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Affliction wrote:Wurth film is not a silicone or is it dielectric.It is a pure base petrolium which coats and adheres to metal surfaces to prevent corrosion long term. It is semi fluid which means it flows SLOWLY but never solidifys. Ideal product for hub motors.
When I Googled "Wurth Film," this is what came up first and I thought it was what you meant:http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/product-Wurth-Wurth-Silicone-Spray-Grease-500ml-Spray-Can-10767.htm
I'll look harder for "Wurth Film," as it does sound ideal from your description. The ACF-50 looks like it would
work the same way according to the page http://www.allyearbiker.co.uk/Bike_Protection/ACF50.html
on the UK Biker page posted.
Is the "Fluid Film" from Canadian Tire the same kind of thing? I think that the
staying semi liquid being one the the key things, and the page does not mention that.http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/4/Auto/3/AutoFluidsChemicals/LubricantsPenetrants/PRDOVR~0381567P/Fluid%2BFilm%2BRust%2Band%2BCorrosion%2BPrevention.jsp
I somehow missed Page 1 of this thread and note that Drunkskunk brought up some concerns I had as well
regarding packing the hub with grease:
Drunkskunk wrote:problems I see are:
The break down of the insulation and glue due to the solvent action of the grease
I don't think the Permatex Silicone Dielectric Grease has solvents in it.
Drunkskunk wrote:Friction caused by the grease viscosity acting on the airgap. Oil is a lube only when the viscosity is overcome, untill then it sticks things together pretty well. The airgap is so small, and grease is so well effective against shearing, that it would be difficult to spin the motor efficently.
This is certainly a concern depending on how bad the shear force is.
Drunkskunk wrote:Weight. it woudl take a couple pounds of grease to fill one of these things.
Not the little Bafang anyway. I've had it open and it wouldn't take that much.
Drunkskunk wrote:and last of all, Leaks. Grease is a fluid, more so when hot. if the seals can't keep water out, they can't keep the oils from the grease in. This bike would leak more than an MG, and sling grease as the tire spun.
And this I'm not sure about. I'm not sure how hot before it turns fluid. I thought my normal hill abuse around
here where it feels warm by touch would do it (as it does for other grease). But I'm not sure about the Permatex
Silicone Dielectric stuff.
Affliction says it would have to be hotter than I thought:
Affliction wrote:Permatex Dielectric Tune-Up grease...is totally useless unless you are methods and your hub generates 100 degrees+ celcius of heat to melt it to liquid.
So I'll probably go with one of the Spray Films that stay semi-liquid, all-things-considered.
I just might heat up some of the Permatex Dielectric just to see exactly when it liquefies. Now I gotta know | <urn:uuid:bbc29b94-912e-473e-9003-4da0e3dd52f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12984&start=15 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950938 | 786 | 1.570313 | 2 |
What is the opinion on Jesus's use of the phrase "the eye of a needle" in Mark 10:25:
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”—Mark 10:23-26 (ESV)
Could it refer to the small gate which required a camel to unladen and cross through on its knees or could it be an extreme analogy? | <urn:uuid:f368f1d9-4d3f-4ed9-966f-5ef84c2532b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/223/the-eye-of-the-needle/1489 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988411 | 176 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Ready to use How to install ? Try (no longer available) Short overview
Voyez l'annonce du livre de Sébastien Veigneau Approches impérative et fonctionnelle de l'algorithmique, Applications en C et Caml-Light, qui inclut de nombreux exercices corrigés.
Have a look on the Sébastien Veigneau's book Approches impérative et fonctionnelle de l'algorithmique, Applications en C et Caml-Light, which includes many exercices with solutions.
ACE is a MAPLE library devoted to Algebraic Combinatorics computations. It is available for Maple V release 1, 2, 3, 4 and since 1999, for Maple V release 5. This is a joint effort of a number of people from the University of Marne-la-Vallée. The development has been supervised by Alain Lascoux and Jean-Yves Thibon.
When using the ACE system, thank you for including references to ACE in your articles.
The project started in April 1994, at the University of Marne-la-Vallée, with the development of three MAPLE packages, dealing respectively with the symmetric group, Schubert polynomials and noncommutative symmetric functions. These packages were available in July 1994. We made up our minds to develop a more general project about algebraic combinatorics on October 1994. The aim was to build an ``easy to use'' Algebraic Combinatorics Environment. We have chosen MAPLE because this system is widely used by combinatorists and it has a convenient user's interface. We had in mind to develop an efficient toolbox of functions for research in algebraic combinatorics. The interface had to be very flexible for first experimentations, whereas it may be more interesting to use some specific programs for large scale computations: for instance, we refer the reader to the SYMMETRICA system that is well suited for such computations.
We also refer the reader to the new system µ-EC developped by Vincent Prosper (University of Marne-la-Vallée) which includes the SYMMETRICA system (to compute with symmetric functions) and can be seen as an environment of computation in combinatorics for the computer algebra system MuPAD. The µ-EC system includes many functions available in ACE.
The story started in 1994. ACE 1.0 was divided into various packages dealing with specific objects such as noncommutative symmetric functions, Schubert polynomials, tableaux or Hecke algebra, each package having the ability to use some functions defined in the other packages. The first version of ACE was available for any Ms-Dos or Unix system, for MAPLE V Release 1, 2 and 3.
The second version ACE 2.0 was available since June 1996 for any Ms-Dos, Unix and Macintosh system. It provided new packages and new functions in the already existing packages. Several people have been involved in the project in order to develop new programs as for instance to work with the hyperoctahedral group and with several algebras associated to the hyperoctahedral groups B(n), together with their realizations as algebras of operators on the ring of polynomials. Moreover, a package has been developed to work with the representation theory of classical Lie groups (symplectic and orthogonal groups), whereas a new package was devoted to computations in the polynomial ring Z[x1, ..., xn] regarded as a free module of rank n! over the ring Sym[x1, ..., xn] of symmetric polynomials, and another one was devoted to calculations in the Fock space representations of the quantum affine algebras Uq(sl^(n)).
The third version of ACE, that is ACE 3.0, has been released at the beginning of 1998. Many changes have been made in order to get a coherent system devoted to computations in algebraic combinatorics. Many function names have been changed, many functions have disappeared, either becoming internal functions or being included as options of other more general ones. Function names have been strictly normalized.
ACE 3.0 has thus less functions but more functionalities. In particular, several packages have been included such as two packages to handle partitions and compositions of integers, one package to work in the free algebra, one package dealing with symmetric functions on different alphabets.
The ACE system, version 3.0, is now available for Maple V Release 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 for any Ms-Dos, Unix and Macintosh system.
I hope this system will be useful for further developments in computer science in relation with algebraic combinatorics. I would like to thank you for your interest in ACE, quant à moi, je vais désormais voler vers d'autres horizons... | <urn:uuid:8961b540-7097-4400-8b6e-b593c9687890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phalanstere.univ-mlv.fr/~ace/ACE/3.0/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921806 | 1,050 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Posted at 11:48 PM on October 29, 2012
by Paul Huttner
Filed under: Hurricanes
Landfall Sandy made landfall Monday evening near Atlantic City, NJ
Record storm surge flooding & damaging wind gusts
From New Jersey to NYC, Sandy's powerful storm surge reached record levels.
50% of Hoboken, NJ is "under water" as of early Monday AM according to the Mayor.
Details on a few of Sandy's impacts from NHC:
NATIONAL OCEAN SERVICE TIDE GAUGES HAVE RECENTLY REPORTED STORM TIDE HEIGHT...THE COMBINATION OF STORM SURGE AND TIDE RELATIVE TO MEAN LOWER LOW WATER...OF 13.3 FEET AT KINGS POINT NEW YORK...13.7 FEET AT THE BATTERY NEW YORK...AND 13.3 FEET AT SANDY HOOK NEW JERSEY.
A WIND GUST TO 79 MPH WAS REPORTED AT JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT IN NEW YORK. A WIND GUST TO 90 MPH WAS REPORTED EARLIER THIS EVENING AT ISLIP NEW YORK.
New York City Disaster:
Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy was every bit as bad as meteorologists advertised.
The record storm surge in New York has inundated major parts of the city.
Streets, power plants, subways and commuter tunnels under water. Much of lower Manhattan plunged into darkness as explosions rock a power station.
It will take much of Tuesday and maybe much longer than that to fully assess the damage, and begin to understand the impact and longer term consequences of this historic storm.
6 million (and counting) are without power that will take many days to restore.
Storm sinks HMS Bounty: Dramatic Coast Guard rescue
The storm took the HMS Bounty 90 miles off the Carolina Coast Monday.
Here are the amazing details and rescue video from the U.S. Coast Guard.
In the first major U.S. Coast Guard search and rescue operation associated with Hurricane Sandy, the Coast Guard has rescued 14 people from life rafts in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C. The search continues for two people who remain missing from the crew of HMS Bounty.
The owner of the 180-foot, three-mast tall ship HMS Bounty, a replica of the original British transport vessel built for the 1962 film "Mutiny on the Bounty" starring Marlon Brando, contacted Coast Guard Sector North Carolina after losing communication with the crew late Sunday evening. The 5th Coast Guard District command center in Portsmouth, Va., subsequently received a signal from the emergency distress position indicating radio beacon, or EPIRB, registered to the Bounty confirming the distress and position.
It will take a while to get final numbers, but Sandy appears to have set many storm related records including:
940 millibars Lowest observed barometer for any storm North of the Carolinas
13.88 feet storm surge driven record water level at Battery Park in NYC
Unprecedented track and intensification for a storm so late in season
Hurricane done, Sandy not:
Sandy is not over. The major coastal surge and flooding will ease, but the giant swirl of wind, rain and snow will continue to cause some damage Tuesday, and possibly into Wednesday.
- Blizzard Warnings with 3 to 4 foot snowfall totals will rage Tuesday in the Appalachians.
-Lakeshore Flood Warnings are also flying for northern Ohio.
Tropical storm force winds with gusts to 60 mph will cover much of the NE USA Tuesday.
The slowly weakening storm will linger in the northeast through Halloween.
Stay tuned as we see what Sandy has in store Tuesday...and beyond. | <urn:uuid:a1725546-2847-485a-82a4-7010db705c4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/updraft/archive/2012/10/sandy_now_extra-tropical_still.shtml?refid=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920884 | 772 | 2.265625 | 2 |
During the second-to-last week of the 2012 season, we met World Wildlife Fund program managers from Britain, China, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United States. They had been camping out in somewhat less than our anglers’ accustomed style and seemed cheered to see the dining tent with wood stove, tablecloths, and wine glasses.
But what started out as an information-sharing event ended on a more celebratory note. In wildlife circles, the working partnership among Nomadic Journeys, Mongolia River Outfitters, WWF, and six local governments has become a conservation success story. Through an innovative public awareness campaign—using a little bit of everything, from bumper stickers to text messages—an environmental ethic that might have taken decades to germinate has flowered in just four years.
It’s no stretch to say that, in earlier times, taimen survived in far northern Mongolia because few people cared enough to kill them. That changed in the late 1990s, when tourists and anglers began to arrive from other countries; since the mining boom, angler numbers have further swelled with weekend warriors from Mongolia’s newly prosperous capital.
When Rare’s Pride campaign began in 2008, slightly more than a third of survey respondents in the district “strongly agreed” that taimen should always be released. By this year, that figure was more than 95 percent. Not all of these folks like to fish, of course, but those numbers are growing as well. In 2009, members of local angling clubs caught and released 68 taimen; that number had nearly quadrupled by 2011.
Conservation efforts continue with the work of a few dedicated staff, a core of volunteers, and the support of individual and corporate donors, including a generous grant from Patagonia’s World Trout Initiative.
Just before spawning season—when large fish are particularly vulnerable—the local WWF office held anti-poaching trainings for police officers, park rangers, and angling club members. In these sessions—and in all other campaign materials—taimen are not portrayed as treasures to be hoarded. Long-lived and slow-growing, these fish are more like our honored companions (or perhaps we are theirs).
While it is true that taimen are astounding and beautiful creatures on their own, they cannot exist without a healthy river. If we were ever to lose them, it would only underscore the more painful fact that the river also had been lost.
(For more info and photos, see "Conserving Taimen," posted on July 27, 2012.) | <urn:uuid:2c117040-fe52-4824-96c2-04a368456293> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://peterwfong.blogspot.com/2013_02_03_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971186 | 542 | 2.109375 | 2 |
EPA’s Rules Need to be Rationalized
Last December, the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new standards that sharply limit emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from the nation’s coal- and oil-burning power plants. Shortly, EPA will be issuing similar rules for industrial boilers. If the Utility Maximum Achievable Control Technology Rule (U-MACT) is implemented as proposed, more than 60 coal-fired power plants, currently generating enough electricity to supply 22 million households, will likely be shut down because retrofitting would be uneconomical.
EPA itself has estimated that U-MACT would impose costs of about $11 billion annually on the U.S. economy. National Economic Research Associates (NERA) puts the costs at closer to $18 billion per year for the next 20 years.
The utility industry is already laboring to comply with a myriad of other EPA mandates including greenhouse gas emission reductions, revised air quality standards for sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide, and new standards for ash and other residuals from coal combustion. Taken together, these regulations will affect about 400,000 megawatts of oil- and coal-fired power generation—almost 40 percent of currently available U.S. capacity. Should all of the proposed implementation deadlines remain unchanged, the reliability of the entire U.S. power grid could be compromised.
With the growing prospect of a double-dip recession, it makes little sense to impose additional costs on the utility sector at this time since these will simply be passed on to businesses and households. Energy-intensive manufacturing industries, one of the few sectors of the economy currently creating jobs, would be especially hard it.
A better approach would be to allow industries and utilities more time to make a smooth transition to the next generation of emissions control technology. A more deliberate schedule for promulgating standards, coupled with a more realistic compliance schedule, would ease the strain on the utility sector and reduce risks to consumers. In addition, a longer compliance timeline might allow for the development of lower-cost control technologies.
It is also imperative that EPA reconcile the various overlapping regulatory requirements affecting the utility sector. A serious cost impact assessment would not merely examine each proposed rule in isolation but instead consider the cumulative cost impacts of all proposals. Anything less could put at risk the economic growth and job creation that depends on reliable and affordable electricity. | <urn:uuid:bc25c2eb-3b4f-4936-b692-be446d4d57d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heartland.org/policy-documents/epas-rules-need-be-rationalized | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940006 | 478 | 2.296875 | 2 |
They can be rich and gooey or light and crumbly, free-form pillows of dough or precisely cut out and decorated.
Regardless of ingredients or effort, cookies are symbolic of more than a sweet treat, says Mary Shaw, culinary educator for Ashland Food Co-op.
Find this story and more recipes, tips and ideas for entertaining through the new year on our Holiday 101 page, www.mailtribune.com/holiday101
"Everybody has a story that goes with cookies," says Shaw. "Different cultures have holiday cookies."
The Co-op's bid to offer customers some special, seasonal recipes led Shaw on a search through the annals of traditional baking around the world. The trip started, perhaps predictably, in Europe with recipes for Italian, Greek, Swiss, Austrian and Jewish cookies. But Morocco and New Mexico provided their own festive morsels.
"They reflect the foods that are native to where they come from," says Shaw, noting that an authentic New Mexican biscochito — the state's official cookie — is made with lard, not butter, and "just melts in your mouth."
Whole-grain spelt flour and unrefined cane sugar are the primary ingredients that Shaw used in her adapted recipes. The flour, available at the Co-op and any store with a bulk-foods section, is a bit more healthy than all-purpose flour with a tender crumb ideal for baking. The unrefined sugar — a bit more coarse and a beige color — also is available in bulk and isn't quite as sweet as its standard, granulated counterpart but measures out the same.
"There's a few minerals still left in it," says Shaw.
While Shaw did adapt a gluten-free gingersnap in lieu of the classic gingerbread man, her recipes aren't designed for alternative sweeteners and fats.
"Each of them contributes," she says of real sugar, eggs and butter for baking. "In my mind, a low-fat cookie is an oxymoron."
Store shoppers can taste for themselves on three Saturdays this month. Free sampling of biscochitos, rugelach and linzer cookies will be at 11 a.m. Dec. 8, 15 and 22, respectively, at the culinary kiosk in the store, 237 N. First St., Ashland. Recipes will be available to take home.
Baking enthusiasts also can get a leg up on the season at a Saturday class in Medford. Professional baker Rebecca Hill, known for multiple GingerBread Jubilee wins, will demonstrate drop, rolled and refrigerator cookies at her store, Sweet Stuff. Although the store has all the supplies for show-stopping cookies, Hill recommends offsetting efforts with a few simpler recipes.
"I've made thousands and thousands of cookies," she says. "It's a little bit more enjoyable when you do a few different kinds."
Participants will go home with extra cookie dough to bake.
Reach Food Editor Sarah Lemon at 541-776-4487 or email email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:0ed5e096-9e89-48ef-a68d-8a9b0df4ccc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121205/LIFE/212050301/-1/LIFE04 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949287 | 639 | 1.6875 | 2 |
To organize objectives within topic areas, Dr. Fielding proposed that each topic area have a logic model that would serve as a "structural scaffolding" for discussion about how objectives relate. Dr. Remington said this could become complicated, but ideally it would provide a simple way to think about how determinants relate to outcomes. Although the exact template of the logic models had not been specified, they should display the logic for why certain objectives have been grouped together.
- Dr. Fielding asked for a vote on the recommendation that logic models be created for each topic area. All members who were present voted in favor of the recommendation; none were opposed.
IV. Healthy People 2020 Target Setting Recommendations
Dr. Remington, who also chaired the Subcommittee on Target-Setting, gave an overview of that group's efforts. He explained that the group had been charged with answering four questions: 1) what data should be used in target-setting; 2) what processes should be used; 3) should targets be aspirational or realistic; and 4) should they incorporate knowledge of interventions. While the Subcommittee had addressed most of these questions in its report, some unresolved issues remained for discussion. Remaining questions included whether there should be disparities targets; what tools should be provided to states, regions, and localities to help with target-setting, and how target-setting should relate to prioritization of objectives.
He said the quality of data available for target-setting will not be uniform across all objectives. There might be two categories of objectives: those with high-quality data, and those with lower quality data for tracking purposes. Targets should be rooted in past experience and should incorporate knowledge of effective interventions. Ideally, they should be set using evidence to project what the effects of programs and policies would be, and then modeling a science-based objective. Yet targets can be set with less information by seeking a percentage improvement in the level of the objective (e.g., 10%, 20%).
The process of target-setting should vary depending on the objective. The "Better than the Best" approach is of limited value; often those targets have not been meaningful for the entire population (e.g., in situations where there are high rates of a condition). The Subcommittee proposed setting a single population target for each objective at a level that represents an improvement for most of the population, but might not be better than that of the subpopulation with the "best" health status. This method is not based on the status of a reference population. Disparity reduction would be achieved by having all groups reach the target.
Dr. Remington said the target-setting approach recommended by the Subcommittee would yield three types of objectives: a subset that have science-based or S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) targets; a sub-set that are monitored but do not have targets (because not enough data is available for the targets to be meaningful); and a sub-set of developmental objectives that currently lack a data source. Regarding "aspirational" versus "realistic" targets, the Subcommittee preferred using the term "reach" to describe targets that are achievable, but require more effort than perpetuation of the status quo
There was discussion as to whether separate "disparities" or "equity" targets should be set in addition to the general population targets. In the past, the "Better than Best" approach was criticized for creating a single target that was not realistic for subpopulations with the greatest health disparities. A disparities target could be used to measure the gap in health status among subpopulations, which would highlight the issue. States could then be charged with setting disparities targets. Yet setting two targets (one for the population mean, and a second for variance) could lead to confusion. A variance target would be both difficult to measure and difficult to communicate about. Dr. Remington requested the Committee's feedback.
Dr. Fielding said disparities targets could be viewed two different ways. First, they could be seen as targets for groups that are not at the level of the average, mean, or reference group. Second, a disparities target could be seen as measuring dispersion. Dr. Remington expressed the view that, if the population target is based on the mean, the disparities target should focus on reducing disparities for populations at higher risk. If this approach is used, there will be population subgroups that have already reached the target at the outset of the decade. Thus, one would not reduce variation, but one would seek to reduce disparities by focusing efforts on the populations that are at greatest risk.
When asked how a separate disparities target would be expressed, Dr. Remington said one could look at the standard deviation of subpopulations. Groups that are more than one or two standard deviations away from the mean would be the focus of disparity-reduction efforts, so that ultimately there would be less variation across the subpopulation means. Ideally, there should be very little variation across subpopulation means for a particular objective (indicating low health disparities). Nonetheless, in some areas there would be tremendous variation. Dr. Fielding asked the group to address the questions of: 1) what they think of disparities targets, and 2) how such targets might be expressed. | <urn:uuid:142cc873-a3c6-4e2f-9802-bc85ba93c8b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://healthypeople.gov/2020/about/advisory/FACA12Minutes.aspx?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960793 | 1,084 | 2.546875 | 3 |
AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK BRINGS OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S 'RURAL TOUR' TO SOUTH DAKOTA
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Discusses Administration Efforts, Collects Ideas on Revitalizing and Rebuilding Rural America
BATH, S.D., October 5, 2009 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited the Jim Hundstad Farm today and held a 'Rural Tour' community forum to discuss efforts by the Obama Administration to rebuild and revitalize rural America, listen to local residents talk about how the federal government can assist them, and discuss solutions to challenges facing their communities.
"To overcome challenges and be successful in a new, 21st century economy, President Obama has asked that we reach out to people in rural communities across the country to listen, learn and facilitate problem-solving," said Secretary Vilsack. "It is critically important to hear the thoughts, concerns and stories about South Dakota's vision for its future and to collect ideas about how USDA can better serve these communities. The thoughts, ideas and concerns for the future I heard in Bath were a reminder of the strength and optimism I have seen in communities throughout rural America."
At today's rural community forum, Vilsack discussed how the USDA is working to promote a sustainable, safe, sufficient and nutritious food supply, ensure that America leads the global fight against climate change, and revitalize rural communities by expanding economic opportunities.
Secretary Vilsack also highlighted the USDA's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act efforts that are underway in South Dakota and across the country, including the following:
USDA Rural Development is providing over $26.7 million to help make improvements at eight water and waste treatment projects.
USDA's Farm Service Agency is providing $10.2 million through 176 Direct Operating Farm Loans. These loans help farms purchase items such as livestock, farm equipment, feed, seed, fuel, farm chemicals, insurance, and other operating expenses.
USDA's Forest Service is providing $5.27 million for 5 projects. This work will reduce sedimentation in streams, restore water quality and fish habitat and provide safe public transportation.
Through USDA Rural Development, $5.47 million will be made available for 15 community facilities projects. Community Facility Grants will allow towns across South Dakota to purchase critical emergency service vehicles and equipment, build Emergency Operations Centers and community centers.
USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service announced $1.9 million for three watershed operations projects.
USDA Rural Development has helped guarantee 13 loans worth more than $1.7 million in the state of South Dakota through the Single Family Housing Loan program. These loans help residents and producers to have access to the capital they need to keep rural communities strong.
USDA Rural Development has issued eight Rural Business and Enterprise Grants for a total of $871,382.
USDA Rural Development has issued one Business and Industry loan guarantees for a total of $5 million.
Through USDA, the Recovery Act provided for an estimated increase of more than $10.7 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in South Dakota. Most four-person households will receive an $80 increase in their monthly SNAP benefit. Eligibility limits on jobless adults will be suspended in most areas.
USDA is also helping low-income South Dakota residents to receive healthy, nutritious meals through $266,000 in funding from The Emergency Food Assistance Program. Kids in South Dakota also will benefit from $255,000 through the National School Lunch Program.
In June, President Obama announced that Secretary Vilsack will lead the Administration's Rural Tour to visit rural communities in states throughout the country. Secretary Vilsack is scheduled to lead Rural Tour events with other top administration officials over the coming weeks. Monday's event is the twenty-second similar forum Secretary Vilsack has led since being sworn in, and follows rural listening sessions held in Las Cruces, N.M., Scottsbluff, Neb.; El Reno, Okla.; Zanesville, Ohio; Modesto, Calif.; Sedalia, Mo.; Des Moines, Iowa; Hamlet, N.C.; Bethel, Alaska; St. John Parish, La.; Blairs, Va.; West Salem, Wis.; Charlotte, Mich.; Concord, N.H.; Wattsburg, Pa.; Danville, Ind.; Geneseo, Ill.; Harrodsburg, Ky.; Ludowici, Ga.; Portageville, Mo. and Brush, Colo.
USDA recently launched a new website and social media tools designed to enhance discussions and facilitate innovation for challenges facing rural America. All Americans can follow the Rural Tour's progress online at www.RuralTour.gov, on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RuralTour, or on USDA's Facebook fan page available at www.facebook.com/usda.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272(voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). | <urn:uuid:0b6a59c4-907f-4f18-be47-17858881bf2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentidonly=true&contentid=2009/10/0489.xml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917647 | 1,069 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Man first landed on the moon, that celestial body that is our constant orbiting companion, on July 20, 1969. As the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong recently passed away, which prompted an article all about him and the Apollo missions to conquer near-space.
While researching that article I was astounded by the amount of conspiracy theories which still exist around the Apollo 11 moon landing. Many people don’t believe NASA actually landed on the moon 40-some years ago. And these non-believers are a vocal minority on the Web. There is a slew of information – both promoting and debunking the conspiracy theories – online, much of which is laid out below.
We begin as usual with Wikipedia, specifically the entry titled ‘Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories‘. The entry takes us through the origins of the conspiracy theories – a self-published book and The Flat Earth Society – before actually laying out the “evidence” accompanied by counter-claims by the debunkers.
As usual the ‘Citations’ section offers a good starting point for exploring the subject further on the Web, as do the links to other people and places key to the subject spread liberally throughout.
Moon Base Clavius
Moon Base Clavius is a website run by a group of amateurs committed to debunking the various theories. In order to debunk they first have to reveal the conspiracies in all their convoluted glory. The site breaks down all of the various moon landing conspiracy theories by category and then explores them in great detail.
Clavius obviously comes out as believers in NASA and the Apollo missions, but the information can be consumed in whichever way you personally see fit.
AULIS Online is a website which seeks to challenge accepted thinking on various subjects, including the Apollo moon landings. Putting aside the authors of this site’s views on Mars and the origins of mankind (as fascinating as they are), the section on the moon landings is unmissable. Lots of different conspiracy theories surrounding the Apollo missions are put forward, and the sheer amount of reading material will keep you occupied for hours. Whether you believe it or not.
YouTube is a treasure trove of videos about the moon landing conspiracy theories. And every other conspiracy theory you care to mention as well. Type in Moon Landing and the auto-complete suggestions will kick in with Moon Landing Hoax, Moon Landing Conspiracy, Moon Landing Faked, and many more besides.
Some videos have been made by believers in the conspiracy, so they show the “evidence” and invariably include talking heads discussing the events. Other videos have been made by the debunkers, so they show the “evidence” that the whole thing was faked being ripped apart. There is also a Mythbusters episode dedicated to moon landing conspiracy theories, but you’ll have to watch it in several parts.
National Geographic – This is a debunking article which shows eight controversial photographs from the Apollo 11 mission and counter-arguments to the conspiracy claims against them. It’s up to you to decide the truth.
How Stuff Works? – This is an article that presents the most common moon landing conspiracy theories along with the counter-arguments which suggest there are pure, scientific reasons for all of the above.
American Patriot Friends Network – This article asks Was The Apollo Moon Landing Fake? and comes out in favor of it being so. There are a host of videos embedded on the page, along with other quotes, links, and statistics.
University Of Wisconsin – This article deals specifically with Conspiracy Theory: Did We Go to the Moon?, a controversial television special aired on Fox in 2001. The author of the piece clearly doesn’t side with the conspiracy theorists.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera – This article shows photographs of the Apollo moon landing sites as taken by the LROC. Many believe these images alone should put paid to the conspiracy theories, but they’re unlikely to ever die completely.
The majority of people do believe man landed on the moon in 1969, but there remains a minority who will never be convinced it happened as NASA suggested it did. There were certainly reasons why the U.S. would have wanted to fake the whole thing, and if they did then it remains the biggest hoax of all time, with the whole world played like fools. I say make your own mind up based on the evidence at hand.
Let us know what you think about the Apollo moon landings in the comments section. Do you believe Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar surface before the 1960s drew to a close? If you know of any website, resource, or video online that discusses the moon landing conspiracy theories then please share a link below.
Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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FCC to Uphold Network Complaint vs. Comcast
Page 1 of 1
U.S. communications regulators later this week are expected to uphold a complaint accusing Comcast Corp of unreasonably restricting Internet users who share movies and other material, a source familiar with the case said on Monday.
The Federal Communications Commission will take formal action by Friday against Comcast for violating the FCC's open-Internet principles by improperly blocking peer-to-peer traffic on its network, the source said.
The commission is expected to take up the issue at its next public meeting on Friday. However, the source said a majority of the agency's five commissioners already have voted in favor of a proposal by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to uphold the complaint.
"I continue to believe that it is imperative that all consumers have unfettered access to the Internet," Martin said in a statement on Monday. "I am pleased that a majority has agreed that the commission both has the authority to and in fact will stop broadband service providers when they block or interfere with subscribers' access."
Comcast responded to reports of an FCC decision by reiterating the company's view that its network management practices are reasonable and did not block access to Web sites or applications.
"We do not believe the record supports any other conclusion," Comcast said in a statement.
The complaint against Comcast has become a flash point for a growing debate between open-Internet advocates who are pushing a concept known as "network neutrality" against some Internet service providers (ISPs), who say they need to take reasonable steps to manage ever-growing traffic on their networks for the good of all users.
The ruling against Comcast, proposed by Martin earlier this month, would not include any fines against the company. But it would require Comcast to halt its current practice of hindering peer-to-peer applications, to disclose to the FCC how the practice has been used, and to notify customers about other network management practices it adopts in the future.
The ruling has been closely watched because it will lay out key guidelines for operators of broadband networks as to what the FCC considers to be "reasonable" way for them to manage their networks.
Martin has said Comcast was in violation of FCC principles because the techniques it used to slow down peer-to-peer applications were "overly broad," targeted only certain applications, and were not disclosed to its customers.
In order to be considered reasonable under Martin's proposal, network management techniques must have a legitimate traffic-management goal, they must be narrowly drawn, and operators must fully disclose what they are doing to customers.
The complaint was filed by consumer groups who said Comcast had unreasonably hindered some file-sharing services, such as BitTorrent, that distribute TV shows and movies.
Comcast and other cable industry officials have argued that operators need to be allowed to manage their networks as they see fit to alleviate congestion and combat illegal file-sharing. Comcast also has argued that the FCC does not have the authority to enforce its open-Internet policy.
Comcast announced in March that it will change the way it manages its network later this year and cooperate with BitTorrent and other critics to resolve the dispute.
Comcast also said it would partner with a second file-sharing company and help create a "bill of rights" for consumers and Internet service providers. | <urn:uuid:494528c6-a12c-445f-beaf-75b562b4672c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internetnews.com/breakingnews/article.php/3761801/FCC+to+Uphold+Network+Complaint+vs+Comcast.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974499 | 675 | 1.59375 | 2 |
From Our 2012 Archives
When a Child With Autism Wanders, It's Crucial to Stay a Step Ahead
Latest Neurology News
FRIDAY, March 23 (HealthDay News) -- The Oertel family lives in a red-brick, two-story house tucked in a tree-lined, suburban Maryland cul-de-sac. There's no fence, just a small alarm company sign on the lawn that gives no clue to the system's real purpose.
The array of bolts high on the front door, the upgraded locks on the patio and garage doors and the "burglar" alarm are meant less to keep out intruders than to prevent 15-year-old Luke Oertel from silently leaving.
Luke has a moderate form of autism, a developmental disorder that affects a child's social interactions, language and behavior. He is among those with autism who wander without a typical child's sense of fear or danger.
In June, Luke outsmarted a system of combination locks and wandered five miles away, through the early-morning rush hour, taking a pedestrian underpass beneath a heavily traveled road off the Capital Beltway.
Two hours later the police brought him home, still in his green pajamas, handcuffed.
It was "sheer terror," said Luke's mother, Gwynne, of the moment when she and her husband realized Luke was missing. To protect their privacy, the family asked that their real names not be used.
Last year, "autism wandering" became an official diagnosis in the United States with its own medical code. Some of those afflicted enter strangers' houses. Others end up in traffic or on train tracks. Many find their way to nearby pools or ponds.
An aura of constant vigilance exists between Gwynne and Tess Oertel, Luke's older sister. "Are you with him?" Gwynne calls. "Is he up there?" When he's not in the same room, his mother scans doorways and listens for a wrong sound. It's unconscious by now.
In the kitchen, a heavy, padlocked chain around the refrigerator keeps Luke from tearing into the food. The pantry is also secured.
Today, Luke, a well-built teen with dark red hair and a couple of pimples, is wearing a Washington Capitals hockey T-shirt and thick brown pants. Hidden beneath his sock is an ankle bracelet. It's bulky in the middle where the battery sits, and it's water-resistant. He can't get it off, his mother said, and now he's used to it. There are no scissors in the house. The bracelet allows radio tracking of Luke's whereabouts, within a range of one to two miles.
About one in 110 children is estimated to have an autism disorder. Some are hypersensitive to sounds, smells and touch, and an "itchy" shirt or a vacuum's drone can be highly disturbing.
It is thought children have individual "triggers" that lead them to wander -- either to get away from something that bothers them or to seek out their particular fascination, such as water. As a result, drowning and exposure to the elements are top causes of death for those with an autism spectrum disorder.
From the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Dr. Paul Law led a study that provided the first national figures on wandering. The survey, conducted by the Interactive Autism Network, comprised more than 800 parents of children with autism.
Nearly half of these children between the ages of 4 and 10 had wandered at least once. However, because this was a self-selected group of parents -- not a random sample -- the results might not reflect the experience of all families.
Law said that no matter how vigilant a parent is, some children bolt.
When Samantha Gardner's 5-year-old son wandered off to a Brighton, Mich., ice cream store last summer, she was hyperventilating in the recorded 911 call.
