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Automatic adjustments, which are either fuel clause adjustments (FCA) for electric utilities or purchased gas adjustments (PGA) for natural gas utilities, allow utilities to change rates between rate cases as the cost of fuel or natural gas fluctuates. This is different from rate cases where rates are set and do not change until the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission decides a subsequent rate case. Typically, these rates change monthly. The Division of Energy Resources reviews FCA/PGA filings to ensure that the costs are reasonable, involve only those costs that are allowed to be passed through, and that the utility’s system for accounting for these costs is appropriate.
In the eDocket system: under “Docket Type” select “Auto Fuel Adj” to obtain all adjustments to electric rates and natural gas rates.
A rate case is a proceeding where there is a “snap-shot in time” of all aspects involved in a utility providing service to its retail customers to include:
financial elements (including balance sheet, income statement, and specific adjustments for any such item)
cost of capital, sales forecasts, rate design (which involves allocating costs to various customer classes setting rates for each class, and reviewing any changes in services)
conservation cost recovery and other factors
The Division of Energy Resources analyzes each aspect of the utility’s proposals in rate cases to ensure that the utility’s ratepayers pay reasonable rates (as required by law) and that the utility has a reasonable opportunity to recover its costs.
The goal of setting rates through a rate case is that, between rate cases, the utility should have sufficient incentive to minimize costs to increase its profits. Such cost minimization should then be reflected in the subsequent rate case. However, there is always a need to ensure that utilities include only just and reasonable costs in the rate case in the first place.
In the eDocket system: under “Docket Type” select “General Rate Case” to obtain all documents filed in general rate cases. Since numerous documents are filed in general rate cases, it is helpful to use the search results to find the docket number for the rate case(s) of most interest and refine the next search. For example, if a docket number of interest is 11-1234, then select 11 from the drop-down menu for the year and type in 1234 for the number.
Utilities propose many other changes to their rates or service; the Division of Energy Resources analyzes the proposals and makes recommendations to the Commission. The following is a partial list, including the “Docket type” in eDockets:
|Petition||Docket Type in eDockets|
|Competitive or discretionary rates||Misc. Changes|
|Purchased power agreements||Misc. Changes|
|Service quality||Misc. Changes|
|Franchise fees||Misc. Changes|
|Service area changes||Service Area|
|Affiliated-interest filings||Affiliated Interest|
|Commission investigations||PUC Investigation|
|Department investigations||DOC Investigation|
|Sale or acquisition of utility property||Prop. Acquisition| | <urn:uuid:5ad4e800-fbf9-4c4d-ab60-f86f247c7f36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mn.gov/commerce/energy/utilities/Utility-Rate-Cases.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914865 | 660 | 1.78125 | 2 |
U.S. Steps Up Efforts to Prolong Iraq Occupation
June 16, 2008 · By Phyllis Bennis
UFPJ Talking Points #59: U.S. trying to "legalize" permanent occupation of Iraq; Shifting discourse on Israel-Palestine
- The Bush administration is escalating its efforts to make permanent its occupation of Iraq through imposing a "bilateral" agreement on the Iraqi government, but Iraqi opposition is growing. If those efforts fail, the U.S. and Iraq may try to pressure the United Nations to extend its current mandate "legalizing" the U.S. occupation.
- While U.S. policy has not yet changed, public and media discourse on Israel and Palestine is in the throes of a major transformation.
"Legalizing" the U.S. Occupation of Iraq
In recent weeks, the Bush administration has intensified its longstanding effort to make the U.S. occupation of Iraq permanent. Its first choice is to coerce the U.S.-backed Iraqi government to sign an ostensibly "bilateral" agreement - what the White House would like to call a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA). The administration is pushing to meet the July 31 deadline that was earlier agreed to for that agreement. There are new indications of Iraqi resistance to the proposed agreement - both U.S. occupation-backed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the influential Shi'a cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani have recently indicated strong opposition. But the U.S. effort to impose a "security agreement" remains in force.
The reason for the Bush administration's urgency is that the current United Nations mandate expires on December 31st of this year. That mandate, which the U.S. forced on a reluctant but unwilling-to-resist Security Council, transformed the U.S.-British occupation army into a UN-approved "multi-national force." It provided a veneer of international legitimacy over what would otherwise be understood to be a thoroughly illegal occupation. That veneer that will be stripped away on January 1, 2009, making the U.S. occupation officially illegal and leaving the 150,000 or so remaining U.S. occupation troops without immunity from Iraqi law.
The Proposed Agreement
The Bush administration claims that the agreement it's trying to impose is not a treaty, and thus does not require Senate ratification. They are trying to equate this imposed Iraqi agreement with SOFA agreements the U.S. maintains with other countries - the countries that host the Pentagon's 1000+ foreign bases. But those other countries - such as Germany and Japan - are not at war. Those SOFA agreements do not give U.S. troops the right to arrest German or Japanese citizens and hold them indefinitely without charges; they do not give U.S. troops and U.S.-paid mercenaries complete immunity from local laws; they do not give the U.S. the right to supervise German or Japanese police or defense ministries; and crucially, they do not allow U.S. troops to launch military attacks within their countries or against other countries without even pretending to consult with the local government.
The U.S.-proposed agreement with Iraq would allow all of that, and more. Although the text has not been made public, numerous leaks (primarily in the Arab and especially British press) have indicated that the agreement would include:
- U.S. troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely, with numbers to be determined by the U.S., and with troops and military contractors immune from accountability under Iraqi criminal or civil law.
- U.S. troops could launch military attacks in Iraq without consulting the Iraqi government.
- The U.S. would maintain its 58+ military bases in Iraq, including the five huge mega-bases, indefinitely.
- Iraq's defense, interior and national security ministries and all Iraqi arms purchases would be kept under U.S. supervision for ten years.
- The U.S. can determine that any act by other country [read: Iran] constitutes a "threat" to Iraq, and exercise the right to respond to "protect" Iraq.
- The U.S. will maintain control of Iraqi airspace.
(We should note that all the Bush administration plans for maintaining the U.S. economic occupation of Iraq -through control of oil funds, trade practices, privatization and more -remain in place. However, because of the Dec. 31 UN mandate expiration deadline, the current debate has focused only on the so-called "security" agreement, not on the continuing U.S. goal of a second, broader "treaty" between the U.S. and Iraq.)
So far the Iraqi government, facing massive popular and parliamentary opposition, has indicated it will not accept the terms. On June 12 Maliki expressed direct opposition to some aspects of the text. Iraq's parliament, also elected and kept in power by the occupation but which has somewhat closer ties to the population, has opposed the agreement even more strenuously. A wide range of parliamentarians sent a letter to Congress stating their willingness to "ratify agreements that end every form of American intervention in Iraq's internal affairs and restore Iraq's independence and sovereignty over its land." Nadeem al-Jaberi, one of the Iraqi parliamentarians visiting Washington last week told a congressional hearing that "the anarchy and chaos in Iraq is linked to the presence of the occupation, not withdrawal from Iraq."
And in response to the Iraqi resistance, the Bush administration is reportedly now holding $50 billion of Iraqi oil money - deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York because of earlier sanctions arrangements - hostage to the Irag's agreement to sign on.
If Iraq Rejects the Agreement - Plan B
There is a good chance that unless the administration significantly cuts back the content of the agreement (possible but unlikely to be sufficient) it will be rejected by the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister al Maliki. His opposition stems largely from concern over his close-to-zero public credibility, which is likely to disappear altogether if he signs on with Washington. And with provincial elections coming in the fall, Iraqi parties are tripping over each other to win popularity by claiming to oppose the U.S. occupation.
But whatever the motivation, if the Iraqi government ultimately refuses to sign a new agreement, the consequence would be that on January 1, 2009 all U.S. and "coalition" troops and mercenaries would be in Iraq without legal authorization. The occupation would be officially illegal. And crucially for U.S. domestic political purposes, U.S. troops and mercenaries would become vulnerable to Iraqi law.
That would be a good thing - the occupation is illegal, and recognizing that should force the U.S. to bring home all the troops and mercenaries and to close the bases, because there would be no legal basis for them remain occupying Iraq. But that is unlikely.
It is clear that both Bush and both of his potential successors intend to keep tens of thousands (or more) U.S. troops in Iraq for years to come. To prevent the possibility that the occupation would be recognized as illegal, Plan B is already in the works. That would involve the Iraqi government returning to the UN Security Council under U.S. sponsorship to ask for an extension of the existing UN mandate - despite the current mandate's explicit recognition that it would be the last one.
Several countries on the Council - including South Africa, Libya, Indonesia, and possibly Viet Nam, along with permanent members Russia and China - likely have some hesitation about the UN being asked once again to provide legitimacy for the U.S. occupation of Iraq and immunity for U.S. occupation soldiers, including immunity for war crimes. But there is little reason to think any of those countries - with the possible exception of South Africa - would be willing to stand up and resist U.S. pressure to give the occupation UN approval.
European Union countries currently on the Council - Britain, France, Italy, Croatia and Belgium - are likely to follow the British lead of continuing occupation, despite France's history of opposition. (All are now led by right-wing governments eager to maintain close U.S. ties.)
In the U.S. there is significant congressional opposition to the Bush administration's proposed bilateral treaty. Much of it focuses on the right of Congress to be consulted on the agreement, and the claim (unlikely at best) that it would tie the hands of the next president. There is some substantive opposition as well (to officially "permanent" bases, for instance, although not to the Pentagon's cleverly-titled "enduring" bases, and unfortunately not to maintaining large numbers of troops in Iraq). Some important opponents of the proposed U.S.-Iraq agreement - unfortunately including Rep. Bill Delahunt who has played a great role in holding hearings on the danger of such an agreement - have taken the view that the only danger is in a bilateral agreement being taken without U.S. congressional approval. They therefore support extension of the UN mandate as a way of protecting U.S. troops from being held accountable to Iraqi law - deeming that more important than the call to simply bring them all home.
But in fact the danger of the U.S. succeeding once again at imposing its will on the United Nations, as it has so often throughout sixty-three years of UN history, is a greater danger. The UN stood up to U.S. pressure once - in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq - because member governments and the Security Council itself faced massive direct public pressure from social movements around the world, demanding that the UN stand up for its own Charter, its own integrity and independence, and against the U.S. war.
The question now is how to make that happen again.
On Palestine: Changing the Discourse
We are in the midst of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe," which is how Palestinians describe the events if 1947-49. During that time 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homeland in what Israelis celebrate as the "war of independence." They were never, despite the requirements of international law and UN resolutions that Israel agreed to implement, allowed to go home.
The nakba has been commemorated every year since. Certainly the usual triumphalism of the AIPAC conference, with its annual parade of politicians making obeisance to Israeli occupation and apartheid policies did not change. But outside of AIPAC, what was different this year was that the massive media coverage of the overall celebration of the Israeli anniversary and the U.S.-Israeli "special relationship" actually acknowledged and gave voice to the nakba as a legitimate component of the narrative. Certainly the mainstream press did not give equal voice to Palestinian suffering or Palestinian rights, but there was a visible and audible breach in the once-unchallenged triumphalism of Israel's creation. There was widespread recognition that Palestinian voices had to be heard, and the recognition included all three components of the divided Palestinian nation - Palestinian refugees in their far-flung diaspora, those living under occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. AIPAC and Israel are no longer the sole proprietors of the Israel-Palestine narrative in the U.S.
Significantly, the change in discourse was powerful enough to reach UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently endorsed Washington's efforts to protect Israel from being held accountable for its violations of international law. The same day Ban called the Israeli prime minister to congratulate him on the 60th anniversary, he also called Palestinian Authority president to express his support for the Palestinian people after 60 years of the nakba. That announcement was enough to cause Israel's deputy ambassador to the United Nations to demand that the word nakba be banned from the UN, complaining that the very term nakba "is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN."
The shift in discourse is huge, reflecting the massive change in public discussion of this issue that has been underway for the past year or more. Former president Jimmy Carter, both in his book's using "apartheid" to describe Israeli policy towards Palestine, and in his courageous decision to meet with Hamas officials in defiance of U.S.-Israeli efforts to isolate Gaza and the Islamist organization, has played a huge part. So has the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation - a coalition of more than 250 organizations whose recent "Expressions of Nakba" art competition brought in more than 300 entries from around the world. According to the Campaign's advocacy director, Josh Ruebner, "Israel's effort to ban the use of the word nakba at the UN is an act of desperation. They are obviously incredibly threatened by the precariousness of their international standing. So we should view this attempt as a victory for us in our efforts to delegitimize its policies." (I urge people to go to the Campaign website - www.endtheoccupation.org - and take a look at the incredible photos of the nakba commemoration including the "mobile billboard" that circled the Washington DC celebration of Israel's anniversary and the AIPAC conference…)
The discourse has also widened on the still difficult but much less contentious debate over one state or two states. The one-state view (transforming what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories into a single democratic and secular or bi-national state based on one person-one vote) remains a minority position. But there is growing realization that the continuing U.S.-supported expansion of Israeli settlements, land confiscations and the apartheid wall are about to or have already rendered a viable two-state option impossible. The two-state/one-state debate is increasingly part of mainstream Palestinian, international, and even some Israeli discourse. And the mere existence of the debate has helped in the process of transforming the discourse on the entire "question of Palestine."
(Full disclosure: I continue to believe that the role of non-Palestinian supporters of Palestinian rights in the U.S. should focus on changing U.S. policy away from support for Israel's occupation and apartheid policies, and toward a policy supporting an end to occupation and equal rights for all - with full equality both within and between the one, two or six states chosen by Palestinians and Israelis themselves. That is the position of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, which I continue to serve on the steering committee. But my own personal view, throughout 30-plus years of working on this issue, is that a democratic, secular democratic state with equal rights for all has always represented a far more just solution for Palestinians, Israelis and everyone else.) | <urn:uuid:ef913552-a76b-4644-8b36-17b25af38232> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/459 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95958 | 3,060 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The Morris-Jumel Mansion
The Morris-Jumel mansion in Washington Heights is Manhattan’s oldest Colonial residence and served as General Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War. Today, visitors to the mansion can make their way from the subway via a cobblestone street lined with Victorian row houses. In the early 19th Century, the mansion was purchased by Stephen and Eliza Jumel. Stephen died in 1832 and the next year Madame Jumel married Aaron Burr, the former Vice President, in the mansion’s front parlor. Madame Jumel’s 19th Century bedroom features a suite of furniture in the French Empire syle; she claimed that some of the objects in the room belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. Visitors to the mansion can also see the bedrooms of Aaron Burr, Mary Bowen – Madame Jumel’s adopted daughter — and George Washington. The City of New York bought the house in 1903 and has preserved it as a museum ever since. Neighbor and jazz great Duke Ellington called it “a gem at the top of Sugar Hill.” And today the mansion honors the Duke each summer by hosting a popular jazz series free to the public.
Free music at Symphony Space
Audiences have an opportunity to enjoy some free performances of great music next weekend, when Symphony Space concludes its “Sonidos” series with an all-day marathon of latin music and dance. “Wall to Wall” is Symphony Space’s annual gift to the city, presenting 12 hours of music free to the public. This year’s program expores the richness and diversity of latino cultures with a roster of stellar latin artists from around the world. Performances will include new works by Mexican composers as well as classics by the Brasilian Hector Villa-Lobos; Grammy-Award winner Fernando Otero and his Electric Tango Project; and the world premiere of a new work by Arturo O’Farrill for his Afro-Latin jazz orchestra.
Bach, by Dinnerstein
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein brings her special interpretation of Bach’s work to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For years, Glenn Gould’s albums of Bach’s Goldberg Variations were considered definitive. But Dinnerstein made her mark with the success of her recording from 2007, even before she was signed to a record label. For her May 13 concert at the Met, Dinnerstein will perform works by Bach as well as Robert Schumann. This concert will be Dinnerstein’s only solo recital in New York this season.
Take Dance: Salaryman
In dance, Take Dance celebrates its seventh New York season with its first evening-lengh production. Artistic director Takehiro “Take” Ueyama formed his company in 2003 after eight years with acclaimed dancemaker Paul Taylor. Since then Take has been creating works that expl0re the integration of expressive and physical movement. His latest, “Salaryman” draws on take’s personal experiences as a Tokyo native and his observations of Japan’s collectivist business culture. The dancers perform vignettes that depict the salaryman’s pressures and responsibilities, and their emotional impact. A work in progress over the past year, “Salaryman” was conceived prior to the devasting tsunami in Japan, yet the piece is a testiment to Japan’s resilent nature. “Salaryman” will be presented at Dance Theater workshop May 18th through May 21st.
German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse at MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art presents its first major exhibition devoted to German Expressionism in over 50 years. At the same time the museum is making its entire collection of more than 3200 Expressionist works on paper available to the public. “German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse” focuses on the explosive production of graphic art – prints, drawings, posters, illustrated books, and periodicals – that came out of Expressionism, the broad Modernist movement that developed in Germany and Austria during the early decades of the 20th Century. It features more than 250 works by nearly 30 artists, drawn from the Museum of Modern Art’s exceptional holdings of German Expressionist prints. The exhibit represents just a fraction of the museum’s collection, which, thanks to a major Annenberg Foundation grant, are now accessible to the public on the museum’s website. You can see the works in “German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse” at MoMA through July 11, and online indefinitely. | <urn:uuid:efd68486-152d-4db8-b18f-306d8ebdae36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thirteen.org/sundayarts/video/sundayarts-news-5082011/1261/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950544 | 957 | 1.875 | 2 |
The mere act of searching for and downloading an application through the Synaptic Package Manager program will have the added benefit of showing where to get access to hundreds and hundreds of free programs to customize and enhance your system. Instant messaging capability is included in the Pidgin Internet Messenger, which is compatible with virtually all the existing messenger programs, including MSN Messenger, ICQ, etc., and has the added benefit that it can communicate with all of them simultaneously. Internet telephoning is also discussed, including instructions on how to install Skype.
The book discusses the Advanced Package Tool (APT), the engine for downloading applications, updates and for removal of programs. The Synaptic Package Manager is one of a few of the graphical front ends for the APT's command line interface. Update Manager is also covered as it updates the overall operating system and should be run before downloading any applications.
The author covers The Linux Command Terminal with commands that illustrate why it is not to be feared and how it can be useful and even fun. Yes, you can run some Windows applications by using a program called WINE, which stands for “WINE is Not an Emulator,” including Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution of Linux and uses DEB packages to install programs and updates. Some Linux packages exist only as RPMs, packages for Red Hat, Fedora and some other Linux distributions. The author shows you how to utilize a program called Alien to convert RPM packages to DEB packages so that they can work on Ubuntu.
Linux operating systems are packaged with what could be considered thousands of dollars worth of productivity software, from OpenOffice.org to photo editors to financial management software. Several of the popular applications are discussed.
Multi-media has become a big part of what we use computers for, and this topic is covered, as well. Due to licensing issues, MP3 playback and creation software is not included in Linux, but the author shows you to download free software for those purposes, as well as how to connect to your iPod. Digital cameras, DVD playback, connecting peripherals like scanners and printers, are also covered.
Finally, one of the most important topics for any computer user is discussed. Many people have switched from Windows to Linux due to the multitudes of security flaws which appear in Windows computers. While every operating system has its security flaws, there are fewer of them for Linux systems simply due to the fact that there are far fewer users of Linux than Windows. Also, most Windows users are running in a privileged mode with grants rights to malware to cause problems that restricted user accounts don't have rights to perform. Most Linux systems are run in a restricted mode. | <urn:uuid:5aa5b569-5fd1-4e5e-b748-a07de6cb57af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-ubuntu-for-non-geeks1/page-3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952673 | 545 | 2.046875 | 2 |
THE SYRINGOMYELIA CAVALIER COLLECTION SCHEME
This is a plea to all owners with a cavalier that has Syringomyelia confirmed by an MRI scan.
However sad the thought makes us, all our dogs will die at some time.There will be some owners who having seen their pets suffer from syringomyelia, would like to know that their loss could help unravel some of the mysteries of this painful condition.
Professor Nick Jeffery ( Cambridge University ) Dr Clare Rusbridge (Stone Lion Veterinary Centre), & other researchers need owners to donate cell tissue, the basic material needed in the study of cavalier health problems, when their Syringomyelia affected cavaliers die.
The death can be from any cause but, as the primary aim of this scheme is to provide spinal cord tissue for SM research, the cavalier must have a positive diagnosis of SM.
Pancreatic and heart valve tissue will also be collected for use in separate studies.
The Collection Scheme will pay for ten cavaliers bodies to be donated. It will provide a grant to help the owner transport their recently deceased pet to the nearest veterinary centre with a pathology department.
The cost of the post mortem, the fee for individual cremation and return of the ashes, and the cost of sending the donated tissue to the Universities will also be paid by the scheme.
The deceased cavalier should be at least three months old and the cause of death can be for any reason, it does not have to be related to the syringomyelia diagnosis.
All Cavalier owners are different, some will find themselves uncomfortable at the thought of donating their pet’s body for post mortem, preferring to bury them in a favourite spot in the garden. There are other owners, however, who would feel positive about giving their dog for post mortem examination, as long as they know they will have their pet’s ashes back and they can decide on their last resting place.
The death of a much loved cavalier is a very emotional occasion and decisions made on the spur of the moment may later be regretted.
Participation in this scheme is something that should be thought through carefully before the loss of the pet occurs.
Any cavalier owner wanting more details are invited to contact:-
Tel: 01707 262035 | <urn:uuid:131fcfdd-c799-47c6-aba9-5dba5d66d75a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cavaliertalk.com/forums/showthread.php?28230-The-Syringomyelia-Cavalier-Collection-Scheme&p=357919 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953967 | 479 | 1.625 | 2 |
In a major expose in the New York Daily News, Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez uncovered the story of how a new-born baby may have suffered deformities because her father was exposed to depleted uranium while deployed as a soldier in Iraq. We are joined in our studio by Guardsman Gerard Darren Matthew and Sgt. Ray Ramos, one of the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict. [includes rush transcript]
Welcome to Democracy Now!, I’m Amy Goodman in Albuquerque, New Mexico with Juan Gonzalez in New York. For the last five months Juan, you have chronicled the plight of soldiers who have returned from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. Your exclusive groundbreaking investigation in April found that depleted uranium contamination was far more widespread in the military than the Pentagon would admit.
Well in a * major expose* in yesterday’s Daily News, Juan you uncovered the story of how a new-born baby may have suffered deformities because her father was exposed to depleted uranium while deployed as a soldier in Iraq.
Army National Guard Specialist Gerard Darren Matthew tested positive for uranium contamination after he returned from Iraq. He suffered constant migraine headaches, blurred vision, blackouts and a burning sensation whenever he urinated. Shortly after he returned home, his wife became pregnant.
When his daughter, Victoria Claudette, was born on June 29 she was missing three fingers and most of her right hand. The family believes the deformities are a result of the depleted uranium contamination. The Daily News headlined the story "The War’s Littlest Victim." Today, Gerard Darren Matthew joins us in our studio in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now!
We are also joined by Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos who was deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
- Gerard Darren Matthew, Guardsman sent home from Iraq with mysterious illnesses. He tested positive for uranium contamination. Shortly after his return, his wife, Janice, became pregnant. On June 29, she gave birth to a baby girl, Victoria Claudette. The baby was missing three fingers and most of her right hand.
- Ray Ramos, deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
- Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! co-host and columnist with the New York Daily News. His front-page piece in yesterday’s paper is entitled * "The war’s littlest victim."*
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re joined today by Gerard Darren Matthew. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Thank you, sir.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Gerard, can you tell me a little bit — tell us, the listeners and viewers, a little bit about your experiences. When did you get to Iraq, what did do you when you were there, and how did your illnesses develop?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Well, I was deployed January 15 of 2003, and I moved out, shipped out, from Fort Dix, April 10, arrived in country April 11. Stayed over there, came home on emergency leave in August, and that’s when I started receiving the problems. Initially, I was getting swelling and burning sensation, but I thought it was attributed to the heat, being in a high heat environment. As time went on, going back, I started getting worse. I started getting swelling in my face, blurred vision, because I’m a truck driver, and I felt like I saw my face two — two different faces. If you put a cross section down the middle of my face it’s like I’m seeing a right-side facial droop coupled with blurred vision. It was very traumatic because I’ve never had any problems before. I’m a very healthy person. I’m a runner, and to take this and now have a child with a problem, and getting a result, it’s really traumatic.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What did you do? You said you were a truck driver but where do you think the exposures might have come from?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW:Well, in shipment of exploded material, where it be tank parts, Humvee parts, you name it, from Kuwait going north back and forth. That could be attributed to what I have. Plus, I believe it could be from things that happened from the prior war that’s been hidden, or mistargeted shrapnel that we inhaled. I mean I really and truly — I’m still trying to — I’m mind-boggled by the whole thing.
JUAN GONZALEZ:The military gave you in May a 40% disability pension. What did they diagnose as what your problems were?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: They gave me 30% for the migraines. They call it a — and they gave me 10% for angioedema, which is the swelling on my face, which occurs off and on, and for the last — since I’ve gotten this, I think — I don’t know if it’s just my mind playing games, but it seems like every day under my eye it’s swollen for some odd reason.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when did you learn that your baby was going to be born deformed?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: March 12, at Lenox Hill Hospital, a doctor by the name of Michael Divon, is one of the best doctors rated in Newsweek. He found the anomaly and he told me about it, and they gave me options of having an abortion. And I figure with the child now being five months, it’s like killing someone. I been over there in Iraq, I didn’t kill anybody, and now I’m going to try to do something to my own daughter. Eventually, she conceived the baby, and it’s healthy, except for the hand. We don’t know if there’s going to be any cognitive issues in the long run, but I mean, you could — you should see the hand. It’s just — it’s unbelievable.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re also joined by Staff Sergeant Ray Ramos, who was part of the group of soldiers that we tested in the Daily News actually earlier this year. Out of nine soldiers who had returned sick from Iraq, and was stationed at Fort Dix and the army couldn’t tell him what was wrong with him. Ray was one them actually who was at Walter Reed medical center. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
RAY RAMOS: Thank you, Juan.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You’ve just recently have gotten out of the army, finally, I think in July.
RAY RAMOS: Yes, July 31.
JUAN GONZALEZ: What did they finally figure out was wrong with you?
RAY RAMOS: They gave me a 30% disability, temporary disability, for my migraine headaches, and they linked it together with post traumatic stress disorder. The other illnesses they ruled out. They said they were medically acceptable, including the depleted uranium exposure.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Right, and the army conducted several tests after the Daily News in our testing did find D.U. in your — the army claims that their testing did not. In fact, I think they finally said that there were 77 soldiers that they tested as a result of the Daily News articles that came out, and requested testing, and they found no one positive, even though we found four out of nine that were positive for D.U.
RAY RAMOS: Yes, they told me my levels were low. They were too low to even test, pick up the uranium.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, let me ask you this: What was the reaction when you were still in the army at Walter Reed when they found out you had gone out for independent testing? Can you talk a little bit about that?
RAY RAMOS: Yes. I was actually grilled for about a couple of hours. I was asked by Colonel Hack, Lieutenant Colonel Mercer. I was questioned as to why I felt that I was exposed to depleted uranium. I was asked if I was in any burning vehicles or I was around any vehicles that had been struck by uranium rounds. My response to them was that I was not aware of any exploded ordinance around me, although we had patrols that had gone out and had expressed that, you know, they would see things. It wasn’t too receptive when they first started questioning me about it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And when they found out you’d gone to the Daily News?
RAY RAMOS: Yes. They were very curious. They were like, why did I go seek independent help? And my answer to them was, when I asked to — about the depleted uranium in Fort Dix, I was told that I didn’t have anything to worry about, and that there was no known testing for depleted uranium.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask Gerard also. You went to the army in April, and you did submit a urine sample and asked for it to be tested for D.U. What happened to the army’s test?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: It’s so-called unfounded. They don’t know where the specimen is, and I’ve been contacted since the article by Walter Reed and they’re wanting to have me redo the test. They’ll send the bottles at home and for me to send it to West Point, but in lieu of the articles that what has stirred the pot a little bit.
JUAN GONZALEZ: In other words, they lost your sample, or they claim that they don’t have a record that you ever gave it back in April?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, Mr. Gonzalez.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And now that the article came out, now they’re calling you and saying they want to test you now.
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yeah, and I think it’s kind of late. If one thing is already stating that I have it, what is the use of another test? It’s still going to state that I have it.
JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the interesting things obviously is that there has been a lot of, in New York, quite a few of the political leaders, Congressman Eliot Engel, Senator Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have gotten involved and actually Senator Clinton got a new bill passed just this summer requesting systematic testing of all soldiers when they return from Iraq as well as when they leave, and yet we have a situation with you where the army has lost a test that you gave them, a sample that you gave them five months ago. Senator Clinton issued a statement yesterday saying that she’s still troubled by the failure of the army to be able to adequately screen troops when they leave, and when they return from Iraq. So, we’ll be continuing to cover this issue of depleted uranium. The military continues to insist that no soldiers that they have tested who have returned from Iraq have tested positive, and yet in the Daily News now, we have out of 10 soldiers that we’ve tested — and I should add in your test, we actually sent three different samples to a lab in Germany, two of reporters and one of Gerard’s and we didn’t identify any of the three. The two reporters came back completely negative, only Gerard’s came back positive.
AMY GOODMAN: Juan, congratulations on once again stellar work in this investigation. Today — yesterday in the New York Daily News when you did this, they went through the effects of this report. At the request of the news, nine soldiers from the New York Army National Guard serving in Iraq tested for radiation from depleted uranium shells. Four of the ailing G.I.s tested positive. The day after your story appeared, army officials rushed to test all returning members of the company, the 442nd Military Police based in Rockland County. By week’s end, the scandal had reverberated all the way to Albany as Governor Pataki joined the list of politicians calling for the Pentagon to do a better job of testing and treating sick soldiers returning from the war. Your expose sparked a huge demand for testing. By mid-April, 800 G.I.’s had given the army the urine samples and hundreds more were waiting for appointments. Two weeks later, the Pentagon claimed that none of soldiers from the 442nd had tested positive for depleted uranium; but the news experts found significant problems with the testing methods. Finally, I wanted to just ask, Gerard Darren Matthew, what are you demanding now for your daughter?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Just take care of her.
AMY GOODMAN: We’ll go to that af — Just to take care of her; and what has the army said about that?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: The army is now willing to give her a test and my wife a test, all of a sudden, and my Tricare insurance runs out November 2nd, but they’re willing to do whatever it takes in order to help...all of a sudden.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being there, Gerard Darren Matthew, guardsman sent home from Iraq, suffering from mysterious illness; now his daughter born is missing three fingers, most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, deployed in Iraq with the 442nd military police. Thank you very much for being with us. This is Democracy Now!. We’ll be back in a minute. [break]
AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Alburquerque, New Mexico. Juan Gonzalez is in New York as we talk about his most recent expose: depleted uranium exposure of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Juan, this is such an important report. Our guest, Gerard Darren Matthews, who returned from Iraq. His wife got pregnant and born was Victoria Claudette, June 28. The baby is missing three fingers, most of her right hand. Ray Ramos with us, deployed with the 442nd military police. What’s most stunning about the effect of the expose, Juan, is that in all of these cases, these men and their families have not been dealt with until you pushed. Ray Ramos, Juan was asking you this question before the break, but can you describe the scene when after the expose came out in the New York Daily News, you were brought into this room with — at Walter Reed where they grilled you. I mean, how many doctors, military people, were in the room, and were they accusing you of going outside the military to do these tests?
RAY RAMOS: Well, I was in a room with about three military personnel and a civilian. Basically, the questioning was to the effect of why I felt I was exposed. I didn’t have anything to worry about unless I was in a burning vehicle that had just been hit with a uranium round. Who was I, who did I get the testing from, and how much did it cost me to get the testing done? Things to that effect.
JUAN GONZALEZ: As I recall, there was one doctor in the room, one officer, who you had asked months before for testing and had turned you down, and you reminded them of that, that several months back, that was the very doctor that you had said, "Listen, I’d like to be tested," right?
RAY RAMOS: Yes. At that time I got the same answer, that I didn’t have anything to worry about, that unless I was, again, in direct contact with the uranium round, that I wouldn’t be exposed.
JUAN GONZALEZ: See, and I think this is important to understand, because the army in the spin that it is giving this story, Amy, continues to say, "Well, these soldiers were not in direct contact. They were national guardsmen who were doing basically support work for the combat troops." But it’s precisely the fact that they were not in combat and yet many of them are turning up positive that would suggest that there’s a much more widespread problem, especially among the combat troops who were directly involved. Many of these men were sleeping in their — next to burned-out tanks or, in Darren’s case, were transporting these burned-out tanks to bases in Kuwait. What about those soldiers who were even more closely involved in combat? The army’s testing, the problem with the testing, according to the experts that I’ve consulted in nuclear medicine and in radiation, is that the army is continually referring when they do testing of soldiers to the total uranium content that they find in urine, of natural uranium. If that’s not a high level, from their perspective, they don’t even bother to look for depleted uranium. The experts that I have talked to say that all of us ingest uranium to one level or another in the food that we eat or in the water that we drink, but that uranium gets excreted within 24 hours from the body. However, if you breathe in depleted uranium and it gets into your lungs, it does not get excreted as quickly. It can stay in your lungs for years and emit alpha particles, intense radiation, to a very, very localized spot within the lung. That can lead to problems, as well as the toxic effects. Because depleted uranium has not only radiological effects, it also has toxic effects as a heavy metal to the kidney and other organs. So that the military is using the testing procedure just for natural uranium and is not even using the most sensitive equipment that could detect smaller parts of depleted uranium that might be a reflection of — that the uranium has settled somewhere else in the body, especially the lungs.
AMY GOODMAN: Darren, have other people in your unit been tested? Has everyone so far been tested?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: I know of only one soldier who has been tested, and to believe me, he was the one that turned in his urine sample just before mine. That’s why. And they have the results of him, but they don’t have the results of me, which I find very intriguing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And your company was the 719th Transport Company?
GERARD DARREN MATTHEW: Yes, 719 Transport out of Harlem, New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you again very much for being with us. Gerard Darren Matthews, guardsman returned, his daughter born without most of her right hand. Ray Ramos, back from Iraq from the 442nd Military Police. And Juan, thanks for doing the report. | <urn:uuid:e67a5663-f02d-43dc-83d0-f12040d004dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.democracynow.org/2004/9/30/daughter_of_soldier_contaminated_with_depleted | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980751 | 4,058 | 1.554688 | 2 |
When the infamous Alfonso Cano, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was killed recently during an assault by government forces, the longstanding guerilla group faced a pivotal moment: It could have fractured under the lack of leadership, or it could have continued with its violent mission. It chose the latter.
Despite Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s words of warning, “I want to tell the FARC, this is the time for them to demobilize, this is the time for them to lay down their arms.… The alternative, as we’ve said many times before, is either the prison or the grave,” FARC announced shortly after Cano’s death that Timoleon Jimenez would take over the vacant leadership position.
Commonly referred to by his nickname Timochenko, the new FARC leader is wanted in Colombia “for kidnapping, murder, rebellion and terrorism” and in the U.S. for drug trafficking. Colombian officials hold out little hope of reaching a peaceful end of FARC’s narco-insurgency with Timochenko in charge.
A FARC spokesman stated that with Timochenko’s appointment, “the continuity of the Strategic Plan for the taking of power by the people is guaranteed,” suggesting that the violence is far from over. In fact, although Cano’s death was expected to deal a harsh blow to the group, only 23 FARC members have deserted since their leader’s demise, according to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón.
The glimmer of hope that Colombians and their allies around the world might have once seen in Cano’s death has now been for the moment turned aside. Just weeks before Cano’s death, FARC launched an attack on Colombian troops that killed 10 soldiers, making it the second attack within three days to take 10 lives. This escalation of violence has caused “the worst loss suffered by Colombian security forces in more than a year,” according to the Associated Press.
In the recent battle over congressional approval of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, much was heard—especially on the liberal Democratic side and among intellectuals and the media—about violence against trade unionists in Colombia.
But where was the concern about the Colombian state, citizen security, and the need to end a futile and discredited armed revolutionary struggle? Where is the courage of leaders in the Americas to stand up and say it is time to end FARC’s campaigns of terror and destruction?
Jen Gieselman is a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. Click here for more information on interning at Heritage. | <urn:uuid:c197f46f-99d4-4a67-a993-1a76d374a716> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.heritage.org/2011/11/21/new-leader-same-narco-terrorist-farc/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962843 | 556 | 1.90625 | 2 |
Surgeon at Silver Cross Transplants Cartilage Cells to Help
New Lenox, IL (August 21, 2012)— Lincoln-Way Central High School track and field athlete Joseph Strain continued to suffer during pole vault maneuvers due to a prior football injury. “As a result of my football injury, my knee cap would continuously pop,” said the former Class President.
After meeting with Jason Hurbanek, M.D., orthopaedic sports medicine physician with Hinsdale Orthopaedic Associates at Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, Strain learned that the cartilage surrounding his knee cap was wearing away. The injury was exasperated due to a prior incident that apparently never fully healed when Joseph injured his knee cap at football practice in August 2011. At that time, he had an MRI that showed that he tore off chunks of cartilage. Dr. Hurbanek performed a knee arthroscopy where these chunks were removed and sent to a Genzyme lab so that they could grow Strain’s cartilage cells for possible future transplant if needed. At the same time, Strain had a microfracture of his knee cap performed in an attempt to fill the void on his knee cap with scar cartilage. Unfortunately, he missed his entire senior year of football, but rehabilitated successfully.
Then after successfully mending his knee from the August surgery, Strain was able to play his other favorite sport - pole-vaulting - in the spring of 2012. This is when Strain injured his knee cap for the second time. The area where he knocked off the cartilage with the initial injury became symptomatic (as frequently occurs). Since the care team thought ahead and successfully grew and stored his cartilage cells in the lab, Dr. Hurbanek then transplanted the new cells during Strain’s second surgery in June.
Dr. Hurbanek quickly scheduled surgery in the new Silver Cross Hospital to repair Strain’s damaged knee. “It was important to immediately perform the surgery, so the healing process could begin,” said Dr. Hurbanek who is a member of the Silver Cross Hospital Medical Staff.
During this second surgery, Strain underwent an autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) where cartilage cells from a previous surgical harvest were re-implanted in the cartilage damaged area where he was injured. He also underwent a tibial tubercle osteotomy (TTO) where the kneecap bone insertion is cut and shifted to protect and stabilize the ACI procedure. This type of procedure requires significant rehabilitation.
Prior to surgery and after, Strain found relief through Dr. Hurbanek’s bedside manner. “Dr. Hurbanek always kept me informed and updated at every step of my surgeries and continues to do so during my therapy process,” said Strain. “And because he is so friendly, I always felt comfortable asking him questions.”
Strain’s father was also very pleased with the care his son Joseph received. “Dr. Hurbanek was a wonderful resource throughout the entire continuum of care that my son experienced – from his initial examination, to the surgeries through physical therapy appointments,” said Brian Strain. “We were impressed with how cohesive the teams of caregivers were with each other.”
Moving forward, Joseph’s leg will be in a brace and he will be receiving physical therapy for 6 to 8 months. “I am so grateful to have received such awesome care from both Dr. Hurbanek and the caring team of nurses at Silver Cross Hospital,” said Joseph Strain, who will be pursuing a secondary education degree from Augustana College in Rock Island this fall.
Currently, 30 million U.S. children participate in organized sports. Unfortunately, high school student athletes account for 2 million injuries, 500,000 doctor visits and 30,000 hospitalizations every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All sports have a risk of injury; some more than others. In general, the more contact in a sport, the greater the risk of injury.
“Most people who experience sports injuries have either a history of injury or over do it while playing sports,” said Dr. Hurbanek. “Previous injuries often develop into chronic problems if they’re not properly and thoroughly rehabilitated. That is why it was important to repair Joseph’s knee quickly, in order for him to possibly avoid any chronic pain in the future.”
How to reduce risks
• Wear the right gear. Appropriate protective equipment can include helmets, eyewear, mouthpieces, face guards, pads, and protective cups.
• Increase flexibility and strengthen muscles. Stretching and conditioning exercises before and after games can help increase flexibility of muscles and tendons used in play.
• Take breaks. Rest periods are important during practice and games to reduce the risk of overuse injuries. During the year, a 2-month break from a specific sport is recommended to prevent overuse injuries.
• Play safe. There should be strict rules against headfirst sliding (in baseball and softball) and body checking (in ice hockey) to prevent serious head and spine injuries.
Jason Hurbanek, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, is a member of the Silver Cross Hospital Medical Staff. Dr. Hurbanek graduated medical school from Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health. He completed an Orthopaedic residency at Henry Ford Hospital and an Orthopaedic Sports Medicine fellowship at Ohio State University Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. His office is located with Hinsdale Orthopaedic Associates, 1870 Silver Cross Blvd., Suite 200, New Lenox. To schedule an appointment, call (815) 462-3474.
About Silver Cross Hospital
Silver Cross Hospital is a not-for-profit health care provider serving Will County and southwest suburban communities since 1895. Silver Cross has been recognized as a Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals National Award winner for seven consecutive years; one of America’s Most Customer Friendly Hospitals by the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers and was honored with an “A” Hospital Safety ScoreSM by The Leapfrog Group. With over 2,900 employees, physicians and volunteers, Silver Cross operates a 289-bed acute care hospital and 10 satellite facilities providing outpatient services and physician offices and recently opened a state-of-the-art replacement hospital on February 26, 2012 at I-355 and Route 6 in New Lenox. To learn more about Silver Cross Hospital or a referral to a physician on staff, visit www.silvercross.org or call 1-888-660-HEAL (4325). | <urn:uuid:ed203acf-0d09-4f94-bca3-a701f60f3473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.silvercross.org/about-us/news/8-news/883-surgeon-at-silver-cross-transplants-cartilage-cells-to-help | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967204 | 1,399 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Here’s a quick guide on how to setup a secure SSH based encrypted proxy. I use this to browse when I want to get to work restricted sites, and when on a ‘free’ WiFi connection, as nothing is protected on them.
This is all Windows based, but you could quiet happily take the concepts and apply it to your OS of choice.
What we need
- A PC connected to the net that’s either on permanently, or has wake on lan (and a router that supports wake on net), I’ll assume that it’s on permanently for now and leave you to configure your WOL
- An SSH server, for Windows we will be using WinSSHD by Bitvise as it’s free for personal use, and easy to configure and maintain. For *nix systems you could easily use OpenSSH Server.
