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Source: Flickr User aemosion
The Korean Peninsula's position between China and Japan might lead you to believe that the cuisine is heavily influenced by both countries, but over the centuries, Korean food has developed into a genre quite distinct from its neighbors. Perhaps best known for smoky barbecue and spicy pickled cabbage kimchi, the cuisine actually is heavy on seafood and vegetables with plenty of nonspicy options. Of course, we'll never turn down piping hot charcoal barbecue or bubbling, peppery stews, but we're happy to sample any of the region's deliciously diverse dishes and soulful seasonings. For some popular dishes and ingredients keep reading.
- Mixed casserole (bibimbap). Cooked in a stone pot, bibimbap contains rice, assorted vegetables, egg, and meat, which is stirred together with sesame oil and spicy dressing.
- Spicy tofu stew (soon dubu jjigae). Silken tofu, vegetables, meat, and seafood simmer in a spicy fish-and-kelp based broth and arrive at your table still simmering in an earthenware pot.
- Seafood pancake (haemul pajeon). Assorted seafood (squid, octopus, mussels, shrimp, etc.) and vegetables are tossed in a rice flour batter and pan-fried into a savory pancake, served with a sesame-soy dipping sauce.
- Barbecue wraps (ssam). Barbecued meat is served alongside fresh lettuce, fragrant perilla leaves, raw garlic, and spicy bean paste to make delectable lettuce wraps. The most popular types of meat are bulgogi (marinated paper-thin rib eye), kalbi (marinated short ribs), dak gui (marinated chicken), and daeji bulgogi (spicy marinated pork), but even seafood and vegetables find their way onto the wooden charcoal grill.
- Cold noodles in broth (mul naengmyun). Perfect for a sweltering day, these skinny, chewy noodles swim in a chilled broth and benefit from a squirt of hot mustard and tangy vinegar. Julienned Asian pear, cucumber, and radish provide a nice crunch.
- Kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae). A fast and easy meal, kimchi is added to simmering vegetables and pork belly for a bold and hearty stew.
- Japchae (stir-fried noodles). Clear potato starch noodles are sauteed with vegetables and meat in a sweet soy-sesame sauce.
- Side dishes (banchan). A Korean meal isn't complete without an assortment of small side dishes. Banchan come in unlimited varieties, including but certainly not limited to spicy, tart cabbage kimchi; tiny dried and seasoned anchovies; sesame-soy spinach; marinated fish cake; and pickled radish.
Basic Pantry Items:
- Sesame oil and seeds. The fragrant oil gets drizzled over meats and soups, and finds its way into marinades, vegetable dressings, and stir frys. The seeds can garnish virtually any dish.
- Gochujang (hot pepper paste). A fermented hot pepper paste that's just slightly sweet, gochujang gets stirred into stews, stir-frys, and other sauces for a spicy kick.
- Gochukaru (hot pepper flakes). Dried hot peppers are pulverized into a coarse powder, which is fantastic for seasoning dishes as well as providing a pretty garnish.
- Doenjang. This fermented bean paste serves as the base for soups and sauces thanks to its nutty, salty flavor.
- Seasoned seaweed. Similar to Japanese nori, kim is seaweed that is toasted and seasoned with sesame oil and sea salt. Eat it with rice, crumble it as a garnish, or munch on it as a healthy alternative to potato chips!
- Dried anchovies. These little fish provide the flavor base for many Korean soups. Since they are whole, make sure you remove their heads and innards before cooking to avoid a bitter flavor.
- Soy sauce. A staple in any Asian pantry, ganjang (as it's known in Korea) is definitely an essential! | <urn:uuid:1c3e41d1-146f-4533-8f32-6bad2fddb4ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yumsugar.com/Basic-Korean-Foods-Ingredients-22216283 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91839 | 901 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Anti-Aging Effects of Blueberries
Blueberry season is almost coming. But this sweet, flare-crowned, indigo superfruit is more than
just a mouth-watering delight to your craving senses. Would you believe that this favourite has a wide range of
micronutrients that do not only protect the body from diseases, but also aging?
High Antioxidant Value
Blueberries, along with blackberries, strawberries, and plums, have the highest total antioxidant capacity of any
food. It is being regarded as one of the “superfuits” having the promising combination of nutrient value, emerging
research evidence for health benefits, versatility for manufacturing popular consumer products, and antioxidant
Antioxidants are thought to aid in guarding the body against the detrimental effects of free radicals to cells
and the chronic diseases associated with the course of aging. The antioxidants present in this fruit can protect
the cell, so there is less chance for aging. Blueberries contain 14 mg of Vitamin C and 0.8 mg Vitamin E per 1 cup
of blueberries. Blueberries also contain anthocyanins and phenolics that can also act as antioxidants. With this,
the effects of blueberries to the skin are copious.
The compound anthocyanin, found in blueberries, is thought to slow down age-related loss in the mental capacity of
humans. Those who eat more blueberries are thought to have better functioning in motor behavioral learning and
memory. Anthocyanin also gives blueberries their colour and might be the key factor of the blueberry’s antioxidant
and anti-inflammatory properties. While it is thought that aging can decrease cognitive and motor functions,
blueberries can be of huge help to improve mental functioning.
Better balance and coordination
Blueberries also have positive effects to balance and coordination. In a study by Dr. James Joseph of Tufts
University, it was found that a diet loaded with blueberries counteracted poor balance and coordination associated
with aging. In this study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Joseph fed four groups of rats a normal diet.
But among these groups were given blueberries, spinach, or strawberries.
For 18 weeks, the rats were tested for mental functioning, muscle strength, coordination, and balance. The two
groups which were fed with strawberry and blueberry extracts performed well on these tests, but the group fed with
blueberries executed the most improvement.
Not only that, findings also showed that blueberries improved the neuronal functioning of the rats. Dr. Joseph
suspects the findings are a result of blueberries' rich store of flavonoids -- phytochemicals that have an effect
on cell membranes. These findings suggest that nutritional intervention can offer hope to those suffering poor
balance and coordination related to aging.
Prevention of diseases
A serving of blueberries provides a relatively low glycemic load while providing a diverse range of nutrients,
which also means there are fewer calories (good news for calorie-watchers) in a serving full of phytochemicals and
nutrients such as iron, vitamins C and E. Because of the phytochemicals present, the risk of acquiring some deadly
diseases may also be prevented.
Anthocyanins, proanthocyanidins, flavonols, and tannins found in this wonderful fruit may help prevent cancer by
inhibiting some cancer mechanisms. These components protect the DNA from damage and disintegration caused by free
At a symposium on berry health benefits, there have been reports that eating blueberries and other similar fruits
like cranberries may improve the cognitive deterioration occurring in Alzheimer's disease and other conditions of
aging. Blueberries may help lower the damages of stroke.
Researches have also shown that blueberries may help prevent urinary tract infections (UTI), hypertension, and
hypercholesterolemia that can also lead to potentially fatal heart disease.
With blueberries, your tongue, and more importantly your health would get the best out of it. Well, even without
all these benefits in mind, who wouldn’t die for a serving of blueberries? Hmmmm… Anyone? | <urn:uuid:04ecc86b-a577-4130-9deb-dd86ca177ff3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://charearl.com/antiaging/Anti-Aging-Effects-of-Blueberries.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944261 | 865 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Billy Carter’s Gas Station May Become Historic Site
Gas stations don’t often become historic landmarks, unless they were once owned by the colorful brother of a U.S. president. Congress is preparing to expand the historic site honoring former President Jimmy Carter by adding 30 acres that includes the gas station once owned by Billy Carter. The cost to the federal government is expected to be $17 million over five years.
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- FTC Allowed to Stop Brand Drug Firms from Paying Competitors to Keep Generics off Market
- Majority of Americans Disapprove of NSA Surveillance Operations
- U.S. and Britain Eavesdropped on World Leaders at 2009 Summits | <urn:uuid:28c6f568-9068-48f9-acea-9ef334859ab4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allgov.com/news/unusual-news/billy-carters-gas-station-may-become-historic-site?news=839774 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93436 | 213 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Quitting Smoking Cuts Cancer Risk After Liver Transplant
Study also found smoking after transplant increased risk of smoking-related tumors
WEDNESDAY, March 30 (HealthDay News)-- Liver transplant patients who quit smoking are less likely to develop smoking-related cancers, a new study suggests.
Spanish researchers reviewed data from hundreds of patients who had their first liver transplant between April 1990 and December 2009. Over the average follow-up period of 7.5 years, patients who quit smoking after their transplant had a lower incidence of smoking-related cancers than those who kept smoking.
Smoking-related cancers were identified in 13.5 percent of patients who died during the study period. All in all, 26 patients were diagnosed with 29 smoking-related cancers.
The types of cancers looked at in this study were lung, head and neck, esophagus, and kidney and urinary tract (other than prostate) cancers.
Some previous studies have suggested that longer duration of, or stronger, immunosuppression treatment may be associated with increased risk of cancer among transplant patients. But this study found no such link.
Instead, the researchers concluded that smoking after a transplant increases the risk of cancer, and quitting smoking following the transplant decreases the risk.
The study appears in the April issue of the journal Liver Transplantation.
"As smoking is an important risk factor of malignancy, intervention programs, together with screening programs, may help to reduce the rate of cancer-related mortality in liver transplant patients," study leader Dr. J. Ignacio Herrero concluded in a news release on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society.
The American Liver Foundation has more about liver transplantation.Robert Preidt SOURCE: Liver Transplantation, news release, March 28, 2011 Related Articles
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Sharp HealthCare is San Diego's health care leader with seven hospitals, two medical groups and a health plan. Learn more about our San Diego hospitals, choose a Sharp-affiliated San Diego doctor or browse our comprehensive medical services.
Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:d106b555-d02f-4e83-bd08-c477559e0b8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharp.com/news/health/newsArticle.cfm?articleID=27294&channelID=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950302 | 470 | 2.109375 | 2 |
It is probably the first time that three departments — School Education, Transport and Police — have come out with detailed guidelines for schools, parents, children and other stakeholders to safeguard students going to school.
All this in the wake of recent reported incidents where school children were kidnapped and abused. A majority of parents and schools have welcomed the initiatives suggested by the Departments, but many wonder if it can be strictly be adhered to and if these are really long-term solutions.
To start with, counsellors say that with no proper fencing and inadequate security personnel in a majority of the government schools, the premises is susceptible to use by anti-social elements and activities.
Counsellors say schools and parents should play an important role in addressing issues such as kidnapping, hoax calls, skipping classes, abuse and violence.
Teachers say that in today's context, the safety issue is a lot different from how it was viewed 6 to 10 years ago. Technology, the cyber world and television influence students in several ways.
Mary Ramola Samuel, headmistress, St. Ebba's Girls' Higher Secondary School, Mylapore, says there are several challenges running an all-girls school.
“We generally do not send our students with somebody who claims to be the brother of the ward. Many times I have parents who are terrified to talk to their daughters about issues and they ask the school to intervene,” she says.
When the Commissioner of Police recently convened a meeting with school heads, he insisted that schools install closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems. While some institutions already have such systems, many schools have said to the Departments that it is not a viable proposition.
‘A School' run by the Chettinad Foundation, for instance, has tied up with Viva Communications and has a web-based IP CCTV surveillance. The arrangement allows parents to view their children in school from anywhere by logging onto the internet. They can view the classrooms, playground, canteens and pick-up points.
But not all schools may be able to afford it. Some schools even wonder if it will serve the purpose of enhanced safety and if so to what extent. Seethalakshmi Viswanath, principal, Amrita Vidyalaya School in Nesapakkam, says it might not be financially possible for all schools to make such investments.
“What is most important is to create awareness. On campus, teachers should be sensitised. We are also giving a list of do's and don'ts for children,” she says. The school does not allow someone new to pick up a student unless they have an authorised letter from the parent.
Simply relying on technology alone cannot help. “Raising awareness is important in sustaining any safety measure,” Ms. Viswanath adds.
Children need to be empowered — they need to be taught when to befriend somebody, what is the difference between a safe touch and an unsafe touch, and need to be taught to handle any crisis, say psychologists.
“We need a module on psycho social support and crisis situation. Crisis management skills can be taught to children, right from kindergarten,'' says Fatima Vasanth, Principal, Madras School of Social Work.
She also thinks appointment of counsellors cannot be considered a luxury. For mental and psychological support, a comprehensive education system with a counsellor is required, she says.
Parents have their share of concerns, particularly related to transporting their children. D.Prakash, parent of a class IV student studying in a Matriculation School in Villivakkam, ensures he drops his daughter to school one way and in the evening the child's grandparents are outside the school at least 10 minutes before the school bell rings.
“These initiatives on having extra security outside the school and other instructions to van drivers and schools need to be followed up. At least every month, a meeting should discuss the progress and schools should ensure parents play a greater role when it comes to suggesting safety measures,” says Mr. Prakash.
Officials in the School Education Department say that the circular sent to schools also talks about the Chief Educational Officers of every district being asked to conduct meetings, with the police department also as a representative, once in three months to chalk out new measures and review initiatives.
(With inputs from
Liffy Thomas and | <urn:uuid:a15ad342-0271-47ed-99d8-c21e43b2ff69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/how-schools-deal-with-students-safety-issue/article904119.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966854 | 907 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Open hardware opportunity?
Posted Apr 10, 2009 18:48 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata
In reply to: Open hardware opportunity?
Parent article: Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop, day 2
how about some hardware person designs a fully open PCIX board populated with a load of flash memory and appropriate (minimalist) interfaces? ... Then implement all the code for using it as a storage device in linux drivers, kernel and filesystems.
I recently saw a list of four companies doing that. One I remember is FusionIO. (Not actually PCIX, though -- PCI Express (PCIe), which is probably what you meant). In addition to allowing more efficient use by the OS than SSDs, it's also cheaper -- less waste.
It's the best solution for many problems, but SSDs are going to be essential for a long, long time because they're easier to integrate into existing systems.
to post comments) | <urn:uuid:b406e2e5-932a-4f0d-b9c2-98fbffbd3e6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lwn.net/Articles/328182/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934285 | 197 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Nobody outside closed federal circles knows how often the government eavesdrops on Americans' phone calls and e-mail in the name of fighting enemies abroad.
Congress grappled with these secret spy powers Thursday — driven by Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and others demanding greater transparency.
If the government won't disclose how many Americans it spies on, Democratic lawmakers contend, the law that allows warrantless surveillance should expire as scheduled Monday.
When Udall and Senate Intelligence Committee colleagues asked intelligence chiefs to reveal the scope of the spying, they didn't give even a rough estimate, Udall told fellow senators.
"This is disconcerting," Udall said.
"If no one has even estimated how many Americans have had their communications collected ... it is possible that this number could be quite large," he said. "The American people deserve to know."
A final debate and vote on whether to reauthorize warrantless surveillance for another five years was set for Friday morning. Senators on Thursday rejected two proposals intended to increase accountability.
The last-minute debate on a long-pending topic reflects discomfort and uncertainty about the balancing of civil liberties and expanded government powers to fight terrorism.
After the 9/11 attacks, then-President George W. Bush launched warrantless domestic spying. It wasn't until 2008 that senators set legal limits, amending the 1970s-era Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. They allowed the government to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists abroad without a court order — as long as investigators reasonably believe conversations involve at least one party outside the country.
A panel of 11 federal district court judges, appointed by the chief of the U.S. Supreme Court, is charged with secretly overseeing spying.
For years, Udall and others have pressed for more information about how this works and who is targeted.
Renewing the surveillance law "is an extremely high priority" for the Obama administration, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in an Aug. 24 letter to Udall and a dozen other senators. Such powers are essential for detecting and preventing threats to the United States and its allies, Clapper said.
The law, if re-authorized, will permit targeting only non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States, the letter said. It does not permit targeting U.S. persons anywhere in the world — or any person inside the United States.
Senators have been asking whether federal agencies mine domestic information unintentionally swept up when targeting foreign parties.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the intelligence committee, said changes Udall and others propose would hurt national security.
Holding up re-authorization "is a mistake," Feinstein said.
"This program is valuable. ... The ability to collect intelligence and use that intelligence wisely and well ... saves lives in this country," she said.
Hundreds of arrests have been made based on warrantless spying, Feinstein said. Among terrorists caught was Afghan-American Najibullah Zazi, a metro Denver airport shuttle bus driver, she said.
"If it weren't for the FBI," Zazi and fellow plotters "would have blown up the New York subway." It was "because of that intelligence" that he and others were arrested, Feinstein said.
"There are people who will kill Americans if they can." | <urn:uuid:1867d4eb-b6b7-4bb4-95e5-d710d24b03d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_22271546?source=commented- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957634 | 686 | 1.984375 | 2 |
1.The term used to describe the combination of semen and quim. (Quim)(Semen)(Jizz)(Cum)(Spunk)(Blood Quemen)
2. The juice produced when a semen producing male of any species ejaculates into the vagina of a quim producing female. After several thrusts of the hips the two fluids form a lumpy smelly sticky blend of....Quemen.
1. I was with your sister last night and when i left she was dripping with quemen. | <urn:uuid:64bbb775-9199-4244-8f82-381520680555> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Quemen&defid=2649122 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911604 | 105 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Section 13. Whenever land which is valued, assessed and taxed under this chapter no longer meets the definition of land actively devoted to agricultural, horticultural or agricultural and horticultural use, it shall be subject to additional taxes, in this section called roll-back taxes, in the current tax year in which it is disqualified and in those years of the 4 immediately preceding tax years in which the land was so valued, assessed and taxed, but roll-back taxes shall not apply unless the amount of those taxes as computed under this section, exceeds the amount, if any, imposed under section 12 and, in that case, the land shall not be subject to the conveyance tax imposed under said section 12. For each tax year, the roll-back tax shall be an amount equal to the difference, if any, between the taxes paid or payable for that tax year in accordance with this chapter and the taxes that would have been paid or payable in that tax year had the land been valued, assessed and taxed without regard to those provisions. If, at the time during a tax year when a change in land use has occurred, the land was not then valued, assessed and taxed under the provisions of this chapter, then such land shall be subject to roll-back taxes only for such of the five immediately preceding years in which the land was valued, assessed and taxed thereunder. In determining the amount of roll-back taxes on land which has undergone a change in use, the board of assessors shall have ascertained the following for each of the roll-back tax years involved:
(a) The full and fair value of such land under the valuation standard applicable to other land in the city or town;
(b) The amount of the land assessment for the particular tax year;
(c) The amount of the additional assessment on the land for the particular tax year by deducting the amount of the actual assessment on the land for that year from the amount of the land assessment determined under subsection (a); and,
(d) The amount of the roll-back tax for that tax year by multiplying the amount of the additional assessment determined under subsection (c) by the general property tax rate of the city or town applicable for that tax year.
Roll-back taxes will be subject to a simple interest rate of 5 per cent per annum. Land which is valued, assessed and taxed under this chapter as of July 1, 2006 shall be exempt from any interest if it remains in the same ownership as it was on that date or under the ownership of the original owner’s spouse, parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister or surviving spouse of any deceased such relative.
If the board of assessors determines that the total amount of roll-back taxes to be assessed under this section, before the addition of any interest, as provided for in the preceding paragraph, would be less than $10, no tax shall be assessed.
No roll-back tax imposed by this section will be assessed on land that meets the definition of forest land under section 1 of chapter 61 or recreational land under section 1 of chapter 61B.