Minutes earlier, a store employee had also called 911, reporting a "child that just popped out of nowhere; he seems to be potentially autistic and was running into the road." The staff kept him safe until Gardner arrived.
"With my son, 'asks permission' doesn't exist," Gardner said. "He doesn't talk. He can't ask to go to Dairy Queen."
When a child wanders, it can take just a few minutes for the worst to happen.
Beth Martin of Lawton, Okla., sometimes used a tether to keep her daughter Savannah, who had autism, safe outdoors. But her constant vigilance wasn't enough, and Savannah, 7, drowned in February 2011.
Savannah had a history of wandering. "I tried hard to do all the precautions I could," her mother said. "I knew she was a child who could go. I was trying to stay one step ahead."
On that day, in a matter of moments, Savannah had slipped away to a nearby pond and although her older brother and a neighbor tried to save her, it was too late.
Months later, Martin recalled that painful time. "My husband was deployed and I was uncomfortable with the ponds near our house," she said. "I was looking for a safer place to live."
The day before the accident, Martin had the door alarmed because Savannah was getting up at night. "But I was comfortable during the day that she knew not to cross boundaries. It was simple as that. Kids with autism have routines. I was making noodles and she always waited for noodles. I went to the bathroom and when I got out, she was gone."
Martin said she shared her story to help other parents.
For the Oertels, a factor in their decision to move to Montgomery County, Md., is that it's part of Project Lifesaver. The program provides known wanderers with radio-tracking devices and coordinates with local emergency agencies. Officer Laurie Reyes heads the Montgomery County program, where officers respond to calls about missing children with autism about every other week.
Police quickly arrived at the Oertels' home, using police dogs to search the house. Gwynne requested a helicopter, which can detect signals for three to five miles, but the police said it was too early in the search to employ one.
Luke might not have been saved without the intervention of two Good Samaritans.
A woman in a car spotted Luke on the road in his pajamas, and followed him to a hotel parking lot. She enlisted the hotel security director's help, and they trailed Luke to the Metro station, followed him by foot onto the platform and blocked him from entering a Washington, D.C.-bound train. He recited his phone number for the strangers, and they contacted his mom.
Police still had to get Luke safely into the car. Reyes recounted rescue steps: "We'll have to stop traffic. Mom has to grab his favorite food. We tell her, 'We may have to put him in handcuffs, for his safety.' Mom got it."
Oertel said she was "fine" with the handcuffs -- although she didn't want to see them applied and asked the officers not to use a Taser on her son. By 8 a.m., he was home.
Despite the blistered feet from his escape, Luke has said he wants to do it again.
Autism advocacy groups want wandering incidents to trigger Amber Alerts, but because that system is meant only for abducted children, wanderers don't qualify. A grassroots movement is afoot to implement "Mason Alerts," named in honor of Mason Allen Medlam, who drowned after wandering.
Luke attends a local high school, where he's in a six-year program to learn functional life skills. He continues to plays hockey on a special team.
"My first concern is his safety, keeping him safe," Gwynne said. "That's the number one priority. My second is his happiness. So, we're trying to expose him to all different hobbies to see what he likes. If you don't expose him to it, you'll never know."
Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
SOURCES: Paul Law, M.D., M.P.H.; director, medical informatics, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, and principal investigator, Interactive Autism Network; Officer Laurie Reyes, Project Lifesaver Coordinator, Montgomery County, M.D., Police Department; Parents Samantha Gardner, Brighton, Mich., Beth Martin, Lawton, Okla.
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Priority Setting Amid the Rubble
Organizational Responses to Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Haiti
Caption: The collapsed Haitian Presidential Palace.
Photo: Michael Hooper
Priority Setting Amid the Rubble: Organizational Responses to Post-Disaster Reconstruction in Haiti
Port au Prince, Haiti
Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies
Dates of project
This project investigates how development organizations establish, and act on, priorities in urban, post-disaster reconstruction. It is motivated by a longstanding observation that the priorities of organizations engaged in disaster response are often unaligned. As an example, in post-earthquake Haiti, donor funding for transportation has exceeded government requests by 510%, while funding for strengthening democratic institutions has reached only 20% of the government’s target. Unaligned priorities are of concern, in part, because they can hinder coordinated action. While there is a small but established literature on organizational responses to disasters, it has largely focused on immediate disaster response, not reconstruction. Where it has addressed reconstruction, it hasn’t investigated the issue of priority setting across the diverse range of organizations increasingly engaged in this dimension of urban planning. Recognizing that the social science community working on disasters is small and that social science theory development in this area is relatively limited, this project seeks to contribute to a more robust understand of organizational responses to urban reconstruction. It draws on detailed interviews conducted with seven categories of development organizations working in post-earthquake Haiti: intergovernmental organizations, bilateral aid agencies, large international NGOs, small international NGOs, private development contractors, Haitian government agencies, and local Haitian NGOs. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the project analyzes how these different actors have established priorities and chosen to act on them and evaluates how organizational dynamics in the field of post-disaster reconstruction influence these decisions. The research seeks to inform policy by suggesting ways to improve the coordination of reconstruction efforts, an important task in a field that includes an increasingly diverse array of organizational actors. | <urn:uuid:9c752b07-de32-4187-acfa-e405f1bed24a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/projects/priority-setting-amid-the-rubble.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906533 | 406 | 2.125 | 2 |
Have you ever dreamed of having a dragon and training it yourself? Well here is your chance to train your own dragon! The first step to training a dragon is to dress it up however you want. It is your dragon after all, so it should look like how you would want it to look. After you dress up your dragon, take it for a ride in the sky to visit your school. Your classmates will be so jealous of you new dragon! | <urn:uuid:f46826d6-23ba-4709-9425-ad7ca7533fef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.enjoydressup.com/pet-games/dragon-trainee-2469.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966623 | 91 | 1.757813 | 2 |
By Bill Pronzini
When some people first learn about my extensive collection of Western fiction, they wrinkle their noses and ask me why I collect that sort of thing. As if Westerns were a kind of inferior and alien art form.
These scoffers and sneerers, these snooty types who look down their snouts at Westerns, all seem to have one thing in common: None of them has ever read one. Nor do they know anything about Western fiction.
As far as I’m concerned, such ignorance is not bliss. So I sit them down and educate them.
In the first place I tell then, the Western story is a uniquely American art—one of the relative few this country can call its own. It was born more than a hundred years ago with the dime novels of such writers as Ned Buntline and Colonel Prentiss Ingraham, and was later refined and given permanent literary stature by Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and O. Henry, among others. During this century, Western fiction has functioned as a symbol of all that America stands for: freedom, justice, self-reliance, the pioneer spirit. And in a century that has produced two world wars, dozens of localized wars and “police actions,” the Great Depression, and other tragedies large and small, Americans have needed— still need—that spirit to sustain them.
In the second place, I tell these unenlightened folk, the popular image of the Western as mindless horse opera, as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry juvenilia, is so much bunkum. There are as many good, intelligent Western novels, or mysteries, or any other type of fiction. And the best of them not only have high literary and entertainment value; they are rich in authentic history, providing the reader with little known facts about, and insights into the lives and accomplishments of, the men and women who settled the western half of these United States.
In the third place, I say, speaking from a collector’s point of view, Westerns are scarce arid getting scarcer. Relatively few copies were printed of 99 percent of all hardcover Westerns, and nearly all of any title’s print run was (and still is) sold to the public and lending libraries. Therefore, copies in good condition, and in dust jacket, are difficult to obtain—a challenge for any serious book collector. But more than that, as a collector of Westerns I am performing something of a public service by rescuing fragile old titles from secondhand bookshops or junk dealers. If it weren’t for collectors many titles would be lost or destroyed. And eventually certain ones, certain little segments of American popular culture, would be lost forever.
In the fourth place, I tell those poor ignorant souls, again speaking from a collector’s point of view, the dust jacket art on old Western hardcovers is marvelously colorful and evocative of their times. These dust jackets are mini art forms in the own right, and it would be just as much of a shame if some of them, too, were to be forever lost through neglect and ridicule.
By this time, the more intelligent and perceptive among my listeners have begun to look thoughtful, if not downright enthusiastic. To these folk I give reading copies (I never allow first editions out of my house) of books by A. B. Guthrie, Jr., Jack Schaefer, Dorothy Johnson, Ernest Haycox, and others, and send them on their way. Those who read just one good Western usually stop being skeptics; and those who read more than one usually become converts.
So if you other Western-fiction collectors have the same sort of problem with the people you know, you might try my approach. It works so well that I’ve even invented a slogan for it:
Don’t apologize, don’t temporize—proselytize!
–Reprinted by permission of the author from the
Western Writers of America Roundup | <urn:uuid:23e8e83c-03c0-4db7-93cd-eb38d980455d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prologuebooks.com/blog/on-collecting-westerns | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965618 | 831 | 1.65625 | 2 |
At a glance
- Dog rescues cab driver
- Nelson the Newfoundland dog
- Flash flood in Melbourne street, 1881
- William John (Bill) Higginbotham and Thomas Brown
Dog saves man in Melbourne flood
A studded metal dog collar illustrates a dramatic story of a dog saving a man during a flash flood in Melbourne in the 1880s.
Nelson the Newfoundland helped rescue Thomas Brown, a cab driver who was swept away by flood waters in Swanston Street on the night of 15 November 1881.
When the 130-year-old collar was acquired by the National Museum in late 2011, little was known about Bill Higginbotham and his dog, Nelson, before or after the rescue. Bill's family contacted the Museum and helped to fill in some of the blanks, in response to a call for more information.
2012 update: Family shares Nelson's story
Russ Higginbotham, Bill's great grandson, shared a studio portrait and rich details about the man and his dog with the National Museum in January 2012.
Bill and Nelson took weeks to recover from the dramatic rescue and Nelson later led a parade where the collar was presented to him in recognition of the feat. Learn more in the Higginbotham family history.
Nelson's story has also inspired a song from Melbourne folk band The Bastard Children.
Swept down the street, shrieking for help
Melbourne's location close to the River Yarra meant that it was prone to flooding. When it rained, reported the Illustrated Australian News in 1881, city streets became 'miniature rivers, down which the water rushes at an extraordinary rate, and pedestrians find it exceedingly difficult to cross'.
At 8pm on 15 November 1881, a thunderstorm broke over central Melbourne. Heavy rain fell for nearly an hour, and the city was soon flooded. The south ends of Elizabeth Street, and Swanston Street, which runs parallel to it, were worst affected. The Argus reported, 'in both these streets the water was flowing in one broad stream extending from shop door on one side to shop door on the other.'
At the intersection of Swanston and Lonsdale streets, Thomas Brown, the driver of a horse-drawn cab, was pulled into the torrent.
Fifty years after the event, in 1931, the Melbourne Herald had this account of Brown being swept away:
Close to the gutter, which was a torrent five feet deep, seething to a culvert 50 yards down the hill, a cabman was trying to keep his horse still while waiting for his passengers. At length he clambered down to quieten the beast, and at that moment it tossed its head and knocked him insensible into the gutter. In a moment he was being swept down toward the culvert.
Brown's cries were heard by Bill Higginbotham and his dog, Nelson.
Luckily for Brown, Nelson was a Newfoundland. Bred by fishermen in Canada, Newfoundland dogs have a strong instinct for water rescue and retrieval. With their large, powerful bodies, water-resistant coat and webbed feet, they were often employed to save people and cargo from shipwrecks.
Repeated attempts to save the drowning man
The Argus article reports that Nelson the dog jumped into the stream and caught hold of Brown's clothing, but it gave way. Brown was swept quickly down the block. Near the corner of Little Bourke Street, the dog seized him again, but could not keep his grip. Just as Nelson let go, Mr Higginbotham, who was clinging to a post and leaning out into the water, grabbed hold of Brown. The power of the racing stream was so great that he too lost his grip on the cabman, who disappeared into a covered channel that ran under Little Bourke Street.
It seemed almost impossible that Brown could be saved — but undaunted, Nelson managed to catch him as he emerged from the channel on the lower side of the street. Again though, the current was too strong, and Brown was wrenched from Nelson's jaws and pulled at great speed towards the channel that ran under Bourke Street.
A last desperate attempt was made to save Thomas. Mr Higginbotham, a Mr Mates and Nelson plunged into the stream and managed to haul Brown out of the water. When they got him safely to the side of the street, they found his clothes had been torn to shreds, probably as a result of Nelson's indefatigable efforts to catch hold of him.
The incident was widely reported in the colonial press, and the Illustrated Australian News praised Nelson's 'courage and sagacity', suggesting he would be a 'worthy candidate for the Humane Society's medal'.
William John Higginbotham, known as Bill, was born in London on 5 August, 1832. A family history provided by great grandson Russ Higginbotham says that Bill's father was a hatter who worked in the London theatre district as a wigmaker and hairdresser.
In 1853 Bill married Mary Ann Jones and they had two children, William John Junior and Hannah. In 1857, Bill's uncle, Tom Higginbotham returned to London from Melbourne. Tom had lived in Melbourne since 1839 and established a successful painting and glazing business. It is thought Tom might have told a great story of the new colony and over the next 10 years all his siblings, nieces and nephews moved to Australia.
Bill and Mary arrived on the Suffolk in May 1858 with their two children. Six sons — Thomas, John, Arthur, James, Charles and Walter — and three daughters — Charlotte, Mary and Sarah — were born in Victoria. Bill operated salons in Bourke St, Swanston St and for a few years in Bendigo. Most of the sons followed Bill into the hairdressing trade, mainly in the city and near suburbs. Charles and Walter Higginbotham operated a hairdressing salon in Chapel Street, South Yarra.
The young Higginbotham family lived in Fitzroy and Collingwood for many years and may have lived above the Swanston Street shop (now 244 Swanston St). Bill's prime trade was in wig making and his salon was well placed to service the theatre industry. A number of advertisements for his business appeared in the Melbourne Argus in the 1870s:
Hairdresser wanted: Must be steady. Apply Higginbotham, Wig maker, 237 Bourke St East
Mayors fancy ball – A grand assortment of Ladies and Gentlemen's Court and Ringlet wigs on hire. Higginbotham Theatrical Wig Maker, 122 Swanston St.
It is believed Bill also made a collection of ornate head pieces for the Indigenous display at the Melbourne Museum, and Russ recalls seeing them as a child.
Bill died in 1912 at his daughter, Charlotte's home. He is buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery with his wife Mary.
Nelson and his dog collar
The Museum doesn't know what became of Thomas Brown and until contacted by Russ Higginbotham, knew little about Bill or Nelson, beyond the dog's collar and information from newspaper accounts of the rescue.
The Higginbotham family history states that Nelson was born in Bendigo on the same day as Walter Higginbotham, 25 May 1874. Nelson was well known to many inner city Melburnians as he used to sit outside Bill Higginbotham's shop.
Made from copper with brass studs, the 16.5cm diameter collar is engraved 'Dog Nelson, W Higginbotham, 122 Swanston St'. The Museum's Conservation team closely analysed the copper collar and found that it was once nickel plated and shone like silver.
It was originally thought Nelson may have been wearing the collar when he made his daring rescue, but in 1931 Bill's hairdresser son, Charles, told the Melbourne Herald it was presented to the dog later:
Nelson never fully recovered from the effects of the choking struggle in the culvert, although he was able to take part in the annual procession of the Albion Fire Brigade six months later, and half the city turned out to see him presented with a silver collar for his part in the rescue.
Russ suspects the collar may actually have been presented by the Union Fire Brigade in Collingwood, where Bill was a volunteer. The brigade met at the Albion Hotel, which might explain the wording of the newspaper report.
For many years the collar remained in the Higginbotham family, with Russ' aunt Nina until about 1960. It was offered for auction in 2008 as part of the collection of antique dealer Richard Berry. The collar was auctioned again in 2011 when the Museum was the successful bidder.
Dog collars have a long history, with metal or leather being the most popular materials. Metal collars allowed the owner to engrave their name and address, enabling the dog to be returned if it wandered or was stolen. They probably also offered some protection for the dog if it was in a fight — although perhaps Nelson's canine neighbours would have thought twice before taking on an 80kg Newfoundland.
A Newfoundland in the new colony
Why a Melbourne hairdresser and tobacconist had a Newfoundland dog is a mystery.
Russ Higginbotham wrote: 'The family was certainly not seafaring and it was a large dog to have in a relatively confined suburban space. The photo, from circa 1880 is probably before the flood so he obviously thought highly enough of Nelson to have a studio picture taken. (We don't have any photos of the family!)'
The first Newfoundland came to Australia with the First Fleet in 1788. In 1900 another Newfoundland named Nelson was the mascot of the first contingent that left South Australia to fight in the Boer War. Newfoundland dogs were exhibited at the Melbourne show from the 1860s. Perhaps Higginbotham had simply seen a Newfoundland dog and been drawn to the gentle, loyal breed.
An end to flooding in a city on a floodplain?
Thomas Brown was lucky. According to the 1931 Herald report his: 'beard was stained from a gash in his temple but he was not seriously hurt. He was on duty again within a couple of days'. But many Melbournians were killed by floodwaters in the 19th century.
Victoria's capital was known as 'marvellous Melbourne' in the 1880s. Flush with wealth from the gold rush, it had grown from a small riverside village to an imposing city in less than 50 years. Still, the geographic advantages that had made the site so attractive for settlers could surprise its inhabitants.
Melbourne's founders were drawn to a spot on the banks of the River Yarra where a deep, steady flow of fresh water ran into Port Phillip Bay. In 1837 planner Robert Hoddle laid out a grid of wide streets on a gently sloping valley running down to the river. One of the main thoroughfares, Elizabeth Street, followed the course of a gully.
Melbournians soon had cause to regret building their town on the Yarra's floodplain. From 1839 the river inundated central Melbourne about every 10 years, as water from upstream burst its banks and met surges channelled along its streets and drains — many of which followed the valley's natural watercourse down to the Yarra estuary.
The constant threat of inundation in Melbourne's central business district led, from the 1860s onwards, to a sequence of works on the Yarra. The wide slow river of today was produced by straightening, widening and deepening its course, removing billabongs and cutting canals.
The large, open street drains of 1881, into which people poured their waste and sewage, earned the city a new nickname, 'Smellbourne'. These street drains were replaced by a huge network of underground drains maintained by the City of Melbourne. Hidden beneath skyscrapers and footpaths, stormwater from Melbourne's streets still travels on its ancient course to the river and the sea.
Can you help?
Do you know anything more about Nelson or Thomas Brown? Email email@example.com | <urn:uuid:4bc73c2d-194b-43c8-92de-1eef8e28d528> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/highlights/nelson_the_newfoundlands_dog_collar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980307 | 2,503 | 2.25 | 2 |
First off I hope you're doing your part each day to fight SB Syndrome. Check out my posts on Friday's this month to see how you can help yourself or someone you know fight SB Syndrome.
I know, I know. People must think that sometimes I just make up the rants and info I share with you. But I don't! I actually do research on each and every bit of information I share with you. How else will you be able to rely on me if I don't give you credible, useful info that you can live by, or share with your friends.
1.) That being said I've got to tell you this next bit of info even blew me away. Who knew sitting for long periods of time could be so dangerous to your health? I mean honestly, I advocate exercise and modified nutrition to assist you in getting out of pain and to improve your quality of life; Who knew that sitting could actually do so much damage. Here's a quick synopsis of the article and the link below if you want to read it for yourself.
I wanted to be sure to provide you with the links so you can get the full story.
But the long and short of it is this:
"Over a 14-year period, women who spent six or more hours per day sitting had a 37% increased risk of dying compared with women who sat for 3 hours or less. The excess risk was independent of other health factors, including the amount of exercise they got. When overall activity was taken into account, the women who sat the longest and exercised the least were almost twice as likely to die as those who sat the least and exercised the most."
Exercise and Sports Science Review
American Journal of Epidemiology
Put quite simply, you have to get up and move every few hours! Sitting for long periods of time is actually decreasing your life expectancy -- whether you exercise or not. Take a moment, get up and walk around if you've been sitting for three hours or more. In a sense, the length of your life depends on it.
2.) And if that wasn't enough, there has been even more research done on the importance of nutrition. Specifically, dieting by itself does not significantly create lasting weight loss. OK, I promise not to say "I told you so." Yet another study was done that demonstrated the 3 most important factors in losing weight and keeping it off:
* Diet coupled with exercise produces the best results for losing weight and keeping it off
* Having a formal or informal support group is key to losing weight
* Planning meals ahead of time on a consistent basis is essential to lasting weight loss
To make it quite plain and to the point, you've got to get up and move every 3 hours to maintain a long and healthy life and if you're serious about transforming your body, change your nutrition to healthy choices and add regular exercise to your daily and/or weekly schedule.
It's all about creating the habits that will create the life you want. You now have the information, what kind of habits will you create?
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Barack Obama's re-election reverberates far beyond US borders — so much so that citizens of some distant nations, like Pakistan and Turkey, say they too should have been able to vote. To give them a voice, GlobalPost interviewed people around the world for their views on the United States and who they hoped would win the election.
Both candidates have had harsh words for China, and their tough talk carries huge risks.
HONG KONG — As China has become a major theme in the electoral battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, so has “China bashing.” In fact, just about anything either of them says about China now is bound to be construed in the media as “bashing.”
“China-bashing in the campaign could backfire,” warn the editors of Bloomberg View.
“Romney and Obama try to compete in bashing China,” scolds the Christian Science Monitor.
“Bashing China has become a ritual in presidential campaigns,” laments the Kansas City Star.
But is that fair? As Clyde Prestowitz of Foreign Policy argues in a recent column, “It’s not ‘China-bashing’ if it’s true.” So in order to see whether there are valid points buried in all the rhetoric, GlobalPost has examined the main statements made by the candidates in hopes of distinguishing the legitimate criticisms of China — if there are any — from the plain old, red-meat, nationalist "bashing."
What we found is that “China bashing” might have something in common with Michael Kinsley’s famous definition of a gaffe — it sometimes reveals an inconvenient truth.
More from GlobalPost: What if the world could vote?
Romney: China is a “currency manipulator” and should be labeled as such.
Romney has stated repeatedly that China should be called out for keeping the renminbi artificially low in order to boost exports, keep imports expensive, and hurt American manufacturers. On "Day One” of his presidency, Romney has promised that he would officially designate China a currency manipulator, likely resulting in tariffs on Chinese-made goods.
Does he have a point? In the big picture, yes. There is no question that Beijing has kept the renminbi deliberately undervalued over the years, and that this has had a huge impact on the US. The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that between 2001 and 2010, China’s currency policy cost America 2.8 million lost or displaced jobs. And C. Fred Bergston of the Peterson Institute, which publishes trusted reports on global currencies, has estimated that if the renminbi were allowed to rise on the free market, it would lead to the creation of between 600,000 and 1.2 million American jobs.
That said, currency manipulation is not the biggest China challenge, and it has become much less of a problem lately. In its most recent report, the Peterson Institute says that the renminbi is now undervalued by just 7.7 percent, as opposed to nearly 30 percent last year.
And, just as importantly, there are serious reasons to doubt that calling out China on “Day One” out would do anything but start a mutually damaging trade fight.
Verdict: Not just China bashing — though the valid point is buried in a lot of bluster.
Obama: This administration “protected American workers” by slapping a tariff on China when “a flood of Chinese tires” entered the market.
The president has repeatedly touted his decision to impose a tariff on Chinese tires in 2009 as having saved 1,000 jobs. “It was President Obama who stood up to China and protected American workers," says one recent ad. "Mitt Romney attacked Obama's decision. … How can Mitt Romney take on the cheaters when he’s taking their side?"
The backstory, as outlined by the fact-checking site PolitiFact, is that in 2009 a US International Trade Panel found that so many tires were coming in from China that it was having a “market disrupti[ng]” effect. It recommended tariffs, and Obama eventually agreed, signing off on a three-year tariff that will expire this year.
The Peterson Institute found that the decision did, in fact, save over 1,000 American jobs. But, at the same time, it found that “the additional money that US consumers spent on tires reduced their spending on other retail goods, indirectly lowering employment in the retail industry.” And China, in turn, slapped duties on US chicken parts, costing related American businesses $1 billion.
In other words, an arguably net-zero benefit.
Verdict: Too measured to be China bashing, yet not entirely true.
Romney: China is “cheating” by “stealing American ideas and technology.”
Putting aside the question of what exactly an “American idea” is (the Three-Fifths Compromise? the Electoral College?), Romney’s ad says China has stolen American technology on “everything from computers to fighter jets.” Not only that, the ad says, but Obama passed up seven opportunities to “take action” and “stand up to China.”
Beneath the fear-mongering tone, there is a grain of truth. Chinese hackers have breached many US government systems, including the Pentagon’s $300 billion fighter jet program and the White House. Industrial espionage is rampant, to the point that America’s top cyberwar officer has called the scale of intellectual theft the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
A Pentagon report recently went further to conclude that “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.”
And in a survey of American companies doing business in China by the US-China Business Council, 95 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about intellectual-property rights enforcement in the country.
But the ad is also deeply misleading. In fact, the “seven times” alluded to have nothing to do with intellectual theft: they refer to the number of times that Obama could have declared China a currency manipulator. And as Beijing already agreed in a 2010 accord to crack down on piracy and counterfeiting, and the Obama administration has continued to bring up hacking and intellectual theft, it’s unclear how Romney intends to do any more.
Verdict: China-bashing, with a grain of truth. | <urn:uuid:31296885-5cde-4213-bb15-b5e876baf5ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/121011/us-election-china-bashing-mitt-romney-barack-obama | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963707 | 1,362 | 2.140625 | 2 |
A Cat Image Credit: Flickr/ ericrichardson
In a bizarre incidence, a woman from Thailand found the skeleton of a kitten while eating sausages with her family and later turned the 'lucky' carcass into a shrine.
Krod Yotchomrang, a 52-year-old woman in Buri Ram, Thailand, noticed something strange inside one of the sausages she was cutting.
"I was cutting the third sausage when I noticed what looked like a small cat," she told the Bangkok Post.
A closer look at her food revealed the cat's eyes and nose, and a chunk of cat hair.
"We almost threw up when we realized we were eating the body of a kitten for dinner."
She had bought the sausage from a local market in Satuk district of Buri Ram province.
Although most people would throw the sausage at the very moment of finding cat carcass in their food, Yotchomrang "after thinking it through", decided to create a shrine dedicated to the kitty in her house and also prayed before it, the report said.
The peculiarity of the story does not end there. Once Yotchomrang's friends and neighbors got to know of the shrine, they too visited the shrine and prayed before it.
To Yotchomrang's astonishment, many a people among those who prayed, won money in the local lottery and this convinced her further that the kitty carcass can bring good luck to people, reports msnNOW.com.
Public health officials, who are less charmed by the incidence, are now investigating if the local sausage maker is mixing pork with cat meat, according to Thai Rath, a Thai language website.
To contact the editor, e-mail: | <urn:uuid:b91be9a2-28e2-4075-8402-f3e3a01b44a7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/448837/20130321/woman-finds-cat-skeleton-sausage-shrine-worship.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973355 | 367 | 1.734375 | 2 |
DARPA wants more American geeks. Not just to create more remote-controlled cyborg beetles, but to secure the future of our country.
Right now, DARPA says, America's "ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development."
To help give developing geeks a little push, DARPA is advocating extracurricular programs "targeted to middle and high school students" that will "maintain a positive, long-term presence in a student's education." What kind of extracurricular programs? It's unclear just yet, though the government agency wants to start up career days, lab tours, mentoring and more that would help show nerdy youngin's that all those swirlies are worth it, if they stay the course. | <urn:uuid:58643ebb-22e7-47fd-a8c3-56040cf1706b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvice.com/archives/2010/01/us-threatened-b.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948348 | 212 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Calculate Addition and Subtraction Problems Using Decimals
You frequently work with decimals when dealing with money, metric measurements, and food sold by the pound. The following problem requires you to add and subtract decimals. Even though the decimals may look intimidating, this problem is fairly simple to set up:
Antonia bought 4.53 pounds of beef and 3.1 pounds of lamb. Lance bought 5.24 pounds of chicken and 0.7 pounds of pork. Which of them bought more meat, and how much more?
To solve this problem, you first find out how much each person bought:
Antonia = 4.53 + 3.1 = 7.63
Lance = 5.24 + 0.7 = 5.94
You can already see that Antonia bought more than Lance. To find how much more, subtract:
7.63 – 5.94 = 1.69
So Antonia bought 1.69 pounds more than Lance. | <urn:uuid:8d18381a-23aa-418f-9461-0f4b386ef6de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/calculate-addition-and-subtraction-problems-using-.navId-407338.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94327 | 207 | 3.4375 | 3 |
In a 1956 text on ethics and literature, Emmanuel Levinas offered the following diagnosis of the philosophical trends of his time:
Contemporary thought holds the surprise for us of an atheism that is not humanist. The gods are dead or withdrawn from the world; concrete, even rational man does not contain the universe.
This atheism that is not humanist, the sense that certain strands of contemporary philosophy had abandoned secularism’s central ethical and political investment in humanism, poses the motivating question behind the book I am presenting for discussion here, An Atheism that Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought. In twentieth-century French thought, particularly in the period from the end of World War I through the late 1950s, a new form of atheism, and with it, a new conception of man, emerged and crystallized. What historians and critics of French thought, literature, and intellectual culture have, since the 1960s, called “antihumanism,” I argue, can be best understood in terms of this development, which is at once theological, epistemological, and political. By way of introducing the exchanges, critiques, and discussion to follow (and I thank The Immanent Frame for making these possible), I would like to offer a quick overview of the book, a general treatment of its questions, leaving a clearer articulation of the consequences of this transformation for the next generation of thinkers for a later post.
Beginning from Levinas’s proclamation, I have sought to re-define and describe antihumanism in terms of three different and interconnected problems and their historical trajectories: 1) transformations in atheism; 2) the fragmentation of the humanist imagination amidst a series of rejections of particular competing humanisms; and 3) the development of what I call a negative philosophical anthropology—that is to say, a theorization of “the human” as a construct or category fundamentally dependent on others.
Some questions are worth posing immediately, and in describing my research, these are the ones I will try to address. What does this new “atheism” amount to—in political, philosophical, and even theological terms? How does one trace it? How does this transformation of atheism animate the mid-century political critiques of humanism? How does it reformulate religious attitudes? Lastly, how does it affect, and how is it shaped by, contemporary conceptions of “the human”?
But first, a quick note on my call for a new approach to “antihumanism.” The term “antihumanism” is usually linked to its supposed golden age, the 1960s; this linkage, itself largely a product of 1970s and 1980s “neo-humanist” trends in French thought, suggests that antihumanism is an appendix of “post-Heideggerian” or “structuralist” philosophies. This narrative, which is still occasionally evoked by critics today, often claims that antihumanism 1) can be traced to a continuation of the Counter-Enlightenment; 2) is committed to a confused mix of Marxisant and right-wing themes, and is the political position of former Marxists unwilling to turn toward liberalism; and/or 3) designates, above all, an illiberal mistrust of the promises of egalitarianism and human rights, a mistrust of forms of liberal humanism.
This kind of narrative replaces the philosophical, theological, and cultural complexity of the term and the problem with the simplistic and confusing label of “Nietzschean post-Marxism,” which, regardless of the importance and influence of Marx and Nietzsche, renders the aims and claims of “antihumanist” thinkers politically absurd and philosophically senseless. Something else also gets lost: the way in which what is usually referred to as “antihumanism” is not correlated to the great transformations of French intellectual culture that occurred after each of the two World Wars. Not only were people excited about certain elements of “antihumanism” already in the 1920s (André Malraux asked about the “death” of European Man already in his 1926 The Temptation of the West), but the politics of criticizing humanism was by no means simply a mixture of illiberalism and Marxism. Rather, such critiques were to be found almost everywhere on the intellectual spectrum of the 1930s.
If the refusal of some humanism could be seen across a rather wide array of positions at the time, this was largely because every political position in the period claimed to be, not only a humanism, but the only possible humanism. Breaking with their century-old refusal of the humanist language and tradition, Catholics now began to claim that humanism was misguided and tragic only insofar as it was not a “theocentric” and, in Jacques Maritain’s influential expression, integral humanism. Following Marx’s treatment of human rights in “On the Jewish Question,” as well as Andrei Zhdanov’s 1934 lead in the First Congress of Soviet Writers, communists responded that only “socialist humanism” afforded man the dignity he deserved. And already before these positions developed, so-called non-conformists like Thierry Maulnier had led searches for an “adequate” humanism. Their direct target was the liberal, secular humanism of the Third Republic, itself best expressed by academic philosophers of the Dreyfusard generation—a humanism which seemed to them to have, not only strongly Eurocentric, but even fantastic and imperial implications out of step with the realities of contemporary France. As Paul Nizan memorably put it, in his call for a socialist humanism, “On the one hand, we have the idealistic philosophers who promulgate truths concerning Man; and, on the other hand, we have a map showing the incidence of tuberculosis in Paris, a map which tells us how men are dying.” A further victim of these criticisms was the humanist imagination itself: fragmented and attached to political projects that did not shy from, and indeed legitimated, violence, it became more attached to the suspicion directed at it than to any of its own promises. After World War II, and even though the French resistance understood itself as taking the side of humanity against Nazi barbarism, these doubts were radicalized and, by 1947-48, became common currency among philosophers and many literary authors. And not only were such doubts radicalized, but they became attached to an array of different and even opposed political positions.
This breakdown of humanism (and with it, of notions of history as progress, nature as in the service of man, and suffering as eradicable) halted the great hope, once integral to European atheism, of a harmonious secular society, something that, though in some doubt since Nietzsche and Sorel, now entered a renewed period of crisis. Concomitant to this was a doubt regarding notions of human nature linked to secularism and, moreover, a general suspicion of unified notions of man, the positing of which now appeared as unfounded and over-assertive. In writing intellectual history today, the problem of antihumanism is of methodological interest because it involves a change in something that is not simply a political stance among intellectuals, nor a specific concept or philosophical movement, but a precondition of thought, a somewhat fluid matrix of ideas—a philosophical attitude, if you prefer. To restate the questions that interest me somewhat differently: How does one write about something as nebulous as that, keeping together the different strands—political, theological, and philosophical? As critiques of humanism point to changes in atheist thought, how can we think of their joint history? How do philosophical and theological concerns shape and get shaped by political problems?