- An SSH Client, again we will be using a Bitvise product (makes life easy) called Tunnelier. However you could use OpenSSH, or any SSH client you like, for example PuTTY
- A Proxy Server, we will use Squid. (The Windows Build is here). Reason being is it’s easy to get running, supports all OS’s and well documented.
- A way of having a common permanent name (or IP address), I use No-IP and the client, but fixed IP or any other DNS hoster you fancy.
- Some patience
Lets get started….
- Download and unpack Squid to the C Drive (C:\Squid)
- In there we should have a bunch of folders in there now, looking a little like the image below
- Open up the ETC folder, and rename all the files so they all are *.conf (i.e take the .default off the end of the filenames)
- fire up notepad, and edit the squid.conf file and search (CTRL-F) for the phrase http_access , This should say http_access deny all change this to http_access allow all we are not really worried about the security of your proxy server, as it’s only being accessed by already authenticated clients coming in over ssh. But if you want set the security up however you desire, as long as 127.0.0.1 has full access. (read the section above the change for details)
- Launch a command window and goto the sbin folder in C:\Squid and type squid –z this will create the swap folders that squid needs to run, then type squid to start the app in interactive mode (to check)
- Test this is working by setting the local browser to use 127.0.0.1 on port 3128, if you can browse the net then squid is working.
- If all is good, go back to the command window, press CTRL-C to stop squid, and then type squid –i this will install the squid service, bring up the services control panel (type services.msc and press enter), fine the one called Squid, set it to automatic, and then click the start on it.
Right, Squid installed and running, lets get the SSH stuff working.
- Install WinSSHD that you downloaded earlier, and set it up. After the install it will go through the easy setup. It will ask you for your setup. Here’s what I have, but upto you.
- Don’t worry about that too much now though, as we will configure it in the advanced config. Bring up the control Panel for the app if not already open, and click the Edit Advanced Settings link
- Goto the Server/Bindings and add some more ports (see image)
You can obviously tick the Enable UPnP if you like, it may make configuration of your router easier. If not ticked make sure you point the ports to the PC on your Router.
- Everything else should be good to go. Just make sure the startup type is Automatic
- Install the Tunnelier software, and set it up, it’s easy to get the connection going. Use your standard Windows username and password.
- We need to set some port forwards up now. Goto the C2S Fwding
Add some local port captures. What we are doing here is mapping a local on your Laptop/Remote PC and map it to a port on the Server PC. Above in the image I have the following. Local port 8088 maps to the Remote 3128 for the Squid port. That way if I tell IE to use proxy LocalHost on port 8088 I am actually using Server Port 3128, and hence we get connection to the outside world, from wherever the server is located. the other two are For Terminal Services (RDP) means I can connect to the various machines by issuing the command MSTSC /V:localhost:33891 and connecting via the tunnel to the remote machine.
- Pop into the SSH tab, and make sure the tick boxes for NONE are not ticked on Encrytion and Compression. You allways want those to be forced.
- When your happy that it’s working as you want then save the configuration.
Make sure you now have a fixed IP, or a No-IP account setup, and the software installed. Configure the client to connect to that address, and you should be good to go.
The ports I have setup should get you through a lot of things. 443 obviously the ‘Secure Universal hacking port’, however I’ve also got 21 (FTP) and 53 (DNS) in there, DNS specifically because most locked ‘pay for’ WiFi zones allow DNS resolution and traversal.
Any questions just shout in the comments. | <urn:uuid:137b1359-b5f9-4b9a-b3e0-517bde89d713> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nakedcleaner.com/2011/07/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907608 | 1,209 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Whether you're young or old, a man or a woman, in shape or not, I think we can all agree that we'd like our body to work better, especially if it's easy to do!
You want your body to work as good as it can right?
Here's 4 weird ways you trick your body into working better!
#1.) Before You Take a Nap, Drink a Cup of Coffee. According to at least one study, it's better than doing one or the other when you need to wake yourself up.
It works because caffeine doesn't kick in for about 15 minutes, which means you have to drink it RIGHT before you lie down. And you have to make it a SHORT nap.
#2.) Don't Stretch Before a Workout. Researchers at the University of Nevada tested it both ways, and the people who stretched their legs before they did a lower-body workout actually generated less force than they did WITHOUT stretching.
Other studies have found that stretching can decrease muscle strength by 30%, which means your workout won't be as intense.
Plus, stretching can actually do the OPPOSITE of what you expect and make your muscles TIGHTEN. When you stretch, your limbs basically think they're about to be snapped off. So the muscles tighten and make you MORE likely to pull something.
That's why you should warm up by doing something like jumping jacks instead. And you SHOULD still stretch, because it makes you more flexible. But you should do it AFTER you work out, or on a day you're not going to the gym.
#3.) Eavesdrop with Your Right Ear. This has to do with the right and left sides of your brain, and the science behind it is kind of complicated. But basically, our left ear has evolved to be better at hearing TONES, like music.
And our right ear is better at hearing speech. There's not a HUGE difference, but if you're trying to listen through a wall or something, you're better off using your right ear.
#4.) Reset Your Sleep Cycle by Skipping a Few Meals. The MAIN way your body regulates your biological clock is through light. So, if it's midnight and you're staring at a bright TV screen, your brain thinks the sun's still out.
But another factor is FOOD. A Harvard Medical School study found that if you fast for 12 to 16 hours, your brain automatically thinks it's morning the next time you eat.
For example, if you need to start waking up earlier . . . at say, six in the morning . . . you should stop eating between 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. the day before. Then have a good breakfast as soon as you get up. | <urn:uuid:9f242f5e-9f61-46d0-8e29-61fa2245cafb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.1037kissfm.com/4-Weird-Tricks-To-Make-Your-Body-Work-Better-/11341574?pid=254890&archive=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965051 | 569 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Messerschmitt Me262 Screenshots
The world's first jet combat aircraft authentically reproduced by award-winning developers Flight Replicas, for Flight Simulator X and 2004.
Developer: Flight Replicas
Genre: Flight Simulator Expansion
Format: PC CD-ROM
Release: April 2009
SRP: £19.99 / €29.95
Barcode: 5060094401225 (Eng)
Take your seat in the legendary ‘Stormbird’
The Messerschmitt Me262 Schwalbe (German for "Swallow") was the world’s first operational turbojet fighter aircraft. It saw action from late summer of 1944 until the end of World War II as a multi-role fighter/bomber/interceptor warplane for the Luftwaffe.
German pilots nicknamed this incredible aircraft as the Sturmvogel (Germanfor “Stormbird”). Ultimately though the Me262 had little impact on the course of the war, with 500 odd kills claimed against a loss of 100 aircraft and many more grounded due to lack of fuel.
However, its spectacular and revolutionary design has left it as one of the legendary and most recognisable combat aircraft of the era.
Of the 1,430 total aircraft were built, though only about 300 ever saw combat. Some 120 two-seat trainers were built, made by modifying the single seat airframe. The Me262, although a spectacular aircraft for its time, had a negligible impact on the course of the war, shooting down an estimated 150 Allied aircraft for the loss of 100 Me 262s, the majority of aircraft being grounded too often for lack of fuel.
Built specifically for FSX (SP2/Acceleration) from the critically acclaimed developers of the Bf109, this all-new extremely detailed and functional Gmax version of the famed Messerschmitt Me262 features not only the single seat fighters, but the two-seat trainer with fully operational dual cockpits, the dual seat Nightfighter as well with a total of ten different aircraft variants. (Dual seat variants are for FSX only.)
In addition the package includes the Me262A single seat -1A and 2A models in seven variants.
Several of the single seat models have also been included for FS2004.
Revi16B gunsight that folds accurately out of the way and can be turned on or off.
- Highly accurate Virtual Cockpits, each different, individually modelled after photos of those in existing period aircraft, including fully-functional dual cockpits in the two seat aircraft.
- Accurate cockpit instrumentation right down to different types of artificial horizon, VSI, electric compass and oxygen gauges – all modelled in 3D.
- Cabin ventilation lever that opens a visible air scoop
- The Nightfighter has a red gun sight reticule, just like the original!
- Fully clickable and workable cockpit has accurate and working buttons on systems panel plus a working trigger guard and trigger on control stick.
- Bump mapping on FSX models with carefully researched textures, including help from a major museum.
- Accurately animated landing gear sequence (e.g. on approach: main wheels first, then front gear)
- The animated pilot is dressed in authentic flight suit, helmet and mask. He will even put on his mask when you turn on the oxygen system! (FS2004 versions automatically at 8000 feet)
- Exhaust cones that move with throttle setting, just like the original Jumo 004 engines.
- Full flight operations manual, accurate and derived from the original plus included history of all the aircraft depicted.
- Two paint kits, one for the Me262A and one for the Me262B two-seater.
Aircraft model list
Flight Simulator X
Me-262A-1A - 3 liveries
Me-262A-2A – 2 liveries
Me-262A-1A Nightfighter - 1 livery
Me-262A-1A/U3 Reconnaissance - 1 livery
Me-262A-1A/U4 Large Cannon - 1 livery
Me-262B Trainer - 1 livery
Me-262B-1A/U1 Nightfighter - 1 livery
Flight Simulator 2004
Me-262A-1A standard - 2 liveries
Me-262A-1A/U3 Reconnaissance - 1 livery
Me-262A-1A R4M Rocket Launcher equipped - 1 livery
Me-262A-1A Long-range standard (Drop-tanks) - 2 liveries
Me-262A-2A Jabo - 1 livery
The boxed edition includes both the Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X versions of the software (model variations based on simulator version) with printed manual detailing the cockpits and operational procedures for this remarkable aircraft.
MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X or 2004
Windows – Windows XP or Vista
Processor – 2.8 GHz
Memory – 2 Gb RAM
Hard Drive – 200 Mb free
Video Card – 256 Mb
Content on this page comes directly from press releases and fact sheets provided by publishers and developers and was not written by the Game Revolution staff.
More information about Messerschmitt Me262
More On GameRevolution | <urn:uuid:1769e110-8170-4909-9b2c-8b0b4f13f983> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gamerevolution.com/screen/messerschmitt-me262/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908306 | 1,108 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Two stories in the Mail Tribune in recent days underlined the sad state of affairs in mental health care in the Rogue Valley and Oregon at large. The seriously mentally ill have too few options, the result both of chronic underfunding of services and the good intentions of advocates who resist any form of institutionalization.
In Sunday's paper, we read the story of Rachel Rice, a former high school honor student and cheerleader, whose family watched as she descended into the hell of mental illness. And a hell it was, at least in part because there are so few options for people such as her in our society.
Rice, a paranoid schizophrenic, has been dead since 2005. But she made the news this month after her body finally was found, deep in the woods where she apparently had fled more than seven years ago as she tried to escape her demons.
As with many of the very seriously mentally ill, there were no easy answers in dealing with Rice. Her paranoia made her suspicious of people trying to help her, caused her to resist taking medications, and to run away repeatedly. Foster home caregivers eventually said they were no longer willing to care for her. So she was largely left to her own devices, with predictable results.
Wednesday, we read about 17-year-old Mariah Piatkin, who committed suicide Friday in Albany, despite the best efforts of her father, who lives locally, and the Medford-based Hearts With a Mission shelter for teens.
Plagued with bipolar disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity and substance abuse, Mariah, like Rice, routinely ran from those who would help her. A residential treatment program for children was not a good fit for the teen and she ran away. Hearts With a Mission desperately tried to help her, but she ran away. Her father would find her, bring her home, and try to provide a safe environment. She repeatedly ran away.
And then she died.
There are no easy answers and rarely happy endings with cases such as these. But whatever chance the seriously mentally ill have to survive and thrive are particularly long shots in a state and a region that provide so few services. The Oregon State Hospital has 655 beds in Salem and Portland for patients in need of long-term intensive psychiatric treatment. That's 655 beds for a state with a population approaching 4 million people. Take a number and good luck — you'll need it.
Locally, the chance of finding treatment facilities is an even longer shot. Jackson County has a handful of short-term beds for the mentally ill and virtually no facilities for minors with mental issues.
That leaves it up to overwhelmed families and social service agencies to try to keep them alive and functioning. If you're a parent with a mentally ill child, your best hope is to ship your child hundreds of miles away, if a spot can be found.
For those who consider themselves lucky to have escaped the consequences of mental illness in their families, think again. We all pay on a regular basis, as police officers, paramedics and employees from other public and private agencies routinely respond to calls ranging from public disturbances to crimes and suicides. Many of the mentally ill who are not under supervision also end up self-medicating with illegal drugs or alcohol.
We need more money in the system, some of which should be spent on secure facilities where the seriously mentally ill can live — against their will if they prove to be a danger to themselves or others.
The move to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill and others with chronic mental disabilities was a good thing taken too far. Yes, for many, many of those who were once locked up in institutions, their lives were vastly improved by being moved into community-based services. But for some, it means a life on the streets, with nowhere to turn for help. Those who demand the end to institutions are not dealing with the reality that these people and their families deal with on a daily basis.
Money would help cure many ills in this state — the list of needs is long and expensive. But in most other publicly funded areas, those who are critically in need of help are getting it. That's not true for far too many of Oregon's mentally ill people. And that needs to change. | <urn:uuid:3ecb56da-6308-40f7-aeab-e37ed8cdbe78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130131/OPINION/301310304/-1/OPINION02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979148 | 861 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Faithfully illiterate: What we don't know about religion hurts us all
Written by Nancy Haught
June - July 2007
July 1, 2007
What Americans don't know about religion is sometimes funny. For instance, when Jay Leno interviewed people on the street recently, someone told him that God made Eve out of an apple.
Our ignorance also makes for some astonishing statistics. Ten percent of us believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Seventy-five percent of us are certain that the Bible says, "God helps those who help themselves." Even evangelical Christians have lapses: 20 percent say they believe in reincarnation.
It should not be surprising, then, that most Americans don't know the difference between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Most of us haven't read any Hindu Scripture, and we couldn't find the Buddha's Eightfold Path with a map.
In his new book, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn't," Stephen Prothero, head of the religion department at Boston University, points out what Americans don't know and how it can hurt us. His book includes a religious literacy quiz that he says most of his beginning students fail at the start of an introductory course.
Because we are ignorant of the Bible, of our own faith (whatever religion we might practice) and of others' religious traditions, we stand to suffer politically, culturally and personally, Prothero says.
We can't decode political speeches, we can't weigh religious arguments, we can't explain to our own kids why we disagree with others on a religious point, he explains in a telephone interview. We're even confused about our own beginnings.
"Ever since George Washington put his hand on a Bible and swore to uphold a godless Constitution, the United States has been both staunchly secular and resolutely religious," Prothero writes in "Religious Literacy."
The problem, Prothero argues, is an unfounded wariness of teaching religion as a secular subject. Only 8 percent of public high school students report that their school offers a class on the Bible.
"There are two ways to talk about religion," Prothero says. "The way we're most accustomed to is a Sunday or Sabbath school way, as a matter of personal faith. But religions are institutions, with histories and books that outsiders can read and ethical codes that outsiders can learn. There is as much knowledge to be gained about religion as there is about music, art and history."
Like it or not, religion has shaped and still is shaping American history, culture, politics and foreign policy, Prothero says.
"If you want to understand the upcoming presidential campaign, you have to know something about religion," he says. "Mitt Romney is talking about his Mormonism. John Edwards is talking about Jesus. Hillary Clinton is talking about the good Samaritan in the context of immigration reform."
Americans who are ignorant about religion are vulnerable to "being bullied," Prothero says, by politicians and by those in the news media who "give too much coverage to the crazy arguments."
"Between the crazy secular left and the crazy religious right, there is a really huge middle," he says. "That middle tends to be silent because we don't know enough" to talk intelligently about religion.
The diversity of religious expression in the United States is challenging, he says, but it is no excuse for nursing our ignorance.
"Our public debate about religion-inflected matters is dominated by people on the far left and the far right, who either think religion should be run out of politics or rammed down our throats," he says. "This leads to a kind of public discussion that is more heat than light."
What's a country to do? Prothero calls for public school classes that teach about religion and sacred texts by trained teachers who know their Constitutional responsibilities. In the meantime, he's compiled a dictionary of religious words, people, stories and symbols that fills 78 pages of his book.
If nothing else, he says, spend an afternoon reading two books of the Bible, Genesis and Matthew.
"If you read those two books, you get about 80 percent of the characters, phrases and stories that are used in American politics," he says. "It's a start."
And then, unlike a chunk of the American public, you'll know that Abraham Lincoln didn't deliver the Sermon on the Mount and that Sodom and Gomorrah were never married.
Nancy Haught writes for The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.
WHAT EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO KNOW
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco (March 13, 2007)
A Religious Literacy Quiz: How much 'God stuff' do you really know?
Test your knowledge with this quiz from Stephen Prothero's book, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn't."
1. Name the four Gospels. List as many as you can.
2. Name a sacred text of Hinduism.
3. What is the name of a holy book of Islam?
4. Where according to the Bible was Jesus born?
5. President George W. Bush spoke in his first inaugural address of the Jericho road. What Bible story was he invoking?
6. What are the first five book of the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament?
7. What is the Golden Rule?
8. "God helps those who help themselves." Is this in the Bible? If so, where?
9. "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God." Does this appear in the Bible? If so, where?
10. Name the "Ten Commandments." List as many as you can.
11. Name the four noble truths of Buddhism.
12. What are the seven sacraments of Catholicism? List as many as you can.
13. The First Amendment says two things about religion, each in its own "clause." What are these two clauses?
14. What is Ramadan? In what religion is it celebrated?
15. Match the Bible characters with the stories in which they appear. Draw a line from one to the other. (Hint: some may be matched with more than one story, or vice versa).
Adam and Eve Exodus
Paul Binding of Isaac
Moses Olive Branch
Noah Garden of Eden
Jesus Parting of the Red Sea
Abraham Road to Damascus
Serpent Garden of Gethsemane
Answers and scoring:
1. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. (one point each)
2. Many possibilities, including the Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyajas, Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Yoga Sutras, Laws of Manu, and the Kama Sutra. (one point)
3. Quran. (one point)
4. Bethlehem. (one point)
5. The Good Samaritan. (one point)
6. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. (one point each)
7. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Matt. 7:12) or a similar sentiment by Rabbi Hillel or Confucius. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is not the Golden Rule. (one point)
8. No, Benjamin Franklin said it. In fact, it is contradicted in Proverbs: "He who trusts in himself is a fool." (one point)
9. Yes, in Matt: 5:3, the Beatitudes of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. (one point)
10. The Protestant, Catholic and Jewish versions differ in terms or grouping/ordering. Give yourself credit for any 10 of the following 12: I am the Lord your God. Have no other gods before me. Do not make yourself a graven image. Do not take the Lord's name in vain. Remember Sabbath and keep it holy. Honor father and mother. Do not kill/murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet your neighbor's wife. Do not covet your neighbor's goods. (one point each, maximum of 10)
11. Life is suffering. Suffering has an origin. Suffering can be overcome (nirvana). The path to overcoming suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. (one point each)
12. Baptism, Eucharist/Mass/Holy Communion, Reconciliation/Confession/Penance, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders / Ordination, Anointing of the Sick / Last Rites. (one point each)
13. Establishment clause: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, …" Free exercise clause: "… or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." (one point each)
14. Ramadan is a Muslim holiday characterized by a month of fasting. (two points)
15. Adam and Eve = Garden of Eden, Paul = Road to Damascus, Moses = Exodus and Parting of the Red Sea, Noah = Olive Branch, Jesus = Road to Damascus and Garden of Gethsemane, Abraham = Binding of Isaac, Serpent = Garden of Eden. (one point each)
Check yourself: A grade of A is 90-100 points. B is 80-89. C is 70-79. A passing grade is 60 points or more. | <urn:uuid:db8818ce-031a-4f8e-afcc-990a520746ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucc.org/ucnews/june-july-2007/faithfully-illiterate-what.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956251 | 1,974 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Psst… “TWRC” rhymes with “work.” With a little TWRCing, I bet you can figure out what the letters T-W-R-C represent. :)
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Category Archives: Background Knowledge
I think children who do not struggle with decoding the words can find reading boring for many reasons. Here are three of them: They have not found the right book. The right book would be one that interests them for … Continue reading → | <urn:uuid:a3a4c282-6281-487f-b881-f77e80948d11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://twrctank.com/category/background-knowledge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926184 | 128 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The UN Environment Program estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter in every square mile of ocean, and a swirling vortex of trash twice the size of Texas has spawned in the North Pacific.Since they asked whether there is a solution, I felt the need to try and solve the problem. My solution? A bunch of autonomous robots scurrying the North Pacific Gyre, scooping up and burning the plastic. I call them Whoombas as they would be a cross between a Roomba and a whale.
Are there really 'continents', or massive floating garbage patches residing in the Pacific? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. However, before you start imagining a plastic version of Maui, keep in mind that these plastic patches certainly aren't solid surfaced islands that you could build a house on! Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic "soup" where countless bits of discarded plastic float intertwined just beneath the surface. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. The enormous Texas-sized plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons.
Sadly, marine researcher Charles Moore at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach says there’s no practical fix for the problem. He has been studying the massive patch for the past 10 years, and said the debris is to the point where it would be nearly impossible to extract.
"Any attempt to remove that much plastic from the oceans - it boggles the mind," Moore said from Hawaii, where his crew is docked. "There's just too much, and the ocean is just too big."
The trash collects in this remote area, known as the North Pacific Gyre, due to a clockwise trade wind that encircles the Pacific Rim. According to Moore the trash accumulates the same way bubbles clump at the center of hot tub.
The Whoomba would be similar to other aquatic autonomous robots that can travel around without any need for human interaction. The Whoomba would resemble a humpback whale with a mouth in front which would open up to collect the plastic and other trash. When it collected enough trash, the mouth would then close and all the water would be drained. Then it would incinerate the plastic generating steam to drive a turbine. This would generate electricity that would recharge its battery. Using the plastic for energy would allow it to keep moving around and collecting more plastic without needing to refuel. Just like whales feed on plankton, Whoombas would feed on plastic.
I don't know how large the optimal size would be for these Whoombas, but I am thinking something the size of yacht. That would allow its mouth to be big enough to capture the trash, and give you enough space to put in a small incinerator and turbine. Get a couple thousand of these out there and the plastic would be eaten up in no time.
via The Daily Galaxy
Update: Apparently there is a human operated boat called the TrashCat that does something similar to the Whoomba. If you want to see what this problem looks like with your own eyes, check out the Garbage Island videos produced by VBS.tv. More information on this issue can be found in the NY Times Magazine's Sea of Trash article. If you are curious about how the levels of plankton and plastic compare, you can't do much better than this: A comparison of plastic and plankton in the North Pacific central gyre. And in the BBC's excellent Blue Planet series (I was able to pick up a copy of Planet Earth/The Blue Planet on eBay for $39 shipped, one steal of a deal if you ask me), they note that the larger pieces of garbage can be used as shelter for small fish, so maybe some of this trash does sea life more good than harm. | <urn:uuid:1906f218-86ea-4ee7-9a07-af82e8b76c9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-there-solution-to-continent-of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961027 | 800 | 3.125 | 3 |
I'd go with replacing the special characters with the normal characters. Perhaps using a map table would be the easiest way to accomplish this. I've done so for a romanian website, where I've replaced the diacritics with the associated alphabet letters.
I have optimistic thoughts, even though sometimes (if not always) life's a bitch.
This is the code I would use to do it. However, although you can calculate the identifier on-the-fly, if you introduce any more characters into it then consider storing it in the database so you can be certain it can be reversed.
I know I can do string to lowercase and ' ', '-' replace, but what else can I add for weird symbols like é etc... Whats the easiest way to go round this?
The easiest way (that I can think of right now) to deal with accented characters would be to build some sort of translation table which specifies which ASCII character any given accented character should be converted to. For example, array('à' => 'a', 'é' => 'e' ... 'Ź' => 'Z'). There might be a lot of characters to consider but you'd only have to construct the translation table once. | <urn:uuid:8c375e51-4ae9-42e2-aa40-d83e4c63fec2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.talkphp.com/general/2113-best-way-do-se-friendly-urls.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921409 | 253 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Education Week contributor Ian Quillen’s recent interview with Leslie Fetzer, 2012 National Online Teacher of the Year, was full of inspiration and hope for online education (13 June, 2012). In the piece, readers are sure to be excited about some of the points Fetzer makes about virtual education and its potential to work well with everyone, even the at-risk and special needs students she primarily works with as a high school biology teacher. It’s hard to not to agree and share her enthusiasm as she makes the following points:
• Faculty should focus on being good teachers first, and the online modality second.
• Teachers must personalize their instruction, getting to know their students individually and building community collectively.
• Community building easily extends beyond the teacher and students in a single class to include colleagues, parents, and other interested constituents. Education becomes a collaborative process.
• Subjects such as science, English, and humanities, each have their respective challenges, but these may be overcome with various types of delivery options.
• Each day contains some repetitious activities (e.g., grading); however, more time is devoted to meeting the individual needs of students in a variety of creative ways.
• The one-on-one opportunities afforded by online learning as opposed to face-to-face (F2F) classroom learning provide teachers with the opportunity to connect more with all students, especially those who are at-risk or who have special needs. (13 June, 2012)
What perhaps won me over most of all as a reader was Fetzer’s focused comments on “meeting the needs of students with disabilities that have [individualized education programs] and 504s [plans under the 1973 rehabilitation law], both in inclusion classrooms and in mainstream classrooms. Because … this is the population that has been left behind a little bit when it comes to online education” (13 June, 2012).
In spite of these inspirational points, their reasonableness, and my own dedication to online learning, the headline of the interview and the stated theme of the post that “all students can be successful online” are a bit troublesome. I would like to believe there is a “one size fits all” modality that will reach all students whoever they may be, but I know this is not the case.
Simply stated, online learning is not the best or even a possible option for all students.
Lack of Access
In order to be successful online students, regular access to a high speed Internet service and any necessary software and hardware is needed. Additionally, the availability of troubleshooting assistance is needed, as technology doesn’t always cooperate with users. Unfortunately, not all students have access nor can all school districts afford to provide access for everyone, especially in this time of deep budget cuts.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2009:
• 97% of teachers had computers in their classrooms.
• 54% could bring a computer into their classrooms.
• 93% of the classroom computers had Internet access.
• 96% of the computers brought into the classroom had access.
• 5.3 to 1 was the average ratio of students to computers at the K12 levels.
• 40% of teachers reported they or their students used computers in their classrooms often during instructional time, while 29% used them sometimes.
• 23% of teachers reported that they or their students used computers in other parts of the school often, while 40% reported doing so sometimes.
Although there’s a temptation to see the high percentages of equipment existence as a sure sign that much teaching and learning is being done online, these statistics imply that perhaps teachers are providing and utilizing the Internet more than the schools are providing technology and students using it. The fact that less than half of teachers are using the available technology in schools nationwide indicates there is more behind the numbers.
For instance, many of us who have taught at the K12 levels know that a computer in a classroom doesn’t mean it’s up-to-date enough to use for all instructional needs; Internet access may also be at too slow of a speed to meet the needs of elearning. Similarly, a ratio of 5.3 students to one computer does not allow everyone the access needed to be successful online or even to develop the digital fluency needed to achieve their goals. Access to the Internet along with computer hardware and software in the schools impacts student usage outside of school, too.
In fact, research by the non-profit organization Data First corroborates the above concerns about incomplete access and currency of equipment inside and outside of K12 schools. Additional interferences come from the digital divide within which, for example, there is a 50 percentage-point gap between home computer access between middle ($75,000 annual household income) and low ($20,000 or lower) income families. Similarly, 78% of white students had access to a home computer while only 48% of African-American students do. The gap between states is similar, with school access to a computer ranging between 70% and 30%. Only about 30% of teachers surveyed felt they were adequately trained to use and implement available technology in a pedagogically sound way (2012).
Without access for all, everyone can not be a successful online student.
Characteristics of (Un) Successful Online Students
Another large area of concern even if excellent access, hardware, and software exist at school and at home, is the characteristics online students typically need to succeed. The Alexandria City Public School District posted this list of six characteristics of successful online students:
• Self-motivation — Students can direct their own learning environment and methods to fulfill course requirements and achieve individual academic success.
• Independent learner — The online environment enables students to learn at their own pace, relieving the stress of feeling rushed or pressured and providing enjoyment in the learning process.
• Computer literate — Although it is not necessary to have advanced computer skills, students should possess a working knowledge of electronic e-mail, the Internet, as well as basic keyboarding skills.
• Time management — Students must be able to organize and plan their own best “time to learn.” There is no one best time for everyone, but the key to learning is to make the time to learn.
• Effective written communication skills — Students must use electronic e-mail and discussion forums to communicate with their peers as well as the instructors. The ability to write clearly to communicate ideas and assignments is essential. This method provides the learner with rapid feedback as well as a means to inform instructors of any concerns or problems that they may be experiencing.
• Personal commitment — Because there are no bells that begin and end classes, students must have a strong desire to learn and achieve knowledge and skills via online courses. Making a commitment to learn in this manner is a very personal decision and requires a strong commitment to perform in order to achieve academic success. (2012)
Having worked online with students from the 4th grade through the undergraduate levels, I concur that these descriptors are accurate indicators of online student success. However, they are not characteristics that everyone possesses, especially within the K12 age range.
The ACPS also express that students should not good candidates for online learning if the:
• Student does not meet the profile of a successful online student.
• Student requires a remedial program not an entire course.
• Student will not have reliable access to the appropriate computer hardware.
• If taking an online course is not the student’s choice. Students should desire to take course(s) online rather than having significant adults choosing the online course for the students. (2012)
My assumption is that perhaps in the excitement of her role as the 2012 National Online Teacher of the Year, the successes she and her constituents have achieved, and an early interview that provided perhaps one of her first chances to share her worthy platform, may have contributed to a bit of hyperbole in this interview. Although it is a bit of a concern to publicize a superlative stance like “all students can be successful online,” certainly there is nothing to fault when it comes to Ms. Fetzer’s enthusiasm for our profession. In fact, given the work to be done in getting all students access to a high quality education that includes electronic literacy, I am pleased to have teachers like Ms. Fetzer on the front lines of education advancement.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net | <urn:uuid:dc1bbb2c-aeed-4530-ad6f-0670d04eef7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2012/08/06/can-everyone-be-a-successful-online-learner/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965643 | 1,745 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Pheasant, Quail hunting opens Nov. 3
Hot, dry weather reduced the number of pheasant and quail chicks that hatched in much of Utah this year.
Mix in development along the Wasatch Front, and farming practices across Utah that are different from the hey-day of pheasant hunting in the state, and it looks like this season will be fair at best.
But that's not expected to keep almost 16,000 hunters from participating in one of Utah's most popular upland game hunts. And for those who find areas with good habitat, the thrill of ring-necked rooster pheasants exploding out of the brush under their feet is something they'll still experience this fall.
A good place to look for ring-necked pheasants is northern Utah. More than 50,000 acres of private land in northern Utah is now open to sportsmen through the Division of Wildlife Resource's Walk-In Access program.
For more information about the program, please visit www.wildlife.utah.gov/walkinaccess.
The following are pheasant hunting prospects for each of the DWR's five regions.
In Cache and Rich counties pheasant populations appear stable and very similar to last year. In Box Elder county the dry spring resulted in reduced pheasant production, but healthy, isolated pockets of pheasants are still found throughout the county.
DWR personnel at the Farmington Bay, Ogden Bay and Salt Creek waterfowl management areas report pheasant brood sizes and the number of broods are down from 2006. Upland habitat conditions across most of these areas are stressed because of the dry summer. The marsh vegetation is in good condition, however. Pheasant hunters should expect to find success similar to what they found last year, but not as good as the success found in 2004 and 2005.
In the central region pheasant populations are similar to last year in the southern part of the region. Agricultural lands and marsh areas around Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake harbor some birds. Please remember that written permission is required to hunt agricultural lands. Limited public hunting is available on the Utah Lake Wetland Preserve and the Powell Slough Wildlife Management Area.
In the West Desert, pheasant hunting is marginal at best. Agricultural lands in the area do harbor some birds. There is also limited public hunting on the Walt Fitzgerald and Carr Fork wildlife management areas.
In the northeast pheasant populations remain low and spotty throughout the region's agricultural areas.
In the southeastern region of the state populations are significantly lower than past years. Small grain production is almost non-existent in the region, and the farming practices don't favor pheasant populations. Hunting will be poor.
In the sourthern region a fair number of pheasants are available on the DWR's wildlife management areas. Several broods were seen near Clear Lake and Redmond this summer. A few pheasant broods were also seen in the Millard and Sevier county areas.
If one is looking for quail hunting here is the lowdown on that kind of sport.
In the central region most of the quail habitat is along the Wasatch Front where hunting is very limited, if not restricted all together. Caution should be used when hunting in the foothills above the housing areas.Please take note where city limit boundaries are to avoid illegal shooting. The quail populations are stable, and hunters should find as many birds as last year.
In the northeastern region although limited in distribution, California quail populations are in good shape throughout the brushy areas associated with agricultural fields.
In the southeastern region small populations can be found along riparian (streamside) areas in Emery and Carbon counties. Hunting will be slow.
In the southern region several quail broods have been observed in areas in Millard County, but not as many as in past years. Some birds have also been observed on DWR wildlife management areas in Sevier County. Quail populations on the Beaver Dam Slope in southwestern Utah have had poor to no recruitment. Some adults have been observed, but populations appear to be down significantly in the area. This can be attributed to a combination of fires in 2006 and a dry spring.
For more information, call the nearest Division of Wildlife Resources office or the DWR's Salt Lake City office at (801) 538-4700. | <urn:uuid:0b639374-1167-460f-b859-a5dc0c3feba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=12089&poll=233&vote=results&poll=267&vote=results&poll=269&vote=results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960292 | 910 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Table of Contents
SECTION IV - OF THE EFFECT OF PARTITION AND OF ITS RESCISION
Art. 237. Partition is a sort of exchange which the co-perceners make among themselves, one giving up his right in the thing which he abandons, for the right of the other in the thing he takes.
Art. 238. As the co-heirs hold their share of inheritance by the same title and right which is common to all, the condition must be the same, and they must all have the same sureties for what has fallen to their respective lots.
Thus the partition includes this condition, that the portions of the co-heirs remain reciprocally pledged one to the other.
Art. 239. The co-heirs remain respectively warrantees, one towards the other for the trouble and evictions only, which proceed from a cause anterior to the partition.
There is no warranty where the sort of eviction suffered has been excepted by a particular and express clause of the act; the warranty ceases also if the co-heir suffers the eviction by his own fault.
Art. 240. Each of the co-heirs is personally bound in proportion to his hereditary share, to indemnify his co-heir for the loss which the eviction has caused him.
Art. 241. If one of the co-heirs happens to be insolvent, the portion for which he is bound, must be divided equally between the guaranteed and the other solvent co-heirs.
Art. 242. Warranty between co-heirs has two different effects according to the two kinds of property which may exist in the succession.
One composed of things which exist really in nature and in evidence, whether real or personal as a house, a horse, &c. with regard to which warranty goes no further than assuring them to belong to the succession.
The other kind consists of active debts and other rights; and with respect to these they are not only guaranteed as belonging to the succession, but also as being such as they appear to be, that is to say, as being effectually due to the succession and due by debtors solvent at the time of the partition and who shall be so when the debt will become payable, if it is not yet the case.
Art. 243. The warrantees explained in the foregoing articles exist of right, in such a manner that they would be implied, and the heirs bound to them reciprocally, though no such thing should have been expressed in the partition.
But if the heirs had agreed to add or retrench from them, their agreement would be their rule.
Art. 244. There is no warranty where posterior to the partition the thing decays by its nature or perishes by accident.
Art. 245. If since the partition some new debts or new charges, hitherto unknown are discovered, such new charges, whatever they may be, shall be supported by all the heirs, and they shall guaranty one another reciprocally.
Art. 246. Besides the surety or warranty which is the natural result of the partition, there results also from it a tacit mortgage for the execution of all the engagements therein contained, or flowing therefrom; such are,
1st, The return of the monies which some lot might be burthened with.
2d, The obligation of warranty of the lots one towards the other in case of trouble or eviction.
3d, All the personal claims which an heir may be answerable for towards his co-heirs by consequence of his partition.
The co-heir creditor of those things has an implicit mortgage on all the property comprehended in the lots of his co-heirs debtors of the same.
Art. 247. Third possessors having purchased from an heir the property fallen to his lot, acquire prescription against the above incumbrance after a lapse of ten years between present, and of twenty years between absent parties, to be reckoned from the date of the purchase.
Art. 248. The action of warranty between co-heirs becomes prescribed as the ordinary actions, by a lapse of thirty years, to begin from the day on which it is opened, that is to say, from the day of the eviction, and as to the warranty of debts, from the day on which the insolvency has been proved by the discussion of the debtor.
Art. 249. The heir to whose lot an immoveable, or some other thing liable to be mortgaged has fallen, is not bound by the mortgages which his co-heirs may have given on their individual shares of the same, previous to the partition, because the heir, to whose lot such property falls, is considered as having been seized of the whole of it, ever since the opening of the succession.
Art. 250. Partitions made even with majors may be rescinded, as other covenants, for radical vices.
Such as violence, fraud, or error of fact.
They may even be rescinded on account of lesion; and as equality is the base of partitions, it suffices to cause the recission, that such lesion be of more than one fourth part of the true value of the things.
Art. 251. When partitions, where minors, interdicted or absents, are interested, have been made with all the formalities prescribed by law for judicial partitions, they cannot be rescinded for any other cause than those, which give lieu to rescission in favor of majors.
But if those formalities have not been fulfilled, the least lesion shall be sufficient to cause the rescission.
Art. 252. The mere omission of a thing bolonging to the succession, is no ground for rescission but simply for a supplement to the act of partition.
Art. 253. The action of rescission, mentioned in the foregoing articles, takes place in the cases prescribed by law, not only against all act bearing the title of partition, but even against all those which tend to the division of the property between the co-heirs, whether such acts be entitled sales, exchanges, transactions or otherwise.
But after the partition or the act operating the same effect, the action of rescission can no longer be admitted against the transaction made upon the real difficulties which the first act presented, although there should have been no suit commenced on the subject.
Art. 254. The action of rescission is not admitted against a sale of hereditary rights, made without fraud, to one of the heirs and at his risks, by the other co-heirs or any of them.
Art. 255. The defendant against the demand in rescission, may stop its course and prevent a new partition, by offering and giving to the plaintiff the complement of his hereditary portion, either in money or in nature.
Art. 256. The co-heir who has alienated his share or part of it, is no longer admitted to bring the action of rescission for fraud or violence, if the alienation by him made is posterior to the discovery of the fraud or to the cessation of the violence.
Art. 257. If the partition has been regulated by the father among his children, no restitution can take place, even in favor of minors, when by such partition, one or several of the heirs have received more then the others, unless that overplus should exceed the portion which the father had a right to dispose of.
Art. 258. The minor who obtains relief against a partition, relieves the major, for the partition cannot subsist for one and be annulled for another.
Art. 259. The limitation of time for bringing the action of rescission of partition, is the same which the law prescribes for all kinds of rescissions as well for majors as for minors.
|< Previous | Next >||© Manuscript notes copyright 1968 by Louis V. de la Vergne.| | <urn:uuid:c5f28816-350d-432c-8460-abc7dfef9b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.lsu.edu/index.cfm?geaux=digestof1808.home&v=en&u=048&t=020&anchor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969602 | 1,630 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Ruaidhri O Conchubhair assumed the sovereignty of Connaught and the greater part of Leath Cuinn, because the king of Oirghiall, the king of Meath and the king of Breithfne submitted to him, and, moreover, he is called king of Ireland in the seanchus. Still he was only a king with opposition, that is, a king to whose possession of the sovereignty of Ireland a great many of the Irish nobles were opposed. And it was while Ruaidhri reigned in this manner that the wife of Tighearnan Caoch O Ruairc (Dearbhforgaill was her name, and she was daughter to Murchadh Mac Floinn, king of Meath, and not wife of the king of Meath as Cambrensis says) sent messengers in secret to Diarmaid Mac Murchadha asking him to come to meet her and take her with him as his wife from Tighearnan; and she told the messengers to make known to Diarmaid that Tighearnan had gone on a pilgrimage to the cave of Patrick's Purgatory, and that, therefore, he would have an opportunity of quietly carrying her with him to Leinster.
There had been indeed an illicit attachment between them for many years previously. As to Diarmaid, when this message reached him he went quickly to meet the lady, accompanied by a detachment of mounted men, and when they reached where she was, he ordered that she be placed on horseback behind a rider, and upon this the woman wept and screamed in pretence, as if Diarmaid were carrying her off by force; and bringing her with him in this manner, he returned to Leinster. As to Tighearnan, when he returned to Breithfne and heard that it was against her consent his wife was taken from him, he made a complaint of this outrage to Ruaidhri O Conchubhair and to his friends in general.
Upon this Ruaidhri made a muster of the men of Connaught, Breithfne, Oirghialla and Meath, and set out with a large host to waste Leinster to avenge this evil deed Diarmaid had done.
When Diarmaid heard that Ruaidhri was marching to waste Leinster, he assembled and brought together the nobles of Leinster from all sides, and when they came to one place their answer to Diarmaid was that they would not go to defend the evil deed he had done, and thereupon many of them deserted him and put themselves under the protection of Ruaidhri, and made known to him that Diarmaid before that time had committed many acts of injustice and tyranny against them.
As Diarmaid was not strong enough to fight Ruaidhri, the latter set about spoiling the territories of all the Leinstermen who sided with Diarmaid; and he went on to Fearna and levelled Diarmaid's house, and broke his fortress, and banished him out of Ireland altogether. And Diarmaid went to Henry II., king of England, who was then in France; and when he had come into the king's presence, the latter welcomed him and showed him much friendship; and when he made known to the king the cause of his visit, the king wrote friendly letters to be taken by him to England, in which he gave permission to all who so wished to go with him to Ireland to help him to recover his own territory. Diarmaid, on this, bade farewell to the king, and proceeding to England arrived at Bristol, and caused his letters to be read there publicly; and he made large promises to those who would go with him to Ireland to recover his own territory.
