years. Sauna builder, bread-baker, gardener, and picture-taker. Handy-man, philosopher, hiker, and dreamers. As old as we get to be, we still plan on singing, laughing and dancing into the twilight of our lives.
PS-- The iridescent clouds have been stunning lately. Click on the above pic, it gives you a big-sky context for the colors.
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Watch the recording of the Tech Talk on the Windows 7 from Feb. 24, 2011.
Watch the recording of the Tech Talk on the new Discussion Boards in MyLutherNet from Feb. 10, 2011.
Ted Wilder, Director of IT, joined us this week to offer valuable tips about keeping your personal computer safe from phishing and hacking. The recording is above.
In this week's Tech Talk, Jennie discusses useful resources, databases, and websites for finding images for your project.
In this week's Tech Talk, Jennie Bartholomew from the library
gives a tour of Bibleworks - the PC-based biblical exegesis and research software.
In this week's Tech Talk, Prof. Eric Barreto demonstrated the Mac bible software Accordance.
This week's Tech Talk looked at ways to find useful and meaningful content within the realm of social media - blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
For this week's Tech Talk, Terri Elton from Children, Youth, and Family joined us to explain and demonstrate how her department is using Google Sites to create e-portfolios. The recording is above.
You can view the CYF portfolio site here. However, your Luther Seminary email and password are required.
On Sept. 30, 2010, a Bibleworks trainer came to Luther Seminary and hosted a training session on Bibleworks 8. The recorded session is above.
If you're trying to figure out how to use a particular feature in Bibleworks, we encourage you to make use of the very robust Help documentation found within the program. From within Bibleworks, go to Help > Study Guides. Here you'll find a list of various topics that include instructional text and videos.
This week's Tech Talk's guest speaker was Peter Susag from the Writing Center. He discusses different ways to begin the writing process. The audio-only recording is streamed above.
He mentions several handouts in his talk. You can find the handouts on the Writing Center's web site.
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|Colonization and Environment: Land Settlement Projects in Central America (UNU, 1990, 155 pages)|
|3. Colonization in Panama|
Deforestation and colonization are taking place with very little supervision or technical support from government agencies. Although a large part of Darién is legally protected, the mechanisms for enforcement are deficient, and the areas which are not being colonized are those which are too inaccessible to be desirable to colonists. Darién National Park and the Indian reservations have not been greatly affected by colonists, but these are areas which are quite distant from the Inter-American Highway. Filo de Tallo Biosphere Reserve, on the other hand, is located close to population centres and to the highway and is being colonized despite the presence of two RENARE employees assigned to guard the area.
To avoid long-term problems in the development of Darién, a much more decisive programme is necessary on the part of government agencies. At present, development plans and environmental protection laws exist but are not enforced due to the lack of administrative and financial support to the local offices. The enforcement of existing laws and the execution of existing plans would have an extremely beneficial effect on the process of development in the area. For example:
More recently, a set of recommendations has been proposed by the National Environmental Commission which touches on these problems and many more. The weakest link in the control of environmental problems at this time is execution rather than planning.
There is also a need for the development of basic technical information, especially in the area of agro-forestry. Local officials and even farmers have been convinced of the need for some sort of forestry to meet the special needs of the area. There are no models ready for immediate implementation in the area, although research has begun on some alternatives. Viable alternatives must address the question of short-term utility and profitability of the agro-forestry systems, because Darién colonists tend to be poor. There is an active interest in mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) and cedro espinoso (Bombacopsis quinatum) in the area, and these species are being produced on a smallscale in the RENARE nursery near Metetí.
Agro-forestry programmes are being carried out by RENARE, the University of Panama, the Universidad Popular del Darién, and the IDIAP. Each of these programmes has developed independently, with a notable lack of co-ordination between them. The programme of the University of Panama is the most advanced and has the additional advantage of being formally associated with the Universidad Popular del Darién. A programme for financing and co-ordinating these programmes would be a major contribution to the future development of Darién, especially if it would permit activities to go beyond the demonstration phase and take a more active role in promoting the establishment of agro-forestry systems. This very likely will require more work in the perfection of production systems and other support activities like those which are usually directed toward other agricultural production, including extension, credit, etc.
As mentioned previously, unsatisfactory enforcement of existing land use regulations is a major problem. Clarification of land holdings through a process of mapping and land adjudication is a current strategy of local agencies in Darién, but it is being carried out very slowly; more resources and clearer mandates of action must be given to local offices to allow them to carry out this policy.
Also lacking is an understanding of on-farm land management strategies in Darién, as well as those of logging companies and possibly those of local indigenous groups. Although the general process of colonization and pasture planting is known, there are many questions which must still be answered before effective legislative or administrative strategies can be developed to control land misuse. Long-term plans of farmers, the role of land speculation, the effect of on-farm lumbering, and different types of lumber entrepreneurship, etc., all are factors which must be understood to facilitate future land management planning.
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Helping Children Understand "Good" vs. "Bad" Secrets
Never assume that private information will be kept secret with young children. Preschool teachers around the world have heard more information about parents' personal habits (hygienic and other!) and behavior than you can imagine. While you must have been disappointed that your mother learned about the surprise, it is not unusual for a preschool-aged child to spill the beans. Exciting ideas breed excitement, and it is fun to share exciting news!
Rather than focus on the spoiled surprise, which is really at the heart of the matter, you can learn from this experience and talk to your child about sharing information.
Your instinct about wanting to foster open and honest communication within your family is wonderful. Children of this age are starting to learn that they can indeed keep information secret. They can choose to share feelings, ideas or stories with others, or not. This is very empowering for young children, and something to be discussed.
You can use simple language to explain to your daughter that you will always keep her safe. She should tell you when she feels happy or sad, angry or afraid, and you can talk about these feelings. There may be times when she feels embarrassed or shy about her feelings, and this is perfectly OK.
Other information (that doesn't compromise someone's safety) can be kept secret, such as a surprise. You can try to explain, "We will tell grandma about the surprise tomorrow, but please don't talk about it today." You'll have to hope for the best, because any information may be too much to keep to herself, and that is simply a developmentally appropriate reality.
Another thing to consider is, what are the actions of others in terms of trying to get information out of a child? Some grown-ups are all too aware of children's inability to keep information secret, and will use this to their advantage. For example, asking your child, "Did you see Daddy buy me a birthday present? What is it?" is somewhere between fishing and manipulation. Open conversation about what is appropriate to share and what can be kept secret is fundamental, and will develop over time as you explore the boundaries together.
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‘Pretty’ is how she looks to herself. She’s done her best to attire and groom herself well. Her physical attributes shine and physical weaknesses go unnoticed to her.
· Prettiness to men fades as femininity gives way to masculinity and feminist pride.
· Men know very little about ‘feminine’. They don’t know what makes it; they just like what they see. They can individually cite a few prettifying traits or characteristics. But generally they accept and live with whatever females present. They make judgments based on that.
· Men are not in the business of generating pettiness or femininity, feminine behavior, or distinctions. Women are, because they need a man more than men need a woman.
· Making herself pretty for a man leads to disappointment every time his reaction does not match her expectation.
· Pretty can be summarized as her female magnetism. She’s good company, fun or companionable, and looks ‘great’ to him. But it varies to an infinite number of degrees, situations, and men. This makes manly reactions unpredictable, which translates to this: She prettifies herself solely to make herself feel good about herself. Anything beyond that risks disappointment and belittling of herself.
The next post concludes this series.
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Robert Malcolm Laing (1865-1941).
Born in Dunedin in 1865, Laing was educated at Otago Boys' High School and Canterbury University College, graduating M.A. in 1889. After teaching at Timaru, he was appointed a master at Christchurch Boys' High School in 1886. There he continued till 1924, influencing a long line of pupils. After retiring he lived at Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, paying frequent visits to his cottage at Arthur's Pass. His death on 19th May, 1941, was mourned by many. “His passing,” we read in the annual report of the Canterbury Branch, “severs a link with the Society's most active period and with many notable scientists who predeceased him.”
Laing's public career as a scientist began with his election as a member of the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury in 1883, when F. W. Hutton was president. A member he continued to be till his death, and he left a record of quiet devoted service not easy to parallel. He was elected to the Council in 1887, was Secretary from 1888 to 1892, Vice-President 1893, President 1894, Vice-President 1895, Council member 1896 to 1907, Vice-President 1908, 1909, President 1910, Vice-President 1911, Council member 1912, to 1916.
Throughout this period Laing was steadily working at his special subject, the marine algae of New Zealand, and was elected a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute in 1922. He was President of the Canterbury Institute for a third time in 1927, in which year he was one of the editors of the Natural History of Canterbury, contributing several of the chapters. In one of these, “The History of Botanical Research in Canterbury,” he dismisses his own work with the all too brief, “Mr R. M. Laing has collected and described the marine algae of the district.” His first publication was a thoughtful paper on “The Classification of the Algae” in 1885, and in all he published over twenty papers on the marine algae of New Zealand, mostly in our Transactions.
Laing experienced to the full the difficulties of a pioneer in an almost untouched field working in a country remote from the centres of learning in his specialty. He persevered in face of all the difficulties, with less than the support and encouragement he deserved from his contemporaries, and his unflagging enthusiasm brought him to success and some measure of recognition. With the recent revival of interest in our marine algae the students of to-day have recognised the debt they owe to Laing for the excellent foundation on which they can now build. Some of his more important papers are : “The Algae of New Zealand, Their Classification and Distribution” (Presidential Address, 1894), “Revised List of New Zealand Seaweeds” (1901, 1902, 1905), “The Seaweeds of Norfolk Island” (1901, 1906), “The Ceramiaceae” (1905), “The Marine Algae of the Subantarctic Islands of New Zealand” (1909), “Reference List of New Zealand Marine Algae” (1927, 1930, 1939), “New Zealand Bangiales”, (1928), “New Zealand Species of Gigartina” (1929, 1931).
His interest in the land vegetation and flora was keen, and he made several excursions to little known areas, besides doing a great deal of detailed work on Banks Peninsula and the Canterbury foothills. Of the fifteen papers published as a result, the following deserve special mention : “The Plant Formations and Associations of Campbell Island” (1908), “Botany of the Spencer Mountains” (1912), “The Norfolk Island Flora” (1915), “The Vegetation of Banks Peninsula” (1919, 1924). His pleasant days at Arthur's Pass bore fruit in “The Vegetation of the Upper Bealey Basin” (with W. R. B. Oliver, 1928), and “The Small-leaved Species of Pittosporum” (with H. W. Gourlay, 1935).
In 1936 appeared Laing's obituary notice of L. Cockayne, whom he had had the pleasure of proposing in 1895 as a member of the Canterbury Philosophical Institute. This notice gives a reasoned evaluation of the advances made by Cockayne, and reveals his own wide acquaintance with general botanical and evolutionary problems. No account of Laing's work and influence should fail to stress the value of his Plants of New Zealand, published in the first instance (1906) with the assistance of Miss E. W. Blackwell, and culminating in the fourth edition in 1940. Probably no book has done so much to assist the amateur botanist and Nature lover to secure an accurate and vivid knowledge, of the flora of New Zealand. No publication has done so much to educate and delight the general public interest in our plants. To clear accounts of the species, beautifully illustrated, are added commentaries on modern views and researches, written in a way that all can understand. Many generations yet will draw inspiration from the pages of this classic work.