The overall umbrella of answers that I propose suggests two further histories. The first is the transformation of atheism and the abandonment of its traditional identification with anthropotheism, humanist morality, and secular utopia. Nineteenth-century atheism had routinely posited Man as replacing God, or as having to transform himself in certain ways in order to do so adequately—in, for example, Comte, Feuerbach, Proudhon, Marx, Wagner, and Nietzsche. To make up for the absence of God in human affairs, philosophers linked atheism with a positive ethico-philosophical project that claimed to provide for man, as highest being, the modes of thought and action integral to a good life and proper society. Humanism, in this sense, was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries what reaches, reveals, and cultivates the proper humanity of man; it turned an improvement of human relations into the core of ethics, and man himself into the bearer and guarantor of his own dignity, equality, and freedom.
But certain strands of atheism seem to have accepted a much more limited stance after World War I, one that rejected this anthropotheism. The idea that the replacement of God by man suffices as a project, a mode of life, or an ethic begins to be rejected in French thought and literature from about 1930 on. A number of prominent philosophers and literary figures, including—to give just a few names—Jean Wahl, Alexandre Kojève, Georges Bataille, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identified atheism, the “Death of God,” and the philosophical enterprise itself, not with secularism, but with the collapse of a unified and virtuous figure of man, and with man’s sense of entrapment in a hostile world of invidious ideologies and violence. This is a major, and largely sudden, shift, and within philosophy it clearly appears as a new generation’s response to the failure of older philosophers to “understand” World War I, as well as an epistemological-cum-existential response to new scientific movements.
The second parallel history that I trace specifically concerns this collapse of a unified figure of man and the new argument that man should not be seen as a basis for philosophy and a premise of ethics. It is a claim that there is no such thing as human “nature,” or that “human nature” is unknowable, unavailable, and, in any case, hardly benevolent or ethical. Because it seeks to talk about man in the negative, and in order to keep its proximity to negative theology in mind, I call this a “negative anthropology.” Negative anthropology rejects the idea that man is his own highest being or foundation. Enlightenment definitions of man as a being sovereign over the earth, in control of his destiny, and the force behind his own assured progress had worked in just this foundational direction. Kant saw man as his own highest being and highest end, and in his Logic of 1800 even placed the question “What is Man?” at the base of his entire critical project. Diderot’s short definition of man in the Encyclopédie reads as follows:
Man—masculine singular—is a sensing, reflecting, thinking being, which freely traverses the surface of the earth, which appears at the head of all other animals over which it reigns, which lives in society, which has invented the sciences and the arts, which has its own goodness and viciousness, which gives itself masters, which makes its own laws, etc.
What changes with the advent of negative anthropology is that this kind of definition becomes irrelevant. Man is no longer to be talked about as the basis of a philosopher’s thought, or in the masculine singular of a powerful, self-possessed I. He can no longer claim to be capable of scientifically understanding the entire world. To the extent that he may still be a sensing, reflecting, thinking being, these are not properties that are in interplay with the fact of his humanity—indeed, what is in question is this very humanity. At stake, then, is the conceptual dependence of human nature on structures of Being, language, thought, and culture.
More specifically, 1930s French thought undermined the idea that man, especially the scientist, is a privileged observer of the world around him. Thinkers such as Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojève, Georges Bataille, and Jean-Paul Sartre, imported and adopted Husserlian and especially Heideggerian phenomenology, as well as new developments in scientific thought (notably quantum physics), in order to articulate a radical skepticism toward the positivistic belief in man’s ability to understand and fully know his “world.” Denying the purity or even possibility of transcendence became a way of seeing man as not only embedded but trapped in the world, Thus, the epistemological problem concerning scientific observation and truth is continuous with the existentialist anxiety about the weakness of man in the face of the world.
In the late 1940s, many of the same thinkers, together with some younger ones, furthered this position, dismissing the idea that one can simply speak of humanity on its own premises at all. For philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, even the Marxism whose success they worked for could not a priori define or guarantee humanity:
Even those of us today who are taking up the word “humanism” again no longer maintain the same shameless humanism our elders. What is perhaps proper to our time is to disassociate humanism from the idea of a humanity fully guaranteed by natural law and not only reconcile consciousness of human values and consciousness of the infrastructures which keep them in existence, but insist upon their inseparability.
Thus, even humanists were antihumanists first: at this point, history, language, the unconscious, being, and society came to definitively take priority over notions of human nature. Inhabiting such systems or structures, man does not grant meaning to reality, language, history, being, and society; he finds his own role and status produced and located by the way that they construct his interaction with the world and with other beings. These systems are not consequences of Man’s creative activity, desire, or will; they are not figures of his difference from an animal; they become the structures on the basis of which the human can be addressed, understood, discovered, and debated. This idea is most often associated with Heidegger’s “Letter on ‘Humanism,’” but it was also adopted in France by influential and well-positioned thinkers like Jean Hyppolite, who, working off of Hegel’s Logic, claims that “When man is reduced to himself, he is lost… Man is an intersection,” and should be understood as suspended from History, Being, Language—not as their foundation. Merleau-Ponty similarly rejected earlier definitions in which “human nature had truth and justice for attributes, as other species have fins or wings”; so did contemporaries from Lacan through Canguilhem (who would later write that “the concept of man covers with a false appearance of specific identity individual organisms whose existence is thus deprived of different powers of resistance to aggression”). As is well known, in the 1960s, thinkers from Foucault to Derrida would radicalize this position; but so did others who continued to advocate for humanisms, though without grounding them in human nature, natural right, or law.
This, I would argue, constitutes the matrix of the epistèmè that came to be called “antihumanist”: an atheism that rejected many of the grounds of secular humanist conviction, and with them, the definitions of human nature that had supported and had claimed to guarantee humanism’s trust and thrust.
Tags: antihumanism, atheism, communism, Emmanuel Levinas, epistemology, Europe, existentialism, France, Friedrich Nietzsche, history, humanism, Jacques Maritain, Jean Hyppolite, Martin Heidegger, Marxism, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, philosophy, science, theology | <urn:uuid:a9536222-b775-4d00-bf9e-93197db64d95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/06/03/secularism-atheism-antihumanism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960154 | 3,351 | 2.03125 | 2 |
The most wonderful time of the year has a dark underbelly: germs, bugs and general ickiness that can travel more quickly than Santa's sleigh. We're not trying to give you the willies, just suggesting a few easy ways to prevent problems and make your holidays even happier.
Spoiled Snacks on the Doorstep
Mail-order food gifts are great unless the weather outside is too delightful to keep them cold. Left out too long, even well-packaged perishables such as cheese and cheesecake become frightful. What to do: Open perishables immediately. If food temperature is above 40 degrees, call the company that sent it and don't eat any. Not even a nibble. Seriously, don't.
Maladies Under the Mistletoe
Before you pucker up, consider a cheery note from a British Columbia health department: "Colds, kissing disease [mononucleosis], herpes infection, warts, hepatitis B and meningococcal disease may all be transmitted by kissing." What to do: Smooch with discretion. (Thinking about warts should help.)
Tummy Troubles in Tight Places
Getting away for the holidays? Norovirus, a.k.a. "winter vomiting disease," causes more than 20 million cases of gastroenteritis every year. It spreads easily in tight quarters such as hotels, restaurants, airplanes and cruise ships and is often transmitted on uncooked greens, fruit and shellfish. What to do: Wash hands often and don't share utensils. If someone becomes ill with nausea or diarrhea, disinfect contaminated surfaces with a bleach solution.
(Hum)bug on the Tree
Critters on conifers are harmless and usually remain unnoticed until you haul the tree to the curb, but a few mites, spiders or praying mantids might hop off or hatch and stay awhile. What to do: Before taking a tree inside, shake it to get rid of loose bugs and remove obvious eggs and nests. Don't spray with insecticide - it's flammable.
Flu in the Air
Influenza viruses thrive in late fall and early winter and spread from person to person through the air, particularly cold, dry air. Family gatherings, holiday crowds and even Santa's lap provide plenty of transmission opportunities. What to do: Steer clear of coughing commuters, sneezing shoppers and ailing aunts. Hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent ethanol (also called ethyl alcohol) is very effective against flu.
Cold Viruses on the Remote
Are you constantly clicking between football and "A Christmas Story"? A 2011 study found that the TV remote is one of the germiest items in the house. Rhinoviruses, which cause about a third of all colds in adults, can be resistant to hand sanitizer and can survive on hard surfaces for four days. What to do: Wash your hands often, try not to touch your nose or eyes, and if you're really worried, hide the remote.
Bacteria at the Buffet
Nasty bacteria called Clostridium perfringens cause about a million cases of food poisoning each year, and they can flourish in catered foods, especially meats, that sit out a long time. After two hours at room temperature, bacteria in food double every 20 minutes. What to do: At parties, pay attention to how long cooked food has been sitting. At home, refrigerate leftovers within two hours and freeze or toss them after three days.
Lice in Santa's Lid
Pediculus humanus capitis isn't on anyone's wish list, but you're asking for it if you pop Frosty's old silk hat on your head without knowing where it's been. Lice don't hop or fly, so they have to be within crawling distance to hitch a ride. What to do: Wash suspicious items in hot water or seal them in a plastic bag for two weeks before wearing.
Salmonella With Stuffing
You don't have to eat undercooked turkey to get a serving of salmonella. Raw eggs and poultry can leave microbes on utensils, hands and countertops, ready to spread to other food. What to do: Clean and sanitize as you cook. Use an eggnog recipe that requires heating the eggs. And don't bet on the booze in the eggnog: A 2008 experiment that suggested a 20 percent rum-and-bourbon concentration might kill salmonella was inconclusive.
Sources: Partnership for Food Safety Education; USDA; CDC; J. Owen Hendley, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Virginia; Penn State University; Rockefeller University via ScienceDaily; Michigan Department of Community Health. | <urn:uuid:420a424f-e023-4b5f-b860-cc497a1b3b6b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pressrepublican.com/fyi/x349505331/Creepy-crawly-holidays-9-ways-to-avoid-germs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942076 | 978 | 2.28125 | 2 |
For kids ages seven to fourteen and their adult companions
Saturday, December 1, 2012, 1:00–2:00 p.m.
Theater 3 (The Celeste Bartos Theater), mezzanine, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building
View all Conversations with Contemporary Artists: The Family Edition »
Hear from contemporary artists as they share their art-making techniques and sources of inspiration. Presentations are followed by a special Q&A.
Artist Chuck Close is is best known for his large-scale, photobased portrait paintings and the highly inventive techniques he uses to paint the human face. He is also an accomplished printmaker and photographer. In 1988, Close was paralyzed following a rare spinal artery collapse; he continues to paint using a brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm. In 2000, President Clinton presented the artist with the prestigious National Medal of Arts. Close is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was recently appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
The artist will sign copies of his new book for kids, Chuck Close Face Book immediately following the program, in the mezzanine of the Education and Research Building.
Admission is free. Preregistration is required.
Registration will take place online beginning at 10:30 a.m. ten days before the program.
To receive registration and program information, sign up for the Family Programs E-news.
Sign language interpretation can be scheduled for any Conversations with Contemporary Artists: The Family Edition with at least two weeks advanced notice by calling (212) 408-6347 or (212) 247-1230 (TTY) or e-mailing email@example.com.
FM assistive listening devices (headsets and neck loops) are available for all programs.
For further information about Family Programs at MoMA, please call (212) 708-9805 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:13d736bb-3f63-43d9-b3b9-71404b9bc5d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/events/15942 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943595 | 424 | 1.84375 | 2 |
|First appearance||"The Double Deuce"|
|Voiced by||Roy McCrerey|
|Occupation||World War I Fighter Pilot|
|Relationships||Woodhouse(homoerotic love interest)|
|“||You scoundrel, is that Brandy?||”|
Captain Reginald "Reggie" Thistleton was an English fighter pilot during World War I. He is voiced by Roy McCrerey. Woodhouse served as his officer's personal attendant during World War I. It's possible that he went to school with Woodhouse but it's possible that Woodhouse's memory was failing him. Reggie and Woodhouse developed unspoken, homosexual feelings for each other, however they never acted on them. A relationship which caused made fellow pilot, Stripes, jealous.
As Captain of the Double Deuce Squadron, he noticed his men were getting depressed. Reggie started a Tontine with the rest of the pilots and soldier servants. It began with 1,200 British pounds and over the course of several decades worked it's way up in value to over $1 million US dollars.
When Reggie was shot down and his plane crash landed in No Man's Land, they were forbidden to rescue him. Woodhouse went anyway, he provided Reggie with a cigarette which allowed the enemy to shoot him through the neck. The death caused Woodhouse to go into a homocidal rage and kill around 50 German soldiers with his knife. He was discharged from the service because he scalped all his enemies.
After several members of the Double Deuce Squadron died, Lieutenant Stripes came to visit with Woodhouse and Corporal Bishop. Stripes brought Reggie's old Webley Revolver to give to Woodhouse, it was sort of a peace offering. Stripes also had feelings for Reggie, and his final words were, "I'm coming Reggie!" | <urn:uuid:75692a27-6a3b-4b9b-9981-8ea270df6eed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archer.wikia.com/wiki/Reggie_Thistleton | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980213 | 387 | 1.90625 | 2 |
- Report Published -
|Leased Vehicles: the Collection, Maintenance, and Dissemination of Lessee Information|
|Department of Motor Vehicles|
|HJR 107 (Regular Session, 1996)|
|Increasing numbers of Virginians and Virginia-based businesses are choosing to lease motor vehicles rather than purchase them. As of August 20, 1996, records maintained by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) contained 196,566 "leased vehicle" indicators.|
In response to the increased use of leased vehicles, the 1996 General Assembly introduced two pieces of legislation related to record keeping requirements for leased vehicles. The first, House Bill 722, was passed and signed by the Governor and codified the current collection of lessee information done by DMV. The second, House Joint Resolution 107, requested DMV to study means of collecting, maintaining, and disseminating information on leased vehicles which would support the assessment, collection, and payment of personal property taxes. To address these issues, DMV formed a Leased Vehicle Task Force. This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of that Task Force.
In accordance with Virginia statute, DMV and the local Commissioners of the Revenue hold vehicle owners, including lessors, responsible for the payment of all taxes related to specific vehicles. Vehicle owners are also responsible for maintaining current state and local registrations for their vehicles. Owners' names, addresses, and vehicle garage jurisdictions are collected by both DMV and the local Commissioners of the Revenue to support the collection of vehicle-related taxes.
However, lease agreement terms can vary from one leasing company to another, with some agreements requiring the lessee to pay registration renewal fees and other lease agreements requiring the lessor to pay registration renewal fees and other lease agreements requiring the lessor to pay these fees. Since the late 1960's, DMV has also collected and maintained the names and addresses of lessees in situations where lease agreements require them to pay registration renewal fees. This information is also provided to the local Commissioners of the Revenue for their use in mailing registration renewal notices directly to lessees.
The collection of personal property taxes, as well as fees for local registration decals, is complicated by the fact that there is no statutory requirement for statewide consistency among the 135 independent jurisdictions. Consequently, ordinances governing personal property tax assessment vary, as do administrative procedures used to collect property taxes and local vehicle registration fees. However, efforts in Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area have resulted in compacts between Commissioners of the Revenue in those localities. The compacts address such issues as proration, consistent tax due dates and collection dates, as well as decal location and cost. (*1)
DMV provides the local Commissioners of the Revenue with vehicle information, including owner's name and address and garage jurisdiction, on a routine basis. The Commissioners have the ability to obtain this information weekly, monthly, or semi-annually, depending upon their specific needs. In cases where DMV has collected lessees' names and addresses on its revised title application form, this information is also disseminated to the local Commissioners of the Revenue.
Some Commissioners of the Revenue, however, have not made the automated system changes needed to accept, store, and use the lessee information which DMV routinely provides. Commissioners of the Revenue also obtain lessee name and address and garage jurisdiction information on leased vehicles from lessees as part of their annual personal property tax filings and from lessors on listings which leasing companies provide to them annually.
Lessee name and address are important to local Commissioners of the Revenue whose localities hold lessees responsible for paying local registration fees. In addition, accurate garage jurisdiction information and prompt notification when the lessor disposes of a vehicle are important to Commissioners of the Revenue whose localities prorate personal property tax assessments. According to the Commissioners of the Revenue who served on the Leased Vehicle Task Force, there continue to be problems with the collection of accurate garage jurisdiction information in spite of the efforts DMV has made to make this information accessible to the localities. This problem exists because lessees and lessors are not notifying either DMV or the local Commissioner of the Revenue when garage jurisdictions change or when vehicles are sold.
The research conducted the Leased Vehicle Task Force indicates that the current problems with leased vehicle information relate to a need to improve notification regarding changes in garage jurisdiction and disposition of vehicle rather than to a lack of lessees' names and addresses. Consequently, there does not appear to be a need for legislation to require DMV to capture the names and addresses of all lessees. The Leased Vehicle Task Force recommends that the following administrative actions be implemented, however, to facilitate the collection of lessee information, garage jurisdiction information, and vehicle disposition information:
1. DMV has written to all leasing companies notifying them of the changes which have been made to its title application for use in collecting lessee name and address, encouraging the leasing companies to complete this information, and reminding them of the importance of notifying DMV of changes in vehicle garage jurisdiction or disposal of the vehicle.
2. The local Commissioners of the Revenue Association should write to all leasing companies informing them of the need to ensure that localities are notified immediately of any changes in garage jurisdiction or disposal of the vehicle so that proration of taxes can be done accurately.
3. The Commissioners of the Revenue should explore the feasibility of mailing out personal property tax assessments and local registration renewal notices earlier so that lessors have the time needed to forward these notices to lessees for payment when the terms of the leasing agreement hold the lessee responsible for such payments.
4. The leasing companies could take steps to provide the Commissioners of the Revenue with listings on a more frequent basis, such as quarterly. They may also wish to explore the feasibility of exchanging the required information on leased vehicles in an electronic, rather than paper, format.
(*1) The Northern Virginia Compact for Local Motor Vehicle License Enforcement was entered into by the following six governing bodies: the Town of Herndon; Arlington County; Loudoun County; Fairfax County; the City of Fairfax; and the City of Falls Church. The participating jurisdictions adopted a uniform ordinance to obtain reciprocal enforcement of local motor vehicle license display requirements. The jurisdictions adopted a uniform license display year beginning November 16 and ending November 15. The jurisdictions use a uniform decal of the same border color and same general design. Each jurisdiction agreed to reciprocal enforcement of local motor vehicle license display requirements by the other jurisdictions in the compact.
Tidewater localities have entered into a similar agreement. Participants in the compact for regional enforcement are: the cities/towns of Chesapeake, Franklin, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and Williamsburg; and the counties of Gloucester, Isle of Wight, James City, Mathews, Middlesex, Southampton, and York. Each jurisdiction agreed to reciprocal enforcement of local motor vehicle license display requirements by the other jurisdictions in the compact. | <urn:uuid:a330432f-94b8-45c0-9654-9231bd76b535> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leg2.state.va.us/dls/h&sdocs.nsf/4d54200d7e28716385256ec1004f3130/f27d060a9714bcca852563ea00069f63?OpenDocument | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933566 | 1,415 | 1.773438 | 2 |
From Naples, Florida, USA:
For the past nine months, I have been controlling my sugar very well with diet and exercise. My fasting levels have been between 110-120 (6.1-6.6 mmol/L] and after eating levels below 130 (7.2 mmol/L]. In the last three weeks, my fasting levels have been between 135-160 (7.5-8.9 mmol/L] and I have tried everything (exercise and diet) but nothing seems to be working. At night, before going to bed, my levels are 120-125 (6.6-6.9 mmol/L], but in the morning when I wake up they are back up to 150s (8.3 mmol/L). Is something happening while I'm sleeping? I've received two types of conflicting information:
- My sugar is going a low in the middle of the night and starts creeping up, so I need to eat something either very late at night or wake up in the middle of the night and eat a snack. (This won't help with my effort to loose weight.)
- Don't eat a snack. The problem is that my residual sugar is out of control and I need to fast (only liquids) for three days to clean my system out.
Neither one is probably correct. It sounds like you have Type 2 diabetes. You are trying to control the sugars with lifestyle changes (essentially exercise and diet). Your sugars are now higher in the morning than they use to be. This is the natural history of Type 2 diabetes. The reason the sugars are high in the morning, and higher than the night before, is that the liver puts out glucose during the night. When there is poor glucose tolerance, too much glucose is put out. You may need to be treated with medicine to suppress the glucose output over the night that raises your fasting blood sugar.
Original posting 24 Dec 2003
Posted to Type 2
Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:09:51
This Internet site provides information of a general nature and is designed for educational purposes only. If you have any concerns about your own health or the health of your child, you should always consult with a physician or other health care professional.
This site is published by Children With Diabetes, Inc, which is responsible for its contents.
© Children with Diabetes, Inc. 1995-2013. Comments and Feedback. | <urn:uuid:550174b5-037f-4f0c-805f-245173a1ecec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/dteam/2003-12/d_0d_bl7.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953295 | 495 | 2.03125 | 2 |
VATICAN CITY -- Over the course of the last six months, Pope Benedict XVI delivered five major speeches to small groups of American bishops who were in Rome for their "ad limina" visits, which are required once every five years.
The "ad limina" visits are the way the pope and and Vatican departments keep tabs on bishops from around the world. They are also an occasion for the pope to address the major issues faced by a local church.
In his speeches, Benedict often echoed bishops' concern about religious freedom and the challenges confronting the American church. In his last address, on May 22, he warned bishops of the "threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly."
The pope didn't directly mention the bishops' recent conflicts with the Obama administration over a birth control mandate and other hot-button issues, but touched on many of the topics at the heart of the controversy, from conscientious objection to gay marriage.
One factor that might have shaped the pope's message to the American bishops in recent months is the relative weakness of the Vatican ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
He is a newcomer to the U.S., having arrived in Washington just weeks before the bishops' visits started. He has been embroiled in the so-called "Vatileaks" scandal with the publication of his private letters to Benedict that denounced widespread "corruption" in the Vatican.
Here's a recap of what Benedict had to say on hot-button issues in these past months.
- Sexual abuse: "It is my hope that the church's conscientious efforts to confront this reality will help the broader community to recognize the causes, true extent and devastating consequences of sexual abuse, and to respond effectively to this scourge which affects every level of society" (Nov. 26).
- "Dissent" within the Catholic church: "The seriousness of the challenges which the church in America ... is called to confront in the near future cannot be underestimated. The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture also affect the lives of believers, leading at times to that 'quiet attrition' from the church which you raised with me during my pastoral visit" (Nov. 26).
- "Anti-Christian" culture in America: "At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation's founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature's God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such" (Jan. 19).
- The church's place in the public square: "The legitimate separation of church and state cannot be taken to mean that the church must be silent on certain issues, nor that the state may choose not to engage, or be engaged by, the voices of committed believers in determining the values which will shape the future of the nation" (Jan. 19).
- Religious freedom: "It is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the church's public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices. Others have spoken to me of a worrying tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience" (Jan. 19).
- Catholic politicians: Benedict praised the bishops' "efforts to maintain contacts with Catholics involved in political life and to help them understand their personal responsibility to offer public witness to their faith, especially with regard to the great moral issues of our time: respect for God's gift of life, the protection of human dignity and the promotion of authentic human rights" (Jan. 19).
- Gay marriage: "Particular mention must be made of the powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage. ... Sexual differences cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to the definition of marriage. Defending the institution of marriage as a social reality is ultimately a question of justice, since it entails safeguarding the good of the entire human community and the rights of parents and children alike" (March 9).
- Catholic colleges: Benedict condemned the failure to comply with church requirements. Catholic theology teachers "have a mandate from the competent ecclesiastical authority," he said. "The importance of this canonical norm ... becomes all the more evident when we consider the confusion created by instances of apparent dissidence between some representatives of Catholic institutions and the church's pastoral leadership: Such discord harms the church's witness and, as experience has shown, can easily be exploited to compromise her authority and her freedom" (May 5).
- American nuns: "I wish to reaffirm my deep gratitude for the example of fidelity and self-sacrifice given by many consecrated women in your country, and to join them in praying that this moment of discernment will bear abundant spiritual fruit for the revitalization and strengthening of their communities in fidelity to Christ and the church" (May 18). | <urn:uuid:7e74e631-14c9-47ce-9a1f-d90fda7eb182> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncronline.org/print/news/vatican/benedict-gives-direction-us-bishops-hot-button-issues | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961624 | 1,148 | 1.921875 | 2 |
What is co-dependency?
The term “co-dependency” was coined more than 20 years ago by authors who studied the negative impact of drug and alcohol use on families. Since then, use of the term has been expanded to include a pattern of psychologically unhealthy behaviors that are learned by individuals as a way of coping with a family environment marked by ignored or denied emotional turmoil.
Most people are able to enjoy a sense of healthy, mutual interdependence in their lives. However, people with co-dependency seem to habitually form relationships that are one-sided and emotionally destructive.
The central feature of co-dependency is an unhealthy dependence on relationships, usually in an attempt to avoid the feeling of abandonment.
Signs and symptoms of co-dependency include:
- Controlling behavior
- Mistrust of others
- Avoidance of feelings
- Excessive caretaking behavior
- Hypervigilance — a heightened awareness for potential threat or danger
If you feel that you or someone you care about may be struggling with co-dependency issues, consider consulting with a mental health professional who is experienced in working with individuals with these problems. The more you understand about co-dependency, the more likely meaningful and positive change will occur. | <urn:uuid:f725b6d8-e8b9-414d-8a17-8012d8295047> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://recoveryissexy.com/6-signs-of-co-dependency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971786 | 260 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Learn about the relationship between author James Ross and Mark Twain.
Some say that if you go back far enough in time everyone could very well be related to each other.Please don’t tell that to my “Aunt Marie.”She is now a retired schoolteacher in her late eighties.I don’t know if she would have enough time to research all of those connections.
Our family historian has been my dear “Aunt Marie.”She has spent the better part of her life researching county records, state documents, gravestones, periodicals, and anything else that is part of public knowledge.She has spent virtually her entire adult life composing the family tree. What she turned up in our gene pool was surprising to all of us that now live several generations away from our ancestors.
So as to not sound boring, I’ll simply cut to the chase.As the story goes a Colonel William Casey was born in FrederickCounty, Virginia in 1756.He migrated to Kentucky and had many fights with the Indians over the years as the property was being settled.Through adulthood he was appointed a county judge and served in local politics.Rumor has it that he was a mountain of a man, very kind, and the father of four daughters.This is the start of what I’ll call a mighty oak with several enduring branches.
His third daughter was named Polly.His fourth daughter was named Margaret, but nicknamed Peggy.The two branches of the tree that those two formed are what this article is about.They traveled through Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Iowa.
William Casey died in 1816 after serving in local politics in Adair County, Kentucky.He never lived to see his great grandson which had been placed on a limb of the family tree by his youngest daughter, Peggy.Born in Florida, Missouri in 1835, William Casey’s great grandson was christened Samuel L. Clemens…none other than Mark Twain.
Samuel Clemens was born roughly thirty-five miles inland from Hannibal, Missouri which was where he was raised during his younger years.Being from the Midwest it is quite believable that Casey’s youngest daughter Peggy and her siblings traveled up and down the states that were bordering the Mississippi River. Mark Twain made that tributary legendary in several of his tales.
As an added sidelight “Aunt Polly” was a recognizable character in Tom Sawyer.In all likelihood that was a name that Twain had heard his mother say often as he was growing up.To me the person identified as “Aunt Polly” would be my great, great, great, great grandmother.
At any rate the rest is history as far as Mark Twain goes.He is a legend in American folk yore as an author, philanthropist, statesman, humorist, and traveler.
I doubt that William Casey even cares that his great, great, great, great, great grandson wrote a novel after he turned fifty.That was the limb of the tree that his third daughter Polly helped to form.And I doubt if it matters that his far-removed relative grew up in modern-day St. Louis…only a driver and an eight-iron away from the Mississippi River.
But don’t tell that to my “Aunt Marie.”When she turned over all of the family tree information to me she said, “You know, Jim, you’ve done something that I’ve always dreamed about doing but never found the time.”
Naively, I asked, “What’s that?”
She said, “You wrote a book.I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Something tells me that maybe she should start with William Casey.He’s the mighty oak in this tale and she’s on one of those limbs too.
James Ross has published a series of books that use the wonderful city of St. Louis as a backdrop. Lifetime Loser (2007), Finish Line (2008) and Tuey's Course (2009) all present a colorful cast of characters that come together on the Prairie Winds Golf Course. Situated high atop the Mississippi river bluffs on the east side of St. Louis the author uses his personal knowledge of St. Louis to fully incorporate the city into the plots of his novels. Residents of and visitors to the GatewayCity will appreciate the author's fine storytelling and how he highlights his home city. All three novels from James Ross can be found at Xlibris.com or through his personal web site at http://www.authorjamesross.com/. | <urn:uuid:7474247e-c1e7-4ad5-bdf6-afaaf6345a54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=100582&id=46013 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983809 | 964 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Gifts of Art
When appreciated art is given to us, capital gains taxes can be completely avoided and the full fair market value of the property is generally deductible as a charitable contribution.
Gift of a Fractional Interest in Art
Federal tax laws let donors take a charitable deduction for gifts of fractional interests in art. This type of gift can be especially rewarding for donor(s) who wish to gift their art to the Museum but cannot take advantage of the entire charitable deduction over the legally mandated IRS 6 year period.
Example: Mary and Jim own a $500,000 piece of appreciated art they would like to gift to the Museum. They can give our institution a 50% interest in the art now, secure a current tax deduction for the value of our current interest in the property, and gift the remaining 50% within 10 years, taking full advantage of the entire charitable deduction.
Outright Gifts of Art
Individuals may have a desire to donate one or more pieces of art to the Museum now. Art accepted by the Museum will add to our permanent collection and will not likely be sold. Accordingly, your gift of art is used for a “related purpose”, and as such will be fully deductible by you at its current appraised market value. Donors are solely responsible for obtaining their own certified appraisals in substantiating their deduction. Our curators can preview the art beforehand and determine its acceptability into our permanent collection. They can also offer names of appraisers for your consideration.
Bequests of Art
It is not uncommon for individuals to name The San Diego Museum of Art to receive one or more pieces of art as a bequest from an estate. We are truly grateful to these individuals for their generosity. In some cases however, the Museum is reluctant to accept its bequest in part or in full because the artwork left to us may not fit properly into our permanent collection. Likewise, the Museum may be reluctant to accept its bequest and later consider selling unwanted pieces for cash to augment our acquisition fund, primarily because of the intricate logistics of re-selling accessioned art. If you have intentions to leave one or more pieces of art to the Museum in your estate plan, we kindly ask that you consider having one of our curators view it beforehand to assure it will be accepted at the appropriate time.
For more information about Gifts of Art, contact our Planned Giving Center. | <urn:uuid:58150450-acf8-49b3-927d-d5481fe2fc56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sdmart.org/planned-giving/gifts-art | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95448 | 491 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Russ Hendricks has used online banking as a way to help his parents, Helen and Harry, manage their bills.
(Money Magazine) -- Face it. Mom and Dad are getting up there. And their finances aren't getting any simpler. Some of life's trickiest money tasks -- managing a large but basically fixed nest egg, figuring out how to spend it down while never running out -- are in the hands of people who at some point may not be up to doing the work by themselves.
The normal wear and tear of aging can mean worsening eyesight, fatigue, and enormous life changes (such as caring for an ailing spouse) that make it harder to deal with reviewing bank statements or tracking a portfolio.
And as your parents get older, they are also at risk for difficulties with reasoning or memory, which recent studies have found can show up first in their financial skills.
"Neuroscience research suggests people beginning to suffer cognitive impairment make significantly more financial errors than those who aren't," says Robert Roush, associate professor of geriatrics at Baylor College of Medicine. All of this means you have a tough new job to add on top of planning your own retirement and getting the kids through school: helping your parents manage their money.
It's a delicate art. You're used to Mom and Dad being the authority on most things, especially money. So are they. You can't demand out of the blue that they show you their checkbook.
But if your folks are over 70, you and your siblings should start getting them comfortable with the idea that you can help.
"If you don't take action, you can end up paying unnecessary costs or handling things differently from the way your parents would have wanted," says Andrew Lo, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lo is well-known on Wall Street as a leading expert on number-crunching hedge fund strategies, but he still had to negotiate with his own mother to help with her money. He's been urging financial advisers to be more aware of aging problems.
This story is the first in a three-part series on protecting your parents. It will show you what researchers are learning about how seniors handle finances, and identify some simple things you can do starting even before your parents have serious problems. The goal is to help them without taking over their lives.
You'll find a guide to gadgets and services that will help your folks stay independent for as long as possible.
Finally, a feature in the August issue will help you defend Mom and Dad against the people hawking inappropriate -- or worse -- financial products.
To get started, it helps to know more about how your parents' lives have been changing as they age. That can help you decide when and how you should step in.
WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR
Old age brings enormous changes -- not all of them physical -- that could leave your parents feeling overwhelmed by the work of running their money.
In many marriages -- especially in your parents' generation -- husbands and wives split up financial duties. When one of your parents dies or becomes seriously ill, the other will very likely be handling unfamiliar problems, whether it's picking mutual funds or making sure the utility and cable bills are sent out on time. Anyone in that situation, young or old, could benefit from extra help or advice.
Even normal aging can bring gradual changes in mental function. Those changes may not affect the ability to make sound financial decisions, but if Dad takes longer to work with numbers than he used to, he may become less diligent about checking his account statements.
General health issues can also make things harder.
Russ Hendricks of Watertown, Tenn., helps his mom, Helen, 77, manage the bill paying. She's been spending a lot of time caring for his dad, Harry, 81, who has trouble walking. And she recently had back surgery.
"I find time gets away from me really fast these days," says Helen. "With my surgery, I'm still having to rest in between chores."
Russ noticed a problem when Helen said she had trouble balancing the checkbook. "My mom isn't forgetting things, but she gets overwhelmed," he says.