It was there he met Richard Fitz Gilbert, son of earl Stranguell; and he made a compact with him, to wit, to give his own daughter, that is, Aoife, daughter of Diarmaid, to wife to him, and with her the inheritance of Leinster after his own death, Richard to be obliged to follow him
p.323to Ireland to recover his territory for him. After they had made a compact on these conditions, Diarmaid went to Wales to a prince who was there called Ralph Griffin, who ruled the country under king Henry, and made his case known to him. At that time the prince kept in prison a powerful nobleman of great achievements called Robert Fitz Stephen, for having disobeyed the king, and there was no relief forthcoming to him unless he chose to go to Ireland to aid Mac Murchadha by the strength of his arm in the recovery of his territory. And when the bishop of St. David's and Maurice Fitz Gerald heard that Mac Murchadha had visited this prince requesting him to free Robert Fitz Stephen from his captivity, they themselves came to request him in like manner to set Robert at liberty, and let him go to Ireland with Mac Murchadha. Now that bishop and Robert Fitz Stephen and Maurice Fitz Gerald were uterine brothers.
The prince then released Robert on condition that he would follow Mac Murchadha to Ireland the next summer. Diarmaid, on the other side, promised Robert Fitz Stephen Loch Garman and the two cantreds next it, as his property for ever, in return for his coming to help him to fight his enemy; and after this compact was made, Diarmaid bade farewell to these people and proceeded with only a small force to Ireland. Having landed in a place where he had many enemies and few friends, he went secretly to Fearna Mor Maodhog, putting himself under the protection of the clergy and community of Fearna; and he stayed with them sad and wretched during the time that elapsed until the coming of summer.
As to Robert Fitz Stephen he came to fulfil his promise to Mac Murchadha, and the number of the host that came with him to Ireland was thirty knights, three score esquires and three hundred foot; and the place where they landed was at Cuan an Bhainbh on the south coast of the County
p.325of Loch Garman in the place which is called Baginbun, and it was then the year of the Lord 1170, and the seventh year of the reign of Ruaidhri O Conchubhair. There was also a distinguished knight with Robert Fitz Stephen at that time, to wit, Herimont Morti, a knight of the party of the earl of Stranguell, whom he sent before him to Ireland to study the country, and when they landed Robert sent word to Diarmaid to make it known to him that he had arrived in Ireland.
When Diarmaid heard this he rejoiced, and went to meet them with five hundred warriors; and when they had come together they proceeded by agreement to attack Loch Garman with a view to getting possession of it; and when they were approaching the town, the burgesses came to the decision of submitting to Diarmaid, and of giving him four of the nobles of the town as hostages for their maintaining peace and paying him rent and tribute and for their being obedient to him as their lord. It was then that Diarmaid bestowed Loch Garman and the two cantreds next it on Robert Fitz Stephen, and, moreover, he bestowed the two cantreds next again to these on Herimont Morti, according to the promise he had made them in Wales; and after he had fulfilled this promise Diarmaid assembled his own people and the foreigners to one place; and the number of the host that assembled there was three thousand men, counting Gaels and foreigners; and they proceeded thence of one accord to plunder and spoil Osruighe; and the king of Osruighe at that time was Donnchadh, son of Domhnall Reamhar, an inveterate enemy of Diarmaid, and as they had come to waste Osruighe, while Donnchadh could not defend himself, he, with the nobles of his country, decided to give Diarmaid hostages for the payment to him of head rent; and thus Diarmaid was prevented from wasting the country.
Now when the nobles of Ireland heard of the arrival of Diarmaid and of these foreigners and of all the successes
p.327they had met with, they went to take counsel with Ruaidhri O Conchubhair, king of Connaught, who then held the sovereignty of Ireland; and what they agreed upon was to give him an auxiliary force from every province of Ireland; and when these forces had assembled in one place Ruaidhri marched with them to Ui Cinnsealaigh in the hope of driving Diarmaid and the foreigners from Ireland; and when Ruaidhri went into Leinster, Diarmaid and the foreigners, and as many of the Leinstermen as followed him, went into the dark fastnesses of the woods near Fearna Mor Maodhog to shield themselves from the great force of Ruaidhri's hosts. But as Ruaidhri saw that they were not going to give him battle he sent envoys to Robert Fitz Stephen asking him to quit the country, saying that he had neither right nor hereditary claim to be in it. Robert said, in reply to the envoys, that he would not desert the lord with whom he had come to Ireland. The envoys returned with this answer to Ruaidhri, and when he heard it, and heard also that Mac Murchadha would not on any account forsake the foreigners, he resolved to make a sudden attack with all his forces regular and contingent on Diarmaid and the foreigners and upset and destroy them.
When the Leinster clergy saw that the country was in danger of being thrown into disorder and destroyed by this conflict, they did their best to bring about peace between Ruaidhri and Diarmaid; and these were the terms in which this peace was concluded, to wit, Diarmaid to have the province of Leinster which he had inherited, and to be obliged to be obedient and faithful to Ruaidhri, as every king of Leinster was bound to be to the kings of Ireland, and in pledge for the fulfilling of the terms of this peace Diarmaid gave one of his sons named Art to Ruaidhri as a hostage. Moreover Ruaidhri promised to give his own sister to Diarmaid to wife; and on these terms they
p.329separated from one another in peace; but Diarmaid promised Ruaidhri not to bring any more of the foreigners to Ireland; and soon after this Maurice Fitz Gerald came to Ireland in the beginning of the summer according to the promise he had given to Mac Murchadha, and also because of the reward which Mac Murchadha had promised to himself and to Robert Fitz Stephen the previous autumn on condition of their coming to Ireland to help him to recover his own territory; and the number of the hosts who came with Maurice on that occasion was ten knights, thirty esquires and one hundred foot, and the place where they landed was at Loch Garman. | <urn:uuid:78601a14-2e60-43d8-8af5-2867bb3dd049> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100054/text092.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990101 | 2,321 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Specialized Microscopy Techniques
Modern microscopists and optical engineers have developed a wide spectrum of useful techniques designed to aid in contrast enhancement, provide better observation, and assist in the collection of photomicrographs and digital images of a wide variety of specimens. This section of the Molecular Expressions Microscopy Primer describes many of these techniques in detail.
Contrast in Optical Microscopy - With the assistance of Dr. Robert Hoffman, we review the problems of contrast enhancement with both amplitude and phase specimens and review techniques that have been developed to assist with specimen contrast.
Darkfield Microscopy - Oblique illumination can be used to increase the visibility of specimens lacking in sufficient contrast that are difficult to observe with standard brightfield microscopy. This section discusses various aspects of the theory and practice of condenser design and other important concepts in both transmitted and reflected light darkfield microscopy.
Differential Interference Contrast - An excellent mechanism for rendering contrast in transparent specimens, differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy is a beam-shearing interference system in which the reference beam is sheared by a minuscule amount, generally somewhat less than the diameter of an Airy disk. The technique produces a monochromatic shadow-cast image that effectively displays the gradient of optical paths for both high and low spatial frequencies present in the specimen. Those regions of the specimen where the optical paths increase along a reference direction appear brighter (or darker), while regions where the path differences decrease appear in reverse contrast. As the gradient of optical path difference grows steeper, image contrast is dramatically increased.
Hoffman Modulation Contrast - Hoffman modulation contrast is an oblique illumination technique that enhances contrast in both stained and unstained specimens by detection of optical phase gradients. This section includes discussions of transmitted and reflected light applications using Hoffman modulation contrast and links to interactive Java tutorials designed to aid in understanding the technique. Also included are virtual microscopes and an image gallery of photomicrographs made using modulation contrast either alone or in combination with other illumination mechanisms.
Oblique or Anaxial Illumination - Achieving conditions necessary for oblique illumination, which has been employed to enhance specimen visibility since the dawn of microscopy, can be accomplished by a variety of techniques with a simple transmitted optical microscope. Perhaps the easiest methods are to offset a partially closed condenser iris diaphragm or the image of the light source. In former years, some microscopes were equipped with a condenser having a decenterable aperture iris diaphragm. The device was engineered to allow the entire iris to move off-center in a horizontal plane so that closing the circular diaphragm opening would result in moving the zeroth order to the periphery of the objective rear focal plane. In advanced models, the entire diaphragm was rotatable around the axis of the microscope so that oblique light could be directed toward the specimen from any azimuth to achieve the best desired effect for a given specimen.
Phase Contrast - A large spectrum of living biological specimens are virtually transparent when observed in the optical microscope under brightfield illumination. To improve visibility and contrast in such specimens, microscopists often reduce the opening size of the substage condenser iris diaphragm, but this maneuver is accompanied by a serious loss of resolution and the introduction of diffraction artifacts. Phase contrast was introduced in the 1930's for testing of telescope mirrors, and was adapted by Zeiss laboratories into a commercial microscope several years later. This technique provides an excellent method of improving contrast in unstained biological specimens without significant loss in resolution, and is widely utilized to examine dynamic events in living cells.
Comparison of Phase Contrast and DIC Microscopy - Phase contrast and differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy are complementary techniques capable of producing high contrast images of transparent biological phases that do not ordinarily affect the amplitude of visible light waves passing though the specimen. The most fundamental distinction between differential interference contrast and phase contrast microscopy is the optical basis upon which images are formed. Phase contrast yields image intensity values as a function of specimen optical path length magnitude, with very dense regions (those having large path lengths) appearing darker than the background. The situation is quite distinct for differential interference contrast, where optical path length gradients (in effect, the rate of change in the direction of wavefront shear) are primarily responsible for introducing contrast into specimen images.
Polarized Light Microscopy - The polarized light microscope is designed to observe and photograph specimens that are visible primarily due to their optically anisotropic character. In order to accomplish this task, the microscope must be equipped with both a polarizer, positioned in the light path somewhere before the specimen, and an analyzer (a second polarizer), placed in the optical pathway between the objective rear aperture and the observation tubes or camera port. Image contrast arises from the interaction of plane-polarized light with a birefringent (or doubly-refracting) specimen to produce two individual wave components that are each polarized in mutually perpendicular planes. The velocities of these components are different and vary with the propagation direction through the specimen. After exiting the specimen, the light components become out of phase, but are recombined with constructive and destructive interference when they pass through the analyzer. Polarized light is a contrast-enhancing technique that improves the quality of the image obtained with birefringent materials when compared to other techniques such as darkfield and brightfield illumination, differential interference contrast, phase contrast, Hoffman modulation contrast, and fluorescence.
Rheinberg Illumination - Rheinberg illumination, a form of optical staining, was initially demonstrated by the British microscopist Julius Rheinberg to the Royal Microscopical Society and the Quekett Club (England) over a hundred years ago. This technique is a striking variation of low to medium power darkfield illumination using colored gelatin or glass filters to provide rich color to both the specimen and background. In Rheinberg illumination, the oblique light rays traversing a brightfield condenser pass through an annular filter of one or more colors, while the central rays of light pass through another spot-shaped filter fitted into the circular opening of the annular-shaped filter. The objective is used at full aperture.
Fundamentals of Stereomicroscopy - Considering the wide range of accessories currently available for stereomicroscope systems, this class of microscopes is extremely useful in a multitude of applications. Stands and illuminating bases for a variety of contrast enhancement techniques are available from all of the manufacturers, and can be adapted to virtually any working situation. There are a wide choice of objectives and eyepieces, enhanced with attachment lenses and coaxial illuminators that are fitted to the microscope as an intermediate tube. Working distances can range from 3-5 centimeters to as much as 20 centimeters in some models, allowing for a considerable amount of working room between the objective and specimen.
Deconvolution in Optical Microscopy - Deconvolution is a computationally intensive image processing technique that is being increasingly utilized for improving the contrast and resolution of digital images captured in the microscope. The foundations are based upon a suite of methods that are designed to remove or reverse the blurring present in microscope images induced by the limited aperture of the objective. Practically any image acquired on a digital fluorescence microscope can be deconvolved, and several new applications are being developed that apply deconvolution techniques to transmitted light images collected under a variety of contrast enhancing strategies. One of the most suitable subjects for improvement by deconvolution are three-dimensional montages constructed from a series of optical sections.
Live-Cell Imaging - An increasing number of investigations are using live-cell imaging techniques to provide critical insight into the fundamental nature of cellular and tissue function, especially due to the rapid advances that are currently being witnessed in fluorescent protein and synthetic fluorophore technology. As such, live-cell imaging has become a requisite analytical tool in most cell biology laboratories, as well as a routine methodology that is practiced in the wide ranging fields of neurobiology, developmental biology, pharmacology, and many of the other related biomedical research disciplines. Among the most significant technical challenges for performing successful live-cell imaging experiments is to maintain the cells in a healthy state and functioning normally on the microscope stage while being illuminated in the presence of synthetic fluorophores and/or fluorescent proteins.
Introduction to Confocal Microscopy - Confocal microscopy offers several advantages over conventional optical microscopy, including controllable depth of field, the elimination of image degrading out-of-focus information, and the ability to collect serial optical sections from thick specimens. The key to the confocal approach is the use of spatial filtering to eliminate out-of-focus light or flare in specimens that are thicker than the plane of focus. There has been a tremendous explosion in the popularity of confocal microscopy in recent years, due in part to the relative ease with which extremely high-quality images can be obtained from specimens prepared for conventional optical microscopy, and in its great number of applications in many areas of current research interest.
Principles and Applications of Interferometry - The foundation for interferometry (often referred to as microinterferometry) dates back to the nineteenth century with the introduction of the first interference microscope, which was based on the principles of the Jamin interferometer. Since that period, a number of commercial interference microscopes, both with transmitted and reflected light capabilities, have been produced by a number of manufacturers. Primarily designed to yield quantitative data from interference images, these microscopes utilize various technologies to determine parameters such as refractive index, birefringence, and thickness for a wide spectrum of materials.
Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscopy - For ultra-high optical resolution, near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) is currently the photonic instrument of choice. Near-field imaging occurs when a sub-micron optical probe is positioned a very short distance from the sample and light is transmitted through a small aperture at the tip of this probe. The near-field is defined as the region above a surface with dimensions less than a single wavelength of the light incident on the surface. Within the near-field region evanescent light is not diffraction limited and nanometer spatial resolution is possible. This phenomenon enables non-diffraction limited imaging and spectroscopy of a sample that is simply not possible with conventional optical imaging techniques.
Fluorescence Microscopy - Used primarily with episcopic illumination, fluorescence microscopy is rapidly becoming a standard tool in the fields of genetics, embryology, and cell biology.
Fluorescence and Differential Interference Contrast Combination Microscopy - Fluorescence microscopy can be combined with contrast enhancing techniques such as differential interference contrast (DIC) illumination to minimize the effects of photobleaching by locating a specific area of interest in a specimen using DIC then, without relocating the specimen, switching the microscope to fluorescence mode.
Fluorescence and Phase Contrast Combination Microscopy - To minimize the effects of photobleaching, fluorescence microscopy can be combined with phase contrast illumination. The idea is to locate the specific area of interest in a specimen using the non-destructive contrast enhancing technique (phase) then, without relocating the specimen, switch the microscope to fluorescence mode.
Olympus FluoView Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy - The new Olympus FluoViewTM FV1000 is the latest in point-scanning, point-detection, confocal laser scanning microscopes designed for today's intensive and demanding biological research investigations. Excellent resolution, bright and crisp optics, and high efficiency of excitation, coupled to an intuitive user interface and affordability are key characteristics of this state-of-the-art optical microscopy system.
Interactive Java Tutorials - A gallery of interactive Java applets designed to aid students in understanding difficult concepts in specialized microscopy techniques.
Mortimer Abramowitz - Olympus America, Inc., Two Corporate Center Drive., Melville, New York, 11747.
Robert Hoffman - Modulation Optics, Inc., 100 Forest Drive, Greenvale, New York 11548.
Tatsuro Otaki - Optical Design Department, Instruments Company, Nikon Corporation, 1-6-3 Nishi-Ohi, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, 140-8601, Japan.
Philip C. Robinson - Department of Ceramic Technology, Staffordshire Polytechnic, College Road, Stroke-on-Trent, ST4 2DE, United Kingdom.
Kenneth R. Spring - Scientific Consultant, Lusby, Maryland, 20657.
Kirill I. Tchourioukanov and Michael W. Davidson - National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, 1800 East Paul Dirac Dr., The Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, 32310.
Questions or comments? Send us an email.
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As a chef, educator and a salumi maker, many people, especially those “not-in-the-know” ask me this question. I typically (tactfully) respond in my Massachusetts accent ~ butchering the pronunciations ~“It’s like that French chahhhcoooterreeeyyy stuff. Due to that Medici chick back in the day, and all the Italians basically teaching the French all they know about food, but somehow, the French get all the accolades and the popular meat term that eminates the salivating lips of foodies and chefs flexing their meaty muscles… Charcuterie!”
Salumi is to Italy what Charcuterie is to France. Both are considered to be forms of what the American public often calls “further processed meats”. For some, the term further processed meats itself brings visions of olive loaf, the multi-pack of meat from Oscar Meyer, and the fist pumping rants of Ann (renegade lunch lady) Cooper and PETA raging against the machine of the carniverous USDA.
Whatever your personal belief, further processed meats, salumi and charcuterie both are an all inclusive catchall terms referring to all meats; dry cured, smoked/cooked, fresh sausage and even pate, terrine and galantines. So sausage, bologna, pepperoni and proscuitto are all salumi. Furthermore, salumi/charcuterie can be considered anything other than roasts or steaks handled in such a fashion being transformed into a myriad of other well known processed meats.
Salumi- derived from the Latin term salsus (salty) or Italian sale (salt) simply a way of preservation. Originally salumi referred to meats that were dry cured such as salami, salame and prosciutto. Salumi came more from a means of necessity and utilization to sustain and have an abundance of food over long periods of time. Salumi, the real deal old world stuff made of nothing more than pure sea salt, meat and spices (no junk added, no nitrites, nitrates or fermentation cultures) was salted and dried to a point, now known in the new world, NOT to be a PHF (potentially hazardous food) due to its low moisture content. What that means is that salumi has enough salt and the lack of moisture which creates an environment that little nasty things like salmonella, listeria and botulism cannot survive.
These salumi items can be stored at room temperature without concern of spoilage which back in the day was a pretty good way to live.
Over the past decade salumi/charcuterie has been on the forefront of culinary trends in many forms from USDA small and large production to restaurant chefs and even home enthusiasts.
All Salumi is Salami but not all Salami is Salumi! Say that five times fast!!! Seriously though, here is the breakdown…..
Salami/Salame- Most well known term that American culture is most comfortable or familiar with when referring to dry sausage specifically. Salami/salame dry sausages are produced from big conglomerates down to today’s artisan producers. Coarse or finely ground meat (most often pork), at Il Mondo Vecchio we make a selection of seasonal SaLambi (salumi made from American Lamb).
Salumi- Originally an all encompassing term referring to preserved meats dry sausages and dry cured whole muscles such as coppa/capicola, prosciuttio, pancetta, lomo and guanciale just to name a few. Technically salumi now by definition in the new world also includes fresh sausages, smoked/cooked specialties such as mortadella and cotechino.
With expert execution and passion of salami, salame and salumi from my own Il Mondo Vecchio-Salumi (Denver), Erik Gutknecht Continental Sausage (Denver), Chef Cosentino’s Boccolone (San Fran), The Batali Family’s Salumi (Seattle) and Olympic Provisions (Portland) to larger companies such as Paul Bertolli’s Fra Mani (San Fran) and Salumeria Biliese (NYC/NJ) and the age old big dogs Volpi (St Louis, MO), Columbus (San Fran) to dare I even mention for fear of reprimand and ridicule from my salumi colleagues and brethren Hormel and Oscar Myer.
At the end of the day no matter how you slice it, from small to large, each fits the category of what salumi is in its purest form…which is nothing more than a fancy way of saying… “further processed meats”.
A great source reference and research on the great American Salumi movement by Kim Long (American Forecaster) and John Lehndorff (freelance writer Boulder Daily Camera, Aurora Sentinel) can be found @ www.AmericanSalumi.com
Other References, meat porn and friends: | <urn:uuid:dc59c42f-45fa-4f97-90b4-d76a92fb58db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thelastthingweate.com/?p=351 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915055 | 1,053 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Students at Northern Arizona University who hope to skip large lecture courses may have more trouble doing so this fall: The university is installing an electronic system that measures student attendance.
The university is using $75,000 in federal stimulus money to install the system, which will detect the ID cards students are carrying as they enter large classrooms, The Arizona Republic reported on Tuesday. (The cards can be read by an electronic sensor.) Faculty members can choose to receive electronic attendance reports.
Karen Pugliesi, vice provost for academic affairs, says the project will help improve attendance, which is key to higher academic performance.
Research, she says, shows a real link between good attendance and student achievement. She says the system will improve student engagement and participation, putting more students on track to graduate.
“We want every one of our students that enrolls in a class to realize their potential and be successful in the completion of that course,” she says. “It’s not in the student’s interest for them to drop out of a course or to fail a course.”
But many students are opposed to the new system, which they say invades their privacy. Rachel Brackett, a sophomore, started the Facebook group “NAU Against Proximity Cards,” which has over 1,300 members.
Ms. Brackett says participation is more important in some classes than others, and students should be responsible for making their own decisions about attending lectures.
“Students should be able to choose to go to class, and if they fail, they have to live with those consequences,” she says. “Part of growing up and becoming more mature is knowing you have to go to class.”
Kathleen Templin, president of the university’s student government and a junior, says she recognizes the importance of attendance, but it is hard for her to attend every class because of her extracurricular commitments.
“I’m sure students will come up with a way to get around that system,” she says. “They’re paying for credit hours to be here and if they choose not to come, it’s their own choice.”
But Ms. Pugliesi doesn’t expect students to try to game the system by, for instance, giving their ID cards to friends who will attend the classes.
“The extent to which that happens is most likely to be very minimal,” she says. “I don’t believe in designing a policy or a system to address the outliers.”
Tracy Mitrano, director of information-technology policy at Cornell University, says she worries that such a system treats college students like elementary- and secondary-school students.
“Higher education loses its meaning if it’s just continuing to emphasize or even rely on a rote approach to learning like attendance,” she says.
But Ms. Pugliesi says universities should be thinking about how technology can help improve student attendance, as well as further creative-learning strategies.
“It’s more than just enforcing compliance with attendance through the proximity readers,” she says. “We intend to make our classes compelling and attractive.” | <urn:uuid:11bc6312-dfcc-4549-97da-c38fd60553b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/skipping-class-sensors-are-watching/23530 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962337 | 683 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Cultural Marxism is a term bandied about quite loosely in the manosphere and the imprecision in it's use causes much confusion. For some, Cultural Marxism is a term to describe the progressive leftward shift of culture, for others it's an analytic approach used to understand the world. In this latter instance, the term that really should be used is Conflict Theory (itself heavily influenced by Marxism). If you want to know why Feminists, Fat Advocates and MRA's sound the same it's because they both explain the world with near identical variants of the same approach.
In essence, Conflict Theory posits the existence of identifiable groups who exist to exploit others for their own benefit. It's akin to the Marxist notion of the bourgeois setting up society in order to exploit the workers. Note, Conflict Theory doesn't admit the existence of any legitimate theory of social structures, seen also such structures as exploitative, hence the person who uses this approach will be profoundly anti-authoritative. Conflict theory can thus count on anyone who wants to push radical equality (Communists, Femminsts, Anarchaists, Libertarians etc) for a sympathetic hearing.
As a theory of social analysis, it's a tailor made cognitive solution for the
Now, the reason why I've bought this subject up, is because the term has been bandied about with respect to the phenomenon of the Feminine Imperative. Critics of the the concept of the Feminine Imperative have labeled it a product of Cultural Marxism, by which I think they mean Conflict Theory. Now, I've actually had a hard time trying to grasp what exactly this Feminine Imperative is, so has SunshineMary, but I'm going to go with Rollo's definition of it;
For one gender to realize their sexual imperative the other must sacrifice their own [Ed] This is the root source of power the feminine imperative uses to establish its own reality as the normative one. From this flows the rules of engagement for dating / mating, operative social conventions used to maintain cognitive dominance, and laws and legalities that bind society to the benefit of the feminine. From this is derived men’s default status as the ‘disposable’ sex, while women are the protected sex. It’s this root that the imperative uses to excuse (not apologize for) the most blatant inconsistencies and atrocities of women.In a nutshell, it's women getting what they want at the expense of men. Being an imperative, this desire for female dominance must originate from women themselves (Class Consciousness), even though women themselves may be unaware of process (False Consciousness). To quote Rollo once again:
One issue many of my critics have is that in exposing these inconsistencies, these operative social conventions and the latent purposes behind them, my writing (really most of the manosphere) seems to take on a conspiratorial tone. I can fully appreciate this, and it might shock a few readers to know that I reject much of the popularized MRA perspective in this respect. I agree with an MRA perspective in a rational analysis to a certain degree, but there is no grand conspiracy, no secret mysterious cabal pushing a negative perception of masculinity – and this is exactly why what I outline on this blog is so pervasive. There doesn’t need to be a unitary group of ‘anti-men’ bent on some melodramatic goal of world domination; because this feminized ideal is already embedded in our socialization. Fem-centrism IS our collective social consciousness.I've got to admit, to me it appears a classic Marxist analysis of the situation and I reckon that the charge, that this understanding of the relationship between the sexes is classically Marxist in nature, stand.
The problem with this approach is that it intrinsically pits women against men and tars all women with the same brush. Now, I do think that the Feminine imperative holds true, especially for the avowed feminists, but for the average woman, I don't think she wakes up in the morning desiring to consciously or unconsciously screw men over.
But..... Rollo and Dalrock's highlighting of the subject did get me thinking and I think something else is happening. I do think that the effects of the feminine imperative are real but what is enabling this is not some underlying power conflict but something more complex and therefore harder to understand and tackle.
Our current Western Culture is a product of many historical influences, influences which taken together absolve women of moral responsibility (and protect them) when they act badly. What women are doing at the moment is not imposing some sort of imperative, rather, the worst elements of female-kind (and there is a hell of a lot of them) are exploiting a sort of cultural loophole to their advantage and, as such, Dalrock is more correct than Rollo when he says that the feminine imperative "just happens".
To keep this brief, I'll just go through a few of these influences in Western thought and how they help the worst elements of womanhood escape moral culpability.
- Classical Greek thought. It taught that women were inferior beings devoid of full moral agency and hence were little more than moral children.
- This synched with traditional Christianity with the husband being the moral head of the household and the woman under his control (and therefore by implication not fully morally responsible.)
- Puritanical Christianity which taught that flesh was bad.
- The chivalric code. It's corruption resulted in the pedestalisation of women. More importantly, if a man compelled a woman to do anything it was seen as the moral fault of a man.
- Romanticism. The theory that feelings were justified moral ends in themselves.
- Atheism. Which stripped away any moral objectivity.
- Protestantism. This is a biggie and I know I'm going to get some heat on this one. When Catholic practice becomes corrupted it becomes superstitious and idolatrous. But when Protestant practice goes bad it becomes preoccupied with being nice and non-judgmental(tolerant) instead of being good. i.e Churchianity.
- Feminism. The theory that women are victims and can do whatever they like to obtain "justice" and that morality is an instrument of oppression.
- Modern psychiatry (especially the legacy of Freud), which taught that repression of feelings was bad and that self-esteem was good.
- Modern Medicine which tends push mechanistic explanations of human behaviour and therefore negates the concept of moral agency.
Any question about reciprocal behaviour can be countered along the lines of:
1)Gentlemen expect nothing in reward(Chivalry).Or let's say a woman who cheats on her husband. She can draw on a whole host of cultural memes to justify herself:
2) We shouldn't have to do anything for you(Feminism).
(1) We were in love (Romanticisim).Suffering the consequence of thug loving:
(2) Don't judge me (Churchiantiy, Atheism).
(3) He seduced me (Churchiantiy, Puritancial Christianity, Chivalry, Feminism).
(4) I was depressed (Modern Psychiatry and Medicine).
(1) Low self esteem (Modern Psychiatry and Medicine).Women who write love letters to serial killers.
(2)) He abused me (Chivalry, Churchianity).
(3) I didn't know what I was getting into. (Denial of moral agency:Traditional Christianity, Classical Greek Thought. Exploitation:Feminism).
(1) Low self Esteem (Modern Psychiatry, Medicine).The list could go on. I really don't think there is such a thing as the feminine imperative, what I do think though, is that Western Women are privileged to enjoy moral indulgence--it's their get out of jail free card, and currently, Western Women are exploiting this phenomenon en mass to avoid moral responsibility. When a woman does something consciously dumb, rude or evil, there are many resources in Western Culture she can draw on. Sure, men can access some of these resources, and criminals frequently do, but women have far deeper pool of cultural "treasure" to get out of jail.
(2) I want to save him. ( Churchianity, Traditional Christianity).
The other interesting things to note is that jumping to defense are ideas which come from two totally different streams of thought. For example, Atheism, with its moral relativism "meshes" nicely with churchiantiy with it's imperative "not to judge". It's like fighting a hydra.
Here is an interesting cartoon from the 40's which illustrates the get out of jail free card. Bugs, a male, has to assume a female persona in order to obtain the help of chivalrous male. As a man he could never get the assistance.
Bugs Bunny - Mississippi Hare
Vezi mai multe video din animatie
Framing this advantage as an sexual imperative, slurs the women who would not dream of using it. The woman who loves her husband would be insulted at the notion that she is planning to screw him over, and I imagine the hostility many women have to this notion of an imperative stems from this. This cultural get-out-of-jail-free card is not omnipresent but is there if a woman decides to use it. There is nothing in Western Culture stopping a woman from assuming moral responsibility for their actions, it's just that in real life women, like all the male bankers involved in the GFC, want to evade responsibility.
Western Culture is largely a male product. The loopholes that have been created in it have been created by men who thought badly and are perpetuated now by men and women who don't want things to change. By chasing an imperative that is not really there, we fail to tackle the problem that is. Conservatives have got to stop treating women like moral saints(and therefore privileged) or moral idiots(and therefore excusable) and recognise them as moral equals. The solution to female bad behaviour lays not in searching for some imaginary imperative, or in trying to assert some male version of it, but in ensuring that we cut through the bullshit and ensure female moral accountability. | <urn:uuid:4e6c85ac-0a51-4bab-b057-ec35f392c612> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socialpathology.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/marx-and-feminine-imperative.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962138 | 2,103 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Lessons of London: What's next in war on terror?
By Rudolph W. Giuliani
On July 7th, I was traveling in London. I was having breakfast at a hotel very near Liverpool Street Station when the first explosion was detonated. Hearing the sirens and seeing London's emergency personnel respond to the bombings brought back vivid memories of the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
People have not forgotten Sept. 11, 2001. Americans can still recall exactly where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day. But it's understandable that some remember it as historical fact, lacking the painful impact and immediacy they originally felt. If we allow a dimming of purpose — to eliminate terrorism — these terrorist attacks in London serve as another chilling reminder that we're still at war.
Something constructive emerges from these tragic, horrible and unexplainable attacks. It is the message that we must remain vigilant in opposing an enemy who intentionally targets innocent civilians.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, the civilized nations of the world have remained mostly united in opposing these despicable, wanton acts of terror. We have had some great successes in that effort. We have arrested perpetrators and plotters, and we have foiled planned attacks. We have reduced the power and scope of those who despise freedom and democracy.
The effort must continue. As we learned Thursday — and in Madrid and Bali — the enemies of freedom have not lost their resolve. We must not lose ours.
Ultimately, the only real defense from terrorist attacks is being able to find out about them in advance. Intelligence gathering has improved but needs to be even stronger, including consistently improving human intelligence and patrol. Police and ordinary citizens must be alert and encouraged to convey information.
Once a terrorist incident does occur, there's no such thing as a perfect response. By definition, a terrorist attack means people are being hurt or killed. But by studying the response to past attacks, we can better prepare to handle those in the future.
London is one of the most secure cities in the world, steeped in years of dealing with terrorism. The city's preparation and resolve was evident on Thursday. I am very impressed by London's reaction to the bombings. Both the emergency personnel and the citizens seemed prepared. The first responders were rapid, well-directed, organized and professional, in accordance with obviously well-tested plans.
As for the citizens, at least a dozen people told me in one way or another, "We knew this was going to happen; it was just a question of when."
That is not only a realistic assessment, it also is a mindset that just might save lives. Political, business and community leaders are sometimes reluctant to talk about terrorism or stage drills to prepare their response because they don't want to frighten or upset people. But that's a mistake. People react to emergencies more effectively when they're not shocked by them.
London was ready
Prime Minister Tony Blair and London Mayor Ken Livingstone have made preparedness a priority, and their efforts clearly paid off during Thursday's response to the attacks.
There's another benefit to preparing for terrorism in advance. Part of the damage the terrorists hope to inflict is the emotional reaction in the wake of the destruction. The reason it's called "terrorism" is that they want fear and its debilitating effects to linger long after the smoke has cleared.
By preparing citizens for the possibility of a terrorist attack, leaders can help minimize the emotional response in the wake of the destruction.
Finally, Thursday's attacks demonstrate that we must remain committed to confronting and eliminating terrorism. There are those who assert that the efforts to eliminate terror are somehow provoking the terrorists. That is wrong. The terrorists have been attacking innocent people long before Sept. 11, 2001, or the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Seeing Prime Minister Blair speak so forcefully, with President Bush, President Jacques Chirac and other world leaders right behind him, was encouraging. Let's remember the unity the world shared after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Free nations can and will disagree. But let us always remember that free people must be steadfast and resilient in defending our way of life.
Rudolph W. Giuliani was the 107th mayor of New York City. | <urn:uuid:05ae6958-4067-4b3d-8994-3f67b4ce1878> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-07-10-london-giuliani_x.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974631 | 863 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Vacation In Space? It’s Possible … For The Rich
“It’s really been a lack of competition,” says Eric Anderson, who heads a company called Space Adventures.
He adds that during the space race with the Soviet Union, the technology involved in spaceflight was practically a state secret.
“You know, you hear stories about how we had the drawings for the moon rockets put away,” Anderson says. “This is completely the reverse of the approach that we should have taken.”
In the last decade, things have opened up: Engineers and entrepreneurs have created a new wave of companies that plan to launch satellites and science experiments — as well as tourists — into space. There’s even a company designing an inflatable space hotel.
Read the full story. | <urn:uuid:d4f23cb8-9ab9-4ef5-8d0f-fca6e129d1c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/07/25/space-adventures-eric-anderson-bemoans-monopolies/ | 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 | 0.962836 | 179 | 2.078125 | 2 |
There’s nothing cooler than riding a motorcycle down a hot desert highway, your shirt off so everyone can see your tattoos, your motorcycle helmet left at home so everyone can gaze at your flowing locks of hair. Did I say cool? Oh, what I meant was stupid.
Not wearing protective gear, to me, is a lot like smoking cigarettes in the 5th grade. You know that it’s bad for you. You know that if you smoke you could get cancer. But you also know that all the cool kids do it. So you pick up a cigarette and start smoking, hoping that you can sneak into that cool group.
Riding without the proper gear is the same sort of thing. No one is going to look at you and say that your the biggest bad ass to ever sit on a motorcycle because you don’t wear a helmet. More than likely, they’ll say that you have a death wish.
If you ride a motorcycle, you don’t need to worry about proving how cool you are or how dangerous you are. Your driving an open air two wheel machine at highway speeds surrounded by vehicles ten times your size. It’s dangerous enough just to ride a bike, you don’t have to make it any easier for the road to take your life.
If, for some reason, you just can’t get passed how dorky your helmet looks, then you probably own the wrong helmet. There is a lot of great protective gear out there. Helmets, motorcycle jackets, gloves, boots, etc… all come in different styles so that you can get the look that you want.
So don’t omit protective gear simply because it isn’t cool. There’s no reason to take a trip to the hospital just to learn that lesson.
Courtesy of AllAboutBikes.com | <urn:uuid:009da4e1-16ce-45ad-a643-0e2c3a3e08d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.compacc.com/2011/04/the-dos-and-don%E2%80%99ts-of-riding-protective-gear/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94427 | 386 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The case was so strong it didn’t go to trial. Jennifer Adams of Boca Raton has pleaded guilty to a federal charge that she worked with others to rip off insurance companies through staged auto accidents. The chiropractor could go to jail for up to 20 years, pay a $250,000 fine and return $1.9 million stolen from the insurance companies.
Cases like hers are among the reasons why the Florida legislature pushed through Personal Injury Protection (PIP) reform in the 2012 session. Under a law that took effect in July, people injured in a car accident can receive the full $10,000 in PIP benefits if they to go to a doctor, but no more than $2,500 if they see a chiropractor or visit a non-medical care outlet.
Why? PIP fraud stems in part from medical clinics and chiropractors that predominantly treat auto accident-related injuries. The 39-year-old Adams is one example. Federal prosecutors say recruiters found people who would fake car collisions. The participants in both vehicles were coached on what to tell police when they arrived at the scene of the staged accident, and organizers would then file false injury claims with insurance companies.
The organizers sent the participants to two chiropractic clinics to which Adams loaned her license and she claimed she owned, prosecutors said. They were Ovy Rehabilitation Medical Center, Inc. in West Palm Beach and Chiropractic Office of South Florida in Palm Springs.
However, the organizers ran the clinics and filed falsified paperwork for PIP claims even though the participants were not injured and received little or no treatment. Prosecutors say Adams knew what was going on and collected a salary from the organizers; they kept most of the $1.9 million collected from 10 insurance companies.
The fraud was uncovered through the hard work of the FBI, IRS and Florida Department of Insurance Fraud. Prosecutors gave a special thanks to the National Insurance Crime Bureau for its assistance. The NICB is a nonprofit organization funded by insurance companies that works with law enforcement agencies to find and prosecute insurance criminals.
Tags: auto insurance, chiropractor, Division of Insurance Fraud, fake accident, fake auto injuries, FBI, fraudulent PIP claim, IRS, Jennifer Adams, NICB, Palm Beach County, PIP claim, PIP fraud, staged accident, United Automobile Insurance Company | <urn:uuid:24b3000b-5fa3-4982-bfdc-ee41ccf9d925> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unitedautocourtsreport.com/blog/?p=2491 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967631 | 481 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Gatlinburg History and Culture
Martha Ogle was one tough lady.
Martha my dear
There's no better place to experience Appalachian culture and history than Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains.
It all begins with a strong-willed lady named Martha.
Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, her children and several other family members arrived in a remote locale of the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee called White Oak Flats in 1807. It was their wish to honor her recently deceased husband, William and settle in the "land of paradise" he had found for them. That paradise is Gatlinburg. The Ogle cabin was built in that year, and you can still visit it today.
The Tennessee Heritage Trail: three pathways
Gatlinburg's historic sites, trails, music, crafts and the arts all paint a picture of a colorful state. To showcase that history, the Tennessee Heritage Trail was developed to highlight the cultural heritage of our people. Numerous Gatlinburg locations have been designated as integral stops.
To make it easy to take in all of the Heritage Trail, it's been divided into three distinct pathways. The Arts & Crafts Trail takes you to folk art, trolls, candles of all descriptions, hand-made pottery, oak and willow baskets, watercolors, sculpture and lithographs. The Gatlinburg History Trail takes you on a journey to discover the people and events that made Tennessee what it is today. The Music Trail will have you tapping your toes to diverse styles of music evolving from three Appalachian culture traditions. East Tennessee's Appalachian region is known for its folk songs and bluegrass, which evolved from the immigrant influences of the 1700's.
Gatlinburg's name: controversy, mystery and one Rad dude
Nestled in the valley of the Little Pigeon River's West Prong and surrounded on three sides by the majestic Great Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg has evolved from a rural hamlet to a thriving gateway community.
Settled in the early 1800s, it was called White Oak Flats for the abundant native white oak trees covering the landscape. It is believed that a middle-aged widow, Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, was the first official settler here. She came with her family to start a new life in what her late husband described as a "Land of Paradise" in East Tennessee. Soon after, the familiar family names McCarter, Reagan, Whaley, and Trentham took up residence along local streams and hollows.
There are many stories as to how Gatlinburg got its name, all involving a controversial figure who settled here in 1854. Radford C. Gatlin opened the town's second general store, and when the town's new post office was established there in 1856, the town's name was changed from White Oak Flats to Gatlinburg. By all accounts, Mr. Gatlin was a flamboyant preacher, establishing his own "Gatlinite" Baptist Church. He was a democrat in a republican community, and for reasons which remain unclear, he was eventually banished from the area. But he had the last laugh: the city still bears his name.
The first 100 years
Gatlinburg changed little in its first hundred years. When the Civil War erupted, some locals joined the Union; others joined the Confederacy. But, in general, the mountain people tried to remain neutral. Only one Civil War skirmish was fought in Gatlinburg, but many raids were made by both sides to gather resources needed to keep up their war efforts. As with much of the South, deprivation and hardship persisted long after the war.
In the early 1800s, education came to the area in the form of subscription schools, where parents paid for each child's education. The first public school was not founded until 1912, when a public settlement school was created by the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity. The school not only provided academic and practical education, it also contributed to a rebirth of Appalachian culture through arts and crafts and the "cottage craft industry" movement.
The creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park
With the formation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, tourism began to boost the area's economy. Many displaced mountain families moved into town to develop new enterprises or take jobs in new hotels and restaurants. Progress slowed during World War II. By war's end, tourists returned, and the sleepy little village of Gatlinburg expanded. Incorporated in 1945, it has since developed into a four-season resort and convention setting.
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts
In 1945, Pi Beta Phi and the University of Tennessee established a summer program of craft workshops for emerging Tennessee artists. It eventually became the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts on the old Pi Beta Phi Settlement School grounds. The program has grown considerably. It now offers year-round classes and workshops for college credit.
Once used for elementary and high school education and vocational training, the classrooms have been transformed into studio space for arts and crafts classes, food and lodging services, and facilities for administration and maintenance.
The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is a nationally renowned center of contemporary arts and crafts education. Workshops are offered for one and two weeks in the spring and summer, and during single week and weekend workshops in the fall. Areas of study include ceramics, fibers, metals/jewelry, painting, drawing, photography, warm glass, woodturning, woodworking, sculpture, and book and paper arts. Visitors are welcomed year-round to the school's five galleries, resource center, and book and supply store. Artist residencies, assistantships, work-study, scholarships community outreach, conferences and music programs each contribute to Arrowmont's mission of "enriching lives through art."
The E.L. Reagan Furniture Company
Elijah Lawson Reagan is an important figure in Gatlinburg history. He established a woodworking business in 1910. For over a decade, he practiced his craft with simple hand tools. In the 1920s, he harnessed the power of the Roaring Fork to operate newfangled power tools, built a water-wheel and installed a turbine and generator to power them. He also furnished electricity to his neighbors until the Tennessee Valley Authority brought inexpensive power to the valley. After his death in 1968, his son, Harlan Reagan, and son-in-law, J. Wade King, took over the business.