Land retained as open space as required for the mitigation of development shall be subject to the roll-back taxes imposed by this section. | <urn:uuid:00e571d2-5a2d-4b5f-ac03-3df36bac9934> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleIX/Chapter61a/Section13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95953 | 664 | 1.984375 | 2 |
For years, presidents of both parties have pledged to ensure that America fields a military second to none. A successful test last week of a truly transformative technology affords Barack Obama an opportunity to help make that pledge a reality. Unless Mr. Obama swiftly orders the Pentagon to change course on the remarkable Airborne Laser Test Bed (ALTB) program, however, his legacy on defense preparedness will be one of empty rhetoric and increased danger for our country.
The Airborne Laser program is a direct descendent of Ronald Reagan’s visionary Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), with its exploration of various means of intercepting and destroying ballistic missiles – including lasers and other “directed energy” techniques. Given the state of the art at the time, critics scoffed at the idea that these exotic, speed-of-light weapons could ever be made to work. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy exemplified this view when he dismissively dubbed the SDI program “Star Wars.”
Today, however, it is the critics who look ridiculously shortsighted. Thanks to two decades of intensive research and development and an investment of roughly $5 billion, America’s aerospace industry has achieved an extraordinary feat of science and engineering. They have successfully married a Boeing 747 airframe with three chemical lasers: a low-power system used for tracking a missile early in its flight; a second, low-energy laser that measures and calculates adjustments needed to compensate for atmospheric conditions; and a third, megawatt-class high energy laser that uses the others’ data to destroy the missile by using its heat to induce structural failure.
The ALTB successfully performed this feat not once but twice on February 11, taking out first a short-range liquid-fueled missile and then a solid-fueled one representative of the sorts of threats emerging notably from North Korea and Iran. Importantly, these intercepts took place during the boost-phase – a capability that means the missile and its deadly payload could be destroyed over the territory of a would-be attacker. That potentially devastating prospect may serve as a further disincentive to a hostile power’s launching the missile in the first place.
At a time when the Obama administration is rushing anti-missile defenses systems to the Persian Gulf in the face of intensifying regional concerns about Iran’s ballistic missiles, one could be forgiven for thinking that every effort would be made to bring to bear the Airborne Laser system’s ability to perform boost-phase intercepts. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Far from contemplating the early deployment of the ALTB, the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget recently submitted to Congress by the Obama administration eliminates any further preparation of the platform as a weapon system. It will be confined, instead, to development and testing of laser technologies.
To be sure, the ALTB is not an operational weapon; it is a test-bed that has been painstakingly prepared to conduct certain experiments, not to deal with the myriad vicissitudes of war-fighting. Still, as Riki Ellison of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance pointed out last week, “The Airborne Laser is similar in some ways to the development of the Joint Stars 707 aircraft that was thrust into the [first] Iraq war as a test bed version and has become a tremendously useful military asset that is deployed in numbers today, providing sophisticated surveillance and tracking on the ground from the air.”
The effective cashiering of the Airborne Laser fits a pattern of Obama defense procurement decisions with respect to advanced weaponry that is needed to provide our forces the qualitative edge upon which their mission success – and perhaps their lives and ours – may depend. For example, production has been halted on the world’s best fighter aircraft, the F-22, well short of abiding Air Force requirements. Construction of stealthy, modern Zumwalt-class destroyers has been truncated in favor of additional purchases of ships with far more limited capability first designed 30 years ago. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will try once again to persuade Congress to stop further acquisition of the nation’s only long-range, heavy airlifter, the C-17. And a succession of needed replacements for obsolescing weapon systems will remain right where they are: on the drawing boards.
Curiously, these actions are being taken at the same time as the Pentagon’s new Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) does, in the words of the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, “an excellent job of delineating the threat posed by those with anti-access capabilities – notably, China.” Mr. McKeon goes on, though, to observe that the QDR “does little to address the risk resulting from the gaps in funding, capability and force structure.” In fact, the budget submitted by Defense Secretary Gates is explicitly focused on fighting more of today’s wars (that is, low-intensity counter-insurgency operations), rather than contending with peer competitors.
The bottom line is simple: No other nation on earth capable of fielding the Airborne Laser, the F-22 and the other advanced weapons now on the Obama administration’s chopping block would willingly abandon them. That is especially true of those hostile to freedom, which will strive to acquire through purchase, theft and/or their own efforts similar capabilities to those we are giving up. We engage in such unilateral disarmament at our extreme peril – both to the forces who truly need to be second to none as they fight the nation’s wars, and to the rest of us whom they thereby seek to safeguard. | <urn:uuid:2de5e6b0-6945-4643-a801-52864bdd52fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catholicexchange.com/why-not-the-best/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951122 | 1,168 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Texai is a knowledge-based software project to create artificial intelligence.
Texai's knowledge base is stored in the Sesame RDF server. Because the initial knowledge base is large, it has been partitioned into separate Sesame repositories. These have been extracted into RDF and have been released in the file download section here.
The project's domain objects are persisted in Sesame using the RDF Entity Manager and semantic annotations. The RDF Entity Manager is released as a separate component.
The dialog system is presently under development and will be released when it is able to process its bootstrap use cases.
What's New in This Release:
· This release includes the Java classes that are semantically annotated to represent the RDF entities in the associated RDF file releases: cmu-pronouncing-dictionary-rdf v1.0, open-cyc-rdf v1.0, texai-lexicon-rdf v1.1, wiktionary-rdf v1.1, and wordnet21 v1.0. Missing lexicon has been fixed. | <urn:uuid:4318ef9a-e0f3-4996-93d8-a4a1c08f55a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Communications/Chat/Texai-31587.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924795 | 228 | 2.03125 | 2 |
October 15, 2008 > Billions and billions boggle the brain
Billions and billions boggle the brain
Submitted By AP Wire Service, By Erin McClam, AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP), Oct 12 _ There's an old saying attributed to Everett Dirksen, the Illinois senator who dotted his speeches with colorful rants against government borrowing: A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
Not these days, you're not.
The thicket of figures hurled at Americans since Wall Street began to melt down last month boggles the mind and crashes the calculator. We are utterly numb from numbers.
Bailout of the U.S. financial system: $700 billion. Sweeteners to get the bill through Congress: $140 billion. Federal loan to insurer AIG: $85 billion. John McCain government mortgage buyback proposal: $300 billion.
Billions and billions and billions and billions, tossed out there as quickly and casually as if by a Carl Sagan impersonator on speed. The Fed announced Wednesday it would loan AIG an additional $37.5 billion, and we hardly flinched.
It was not always this way. Five years ago, early in the Iraq war and at about this time of year, the Bush administration infuriated opponents by calling for an additional $87 billion in war funding.
Yes, the $87 billion helped do in John Kerry, who voted for it before he voted against it. But the point was that $87 billion was a jaw-dropping amount. That Halloween, people actually wrote ``$87 billion'' on T-shirts and went as blank checks.
Now, in the Age of the Meltdown, the numbers we are asked to comprehend are so massive that it takes something even larger to get our attention.
Here's something: Between the stock market peak of Oct. 9, 2007, and exactly one year later _ which is to say, encompassing the Wall Street free fall _ $8.3 trillion was vaporized.
Write it out and it looks like a spill on the Cheerios aisle: $8,300,000,000,000.
And that's still less than the national debt:
$10,200,700,000,000 and growing.
That's right: Trillion is the new billion.
How are we supposed to get our minds around all this? How are we to avoid an embarrassment worthy of Dr. Evil in the ``Austin Powers'' movies, who was cryogenically unfrozen after decades and gamely made the diabolical suggestion that he hold the world ransom for ... a puny $1 million?
(His evil advisers gently told him $1 million was not exactly a lot of money anymore. Come to think of it, even his second suggestion, a way more evil $100 billion, wouldn't raise an eyebrow on Wall Street now.)
Ronald Reagan had an idea. In 1981, to call attention to a national debt approaching $1 trillion, he asked Americans to imagine a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.
Setting aside the limitations this posed in terms of both space travel and the availability of thousand-dollar bills, the comparison seems almost quaint. The national debt just passed $10 trillion _ so big the additional front-end digit of ``1'' cannibalized what used to be the dollar sign on the National Debt Clock in New York.
Another suggestion comes from John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University and author of ``A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper.'' He suggests thinking of the gobsmacking numbers in terms of time: 1 million seconds is about 111/2 days, 1 billion seconds 32 years, 1 trillion seconds 32,000 years.
Almost long enough for your 401(k) to recover.
``It might help to think of these quantities in terms of jail sentences,'' Paulos said in an e-mail interview.
OK, bad example.
And one small problem. While it is by far the most popular line ever attributed to Dirksen, there is no record anywhere that he ever actually said it, according to Frank H. Mackaman of the Dirksen Congressional Center in Pekin, Ill.
Oh, the senator hated excessive government debt, all right. He told stories about potholes and about cats trapped in wells. The moral: Never dig deeper to get out. He just didn't make that one famous quip.
No matter. The fact remains that whether it's the federal bailout or chaos in the market or new tax breaks, it's not just a billion here, a billion there anymore. We are definitely talking real money _ trillions of it. | <urn:uuid:04fc7798-fbd0-429d-807a-c86a99fdfe1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2008-10-15&file=Billions+and+billions.txt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957032 | 969 | 1.796875 | 2 |
The Maoist leader becomes the most powerful politician in the country
Members of Nepal's parliament have overwhelmingly elected the Maoist leader Prachanda as the country's new prime minister.
The 53-year-old won 80% of votes to defeat his only rival, the Congress Party candidate, Sher Bahadur Deuba.
Maoists won a surprise victory in April elections, and two other key parties supported Prachanda in the vote.
Last month, Nepal swore in a mainly ceremonial president, Ram Baran Yadav, after the monarchy was scrapped in May.
'Lenin or Napoleon'
It is only two years since Prachanda emerged from more than two decades underground as a militant communist leader.
"I am very happy and very emotional," he said as he left the constituent assembly after the vote, reported AFP news agency.
What the Maoists called their "people's war" had left 13,000 people dead, tens of thousands displaced and much of the country's infrastructure destroyed.
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kathmandu says that now the former guerrilla will be the most powerful politician in the Himalayan country, after 464 lawmakers gave him their vote and only 113 rejected him.
The Maoists' deputy leader, Baburam Bhattarai, said: "Today is a day of pride and it will be written with golden letters in the history of the nation."
He predicted earlier that Prachanda would be a leader "for a new era", comparable to Lenin or Napoleon.
Friday's ballot ends months of political deadlock that had followed the sacking of the unpopular King Gyanendra and the abolition of the 240-year-old monarchy.
Our correspondent says that Prachanda's elevation had long seemed inevitable after his party scored its convincing win in April.
Prachanda was almost guaranteed victory because he had the support of three parties - his own, the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and the MJF (Madheshi Janadhikar Forum).
The Maoists' Congress Party rivals accused them before the vote of plotting to set up a totalitarian communist regime, a suggestion they strongly denied.
A former agricultural science teacher-turned-revolutionary, Prachanda was originally named Pushpa Kamal Dahal, but he still uses his guerrilla nom de guerre. | <urn:uuid:63ef501e-cf11-4ad7-a035-91a448329814> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7563816.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973127 | 484 | 1.648438 | 2 |
In this project, we have been fortunate enough to have the support
and guidance of nine advisors who represent many segments of
the language arts educational community. With their assistance,
we have designed Conversations in Literature to meet
the needs of language arts educators working with students in
middle and high school.
Judith Langer, Chief Content Advisor
A. Langer, Ph.D.
Judith A. Langer is Professor of Education at the University
at Albany, State University of New York. She specializes in
studies of language, literacy, and learning. Her research focuses
on how people become highly literate, on how they use reading
and writing to learn, and on what this means for instruction.
Her major works examine the nature of literate thought
the knowledge students use when they "make sense" and the ways
in which their learning is affected by activities and interactions
in the classroom. She has studied reading and writing development,
the ways in which understandings (envisionments) grow over time,
how particular literacy contexts affect language and thought,
and the contribution of literature to literate thought.
She is presently studying the professional and classroom features
that accompany English programs where students are "beating
the odds" in literacy. Her work on envisionment building has
had a major impact on literature instruction and assessment.
She serves on many advisory boards and national reform groups
involved in reconceptualizing literacy education.
Langer has published in a wide variety of journals and collections.
Her books include Reader Meets Author/Bridging the Gap; Understanding
Reading and Writing Research; Children Reading and Writing:
Structures and Strategies; Language, Literacy, and Culture:
Issues of Society and Schooling; How Writing Shapes Thinking:
Studies of Teaching and Learning; Literature Instruction: A
Focus on Student Response; Literature Instruction: Practice
and Policy; and Envisioning Literature: Literary Understanding
and Literature Instruction. Effective English Instruction
will soon be published.
Langer has been director of the National Research Center on
English Learning & Achievement (CELA) since 1987. The Center's
research, including Langer's work on envisionment building,
has been primarily funded by the United States Department of
Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).
She is also chair of the Department of Educational Theory and
Langer serves as the chief content advisor for Conversations
Dale Allender currently serves as the Associate Executive Director
of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). A former
teacher in the Iowa City Community School District, Allender
has also lectured at Grinell and Coe Colleges. He has also served
the language arts community as an Editorial Board Member of
The New Advocate, as representative-at-large for the
Alliance for Curriculum Reform, and in his current position
as the NCTE Liaison to the Iowa Council Teachers of English
and language arts Executive Board.
A recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer
Institute for Native American Literature fellowship and numerous
other awards, Allender has also served as a consultant and curriculum
developer for a number of media projects, including Songmasters:
The American Road, a music recording of traditional socially
conscious songs performed by contemporary popular music artists;
Tutu and Franklin: A Journey Towards Peace, a dialogue
between Desmond Tutu and John Hope Franklin and twenty-one international,
multicultural high school students; and Regret to Inform,
an award-winning documentary on widows from the Vietnam War,
featured on PBS.
Some of Allender's recent publications include "Deep Reading:
Building a Schematic Bridge Across World Mythology and Multicultural
Literature" which appeared in Multicultural Review, "The
Myth Ritual Theory and the Teaching of Multicultural Literature,"
"Standing on the Border: Issues of Identity and Border Crossing
in Young Adult Literature," and "African and African American
Voices and Experiences" which is included in Adventuring
Arthur N. Applebee,
Arthur N. Applebee is Professor in the School of Education,
University at Albany, State University of New York, and (with
Judith Langer) is Director of the federally sponsored National
Research Center on English Learning and Achievement. The Center
has an active research and development agenda in elementary
and secondary instruction, in effective uses of technology,
and in teacher education.
During his varied career, Applebee has worked in institutional
settings with children with severe learning problems, in public
schools, as a staff member of the National Council of Teachers
of English, and in research and professional education. He joined
the faculty at the University at Albany from Stanford University
in 1987, as part of a SUNY-wide Graduate Research Initiative
designed to place the University at Albany at the forefront
of literacy research in the United States.
With degrees from Yale, Harvard, and the University of London,
Applebee's work focuses on how children and adults learn the
many specialized forms of language required for success in school
subjects, life, and work. His numerous books and articles focus
on particular issues in curriculum and instruction in reading,
writing, and the English language arts. Since the early 1970s,
he has also worked with the National Assessment of Educational
Progress, helping to design, implement, interpret, and report
a continuing series of evaluations of the educational attainment
of U.S. students.
An internationally recognized expert, Applebee consults at the
national, state, and district level on effective approaches
to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Applebee is a former
editor of Research in the Teaching of English, a past
president of the National Conference on Research in Language
and Literacy, and a recipient of the David H. Russell Award
for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English, from
the National Council of Teachers of English.
Elizabeth Close is the Director of Educational Outreach for
The National Research Center on English Learning and Achievement
(CELA). Before assuming that role in 1999, she taught for many
years in the Guilderland Central School District near Albany
New York and in the Roosevelt and Sachem Central School Districts
on Long Island. As a teacher, she was one of a number of teacher/researchers
working with Judith Langer and her research staff in the Envisioning
Close completed her undergraduate work at the State University
of New York at Stony Brook. She did her graduate work at Hofstra
University and the University at Albany. She has been active
in the National Council of Teachers of English, serving on the
Secondary Section Steering Committee, the Executive Committee,
and as chair of the first Middle Level Nominating Committee.
She was the recipient of the 1999 NCTE Edwin A. Hoey Award for
Outstanding Middle School Educator in language arts and received
a Paul and Kate Farmer Writing Award in 1993 for an article
in English Journal. She was co-editor of "Middle Talk,"
a column in English Journal, and co-editor of A Middle
Mosaic: A Celebration of Reading, Writing, and Reflective Practice
at the Middle Level (NCTE, 2000).
Shawn Eric DeNight has been a high school English teacher since
1985. At Miami Edison Senior High School, he teaches English
and journalism. He is also the language arts department chairperson.
In 1999, he earned certification from the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards in English/Language Arts for
adolescents and young adults. He has worked with the National
Board as an assessor and as an assessment developer. In 1995,
he received his Ph.D. in English education from the University
of Miami. His dissertation study investigated the effects of
teacher written comments on the quality of students' writing.
In October of 2000, he was named to USA Today's All-USA Teacher
Team. In 1994, he was selected as Florida's state teacher of
the year. In 1997, he participated in a teacher exchange program
to Russia and Ukraine sponsored by the United States Information
At his school, DeNight sponsors the National Honor Society,
supervises a computer writing lab, and chairs the school's accreditation
self-study team. For his school district, he works as a facilitator
at the Zelda Glazer Writing Institute, a two-week summer in-service
program dedicated to the teaching of writing. He has also been
a leader in the district's intergenerational community outreach
As the K-12 Specialist in English language arts for the Maryland
State Department of Education, Frank Horstman works with a variety
of issues related to language development: curricular design,
instructional implementation, assessment, and school improvement.
Specific projects have ranged from kindergarten-Maryland Model
for School Readiness (MMSR) training, to primary-managing the
Reading Excellence Act Grant, to middle-range finding for the
Maryland Writing Test (MWT) and the Maryland School Performance
Assessment Program (MSPAP), through high school-collaborating
on the development of the English High School Assessment. While
he received his formal training in applying theories in cognitive
psychology, linguistics, and classical rhetoric to improving
writing instruction, Dr. Horstman credits the training he received
from his English, journalism, and foreign language students
with helping him develop a very practical perspective on English
He also believes that serving as both a staff development facilitator
and an administrator have helped him to see the learning process
from still other perspectives. Dr. Horstman welcomes the opportunity
to support educators across Maryland in their goal to improve
student achievement in English/language arts.
Alfredo Celedon Lujan is a native of the village of Nambe in
northern New Mexico. He currently teaches English at the Native
American Preparatory School in San Ysidro, New Mexico. Lujan
is active in many national language arts organizations. He is
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Rainbow Strand
planner for Middle and Secondary Sections, a member of NCTE's
Steering Committee, Secondary Section, and a member of the Early
Adolescent language arts Committee with the National Board for
Professional Teaching Standards.
Previously, Lujan taught English at Pojaque Middle School, chaired
the NCTE Committee on Racism and Bias, and was a member of NCTE's
Commission for Literature. He also served as a SLATE (Support
for the Learning and Teaching of English) representative in
New Mexico, and edited Capirotada, the newsletter of
NCTE's Latino Caucus. He has also held leadership roles in educating
teachers, serving as an instructor at the Bread Loaf/Gallup-McKinley
Teachers Institute, and as an instructor/facilitator in many
Writing Across the Curriculum workshops and inservices.