Other possible red flags: increased complaints about having to fill out forms from an insurer or brokerage, trouble reading fine print, or a general rise in stress about paying bills.
About half of people in their eighties suffer from significant cognitive impairment. That includes Alzheimer's but also other issues. This mental deterioration often takes families by surprise.
"Older people may be able to answer questions and respond well in social situations, but people end up shocked when they finally look at their finances," says Beth Kallmyer of the Alzheimer's Association.
So what should you be on the lookout for? A recent paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association lists warning signs. Your parent might have forgotten to pay utility bills or rent, or could be having trouble making change or writing checks.
Or they may complain that money is missing from their bank account or that someone is stealing from them. Of course, your parents may never get to that point -- and it's best to start the process of helping well before they do.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THEY SIMPLY NEED A HAND
Get involved in small ways while your parents are still healthy. You can let them know you are available for advice, and make routine tasks easier for them. All of this will make it easier to step in when bigger issues arise later.
It won't be easy to get your parents to open up about their finances.
"For many older Americans, who grew up during the Depression and World War II, money has always been a taboo subject," says Miriam Zucker, a geriatric-care manager and social worker in New Rochelle, N.Y.
So don't expect to have one big talk that settles it all. Get the conversation rolling by asking how they've prepared their financial accounts in case of an emergency. Where do they keep their accounts and insurance? Where would you find the paperwork? Who has the passwords?
Those shouldn't be touchy questions -- you aren't asking them if they are having trouble remembering the bills, just whether they've made the contingency plans everyone (you included) ought to have.
They may also have an easier time talking if you keep them in their familiar parental role, says Zucker.
Ask Dad for advice on how best to invest the money you put in his granddaughter's college savings account. Or tell Mom you are revising your will and you're wondering how they'd handle it.
You could very well get good advice, and conversation will flow naturally from there. And by talking about your investments and estate, you've also basically told them that you are doing okay financially. That will make it easier for them to turn to you.
Another way to reassure them they are still the parents is to say you've been worried and they could make you feel better if you knew more about their plans.
"You're asking them to do you a favor," says Jake Harwood, an expert on communication and aging at the University of Arizona.
Try citing something called the 40/70 rule, suggests Paul Hogan, head of a senior-care agency called Home Instead. The idea is that families should talk money when the parents turn 70 or the kids turn 40.
Russ Hendricks says online banking has been an important tool for helping to manage his parents' finances.
"I said, 'Mom, I use electronic banking, and it makes my life so much easier. Let me help you do this,' " he says.
Russ adds that there was an important side benefit for her: "She asked me to help her learn to use a laptop so that she can learn about the Internet and stay more connected."
Working with your parents to set up their accounts will also give you a glimpse at the state of their finances.
Financial advisers and planners can be a huge help, in part because having a neutral third party can defuse family tensions. But don't count on this person to sound the alarm if your parents are having trouble.
A survey of advisers by Fidelity found that 84% had worked with clients they suspected were suffering from Alzheimer's, but just half felt comfortable raising the subject.
Ask your parents if you can come along next time they meet their adviser. Watch to see if Mom and Dad are following along with the conversation. And just as important, check that they aren't being taken advantage of.
You should be concerned if the adviser is frequently pushing new financial products, especially if there are upfront loads and commissions attached. And make sure your parents aren't taking on too much risk.
Even an aggressive rule of thumb says that a stock position should equal 110 minus your age. So if your 75-year-old mom is over 35% in stocks, at least ask questions.
WHEN IT'S TIME TO HELP THEM MAKE DECISIONS
If you haven't already discussed the issues with your siblings, now's the time to make sure they know what's going on -- perhaps they can even share the burden.
That strategy has worked well for Diane Huff of Charlotte, N.C.
She manages the day-to-day finances of her mother, Ollie, who lives in an assisted-living center nearby. Meanwhile, her brother, Jim, in Florida, manages Ollie's investment portfolio.
"I just told Jim I can't do it all," says Diane.
Even if it's not necessary for everyone to pitch in, keep your siblings informed about what's going on -- you don't want to risk misunderstandings or bad feelings.
Taking a more active role in your mom and dad's finances may make them nervous or even resentful. Or they may simply need time to build trust in your abilities, as well as accept the idea of letting some responsibilities go.
So try to keep your involvement low-key -- perhaps using it as an opportunity to socialize. Offer to have a bill-paying and savings review date once or twice a month. After you square away the bills, go out for coffee or a meal.
"That makes the process more like an excuse to get together and have some fun," says Jim Ludwick, a financial planner in Odenton, Md.
With increased forgetfulness, your mom and dad may be at greater risk of making a major money misstep. They may also be targets for scams. So put some tripwires in place that will alert you if there are problems.
Ask your parent to have you listed to receive automatic notification if he or she misses a utility payment. And consider getting them to give you access to their bank accounts. Then you'll be able to see their daily cash-flow information.
One caveat: Check with the bank about what kind of account your parent has. Be sure you or your siblings are sharing a so-called convenience account, not becoming a joint owner with right of survivorship.
That might run afoul of your parents' estate plan, since you would inherit any leftover assets. It could also put your parents on the hook for the debts of anyone listed on the account, says Patricia Sitchler, an elder-law attorney in San Antonio.
In other words, if your brother is a joint owner and can't pay his credit card balance, creditors could have a claim on the money in Mom's account.
As you become more and more involved in helping Mom and Dad out, you can all too easily forget to treat them as the adults they are. Whether they've moved into your house or you've taken over management of their household budget, it's important to give them as much financial independence as they can handle.
Staying involved and active is essential to older people's well-being, says Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity.
That means getting out and socializing with friends, which can be difficult for them to do if they don't have control over some money. Even if you and your siblings eventually have to manage most of their finances, make sure your parents have access to cash and perhaps credit cards, with modest limits, for as long as possible.
Marion Peterson, 80, of Downers Grove, Ill., has moved in with her daughter, Gail Dunlap, and her family. That means she doesn't worry about paying for a lot of basic costs, such as utilities. But she still has her own bank account, and pays her own credit card, Medicare, and insurance bills. If she has questions, she can turn to Gail.
"I forget sometimes, and it helps to have someone else look at things with me," says Marion. That balance of support and freedom can help your parents live a better life -- one without money worries.
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|Overnight Avg Rate||Latest||Change||Last Week|
|30 yr fixed||3.66%||3.58%|
|15 yr fixed||2.79%||2.72%|
|30 yr refi||3.64%||3.57%|
|15 yr refi||2.79%||2.72%|
Today's featured rates: | <urn:uuid:c56a89a3-8c57-458a-84fe-e4157fe6e83e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/25/retirement/helping-aging-parents.moneymag/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97433 | 2,763 | 1.992188 | 2 |
|Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon
[ White ]
Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon
ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
The enforcement of the provision in § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution that the United States shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government is of a political character, and exclusively committed to Congress, and as such is beyond the jurisdiction of the courts.
The provisions of § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution do not authorize the judiciary to substitute its judgment as to a matter purely political for the judgment of Congress on a subject committed to Congress.
Under § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution, it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State, and its decision is binding on every other department of the Government, and cannot be questioned by the judiciary. Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1.
A statute otherwise constitutional cannot be attacked in the courts on the ground that it was adopted in pursuance of provisions in the constitution of the State which render the form of government of the State unrepublican in form within the meaning of § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution. The courts have no jurisdiction of the question; it is for Congress to determine.
Where the claim that one taxed under a state statute is deprived of property without due process of law is not based on any inherent defect in the law, or infirmity of power of State to levy it, but on the ground that the government of the State is not republican in form, the question is not within the jurisdiction of the courts.
The judicial power of the United States will not be extended so as to interfere with the authority of Congress or of the Executive so as to make the guarantee contained in § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution one of anarchy, instead of order. Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1.
Whether the adoption of provisions for the initiative and referendum in the constitution of a State, such as those adopted in Oregon in 1902, so alter the form of government of the State as to make it no longer republican within the meaning of § 4 of Art. IV of the Constitution, [p119] is a purely political question over which this court has no jurisdiction. Writ of error to review 53 Oregon 162, dismissed.
The facts, which involve the constitutionality under § 4 of Art. IV of the Federal Constitution of the initiative and referendum provisions of the constitution of the State of Oregon, are stated in the opinion. [p133] | <urn:uuid:958a908a-bda1-4bc5-886c-0ea59dd06206> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0223_0118_ZS.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944535 | 527 | 2.03125 | 2 |
So, One of my Students is a Pilot
It finally happened. The planets aligned, the stars shined with approval in the Western sky as night was chased away by day. We dropped some bags of flour from an airplane in physics today.
The build-up to this has been quite epic. We started planning it in August. We hit road blocks. Our pilot was to finish his coursework and recieve his license, but then the tragedy of delays and red tape struck. We languished in this limbo, jumping for physics problem to physics problem like drifters in box cars.
The goal here is narrative. We started studying acceleration and velocity, which led us to combining the two into the motion of objects as they fall. So often teachers get accolades simply for making things “fun.” I demand a little more than that; lots of things are fun, but I’d rather shoot for perplexing (thanks Dan), engaging–dare I say–riveting. There’s a reason kids play video games and watch movies instead of reading books and doing math problems: Narrative.
So, we call the FAA. We call the department of defense. We get clearance. We look up regulations.
We used Google Earth to find a suitable drop zone:
We calculated how far the object will fall and where it will hit. See below.
We’re ready. The kids and I form a convoy and we drive out into the desolate, pre-winter that is December in Iowa.
The co-pilot and I text message back and forth, and the drops begin:
All-in-all, not the worst way to spend a frigid morning with 40 of my high schoolers.
Here’s the math:
The co-pilot planned to drop the bag when the plane was directly over the house in the drop zone. This is a great piece of physics, because most people naively believe that an object, once dropped, will fall straight down. When in fact the object will continue along horizontally as fast as it was originally going, while only picking up speed in the downward direction (hooray for gravity).
So, we needed to figure out how long it would take for the object to fall using the model for constantly accelerated motion (again, hooray for unbalanced gravity):
h is height, a is acceleration, and t is time. The plane was 500 ft up, which is roughly 152.4 meters. The acceleration on Earth is 9.81 meters per second per second:
Solving for the time-to-fall yields:
We agreed that the plane would fly at 90 mph (v = 40.23 m/s), so the distance d covered horizontally will be:
However, our bags did not hit at 224 meters, which gives my class a chance to really flesh out a model for drag and its effect on the trajectory of the bag; ho hum, yet another day planned out for me by the natural narrative of figure-stuff-out. | <urn:uuid:4d5b37d1-f823-4ece-939b-609495303cd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?p=2330&cpage=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964536 | 627 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Tools to help further the growing green market in South America have been developed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and partnering organizations in that region.
Two ASHRAE standards regarding energy efficiency and sustainability recently were translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
ASHRAE’s Argentina Chapter recently translated ANSI/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1-2009, Standard for the Design of High Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, into Spanish.
The Argentina Chapter along with other groups, including the Asociación Argentina del Frío (AAF), are working to increase the market for green buildings in the country, notes Florentino Roson, past president of the Argentina Chapter, vice president of AAF and a green building controls expert in Argentina.
“Making our society aware of the benefits of sustainable buildings is one of our most important priorities,” he said. “The translation was spurred by our desire to save energy through responsible building. Although application of the standard is not yet mandatory in Argentina, we believe Standard 189.1 will be used as a benchmark in the design, building and maintenance of sustainable buildings in the near future.”
On Sept. 2 and 3, the Argentina Chapter hosted a seminar on Standard 189.1.
Additionally, ASHRAE worked with the Green Building Council Brasil on the Portuguese translation of Standard 90.1-2007, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. The council wanted a translation of the standard for use in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating program in that country.
ASHRAE past president Kent Peterson visited Brazil earlier this month to support ASHRAE chapters and the society’s work with ABRAVA, SMACNA, and the Green Building Council Brasil.
Both translations are available for purchase from ASHRAE. To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Service at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 404-321-5478, or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore. | <urn:uuid:0f978c02-2758-49b1-91b2-0ebb2a6c3c4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hpac.com/archive/ashrae-standards-translated | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915837 | 464 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
September 29, 1937. Washington, D.C. "Death masks displayed at identification convention. Mrs. Clark Schilder, wife of the Chief of the Division of Identification, Federal Bureau of Investigation, inspects a death mask of a trapped criminal at the annual convention of the International Association Identification which opened here today. Death masks of criminals are now being generally used by police bureaus throughout the country for identification purposes." View full size. | <urn:uuid:88687911-2ad5-460d-b7ad-863372c40911> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorpy.com/node/6094 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940436 | 175 | 1.945313 | 2 |
High gas prices push some to public transit
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The national average is now at $3.75 a gallon for regular unleaded. Here in the Valley, it's even higher. The average price for regular unleaded is $4.21 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.com.
Because of those high prices, many people are finding mass transit is a cheaper way to go.
Most everyone is feeling that pain at the pump. People are getting creative -- doing what they can to stay out of the driver's seat.
"When I was 17 learning to drive gas was 18 cents," said frequent train rider Dan Rule.
It's been a long time since gas prices were well under a dollar. Dan says that these days mass transit makes sense.
"It costs 40 dollars from Bakersfield to Hanford and back. I can't drive there... It takes me 68 bucks to fill up my van and I can go 40 buck back and forth from Bakersfield to Hanford."
Amtrak officials don't have specific numbers just yet, but they admit, they anticipate their rider-ship is up. Way up.
Ralph Fairbanks has been out of work since November and can no longer afford to drive to job interviews. "The gas prices have spiked so high that its cheaper to ride the train than it is to drive a car up here. And I can catch the bus and get to where I need to be in 30 minutes. So there's no point in driving."
Speaking of the bus, people in the Central Valley say they're more crowded these days with people who have alternative sources of travel. "Gas man. Gas is too much. Across the street its 4.19, down the street its 4.29," said bus rider Philip Martinez.
The transportation director for "FAX" tells said that they don't have tallies just yet, but ridership has been steady for quite a while.
As for those who remain behind the wheel AAA's district manager Jose Plascencia says he's noticed a trend in how people drive. "If you're going to do an errand, consolidate your errands into one drive rather than go across town and back. Take care of everything in one fell swoop and minimize your miles on your car that way."
Some other tips from AAA Should you decide to stay in the driver's seat:
- Keep your car maintained
- Check your tire pressure
- Take excess belongings out of your trunk
Believe it or not, it makes a difference in your mileage.
gas prices, consumer
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- California sheep ranchers face high costs, competition | <urn:uuid:b6cfffa3-0b93-4cc1-a6ac-eb13f4e522a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/consumer&id=8560768 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964235 | 678 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Auschwitz concentration camp, weird and scary place!
Auschwitz was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I, and 45 satellite camps.
Auschwitz is the German name for Oświęcim, the town in and around which the camps were located; it was renamed by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka (birch tree), refers to a small Polish village nearby that was mostly destroyed by the Germans to make way for the camp. | <urn:uuid:01c5f6f9-da12-4a3a-80da-e0438302c85f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rgbpicture.com/auschwitz | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98101 | 141 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Mizpah = Benjamin or Ephraim
From: Scott Mitchell <MITCHES@co.clark.nv.us>
Subject: Re: USA: Biblical Names
There is a mountain in eastern Nevada named Mount Moriah; it's over 12000
feet high. In Utah, not only is there a River Jordan, but it runs out of a
fresh water lake and into the Great Salt Lake, which is very similar to the
Dead Sea. There is also a Mount Nebo in Utah, approximately 12000 feet high.
Las Vegas Nevada | <urn:uuid:d8c5dd2e-aa8d-4745-a17c-2a11af188b6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://britam.org/nevada.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906096 | 119 | 1.742188 | 2 |
The objective of this Convention is to maintain populations of yellow fin and
skipjack tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean to permit maximum sustained catches
year after year.
Adopted on 31 May 1949 in Washington, D.C., the Convention entered in force
on 3 March 1950.
Besides establishing an Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, the Convention
set up a Commission to investigate the abundance, biology and ecology of the
tuna, and of fishes used as bait in the tuna fisheries; to collect and analyse
information; to publish such information and make recommendations for joint
action by the parties to maintain tuna stocks.
Read a summary
full text provided by ENTRI. | <urn:uuid:85db2680-261b-4bd5-b79e-1b68f83fe9d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unep.ch/regionalseas/main/legal/liattc.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902208 | 140 | 3.453125 | 3 |
And just like that, the Xbox 360 is five years old.
Five years ago yesterday I was one of about 2,000 people who spent 30 very cold hours inside a giant hangar in the Southern California desert celebrating the launch of this brand new video game console. The so-called "Zero Hour" event was the start of something that has helped change the industry forever.
It's hard to believe that five years has gone by so fast, but sure enough, the Xbox 360 has officially reached the age at which previous generations of video game consoles would be retired in favor of the next round. But the new Xbox was the first to hit the playing field of what quickly became known as the "next-gen" consoles: the Xbox, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, the latter two of which would be released in November 2006.
Amazingly, on that frigid Nov. 21, 2005, Sony's flagship console was still the PlayStation 2, and no one had yet even heard the name "Wii."
Along the way, the Xbox 360 has become a major part of Microsoft's stable of products, and has helped spawn (or enhance) some of the biggest and most important exclusive titles and accessories in video game history: the Halo, Gears of War, and Fable franchises, among many others; the Kinect motion-sensitive controller; and of course, the massively popular Xbox Live service.
But the Xbox has also had issues, most notably the infamous Red Ring of Death failures, and the resulting $1 billion warranty program Microsoft instituted to handle the resulting thousands of dead Xboxes. Many gamers also scoffed at its original behemoth power supply. … Read more | <urn:uuid:e534106a-6002-4049-b7eb-ac7c941b8742> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cnettv.cnet.com/8300-5_53-0.html?keyword=fable | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972182 | 340 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The supreme Roman ruins
Leptis Magna has deservedly earned a reputation of having the most complete and impressive Roman ruins in the entire North Africa. Leptis Magna was originally a Berber settlement, whereafter the Phoencians made it into a trading point. From the 6th century BC Leptis Magna was probably subdued by Carthage. It became part of the Roman empire in 111 BC.
While the setting of Leptis Magna cannot compete with what is found in eastern Libya, the harbour area is still very nice, together with Wadi Labna, even if it is almost filled with sand now. It is much because of the sand that Leptis Magna is so well preserved, for 800 years the
site was entirely protected by it.
At the most Leptis Magna can have had as much as 80,000 inhabitants, and its splendor profited from the love the emperor Septimus Severus (193-211) felt for his native town. Much of the best at the present site dates back to this period. The town had a steady base of income from slave trade, gold, ivory, metals, plus agriculture which was richer in those days.
The number of great monuments of Leptis Magna makes it a bit difficult to point out highlights. But the theatre is clearly one, and it has a splendid view from its upper tiers. Its diametre is 70 metres. Large parts of the structure has kept on to its ornamentation, and in the theatre there are many statues left.
The Hadrianic Baths are still impressive, and one of the pools, measuring 28 times 15 metre, remains intact. This bath house was one of the largest that ever was built outside Rome itself.
The circus, near a kilometre away from the main site, remains still only partly excavated. With its size of 450 times 100 metres it was one of the very largest in the entire Roman world. And it is the only of its kind in Libya today. Nobody should miss out on the important museum of Leptis Magna, now open.
Leptis Magna is added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, as one of 5 places in Libya.
Eat and Sleep
There are no hotels or restaurants near Leptis Magna, and most visitors make the sites as a one day trip. Al-Khoms, a 3 kilometres to the west, has a handful of hotels.
Bus or taxi between Al Khums and Leptis Magna.
Do not buy or steal any artefacts, as Libyan authorities are careful about destruciton of their ancient sites.
3 km west: Al-Khoms
12 km west: Villa Sileen
80 km southeast: Misrata
120 km west: Tripolis
Other spelling / Lepcis | <urn:uuid:3cb4139a-9677-4252-9253-3a24c0e1b6e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lexicorient.com/libya/leptis_m.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974423 | 582 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Six-year-old Casselton girl deals with daily routine to fend off effects of cystic fibrosisCASSELTON, N.D. – Logan Hahn acts like any other 6-year-old, happily chatting about herself while drawing a unicorn surrounded by mountains and a fairy.
By: Tracy Frank, INFORUM
How to help
What: Blow Away Cystic Fibrosis 2012 Great Strides walk
Benefits: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
Where: Rabanus Park, 4315 18th Ave. S., Fargo
When: 10 a.m. May 5. (Check-in is at 9 a.m.)
Donate: You can donate to help the Logan’s Heroes team reach its $10,000 goal by going to: greatstrides.cff.org and entering Chris Hahn or James Parker in the “Find a Walker” link.
Additional fundraiser: Jim Parker, a family friend, is running a 5K backwards called: "Running Backward to Move Forward for Cystic Fibrosis" at 9 a.m. Saturday at Minnesota State University Moorhead as part of the Dragon Races. Donate on his page at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Great Strides website.
CASSELTON, N.D. – Logan Hahn acts like any other 6-year-old, happily chatting about herself while drawing a unicorn surrounded by mountains and a fairy.
But she does it while her voice is muffled by a facemask delivering specialized antibiotics. She shakes from a vibrating vest that helps rid the mucus, germs and bacteria from her body. And she talks about the enzymes she swallows in pill form before eating to help her body absorb her food.
Logan was born with cystic fibrosis, a life-threatening genetic disease that causes thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs, digestive tract and other areas of the body.
The mucus buildup can lead to lung infections and serious digestion problems.
But for Logan, the disease is just a part of who she is. She has to spend about two hours a day hooked up to the Vest Airway Clearance System. And she’s decked it out in a hot pink and black leopard print. She’s also proud of the fact that at 6 years old, she can already swallow multiple pills at once.
“We love her free spirit,” said Nikki Hahn, Logan’s mom. “She doesn’t take anything too seriously.”
Doctors found Logan’s cystic fibrosis through a newborn blood test.
“The thing that resonates with me is they said go ahead and make plans,” Nikki said. “I remember asking, ‘What does that mean?’ It was go ahead and make plans for her to go to school. And go ahead and make plans for her to make it to high school and possibly to college.”
At the time, Nikki knew of a couple kids with cystic fibrosis from the dental office where she worked and Chris Hahn, Logan’s dad, had one student with the disease at the charter school where he worked.
“I never thought it would ever affect me,” he said.
About 30,000 children and adults in the U.S. have cystic fibrosis, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. In the 1950s, few children with the disease lived long enough to attend elementary school. Now, medical advances are extending life for people with the disease into their 30s, 40s and beyond, according to the foundation.
Nikki said she was devastated when she found out Logan has cystic fibrosis because she’d wanted to have lots of kids.
“Our genetics don’t work together very well,” she said. “The chance of having us another one with cystic fibrosis is very high.”
A person with cystic fibrosis must have inherited two defective genes – one from each parent, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
“I was never afraid for her though because I honestly believe that we’ll be OK,” Nikki said. “We have a child who we try to appreciate every single day.”
They adopted their second daughter, Aftyn, who is now 4 years old. Aftyn likes to look after her big sister, Nikki said.
“She’s such a caregiver,” Nikki said. “She takes care of Logan.”
They Hahns moved from Colorado to the area to be closer to Nikki’s family. She is originally from Barnesville, Minn. They now live in Casselton, where Chris works as a physical education teacher at Central Cass.
Nikki is a part-time clinical dental hygienist. She also works with TNT Kids Fitness in Fargo and does accounting work from home.
Their backgrounds have come in handy in caring for Logan.
Nikki monitors Logan’s diet very closely. She has to count her calories and make sure she’s getting enough of protein and fat.
Exercise is also important to keep Logan’s lungs healthy.
“We’ve never missed a treatment. We’ve never missed a medication. If she needs it, we find a way to pay for it,” Nikki said. “Diet and exercise is huge in our family. We feed her really well.”
Logan doesn’t even eat candy, by her own choice, because she knows it’s not the best choice for her body, Nikki said.
Every few months they go to the University of Minnesota Cystic Fibrosis Center in Minneapolis where Logan sees a lung doctor, dietician and an ear, nose and throat specialist.
She has antibiotics squirted into her sinuses every three months, and she has to take steroids to shrink the polyps that form there. Logan had sinus surgery when she was 2.
“That was probably our first real picture of what could get into her lungs because she got very sick after that,” Nikki said.
Sinus surgery is something she may have to go through every few years, Chris said.
Logan has been going through the daily vest treatments since she was a year old. Before that, her mom would have to drum on her back, chest and sides for 45 minutes twice a day to try to clear her lungs.
Until she was 3, one of the Hahns would have to hold their daughter on their lap until she was done with her treatment. Now, she does homework, draws pictures or watches TV when she’s strapped into the vest.
Logan started kindergarten this year, which means extra precautions.
“It’s very difficult,” Nikki said. “Logan technically shouldn’t be any closer than three feet from a child who is coughing or has a cold.”
Logan’s teacher sent a letter home with the other kids explaining Logan’s situation and asking parents not to send their child to school with an active cough or a runny nose they can’t handle. There’s also hand sanitizer in the classroom, and they use disinfecting wipes to clean the surfaces.
Logan’s medications and treatments are expensive. The vest system alone was $16,000. Insurance covers some costs, but Nikki is constantly on the phone finding ways to pay for the medications and treatments her daughter needs.
Logan is starting a clinical trial on new medication this week at the University of Minnesota. The drug is supposed to help her symptoms dramatically, Nikki said.
“The adults who did this trial said within seven days they had more energy than they’ve ever had in their life,” Nikki said. “I’m excited.” | <urn:uuid:f71c5f8e-05a0-4eaa-a386-584ae3a1d0b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/358251/publisher_ID/1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976449 | 1,668 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Home > Acetaminophen (Molecule of the Month for June 2003 )
click on the picture above
C8 H9 N O2
Papa-amino-phenol , a parent compound of acetoaminophen, was discovered to reduce fever in the late 1800s. However, due to its high toxicity, it was useless in medicine. It was discovered that acetophenetidin (phenacetin), which is less toxic, was an equally effective antipyretic agent which also possessed analgesic (pain-relieving) properties.
Phenacetin soon became a commonly used ingredient of analgesic-antipyretic medications until later on, in 1949, when it was found that phenacetin is converted in the body to an even less toxic metabolite, acetaminophen. From then on, acetaminophen gradually replaced phenacetin as a popular analgesic. It is now widely available as an ingredient in many non-prescription drugs to relive migraines and tension headaches.
Acetaminophen is completely absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract and, after oral administration, peak plasma concentrations are reached in less than an hour. The drug is fairly uniformly distributed in the body and approximately 90% of a therapeutic dose is eliminated by conjugation with glucoronic acid in the liver ; 3-5% is catabolized to the acid and cysteine conjugates by the P-450 mixed function oxidase enzyme system . All of these metabolites are excreted in the urine and in fact only a slight amount of the drug is excreted unchanged. It is the intermediate metabolites formed during the biotransformation in the liver (whose structures are uncertain) that are believed to be responsible for the hepatotoxicity of the drug.
The biologic half-life of acetaminophen in normal adults is about 2-3 hours. Because the hepatic conjugation is the rate-determining step in the catabolic pathway, the half-life is found to be longer in patients with liver disease or in the presence of other drugs which compete for the hepatic conjugation mechanism.
Acetaminophen does not have anti-inflammatory activity and it does not effect blood clotting (homeostasis). Its pain relieving ability is about equal to that of aspirin and it is preferred over aspirin when the homeostatic side effects of aspirin must be avoided.
Formal Chemical Name (IUPAC)
Update by Karl Harrison
(Molecule of the Month for June 2003 ) | <urn:uuid:1c4783bf-3806-4bba-b943-0975ebc158f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.3dchem.com/molecules.asp?ID=9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946918 | 523 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Today I took a container of worms to school. I spoke to and took questions from sixty second graders. This made Baby Monkey the star for a day.
The topic was soil. Ever tried to keep sixty eight year old children on topic? We talked about composting and organic and inorganic materials in the soil. We talked about what plants do for us. We talked about the longest Night Crawlers they have ever seen. Eight year old kids tell monster fish stories.
One of the teachers had two containers to plant. We added some worm castings to one. The other was just potting mix. They are going to see if the compost makes a difference in the way the plants grow. These are going to be crazy container gardens. She had seeds for Bachelor’s Buttons, tomatoes, wax beans, and pumpkins. I can’t wait to get a look at these in about four weeks.
They looked at the worms with a mix of awe and disgust. One poor little girl got one on her arm and had a complete melt down. She may be scared for life, but she will live. They caught on pretty quick that worm castings = worm poo. I got lucky and was able to find a worm egg to show them.
They asked some really good questions.
“Where is the worms head?“
“How do worms see?“
“Why are there so many worms in that eggshell?”
“What is the biggest worm you have ever seen?”
Here is what cracked the teachers up.
Little Girl, “Where do you get worms?”
Me, “I got my worms from my friend.”
Me, “Any questions?”
Several children at different times, “One time, in my yard….”
The question I dodged, “Where do worm babies come from?” I was not sure how I would get around the fact that there are not girl and boy worms, well not exactly - Yikes!!!
They kept me talking for a full hour. Children are more fun to talk to about gardening than grownups. | <urn:uuid:1f7ae28c-8bbb-4c0b-aa09-c842d1927734> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://auntdebbisgarden.blogspot.com/2008_04_07_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978437 | 452 | 1.96875 | 2 |
On 10 September 2012, orphan designation (EU/3/12/1044) was granted by the European Commission to Endocyte Europe B.V., the Netherlands, for folic acid to be used with N-[4-[[(2-amino-3,4-dihydro-4-oxo-6-pteridinyl)methyl]amino]benzoyl]-D-gamma-glutamyl-(2S)-2-amino-beta-alanyl-L-alpha-aspartyl-L-cysteine for the diagnosis of positive folate-receptor status in ovarian cancer.
- What is ovarian cancer?
Ovarian cancer is cancer of the ovaries (two organs in the female reproductive system that produce eggs). Most ovarian cancers occur in women over the age of 50 years. Due to the absence of symptoms in the early stages of the disease, the majority of patients are diagnosed when the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.
Most ovarian cancers are ‘folate-receptor positive’. This means that the surface of the cancer cell contains high amounts of a receptor, which folic acid (a vitamin required for cell division) attaches to. This receptor can be targeted for treatment.
Ovarian cancer is a life-threatening disease that is associated with poor long-term survival.
- What is the estimated number of patients eligible for diagnosis of positive folate receptor status in ovarian cancer?
At the time of designation, the number of patients eligible for diagnosis of positive folate receptor status in ovarian cancer was estimated to be not more than 1.3 in 10,000 people in the European Union (EU)*. This is equivalent to a total of not more than 66,000 people, and is below the ceiling for orphan designation, which is 5 people in 10,000. This is based on the information provided by the sponsor and the knowledge of the Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products (COMP).
*Disclaimer: For the purpose of the designation, the number of patients affected by the condition is estimated and assessed on the basis of data from the European Union (EU 27), Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. This represents a population of 506,300,000 (Eurostat 2011).
- What methods of diagnosis are available?
At the time of designation, there were no satisfactory methods of diagnosing positive folate-receptor status in ovarian cancer in the EU. Existing methods were limited to detecting the presence of ovarian cancer cells. They included vaginal examination to check for any visible abnormalities of the womb or ovaries. In addition, blood tests and ultrasound were used to help identify masses in the abdomen. If a mass was discovered, the patient underwent surgery to determine the nature of the mass.
- How is this medicine expected to work?
Folic-acid injections are used to improve the image on scans for diagnosing positive folate-receptor status in ovarian cancer. It is given before the injection of another medicine that is radioactive and also contains folic acid. The radioactive medicine can enter the cancer cells by attaching to their folate receptors and once inside it emits radiation which can be seen as an image on a scan.
The folic-acid injections are given before the radioactive medicine as this has been shown to improve the quality of the image on the scan. This is because the folic acid attaches to many receptors in non-cancer cells, thereby ensuring that more of the radioactive medicine attaches to the receptors on the cancer cells.
- What is the stage of development of this medicine?
The effects of folic acid have been evaluated in experimental models.
At the time of submission of the application for orphan designation, clinical trials with folic acid in patients with ovarian cancer were ongoing.
At the time of submission, folic acid was not authorised anywhere in the EU for the diagnosis of positive folate-receptor status in ovarian cancer or designated as an orphan medicinal product elsewhere for diagnosing this condition.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 141/2000 of 16 December 1999, the COMP adopted a positive opinion on 23 July 2012 recommending the granting of this designation.
- Opinions on orphan medicinal product designations are based on the following three criteria:
- the seriousness of the condition;
- the existence of alternative methods of diagnosis, prevention or treatment;
- either the rarity of the condition (affecting not more than 5 in 10,000 people in the EU) or insufficient returns on investment.
Designated orphan medicinal products are products that are still under investigation and are considered for orphan designation on the basis of potential activity. An orphan designation is not a marketing authorisation. As a consequence, demonstration of quality, safety and efficacy is necessary before a product can be granted a marketing authorisation.
|Active substance||Folic acid to be used with N-[4-[[(2-amino-3,4-dihydro-4-oxo-6-pteridinyl)methyl]amino]benzoyl]-D-gamma-glutamyl-(2S)-2-amino-beta-alanyl-L-alpha-aspartyl-L-cysteine|
|Disease/condition||Diagnosis of positive folate-receptor status in ovarian cancer|
|Date of decision||10/09/2012|
|Orphan decision number||EU/3/12/1044|
Review of designation
The Committee for Orphan Medicinal Products reviews the orphan designation of a product if it is approved for marketing authorisation.
Sponsor’s contact details:
Endocyte Europe B.V.
Prins Bernhardplein 200
1097 JB Amsterdam
Telephone: +31 20 521 4777
Telefax: +31 20 521 4821
For contact details of patients’ organisations whose activities are targeted at rare diseases see:
- Orphanet, a database containing information on rare diseases which includes a directory of patients’ organisations registered in Europe;
- European Organisation for Rare Diseases (EURORDIS), a non-governmental alliance of patient organisations and individuals active in the field of rare diseases. | <urn:uuid:e4777dfe-0f88-4edd-aba5-f9340afa8b9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/medicines/human/orphans/2012/09/human_orphan_001109.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058001d12b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905046 | 1,291 | 2.796875 | 3 |
This Overview Report from the Physical Activity Council (PAC) is produced by a partnership of six of the major trade associations in US sports, fitness and leisure industries. Each partner produces more detailed reports on their specific areas of interest but this Overview Report summarizes “topline” data about levels of activity in the US. The overall aim of this report is to establish levels of activity and identify key trends in sports, fitness and recreation participation in the US. For more detailed results, please contact the relevant partner listed below.