Ogle's Cabin: The original settlement
Around 1802, William Ogle selected a site for what was to be the first "home" to be built in Gatlinburg. After cutting the logs for the cabin, he returned to South Carolina to get the family. He told them that he had found "The Land of Paradise" in the mountains of East Tennessee. While preparing to bring his family here, he fell ill, probably with malaria, and died in 1803.
Four years later, widow Martha Jane Huskey Ogle, at age 46 or 47, came to her late-husband's "Paradise" with her five sons and two daughters, her brother, Peter Huskey, and his family. They found William's hewed logs, completed the cabin, and started a new life. Great grandson Andrew Ogle and his family were the last of the clan to live in the cabin, abandoning it about 1910.
The Ogle farm was sold to Pi Beta Phi when the settlement school expanded in 1921. They used the cabin as a hospital. From 1922 to 1926, it housed a museum of mountain artifacts. Later the cabin was moved a short distance away from its original site to the former site of the community's first church building, where you can visit it today.
The Pi Beta Phi found the first schools
In the early 1900s, Gatlinburg was still a remote mountain village located in an even more remote Appalachian region. There were no public schools. In 1910, the alumni of the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity voted to commemorate its 50th anniversary and honor the founders by providing education where no formal schooling had been available. Although it was called a fraternity, Pi Beta Phi was actually a national women's organization, the first of its kind in America, with a long-standing tradition of helping the underprivileged. The provision for basic education was later expanded to include vocational and home economics training for the community's adults. The community persuaded E. E. Ogle to sell 35 acres of land to Pi Beta Phi for the establishment of this school. Many area residents were educated here, and the school's focus on reestablishing and promoting local craft skills helped establish Gatlinburg as a prominent arts and crafts center. Many of its original buildings have been refurbished and are still used today. The school opened in an unused church building in March 1912 with an initial enrollment of 13 students. In 1921, the school expanded by acquiring an additional 35 acres. Today it is known as the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.
The First Baptist Church
Religion was important to the settlers and is a large part of the story of the settlement of the Great Smoky Mountains. Before church buildings, settlers held services outside or in their homes. Although this area was originally settled by Presbyterians, the first church was Baptist. The White Oak Flats "arm" of the Sevierville Baptist Church convened in the early 1800s on Baskins Creek, probably at the present location of the Ogle cabin. Under the guidance of the Reverend Richard Evans, a second church was built on River Road near the mouth of Mill Creek (now LeConte). In 1837, they formed a new church and called it White Oak Flats Baptist. The congregation met in a log cabin on Baskins Creek, which also served as a school. The first frame church building was constructed in 1875 at the corner of the Parkway and Baskins Creek Road. The congregation changed its name to Gatlinburg Baptist Church in 1932. In 1951, they constructed a landmark stone church at the same location. As businesses crowded around, First Baptist moved to its present location on Highway 321, east of downtown, in 1991.
The Ogle Store
Noah Ogle was Gatlinburg's first merchant of record, establishing a store in 1850 on the site that later became the Riverside Hotel. In 1910, he moved the store to the intersection of River Road and the Elkmont Highway. Ephraim E. Ogle took over his father's store around 1916. Until 1925, the E. E. Ogle and Company store housed the Gatlinburg Post Office. Grandson Charlie A. Ogle and great grandson Charles Earl Ogle continued the family tradition. Through the years the store expanded, spreading out in all directions. You could purchase almost anything from hairpins to threshing machines, "if they could find it." The quaint old general store and adjacent tourist cabins were torn down in the mid 1970s to make way for the Mountain Mall. The Ogles, descended from the area's first settlers, have played a major role in Gatlinburg history and the city's ongoing development. | <urn:uuid:4477214f-df21-4006-9dac-5a1306bfa194> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gatlinburg.com/things-to-do/culture-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976104 | 2,292 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Banana on toast with peanut butter makes a good race-day breakfast.
You've heard the same old "high-protein, low-fat, moderate carbs" dogma regurgitated for the umpteenth time.
That would be too easy for me to write about, and probably too familiar to anyone who is remotely in touch with today's health and fitness magazines. Does anyone not abide by the high-protein, low-fat diet anymore?
Instead, I'm going to tell you what to eat and what not to prior to an athletic activity or competition. Believe it or not, the last few meals before a competitive event—or perhaps that business lunch before a post-workday workout, which you didn't think twice about—make all the difference in overall athletic performance.
First off, the idea that carbo-loading will help stamina and endurance during athletic activity has some merits, but it's not as simple as "Eat spaghetti the night before a long-distance ocean swim and presto, you will be able to double your endurance level!"
As a veteran ocean swimmer and winner of many long-distance races, I've read many articles on nutrition. This is what works for me.
Not Just Carbs
Carbo-loading needs to take place several days before your event, at least three days prior to competition. Pastas, breads, cereals, etc. can be incorporated into your diet more than usual, although be careful not to add or increase your intake of cream sauces, butter, or milk (respectively) with those items.
A common mistake people make when carbo-loading is that they forgo their intake of vegetables, fruits, and proteins. Pasta carbo-loading is fine, but not at the expense of other nutritional supplements that are vital to prime performance. Pasta primavera with chicken, for instance, is a great dish that is heavy on carbs while providing a balance of other vitamins and nutrients.
However, the night immediately before a race you may want to lay off the tomato sauce (tomatoes contain acid that can give you an upset stomach).
Steamed or microwaved vegetables contain valuable antioxidants and vitamins essential to peak performance, but don't forget they are also a good source for carbohydrates. However, vegetables take longer to digest than simple grain-based carbohydrates like bread and cereal. Uncooked vegetables are definitely not recommended before a long swim or run.
Stay away from broccoli, carrots, corn, and other "hard" vegetables in favor of watery ones like salad, zucchini, squash, and asparagus. They will pass through your system, supply you with carbohydrates and nutrients that you need, and not weigh you down.
What to Drink
Orange juice and milk are staples of any healthy breakfast, but are best avoided 24 hours before you compete. I have always stuck to water as my fluid intake in the day before a race; you don't need the extra calories or acidic side effects of a fruit juice (no matter how healthy it is), nor the hard-to-digest side effects of dairy products. | <urn:uuid:a6ba7436-45b3-48f9-b640-9bb71ce171a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.active.com/swimming/Articles/An_open_water_swimmer_s_formula_for_race-day_fuel.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956755 | 635 | 2 | 2 |
“Africa may at last be poised to make real progress on achieving food and nutrition security. Although the number of Africans who are undernourished has been on the rise for decades and now stands at about 200 million people, a new commitment to change has emerged both among African leaders and in the international community. To help determine how to bring about actions that will assure food and nutrition security, the 2020 Vision Initiative of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) facilitated an African-owned and African-driven conference in Kampala, Uganda, on April 1-3, 2004. The conference, “Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020: Prioritizing Actions, Strengthening Actors, and Facilitating Partnerships,” brought together more than 500 traditional and new actors and stakeholders representing perspectives and experiences from all major sectors across Africa. This statement on the way forward from the 2020 Africa Conference was developed by the Conference Advisory Committee (CAC), comprising about 35 distinguished African policymakers, civil society leaders, and researchers as well as representatives of cosponsor institutions. A draft of this statement was shared with CAC members and participants at the 2020 Africa Conference, and a subcommittee of the CAC then finalized it. This statement is designed not as an immutable set of instructions, but as a set of guidelines, or a framework, pointing the way toward a food- and nutrition-secure Africa…. Our hope is that this statement will contribute to the efforts by individuals and institutions to ensure healthy and productive lives for all Africans.
from the 2020 Africa Conference Assuring food and nutrition security in Africa by 2020 -- prioritizing actions, strengthening actors, and facilitating partnerships, Kampala, Uganda, April 1-3, 2004
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) | <urn:uuid:ca43e78d-c1d8-4da8-83db-c645cd470b36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ifpri.org/publication/way-forward | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941126 | 363 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Carpe diem! Did our ancient ancestors have personalities?
Friday, August 14, 2009
By Wray Herbert
I have high school friends who are dead already, as a direct result of their chosen lifestyle. They drank too much, drove too fast, ate whatever they craved at any given moment. They were impulsive, live-for-today types, and they paid a price for these traits. Nobody’s shocked that they died early.
We all know people like this. We also know people who are conscientious workers, homebodies and parents, committed partners and committed bachelors, workaholics, health nuts, easy-going and neurotic. There’s no denying the stark individual differences in personality. “Who we are” seems to emerge early in life, and to endure through the lifespan. It shapes our life choices, from health to family to work and finances.
But why do we have personality at all? It wouldn’t seem to make sense from an evolutionary point of view. The traits that have been wired into our genes and neurons over the millennia tend not to be differences, but things we all share in common--habits of mind that have helped the entire human species survive and adapt. That’s why evolutionary psychologists have tended to dismiss personality traits as irrelevant “noise.”
Until recently. Now a small cadre of psychologists has been revisiting personality, to see how it might fit into an evolutionary understanding of humanity. One of the leaders in this effort is University of Texas psychologist David Buss, who lays out several emerging ideas in the April issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. Here’s just one:
Each of us has a finite supply of time and energy. Think of a hypothetical young man making his way in the modern world. He might choose to put his energy into prospering—being healthy and well-fed—or he might instead choose the life of a romantic gadabout. Or perhaps he’ll opt for being a devoted parent and provider. But he probably can’t do all these things well. He has to make choices.
So it was with our ancient ancestors. They were similarly called upon to make tradeoffs, spending their time and energy on one life “problem” or another. They probably weren’t as aware of making choices as we are today, but they were nevertheless prioritizing things like romance, parenting, and social climbing.
So the constant challenge that all early humans faced was making the optimal energy tradeoff. The individual choices they made—and continue making today—were shaped by their supply of energy and time, their personal qualities, and their circumstances. Very attractive men, for example, might put a lot of their energy into mating rather than parenting, while people with bleak mating prospects might opt for career or nurturing others’ children.
And those who lack energy, or who perceive the future as short, might discount mating and parenting and career, and squander their limited energy now. Those are the live-for-today types, according to Buss: In that sense, what is often disparaged as a maladjusted personality marked by poor self-control might more generously be viewed as a realistic adaptation to what life throws at you. Carpe diem.
For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit the new “Full Frontal Psychology” blog at the True/Slant website. Selections from “We’re Only Human” also appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind and at Newsweek.com.
posted by Wray Herbert @ 3:17 PM | <urn:uuid:314da106-8495-48d8-9ce5-f04c768b9ff0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://onlyhumanaps.blogspot.com/2009/08/carpe-diem-did-our-ancient-ancestors.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971307 | 751 | 2.78125 | 3 |
When you know how to think creatively, finding free toys for kids under five years of age is a breeze.
You can uncover fun and free kids toys almost everywhere once you know what to look for.
Find great ideas for cheap and free toys for children here.
|best kids toys? How can you get the most out of the money and time you invest in buying children's play toys or searching for free toys for kids.|
|imagination toys is key to the development of your child's self-esteem. Abstract toys are great for supporting the development of your child's imagination and happily this type of kids toys are often free.|
|cheap toys for kids or even free kids toys.|
|educational toys for kids.|
|play for kids. Play helps your child develop motor skills, strength, balance and co-ordination. Play also helps the development of language, encourages creativity. Don't miss our tips on matching toys for smart kids development.|
|technology toys. That's great. But are they the best learning toys for kids? What age should a child be before they use their first technology toy? Children, technology, expectations and the pressure to excell. How can you support your child's sense of wonder and how can you do it with free kids toys?|
|Childrens wooden toys are usually more abstract than commercial toys and are great for both individual and cooperative play. If you're handy, they can also be practically a free toy.|
|toy blocks is a doorway to learning the language of maths, engineering, design, architecture and science. Block play offers a wide learning exposure across exploration, imitation, spatial problem solving, sorting, comparing, and pretending.|
|toy storage, you'll be considering types of storage containers, where to store toys and how to get kids to tidy up.|
Have you ever thought about recycling common household items? They make great free and cheap kids toys.
And abstract objects are great fun free kids toys. They allow your child to use their imagination in play just as does playing outside under a tree with sticks, water and other natural objects.
KIDDIE TIP: Simple household items make great free kids toys. You've probably got most of what you need in your house right now.
If you've got a little space then you can start today and create the basis for a fun free kids toy treasure basket by saving used tissue boxes, bottle tops, toilet rolls, egg cartons, ribbons and the like.
Common household objects make great fun free toys for kids, especially for young children. Your clothes trolley makes a great push toy and an empty toilet paper roll makes a great trumpet. Your child will love these simple objects and these fun free toys for kids can played with over again.
Broadly speaking there are three major stages of play in a child's development.
Stage one - 'the baby stage' is exploration using the senses to discover "What is it?" Children use and explore each toy roughly the same way - fingering, mouthing and banging.
Stage two - 'the toddler stage' is about cause and effect. "What does it do?" Your child interacts with a toy to see what can happen. This stage mostly involves play by self or in parallel to other children.
Stage three - 'the preschool stage' centres around imagination and creativity. "What can it be?" Your child uses objects in pretend play, uses objects to represent other object and may put a number of objects together to create something else. This stage can also involve play with other children.
Some toys are suitable across the stages - they are universal. These fun kids toys have multiple colors and/or multiple materials for many uses and don't restrict a child by offering just one way to play. Such universal toys are great as they grow with your child.
These universal fun kids toys are great because they grow with your child as your child develops, so you get value from them and they're also terrific for stimulating your child's imagination and motor (fine and gross) skills.
KIDDIE TIP: Children love the magic of puppets. Puppets provide terrific hands-on fun which also enables a child's imagination to roam, connects parents and children and aids in language development. Simple puppets are easy to make - a free fun kids toy!
Above all, remember that little kids love to explore and everything to them looks like fun kids toys. Keep an eye out for toys with sharp edges or little pieces that can break off. A lot goes into little mouths and this lasts for a couple of years.
Children can be noisy, dirty, messy and can unintentionally break things. Toddlers in particular have enquiring little fingers and inquisitive minds. Be assured the touching and mouthing period does subside. Just make sure you keep breakables, sharp and tiny objects out of reach in the meantime.
And don't leave crayons or textas about the house! The 2 year old son of one of our mum's got a bit ambitious and added two yellow crayon stripes to the couch cover. Mum left the crayon marks on it and pointed out to him that "we don't draw on the couch, we draw on paper ". Since then she says, when he passes the couch he points to the marks and shaking his head saying "no".
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission provides a great publication about Safe Fun Kids Toys as guide to help you select safe toys for your child. (opens in new browser) | <urn:uuid:99a8faa2-5162-4af1-8621-9c73daa4eae7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kiddiefreebies.com/free_toys_for_kids.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943377 | 1,142 | 1.914063 | 2 |
European budget stalls in Brussels
POSTED: Friday, November 23, 2012 - 10:00am
UPDATED: Friday, November 23, 2012 - 10:04am
NBC News — The prospect of failure overshadows day two of a European Union budget summit in Brussels. Britain and France are pulling in opposite directions over the 27 country bloc's long term spending plans, and smaller member countries are threatening to veto the deal to make themselves heard. A tense first session left observers predicting leaders may need more time to resolve differences over spending priorities.
The E.U. budget primarily funds programs to help farming and create growth in less developed countries and amounts to only 1% of the bloc's gross domestic product. Richer countries want to reduce their contributions to the common budget during tough economic times, but poorer nations, which rely on E.U. money for development aid and economic investment, don't want spending cuts. British Prime Minister David Cameron says it's unreasonable to increase spending for 2014 through 2020 when many member states are cutting budgets at home. | <urn:uuid:a169b87e-af13-4d20-8a58-c36998c70998> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/national-news/european-budget-stalls-in | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946319 | 212 | 1.6875 | 2 |
10 Worst Time Wasters at Work
Tania Khadder | NursingLink
Culprit #4: Short Gaps Between Meetings
Speaking of meetings, what about those 15-30 minute gaps between them? What do you ever really accomplish in that time? Usually, very little. Not enough to go check on a patient or do something worthwhile. Sure, it gives you a bit of time to decompress, but it also takes you in and out of meeting mode for no apparent reason. If you have several meetings a day, that limbo time can amount to a couple hours of waste.
The solution: Schedule your meetings back-to-back if you can; you’ll knock them out more efficiently. The time in between is better clumped together at some point in the day so it can be used for productive endeavors like getting to your patients. | <urn:uuid:0bec1b18-f9c6-4415-b71d-4936a36d430a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nursinglink.monster.com/benefits/articles/8821-10-worst-time-wasters-at-work?comment_page=1&page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941017 | 176 | 1.734375 | 2 |
|The key objectives of the National AIDS Control Program are the reduction of the spread of HIV infection in the country and strengthening India's response to HIV/AIDS on a long- term basis. To meet these objectives, data on the current situation in the country needs to be collected. Such information provides a backdrop for evidence based planning of strategic interventions for the control of HIV/AIDS. The impact of the interventions also needs to be periodically monitored through continuous surveillance.
Download this publication | <urn:uuid:757542f4-1a18-4c8a-b73b-ed45a5fb2873> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aidsdatahub.org/en/reference-librarycols2/surveillance-situational-analysis-assessments/item/4830-national-baseline-high-risk-and-bridge-population-behavioural-surveillance-survey-2001-report-part-1-female-sex-workers-and-their-clients-national-aids-control-organisation-india-2001 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921014 | 95 | 2.296875 | 2 |
“All of us in the Brooke community are thrilled by our results because they are a reflection of all the hard work put in by our scholars and their teachers,” said Kimberly Steadman, the school’s co-director.
The charter school was founded in 2002 with just 88 fifth-graders. Today, it has 475 students in kindergarten through grade 8 and is an open enrollment Boston public school. According to the school, 98 percent of students are black or Latino and 78 percent qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Steadman said the results are no surprise to the faculty and staff.
“We know that what it takes to get great results is great teaching -- it's not a trick or an easy formula,” she said. “It's just daily hard work by teachers to constantly push themselves and their students to learn more and perform at higher and higher levels day after day, week after week, and year after year. When teachers and students get into their work and deeply believe in their own self-determination, they can accomplish great things.”
In addition to the eighth grade scores, Brooke seventh-graders ranked first among all districts in the state on the ELA test and second on the math test, while its fifth-graders ranked first among all districts in the state on the ELA test and third on the math test. | <urn:uuid:c8b2d4fb-8be6-41d5-b529-fc9d1ed3b6fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/roslindale/2011/09/roslindale_charter_school_goes.html?camp=pm | 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 | 0.98129 | 282 | 1.71875 | 2 |
CAUTION: Post Storm Damage to Coastal Trail
The Presidio Coastal Trail segment just north of the Pacific Overlook and adjacent to Lincoln Blvd remains CLOSED indefinitely. We have posted signage to alert bicyclists and hikers and with information for safe trail alternatives. More »
Coast Rock Cress
Origin Of Genus Name: Arabis is Latin for "of Arabia."
Presidio Locations: Found on rocky coastal bluffs and ridges of serpentinite.
Range In State: Central coastal California.
Description: This rare, native perennial species of the Mustard Family grows up to 12 inches in height with showy, fragrant, pink to purple four-petaled flowers with white centers. Leaves are long, with distinct individual hairs on edges; forming a rosette at the base of the stem. Blooms from February to April.
Did You Know?
The National Cemeteries Act was based on the principles articulated by President Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address--"that these dead shall not have died in vain." Passed by Congress in 1863, the law established thirteen cemeteries to inter veterans of the Armed Forces and their families. | <urn:uuid:0f7af622-1bae-42d2-ad3b-b299f944a1a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/prsf/naturescience/coast-rock-cress.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931262 | 239 | 2.375 | 2 |
Milwaukee mayor wounded after being hit with pipe
August 16, 2009 4:02 PM EDT
MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was hospitalized with head and hand injuries on Sunday after he tried to assist a woman crying for help and was attacked by a man with a metal pipe near the Wisconsin State Fair, police said.
Barrett was in stable condition at a local hospital and was alert and talking when he arrived there on Saturday night, Milwaukee police said.
The mayor had gone to the Wisconsin State Fair on Saturday with his children and niece. As Barrett walked to his car, he heard a woman screaming for someone to call the police emergency dispatcher, police said.
"The mayor stopped and said something like, 'Let's all cool down here, I'm going to call 911,'" the mayor's spokesman Patrick Curley said. "He said it one or two times according to him. When he took out his phone, that's when the suspect attacked him."
The suspect hit him in the head and torso with a metal pipe. Barrett apparently fought back, fracturing his hand when he punched the suspect.
"I think he hit the guy," Curley said. "I don't know where, but it was hard enough, whatever he hit, to fracture his hand."
The suspect then fled the scene. Authorities said they were seeking a person who has a criminal arrest record, police said. The woman was uninjured.
The mayor, who did not ask for security to accompany him to the fair because he wasn't on official duty, underwent successful surgery Sunday on his fractured right hand and also had cuts on his head and lip stitched up, Curley said. | <urn:uuid:73ade105-fae3-46d2-9ee1-9354dc5a5eca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/news-good-bad-ugly/84689-milwaukee-mayor-injured-trying-assist-victim.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.991243 | 344 | 1.546875 | 2 |
7. An electric guitarist gets enough feedback into his guitar so that the amplitude of string playing a note stays constant. The formula for the displacement of the string from its equilibrium point over the pickup as a function of time is given by the formula
where the displacement is measured in millimeters. Find the formula for the velocity and the acceleration of the string.
The acceleration is given by | <urn:uuid:bae0e06c-fe31-4a2d-b490-6dfdcff13f57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sonoma.edu/users/w/wilsonst/Courses/Math_161/smt1/p7/default.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946905 | 77 | 3.1875 | 3 |
|Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary|
11:1-6 It is no new thing for those whom Christ loves, to be sick; bodily distempers correct the corruption, and try the graces of God's people. He came not to preserve his people from these afflictions, but to save them from their sins, and from the wrath to come; however, it behoves us to apply to Him in behalf of our friends and relatives when sick and afflicted. Let this reconcile us to the darkest dealings of Providence, that they are all for the glory of God: sickness, loss, disappointment, are so; and if God be glorified, we ought to be satisfied. Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. The families are greatly favoured in which love and peace abound; but those are most happy whom Jesus loves, and by whom he is beloved. Alas, that this should seldom be the case with every person, even in small families. God has gracious intentions, even when he seems to delay. When the work of deliverance, temporal or spiritual, public or personal, is delayed, it does but stay for the right time.
Verse 2. - Now it was that Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. The word μύρον is used of any aromatic balsam which is distilled from trees and herbs by itself. In classical Greek μύρον was used of costly ointments used by women. Ἐλαίον was the common oil used by men for purposes of health, which might be perfumed. Our Lord clearly draws a distinction between the ἐλαίον and μύρον in Luke 7:46. Ἀλείφω has been said to be used for the more superfluous anointings and χρίω for the sanitary anointing with oil. No trace of such distinction is found in the New Testament (cf. Mark 6:13 with James 5:14). One great distinction in biblical Greek is that χρίειν is used of religious anointings, from its association with Ξριστός, but ἀλείφειν in the LXX. is only twice used in this sense, while χρίειν is used times without number (Archbishop Trench, 'New Test. Syn.,' § 38.). The use of the term Κύριον, "Lord," shows that the story was widely known, and that when the Gospel was written it had passed into a commonplace of Christian experience and illustration. The anointing has not yet been referred to by John, but he is looking back upon the events and anticipates his own subsequent record.
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment,.... Not the woman in Luke 7:37, as some have thought, whose name is not mentioned, and which history is not related by John at all: but Mary in John 12:3, who is both mentioned by name, and along with Lazarus her brother, and with whom all the circumstances of the affair suit; and though the fact was not yet done, yet John writing many years after it was done, and when it was well known, proleptically, and in a parenthesis, takes notice of it here:
and wiped his feet with her hair; instead of a napkin, after she had anointed them with oil; See Gill on Luke 7:37, See Gill on John 12:3.
Whose brother Lazarus was sick; this is observed, to show how well they were all acquainted with Christ, and affected to him.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
2. It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, &c.—This, though not recorded by our Evangelist till Joh 12:3, was so well known in the teaching of all the churches, according to our Lord's prediction (Mt 26:13), that it is here alluded to by anticipation, as the most natural way of identifying her; and she is first named, though the younger, as the more distinguished of the two. She "anointed THE Lord," says the Evangelist—led doubtless to the use of this term here, as he was about to exhibit Him illustriously as the Lord of Life.
John 11:2 Parallel Commentaries
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John 11:2 NASB
John 11:2 KJV
Bible Hub: Online Parallel Bible | <urn:uuid:532fd174-8600-413c-961d-5c9b71c895f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biblehub.com/john/11-2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979882 | 1,002 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Female inmate overcrowding problem for Ohio jails
ATHENS — The warden of a regional jail in southeast Ohio says overcrowding of female inmates is becoming an increasing problem there and at other county and regional jails around the state.
There are 32 beds available for women at the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail in Nelsonville and — often — they are all occupied, warden Jeremy Tolson told The Athens Messenger.
Tolson said the overcrowding is “kind of a new trend,” occurring statewide.
Various factors have contributed to the overcrowding, including a state legislative change in 2011, according to some jail officials. That change enabled fifth- and fourth-degree felons to be incarcerated in county jails.
Robert Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs’ Association, said the change was seen as a way to save the state money and reduce its prison population. It gave judges more flexibility to put nonviolent felons in local control settings such as halfway houses or community-based correction facilities, he said.
“But that can put a burden on local jails,” Cornwell said. “Many of the jails that were constructed in the last 20 years didn’t envision this increase in the female inmate population.”
He said another factor contributing to overcrowding is that more women are being arrested on drug-related charges considered nonviolent offenses.
“They stay at the local jail when they are arrested, and if they are put on a local control program and violate that, they go back to jail,” he said. “It can be like a revolving door.”
In the regional jail in Nelsonville, 185 of the 226 inmate beds are designated for its member counties. Those include the counties of Athens, Hocking, Morgan, Perry and Vinton. The remaining beds are used for overflow.
There were only about 200 inmates at the regional jail as of Jan. 23, but all of the beds for women were filled. Continued...
Athens County has the most beds at the regional jail, with 70 for men and six for women. But with the overflow beds for female inmates full, one woman recently arrested had to be jailed in Washington County, Athens County Sheriff Patrick Kelly said.
If inmates are arrested and the jail doesn’t have available beds, the county making the arrests pays to house them in a different jail, typically for a higher cost.
Kelly said two other women recently arrested for nonviolent offenses had to be released pending further court dates because there was no room at the jail.
“I wish I had a place to put them but I have to look at what’s cost-effective for our county too,” Kelly said.
The number of male inmates has also risen, with warrant round-ups or raids contributing to the increase, according to Tolson.
Cornwell said the sheriffs’ association is concerned about the overcrowding, and its community corrections committee has been monitoring the situation. Any recommendations for solving the problem would be made to the association’s board of directors, which would then work with legislators and state corrections officials to try to begin to solve some of the problems.
Location, ST | website.com
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As Northeast Ohio gears up for a local election, get the latest on what's happening behind the scenes.
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Sportswriters from The News-Herald go behind the scenes of the area's high school and professional sports. | <urn:uuid:a6b964b5-6132-4a19-a78c-3c369b2491e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news-herald.com/articles/2013/01/28/news/doc5105c01f6f547670069090.txt?viewmode=fullstory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955144 | 1,011 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Shisha clampdown: Concerns raised over fire and health risks
Councils are considering bringing in licensing for shisha cafes, in an attempt to tackle the growing number of back-street premises.
Officials fear that more water-pipe bars are moving into enclosed premises, in a bid to escape anti-smoking laws.
Councils say licences may be needed because of the health and fire risks associated with shisha.
Freedom of Information requests suggest a there has been a 210% increase in the number of such cafes since 2007.
According to requests submitted to 133 UK councils, by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) for No Smoking Day, the number of cafes nationwide has risen from 179 to 556.
The World Health Organization has advised that a 40-minute session on a waterpipe is the equivalent to the volume of smoke inhaled from at least 100 cigarettes.'Deathtraps'
Yet 84% of those surveyed thought it was fewer than 10.
About 44% of young adults, thought it was less harmful than cigarette smoking.
The survey also suggests more than a quarter of 18-to-24 year olds had smoked shisha.
The data also revealed that shisha smoking is no longer a pastime for specific ethnic groups, with 8% of people with white ethnicity saying they used it. The same number of non-smokers had also tried it.
End Quote Janet Bradley Birmingham City Council
These places are like 1940s snugs. There's a phenomenal profit”
The figures have come as no surprise to councils up and down the country trying to enforce the law.
Shisha cafes have to comply with smoke-free legislation by providing open-air canopies.
Govind Mandora, health and safety team manager for Leicester City Council, is concerned about a worrying recent trend with shisha establishments trying to avoid legal requirements.
He has serious concerns about the health and fire risks, and says the shisha smoking culture "is going underground".
"We are investigating and prosecuting several places in the city," he says.
"They're locating in back streets, even old industrial units, hidden from view.
"Customers hear about them via Twitter or Facebook and gain entry by pressing a buzzer by the locked door or making a call from outside on their mobile phone.
"These places are enclosed, often their doors are locked.
"They are deathtraps, not just because of the fire hazard, but with the potential for carbon monoxide poisoning from the charcoal-fuelled tobacco."
Environmental health officers across the country are receiving reports of people collapsing through inhaling the smoke, even playing dangerous smoking games.
Ian Gray, principal policy officer for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health said: "Students are filling their lungs with the smoke, in a kind of game, then passing out from the carbon monoxide.
"They are starved of oxygen. One GP reported a patient became breathless, with not enough oxygen in his blood. He was a hospital case. He'd been smoking shisha."'Phenomenal profit'
Mr Gray said: "It's now a chic thing to do, especially among the young. It's becoming a young person's introduction to tobacco. I'd like to see a licence for selling tobacco, like they have in Scotland."
Janet Bradley, Birmingham City Council's operations manager for team enforcement, said: "These places are like 1940s snugs. There's a phenomenal profit.
"It's less risky. One assistant in a bar who helps light the coals, by drawing it through the waterpipe, told me how a customer collapsed after smoking for a couple of hours.
"Even the assistants are at risk because of the time they spend in there. We're even seeing shisha bars hired for 18th birthday parties."
One close relative of a 14-year-old in Leicester, who did not want to be identified, described how her nephew and a group of friends were trapped in a shisha cafe.
"They went into the cafe to watch television, but the cafe is encouraging underage smoking. I was horrified to hear that the boys wanted to leave and couldn't.
"My nephew was traumatised. Parents just aren't aware of the risk.
"The shisha smoking is bad for your health, to say nothing of the potential fire hazard with the charcoal burning in the hookah in a room with locked doors."
Leicester City Council is now considering using licences to regulate the cafe culture more stringently.
"This is a nationwide problem, it's no longer a niche pastime, but mainstream" said Mr Mandora.
The manager of a shisha cafe in Leicester, who didn't want to be named, said he was losing a significant amount of trade to the underground scene.
"I asked my customers why I don't see them so much, they said it was warmer in the back street enclosed premises, it's too cold here, because my premises is partly open.
"I've lost about 25% of my trade trying to be above the law, we invested £120,000 in this business, but I'm still in dispute with the council over compliance." | <urn:uuid:d4b20b88-992b-410f-acb9-002648c557fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17361047 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971203 | 1,067 | 1.96875 | 2 |
willieH: Hi James...
Where do you think the IF factors in, i.e., "if we confess our sins.."? Perhaps that as believers we will do so as a result of Him working through us? But then again, it doesn't say when, it says if...
The Christian Bible translates as "If we are continually acknowledging the things that we have done that are wrong, He is going to be trustworthy and just to forgive us for our wrongdoings and make us clean from all injustice."
CLT has "If we should be avowing our sins, He is faithful and just that He may be pardoning us our sins and should be cleansing us from all injustice."
Also, anyone address the "what if I murdered my neighbor" scenario? Or if you murdered your neighbor, what would you do regarding that sin? And why, based on what scriptures?
OK, I'll get out of this discussion a bit and let folks kick it around. Thanks.
This is another of the "might" things... Like, John 3:17
-- that the world through Him, ..."MIGHT"... be saved.
Does this mean that the SAVING of the WORLD in "in question", because the word "MIGHT" appears in this verse? Or is the deal DONE, and the word "MIGHT" is a VEHICULAR designation of surety... as opposed to an unsurety?
When we INCORRECTLY observe this word "IF"... then it transposes the "cleansing" of SIN, as due to OUR deed of confessing, ...as opposed to HIS HOLY impression on us that TRULY brought forth that confession. Phil 2:10-11
--- EVERY knee shall bow, and tongue CONFESS... in the which is the "TAKING AWAY of SIN".
In the confession of CHRIST
is the cleansing, NOT due to us, but due to HIM, for He is the Lamb which has TAKEN it AWAY... John 1:29
-- and it is HE and HIS INFLUENCE upon our hearts, that causes that confession to come forth, that HE "might" take it away! | <urn:uuid:0be838f8-217e-4bc5-bea6-3b05e2142572> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tentmaker.org/forum/christian-life/sin/msg94755/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95679 | 456 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Listen and Hear
After God set seven plagues upon Egypt, Pharaoh's servants finally said to him:
"How long will this be a snare for us? Send out the men that they may serve ... God! Do you not know that Egypt is lost?" (Exodus 10:7)
A LIFE LESSON
The Egyptians had just experienced seven severe plagues that God set upon them. Even though Pharaoh had also witnessed all of it, he still remained stubborn in refusing to let all of the Jews go free. However, Pharaoh's servants - the ones who waited on their master hand and foot - had complete clarity: if the Jews were not freed, then Egypt and its inhabitants would be completely destroyed.
How is it that a king was unable to see what was so abundantly clear to everyone else?
The reason is that often we're much too close to a situation to be able to see it objectively. Since it was Pharaoh who was speaking directly to Moses, he was too emotionally charged with what was happening to "his" country. Too close to the forest to be able to see the trees. Pharaoh - like many of us who are too close to something in our own lives - has the misguided belief that since we feel we know the situation the best, then we're also in the best position to know what should be done. Therefore, we won't entertain any other ideas or opinions.
It all comes down to objectivity. Whenever someone is emotionally immersed in something, then by definition he will have little or no objectivity. How often have you known someone who was involved in an unhealthy personal relationship but failed to see just how detrimental it was? And he justified being closed-minded to any other opinions because he embraced the notion that "no one knows the person like he does." And that's exactly why he can never be objective or act rationally. Anyone so close to a situation loses the larger picture and cannot see it clearly.
This is why it's imperative always to seek others out and sincerely ask for and hear their advice. Our human nature will oftentimes discount what other people are telling us. This is because if we embrace their viewpoints, then we have to admit to ourselves that we made poor choices and will continue to do so. This "saving face" mentality of not hearing good advice is why people continue to just rationalize their poor behavior instead of changing.
One can never grow or become great with this philosophy. The greatest men have always been able to admit their wrongs of the past and then, based upon a new perspective, choose to make healthy and productive choices.
So listen to those around you who know you well and whose opinions you value. But the ball will ultimately still be in your court, so fight the urge to justify your past actions and start taking good advice. While it might not be easy on your ego to do this, it will, however, make you great. | <urn:uuid:009b3459-d2a1-47b9-bbef-f9ceee41b241> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aish.com/tp/b/ll/48972181.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9808 | 595 | 2.09375 | 2 |
June 28, 2012
A few Sundays back, a friend of mine was preaching on Mark 14:1-11 where Jesus is reclining at the house of Simon the leper when a woman comes to him and covers his head with perfume. He focused, in particular, on the words in verse 8 where Jesus, commending the woman before the disciples, tells them that “She has done what she could.”
In 1995 American writer Anne Herbert first coined the phrase that to improve our world we should all “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” Perhaps that, my friend suggested over a post-sermon lunch, is what Jesus is calling us to.
But is that what the woman did in Mark 14? Is that what Jesus commended her for and, by implication, gave us as an example to follow?
Random kindness seems fashionable in the Christian world today. We’re told that it is our task to bring Shalom into the world (everything sounds more impressive and theological in Hebrew after all). We’re told that God is in the business of redeeming the world and so as his followers we should be too. And what better way to do that than by practicing random kindness and senseless acts of beauty? After all, isn’t God the one who shows kindness to all and isn’t he the origin of beauty?
And if you’re struggling to feel randomly kind of senselessly beautiful then never fear because there are a myriad of books and websites out there to help you think of ways you can do it. “Put a hundred dollar bill on the windshield of a stranger,” for example, or “Plant a flower in a nearby park, or on the side of the road.”
But is that what we’re called to do as Christians?
Is that what the woman in Mark 14 was doing? No. She wasn’t practicing random kindness. If she was, then it wouldn’t have mattered whose head she had covered in perfume: Jesus’, Simon’s or even Judas’. But of course it did matter. Her act wasn’t random; she did what she did out of love for Jesus.
The truth is none of our actions are ever random. Everything we do we do for a reason, and that reason matters. In fact, the Bible tells us that the reason we do anything changes everything.
In Hebrews 11 verse 6, we’re told that without faith it is impossible to please God. That is a staggering thing to say. Nothing someone does, no matter how kind or beautiful that action may be, can be pleasing to God unless that person has faith in God. Why is that? Because God doesn’t call us to random acts of kindness, he calls us to love him in response to his love. “Be holy,” he says in Leviticus 19 verse 2, “because I am holy.”
The problem with our random kindness and senseless acts of beauty is that they are ours. God calls us to something far harder and far higher; he calls us to imitate his kindness and his acts of beauty for him.
Am I suggesting that we stop practicing random kindness and senseless acts of beauty? Not at all (in fact if anyone feels the urge my car is the red Subaru outside C-Building, random kindness is always welcome). I’m suggesting that the woman in Mark 14 did something far greater and Jesus calls us to something far harder. He calls us to love deliberately, to love sacrificially, to love God with everything and to show his love to all people, all the time.
Dimitri (Dim for short) and his wife, Gayles, moved to the U.S. from England in 2011 to pursue a Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell. He grew up in a little town in England called Sevenoaks and completed his undergraduate degree in Automobile Design at the University of Coventry. Upon graduation, Dim spent some time as a ski instructor, a church intern and an assistant pastor. When he’s not pretending to study, he’s usually dreaming about skiing.
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| Global Times | 2013-1-15 19:48:01
By Lin Meilian
Zhao Feihong, 58, a researcher on drinking water at the Beijing Healthcare Association, says she and her husband, Li Fuxing, also a water expert, have not drunk tap water for 20 years.
"Beijing's water has become more polluted of late," she told the Southern Weekly, "We are probably the most mindful family about healthy drinking water."
After years of researching Beijing's water, the couple has developed the habit of never letting tap water pass their lips and always using bottled water instead.
Zhao's remark soon caused online debate about whether tap water is drinkable. On January 8, Zhao organized an online Q & A session with Internet users. Some 900 questions were asked in 20 minutes. Some blamed the couple for keeping this "secret" to themselves and complained that they couldn't afford bottled water every day, but most expressed their worries about water safety.
Liang Li, a spokesperson from Beijing Waterworks Group, responsible for providing water to the capital, assured the public that "Beijing's tap water meets national water quality standards, it is safe to drink."
In response, Zhao told the Global Times that she agrees Beijing's water is safe to drink but remains unhealthy.
"We never expected such a big reaction from the public," Zhao said. "Not drinking tap water is a personal lifestyle; we are not necessarily encouraging people to follow us."
"Beijing's water is safe to drink, but we believe drinking bottled water is better for you," she continued.
Isabel Hilton, founder and chief editor of the China Dialogue, a bilingual website devoted to the environment, said the couple's ways might seem a little extreme but that it is useful to remind people of the water crisis.
"The problem with our profession is we are quite tied to a short-term crisis and the larger background problems get less attention in the media," Hilton told the Global Times. "I think reminding people of that is very good."
However, many people find it confusing to try and pick sides between the personal lifestyle choices of water experts and the guarantees made by authorities. Some have tried a third way to discover the truth.
Beijing resident Hao Yungang did his own experiment. He wrapped his tap in medical gauze for 10 days and posted the result on Weibo. Pictures showed large, dirty yellow stains on the medical gauze.
"This is the most disgusting water I have ever seen, you call this clean?" he wrote.
Hao told the Global Times the couple's remarks had caused widespread concern.
"This is everyone's problem," Hao said. "However, an individual can't fix the problem, the government must take it seriously."
Netizens across the country copied Hao's experiment, with similar results leading to even more complaints.
For Zhu Yi, a professor at China Agricultural University, the problem also lies in the aging network of water pipes.
"A large number of water pipelines throughout the country are aging. There are some contaminated elements inside them, we need to upgrade them," Zhu said.
Concerns about water quality are hardly new. Last year, Dong Liangjie, a specialist on heavy metal pollution in water and former researcher at the University of Hawaii, blogged that water supplies were laced with contraceptive contaminants, likely due to the high rate of contraceptive pill usage in China, not just by humans but also in fisheries and aquaculture. Dong cited an article from the Journal of Environmental Science in February 2012, saying that all 23 samples from six main river systems in China showed significant estrogenic activity, with the highest level in the Yangtze River Delta.
Some Internet users then began to fear that drinking tap water might cause infertility although officials and experts quickly moved to publish evidence refuting Dong's claims. Peng Danhong, the deputy director of gynecology and obstetrics of Zhongda Hospital at Southeast University, told Modern Express that the level of estrogenic compounds in tap water is negligible and would have no effect on the human body.
It has long been known that tap water in China is not drinkable before being boiled, but more and more people choose to eschew this option altogether and rely on mineral water.
In 2008, about 3 billion carboys of water were used. In 2009, sales of drinking water machines topped 11 million, while in 2010, 15 million water filters were bought, according to China Central Television (CCTV).
Expert said the reason behind this is dwindling trust in Chinese society. "We drink tap water because we believe it is safe; just like we believe the police will protect us when we see them. This is basic trust, but it is failing now," said Wang Junxiu, editor of the annual Blue Book on Social Mentality published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences earlier this month.
The report shows that overall social trust has declined in 2012, with less than 50 percent of Chinese people believing most people are worthy of trust and between 20 to 30 percent saying they can trust strangers.
"Society has entered a so-called reverse mood, distrust among groups has also worsened, such as the public and officials, civilians and police, patients and doctors…the lack of trust is the reason that caused many social problems," Wang told CCTV.
It is not easy to build trust between public and officials when it comes to transparency. Hundreds of thousands of people from Handan, Hebei Province, never expected to ring in the New Year while drinking and bathing in toxic water for five days.