Laing was a student of human affairs, as well as a student of Nature, interested especially in the progress and welfare of humanity. Loving to reflect upon and discuss the esoteric, he was also imbued with the spirit of practical help, as witnessed by his work for the New Zealand Howard League, of which he was President in 1930. These wider interests found some vent in addresses to the Philosophical Institute on such topics as “Hypnotism” and “Thought Transference,” while his ex-Presidential Address in 1911 was devoted to “A Study in Multiple Personality.”
Laing shared with his fellow pioneers the desire to help and encourage younger workers, and give them the benefit of hard-won experience, and these younger workers will not let his memory die. So one remembers Laing, modest, whimsical, helpful, interested in humanity. He claimed no high place for himself, but what he knew and thought he passed on eagerly to others. As the years go by he will be found to have builded better than he knew.
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By Claire Wayne
West Virginia University
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- In 10 days, the West Virginia Youth Symphony visited Poland, Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. It was a fast-paced trip, but the memories I have gained through that small window of time will last me a lifetime.
Now that I am back home, the most prominent idea in my mind about the trip is the belief that there are many things that are universal. I am not much different than some of my friends on the other side of the world.
I realized this the most during my home stay in Slovakia. A memory that stands out is when I was trying to interact with my home stay's little sister who didn't know a word of English. Through drawing pictures, I was able to successfully communicate with her.
This same theme also became apparent during our joint concert with a conservatory in Slovakia. By the end of it, everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves at the reception. I believe even though art can be interpreted differently everywhere, the emotion and dedication involved convey something purely human and universal.
Through understanding each other's art, the world can learn to grow and understand each other.
See more photos from the WVYS European tour at wvyouthsymphony.org/tour2012/index.html
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© The Spokesman-Review.com
--SPOKANE, WA: A Spokane Valley man hopes to stop a Southern Oregon timber
cut in the name of Bigfoot, a creature he said he encountered seven years
Hobby prospector Karl Breheim insists he ran into the creature while hunting
for gold in the Rogue River area just north of Grants Pass, Oregon.
Breheim believes the beast took a chomp out of his plastic-foam toolbox.
Ever since the encounter, Breheim, 49, has been determined to prove the
mystery mammal is for real. His girlfriend, Nancy Dean Paulson, says the
sighting is no joke. A pending timber harvest has the couple scrambling
for proof. Breheim believes chewed up pieces of his toolbox might hold
the genetic proof needed to declare Bigfoot an endangered species. Now
he needs a scientist willing to test the material.
"I'm the man with the goods," Breheim said. "I don't think
it can hurt someone in Spokane to test these goods." But one of the
nation's top Bigfoot experts, Idaho State University professor Jeff Meldrum,
says there's not enough evidence to prove the encounter was real. "All
I have to go on is what he sent back from his trip. I got this lengthy
letter recounting his experience and two dozen fragments that were buried
under 6 inches of (mulch)," Meldrum said.
"I don't think the chances of recovering DNA evidence from this is
good at all." The anthropology and anatomy professor does find Breheim's
story intriguing. Breheim said he spotted Bigfoot seven years ago in the
Pea Vine area of the upper reaches of the Rogue River drainage. It's the
kind of densely forested area where spotting a 9-foot hairy biped is about
as likely as encountering another human being. The upper reaches of the
Rogue are a hard place to know, say environmentalists who have combed
the area for endangered species, yet hardly covered the forest of which
"It's fairly remote," said Joe Serres, a Grants Pass environmentalist
familiar with Breheim's story. "It's dominated by old growth, Douglas
fir. I give Karl a lot of credit. He's spent a lot of time up there."
Breheim's first trip to the area was prompted by an assayer's book found
in a Spokane Valley home. The book spoke of gold in the Rogue River area.But
what Breheim mostly encountered above the Rogue was unnerving isolation.
The woods were spooky. "In our case, we had visits." he said.
"Things happened in the woods, noises, weird smells. Something big,
something huge was wandering around in the night."
Breheim was certain he was being watched, but hadn't really seen anything.
That changed a few months later when he brought Paulson to the site. The
two worked the site in the day, but drove to Grants Pass at nightfall.
When they returned the next morning, they found close to 50 small trees
snapped "like kitchen matches."
"It seemed to me like a mini tornado had touched down on the trees.
Every one had been snapped off," Paulson said. "That's what
I noticed. Then we saw the bites out of the toolbox and we got out of
Breheim said the bites looked like a giant man had munched a white-bread
sandwich. Pieces of the chewed-up box were spit out 20 feet across the
forest. They stayed on the ground for years beneath ever-piling mulch
until Breheim retrieved them this spring.
There were other signs. Breheim said he found sticks broken to similar
lengths and piled 9 feet high, which he photographed. He found long, steaming
dung samples as big as ship rope. And he found marmots carefully plucked
clean of their fur placed at the doorstep of his camper. And suspicious
shapes in the woods, which Breheim filmed with an infrared camera.
Now Breheim and Paulson are looking for someone willing to do DNA testing
on the chewed up foam. Meldrum, who has studied hundreds of possible Bigfoot
tracks, said the most compelling detail of Breheim's encounter was left
in the woods -- the giant dung piles.
"He tells a very intriguing story. He's related finding nests. He
did show me photos of large debris mounds. No pack rat will build a mound
9 feet tall," Meldrum said. "But I don't see anything there
that would point to sasquatch activity."
Bureau of Land Management employees might have made the stick mounds,
said Abbie Jossie, field manager for BLM's Grants Pass Resource Area.
The BLM has been piling up sticks in the Pickett Snake area of the Rogue
River drainage to reduce fire danger. The area has been contracted for
logging. A second cut in the Pea Vine area will go out on bid this summer.
To date, no one has suggested Bigfoot preservation as a means to stop
a BLM timber cut, Jossie said. That doesn't mean she wouldn't listen if
they did. "If we have a Bigfoot in our woods, we'll definitely do
everything we can to preserve its habitat," Jossie said.
Courtesy Ray Mizer raymizer at webtv dot net
to Newspaper & Magazine Articles
this website are reprinted under the Fair Use Doctrine of International
Copyright Law as educational material without benefit of financial gain.
This proviso is applicable throughout the entire website.
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This is the continuation of the essay from Study of Child Life (1907). To read from the beginning go to Part 1.
1. Freedom is the first essential, and here the child of poverty often has the advantage of the child of wealth. There are few things in the poverty-stricken home too good for him to play with; in its narrow quarters, he becomes, perforce, a part of all domestic activity. He learns the uses of household utensils, and his play merges by imperceptible degrees into true, healthful work.
In the home of wealth, however, there is no such freedom, no such richness of opportunity. The child of wealth has plenty of toys, but few real things to play with. He is shut out of the common activity of the family, and shut in to the imitation activity of his nursery.
Froebel insists upon the importance of the child’s dress being loose, serviceable, and inconspicuous, so that he may play as much as possible without consciousness of the restrictions of dress. The playing child should also have, as we have noticed in the first section, the freedom of the outside world. This does not mean merely that he should go out in his baby-buggy, or take a ride in the park, but that he should be able to play out-of-doors, to creep on the ground, to be a little open-air savage, and play with nature as he finds it.
2. Sympathy is much more likely to rise spontaneously in the mother’s breast for the child’s troubles than for the child’s joys. She will stop to take him up and pet him when he is hurt, no matter how busy she is, but she too often considers it waste of time to enter into his plays with him; yet he needs sympathy in joy as much as in sorrow. Her presence, her interest in what he is doing, doubles his delight in it and doubles its value to him. Moreover, it offers her opportunity for that touch and direction now and then, which may transform a rambling play, without much sequence or meaning, into a consciously useful performance, a dramatization, perhaps, of some of the child’s observations, or an investigation into the nature of things.
3. Right Material. Even given freedom and sympathy, the child needs something more in order to play well: he needs the right materials. The best materials are those that are common to him and to the rest of the world, far better than expensive toys that mark him apart from the world of less fortunate children. Such toys are not in any way desirable, and they may even be harmful. What he needs is various simple arrangements of the four elements—earth, air, fire and water.
Earth. The child has a noted affinity for it, and he is specially happy when he has plenty of it on hands, face, and clothes. The love of mud-pies is universal; children of all nationalities and of all degrees of civilization delight in it. No activity could be more wholesome.
Next to mud comes sand. It is cleaner in appearance and can be brought into the house. A tray of moistened sand, set upon a low table, should be in every nursery, and the sand pile in every yard.
Clay is more difficult to manage indoors, because it gets dry and sifts all about the house, but if a corner of the cellar, where there is a good light, can be given up for a strong table and a jar of clay mixed with some water, it will be found a great resource for rainy days. Clay-modeling is an excellent form of manual training, developing without forcing the delicate muscles of the fingers and wrists, and giving wide opportunity for the exercise of the imagination.
Earth may be played with in still another way. Children should dig in it; for all pass through the digging stage and this should be given free swing. It develops their muscles and keeps them busy at helpful and constructive work. They may dig a well, make a cave, or a pond, or burrow underground and make tunnels like a mole. Give them spades and a piece of ground they can do with as they like, dress them in overalls, and it will be long before you are asked to think of another amusement for them.
In still another way the earth may be utilized, for children may make gardens of it. Indeed, there are those who say that no child’s education is complete until he has had a garden of his own and grown in it all sorts of seeds from pansies to potatoes. But a garden is too much for a young child to care for all alone. He needs the help, advice, and companionship of some older person. You must be careful, however, to give help only when it is really desired; and careful also not to let him feel that the garden is a task to which he is driven daily, but a joy that draws him.
The Air. The next important plaything is the air. The kite and the balloon are only two instruments to help the child play with it. Little windmills made of colored paper and stuck by means of a pin at the end of a whittled stick, make satisfactory toys. One of their great advantages is that even a very young child can make them for himself. Blowing soap-bubbles is another means of playing with air. By giving the children woolen mittens the bubbles may be caught and tossed about as well as blown.
Water. Perhaps the very first thing he learns to play with is water. Almost before he knows the use of his hands and legs he plays with water in his bath, and sucks his sponge with joy, thus feeling the water with his chief organs of touch, his mouth and tongue. A few months later he will be glad to pour water out of a tin cup. Even when he is two or three years old, be may be amused by the hour, by dressing him in a woolen gown, with his sleeves rolled high, and setting him down before a big bowl or his own bath-tub half full of warm water. To this may be added a sponge, a tin cup, a few bits of wood, and some paper. When he is older—past the period of putting everything in his mouth—he may be given a few bits of bright ribbons, petals of artificial flowers, or any bright colored bits of cloth which can color the water.
Children love to sprinkle the grass with the hose or to water the flowers with the sprinkling can. They enjoy also the metal fishes, ducks, and boats which may be drawn about in the water by means of a magnet. Presently they reach the stage when they must have toy-boats, and next they long to go into real boats and go rowing and sailing. They want to fish, wade, swim, and skate.
Some of those pastimes are dangerous, but they are sure to be indulged in at some time or other, with or without permission. There never grew a child to sturdy manhood who was successfully kept away from water. The wise mother, then, will not forbid this play, but will do her best to regulate it, to make it safe. She will think out plans for permitting children to go swimming in a safe place with some older person. She will let them go wading, and at holiday time will take them boat-riding. If she permits as much activity in these respects as possible, her refusal when it does come will be respected; and the child will not, unless perhaps in the first bitterness of disappointment, think her unfriendly and fussy. Above all, he is not likely to try to deceive her, to run off and take a swim on the sly, and thus fall into true danger.