During January and February of 2013 ,a total of 42,356 online interviews were carried out with a nationwide sample of individuals and households from the US Online Panel of over one million people operated by Synovate/IPSOS. A total of 15,770 individual and 26,593 household surveys were completed. The total panel is maintained to be representative of the US population for people ages 6 and older. Over sampling of ethnic groups took place to boost response from typically under responding groups.
The 2012 participation survey sample size of 42,356 completed interviews provides a high degree of statistical accuracy. All surveys are subject to some level of standard error — that is, the degree to which the results might differ from those obtained by a complete census of every person in the US. A sport with a participation rate of five percent has a confidence interval of plus or minus 0.21 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. This translates to plus or minus four percent of participants.
A weighting technique was used to balance the data to reflect the total US population ages six and above. The following variables were used: gender, age, income, household size, region, population density and panel join date. The total population figure used was 287,138,000 people ages six and older.
In this year’s report we have changed the definition of “inactivity.” In the past, we had included only those participants who report no activity in any of the 126 activities listed for the data year. This year we included 19 sports/fitness activities that require minimal to no physical exertion. We also added a “calorie burning” component.
If you have specific questions regarding this change in methodology, pleased get in touch with Sports Marketing Surveys
USA at firstname.lastname@example.org or (561) 427-0647.
The Physical Activity Council is made up of the following industry leading organizations:
- GOLF: The National Golf Foundation (NGF) p: 561.744.6006 e: email@example.com
- SNOWSPORTS: The Snowsports Industries America (SIA) p: 703.556.9020 e: SIAmail@snowsports.org
- OUTDOOR : The Outdoor Foundation (OF) p: 202.271-3511 e: firstname.lastname@example.org
- TENNIS: The Tennis Industry Association (TIA) and United States Tennis Association (USTA) p: 866.686.3036 e: email@example.com
- CLUB/INSTITUTIONAL FITNESS: International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) p: 617.951.0155 e: firstname.lastname@example.org
- TEAM SPORTS / INDIVIDUAL SPORTS / GENERAL FITNESS / WATERSPORTS: The Sports and Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) p: 301.495.6321 e: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:a1c3d3b1-d02b-423b-894a-6e7bb813ae2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://physicalactivitycouncil.com/Methodology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912263 | 733 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Grades 4 - 7
Grade level Equivalent: 4.5
Lexile Measure®: 740L
DRA: Not Available
Guided Reading: Not Available
- Science Fiction and Fantasy
- Ghosts, Monsters, Vampires, Witches
- Courage, Bravery, Heroism
- Magic and Supernatural
About This Book
David Rain was lost in the Arctic for five years. Now, his daughter, Alexa — the only one with the power to save him — has brought him home, but a lot more than just David have come back to Wayward Crescent: dragons have finally returned to Earth as well...
Now, David, Lucy, Zanna, Liza, and the dragons of Wayard Crescent must face a more terrifying evil as they fight to restore balnce to this world.
Chris d'Lacey weaves another fiery and magical tale for readers in the fifth book of the New York Times bestelling Last Dragon Chronicles.
"D'Lacey's characters are realistic and engaging... A page turner." — The Horn Book, for The Fire Within
"The story, with its involving and thought-provoking plot full of clever little dragons, mystical polar bears, and spiritual and ecological aspects, will appeal to many fantasy lovers." — School Library Journal | <urn:uuid:ddb0c2a9-20d0-49b2-a814-5f3497975027> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/dark-fire | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906529 | 264 | 1.851563 | 2 |
One of the key concepts in current physics and technology is the concept of photon. Not by chance we have journals and professional societies titled Nature Photonic and IEEE Photonic Society. Nevertheless, optics and the concept of photon have not had a soft development. Brown and Pike (1995, 1406), for instance, describing the history of optics in the 20th century, called the time from 1930 to 1960 of “the calm before another storm”. I am interested in narrating that storm. Therefore, my research project roughly covers the period between 1956 and 1986, however, I will have as background the articles published by Schrödinger and by others since 1927 challenging the need of the concept of photon introduced by Einstein in 1905. I focus on the experiment performed by Hanbury Brown and Twiss in 1956; on the theoretical treatment given by Glauber in the 1960s to the theory of the quantum coherence; on the experiments carried out in the 1970s, such as the antibunching of photons; on the experiment with single photons performed by Aspect in 1986. In this perspective, I am interested in the debates about these experimental results and theoretical breakthroughs motivated by them, on the technical improvements which allowed the improvement of the apparatus, and on the professional and cultural settings in which these physicists were immersed, with special attention to their professional and intellectual interests, and the new concept of photon that emerged with the quantum optics. | <urn:uuid:1731d632-f63d-4cd1-af2d-7a851a2705cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aip.org/history/events/conference2011/abstracts/silva.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964575 | 289 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Richard Wiseman’s excellent book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute ends with a top ten list of quick, research-based advice. Here are some highlights:
Develop the Gratitude Attitude.
“Having people list three things that they are grateful for in life or three events that have gone especially well over the past week can significantly increase their level of happiness for about a month.”
Be a Giver.
“People become much happier after even the smallest acts of kindness.”
Hang a Mirror in Your Kitchen.
“Placing a mirror in front of people when they are presented with different food options results in a remarkable 32 percent reduction in their consumption of unhealthy food.”
Buy a Potted Plant for the Office.
“Adding plants to an office results in a 15 percent boost in the number of creative ideas reported by male employees and helps their female counterparts to produce more original solutions to problems.”
Touch People Lightly on The Upper Arm.
“Lightly touching someone on their upper arm makes them far more likely to agree to a request because the touch is unconsciously perceived as a sign of high status. In one dating study, the touch produced a 20 percent increase in the number of people who accepted an invitation to dance in a nightclub and a 10 percent increase in those who would give their telephone number to a stranger on the street.”
Write About Your Relationship.
“Partners who spend a few moments each week committing their deepest thoughts and feelings about their relationship to paper boost the chances that they will stick together by more than 20 percent.”
Deal with Potential Liars by Closing Your Eyes and Asking for an E-mail.
“The most reliable cues to lying are in the words that people use, with liars tending to lack detail, use more “ums” and “ahs,” and avoid self-references (“me,” “mine,” “I”). In addition, people are about 20 percent less likely to lie in an e-mail than in a telephone call, because their words are on record and so are more likely to come back and haunt them.”
Praise Children’s Effort over Their Ability.
“Praising a child’s effort rather than their ability (“Well done. You must have tried very hard”) encourages them to try regardless of the consequences, therefore sidestepping fear of failure.”
Visualize Yourself Doing, Not Achieving.
“People who visualize themselves taking the practical steps needed to achieve their goals are far more likely to succeed than those who simply fantasize about their dreams becoming a reality.”
Consider Your Legacy.
“Asking people to spend just a minute imagining a close friend standing up at their funeral and reflecting on their personal and professional legacy helps them to identify their long-term goals and assess the degree to which they are progressing toward making those goals a reality.”
Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. | <urn:uuid:58ef001e-c4a4-4253-be99-e10c33ecb5f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/03/10-ways-to-improve-your-life-distilled-from-t/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957528 | 652 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Summer of the Gypsy Moths is a very cute and amusing book by Sara Pennypacker, the author of the popular younger children's series, Clementine. Pennypacker knows how to write for young girls and this book is no exception. This is the not-so-serious story of two girls who crave family and stability. When they finally get it, their caretaker (Aunt Louise) dies. The two unlikely friends decide to work together to hide Aunt Louise's death so they can continue their living arrangements. Readers must suspend reality for a bit here as as they drag Aunt Louise out back and bury her. They are very resourceful girls who live off the land and fool adults about their caretaker's whereabouts. While working together, they learn about friendship, teamwork, and loyalty. Ultimately, they get that sense of belonging and family they both crave. Although may the plot may seem a bit dark, it is actually not. It's a touching but also fun story for kids who will enjoy reading about two clever girls who live in a largely adult free world. Summer of the Gypsy Moths is a wholesome read and a great choice for older elementary school/younger middle school girls. | <urn:uuid:a0308c94-7583-4e6a-b069-648089999042> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.storysnoops.com/detail.php?id=1556 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969996 | 244 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Detachable Multicolor Light Source for Forceps - A Novel Supportive Tool for Surg
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Traumatic wounds contain devitalized tissue, bacteria and associated foreign bodies, grass, soil, and bone fractions, depending on how and where the injury occurred. Wounds caused by blast impact from modern weaponry inwar scenarios are usually more severe, and are contaminated with an even greater variety of foreign bodies. The debris can include weapon shells, fabric from clothing, gravel, ceramic shards from armor, and various types of shrapnel, such as those used inimprovised explosive devices. The wound will also contain a mass of devitalized skin and muscle tissue meshed with healthy tissue. The speed and quality of wound debridement in the initial treatment stage are crucial to prevent the type of infections thatlead to mortality and morbidity. Various imaging methods that have been developed in the past century can be used to locate and visualize some of the objects in the wound, but as a rule, the surgeon still uses visual observation and mechanical methods (hand, forceps, and scalpel) to identify and remove the objects and devitalized tissue. Often, additional ceiling and headlight illumination is applied, but the scattered light from the wet tissue, and shadows from the surgical instruments dramatically reducethe visual contrast. Intelligent Optical Systems proposes to enhance the ability to visualize foreign bodies in wounds by illuminating the area of interest with different colors of light that match the hues of specific objects, thereby improving contrast,and making it easier to locate and identify different types of debris inflicted in the wound or surgical articles mistakenly left in the wound. This method will be implemented in a multicolor illuminator that can be attached to any type of surgical forceps. The color controls will be provided via a user friendly sliding rheostat. UV radiation (optional) to distinguish highly fluorescent foreign bodies will also be considered in the proposed design. A miniature video camera chip will be incorporated in theilluminator to provide a magnified image of the debris. The image will be observed on a screen placed on the surgery supportive equipment cart. Two illuminator options are proposed: 1) a wall powered device for use in regular operating facilities, and 2) abattery operated device for use in areas of restricted power consumption, such as field hospitals or remote locations. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed Detachable Multicolor Light Source for Forceps will enhance the ability of military and trauma surgeons, and first responders, to remove foreign bodies inflicted in wounds caused by vehicular accidents, industrial accidents, fire, modern weaponry, or improvised explosive devices. The higher quality of wound debridement will decrease the number of trauma related infections, and as a result, lead to a reduced number of infection related amputations morbidities and mortalities.
Small Business Information at Submission:
INTELLIGENT OPTICAL SYSTEMS, INC.
2520 W 237TH ST TORRANCE, CA 90505-5217
Number of Employees: | <urn:uuid:b58b47ef-da79-4dc5-ab23-ae53e0718d3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/369077 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90871 | 617 | 2.390625 | 2 |
I thought I had already featured Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback, but my son promises that I haven’t. It’s a great one. A family favorite.
The charming basics: Joseph has an overcoat that gets worn out. So he remakes it into a smaller item of clothing. Again and again and again. Until it’s only a button. It’s one the best kid-friendly examples of reuse/recycle I know of.
The illustrations are fantastic. And if you’d like to sing along (the story is based on a Jewish folk song) there are even music notes included at the back. A great addition to a family library. | <urn:uuid:ecadcd41-2adf-4d16-b2d3-dead12dadd56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designmom.com/2007/07/book-of-the-week-joseph-had-a-little-overcoat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970339 | 148 | 1.734375 | 2 |
A 90- to 150-minute game for two to six players ages 14 and up. It’s a crime and investigation game centered on the crimes and pursuit of Jack the Ripper. One player controls Jack, and others are detectives who try to track him down. It utilizes “very intense” artwork and graphics.
Get ready to enter into the poor and dreary Whitechapel district in the London 1888, the scenario of the mysterious Jack The Ripper murders, with its crowded and smelly alleys, hawkers, shouting merchants, and dirty children covered in rags who run through the crowd and beg for money and prostitutes - called "the wretched" -- on every street corner. The board game Letters from Whitechapel will take the players right there: one player plays Jack the Ripper, and his goal is to take five victims before being caught. The rest of the players - 1 to 5 - are police detectives, who must cooperate to catch Jack the Ripper before the end of the game.
The game board represents the Whitechapel area at the time of Jack the Ripper and is marked with 199 numbered circles linked together by dotted lines. During play, Jack the Ripper, the Policemen, and the Wretched are moved along the dotted lines that represent Whitechapel streets. Jack the Ripper moves stealthily between circular numbered circles, while policemen move on their patrols between crossings and the Wretched wander alone between the circular numbered circles.
The game includes 5 Police sheets and 5 wooden Policeman pawns (in five different colors), 1 Jack the Ripper sheet, 2 black wooden Jack pawns, 1 Jack the Ripper screen and 1 pad with 30 Jack the Ripper move track sheets, 5 white wooden Wretched pawns and several other components used to sign movements and situations on the game board, like Head of Investigation tiles, Police Patrol tokens, Woman tokens, a Time of the Crime token, Special Movement tokens and Jack's Letters tiles, all in cardboard, and Clue tokens, False Clue tokens and Crime Scene Tokens in plastic. | <urn:uuid:b73d8449-f06f-438e-bb1b-19d07b15b0f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fanen.com/brettspiele/p--1_-1_-1_35115/katalog/1143845891/letters-from-whitechapel.html?feuid=f15b91c1799bee8f8770c3abe219b14b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941547 | 429 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The salary of EMS personnel depends on many factors so it's important to understand their work and responsibilities. EMS personnel like EMTs and Paramedics respond to emergencies where there are victims that needs to be taken to a hospital for treatment. They are responsible for keeping the patient alive while on the scene which involves treating injuries, splinting, controlling bleeding and many more.
Paramedics and EMTs requires special training and education. They need to be certified and needs to renew their certification every couple of years. EMT is one of the lower levels in the EMS field so their salary is also lower compared to that of the Paramedics. Different places offer different EMT salary ranges, searching for a better place or location can result in higher EMT salaries than others.
EMT Basics typically earn $13 or more an hour on average and up to $26,000 per year. You can still earn higher even if you stayed as being an EMT Basic through good choices and decisions. You can earn as high as more than $30,000 a year after several years in the field and later down the road. You can also earn higher by choosing your employer right. The highest paying employer for EMT's are the state administration where you can receive an EMT salary of more than $40,000 per year.
The place where you work is also another factor. Some areas just pay a lot better than others. Some of the states where you can earn a high salary are Hawaii and Alaska where you can earn higher than $40,000 a year. Denver is one of the cities that offers the highest salary for cities in the US.
It is better if an EMT would continue to have higher training and education and become a paramedic. Compared to the EMT, Paramedic command a much higher salary. EMTs still need to take courses to keep their certification so why not get a higher education after a year of working. Paramedics has a salary of more than twice of any EMTs.
It will be a worthwhile investment to learn new skills and accept more responsibility. You'll get to do more advanced task and save more lives as well. Many aspiring medical physicians started out as EMTs and Paramedic to try and test the waters. Increase your EMT salary today by increasing your skills and knowledge in the EMS field. | <urn:uuid:81127d7e-d1a7-4821-8d62-9e1e3d0a8cc7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474980696405 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979394 | 483 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Welcome to H2OC’s public information pages, created with the goal of connecting Orange County residents to their local watersheds through educational resources and event listings. Please click here for more information on Orange County's 11 watersheds which all flow to Pacific Ocean. Join H2OC – all 34 Orange County cities and the County of Orange – in celebrating our water resources this Spring.
Earth Day – April
April 22nd is Earth Day and the entire month of April has a variety of activities to celebrate awareness and support of the environment. Events include beach and creek cleanups, electronic and hazardous waste pick-ups and more. Please click Public Education Calendar for Earth Day event listings in your area.
Watershed Awareness Month – May
May is celebrated as Watershed Awareness month to encourage Orange County residents to learn about and experience their local watersheds. Much like Earth Day, Watershed Awareness Month calls our attention to the streams, rivers and channels we pass every day and the pollution that can be generated from everyday activities. Want to know more? Click on the Public Education Calendar for Watershed Awareness events in your area. | <urn:uuid:d83e8638-de62-4dfb-8c57-58c38a9fff76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ocwatersheds.com/publiced | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930335 | 227 | 2.234375 | 2 |
About the only thing that may cause an error when you run one of the actions is the use of a "Place" command within the action.
A Place command is used to take the contents of one file and "place" it into the current document. In the case of Greeting Cards, the Place command is used to include the signature block on the back of the cards. With Calendars, the Place command is used to lay out the calendar grid and dates.
The most common error is when the Place command is not available. This means that Photoshop is not able to find the file that is being placed.
The file that may be generating the Place command error depends upon what program you are running at the time. Follow the links below for details about each set of actions. | <urn:uuid:d8513fc9-893d-453c-b56a-2115b8213fd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.playwithyourpixels.com/support/calendar-support/place-command-error/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946375 | 160 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Lordship of Christ
by Greg Barolet
Deus aut homo malus. Christ is either “God or a bad man.” It was C.S. Lewis who took it one step further stating that Jesus was either the Lord, a liar, or a lunatic. Why bother asking? Well, good men or sane men don’t go around claiming they are the truth (John14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”), that they are God incarnate (John 1:14, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son,” or “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” John 14:9), that they will die and rise again (John 2:19, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”), or that they are the Creator (John 1:3, “All things were made through him”).
These are just a sampling of the claims Jesus uttered about Himself, and they were substantiated by His rising from the dead on the third day.
I say this to say that the deity of Christ and the Trinity are the two most important doctrines that separate orthodox Christianity from every other cult or religion, including Islam.
I know that Muslims claim Jesus was a prophet of God. I recall a true story once told by a friend of mine. He was approached at an airport by a Muslim man and was asked, “What do you think of Mohammed?” My friend asked the Muslim if he truly wanted him to answer the question. The man answered yes, with anticipation. He asked the man: “Is Mohammed a prophet?” The man: “Yes.” My friend: “Jesus is a prophet? The man: “Yes.” My friend then asked: “Can a prophet of God lie?” The man said no, a true prophet of God cannot lie.
My friend went on kindly to explain that if Jesus is right, then Mohammed is wrong. Jesus said He was the Son of God and the way to God, the resurrection and the life. My friend then added that if Jesus is wrong, then Mohammed is still wrong because He said Jesus was right. The man was very upset, glared at him, and then left in a huff. Do you see the dilemma?
I know that any Muslim man reading this will say that we don’t know the Qur’an, that we can’t understand it unless we can read Arabic and so on. Well, many former Muslims who can read Arabic say that in the Qur’an Jesus is a true prophet of God. Those same skeptics will say Jesus is a prophet but Mohammed is a greater prophet. I know of no other prophet who said He was going to rise from the dead and then did it. Jesus was no ordinary prophet. He was who He said He was — the incarnate Son of God.
© Tabletalk magazine
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred (where applicable). If no such link exists, simply link to www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. Any exceptions to the above must be formally approved by Tabletalk.
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: From Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul. © Tabletalk magazine. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. Email: email@example.com. Toll free: 1-800-435-4343. | <urn:uuid:19bfdcb6-07f8-42ff-a6bf-7952ebfb745f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/lordship-christ/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967632 | 813 | 1.5625 | 2 |
In the film, Forest plays James Farmer Jr., a role he says brought him closer to his grandfather. Fifty years ago, Forest says his grandfather founded a church in the same part of the South where the film is set.
"It was an opportunity to get a chance to try to pay homage to this kind of a man," he says. "There's a sternness. There's a certain way of raising kids because of the environment and what can happen to them. It was a great chance to get to do that."
Denzel says he told Forest not to make his character "too nice," because he was from a generation of African-American fathers who were strict with their children. This parenting method was adopted, in part, to protect children from the hostile racial climate of the 1930s.
"It's love but it's different," Forest says. "As you can see in the movie, if you take the wrong step, you know, you can die."
In one scene, Denzel says Forest captures this intensity without saying a word. He simply gives the young man playing his son a look. "This guy can act right here," Denzel says. | <urn:uuid:97ffa12e-9579-4670-9600-5e7c1aed2bc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Bringing-The-Great-Debaters-to-Theaters/print/1/?slide=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991476 | 240 | 2.0625 | 2 |
More Than 1.1 Million Health Care Workers Vaccinated for Seasonal Flu in 2008 as Part of the Flu Vaccination Challenge
OAK BROOK, Ill., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Joint Commission Resources (JCR) today announced the results of the first-ever Flu Vaccination Challenge, a program launched just prior to the 2008/2009 flu season to help increase flu vaccination among health care workers. During the program’s inaugural year, JCR challenged hospitals across the country to achieve a seasonal flu vaccination rate of 43 percent or higher among their staff. The goal was based on results from a 2005/2006 national survey of health care worker seasonal flu vaccination rates.*
With help from the Flu Vaccination Challenge, about 1.1 million health care workers were vaccinated against the seasonal flu, and 94 percent of participating hospitals met “the Challenge.”+ According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), all health care workers should be vaccinated to help decrease the spread of seasonal flu to patients, which can lead to serious health risks and even death. However, in recent years, flu vaccination rates among health care workers have continued to remain low. JCR is a not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission.
Flu Vaccination Challenge Results: 2008/2009 Flu Season
More than 1,700 hospitals – including at least one hospital from each of the 50 states – participated in the Flu Vaccination Challenge. Approximately 78 percent of participating hospitals increased their health care workers’ flu vaccination rate from the previous year. On average, the total number of health care workers vaccinated against seasonal flu among participating hospitals increased by 14 percent.+
“We are thrilled with the level of participation and enthusiasm from the hundreds of hospitals across the country that participated in ‘the Challenge’; however, we believe organizations can do better,” said Barbara M. Soule, R.N., M.P.A., C.I.C., practice leader, Infection Prevention and Control Services, JCR. “Despite the encouraging results, nearly 40 percent of health care workers among the participating hospitals were not vaccinated and remained unprotected against the flu. Influenza occurs in health care settings and studies have shown that health care workers are a potential source of these infections.”( )
“All individuals who work in a health care facility should be vaccinated against the flu,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman, Department of Preventive Medicine, and professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “When we talk about whom to vaccinate, we have to change our mindset. Vaccination shouldn’t be limited to doctors and nurses, it should be encouraged for everyone who works in a health care facility. The flu is a highly contagious disease; therefore if you work in a health care setting, you may be needlessly putting patients at risk if you are not vaccinated against this preventable disease.”
The Joint Commission defines health care workers as all people who provide care, treatment and services in the health care organization, including those receiving pay, volunteers and health profession students.( )
Program Goals: 2009/2010 Flu Season
JCR is “raising the bar” and introducing a tiered approach to setting this year’s seasonal flu vaccination goals. Health care facilities will be challenged to reach a 65, 75 or 90 percent vaccination rate. The goals were determined by evaluating last year’s results and recognizing that most participating hospitals surpassed the national flu vaccination rate. The tiered approach encourages health care facilities to strive for a better vaccination rate than achieved the previous year. Those that do will be recognized by JCR for their dedication to keeping their employees healthy and helping to protect their patients. JCR is also broadening “the Challenge” to include health care workers in ambulatory and long-term care facilities, emphasizing the importance of flu vaccination and patient safety beyond the hospital setting.
Soule continued, “This flu season, we are encouraging hospitals to participate in ‘the Challenge’, leading to an increased flu vaccination rate among health care workers nationwide. JCR is committed to providing participants with additional tools and resources to help achieve even greater success.”
Efforts to increase vaccination coverage among health care workers are supported by The Joint Commission. ( )The Joint Commission requires accredited hospitals, critical access hospitals and long term care organizations to offer the flu vaccine annually on site to staff and licensed independent practitioners. JCR is committed to continuously improving the safety and quality of care in hospitals.( )The Flu Vaccination Challenge is one way to contribute to this goal by increasing vaccination rates among health care workers. Resources for participants in “the Challenge” include a complimentary seasonal influenza monograph released in June by The Joint Commission, a myths and facts fact sheet, virtual poster presentations and audioconference downloads as well as a software program for participants to easily track employee flu vaccination rates at their organization.
The 2009 Flu Vaccination Challenge begins today and will continue through the flu season until March 2010. For additional information regarding how health care facilities can help improve their flu vaccination rates, please visit www.FluVaccinationChallenge.com.
The focus of the Flu Vaccination Challenge is on seasonal flu, which is a contagious and potentially deadly infection, affecting thousands of people each year. For questions related to the H1N1 virus, please refer to the CDC Web site at www.CDC.gov.
About The Flu
The flu is a contagious and potentially deadly infection. Flu viruses are mainly spread from person to person via droplets from coughing or sneezing. Transmission may also occur through direct or indirect contact, such as when touching something already laden with the flu virus, then touching the eyes, nose or mouth.
Every year in the U.S., on average, up to 20 percent of the population is infected with the flu. On average, more than 200,000 hospitalizations occurred each year from 1979 to 2001 as a result of flu and its complications. In addition, on average, approximately 36,000 persons died each year from 1990-1999 from the flu and its related complications;( )more than 90 percent of these deaths occurred among persons 65 years of age or older.
According to the CDC, annual flu vaccination is the most effective method for preventing flu virus infection and its complications. The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends an annual flu vaccination for a number of groups, including adults at high-risk of complications from the flu and those who are in contact with them, including health care workers.
About Joint Commission Resources
Joint Commission Resources, Inc. (JCR), a not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission, has been designated by The Joint Commission to publish publications and multimedia products. JCR reproduces and distributes these materials under license from The Joint Commission. JCR educational programs and publications support the accreditation activities of The Joint Commission, but are separate functions. Attendees at JCR educational programs and purchasers of JCR publications receive no special consideration or treatment in, or confidential information about, the accreditation process. Learn more about Joint Commission Resources at www.jcrinc.com.
Joint Commission Resources received funding and other support from GlaxoSmithKline for the Flu Vaccination Challenge initiative.
* Results from a national survey during the 2005/2006 influenza season; N=833
+ The data is self-reported by each participating hospital and is not a standardized study of all U.S. health care workers.
SOURCE Joint Commission Resources | <urn:uuid:62a9025b-3ebf-453a-b039-47fcbefae841> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1739289/more_than_11_million_health_care_workers_vaccinated_for_seasonal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953904 | 1,563 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Welcome to Triple One Care
Online First Aid Course
First aid has traditionally been taught in a classroom style but at Triple One Care we know that people learn in different ways and at different speeds. This course has been designed so that you can complete it at your own pace, in your own time. Not only will you learn more effectively but you will also have more fun learning.
The course has two components:
1. A first aid theory "Online" Component
2. A first aid practical and assessment Component
The online course addresses the theory and works very simply. There are seven modules and at the beginning of each is a teaching session. Read through the information and when you have learnt it you are ready to complete the assessment. With the exception of the first two modules the initial questions are based on how you would respond to real life first aid situations. You have to get them all correct but do not worry, if you make a mistake you are allowed to try again (remember our goal is to help you learn).
After the scenario questions you will be presented with a number of random questions (multiple choice, true/false etc) based on the module you have just studied (this is also the format for all of the questions in modules one and two). You need to get 80% correct to pass the module and move onto the next - if you do not achieve this then you will be asked to start the whole module again. After you have completed all seven modules there is a final assessment which tests you on the entire course and also has an 80% pass mark.
On average the theory course will take about five hours but remember - you do not have to do the Theory all in one go (indeed a module a day is probably the fastest you would want to complete to maximise your learning). You can come and go as you please with this theory component so if you are interrupted just log out and log back in when you have more time.
You must complete the online course before you can participate in the practical course and we recommend that you aim to finish it at least a week before your practical training session. We will monitor your progress while you are completing the online course and will contact you if we feel that you are at risk of running out of time. If you have any questions while working on the course you can e-mail us using the contacts screen and we will endeavour to answer you within 24 hours.
Once you have completed your theory course you are ready for your practical session (you can book yourself into the calendar). At this session you will meet with a Triple One trainer who will be able to answer any questions that you have as a result of the theory course (remember to write them down as you think of them!) and will then demonstrate a number of techniques - recovery positions, bandaging, spinal immobilisation and resuscitation. Following the successful completion of both components you will be a qualified first aider.
First aid is a serious subject but learning can be (and should be) fun and rewarding - enjoy the modules, share the knowledge with your family and friends and benefit from the increased confidence that the course will give you.
Full Course $161.00 Payment is for both components of the course.
Refresher Course $92.00 Payment is for both components of the course. A current First Aid certificate is required at the start of the Practical component.
a. If a participant does not finish the whole course within 90 days (they will get electronic reminders) their Registration Key will “Log Off”. Re-activation will require the purchase (full cost) of another Registration Key.
b. Once a participant books into a Practical Course - the placement on the course is “locked in”. Changing a Practical Course booking has a $60.00 Booking Fee associated.
c. As the course is only 3 hours or 2 ½ hours respectively the Venues doors close when the course starts and late participants cannot enter. Re-booking is required and a Booking Fee applies.
d. Participants have the right to re-assess should they not achieve the pass rate criteria. After the 2nd attempt participants are required to re-enroll and complete the full course again with associated full course costs.
e. Participants will receive an alternative option to complete the course should TOC cancel a Practical Session due to circumstances beyond their control.
Any inquiries please contact firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:cb02e459-dc49-4b0b-8fad-d97e68df941d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tool.tripleonecare.co.nz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940892 | 914 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Release No. 0562.10
Jean Daniel (703) 305-2281
USDA Recognizes Washington D.C. Middle School's HealthierUS School Challenge Achievement
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2010 – Audrey Rowe, Deputy Administrator of USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, today presented Kelly-Miller Middle School with silver-level honors in USDA's HealthierUS School Challenge - the first silver award achieved by a school in the District of Columbia. Kelly-Miller is the first middle school in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area to receive a HealthierUS School Award.
"Your HealthierUS School Challenge achievement demonstrates your deep commitment to create and maintain a healthy school environment by promoting good nutrition and physical activity," Rowe said. "This achievement recognizes Kelly-Miller as a national leader in efforts to advance school nutrition."
While at the school, the Deputy Administrator had lunch with students and toured the site of the Kelly-Miller's proposed garden. Fresh apples from local orchards were featured during Rowe's visit as part of the school's enhanced menu with more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.. Washington Redskins wide receiver Malcolm Kelly, representing Fuel Up to Play 60, joined the celebration. Fuel Up to Play 60 is an in-school nutrition and physical activity program launched by the National Dairy Council and the National Football League (NFL), with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that empowers and encourages youth to eat nutrient-rich foods (low fat and fat-free dairy, fruits, vegetables and whole grains) and to achieve 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
The HealthierUS School Challenge is a key component of First Lady Michelle Obama's
Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Schools participating in the challenge voluntarily adopt USDA standards for food they serve, agree to provide nutrition education, and to provide their students with opportunities for physical activity.
In February, the First Lady and USDA challenged stakeholders to double the number of HUSSC schools within in a year and add 1,000 schools per year for two years after that. Schools participating in the Challenge are recognized with Gold of Distinction, Gold, Silver, or Bronze-level certification. As of October 20th, 881 HealthierUS School Challenge awards have been made to schools.
The First Lady actively supports the HUSSC with innovative Let's Move initiatives, including
Chefs Move to Schools, a collaboration that links chefs with nearby schools, and most recently with the
Recipes for Healthy Kids competition, launched in early September. The competition brings together chefs, school nutrition professionals, students and parents who work in teams to develop nutritious, kid-approved recipes for use in schools. Recipes must be submitted by Dec. 30. Winners will have a chance to compete in a national cook-off and $12,000 in prizes. For more information, please visit
Improving USDA's child nutrition programs for nearly 32 million kids across the nation is a top priority of the Obama Administration. Strengthening the Child Nutrition Act, which authorizes USDA's child nutrition programs including the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs, is the legislative centerpiece of First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign. This legislation will serve as a down payment in battling hunger and food insecurity while providing critical resources to raise a generation of healthy children. To learn more about the First Lady's Let's Move! campaign, visit
USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) oversees the administration of 15 nutrition assistance programs, including the child nutrition programs, that touch the lives of one in four Americans over the course of a year. These programs work in concert to form a national safety net against hunger. Visit
www.fns.usda.gov for information about FNS and nutrition assistance programs.
About NFL PLAY 60
Designed to help tackle childhood obesity, NFL PLAY 60 brings together the NFL's long-standing commitment to health and fitness with partner organizations like the National Dairy Council. NFL PLAY 60 is also implemented locally, as part of the NFL's in-school, after-school and team-based programs. For more information, visit
©2010 NFL Properties LLC. Team names/logos/indicia are trademarks of the teams indicated. All other NFL-related trademarks are trademarks of the National Football League.
About National Dairy Council
National Dairy Council® (NDC) is the nutrition research, education and communications arm of Dairy Management Inc™. Established in 1915, NDC is dedicated to educating the public on the health benefits of consuming milk and milk products throughout a person's lifespan. For more information, visit | <urn:uuid:a6cb88ec-6af0-473d-a486-c9a3d6f73636> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fns.usda.gov/cga/PressReleases/2010/0562.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929266 | 941 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
WASHINGTON – If the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, was due to poor security, U.S. diplomats abroad will be even less protected as a result of the $85 billion in budget cuts under sequestration, Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee complain, according to report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.
The cut in security funding for State Department facilities and personnel would be some $168 million, with basic operations slashed by some $780 million, said a study they released.
Sequestration is a cut in the rate of increase, but the study pointed out that some 80 State Department facilities need upgrading or new construction to remain in compliance with security guidelines.
“Under sequestration, security upgrades will be further delayed and United States personnel and property will remain at risk,” the study said. “Such a cut would severely limit the ability of the State Department to provide physical protection for diplomatic personnel and facilities overseas and maintain missions in increasingly dangerous locations.”
Overall, the cuts are affecting U.S. homeland border security, airport screening for flights, the ability to monitor incoming container shipments for nuclear materials and now the protection of U.S. diplomats abroad.