On December 31, the city's main water resource was reportedly polluted by a ruptured pipe from neighboring Shanxi Province that released nearly 40 tons of aniline, a carcinogenic chemical that can damage human organs if consumed. Nine tons of aniline entered the city's main water source. However, the local officials did not make it public until five days later, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
On January 5, water supplies in Handan, home to 1 million people, were cut off due to pollution, which caused panic buying of all the city's supply of bottled water.
"Some local officials worried that if the public knew the truth, they would run riot," said Wang. "So they kept the truth from the public and lost its trust."
On January 10, Deng Haihua, spokesman of the Ministry of Health, sought to reassure people that drinking water in Beijing meets the country's official standards.
"I don't know the professional background of these so-called water experts or their motivation in making those comments to the media, but I'm pretty sure that the water quality in Beijing meets all 106 requirements stipulated in the country's latest monitoring standards," Deng said at a press conference.
However, he admitted that the country's drinking water safety faces difficulties such as lack of protection measures and supervision.
According to a survey conducted by Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2011, 11.4 percent of drinking water sources to cities were unsafe, Xinhua reported.
Almost 1,700 water pollution accidents have been reported each year, according to the Ministry of Supervision. Chemical plants built along rivers are causing a spike in environmental damage. Back in 2005, the chemical plant explosions in Jilin province created about 100 tons of pollutants entering the Songhua River. Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated.
In 2011, a mineral water panic buy swept the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, after 20 tons of carbolic acid were spilled into its river system, knocking out water supplies to 9 million people.
Tap water supplied to millions of people has also regularly failed to pass quality tests. At least 1,000 out of 4,000 water plants failed tests, according to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development in 2009, the Century Weekly magazine reported.
About 300 million people in rural China drink unsafe water contaminated by chemicals, according to an official research on water safety in 2007.
Beginning in July 2012, China's new drinking water standards took effect. Differing from the old version that was approved in 1985, the new one brought about 106 new quality indicators.
In response to the latest credibility crisis, the Beijing Waterworks Group launched an online monitoring system for the real-time quality supervision of the city's water supply. Starting Tuesday, people can log on to the group's website and check data that is set to be updated every three months.
To get a bigger picture of Beijing water's crisis, Green Earth, one of China's oldest environmental NGOs, launched a weekly River Watch activity two years ago to provide Beijing residents with a chance to see the polluted rivers with their own eyes.
As volunteers, the couple Zhao and Li have visited almost all the 100 rivers in Beijing. Zhao said she has witnessed changes in water quality going from clean to cloudy.
"The water quality in Beijing has been deteriorating from dying to dead," Zhou Chen, one of the River Watch organizers, told the Global Times, after four years of watching and recording water quality. He said many people in Beijing might feel disconnected from environmental problems. He believes that is why they were so shocked at finding out the water expert couple's "secret."
"As an environmentalist, I don't suggest people follow Zhao's lifestyle because the disposal of plastic bottles of mineral water can worsen pollution. But I hope more people can go out, see the pollution and talk about it. Hopefully, this would bring about some positive changes in China," Zhou said.
By leaving a comment, you agree to abide by all terms and conditions (See the Comment section). | <urn:uuid:f61d7b81-cd4f-41a7-b9ba-a24c7f5a8a08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/756013.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971251 | 1,982 | 1.804688 | 2 |
To supplement last September’s conclusion that the peopling of the Americas was initiated by a pretty diverse group of people who camped out in Beringia for a long time, long enough to differentiate from their Asian sister-clades, comes this study published in this week’s PLoS One, “A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas.”
The new study offers up perhaps the largest published alignments of Native American mtDNA, spanning all Native American haplogroups. Over 77 full mitochondrial coding genomes were constructed from 812 concatenated mtDNA hypervariable region (HVR) I and II sequences. They took these mitochondrial genomes, aligned them up, and applied the same algorithims, Bayesian skyline plotting, used in a recent paper to estimate prehistoric population sizes. Bayesian skyline plots are a unique approach to the coalescent modeling, that assume a single migration event, and thus test the generally agreed consensus that there was a single migration of people in the Americas.
The dominant model on the peopling of Americas started with the the ice sheets advancing and sea levels falling about 17,000 years ago. It is during this time that people are thought to first migrate across the Eurasian landmass and into the Americas. It was thought that a very small number of people, maybe even as small as 70 or so, who crossed over. Perhaps they were nomadic hunters, following game herds from Siberia across what is today the Bering Strait into Alaska, and then gradually spreading southward. Based upon the distribution of Amerind languages and language families, a movement of tribes along the Rocky Mountain foothills and eastward across the Great Plains to the Atlantic seaboard is assumed to have occurred some 10,000 years ago.
What this new study found doesn’t indicate that the peopling of the Americas happened in one fell swoop. Rather, it supplements the paper I mentioned above, “Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders,” and offers up an interesting time frame, a three stage colonization event that is effectively illustrated by the authors. I’ve cut out the figure the authors provided, it’s to your left. The first stage began about 40,000 years ago with a gradual ancestral population expansion of people from an East Central Asian gene pool into Beringia. The second stage of ‘proto-American Indians’ was marked by almost no population growth for about 20,000 years, which confirms the previous Beringian standstill conclusion. The last stage started about 16,000 years ago with a massive rush of people, about 5,000 strong, fleeing out of Beringia and into the “ice free, inland corridor between the eastern Laurentide and western Cordilleran Ice Sheets and/or along the Pacific coast.” This challenges the n=70 founding population estimation.
The authors offer up no discussion about a possibility of bidirectional gene flow, which was shown in the September 2007 Beringian Standstill study that I keep referring too. I’m thinking its cause the skyline plots test for single migration events and not backflows.
Either way, it is a very enlightening study especially because other models, such as the Clovis archaeological model, which says the peopling of the Americas happened in 11,000 years, estimate really rapid colonization events. That’s awfully fast. Pushing back first rush of people to 16,000 years ago can help us better explain how the Clovis culture radiated so fast.
- Kitchen, A., Miyamoto, M.M., Mulligan, C.J., Harpending, H. (2008). A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS ONE, 3(2), e1596. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001596 | <urn:uuid:c4788b47-3176-42cc-805f-770a72c1fcef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://anthropology.net/2008/02/14/peopling-of-the-americas-three-step-model-for-colonizing-the-americas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943947 | 804 | 3.125 | 3 |
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Aug 14th, 2010 at 20:13 GMT
Portugal, so many years o_O. Didn't think it was that much.
Aug 14th, 2010 at 21:15 GMT
France (Vichy) as a bonus, at least
Aug 14th, 2010 at 22:26 GMT
It seems really dubious to me listing the Salazar regime in Portugal or the later years of the Horthy Regime in Hungary as fascist, much less Japan, which I don't think any serious historian would really describe as fascist. And what's El Salvador 1989-2009 doing on here? El Salvador in that period is normally taken to have been relatively democratic - free elections and democratic transitions and such.
Aug 15th, 2010 at 17:10 GMT
Gosh..I went to El Salvador 5 straight years 2003-2007 and never realized it was a fascist state.
Aug 15th, 2010 at 18:19 GMT
If you are going to include Albania, then you would have to include Quisling's Norway, as well as Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, etc etc....
Aug 16th, 2010 at 00:39 GMT
No Integralist Brazil? I do think historians would consider 40's imperial Japan to be Fascist leaning, it had most of the hallmarks of it.
Aug 16th, 2010 at 21:00 GMT
You are missing Romania's Iron Guard. Ruled briefly from Sept. 1940-Jan. 1941. And I quibble with the inclusion of Albania (it was really an Italian puppet government) if you are not going to include Vichy France, Quisling's Norway, etc. Not sure about Bulgaria either. Someone will have to explain that one to me. Also, El Salvador. I don't even know where that comes from. As for Brazil, Zephos, when did the Inegralists rule Brazil? Did they ever? (please pardon my ignorance on Brazilian history; I really don't know!)
Aug 17th, 2010 at 21:34 GMT
This is so arbitrary. Why Bulgaria and Croatia but not Slovakia, for example. And if you're going to be so loose as to include El Salvador, then why not Austria after 1934? I gave this a 2 for effort.
Aug 20th, 2010 at 08:10 GMT
i think bulgaria is reasonable, but the real problem is that there's no source and jmpasquale is not explaining the criteria to us. so bad quiz
Aug 20th, 2010 at 08:26 GMT
albania, and croatia all had very fascist regimes in place that supported and were not just ruled by the axis powers during wwII. albania was certainly split between fascists and non-fascists, but the fascists were in control and after Italy surrendered the Albanian ruling fascists became german facist nazis. after ww2 ended, civil war between fascists and non-fascists (mainly communists) broke out. croatia was virulently racist and fascist. slovakia was part of czechoslovakia which was really crushed by germany, not supportive of germany (unlike the hungarians who welcomed hitler with open arms). but this is just A reading of the history. i still say we have no source and no objective criteria.
Aug 20th, 2010 at 08:29 GMT
oh, and bulgaria was definitely fascist before wwii which is why italy and germany thought bulgaria would support them when they were ripping through eastern europe. but bulgaria didn't continue that way.
Aug 20th, 2010 at 16:54 GMT
Japan was not fascits just because it was allied with Germany, however bulgaria Romania Hungary Slovakia (not by choice) Finland and Norway were fascist and allied to Germany, oh and obviously Italy, I also think I heard something about iraq wanting to join the axis, I don't know if that made them fascist...
Aug 22nd, 2010 at 02:01 GMT
El Salvador had free elections? Tell that to the leftists. Oh wait you can't, because they were all killed by death squads.
Aug 25th, 2010 at 21:40 GMT
These answers were extracted from the various historical reference books I own. Japan had always been traditional Asian culture that would draw on the west for ideas, (hence banzai charges: the result of the traditional Japanese concept of dying on the field of battle combining with Western military weapons and tactics). When it began to side with Germany, it began borrowing concepts from fascism. That's what it said in my reference books anyway.
Aug 25th, 2010 at 21:49 GMT
Austria was absorbed almost completely into the German Reich, so it seemed redundant to include them. Also Quisling's Norway was left out for the same reason as Vichey France. Both were just puppets of Germany
Aug 31st, 2010 at 02:37 GMT
No it's not redundant, Austria had an independent fascist regime who Hitler covertly liquidated before annexing the place. It was one of the early points of conflict between Mussolini and Hitler, since Mussolini had been pals with Engelbert Dollfuss.
Nov 24th, 2010 at 20:38 GMT
I would definitely not call Smetona a fascist.
May 19th, 2011 at 01:30 GMT
San Marino had a Fascist government allied with Mussolini. I think the big problem with quizzes like this is the definition of Fascism. Does it mean totalitarianism, torchlight parades, uniformed political parties, etc.? Or can it be simple authoritarianism allied with extreme nationalism? Tiso in Slovakia was a Catholic priest, so not an ordinary Fascist, but he had no problems cooperating with Hitler, much as Croatia, a similarly clerico-fascist regime. Spain, on the other hand, despite a fascist veneer, was more an old style Caudillo dictatorship, in cooperation with the Catholic church. It's tricky.
Jun 13th, 2011 at 12:04 GMT
JAPAN???? Japan was allied with the fascists they themselves were not. sorry to point this out but it was needed.
Jun 29th, 2011 at 06:25 GMT
I didn't make this quiz so people could debate with me and other Sporclers on what is and isn't Fascist. I'm sorry I disappointed some of you with my selection of answers, but as carbon_rod pointed out, defining a government as complex as Fascism is difficult even for 20th century historians such as myself. I just figured people would prefer clicking on a quiz that said "Fascist countries" and see many nations that were considered fascist rather than just Germany and Italy.
Jul 6th, 2011 at 16:59 GMT
Chile under Pinochet?
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A digest of important news from sources selected by our local editors. Delivered weekday mornings.
When the presidential debates kick off tonight, someone is bound to bring up a traditional election-year refrain: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Given everything that's happened in the economy over the past four years, it's a particularly interesting question in the 2012 election.
Our Washington Bureau recently assessed the national economy's performance over the past four years, so we've decided to do the same for the Alabama economy.
Here's a look at four key indicators and how they compare to four years ago. After you look at the indicators, take our poll and tell us what you think on the issue.
Rate in August 2008: 5.2 percent
Rate in August 2012: 8.5 percent
Analysis: No matter how you slice it, we were better off in 2008. There were more people employed in the state and the jobless rate was more than three percentage points lower. The unemployment rate was trending higher in 2008, but it was also trending higher in August 2012.
2007 - $165.7 billion
2008 - $170.2 billion
2009 - $164.7 billion
2010 - $170.2 billion
2011 - $173.1 billion
2012 (projected) - $176 billion
Analysis: This one is a little tricky because we don't know what the 2012 result will be. The state posted stronger growth between 2007 and 2008 than it did between 2010 and 2011 (the latest year data is available). That 2.7 percent growth is also better than the latest projections for this year. But the state's GDP also shrank by $5.5 billion between 2008 and 2009. That type of drop isn't widely projected this time around – at least not yet – so, in terms of Alabama GDP, things are probably better now.
Ty West is the managing editor for the Birmingham Business Journal. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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When the download dialog is displayed, it should always be visible to the user, to ensure that the user realizes it is there. If the dialog is displayed in a small enough window, the user may not realize it is being displayed, and if the right keyboard sequence is carefully followed, they can end up running a downloaded executable. Additional social engineering steps are needed to ensure that the user presses the correct key sequence, without being able to show any relevant visual feedback, as the page cannot see that the keys are being pressed.
Opera Software has released Opera 11.62, where this issue has been fixed.
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The U.S. government is cracking down on Internet piracy. This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had seized the domain names of five websites that it says were being used to sell counterfeit goods and illegally distribute copyrighted media content. NBC News' Rich Gardella reports.
By Rich Gardella and Jamie Forzato, NBC News
Amid growing calls for more government regulation of the Internet, the United States is conducting what it calls "a sustained law enforcement initiative aimed at counterfeiting and piracy" – an effort that already has resulted in arrests and the seizure of 125 websites.
Ask anybody who uses a computer if they've ever downloaded or streamed media content for free on the Internet, and the answer most likely will be yes. The U.S. government and the American media industry say as much as a quarter of this kind of media traffic violates U.S. copyright law, and both are getting serious in their attempts to turn off the spigot.
But detractors of the crackdown say that the government shouldn’t side with industry and attempt to restrict what flows across the Internet.
(A similar debate unfolded this week at the G8 summit in Paris, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy arguing that governments need to impose more rules of the road on the Internet, and tech leaders like Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg warning that could stymie innovation and squelch free expression.)
The most recent skirmish in the escalating conflict occurred this week, when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) announced that its Homeland Security Investigations unit had seized the domain names of five websites that it said were being used to sell counterfeit goods or illegally distribute copyrighted materials, including media content.
"American business is threatened by those who produce counterfeit trademarked goods and pirate copyrighted materials," ICE Director John Morton said Wednesday in a press release announcing the seizures. "From counterfeit pharmaceuticals and electronics to pirated movies, music, and software, IP thieves undermine the U.S. economy and jeopardize public safety. Our efforts through this operation successfully disrupt the ability of criminals to purvey counterfeit goods and copyrighted materials illegally over the Internet."
The crackdown – dubbed “Operation In Our Sites" – is being spearheaded by ICE’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, working in coordination with U.S. attorneys' offices across the country. The initiative has so far seized the domain names of 125 websites since it began last year, ICE says, effectively shutting them down.
Of the seized website domains, approximately 25 – including two of the five announced this week – were hosting or linking to copyrighted media content illegally, the government says. (The rest have been selling counterfeit goods, everything from shoes and clothing and accessories to DVDs of movies and TV shows to pharmaceutical products.)
Free downloading or "streaming" media content from Internet websites – including movies, TV shows, sports events and music – is a big and rapidly growing business. While an exact number is difficult to pin down, available data and estimates show that millions of streamings and downloads occur daily.
A lot of that traffic is legal – downloading or streaming a full episode of a current television program from an authorized and sponsored service, such as a network's website, for example.
But the U.S. government and the American media industry claim a significant amount of it is illegal. A lot of the media content streamed and downloaded is copyrighted – owned by the person or entity that created it – and a lot of the services providing access to the material don't have permission from the copyright holder to do so.
The government and the media industry say U.S. copyright law (specifically, 18 USC 2319), states that distributing such content without permission from the copyright holder is a crime – copyright infringement. They generally use a simpler name: theft – of intellectual property, or "IP theft" for short.
It’s been more than a decade since the online music-sharing service Napster made headlines for distributing copyrighted content without permission. At the service's peak, millions of Napster users traded and downloaded millions of data files containing copyrighted music, free of charge. The music industry, through some of its largest companies, sued over copyright infringements and lost revenue. After losing in federal court, Napster shut itself down in 2001. (Its name and now-legal music service lives on as a part of the electronics retailer Best Buy.) Despite Napster’s legal troubles, online services providing unauthorized access to copyrighted media content have continued to ply the Internet, though not on such a large scale.
Study: Nearly a quarter of streams, downloads illegal
The media industry seeks to quantify IP theft as a problem.
It commissioned a study that found that almost one-quarter of all that streaming and downloading is illegal. In a January report, the Internet intelligence and research company Envisional of Cambridge, England, found that "across all areas of the global internet, 23.76 percent of traffic was estimated to be infringing" on copyrighted material.
(The report, "An Estimate of Infringing Use of the Internet," was commissioned by NBCUniversal Media LLC, part owner of msnbc.com. The media industry's powerful lobby, the Motion Picture Association of America, supports its conclusions. Microsoft, another parent company of msnbc.com, also is a leading advocate of stricter enforcement of digital copyright protections.)
The industry claims that all that copyright-infringing media traffic translates not only to lost revenue, but also to lost jobs and wages for media industry workers.
The Motion Picture Association of America claims illegal streaming and downloading cost American workers 375,000 jobs and $16 billion in earnings every year.
A public service announcement, originally produced for the City of New York to help protect its film and television business, with support from NBCUniversal, makes that point bluntly.
Comedian Tom Papa appears on a New York City sidewalk as a vendor hawking illegally downloaded "free movies." As passers-by express interest, Papa gestures to a woman standing beside him carrying audio equipment, who looks a bit forlorn.
"These are illegally downloaded movies," Papa says, "and because of that people like her are losing their jobs."
"Whether you get it off the streets or off the Internet,” Papa concludes, now facing the camera, "digital piracy and product counterfeiting are not victimless crimes."
The federal government has adopted that message, releasing the public service announcement to the public through its own media office, and linking it to some of now-shuttered websites whose domains it has seized.
A warning to surfers
Visitors to these websites are redirected first to a government warning banner bearing the seals of the Department of Justice, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center and Homeland Security Investigations. The banner states that the government has seized the domain name, that it is illegal to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material without authorization and that willful offenders risk prosecution for criminal felony violation copyright law. If convicted, the banner warns, even first-time offenders "will face up to five years in federal prison," plus "restitution, forfeiture and fine."
William Ross, the unit chief for investigations at the National Intellectual Property Rights Center, said Operation In Our Sites is about enforcing copyright law and protecting the U.S. economy from intellectual property theft, which the government considers a national threat.
"We try to protect the economic interests of U.S. industries and manufacturers," Ross said. "We're protecting them from other people taking their ideas and selling them."
In some cases, the government has arrested and charged website operators. In February, it arrested and charged a Texas man who had streamed copyrighted sports events on one seized site, channelsurfing.net, claiming he'd collected $90,000 in online advertising revenue.
Most of the seized websites appear to be strictly online operations, and their operators were difficult to contact. But NBC News found one willing to talk: Waleed Gadelkareem, an Egyptian businessman.
The U.S. government seized his domain – torrent-finder.com, which was based in the U.S. – in November. He says his site was getting 100,000 hits a day and generating revenue from online advertising.
But Gadelkareem claims he wasn't doing anything wrong. He said his site was a just a search engine that linked to other sites with such content, just like other big search engines do.
"It's a dirty game they are playing. and it's totally unfair," said Gadelkareem, interviewed via Skype from his home office in Alexandria, Egypt. "I don't try to sell anything. I'm a search engine. I don't have any database of any copyrighted materials."
Ross said he could not discuss Gadelkareem's case, an ongoing investigation. But he said every website the government acted against was violating American copyright law.
After the government seized his U.S.-based domain, which was run from a server in Texas, Gadelkareem changed its name slightly, to torrent-finder.info, and moved it to a server based in Sweden. He continues to operate it from Egypt.
Ross said the U.S. is working with foreign governments to shut down sites if they move out of the U.S. "We keep going after them,” Ross said, “no matter how many times they come back up."
Proposed legislation in Congress would give the U.S. government the power to shut down copyright-infringing websites in other countries – even if they mainly link to copyright-protected material without permission.
Businessman says he was wrongly shut down
Waleed Gadelkareem sees big business behind the government’s efforts.
"The USA government is trying to shut it down," Gadelkareem said, "for the sake of a group of rich businessmen. That's what I think. That's (what) everybody thinks."
His American lawyer, David Snead, who represents and advises online service providers who distribute content on copyright issues, agrees.
"The government is doing industry's bidding here," Snead said. "I think that it is wrong for prosecutorial resources to be used on behalf of any one industry."
There is vigorous debate in the various precincts of the Internet about whether the government's crackdown and seizures are appropriate.
The media and entertainment industry – including NBCUniversal – has long advocated more government enforcement of intellectual property violations.
Ross said the motivation for the government's efforts to crack down on unauthorized distribution of media content is simply to enforce copyright law and to protect the U.S. economy and jobs.
He says the media industry itself takes down far more websites hosting illegal copyrighted content than the government does, using its own mechanisms.
"They have a lot more resources, a lot more manpower to do those type things than we have within the government,” Ross said. “So what we're doing is a very small percentage."
As the government and industry crack down on supply, what will happen to demand – the computer users who aren't distributing unauthorized media content but are consuming it, who initiate all those unauthorized downloads and streams?
NBC News recently discussed these issues with six college students at the University of Maryland.
"I think it's common, especially among college students,” said one, “because it seems anonymous and it seems like something you can get away with."
All six students we talked to at the University of Maryland/College Park agreed that hosting or providing access to copyrighted content without the permission of the copyright holder was illegal.
They made a distinction between illegal and wrong, however, with only one saying it was wrong.
"If it violates the law," the student said, "then, yeah, I think it should be enforced."
But while five of the six thought that consuming copyrighted media content without the permission of the copyright holder was illegal, none thought that was wrong.
"I just don't think that it's wrong enough for me to stop doing something that's so easy and so available to me," said another, expressing the view of the majority. "I just don't feel it's wrong." | <urn:uuid:b58fad11-619e-447f-9ab5-8a0a7d4db4fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/05/28/6732624-us-goes-on-offense-against-digital-piracy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958986 | 2,518 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Thursday, May 3, 2012 | The New York Times The Choice blog
Calling all Texans with college apparel: Friday is Generation TX Day, or “GenTX,” as the event’s organizers call it. Students all over the Lone Star State will be wearing T-shirts from their favorite universities to increase awareness about college attendance.
By 2030, “nearly 60 percent of all Texans will have only a high school diploma or less,” a 2005 study from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted.
GenTX is part of a statewide initiative with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to encourage an entire generation of Texans to attend two- or four-year colleges. The movement is financed by a grant from the United States Department of Education. | <urn:uuid:f833b034-6473-4c53-82b6-69817d38dc12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gentx.org/2012/1625/gentx-wants-texans-to-wear-college-t-shirts-on-friday/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93074 | 156 | 1.570313 | 2 |
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Complex robots that interact naturally with humans require the integration, coordination and maintenance of many diverse software components and algorithms. An architecture that incorporates explicit knowledge about the relationships among these components and the overall system state can be used for introspection and consequently to reason about the best configurations of the computing environment under changing conditions; potential uses include maintaining the system's integrity, promoting its health, and providing the ability to dynamically reconfigure system components (e.g., after component failure). In this paper, we describe a rudimentary reasoning system, part of our distributed integrated affect reflection cognition (DIARC) architecture for human-robot interaction, that can autonomously perform failure detection, failure recovery, and system reconfiguration of distributed architectural components to ensure sustained operation and interactions. We demonstrate the functionality and utility of the proposed mechanisms on a robot, where architectural components are forcefully removed by hand and automatically recovered by the system while the robot is continuing its interactions with humans as part of a joint human-robot task.
Date of Conference: 10-14 April 2007 | <urn:uuid:a239c04e-f09f-4ddc-9a9c-6e57cde981bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=true&arnumber=4209663&contentType=Conference+Publications | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920474 | 215 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Recent data relating to new home sales, housing permits, declining inventory levels, and rising housing prices are sufficient indicators of an improving U.S. housing market.
The sector suffered since 2006 when house prices had fallen by more than 30% across the nation. The decline had been twice as much in some of the metros. Declining house property ate away home equity, wiping out trillions of dollars held by individual households.
Delinquency and foreclosure rates on home mortgages were at an all time high, at levels unseen since the Great Depression. Recessionary conditions along with rising foreclosures in recent years caused the national homeownership rate to decline from its 2004 peak of 69% to under 66% in 2011.
Fast forward to 2012 and conditions have improved remarkably. To get more specific, data released jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development relating to sales of new single-family houses in October 2012 was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 368,000, up 17.2% from the October 2011 estimate of 314,000.
Moreover, the median sales price of new houses sold in October 2012 was $237,700; the average sales price was $278,900 up 8.0% year over year.
The data also shows that there are currently 4.8 months of supply of new houses (thanks to strong sales) on the market at the current sales rate and 5.4 months of supply of existing homes. For reference, a healthy market would be between 5 and 6 months of supply.
Meanwhile housing permits, which are the best short-term indicator of future housing starts, also show a strong run up. As of October 2012, housing permits, at 679,900, posted an increase of 33% year over year.
Inventory levels for October 2012 were also low. Five-year data also suggests that inventory for new homes as well as existing homes has been declining.
Moreover, housing prices have been on an upward trend. S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index – the gold standard for housing price index – demonstrated a rise in home prices in the third quarter of 2012. The index was up 3.6% year over year and 2.2% sequentially. A consistent rise in home prices for six months through September 2012 is a sufficient pointer that the housing market recovery is in positive territory.
Further, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (:HMI), which shows builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes, posted a solid, 5-point gain to 46 for November. This marks the seventh consecutive monthly gain in the confidence gauge and brings it to its highest point since May 2006. Though any reading under 50 still indicates that the builders see conditions as poor, a substantial progress can be witnessed since this time last year, when the HMI stood at a paltry 19.
Other tailwinds driving the sector are low long-term mortgage interest rates which translate into higher affordability and a recovery in the unemployment rate which narrowed down to 7.7% in November 2012 from the highs of 10.0% in the recent past. These factors are now expected to trigger a renewed demand for houses.
Historically, residential investment, of which new home construction is the most important part, has been the catalyst that has pulled the economy out of the woods. The building of every new single-family home creates roughly three new jobs.
A recovery in housing will not only benefit homebuilders like Lennar Corporation (LEN) or D.R. Horton Inc. (DHI), but all other businesses that go into producing a home. These include lumber, produced by companies like Plum Creek Timber Co. Ltd. (PCL), concrete, lighting fixtures, heating, and cooling equipment providers like United Technologies Corp. (UTX) and the like. Jobs are also created for service providers such as real estate agents, lawyers, and brokers.
In addition to generating employment, housing generates revenue for the government by way of property tax, which helps in the funding and flourishing of local schools and communities.
Residential investment in the Gross Domestic Output which has averaged at 2.7% year to date is expected to increase to more normal levels of 4.5% to 5% of GDP over the next couple of years, if the current recovery gathers momentum.
Putting It Together....
The recent trends backed by adequate data reinforce our view that the housing market is on its way to recovery. However, a big if remains in place in case the U.S. fails to address the Fiscal Cliff or suffers from a slowing global economy in the wake of the European debt crisis.
Key data relating to homebuilder sentiment index, November Housing Starts numbers and Existing Home sales data, due this week will provide further clarity to the housing market movement.
More From Zacks.com | <urn:uuid:a17ab78a-ca4c-43c7-87c4-5c5091689178> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-comeback-2013-173651124.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967607 | 1,002 | 1.890625 | 2 |
By Charlotte De Val, Safe World Student Writer
Beatrice Vanaja is the chief administrative officer of New Life, an organisation based in Tiruchchirappalli, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Tiruchchirappalli (frequently referred to as ‘Trichy’) is a hub for various industrial sectors, education and agriculture, and it is also rich in natural resources.
Tamil Nadu, despite having a relatively better reputation for women’s rights compared to many states in India, has been ranked as the second most corrupt state of India by Transparency International, and thus, has problems of its own. While the literacy rates, according to the 2011 census, are on the rise, poverty levels within rural areas are still high, making the challenge to enhance the lives of women and children in rural Tiruchchirappalli difficult.
New Life is a largely self-funded NGO, and relies on the hard work of Beatrice to raise money to fund community projects.
Charlotte De Val, Safe World Student Writer, spoke to Beatrice Vanaja about her work.
The organisation was started in 1993 by some friends, who were working in the public and organised sector. We were discussing the difficulties we had in addressing the needs of the very poor population, and wanted to find a means to reach them.
We were sure that poor and underprivileged women, who were thought to be not bankable, were bankable and credit-worthy. Hence, the organisation started working with women, who are living in poverty, to help organise their finances and ensure they were aware of the benefits available.
When we started the organisation, I had been married for two years and my son was only a year old. During that time, I also had a full-time job in a bank and my daughter was born less than a year later. I had to multi-task my family, job, and the cherished organisation.
I remember spending my evenings in the field with the women and children while my son and daughter were playing in the car. With the growth of New Life, someone had to take on the full-time job of overseeing the work, and manage the employees and volunteers. With this in mind, I decided I had to resign from my coveted banking career in 2001, in order to give the job sufficient attention.
After that, I had to travel a lot, and it is with thanks to my partner, whose support and encouragement allowed me to be where I am now.
The problems of women and children in Tamil Nadu are similar to those in other states. Tamil Nadu is a developing state, but the status of women and children is improving when compared to states such as Orissa and Bihar.
However, we still suffer from cultural blocks, and women are restrained from coming out for work. Until the 20th century, the women were burdened with the values of: “Acham (fear), Madam (foolishness), Naanam (shyness), and Payirpu (aversion)”; they were shut in their homes. Now urban women are coming out and are working, but in rural areas things have not changed much.
A woman represents her family and is not seen as an individual.
She cannot fulfil her desires and wishes and she has to compromise her needs due to the limited resources of the family.
A woman is always made dependent on a male, be it her father, husband, or son. Women who are separated from their husbands are not given respect, and are ill-treated even by fellow women. This is the case irrespective of the caste, creed, community, and economic strata.
The group whose voice is least heard, or never heard, is that of the children. The children are vulnerable to the refusal of health, education, and psycho-social care. They have their rights easily neglected and violated, and this is in spite of the efforts of many voluntary organisation working for their welfare.
There was resistance from the already existing players. Yes, the resistance came from my fellow organisations.
When I participate in a meeting, it is usual for me to be confronted with comments such as ‘you are inexperienced’, ‘you come from a good background', and ‘so you don’t know the difficulties of the poor’, and ‘you don’t have field experience’. They treated me indifferently.
This is because at that time, most of the voluntary organisations were not headed by professionals and most of them were men. The competition is cut-throat and not healthy, as it should be. The fellow men thought that either I could not sustain in the field with my banking and family background, or I may become a threat. But now they respect me and have accepted me.
We have been persistently doing our work, and in the early years we had to spend a lot of our personal earnings to run the programmes. For the first five years, we had very few funded programmes, but we were determined to run the organisation. In 1998, we received the funding for our child labour special schools. Then everything geared up. We also had an institution which supported our microfinance programme.
People started recognising our work and contributing to our work. They volunteered, donated, and morally supported us. The microfinance program helped us generate our own funds to continue running the programmes.
In the process of empowering women, New Life tried a new model of federations. The women leaders of the federation were trained to manage the federation on their own, make credit decisions, maintain the books of accounts; you will be surprised to know that 95% of the these leaders have not completed their school education.
These women were wrongly guided by one of our male staff, who has since resigned, as he could not accept leadership from women. Also, a few of the project leaders were working with our funder, who wanted to get credit from raising and nurtering these federations directly, and tried to cheat us. It took four years to resolve the issue, affecting the growth of the organisation, and eating away eleven years of hard work in developing female leadership among the poor and less educated communities. It was a good but costly lesson for the organisation.
New Life could overcome the problem as it had a good grip on the field, and the other leaders and members were supporting us. The federations had to be dissolved, and branches were formed to continue the work.
This experience showed us the power and responsibility that came with being an organisation, which also provided holistic support to members.
We support females in our target areas from birth to death. Post-natal care is given to the children until the age of 3, when they can then benefit from our early learning centres. Once they enter the primary schools, they can attend our coaching classes and if eligible, can get their education supported. Girls above 13 are taught health awareness on a variety of issues.
Ante-natal care is provided to pregnant women, and women above 18 can join our self-help group, and benefit from leadership and entrepreneurial training. From this they can start their own enterprises and income generating small businesses, and be supported by our mentorship services. Women can also enroll in a scheme which offers health and life coverage.
The women who have benefitted from the various schemes of the organisation, come from varied backgrounds. Some are from rural areas while the rest are from semi-urban and urban areas. All are poor – or the poorest of the poor, or from low income areas. Of the women in New Life's target community, 56.8 percent of them are illiterate, 41 percent have studied up through the higher secondary school level, and 2.2 percent have collegiate education.
Children below six are the most vulnerable in our target areas, and there is a lot of parental abuse and neglect. They don’t get enough food, care, shelter, or a clean and conducive environment for their development.
Until they reach 13, access to quality education is a problem. We also work with children in crime-prone slums who are vulnerable to juvenile delinquency and abuse. Between the ages of 13 and 18, many children leave school and become child labourers (though our country law describes child labour to be working children below the age of 14, we take this limit to be 18). Adequate education is denied, their childhood is denied, and they become burdened with work and responsibilities beyond their age.
Specific to a few of the slums, the gypsy community, and in some villages, is the problem of early marriage.
Young girls are forced to get married after 2-3 years of attaining puberty, and we see girls below 18 having children in these areas.
After marriage, the women have to depend on their husbands even if they are earning.
There are so many myths and cultural taboos attached to marriage, and they forego even their own food in order to feed their children and husbands properly.
This is an expectation of women, by society.
Women are also encouraged to use New Life loans to set up, or improve, their own businesses in order to become economically self-sufficient.
For example, G. Puspalatha, living in Pasumadam village in Trichy has four children to support, with her husband Govinda. With an initial Rs10000 (about £125) loan from New Life, they were able to create a profitable fire-wood selling business. When asked how it was possible to change her income and lifestyle so quickly, her response was, “At first I am grateful to my God and then to New Life. Without the loan from New Life, it is unachievable to dramatically change our lifestyle. Thanks to New Life and all its members”.
For young women, we are able to help them achieve an education. Anita, one of our students in the special school for child labourers from Ramagiripatti village in Trichy, dropped out of school at eighth standard, to earn additional income for her family. She was sent to rear goats for more affluent families in the village; however, she spoke of her desire to study with her friends.
When this was brought to the attention of our special school teacher, they were able to meet with Anita’s parents. After several attempts to persuade her parents, she joined our special school, studied well, and was admitted to regular school in standard ninth. She passed her higher secondary examinations in May 2010. She is now employed as a teacher in one of our early learning centers. Her parents are now very proud to see her as a teacher. It is her conviction – backed up by our team’s support, that brought her to this position now.
Aside from the educational, health and socio-economic support from the organisation, women are also encouraged to use democracy to improve their lives. Our women members are motivated to participate in panchayath (an elective village council). and general elections. Forty two women members from different locations are elected as ward members and counsellors, while one of our women members, Mrs Malliga Chinnaswamy, was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly from Musiri Town Panchayath.
Despite the government of Tamil Nadu spending 30% of its budget on social welfare and rural development programmes, the World Bank went on to say that the success in social empowerment had not translated itself into economic empowerment. This is an issue that New Life has been focusing on, making their approach comprehensive in both social and economic development.
When the organisation was started, we were working for women who were organised into self-help groups, that were linked to banks for financial support. They were given leadership and entrepreneurship training. But with passing years, we found that the women are happier not when their economic status is improved, but when their children develop also. Thereafter, we started working for their children too.
Meanwhile, we also saw that many women and children are made vulnerable to crime and crime-prone circumstances. We are concerned with this, and it has led us to the Rehabilitation of Prisoners’ project.
Real empowerment for a woman is not only her economic development, but her development in all spheres. She needs to be developed socially, within her family and individually, as well as economically.
We are severely concerned about the drastic climatic changes, issues related to the environment, and its impact on our members, and the world as a whole.
Though New Life wants to do much, and has plans to be implemented, we are now restricted by limited funding. A water management project is implemented in the Thanjavur and Trichy districts. Since the funding is limited, we try to compensate by linking up with other institutions like colleges, which has allowed us to implement a tree planting project with colleges in our target areas.
We are also creating awareness about the climatic changes, and the preservation of environment to our members.
When we started working, education was inaccessible to all, and was only a dream to many. But now with years gone, I can see that education is being provided, and the children are motivated to take up higher education.
Education loans are given to all through banking institutions. But the concern is, most of the students who graduated are unemployed or underemployed. This is largely due to the poor quality of our education system, and poorly designed courses – which don’t develop employable skills.
My role is to be a change maker in the community.
Charlotte De Val is a Safeworld Student Writer. She is a history undergraduate, focusing on global, cultural, and social history.
"Over the past two years I have been lucky enough to spend six months living in Chennai, India.
There, my life in a home for disabled and disadvantaged children has cemented by commitment to humanitarianism and my goal for a career in humanitarian aid. They continue to be my inspiration and teach me more about the world than I could have ever hoped for. They continue to be my inspiration and teach me more about the world than I could have ever hoped for. Working with, and not explicitly for, communities is the most valuable contribution we can make." | <urn:uuid:9b62ff47-475f-4106-8d7c-18044261cd48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/partners-in-asia/partners-in-india/new-life/new-chief-officer/2868-tamil-nadu.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983905 | 2,935 | 2.015625 | 2 |
In this day and age, there are too many people who have eventually become quite conscious about physical appearances, mainly their own.
There are lots of media influences which often force people to do their best to maintain smooth and flawless complexions.
Of course, this means that nearly every person on the face of this planet would want to be as attractive as possible, showing off the beauty of their skin, and simply making heads turn wherever they go.
Yet, such is not the case for some. Even in the early years of their life, people are often wondering why they see their faces saddled with saggy skin and wrinkle problems.
Of course, this can always lead to some confidence issues which would then make them feel tired and withered even while being in their mid-20’s or early 30’s.
However, many companies have sought to rectify this concern, with the numerous anti-aging creams, ointments and products which consumers can avail of to finally acquire smooth and wrinkle-free skin.
The main issue regarding these products, though, is that not every one of them can be effective. Some may contain ingredients which are synthetically or chemically made, and can lead to all sorts of unwanted side effects on a person’s skin.
Therefore, one would go for a more natural manner in which they can remove those wrinkles. With that said, it is essential for people to actually pay close attention to the foods which they eat.
Below are just some of the top choices with regard to foods and beverages which are pretty helpful in getting rid of wrinkles.
- Water is perhaps the most important beverage that any person can drink, especially since this is a natural resource which makes for a really reliable anti-wrinkle regiment. It’s not technically a food, but it is after all a universal cleaner which can flush out many of the toxins people have accumulated in their bodies through the unhealthy foods they’ve eaten. It also provides the skin with proper hydration, thus keeping it moisturized and steering clear of potential wrinkling.
- Tomatoes & avocadoes are two fruits which are very much helpful in maintaining the youthfulness of a person’s skin. With tomatoes, lycopene is the main substance which can help maintain that blushing look, allowing the skin emit such a radiant glow and keep a person looking young. It’s also responsible for reducing damage to the skin cells. Avocadoes, on the other hand, are filled with vitamin E, something that’s recognized as a preventer of aging signs, such as age spots and wrinkles.
- Green tea is also essential for people who want to get rid of wrinkles. These contain antioxidants which are known to cleanse the body as well of unnecessary wastes. What’s even better is the fact that it can help those who wish to lose weight.
These are some of the foods & beverages that people should consume more if they wish to eliminate wrinkle problems from their skin for good. | <urn:uuid:ef761b41-effc-465b-a7ff-f25d442fe340> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://acembike.org/tag/eliminate-wrinkle-problems/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978358 | 622 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Johannes Kepler Biography
Born: December 27, 1571
Weil, Swabia, Germany
Died: November 15, 1630
Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler's discovery of three basic laws governing the motion of planets made him one of the chief founders of modern astronomy (the study of the universe and its stars and planets).
Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in Weil, Germany. He was the son of Heinrich and Katharina Guldenmann Kepler. His father was a mercenary (a soldier serving only for money). Although a member of the Protestant faith, his father helped put down a Protestant uprising in the Low Countries (Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg). Kepler's parents allowed him to watch the great comet of 1577 and an eclipse (passing into shadow) of the Moon. Kepler was a sickly child but an excellent student. At thirteen he entered a religious training school at Adelberg, Germany.
Following Kepler's graduation from the University of Tübingen in 1591, he became interested in astronomy, particularly the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), who stated that the Earth moved around the Sun in a circle. The University of Tübingen recommended Kepler for the post of the "mathematician of the province" in Graz, Austria. He arrived there in 1594 and began composition of the almanac, in which the major events of the coming year were predicted. His first almanac was a success. The occurrence of two events that he had predicted, an invasion by the Turks and a severe winter, established his reputation. In 1597 Kepler married Barbara Muehleck. Of their five children only one boy and one girl reached adulthood.
Work in astronomy
Kepler sought the job of assistant to Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), astrologer (one who interprets the positions of stars and planets and their effect on human affairs) and mathematician to Rudolph II (1552–1612), in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Kepler took his new position in 1600. When Brahe died the following year, Kepler was appointed to replace him. His first job was to prepare Brahe's collection of studies in astronomy for publication, which came out between 1601 and 1602.
Kepler was also left in charge of Brahe's records, which forced him to make an
Kepler published these laws in his discussion of the orbit of the planet Mars, the Astronomia nova (1609). The two laws were clearly spelled out in the book's table of contents. They must have been seen by any careful reader alert enough to recognize a new idea of such importance. Still, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) failed to use the laws in his printed works—although they would have helped his defense of Copernicus's ideas.
New jobs and the third law
In 1611 Rudolph II stepped down from the throne, and Kepler immediately looked for a new job. He obtained the post of province mathematician of Linz, Austria. By the time he moved there in 1612 with his two children, his wife and his favorite son, Friedrich, were dead. Kepler's fourteen years in Linz were marked by his second marriage to Susan Reuttinger, and by his repeated efforts to save his mother from being tried as a witch.