His publications have appeared in The Council Chronicle,
California English, La Herencia del Norte, Bread Loaf Rural
Teacher Magazine, Bread Loaf News, A Work of ARTE, New Mexico
Sports Journal , Puerto del Sol, and the New Mexico Humanities
Lujan was an National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (1985,
1989, 1990), won First Place for student writing portfolio in
the Quality Education Awards Program at University of New Mexico,
and has served as a writer in residence for the Anchorage and
Mat-Su School Districts in Alaska.
Elizabeth Penfield is Professor Emerita of English at the University
of New Orleans. She is the author of four books and numerous
articles published in state, regional, and national journals,
including Arizona English Bulletin, English language arts
Bulletin, and the ADE Bulletin. Her book Short
Takes, published by Harper Collins, is currently in its
seventh printing. She is a contributor to the Longman Bibliography
of Composition and Rhetoric, and her article Freshman
English/ Advanced Writing: How Do We Distinguish the Two?
was published in On Teaching Advanced Writing. Together
with Charles Moran of the University of Massachusetts, she edited
the NCTE publication Conversations: Contemporary Theory and
the Teaching of Literature. Penfield has also presented
papers to many state, regional, and national groups, including
the Conference on College Composition and Communication and
the National Council of Teachers of English.
Penfield's principle areas of interest are composition and rhetoric,
and contemporary literature. She has consulted on writing with
schools throughout Louisiana and for the Wyoming Conference
on Freshman and Sophomore English. She has also chaired the
New Orleans Writing Project. At the University of New Orleans,
she has directed the freshman program, chaired the English Department,
and served as Associate Dean of Liberal Arts.
Sallie Snyder is a former language arts/reading supervisor for
the Miami-Dade County Public School District where, during her
25 years in the district, she also taught high school English
at all levels and was an assistant principal for curriculum.
In addition to her other responsibilities as supervisor, she
served as the district administrator for Dr. Judith Langer's
study on exemplary English instruction in the Miami-Dade County
area. She also had the pleasure of being both a facilitator
for the Zelda Glazer Miami-Dade County Public Schools/University
of Miami Writing Institute for ten years and a member of the
Pacesetter English teacher training team for three years. While
working as a supervisor, she served on several state committees
and served a term as President of the Florida Council of Language
Before moving to Florida, Sallie taught language arts in Ohio,
California, Nebraska, and Georgia. Now living on the southern
Oregon coast, she is an adjunct teacher of writing at Southwestern
Oregon Community College, and, in addition to her work for Maryland
Public Television, works part time as a consultant for a publisher.
Betty Tillman currently teaches Ethnic Literature, American
Literature, and European Literature at Raoul Wallenberg Traditional
High School in San Francisco. She serves as head of the English
Department there, and is very instrumental in its program to
support beginning teachers. Her thirty-five year career as a
language arts educator has also included numerous positions
on Wallenberg's Literature Review and Recommendations and Fine
Arts Core Curriculum Committees. Holding a master's degree in
Theater and Communications from the University of New Orleans
(LSUNO), Tillman has advised the drama clubs in many of the
schools in which she has taught, and coordinated talent shows
and other opportunities for student artists to showcase their
talents. In September 2000, she was selected to take part in
the Toyota International Teacher Study Program in Japan.
Tillman has also created and presented a video for middle and
high school teachers on teaching techniques for African American
students, entitled, "I Didn't Do Nothin', Why You Always Picking | <urn:uuid:d9cbeb98-6039-4974-987f-0970c163002e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.learner.org/workshops/conversations/about/advisory.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94675 | 3,174 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Victorian Gardens Intro
Victorian gardens were at once a refuge for the industrious and wealthy Victorian at home, they were also a garden show piece for the dynamism of the age. Never before was so much energy devoted to the gardening craft. The Victorian age was the era of the gardening engineer, where the science and technology of the day went hand-in-hand with horticultural showmanship. Tremendous resources and money were put in to both vegetable gardens and flower gardens of all types as you will see in the ensuing pages.
This section describes and details the amazing Victorian ‘finds’ found in the garden of my own home in what was once a Victorian walled garden in the South West of England. I arrived on site having never done any gardening before, yet I was ‘hooked’ by the enormous high walls around me. I couldn’t see them, they were carpeted in ivy, but ivy doesn’t stand over 14ft high without support. I was spellbound and excited. So when my parent asked, shall we take it? “Yes” came out before I knew what was happening.
The Victorian gardens was a derelict wreck, once glorious, now long forgotten beneath decades of neglect. So we rolled up our sleeves and got stuck in. My gardening experience was a blank slate and as such I had no prejudices to cloud me, no second thought that might argue “it can’t be done”. I just did.
One thing concerning my Victorian gardens discoveries was repeated time and again. No matter what was in the garden, on the walls, or in the Victorian Greenhouses, I did not find a single item that did not have at least two reasons for it to be there. Everything, had a dual purpose to be in the garden. If I found something, and considered only one use for it, that was my fault, I just hadn’t found the other reasons for it to be there. The garden walls were a case in point as you will discover. . .
Whether you are a gardener or not, like I was once, be prepare to be amazed
Now let’s begin … Victorian Walled Gardens | <urn:uuid:cb79390f-aa3b-4a85-980e-46660b81d303> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winsfordwalledgarden.com/victorian-gardens-intro/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979133 | 459 | 1.765625 | 2 |
7/17/01It's been years since the shortwave pirate scene has been this active.
Normally, the best times to catch pirate broadcasts on shortwave frequencies has been weekend nights. While the spring and summer months tend to see a slowdown in activity due to increased solar and thunderstorm-induced interference, this trend has all but disappeared.
Pirates are popping up at all hours during the week, with some broadcasting marathon shows on multiple frequencies.
In the United States, the FCC has spent the last few years devoting most of its enforcement resources to tracking down and busting FM microradio stations; this has left little effort directed toward monitoring the shortwave band.
The FCC does have a nationwide monitoring network that can triangulate a shortwave pirate's general location, but the effort needed to actually shut shortwave broadcasters down is much more labor-intensive. For one thing, even if the FCC's monitoring network finds a pirate, agents on the ground must still pinpoint the station's location and travel to the broadcast site itself. Sometimes this just can't be done during the window when the station's on the air.
Additionally, shortwave pirates tend to set up their stations in remote areas and run them using crude "automation" - it's not surprising to hear one pirate broadcaster relay tapes of another pirate's shows. Sometimes, shortwave pirates tape original shows in advance, then broadcast them once the operator has left the transmit site. The FCC may find the station and confiscate the gear, but the pirate gets away to broadcast another day.
Because of this, it's probably more difficult to find and silence a shortwave pirate than an FM microbroadcaster. The FCC is obviously aware of all the activity but seems to be willing to overlook it so long as it doesn't become a political hot potato like FM piracy has become.There has been so much pirate activity on the shortwave bands recently that some stations have accidentally broadcast on top of one another, to the frustration of dedicated listeners around the world.
Such activity constitutes bad etiquette, but with so many stations doing so many shows it's bound to happen once in a while. In order to better coordinate the activity, the Free Radio Network - indisputably the major Web site of interest to the hardcore North American shortwave pirate community - has set up a new forum for broadcasters to pre-announce their show times and frequencies.
The most prolific shortwave pirate of summer 2001, by far, has been WHYP. Run by "James Brownyard," the station not only features an eclectic mix of music and comedy, but it also relays old shows from past pirates. It's a great place to hear some of the history behind the shortwave scene.
During the first weekend of July 2001, in celebration of WHYP's third anniversary on the air, Brownyard attempted a broadcast on multiple frequencies using as many as five different transmitters.
Shortwave pirates have often pulled out all the stops to create and perform original material in the past, but the current crop of stations seems to focus almost exclusively on music. One major exception to this has been Radio Bingo, whose broadcasts include a contrived "live" bingo game involving various "personalities" in the shortwave scene - something one must hear to truly understand.
Other active pirates of late include the high-flying Radio Bong, comedy and parody by Radio Three, and the legendary WKND, who's come back from a long hiatus (and FCC hassles) to claim a spot on the shortwave band.
Most of the current activity in the United States has been centered around 6950 kHz, with most pirates popping up within five kHz of this target frequency (tune between 6945-6955). European shortwave pirates have also been busy, using other parts of the shortwave band to try and "shoot the Atlantic" to reach listeners Stateside. Notables who've been active include the Dutch pirate stations Mike Radio (appearing around 9290 kHz) and Alfa Lima International (making regular broadcasts on 15070 kHz).
As always, nights and weekends are the best times to listen, when solar and weather activity is lower and the shortwave bands become clearer. However, there's a better than even chance of catching a pirate on the air almost any day of the week.
All good things must come to an end, and eventually the FCC will clamp down on shortwave pirate activity. But this bona-fide boom in the shortwave scene is shaping up to be one for the books, and if you haven't tried tuning it in yet, you're missing out on some history in the making. | <urn:uuid:8c537a71-d4a6-4cf9-a5d2-4cb91ead4978> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diymedia.net/feature/pirate/f071701.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957907 | 952 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Edith Cowan University, Western Australia in association with Khon Kaen University, Thailand and Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University, Thailand.
Education has always been facing the challenge in ensuring that the quality of teaching and learning takes place effectively. One possible path for improving the quality of education lies in the application of a Quality Management approach as has been used in Industries, to the teaching and learning process. This paper adopts and uses the principles from one of the Quality Management methods, Total Quality Management as the pedagogical methodology and improved framework in managing, scrutinizing and enhancing the quality of teaching and learning practices in higher education. The paper focuses on the limited application areas of specific key components of a Total Quality Management tool on managing the needs, expectations and problems of the students, and on collecting feedback information for continuous improvement in teaching and learning process. Employing these Quality Management attributes into the education equation create values for educational institutions, employers, and students. | <urn:uuid:f1fcb0b2-853f-464f-99df-6812fb71cc1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ro.ecu.edu.au/ceducom/53/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924201 | 198 | 2.625 | 3 |
The concept: A group, usually composed of strangers at the start, creates a communal-type housing arrangement that is intergenerational or all older people, with separate units but some shared common space. The group may buy the property, help design it, make all rules by consensus and manage it independently. Residents eat some dinners together and often form deep relationships.
The numbers: 112 intergenerational cohousing communities, with another 40 to 50 planned; four elder cohousing projects, with 20 or so in the works. More than half are in California.
The price: $100,000 to $750,000, monthly fees $100 to $300; 10 percent of projects offer rentals for $600 to $2,000 a month.
Intergenerational cohousing is geared to families with younger children but also draws boomer couples and singles. The youngest elder cohousing residents are in their 60s. Members live in separate, fully equipped attached or clustered units, and share outdoor space and a common house where communal meals take place. The common house also contains a living room and guest (or caretaker's) quarters. What's in the rest of the space depends on the members; it could be a media or crafts room, or a studio for exercise and meditation.
"I think cohousing is a marvelous way to live," says Bernice Turoff, an 85-year-old widow and member of the intergenerational Nevada City Cohousing community in California. "It's a close community where people really care about one another. If you get sick, 14 people say, 'How can I help you?' "
Charles Durrett, her neighbor and an architect who, along with his wife, Kathryn McCamant, brought the concept of cohousing to the United States from Denmark in the 1980s, says older members act as surrogate grandparents. Last year, when one of the older residents was dying, all ages pitched in to help or visit.
Today, older boomers live in both intergenerational and elder cohousing. "I'd be surprised if cohousing doesn't double every couple of years in the next 20 years," says Durrett. Getting popular: cohousing in cities. | <urn:uuid:bebe7dc7-8db2-4e06-a2e6-4905951f3da5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/housing/info-04-2011/elder-housing.3.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 | 0.967468 | 450 | 2.203125 | 2 |
The news from England is unexpected, but its cause was predicted decades ago. First, lets look at the newsmaker, then we’ll examine his little-noticed prophet. There is a lesson to be learned here…
British Prime Minister David Cameron recently stunned the politically-correct wing of punditry by stating plainly what could not be more obvious: England’s multi-cultural experiment is an abysmal failure. This comes on the heels of a similar pronouncement from German Chancellor Angela Merkel in October. (Did they flip a coin to see who would go first?)
Cameron’s comments, while courageous, pale in comparison to Enoch Powell’s though, for one really important reason: Powell’s speech was over 40 years ago.
Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech was a brave appraisal of England’s future if its policy of allowing immigration without assimilation continued. Cameron’s words are a cautious reaction to what has become obvious: Immigrants live as foreigners on English Soil.
Who was Enoch Powell? He was scholar first, and patriot second. A full professor of Ancient Greek studies by the age of 25, his exceptional awards for profiency in Latin and Greek at Cambridge were almost without equal.
He studied Urdu to increase his chances of someday being appointed Viceroy of India, but cut short his professional goals and joined the military when it became clear to him that England would soon be at war with Germany. A line taken from a letter to his parent’s illustrates his regard for uber-appeaser Neville Chamberlain fairly succinctly:”The depths of infamy to which our accurst “love of peace” can lower us are unfathomable.”
So now we know Enoch Powell’s pedigree, let’s fast-forward to 1968-
Powell knew his speech on immigration would be incendiary, and he tried as best as he could to temper his courageous words by first talking about the difficult task a statesman has in warning of unseen dangers.
It helped little if at all. He knew that the press would excoriate him (and they did), but he was probably hoping that he could talk over them and speak directly to the people. He was wrong.
An excerpt from his infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech:
“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now.” | <urn:uuid:79f2ab0c-5b76-473d-abdf-11a4a5696df2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teapartytribune.com/2011/02/09/enoch-powell-voldemort/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980699 | 621 | 2.28125 | 2 |
In baseball, if the home team is playing defense in the top of the 9th with a one run lead, two outs and the bases are loaded, the manager will normally go out to the mound and bring in his top
relief pitcher to get the last out.
Congress and the President on Dec. 17, 2010, provided the same type of drama with the passage of The Tax Relief Act of 2010. There have been many tax acts during the past 25 years or so,
and this act probably has more provisions that are pro-farmer than almost any other act that I can remember.
Savings for Farmers. Everybody’s front-burner issue was the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Under the new law, the current favorable tax rates on income, capital gains and dividends will be extended for at least two years. This means that the top rate on income will remain at 35% and the top rate on capital gains and dividends will remain at 15%.
In my opinion, the most important provision is the extension of the top dividend rate being kept at 15%. If a farmer has a C corporation with a large amount of retained earnings that need to be distributed, then 2010, 2011 and 2012 are the prime years to get this accomplished (in some cases, this can be distributed at zero tax for federal purposes).
For 2011 only, Congress initiated a new payroll tax savings for employees, including self-employed farmers. Instead of the FICA tax being 6.2% on wages and net farm income, the employee’s part of the tax will fall to 4.2% or a maximum possible savings of $2,136 for those with wages and net farm income more than the FICA wage base of $106,800.
The extension of the Bush tax cuts would not have meant much to farmers without extending the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch for 2010 and 2011. Under this patch, only about 4 million taxpayers will be subject to AMT instead of 26 million. This should save those affected up to about $10,000 in AMT for these two years.
Also, earlier in the year Congress extended the 50% bonus depreciation for all of 2010. The new bill increases bonus depreciation for new assets placed in service between Sept. 8, 2010, and Jan. 1, 2012, to 100%. This means that almost all new farm equipment, buildings and structures will qualify for immediate write-off if placed in service between these dates. In 2012, the bill returns to 50% bonus depreciation for those assets.
Estate Tax Changes. This bill would not be complete without addressing the estate tax mess that Congress created earlier in the decade. Under the old law, there was no estate tax for 2010 but a limited step-up in basis for inherited assets. For 2011, the top rate would have been 55% and estate taxes would have been owed on estates as low as $1 million.
The new law decreases the top estate tax rate to 35% for 2011 and 2012. The lifetime exclusion increases from $1 million to $5 million per taxpayer. In addition, the old step-up in basis rules to fair market value could be used for inherited assets.
For 2010, the new law allows an estate to use either the old law in effect with no estate tax and limited basis adjustments, or the new 2011 law. The due date for any estate happening in 2010 has been automatically extended to nine months after President Barack Obama signed the law to allow the estate-holders time to decide which election they want.
Moreover, spouses can now tack on the unused lifetime exemption from their deceased spouse who filed an estate tax return. For example, if a farmer died with an estate of $2 million, the unused $3 million can be added to the surviving spouse’s $5 million lifetime exemption to make $8 million exempt from estate tax.
Finally, the gift and generation skipping tax lifetime exemptions have been coordinated with the estate exemption, which means for 2011 and 2012, farmers can gift up to $5 million without owing gift taxes.
All in all, the Tax Relief Act was the best Christmas gift Congress has given farmers in a long time.
- January 2011 | <urn:uuid:26ff6299-cb79-4449-a9cc-b6c582775fd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/legacyproject/article/the_farm_cpa_tax_relief_act_helps_farmers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957755 | 854 | 1.507813 | 2 |
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News, education
A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.
The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
Becta, the government's educational technology agency, is a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools.
The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders.
The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face".
The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children.
But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
The Three Little Cowboy Builders has already been a prize winner at the recent Education Resource Award - but its Newcastle-based publishers, Shoo-fly, were turned down by the Bett Award panel.
The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".
They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".
The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"
Ms Curtis said that rather than preventing the spread of racism, such an attitude was likely to inflame ill-feeling. As another example, she says would that mean that secondary schools could not teach Animal Farm because it features pigs?
Her company is committed to an ethical approach to business and its products promote a message of mutual respect, she says - and banning such traditional stories will "close minds rather than open them".
Becta, the government funded agency responsible for technology in schools and colleges, says that it is standing by the judges' verdict.
"Becta with its partners is responsible for the judging criteria against which the 70 independent judges, mostly practising teachers, comment. All the partners stick by the judging criteria," said a Becta spokesman.
The reason that this product was not shortlisted was because "it failed to reach the required standard across a number of criteria", said the spokesman.
Becta runs the awards with the Besa trade association and show organisers, Emap Education.
Merlin John, author of an educational technology website which highlighted the story, warns that such rulings can undermine the credibility of the awards.
"When benchmarks are undermined by pedestrian and pedantic tick lists, and by inflexible, unhelpful processes, it can tarnish the achievements of even the most worthy winners.
"It's time for a rethink, and for Becta to listen to the criticisms that have been ignored for a number of years," said Mr John. | <urn:uuid:db58c122-9cbd-4117-8d82-1fdc463fe621> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974395 | 637 | 1.867188 | 2 |
The burgeoning field of 3-D printing got a big boost Tuesday night when President Obama highlighted it as something that could fuel new high-tech jobs in the United States.
The shout-out in Obama's State of the Union address was perhaps the biggest public endorsement so far of a technology that has its roots in the 1970s, but has recently begun to boom on two fronts -- as an increasingly accessible consumer product and an industrial one that advocates say could change the face of manufacturing.
Obama spoke about the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, a public-private partnership established in the hard-hit manufacturing city of Youngstown, Ohio, last year to research how cutting-edge 3-D printing technology can be moved from the research phase to day-to-day use.
"A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything," Obama said.
The process of 3-D printing (also known by the clunkier "additive manufacturing" moniker) uses computer-created digital models to create real-world objects -- everything from simple chess pieces to more complex objects such as functioning clocks. The printers follow the shape of the model by stacking layer upon layer of material to make the objects.
Obama announced plans for three more manufacturing hubs where businesses will partner with the departments of Defense and Energy "to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs."