Since 2010, Congress has cut some $300 million for embassy security and security construction programs.
“Security budgets for diplomatic security have never been consistent,” an intelligence officer told Homeland Security Today. “Congress has repeatedly cut or not appropriated enough to deal adequately with our expanding overseas diplomatic missions.”
In the past, similar cuts have resulted in the cancellation or reduction in a number of security programs.
They have included residential security, vehicle armoring, physical security, weapons and ammunition, construction security and radio frequency and shielding of conference rooms against eavesdropping.
In 2009, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, had recommended that the Secretary of State conduct a strategic review of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to ensure that its mission and activities address the department’s priority needs.
Following a subsequent GAO audit, however, GAO told Congress that “the State Department has not yet conducted the strategic review.”
Last November, GAO told lawmakers in its audit report, Diplomatic Security Challenges, that requested security upgrades at the Benghazi location were repeatedly denied by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, since “resources needed to carry it out have grown substantially since 1998″ and that foreign mission security policy and practices haven’t kept up with increased security risks.
To underscore this lack of keeping pace, the diplomatic security budget increased from $200 million in 1998 to $1.8 billion 10 years later. However, the size of the bureau’s employees had doubled.
In an apparent sympathetic message, GAO told Congress that the State Department “is maintaining missions in increasingly dangerous locations, necessitating the use of more security resources and making it more difficult to provide security in these locations.”
While staff has increased, GAO said there remain shortages “as well as other operational challenges,” all of which have “further taxed” its ability to implement its mission.
Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND. | <urn:uuid:29ae623b-cbf9-4cb4-a990-848564f58bcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/democrats-continue-sequestration-dirge/?cat_orig=politics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953907 | 770 | 1.625 | 2 |
Whatever drove someone to desecrate St. John the Baptist Church last weekend, the intruder(s) left with far more than precious religious artifacts.
Taken too was a priceless bit of the sense of sanctuary that this place provides to 1,000 Westport families.
No matter what else goes on in the lives of its members, St. John the Baptist Church has always been a place of peace, safety and tranquility. It is the place they can turn for a caring word, the comfort of friends and the solace of tradition and faith.
It remains all of those things, but the notion that someone would assault this church strikes not just St. John’s members but all of Westport to the core. For if this sacred place can be violated, what place really is safe?
Like many churches, St. John the Baptist left its doors unlocked much of the time. That is not a result of carelessness, rather a sign of welcome. Even those who don’t take advantage of the opportunity are comforted by the knowledge that they can stop by any time, sit down and contemplate the beauty of this church.
Like many parts of life in these strange times, that may have to change — something else the intruder(s) has taken.
Whether motivated by greed, rage or something else, the troubled person(s) who did this has caused greater harm than he or she may know. But if the intent was to weaken the St. John the Baptist Church spirit, that did not happen.
From Sunday’s re-consecrtation to the Mass that followed and embraces shared later outside, the strength of this family is evident and more powerful than before.
That is something no thief could touch.
Add to favorites | <urn:uuid:99e188ef-a168-4167-b5de-4889b4f69484> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eastbayri.com/opinion/editorials/church-attack-violates-all-in-westport/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965462 | 362 | 1.507813 | 2 |
ROSWELL, N.M. - Extreme athlete and skydiver Felix Baumgartner cancelled his planned death-defying 23-mile (37 kilometre) free fall on Tuesday into the New Mexico desert because of high winds.
The 43-year-old former military parachutist from Austria had hoped to become the first skydiver to break the sound barrier and shatter three other world records.
But the weather forced his team to cancel his planned ascent in a 55-story, ultra-thin helium balloon that was to take him to the stratosphere.
Because the balloon is so delicate, it could only take flight if winds were 2 mph (3.2 kph) or below.
Those plans were in question before sunrise, when winds at 700 feet (213 metres) above ground — the top of the balloon — were 20 mph (32 kph), far above the 3 mph (4.8 kph) maximum for a safe launch, mission meteorologist Don Day said.
With winds calming, they began the launch process, with Baumgartner suiting up and entering the capsule. During the inflation, a live online feed showed winds whipping the balloon around.
The balloon had been scheduled to launch about 7 a.m. from a field near the airport in a flat dusty town that until now has been best known for a rumoured 1947 UFO landing.
Baumgartner was to make a nearly three-hour ascent to 120,000 feet (36,576 metres), then take a bunny-style hop from a pressurized capsule into a near-vacuum where there is barely any oxygen to begin what is expected to be the fastest, farthest free fall from the highest-ever manned balloon.
Baumgartner spent Monday at his hotel, mentally preparing for the dangerous feat with his parents, girlfriend and a few close friends, his team said. He had a light dinner of salmon and a salad, then had a massage. He spent Tuesday morning resting in an Airstream trailer near the launch site.
Among the risks: Any contact with the capsule on his exit could have torn the pressurized suit. A rip could have exposed him to a lack of oxygen and temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero. It could have caused potentially lethal bubbles to form in his bodily fluids, a condition known as “boiling blood.”
He could also have spin out of control, causing other risky problems.
The energy drink maker Red Bull, which is sponsoring the feat, has been promoting a live Internet stream of the event at http://www.redbullstratos.com/live from nearly 30 cameras on the capsule, the ground and a helicopter. But organizers said there will be a 20-second delay in their broadcast of footage in case of a tragic accident.
And while Baumgartner hopes to set four new world records when he jumps, his free fall is more than just a stunt.
His dive from the stratosphere should provide scientists with valuable information for next-generation spacesuits and techniques that could help astronauts survive accidents.
Jumping from more than three times the height of the average cruising altitude for jetliners, Baumgartner expects to hit a speed of 690 mph (1,110 kph) or more before he activates his parachute at 9,500 feet (2,895 metres) above sea level, or about 5,000 feet (1,524 metres) above the ground in southeastern New Mexico. The total jump should take about 10 minutes.
His medical director is Dr. Jonathan Clark, a NASA space shuttle crew surgeon who lost his wife, Laurel Clark, in the 2003 Columbia accident. No one knows what happens to a body when it breaks the sound barrier, Clark said.
“That is really the scientific essence of this mission,” said Clark, who is dedicated to improving astronauts' chances of survival in a high-altitude disaster.
Clark told reporters Monday he expects Baumgartner's pressurized spacesuit to protect him from the shock waves of breaking the sound barrier. If all goes well and he survives the jump, NASA could certify a new generation of spacesuits for protecting astronauts and provide an escape option from spacecraft at 120,000 feet (36,576 metres), he said.
Currently, spacesuits are certified to protect astronauts to 100,000 feet (30,480 metres), the level former Air Force Capt. Joe Kittinger reached in his 1960 free-fall record from 19.5 miles (31 kilometres).
Kittinger's speed of 614 mph (988 kph) was just shy of breaking the sound barrier at that altitude. | <urn:uuid:d2325436-edea-4da2-ac87-46468319c2ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guelphmercury.com/news/article/814203--high-winds-force-cancellation-of-supersonic-skydiving-attempt-tuesday | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960105 | 958 | 1.679688 | 2 |
| COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT HIGH SCHOOLS IN ONTARIO
| What kind of high school education is available for international students in Ontario?
High school in Ontario offers a variety of options for international students, including public schools, private schools, co-ed schools, all-boys schools, all-girls schools, and Catholic and other Christian schools.
What is the difference between private and public high schools?
Public high schools are administered directly by the provincial government, and are funded by tax-payers. The curriculum is also designed by the government. Private high schools are funded mostly by student tuition, and have more control over their curriculum (which must still be approved by the government).
Do I need to wear a uniform? If not, is there a dress code of some kind?
Dress codes vary from school to school. Private schools are more likely to have a uniform or require a stricter dress code, but public schools in Ontario may also have dress codes.
What kind of recognition do Ontario secondary school diplomas receive?
Diplomas from high schools anywhere in Canada--including Ontario--are recognized for their quality world-wide.
What advantages does a high school in Ontario provide for international students?
Ontario high school education provides quality, government-regulated teachers and programs, as well as the opportunity for international students to English in an immersion setting. Going to high school in Ontario also eases the transition into Ontario colleges and universities, which are among some of the country's best.
Is financial assistance available for international students going to high school in Ontario?
Since Ontario has an excellent publicly funded school system, financial assistance for international students is limited. However, private schools may have financial assistance available to families who have difficulty paying tuition. be sure to double check with the high schools you are applying to.
What documents do international students need to provide when applying to high school in Ontario?
Students applying to study in Canada generally must submit official transcripts from their current school. Additionally, reference letters from school officials and language test scores may be required. Individual high schools in Ontario may have different reequirements. International students studying in the country longer than six months will require a student visa, also known as a study permit, which is issued by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC). Depending on your country of origin, you may also need a temporary residence permit, which is also issued by CIC.
Which countries do Ontario high schools accept students from?
Ontario high schools do not discriminate: they accept international students from countries world wide, as long as the student meets the acceptance criteria. You will want to contact the high school you are interested in attending to find out their specific guidelines. International students at Ontario high schools come from Japan, China, Thailand, Mexico, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and from across Europe and South and Central America.
Can I study at a high school in Ontario for only one semester, or do I have to stay for a year or more?
Many high schools in Ontario enroll students for a full year; however, shorter programs such as summer programs and short term high school experience programs may also be available.
Will there be someone to take care of me if I have health problems?
Ontario has a publicly funded health-care system. International students may also purchase extended health-care insurance from a secondary provider.
How are homestay families chosen?
Homestay programs in Ontario screen families--who must apply--to make sure that they have the appropriate background and accommodation for taking in a foreign student. Homestay programs may be independent, or they may be run in affiliation with your school.
If I live at the high school, what are the rooms or dormitories like?
High school dormitories in Ontario will vary from school to school. Typically, you will have a roommate or possibly several suitemates, and you may share a bathroom with either your suitemates or with all the students on your floor. There is usually a common-room with television and other facilities. Dormitories at high schools in Ontario are always kept clean and safe for students and have adult supervision. | <urn:uuid:f46cf9a9-beca-4dd4-87a7-78a1c9d2fe08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.schoolsincanada.com/Common-Questions-About-High-Schools-in-Ontario.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966924 | 852 | 2.359375 | 2 |
US 4373808 A
A system is provided for remote determination of the attitude of a moving hicle. The system utilizes two remotely located transmitting-receiving stations and two retroreflecting single plane roof prisms mounted on the vehicle which may exhibit high angular rates about a roll axis. The two remotely located transmitter-receiver stations provide laser tracking of the vehicle, continuously illuminating the vehicle with a laser beam located at each station so that the position of the vehicle relative to the remote stations is obtained. During tracking, the roof prisms located symmetrically on the vehicle provide both a return signal to the laser station regardless of the aspect angle of the vehicle and a doppler signal indicative of the vehicle aspect angle, from which the vehicle attitude is determined.
1. In a tracking system having plural tracking stations for determining the spatial attitude of an object having a longitudinal axis of rotation and wherein a beam of optical energy from a single source is directed from each tracking station toward the object and reflected back to the tracking station from the object, the improvement of first and second optical reflectors disposed on the surface of said object, said reflectors being disposed in a common plane passing through said longitudinal axis and spaced apart on opposite sides of said axis for simultaneously retroreflecting first and second pulses of impinging optical energy from a tracking station back to that tracking station during each period of periodic rotation.
2. A tracking system as set forth in claim 1 wherein each of said reflectors is a roof prism for providing single plane corner reflection, and the respective planes of reflection of said prisms being parallel.
3. A tracking system as set forth in claim 2 wherein said object is an airborne vehicle, and said prisms are located on respective first and second tail fins.
4. A tracking system as set forth in claim 3 wherein said plural tracking stations are two stations and said retroreflected pulses contain doppler shifted frequency components therein which are shifted in opposition.
5. In a tracking system having a transmitter-receiver at first and second separately established tracking stations and disposed for tracking a moving vehicle, a method of tracking said vehicle comprising the steps of:
launching a vehicle into a general flight trajectory;
directing respective first and second beams of radiant energy from each of said first and second separately established tracking stations toward said vehicle;
retroreflecting first and second pulses of said radiant energy simultaneously from first and second retroreflectors on said vehicle back toward the tracking stations for each of said first and second beams;
receiving said retroreflected energy by said tracking stations for processing to provide vehicle attitude;
rotating said vehicle around a longitudinal roll axis thereof and thereby rotating said reflectors around the vehicle longitudinal roll axis during tracking for periodically rotating said first and second retroreflectors into a plane with each of said tracking stations for providing pitch, yaw, and roll attitude data, and
positioning said first and second reflectors on the surface of said vehicle prior to launch for providing the reflectors in a common plane passing through said longitudinally axis, spaced apart from each other and the vehicle longitudinal axis on opposite sides of said axis for providing said first and second simultaneously retroreflected radiant energy pulses, said pulses being doppler shifted in opposition.
Referring now to the drawings wherein like numerals represent like parts, FIG. 1 discloses a block diagram of a preferred embodiment of a system utilizing parallel plane reflectors for providing the aspect angle and attidue of a missile. In the system of FIG. 1, a flight vehicle or missile 10 is directed along a general trajectory toward a target area. Fins 16A-D provide stability to the vehicle. A pair of single plane retroreflectors 12 and 14 are located symmetrically in a plane including fins 16A and 16C of the missile to reflect incident laser energy. Laser tracks 20 and 22 are located off range for tracking the vehicle. The laser trackers each comprise a laser transmitter/receiver for directing coherent optical energy toward the missile and detecting coherent optical energy reflected from the missile. The laser tracker and retroreflector system allows near real time determination of the missile performance, which is accomplished by the laser tracker recording the analog input signals and/or coupling these signals to a digital computer 24 or other signal processing circuitry. Intelligence signals typically, are coupled to the computer and processed to provide a digital signal of the time of occurrence of return pulses in a computer compatible format. Alternatively, this data may be recorded on digital magnetic tape recorders. Each laser tracker has a continuous wave (CW) laser operated at different frequencies.
FIG. 2 discloses a typical retroreflector 12, a 90 two internal reflective surfaces, located at right angles to each other and silvered for reflection. Two lines (normals) emanating from the center of each silvered surface and perpendicular to their respective surfaces define a plane which may by defined as the plane of the retroreflector. A simple ray trace shows that a ray of light incident on one of the silvered surfaces and describing a path parallel to the plane of the retroreflector is generally reflected off the second surface back to the origin.
When a rolling vehicle is equipped with two 90 tracked so that it is continuously illuminated by a CW laser, a return signal of the CW radiation will be returned to the laser site each time the planes of the retroflectors pass through this ground station. The return signal from each reflector is in the form of a pulse, the width of which depends on the beam divergence angle, the range, the optical quality of the roof prisms, and the roll rate of the vehicle. The time interval between pulses is directly related to the roll rate of the vehicle, a pulse or pulse-pair being received once for each full revolution of the vehicle.
Retroreflectors 12 and 14 are both roof type prisms arranged in parallel. Prisms 12 and 14 may be disposed at other selectable positions on the vehicle surface for simultaneously reflecting collimated laser light back to its source. Each reflector functions as a single plane corner reflector so that collimated light incident on one surface of the array from a direction parallel to the retroreflection plane is retroreflected in the same plane. The prisms are disposed on the vehicle so that the retroreflective planes are parallel relative to each other. As shown in geometric schematics of FIGS. 3 and 4 the retroreflectors 12 and 14 are mounted on the fins of the missile a distance r from the vehicle axis of rotation 30. The direction of rotation is given by ω. For CW laser illumination 32 (incident laser beam f.sub.0) from a laser tracker, each pulse of radiation f.sub.u and f.sub.1 returned to the tracking station will contain frequency components which are doppler shifted with respect to the original CW laser frequency.
The frequency of radition returned from the lower roof prism is ##EQU1## where v.sub.1 is the velocity of the roof prism with respect to the ground station, f.sub.0 is the frequency of the laser radiation emitted from the laser, and c is the velocity of propogation of the radiation emitted from the laser. The relative velocity v.sub.1 can be expressed in terms of the relative velocity of the roll axis v.sub.0 and the roll rate ω, as
v.sub.1 =v.sub.0 -rω (2)
so that the frequency of the radition returned from the lower roof prism ##EQU2## Similarly, the frequency returned from the upper prism is found to be ##EQU3## The difference between the two frequencies returned to the ground station is ##EQU4## When the laser beam is at an aspect angle σ with respect to the roll axis of the vehicle, the relative velocity along the line of sight of the laser beam (the component responsible for the doppler shift) is (v.sub.0 -rω) sin σ for the lower beam and (v.sub.0 +rω) sin σ for the upper beam. Therefore: ##EQU5## Since f.sub.0, r, and c are known, and ω is inferred from the time interval between pulses returned to the ground station, the doppler frequency Δf is measured by the computer or signal processing circuit and σ is readily calculated, being the only unknown of equation 6.
For a system composed of two transmitter/receiver stations, the time interval measurements at the second station are accomplished in the same manner as those for the first station and provide the determination of a second aspect angle σ.sub.2. Knowing σ.sub.1 and σ.sub.2 the attitude of the missile roll axis 30 can be resolved into any desirable coordinate system. The computer then converts the flow of data into selected vehicle performance parameters. Implementation of this technique requires that continuous tracking be maintained to provide continuous illumination of the missile with the CW laser and that the doppler shifted frequencies be measured to allow the respective aspect angles to be obtained. The roof prisms arranged symmetrically on the vehicle provide a return signal to the laser station regardless of the aspect angle. Since doppler frequency measurements can be made very accurately improved accuracy is obtained ove other attitude measurement methods.
A simplified mathematic representation utilizing two coordinate systems which may be used in determination of the attitude of a vehicle is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,816 issued to Kynric M. Pell et al as has been noted hereinabove, which is typical of the well established state of the art. Similarly, Brown et al in U.S. Pat. No. 4,123,165 discloses transformation from one coordinate system to another and references the Pell et al Patent. Kynric M. Pell is one of the co-inventors in the instant invention.
During operation, as vehicle 10 is launched into or flies into the tracking range of the tracking stations 20 and 22 a CW laser pulse is returned to each tracking station as the vehicle rotates and the respective stations are swept by the retroreflection plane of each prism. The time interval between pulses returning to the two stations from both arrays provide the data for determining vehicle attitudes. The time intervals between pulses are functions of the vehicle pitch and yaw or attitude allowing the performance parameters to be obtained. A return pulse of CW laser energy occurs simultaneously from reflectors 12 and 14. The incoming pulses are processed in the receiver electronics to provide the doppler signal output from which the aspect angle from each laser tracking station to the missile or roll axis 30 is obtained, thereby providing the data necessary to obtain attitude.
Although a particular embodiment and form of the invention has been described, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that modification may be made without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention. For example, reflectors 12 and 14 may be inclined to the vehicle surface and mounted on the vehicle surface such that the planes of reflection for the two prisms are parallel for simultaneously directing return pulses of laser energy when impinged upon by a tracking beam. Accordingly, it is understood that the invention is limited only by the claims appended hereto.
FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic view of a preferred embodiment for carrying out the method of vehicle attitude determination utilizing a pair of parallel retroreflectors.
FIG. 2 is a graphical representation of a typical roof type prism for providing retroreflection.
FIGS. 3 and 4 are geometry schematics for indicating the laser aspect angle to the reflectors.
Laser radars are established in prior art teachings for determining flight vehicle attitude or range with automatic laser trackers, related receivers, and retroreflectors. In the "Radar Handbook" by M. I. Skolnik, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1970, Chapter 37 discloses laser radars in detail. For example, pages 37-62 show laser tracking interconnected with a computer and tracking mount. In describing motion of a flight vehicle the variables that are involved are related to the vehicle position, roll rate, and attitude rates. Prior techniques of measuring these variables have used radar or laser radar and triangulation with three or more ground stations or high speed camera trackers and triangulation from three or more camera stations.
Attitude of a flight vehicle has also been obtained using two laser transmitter/receiver stations tracking of skewed reflectors on a vehicle. A single laser transmitter/receiver station will track skewed retroreflectors in sequence on the vehicle to determine the position, roll rate, and attitude in one plane, this plane being defined by the vehicle roll axis and the ground station. As the vehicle rotates each plane of retroreflected energy sweeps the ground station at a timed interval dependent upon the attitude of the vehicle. The reflector alignment on the surface of the vehicle is known and the roll rate is measured by a signal reflected from one of the skewed retroreflectors on the vehicle. These reflected laser pulses are detected and processed to resolve the position, roll and attitude (pitch and yaw) data. This skewed reflector method of measurement allows attitude of a flight vehicle to be determined with only two tracking stations, and is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,816 issued to Kynric M. Pell et al. Pell et al also derive the simplified mathematical representation for expressing the information using a right hand cartesian coordinate system, as shown in columns 3, 4, and 5 thereof.
The laser doppler attitude measurement system provides remote measurement of missile aspect angle and measurement of attitude based on the doppler shift of retroreflected laser radiation utilizing no more than 2 tracking stations. A pair of retroreflectors are located in a common plane parallel with and on opposite sides of the vehicle roll axis to simultaneously provide a retroreflective sigal back to a tracking station in response to an impinging laser tracking frequency. This pair of simultaneous response pulses provide a doppler signal which yields the missile roll axis aspect angle with respect to the single tracker. Providing a second aspect angle with respect to a second ground station allows the attitude of the vehicle in space to be determined.
The invention herein may be manufactured, used, and licensed by or for the Government for governmental purposes without the payment to us of any royalties thereon. | <urn:uuid:3ee720bb-6757-4c10-bd7e-c54e093f9c3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.google.de/patents/US4373808 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929531 | 2,946 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Germanic Lexicon Project
Other ways you can help
Please write to me or post on the message board before you start a project with the materials here. Somebody else might already be doing the same project. It's a big waste of effort if two groups create essentially identical online copies of the same text.
Things you can do to help:
The biggest project right now is the correction of Cleasby/Vigfusson and Bosworth/Toller; please click on the "Volunteers" tab to find out how to help with this. However, if you want, there are others ways you can help as well.
1. Scan more books.
If you would like to pick a book on the older Germanic languages and scan it, I will be glad to host the page images. Contact me to discuss how we can transfer the images.
Be sure that the book you choose is out of copyright. In the United States, all books published before 1923 are out of copyright.
Please read the first section of the page "How to digitize a text" for recommendations on scanner settings, filenames, optional image post-processing, etc. Please at least make the filenames match the page numbers before you hand them off to me.
2. If you have OCR software, perform OCR on any of the documents here.
It's OK if you just crank the images thru and send me the text without doing correction. I can post your OCRed text, and somebody else will probably eventually pick up the correction.
If the text contains special characters which you don't have convenient support for, it's OK to have your OCR software substitute some other character which never occurs in the text (perhaps @ or % or £, for example). The important thing is never to lose the distinction between characters.
It's helpful if your OCR software can preserve type attributes such as italics or boldface. A programmer can use this information to help recover the data type of each field (headword, definition, etc.). One good choice would be to have your OCR software output HTML files, since HTML can encode text attributes such as italics.
1. Make page content lists.
For any text here (dictionary or textbook), you could make a list of the header information for each page, like this:
Until the TIFF/PNG page images are eventually converted to text, a lot of people use the materials on this site by simply viewing the page images. Having an index list makes it much easier to find things.
If you want to do this, just send me a list like the example above (page number followed by page information). No need to make an HTML page; I have a script which will automatically produce the web page using the list.
3. Hand-correct the text.
This is the most important task, and also the most time-consuming and labor-intensive. However, it is not difficult: you simply compare the online text against the original page image and make corrections.
One way to do this is to print out the text and images, and compare them side by side, keeping a finger on both to keep your place. You can use a red pen to mark errors, and then enter the corrections at your computer. Of course, this is just a suggestion based on my own experience; you can do it however you like.
It's perfectly OK to correct just part of a text. Starting a whole book doesn't obligate you to finish it, and even a few pages gets us that much closer to completion.
A lot of times I get questions on how the text should be encoded, etc. There really isn't any one right answer here. The important thing is that none of the contrasts between characters be lost. See below for further comments on this issue and on strategies you might choose.
4. Separate text into fields.
The task here is mark up the text to indicate fields such as headwords, definitions, etymologies, etc. This task takes a little bit more technical understanding than the others; see below for a discussion of why this task is necessary and what it involves.
5. Other stuff
Occasionally, folks have scanned books and sent me the image files to post. If you want to do this, then PLEASE make the filenames match the page numbers. This will save me a ton of work. The numbering system I use is to start with a0001, a0002, etc. for Roman-numeralled or other introductory pages, and b0001, b0002, etc. for the numbered pages of the main text (putting zeroes at the front helps the files to sort in the desired order in a directory). Also, if you've scanned both the left and right pages to a single image, it would really be a nice thing if you use a graphics program to separate the two. Some programs, such as Photoshop will allow you to define a macro to process all the files automatically. (The really important thing is the filenames, however.)
Sometimes folks have sent me files which are a trivial conversion of one format to another, such as taking a plain text file and converting it to HTML by simply adding <P> tags to separate the lines. This is generally not very useful unless some new information is added in the process, such as separating fields within the data as described below. | <urn:uuid:0fbec72b-80cd-42e7-90cf-8162b2894a2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/aa_how_to_help.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914449 | 1,114 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Desi Arnaz biography
Born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz III on March 2, 1917, in Santiago, Cuba, Desi Arnaz fled Cuba to the US with his family in 1933. Early success led to him being offered a role in the 1939 Broadway musical Too Many Girls, and he later starred in the film version, where he met his future wife, Lucille Ball. In 1949, Arnaz developed the hit TV series I Love Lucy, which ran for six years.
Musician, actor. Born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz III on March 2, 1917 in Santiago, Cuba. Born to a wealthy family, the Arnazes fled Cuba for Miami after a revolution in 1933. After working a number of odd jobs to help support the family, Desi got his first musician's gig as a guitarist for the Siboney Septet.
After working briefly for Xavier Cugat in New York, Arnaz returned to Miami to lead a combo of his own and introduce the Conga Line to American audiences. It was such a hit, both locally and nationally, that Arnaz returned to New York to start his own band. He was offered a role in the 1939 Broadway musical Too Many Girls and later starred in Hollywood's film version. It was there that he met his future wife, Lucille Ball. They were married in 1940.
Arnaz made three more films before being inducted into the Army during WWII. During his two years in the service, he was responsible for entertaining the troops. After being discharged, he formed a new orchestra, recording several hits during the late 1940s, and served as orchestra leader on Bob Hope's radio show from 1946 to 1947.
In 1949, Arnaz turned his efforts to developing the hit television series I Love Lucy, which ran for six years on CBS and became the most successful television program in history.
Desi's marriage to Lucille Ball ended in 1960. He retired from show business and eventually moved to Baja California with his second wife, Edith. He died in 1986 at the age of 69. | <urn:uuid:d6c1fca2-ad5f-4832-9bad-aa38cc55f3ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biography.com/print/profile/desi-arnaz-9542545 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986752 | 422 | 2.25 | 2 |
You're offensive, President Obama, to use your own words.
Offensive to coal miners and their families who have paid the ultimate price, offensive to people who live daily with the devastating impacts of coal mining and coal ash in their communities and watersheds, and offensive to anyone who recognizes the spiraling reality of climate change.
If Ameren, one of the biggest coal-supporting utility companies in the nation, can throw in the towel on the FutureGen "clean coal" boondoggle in Obama's adopted state of Illinois, then why can't our president at least state the truth during his election -- or drop the sloganeering?
It's sad enough to watch the president mock Republican Mitt Romney for his dead-on realization, once upon a time, that coal-fired plants kill.
It's even sadder, as our nation drifts along in Titanic denial toward climate destabilization, for our president to crow about being a friend of a deadly rock.
And it's downright tragic for Obama apologists -- all of whom live in Washington, D.C. or non-coal mining areas -- to turn a blind eye to Obama's unleashing of massive coal mining permits in the Powder River Basin, to the regulated humanitarian and health disaster of mountaintop removal in Appalachia, and the destructive operations of longwall mining for farm communities in the heartland.
Coal is not and will never be clean, and President Obama and all of his apologists know it.
Mitt Romney is right: Coal kills.
Coal kills three miners daily, as black lung has spiked during the Obama administration.
Coal mining and burning pollutants contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S., according to the Physicians for Social Responsibility: "Heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases. This conclusion emerges from our reassessment of the widely recognized health threats from coal. Each step of the coal life cycle -- mining, transportation, washing, combustion, and disposing of post combustion wastes -- impacts human health."
Coal slurry, coal ash, mercury, strip mining, silicosis -- the deadly list goes on and on.
President Obama: Stop using the "clean coal" slogan.
Follow Jeff Biggers on Twitter @JeffRBiggers
Original article on Huffington Post | <urn:uuid:400f5141-54e3-4287-8711-2b4dbbbd5ee8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pdamerica.org/news/item/895-clean-coal-is-a-hoax-mr-president-and-you-know-it-so-drop-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94379 | 477 | 1.640625 | 2 |
First of all a goalie has to have a passion for the position if you want them to be good. They have to want it for themselves. Because, some teams put the bigger and slow kid in the net, hat is not what you want to do. I like to tell the kids that goalie is the most important position, because it is. The goalie controls so much of the game. I want someone in net that has good vision, is loud, can communicate well, can pass well, and is not afraid of getting hit by the ball.
Last year we didn’t have a goalie for JV so, I had to convince one of the kids to play. I talked to the team asking the kids who wanted to have the biggest impact on the team should give it a try. We had one kid step up and he has been getting better ever since.
I had someone ask me how to approach warm-up. It all depends on the amount of time you have. But, planning this out is the coach’s job. The first step is to start passing and making the passes longer. This way you can work on clears. Having one you’re your players jogging around so the goalie can pass to different areas of the field. Then you go into the cage to take shots. Take shot high, middle, low, on both sites. When goalie is taking shots, you have to remember to take shots in all areas of field where a shot can come from. This way they are warmed up for all the different shots that happen in a game. Another key note is that who ever is doing the shooting needs to not rip them as hard as they can. This way you build up your goalies confidence.
Talk to a couple older goalies to see what they like. Every goalie is different.
Here are a couple of videos that I want my goalies to watch to get better.
Check out more at www.coachgafner.com | <urn:uuid:a65900e0-a968-4997-81eb-30d243e55c08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://e-lacrosse.com/blogs/coaching/2009/02/19/tips-for-coaching-a-keeper/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981963 | 406 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Swing your pelvis with the King
Bringing together white country music with black rhythm and blues was just the beginning. Ever since his first hip swinging appearance on The Milton Berle Show in 1956, music changed forever. Under the guidance of ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, Presley scored 23 US #1 songs in his lifetime became the biggest star that rock and roll has ever seen.
1935: Born in Tupelo, Mississippi
1953: Cuts his first record, My Happiness at Sun Records in Memphis
1954: That’s All Right airs on WHBQ-AM radio in Memphis
Debuts at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville
1955: Enlists ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker as his manager
1956: Heartbreak Hotel becomes #1 in the US
Causes controversy and hysteria performing Hound Dog on The Milton Berle Show
Releases Blue Suede Shoes
1957: Buys Graceland
Releases All Shook Up and Jailhouse Rock
Too Much becomes #1 in the UK
1960: Releases Are You Lonesome Tonight?
1976: Moody Blue becomes his 23rd US #1
1977: Dies in Graceland | <urn:uuid:bba6e1a8-cc24-4d20-a4aa-1a59e1abaa49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.madametussauds.com/London/OurFigures/PopMusic/ElvisPresley.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924979 | 251 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The nation stands about a third of a chance of avoiding a risky plunge over the fiscal cliff by year end, one of the authors of the U.S. debt-cutting Simpson-Bowles plan told an audience of about 4,000 financial advisers in Chicago tonight.
Speaking before the Schwab Impact conference, along with the co-author of the so-called Simpson-Bowles Plan, Bowles implored the audience of financial advisers to contact political leaders and insist that they compromise on a deal.
"The whole history of America is compromise," added Alan Simpson. "If you can't learn to compromise you shouldn't be a legislator and you should never get married."
Bowles, a Democrat who was chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton, and Simpson, a Republican and former Wyoming Senator, emphasized that the nation is on a dangerous path. They urged people to sign a petition at www.fixthedebt.org.
Eventually, Simpson said inaction will lead to a "tipping point," when investors in U.S. bonds decide "the country is totally dysfunctional" and won't implement the tax increases and spending cuts essential for reducing the debt. When that happens -- maybe in "two years, two months or two days," he said, "it will be a disasterous thing."
Since the nation can't function without borrowing money, it will have to pay higher interest and the costs of higher interest will make the debt more impossible to handle long-term.
"There is no question the fiscal path is not sustainable," said Bowles. "It's like a cancer that will destroy from within."
Also at the conference, former defense secretary Robert Gates said the nation's financial weakness could become a national security concern. Shoring up the nation's finances, he said, will enhance the nation's power in the world.
Bowles said prior to the presidential election there was "zero progress made" to fashion a debt-cutting plan that would be supported by President Barak Obama and Congress. But since then, he said, he has talked with the president and political leaders including House Speaker John Boehner. Those talks have suggested some progress is possible, he said, but he faulted Congress for leaving Washington, D.C. for the Thanksgiving holiday and devoting too little time to averting a potential recession-causing fall from the fiscal cliff.
"This is ridiculous," he said. If a business was facing such dire possibilities, he said, "everyone would be there working full-time" to find solutions and avert a crisis.
Meanwhile, both Simpson and Bowles said the American people do not seem to fully appreciate what the nation is going to have to do to shore up the country's finances. Simpson said people suggest getting rid of wasteful spending, and cuts like aid to other countries. Yet, both Simpson and Bowles said the size of the nation's deficit is so huge it cannot be repaired without cuts in Social Security and Medicare and major tax reform. | <urn:uuid:ef9e9532-e210-4d5e-8000-c3b445bbc43b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.b1029.com/b1029/lifestyle/parenting/chi-inaction-on-fiscal-cliff-will-lead-to-tipping-point-a-disasterous-thing-20121115,0,3533566.column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970023 | 610 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Submersible and conventional pumps manufacturer Bedford Pumps has just completed a contract in excess of £1.25 million with Yorkshire Water for the refurbishment of the Don Valley Sewage Pumping Station, UK.