Kepler also published two important works while in Linz. In the Harmonice mundi (1618) his third law was announced. It stated that the average distance of a planet from the sun, raised to the third power, divided by the square of the time it takes for the planet to complete one orbit, is the same for all planets. Kepler believed that nature followed numeric relationships since God created it according to "weight, measure and number." Kepler used the same idea in describing geometry (the study of points, lines, angles, and surfaces). Kepler's second work, the Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (published 1618–21), proposed a physical explanation of the motions of planets, namely, "magnetic arms" extending from the sun.
Kepler wandered over Europe in the last three years of his life. He was in Ulm, Germany, when his Tabulae Rudolphinae (1628) was published. It not only added the positions of over two hundred stars to those contained in Brahe's published works, but it also provided planetary tables that became the standard for the next century. Kepler died on November 15, 1630. He was a unique symbol of the change over from the old to the new spirit of science.
For More Information
Caspar, Max. Kepler. Edited and translated by C. Doris Hellmann. New York: Abeland-Schuman, 1959. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1993.
Tiner, John Hudson. Johannes Kepler: Giant of Faith and Science. Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1977.
Voelkel, James R. Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. | <urn:uuid:4af9bc4a-d804-4d54-9ca1-aaef96cd5ffc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.notablebiographies.com/Jo-Ki/Kepler-Johannes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974857 | 1,074 | 3.84375 | 4 |
Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons.
You’ll know Michelangelo’s comment about how he worked, so let me paraphrase:
“I just carve away anything that doesn’t look like a lion, and I’m left with a lion.”
In that statement is the fundamental choice at the heart of Great Work: focus on the No to become clear on the Yes; define the Yes by clarifying the No.
I think it’s the essence of doing more Great Work; or at least it seems to be the critical lesson I keep needing to learn. (You do know we teach what we most need to learn, don’t you?)
Here are four elusive pairs I’d like to do a better job at saying No and Yes to, and the four experiments I’m going to start to see if I can move in the right direction.
1. Saying No to Control … so I can say Yes to Freedom
My very first boss was creative, prolific and a touch insane. I remember one of my early Career Limiting Moves when, in front of the whole company, I clicked into mouth-operating-before-brain mode and joked he needed to have a finger in every pie.
I have become that very same person.
Pies? I’ve got pies everywhere I look, way too many pies. Or perhaps it’s not enough fingers.
But in any case, we – and by that I mean I – have reached a point where it can’t go on. If I haven’t dropped a ball yet, it’s only a matter of time. And hamster-in-wheel is not a job description worth much.
I’m inspired by Chris Brogan whose philosophy, as I understand it, is to start something, hand it over and then get the hell out of the way.
Here’s the shift in thinking that might make the difference for me. Realizing I am not Box of Crayons but that I only serve Box of Crayons.
And I’m going to test that by staring one thing, something I’d normally hold on to, hand it over, move aside and see if it will be the end of the world (which has been my theory to date).
How about you? Where has staying in control become your own mind-forged manacle?
2. Saying No to Popularity … so I can say Yes to Friendship
I’m not super obsessed with numbers, and in fact am pretty lousy at metrics. (I mainly go with “Is this the right mix of Great Work and Good Work?” “Am I having fun?” “Are we in the poor house?” I hope for Yes Yes No as the answers.)
But the rise of new technology means that one way of spending time is hanging out in the social media mirrored rooms waving at many (Woo hoo! 14,000 people on Twitter!) but never really holding hands, looking into the eyes and having a real conversation with a few.
I notice that this week, Gwen Bell is leaving Twitter and moving to Google+, because she feels it’s a place where she can create intimacy, community and digital sanctuary. And Scott Stratten, one of the Twitterati, has said his greatest mistake was to follow back blindly.
My shift in thinking is to recognize it as a width vs depth thing, and see if I can find the hunger for the depth. I think it’s there somewhere.
I’m going to start taking the Call a Friend option once a day to connect to people I love.
3. Saying No to Money … so I can say Yes to Impact
For the last eighteen months I’ve been walking a fine line, working on the business that I love and that pays my bills, and working on my Great Work Project, a new book whose sale raises money for an important cause.
It has been a constant struggle to give this Great Work the appropriate time and space to come together, and that’s primarily because of the seductive comfort of Good Work.
Great Work, because it’s work that truly matters to me, makes me fret, gives me sweaty palms, and invites all sorts of doubt and self-sabotage.
Good Work on the other hand is the relatively simple task of rolling up my sleeves and getting things done, having some fun and making some money along the way.
And yet, Great Work – unsafe and uncertain as it so often is – is where I hang out on the edges of my own competence and ambition, learning what’s possible for me and for the world. Great Work is also where I can most easily invite other extraordinary people in to help me create the meaning and impact I’m hungry for in my life.
The shift in thinking is to remember (and remember and remember) that Great Work projects take time and need time, and your calendar never lies about what really is most important to you.
And the experiment for now is to look again at “the bottom 10%” of what I do, to see if I might say No to that in some way, to say Yes to Great Work.
What is it for you? Where might you trade money (or time) for meaning?
4. Saying No to Plans … so I can say Yes to Now
Truth is, I’m unlikely to ever say No to plans. I love them – which is one reason at least that I hang out with Charlie Gilkey, who’s a master at them.
I’ve got plans for the week, the month, the quarter, the year. When in doubt, I pull out a piece of paper and start sketching out a plan (which, it must be said, often looks exactly like the plan I’d done two weeks earlier and then “filed” somewhere safe and forgotten about.)
But it’s time to plan a little less. Leo has been talking about No Goals for a while, and (following in his footsteps as I so often do) I am becoming aware that the price I pay for planning is that I spend more time in the future and less time in the here and now.
For instance, the last few months I’ve been deep in the planning of today’s book launch. The price I’ve paid is that summer has slipped by largely unnoticed. I haven’t stopped enough to feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders, to hear the ice clink in my drink on the deck, to give myself up to the swing of the hammock.
And as I write this now, the first of intimations of Fall are here and I know I’ve missed a season that I won’t have back.
The shift in thinking is to realize that planning comes at a cost. A price I’m willing to pay, but perhaps to pay less these days.
My action is to not fill up the final months of the year, but to try to wander a little in the white space that’s there.
Got any non plans?
Yes is too easy
But a strong Yes is hard, and say a strong Yes to the things that really matter is harder still.
So rather than starting with the Yes, start with the No.
Get to the heart of the choice you want to make, then design your own experiments to see what might be possible.
Michael’s Great Work Project is End Malaria a collection of essays on Great Work from 62 brilliant people and where $20 from every book sold goes to Malaria No More. | <urn:uuid:b5f0782d-3db2-43e7-861d-aced8d2459f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zenhabits.net/no/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953405 | 1,637 | 1.523438 | 2 |
AstroForecast June 2001
All times Central Time Zone
The sign of the Twins, Gemini, launches the month of June for the
annual solar journey in this mentally stimulating zodiac sign. The
identification of the themes of communications, information, peer relationships,
negotiability, bargaining, dialogue and versatility will be brought to the fore.
Issues to be addressed will be superficiality, duplicity, lying, cheating,
trickery, two-facedness, scatteredness, boredom and fraud. Gemini's guiding
angel is Ambriel and June's angel is Muriel.
Chiron, the Wounded/Healer has an exact alignment with the Galactic
Center on the first day of June. This is a once in a fifty-year alignment with
the last occurrence dated January 1, 1951. Mars is also aligned with Chiron and
the Galactic Center. The potential for war/aggression can be quite high with
disproportionate large fatalities as extreme consequences. It was during the
Fifties that the Cold War escalated and became entrenched globally. Could this
be another emergence of a 21st Century version of the previous Cold War? Will
international political differences wound future generations of children?
Themes/issues of international security/safety concerns are strongly
highlighted. What is fascinating with this June 2001 chart and that of January
1951 are both charts have the Moon in Libra with an uncanny one-degree
difference! Libra is astrologically associated with mediation, compromise,
fairness, justice and equality in any and all partnerships. A quotation to
consider with this celestial alignment is by Erich Fromm: "Integrity simply
means a willingness not to violate one's identity". The following dates may be
significant as many planets contact this Mars/Chiron/Galactic Center degree
point through oppositions: June 12th, 13th, 15th, 16th, and the 22nd; these
oppositions require the ability to draw distinct definitions or clarifications
with any of the aforementioned themes/issues. The following geographic areas
are sensitized to this alignment: Asia especially Northern India and Pakistan
with both capitals of these countries specifically sensitized; the disputed
islands northeast of Hokkaido, Japan with Russia; Papua New Guinea, Micronesia
and Eastern Australia especially Sydney and Brisbane; and Anchorage, Alaska as
well as the Aleutian Islands. Keywords associated with this Galactic Center
alignment are a new dawn arises for the horizon of mankind; can an expanded
vision of true freedom and justice be shared on a universal level? Can the
temptation of past differences with all of its unresolved animosities be finally
released? The deeper uncharted and undiscovered universal love can be tapped
thus releasing new streams of consciousness that spark evolutionary growth.
The bi-monthly ecliptic shift of the Moon occurs on the 1st as well
that indicates emotional shifts in all relationships in regards to cooperation,
fairness and equality. This lunar ecliptic shift also affects seismological,
meteorological and volcanic activities.
Saturday June 2nd is an excellent day for all partnerships that want
to take daring new steps with projects. Invigorated discussions within
committed partnerships also play out well with the ingress of asteroid Juno into
Gemini at 12pm. The acceptance of new philosophies, attitudes, viewpoints and
perspectives stimulates healing with intimate relationships.
Mercury stations retrograde on the 4th at12: 21am lasting approximately three
weeks. Retrograde Mercury increases the potential of Murphy's Law occurring
with miscommunications, misunderstandings and misperceptions. Problems with
electronics, delivery systems and transportation also tend to increase.
Astrological tradition maintains that purchases made during this 3-week period
of Mercury retrograde can witness problems with workmanship, defective
operations or warranties. Contracts may have to be re-written. Negotiations
have to be re-done. The best application for this retrograde period is to do
thorough re-evaluations, reassessments and reviews. The following signs are
highly sensitized to this current Mercury retrograde in the order given: Gemini,
Sagittarius, Virgo and Pisces. An applicable quote for this Mercury retrograde
comes from Heraclitus: "When you stop thinking, do not forget to begin again".
Keywords for this retrograde of Mercury are recognize the phases or tides that
all individuals experience through changes. Connect with the essence of the
miracle of your existence. Engage the notion that daily life is pure
celebration. You are the exquisite jewel of infinite splendor in the Universe's
The annual Sagittarius Full Moon occurs the next day Tuesday the 5th at 8:40pm
symbolizing the release phase of the Moon. The following issues can be
addressed for this Full Moon: judgment, hypocrisy, over-generalizations,
self-overextension, exaggeration, excess, empty promises, strong opinionating,
intolerance and self-righteousness to name a few. Angel Kyriel can be invoked
for assistance with these issues. A quote by Lin-Chi may help with this
lunation: "Thinking brings us to the foot of the mountain; faith brings us to
the top". Keywords for this lunation are all human beings deserve full
participation in society without the hindrances of bias, prejudice and
exclusion. Whatever the cosmic poker dealer hands the cards to the individual
it is important for the individual to grasp and recognize opportunities and
strategies for the future. Fortify tolerance in regards to differing viewpoints
and perspectives. Be there for someone when it really counts.
Wednesday the 6th at 5:25am is the entrance of harmonious Venus into its own
ruled sign of Taurus for an approximate 28-day journey. Here is an important
focus on financial well being, priorities with personal values and
steadfastness. Give and take with relationship communications is emphasized on
this day as well. Technology markets undergo rapid accelerated changes that
perhaps make up for previous losses earlier in the year.
Committed partnerships are challenged to define ambivalent strategies and
tactics for the future on the 8th and financial commitments experience
adjustments as the 9th rolls into the picture. Discipline is required on both
sides to bring about a win-win situation for both parties involved. Fear
undermines stability in a gnawing way.
An Apogee Moon (farthest distance from the Earth) occurs on the 11th symbolizing
the need to acquire objectivity and impartiality with emotionally vexing and
confusing individuals or situations. Nurturance issues also are emphasized on
this day. Withholding or withdrawal behaviors can arise as well.
Mars opposes Jupiter on the 12th at 12:01pm that can ignite excesses,
exaggerations and over-generalizations. Foreign aggressions can be volatile
with the likelihood of intolerance, bigotry and bias being the tinder for future
conflagrations. Overly compensatory behaviors can also develop. Horace Greely
is succinct when he said: "I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample
Wednesday the 13th at 12:46pm is the opposition of Mars to the Sun.
This is also the closest approach of the Red Planet to our star. Observe what
transpires on this day in regards to the following themes/issues as this is a
once in every two year celestial alignment: assertiveness/aggressiveness,
confrontation, pioneering attitudes, new frontiers, defensive maneuverings, the
military, explosions, riots, the police, anger, frustrations, annoyances,
aggravations and violations to name a few. The Sun as an astrological planet
symbolizes full consciousness so this contact with the Warrior Planet pulls up
all unconscious material to the conscious surface especially whatever issues
were constellated from last summer's Solar Eclipse of July 1, 2000. Mars is an
action-oriented planet and perhaps the following quote by William Arthur Ward
makes sense: "The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist waits for it
to change its course; the realist hoists the sails".
Hurtful and wounding communications in relationships are a strong
potential with the opposition of Mercury and Chiron on the 15th at 11:07am; work
with the healing energies of reconciliation. A Sufi proverb provides insight:
"When the heart cries because of what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it
has found". This same date is the second ecliptic shift of the Moon for the
month emphasizing the need for international diplomacy to be put on the fast
track. This lunar ecliptic shift also affects seismological, meteorological and
The potential for an assassination attempt of a world leader is
strong for June 16, 2001. The following geographic areas are sensitized: the
Indian Sub-Continent especially New Delhi, Western Europe especially Paris,
London and Barcelona, Western Africa especially Algeria and Nigeria, Central
America especially Costa Rica, Cuba and Washington, DC.
Father's Day is an excellent day for innovative and mentally
stimulating discussions. Techno-gadgets are wonderful gift ideas to consider.
Some individuals work really well with spiritual solitude for this day.
The third week of June begins with an air of optimism and expansive
communications as Mercury and Jupiter rendezvous with one another Monday the
18th at 5:12am. Negotiating skills are enhanced with a keen ability to be
Tuesday the 19th at 7:25am Jupiter and Uranus rendezvous in a
harmonious aspect with one another that will be a buoyant lift to technology
sectors. Incredible bargains especially with computers, peripherals and
software are available to the public so take advantage! Sudden opportunities
present themselves; be alert and recognize when to develop them. Intellectual
windfalls are also a potential. To better understand this opportunity potential
Leonardo da Vinci said it best: "When Fortune comes, seize her in front with a
sure hand, because behind she is bald".
This day also witnesses petty jealousies or envy in intimate
relationships. A partner can be compulsive or obsessive. Adjustments are
necessary to ease tensions.
Thursday June 21st at 2:38am is the annual ingress of the majestic
Sun into the sign of Cancer launching its 30-day journey in this emotionally
nurturing sign. This is the Summer Solstice or the pagan Litha celebration.
The creative and vital identification of all themes associated with the home,
family, personal emotions, imagination, dreams and sensitivity come to the fore
with this Solar transit. National security interests also are affected by this
Solar journey. Negative expressions of Cancer are hypersensitivity,
over-protectiveness, sidestepping issues, burying the old ostrich head in the
sand routine so as not to deal or confront a problem directly,
over-emotionalism, moodiness and insecurity.
Interestingly enough this is also the date of the annual Cancer New
Moon at 6:58am and a Solar Eclipse! Themes to encourage growth are
unconditional love, nurturance, improving family ties, foster parenthood,
sympathy, homage to ancestors and genealogy. Domestic themes of furnishings,
décor and food preparations like canning and preserves do well with the early
summer crops. Real estate and agri-business have a new focus with this New
Moon. The guiding angel is Amnediel for this Solar Eclipse and New Moon. This
eclipse occurs at zero degrees of Cancer; any zero degree of any cardinal sign
(Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn) is known as an Aries Point position that in
astrology can signify great importance with events, individuals or
relationships. Florence Nightingale summed it up pretty well for this Aries
Point Eclipse: "The most important thing is not what destiny does to us, but
what we do with it". Keywords associated with this New Moon and Eclipse are a
new foundation to solicit an ultimate end is put into place. Cultivate and
foster this new foundation and be ever mindful to weed out the unnecessary. The
following geographic areas are sensitized to this lunation and eclipse: Beijing,
Myanmar, Togo, Mali, Algeria, Barcelona, Paris, London, Santiago-Chile, Mexico
City, El Paso, Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Spokane, Fairbanks and Anchorage,
Saturn reaches its Pre-Shadow Point on June 23rd that refers to the
degree position it will hold when it turns station direct on February 8, 2002.
This June date may have a direct correlation with next February's date.
Keywords associated with this degree position are pursue self-interests with a
disciplined approach to produce tangible results. Synchronicity presents itself
in an uncanny and unusual manner. "If we want to make a new world, the material
is all there; after all, the first one was made out of chaos" is a quote by
Robert Quillen that underscores this Saturn Pre-Shadow Point.
A Perigee Moon (closest approach to the Earth) occurs on this same
day so hypersensitivity and hyper-emotionalism run high as well. Problem areas
would be control, authoritarianism, dictatorial behaviors and power games. Lack
of confidence and lack of creativity are also issues.
June 25th at 2:17am Saturn and Neptune align harmoniously with one
another that can indicate the realization of a dream or vision. The last time
these two planets were in this same phase and angle with one another was March
27, 1966! Due to Saturn's retrogradation later this year these two planets will
have two more harmonious alignments in 2002. Those individuals born the second
week of Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are really sensitized to this harmonious
planetary energy. Strong perseverance and patience will be required to manifest
the dream or vision into reality. Antonio Machado captures this Saturn -
Neptune harmony best: "If it is good to live, it is even better to dream, and
best of all to awaken".
Mercury is station direct on the 28th at 12:48am ending its
retrograde period that began earlier in the month. Mercury direct can now
correct whatever Murphy's Law came into existence with communications,
transportation and delivery systems from the previous three weeks. Keywords
associated with this Mercury station are entice self-rewarding experiences by
releasing limitations that inhibit full participation in the spice of life -
variety. Multi-tasking orientations enable the individual to accomplish much
even though it may appear to some that the individual has sold out to divergent
interests, which is far from the truth.
A rare third ecliptic shift of the Moon occurs on this day of the
Mercury station. Emotional shifts occur that emphasize sharing, bonding and
intimacy concerns. This lunar ecliptic shift also affects seismological,
meteorological and volcanic activities.
As June closes the potential for naval or maritime accidents occur
especially around the 29th. Sudden reversals in partnerships test patience and
fiscal responsibility. Spoken over-generalizations damage the integrity and
dignity of partners. Heal all wounds with loving care and support of
The month of June holds many international implications that raise
many concerns for humanity. Confucius once said: "If a man gives no thought to
what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand". Humanity is ready to
initiate changes to bring about actions that benefit the collective social well
being. We all have a stake in this development especially through community
neighborhoods and networking. Education plays a key role but nothing will excel
better than genuine and sincere neighborly love. Universal blessings to all of | <urn:uuid:ab39d87e-8cfa-4647-a547-590bd7cfc48b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mariesimpson.com/ezine/members/astro/6-01.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919544 | 3,370 | 1.75 | 2 |
|(a) An official backtag is a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Veterinary Services (VS) approved identification backtag. It must conform to the national uniform tagging system and uniquely identifies each individual animal with alpha-numeric identification. The tag may be encased in a strip of nylon mesh that adheres to the tag. (b) Test eligible swine at markets are defined to mean sexually, intact swine that are six months of age or older. (c) Livestock markets that handle feeder and breeder swine must have well-constructed, well-lighted, concrete or other approved imperviously surfaced pens. Those markets not in compliance with this rule on the date of adoption shall have 120 days after such adoption to bring their facilities up to standards. If adequate pens have not been constructed at any market within the aforesaid 120 days, no further sales of feeder and breeder swine shall be permitted at that market. (d) Feeder and breeder swine must be maintained separately from slaughter swine. Feeder and breeder swine must be sold before the sale ring is used for slaughter swine. (e) No feeder or breeder swine will be permitted to remain in the livestock market for more than 72 hours. No slaughter swine will be permitted to remain in the livestock market for more than 120 hours (five days). (f) No slaughter swine will be released from the livestock market unless they are: (1) consigned for immediate slaughter; or (2) consigned to one other livestock market for sale only to slaughter as long as dealer records are maintained on both the buyer and seller and swine are moved under permit when moving from markets that are not approved under the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 76. (g) When there is evidence of hog cholera within a livestock market, all swine therein shall be immediately quarantined. No swine movement into, out of, or within the market shall be permitted until authorized by a representative of the commission. (h) Market identification with an official backtag is required on all test eligible swine in each consignment to a livestock market. The market shall record the following information on each consignment to the market: (1) full name, street address and/or route address and zip code of the owner of the swine at the time of delivery to the market; (2) backtag number with prefix for each head of swine; and (3) delivery vehicle license number. (i) Requirements for testing of test eligible swine at the market. (1) Blood samples shall be collected from test-eligible swine that are sold for testing for swine brucellosis and pseudorabies. These samples may be collected either prior to or after sale but prior to leaving the market. (2) If result of the blood test is unknown prior to leaving the market, swine may be moved to the premise of the buyer under permit and Hold Order pending result of that test. (3) Swine that originate directly from a herd with a recognized free status for that disease or if they were tested negative within the previous 30 days are exempt from the testing requirement. Proof of a disease-free status or negative test must be presented at time of sale. (4) Each animal(s) tested shall be identified by a USDA Veterinary Services approved identification eartag (metal, plastic, or other) that conforms to the nine-character alpha-numeric National Uniform Ear tagging System and an official backtag. (5) Pursuant to §55.8 of this title, the market shall maintain official backtag information correlating the backtag number to both the seller and the buyer of those swine. (6) At the time of blood sample collection, the swine test chart (TAHC Form 4-54S) shall be completed in its entirety.
|Source Note: The provisions of this §55.4 adopted to be effective January 1, 1976; amended to be effective July 1, 1990, 15 TexReg 3085; amended to be effective October 15, 1995, 20 TexReg 7483; amended to be effective July 16, 1997, 22 TexReg 6733; amended to be effective September 6, 1998, 23 TexReg 8831; amended to be effective March 16, 2005, 30 TexReg 1441 | <urn:uuid:a777841b-8572-4152-b64d-ab6158828b62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://info.sos.state.tx.us/pls/pub/readtac$ext.TacPage?sl=R&app=9&p_dir=&p_rloc=&p_tloc=&p_ploc=&pg=1&p_tac=&ti=4&pt=2&ch=55&rl=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925579 | 906 | 1.804688 | 2 |
[erlang-questions] Trace-Driven Development
Tue Jun 5 08:01:53 CEST 2012
On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 2:56 AM, Ulf Wiger <> wrote:
> Listen, I tried to politely point out to you that the *requirements*
> for sequence trace in Erlang grew from Ericsson developers'
> experience using "forlopp tracing" in AXE.
What you actually wrote:
"Anyway, not noting in the docs that sequence trace mimicks AXE's
forlopp trace seems forgiveable."
But there's nothing in the AXE documentation you pointed me to that
shows AXE forlopp trace doing Lamport clocks, which is the relevant
What you actually wrote:
"... many of the inputs that *actually* informed the implementation
were either confidential or proprietary enough to be of no interest to
the people reading the manuals."
Yeah, but there's nothing proprietary or confidential about Lamport
clocks, described in a publication that's cited *directly* in
publications by about half-a-dozen Erlang contributors in the 1990s.
Since that Lamport publication is cited in over 2000 other
publications, including one on the internals of Mnesia, it's hard to
see how it can be deemed, in advance, "of no interest to the people
reading the manuals." *I* read the manual on seq_trace. My reaction? I
expressed considerable confusion, here:
That was before it finally dawned on me: "Lamport clocks! Why the hell
don't they say so!? Lots has been written about Lamport clocks, and
undoubtedly somewhere something has been written more clearly and more
usefully than what I'm looking in here. Obviously, if I want to get
the most out of seq_trace's trace tokens, reading the seq_trace
documentation isn't going to get me much farther. I'll have to go to
the open literature."
> Much like Erlang itself
> was created - as Joe has described it - as an effort to "make something
> like AXE, only better".
Yeah, the same Joe Armstrong who's co-author of a book about Erlang
whose second edition in 1993 cites Leslie Lamport's paper defining
> This is also why it is called "sequential tracing" (let's call this an
> educated guess, as I was not part of the naming discussion,
> although I *was* in the loop when the requirement came up).
If you want to call everything that seq_trace implements "sequential
tracing," OK, fine. But if you've got Lamport clocks in that
implementation, and in the API, for God's sake, call them Lamport
clocks. Say so in the beginning. Lots of people know what to do with
these. Not giving those people a way to get their usual handle on them
means you're leaving talent on the table. Telling them early in the
documentation would inspire confidence in documentation that's so rife
with basic copyediting errors as to inspire very little confidence
> The people who asked for the feature, and helped finance the
> development of it, did not ask for Lamport clocks - they asked for
> something like "forlopp tracing" in AXE. "Forlopp" is a bastardization
> of the Swedish word "förlopp", which means "sequence". In the
> world of AXE, it was a way to associate events to a "transaction",
> which could be restarted if something went wrong.
Seq_trace is not "the feature" -- it's a collection of features. It
came out of a milieu in which I've identified half-a-dozen people who,
if their publications in the 1990s are any indication, know perfectly
well what Lamport clocks are.
> Sequence tracing was therefore a perfectly logical thing to call
> it in Erlang, as it is one of the correct ways to translate "forlopp
> trace" to real English.
> There was no deceit, sloppiness or arrogance behind it.
I can see that there might be "no deceit," but only by way of
sloppiness. And the sloppiness is pretty obvious.
As for arrogance, well, when you gesture vaguely in the direction of
AXE documentation that contains no evidence of any independent
invention of Lamport clocks, in support of the claim "we invented that
too", and you do it apparently without actually closely comparing that
the relevant sections of that document, the seq_trace documentation,
and what Lamport wrote.... OK, I'll be kind, and just call that "yet
more sloppiness," not arrogance.
> I have told you that the details of AXE's implementation are
> proprietary. I provided one link to a document that *was* publicly
> available, and that mentions "forlopp tracing". Take that as a
> form of existence proof of "sequence tracing" in AXE.
I see a tracing facility there. I don't see Lamport clocks. How many
times do I have to say this before you'll actually take a look for
> As for "independent verification", am I to understand that I'm being
> chided for not revealing secret Ericsson design details in a public
> forum just so you can independently verify my claims?
There's nothing secret about Lamport clocks. Kenneth Lundin said
seq_trace implements Lamport clocks, in 2007. Mnesia uses Lamport
clocks, as reported in 1999. The first book about Erlang (2nd ed.
1993) refers to the 1978 paper in which Lamport clocks were defined.
Where is the excuse for *not* saying that seq_trace implements Lamport
> I did agree that the reference to Lamport clocks could be added to
> the documentation, since it is not without interest. The one thing
> I don't agree with is that the OTP team deserves infamy for not
> having done so already.
I don't believe the entire team deserves infamy. I DO believe that
whoever's responsible for documenting seq_trace has been, at best,
As for any actual motivation to obscure origins, the best I can come
up with is one that is still very compelling indeed: having a
grotesquely swollen patent pool, for purposes of intimidation and/or
deterrence. After all, it's much easier to get a patent attorney to
write one of those not-very-inventive software patents if you say,
"well, there really IS no prior art on this one, except our own, of
course. Which is proprietary." At its extremes, you get disgusted
engineering teams pulling pranks like the one James Gosling described:
a draft patent describing the electrical power switch.
> When publishing research, it is extremely bad form not to mention
> prior art. When writing a user guide, one has to consider whether
> describing details of the implementation actually helps the user,
> *and* whether those details are something one wants to commit
> to as part of the interface.
> I hope you can appreciate the difference:
Oh, I definitely can. When the documentation isn't very good, a
reference in it to published research behind its API can at least
I found the seq_trace documentation pretty confusing. I pressed on
anyway, because I didn't like my alternative: other trace facilities
that are (literally) described in the company's official documentation
as hellish. Then I saw how seq_trace generates trace tokens, which
made it sound like some serious thought had been put into seq_trace --
if only I could figure out the implications of the algorithm. After a
couple of unanswered questions about this aspect of seq_trace, on this
list, I finally did figure it out: I was looking at Lamport clocks.
Knowing that seq_trace implements Lamport clocks would have helped me.
Maybe lots of people never even get as far as I got with seq_trace
before shrugging and deciding it's something like gs was and is --
basically a moribund, abandoned line of approach to tracing in
Erlang/OTP, even if the documentation doesn't come right out and say
so. (In the case of gs, getting the documentation to come right out
and say so required prodding from me, after I discovered I was at a
dead end with it.)
That's a waste. An easily remedied waste.
How long does something have to stay in beta? I'm finding other
versions of the seq_trace documentation with copyrights going back to
1991. If, as you say, the requirements come out of the late 90s,
that's like FIFTEEN YEARS IN BETA.
> - Kenneth agreeing on a mailing list that Lamport clocks are used
> is a service to the community, but not a commitment to stay with
> this design choice indefinitely (not that I think there are that many
> other good ways to do it).
You mean if I write to seq_trace as a spec that uses a pretty standard
(and in fact famous) way of generating trace tokens, it might change
out from under me? May I ask, why? To what? Or would that be inquiring
of Ericsson's trade secrets?
> - Inserting details about the implementation in the Reference Manual
> elevates that information to become part of the interface.
In the case of seq_trace implementing Lamport clocks, that sounds like
an excellent idea to me, given the vintage of the idea and how, in the
test of time, that idea has withstood over three decades.
> Another, perhaps more appropriate, place to insert the reference is
> as a comment in the source code. It isn't there, however.
Gosh, yet another place where you save people some comprehension time
by just writing four words. I wonder how many more?
> Granted, the interface *as described* pretty much commits to Lamport
> clocks. It does seem reasonable to mention that, although I'm still
> not convinced that many will find it that helpful.
Of course not. After all, somebody would have to read all 2000+ papers
that cite Lamport's paper, before they could be *really* sure.
> Perhaps this thesis can be of interest then?
> (Interestingly, the thesis project was run at Ericsson, on real-time
> 'transaction' or 'sequence' tracing. While it mentions Lamport and
> a few other techniques, it fails to mention that both the AXE and
> Erlang - both established Ericsson technologies at the time -
> already supported this feature. ;-)
Yeah, when you don't identify the wheel by name, making it hard to
find in a search, people reinvent that wheel. How amazing!
I've also seen a professor's assignment online: he starts with simple
trace framework in Erlang, and the student is then asked to implement
Lamport clocks. No mention of seq_trace. I guess it's because that
professor searched on "Lamport clocks" in the Erlang documentation and
said, "Hm, that's odd: no Lamport clocks."
Nice job of hiding gold. Next step: cast doubt on whether gold is
actually all that valuable, when compared to something unstated that
you might invent one of these days.
>>> The OTP team is known to accept patches to the documentation,
>>> so please feel free to contribute to a more helpful way to describe
>>> the tracing support. I'm sure it would be universally appreciated.
>> The one time I tried to get a patch into anything in Erlang (something
>> that was causing a build under FreeBSD to segfault), it didn't make it
>> into the next release -- even though other people helped get it into
>> shape for submission. Pardon me for being a little leery of the
> Patching can be pretty hairy, but note that patching the documentation
> is much easier than patching the emulator. ;-)
I'm sure it *can* be hairy, but mine was a single-character change, as
I recall, and it only asked that a C auto array have a dimension of 1
rather than zero (a write to that array unsurprising caused the stack
to be trashed on the platform I was trying to build on, which made
using source-level debugging a non-starter, which made debugging a
total pain in the ass.)
>> And I suggest that you NOT take the opportunity to add any supposed
>> "history" about how AXE implemented Lamport clocks until you can
>> demonstrate that it did. From what I can see in the documentation you
>> pointed to, AXE did not.
> Actually, there is some mention of it in the seq_trace docs already:
It shows traces "inspired" by AXE, but without the sequence tokens
that would suggest that AXE implemented Lamport clocks -- IF it ever
> More Ericsson history than that is hardly needed, ...
I'd say that history is entirely dispensable. I'd even throw out the
AXE traces, if you could use the space to instead say something about
how useful the trace tokens can be.
> ... but does
> somewhat strengthen my claim that these systems were the main
> source of inspiration.
We're not talking about whether AXE was "the main source of
inspiration". We're talking about whether the seq_trace documentation
(especially given how confusing it is to begin with) should mention
that it implements Lamport clocks, since, after all, (a) it does, and
(b) lots of people who do concurrent programming know what Lamport
clocks are already -- including about half-a-dozen in the Erlang group
(at least if what they cite in their publications is any indication.)
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Australian shale oil discovery could be larger than Canada's oilsands1/24/2013
Brisbane company Linc Energy says independent studies have confirmed a major shale oil source in South Australia's far north, which officials have estimated could be worth $20 trillion.
The company says U.S. consultants have carried out drilling and geological and seismic surveys around Coober Pedy. Linc Energy holds rights over more than 65,000 square kilometres of land in the Arckaringa Basin and started explorations in 2008.
In a statement to the Stock Exchange, the company said reports from U.S.-based consultants indicate underlying rock formations "are rich in oil and gas-prone kerogen."
The company says up to 233 billion barrels of oil are estimated to be trapped in the shale. Chief executive Peter Bond says even if the amount of retrievable oil is well below that, the discovery is still "bigger than the Cooper Basin and Bass Strait combined".
"If you stress test it right down and you only took the very sweetest spots in the absolute known areas and you do nothing else, it's about 3.5 billion [barrels] and that's sort of worse-case scenario," he said. "So if you took the 233 billion, well, you're talking Saudi Arabia numbers. It's massive, it's just huge."
By way of comparison, the Athabasca oilsands in Northern Alberta contain almost 170 billion barrels of proven or probable reserves.
"We've also spent a lot of time with our own geologists and external geologists trying to unlock what's the best option there. "What it could do is really turn this thing into the next boom, so where you saw coal-bed methane transform Queensland and the gas industry, shale could and I think will transform South Australia and a potential oil boom."
But Bond says it could cost up to $300 million to prepare the site for production.
"We've got something in excess of a billion-dollar market cap … but the issue here isn't just capital. It's the expertise to unlock the acreage as well," he said. "We will seek a partner to both fund that and work with us from a technical perspective and that could be anybody.
"It could be a major oil company, it could be one of the major operators in shale, it could be one of the larger overseas oil groups."
Bond says the discovery has the potential to bolster the nation's energy security. "We are importing more and more oil every day. Australia was relatively self-sufficient in oil in 2000, 2001, but since then we've been falling off the peak oil curve for quite a while now," he said.
"Australia currently consumes just under a million barrels of oil a day of which we are probably producing something less than half that or around half that depending on the numbers you read," he said.
"You'd have to get up over 500,000 barrels a day to put yourself into a net energy export position which would be significant.
"Any oil field that can do 500,000 barrels a day is massive in anyone's books. It would be a push to get to that high. That would basically be getting out to full production. It's hit all the runs and done all the right things to get up to that size but if it does, you potentially would be getting up around being an oil exporter," Bond said.
"By then much of your other oil production in Australia would have dropped off even more and you'll be just starting to fill the gaps there."
Problems with shale oil
Shale oil is more costly to extract and more controversial than conventional crude and involves fracking, in which water is pumped in to break up the shale.
South Australian Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis says it is much too early to say if the reserve can be profitably tapped. "What they think they've found, or they have found, but whether it's economic to recover or not is still the question, is vast reserves of shale oil," he said.
"It's basically oil which is trapped in low-permeability, clay-rich rocks so it's within the rocks and you fracture-stimulate those rocks to release the oil. "There are processes now where you can unconventionally retrieve these reservesm" he said."
"If the reserves and the pressure was right over millions of years and the rocks have done the things they think they've done, they think they can extract vast reserves of oil out of South Australia which would have a value of about $20 trillion."
"South Australia is blessed with abundant resources but there are a few setbacks and those setbacks are that they're remote and they're deep" Koutsantonis said.
But the discovery is not another example of 'pie in the sky' dreams such as when BHP Billiton cancelled its Olympic Dam expansion in the state's north last year, he promises.
"All these things are luck and risk. I think what we're seeing up there is a very, very big deposit. There's more drilling to be done. If it comes off, it will certainly be a very significant amount of oil reserves."
John Young, a senior resources analyst at Wilson HTM, says it is important to take these preliminary figures with a grain of salt. "I think we need to recognise these represent, at this point in time, what people believe to be there and what might be able to be recovered, but we've still got some significant way to go before people have actually commercially recovered resources out of these shales," he observed.
He says it is still to early to fully assess the quality of the resource, and how much is extractable at a commercially competitive cost. "I think it's unwise to hang one's hat too much on the size of the numbers," he added.
"The numbers are going to be very large, but we really need to move from that in terms of this focus around the quantity to ultimately one of the quality of the resource — how good is it, how economic will it be, and that's going to take a significant amount of exploration and appraisal work before the industry's in a position to determine that." | <urn:uuid:ba4ef061-f430-4cec-a9e6-a39138bde101> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocean-resources.com/industry-news.asp?newsid=12494 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97735 | 1,279 | 1.992188 | 2 |
To me, it sounded like the kind of story that would tickle the news whiskers of Quebec's francophone media: the government of Quebec publishing a document entirely in English and sending it to a francophone.
Except there was one problem: the francophone didn't live in Quebec. He lived in Ontario.
When Radio-Canada's Ottawa bureau came out with the news that Tourisme Québec had sent unilingual anglophone marketing material to surrounding regions, and that this happened to include some franco-Ontarians, it caused a stir ... among anglophone media in Montreal. CBC Montreal picked up the story, and The Gazette ran an editorial denouncing the decision.
In the French media, the reaction was minimal. An entry on Chantal Hébert's blog, a by-the-way mention by Pierre Jury at Le Droit (the French-language paper in Ottawa). Its biggest exposure probably came from a post by Patrick Lagacé, though even then it only received a handful of comments.
Despite RadCan's use of the term "choquante", the scandal is fairly minor. The brochure in question was meant for audiences in New England and Ontario, and Tourisme Québec is right that most of that audience is anglophone. The diminishing budget of Quebec's tourism agency means that they can't please everyone.
But, as the Gazette editorial says, it fits in with this idea that hard-line language zealots in Quebec care only about the status of French on one side of the Outaouais. Even though the rest of Canada is where French is most at risk, there's little outrage when stuff like this happens. I don't know why that is. Perhaps it's because language extremists are also militant separatists, and what happens outside Quebec's borders is of no concern to them. When sovereignty finally comes, the border will protect les Québécois, and on s'en crisse du reste.
Or perhaps Quebec anglophones like me are overcompensating for their guilt about fighting for anglo rights by pretending to care about other linguistic minorities.
Are the English media paying too much attention to this story, or are the French media paying too little? | <urn:uuid:5bbfb705-9969-4c5f-90f0-cac2f118d5ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.fagstein.com/2009/12/13/canada-is-english/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956954 | 457 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Fuel pumped from Costa Concordia
Posted Tue, 24 Jan 2012
As the search for guests on board the sunken Costa Concordia continues, experts are preparing to pump fuel from the cruise ship.
Fuel is to be pumped from the ship after it was confirmed the wreck does not risk falling to a lower seabed. The fuel removal will take place alongside the search, which the national civil protection agency says will continue "as long as it is possible to inspect whatever can be inspected".
Some 17 are known missing, but it has emerged that unregistered guests were on board the cruise ship, meaning the number could increase.
Two further bodies, both women, were found in the ship's internet cafe, taking the total death toll to 15.
Copyright Press Association 2012 | <urn:uuid:ec4ef283-d895-49a0-8969-a633d7c14702> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iosh.co.uk/news_and_events/news/industrynews.aspx?i=N0092871327391369504A | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971435 | 157 | 1.539063 | 2 |
About the District of Columbia Chapter
The District of Columbia Chapter of Sigma Xi has the distinction of being the first "Alumni Chapter" formed under the provisions of the National Organization. Before this, all chapters were directly affiliated with institutions of education and research, however the need for such a chapter was felt by the charter members because of the number of research institutions in the Washington, DC area. The Preliminary Constitution of the Chapter gives the objectives of the organization as "primarily to establish fraternal relations among the alumni of the Society of the Sigma Xi in the District of Columbia and vicinity, to grant the privilege of membership to individuals of this community who have achieved distinction in science, and in general to foster the spirit for which the Society of the Sigma Xi was established." The D.C. Chapter was the 29th chapter to be chartered by the Society of the Sigma Xi.
The formation of this chapter began in the year 1914. On January 2 at 4 p.m. the nucleus of an organization committee met in the office of Dr. Paul Bartsch in the U.S. National Museum. Those attending this meeting in addition to Dr. Bartsch were Marcus Benjamin who became acting chair of the Organization Committee and the first President of the D.C. Chapter, M.W. Lyon, Jr. who became Secretary of both the Organization Committee and Chapter, and Edmond Heller. More meetings were held in the following weeks and a constitution and by-laws were drafted. Invitations were sent to Sigma Xi alumni who were residing in Washington, D.C. and the vicinity to attend a meeting on Friday, January 30, 1914 in Room 43 of the National Museum. The earliest letter in the Chapter archives is a letter granting the use of this room that was signed by Charles D. Walcott who was then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The application for the Chapter was submitted in February 1914 and was accepted a short time later.
The first Annual Meeting of the District of Columbia Chapter was held on Friday, April 30, 1915, more than one year after the first meeting of the Organization Committee that met in the office of Paul Bartsch. The meeting was called to order at 8:15 p.m. in the Assembly Hall of the Cosmos Club by temporary president Marcus Benjamin. There were 50 persons attending. At this time, the first slate of officers was elected for the Chapter. The officers and their affiliations were as follows: President - Marcus Benjamin (Columbia, U.S. National Museum); Vice-President - Isaac King Phelps (Yale, Bureau of Chemistry); Secretary - Marcus Ward Lyon, Jr. (Brown, George Washington University); Treasurer - Daniel Roberts Harper 3rd (Pennsylvania, Bureau of Standards); Councilor - Fredrick Leslie Ransome (California, Geological Survey); Councilor - Cornelius Lott Shear (Nebraska, Bureau of Plant Industry). The meeting concluded with informal remarks by the President and other members relative to the practices of Sigma Xi at their parent chapters. Adjournment at 9:30 p.m. was followed by a social hour with refreshments. It was recorded in the minutes that the bill from the Cosmos Club for the hall rental and refreshments was $26.