"And I ask this Congress to help create a network of 15 of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is made in America," Obama said.
Edward A. Morris, the director of NAMII, said the organization was "tremendously honored" to be mentioned by the president in such a high-profile speech.
"It is rewarding to know that NAMII's efforts to promote innovation and entrepreneurialism within the additive manufacturing sector is highly recognized and supported," he said in a statement on the partnership's website.
While primarily a novelty among the tech-obsessed, 3-D printing been used successfully for a variety of tasks, from making jewelry or medical supplies to larger projects in industrial design and engineering. | <urn:uuid:6e3bb395-4faf-4fde-92b8-6621b73062b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ketv.com/news/money/technology/Obama-speech-highlights-rise-of-3-D-printing/-/9674290/18534364/-/xjn8x6/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960075 | 460 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Many current and former athletes and sports entertainers work in a variety of settings, including as analysts. We seem to be saturated with them when watching post-draft commentary in any major sport.
For the most part, they seem intelligent and provide insight that the average fan, like me, has a tendency to overlook.
Lately, one of the more credible former sports entertainers to make his opinion known is Chris Nowinski, a former professional wrestler with a Harvard education.
I know, I know — this appears to be a paradox. How could anyone blessed with that much intelligence become immersed in a world that is universally decried as make-believe? How sensible is it to make such a seemingly barbaric choice for a career path?
Nowinski eventually showed his intelligence by retiring from his brief wrestling career because of post-concussion syndrome. In his 2006 book Head Games: Football’s Concussion Crisis, he goes to great lengths in offering his opinions on the dangers of concussions in contact sports, especially football. He also thoroughly chronicles his injuries in the wrestling world.
Nowinski’s book is filled with horrifying stories and anecdotes about football players and others who suffered from brutal, violent collisions while plying their trade.
I want to say right now that as a former high school and college linebacker, I can recall two specific moments when I saw stars after making a hit or getting blocked — and the second one was in practice.
In those days, a player would just shut his mouth and carry on, or if coaches were alert, they would pull you out for a little while so you could “clear the cobwebs."
Since 2006, Nowinski has been a leading educator on concussion-related injuries. He successfully persuaded the family of former NFL defensive back Andre Waters to donate parts of his brain for examination after he committed suicide by gunshot at age 44.
The medical conclusion was that Waters’ brain was similar to that of an 85-year-old man in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
Nowinski is one of the first to openly discuss chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease that has been linked to depression and dementia.
Elements of CTE were found in former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson after his suicide last year at age 50.
Duerson left a note for his wife specifically requesting that his brain be donated for study and examination.
Clearly, this man knew he had been stricken with something.
Recently, my world was rocked by the suicide of Junior Seau, a former all-pro linebacker for the San Diego Chargers before signing with the New England Patriots.
Seau also killed himself with a gun.
He is the eighth member of the Chargers’ 1994 Super Bowl team to die, though not all by gunshot.
EARTH TO ROGER GOODELL!!! Mr.
Commissioner, I know that part of your responsibility is to espouse all that is well and good about professional football. But you have taken swift action in addressing the New Orleans Saints bounty issue. It is time to stand up and at least make an attempt to make the game safer.
Please do not let the memories and lives of men like those above, and many, many others, wilt away without support. Some 3,000 former players have a lawsuit pending against the NFL, which is probably why you are maintaining your silence, at least publicly.
Don’t sit idly by while intelligent men like Nowinski lobby for more attention to be devoted to concussionrelated injuries. Meanwhile, Jacob Bell, an offensive lineman with the Cincinnati Bengals, was so affected by Seau’s suicide that he has decided to retire.
Cecil Wright is a Halifax sports enthusiast. | <urn:uuid:1addd78e-fcec-46e8-ae6e-4227dd507790> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thechronicleherald.ca/hcw/98597-goodell-take-note-of-nowinski-s-crusade-on-concussions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984787 | 767 | 1.546875 | 2 |
A recent review commissioned by the DSM-5 Anxiety, Obsessive-compulsive Spectrum, Post-traumatic, and Dissociative Disorders Work Group recommended the addition of Hoarding Disorder (HD) as a separate diagnostic entity (1
). Hoarding is characterized by excessive acquisition of and difficulty discarding possessions, resulting in severely cluttered living spaces (2
). It has a high prevalence rate of 2–5% (3
), and the resulting cluttered home environment can lead to health code violations, eviction, fire, family strain, significant cost to the community, and even death (6
Because hoarding has previously been considered a subtype of OCD, much of the research on hoarding has used samples drawn from patients seeking treatment at OCD specialty clinics. However, reviews of accumulating evidence have led to conclusions that the two are distinct disorders (1
). Since most large sample studies are of hoarding within the context of OCD, our understanding of the diagnostic placement and comorbidity of hoarding is limited. To underscore this concern, in the few studies in which participants were solicited for hoarding rather than OCD symptoms, non-hoarding OCD was diagnosed in only a small number of cases (5
). Because of the small number of cases in these studies, the prevalence of OCD in people with hoarding disorder is not yet clear.
An additional limitation in the research on hoarding is the reliance on inadequate definitions and measures of the construct (8
). Not surprisingly, the variability in assessment has resulted in wide variability in reported comorbidities. Several studies failed to find increased risk for any axis I disorder in OCD patients who reported hoarding (11
), while the majority of studies have shown increased comorbidity for selected disorders.
Recent advances in definition (1
) and measurement (9
) provide the ability to more reliably diagnose and assess comorbidity in HD; however, studies using these improved assessment strategies have used small samples. The majority of studies of hoarding comorbidity have reported very high rates of depression, often significantly greater than among OCD comparison groups (13
). Hoarding behaviors have been observed in anxiety disorders other than OCD, especially generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social phobia (22
). Among hoarding patients with OCD, rates of these disorders have exceeded nonhoarding OCD in some studies (16
), while the opposite pattern has been found in studies of patients solicited for hoarding and not OCD (13
). Interestingly, Pertusa et al. (17
) reported higher rates of GAD in OCD cases (with or without hoarding) compared to HD cases without OCD, whereas higher rates of social phobia occurred in all HD cases, regardless of accompanying OCD. That is, GAD seemed more strongly associated with OCD, whereas social phobia was more strongly associated with hoarding. Despite apparently elevated rates of traumatic events in hoarding cases (15
), rates of comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among patients reporting hoarding have been equal to or lower than rates for other anxiety disorders in most studies, ranging from 0–23% (13
Hoarding has been thought to be associated with impulse control problems, particularly those characterized by acquisition such as compulsive buying, kleptomania, and the excessive acquisition of free things (4
). Frost et al. (26
) found that over half of hoarding cases had clinically significant compulsive buying, and when the tendency to excessively acquire free things was included, 86% had at least moderate acquisition problems. Similarly, Mueller et al. (4
) found that nearly two-thirds of hoarding individuals suffered from compulsive buying. To date, however, there are no data on acquisition problems in a large, carefully-diagnosed sample of people with HD. While kleptomania has been reported anecdotally among people with hoarding problems (27
) and found to be associated with hoarding behaviors in a nonclinical sample (28
), as yet, no data have linked the two clinical conditions. Rates of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among hoarding samples have exceeded that of nonclinical groups (29
) and often exceeding that of people with OCD and other clinical comparison groups (29
). Tolin and Villavicencio (32
) reported that inattentive ADHD symptoms, but not hyperactivity, predicted severity of hoarding after controlling for negative affect.
Hoarding has been associated with a wide variety of personality disorders as well. The most frequent finding has been that hoarding is associated with obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), and in some cases even when the hoarding criterion is excluded (5
). However, studies using hoarding samples not drawn from OCD patients have failed to find elevated rates of OCPD when the hoarding criterion was excluded (17
). Other personality disorders have sometimes, but not routinely, been found to be associated with hoarding.
Reports of gender differences in hoarding comorbidity have been mixed. Labad et al. (34
) found no gender differences in hoarding frequency among OCD patients, whereas Wheaton et al. (21
) reported greater OCD symptom severity among women with versus without hoarding, although no such differences emerged among men. In contrast, Samuels et al. (23
) found higher frequencies of most types of obsessions and several compulsions in men with hoarding-related OCD compared to men with non-hoarding OCD. Among women, only symmetry obsessions and ordering compulsions were more frequent in hoarding than non-hoarding OCD patients. No studies have reported on gender differences in samples recruited for hoarding. Because of the inconsistencies in the findings and the narrow population from which these samples were drawn (OCD patients), no clear hypotheses regarding gender can be made with respect to comorbidity.
The present study employs the largest sample to date of participants solicited solely for hoarding symptoms and using diagnostic criteria for hoarding disorder that match those currently proposed for DSM-5 (1
). This study also solicited participants regardless of their interest in treatment and utilized well-validated measures of hoarding and other symptoms. Comorbidity was compared across participants with HD and participants with OCD without hoarding. Based on previous research, we predicted that:
- A minority of individuals with HD will be diagnosed with OCD.
- Major depressive disorder will be the most frequent diagnosis in both groups and significantly more frequent in HD than OCD participants.
- GAD and social phobia will be diagnosed in HD participants at least as frequently as OCD.
- Frequency of traumatic events but not PTSD will be greater among HD than OCD participants.
- Acquisition-related impulse control problems (compulsive buying, excessive acquisition of free things, kleptomania) will be more frequent in HD than OCD participants.
- Inattentive ADHD, but not hyperactivity, will occur more frequently in HD than OCD participants.
- OCPD will occur more frequently in HD than OCD, but not when the hoarding criterion is removed.
No gender differences were hypothesized, but exploratory analyses of gender were conducted. | <urn:uuid:9affbd8e-84c0-4a99-a935-cbde7c7c0eaf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC3188689/?lang=en-ca | 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 | 0.956866 | 1,475 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Book Description: The 2011 Garden Writers of America Gold Award for Best Writing/Book proves soil is anything but an inert substance. Healthy soil is teeming with life -- not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains healthy plants, and thus become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of artificial substances, many of them toxic to humans as well as other forms of life. But there is an alternative to this vicious circle: to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web -- the complex world of soil-dwelling organisms whose interactions create a nurturing environment for plants. By eschewing jargon and overly technical language, the authors make the benefits of cultivating the soil food web available to a wide audience, from devotees of organic gardening techniques to weekend gardeners who simply want to grow healthy, vigorous plants without resorting to chemicals. | <urn:uuid:29ce1380-0a2a-406a-ba22-d10c47a01ec8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campusbooks.com/books/home-garden/gardening-horticulture/general/9781604691139_Wayne-Lewis-Jeff-Lowenfels_Teaming-with-Microbes-The-Organic-Gar.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911808 | 196 | 2.421875 | 2 |
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...are blurred by motion. Only those objects lying in a plane coinciding with the pivot point of a line between the tube and the film are in focus. A somewhat more complicated technique known as multidirectional tomography produces an even sharper image by moving the film and X-ray tube in a circular or elliptical pattern. As long as both tube and film move in synchrony, a clear image of...
What made you want to look up "multidirectional tomography"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:22345dbc-3860-4082-b0cc-a1a64d07d0a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/397012/multidirectional-tomography | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925504 | 143 | 2.734375 | 3 |
BY ANDREW LARSON REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
As New York City considers a law requiring people convicted of animal abuse to register like sex offenders, groups in Connecticut are lobbying for stronger protections for animals — and more severe consequences for people who abuse and neglect them.
Animal abuse registries have been proposed in nine states this year. Although Connecticut is not one of them, the state legislature is likely to consider reforming animal abuse laws soon, animal rights groups say.
"It's very, very difficult to be convicted of animal abuse," said Edita Birnkrant, of the Darien-based group Friends of Animals.
Recently in Branford, a young man dumped a pit bull-boxer mix named Desmond in a garbage bag and left him to die, according to published reports. The dog's owner, Alex Wullaert, 22, was charged with maliciously killing an animal.
He has asked a judge to grant him accelerated rehabilitation, which would allow his record to be wiped clean if he follows a set of court-ordered requirements. At every court appearance, protestors representing a group called Justice for Desmond assemble with signs demanding Wullaert receive the maximum penalty.
Connecticut is a state where harm to animals triggers public anger.
"I can tell you that the problem of animal abuse is a top priority," said Amy Harrell, president of Connecticut Votes for Animals in Bloomfield. She said creating an animal abuse registry is one of "several possible angles we can take to establish greater protections for animals."
While a registry wouldn't stop people from harming animals, it would send a signal to would-be offenders that animal abuse will be treated harshly, advocates say.
For one thing, an animal abuse registry would give animal shelters, and other purveyors of pets, another method of vetting their customers.
"It would be a huge step towards making sure that animals do not end up in hands of animal abusers," said Sarah Preston, intake manager of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals cruelty investigations department.
Also, an animal abuse registry would help law enforcement officials investigate animal crimes and identify trends.
"Residents have good reason to be concerned about the activities of animal abusers, who often go on to repeat their crimes" said Stephen Wells, executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which has been one of the biggest supporters of New York City's proposed law.
Many studies have found that people who abuse animals tend to commit other crimes. A study by Northeastern University and the Massachusetts chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that people who harm animals are five times more likely to commit a violent crime against a human being.
Also, the FBI considers animal cruelty one of three factors that can indicate a "severe behavioral problem." The other two are setting fires and bed wetting.
"The link between cruelty to animals and interpersonal violence is undeniable," Preston said.
Just as sex offenders must endure the humiliation of having their name, address and photo included in an online registry, forcing animal abusers to register in a database would be its own consequence.
"They'll be ashamed," Birnkrant said. "Anything that would be a deterrent, I'd be in favor of it."
In 2011, subcommittees of Connecticut's General Assembly considered five versions of a bill that would create a statewide animal abuse registry, but none ever went to a vote.
New York is in the vanguard of animal abuse registries. In addition to New York City's proposal, Suffolk, Albany and Rockland counties have already established such registries.
to comment on this story. | <urn:uuid:91ca86e4-d2d0-410b-98db-556f8092cb90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2012/11/17/news/local/677710.prt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960371 | 743 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Forecasters predict as many as four to eight hurricanes this year. University of Houston resources have expertise in a variety of topics related to storms – before, during and after.
State’s Leading Climatologist to Speak at UH Law Center April 7 Public Invited to Discussion on Climate Change in Texas
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor map, more than 40 percent of Texas is currently experiencing extreme drought. What does the future hold for Texas? Professor John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist and a leading researcher on weather and climate, will address this issue and others in a talk at noon on Thursday (April 7) at the University of Houston Law Center.
Nielsen-Gammon is a professor in the department of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University. For the past 10 years, he has served as the Texas State Climatologist, investigating, interpreting and applying climate knowledge to our state.
As Texas State Climatologist, Nielsen-Gammon has supervised research on mechanisms for summertime drought, estimation of long-term trends from climatological data sets, the development of high-resolution drought information, and the climatology of regional air pollution. Much of his recent work has involved air pollution meteorology. He has developed conceptual models of ozone formation in the Houston area.
This event is sponsored by the UH Energy and Environmental Law Society.
|Who:||Prof. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist and a leading researcher on weather and climate|
|What:||'Climate Change in Texas' talk, followed by a questions-and-answer session. The free event is open to the public.|
|When:||Noon, Thursday, April 7|
|Where:||University of Houston Law Center, Room 240 BLB|
About the University of Houston
The University of Houston is a comprehensive national research institution serving the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry partnerships. UH serves more than 38,500 students in the nation's fourth-largest city, located in the most ethnically and culturally diverse region of the country.
For more information about UH visit the university's Newsroom at www.uh.edu/admin/media/newsroom | <urn:uuid:2b372d79-1f12-4a5c-9fc9-e08f0cf9f784> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2011articles/April2011/040711NielsenGammonLawCenter.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937175 | 474 | 2.375 | 2 |
As the final project for course 1 of COETAIL, the teachers had to get together into groups and come out with a project. So while at The Networked Educator weekend PD, I had a brainwave. I thought it would be an amazing idea to develop a wiki, maintain and develop by students, for new students, new teachers and in fact anyone in the community to get tips on the best goods and services in Tokyo. For example, the best pizza restaurant, the best bakery, the best supermarket, the best cinemas, the best shrines and so on. We could add a brief history of certain areas of Tokyo, maps, basic Japanese language lessons and so on.
I pitched the idea to the other teachers at my school that are also doing the COETAIL course: Miss Seed (a social studies teacher), Mr. Baker (a history teacher) and Hosoi Sensei (a Japanese teacher) as each of their students could contribute a large part to the wiki. They loved the idea so we started brainstormed the possibilities. As we started talking, the idea evolved into a website maintain by all of the students in the school. And instead of having just recommendations, we decided to develop it into a school website, that is made by the students, for the students and the greater community. It would be less formal than the official website and all of the content would be created and managed by the students, the teachers would have no say (within reason) what goes onto the site because it wouldn’t be theirs, it would be the students.
We thought this would be a great way to empower the students, involve all the students and teachers of the school in the process and develop a closer community not only with the students, but with the wider community as they could see first hand what the students are doing at special events, interesting features of the school, etc.
So we got together and develop the following unit outline:
We actually wrote up the unit very quickly as we were all thinking along the same line, from chats at COETAIL meetings as well as on the trips down and back from YIS. We are all very excited to start the ball rolling, I have actually started a lesson with one Grade 7 class where we brainstormed the name of the website and will start with the design of the heading/logo. In one of my Grade 6 classes, I plan to do a website design lesson to develop an understanding of the layout of a good website so that we can develop the structure of the website. Once we have the site up and running, we can start inviting other students in other classes and grade to develop the content. Hopefully by the end of the school year, we should have a functional and up and running website that we can share with the world. | <urn:uuid:160799f2-42f5-41f1-9c80-9983394cb2ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://misternorris.com/tag/sudent-power/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974397 | 569 | 2.140625 | 2 |
In most years, car crashes with trains causing death or serious injury outnumber the deaths and injuries in commercial plane crashes.
Drivers often underestimate the danger at railway crossings. It takes an average train going 100 kilometres per hour 15 football fields to stop. Trains obviously cannot steer to avoid crashes. Surprisingly, in 25 per cent of death- and injury-related crashes, the driver drove into the middle of the train. In some cases the train was not even moving. Why this happens is anybody's guess. Perhaps the weather is a factor or darkness impedes vision or maybe elevated crossings confuse drivers.
Every driver should lower the window to listen for a train at a level crossing. The engineer on the train will blast the train whistle to warn cross traffic upon approaching the level crossing. This is the law in most jurisdictions.
When drivers were asked to estimate the speed of an oncoming train, in a safety study, their estimates were a full 50 per cent less on average than the actual speed of the train. Many crashes with trains can be attributed to this gross misjudgement of speed of the train by drivers. Another strange statistic concerning train-car crashes is that frequently, those crashes increase with the increase of warning devices at the crossing. Crossings with a single stop sign or no stop sign at all have fewer crashes than those with fully illuminated, flashing red lights and gates to block traffic. Drivers should treat all rail crossings as if there is a giant yield sign -- never think you are safe when approaching or crossing the tracks.
When approaching a rail crossing at which a stop is required, remember to stop well back from the crossing. This will allow for a better view of the train and provide a better estimate of the speed. It will also allow space in front of your vehicle if you are hit from behind or if any debris falls from the train. Many derailments occur at rail grade crossings, so extra space is always an advantage.
Note the number of tracks when crossing. It will be posted between the arms of the crossbuck sign which denotes a rail crossing. Be particularly careful to check for a second or third train on accompanying tracks.