Don Valley SPS is part of a £78 million investment from Yorkshire Water for Blackburn Meadows Wastewater Treatment Works. The Don Valley Pumping Station site originally housed five A P E Allen mixed flow vertical spindle units to lift sewage 21.4m to the inlet works. These pumps were at the end of their working life and no longer able to cope with the demands of the pumping station. As a result sewage debris often entered the River Don during heavy rainfall.
Bedford Pumps replaced the original units with six conventional shaft driven volute pumpsets.
The pumps are of a centrifugal, mixed-flow design and the largest of the six pumps can handle up to 215mm spheres of untreated raw sewage.
The station has been designed within a wet well sump that is divided into two halves. Each half is a mirror image of the other and is designed to function with one half operational and one half isolated. Bedford Pumps units must therefore provide sufficient total pumping to achieve full FFT from one half of the wet well only.
Bedford Pumps said it achieved this criteria by suggesting that each half of the sump houses an identical set of three pumps, of varying sizes. The pumps are installed in a vertical configuration.
The largest pump has a duty of 2 m3/second at 26m head driven by 645kW 6.6kV motors. The next size down operates at 1.5 m3/s at 27.4m head powered by 505kW 6.6kV motors. The smallest pumps run at 0.85 l/s at a head of 28.4m from 300kW 6.6 kV motors. | <urn:uuid:3419bfc8-72d9-4e78-aaad-508841ed53b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waterworld.com/articles/wwi/print/products/2012/11/centrifugal-pumps-part-of-1-25-wastewater-facility-refurb.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953648 | 385 | 1.796875 | 2 |
BATON ROUGE -- The Senate voted without debate or dissent today to outlaw research designed to create animal-human hybrids, a practice that is apparently not occurring in the state but is cast by legislative critics as a potential violation of Louisiana's ethics and morals.
Senate Bill 115 by Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, lays out specific scientific acts that would result in jail time and fines for researchers and others who profit from such activities.
Senators raised no questions before sending the bill to the House with a 38-0 vote. In a Senate committee last week, senators heard from impassioned supporters and, separately, from one scientist who warned such restrictions could send intellectual capital and research money elsewhere.
Under Martiny's bill, violators would be subject to a prison term of as long as 10 years and a fine of up to $10,000. Profiting from the forbidden activity would command additional civil fines of $1 million or double the gain from the research, whichever is greater.
Martiny said the civil fine is targeted at researchers and other primary employers or executives of research operations rather than unwitting shareholders of an offending entity.
Dorinda Bordlee, a frequent Capitol presence representing the Bioethics Defense Fund, said during the committee hearing that she does not know of any such research occurring in Louisiana. But lawmakers, she said, should be proactive in preventing the activities.
A stem cell researcher from Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge told lawmakers they generally should resist limitations on research opportunities. "There are no mad scientists at our state institutions," Dr. Jeffrey Gimble said, in response to a comment made by Martiny. "Anything that's going to criminalize scientific activity could potentially restrict our ability to recruit young scientists to our state."
Bordlee said: "Businesses don't like regulation. Scientists don't like regulation." But she said the state has a compelling interest to prevent research that she said violates society's collective moral and ethical standard.
The bill would outlaw attempts to create a human-animal hybrid; transferring a human embryo into a nonhuman womb; or transferring a nonhuman embryo into a human womb. The bill includes a lengthy passage of specific definitions of "human-animal hybrid" and other terms used in the section detailing the acts that would be illegal.
Bordlee said the clarifications ensure that ongoing research and medical activities are not affected. Examples include the use of animal parts in surgery, research or medical treatments.
. . . . . . .
Bill Barrow can be reached at email@example.com or 225.342.5590. | <urn:uuid:687f3cc5-c0f7-40e9-983f-c5fa4a8ee0f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/05/senate_passes_animalhuman_hybr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948154 | 540 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Even today’s budget-priced home printers churn out quality photos that a few years ago you could have gotten only from a professional printing house. Key to the high quality are steady improvements in print heads, which can eject smaller and smaller droplets of ink with ever-greater precision.
A decade ago, eight-picoliter drops (that’s eight trillionths of a liter) were considered small. These days, inkjet printers deliver drops as tiny as one picoliter through thousands of nozzles—some less than half the width of a human hair.
To make prints that look like photos instead of finger paintings, the printer must precisely control how much ink comes out of every nozzle, every time, at a rate of up to 22,000 drops per second.
Two types of technology can squeeze ink through the nozzles. | <urn:uuid:962b5ab6-17f3-474b-ba49-3b02aba40d24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2009-03/inside-inkjet-photo-printer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948825 | 176 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Thursday, July 9 2009 - 9/11 Precedents
Exclusive: Robert McNamara deceived LBJ on Gulf of Tonkin, documents show
By Gareth Porter
Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967, took many secrets with him when he died Monday at 93. But probably no secret was more sensitive politically than the one that would have changed fundamentally the public perception of his role in Vietnam policy had it been become widely known.
The secret was his deliberate deceit of President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 4, 1964 regarding the alleged attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Documents which have been available for decades in the LBJ Library show clearly that McNamara failed to inform Johnson that the U.S. naval task group commander in the Tonkin Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick, had changed his mind about the alleged North Vietnamese torpedo attack on U.S. warships he had reported earlier that day.
By early afternoon Washington time, Herrick had reported to the Commander in Chief Pacific in Honolulu that “freak weather effects” on the ship’s radar had made such an attack questionable. In fact, Herrick was now saying, in a message sent at 1:27 pm Washington time, that no North Vietnamese patrol boats had actually been sighted. Herrick now proposed a “complete evaluation before any further action taken.”
These documents were reviewed by this reporter in researching my book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
McNamara later testified that he had read the message after his return to the Pentagon that afternoon. But he did not immediately call Johnson to tell him that the whole premise of his decision at lunch to approve McNamara’s recommendation for retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam was now highly questionable.
In fact, no call from McNamara to Johnson was recorded until 3:51 pm – 7 minutes after Johnson called him from his private quarters. Had Johnson been accurately informed about the Herrick message, he might have demanded fuller information before proceeding with a broadening of the war. Johnson had fended off proposals from McNamara and other advisers for a policy of bombing the North on four separate occasions since becoming President.
But when McNamara called Pacific Admiral Grant Sharp shortly after speaking with Johnson, it was not to order a full investigation or to seek more detailed information. In fact, McNamara didn’t even bring up the Herrick report. Instead, he seemed determined to obtain a statement from Sharp that would make it unnecessary to wait for further investigation. “There isn’t any possibility there was no attack, is there?” asked McNamara.
Sharp insisted, however, that the commander on the scene was saying “the situation’s in doubt” and suggested that McNamara “hold this execute” – meaning the strike order to CINCPAC and Seventh Fleet — “until we have a definite indication that this happened….” Sharp said he believed he could get a “definite indication” that the event had occurred within two hours.
But McNamara rejected Sharp’s proposal to wait for confirmation of the attack. Instead he said, “[I]t seems to me we ought to go ahead on that basis: get the pilots briefed, get the planes armed, get everything lined up to go. Continue the execute order in effect, but between now and 6 o’clock get a definite fix and you call me directly.”
McNamara didn’t claim that he had authority from Johnson to make that decision.
After the conversation with Sharp, McNamara didn’t call LBJ to report on what Sharp had told him or what they had agreed on, according to White House phone logs. Instead he went ahead on his own to issue the execute order at 4:49 pm.
The next phone call, which came just one minute after that order was sent, did not come from McNamara but from LBJ. That brief phone conversation, which was not recorded, was followed moments later by a call from McNamara to Johnson in which he the Secretary said the story had already been broken by wire services that a meeting at the White House that night would brief congressional leaders about a second attack on U.S. warships.
McNamara urged Johnson to authorize a statement by the Pentagon about the attack. He’d somehow found the time during the previous hour to draft a statement reaffirming the attack, which he read to Johnson. It said two U.S. warships had been attacked by patrol boats, but that the North Vietnamese boats had been “driven off.” It concluded, “We believe several of the patrol boats were sunk. Details won’t be available till daylight.”
Neither McNamara nor Johnson alluded in that conversation to Admiral Sharp’s seeking confirmatory evidence – a matter that would surely have been on LBJ’s mind if McNamara had told him about it.
The record of phone McNamara-Johnson conversations on the afternoon of Aug. 4, 1964 thus shows a President who was blissfully unaware that the original reports of an attack were now in doubt and that the Commander-in-Chief of Pacific forces was still seeking to obtain confirmation of the attack.
Ultimately, National Security Council documents declassified in 2005 (PDF) would reveal that no attack on US warships had taken place.
It “is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night,” they said. “In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.”
Reporter confronted McNamara in 2004
This writer confronted McNamara with that record in a phone conversation with him on Feb. 24, 2004. His response was that telephone calls were not the only way he had to communicate with Johnson and that he could have told Johnson about the military’s unresolved doubts at the National Security Council meeting which took place that night at 6:15 pm.
Unfortunately for McNamara’s alibi, detailed official notes of that Council meeting taken by NSC staffer Bromley Smith, marked “Top Secret Sensitive, For the President’s Eyes Only,” show that McNamara again asserted unequivocally that the attack had indeed taken place.
After USIA Director Carl Rowan asked, “Do we know for a fact that the North Vietnamese provocation took place?” McNamara said, “We will know definitely in the morning.”
When I read those quotes to McNamara over the phone, he suggested that the notes were “not complete.” But McNamara was admitting, in effect, that he did not inform LBJ that afternoon about the Herrick report or about Sharp’s plea to hold off the execute order until confirming evidence had been obtained.
The records of the Tonkin Gulf crisis in the LBJ library also include documentation showing LBJ wanted to get the truth about what McNamara knew and when he knew it.
Even before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was approved by the Senate Aug. 7, LBJ ordered a full account of the communications between the commanders of U.S. Pacific forces and the Pentagon on Aug. 4 and 5. The requested study was referred to as the “inquiry,” according to a handwritten note on a draft chronology prepared at the Pentagon. It was to be based on the original tapes of all such communications, which were tracked down and transcribed.
McNamara altered transcripts of calls
The clearest evidence that McNamara was afraid of what the inquiry would reveal about his maneuvering on Aug. 4 is that the chronology produced under his personal guidance — where numerous changes were made on previous drafts in McNamara’s own handwriting — deliberately suppressed the most damning words from the transcript of his conversation with Sharp.
Not only did the official Defense Department chronology change the wording of McNamara’s question to Sharp so that it was no longer obviously a leading question, it also failed to mention Sharp’s revelation that Herrick considered the “whole situation” to be “in doubt” and was calling for “daylight recce” — or reconnaissance.
In addition, the McNamara’s chronology portrayed him as agreeing with Sharp that the execute order should be delayed until definite evidence of an attack was obtained. It reports, “McNamara says that even if definite confirmation of an attack is not forthcoming for another 2 hours, an hour would still remain and the execute order could then be issued.”
But McNamara had not said that the executive order could be issued after getting confirmation of an attack. He had said the opposite: “Continue the execute order in effect, but between now and 6 o’clock get a definite fix and you call me directly.” So that crucial sentence was omitted from the chronology.
McNamara did not want LBJ to know that he had rejected Sharp’s proposal to hold the execute order until the situation was clarified and had not even informed him.
There is more evidence in the presidential tapes at the LBJ Library that Johnson believed that McNamara had misinformed him about what had happened in the Tonkin Gulf. Six weeks later, McNamara and then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk went to Johnson with yet another claim that North Vietnamese boats had attacked a U.S. warship in the Tonkin Gulf and again urged a retaliatory bombing of the North.
This time Johnson expressed skepticism and complained about McNamara’s claim of an attack on Aug. 4. “You just came in a few weeks ago and said they’re launching an attack on us – they’re firing at us,” Johnson tells McNamara on the tape recording of the conversation, “and we got through with the firing and concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.”
Whether or not Johnson understood the seriousness of McNamara’s deception Aug. 4, he seemed to become even more resistant to McNamara’s views on Vietnam after the incident. That fall, during the presidential election campaign, Johnson began to challenge McNamara for his advocacy of bombing North Vietnam, even referring to his proposal as “your bombing bullshit,” according to accounts given by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton to Daniel Ellsberg, his then-assistant (who later leaked what would be known as the Pentagon papers).
McNamara’s deception was one of many maneuvers aimed at pulling Johnson into an escalated war in Vietnam. But it is perhaps the only one in which McNamara’s role shifted from tough bureaucratic in-fighting to usurping presidential authority, in effect, on an issue involving the use of military force.
On the following audio file from The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, Johnson can be heard telling McNamara that he had misinformed him about the alleged attack:
A pdf file of the McNamara/Sharp transcript can be accessed at this link.
A pdf file of the chronology of events that McNamara prepared for Johnson can be accessed at this link.
Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian who covered the Vietnam War as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International in 1970-71 and taught international studies at the City College of New York and American University from 1982 to 1990. His book Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, documents US policymaking on Vietnam during the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He has a doctorate in Southeast Asian politics from Cornell University, and currently covers diplomatic and military affairs for Inter Press Service.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author, who is solely responsible for its content, and do not necessarily reflect those of 911Truth.org. 911Truth.org will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
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|home | about us | contact | research | grassroots | calendar | links | search| | <urn:uuid:8545ad3f-1dc8-405c-a87f-abcbfaf17910> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090709152210748 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977434 | 2,702 | 2.15625 | 2 |
A few years ago, I hunted Highland stag and sika deer in Scotland with Malcolm Harman of UK Outfitters. I wrote about that hunt in these pages, and several subscribers subsequently hunted with Harman and sent very positive reports on their experiences. Harman continues to offer stag hunting. In fact, he has gone on to create what may be the ultimate deer hunt in Great Britain.
The country's deer include seven types, both native and introduced. Geographically, from the south of England up into Scotland, they begin with the Reeves muntjac and Chinese water deer, European red deer, fallow deer, Highland stag and Japanese sika. The seventh, roe deer, can be found from north to south. Of course, other outfitters can get you all of these deer in one trip, but the likelihood is that at least some of the hunting will be in small enclosures that offer little or no sport. Harman, on the other hand, offers a fair-chase, unfenced hunt for all seven of these deer (call it his "Seven Slam").
Harman's hunt lasts from 12 to 14 days and involves traveling the length of Great Britain. The amount of land available to Harman for the hunt is what's truly amazing. He reports that his smallest area, for Chinese water deer, is 5,000 acres, although he also has a second, larger area for this species. The largest, where he hunts European-strain red deer and what he describes as some exceptional fallow deer, is 180,000 acres. Altogether, he has more than 350,000 unfenced acres in Britain upon which he can hunt.........(continued) | <urn:uuid:a17f8d7c-3870-4230-b1ba-2b09e40e5175> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huntingreport.com/hunting_article_details.cfm?id=1342 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967882 | 343 | 1.570313 | 2 |
"I was there..."
by Danny Beagle
Italian laborers lay cobblestones on Hyde between Bay and Chestnut, c. 1910
Photo: J.B. Monaco
His real name was Achille Reale. He was an Italian immigrant who came from northern Italy in the marble quarries. He'd worked in the marble quarries for his childhood. And he said, "I've had a lot of experience with unions. We had a very strong union. The reason we had a strong union is because every time the army came in we could go up in the hills where the marble was and drop rocks on them."
His father gives him the money to come to America. Got on the train, he said, "I didn't know how big America was. I had a can of tomatoes and a big piece of bread and a salami to last me the whole way, and about 50 cents." You know, it was one of those immigrant stories. He went to see his brother who was working in Pueblo, Colorado at a big steel plant there. He didn't like Pueblo because the air was filthy, he was used to clean air, he liked to be outdoors, he didn't like working in the steel mill, so he left there and went to the coal fields of southern Colorado. This is about 1914.
He is there just in time for the famous Ludlow Massacre where basically the Industrial Workers of the World took on the Rockefellers. And he said, "trains used to come into town loaded with scabs, and the conductors were union people, and if they beeped the whistle twice, then we knew the scabs were in the second car. And so we used to go beat the shit out of them and chase them out of town." And they did that enough that eventually the army came into town and blew them away. In a very very bitter struggle that I'm not going to make light of at all, they basically destroyed the housing that the miners had set up for themselves, they killed scores of miners, drove them out into the snow. That was the end of that strike.
So Archie wanders around Colorado for a while, works in the hard rock mines in the north, changes his name because he's known to all the mine owners as a bad person. This is not a deeply political person, by the way, this is just a regular guy. And winds up in San Francisco because his wife who he met in Colorado had a sister here. Winds up working on the San Francisco waterfront. They had a company union then, it was basically a union formed for the purpose of keeping the men in line. You had to join it if you wanted to work. Archie wanted to work. He was a worker, a guy who wanted to work, to do a good job, to make a decent living. He shows up at the Fink Hall one day, he had had a problem because he had an IWW book in his back pocket and he lost it one day and so it became public knowledge that he was a bad person. He had a reputation as a good worker. So he goes down to the Fink Hall and tries to join, here's this one little bodyguard. So Archie says I need to see the president of the union, I need to join so I can get steady work. He says, "Nah, ya can't go see 'im." So Archie says, "I just knocked this guy over," because he had letters from the employers, he was allowed to join. "And I says, I kept looking at this guy, this bodyguard, I said "Don't I know you? Nah, ... wait a minute! I realized he was a sergeant in the National Guard for Ludlow, Colorado."
He is telling me about a 50 year unbroken thread of history and human experience. This guy was not radical by any means. His son, who later became a union official, was part of that right wing [Catholic] opposition to Harry Bridges in the union, but he was a good union person, a good worker, and a good guy. The ILWU was filled with people like this, whose stories went back really into the 19th century, who had had experiences that in themselves were not a big deal. This guy's final story he told me was fighting off the police on July 5, 1934 with somebody named Hernandez whom he'd just met. He said, "He's got his back to me, we're back to back with 2x4s swinging at the cops. It's like the mines all over again."
-- from a talk given at New College, Fall 1994 | <urn:uuid:859a137d-1859-4c9d-b450-4be1db5cc1c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Achille_Reale | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993798 | 959 | 2.40625 | 2 |
27 May, 2012 in Pictures, Science | 10 Comments
They are not the same shape.
The red and green triangles are not the same angle, so all together they do not form a triangle, and the two collections are not the same shape.
The hypotenuse of the whole shape is not actually a straight line; the two triangles do not have exactly the same slope. So in the top shape, the “line” of the hypotenuse is actually sort of bowed in slightly, while in the lower shape, that “line” is bowed out slightly. The difference between those, while not visually obvious, makes up for the 1 square unit of space opened in the lower shape.
Mathematically, if you add all the areas of each shape together, you get 32. If you calculate the shape of an actual right triangle with sides of 13 and 5, you get 32.5. That means you have to lose .5 square units somewhere–in the top shape, it’s a sliver along the hypotenuse; in the lower shape, it’s a whole missing square, with a sliver instead added along the hypotenuse to make up for the fact that you took a whole 1 away, instead of just .5.
Maybe not the clearest explanation, I’m not great with words, but that’s the best I’ve got.
Took me a while to figure that one out as well. A soft opposite curve on the hypotenuse of both triangles is enough to create the missing square.
The triangular pieces (dark green, and red) don’t have exactly the same proportions (5:2 does not equal 8:3). The dark green piece has a steeper slope on its slanted edge compared to the red one.
So the upper arrangement has a subtle concavity (dip) in the middle of the upper border where the triangular pieces meet, and the lower arrangement has a subtle convexity (bulge), exactly enough difference to make space for the 1×1 “hole”.
The answer is that they aren’t exactly the same. The long angled side is slightly different, and the differences in each square along that line add up to an additional square.
You guys are only looking at it one way. You’re looking at it as if the heights of the individual pieces are exact according to the grid, then inferring that the triangle as a whole is not an actual triangle. Alternatively, you could assume that the triangle as a whole is true (slope of 5/13) then see that it is the gridding that is off since 5/13(8) =/= 3 but is slightly larger. Meaning the panhandled boxes are taller than the blue triangle.
There is no one correct answer. Perhaps also the panhandled boxes are of different heights when laid next to each other as in the lower image. Many possible things wrong.
With a difficult problem like this, you’ve got to know how to look for the right sines. If you don’t keep focused you could get off on a tangent. You need an acute mind to approach from the right angle. If you do, maybe your friends will give you complements.
It’s trick photography or whatever.
It’s not a true triangle. The big one, I mean.
The longer sides of both the red and the blue triangles DO NOT HAVE THE SAME SLOPE.
For the blue triangle, the slope is 2/5 – that is, it goes up 2 squares of height, over a distance of 5 squares.
For the red triangle, the slope is 3/8 – that is, it goes up 3 squares of height over a distance of 8 squares.
Expressing them with common denominators gives us 16/40 for the blue, and 15/40 for the red. They’re CLOSE … close enough to TRICK the eye into thinking the whole diagram is also a true triangle. BUT IT’S NOT. “Close” _never_ counts in Geometry – be exact or go home!
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Freedom in the World
In July 2010, the international tribunal trying former leaders of the Khmer Rouge announced its first judgment, but also faced criticism over its refusal to expand the number of suspects currently indicted. Critics of the government continued to face legal harassment, while the government used a dispute with Thailand over a border temple to boost nationalism and consolidate the power of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his family.Both the United States and China sought to increase their ties to Cambodia during the year, with the United States holding joint military exercises despite concerns about human rights abuses committed by the Cambodian armed forces.
Cambodia won independence from France in 1953. King Norodom Sihanouk ruled until he was ousted in 1970 by U.S.-backed military commander Lon Nol, and the Khmer Rouge (KR) seized power in 1975. Approximately two million of Cambodia’s seven million people died from disease, overwork, starvation, or execution under the KR before Vietnamese forces toppled the regime and installed a new communist government in 1979. Fighting continued in the 1980s between the Hanoi-backed government and the allied armies of Sihanouk, the KR, and other political contenders. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords halted open warfare, but the KR continued to wage a low-grade insurgency until its disintegration in the late 1990s.
Since entering government as part of the Vietnamese-backed regime in 1979, Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) have dominated politics, controlling the National Assembly, military, courts, and police. Opposition figures, journalists, and democracy advocates have been given criminal sentences or faced violent attacks by unknown assailants in public spaces. Hun Sen’s divide-and-rule tactics have succeeded in fracturing and weakening the opposition.
In 1997, Hun Sen used his control of the security forces to coerce the royalist party, known as Funcinpec, to share power even though Funcinpec won the largest number of seats in the first parliamentary election held in 1993. Hun Sen later ousted the leader of Funcinpec in a bloody coup in 1997.
The 2003 parliamentary elections were deeply flawed and marred by violence and voter intimidation by the CPP. Nevertheless, the CPP failed to obtain the two-thirds majority required to form a government. A coalition government with Funcinpec was negotiated but quickly broke down. Following the formation of a new CPP-Funcinpec coalition in 2004, Hun Sen turned to quieting opposition leader Sam Rainsy’s attacks on government corruption and abuse. The National Assembly stripped him and several other Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) legislators of their parliamentary immunity in 2005. After fleeing Cambodia to escape arrest, Rainsy was found guilty in absentia of defaming Funcinpec leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen. However, under pressure from international donors, Hun Sen negotiated a settlement: Rainsy would receive a royal pardon in exchange for promising to recant his allegations and issue a public apology to Hun Sen. Rainsy returned to Cambodia in 2006 after fulfilling the terms. The new alliance with Rainsy further strengthened Hun Sen and the CPP’s grip on power.
In the 2008 elections, the CPP took 90 of 123 parliamentary seats, and Hun Sen was reelected as prime minister. The SRP took 26 seats, while Funcinpec took only 2. Two new parties, the Human Rights Party and the Norodom Ranariddh Party, won 3 and 2 seats, respectively. Opposition parties rejected the results, citing political intimidation and violence. Among other irregularities, they alleged that the National Election Committee worked with pro-CPP local authorities to delete potential opposition supporters from the voter rolls. With the opposition divided and unproven in the eyes of the voters, and the country enjoying relative political stability and sustained high economic growth, the CPP has started to command a measure of popular credibility despite public frustration with widespread corruption and other problems.
The launch of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to try former KR officials for genocide and other crimes against humanity was delayed for years by bureaucratic and funding obstacles following its establishment in 2007. At the end of 2008, five former high-level KR leaders were charged, including the former chief of the Tuol Sleng prison Kang Kek Ieu (also known as Duch). KR mastermind Pol Pot died before he could be brought to trial. In July 2010, Duch was found guilty of war crimes and was sentenced to 35 years in prison, reduced to 19 years given time already served. The judgment angered some KR survivors who argued that the sentence was too lenient. Moreover, while the international judges on the court have pressured the tribunal to try more than the handful of high-ranking suspects currently indicted, they have been rebuffed by the Cambodian judges on the court. Some critics suggest that Hun Sen—a former low-level KR officer before he defected to the Vietnamese side—has pushed the three Cambodians on the five-judge tribunal to refuse. Hun Sen allegedly does not want the tribunal to delve too deeply into the past or dent the climate of impunity for the powerful in Cambodia.
Throughout 2010, critics of the government continued to face legal harassment, leaving the country with few alternatives to the rule of Hun Sen. In January, Rainsy was sentenced in absentia for destroying public property and racial incitement in a trial that failed to meet international standards. Rainsy, who was in self-imposed exile abroad at year’s end, faces a twelve-year prison sentence for the January sentence as well as a series of other charges if he returns to Cambodia. Separately, in August, an employee from one of Cambodia’s leading rights organizations, LICADHO, was sentenced in a flawed legal process to two yearsin prison on “disinformation” charges. Meanwhile, the government used the increasing controversy over a disputed border temple with Thailand to boost nationalism and place more power in the hands of Hun Sen’s son, who personally oversaw Cambodian forces on the border.
China continued to expand its influence in Cambodia in 2010. In January, Beijing gave the country some $850 million in new aid projects after Cambodian authorities forcibly deported 20 Uighur asylum-seekers back to China in December 2009. UN officials and other human rights groups had warned that the Uighurs could face torture or other mistreatment in China for alleged involvement in fomenting unrest; their fate in China remained unknown at the end of 2010.In March, Cambodia passed new laws on asylum-seekers, which were criticized by human rights groups for failing to meet the dictates of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.
In 2010, the United States also improved its ties to Cambodia, in part to combat China’s increasing presence in the country. The United States had withdrawn a token amount of aid to protest the Uighur deportations in 2009, but in July 2010, the Pentagon launched “Angkor Sentinel” multinational peacekeeping exercises in both Phnom Penh and at a Pentagon-funded training center in Kompong Speu province. Human rights groups charged that the Cambodian military units normally housed at these bases and those included in the Angkor Sentinel exercises have been involved in illegal land seizures, political violence, and torture, among other abuses.
Political Rights and Civil Liberties:
Cambodia is not an electoral democracy. The current constitution was promulgated in 1993 by the king, who serves as head of state. The monarchy remains highly revered as a symbol of national unity. Prince Norodom Sihamoni, who has lived abroad for much of his life, succeeded his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, in 2004 after the latter abdicated for health reasons.
The prime minister and cabinet must be approved by a majority vote in the 123-seat National Assembly. Assembly members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms. The upper house of the bicameral parliament, the Senate, has 61 members, of whom 2 are appointed by the king, 2 are elected by the National Assembly, and 57 are chosen by parliamentarians and commune councils. Senators serve five-year terms. Voting is tied to a citizen’s permanent resident status in a village, township, or urban district, and this status cannot be changed easily. The CPP’s strong influence in rural areas, with its presence of party members and control of local and provincial government officials, gives it an advantage over the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, which finds support mainly in urban centers.
Corruption and abuse of power are serious problems that hinder economic development and social stability. Many in the ruling elite abuse their positions for private gain. While economic growth in recent years has been sustained by increased investment in mining, forestry, agriculture, textile manufacturing, tourism, and real estate, these enterprises frequently involve land grabs by powerful politicians, bureaucrats, and military officers. A March 2010 anticorruption law established an Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) that will require as many as 100,000 public officials to disclose their assets to investigators. However, many groups maintain that the new ACU lacks independence and have raised concerns about certain provisions of the law, including one that may used to bring defamation charges against those who register complaints that are found to be erroneous.
The government does not fully respect freedom of speech. Media controls are largely focused on local broadcast outlets. There are many newspapers and private television and radio stations, including several owned and operated by the CPP and opposition parties, though processes for granting and renewing radio and television licenses remain opaque. There are no restrictions on privately owned satellite dishes receiving foreign broadcasts. Print journalists are somewhat freer to criticize the government, but the print media reach only about 10 percent of the population. The government has increasingly used lawsuits and criminal prosecution as means of intimidation, though a judge acquitted a prominent reporter for Radio Free Asia’s Khmer-language service of defamation and disinformation charges in February 2010. Imprisonment was eliminated as a penalty for defamation in 2006, but it can be imposed for spreading false information or insulting public officials. Journalists also remain vulnerable to intimidation and violence, which are rarely punished.A new penal code that came into effect in December 2010 drew criticism for several vague provisions relating to freedom of expression, including one that criminalizes any action that “affects the dignity” of a public official. The Internet is fairly free of government control, but access is largely limited to urban centers.
The majority of Cambodians are Theravada Buddhists and can generally practice their faith freely, but societal discrimination against ethnic Cham Muslims remains a problem. Terrorist attacks by Islamist militants in the broader region in recent years have raised new suspicions about Muslims. The government generally respects academic freedom, though criticism of the prime minister and his family is often punished.
Freedoms of association and assembly are respected by the government to a certain degree, though the authorities’ tolerance for these freedoms has declined over the past two years. Civil society groups work on a broad spectrum of issues and offer social services, frequently with funding from overseas. Those that work on social or health issues generally face less harassment from the state. Public gatherings, protests, and marches occur and are rarely violent. However, the government occasionally uses police and other forces to intimidate participants and break up demonstrations. In June 2010, representatives of communities affected by land disputes marched to Phnom Penh, though military police prevented them from presenting Prime Minister Hun Sen with a petition. In November, Phnom Penh Municipality inaugurated “Freedom Park,” in accordance with the 2009 Law on Peaceful Demonstrations, which calls on the capital and each province to establish specific areas for public demonstrations. The government hailed Freedom Park as a mechanism for balancing freedoms of expression and assembly with public order. However, rights groups raised suspicions, due to the park’s considerable distance from government buildings, government discretion in granting approvals for park gatherings, and a limit of 200 people per demonstration, among other restrictions. Within weeks after the park’s inauguration ceremony, police turned back a group of demonstrators who planned to use the park to screen a documentary about the murder of a prominent labor leader.
Cambodia has a small number of independent unions. Workers have the right to strike, and many have done so to protest low wages and poor or dangerous working conditions. Lack of resources and experience limits union success in collective bargaining, and union leaders report harassment and physical threats. Wages have not kept up with rising costs of living, and the global economic slowdown exacerbated the hardships of low-income workers. However, the garment industry has made several well-known compacts with international companies ensuring the fair treatment of workers. In September 2010, approximately 200,000 garment and footwear industry workers staged strikes in the capital and elsewhere, demanding significant wage increases. Although the demands were not met, strikes came to an end after several days. Hundreds of workers were either dismissed or temporarily suspended from their jobs following their participation in the strikes, yet legal proceedings regarding the legitimacy of the strikes and the response that followed remained ongoing at year’s end.
The judiciary is marred by inefficiency, corruption, and a lack of independence. There is a severe shortage of lawyers, and the system’s poorly trained judges are subject to political pressure from the CPP. Abuse by law enforcement officers, including illegal detention and the torture of suspects, is common. Jails are seriously overcrowded, and inmates often lack sufficient food, water, and health care. Police, soldiers, and government officials are widely believed to tolerate, or be involved in, the trafficking of guns, drugs, and people, as well as other crimes.
The constitution guarantees the right to freedom of travel and movement, and the government generally respects this right. However, there have been reports of authorities restricting travel for opposition politicians, particularly during election campaigns. Land and property rights are regularly abused for the sake of private development projects. Over the past several years, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly removed—from both rural and urban areas, and with little or no compensation or relocation assistance—to make room for commercial plantations, mine operations, factories, and high-end office and residential developments. High-ranking officials and their family members are frequently involved in these ventures, alongside international investors.
Women suffer widespread economic and social discrimination, lagging behind men in secondary and higher education, and many die from difficulties related to pregnancy and childbirth. Rape and domestic violence are common and are often tied to alcohol and drug abuse by men. In 2010, several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, highlighted the deteriorating climate for sex workers in Cambodia, who face arrest, abuse, and even rape by police. Women and girls are trafficked inside and outside of Cambodia for prostitution, and the sex trade has fueled the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Cambodia received a downward trend arrow due to the government’s consolidation of control over all aspects of the electoral process, its increased intimidation of civil society, and its apparent influence over the tribunal trying former members of the Khmer Rouge. | <urn:uuid:3a541c4b-0527-4e7c-a5b3-35a2d37bb273> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2011/cambodia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965066 | 3,113 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Monday, April 30th: Z’s celebration is for ZEBRA’S LESSON: NATIONAL HONESTY DAY. Zebras? What do zebras have to do with Honesty? In our current times, it appears that integrity is missing in so many places (not pointing out only national and local political institutions, although they tend to get more press than other instances). Too many times the acceptable “gray” area seems to be expanding and growing. There are times that a little “white lie” is acceptable, as a way of lubricating the social cogs. (“Oh my, Aunt Clara, that is an interesting hat” instead of telling her how atrocious the hat really is.) But instead of letting the “gray area” consume a larger portion of our world, maybe we need to step back and see that sometimes things really are black and white.
Celebrate National Honesty Day by looking a little closer at our lives and see if there are ways we can be more honest. Is there a place in our lives where we need to keep the black and white boundaries? Are there times that we should be honest with our friends, instead of using minor social fabrications?
www.holidayinsights.com reports on the Origin of “National Honesty Day”: “M. Hirsh Goldberg, former press secretary to a governor ofMaryland and author of five books, created National Honesty Day in the early 1990s after spending four years researching and writing The Book of Lies (Morrow). This book has been translated into Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
Goldberg created this day, because he felt that the month of April, which begins with a big day of lying (April Fools Day), should end on a higher moral note.”