Printing the official Charter presented some problems. There were 172 charter members and not all names could be printed on the face of the standard form for Sigma Xi Charters. After some discussion it was decided that 11 names would appear on the face and the remaining names would be placed on the back. The Charter was sent to the D.C. Chapter in January 1916, however, it left the National Office without signatures of any of the officers of Sigma Xi. It is unclear whether the document was returned to headquarters for the signatures or if it was signed at the installation meeting in the following month. This was not to be the final word on the Charter. After the Chapter was officially installed, it was decided that since the District of Columbia Chapter held a special status as the first Alumni Chapter a special charter would be printed. The old charter was recalled and a new one printed by the National Office.
Formal installation of the District of Columbia Chapter occurred on Saturday, February 19, 1916. The meeting commenced at 7 p.m. in the Red Parlor of the Ebbitt Hotel. Dinner was served to 41 members and guests. After dinner Chapter President Benjamin gave an introductory address which outlined the development of the D.C. Chapter. This was followed by an address from National President Charles S. Howe. He spoke of the history of Sigma Xi and its scientific ideals and concluded his address with the formal presentation of the Charter to President Benjamin, who accepted it on behalf of the D.C. Chapter. Other speakers included Thomas H. Norton, L.O. Howard, Vice-President Phelps, and Paul Bartsch. Prof. Norton, a guest, congratulated the D.C. Chapter on behalf of the Phi Beta Kappa Association. He also related some of his experiences in the Orient, in particular the region including Constantinople. He described his visit to a gorge in the upper Euphrates River and discussed the possibility of developing water resources there with the preservation of natural scenic beauty. The minutes of the Installation Meeting also recorded that another speaker, charter member L.O. Howard, "had been longest in the Society and made a short address". The meeting adjourned about 11 p.m.
(This article is based on documents in the D.C. Chapter Archives. Names of Charter Members appear in Sigma Xi Quarterly, Vol. III, June, 1915. The account of the Installation Meeting was published in Sigma Xi Quarterly, Vol. IV, June, 1916.)
Geoff White, Archivist | <urn:uuid:b4f9a503-bd78-46b5-8e79-3b2aeb71f1d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sigmaxi.org/chapters/web/index.php?chapter_id=22&page_id=38 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975376 | 1,166 | 1.875 | 2 |
India joins land-grabbing nation league: RRI
A new research by a global coalition of forest rights groups released Monday here on the eve of an international conference on land and forest rights, blames India's government agencies and investors for a growing spate of violent clashes in the nation's forest and tribal areas.
The trend is captured in a new map of the nation, showing that 130 districts have experienced conflict in virtually all states of India, most during the last couple of years, claimed the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of organizations working on advancing forest tenure, policy, and market reforms.
The authors argue that the reports of civil unrest, gathered from a review of newspaper articles and court cases, are the outcome of a massive transfer of resources from the rural poor to investors, aided by the government.
According to findings released by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) and the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development (SPWD) in New Delhi, the nation can expect rising civil unrest in response to major projects planned for the next 15 years, requiring over 11 million hectares of land and affecting the livelihoods and welfare of millions of people.
"Brazen takeovers of community-owned lands have become a burning issue in large parts of India," said Shankar Gopalakrishnan of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity, one of the researchers presenting at Tuesday's Conference on Forests and Common Lands: Rights, Conflicts, Forest Rights Act (FRA) and Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA).
Gopalakrishnan and his colleagues note that India has legislation on the books already that could address the root causes of the conflicts reported in their studies.
Two key examples are the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006, which is designed to protect forest dwelling and tribal people from illegal takeovers, but is being routinely violated; and the 1996 Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (the PESA Act), which gives village councils, known as gram sabhas, powers to manage and protect their lands State laws that provide for community and collective rights and management powers are also ignored and violated across the country.
"Right now, one part of the government or another is in violation of the provisions of these Acts. Is there no penalty for violating legislation already on the statute books?" said RRI executive director Arvind Khare, a global expert on land rights of traditional and forest communities.
Citing research carried out by the International Land Coalition (ILC) Land Matrix, he said that the Indian government and Indian-owned companies have acquired land in Africa and Southeast Asia for agricultural purposes.
Increasingly, Khare said, investors from emerging economies are beginning to encounter community resistance to their activities in the rich agricultural nations of Africa, much like that faced by investors in India. But India's role in the global land rush is difficult to assess. Land deals are rarely transparent, so information about them is limited, he said.
However, analysis of land grabs in Ethiopia show most of the agricultural investors are Indian, including Karuturi, which produces rice, palm oil, maize and sugarcane on 100,000 hectares in the Gambella region, and Emami, a biotech company that grows jatropha and edible oil seeds on 100,000 hectares in Oromia.
"Anecdotal evidence suggests that Indian investors have been as disrespectful of people's rights as the Chinese, who have gotten most of the attention," Khare said.
"What makes India different is that it calls itself a democracy that guarantees human rights. In becoming part of this global land grab, they are acting against their values. Sadly, they are repeating a pattern that is all too familiar within India as well," he said.
RRI and SPWD examined recent land acquisitions, court cases and news reports to reveal that an increase in protests against land grabs in India is emerging as one of the country's most pressing development challenges.
Based on news reports and court cases, the map reveals that every state-and every tribal area-in the country is embroiled in these land disputes, many of which are still unresolved.
"We have seen projects such as phosphate mines in Jaisamand, highway projects in Rajasthan and biofuel plantations in Chhattisgarh, and they all share a need for more and more land," said Viren Lobo, the executive director of the Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development.
"Such projects continue to claim two percent of the country's common lands each year, ensuring they will face greater civil unrest across the country if the government doesn't recognize the land rights of rural and tribal people."
The map recorded a large number of conflicts across the country, most of which took place in 2011 and 2012; it identified such conflicts in 130 of India's 602 districts.
"The map clearly shows that there are similar conflicts underway in nearly every one of the country's tribal and forest districts," said Madhu Sarin, a Rights and Resources Initiative fellow.
"What it does not show, however, are the many, many conflicts that go unreported. The potential for conflict is everywhere. It would be very surprising if there was a single large project underway in the country today that did not involve some takeover of community or forest and common lands."
Brazilian forestry expert Luiz Joels, one of the speakers at the conference, said, "Once the 1988 constitution of Brazil recognized that lands traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples are essential to the preservation of environmental resources and necessary to their well-being, culture and traditions, the situation changed completely. The rights of indigenous peoples have now been recognized and demarcated in over 100 million hectares of territories."
Professor Xu Jintao, an economist at Peking University who is also participating in the event, added a Chinese perspective. "China's economic progress is fundamentally based on agrarian reforms of late 1970s and forest tenure reforms in early 21st century-both of them recognizing rights of people over their resources," he said.
Indian experts participating in the conference agreed; most of these issues do not feature in current deliberations over land conflicts. "What is required is to recognize and record rights, penalize violators of rights, and finally ensure democratic control over decision-making on land takeover," said Shankar Gopalakrishnan. --IBNS | <urn:uuid:46117fd3-6d4a-4ea9-b667-0b5b5b5c8c31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newkerala.com/news/newsplus/worldnews-118347.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96101 | 1,328 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Since opening in May 2011, Portola Coffee Lab has generated a cult-like following among cappuccino cravers and latte lovers. At the Costa Mesa cafe, coffee doesn’t sit idle waiting to be poured or pumped into a cup. Instead, beans are roasted daily and coffee is brewed to order using three unconventional brewing methods.
One process, dubbed the Siphon, takes eight minutes to produce a light-bodied beverage designed for coffee purists. Other methods, Trifecta and V60, are pour-over or French press inspired methods that produce bold and complex flavors.
Whatever the choice, the end result is the same: a custom made cup of joe.
“The difference between our shop and others is that the quality continues all the way to the cup,” Portola founder Jeff Duggan said.
Duggan, 39, is the chief mad-coffee-scientist behind Portola Coffee Lab, which is leading a craft coffee revolution in Southern California. Coffee zealots have been known to drive more than 100 miles to try Portola’s hand-crafted drinks, which range from $2.50 for a single shot of espresso to $7 for a slow-brewed Siphon cup.
Taking the craft coffee craze up a notch, Duggan plans to launch a “slow bar” called Theorem later this month. The six-seat slow service coffee bar, adjacent to Portola, will sell creative cocktails where coffee is the main component. | <urn:uuid:a3748cf5-45a5-4bed-867c-1b7ed9bd4f6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fastfood.ocregister.com/category/cafes-and-coffee/starbucks/ | 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 | 0.950658 | 315 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Videos for Prospective Interpreters
Videos for Testing Candidates
Here is a list of organizations that may host conferences, workshops, or events that may assist aspiring and existing court interpreters to develop their court interpreting skills. These web sites also provide information and links that you may find useful in your pursuit for additional resources.
A: Spoken language court interpreters interpret in civil or criminal court proceedings (e.g., arraignments, motions, pretrial conferences, preliminary hearings, depositions, trials) for witnesses or defendants who speak or understand little or no English. American Sign Language interpreters interpret for all parties who are deaf or hard of hearing in all proceedings. Court interpreters must accurately interpret for individuals with a high level of education and an extensive vocabulary, as well as for persons with very limited language skills without changing the language register of the speaker. Interpreters are also sometimes responsible for translating written documents, often of a legal nature, from English into the target language and from the target language into English.
A: California court interpreters have an important job in the courtroom: they interpret court proceedings for witnesses and defendants with limited English skills or for parties who are deaf or hard of hearing. The position requires strong memory and communication skills. Court interpreters shift between two different languages, in real time, accounting for different types of speech and grammar. They also know legal terms and commonly used courtroom forms and reports.
A: Very much so. According to a recent study, more than 200 languages are spoken in California. Of the state's 36 million people, about 20 percent speak English less than "very well." That's almost 7 million Californians who would need help from an interpreter if they found themselves in court.
A: First, interpreters need to be fluent in both English and a second language. Right now, court interpreters must be certified in the following languages:
People who master other languages can become registered interpreters with the same full-time pay and benefits that certified interpreters receive.
A: Yes. Court interpreting is a very demanding job. Spoken language court interpreters must be completely fluent in both English and the second language, while court interpreters of American Sign Language must be completely fluent in both English and American Sign Language. The level of expertise required for this profession is far greater than that required for everyday bilingual conversation. The interpreter must be able to handle the widest range of language terms that may be presented in the courts—from specialized legal and technical terminology to street slang. Most people do not have a full command of all registers of both English and the foreign language and, therefore, require special training to acquire it.
Although there are no minimum requirements that must be met in order to apply to take the state certification test, applicants are encouraged to complete formal, college-level course work and training in both languages and modes of interpreting before applying for the examination. At present there are colleges and universities throughout the State of California that offer introductory courses and certificate programs in interpretation or translation. However, most of these are for English/Spanish. We encourage you to contact the schools and request information about their programs. For the other languages, the following self-study techniques are suggested: (1) expand your vocabulary, (2) develop your own glossaries, and (3) develop interpreting techniques. Suggested skills-enhancing exercises are available to help you develop three interpreting techniques: (1) consecutive interpretation, (2) simultaneous interpretation, and (3) sight translation.
Only interpreters who pass the Bilingual Interpreter Exam or the required exam for American Sign Language and fulfill the corresponding Judicial Council requirements are referred to as certified interpreters. Currently, there are certification exam for the following designated languages: American Sign Language, Arabic, Eastern Armenian, Cantonese, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.
Interpreters of spoken languages for which there is no state-certifying exam are required to pass the Written Exam and Oral Proficiency Exams in both English and their non-English language and fulfill the corresponding Judicial Council requirements in order to become a registered interpreter.
A: Certifications may change periodically, depending on the results of studies of language use in the courts and other administrative factors. When a language is designated for certification, there is a transitional period in which a new certification exam is developed and registered interpreters are given time to meet the requirements for certification.
A: As approved by the Judicial Council on July 7, 1994, court interpreters must meet the following requirements for certification:
A: The AOC has contracted with Prometric to administer the Certified Court Interpreter and Registered Interpreter exams. See the Exam Information page for more information.
A: The Judicial Council also has the authority under California Evidence Code section 754(f) to designate testing entities for American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters. The council has determined that a qualified ASL interpreter is one who holds the following certificate:
Most court interpreters work as freelance or per diem interpreters, meaning that they are hired by the day or the half day, rather than being permanent employees of the trial courts. Some trial courts, however, have permanent positions for court interpreters. A freelance interpreter must be willing to travel from one trial court to another, perhaps even from one county trial court system to another. Court interpreters are generally paid by the whole or half day. | <urn:uuid:54284b15-2582-4c44-8060-501e1c7e3825> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.courts.ca.gov/courtsofappeal.htm/2694.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931242 | 1,118 | 2.796875 | 3 |
(CBS News) Health officials are urging Americans to start thinking about their flu vaccine for the upcoming 2012-2013 influenza season. Though last year's flu season was considered mild, health experts warn influenza is unpredictable and the disease could take a serious toll on many Americans.
Flu season begins as early as October and may last until May, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"I urge everyone to join me and get a flu vaccine this year," Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services Dr. Howard K. Koh said in a press release. Koh was the first to receive his flu vaccine during a Thursday National Foundation for Infectious Diseases' news conference in Washington, D.C. where he was joined by officials from the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Pharmacists Association, AARP, National Medical Association and CDC.
"When it comes to flu, we can't look to the past to predict the future," Koh said. "Stay healthy - get vaccinated!"
Koh called on everyone ages 6 months and older to follow the CDC's universal recommendation of getting vaccinated each year. The CDC cautions that even healthy people can not only get very sick from the flu, and spread it to others who may fare even worse. The agency reports between 1976 and 2007, up to 49,000 people have died from influenza. Ninety percent of deaths during a typical seasonal flu season occur in people older than 65.
The CDC also unveiled new statistics today on how many people actually got last year's vaccine in the Sept 27 issue of its journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The report showed vaccination rates remained steady with that of previous years, with about 128 million people getting the shot during last year's flu season - about 42 percent of the U.S. population.
That's significantly lower than the CDC's goal of vaccinating 80 percent of the U.S. population. The new research also showed vaccination rates varied widely between certain age groups for last year's 2011-2012 flu season.
The greatest year-to-year increase in vaccination rates was a 6 percent increase seen in infants ages six to 23 months old -approximately 75 percent of them were vaccinated for the 2011-2012 season. Overall, rates for kids ages 6 months to 17 years old held steady at 52 percent. The older children became, the fewer got vaccines, with only a 34 percent rate for children ages 13 to 17.
Adults with the best vaccine coverage were 65 and older, with approximately 65 percent getting vaccines last year, but that reflects a 10 percent drop in coverage rates for the age group since the 2008-2009 flu season.
About 47 percent of pregnant women got the flu vaccine last year which was consistent with the previous year's rates, the report found.
"Influenza is five times more likely to cause severe illness in pregnant women than women who are not pregnant," Dr. Laura Riley, director of obstetrics and gynecology infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said in a press release. "Research shows it can decrease the baby's risk of getting the flu for up to six months after birth."
The CDC's report also looked a workers in the health care industry to see if they too were heeding the government's advice. The report found approximately 67 percent of health care workers got vaccinated in 2011-2012 - a 3 percent rise from the prior flu season - and physicians were most likely (86 percent of them) to get a flu vaccine.
Officials say if health care workers get vaccinated, it will better encourage the general population to get the shot.
This year's flu vaccine consists of one H1N1 strain from last year's vaccine, plus two new strains. It is available as the standard shot that is injected into muscle, nasal spray, a high-dose injection for people 65 and older and a new "Fluzone Intradermal" vaccine with a much smaller needle that is injected into the skin that is recommended for adults 18 to 64 years of age.
Besides vaccination, the government urges everyday actions like hand washing, covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, and taking antiviral flu medications if you're at high risk for flu or develop influenza - in both cases, people should check with their doctor.
Said infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner, former president of NFID and chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine: "It is every individual's responsibility to put prevention to good use and make vaccination part of their routine healthcare." | <urn:uuid:85f24d14-2316-4ccd-b1ac-5a24614427cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57521511-10391704/officials-urge-flu-vaccine-for-unpredictable-2012-2013-season | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972844 | 943 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Father James Gibbs, Pastor
"I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts."
-- Saint Brigid
About Saint Brigid --
St. Brigid was the daughter of Dubtach, pagan Scottish king of Leinster, -- and Brocca, a Christian Pictish slave who had been baptized by Saint Patrick.
Just before Brigid's birth, her mother was sold to a Druid landowner and Brigid remained with her mother until she was old enough to serve her legal owner -- Dubtach, her father.
She grew up marked by high spirits and a tender heart, and as a child, she heard Saint Patrick preach, which she never forgot. She could not bear to see anyone hungry or cold, and to help them, often gave away things that were Dubtach's. When Dubtach protested, she replied "Christ dwells in every creature".
Dubtach tried to sell her to the King of Leinster, and while they bargained, she gave a treasured sword of her father's to a leper. Dubtach was about to strike her when Brigid explained she had given the sword to God through the leper, because of its great value.
The King, a Christian, forbade Dubtach to strike her, saying "Her merit before God is greater than ours". Dubtach solved this domestic problem by giving Brigid her freedom.
Brigid's aged mother was in charge of her master's dairy. Brigid took charge ,and often gave away the produce. But the dairy prospered under her hence her patronage of milk maids, dairy workers, cattle, etc. Eventually the Druid freed Brigid's mother.
Brigid returned to her father, who arranged a marriage for her with a young bard. Brigid refused, and to keep her virginity, went to Bishop Mel, a pupil of Saint Patrick's, and took her first vows.
Legend says that she prayed that her beauty be taken from her so no one would seek her hand in marriage; her prayer was granted, and she regained her beauty only after making her vows.
Saint Patrick heard her final vows. And he prophesied that "She is destined for great things."
Her first convent started with seven nuns. At the invitation of bishops, she started convents all over Ireland. She was a great traveller, especially considering the conditions of the time, which led to her patronage of travellers, sailors, etc.
Brigid invented the double monastery, the monastery of Kildare on the Liffey being for both monks and nuns. Combeth, noted for his skill in metalwork, became its first bishop; this connection and the installation of a bell that lasted over 1000 years apparently led to her patronage of blacksmiths and those in related fields. Her feastday is Feb. 1st.
Any and all prayer requests or masses, information or worship schedule, -- please contact Fr. James....
Email Father James Gibbs | <urn:uuid:95feb745-7af5-4c70-974d-85aaf29017b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.angelfire.com/alt/scm/brigid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983338 | 692 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Thursday a man flew an airplane into the Austin, Texas, IRS Building. The Left claimed he was a “Tea bagger,” their vulgar term for Tea Partiers, apparently because he was anti-government. The Right claimed he was a whacky leftist, apparently because he was critical of Bush. A Muslim group claimed he was a terrorist, apparently because he wasn’t a Muslim.
They all miss the point, and quite frankly, the attempt to make political points out of personal tragedy is pretty disgusting.
Today, there is a report of a Moscow, Ohio, man who bulldozed his home before it was foreclosed. No doubt someone somewhere will try to make political hay out of this man’s misfortune. That will be as misguided as the response to the Texas man’s misfortune.
What these events really do is highlight the human costs of recessions, costs that increase in recession severity and duration. These are the more extreme examples, but the fact is, people’s lives are ruined in recessions. Some working families will suffer a permanent decrease in income. Some of our young people will never recover from a bad start to their working lives. Some families will be destroyed because of financial stress. Some individuals will commit suicide. A few will do things like bulldoze their home or fly into a building.
To ask how big a problem we have is to ask how many are unemployed and how long have they been unemployed. Here are the numbers as of January 2010:
- 14.8 million Americans were out of work and looking for a job.
- 6.3 million Americans had been out of work over six months.
- 9.3 million Americans were underemployed
- Over half of unemployed Americans had been out of work for over 19 weeks.
- The unemployed American’s average unemployment duration was 30 weeks.
- 4.5 million Americans had left the labor force.
All of these people deserve our sympathy. They also deserve more from our society and our leaders. Most of them are in their current circumstances through no fault of their own. Even worse, our political class appears to be far more interested in election, reelection, rewarding supporters, partisanship, and political purity than they are in providing the environment for job creation. They have also failed to provide a humane safety net, one that provides at least a minimum standard of living, maintains dignity, and provides appropriate incentives. | <urn:uuid:3cf37cde-45ad-42cc-b789-eaa35e55bc5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newgeography.com/content/001427-recessions-destroy-lives | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979506 | 501 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Your society home, TLC not PLC
We've been in business since 1884 and are now the 3rd largest building society in the UK, with branches up and down the country, over 1.6 million members and assets of
We think the secret to our success is that we're a mutual Society. This means we don't have external shareholders so we can make every decision with the interests of our members in mind.
The most important people at the Coventry are our members, and each one gets a say in how we operate. Take a look to see how you can get involved.
*AER stands for Annual Equivalent Rate and illustrates what the interest rate would be if interest was paid and added each year. The gross rate is the interest rate payable before the deduction of tax. | <urn:uuid:81bbd4e1-1fd5-4a41-8e3f-3169e3080af5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk/your-society/home.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968559 | 163 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Castellano | Euskara | Français | English
Detail of the hispanic-arabic coffer placed in the Museum of Navarre. It dates back to 1004.
Sancho Garcés III el Mayor – the Elder (1004-1035) rules over the greater part of the Peninsula’s Christian domains: Pamplona, Nájera, Aragon, Sobrarbe, Ribagorza, Castile and Leon, at the same time as he lays claim to Gascony and the County of Barcelona. His reign leads to the social, political and economic expansion of the kingdom of Pamplona, with major territorial gains. This monarch organises the Way of Santiago, introduces the Romanesque and spreads the Cluniac culture throughout his kingdoms.
At the end of the 9th century, the kingdom of Pamplona is forced to bring its territorial expansion to a halt, held in check by the advance of its powerful neighbours, Castile and Aragon. Thus its southward expansion is halted at the same time as it lives under the constant threat of political annexation.
Hovering between independence and incorporation within the political sphere of the French, Castilian and Aragonese monarchs is the awkward status that prevails in Navarre during the Early Middle Ages.
From 1076 to 1134 it will remain part of the Aragonese crown, from which it will secede during the reign of Garcia Ramirez (1134-1150), thus restoring its political independence; in the ensuing reign of Sancho el Sabio – the Wise (1150 – 1194), the kingdom of Pamplona will become known as the Kingdom of Navarre, which is interpreted as a gesture of political affirmation and territorial sovereignty in the face of annexationist threats from other Peninsular kingdoms, and especially from Castile.
Nevertheless, the process involving the loss of territory continues, and in 1200, under the reign of Sancho el Fuerte – the Strong (1194 – 1234) the kingdom is deprived of the territories of Alava, Guipuzcoa and the Duranguesado, in Vizcaya, which are conquered by the Castilian monarch. Thereafter, Navarre, blocked to the west by the frontier with Castile, will be forced to focus its policy of territorial expansion largely towards the north, the French lands of Ultrapuertos, and to the east, the border tract with Aragon.
The death of Sancho VII el Fuerte in 1234 brings the Navarrese dynasty to an end and the kingdom falls under French influence, in search of an ally that will ensure its survival in the face of constant pressure from Castilians and Aragonese alike. The first to be installed on the throne is the House of Champagne (1234 – 1274), which is succeeded by the Capetian dynasty, which between 1274 and 1326 simultaneously occupies the thrones of France and Navarre.
The House of Evreux (1328-1425) initiates a time of intense relations in the political life of the Peninsula and Europe overall, especially during the reign of Charles II, obsessed by occupying the French throne; the reign of Charles III the Noble (1387 – 1425) strikes a balance between cultural and material prosperity; testifying to this is the splendour of the Navarrese Gothic, evident in artistic works such as the Royal Palace in Olite and this same monarch’s sepulchre in Pamplona Cathedral.
The death of Charles III gives rise to a serious conflict regarding his succession. This is no more than the first signs of a far-reaching institutional and social crisis that will lead to civil war. John II, who heads the camp of the Agramonteses, is married to Blanca, the heir to the Navarrese throne, and has been King of Navarre and of Aragon since 1458; opposed to him is his step-son, the legendary Charles, Prince of Viana, who heads the camp of the Beaumontes in their quest, which was never to be fulfilled, to occupy the throne of Navarre.
This state of internal weakness will last for half a century and will finally be exploited by Ferdinand the Catholic who, in support of the Beaumonteses, invades Navarre in 1512, thus making it part of the Crown of Castile. Soundly defeated, Don Juan and Doña Catalina de Albret, the last monarchs of Navarre, seek refuge on the other side of the Pyrenees, which they will never cross again, and will uphold the dynasty that, as of 1555, will give rise to the House of Bourbon, which will reign in France until the 1789 revolution, and in Spain from 1700 onwards.
Following its conquest by Castile, Navarre is governed by a Viceroy, who exercises the powers of a monarch in Pamplona. This situation will last for four centuries. Meanwhile, the kingdom’s institutions are maintained, especially the Cortes, which is convened throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries to legislate and approve the kingdom’s financial contributions to the ventures of the Spanish monarch. The Kingdom’s Council (Diputación) is founded in 1576 as a standing governing body in representation of the Cortés when the latter is not sitting: for five centuries this institution has been the exponent of Navarre’s own administration and since the 19th century it has persisted under the name of Diputación Provincial (Provincial Council), Diputación Foral de Navarre (Regional Council of Navarre), and since 1982, Gobierno de Navarre (Government of Navarre). | <urn:uuid:69eb64d6-69cf-4de5-8b2a-3b3d6acd7a26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.navarra.es/home_en/Navarra/Asi+es+Navarra/Historia+y+cultura/Expansi%C3%B3n+y+declive.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926763 | 1,192 | 3.28125 | 3 |
The NRA learned of a problem in Oklahoma several years ago when some co-workers had planned to go do some target shooting one day after work. When their boss learned they had guns in their cars, they were fired, due to workplace rules against weapons on company property. In another Oklahoma case, 12 workers were fired when the company found they had firearms stored in their locked vehicles parked on company property. It’s a conflict between the property rights of the business owners and the Constitutional rights of their employees.
Almost every state has a provision for citizens to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons and keep them in their vehicles.
The state of Oklahoma eventually passed laws protecting employees’ rights and protecting their employers from liability.
A state law was needed because the federal government does not typically act to defend citizens’ Second Amendment rights.
Other states have passed similar laws forbidding employers from interfering with the legal possession of a firearm in their employees’ locked vehicles, but Tennessee’s GOP leaders decided to do the bidding of the employers instead.
Employers maintain their responsibility to provide a safe work place, and that their rights as owners of the workplace property are more important than their employees’ rights.
In Tennessee this year, the Republican-controlled legislature sided with business owners, and the NRA is responding by contributing to a challenger to the number three Republican in the state House.
But Tennessee isn’t alone. The NRA also ran into Republican roadblocks in Georgia, Alabama, Idaho and North Carolina this year.
In Alabama, a similar parking lot bill introduced by a Republican member got out of committee but failed to pass the chamber. A bill introduced in the House by a Democrat was killed in committee.
Why did the bills fail? It could have something to do with the Business Council of Alabama.
In the BCA’s 2012 State Legislative Agenda, the group stated, among other things, that it would actively oppose any legislation restricting the employers’ right to restrict firearm possession on company property. The BCA was apparently successful in that effort in this year’s legislative session.
Part of the Republican Party’s success with working class voters has been its positions on social issues, including opposition to gun control, but critics paint the GOP as the party that looks out for the rich.
It’ll be interesting to see what Alabama’s Republicans do with this issue before the 2014 elections. | <urn:uuid:5ff4a495-bf1a-4bc5-bc53-b58e163850aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailyhome.com/view/full_story/19344538/article-Whose-rights-matter--NRA-targets-GOP-legislators?instance=home_news_right | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980322 | 496 | 1.734375 | 2 |
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
There's a place for you here.
St. Stephen's Church is a thriving community with so many ministries that volunteers are indispensable.
The New testament describes the church as a body with many members, and each member has an important role to play in the proper functioning of the body. Some of us are teachers, some are cooks, some are gifted in providing hospitality, some are leaders of worship, some are counselors, some work with their hands, some are called to a ministry of prayer, and so on. Whatever your gift or inclination, there is a place for you and a role for you to play in keeping our community strong and healthy.
If you are interested in volunteering, we will gratefully put you to work! Volunteering is a great way to strengthen our common life, get to know new people, and realize that you are an important member of the Body of Christ, the church. A list of ongoing areas of need is provided below; in addition, new and upcoming roles are described here:
Food Pantry Garden: Our community garden is making progress. We are planting tomatoes, potatoes, beans and onions. This delicious, fresh produce will go to clients of our food pantry this summer and fall. If you are interested in participating in this special ministry, please contact Deb Lawrence in the church office.
Do you shop at our Farmers Market on Saturdays? You can combine your shopping trip with a vital volunteer opportunity by gleaning donations to our food pantry from our wonderful market vendors. Volunteers are needed just before noon to pick up the donations from these vendors and put them in the pantry and refrigerator. This can be a wonderful community service project for youth.
Fairfield School has new opportunities for volunteers. In addition to roles for classroom assistants, tutors and lunch buddies, there are new opportunities to read to classes or to serve as a reading pal to a student, a math buddy or in an "Adopt-a-Classroom" capacity. These all have very flexible time frames and can be done monthly as opposed to weekly. "Adopt-a-Classroom" is a wonderful opportunity for a group such as an Emmaus Group, and it's also a good thing for someone who prefers an activity that can be done from home, such as sending in a holiday treat, helping sponsor a field trip, etc. Make plans now to participate when the new school year begins.
Also at Fairfield, the Central Virginia Food Bank's Mobile Food Pantry visits the school once a month to provide bags of food to Fairfield School families. They do this on the same night as the PTA meeting (2nd Tuesday of each month) and volunteers are needed to help with distribution.
Our hosting week for CARITAS (Congregations Around Richmond Involved to Assure Shelter), takes place each Fall. Sign-up sheets are placed at the Outreach Table several weeks in advance.
We send a team of health care providers (physicians, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) to CrossOver Ministry's Cowardin Avenue clinic twice each year. Volunteers are also needed to assist with administrative tasks; Spanish speakers are also helpful.
Questions about any of these opportunities may be addressed to Deb Lawrence via email or at 288-2867.
May Fair House cooking (contact Sandy Suskind, 282-4496)
Local Outreach Ministries
Work in our community garden (growing vegetables for our food ministry)
Gleaning produce (working at the Farmers Market on Saturdays right after it closes, to collect unused produce for our food ministry)
National Outreach Ministries (read more here)
International Outreach Ministries (read more here)
Ministries at St. Stephen's
Volunteer to mentor or teach
Help chaperone field trips
Prepare meals for youth group meetings
To volunteer in any of these Youth Ministry roles, contact Matt Johnson.
Volunteer to teach Sunday school (preK-grade 5)
Serve in Palmer Hall Chapel services on Sundays (there are roles for adults and children)
The Women of St. Stephen's
The Women of St. Stephen's offer a wide range of volunteer opportunities, including working in their shop, the May Fair House; preparing foods to sell in the May Fair House; Gracious Gourmets, who prepare meals for those who have recently welcomed a new baby or suffered a loss; and other opportunities. Please visit the Women of St. Stephen's page for more information, or contact Beverly Bates, president. | <urn:uuid:d2d178a7-5dc1-4296-9884-fd71725116bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saintstephensrichmond.net/volunteer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955298 | 939 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Seaweed is an important food in the Asian diet, including Chinese cuisine. But with the exception of "nori" seaweed -- the stuff used in sushi rolls -- not too many Westerners relish the sea vegetable. That's too bad. Seaweed packs a nutritional wallop and is naturally low in calories.
If you are curious about how to use seaweed, take a walk through most Chinatowns and look for the roasted salty, crunchy snacks that come in 3-packs or 12-packs. These snacks are a great alternative to fattening potato chips. | <urn:uuid:25b0258e-d417-4f3f-91a1-7c7966131048> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://storify.com/janasaastad/eating-seaweed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93079 | 119 | 1.734375 | 2 |
I was continuing to shrink, to become... what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close — the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!
From Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man
Posted on SpaceCollective by Rene Daalder in a comment on Claire Evans’ Very Big and Very Small | <urn:uuid:b997e211-4048-45b2-b1f3-823ceff14acb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://butdoesitfloat.com/filter/Jack-Arnold | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969122 | 304 | 1.554688 | 2 |
NEW YORK (WKOW)-- A new gasoline rationing plan that lets motorists fill up every other day, is going into effect in New York.
Police will be at gas stations Friday morning to enforce the new system in New York City and on Long Island. Officials say it was imposed because something had to be done to ease the long waits for fuel, which they say caused people to panic-buy and hoard gasoline.
Cars with plates ending in odd numbers, a letter, or other character, can buy fuel on odd-numbered days, like November 9. Cars ending in even numbers, or the number zero, can buy fuel on even numbered days, like November 10.
Gas rationing is just one of the effects of Superstorm Sandy, which stuck the East Coast over one week ago.
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Persons with disabilities who need assistance with issues relating to the content of this station's public inspection file should contact Program Manager Jessica Miller at 608-661-2794. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, at 888-835-5322 (TTY) or at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:64efbb10-7324-44c2-80cd-94307b5e9123> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wkow.com/story/20050115/gas-rationing-begins-today-in-new-york | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933883 | 271 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Strategizing for Victory in Vietnam . . . Or at Least a Stalemate
When violence erupted in South Vietnam in the mid-1950s, the government under Ngo Dinh Diem initially faced an internal threat from VC guerrilla forces. These VC forces typically engaged in hit and run attacks and terrorism until the VC could gain enough strength to amass and supply larger conventional forces that could challenge and defeat the U.S.-trained and -equipped ARVN (South Vietnamese army) forces. Facilitating this transition in VC strategies and tactics, North Vietnam increased its support of the VC by expanding the Ho Chi Minh Trail in 1959.
Although the VC formed larger, more conventional units, the war changed dramatically in 1964 with the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents, when the United States started bombing North Vietnam and in the following year became more heavily involved in the ground war in South Vietnam. At the same time, North Vietnam also decided to commit more materiel and larger numbers of ground troops to the war in the south.
Although the VC received a significant boost from the introduction of larger amounts of military assistance from North Vietnam, as NVA units arrived in the South, problems also emerged. Perhaps the most significant was competition over command and control of military operations in the South among communist political cadres (NVA/VC political personnel) and military commanders. In addition, many NVA soldiers and members of North Vietnamese communist political cadres who went to South Vietnam looked down on and had little respect for their VC counterparts. This turmoil created a competition between the NVA and VC that lasted until the destruction of the VC during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
After the United States introduced ground units in 1965, the NVA/VC quickly realized that they'd never have enough firepower to truly challenge the United States on the battlefield, and as long as the United States remained committed to sending more soldiers to fight in Vietnam, the NVA/VC never could win an outright military contest. So, instead of trying to match the U.S. superiority in firepower, they chose to use their strongest ally — time — against U.S./ARVN forces. One of the earliest changes in the NVA/VC strategy was exerting greater control over the size and intensity of the battlefield.
The NVA/VC had substantial manpower reserves but couldn't just sacrifice large numbers of men in combat. Rather than holding territory for any length of time, the NVA/VC used mobile bases and chose where and when they'd strike at U.S./ARVN forces. Holding a specific piece of terrain for too long would make NVA/VC units more vulnerable to U.S. firepower, which meant NVA/VC base camps rarely were in the same place for any length of time. The downside was that the comfort levels in NVA camps also declined, because no time or resources were invested on creature comforts. Whereas some U.S. base camps featured basketball courts and other luxuries, NVA/VC soldiers accepted additional hardships when doing so meant less exposure to U.S. bombing and artillery barrages. So, as a major part of their strategy, the NVA/VC opted for mobility. U.S. and ARVN ground forces, on the other hand, chose to establish more static base camps from which to launch their operations.
Although the helicopter still provided U.S./ARVN forces with an advantage in mobility, the NVA/VC base camp design, combined with their strategy, always enabled them to predict the directions from which U.S./ARVN attacks might come. Disadvantages of the mobile NVA/VC camps were much fewer than the advantages gained by being on the move and disrupting the ability of the U.S./ARVN to target and destroy them. The NVA/VC used other things to their advantage in addition to mobility:
- Geography: Use of mountains, hills, rivers, valleys, and other geographical features to mask movement and other activities.
- Camouflage: Used to conceal and deceive, it hides something so that it blends in as if the thing is not there.
- Concealment: Can incorporate camouflage but is also anything that obscures vision or detection. For example, a thatch wall is visible against a jungle backdrop. At the same time, it conceals the movement of anyone behind it although a person can shoot through it and perhaps kill someone hiding there.
- Cover: Can be camouflaged and provide concealment but more importantly it provides protection, such as a cement wall or a bunker.
These things added tremendously to the difficulties faced by U.S./ARVN forces on the ground, in the air, and on the water.
Fighting with jungles and tunnels as allies
Combating the U.S. advantages of mobility and firepower, the NVA/VC developed various techniques for preventing their forces from being detected and destroyed by U.S./ARVN units.
One basic military technique they used was camouflage and concealment. In Vietnam, this meant hiding and using the terrain and jungle to mask movement and activity, especially from U.S. aircraft flying overhead. Most of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which spanned from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam, meandered through mountainous and dense jungle. Double- and triple-canopy jungles were not uncommon in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The number of canopies refers to the layers of trees and foliage that covers an area. Plant life in a jungle competes for access to sunlight and grows in layers, or canopies, which means that the NVA/VC could cut down shorter, lower brush and trees, making way for their trucks and convoys, but keep taller trees intact, thus completely concealing their movements from detection by air. In some areas, the Ho Chi Minh Trail was literally cut through the jungle like a tunnel.
For even more cover and concealment, the NVA/VC used underground tunnels and bunker complexes where they stored, or cached, ammunition, weapons, food, fuel, uniforms, and equipment in smaller tunnels and bunkers, saving larger ones for more difficult tasks.
Tunnel complexes in North and South Vietnam were vast and well designed, providing protection and security when ground, naval, and air forces launched attacks against them. The NVA/VC often built tunnel systems near major rivers and waterways and used the river and canal banks for building and concealing entry and exit points. The NVA/VC also ambushed U.S./ARVN river forces and then used the waterways as avenues of escape to their tunnel complexes. The tunnel systems, often accompanied by bunkers, weren't usually visible by water or air unless the NVA/VC purposefully exposed their positions through an ambush.
Given their extensive use of camouflage and concealment, most of the NVA/VC tunnel systems were located by ground units conducting foot patrols and search and reconnaissance operations through suspected areas of NVA/VC activity. Once uncovered, the only way of rooting out NVA/VC forces from a tunnel complex was sending U.S./ARVN personnel into the tunnel system. Engaging the NVA/VC in the tunnels was difficult for U.S. tunnel rats, because they often encountered booby-traps and other hazards designed to injure or kill them.
In many instances, instead of creating new tunnels and bunkers, the NVA/VC merely improved upon the ones used against the French and Japanese. In the war with U.S./ARVN forces, expanding and digging deeper helped the NVA/VC offset the effects of larger bombs, heavier artillery, and naval gunfire employed by U.S./ARVN forces. Because tunnels were invisible to aircraft, bombing missions over suspected tunnel complexes relied mostly on luck and massive numbers of bombs to destroy suspected tunnels and bunkers.
Maintaining pressure and avoiding defeat: The North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong
The NVA/VC used the U.S. strategy of attrition to their advantage. When larger numbers of U.S. forces appeared on an operation, the NVA/VC tried to choose when and where to fight and then disengaged from combat when overwhelming U.S. firepower pushed their losses too high. The United States nevertheless engaged in several operations that forced the NVA/VC to change their tactics. The success Mobile Riverine Forces and SEALORDS had with using small, fast, highly maneuverable riverboats forced the NVA/VC to reassess how they fought in the Mekong Delta. The NVA/VC countered these highly mobile U.S. forces with hit-and-run tactics. Firefights seldom lasted longer than an hour and were generally over before the full complement of U.S. naval gunfire, artillery, and air power entered the attack. | <urn:uuid:59ff061b-c9e1-490c-ace9-26c98155c2a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/strategizing-for-victory-in-vietnam-or-at-least-a-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962973 | 1,815 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Question: Will radiation therapy for breast cancer cause nausea and vomiting?
Answer: Radiation therapy for breast cancer -- since it treats such a limited part of the body and doesn't involve any treatment of the gastro-intestinal tract -- is rarely associated with nausea or vomiting. So, it's very well-tolerated. The major side effects that patients note are some degree of fatigue, which is somewhat more pronounced towards the end of treatment, so that patients say, "I don't usually take a nap, but I find myself taking a nap on the weekends." And some degree of skin irritation, which is like a sunburn. And these effects completely heal up within a week or two after the end of your treatment.
Previous: Will Radiation Make My Hair Fall Out? | <urn:uuid:34087ebc-d0e0-4b78-a15b-80bbec3d2011> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Health/OnCallPlusTreatment/story?id=3644844 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961664 | 156 | 1.554688 | 2 |
BUSINESSMAN TAKING MONEY FROM WALLET
When is a tax a tax, and not something else? It's hard to believe but the answer to the question is not as simple as one might think.
The latest example of a mix-up appears with a proposal on several county ballots to add $10 to the annual motor vehicle registration, with the proceeds going to manage local roads and transportation systems. The ballot issue is available because of a law passed last year by the state legislature that allows counties to ask for voter approval with a simple majority vote.
Typically, passage of a tax dedicated to particular purposes requires a two-thirds vote, courtesy of California's Proposition 13 that was enacted in 1978. But that's for a "tax."
In this case, the enabling legislation refers to the ballot proposal as a "fee," thereby allowing a simple majority vote to determine the outcome. And since majority votes are much easier to obtain than two-thirds votes, the sponsors of the fee are delighted with its description.
Some groups such as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are hopping mad. They argue that the proposed "fee" is really a tax in disguise, and as such, should require a two-thirds vote to pass.
In fact, the taxation process at the local level is about as disjointed and confusing as imaginable.
How's that for confusion. No wonder the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is angry; they equate the registration fee as something similar to a parcel tax, while the legislature viewed the fee as something close to a sales tax because of the broad nature of use.