Fire is another inevitable plaything. Miss Shinn reports that the first act of her little niece that showed the dawn of voluntary control of the muscles was the clinging of her eyes to the flame of a candle, at the end of the second week. The sense of light and the pleasure derived from it is of the chief incentives to a baby’s intellectual development. But since fire is dangerous the child must be taught this fact as quickly and painlessly as possible. For instance, show that the lamp globe is hot. It is not hot enough to injure him, but quite hot enough to be unpleasant to his sensitive nerves. Put your own hand on the lamp and draw it away with a sharp cry, saying warningly, “Hot, hot!” Do not put his hand on the lamp, but let him put it there himself and then be very sympathetic over the result. Usually one such lesson is sufficient. Only do not permit yourself to call everything hot which you do not want him to touch. He will soon discover that you are untruthful and will never again trust you so fully.
Under proper regulations, however, fire may be played with safely. Bonfires with some older person in attendance are safe enough and prevent unlawful bonfires in dangerous places. The rule should be that none of the children may play with fire except with permission; and then that permission should be granted as often as possible that the children may be encouraged to ask for it. A stick smoldering at one end and waved about in circles and ellipses is not dangerous when elders are by, but it is dangerous if played with on the sly. Playing with fire on the sly is the most dangerous thing a child can do, and the only way to prevent it is to permit him to play with fire in the open. A beautiful game can be made from number of Christmas tree candles of various colors and a bowl of water. The candles are lighted and the wax dropped into the water, making little colored circles which float about. These can be linked together such a fashion as to form patterns which may be lifted out on sheets of paper.
The magic lantern is an innocent and comparatively cheap means of playing with light. If it is well taken care of and fresh slides added from time to time it can be made a source of pleasure for years. Jack-o’-lanterns are great fun, and when pumpkins are not available, oranges may be used instead.
Besides these elemental playthings the child gets much valuable pleasure out of the rhythmic use of his own muscles. All such plays Plato thought should be regulated by music, and with this Froebel agreed, but in the household this is often impossible. The children must indulge in many movements when there is no one about who has leisure to make music for them. Still, when they come to the quarrelsome age, a few minutes’ rhythmic play to the sound of music will be found to harmonize the whole group wonderfully. For this purpose the ordinary hippity-hop, fast or slow according to the music, is sufficient. It is as if the regulation of the body to the laws of harmony reacted upon minds and nerves. Such an exercise is particularly valuable just before bed-time. The children go to sleep then with their minds under the influence of harmony and wake in the morning inclined to be peaceful and happy.
A book of Kindergarten songs, such as Mrs. Gaynor’s “Songs of the Child World” and Eleanor Smith’s “Songs for the Children,” ought to be in every household, and the mother ought to familiarize herself with a dozen or so of these perfectly simple melodies. Of course the children must learn them with her. When once this has been done she has a valuable means of amusing them and bringing them within her control at any time. She may hum one of the songs or play it. The children must guess what it is and then act out their guess in pantomime, so that she can see what they mean. Perhaps it is a windmill song; their arms fly around and around in time to the music, now fast, now slow. Perhaps it is a Spring song; the children are birds building their nests. Other songs turn them into shoemakers, galloping horses, or soldiers.
Dramatic plays, whether simple, like this, or elaborate, are, as Goethe shows in Wilhelm Meister, of the greatest possible educational advantage. In them the child expresses his ideas of the world about him and becomes master of his own ideas. He acts out whatever he has heard or seen. He acts out also whatever he is puzzling about, and by making the terms of his problem clear to his consciousness usually solves it.
As for dancing, Richter exclaims:
“I know not whether I should most deprecate children’s balls or most praise children’s dances. For the harmony connected with it (dancing) imparts to the affections and the mind that material order which reveals the highest, and regulates the beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thought. Music is the meter of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music. Finally, this also ranks among the advantages of his eye and heel pleasure; that children with children, by no harder canon than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast without thorns or strife.”
The dances may be of the simplest kind, such as “Ring Around a Rosy,” “Here We Go, To and Fro,” “Old Dan Tucker” and the “Virginia Reel.” The old-fashioned singing plays, such as “London Bridge,” “Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow,” and “Pop Goes the Weasel” have their place and value. Several collections of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough material may be found for these plays in the memories of the people of any neighborhood.
All these plays, it will be noticed, call for very simple and inexpensive apparatus, in most cases for no apparatus at all. Nevertheless there is a place for toys. All children ought to have a few, both because of the innocent pleasure they afford and because they need to have certain possessions which are inalienably their own. A simple and inexpensive list of suitable toys adapted to various ages is given at the end of this section. Most of them are exactly the toys that parents usually buy. But it will be noticed that none of them are very elaborate or expensive.
List of Toys Suitable for Various Ages
- Ball, rubber ring, soft animals and rag dolls ……… Before 1 year
- Blocks and Bells ……………………………………… 1 year
- Small chair and table ………………………………1 1/2 years
- Noah’s Ark ………………………………………….. 2 years
- Picture books ……………………………………….. 2 years
- Materials and instruments ………………………… 2 to 3 years
- Carts, stick-horses, and reins ………………… 2 1/2 to 3 years
- Boats, ships, engines, tin or wooden animals, dolls, dishes, broom, spade, sand-pile, bucket, etc ……………. 3 years
- Hoop, games and story books …………………………… 5 years
Article by Aadel Bussinger
Aadel has been married to her career Army man for 13 years and they have 2 daughters and a freshly made son. She is a homeschooling mom, volunteer, and online college student. Her hobbies include cooking, organic gardening, sewing, and crocheting. She blogs about their military, unschooling life at These Temporary Tents.
Aadel has written 86 awesome articles for Natural Family Today.
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Adequately plan for the ATIS operational needs for communicating with the public during disasters.
Experiences of a panel of experts in disaster information dissemination.
- Coordinate with other jurisdictions when developing your disaster plans. Disasters often have large scale impacts that can affect multiple jurisdictions within a state, or even an entire region of the country, so it is important to coordinate across jurisdictions. For example, through better coordination, the local ATIS and media can inform the public on what to do or where to go once they have relocated to a distant, and often unfamiliar community.
- Forge relationships ahead of time, informing all relevant agencies of the capabilities and limitations of the ATIS. In planning for disasters, it is important to establish relationships among all the relevant agencies. All agencies and key individuals that may have direct control over a major event should be educated about the information gathering abilities and limitations of the TMC and the dissemination abilities and limitations of the ATIS. Other supporting agencies (i.e. transit, public health) should also be aware of the ATIS and should know what to expect or receive from the ATIS in the event of a disaster. Likewise, large employers and large facility managers should be recruited to receive email, text, and other alerts during a disaster.
- Ensure adequate capacity for ATIS dissemination tools. Transportation agencies need to be aware and ensure that ATIS tools have enough capacity to handle larger volumes (i.e., increased calls to 511, increased access to the website) over the course of a disaster. This is of particular concern in urban areas, where extremely large numbers of residents (much larger than usual) may seek information during a disaster.
- Plan for power and communication redundancy. Often during a disaster, the communications infrastructure experiences reduced capacity or even failure. To ensure proper communication during such situations, power and communication redundancy should be well thought out in advance. Particularly in urban areas, agencies need to be aware and plan for ATIS tools experiencing reduced capacity, or even failure, due to limited electrical power. When communications or power failures occur, alternative means of communications should be utilized, including in-person communication through loudspeakers, HAM radios to communicate with the media or other public agencies, static or flip-down signs posted along specific routes, and the full utilization of broadcast radio.
- Perform practice scenarios and update procedures manuals. Agencies that performed practice scenarios and that maintain up-to-date procedures manuals can more effectively manage information dissemination during a disaster.
- Educate the public in advance. The public needs to be educated in advance on what to do (or not to do) during a disaster, where to go for information, and what to expect (i.e., services may be limited or disrupted). In emergency prone areas, this education should be started at an early age and incorporated in the school curriculum. Even in areas where disasters are not a common occurrence, pre-education is important. The general public can be educated through public service announcements and advertising about the types of disasters, what to expect, and how to be prepared. In particular, this type of education should inform the public on the level of information that is likely to be available during and immediately after a disaster, so they do not develop unrealistic expectations of what various public agencies can do and what information will be made available.
- Establish emergency points of contact in advance. For larger groups or sensitive locations, emergency points of contact should be established, so information can be directly disseminated to those contacts during a disaster. These may include, but are not limited to:
- High rise building and office park facility managers
- Nursing homes
- Large public facilities
- Convention and Visitor Bureaus
- Trucking associations
- Towing community
- Be flexible. During the course of a disaster, transportation agencies may serve many different roles, including being an early responder, a coordinator of travel-related information, and later, serve as a support to the Incident Commander or agency in charge by supplying resources as necessary and taking actions as directed. Agencies need to be able to adapt to these different roles in order to more effectively manage the dissemination of information during a disaster.
Author: Mala Raman and Carol Zimmerman, Battelle; Todd Kell and Chris Bausher, PBS&J
Published By: U.S. Department of Transportation -Federal Highway Administration
Source Date: 28 March 2006
EDL Number: 14262
Other Reference Number: FHWA-JPO-06-024URL: http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/jpodocs/repts_te/14262.htm
Average User Rating
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German Papers Print Mohammed Cartoons
Don’t look now, but backbones seem to be springing up all over Europe: Germans print Muhammad caricatures. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)
Two German newspapers on Wednesday reproduced controversial drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad, with one of them arguing that a “right to blasphemy” was anchored in democratic freedoms.
The drawings were among several published in a Danish paper in September that sparked outrage and boycotts in Islamic countries. The pictures were also shown in a Norwegian magazine last week. …
But the German Welt daily put one of the drawings showing the prophet’s turban transformed into a bomb on its front page on Wednesday. It said the picture was “harmless” and expressed regret that the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily had apologized for causing offense.
“Democracy is the institutionalized form of freedom of expression,” the paper said in a front-page commentary. “There is no right to protection from satire in the West; there is a right to blasphemy.”
The Berliner Zeitung daily also printed two of the caricatures as part of its coverage of the controversy.
Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage.
France Soir, Germany’s Die Welt, La Stampa in Italy and El Periodico in Spain all carried some of the drawings.
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The Wachau (German pronunciation: [vaˈxaʊ]) is an Austrian valley with a picturesque landscape formed by the Danube river. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations of Lower Austria, located midway between the towns of Melk and Krems that also attracts "connoisseurs and epicureans". It is 40 kilometres (25 mi) in length and was already settled in prehistoric times. A well-known place and tourist attraction is Dürnstein, where King Richard the Lion-Heart of England was held captive by Duke Leopold V. The architectural elegance of its ancient monasteries (Melk and Göttweig Abbey), castles and ruins combined with the urban architecture of its towns and villages, and the cultivation of vines as an important agricultural produce are the dominant features of the valley.
The Wachau was inscribed as "Wachau Cultural Landscape" in the UNESCOList of World Heritage Sites in recognition of its architectural and agricultural history, in December 2000.
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This is the lightweight jacket based on the K-1A flight suit worn by World War II Army Air Force pilots. The original was a full-length jumper worn by late-war aviators and into the 1950s. This jacket borrows only the top half of the K-1A for modern year-round wear, faithfully replicating the diagonal zippered equipment pockets on the upper chest, a feature still found on modern military flight suits. This jacket's sage-green exterior is an accurate detail that marked the newly named U.S. Air Force's transition from bulkier, fleece-lined leather models to streamlined nylon models in 1947 to accommodate pilots seated inside newer, smaller jet aircraft cockpits. Made by Cockpit, suppliers of outerwear to the USAF and Navy, it is lined with a nylon reproduction of a silk "escape" map of occupied Europe. With a knit ribbed collar, cuffs, and waistband with two lower slash pockets. Zippered front. Men's chest sizes M (40), L (42-44), XL (46), or XXL (48-50). (2 lbs.)