Celebrate the day; celebrate with a life of integrity and honesty. | <urn:uuid:8bdf9f77-9fb7-4a4f-b6c0-1297d010f87d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trishafaye.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/zs-celebration-is-for-zebras-lesson-national-honesty-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940485 | 394 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Published in Vaccine Weekly, April 27th, 2011
"Mathematical modeling is used to assess the impact of mass vaccination following a smallpox release when either standard public health controls are failing or political/public opinion is urging more comprehensive methods. Two mass vaccination strategies are considered: a blanket nationwide campaign v. an approach targeted only at...
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What is Dual Diagnosis Treatment?
You may be wondering what is dual diagnosis treatment and what does it entail. It is not only treating your substance abuse problems but it is also helping you how to understand your psychological disorder. If you are reading this article, you know all too well that co-occurring disorders can completely ruin your life if not given proper attention. If you think that you need therapy, make sure that you consult your doctor or tell a trusted family member, spouse or friend.
A report by WebMD revealed that at least 60% of people who have drug addiction or a psychological disorder are actually battling both conditions. One condition increases the vulnerability of the other. The report also showed that 1 out of 5 adults in the United States have some form of psychological disorder, making it a common issue in the country.
Genetic Predisposition to Mental Illness
A genetic susceptibility to any kind of mental health problem is often triggered towards onset by substance abuse. The substance is not necessarily a cause of the psychological disorder, but a major risk factor. This new line of thinking has opened the doors to the concept of dual diagnosis therapy as the pattern for treatment. Some researchers even say that there are certain forms of mental illness that are one and the same as the drug addiction.
Among the areas where this research is most prominent is a condition known as bipolar disorder, which is characterized by cycles of extreme mood swings between deep depression and mania.
There are many types of addiction that are currently known today and all of them are extremely detrimental to your physical and mental health. This is where dual diagnosis treatment comes into the picture. Too much of anything can not only kill you, but it can make you do things that you would never dream of doing when you are in your right mind. Long term substance abuse can result to various kinds of psychological disorders mainly because it can affect the brain without you even being aware of it. If this is what is going on with you, your loved one, or friend consider a dual diagnosis therapy program. The therapist will provide a kind of intensive care therapy that involves understanding and managing your their addiction and digging into what is causing the issue. One to one cognitive therapy of EMDR work extremely well; however holistic and animal therapy and AA/NA meetings are also a great way to help target both the addiction and psychological disorder.
Addiction & Psychological Disorders
This is the main reason why it is called dual diagnosis treatment, the doctor is treating you for two problems– one is for your addiction and the other one is for your psychological disorder. Having dual diagnosis therapy means that you have a co-occurring disorder. The addiction and the disorder can ruin your life and possibly kill you but before all of these horrifying things happen, you will also make the life of your loved ones and friends a living hell. Surely, that would be the last thing that you would want to do. The good news is that the therapy can help put you on a healthy path to recovery.
Although addicts can become unstable and lose any focus of having a healthy life, there is hope. There is usually a small window when addicts feel they have reached bottom. This may be due to the fear of going to jail, getting a DUI, or doing something they are ashamed of such as prostitution. It’s at this time their addictive thinking drops its guard and the addict will seek help.
It is important that they seek help at a rehab that specializes in dual diagnosis. If they get admitted to a facility that just treats addiction they may have blown the only chance they have at a long term sobriety. Studies have shown that if you do not take care of the underlying issues causing the addiction the addict may just transfer their addiction or relapse within a very short time. It will ensure that you will not only be treated with your addiction but dual diagnosis treatment will also help you realize and face all the things that you do not want to admit to yourself. Therapy will allow you to accept yourself, build self-esteem, deal with the past and move forward in life.
Dual diagnosis treatment is never easy, but you will realize that specialized treatment programs are truly worth your time and effort. Therapy will ensure that your problems with addiction will not worsen as long as you stick to the program. Addiction is a progressive disease. You can stop it from moving forward; however you will start back at the point you stopped. Addiction is the only disease that wants you dead. It will certainly help and assist you in every way possible.
Attitude About Treatment
There are many ways that you can ensure success. You need right attitude to move forward. What you have been doing in the past has not worked. At times you may question your therapist or program. These are addiction specialts. If you have questions or concerns ask the experts.
You need hundred percent commitment and a healthy dose of patience at all levels. You need to have the right frame of mind in order for you to achieve all your emotional milestones which you will setup in your personal recovery plan. Remember times might get tough but you must never lose hope.
Even when you have been addicted to drugs and alcohol for most of your life there can be success. Just work the program and remember there is hope. This is the first rule that you must remember and accept before you start your treatment.
Once you start your treatment you will most likely attend different forms of therapy such as group, one to one, holistic and/or animal therapy. If you do not like a certain type of therapy talk to the therapist. During the first 30 – 45 days you will probably attend each session; however as you get more time under your belt a good rehab will help individualize the therapy for you.
Attendance is important. You would not want to waste your time, energy and money. Some rehabs will ask you to leave if you are just putting in time. You may have cravings or withdrawal symptoms, or panic attacks. You have to keep strong. Your addictive thinking will try to get you to do anything to leave. Do not give in.
Do not worry, this is normal do not get discouraged. If you relapse while in rehab let the program director know. Most people in recovery feel they have let themselves, their family, friends and even the rehab down. Of course, you never want to see a relapse. A good facility will nip it immediately and provide some form of relapse prevention. You should not get kicked out. Usually the only time this would happen is if you are distributing drugs.
Beware The Pink Cloud
During the 3rd or 4th week you will notice that you are making headway. You feel great. You are eating properly. You are getting great therapy. You are exercising and surrounded by your peers. Life is good…or is it. The biggest mistake people make during their therapy is leaving too early. Everything is telling them they can defeat this disease on their own. There is no way you will ever drink again…ever.
Unfortunately, recovering addicts leave around 30 days. They may have signed for 90 days but they leave at 30 days because they feel so confident. There is a success rate of under 1%. Most fail within days or months. They has a false sense of security. They do not have the addiction management tools they need to handle tough situations. Their therapy is still in its infancy stage. They do not have a sponsor and most likely have not done any steps.
Listen to your therapists. The typical time in treatment should be 3 – 6 months and 3 – 6 months in sober living. This may be out of reach for some families. Remember success is measured by time.
BE WARNED – BEWARE THE PINK CLOUD
Family, Friend, Community Support
Once you leave rehab you still require therapy. Try to find a psychologist that can handle dual diagnosis therapy, a psychiatrist to manage your meds, group therapy and regular AA/NA meetings. Try to find a sponsor. You most likely will be assigned a case manager. They will help get everything lined up so when you get back to your community you can jump into therapy with both feet.
If you or someone you know has an addiction and is suffering from depression, anxiety or PTSD call Hawaii Island Recovery at 866-515-5032. Hawaii’s best dual diagnosis treatment facility. | <urn:uuid:683a2cae-24c8-4a2e-a976-112d1eafc19f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hawaiiislandrecovery.com/blog/dual-diagnosis-treatment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968058 | 1,702 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Seeing as Mars is much further away from the sun than Earth is, a solar eclipse would look different than it does here. Curiosity -- NASA's Mars rover -- caught an image of what this phenomenon looks like from the Red Planet.
While somewhat less impressive than what a solar eclipse looks like from Earth, appearing as a tiny black blip on a small white blip, this photo is still fascinating. Mars has two moons that orbit it, so the moon seen in this image is called Phobos.
To get this photo, Curiosity -- ever the clever rover -- covered its camera with a neutral density filter so as to protect its lens, according to the Atlantic. The result is a pinhole-like image similar to what we earthlings do when documenting photos of the eclipse from here. Apparently, this filter downgraded the Martian sunlight to one thousandth of its normal intensity.
While solar eclipses are not something that Curiosity sees everyday, they are much more common than on Earth. Phobos is closer to its planet than we are to our moon and therefore transits the sun more often. According to the Atlantic, Phobos will create another partial solar eclipse that can be seen from the Gale Crater in one year from now.
Previous Mars' rovers also documented eclipses. Below is a video of one of Mars' moons transiting the sun, which was caught by the rover Opportunity in November 2010. | <urn:uuid:72e4da10-09d6-4765-9d53-d7395fc2d68d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57514668-76/curiosity-snaps-photo-of-partial-solar-eclipse-from-mars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963139 | 286 | 3.96875 | 4 |
When your nose is clogged, it makes you all-over miserable. The sinus pressure hurts your head, you sound like a dog panting through your mouth, and all that stuffiness makes it difficult to hear. You don’t need to turn to over-the-counter medicines that dry you out in the short-term but also leave you feeling like a space case. Who needs the unnecessary chemicals? Instead, clear your nose naturally with these three simple remedies.
1. Make it steamy
Steam can help loosen mucus and clear your airways. For minor congestion, just sipping on a cup of tea can help. Hold your nose over the mug and breathe in the fumes. For added relief drink peppermint tea, as peppermint is a known decongestant.
For more severe clogs, take a steamy shower. You’ve never had such a good excuse to get pruny! The hot steam will moisturize your nasal passages, and help you relax—an often difficult task with sleepless nights spent constantly reaching for the tissues.
You could also create your own steam tent. To do this simply set a pot of water to boil. Once it boils, turn off the heat. Then, hold a large towel over your head to keep the steam enclosed, stand over the pot and inhale deeply. The overload of steam should clear up your nose in no time. Just be careful not to scald yourself! Add a few drops of eucalyptus essential oil to the water for even more medicinal benefits. Eucalyptus has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and decongesting properties—all great features for relieving a stuffy nose.
2. Break out the neti pot
While some of you might cringe at the thought of sticking a pot up your nose, neti pots are strangely effective for nasal congestion. Flushing the nasal passages with warm salt water has been practiced in Asia and India for ages. It removes allergens, germs and general debris, while also helping to keep the nasal passages moist. The salt can also help prevent infection.
To use a neti pot, dissolve a quarter teaspoon of sea salt in warm water. Make sure to use distilled water or boil the water first and let it cool. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but once you get used to using a neti pot, you’ll get addicted. Neti pots can do more than temporarily relieve sinus congestion, with regular use they can ease the symptoms of seasonal allergies and leave you feeling open and clear all the time.
3. Fill up on fluids
We know you’ve heard this one before, but that’s because it works. Seriously, drink your water. Hydrating with lots of clear liquids, like water, broth and herbal tea, will help loosen and thin out the mucus. It sounds weird, but you want thin mucus so your sinuses won’t continue to clog. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in a glass of water can also help thin out mucus. Avoid coffee and other caffeinated beverages, which can dehydrate you. Also, skip the dairy, which can exacerbate the problem.
Follow Kirsten on Twitter @kirsten_hudson, Google+ and Pinterest. | <urn:uuid:78c4f3fe-bf7e-43ca-95c2-0d2ee23ad2dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.organicauthority.com/health/3-natural-ways-to-unclog-your-sinuses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930458 | 677 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Very little is known about Johann Gutenberg, including his actual date of birth. Even the portrait seen here is based on guesses about his appearance. Most of what scholars know about Gutenberg comes from a handful of legal and financial documents.
Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg was born into an aristocratic family of skilled metal craftsmen. Knowledge of metals was useful to him as he developed his method of casting printing type. Before beginning his work on the Bible around 1450, he experimented with printing single sheets of paper and even small books.
In 1455, Gutenberg was sued by his wealthy business partner Johann Fust for the return of large sums of money. In all probability, these funds were used in the development of printing and the production of Gutenberg's Bible. Gutenberg lost this suit and presumably had to turn over some of his printing equipment to Fust.
Little is known about Gutenberg's later years, although he was given a pension by the Archbishop of Mainz and probably continued to print and develop new techniques until his death in 1468. Gutenberg's grave is now lost, but his legacy lives on.
In 1997, Gutenberg's invention was chosen as the most important of the second millennium by Time-Life Magazine. Two years later, the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg the most influential person of the second millennium on their "Biographies of the Millennium" countdown. | <urn:uuid:5cbfb4c1-edb3-4780-8862-ce7dad4831e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenbergbible/gutenberg/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983534 | 279 | 3.703125 | 4 |
Note: Denise and I recommend only products that we have tried and tested. These include the popular speed-reading software 7-Speed Reading.* This article was written by a freelance writer commissioned by eReflect software, the maker of 7-Speed Reading.
When you make the decision to increase your reading speed fast, there are several steps that you can take. By using the points outlined below, you can learn how to speed read in just a few weeks and save yourself a lot of time:
- Analyze Your Current Reading Style — This is perhaps the most difficult step when you choose to increase your reading speed fast because you have to stand back and take a good look at your current skill level. A good step is checking your current reading speed. This will give you a great platform to build skills from. Many of the speed reading software programs available will provide a test that you can take to determine this.
- Modify Your Reading Habits — Old habits die hard and this is true of reading habits. Many people linger over certain words or have developed a way of reading that is not necessarily conducive to improving your reading speed. For example, you may read every single word of a paragraph and take a minute to do so. If you skim read it, then you will be able to cut that time in half.
- Practise Your Improved Style — Practice makes perfect. You should take the time to practise the new ways of reading that you develop if you want them to work for you.
- Invest In A Good Software Program —There are very basic speed reading programs that focus on one specific element of speed reading but that method may not work for you; everyone learns differently. Choose the best speed reading software, which offers as many methods of speed reading as possible, such as 7-Speed Reading with its 7 methods, to increase your chances of success.
If you follow these points then you can increase your reading speed fast and benefit at work within just a few weeks. You can also benefit in other areas of your life; it’s worth the investment.
*Denise and I have agreed to receive a commission from some sales of 7-Speed Reading software because we are happy to endorse this speed reading software. | <urn:uuid:eb985f53-1096-440c-93d9-3255e8ccba2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english-language-skills.com/item/258-increase-your-reading-speed-fast.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958302 | 452 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Hearing aids and cochlear implants act as tiny amplifiers so the deaf and hard-of-hearing can make sense of voices and music. Unfortunately, these devices also amplify background sound, so they're less effective in noisy environments.
But help is on the way. Prof. Miriam Furst-Yust of Tel Aviv University's School of Electrical Engineering has developed a new software application named "Clearcall" for cochlear implants and hearing aids which improves speech recognition for the hard-of-hearing by up to 50%.
"Hearing-impaired people have a real problem understanding speech," says Prof. Furst-Yust. "Their devices may be useful in a quiet room, but once the background noise levels ramp up, the devices become less useful. Our algorithm helps filter out irrelevant noise so they can better understand the voices of their friends and family."
Based on a cochlear model that she devised, the new patented technology is now being developed to improve the capabilities of existing cochlear implants and digital hearing aids. Adding Clearcall to current technology is quite straightforward, says Prof. Furst-Yust, and requires only add-on software for existing devices.
"We've developed a mathematical model of the ear that shows how speech recognition works. The math is complicated, but basically we're cleaning auditory information before it goes to the brain. We get rid of some of the information ― the background noise ― so that the hearing-impaired have an easier time 'filling in' missing information that their ears can't give them," explains Prof. Furst-Yust.
The software was originally developed for use in cell phones, but Clearcall introduced distortions that people with healthy hearing found distracting. That's when Prof. Furst-Yust started applying the methodology to hearing aids.
"It takes some getting used to," she notes, "but people who have been wearing hearing aids all their lives have no problem getting the most from Clearcall. And we can train the newly hearing impaired in a quick introductory session."
Clearcall works with the brain's own sound recognition faculties to help the hearing aid wearer filter out background noise. To a person with normal hearing, a Clearcall-filtered voice will sound distorted, the same way it's hard for some people to recognize voices and words over the telephone. And even to the newly hearing impaired, Clearcall will sound different. But with continued use, the software improves the clarity of voices from 30 to 50%. The study is based on people with only 20% of their hearing intact.
Prof. Furst-Yust continues to refine her algorithm for future applications and foresees the invention of an ultimate device for filtering out the things normal hearers don't want to hear, like the boombox next to us on the subway. She believes it will be easier to target music than voices, since our brains are trained to already listen to music differently. | <urn:uuid:7f840e4b-ec28-48df-894f-d9bafbeedf34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencecodex.com/hearing_the_words_beneath_the_noise | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94809 | 605 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Chances of having twins 'dramatically higher' from 20 years ago
Seeing double? You're probably not alone.
Statistically speaking, it's actually more likely than ever that a mother will have twins or triplets, a new study says.
The Daily Mail cites a study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Michigan State University researchers that says that the chances for having twins has nearly doubled over the past two decades.
The study says that one of every 30 babies born in the United States will be born a twin, which is up from studies done in the 1980's. Those reports said that one of every 53 babies was a twin.
Rates of triplets being born have jumped even more, quadrupling since the studies done two decades ago, the Daily Mail reports.
Researchers cite the increased use of fertility treatments and an older generation of mothers having kids as possible reasons for the jump in multiple births.
READ MORE at DailyMail.co.uk.
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You could treat your loved one ... or just send them a link to this gallery. | <urn:uuid:4898c9b0-bc27-4544-8232-51e75d11e96a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wjla.com/articles/2012/04/chances-of-having-twins-dramatically-higher-from-20-years-ago-74555.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956577 | 288 | 2.40625 | 2 |
What a day yesterday proved to be. I did not intend to watch the Inauguration but at 10:35 CT, I realized I was at my computer and all I needed was an internet feed. Within moments, I was watching a historic event. Try as I might, I do not perceive the new President first as a black president. Rather, I view him first as replacing the previous president. We needed the old to move on if we were to face the challenges before us. Most of us acknowledge the need to address our ailing economy, where we may differ is how. Until, we got a new leader, we were not going to have a plan to address the economy that extended months or years into the future. While the Broadvox SIP Trunking business continues to grow during these difficult times, our OEM partners and VARs are finding it harder and harder to move equipment and close new business. Confidence in the economy must be restored before businesses loosen the purse strings. A new president can be the catalyst to changing the outlook for the future. Therefore, that is what I saw first.
Second, I saw the historic event. It was undeniable that President Obama was touching something unseen during my lifetime with the American people. I am certain more people watched this inaugural than any other in history did. Sure, there were up to two million in Washington but many millions more, such as me, watched from home or work. Ask yourself, when was the last time you watched the transfer of power so important in defining our nation? I don't remember. Were people watching for change as I described? Were they watching to see the first black take the oath of office? Only they know.
As we wait to see the full extent of the changes to come, we did get news today that Kevin Martin has resigned as Chairman of the FCC and is expected to be replaced by Julius Genachowski. Genachowski served as the technology adviser during the campaign expressing support for open Internet or "net neutrality" protections and the expansion of broadband access where USF reform may be needed. These items are of interest to all of us in the IP Community. I am going to agree with a blog by Rich Tehrani. Broadband access is an infrastructure element and should be on the table as part of other infrastructure investments to grow the economy.
Perhaps, in four more years, we will have seen a successful Presidency leading to a second inauguration. That inauguration will have nothing to do with the color of his skin or his heritage. That inauguration will be because he proved to be the right man for the time. I look forward to that inauguration.
Welcome Mr. President! | <urn:uuid:7920db5a-ca58-4c96-a7c4-9f2ca993fd3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.tmcnet.com/byrds-eye-view/2009/01/out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980766 | 542 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The government is expected to announce plans to water down some of the measures in the Digital Economy Bill that had been aimed at protecting copyright following pressure from internet companies.
The key concern for the likes of Google and Yahoo focus on clause 17 in the bill, which is designed to combat piracy but could also provide a back door for those planning to monitor the data of innocent users.
According to The Times, a letter penned by all the major internet firms has sparked a review of the legislation. Business secretary Lord Mandelson is expected to announce changes tomorrow.
Instead of focusing on those downloading material, the copyright laws could be tightened to help strengthen intellectual property protection.
Organisations in the publishing industry that stand to lose income through piracy will have to prove that their business would suffer without the planned changes in clause 17.
When the plans to curb piracy were first announced those industry groups that aim to protect intellectual property warned that the measures did not go far enough. They are unlikely to be impressed by any moves to water down the legislation. | <urn:uuid:362b81ef-d381-43da-b097-d0471a310b78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.microscope.co.uk/news/2240151734/Government-expected-to-water-down-anti-piracy-measures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965748 | 207 | 1.75 | 2 |
CHICAGO — Hepatitis A outbreaks in all age groups could be prevented if children were routinely vaccinated against the liver ailment, a study in Northern California suggests.
When 66 percent of eligible children in Butte County received free hepatitis A vaccinations over six years, cases in the county dropped nearly 94 percent. The number of reported cases fell from 57 in 1995 to 4 in 2000, the lowest number in more than 30 years, the study found.
The study was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was published in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver that can cause flu-like symptoms and jaundice. Children are less severely affected than adults and may even have no symptoms. The virus can be spread by human feces or contaminated water or food. The disease usually clears up in about two months.
Federal estimates suggest there were 270,000 cases nationwide in 1997, and Western states are disproportionately affected.
The CDC recommends routine vaccination of children in Western states with high rates of the virus: Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Washington.
Only Oklahoma and Alaska require the vaccine for children 2 and older, said Dr. Philip Rosenthal, president of the Northern California chapter of the American Liver Foundation. Nevada will begin requiring the shots in January, but efforts to make them mandatory in California have so far failed, he said.
The vaccine became available in 1995 for American children ages 2 and up.
During the study, 29,789 children ages 2 through 12 in Butte County received at least one dose; 17,681 received the recommended second dose. No serious side effects were reported. The incidence last year of 1.9 cases per 100,000 population was the lowest of any county in the state. | <urn:uuid:fa8465db-27c8-4df3-bb2a-7a70785af605> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2001-12-19/article/9074?headline=Vaccinating-kids-against-hepatitis-A-can-prevent-outbreaks-a-study-says--The-Associated-Press | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954161 | 380 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Warm winter set to break recordsFARGO — If the forecast holds up, Old Man Winter may not need an extra day in February to leap into the record books this year.
By: Mike Nowatzki, The Dickinson Press
FARGO — If the forecast holds up, Old Man Winter may not need an extra day in February to leap into the record books this year.
Fargo’s current record for most days above freezing during the meteorological winter months of December to February is 44 days, set in 1923-24.
The 44th day occurred on Leap Day, Feb. 29, which is coming up again at the end of this month.
As of Friday, Fargo had logged 41 days above freezing this winter. With highs predicted to be above 32 degrees today and Sunday — and possibly through Wednesday, depending on how much snow falls Monday — there’s a good chance the 88-year-old record will fall, said Daryl Ritchison, WDAY meteorologist.
Fargo also is on pace to break the record for highest average winter temperature. This winter’s average of about 22.04 degrees is .07 degrees higher than the current record of 21.97 degrees set in 1986-87.
“I’d be very surprised if we didn’t finish in the top three,” Ritchison said.
Fargo’s 12 inches of snowfall this season already exceeded the 9.3 inches that fell in 1957, the winter with the least recorded snow. To claim second place, Fargo must get no more than 1 inch of snow the rest of the season.
There’s no significant snow in the forecast, but it’s impossible to predict what March and April will bring, Ritchison said.
“Once you get into spring, the reality is it’s a transitional zone,” he said. “It would take one storm. We all know we can get 10 inches of snow from any event at any time.”
Fargo-Moorhead has been blizzard-free so far this winter, which Ritchison said is “really not that unusual” and not a predictor of spring weather.
“I don’t think the odds this year are necessarily any less than any other year to have (a blizzard) in the next six weeks,” he said.
The mild winter weather isn’t as uncommon as some might believe, Ritchison said, adding people seem to have short memories when it comes to weather.
Of the top 20 winters with the warmest average temperatures, six have occurred since 1997-98, the most recent in 2006-07. And three winters last decade — 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2006-07 — had snowfall totals below 39 inches, the median total since 1885.
“Certainly, in comparison to the last four (winters), it has obviously been a complete change, and I think that’s why people think that this is really unusual,” he said.
The lack of snow this year has given snowplow crews plenty of time to catch up on other work. In Moorhead, they’ve been patching potholes, cleaning equipment and painting walls, among other tasks, Operations Director Chad Martin said.
The city won’t store its snowplows until mid-April, and crews hope to use them before then, he said.
“They’ve been restless for a month,” Martin said.
Nowatzki is a reporter for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, which is owned by Forum Communications Co. | <urn:uuid:e461f55d-8630-4a5f-a0a5-056888e0f3a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/55615/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953012 | 767 | 2.03125 | 2 |
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Inventor: Cluny Macpherson (1879-1966)
During the First World War the German army used poison gas for the first time, against Allied troops at Ypres, Belgium in 1915. A soldier's only protection was to breath through a handkerchief or other small piece of fabric soaked in urine.
Out of necessity, Doctor Cluny Macpherson, from St. John's, Newfoundland, quickly came up with the idea of a gas mask made of fabric and metal. Using a helmet taken from a captured German prisoner, he added a canvas hood with eyepieces and a breathing tube. The helmet was treated with chemicals that would absorb the chlorine used in the gas attacks. He had invented the world's first gas mask. After a few improvements, Cluny Macpherson's helmet became the first gas mask to be used by the British army.
This Canadian's invention was the most important protective device of the First World War, protecting countless soldiers from blindness, disfigurement or injury to their throats and lungs. Gas masks are worn by millions of soldiers around the world today.
Brown, J.J. The Inventors: Great Ideas in Canadian Enterprise. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967.
Dr. Cluny Macpherson fonds. Health Sciences Library, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
(accessed February 11, 2005). | <urn:uuid:305d3439-7d74-47e3-bd5b-a66a72e606aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/cool/002027-2004-e.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931412 | 357 | 3.46875 | 3 |
SELECTED PREDICTORS OF LIFE SATISFACTION AMONG RETIRED NUNS
This study was conducted during 1983, with a random sample of 150 nuns, 75 each from two congregations, 71-85 years of age, who have retired from their primary full-time ministry. The Life Satisfaction Index-Z was the scale used to measure satisfaction. Both listwise and stepwise multiple regressions were used in analyzing the data. The results supported three hypotheses: (1) there is no significant difference in the life satisfaction of retired nuns based upon affiliation with one congregation rather than the other; (2) a high level of life satisfaction is associated with a high rating for self-perceived health; (3) a high level of life satisfaction is associated with a high degree of participation in the decision making process about retirement. Two hypotheses were not supported: (1) a high level of life satisfaction is associated with a satisfactory relationship with nuns who have not yet retired from their full-time ministry; (2) a high level of life satisfaction is associated with participation on a regular basis in a service related activity. ^
JAMES JOSEPH MAGEE,
"SELECTED PREDICTORS OF LIFE SATISFACTION AMONG RETIRED NUNS"
(January 1, 1984).
ETD Collection for Fordham University. | <urn:uuid:8ee3cef7-f9e8-4c77-b918-6ad294e815c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fordham.bepress.com/dissertations/AAI8619273/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938415 | 277 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Maio 22, 2012
There has never officially been a Palestinian state and Jerusalem has never been the capitol of a Muslim or Islamic state. Just a matter of fact, there is no proof that Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem. He was born at Mecca between 569 e 571 of the Common Era. Mohammed died after he had been ill with fever and was buried in Medina. The spot is now a place of pilgrimage for Muslims.
In the light of proven Biblical history and the physical history of the Jewish people, their claim to the land goes back 4,000 years to the time when God told Abraham to leave his homeland of Ur and go “to the land that I will show you.” (Gen 12:1) Israel became a nation 2,000 years before the rise of Islam in the 7th century. Since the days of King David, Jerusalem has been the capitol of the Jewish nation.
During the time of occupation by Jordan, they never tried to make Jerusalem their capitol. Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times in the Hebrew Scriptures and not even once in the Koran.
Underneath the Temple Mount and the Arab quarter of Jerusalem you will find many proofs of the Jewish nation within the excavations, right under the densely populated Arab neighborhood of Silwan. I have personally seen the remnants of Solomon’s Temple and the toppled stone of Herod’s Temple. I’ve been within 30 feet of the Holy of Holies and have walked on Nehemiah’s Wall. Nehemiah was of the Tribe of Judah. He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and enforced the laws of Moses around the second half of the 5th century BC.
I have personally experienced the glorious Eastern Gate (and have seen the inner courtyard of that gate) to the Temple mount in Jerusalem which will be the place where Jesus (Israel’s Messiah) enters the city from the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem has been a bone of contention for years, and will be until His return.
The holy city is the rightful capitol of the Jewish State, without any doubt. Why doesn’t the present U.S. administration acknowledge Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel? They obviously do not want to upset the radical Islamic element.
Em 2011, houve 497,000 Jews in Jerusalem, 281,000 Muslims and 14,000 Cristãos.
Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem. | <urn:uuid:5863bbc1-366e-4a4f-ae4c-4a001af1252d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jimbakkershow.com/pt/digest/jerusalem-capitol-of-israel-part-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961187 | 496 | 2.328125 | 2 |
DYER: Might this be Hugo Chavez’s swan song?
It is imaginable — not certain, but certainly possible — that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s strongman ruler since 1998, will lose the presidential election on Sunday, Oct. 7.
The most recent opinion polls showed his challenger, Henrique Capriles, has closed the gap between them to only five per cent or less of the popular vote.
If Chavez loses, would he actually hand over power peacefully?
He says he would, of course — but he also says it’s an irrelevant question since he will surely win.
“It is written,” he tells his supporters reassuringly. But, it is not.
Chavez really could lose this time as 30 opposition parties, ranging from the centre-left to the far right, have finally chosen a single candidate for the presidency.
Moreover, Capriles is no Mitt Romney.
He knows the votes of the poor matter.
In previous elections, the Venezuelan opposition railed against Chavez’s “socialism” and Marxism and lost.
Capriles, by contrast, promises to retain most of Chavez’s social-welfare policies, which in the past 12 years have poured almost $300 billion into programs to improve literacy, extend high-school education, improve health care, build housing for the homeless and subsidize household purchases from groceries to appliances.
Capriles can make those promises because, like Chavez, he can pay for them out of the country’s huge oil revenues. He has to make them because poorer Venezuelans — and most Venezuelans are poor — won’t vote for a candidate who would end all that.
However, Capriles says he will spend that money more effectively, with less corruption, and a lot of people believe him. It would not be hard to be more efficient than Chavez’s ramshackle administration.
Capriles also has the advantage of being 18 years younger and a lot fitter than the incumbent, who has been fighting cancer for the past 15 months.
Chavez says it is cured now, but physically he is clearly not the man he was. Some of his own supporters suspect he is not long for this world — and, while they still love Chavez himself, they neither love nor trust the people around him, those who might seize power when he was gone.
Moreover, though Chavez’s rule has benefited the poor in many ways, they are still poor.
Venezuela’s economy has grown far more slowly than those of its big neighbours, Brazil and Colombia, even though it has enjoyed the advantages of big oil exports and a tenfold rise in the world oil price.
Indeed, almost all the growth in Venezuela’s economy since Chavez took power is due to higher oil prices; most other parts of the economy have shrunk.
And, while oil revenues have been big enough — $980 billion during Chavez’s presidency — to sustain subsidies at their current level, they will never be enough to transform the entire economy.
You can work it out on the back of an envelope.
There are almost 30-million Venezuelans. Even if all of that $980 billion had been shared among them during Chavez’s 12 years in power, they would only have realized about $3,000 per person, per year.
Since oil revenue also had to pay for everything from defence to road construction, the real number was more like $1,000 per person, per year.
That’s nice to have, but it’s not going to transform lives. In fact, many people now feel that they are sliding backward again, for inflation has been about 1,000 per cent since 1998, 10 times worse than in neighbouring countries.
Meanwhile, the shelves in government-subsidized food shops are bare most of the time.
It’s like the old Soviet Union. When a shipment of some basic commodity finally arrives, it is snapped up instantly and then there is nothing until the next delivery.
Nationalization and central planning didn’t do the old communist states of Europe any good and it has not worked in Venezuela, either.
Something radical must be done to get the real, non-oil economy growing at a decent rate.
So, even Chavez loyalists can be tempted by a politician who promises to keep subsidies, but to scrap antique Marxist dogmatism that cripples the economy.
Capriles is exactly that politician and, therefore, he really might win the election.
What would probably happen is a grudging, but peaceful, hand-over of power to the newly elected President Capriles.
And, for all his bluff and bluster about defending the “Bolivarian revolution,” he may actually respect a democratic vote that goes against him.
Whether his colleagues and cronies would feel the same way is another question, but they could hardly reject an outcome that Chavez himself accepted.
This thing could still end well. | <urn:uuid:caf5d9ce-54ca-4956-b1fa-1efd15647537> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/opinion/172507501.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975972 | 1,044 | 1.921875 | 2 |
ACCOMPANYING the President to China for TIME were Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey and White House Correspondent Jerrold Schecter. Herewith, excerpted from their notebooks, their day-by-day impressions and perceptions of Nixon's China odyssey:
Arrival in Peking. Trip from airport to city. Meeting with Mao. First banquet in the Great Hall of the People:
It is a lonely arrival. One probably will never know if Richard Nixon expected such a soundless, emotionless affair. After the storm of publicity in the U.S., all the smells and sounds of power that have gone with the... | <urn:uuid:68621cb5-b688-429b-a971-2c53f237e0df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910201,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937292 | 131 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Our question this week was:Dr. Jon - What is the difference between a cat litter box and a cat litter pan? My friend say litter pan and I've always said litter box. Is one better than the other?
Hi – thanks for your email. You wrote asking – "What is the difference between a cat litter box and a cat litter pan?
They are the same thing – they are used interchangeable by most people. However, if you wanted to really consider it – a litter pan would be lower and just the pan (no hood). Litter box could be deeper (like a box) and could include a hood or cover of some sort.
Generally – we believe cats prefer a big box without a hood. A clear box that is deep gives them the size and security they need. Some behaviorists recommend a clear plastic storage container bottom as an ideal litter box. Of course, it is just as important to have the right litter and the box be clean.
An article that might be interesting to you is The Top 8 Reasons Why Your Kitty Won't Use the Litter Box
. This is an excellent article and a must read for all cat owners.
Best of luck!
To read most recent questions Click here!Click here to see the full list of Ask Dr. Jon Questions and Answers! | <urn:uuid:04efc33e-d763-4b7a-b53a-3e7cf40866c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.petplace.com/cats/is-a-litter-pan-better-than-a-litter-box/page1.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947955 | 268 | 1.664063 | 2 |