People believe that most vehicle train crashes happen because the drivers race the train to get across the tracks in time. This is not true. Most drivers, who crash into the train, never see it. Drivers often say that they know the train schedules and that there is little danger in crossing at certain times of the day. This is a foolish statement, since maintenance crews are on the tracks at all hours of the day and night.
The safety of the train crews is of paramount importance. They are helpless to avoid such crashes in most cases and are very vulnerable to serious injury and death because of the inattention of careless vehicle drivers. Most trains are not that long and the time waiting is often only a few minutes. It does not make any sense to put your life on the line by racing the train when a short time span will clear the tracks for drivers.
Always be aware that bicycles and smaller motorcycles will slow for railway tracks that are at an angle. The tires are smaller and run the risk of getting caught in angular train tracks.
Remember that anytime is train time. For the safety of yourself, your passengers, pedestrians, railway passengers and employees: Slow down -- look, listen and live.
Steve Wallace is a longtime teacher and owns the Wallace Driving School in Victoria, B.C.
For some people, work begins before the sun comes up. Perhaps the mare is in labour or the fire is out of control or some other issue needs an immediate...
It could have all gone so terribly pear-shaped. Me, the mondo rapid McLaren and Mosport — oops, I'd better remain politically correct just in case...
The original Sprinter was the first vehicle my then-teenaged daughters would let me drop them off in the school's parking lot. Bentley? Nope, drop us ... | <urn:uuid:7b45dc0a-802b-4728-8941-6310c5da4e34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.driving.ca/Railway+crossings+often+death+zone/2151501/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964328 | 804 | 3.140625 | 3 |
We know that the link between a child’s socio-economic status (SES) and school achievement is real, it is a very tight link as such things go, and the link has existed for decades. Here, for example, is a recent Missouri report; here is a graph for PA PSSA data, from a blogger:
Here’s another from a recent dissertation.
Ever since the Coleman report in the 60s and the controversial book The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray in the 1990’s dozens of studies keep finding the same thing: socio-economic status is correlated with student achievement. (We leave the related but different problem – the achievement gap between Asians, whites, blacks, and Hispanics – for another day: that is a related but different set of issues.)
The question I have is – why does SES predict achievement so well – not just at the extremes, but all along the graph? The older I get, the less sense it makes. And the more it is clear that a glib single-cause explanation of it is unacceptable.
I have been pondering this for decades. I was stunned as a teacher by the College Board data for the SATs. That data, then as now, shows that SAT scores go up in perfect tandem with $20,000-dollar family income amounts. Here is the 2012 data:
|Family Income||Critical Reading||Mathematics|
|0$ – $20,000||433||461|
|$20,000 – $40,000||463||481|
|$40,000 – $60,000||485||500|
|$60,000 – $80,000||499||512|
|$80,000 – $100,000||511||525|
|$100,000 – $120,000||523||539|
|$120,000 – $140,000||527||543|
|$140,000 – $160,000||534||551|
|$160,000 – $200,000||540||557|
|More than $200,000||567||589|
Pause, consider: does this make sense to you as an educator? Does it make any sense that the amount of money the parents make at each level is a better predictor of the SAT score than, say, the number of advanced courses, the size of the school, the length of service of the teacher, or the amount of TV watched by kids? Again, we are not just comparing rich and poor at the margins (which seems more common-sensical). No, the data correlate all the way along. Why would someone whose parents make $80,000 dollars per year in general have higher SAT scores than someone whose parents make $60,000 dollars per year? On the face of it, that should strike us as odd. We should have long ago asked: what gives here?
In a concise and readable article in American Educator Spring 2012 (as part of his ongoing delightful series entitled “Ask the Cognitive Scientist”) Daniel Willingham summed up what we think we now know about the SES/Achievement correlation this way:
“On average, kids from wealthy families do significantly better than kids form poor families. Household wealth is associated with IQ and school achievement, and that phenomenon is observed to varying degrees throughout the world. With a more fine-grained analysis, we see associations with wealth in more basic academic skills like reading achievement and math achievement. And the association with wealth is still observed if we examine even more basic cognitive processes such as phonological awareness, or the amount of information the child can keep in working memory.”
However, care is needed. This is “on average.” The key word in all of this is ”association” or correlation. As researchers never tire of saying (though we never tire of forgetting) correlation is not causality. The data do not prove that parental income causes student achievement any more than the correlation of smoking and alcoholism means that one causes the other.
He concludes his introduction to the summary of findings with this caveat:
But these effects are not due to household income alone. In fact it’s unlikely that they are directly due to income at all…. The effects of wealth must be indirect and must accrue over time.
Do you see the oddity more clearly? Money alone is unlikely to be the determining factor: the SES/achievement link is tight but indirect; it accrues over time. But across the board? The indirectness is another way of saying: opaque; it means that we are guessing about the meaning of the correlation. And to my eye, many of the guesses are implausible because they make the fatal mistake of inferring a single cause or two.
Numerous studies and policy recommendations, for example, have made bold claims about poverty as the key (direct) cause. Here is an often-cited address by Helen Ladd; here and here are two views by respected researcher David Berliner; here is another respected researcher making the case. Here is a typical newspaper article in which policy-makers rely on the causal case.
Yet, there are plenty of highly-respected researchers on the non-causal side. Here is a summary of Harvard’s Paul Peterson’s critique of the poverty-as-cause theory; here is the full article. (Here is a summary of the argument between Ladd and Peterson.) Here, here, and here are often-cited analyses questioning the link by stressing the role of good teaching.
What should we conclude? It seems clear to me: that we still don’t really understand the correlation or exactly where and to what extent we should be fatalistic or optimistic about the power of schooling.
LET’S BE LOGICAL. I am not saying that poverty plays no role in achievement. I am not saying that the correlation between SES and achievement is false. I am merely stating the obvious, given the data – we still don’t really understand the indirectness of the correlation and the fact that across the range of SES student achievement is predictable:
1) the graphs above are curious if we believe that schooling and teachers make a difference in people’s lives. It is unclear and counter-intuitive why a family making 60,000 dollars per year should produce children with higher SAT performance or state test performance than a family making 50,000 per year.
2) We often fail to keep in mind the indirect role of SES. SES has no direct bearing on what students accomplish in school. Nothing that happens in school directly involves parental income or requires it. So, the fact that achievement correlates with parental income involves some connection that people keep speculating about. So, it is still reasonable to ask, in the face of the long-time correlation: why should an indirect relationship be more salient than a direct relationship, such as the caliber of the teaching, class size, or the rigor of the curriculum – for an entire 12-year academic career in which kids spend 6 hours a day or more in school? Do readers believe that most schools are that ineffective?
3) It doesn’t follow from the data that schools in poor neighborhoods are “bad” and schools in wealthy suburbs are “good”. Indeed, if this were true, all along the SES continuum, then the SES/parental income graph would be far less important and would likely look different: better schools would correlate with better achievement; so, we would just make bad schools more like good schools. But that isn’t what the data or my own career says is true.
Hmm, what about the so-called good schools? Well, this is where the issue becomes interesting to me as a life-long educator and reformer. The correlation between SES and school achievement has remained steady in spite of over two decades of school reform, and achievement gaps exist in almost all “good” districts and schools.
Worse, various attempts to study the supposed value added from schools have turned up dispiriting results. I know of one prep school that commissioned an internal study and found there to be NO GAIN over 4 years on measures of critical thinking. Colleges and researchers have found similar results using the CLA. I know for a fact (though, good luck getting the schools to report it) that some private schools have data to show that incoming SSAT scores perfectly predict SAT scores by the time the kids graduate. Another related clue: even in the most elite schools and colleges, pre-assessment and post-assessment on tests of science misconceptions (such as the FCI in Physics) show remarkably little gain.
It’s thus odd and frustrating for educators who believe strongly in the good schooling does to see this data. Somehow, in general, schools are not very effective – schools all along the continuum of neighborhoods. What should we make of this?
LOOK AT THE OUTLIERS. Yet, fatalism is not warranted by the data, either, because the data represent trends not truth, as Willingham says in his conclusion. This is clear from the graphs, too: there are outliers on all such graphs. There are successful schools at all points on the spectrum; there just aren’t many of them. We learn the same thing from value-added data about teachers studied over multiple years: some teachers have an extraordinary impact, in some cases adding an entire extra year of achievement to a class. The outliers are not just statistical noise. Here, here, here, here, and here are some sources of outliers nationally. There are numerous teachers in schools, schools in districts, and states in the nation that are outliers to the general trend (even if many of the outliers have ended up being disappointing or perhaps fraudulent).
[Since I first posted this article, I found a site with excellent data on SES vs. Reading Achievement, in an interactive graph. It is filled with named outliers. A printout of the graph for NY State can be found below, at the very end of this article.]
What, then, are the educational outliers – be they in data about teachers, schools, or best practices – trying to tell us (in their small number)?
In an earlier blog post I noted that Hattie found that the effect size of SES is just under .60 – a sizable effect, but not the most robust of all effects. This raises two puzzles: why would SES be more influential then, say, computer-assisted instruction, individualized instruction, and homework (to pick 3 examples from Hattie’s data that have effect size far less than SES), while the following have a significantly greater effect size than SES:
- Student self-assessment/self-grading
- Providing formative assessments
- Classroom discussion
- Teacher clarity
- Spaced vs. mass practice
- Meta-cognitive strategies taught and used
Here, to my mind, is a clue, then: these interventions (and almost all the other 31 interventions with an effect size greater than SES) have to do with excellent though not-very-widespread teaching and research-based practices directly linked to learning, (as opposed to more indirect policies/structures like schedules, technology, or class size). Ask yourself, honestly: have you ever seen a school that did everything on the 7 elements above or Hattie’s complete list of 31 with fidelity? Have you ever seen a school that did everything on Marzano’s, Lezotte’s or Edmonds’ list of effective school correlates with fidelity? Neither have I.
So, that raises a different question: if there are special conditions that indeed raise achievement across the board, why is it so rare to have those conditions in one place?
10 PLAUSIBLE THEORIES. I can think of 6 general reasons that, on their face, might explain why SES/Achievement correlates and why outlier successes haven’t borne fruit more generally:
- SES links to genetic/health factors that determine levels of achievement
- SES is a marker for home-life conditions that determine levels of achievement
- Schooling is mostly ineffective at all levels
- Schools resist fundamental and sweeping changes
- Professional development is mostly a failure
- What we measure is invalid and misleading
There are a few wrinkles within the categories, so I derive a total of 10 plausible theories we need to consider collectively (while casting some doubt on each of the 10 as I pose it):
- School as we know it and keep it reflects IQ, IQ is pretty fixed, so school cannot ever make much of a difference. (This is pretty much the Murray thesis from 20 years ago. Seems excessively fatalistic, and naïve about IQ vs. the particulars of school).
- Parental income is a marker for pre-school conditions and behaviors in the home (what Willingham calls “family investment”). The poorer the family, the less likely the child is ready in terms of schooling-related enablers: habits, vocabulary, thinking, and experience. And pre-school entry-level abilities are life-determining. (But why can’t the gap be made up by all the intensive schooling we do? Don’t we see some narrowing of the gap in schools that attend to this?)
- Parental income is a marker for ongoing parental support of schooling and school-related behavior once the student is in school. No doubt this links to mobility/attendance issues, too. (But that doesn’t explain to me why middle-class kids don’t do as well as upper-middle class kids. And do we really think that all along the income curve parenting gets “better”? Seems pretty glib to me.)
- Parental income is a marker for student health (what Willingham calls “stress” theories). This is the research in Paul Tough’s recent book, and Willingham devotes considerable attention to it. (But then why aren’t upper-middle class kids struggling academically, since they are arguably under a lot of stress? And why doesn’t anyone call attention to how dreadful many of the schools are that Tough describes? Having spent lots of time in schools, I find much of the urban school experience boring and dispiriting myself: cf. Haberman’s famous paper on the Pedagogy of Poverty)
- Poorer children have access to inferior schools compared to children of the more wealthy. Corollary: those schools are underfunded. (While perhaps true at the margins, there is little evidence to support this view along the whole curve. And money spent on improved schooling has not shown to be a driver in changing the curve, especially in terms of Federal dollars).
- So-called ‘good’ schools provide no more value added than ‘bad’ schools. The ‘good’ kids just start out more able and willing to do well at the thing we call school. (Seems implausible that good schools aren’t good.)
- Schooling as we conduct it is dysfunctional overall, except for a few outliers bucking centuries of tradition: it is pre-modern, fixated on grade-level content coverage rather than talent development, and is lacking in quality control of teaching, student peer pressure is stronger than school values, etc. so the ‘givens’ trump the weak interventions. (An interesting angle; again, it seems implausible that most schools, even “good” ones, have so little effect.)
- Though schools are often ineffective, they strongly resist sweeping change, due to dysfunctional politics, naivete about reform, contractual obstacles, inertia, and inadequate systems for causing effective change internally. (This seems true over the last 25 years in the face of so much reform, but given the incentive to improve schools in the face of NCLB, why would inertia trump incentive?)
- Though schools need to change and often initiate changes, they stand little likelihood of success because ‘best practice’ is rarely taught to teachers in pre-service and in-service professional development is notoriously poor; and even when PD is decent, there is far too little time and space to practice and internalize it with coaching and feedback. (Seems true, but why is PD still so poor in the face of accountability, budget crises, and knowledge about ‘best practice’?)
- Because our testing systems do not measure growth and the value added by schooling very well, we misjudge the schools’ effectiveness; the correlation of one-time scores with SES is thus beside the point. And since IQ correlates with SATs and state test scores, what is likely happening is that tests unwittingly reflect given abilities rather than genuine educational attainments. This was McClleland’s argument over 40 years ago and central to my work in authentic assessment over the years. (Plausible, but it seems like a stretch to say that the vast array of data we have and have been using for decades is completely off the mark.) A corollary here: the SES/achievement correlation may be a data trend, but people have sloppily gotten into the habit of communicating and calling it a truth.
The first 5 theories basically presume that the non-school factors are quite powerful and outweigh the good that school does. #6 – #9 say that fatalism is unwarranted, that school does matter in theory, but that there aren’t either enough good schools or enough good teachers for poor children. #10 suggests that we have been looking in all the wrong places to explain the correlation, that if we had better measures (or more precise communication about the data) the problem might be completely re-defined.
I’ll explain in a later post my own theory. (Hint: the outliers + no single theory as adequate). Meanwhile, do you have a theory or combination of the 10 factors for a sensible and thorough explanation for the correlation of parental income and achievement? Let’s hear it! Try not to cherry-pick or rationalize ad hoc a pre-existing belief. Clearly, no single theory has been useful so far in greatly improving education nationally, so any theory that is likely to be useful moving forward is going to have to address most of these issues, not just one.
PS: A week after I posted this, the NAEP Governing Board released a report in which SES is to get re-defined and better identified.
PPS: As mentioned above, I have since found a great site for looking at SES vs. Reading in an interactive graph here. Here is their graph for NY State, including NY City schools. Note that there are over 3 dozen genuine outliers:
FURTHER: A few months after I wrote this post, the following explanation appeared in the NY Times, written by Stanford Professor Sean Reardon. | <urn:uuid:246492eb-7f80-49f0-8aa7-50541c430183> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/the-odd-correlation-between-ses-and-achievement-why-havent-more-critical-questions-been-asked-a-call-to-action/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958924 | 3,950 | 2.40625 | 2 |
A pneumatic cannon uses a pulse of compressed air to launch objects wedged into the end of a long tube.
Border agents spotted 33 cans full of pot worth, an estimated $43,000, near the where the Colorado river meets the border, and later said they think the smugglers had developed a cannon to launch the dope. Mexican authorities were not able to find any evidence on their side of the border.
Drug smugglers have always been somewhat adaptive to the pursuits of federal authorities wishing to stem the flow of drugs into the country.
Ian Fortey of Cracked.com did a great list a few years back which diagrammed a few of the more wild schemes smugglers have used to get contraband into the country — mini-submarines, coffins, even a seven-pound statue of Jesus have been used to transport illicit drugs. | <urn:uuid:55ed3ab3-956b-43fa-b42f-41a829a72f3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/drug-smugglers-may-have-developed-pot-cannon-to-shoot-dope-over-border-2012-12?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967557 | 172 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Paraffin waxes sold by CEPSA are divided into three groups:
Paraffin waxes are also called macro-crystalline, i.e. they have a structure formed by large and well formed crystals, which give rise to their main characteristics: excellent insulating properties, crystalline nature, rigidity and narrow congealing point range.
CEPSA sells paraffin waxes with congealing points of between 50º and 70ºC under the brands CEPSA LUBRIPAR®, in the case of non-hydrotreated paraffin wax and CEPSA PARASUR® in the case of food grade paraffin wax.
By means of the hydrotreating process, any odour or substance harmful for people or animals is eliminated, obtaining a pure and white paraffin. Paraffins treated in this way are suitable for food use (in contact with foodstuffs) and foodstuff use (forming part of them).
They are used in manufacturing candles, waxed paper, adhesives and hundreds of other applications.
Molecules that give rise to small, irregular crystals are predominant in these, producing a relatively high congealing point, high flexibility and adhesion.
Microcrystalline waxes are sold under the brand CEPSA CERASUR®. They are hydrotreated waxes and therefore suitable for food and foodstuff use and for the cosmetic industry, among others.
They have oil contents above 30% and congealing point ranges between 30º and 70º C. They are sold under the brand CEPSA PARES® and are especially used to produce emulsions and in the fertiliser industry. | <urn:uuid:66fb6def-ef2d-4cbc-8e40-0cfa628c2dac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cepsa.com/cepsa/Products_and_Services/Base_Oils_and_Paraffin_wax/Paraffin__Products_and_packing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919407 | 351 | 1.804688 | 2 |
And Adam Knew Eve
"The biblical Hebrews, given God's commandment to 'be fruitful and multiply' (Gen. 1:28), had what Drorah O'Donnell Setel has alliteratively called a 'preoccupation with procreation.' That's why many of the stories and other passages in the Bible involve sex, and why many of these, unheard of in sermons and Sunday school lessons, remain little known among laity.
"The purpose of And Adam Knew Eve is to inform as well as hopefully to entertain, by gathering from the biblical text all sexually related stories, concepts, and laws, and presenting them, concisely but with attention to context, in convenient dictionary form. Sexually related material comprises overall such a significant portion of scripture that some knowledge of it is essential both in appreciating the Bible as a whole and in understanding the difference in attitude toward sex to be found between the Old and New Testaments.
"It is hoped that And Adam Knew Eve will also help better acquaint the general reader with the problem that biblical interpreters--in particular feminist scholars--face in the sometimes physically abusive treatment of women under the patriarchal system that so controlled women's lives, sexually and otherwise, in the biblical world."--from the Preface
In addition to the 85 full entries, And Adam Knew Eve includes extensive cross references, bibliography, subject and scripture indexes, and 16 reproductions of art by Blake, Steen, and others.
To order within the U.S., send a check for $17.95 (Florida residents add 6% sales tax), plus $2.50 for shipping, total $20.45, to Hodge & Braddock, Publishers, P.O. Box 1894, Palatka, FL 32178. Books are shipped within 24 hours.