The Classic USAAF Pilot Jacket comes with The Hammacher Schlemmer Lifetime Guarantee at no additional charge. If this product ever disappoints you, for any reason, you may return your Hammacher Schlemmer purchase for exchange, credit, or refund.
Should you have any questions, we are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Please call 1-800-321-1484 to speak with a product specialist or email us at email@example.com to receive a response within one hour.
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Home > Administrator's Desk Channel > Administrator's Desk Archive > Goals, Leadership, Classroom Management > School Administrators Article
|SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS ARTICLE|
Practicing Love & Logic
“I saw more stress coming in with the No Child Left Behind Act," Pauli said. “I wanted to improve relationships and wanted something for the high-risk populations coming into the district. The main thing is that the system is a way to deal with relationships -- student-student, student-staff, and staff-staff."
“Because we don’t yell and we’re not punitive, we have very few problems with disrespect toward adults," added Guthals. “A lot of kids are sad before Christmas and spring break because they miss us."
Educators in a Love & Logic school can begin by deciding on a list of core beliefs about working with children, said Fay. Those core beliefs could include the following:
Learning a little about each student’s interests and personality helps to foster a connection between students and teachers. Once those relationships are established, particularly with difficult students, maintaining compliance is easier. For example, if a student does not take off a hat in class, a teacher could quietly say to that student, “Hey, I’m glad your team won last night. I know what a big fan you are," and then as the teacher walks away, add, quietly, “Would you mind taking that hat off just for me?"
“You have to have relationships with high-risk students," added Guthals. “I have been amazed at how easy it is to build relationships with kids with Love & Logic strategies. When you build relationships, you can say to students, ‘Will you stop doing that for me?’ and they will."
Tracy Wagers, principal of Humanex Academy, a private grade 7-12 alternative school in Denver, Colorado, said Love & Logic has proven effective with most students in the 12 years the school has been using it. “It allows us to have positive relationships, but positive relationships with high expectations," Wagers told Education World. “We find we can use it to integrate academics and relationships with peers and teachers."
Teachers also learn techniques to prevent and interrupt disruptive behavior. One way to do that is to allow students some input into decisions affecting the class.
“We try to give kids as many choices as possible," said Wagers. “The teacher has to be able to share control. If it is a little thing, we try to allow choice -- students are more likely to cooperate when they have a choice." That could be as simple as telling a student he or she can stop disrupting the class or go to the office, she said.
“It’s saying, ‘Here’s how I run my life -- work to fit in,’" Fay noted. “It takes the fight out of them."
Still, problems are bound to arise. When appeals to students fail, teachers can ask pupils -- also quietly -- to go to a “recovery" area either in their own classroom or another room to regroup, adding that they will discuss the incident later.
Love & Logic stresses delaying any consequences until the heat of the moment has passed. When the time comes to discuss the infraction, the adult should empathize with the student’s situation and administer a consequence that’s appropriate for the student and the offense, according to Love & Logic. Expressing empathy can be as simple as saying “Bummer," or “I’m sorry you feel bad."
“I discovered that if you have the perfect consequence for a kid, but if you are angry, the kid remembers the anger, not the consequence," Fay told Education World. “If a teacher expresses empathy first, then the kid remembers the consequence. Then it’s also hard to regard the teacher as the bad guy -- the student sees the behavior as the problem."
Empathy often is the hardest aspect of Love & Logic for teachers and administrators to remember to use. “Most of us are conditioned by modeling and repetition," Fay said. “We think we have to get angry to show kids how serious their actions are. That ruins things from the start."
He suggested educators adopt one empathetic response -- and make sure it fits them and their region. “It’s not so much the word, but the feeling," Fay continued. “One-word empathy is generally more effective than anything. We teach men who want to be tough the empathetic grunt. Then they can move on to ‘What a bummer.’ Then put [the word or phrase] on sticky notes all over the place to remind yourself to use it."
Faculty members can use the staff’s core beliefs to guide discipline decisions. “You figure out based on the guidelines what to do," Fay explained. “We believe teachers and administrators actually can think. In the traditional approach to discipline, you make rules -- decide what happens for each offense -- and each rule is enforced the same way. But that doesn’t work. Kids can figure out ways to do things so consequences don’t fit."
At Thompson Falls Elementary and all the schools in the district, educators apply consequences so students feel like they are learning something -- not being punished. “They are thankful for getting a second chance and realize they can help solve the problem," said Guthals. “I actually had a kid thank me because I gave him a consequence -- they think I’m helping them. It’s the way you frame things."
“We have high expectations, but if a kid slips, we don’t put him or her down," added Pauli, the district’s superintendent. “They are all given second or third chances. Each one is treated as an individual. Each teacher knows what to do. We have a warm climate. It’s not about a power trip."
A boy at Thompson Falls Elementary last year, for example, was spreading an inappropriate rumor about a girl. Guthals called the boy to her office. “I said, ‘I heard this is what is going on and want to know how to solve it.’ We sat for ten minutes and talked about what to do."
The boy did receive an in-school suspension. “He had to demonstrate that he could focus just on his schoolwork," Guthals said. The student did his assignments in the counselor’s office to show he could concentrate and complete his work. He also was assigned to model and monitor good behavior for the kindergartners.
“We’re solving problems together rather than punishing mistakes," noted Guthals.
The decision to delay consequences for misbehavior was a trait among most highly-effective teachers Fay observed while doing research for Love & Logic.
“When you get tangled up in the idea that all kids need immediate consequences, you wind up doing something you regret later on," according to Fay.
And that is something with which Fay has experience from his career as an educator. “I started out with the traditional rules," he told Education World. “I would lay out the rules, the consequences, and then expect kids to follow the rules. And lie to the world that everyone was treated the same."
Part of the reason traditional discipline no longer works is that children have lost their fear of adults, Fay noted. “There is a whole different perspective kids have."
Fay continued following the conventional discipline path for several years, until an incident occurred when he was splitting his time between being a fifth-grade teacher and an assistant principal. A chronically misbehaving, borderline dangerous student finally pushed all of Fay’s buttons at once. Fay slapped the boy and said the experience left him deeply troubled.
“I was at the end of my rope, and he was the typical little psychopathic kid -- a fire-starter, and everyone was afraid of him," Fay recalled. “He just thought he was tough, and I thought I just had to be tougher than he was."
Fay estimated he had talked to the boy’s mother about 20 times trying to find a solution for his disruptive behavior. He told her he had slapped her son and was not proud of it. “She said, ‘If you hadn’t done it, someone else would have, based on how he was when he left the house.’"
But Fay decided the time had come to find a more effective behavior management approach that focused on preventing negative behavior. He watched teachers who had good classroom management skills and talked with psychologists. “I found ways to apply psychological approaches to classrooms," Fay told Education World. “I picked their [psychologists’] brains. I asked why certain things would work, and then they referred me to literature."
One way schools can get started with Love & Logic is by introducing one or two of the elements, asking teachers to try them on a voluntary basis, and having them report if using aspects of Love & Logic made their jobs easier. Otherwise, “when you announce a new mandated program, it’s the job of a certain number of teachers to kill it," said Fay.
Love & Logic is most effective when it is implemented school-wide, as long as not all staff members are required to do it the same way. “Some people are more dramatic, some are more laid back," Fay noted.
“In the first year, it took some getting used to," admitted Guthals. “We started to realize that not every situation is the same. We have scaffolding for new teachers and try to send them to the Love & Logic Institute. We’ve never had a problem with parents getting onboard. Parents ask us for Love & Logic material."
Students’ responses to consequences show how effective Love & Logic has been at Guthals’ school. “They don’t leave hating us [after receiving a consequence] -- they leave thinking we helped them," she said.
Article by Ellen R. Delisio
Copyright © 2008 Education World
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Toshiba, the Inventor of Flash Memory
In 1984, Toshiba developed a new type of semiconductor memory called flash memory, leading the industry into the next generation ahead of its competitors.
Some time later in 1987, NAND flash memory was developed, and this has since been used in a variety of memory cards and electronic equipment. The NAND flash market has grown rapidly, with flash memory becoming an internationally standardized memory device. Toshiba, the inventor of flash memory, has carved out a path to a new era in which we are all able to carry videos, music and data with us wherever we go.
Play the NAND Flash Video
Features of NAND Flash Memory
NAND flash memory is suitable for storing large amounts of data.
- Ideal for storing image and music files
- Fast data transfer rates
- Low bit cost
- High expandability due to NAND flash interface
- Comprehensive line-up of NAND flash memory devices with SD or HS-MMC interface
Back to top
Back to Memory home
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¿Cuánto quieres aprender español? (Translation: How much do you want to learn Spanish?) Anthony Farmer, senior in the College of Business, was so adamant about learning the language that he moved to Panama for a summer.
Anthony is from Woodstock, Georgia and came to Auburn as an International Business major. He later switched to Accounting but kept his minor in Spanish. He has decided that once he graduates, he wants to join the military, specifically either the Navy or Air Force. If he were to pursue a job related to his major, however, he said he would want to be an auditor.
Anthony’s mom is from Panama, which is one of the reasons he wanted to minor in Spanish. All of Anthony’s Spanish teachers kept telling him that the best way to fully learn and appreciate Spanish was to immerse himself in it. After completing Intermediate Spanish II, he took their advice to the fullest and decided to spend his junior summer in Panama. He said, “I wanted to be able to further my education outside of a typical classroom setting.”
After settling in with some relatives in the city of Calobre, Anthony enrolled in a local high school for the summer. He said he knew that if he jumped right into everything, he would be compelled to quickly learn as much as he could.
The high school setting there was nothing like anything Anthony had ever seen before. He was shocked at how much the school lacked of basic necessities and funding. He said that only the teacher had books, and every day the students had to bring change to class in order to get a copy of the pages they were studying that day.
The thing that astonished Anthony the most was that the students were the ones who kept the maintenance of the school. He said they cleaned the building and mowed the lawn when necessary. “I couldn’t believe it, but I helped them out as much as possible whenever I could.”
At the end of the summer, he decided to apply for citizenship to Panama and later received it. Before coming home, he visited the Kuna Indian tribe on an island close to Panama and learned a little about their culture. He was able to communicate with them because along with their native language, they also speak Spanish.
When describing his summer in Panama, Anthony said, “The most educational part of living in Calobre was interacting and socializing with the local people and learning about their culture. That summer was definitely one of the most memorable experiences of my life.”
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Movie review: Great moments with Mr. Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's new movie
David James, ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” a very quiet but likable Abraham Lincoln sits patiently as Union soldiers express their opinions to the then-acting president of the Untitled States.
It’s a simple scene, where the actor portraying Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis, sits motionless and says almost nothing throughout its duration. But somehow by the scene’s end — with no sweeping gestures or clever dialogue delivery — Day-Lewis conveys that he has once again immersed himself into his character and that for the remaining 145 minutes, audience members will be treated to arguably the most convincing portrayal of the 16th president ever captured on film.
Fortunately, it’s obvious that Spielberg had complete faith in his leading man and took a stand-back approach to directing Day-Lewis and the more-than-competent supporting cast. Unfortunately, Spielberg seems to have offered an equal level of trust to writer Tony Kushner, who, while capturing many compelling and poignant moments, sacrificed story for scope — a decision which often leaves the film feeling aimless.