Meanwhile, as the November election approaches, voters are likely to be perplexed over just what kind of vote is required for what issue. It may not be the kind of concern that polarizes the electorate, but the lack of clarity won't help to inspire confidence in the revenue collecting system. And at a time when the voters are angry to begin with, extra confusion is the last thing they need. | <urn:uuid:aac30c9e-793c-44f2-8107-ad94d02c3daf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcsandiego.com/blogs/prop-zero/The-Fight-Over-Taxes-vs-Fees-103225039.html | 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 | 0.965039 | 406 | 2.59375 | 3 |
HOUSTON, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is investigating the deaths of two horses minutes apart at The Meadows Racetrack & Casino in southwestern Pennsylvania.
Officials at the harness racing track about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh say an 8-year-old mare, Lislea Isabella, suffered some sort of respiratory distress and died as she prepared to run in the 14th race Monday afternoon. Another horse, 7-year-old Little Bit Tricky, then died while running in the 15th race.
Mike Jeannot (JEN'-noh), president of Meadows Racing, says he hasn't "seen this in the 20 years I've been around." Kim Hankins, executive director of the Meadows Standardbred Owners Association says having two horses die so closely together is "phenomenally coincidental. It's unbelievable."
Agriculture officials have confirmed they're investigating, but the department's press secretary could not immediately offer additional comment Wednesday. | <urn:uuid:86552a0f-d341-46d9-ab93-75a90d7844a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130206/NEWS90/130209872/-1/NEWS | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958481 | 198 | 1.5625 | 2 |
It's a blocky, blush-colored building surrounded by a lush canopy of trees near the rumored home of Cuban revolutionary icon Fidel Castro.
Somewhere inside, as best as can be determined, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is fighting for his life.
People in Venezuela and other parts of the world await word on the fate of a man who once called George W. Bush "the devil" in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, yet there are no journalists camped out on the sidewalk. Nobody gets past a police guard without proof of official business inside. Signs on surrounding streets warn that taking photographs is forbidden.
CIMEQ hospital's well-earned reputation for guaranteeing the privacy of its elite clientele makes it the perfect place for the Venezuelan leader, who is bent on maintaining a large degree of secrecy about his battle against a cancer somewhere in the pelvic region. Venezuelan government officials have released few details on the cancer since it was first discovered in June 2011, and they've been no more forthcoming during his latest stay for a fourth surgery, on Dec. 11.
"What Chavez gets there (at CIMEQ) is a lot of privacy," said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a Virginia-based analyst and the author of "The Health Revolution in Cuba." "They have been pretty good at protecting the private affairs of the leaders of the Cuban revolution, and now we see they're doing the same with Chavez."
CIMEQ, a Spanish-language acronym for Center for Medical and Surgical Research, is operated jointly by Cuban civilian and military authorities and is considered the crown jewel of the island's health care system. Opened in 1982 in western Havana, it was the first to use CAT scan technology in Cuba, and is reputedly at the vanguard of marrow, liver and kidney transplants.
Communist-run Cuba is legendary for being able to keep a secret, and CIMEQ sits in an upscale Havana neighborhood where security is especially tight. The area crawls with police and guards even on a normal day, and high walls shield pre-revolution mansions that today house embassies, diplomats, visiting dignitaries and top officials. Just up the road is a convention center where Colombia and its largest rebel group are holding supersensitive peace talks behind closed doors.
CIMEQ serves ordinary Cubans for free under the island's public health system, but it's renowned as the go-to place for A-listers, from famed 91-year-old ballerina Alicia Alonso to the late boxing great Teofilo Stevenson. High-profile visitors such as Presidents Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Evo Morales of Bolivia have also availed themselves of CIMEQ's services.
Those who manage to get past the front gate walk past a parking lot, under an imposing overhang and through an ample front door to find leatherette-seated waiting areas and broad, labyrinthine corridors.
Even here there's practically no visual clue suggesting the presence of Chavez. A half-dozen CIMEQ patients consulted by The Associated Press said security seems normal and there's no sign of the Cuban secret service agents in guayabera shirts who guard President Raul Castro and famous visitors. However, on one recent day, several cars in the parking lot bore black diplomatic license plates identifying them as belonging to the Venezuelan Embassy. | <urn:uuid:b16f7589-c569-4122-b779-f3eeb197bba3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/17/chavez-reportedly-at-exclusive-cuba-hospital/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961554 | 684 | 1.84375 | 2 |
After winning the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney delivered a victory speech in which he deplored America’s lost “can do spirit”. Unsurprisingly, he blamed it on government. If elected he promised, “We’re going to get government out of the way”. Then he offered a few examples of what he meant. “We once built the interstate highway system and the Hoover Dam. Now we can’t even build a pipeline.”
Romney liked the line, and the thunderous applause it generated so much that a few weeks later at a Tea Party gathering in Pennsylvania he used it again.
Rachel Maddow and many others have pointed out the fundamental flaw in Romney’s argument. The government built both the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Republican administrations championed both projects. They were testaments to the can-do spirit of government, grand collective undertakings that benefited generations to come.
How grand? The Hoover Dam cost the equivalent of $24 billion in today’s dollars, notes Steve Benen. Congress appropriated $25 billion to build the first 40,000 miles of the interstate highway system, equivalent to $830 billion in today’s dollars.
Few have commented on Romney’s second sentence. “Now we can’t even build a pipeline”. Having cited two examples that contradicted his thesis that government lacks the can do spirit, he offered an example of how government is preventing the private sector from having the can do spirit that may be even more problematic.
Romney, as everyone in his audience and most of the country knew, was talking about the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama had delayed construction while a detailed environmental impact study is completed, generating universal Republican outrage.
If completed, the pipeline will transport crude oil extracted from Canadian tar sands through the United States and to Gulf Coast refineries where it will then be exported. Demonstrating that private sector can-do spirit Romney so exalts, TransCanada, the company that owns the pipeline, is continuing to acquire land to construct the pipeline despite Obama’s decision. “We don’t need a presidential permit in order for us to obtain the easements that we need for the right of way for this project,” says TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha.
Apparently, the foreign corporation also doesn’t think it needs permission of the landowners to move ahead. When some farmers refused to sell their land, TransCanada began the process of seizing their private property. Which has led many of Mitt Romney’s most ardent supporters to rebel.
A month before Romney’s speech this major story appeared in the Texas Tribune, “Keystone Pipeline Sparks Property Rights Backlash”. The reporter conveyed the anger of Julia Trigg Crawford who manages a 600-acre farm in Lamar County that’s been in her family since 1948. “I’m just an angry steward of the land. A foreign-owned, for-profit, non-permitted pipeline has taken a Texan’s land. Doesn’t sound right, does it?”
Does it? The Texas Constitution requires that eminent domain, that is, the right to seize private property, can only be exercised for “public use.” In the past courts have routinely dismissed challenges to pipelines by landowners.
But last year the Texas Supreme Court ruled that a company that wanted to build a CO2 pipeline for its own use was a private carrier and couldn’t use eminent domain to get an easement on a Houston-area rice farm. In his opinion for the majority, Justice Don Willett wrote that “even when the Legislature grants certain private entities ‘the right and power of eminent domain,’ the overarching constitutional rule controls: no taking of property for private use.”
“The ruling sent shockwaves through the oil and gas lobby, which is now urging the Supreme Court to rehear the case,” the Texas Tribune observes.
Ms. Crawford successfully obtained a rare restraining order from the courts that halted any further encroachment on her land until questions surrounding TransCanada’s right to condemn her property are resolved.
The case is going to court. There will be a hearing in June and possibly a trial in July. I hope they are televised. Texas’ two Republican Senators and its Republican Governor have come out against the Crawford Family
The Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system were built by the people for the people. They were and are public assets, huge public undertakings that have generated huge public benefits. The Keystone XL pipeline is proposed by a private company for private gain. The private company insists it has the right to seize private land to enhance the value of its private asset.
Perhaps an enterprising reporter on the campaign trail could ask Mitt Romney if he would like to revisit his comments?
This article first appeared on On The Commons. www.onthecommons.org | <urn:uuid:ac03859d-a673-45f8-8194-9d9a2f3acfcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ilsr.org/romney-hoover-eisenhower-pipeline-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955219 | 1,025 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Franklin Cudjoe is the Executive Director of IMANI Ghana
The IMANI Center for Policy & Education made Ghana proud as it emerged one of the top10 civil society groups in Africa in the latest Global Think Tanks Survey.
The 2012 Global Go-TO Think Tanks index, launched on Thursday, January 17, 2013 at the World Bank in Washington, DC and in New York at the United Nations, ranked IMANI Ghana as 8th in Africa and among the top 100 worldwide.
The index, commissioned by the University of Pennsylvania is the result of an international survey of over 1,950 scholars, public and private donors, policy makers, and journalists who helped rank over 6,500 think tanks using a set of 18 criteria. The purpose of the rankings is to help improve the profile and performance of think tanks while highlighting the important work they do for governments and civil societies around the world.
Most of the top rankings in Africa were assigned to South Africa-based organizations. South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) placed first in the top 50 think tanks in Africa with the next five spots going to other South African think tanks. A Senegalese think tank placed 7th followed by IMANI at number 8.
However IMANI’s performance in other categories positions it as an emerging force in the global knowledge industry.
In the category of think tanks operating on an annual budget of less than 5 million dollars, IMANI placed 10th worldwide. IMANI is one of just 4 African think tanks ranked in this category.
IMANI is also one of only four African think tanks ranked in the top 80 think tanks globally for its excellence for proffering solutions for domestic Economic Policy problems. IMANI is one of only two African think tanks ranked in top 30 Global Think Tanks with the Most Innovative Policy Ideas/Proposals. Furthermore, IMANI is one of 6 African think tanks ranked in the top 65 Global Think Tanks with the Most Significant Impact on Public Policy. Interestingly, IMANI is the only African market-oriented think tanks to be ranked in 7 categories.
Besides IMANI, other Ghanaian organizations also made impressive showings. The Center for Policy Analysis ranked 11th, the Centre for Democratic Development ranked 13th, the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) was 21st, Centre for Development Studies and Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research occupied the 34th and 35th positions respectively, Justice and Human Rights Institute ranked 41st, and the Integrated Social Development Center (ISODEC) placed 50th in Sub Saharan Africa.
The 33rd Best Global Advocacy Campaign was awarded to the Center for Policy Analysis and the Kofi Annan International Peace and Training Center placed 60th in the Top 70 Security and International Affairs Think Tanks. | <urn:uuid:da65ad2b-1dba-42f9-9809-5edbd482a870> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201301/100373.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936088 | 565 | 1.632813 | 2 |
AMONG THE MANY UNFORTUNATE legacies of the populist and progressive movements of 100 years ago are the powers of referendum, initiative and recall. The earnest reformers of the 1890s and the early 20th century believed that their government, particularly state legislatures, had been captured by corporate special interests. Creation of true democracy, they said, required a way for the people to reject corrupt legislation, bypass corrupt legislatures and fire corrupt legislators. They also instituted primary elections to take nomination out of the hands of party bosses.
Thus, 49 states require votes of the people to amend state constitutions (Delaware is the lone holdout). Twenty-four states allow voters to enact laws directly by popular initiatives. Most states require voters to approve new state debts. Some allow votes of the people to reject acts of the legislature. And many give angry voters the chance to vote politicians out of office before their terms expire.
It seems that it never occurred to those progressive reformers that the majority of the people could constitute a dangerous interest, one even more powerful than corporate interests.
Over the past 30 years or so, from California to Massachusetts, the people have spoken, and what they have said is usually no more practical than the hot air that rises from legislatures. But there's more of it this year.
There will be 159 statewide referendums on November ballots in 36 states this year, and 24 questions were decided in earlier votes, according to the tally of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California.
California is the epicenter of popular democracy as well as other forms of earthquake, and it has the national referendum championship locked up for another year. Along with ferocious campaigns for governor and U.S. senator, there are some remarkable propositions on the ballot.
Today's California legislature is more in thrall to the state's big unions and activists than to its big industries. In 2006, the lawmakers made a law that said the state's greenhouse-gas emissions–carbon dioxide, methane and others—must be rolled back to the level of 1990 by 2020. Sponsors said it was time for a very rich and environmentally conscious state to help avert global warming.
Unfortunately for the greens, the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions costs money—enough money that businesses are leaving the state to avoid the costs of compliance at a time when the state unemployment rate has surpassed 12%. Some corporate interests, therefore, decided to appeal to the people. Their proposition would keep the law from going into effect next year, and for as long as it takes to bring the unemployment rate below 5.5% for a full year. California hasn't been that lucky or well-governed for a long time and the prospects for improvement are obviously dim. So are prospects for economic realism defeating environmental fear.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his allies oppose the referendum because they see a bright future of cleaner energy, such as windmills, solar cells and other inadequate technologies.
Balance of Power
Interestingly, corporations are funding the campaigns on both sides of the greenhouse-gas question. Texas oil companies are contributing heavily to the side in favor of suspending the roll-back; companies that make alternative-energy devices are putting their money on the green side.
Other California propositions also pit special interests against each other. Public employees, especially teachers, are trying to repeal a law that allows business tax breaks; they claim the state can't afford the revenue loss without laying off public employees. Businesses, not surprisingly, want the favorable tax treatment.
Entrepreneurs of a different sort are backing the proposition to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. In addition to being supported by pot dealers, municipal entrepreneurs want to license and tax the stuff.
Partly because of its fascination with direct democracy, California faces fiscal deadlock almost every year. An anti-tax initiative several years ago required a two-thirds vote of the legislature to pass state budgets; this year the voters are being asked to go back to majority votes, which would make it easier to spend and save state employees' jobs.
The Camel's Back
The state of Washington is asking its people if the burden of state government should be carried more by its richest citizens, with a ballot initiative proposing a 5% income tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and adding another 4% on individual income greater than $400,000 (double the bracket amounts for couples).
Some of the state's richest people, such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his father, are for the tax—though they could pay voluntarily rather than forcing others to do so. Paul Allen, another Microsoft founder, and the CEO Steve Ballmer, are against the tax. So is Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
On the same ballot is something for anti-taxers: a proposal to require two-thirds majority in the state legislature for any tax increase. It could be interesting if both measures pass.
Other states are also submitting tax and spending limits to the voters. Massachusetts voters are being asked if they will cut the state sales tax from 6.5% to 4%. Colorado has a raft of anti-tax and anti-spending questions, including a constitutional amendment to prohibit the state from going into debt.
It's too bad that appealing to the voters can relieve legislators of their responsibility to spend, tax and take the heat directly for their decisions. Too many people on both sides are more interested in advantageous results than in constitutional principles.
No political system provides a sure safeguard against loopy lawmaking. Perhaps the progressives were partly right in wishing to protect the people from their elected legislators. But direct democracy is still dangerous. As James Madison said in Federalist Paper No. 63, the purpose of a legislature is "to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind."
Editorial page editor THOMAS G. DONLAN receives e-mail at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:520206fe-4d92-4677-8cd4-acaa399e0ec1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111903887604575566540890777132.html?mod=BOLFeed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962191 | 1,222 | 2.8125 | 3 |
By purchasing a used car, you can save a lot of money. A new car depreciates quickly in the first few years and after 3 years, it is worth only about 60-70% of the original price. In fact, as soon as you leave the dealership, your new vehicle is suddenly worth $1000-$2000 less. When purchasing a new car you basically are paying for its fresh "new" aroma and warranty. Yet,does not always mean the buyer will get perfection. A new car may come with problems associated with poor design or manufacturing defects that may have been already repaired during the warranty coverage period if it's a used car. The same is true for all kinds of recalls and service campaigns. Another advantage of buying a used car is that you could buy a loaded model with all the bells and whistles that you might not be able to afford had you bought a new car.
However, buying a used car is still a bit of a gamble - there is no guarantee that the car is accident-free, has real mileage, and was properly maintained. There may be some hidden problems like a worn out automatic transmission, or engine problems that may not have been obvious when you test-drove the car. So, next you must ask yourself: Will I save money when buying a used car? How do I eliminate the risk of potential problems and is this actually possible to do? Read on to find out more information. | <urn:uuid:bfa9e129-f9d7-42f7-8dc6-5a05724882c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trustmymechanic.com/forum/b3/how-to-buy-a-used-car/17398/msg109855 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98043 | 291 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Samsung's new drives can give laptops 1TB of storage
- — 05 March, 2008 11:40
To meet the growing storage needs of laptop users, Samsung Electronics on Tuesday introduced a 500G-byte hard drive that could provide a notebook PC with as much as 1T byte of storage.
The Spinpoint M6, a 2.5-inch hard drive, fits into the chassis of commercial and multimedia notebooks, said Andy Higginbotham, director of hard drive sales at Samsung Semiconductor. Two drives can be combined for 1T byte of storage, he said.
The company was able to fit three 167G-byte platters in a small frame to achieve 500G bytes of storage in one drive, Higginbotham said. The hard drive spins at 5,400 revolutions per minute (RPM).
Priced at US$299, the hard drive will ship to PC makers and retail stores later this month. A company spokeswoman declined to comment on which PC makers will be using the drive.
This is not the first attempt to put 1T byte of storage in a laptop. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, Asus announced the M70S laptop, which combined two 500G-byte drives from Hitachi.
Samsung also announced the Spinpoint MP2 hard drive, a 2.5-inch drive with 250G bytes of storage. Aimed at desktop replacement notebooks, workstations and blade servers, it provides quicker read and write speeds than the M6. The hard drive spins at 7,200 RPM.
With the MP2, the company also provides an optional chip that protects a hard drive from vibrations caused by other hardware components.
The Spinpoint MP2 is priced at $299 and will be available through retailers. An 80G-byte version of the hard drive is also available, according to the company.
Both drives come with an optional free-fall sensor, which parks the head and turns the hard drive off in the event of a fall, protecting the data on it. | <urn:uuid:7a1cae46-cdc8-4a07-b2fd-ed8eb84f57fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/207922/samsung_new_drives_can_give_laptops_1tb_storage/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933362 | 416 | 1.820313 | 2 |
Second-place winner essay by Joe Lykken
There are few
today who would question the critical importance of basic scientific research. America's leadership in basic science sows the seeds of our future prosperity, ennobles
our society with a higher purpose, and provides a common ground for peaceful cooperation with other nations.
We depend upon basic science as a resource, mined from an inexhaustible mother lode of knowledge. The federal government acts as the primary custodian of this resource, ensuring a balanced and refined supply, freely shared by all.
from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
High-energy physics has qualities and value that make it unique among the branches of basic science. Only high-energy physics seeks to articulate the fundamental character of physical law, and to identify the primary agents and constituents of physical reality. Physical events play out upon an underlayment of interwoven fields of energy and matter. High-energy physicists tug at the microscopic knots of this cosmic weave. They divine the symmetries that give it order and elegance, and untangle the dense woof of its complex dynamics.
This is the science of extremes: the smallest, the largest, the hottest, the densest, the most energetic. Ghostlike neutrinos stream through the earth and leave no effect, but quarks are trapped in tiny prisons by powerful nuclear glue. Some particles, left undisturbed, will live forever, but others wink in and out of existence in the most fleeting of moments. Gravity reaches across the universe to corral whole galaxies, while the weak force cannot even reach across
a proton to grab a quark.
High-energy physics, more than any other human enterprise,
tests the limits of our imaginations and the rigors of our intellects.
Its role in science is
not only to probe
the nature of matter, energy, space, and
time, but also to inspire young people with the sweep and depth of scientific endeavor.
As a leader in high energy physics, the United States can more easily remain preeminent in science as a whole.
The spectacular progress in high-energy physics of the past half century has made this the most advanced and best tested of all scientific disciplines. This progress has also increased the expense and complexity of the U.S. program. But the money we spend is primarily an investment in people: thousands of highly-trained experimenters, theorists, students, accelerator physicists, computer scientists, technicians and engineers. U.S. high-energy physicists add to the intellectual vigor of a hundred universities, while our high-energy physics laboratories are magnets for the best minds from around the world.
High-energy physicists, by definition,
work at the most far-flung frontiers of human knowledge. For each frontier settled, two new ones open up. In this sense, high-energy physics is a challenge particularly suited to the American spirit. To give up our leadership on these frontiers is to deny the bold ambitions, restless energies, and nimble ingenuity that have brought us so much success. If we go forward, there is no limit to what we can learn, and no limit to how this knowledge may affect our future. | <urn:uuid:804726db-5a94-4404-adbe-d7c1baa943ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fnal.gov/pub/ferminews/essay_2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913287 | 656 | 2.609375 | 3 |
It's a disturbing case of bullying caught on camera. The video was recorded by a Missisquoi Valley Union High School student and later posted on Facebook. It shows one student trying to bait another to fight him on the way home from school Monday. The kids on the bus cheer as the first punch is thrown and continue to encourage the attack for two more minutes.
"They were egging him on saying hit him, hit him, get him in the face," said Robbie Deuell, a sophomore at MVU.
Deuell's black eye is healing, but he says this isn't the first time he's been bullied on the bus. And what's worse-- the driver never stopped.
Robbie Deuell: He didn't do anything. He saw Hazen throw the first punch and just kept on driving.
Reporter Jennifer Reading: Did that surprise you?
Robbie Deuell: No, because he does it all the time whenever something happens.
"It made me sick to see it. It really did," mom Michele Deuell said.
Robbie's mom says she's disgusted that the driver allowed the fight to continue. He's employed by M and C Transport, the company the school hired to provide bus service. School officials wouldn't comment on the driver's conduct and our calls to the bus company weren't returned. Michele Deuell says the driver's actions are unacceptable.
"He's there to protect the kids," she said. "You want to be able to send your kids to school and know that they're going to be safe and not get bullied all the time. He's had things thrown at him on the bus. He's been hit on the bus, called names on the bus."
School officials did not want to speak with us on camera, but they did say that they are investigating the incident. Students on the bus have been interviewed by school staff and the supervisory union is also investigating why the bus driver did not intervene. The superintendent says the owner did stop by the school as soon as he learned about the incident and he was very apologetic.
Robbie and his mom said no one has apologized to them and school administrators won't even talk to them about the incident. She says this highlights a larger problem-- bullying at school. It's something this family has been battling for years.
"I want to see the bullying stop," Michele Deuell said. "I want to see him be able to go to school and be happy. No kid should have to go through this."
She worries that speaking out will only make things worse for her son at school, but she says she's run out of other ways to protect her child.
"They haven't done anything," she said. "It's been years and it's just continuing. There have been so many kids that have killed themselves over things like this and I don't want to bury my son."
School officials say consequences in a case like this are complicated and they wouldn't comment on what specific punishments could be implemented.
State police say 16-year-old Hazen Martell was issued a juvenile citation for simple assault. Additional charges may also be filed against other kids who played a part in the beating. The driver does not face any criminal charges.
We hid the identity of the alleged 16-year-old attacker in the video because his family has not returned our calls to get their side of the story.
Friday, May 17 2013 7:54 PM EDT2013-05-17 23:54:10 GMT
The door to room 118 at the Liberty Inn and Suites is gone-- busted by police during an early morning drug raid. They say tenant Julie Herron, 41, was selling heroin out her room. She was living thereMore >>
A South Burlington drug bust exposed new abuses of the state's homeless voucher program. A couple was arrested for selling heroin out of their motel room, and police say the state was footing the bill for their stay.More >>
Friday, May 17 2013 7:56 PM EDT2013-05-17 23:56:29 GMT
A public defender entered 34-year-old Anthony Wright's not guilty plea in the Chittenden County courthouse Friday morning. Police say a search of Wright's residence two days earlier revealed about 250More >>
A Burlington man denies drug charges after police say they stumbled upon his marijuana grow operation. It happened while authorities were investigating another alleged drug crime next door.More >>
Friday, May 17 2013 7:45 PM EDT2013-05-17 23:45:07 GMT
Prosecutors in a murder case said Thursday that backups at the Vermont Forensics Lab have slowed their case, and the defense said the delays are violating their client's right to a speedy trial. So, isMore >>
Prosecutors in a murder case said backups at the Vt. Forensics Lab slowed their case; the defense said the delays violate their client's right to a speedy trial. So, is that courtroom strategy or is there really a backlog? More >>
Friday, May 17 2013 9:45 AM EDT2013-05-17 13:45:45 GMT
A trial date has been set for a Massachusetts man accused of killing a woman in southern Vermont. 31-year-old Frank Caraballo will be in court September 9. He's accused of killing Melissa Barratt inMore >>
A trial date has been set for a Massachusetts man accused of killing a woman in southern Vermont.More >>
Friday, May 17 2013 12:26 PM EDT2013-05-17 16:26:55 GMT
A Vermont used car dealer is facing federal fraud charges of hiding malfunctions in the cars he sold. Prosecutors say Douglas Jordan, 40, of Wolcott, bought high-mileage used cars at auction and sold themMore >>
A Vermont used car dealer is facing federal fraud charges of hiding malfunctions in the cars he sold.More >> | <urn:uuid:429ebd11-7200-4399-bc19-2034ddc280a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcax.com/story/17534551/school-bus-fight-raises-questions-about-bullying-in-vt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982402 | 1,219 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Andrey Tarkovsky’s disciple, consistently realizing his master’s spiritual and aesthetic principles in his own creations, Konstantin Lopushansky is one of the few Russian film directors whose works can be referred to the notion of “author’s cinematography”. He challenges most complicated artistic tasks in his films, each of them being the evidence of painstaking intellectual work and deep personal emotional experience.
Konstatnin Sergeyevich Lopushansky was born on June 12, 1947 in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. In 1970 he graduated from Kazan conservatoire as a violinist, and in 1973 he completed a postgraduate course in Leningrad conservatoire with a Ph.D. thesis in art criticism. Then Konstantin Lopushansky taught at the Kazan and Leningrad conservatories for several years, before taking the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Film Directors. Upon graduating the courses in 1979 he assisted Andrey Tarkovsky in directing the legendary film Stalker. Since 1980 Lopushansky has worked… read more
Production assistant on Stalker at the age of four? Well, everyone's got to start somewhere...
They are regularly screened at a museum buried under the sea which can only be accessed during low tide. | <urn:uuid:bc3d8371-09ca-45c4-9bae-50ecf3c325ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mubi.com/cast_members/44366 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959126 | 270 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The University of South Florida Libraries subscribes to a host of business and financial numerical databases. They are available through the WRDS platform as well as in Datastream Advance. Information about all of these resources can be found on this subject guide by clicking on the tabs.
What is WRDS?
Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) is a web-based business data research service from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Developed in 1993 to support faculty research at Wharton, the service has evolved to become a common tool for research for over 260 institutions around the world.
WRDS is the de facto standard for business data, providing researchers worldwide with instant access to financial, economic, and marketing data though a uniform, web-based interface. This hosted data service has become the locus for quantitative data research and is recognized by the academic and financial research community around the world as the leading business intelligence tool.
If you already have an account, please click here to access the WRDS suite of datasets.
Individual WRDS accounts are offered to standing faculty, full-time research staff, currently-enrolled Ph.D. students, and full-time Masters students at Subscriber institutions. Access and individual accounts for research assistants, visiting scholars, and other non-permanent faculty is offered at Wharton Research Data Service's discretion. Access by other types of students is limited to class accounts, and special IP authenticated access within the library or computer lab, as provided by Wharton Research Data Services. Please note: Our WRDS policy prohibits undergraduate/Masters students from accessing WRDS during the extended break between semesters. If you have questions about this resource, please contact Matt Torrence at firstname.lastname@example.org, or by phone at 813-974-2779. | <urn:uuid:bac431f3-dec7-4ff8-a804-d0eb2b076895> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://guides.lib.usf.edu/datasets | 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 | 0.938031 | 370 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Can I Use a Tampon If I'm a Virgin?
I'm a virgin and I want to use a tampon but I heard that tampons are for girls/women who've had sex. Is that true or can I use a tampon?
Any girl who has her period can use a tampon. Tampons work just as well for girls who are virgins as they do for girls who have had sex. And even though using a tampon can occasionally cause a girl's to stretch or tear, it does not cause a girl to lose her virginity. (Only having sex can do that.)
Whether a girl decides to use a tampon or a pad is completely up to her. Lots of girls who are active — particularly girls who swim — want to use tampons so they don't miss out on their favorite sport.
It may take some practice putting in a tampon for the first time. Some girls find that using a slender-size, applicator-style tampon (especially one with a rounded top) makes it easier at first. Follow the step-by-step instructions in the box. It also helps to try a tampon for the first time on a day when your period flow is heaviest. That way the tampon should slip in easier.
Reviewed by: Larissa Hirsch, MD
Date reviewed: September 2010
* Names have been changed to protect user privacy.
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Note: All information on TeensHealth® is for educational purposes only. For specific medical advice, diagnoses, and treatment, consult your doctor.
© 1995- The Nemours Foundation. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:20435be8-62b2-4b93-96a8-e83a8aabd0a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/teen/expert/periods/use_tampon.html?tracking=T_RelatedArticle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94637 | 339 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Weeeee! Take a fun ride to the top of a ferris wheel with your little ones. They'll add some bright circus colors to make this scene come to life.
Help your third grader with reading comprehension in this fun activity page on Rudyard Kipling's charming story, "The Elephant's Child."
Sail back in time to Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, with this fun, fact-filled worksheet.
This animal is one of the most majestic and impressive in the Rocky Mountains. Give this bighorn sheep some colors he'll be proud to wear.
Your 5th grader will be the object of her teachers praises after completing this worksheet all about parts of speech.
Young readers will enjoy this passage from Jack London's "All Gold Canyon." They'll complete some vocabulary and reading comprehension exercises too.
It's Christmas time, and every child wants to know when Santa is coming! You and your child can color Santa as you count down the days till his big arrival.
How well does your student know his parts of speech? Give him a great review of nouns with this comprehensive sheet. | <urn:uuid:86c04212-45d3-4452-b2c8-a9683771d4e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.education.com/collection/davidshackelford/favorites/?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934584 | 237 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Winning the Global War on Terror
The withdrawal of the last U.S. combat brigade from Iraq marks a significant milestone for both the United States, and a free and democratic Iraq. The transition of the mission in Iraq from a combat to an advisory role has only been made possible by the hard work, dedication and unflinching bravery of our men and women in uniform.
By taking the fight to al-Qaeda, other terrorist threats, and the insurgency, our armed forces succeeded in providing greater security to the Iraqi population and giving the government the time to build capacity to more effectively meet the needs of the Iraqi people. As a result, the drawdown of U.S. troops that began under the previous administration has been able to continue.
Still, there is much work to be done. As several recent terror plots – including the attempted Christmas day bombing – remind us, terrorists remain committed to killing Americans and destroying our way of life. We need to do a better job of connecting the dots and putting in place a homeland security and intelligence plan that helps prevent future attacks before they ever get off the ground.
We must also remain determined in our efforts to secure Afghanistan against a radical, terrorist threat. As our troops continue the fight to deny Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic terrorists a safe haven to plan and launch attacks on the United States, it is imperative that Congress continue to provide the resources they need and support their mission.
As Americans we’re fortunate in so many ways. We have so many blessings including a great and proud history to inspire us. But we also have an incredible duty – one to stand and fight against those who seek to destroy America and the freedom that defines us. Our troops are committed to fighting and winning this global war. We owe them our unfailing support.
To stay up to date on these and other issues, sign up for Congressman Boehner's e-news updates today!
Congressman Boehner: Obama Administration’s Purchase of Thomson Prison a Backdoor Move to Import Terrorists Into America | <urn:uuid:e419aa30-4886-4e1f-a725-f7eb9a5dc9a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://boehner.house.gov/issues/issue/default.aspx?IssueID=3889 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948571 | 413 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Planning for the Cincinnati Bengals franchise began three full years before the team began playing in the American Football League in 1968. Paul Brown, who had enjoyed exceptional success as the head coach of the Cleveland Browns for 17 seasons before departing in 1962, had the urge to get back into pro football. In 1965, he met with then-Governor Jim Rhodes and the two agreed the state could accommodate a second pro football team.
A year later in 1966, Cincinnati's city council approved the construction of 60,389-seat Riverfront Stadium, which was scheduled for completion by 1970. The next year, a group headed by Brown was awarded an American Football League franchise that would begin play in 1968. Brown named his team the Bengals in recognition of previous Cincinnati pro football franchises with the same name in the 1930s and 1940s. Brown himself returned to the coaching ranks on the Bengals sidelines for the first eight years. He retired after the 1975 season but continued to serve as general manager until his death in 1991. Mike Brown then succeeded his father as general manager.
The 1968 Bengals won their first two home games in 28,000-seat Nippert Stadium against Denver and Buffalo and finished with a 3-11 record, the most an expansion team of the 1960s recorded. Cincinnati improved enough in 1969 that Brown was named the AFL Coach of the Year. In 1970, they captured the AFC Central division title and thus became the first expansion team to win a championship of any kind in just three years.
In 1971, the Bengals selected Ken Anderson, a quarterback from little-known Augustana College, in the third round of the draft. For the next 16 seasons, Anderson was the key man of the Cincinnati offense and a four-time AFC individual passing champion. Cincinnati won its second AFC Central championship in 1973 and a wild-card berth in the 1975 playoffs in Brown's final year as coach. The Bengals missed the playoffs for the next five seasons but won big in 1981, the year the Bengals unveiled their new uniforms with tiger-striped helmets, jerseys and pants. Cincinnati, with Forrest Gregg as coach, won the AFC Central with a 12-4 record and defeated San Diego 27-7 in the AFC championship game. However, they lost the Super Bowl XVI showdown with the San Francisco 49ers, 26-21.
The Bengals had a second shot at the Super Bowl following the 1988 season when, under Coach Sam Wyche and quarterback Boomer Esiason, they improved from the dismal 4-12 record in 1987 to a 12-4 regular-season record. They then defeated Buffalo 21-10 for the AFC championship. But in Super Bowl XXIII, they lost 20-16 to the 49ers on a last-minute touchdown pass by Joe Montana. In addition to Anderson and Esiason, the Bengals have been able to boast of many outstanding players since their first game in 1968. None, however, was more outstanding than tackle Anthony Muñoz, a first-round draft pick in 1981. A perennial all-pro choice, the USC graduate was selected to play in 11 straight Pro Bowls from 1982 to 1992 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1998. | <urn:uuid:c651b39b-f930-4554-942f-469fbfb80dc1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.profootballhof.com/history/team.aspx?franchise_id=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977305 | 644 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Woman protests paddling of her 5-year-old son in Levy County
Paddling opponents urge state to ban the practice
Published: Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 7:53 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 7:53 p.m.
The 5-year-old son of Tenika Jones missed a week of school and still suffers from nightmares of the woman who spanked him — his school principal.
Paddling, or corporal punishment, is allowed in 27 school districts across the state. More than 3,600 incidents of paddling occurred during the 2009-2010 school year.
Alachua County: 0
Source: Florida Department of Education
"That's child abuse to me," Jones said on Thursday during a news conference at the Northwood YMCA.
Jones and the Southern Poverty Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union and a state coalition want to ban paddling, which is still practiced in 27 Florida school districts, including where Jones lives in Levy County
Jones said she never gave administrators at Joyce Bullock Elementary School permission to paddle her son. The bruises on his buttocks from the February incident led to an asthma attack, she said, and a hospital trip.
"If they don't want us to hit our kids, they shouldn't either," she said.
No one at the school contacted her about the punishment, stemming from an incident on a school bus, Jones said.
"Every step (the principal) did, she was wrong," Jones said.
Although paddling is practiced in only a third of school districts, more than 3,600 incidents of paddling were reported during the 2009-10 school year — more than 100 per week, according to the SPLC.
"Corporal punishment is harmful and ineffective," said Jerri Katzerman, director of educational advocacy for the SPLC. "It does not make schools safe, and it does not lead to positive academic outcomes."
Alachua County Public Schools banned paddling several years ago, spokeswoman Jackie Johnson said. Marion County banned the practice last year. Twenty states allow paddling in schools.
State statute dictates the parameters for paddling and prohibits administrators from paddling kindergarten students. Jones' son is a pre-kindergarten student, she said.
It was unknown at press time if the principal was disciplined for her actions.
In New Orleans, hundreds of people marched in support of corporal punishment at a historically black Catholic school this February, arguing that paddling helps build character and maintains a high graduation rate.
According to the Levy County schools code of conduct, corporal punishment should never be given to students with a known physical condition that would cause their life to be endangered.
Jones said her son, who suffers from asthma, falls under that category, as his crying provoked an asthma attack and prevented him from breathing properly.
Shaloma Shawmut-Lessner of the Florida Coalition to Abolish Corporal Punishment in Schools has worked to end the practice, convincing lawmakers to exempt kindergartners in 2010.
"That's all we've won from 1970 to today," she said.
Katzerman said paddling disproportionately affects black and disabled students. Black students comprise 17 percent of the public school population but receive nearly 40 percent of paddlings, according to the SPLC.
Jones said she hopes her story informs parents and forces lawmakers to reverse their stance.
"I want them to stop," she said. "It doesn't make sense."
Contact Jackie Alexander at firstname.lastname@example.org or 338-3166. | <urn:uuid:3dbc4917-8a65-4fa3-ae5e-775eb626660c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gainesville.com/article/20110407/ARTICLES/110409598/1002/news01?Title=Woman-protests-paddling-of-her-5-year-old-son-in-Levy-County | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969041 | 745 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Scottish independence: Shake-up could disrupt vote
A UK-WIDE overhaul of the system for registering people on the electoral roll will create “confusion” among voters ahead of the independence referendum and should be delayed in Scotland, according to election chiefs.
The referendum is already proving a challenge for officials, with 16- and 17-year-olds being handed the right to vote for the first time in a national ballot and having to be registered.
Experts fear the introduction of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill at Westminster could create additional problems ahead of the independence vote in 2014.
The bill includes a new system for getting on to the electoral roll – Individual Electoral Registration (IER) – which is due to take effect in July 2014, a few months before the referendum.
Although it will not be used for that vote, Brian Byrne, chair of the electoral registration committee at the Scottish Assessors Association, told MSPs the introduction of the new system as the plebiscite looms was a serious problem.
He said: “There’s a colossal amount of work and there’s also a potential for confusing some of the electors. Two totally separate things are happening at the same time – individual registration and creating a register for the referendum under two different sets of rules.”
It would mean voters being contacted about the new registration system and about the referendum under the current set-up. “It would be preferable from our point of view if the implementation of individual registration was delayed until after the referendum, but that might depend on a relatively early date for the referendum,” Mr Byrne told Holyrood’s referendum bill committee.
The Scottish Government is holding talks with the UK Cabinet Office to try to resolve the problem.
Mr Byrne said there was an acceptance among Cabinet Office staff that the looming referendum created a particular problem in Scotland, and he added that officials had been “responsive” to the issues north of the Border.
Joan Hewton, assessor and electoral registration officer for Lothian, said the problem would be having a “gap” in the middle of the individual registration process, with implementation due to start on 1 July and finish on 1 December. “The difficulty is stopping in the middle to prepare for a six-week period with the referendum,” she said.
It would difficult to introduce the changes sooner because of the European elections in June 2014, leaving only a “very small window”.
She said: “Whether individual registration will be actually delayed to allow the referendum to take place all depends on when the referendum date is set as to what the UK government might allow us to do with regard to delaying the onset of the IER.”
First Minister Alex Salmond has said the date of the vote will be revealed when the Referendum Bill is published in March. Recent reports, quoting government sources, have named the date as Saturday, 18 October, 2014.
The change to the registration system is being introduced to tackle fraud, ending the system whereby the head of household could simply register everyone in a property.
The final register for the referendum is likely to be set out 11 days beforehand, Mr Byrne said.
Former Tory leader Annabel Goldie told MSPs: “If we overlay this new bill and we anticipate its coming into effect in July 2014, that seems to me to be a colossal amount of work to accomplish in Scotland.”
A government spokesman said: “The Scottish Government is working with the UK Cabinet Office and electoral administrators in Scotland to identify and manage any implications the introduction of individual electoral administration might have for the referendum.”
The proposed new system means the annual three-month canvass to compile the latest electoral register, which usually starts in September, will be delayed this year.
It may be as late as next January before it gets under way, although Mr Byrne said this might be advantage in compiling the most up-to-date register, particularly with 16- and 17-year-olds on it this time around.
Many 15-year-olds will have to be registered in advance, as they will turn 16 before the referendum is held, he said.
But no problems are anticipated because youngsters aged 15 and 16 are “not so mobile” as older teenagers.
“In Scotland we have good access to school records, so we’re pretty confident we have good information,” Mr Byrne said.
Under the new system, it’s envisaged that, by 2015, each individual on the electoral register will be verified against a Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) database.
The first stage of that will see the register from July 2014 matched against the DWP database. Anybody who matches on that will be confirmed as registered, but anyone who doesn’t will have to go through the process of applying to register.
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Weather for Edinburgh
Saturday 18 May 2013
Temperature: 8 C to 12 C
Wind Speed: 25 mph
Wind direction: East
Temperature: 9 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: North east | <urn:uuid:fbaee2b9-2186-4a92-8001-bc749f8cb3e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/politics/scottish-independence-shake-up-could-disrupt-vote-1-2770325 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956807 | 1,074 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Once upon a time, we created a tool that makes it possible to predict how high U.S. politicians will set the maximum personal income tax rate in the U.S., depending upon three things:
This exercise is especially timely now that President Obama and his Democratic Party are pushing to hike that top rate to 49%, which includes the so-called "Buffett tax".
Let's see how well our tool works. You can see a copy of it here.
Using our tool with the default data, we find that today's national debt burden per capita scores in at 3.168, which translates to an "old school" maximum income tax rate of 71.5%. Modern politicians are a different breed however, preferring to stay closer to the margins where changes in the nation's maximum personal income tax rate are likely to be triggered for the political advantages such a strategy offers. Our tool finds that they would set the top tax rate at 48.0%.
President Obama and the congressional Democrats are currently proposing to raise the top tax rate to 49.0%.
We should note that the real difference between the "old school" and "modern" politicians is that the "old school" politicians didn't actually know where the margins for triggering changes in the top income tax rate are - it's something that's had to be worked out by political trial and error. It has really only been since the late 1960s, and really, since the 1980s, that U.S. politicians appear to have registered any sort of recognition that these margins exist.
Comparing Today with the Past
Political Calculations is a site that develops, applies and presents both established and cutting edge theory to the topics of investing, business and economics.
Be the first to read Political Calculation's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox. | <urn:uuid:22997c8f-8e4b-4f71-9f1f-beee4ce74e8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2011/10/13/how_government_really_fixes_tax_rates,_really | 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 | 0.966973 | 378 | 2.265625 | 2 |