To order from outside the U.S., send a check (in U.S. dollars drawn on a U.S. bank) for $17.95 plus first-class international shipping (Canada $10.50; Mexico $15.00; South America, Australia, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Japan and Far East $20.00; for other geographical areas, or to order more than one book, contact "hobrad at bellsouth dot net" for a quote), to Hodge & Braddock, Publishers, P.O. Box 1894, Palatka, FL 32178 U.S.A.
Want to sample And Adam Knew Eve? Click here to view the online edition (without illustrations).
And Adam Knew Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible
by Ronald L. Ecker
Hodge & Braddock, 1995
illustrations, bibliography, and indexes
ISBN 0-9636512-4-2 (cloth)
list price $17.95
Back to Hodge & Braddock | The Ron Ecker Home Page | <urn:uuid:c484bab7-95bf-44e1-b023-2ef7572883e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hodgeandbraddock.com/andhb.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901498 | 604 | 2.234375 | 2 |
John Kerry has launched a bizarre attack against President Bush, making public a letter he wrote to the President which says:
As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our nation’s history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So, it has been hard to believe that you would choose to reopen these wounds for your personal political gain. But, that is what you have chosen to do.
Kerry elaborated on this attack by appearing with his talisman, Max Cleland, at a press conference where Kerry said that the president “decided once again to take the low road of American politics. Saxby Chambliss, on the part of the president and his henchmen, decided today to question my commitment to the defense of our nation.”
It’s hard to know where to begin. John Kerry has not appeared in public on a single occasion in this millenium without mentioning his four-month service in Vietnam, so it is hardly unfair to inquire as to what he has done, with respect to that conflict and others, since leaving Vietnam in 1969. For a man who falsely accused his fellow soldiers of committing mass war crimes and atrocities to now accuse the President–who has, actually, never mentioned the subject–of “reopening old wounds” constitutes chutzpah of a record-setting variety.
Looking on the bright side, it is obvious that the Democrats believe, presumably on the basis of poll data, that Kerry’s thirty-year record of anti-American, anti-military, anti-freedom activism cannot withstand scrutiny. I think they’re right. Bear in mind that Kerry’s talisman, Max Cleland, is a former Senator, having been defeated in his bid for re-election, and rightly so, on the basis of a national security record that was nowhere near as bad as Kerry’s. | <urn:uuid:934871d9-5c5b-4e67-8247-443975af0279> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2004/02/005954.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982284 | 392 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Who loves coffee? We have good news!! Drinking coffee every day reduces by 40% the risk of developing brain cancer than the people who don’t drink coffee.
Archive for the ‘Coffe’ Category
The story begins, like all great legends, in a stormy night in winter of 1942. Joe Sheridan worked as a chef at Foynes Airbase in Limerick, Ireland, when he received a phone as a plane traveling from Foynes to New York was diverted because of weather, and passengers were returning after 5 hours in [...]
The Benefits of Drinking Coffee Organic, high-quality coffee has been shown to provide some health benefits. Antioxidants – Organic Coffee is full of antioxidants which help reduce oxidation, cell damage, and aging. | <urn:uuid:ef900cf8-7dff-4bdb-a25c-e4a55e31fd77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myorganicrecipes.com/category/drinks/coffe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967835 | 158 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Companies with Bizcraft Outperform Those Without
NBAA and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) today welcomed the release of a new study that indicates companies using business aviation outperform those without aircraft. “A business airplane is the sign of a well managed company, because business aviation helps companies of all sizes be more efficient, productive and competitive,” NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen said. “It’s no surprise that America’s best-performing and most-admired companies rely on business aviation to provide concrete and unique competitive benefits that are reflected in shareholder and enterprise value,” added GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce. The study examined how S&P 500-listed companies performed in revenue growth, profit growth and asset efficiency from 2003 through 2008, the most recent six-year period for which complete data was available. Business aircraft use was then tied to key enterprise drivers outlined in the study. According to the Nexa study conclusions, “Business aircraft users had a dominant presence, on average of 92 percent, among the most innovative, most admired, best brands and best places to work, as well as dominating the list of companies strongest in corporate governance and responsibility.” The report also found that business aviation alone is the only asset capable of accelerating strategic transactions and therefore providing a competitive edge to top-performing companies. | <urn:uuid:33cfc60b-8b48-4ec6-87d9-b77757ffbf01> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ainonline.com/aviation-news/ainalerts/2009-09-24/companies-bizcraft-outperform-those-without | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95366 | 282 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Docs Miss Alcohol Abuse -- Almost Always
The study could just as easily have come to the same conclusion about all physicians, not just those in primary care, according to Sam Cullison, MD, a Seattle family physician who's also a specialist in addiction medicine. He agrees that more training in addiction and substance abuse is desirable, but he tells WebMD the study's recommendation that doctors be held liable for missing such a diagnosis a "crazy" attempt at punishing physicians.
Cullison, a clinical associate professor of family medicine in a residency program affiliated with the University of Washington School of Medicine, says that if a patient came in for a sore throat, Cullison wouldn't necessarily ask questions about alcohol or drugs unless there were obvious signs -- such as alcohol on one's breath or a deviated septum from cocaine use. However, substance abuse and addiction questions would come up in detail on an annual physical. | <urn:uuid:29772895-9fd9-40ff-a5a9-658c77b15bef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/alcohol-abuse/news/20000510/docs-miss-alcohol-abuse----almost-always?page=2 | 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 | 0.968173 | 184 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Iranian Nuclear Program Used as Lure in Flash-based Targeted Attacks
A new targeted email attack is exploiting interest in the Iranian nuclear program to trick people into opening booby-trapped Word documents that exploit a known Flash Player vulnerability to install malware.
"There seems to be a new campaign underway using this new CVE-2012-0754 exploit," said independent security researcher Mila Parkour in a blog post on Monday. The exploit is triggered when Flash Player tries to read a maliciously crafted MP4 file.
The rogue emails contain an attachment called "Iran's Oil and Nuclear Situation.doc," that has malicious Flash content embedded inside. When the Word document is opened, Flash Player tries to download and play a malformed MP4 file, which triggers a memory corruption and gives the exploit arbitrary code-execution ability on the machine.
The exploit is designed to drop and install a computer Trojan detected by some antivirus products as Graftor or Yayih.A, Parkour said. "If you are tracking APT [advanced persistent threats], you are likely to recognize this trojan."
At the time of Parkour's report, the malware had a low detection rate on VirusTotal, with only seven out of the 43 antivirus engines used by the service flagging it as malicious. The detection rate has increased to 21 out of 43 since then.
Advanced persistent threats were a hot topic at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, with many industry experts discussing the dangers of targeted attacks that often result in the loss of intellectual property and trade secrets.
Unfortunately, these attacks still work because most organizations are slow when it comes to deploying software security updates. Adobe Systems has patched CVE-2012-0754 in Flash Player 184.108.40.206, which was released on Feb. 15, but attacks leveraging this vulnerability are still going on.
Adobe is currently working on adding sandbox support to Flash Player, a type of technology that will make it significantly harder to execute arbitrary code on systems even if a vulnerability like CVE-2012-0754 is exploited.
However, cybercriminals will probably start targeting other popular programs when that happens. A few years ago the most common exploits used in zero-day attacks were PDF-based, but now Flash Player is the primary target, said Secunia Chief Security Specialist Carsten Eiram at the RSA conference last Thursday.
The release of Adobe Reader 10, which is sandboxed by default, might have influenced this, but there are many other popular products out there. "Maybe Java will be next," Eiram said.
The tense situation surrounding Iran's nuclear program is a particularly important topic for people working in the defense industry. The fact that it was used as a lure in this attack could suggest that defense industry employees were among the potential targets. | <urn:uuid:89598310-b77e-4a99-b071-e4229e430e6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcworld.com/article/251381/iranian_nuclear_program_used_as_lure_in_flashbased_targeted_attacks.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960868 | 577 | 1.523438 | 2 |
April 24, 2009
At one of the most prestigious national institutions in Paris the post-graffiti collection of architect and lover of “l’art sauvage” Alain-Dominique Gallizia is on view in a newly restored hall. We visited TAG au Grand Palais to check it out.
150 international graffiti writers and artists are part of Gallizia’s collection, which he started in 2006. As an architect he realized that with graffiti, the architects were no longer the only “artistes de la rue.” He began to invite graffiti writers into his studio to paint canvases for him, as he felt the need to preserve the beauty of graffiti art from its ephemeral fate on the street. Friends with Henry Chalfant, he was introduced to all the greats, from graffiti’s early- and heydays to contemporary kings from the US to France to Brazil.
Chalfant wrote the introduction to the exhibition, calling it “a historical document of the cultural movement that has arisen out of graffiti” and a “panorama of this international art movement.” But what we really encounter in the exhibition is not so much an historical document but a who’s who of graff from the pioneers onward.
Gallizia commissioned the artists to paint for him, but had “chosen to provide a conceptual framework within which the works [were] to be created”, imposing a format within which the artists had to work. Each work is the same size, made of two panels, the left panel devoted to the “TAG”, and the right panel the artist’s interpretation of “LOVE”.
Far from being limiting, this narrow theme and restricted, uniform format ordered the exhibition and downplayed elements of graffiti such as its competitive aspects, its varying forms, its role in the urban environment—instead we were left with 150 intimate portraits of the artists themselves. The abstraction of LOVE brings about highly personal interpretations and it was truly fascinating to see how the artists reacted to it.
The exhibition is organized chronologically to appeal to our sense history and forbears in graffiti, starting with Cornbread on top—”I LOVE Philly” of course, and Taki 183 (who makes no distinction between the TAG and the LOVE panels..), StayHigh 149 and Coco 144:
One Response to “TAG au Grand Palais”
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There is no doubt that a lot of emphasis is placed on leadership qualities today. However, this is nothing new. If my school history lessons were anything to go by it seems that it is the leaders that we learn most about. Many people believe that the world is divided into two types of people, the leaders and the followers. I don?t agree with this statement to be honest as I think that everyone has some sort of leadership ability that can be realized with some guidance and coaching.
To help explain what I mean I go back to my school days again. There seemed to be a general feeling amongst our staff that everyone should aspire to be a leader in whatever field we decided to follow for a career. The leadership skills needed vary greatly depending on what it was that we wanted to be when we grew up.
I think the greatest myth was that a bossy person was exhibiting leadership skills if they had the power to tell others what to do and their orders would be obeyed. There were a number of students like this but I never saw their ability as a sign of great leadership, more a definite sign of bullying. It is true that some of the great leaders of our time have been close to being bullies but that is not a leadership quality that I aspired to.
I seriously think that one of the greatest leadership qualities to have is that of leading by example. This doesn?t mean that you try to do everything yourself but guide those around you to perform the same task that you are. This was most aptly demonstrated in sports teams. The team captain had to be able to encourage the rest of her team to get the very best out of them and would lead by example in such a way that the rest of the team respected and valued her leadership. The cross country running captain, for example, would encourage the rest of the squad to keep up with her but also know when to fall back and let another take the lead. This highlighted another leadership quality that I believe is important and that is selflessness. If you are a worthy leader then you are able to step back and encourage another to take the lead. You have to be able to let someone else in your team, no matter what arena it is in, work or school, to shine. One of the most important leadership skills is to recognize the strengths of the people around you.
So, I would not think of an army sergeant who barks orders at his soldiers as being a strong leader but the General who actually gets involved with his army and does not sit back and take all the glory does show the leadership qualities that I most admire. The most admirable and effective leadership qualities are those that command respect and trust while being able to get the best out of those that you are leading.
About the Author: Heather Folsom is a leadership expert at http://www.teamleaderships.com . She is the lead columnist of the site, and has great insight into what makes effective leaders. | <urn:uuid:70688da6-5978-425a-8ec3-cc3eb54428c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.roseindia.net/articles/leadership-qualities-leadership.page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988459 | 599 | 2.5 | 2 |
Why was the Platonic year named after Plato?
The Platonic Year was named after Plato because of his conviction of the intimate relationship between space and time. Plato believed that the heavens were "designed" by God for the measurement of time. In his view of the solar system, Plato placed the Moon, the Sun and the planets in "whorls" around the Earth which orbited at different rates. He called one complete cycle of the bodies in this configuration a Perfect Year. Estimates of a Perfect Year's length are a few hundred thousand years.
Though some of Plato's ideas concerning the solar system are now known to be incorrect, the Earth does complete one long cycle on timescales comparable to the (non-existent) Perfect Year. Because of the precession of the Earth's spin, the direction along which the Earth's axis of rotation is aligned drifts among the stars, completing one round in about thirty thousand years. This cycle has been named the Platonic year in honor of Plato's revolutionary ideas.
For more information about Plato's astronomy and the Platonic year, check out this link.
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With the curent anti-patent climate running through the media like a bad cold, it's not often that defenders of software patents take a stand and swat at some of the piffle being promoted by activist groups and other anti-software patent organizations. It's almost impossible to read any press coverage on software patent disputes that doesn't include obligatory language from an activist explaining that the mere fact that these disputes exist are proof positive that "the patent system is broken."
In a refreshing twist, John Keit from Chadbourne & Park published a timely and well-written op-ed piece in Business Week, titled "Give Software Patents a Break." From the article:
Unlike the relatively high regard given hardware patents, the view of software as substandard intellectual property is misguided and potentially harmful to inventors and entrepreneurs. By weakening this alleged barrier to innovation and competition, these detractors are hurting the very underdogs they aim to empower. In reality, smart patent lawyers will always find ways to protect software innovations for well-heeled corporations. But startups that can't afford the legal expertise will have less incentive to invest in intellectual property if it can't be guarded with a strong patent.
The bad news is that this drive against software patents may make them more expensive to obtain. The good news is that this effort is destined to fail.
One needs to understand that there is fundamentally no difference between software and hardware; each is frequently expressed in terms of the other, interchangeably describing the same thing. For example, many microprocessors are conceptualized as software through the use of hardware description languages (HDL) such as Bluespec System Verilog and VHDL. The resulting HDL software code is downloaded to special microprocessors known as FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), which can mimic a prospective chip's design and functions for testing. Eventually, the HDL code may be physically etched into silicon. Voilà! The software becomes hardware.
Nevertheless, anti-patent sentiment has become such a common theme in tech circles like Slashdot.com that the mere mention of the word "patent" sends readers into a Fred Flintstone fit ("bet, Bet, BET!") extolling their evils. This is a neurotic reaction to patent law.
Read the article in its entirety here (link)
Oddly enough, Slashdot has been eerily silent on this (link) | <urn:uuid:ee344a71-e380-4375-8db0-849308e1bbf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://271patent.blogspot.com/2007/11/giving-software-patents-break.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950304 | 492 | 1.851563 | 2 |
In TechRepublic discussions about the virtues of Linux vs. Windows, Linux enthusiasts love to point out that their OS is much more secure. They complain that Windows and its applications are full of bugs and poorly written code and that Windows is more susceptible to viruses.
Of course, administrators who work primarily with Windows take exception to these arguments. They believe that Windows can be secured just as well as any other operating system and that Windows is simply targeted more often because its use is so widespread.
One way to get to the bottom of this dispute is to look at the numbers. In this case, let’s examine the statistics on discovered vulnerabilities tracked by Security Focus Bugtraq. One word of warning: These numbers may just surprise you.
Buqtraq vulnerabilities 2001
Table A shows a cumulative list of vulnerabilities discovered so far in 2001.
Buqtraq vulnerabilities 2000
Table B shows the 2000 vulnerabilities listed by the same source.
The bottom line
As these numbers illustrate, Windows NT 4.0 was the leader in bugs identified during 2000. But Linux was not far behind. And in 2001, Windows 2000 has stabilized a bit and is actually running in the middle of the pack. One logistical note: It wouldn’t be fair to add those Linux bug numbers together—most are the same bugs across every platform. However, the conclusion here is that there is obviously a comparable number of security problems with the various flavors of Linux, as well as Sun’s Solaris, as there are with Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
Ultimately, with the vast number of individuals and businesses using Microsoft software, any flaws in the Redmond product are magnified because of their sheer impact. All this doesn’t mean that I don’t like Linux or that I’m a champion of Bill Gates and his Microsoft cronies. But I believe that simply because of its vast market share, Microsoft should be feeling a tremendous responsibility to make certain that its software isn’t just profitable. It should also be as secure as it can be made because any problems will have such a huge impact. Unfortunately, the Redmond giant doesn’t appear to feel that responsibility.
Microsoft should continue to have its feet held to the fire when a mistake is found. Conversely, Linux bugs will continue to be minor news unless that OS gains a larger share of the world’s computers and thus seriously impedes the work of many businesses and consumers.
What do you think about these numbers?
We look forward to getting your input and hearing about your experiences regarding this topic. Join the discussion below or send the editor an e-mail. | <urn:uuid:0dcc22c2-b598-4fe8-ab4f-728c5c58b7ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lock-it-down-by-the-numbers-comparing-windows-security-to-linux/1032480 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951997 | 539 | 2.265625 | 2 |
My Name is Asher Lev
full title · My Name is Asher Lev
author · Chaim Potok
type of work · Novel
genre · Bildungsroman
language · English
time and place written · Early 1970s, America
date of first publication · 1972
publisher · Alfred A. Knopf
narrator · Asher Lev
point of view · Asher Lev, in his mid-twenties, writes his recollections of his life and development up to that point. We see the world through Lev's eyes.
tone · Since Asher is writing the book, he is very understanding to himself and sympathetic to the way he felt. Mostly, he is trying to explain how he has developed and give a voice to why he has acted as he did.
tense · Past
settings (time) · 1943–mid 1970s
settings (place) · Brooklyn, Manhattan, Florence, Rome, Paris
protagonist · Asher Lev
major conflict · Asher Lev has an intense desire to paint. This often comes into conflict with the Ladover Hasidic community in which he has been raised.
rising action · Asher studies art with the non-observant Jacob Kahn, Asher moves to Paris to study there, Asher paints a picture of his mother in a crucifixion scene.
climax · Asher's parents see his crucifix paintings
falling action · Asher's parents distance themselves, Rebbe asks Asher to leave the community
themes · The conflict between art and community
motifs · Travel, unfinished work
symbols · Earlocks, the Rebbe, Asher's mythic ancestor
foreshadowing · On the plane to Paris, Asher alters the Pietà. This foreshadows his later artistic creation in which he further alters the form of the crucifixion, using it to depict his family.
Readers' Notes allow users to add their own analysis and insights to our SparkNotes—and to discuss those ideas with one another. Have a novel take or think we left something out? Add a Readers' Note! | <urn:uuid:649136b0-8393-48f4-9778-37e1c8357f62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/asher/facts.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935557 | 439 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Friday, March 12, 2010
first tests building a selective laser sintering printer: part 3
This is just a quick post, but I thought I'd post some progress:
The ball-joint system that I'd thought up for the pan-tilt mirror in [part2] was a bit haphazard and didn't work very well, so I decided to rethink the whole thing. A gimble would be idea, but placing the steppers right on the gimble axes wouldn't yield a workable resolution, and would need some gearing to make it work. To keep things simple, I wanted to figure out a way to use lead screws (to get that extra precision), without having to worry about printing some gears out.
I was trying to think of a simple system that would allow you to use a lead screw with a gimble, but there are tricky issues where the motor itself would need to pivot. I left the idea with my dad for a week (especially so I wouldn't be tempted to work on it instead of my thesis), and I'm pretty impressed with what he made. There's still some backlash in the nuts, and ideally you could use even smaller steppers (or, servos, if you could find some really tiny, really high resolution ones), but I think it'll work just great for testing!