“Lincoln” does a reasonable job of examining many of the conflicts President Lincoln might have faced in a war-torn America. One story follows Mary Todd Lincoln (Sally Field) as she struggles to move beyond the grief of losing a son while at the same time being asked to wear a strong face for political gatherings and public events. Field is solid in her depiction of the first lady and she and Day-Lewis seem comfortable portraying an aging married couple, despite Field being 10 years older than the actor.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays President Lincoln’s privileged son, Robert, who is tired of standing on the sidelines while the rest of the nation’s youths are being asked to fight for their country. The few scenes Gordon-Levitt enjoys are a worthwhile consideration, and as usual, he delivers a great performance. But the scenes may have been better fit for DVD extras or later extended cuts of the film.
The main focus of the film is President Lincoln’s behind-closed-door political discussions and the necessary secret dealings he leveraged to push through the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.
Each individual scene and exchange is compelling and often beautiful. The players involved are colorful, led by the delightfully hammy Tommy Lee Jones and James Spader. But as the scenes stack up and are laid out as a single narrative, the film begins to fall in on itself. There is no real direction or grounding conflict to invest in and, as a result, each new scene after the two-hour mark feels like a possible ending.
In fact, “Lincoln” gives “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” a run for its money for the honor of having the most endings in a single movie.
But while the film may not work in its entirety, it’s still definitely worth your time. The moments that do work are some of the best of 2012, and Day-Lewis’ performance is a wonderful tribute to the man so many Americans love and admire.
The film is rated PG-13 because of some vulgarity, and brief scenes containing gruesome battle shots of wounded soldiers.
You can contact Travis at TSPoppleton@gmail.com.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics
1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2009–10
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 04/06/2010
|Page tools: Print Page RSS Search this Product|
HEALTH RISK BEHAVIOURS
The following information is based on the National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) Dietary Guidelines for Australians recommended daily intake of fruit and vegetables at specific ages:
Comparisons between the 1995 and 2007-08 National Health Surveys showed an increase in the proportion of adults who were overweight or obese. In 1995 38% of adults were overweight and 19% obese. The 2007-08 results found that 37% of adults were overweight and 25% obese. For more information on this topic see article, Children who are Overweight or Obese in this edition of Year Book Australia.
The proportion of adults currently smoking decreased from 24% to 21% between 1995 and 2007-08. There was an increase in the proportion of adults reporting sedentary or low levels of exercise from 69% to 73% and the proportion of adults drinking at risky levels (8% to 13%).
This page last updated 21 January 2013
Unless otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence together with any terms, conditions and exclusions as set out in the website Copyright notice. For permission to do anything beyond the scope of this licence and copyright terms contact us.
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DanceBrazil was formed in 1977 by Jelon Vieira, who came to the United States from Brazil’s state of Bahia. Since then, it has served as a cultural ambassador of Brazil in the United States and worldwide. This is a select list of works by DanceBrazil that specifically deal with – or are inspired by – Afro-Brazilian culture. All photos courtesy of DanceBrazil.
Pivete (“Street Kids,” 1993; choreography by Marcelo Marcyr)
This work portrays the life of homeless young kids on the streets of Brazil. Marcyr was deeply shaken by the Candelaria massacre – an event that took place on July 23, 1993 in Rio, during which a group of men killed eight young people in the streets. The men were tried for the killings, but only two of them were convicted. In Pivete, Marcyr shows the difficulty and the joy shared by these homeless young men, who represented a large population of homeless youth in Brazil.
Anastacia (2001; choreography by Carlos dos Santos, Jr.)
This work tells the story of Anastacia, an African princess brought to Brazil as a slave in the 16th Century. Also a high priestess in the Yoruba tradition (African religion brought to Brazil by the enslaved Africans in the 16th Century), Anastacia helped her fellow countrymen keep their traditions and culture. She was also a healer. For her outspokenness, she was condemned to wear an iron mask permanently attached to her face, and she eventually died of gangrene. She is now considered a saint in Brazil and referred to as Santa Anastacia.
Divinities (2003, choreography by Carlos dos Santos, Jr.)
This piece is about the orixas – the deities in the religion of Candomble, which developed in Brazil based on the Yoruba tradition, brought to Brazil by the enslaved Africans in the 16th Century. The piece portrays the Yoruba lore version of the story of the creation of the world and explores the complex relationships and hierarchy between the deities in the religion. It also shows the intricate connections and points of intersection between the world of the divine and the world of humans.
Angeos de Rua (“Street Angels,” 2008; choreography by Jelon Vieira and Carlos dos Santos, Jr.)
This work is based on street dance and ballroom dances (Lambada, Arrosha, Swing, Gafieira) that are especially popular in Brazil. The piece was created with the purpose of drawing attention to the widespread phenomenon of male and female prostitution in Brazil and illustrates the reality of sex workers’ lives. It aims to defy generalization and show the humanity in each person, regardless of their occupation or the circumstances in which life has put them.
A Jornada (“The Journey,” 2010; choreography by Jelon Vieira)
In this piece, Vieira tells the story of the journey of the African people from their homeland to the shores of Brazil. The piece uses capoeira, the traditional Afro-Brazilian martial art, as a unifying thread in telling the story of both a physical journey from Africa to Brazil and a spiritual journey through time taken by the African people in Brazil as their new identity and culture evolved.
All pieces performed by DanceBrazil feature Capoeira – an Afro-Brazilian martial art developed in the 16th Century by the enslaved Africans brought to Bahia, one of the largest states in Brazil. Not allowed to practice self-defense, they disguised practicing their fighting technique as dance – and so Capoeira was born. For a long time, Capoeira was actually banned in Brazil as a lethal martial art. It is now legal again in Brazil and is widely practiced all over the world.
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10/29/2010 11:43:08 PM Researchers find a stable way to store the sun’s heat
Researchers at MIT have revealed exactly how a molecule called fulvalene diruthenium, which was discovered in 1996, works to store and release heat on demand. This understanding, reported in a paper published on Oct. 20 in the journal Angewandte Chemie, should make it possible to find similar chemicals based on more abundant, less expensive materials than ruthenium, and this could form the basis of a rechargeable battery to store heat rather than electricity.
The molecule undergoes a structural transformation when it absorbs sunlight, putting it into a higher-energy state where it can remain stable indefinitely. Then, triggered by a small addition of heat or a catalyst, it snaps back to its original shape, releasing heat in the process. But the team found that the process is a bit more complicated than that.
“It turns out there’s an intermediate step that plays a major role,” said Jeffrey Grossman, the Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. In this intermediate step, the molecule forms a semi-stable configuration partway between the two previously known states. “That was unexpected,” he said. The two-step process helps explain why the molecule is so stable, why the process is easily reversible and also why substituting other elements for ruthenium has not worked so far.
In effect, explained Grossman, this process makes it possible to produce a “rechargeable heat battery” that can repeatedly store and release heat gathered from sunlight or other sources. In principle, Grossman said, a fuel made from fulvalene diruthenium, when its stored heat is released, “can get as hot as 200 degrees C, plenty hot enough to heat your home, or even to run an engine to produce electricity.”
Compared to other approaches to solar energy, he said, “it takes many of the advantages of solar-thermal energy, but stores the heat in the form of a fuel. It’s reversible, and it’s stable over a long term. You can use it where you want, on demand. You could put the fuel in the sun, charge it up, then use the heat, and place the same fuel back in the sun to recharge.”
In addition to Grossman, the work was carried out by Yosuke Kanai of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Varadharajan Srinivasan of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Steven Meier and Peter Vollhardt of the University of California, Berkeley.
The problem of ruthenium’s rarity and cost still remains as “a dealbreaker,” Grossman said, but now that the fundamental mechanism of how the molecule works is understood, it should be easier to find other materials that exhibit the same behavior. This molecule “is the wrong material, but it shows it can be done,” he said.
The next step, he said, is to use a combination of simulation, chemical intuition, and databases of tens of millions of known molecules to look for other candidates that have structural similarities and might exhibit the same behavior. “It’s my firm belief that as we understand what makes this material tick, we’ll find that there will be other materials” that will work the same way, Grossman said.
Grossman plans to collaborate with Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and Professor of Chemistry, to tackle such questions, applying the principles learned from this analysis in order to design new, inexpensive materials that exhibit this same reversible process. The tight coupling between computational materials design and experimental synthesis and validation, he said, should further accelerate the discovery of promising new candidate solar thermal fuels.
Funding: The National Science Foundation and an MIT Energy Initiative seed grant.
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Today I am going to talk about embossing and the tools I use to add embossed elements to my cards. Embossing is to create a raised impression on a piece of paper, and you can do that in two ways. The first is heat embossing and the second is what I call dry embossing where the image is pressed onto a piece of paper.
In heat embossing, there are four essential tools. You need ink, Embossing Powder, a heat gun, and a stamp to create the image. If my powder matches a pigment ink that I already have, than I will use that pigment ink to attract the embossing powder, but mostly I use Perfect Medium. There are embossing ink pads, and I have tried at least two, but they do not attract as well as the Perfect Medium. (If you disagree, please leave me a comment. I am self taught and more than willing to admit I might be using the embossing pads incorrectly.)
After you stamp the image onto paper, you than sprinkle it with the embossing powder. I have a couple of different kinds, and I like the Martha Stewart ones best. However, that is because they have a sprinkle cap, so you don’t end up pouring a ton of powder all over the place. What I don’t have pictured, but is another useful tool, is a tray to collect the extra powder. A paper plate will work, but the trays have a pour spout and are easier to use.
The final step is to heat up the powder. If you don’t have a heat gun, you can use a toaster or the oven, but you risk burning the paper. The heat gun I have is by Martha Stewart. I have never used another, so I don’t have anything to compare it to. However, I don’t think it gets hot enough to use the Jim Holtz Distress Embossing powder because they take forever to heat up.
Another tool pictured, but not listed as essential is the anti-static pad. You swipe it over the surface you are going to emboss before stamping, and it helps to keep stray powder from sticking to the paper. My embossing efforts are a lot neater since I bought the anti-static pad.
The second type of embossing is dry embossing. You can use three different embossing mediums for dry embossing. (There are probably more, but I only have three!) In the picture there is a black embossing plate, a white plastic embossing folder, and a metal embossing die. For all three you place the paper in or on the embossing plate/folder/die and run it through an embossing machine that will smash the paper into the image on the plate/folder/die.
I have found the plates, folders, and dies to work equally well. However, the folder is a little less versatile because do not have as much freedom of movement if the paper is larger than the embossing folder. The folded edge is a hard line that you cannot move the paper beyond. The plates and dies however, require an adapter plate that has some give to force the paper against so it will not tear. (The folders are made of silicon, I think and do not require an adapter plate.) Depending on the thickness, all three may require a shim.
The embossing machine that I have is the Texture Boutique by Sizzix. If you have a manual die cut machine, you can also use it for your embossing, but you probably know that already. There are a couple of other embossing only machines out there, but I have no experience with them.
I love embossing! You can take plain paper and turn it into something beautiful and unique. Embossing is also comparatively inexpensive. The folders are only a couple of dollars each, and the powder will last a really long time.
If you have any other questions about embossing, please leave a comment. If there are any other tools you would like to know about, leave me a comment! Have a great week!
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|December 2010 · Vol. 22, No. 12
FOCUS ON PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY
Sound strategies to avoid
on labor and delivery
First of 2 Parts
A communication–trust–shared responsibility triad established at the first prenatal visit is your best hedge against allegation of malpractice even much later, on L & D
The counseling that you provide to a patient should be nondirective; it should include your opinion, however
Assume the patient does not understand the information you’re providing. Ask her to repeat your instructions back to you.
Patient and physician both have responsibilities that are important to achieving an optimal outcome; so does the hospital
The medical record is the best witness to interactions between a physician and a patient
Avoid medical jargon in the record. Be careful not to use vague terminology or descriptions, such as “mild vaginal bleeding” or “gentle traction.”
Dr. Martin Gimovsky is Vice Chair and Program, Director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Newark, NJ, and Clinical Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY.Alexis
Dr. Alexis Gimovsky is a house officer in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC.
The authors report no financial relationships relevant to this article.
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The State and Future of Chrysler, October 2003
Negative results of the takeover
We have on one hand the cost-cutting measures, which have been described by some as insane, by others as necessary. A balanced view may be that massive cost cutting was necessary but the way it was done was, at best, foolish. Chrysler lost many experienced engineers, including most of the Viper team, and many were simply fired or layed off without any compensation package. They moved on to GM, Ford, and others, taking with them a strong dislike of DaimlerChrysler. For example, the Ford GT is essentially the third-generation Viper, with better corporate backing. Much of the team is there - those who did not manage to get into the SRT team. The unfortunate result is that Chrysler's engineering staff is at a historic level of inexperience. Meanwhile, one plant expansion and modernization (Windsor) was halted, a brand new, state of the art plant in Brazil shut down, and suppliers publicly embarassed by an unreasonable demand for an across the board 15% cut in costs - despite the success of Chrysler's supplier partnership model before the merger.
Plants continue to be shut down and sold to suppliers, and it seems each month brings another mass layoff, sometimes of factory workers, sometimes of managers, sometimes of skilled workers. At this point, it becomes clear that Chrysler is being bled, and that efficiency is not the name of the game any more. Chrysler has succeeded most clearly when it invested, not when it cut back.
Some other major problems of the merger include people who will no longer buy Chrysler products because they are not American; a perhaps larger set of people who, finding that Plymouth is no longer around, shop elsewhere; the demolition of workers' trust in Chrysler management; the demolition of customers' trust; the erosion of the Chrysler success aura that lived so briefly in the 1990s; discord between Chrysler and suppliers; the loss of talent at all levels; the loss of employee empowerment and involvement; and the horrific marketing and public relations, including terribly botched product launches, that followed the merger, making Chrysler's previous ineffectual marketing and PR actually look good.
Let's talk very quickly about one result of the merger: the emphasis on Chrysler's new German ownership. Ad campaigns and press materials revolve around having a car with German technology. Well, if German technology is really superior, why buy a 300 or Magnum, which are only 20% German, when I can get a Volkswagen or Audi, which is all German? For that matter, the Crossfire is only 40% German, yet gets better reviews from most publications than the Mercedes on which it is based. And what about minivans? They are not German at all, so they must not be any good at all. I'd better buy a Toyota or Honda, because I know Japanese engineering is almost as good as German technology, right?
Add to that the inane, obssessive addition of the word Daimler in front of Chrysler - it's everywhere, even on the 200,000 mile club license plate frames - and you have a good way to annoy current customers, drive away enthusiasts and "buy-America" loyalists, and confuse potential new customers.
Benefits of the merger
On the other hand, we are also seeing benefits in the merging of three major automakers, with the ability to pool knowledge and components for cost savings in design and construction. Chrysler PR has told us every time a Mercedes part is used, it seems, but very quietly, Mercedes will also be incorporating Chrysler and Mitsubishi pieces.
The new design model is essentially an electronically enabled "fit the pieces together" system. Electronically, the system is backed up by a powerful extension of Chrysler's old computer systems. Indeed, Chrysler's IT people are not only in charge of corporate IT, but in charge of Mitsubishi IT now.
Even the supplier partnerships seem to be continuing - Chrysler's only board representatives are both from the supplier arena. Despite Dieter Zetsche's macho stance, supplier relationships seem to be returning to the innovative partnership model, with Chrysler people in charge for the whole corporation. Some vendors were booted out, but this process of removing suppliers and concentrating on a smaller number of better vendors began when Chrysler was still in charge.
Chrysler really has saved a good deal of money from some partnerships. The Crossfire, though it is a past-model SLK, has been getting fantastic reviews, with the consensus being that it is better than the much-more-expensive SLK itself. The LX will indeed benefit from Mercedes transmissions, and if we believe the PR folk, the prior electronic architecture would not have supported the nav system or active suspension. The E-class suspension apparently brings benefits as well, and Mercedes does have a state of the art wind tunnel (as does Chrysler).
There are actual economies of scale in some cases - the shared engine with Mitsubishi and Hyundai, shared bolts and bushings and things, and being able to share telematics and other technologies. Chrysler's promising fuel cell research seems to have been abandoned, but its hybrid program is continuing, and moving fuel cell efforts to Mercedes may well save a good deal of time and money. Mercedes has more experience with active suspensions and other luxury items, as well. Unfortunately, Mercedes quality has been moving downhill fast - we can only hope this doesn't affect Chrysler, especially with the German-built Crossfire.
The future - not as bad as we thought?
The good news is also that Chrysler is not being made a simple re-branding outlet for old Mercedes and current Mitsubishi models. While platforms will be shared, it is important to realize what exactly a platform is - as Gary wrote, "a basic dimensional design. On the K platform, the frame, suspension and drivetrain mounting points and firewall were common. The platform determines body width, firewall height and to some degree the length because of front suspension points being located an established distance from the driver position."
Both of Chrysler's current front drive car platforms are being replaced by Mitsubishi platforms, and that has been a point of contention, with the LX getting a sizable number of Mercedes bits. Dan Minick, however, pointed out that it is the newest design, already engineered for four wheel drive, and very flexible - and may appease Mitsubishi, which has faced the largest cuts.
This jibes with reports from others that Chrysler is indeed doing a heavy amount of engineering in the small and medium sized cars. In short, while perhaps the cosmetic differences between the Dodge and Chrysler LX models already shown are very slight, the differences between the Mitsubishis and Chryslers will extend beyond sheet metal and suspension tuning.
Corporate parts model
For the moment, components can still be labelled according to their source - the Mercedes transmissions, the Chrysler engines. The new joint-venture "world engine," though, is the shape of things to come. Dan Minick again:
Global Four, for example. I would guess a "hemi theme" or "magnum" theme to Chryslers version, a "rally theme" for Mitsu's version, and a "smooth, quiet" theme for MB. Same basic engineering, but different cams, valving, induction, compression ratios, etc. Dimensions, such as bore center to center, crank journal size, crank castings, etc. would be common to ensure same line production.
All the divisions work together on a common component, develop a basic framework that will match all needs, then use different tuning to get what they need. Mercedes, with its higher cost tolerances, can go all out for quietness and level power output. Dodge can let the exhaust and intake scream, and go for maximum acceleration, perhaps with an emphasis on torque, while Mitsubishi opts for horsepower, and Chrysler goes somewhere between, with quiet torque but not quite at the Mercedes level. New components are being designed cross-company. Dan pointed out that this is really the old Chrysler Corporation model: Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth shared basic engine designs, but they modified and renamed them for their own needs. Chrysler might use hemi heads to raise power, Plymouth poly heads to save money.
Take the basic hard points (firewall, floorpan stampings, front fender understructure, and mounting points for powertrain cradle), these are all key areas in crash development. The designers can use existing parts bins in CAD design, to use on shelf parts and find the best fit automatically from existing stock, or resize and suggest parts (all done automatically). Any skin, front clip, length, height, etc. can be done this way - any suspension using any combination of parts, any powertrain. Just plug in the appropriate engine cradle for straight or sideways configurations, front wheel drive, rear drive, etc. Think K-car, minivan, C-body, Daytona, etc. all from the same basic parts chest, except we've got a much bigger toy chest to choose parts from now. Brand specific parts that need to be brand specific for feel, ride, execution, are chosen with that target in mind. Since the original goal is to make it flexible, it can be designed in from the beginning to be flexible.
In the case of the Lancer and Galant, these are used as the root, but only at the very basic minimum level, and tweaked to be more flexible. Very little is actually common, then, between all variants, and Chrysler can have a true role and contribution - even before its work in designing the actual pieces such as engines and suspensions.
The problem is that the Mercedes people seem to have a three-ton chip on their shoulder, and seem to always insist that their part or way of doing things is better - and the Chrysler-loathing executives in Stuttgart and at Deutsche Bank always agree with them. We have heard that Dieter Zetsche's future in the company, and in the German auto industry as a whole, is dead, because he's been standing up and demanding resources for Chrysler instead of simply liquidating all the assets and turning it into a front end for Mercedes, smart, and Mitsubishi. We applaud Dieter and can only quietly hope for a major shakeup in the probably-broke-but-it's-hard-to-say-with-German-accounting-laws Deutsche Bank and, for that matter, at DaimlerChrysler AG.
The model line
Chrysler and Dodge will indeed be differentiated more, even though the LX series has very similar Dodge and Chrysler models. Dan Minick wrote, "If you took a hard look at the future, there are NO clones between divisions. None." The days of the Reliant/Aries/LeBaron are thankfully over. There will not be any Chrysler economy cars.
Chrysler did well for a time with a large variety of models from a few basic platforms: in the 1960s and 1970s with the A and B bodies contributing most sales, in the 1980s with the K and L. However, in the 1990s, the excesses of the K-car days were countered with a worse excess - having only a single style of each platform, an expensive waste. The Neon had a single basic engine with one cam or two (second generation had two variations of a single-cam engine), and two doors or four (second generation only had four). The LH series was always a four-door sedan, admittedly with a variety of wheelbases, tuning, and trim lines. The JA and JR were four door sedans with a single convertible. Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to have a choice of door count and wagon/hatchback style.
Chrysler is returning to the plethora system, with each platform spawning a crossover/SUV style vehicle, sedan, wagon, and coupe. That can only increase sales, and at moderate extra cost. The LX series will be spread out over more models, most of them going to Chrysler; the small and medium cars will spread out across Dodge and Mitsubishi.
Most ongoing problems are bad management, coming from a mindset that assumes all decisions are best made at the highest possible level.
- Lack of involvement and empowerment of lower-end workers reduces quality and innovation, and prevents sensible cost reduction
- Cost reduction efforts have become obvious in the cars
- Trust of employees and, in some cases, suppliers and customers was destroyed and no effort seems to be made to build it back up
- Nobody seems to have been told the new strategy, vision, and mission of Chrysler
- Quality is by flying squad and management decree, with no effort to duplicate Toyota's successful ground-up system (adapted and adopted by Chrysler with great success) - the two methods are by no means incompatible
- Mushroom management
- First reaction seems to always be layoffs at Chrysler, more investment at Mercedes
- Ax is still hanging over several plants, which surely is affecting productivity and the retention of qualified employees, not to mention increasing stress for employees and simply being a bad thing to do
- Marketing and advertising is horrible (but may change with new management)
- Stuttgart headquarters is still making too many decisions
- Perception (possibly correct) that arguing with a German manager leads to being fired - this can't help decision quality or innovation
- The idea among managers and leaders that those who are currently acting to sabotage the union of DCX (or those who would at least prefer for it to go away) should be fired, ignored, etc., instead of considering them as potential change leaders
- Deutsche Bank's desire to reclaim their money by selling all Chrysler's assets right now instead of waiting for investments to bear fruit
- Stuttgart's alleged continued bleeding of Chrysler through dubious but probably legal (in Germany) accounting methods
The continued absence of Plymouth seems largely due to Stuttgart's desire to save money and concentrate their effort on a manageable number of brands - and their lack of understanding of the American car market. However, as Chrysler veers far away from their current model line and styling, and specializes their brands' images more, the argument for Plymouth only increases - especially to those who remember the pre-war Airflow disaster.