Right now I'm tinkering with ideas for how fresh material will be delivered over the build chamber. I'm thinking simple, inexpensive, and easy to make... make your mistakes cheaply, after all...
this last one is a 2 second exposure, where the simple square that i coded into the dsPIC controller can be seen (though it's a little blurry). The test square is about 100 steps on a side, and that translates to about 1cm of travel from about 10-15cm high -- so if the mirror assembly is around 5-10cm up, there should (hopefully) be plenty of resolution for the ~1 inch diameter build chamber.
(ps -- still no luck on finding inexpensive thermoplastic powder, the consistancy of flour. happy to hear thoughts on this that haven't already been covered in the past couple posts).
thanks for reading :)
The way I have seen laser stearing done (admitdly not for this particular app) is using:-
2. Microstepping steppers with the mirrors/prisms glued straight onto the stepper shaft. One for X and One for Y. The beam being steared for diaplay purposes (laser lighting effects)
3. Speed regulated motors running continuously witht the mirrors/prisms glued direct to the motor shaft. One for X and One for Y The beam was modulated and synced to the motion to raster scan a target area.
Don't know if this is of any help or not.
PS with the stepper drives the shafts were milled flat enough so that the reflecting surface of the mirror was bang on (orpretty close to) the axis of the shaft.
d taking a deodourant stick apart. Mine had a rod smaller than M8.
@pallepirat: thanks for the link! it's really neat to see that setup. i would like to use off the shelf parts as much as possible, so unfortunately i don't think making galvanometers is going to be an ideal solution. :)
@vik: maybe brown sugar, if its really powdered and really dry so there's no clumping... it has to be dark to efficiently absorb the laser beam, remember? ;)
@deodorant sticks :) : that's a neat idea, but i think they'd be a bit flimsy, and the screw would be all the way up the build chamber, in the middle of where you're trying to build! i've actually replaced the piece of pipe i was using as a screw with a long bolt, so there's lots more travel on the chamber table and it's just generally a bit nicer to work with. I think the build chamber should be about ~30mm dia by about the same in height right now, which is plenty for a test! :)
right now I'm trying to think of different methods to get the powder onto the build chamber -- coming up with a powder feed mechanism. typically folks use two chambers -- one that indexes down where you build, and one that indexes up with new material. they will then use a roller to roll material from the supply chamber, to the build chamber. i'm trying to think of a simpler way though, maybe something with a feeder...
Laser toner is basically plastic + colour.
There is some health risks usig such fine powder
... i've made some tests with sil-rock-spheres from sil-trade: http://www.sil-trade.de/www/index.php?id=18
That are mostly uniform spheres of molten granite around 0.1mm in size.
With a 2Watt-Laser @1070nm focussed to 30 microns i evaporated them and they recondensed to even smaller spheres ... a 1Watt-diodelaser @808nm melted them when focussed to 0.06mm, but hadn't enough power to fuse the droplets with the base.
Now i have 5Watt-diode-lasers @975nm i can control from 0.4 to 5 Watts, so this could be a good option for a restart.
A good material for fusing experiments could be toner from laser-printers or copiers ...
That sounds interesting. Where are you picking up these lasers? I'm looking around for a laser to see what I can find, and while I've been looking in the 250mw range, I keep seeing lots of 1000mw 808nm diodes on ebay, and I figure these would probably have a chance of being able to fuse both black and (potentially) white plastic material too. The tricky part is that they're just bare diodes, and I'd have to build a collimating and focusing system around them, too (and, it'd be nice if it was just all one unit).
In my first post about the SLS printer I mentioned how we'd tried to use both laser printer toner and a few different kinds of powder coatings, but the test pieces were *very* brittle when we took them out. I'm guessing it's because the mixtures are only part polymer, and there's a lot of carbon and other things in them (including flow agents, in the powder coating case) that make them good for their particular applications where thin films are required, but probably not particularly good where you're trying to build something large and solid out of them.
Links to this post: | <urn:uuid:101267ad-23ea-4ca1-9858-078f7e021ad1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://builders.reprap.org/2010/03/first-tests-building-selective-laser.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962344 | 1,399 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Volume three of the Storyteller Trilogy
by Sue Harrison
Centuries ago in a land of ice and fire, a chosen child is born and taught the sacred legends of his ancient people.
When Yikaas is nearly a man, he allows privilege and the deference of others to fill him with false ideas of his own importance. His teacher, an old woman, comes to realize that his vanity will soon displace the wisdom she has entrusted to him. So she challenges Yikaas to join her in a perilous journey across the North Sea to the land of his ancestors.
In an ancient traders’ village, Yikaas hears the stories and tales of the First Men. The tales of one young woman in particular Daughter – speak to his heart and call him from the confines of his own selfishness into the mysteries of love and the magic of stories.
Intertwining the stories of Yikaas and Daughter, Sue Harrison returns her readers to the characters they grew to love in the first two books of The Storyteller Trilogy. Chakliux has become the leader of a great village where he and his wife Aqamdax are honored storytellers. Peace has reigned since the wicked K’os was banished to live as a slave to the First Men.
But then the North Sea brings K’os an incredible gift – a weapon that will rescue her from slavery and restore her power over the River People.
Based on the Sedna legends of the Inuit, Call Down the Stars is not only a study of the storyteller’s art, but also the tension-filled chronicle of a battle between good and evil, where love becomes the pawn of revenge, and forgiveness is the only weapon Chakliux has to ensure the survival of his people.
The release date for Call Down the Stars is November 8, 2001. | <urn:uuid:3b37fcd6-de20-4986-a746-0c6933a4883a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sueharrison.com/books/the-storyteller-trilogy/call-down-the-stars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970352 | 382 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Serving up all the latest food news, cool foodie products, gossip, and good deals that are fit to print!
Swiss Government Bans Spider Venom Pizza
What do you normally put on top of your pizza? Perhaps pepperoni? Maybe, if you're a little adventurous, you might go for anchovies. But what about spider venom? We didn't think so, and neither does the Swiss government.
Health officials shut down the Avanti pizza shop in Zurich, Switzerland, for selling pizza with poison. The pizza topped with the deadly venom of spiders, scorpions, and snakes, was invented by owner Ismail Ertekin, who believes the poison has homeopathic healing powers and is a way for arachnophobes to get over their creepy crawler fears.
Ferdinand Uehli, an Environmental Health Officer, wasn't buying it. He told the Orange News, "Medicinal products are not food stuffs and are not allowed to be an ingredient in food."
Ertekin isn't the first to sensationalize a slice. Pizza Hut in the UK recently offered a hot-dog-stuffed crust. The same chain in the Middle East stuffed its crust with cheeseburgers (after already creating a meatball-filled crust). Washington D.C.'s Bibiana prepares a black pizza made from squid ink pizza and topped with octopus salami.
Would you take a bite of venom-topped pizza? Should Switzerland's government have the right to ban it?
Find more great food content on Delish: | <urn:uuid:f313be38-566f-4da1-8416-efe0f5ada746> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.delish.com/food/recalls-reviews/swiss-government-bans-spider-venom-pizza?src=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942716 | 318 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The most important news to emerge from the Federal Reserve’s June meeting and Chairman Ben Bernanke’s Wednesday testimony before Congress is that the central bank is open to taking further action to juice the economy if the recovery remains stalled, and that the Federal Open Market Committee is divided on what to do. Another round of bond-buying, known as quantitative easing, remains unlikely and any final decision lies with the cautious Bernanke, who expressed uncertainty that the economic benefits of further stimulus would outweigh the risks. I’ll let others mull the potential efficacy of QE3 and pose a slightly different question: Does any of this matter to President Obama?
If anyone has a stake in the economic vitality of the nation, it’s Obama. Let’s go ahead and assume that the President believes the following: A second term is desirable and the economy is a significant variable in his re-election. The stalled recovery can’t be 100% explained by transitory effects or structural shortcomings. Barring extensions of a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, Congress is unlikely to enact further fiscal stimulus and the President’s hands are tied. And expansionary monetary policy has a potential to improve economic outlook.
Given those beliefs and the assumption that there’s negligible domestic political drawbacks to the enactment of further Fed action — global politics is a very different story — why wouldn’t Obama be interested in giving monetary stimulus full hearing? By that I mean: Why is Obama comfortable with leaving two long-vacant seats on the Fed’s Board of Governors to gather dust?
As the failed nomination of Peter Diamond showed, the confirmation process is not a quick or easy one. Any change would take months. But there is a plausible scenario in which a divided FOMC weighs action in the face of continued economic lethargy later this year or next. “The possibility remains that the recent economic weakness may prove more persistent than expected and that deflationary risks might reemerge, implying a need for additional policy support,” Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday. If that debate is to happen, why not lend more voice to central bankers who share Obama’s outlook? A Republican blockade to Senate confirmation might be insurmountable, but why not at least give two names for consideration?
Again, the final decision on whether or not to act monetarily ultimately falls to Bernanke. I’m sure Obama has no interest in complicating the chairman’s already delicate position atop the Federal Reserve. Pulling the trigger on QE3 would entail more risk for Bernanke, who can’t afford to have the central bank appear ineffectual, than for Obama, whose political fortunes aren’t tied to such perceptions. All the more reason why the situation is strange; the President is almost powerless to effect change in the all-important economy for the rest of his first term, if not the remainder of his presidency. Why neglect any avenue of influence, however narrow it might be? | <urn:uuid:682ce44c-f6da-4a79-b575-b76ff949a369> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://swampland.time.com/2011/07/13/the-fed-is-debating-giving-the-economy-another-jolt-does-obama-care/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945599 | 618 | 1.625 | 2 |
This text is from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which is in the public domain.
Latin writer, author of a collection of historical anecdotes, flourished in the reign of Tiberius. Nothing is known of his personal history except that his family was poor and undistinguished, and that he owed everything to Sextus Pompeius (consul A.D . 14), proconsul of Asia, whom he accompanied to the East in 27. This Pompeius was a kind of minor Maecenas, and the centre of a literary circle to which Ovid belonged; he was also the intimate of the most literary prince of the imperial family, Germanicus. The style of Valerius's writings seems to indicate that he was a professional rhetorician. In his preface he intimates that his work is in-tended as a commonplace book of historical anecdotes for use in the schools of rhetoric, where the pupils were trained in the art of embellishing speeches by references to history . According to the MSS., its title is . Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings. The stories are loosely and irregularly arranged, each book being divided into sections, and each section bearing as its title the topic, most commonly some virtue or vice, or some merit or demerit, which the stories in the section are intended to illustrate . Most of the tales are from Roman history, but each section has an appendix consisting of extracts from the annals of other peoples, principally the Greeks . The exposition exhibits strongly the two currents of feeling which are intermingled by almost every Roman writer of the empire—the feeling that the Romans of the writer's own day are degenerate creatures when confronted with their own republican predecessors, and the feeling that, however degenerate, the latter-day Romans still tower above the other peoples of the world, and in particular are morally superior to the Greeks . The author's chief sources are Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Pompeius Trogus, especially the first two .
Valerius's treatment of his material is careless and unintelligent in the extreme; but in spite of his confusions, contradictions and anachronisms, the excerpts are apt illustrations, from the rhetorician's point of view, of the circumstance or quality they were intended to illustrate . And even on the historical sides we owe something to Valerius . He often used sources now lost, and where he touches on his own time he affords us some glimpses of the much debated and very imperfectly recorded reign of Tiberius . His attitude towards the imperial household has often been misunderstood, and he has been represented as a mean flatterer of the same type with Martial . But, if the references to the imperial administration be carefully scanned, they will be seen to he extravagant neither in kind nor in number . Few will now grudge Tiberius, when his whole action as a ruler is taken into account, such a title as salutaris princeps, which seemed to a former generation a specimen of shameless adulation . The few allusions to Caesar's murderers and to Augustus hardly pass beyond the conventional style of the writer's day . The only passage which can fairly be called fulsome is the violently rhetorical tirade against Sejanus . But it is as a chapter in the history of the Latin language that the work of Valerius chiefly deserves study . Without it our view of the transition from classical to silver Latin would be much more imperfect than it is . In Valerius are presented to us, in a rude and palpable form, all the rhetorical tendencies of the age, unsobered by the sanity of Quintilian and unrefined by the taste and subtlety of Tacitus . Direct and simple statement is eschewed and novelty pursued at any price .
The barrier between the diction of poetry and that of prose is broken down; the uses of words are strained; monstrous metaphors are invented; there are startling contrasts, dark innuendoes and highly coloured epithets; the most unnatural variations are played upon the artificial scale of grammatical and rhetorical figures of speech . It is an instructive lesson in the history of Latin to compare minutely a passage of Valerius with its counterpart in Cicero or Livy . In the MSS. of Valerius a tenth book is given, which consists of the so-called Liber de Praenominibus, the work of some grammarian of a much later date . The collection of Valerius was much used for school purposes, and its popularity in the middle ages is attested by the large number of MSS. in which it has been preserved . Like other schoolbooks it was epitomated . One complete epitome, probably of the 4th or 5th century, bearing the name of Julius Paris, has come down to us; also a portion of another by Januarius Nepotianus . Editions by C . Halm (1865), C . Kempf (1888), contain the epitomes of Paris and Nepotianus . | <urn:uuid:1eac9a98-516d-4c93-9f11-e1e69864cbbd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.the-athenaeum.org/people/detail.php?ID=4970 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969756 | 1,030 | 3.25 | 3 |
Date: January 6, 2009
Contact: Carol Connelly, Director,
Media & Communication Services, ext. 5267, email@example.com
PNC Students Offer Martin Luther King Jr. Day Activities
Westville – Purdue University North Central Department of Education students and members of Kappa Delta Pi, the education honorary society, will commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a variety of activities for children on Monday, Jan. 19, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Michigan City Library. The event is free and open to the public.
All ages are invited, but most activities are geared for youngsters ages 2 to 12 years.
This is the second year that PNC students, under the leadership of Dr. David Pratt, associate professor of Education, have planned a day of fun, interactive learning to teach young people about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The PNC students will lead the young people in crafts, coloring, a bingo game and reading aloud. Participants will also listen to Dr. King's “I Have a Dream speech” and write about their own dream.
Pre-registration is not required.
Further information may be obtained by contacting Pratt at firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:9cdfc9bd-ddf9-4546-be54-215a7a6c49ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pnc.edu/cd/news/MLKActivities.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928962 | 263 | 1.78125 | 2 |
- OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health
- Summer 2012 - Volume 32 · Issue 3: 61-72
The purpose of this study was to examine factors that best discriminated among families based on their level of community participation when transitioning from Part C early intervention services. Data were drawn from 2,003 families enrolled in the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study and who completed a 40-minute computerized telephone interview. Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis was used to examine correlates of full and limited community participation among these families from variables representing child, family, and service factors. Two classification trees were developed that suggest difficulty in managing behavior is a significant barrier to community participation and is associated with degree of social support. Based on this association, occupational therapists could elicit information from caregivers about their strategies to manage problematic behavior during community events to identify whether families experience participation restriction. Future studies should examine whether problematic behavior restricts young children’s participation in activities other than community events.
Mary Alunkal Khetani, ScD, OTR, is Postdoctoral Associate, Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. Gael Orsmond, PhD, is Associate Professor, and Ellen Cohn, ScD, OTR, FAOTA, is Clinical Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Boston University, College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences: Sargent College, Boston, Massachusetts. Mary C. Law, PhD, FCAOT, FCAHS, OT Reg (Ontario), is Professor, School of Rehabilitation Science, and Co-Founder, CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research, McMaster University, Hamilton Ontario, Canada. Wendy Coster, PhD, OTR, FAOTA, is Professor and Chair, Department of Occupational Therapy, and Acting Chair, Department of Physical Therapy and Athletic Training, Boston University, College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Sargent College, Boston, Massachusetts.
The authors have no financial or proprietary interest in the materials presented herein.
This manuscript was accepted under the editorship of Jane Case-Smith, EdD, OTR/L, FAOTA.
Address correspondence to Mary Khetani at firstname.lastname@example.org
Received: April 22, 2011
Accepted: September 17, 2011
Posted Online: November 04, 2011 | <urn:uuid:d7552d66-71e2-420c-9f84-9462279aab75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healio.com/health-professions/journals/OTJR/%7B4504CE50-DB77-462B-893F-A7CF5F40A694%7D/Correlates-of-Community-Participation-Among-Families-Transitioning-From-Part-C-Early-Intervention-Services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916053 | 477 | 1.6875 | 2 |
National vocational education project launched in Haryana
Launching the pilot project on National Vocational Education Qualifications Framework (NVEQF) here Monday, union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal emphasised the need to change the mindset of parents to promote vocational education in the country.
"India is a country of youth. There is a need to give them such education, which may get them good employment. Parents will have to change their mindset in this regard and ensure that their children get vocational education," Sibal said.
NVEQF, an ambitious national programme to integrate skills, training and qualifications in schools, has been launched in Haryana on a pilot basis before being implemented in other states of the country.
"If someone has to work in automobiles, where is the need to teach him history? Those who want to pursue studies after schooling can do so but those wanting to work should be professionally prepared to get work," Sibal said.
He added that about 100 community colleges would soon be opened in the country for this purpose.
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said Haryana was developing into an education hub of international repute.
"New opportunities are coming up in sectors like IT, automobile, retail and security, for which there is a need to give vocational education to the youth".
"Our government is trying to mitigate the difference between need of skilled manpower of industry and educational qualification of students by imparting them vocational education," Hooda said.
NVEQF has been launched in 40 schools in eight Haryana districts, where vocational education will be imparted in four fields - automobile, retail, IT and security - to students of classes 9-12. | <urn:uuid:440ba4a5-e3bf-451f-810d-35be5c40851e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newkerala.com/news/newsplus/worldnews-74863.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972596 | 349 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Letter to the Editor: Maybe Vouchers Failed, But They Aren't Going Away
Teacher Steven Singer suggests voting out legislators who vote against public education.
“Almost.” It’s a scary word sometimes.
Like when you put freshly brewed coffee too close to the edge and it ALMOST spills over ...
Like when you’re running late to work, gun that yellow light and ALMOST get clipped by an oncoming minivan ...
Like when your tiny toddler teeters at the top of the steps and ALMOST tumbles down ...
At times like these, ALMOST is both a terror and a relief.
That’s how all of Pennsylvania feels now that our state legislators ALMOST passed a bill to enact school vouchers and expand charter schools.
We feel sick that it ALMOST happened, yet relieved that in the end common sense prevailed. Vouchers failed to muster enough support to make it to the floor, and later, a score of Republicans sided with nearly all House Democrats against a school-reform measure by a vote of 105-90.
Had it been passed, it would have further crippled our public schools still reeling from $860 million in unnecessary budget cuts.
This bill would have been nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy for religious, parochial and charter schools. It would have traded the unmistakable educational gains public school students are making throughout the state for unproven or failing programs.
For example, take cyber charter schools, which would have been rubber stamped for approval across Pennsylvania without any say by local residents had Governor Corbett gotten his wish. Only two of the 12 cyber charter schools operating in PA made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) last year. Compare that with 500 public school districts of which 83 percent made AYP in 2010 according to the state Department of Education. Such a measure would trade success for failure.
Moreover, cyber schools boost profits by shortchanging kids on costs. About 30,000 PA students are enrolled in online schools at an average cost of about $10,000 per student. That is double or more what it costs the companies to educate those children online, according to the state auditor general Jack Wagner. After all, how much does it really cost to plop a kid in front of a computer compared with actually having people and facilities to educate them? However, this is seen as a positive for the business-minded because it translates into massive profits. It’s extremely unfair for the taxpayer to be paying for additional expenses, such as advertising and lobbying state officials—initiatives our public schools can’t legally do.