Consider the current lines:
- smart - ultramodern city car
- Mitsubishi - sporty, youth-oriented
- Dodge - muscular, prototypical American, brash
- Chrysler - entry-level luxury
- Mercedes - luxury
- Maybach - personalized luxury
Now, consider Plymouth's role as the affordable, reliable transportation provider. No, it's not exciting, and it won't get a lot of 18 year olds, but it reaps reliable sales every year, not unlike the Corolla. Given a good, focused, low-intensity ad campaign and a small number of models, Plymouth could make an incredible comeback with attractive, PT-style cars (with those 1940s Plymouth noses). It could have a version of the Dodge minivan, with conservative styling, in case the new look of the Caravan turns off mainstream buyers and leaves Dodge with a 5% market share. It could bring back returning Plymouth buyers - there were 250,000 Plymouths sold in its last year! (That's more than some standalone car companies.) It could also rid Chrysler of its sole remaining low-priced vehicle without sacrificing the rather high sales volume of the PT Cruiser - and, yes, that was Plymouth Truck, not Personal Transportation. If the only thing standing in the way of Plymouth's return is stubborness and refusal to admit a mistake, someone is doing themselves and their employer a great disservice.
It may well be that DCX will try to shove in smart as a Plymouth replacement. However, in the American market, size is important, and smart is small. Attempting to sell a smart minivan may simply confuse customers.
Either way, we don't expect a Plymouth revival for at least four years.
Strengths of various divisions
This is based on Dan Minick's comments, but with additions, so don't blame him if you disagree with it.
|Platform team concept||Small cars||Huge R&D program - much more invested than Chrysler|
|Purchasing skills||Grasp of youth market in USA||Experience with suppliers' telematics|
|Jeep||New platform designs||Ability to build on high-end brand heritage|
|Trucks for North America||Strong Asian presence||Commercial vehicles|
|Liberty Group innovations||Variable valve technology||Worldwide network|
|Advanced internal computer systems||Direct injection||Experience with suppliers' active suspensions|
|Flexible, fast internal systems||-||-|
|Low-cost manufacturing skills||-||-|
|Quality enhancement systems||-||-|
|Susan Unger||?||Dieter Zetsche|
DaimlerChrysler is headed into tough times, and it still makes many decisions badly. The corporation has a bloated division in Mercedes, which has managed to lose money despite its high status, thanks partly to a steep decline in quality, and it tries to solve that problem with frequent, trust-eroding, productivity-killing layoffs at Chrysler. There don't seem to be any healthy DCX divisions, with Freightliner on the edge, Mitsubishi recovering, Chrysler floundering from bad marketing, PR, and management, smart still on an investment cycle, Mercedes apparently losing money and glamor, and other properties suffering from the economy and commercial-vehicle glut.
DaimlerChrysler's savior may well be Chrysler, even as the PR folk, executives, analysists, and apologists tell us that Mercedes is saving Chrysler. For it is Chrysler's computer systems which are being spread across the corporation; Chrysler's unified-company philosophy; and Chrysler's supplier partnerships. If only Stuttgart brass could wrap their heads around the importance of employees and a healthy organizational culture, and stop pretending that Chrysler somehow deceived Daimler-Benz rather than the other way around, Chrysler could probably make some heads turn.
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Casa Maria’s Creative Learning Zone
Flubber is one of those exciting sensory experiences that young children fall in love with immediately. Through numerous play experiences the children discovered how flubber stretches, molds, drips and breaks apart.
While the children were playing one day, a child placed some flubber inside a funnel and watched it drip down slowly. He exclaimed “you won’t believe this, look it’s dripping down” the other children sat beside him and giggled as they saw the pink flubber drip. Everybody wanted their own container after that… We decided to conduct a science experiment and see which container will allow the flubber to drip faster. We named it “The Greatest Flubber Race”.
With that said the whole classroom got busy searching for the perfect container. We decided to hang it up high. The containers stayed up for five days. They eventually dried really hard and never broke off from their containers.
Our final observations are:
1. Flubber placed in the fruit basket dripped the fastest and they looked just like Spaghetti Noodles.
2. Flubber placed in the funnel dripped the longest in length.
3. Flubber placed in the Kleenex box dripped the slowest.
4. Flubber placed in the green wire basket dripped the thickest.
Flubber Recipe :
1. Mix 2 cups water and 1 ½ cups Elmers glue in a big bowl.
2. Add a squirt of liquid water color and then stir it up.
3. In a separate small bowl mix together: 2 cups water and 4 TBS Borax.
4. After it’s completely dissolved, pour the Borax mixture slowly and a little at a time into the glue and water mixture. Pour a little, mix it a little, pour a little, mix a little. Mix with your hands or a sturdy wooden spoon. As you mix, it will become a flubber ball! NOTE: You might NOT need to use all this Borax Solution!!!!!
5. Store it in an airtight container or ziploc for a few weeks. When it begins to flick apart or when it gets too hard, it is time to make a new batch! Play with it, explore it, try to get it to blow a bubble with a straw! Watch it stretch as you hold it!
6. Vinegar takes it out of clothes, carpet and fabric. Mayo will take it out of hair.
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A huge tornado tears through the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing dozens. Slideshow
Graying America gets wired to cut healthcare costs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baby boomers wired to their iPads and smart phones are giving U.S. health experts some new ideas about ways to cut the soaring costs of medical care in graying America.
Some of the ideas might sound like "Robo-Granny". An astronautical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a skin-tight undersuit equipped with sensors that can constantly monitor the vital signs of its elderly wearer and feed the data into a computer that fires off health alerts. It was first designed for a landing on Mars.
There's also Paro, the robotic seal which has fur, big eyes and responds to voice commands, a low-cost companion that the AgeLab at MIT is testing to help calm elderly people with dementia. Then there is the magic carpet with a built-in sensor that monitors gait to check for risk of falling.
Other ideas are simpler and already are being tested by governments and private health insurers. Marilyn Yeats, 79, is suffering from congestive heart failure and uses a personal healthcare computer, Connect, provided by the health insurer Humana Corp. She calls it My Little Nurse for helping her keep track of her blood pressure, weight, temperature and whether she is taking her medicines on time.
"It rings me up every morning at 10 am, and there I am, on my machine measuring myself, and if I have gained weight, it asks me additional questions. I say it is like having your own nurse come into your house every day." said the Naples, Fla., resident.
If these programs succeed, home technologies could help slash billions of dollars from the nation's $2.6 trillion healthcare bill by keeping elderly people in their homes for longer and out of expensive hospitals and nursing homes.
The United States spends far more on health care than any other country at 17.9 percent of GDP compared with the OECD average for advanced countries of 9.5 percent. And yet dollar for dollar it gets results that are consistently in the bottom third of developed countries along with Mexico or Hungary, as measured by average health outcomes.
Cutting healthcare costs is essential if the United States is to tame its $15 trillion government debt load. Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly consumes 15 percent of U.S. budget spending. It is the biggest single expense after defense and the pension program Social Security.
Medicare costs are growing rapidly as the 79 million baby boomers -- roughly equivalent to the entire population of Germany -- retire over the next 20 years, threatening to push the U.S. debt load to $25 trillion in a decade.
Left unchanged, the Medicare hospital fund is forecast to go bankrupt by 2024. The ratings agency Standard & Poor's, which already has downgraded the U.S. credit standing, has warned of further action within three years if the United States and other advanced G20 countries fail to get to grips with the costs of aging. It singled out healthcare as the biggest factor.
New technologies hold out promise for lowering costs. But they run into a basic problem -- the fee-for-service payment model, which pays U.S. healthcare professionals for delivering treatments, diagnostic service or surgical procedures, rather than for keeping someone healthy and out of the hospital.
"We have to rethink entirely how we are paying our doctors, and the longer we fail to look at the results they deliver for the healthcare they provide the more we will fail," said Prof. Amitabh Chandra, a health economist at Harvard University.
Initial studies on home health computers are sufficiently encouraging that Humana, the largest healthcare insurance company in the United States, is testing 1,000 patients in 34 states. They conduct daily self-monitoring and weekly video check-ins with a nurse. Its aim is to see whether it reduces emergency medical visits.
The Center for Disease Control in a study last year estimated that fewer emergency hospital stays could save $7 billion annually. One night in an intensive care unit can cost $10,000, in a nursing home over $200, while staying at home with a health monitor could cost as little as $10.
A Stanford University study last year found that two clinics using a similar product called Health Buddy saved between 7.7 percent and 13 percent per elderly person per quarter. UnitedHealthcare, which insures one out of every five Americans on Medicare, is also running a program.
The Obama administration, in its 2010 healthcare reform legislation now before the U.S. Supreme Court, is seeking to encourage this type of experimentation in healthcare delivery to cut costs. One initiative would pay healthcare providers a set price for each medical condition rather than reimbursing for each service. Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office. Elmendorf said the idea is to create incentives for doctors to treat patients more effectively by allowing them to pocket the difference if they save money.
"It is a period of great ferment, and how successful that will be is a big question," he said.
HOME AS CLINIC
A telehealth project conducted by the National Health Service in Britain has excited health information technology advocates here in the United States.
Britain collected 12 months of data on 6,191 patients in using home health monitoring, half of whom had chronic conditions such as heart failure and diabetes. It found that emergency hospital admissions fell by 20 percent, patient stays were cut by a quarter and re-admissions by 14 percent. The results, released last December, were sufficiently impressive that the British government plans to roll out telehealth monitors to three million homes over the next five years.
"It shows you can really do simple things with simple technology. It's about getting the right information into the right hands at the right time," said Louis Burns, chief executive of CareInnovations, a joint project of GE and Intel Corp. which developed Connect.
Dr. Jeff Kaye, a gerontologist at the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology, is out to prove the case for wide rollout of telehealth devices in the United States. The center has wired 400 homes of the elderly with sensors and computers that feed medical and behavioral data into a computer bank. He wants to expand the project to 10,000 homes nationwide, a large enough sample to produce compelling scientific evidence of its value.
Software programs sift through all the data to check for developing trends or changes in personal habits such as whether someone is getting up more frequently at night, or communicating less with friends, or walking differently. These could signal the onset of dementia, Parkinson's or a stroke. A nurse can call or arrange a doctor's visit.
Without the data, Kaye said he might miss important signals in a short monthly visit.
"If you think that the average appointment is 15.7 minutes long, half of that time I am talking and half of that the patient is talking, that leaves only about five minutes to actually reach the diagnosis and prescribe the treatment. It is crazy," he said.
Collecting reams of highly personal health information sounds intrusive, and adult children often protest. But if it keeps Dad in his home longer and if he controls who sees the information, most people welcome it, Kaye said.
The gerontologist is a huge advocate for these technologies. But he is no starry eyed evangelist. While it might be relatively cheap to turn the home into a health check-up center, comparable to the cost of a home burglary alarm, someone has to read all the print-outs and spotting diseases early can increase the medical bill further, Kaye and other experts say.
Under the fee-for-service payment model, where every time a doctor reads a chart, orders a test or consults with a patient a bill is generated, home monitoring devices would be scarcely affordable. And even if the technologies do help keep someone healthier, a longer lifespan pushes up the total healthcare bill. A 90-year-old is far more likely to have multiple chronic conditions from heart failure, diabetes and cancer to dementia.
"The simple connection from better health information technology to cost savings is very aspirational," said Harvard economist Chandra.
In fact, longevity increases the bill. The MacArthur Research Network on an Aging Society estimated in a December 2009 study that by 2050, Americans will live between three and eight years longer on average than the government projects, adding $3.2 trillion to the Medicare and pension program.
PAYING FOR RESULTS
The job of Dr. Richard Baron, group director at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is to cut through this knot. His task is to improve the quality of care for America's oldest and poorest, while lowering costs. His agency is distributing $900 million in grants this year to test various projects, including those including home technologies.
A specialist in geriatric and internal medicine, Baron was early to adopt email contact with patients, switch to electronic medical records and use some basic home health monitoring under a state-funded project at his Philadelphia practice in 2004.
"Patients loved it. Email was hugely popular," he said.
The business challenge was how to make technology cost effective. Rather than charge for each email a doctor sent or electronic chart read, Baron focused health results - what does the patient want and how can we use technology to achieve that?
"If people are rewarded for the rates at which they use the technology, they will find ways for the technology to reward them. If they are rewarded for the way in which they solve the health problem, they will find ways to make that happen," Baron said.
Studies by the OECD, McKinsey Global Institute and by Thomson Reuters have shown that 30 percent of U.S. health care spending is unnecessary. Experts point to the fee-for-service payment model as a major reason where doctors, surgeons, hospitals and other specialists have no incentive to coordinate care. This is a particular problem for elders who frequently have a number of chronic diseases.
Rand Corp. forecast that converting from paper to electronic medical records could save $162 billion a year by allowing doctors to coordinate treatment and reduce unnecessary procedures. But in a sign of how complex it is to change the dynamics of the healthcare system, a study in the Health Affairs journal last month found that access to computerized image results was associated with a 40-70 percent increase in doctors ordering extra tests, possibly because they were just a mouse click away.
For Baron, the study says less about electronic records than it does about the need to change incentives. Used differently, electronic records can make it easier to track whether people are having the regular tests they need.
This is the vision shared by Eric Dishman, director of health innovation at Intel, who carries a black rotary telephone around to speaking engagements to symbolize a U.S. healthcare system badly in need of a refresh.
By 2030 when all the boomers have turned 65, he wants to see elders using sensors like the MIT biosuit and smart phones to perform their own health checks. He wants to cut visits to hospitals and clinics by 50 percent and relegate nursing homes to the history books.
"Certainly 10 years out, we'd better be in that situation, or we will be in an economic crisis in the United States," said Dishman.
(Reporting By Stella Dawson)
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Enhancing Europe’s Impact
Brussels-based think tanks lead the way
The European Union has never before had more opportunities to shape events than today. The banking crisis and thus the protection of the common currency have become a crucial test for EU partners. The second annual high-level Brussels Think Tank Dialogue, which was held on January 25 at the Residence Palace and dedicated to the topic "Europe 3.0: Building a Viable Union," took Europe’s high potential for guiding policies into consideration. "We need the European dimension more than ever," concluded President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso on the current state of the European Union.
The EU Commission President further emphasized that currently more self-confidence is needed in place of wide-spread pessimism.
The Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), joined eight other leading European think tanks -- Bruegel, CEPS, Confrontations Europe, Egmont, EPC, Friends of Europe, Madariaga-College of Europe Foundation and SWP -- as well as Agence Europe last Tuesday in hosting the 2011 State of the Union-Brussels Think Tank Dialogue.
Leading experts and representatives of the 27 Member States demanded that in order to save the euro, the euro countries should work together more closely and with greater solidarity. The working group on economic coordination and the EU budget was drawn up to present recommendations on how to use positive synergies between the EU member states by combining various funds and financial facilities. The Polish Secretary for European Affairs and Economy Mikolaj Dowgielewicz brought optimism to the debate and noted that the euro was currently faring well. "After creating a euro safety net and strengthening economic coordination at the EU level, it is now time for EU member states to concentrate on more growth-oriented initiatives," he said. Thomas Fischer, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Brussels office, pointed out that the Europe 2020 Strategy of the EU Commission aims exactly at this goal by looking for new ways to foster smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. "However,” Fischer continued, "there is a risk that the strategy will remain a mere ‘policy of promises’ if the EU does not provide the necessary financial resources. The current budget debate should therefore not focus exclusively on austerity efforts of member state governments."
The immediate challenges facing the European Union, however, go beyond the future shape of European economic governance and the current budget debate. During the Think Tank Dialogue, policymakers, researchers and representatives of civil society developed concepts to address areas in which they would like to see improvements and they proposed recommendations for future action by Europe's decision makers.
The working group on climate and energy agreed that a policy allowing for an "energy mix" (renewable and non-renewable energy supply) would be better than setting an unrealistic date for when a purely renewable energy supply would be available. The Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi noted that there is no internal market for energy. "We should change that perception and develop an ‘energy mix’ policy," he said.
Martonyi also shared the opinion of the participants of the workshop on migration who regard immigrants not only as workers, but first and foremost as people with families. The participants called for a different perspective on migration as a natural phenomenon in a globalized world and as a part of a policy package that would address labor shortages as Europe’s population ages and shrinks on average.
The workshop about the new European External Action Service established that although the European External Action Service was established through the Lisbon Treaty, the Union does not currently speak with one voice. The recommendation of the working group was that the member states and the EU would have to agree on the role of the External Action Service and how diplomatic competence is shared. After the failure of the member states to speak with one voice on the revolution in Tunisia, the service should strive to become a more effective diplomatic player in the coming year.
Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, stressed that he is completely content with gradual, step-by-step progress. He rejected criticism from the European Parliament that the actions of the EU government had regularly been "too little, too late." He emphasized that the agenda of European think tanks should include constructive support in order to address important challenges. The experts working in think tanks should help to identify major challenges such as the economic crisis at an early stage and develop solutions to these challenges. At the same time think tanks should make recommendations on how to strengthen competitiveness and social cohesion in Europe. Additionally, Barroso asked the think tanks for their active participation in shaping the future European Union. "Do not forget to put pressure on us policymakers," he said. "We often work better when we are under pressure."
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CeaseFire New Orleans will sponsor a viewing party of "The Interrupters" this afternoon, followed by a discussion. "The Interrupters" is a PBS "Frontline" documentary film based on the work of the Chicago CeaseFire program.
Cobe Williams, one of the Chicago "interrupters" featured in the film, will be in New Orleans for the screening and discussion.
CeaseFire New Orleans launched its Central City operations this week.
Before the "Interrupters" screening, there will be a preview of "Shell Shocked," a documentary by John Ritchie.
The program will begin at 4 p.m. behind New Israelite Baptist Church, 2100 Terpsichore St.
CeaseFire New Orleans is this city's version of a program developed in Chicago that employs "violence interrupters" to stop shootings and murders before they happen. The interrupters are typically ex-offenders trained to figure out when retaliatory violence is likely to occur, and to talk people out of succumbing to their desire for revenge.
The program will start in Central City but is expected to be expanded to the St. Roch area and, eventually, eastern New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and other city officials announced this week.
The concept behind the CeaseFire program is to treat violence as a disease by anticipating where it could spread. Researchers at Northwestern University found that shootings and attempted shootings, as well as gang-related homicides, declined in some Chicago neighborhoods where the program was in place, and they attributed the drop to CeaseFire.
For more information on the "Frontline" documentary, visit www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/
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From the pages of the Crescent City American, June 1931.
The greatest obstacle in the way of acquiring the harbor at Crescent City was removed Tuesday, June 9, when Governor Rolph of California signed Assembly bill No. 1151 which permits the formation of a port district in Del Norte County without floating a bond issue, according to A.H. Banwell, secretary-manager of the Northern California-Southern Oregon Development Association.
The people of Del Norte County can form a port district by getting the signatures of 50 property owners and presenting the petition to the Board of Supervisors. This does away with increasing the taxation of the county, which was the place the shoe was rubbing in the fighting for the port.
The passage of the bill terminated a long fight by the Development Association, according to Banwell, because it was realized long ago that nothing could be done without such a bill. All that remains now is to determine the actual tonnage that will ship through the port, and the case before the Board of Army Engineers will be iron-clad, according to Banwell.
The bill will become a law on Aug. 15 of this year.
Boys begin long hike
Raymond Adsit Jr., Oliver Bailey and Palmer Westbrook have selected a novel way in which to spend the first few days of their vacation.
On Tuesday, the three boys were taken to Gallice, Ore., near Grants Pass, by Ray Adsit Sr. and left there to begin a long hike along the Rogue River to Gold Beach. The hike will probably take 10 days to complete, but the boys will enjoy fishing, swimming and hunting along the way.
On their arrival at Gold Beach they will be met by Mr. Adsit, who will bring them home.
Old-time column used
Through the Crescent City American’s old-time column, “Auld Lang Syne,” an old seaman, who is both a historian and a writer, has been put on the scent of additional material for his historical collections of Northern California.
Thomas A. Selfridge is one of the crew of the steamer Elizabeth and puts in here at least once a week. He has found very little time to make a thorough search in his quest for information, literature, and even souvenirs from old historical buildings, etc. and welcomed the reliable information which he was able to take from our 76 years-ago paragraphs on early Northern California.
On different roads?
Recently a man, weighing about 200 pounds, puffing and swearing, halted his auto at a service station and demanded to know, “who built that highway south along the mountainside and through the redwoods? He should be serving time in your state prison. It got my goat.”
Shortly after, another auto halted, containing four ladies, and all appeared to be in a happy mood. One, who hailed from Hollywood, voiced her opinion of the beautiful Redwood Highway in an entirely different manner:
“In traveling through the redwoods, I enjoyed every foot of the way, in particular the loops and sharp turns. But the real thrill came when we reached that portion of the highway hundreds of feet directly above the Pacific Ocean!”
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An anonymous reader writes "Finding its lander inside a 20-meter crater, NASA has further homed in its latest lander's location and a major science target for the Opportunity rover using high resolution orbital cameras from 400 km overhead. The lander's parachute even casted a shadow nearby this target [another 150 meter crater] during descent. Earlier, each bounce of the Spirit rover could be imaged, along with its backshell, heatshield and parachute debris. Even with dust and weathering, this method could find Pathfinder and Viking [barely], and a technical discussion with pictures is at Malin Space Systems, which designed the Mars Orbital Camera. Because of uncertainties in location, however, it would take 60 years to find the lost Mars Polar Lander, but they may look for Beagle if conditions aren't too dusty."
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Iron, fine octahedrite - IVA
Great Nama Land, Namibia - (25° 30'S, 18° 0'E)
Closing out the Gibeon section is arguably the most aesthetic iron meteorite known to exist. In 1992, indigenous tribesmen in Namibia's Kalahari recovered this matchless specimen with the aid of a metal detector. It is extremely rare for meteorites to have naturally formed holes, and rarer still when the holes are positioned in the matrix in such a way as to yield a magnificent aesthetic specimen-let alone the highly zoomorphic example seen here. Defined by the two adjacent hollows that perforate its mass and separated by perfectly sculpted ridges, there is an exquisite asymmetric balance between this meteorite's two sides: the outward flanging of one side is offset by the larger hollow and more prominent opposing crest.
In addition to the mechanisms involved in the shaping of aesthetic iron meteorites described in the previous lot, there is one other critical detail that was of particular significance to the current example: the moment of extraction from beneath the Earth's surface. If removed several hundred years earlier, this specimen would not have been the perfectly singular zoomorphic evocation before us. If removed several hundred years later, the holes would be far too large and outsized. Adorned with a sumptuous natural patina from its stay in the Kalahari and accompanied by a custom armature and Lucite dome, this is an incomparable meteorite from the finest collection of aesthetic iron meteorites in the world. 195 x 212 x 177mm (7.66 x 8.33 x 7 inches) and 9.37 kilograms (20.66 pounds)
Provenance: The Macovich Collection, New York City
Available at Heritage Auctions.
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