Brick-and-mortar charter schools fare a little better with 71 percent making AYP in 2010. However, that is not a success compared with the much larger portion of students in public schools getting a better education. It is important to note that the average annual administrative expenditure per student for charter schools is DOUBLE the cost of traditional public schools. In other words, charters of all stripes spend much more to run the business and advertise but much less on actually educating the kids. Replacing educational institutions that place kids first for those who put profits first would have been criminal.
As for parochial and religious schools, it’s hard to make a comparison because they aren’t required to take these same state tests or held to any open records or financial accountability laws. However, voucher schemes have been tried throughout the country and every one has failed to show an improvement in students’ education. Why would you replace something that’s working with something that’s completely unproven?
If legislators are really concerned with helping students, they should focus on measures that have been proven to be successful—early childhood education, safe and secure schools, and individualized attention through smaller class sizes and programs like tutoring and community supports. Lawmakers truly concerned about the kids should reverse this year’s unconscionable funding formula that reduces state aid to the poorest schools while hardly altering funding to the wealthiest districts.
In short, Governor Corbett’s educational “reform” plan would have been disastrous, and legislators know it. Constituents made their disapproval plain in hundreds of thousand of phone calls, emails, letters, protests and even public opinion polls finding more than two-thirds of Pennsylvanians against the measure.
Only the most tone deaf lawmakers could ignore such an outcry. It’s unfortunate that our local GOP representatives could not hear voters cries. Reps. Rick Saccone (R-Jefferson Hills), George Dunbar (R-North Huntingdon), Eli Evankovich (R-Export), Mark Mustio (R-Moon) and Randy Vulakovich (R-Fox Chapel) all voted in lockstep with the governor. (State senators Jane Orie (R-McCandless) and Kim Ward (R-Greensburg) supported a similar Senate bill.)
If it weren’t for the Democrats and those 20 free-thinking Republicans who proved they weren’t beholden to anyone else’s political agenda, we wouldn’t be celebrating common sense today. We’d be mourning another hammer blow to our kids’ educations. It’s a pity that there are still politicians who put special interests' campaign contributions and radical ideology before what’s good for kids.
Perhaps our local GOP representatives who are too cowardly to stand up for what’s right need a more unmistakeable message. Let them know you’ve had enough of partisan posturing that goes against facts and simple logic. This election day, show these hearing-impaired politicians what your voice sounds like—vote them out!
Do you agree or disagree with this Patch reader? Send letters to firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:6dc44c33-7616-4e81-af66-ab6a98844f8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://peters.patch.com/articles/letter-to-the-editor-maybe-vouchers-failed-but-they-aren-t-going-away-58bce71f | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957835 | 1,209 | 1.585938 | 2 |
STEMCELL Technologies STEMcircles is a virus-free technique used for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells.
STEMcircles involves introducing reprogramming factors to cells using tiny
circles of DNA. Unlike other techniques, this method, which is based on
standard molecular biology practices, does not use viruses to introduce
genes into the cells. Instead these DNA minicircles do not integrate into
the genome and are naturally lost as the cells divide, overcoming some the
safety concerns associated with current reprogramming methods.
The technique works because the vector contains the minimal DNA sequences
necessary for reprogramming. Unlike the larger, more commonly used DNA
plasmids, the minicircles contain no bacterial plasmid backbone DNA and as
such are able to evade silencing mechanisms that cells naturally use against
foreign DNA. The result is more robust gene expression, and superior
reprogramming over that of regular DNA plasmids.
This Product is made by:
STEMCELL Technologies is committed to supporting stem cell and many other
areas of life science research worldwide by providing enabling research
tools that are innovative, timely and of consistently high quality.
STEMCELL's specialized media and cell separation products are available for
a wide range of research applications, and are complemented by a diverse
array of cytokines, antibodies, tissue culture reagents, as well as services
including contract assays, proficiency testing, and training. | <urn:uuid:208e2752-b1e9-406f-ba11-86870b3afb16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biotechniques.com/biomarket/newproducts/STEMcircles/biotechniques-299531.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916515 | 307 | 2.34375 | 2 |
The current economic situation has certainly reduced the financing prospects of a good number of big ideas, but that doesn't mean the development of innovative businesses and technologies should (or will) grind to a halt. Obviously, though, starting up during a boom is a bit different than bootstrapping during a recession. But that just means more garage startups get created in actual garages -- focused on creating truly valuable services and technology.
So what kind of big ideas are possible to develop during a recession? How can government help (or hinder) economic growth under the current financial conditions? What kinds of technology revolutions may be primed to go right now -- and what can help give them a boost? What areas of business are thriving currently and are poised to continue to grow even when the economy recovers? How do companies plan for long-term growth and avoid pessimistic short-term thinking?
Microsoft People Ready Business is sponsoring this case to create interesting discussions at BigThink's section on Navigating Today's Economy. We're looking for unique perspectives that will inspire further conversations, and selected insights will be published on BigThink.com. | <urn:uuid:fedeb26e-147c-4a17-9391-aee619cc2dbc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=recession | 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 | 0.946755 | 223 | 1.875 | 2 |
- In 1890, Louisiana passed a law imposing mandatory segregation of train passengers by race.
- In opposition, a group of individuals formed the Committee of Citizens and recruited Homer Plessy to challenge the constitutionality of the law.
- Of note, Homer Plessy was one-eighth black and seven-eighth white. With fair complexion, he could easily pass for a white person with ease.
- On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad from New Orleans to Covington. As planned, he took a seat in the "whites-only"
car. When the conductor came to collect his ticket, Plessy informed him of his racial status. He was therefore directed to vacate his seat and move to the "coloreds-
only" car. Plessy was immediately arrested when he refused.
- The judge who heard Plessy's case was John Howard Ferguson.
- Plessy's attorney argued that Plessy's arrest had violated his rights as provided by the Thirteenth Amendment, that granted freedom to the slaves, and the
Fourteenth Amendment, that stated, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, and property without due process of law..."
- But Ferguson believed otherwise. He ruled that segregation was "constitutional" under Louisiana law.
- The Louisiana Supreme Court likewise ruled in favor of Ferguson.
- The Committee of Citizens fought the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court and lost on May 18, 1896 when the Court upheld the constitutionality of
state laws requiring racial segregation.
- The Plessy case therefore cemented in place the doctrine of "separate but equal" which legitimized legalized discrimination based on race --- as long as facilities
were of "equal quality." The only problem was in actuality, the services and accommodations designated for blacks and people of color were grossly inferior to
those designated for whites.
- The Plessy cement, however, was jack-hammered into pieces 58 years later when the United States Supreme Court struck down the principle of "separate but
equal" in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
This website is made available for educational purposes only. Nothing on this website is intended to serve as medical, technical or expert advice. If medical, technical or expert advice is needed, the visitor is urged to seek such
advice from a qualified professional. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly,
by the information contained in this website.
Copyright (c) 2012 by Oliver Chiapco. All Rights Reserved.
(Images from the Library of Congress, NASA, NOAA, USGS, CDC, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management are NOT copyrighted and DO NOT express or imply endorsement of the book.) | <urn:uuid:62fe675d-9b72-4147-9b30-078a074d4653> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefinalrace.net/plessyvferguson.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955181 | 641 | 3.6875 | 4 |
Traditional Chinese Medicine has a rich history of using herbs to support treatment. Herb plants produce and contain a variety of chemical substances that act upon the body to treat numerous illnesses and to assist bodily functions.
Herbal medicine is the substantial counterpart to the energetic medicine of acupuncture. Many conditions can greatly benefit from the use of Chinese herbal therapies alone, or with acupuncture. A well- defined herbal pharmacopoeia has been developed and refined since ancient times. Modern research has proven that herbs are powerful medicine and can have safe, healing effects when properly applied by a licensed herbalist.
At Double Happiness Health, patients are carefully assessed in a holistic manner. Our herbal prescriptions are tailored to each individual patient, and change along with the patient’s changing condition. We are always mindful of the patient’s health conditions, medications and supplements, as well as any herb-drug interactions and contraindications. Because we have a healthy respect for Western medicine and because our first concern is for your best care, we will happily communicate and work closely with your physician when it comes to your healthcare and supplements.
A combination of ancient texts, clinical experience with hundreds of patients, and research guides our selection of herbs used to treat health conditions. Herbal prescriptions are available in loose tea, powder, and pill form depending upon individual patient needs and preferences. We carry hundreds of pharmaceutical-grade single herbs and formulas, which enables us to create customized formulas for individuals. Double Happiness Health carefully selects herb suppliers that adhere to strict production and quality assurance standards. | <urn:uuid:5d79c892-1621-405f-ae36-ee9ed9b80b90> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://doublehappinesshealth.com/services/herbal-medicine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921426 | 310 | 1.539063 | 2 |
6 March 2011 Last updated at 10:47 ET
President Hamid Karzai has told the US commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan that his apology for the deaths of nine children in an air strike is "not enough".
"On behalf of the people of Afghanistan I want you to stop the killings of civilians," Mr Karzai said at a cabinet meeting attended by Gen David Petraeus.
The children were killed in a Nato strike on Tuesday.
Hundreds of people rallied on Sunday to denounce the killing of civilians.
The issue of civilian casualties is a source of widespread public anger and of tension between the Afghan government and the US, the BBC's Jill McGivering reports.
Washington is well aware of the strength of feeling and has worked hard to reduce casualties, she adds, though Nato says most civilian casualties last year were caused by Taliban insurgents, not the security forces.
On Sunday, at least 12 civilians, including five children, were killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Afghanistan.
'Stop the killings'
"President Karzai said that David Petraeus's apology is not enough," a statement from the Afghan presidency said.
"The civilian casualties are a main cause of worsening the relationships between Afghanistan and the US," President Karzai was quoted as saying.
"The people are tired of these things and apologies and condemnations are not healing any pain."
On Wednesday, Gen David Petraeus said he was "deeply sorry" for the air strike in which the boys, aged 12 and under, were mistaken for insurgents by Nato helicopters as they gathered firewood.
Sunday's rally in Kabul condemned both Nato and the Taliban for killing civilians.
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Vatican scientist says belief in God and aliens is OK
VATICAN CITY |
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican's chief astronomer says there is no conflict between believing in God and in the possibility of "extraterrestrial brothers" perhaps more evolved than humans.
"In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, a 45-year-old Jesuit priest who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.
"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.
Asked if he was referring to beings similar to humans or even more evolved than humans, he said: "Certainly, in a universe this big you can't exclude this hypothesis".
In the interview headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," he said he saw no conflict between belief in such beings and faith in God.
"Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom," he said.
"Why can't we speak of a 'brother extraterrestrial'? It would still be part of creation," he said.
Funes, who runs the observatory which is based south of Rome and in Arizona, held out the possibility that the human race might actually be the "lost sheep" of the universe.
"There could be (other beings) who remained in full friendship with their creator," he said.
THE "BIG BANG"?
Christians have sometimes been at odds with scientists over whether the Bible should be read literally and issues such as creationism versus evolution have been hotly debated for decades.
The Inquisition condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century for insisting that the earth revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church did not rehabilitate him until 1992.
Funes said dialogue between faith and science could be improved if scientists learned more about the Bible and the Church kept more up to date with scientific progress.
Funes, an Argentine, said he believed as an astronomer that the most likely explanation for the start of the universe was "the big bang", the theory that it sprang into existence from dense matter billions of years ago.
But he said this was not in conflict with faith in God as a creator. "God is the creator. There is a sense to creation. We are not children of an accident ...," he said.
"As an astronomer, I continue to believe that God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the product of something casual but children of a good father who has a project of love in mind for us," he said.
(Reporting by Philip Pullella, editing by Richard Balmforth)
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Cody Brown and Kate Ray graduated from NYU in 2010, taught themselves to code and built Kommons–a platform for crowdsourcing questions through Twitter and attempting to peer pressure an answer from public personalities. It didn’t, as they say, get traction. So they built another thing, “Nerd Collider,” a platform for hosting text-centric discussions between experts on the web, sort of like the New York Times’s Opinionator blog. Their latest product, Scroll, is a simple single-page HTML editor that allows publishers to lay out a fancy-looking page that mimics the flexibility designers have for formatting on the printed page. Bonus: the web page is automatically-formatted to look as good on the web as it does on the iPad.
Now, the two-person company is announcing some funding scared up over the summer. “We’ve raised $220,000 in seed funding from The Knight Foundation’s Program Related Investment Arm,” Mr. Brown told Betabeat. “We’re part of Knight’s recent initiative to support for-profit startups that help to promote informed and engaged communities.”
Scroll is targeting media companies such as The Wall Street Journal, but anyone who wants to publish on the web can use it. Ms. Ray tests the app by making LOL-cats (unfortunately, it looks like Cheezburger scooped that angle today). The pair estimates the app’s “time to LOLcat” is somewhere around two minutes.
The money is being used to pay themselves modest salaries and hunt for a third team member. Mr. Brown heads up design, business development and Twitter relations; Ms. Ray is the engineer on the backend. The pair are roommates and work at standing desks on the mezzanine of their sunny Brooklyn apartment. Music is prohibited; Ms. Ray prefers to work with her headphones plugged in but no music playing, she told Betabeat, in order to feel connected to her computer.
Mr. Brown has been interested in new media since he took a journalism class at NYU (he originally wanted to be a filmmaker) and was inspired to launch the online-only student news blog NYU Local, which is still operating four years later. ”I actually still love the taste of ramen,” the 23-year-old told Betabeat. “I bought a 20-pack yesterday.” | <urn:uuid:d62b292f-95be-4dcf-864d-c43537259919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://betabeat.com/2011/10/scroll-up-bushwick-based-mini-startup-scores-222-k-after-a-pivot-and-16-months-of-ramen/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962064 | 506 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Dr. Eggman writes "Stanford's School of Medicine brings us an update in the latest achievements towards in-vitro neuron generation via redifferentiation of specialized cells (skin cells in this case.) This important progress follows on last year's success in inducing this change with mice skin cells. The importance of this line of research lies in that the process does not need to first de-differentiate the skin cells into a kind of stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells. By skipping this phase, the process avoids potential problems in the body's rejection of the iPS cells. Amazingly, the transformation occurs with the added presence of 4 proteins (one more protein than need to induce the effect in mice) over several weeks (compared to a few days in mice.) Research continues as the study highlights the significant differences in mice and human neural cells as well as the success rate of transformation (2-4% for human cells, 20% for mice.) The resultant cells aren't yet as capable as naturally derived neurons; generating less-robust electrical signals." | <urn:uuid:605724b9-55b1-4e86-b02c-18656933ccfc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/05/28/133203/human-skin-cells-converted-directly-to-neurons?sdsrc=prevbtmprev | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943823 | 217 | 2.359375 | 2 |
RRB | RRB ASM SYLLABUS | RRB ASM EXAM PATTERN | RRB ASM SELECTION PROCEDURE | ASM | RRB ASM | ASSISTANT STATION MASTER | RRB ASSISTANT STATION MASTER ASM SYLLABUS | RRB ASM EXAM DETAILS | RRB ASM RECRUITMENT PROCESS | RAILWAY RECRUITMENT BOARD | ASM SYLLABUS
RRB ASM SYLLABUS | RRB ASM EXAM PATTERN | RRB ASM SELECTION PROCEDURE
Many students are asked for the RRB assistant station master exam syllabus in the comments…actually there is no such type of perfect syllabus book given by RRB. they just given the topics related to which the questions generally asks in exam..topics are given below in the 3rd point…Read other RRB asm exam details related to the selection process below..prepare well for the exam.All the Best!!!!
1.The selection is made strictly as per merit, on the basis of single stage written examination. In addition, candidates equal to five times the number of vacancies according to community,
will be called for aptitude test which will be of qualifying nature. Short listed candidates will be called for verification of the original documents according to merit, availability of vacancies
and reservation rules.
2. There shall be negative marking in written examinations and marks shall be deducted for each wrong answer @1/3 of the allotted marks for each question.
3. The syllabus for the written examination will be generally in conformity with the educational standards prescribed for the posts.
The Questions will be of objective type with multiple answers and likely to include questions pertaining to General Awareness, Language General Hindi/General English , General Arithmetic, Analytical and Quantitative Skills and those subjects covered as part of minimum educational qualification for the post.
The question paper will be in English, Hindi, Urdu and local languages and the duration of the examination will be 90 minutes with approximately 100 to 120 questions.
4 .The Railway Recruitment Board, at its discretion may hold additional written test(s) and/or aptitude test if considered necessary for all or for a limited number of candidates as may be
deemed fit by Railway Recruitment Board.
5 .The date, time and venue of the written examination and aptitude test will be fixed by the RRB and will be intimated to the eligible candidates in due course. Request for postponement
of the examination/aptitude test and change of center/venue will not be entertained under any circumstance.
6. Stages of examination are given against each post. Based on the performance of candidates in the written examination and aptitude test, the candidates equal to the number of vacancies
will be called for document verification in the main list. In addition 30% extra candidates are also called as standby candidates and they are considered for empanelment only if there is
shortfall in empanelment from the main list. During document verification, the candidates will have to produce their original certificates. No additional time will be given and the candidature
of the candidates not producing their original certificates on the date of verification is liable to be forfeited.
7.The appointment of selected candidates is subject to his/her passing requisite Medical Fitness Test to be conducted by the Railway Administration, final verification of educational and
community certificate and verification of antecedent/character of the candidate.
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- rrb chennai assistant station master syllabus | <urn:uuid:09c8b146-3da4-4dc5-a4e1-b2f5c793c7dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://student.exattosoft.com/rrb-asm-syllabus-exam-pattern-recruitment-process.eswp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903056 | 852 | 1.648438 | 2 |
A/x^2 + B/(x^2+4) + (cx+d)
1 = (x^2+4)*A+x^2*B+(cx+d)/x^2/(x^2+4)
Now I tried to put each to equal 0...
I still don't know how to get to the solution which is supposed to be:
Try again. Here's a helpful link to remind you of the rules.
Pauls Online Notes : Calculus II - Partial Fractions | <urn:uuid:9b23fb7b-591e-49a8-95d7-9faa772bcaf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathhelpforum.com/calculus/113550-partial-fraction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921557 | 112 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Posted in: Compliance, In this week's e-newsletter, OSHA news, Safety training, Special Report, working in heat or cold
OSHA has denied a request by several groups to enact an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) setting a heat threshold level for workers. But OSHA is addressing the issue, including enforcement through the General Duty Clause (GDC).
Public Citizen and other groups and individuals asked OSHA to enact a heat stress ETS.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, OSHA can issue an ETS when it finds employees are exposed to a grave danger from exposures and that the ETS would be necessary to protect workers. The ETS would remain in effect for up to six months at which time OSHA would be required to issue a permanent standard.
A “grave danger” finding is necessary for OSHA to issue an ETS. Grave danger is defined as evidence of a serious health impairment involving incurable, permanent or fatal consequences. Grave danger also involves risk that is higher than the “significant risk” that is required to support a permanent standard.
OSHA says the mortality rate for heat-related deaths does not exceed those of other hazards that are classified as significant, so an ETS can’t be issued.
Also standing in OSHA’s way: court challenges.
Several times in OSHA’s 40-year history, courts have overturned the agency’s attempts to use an ETS.
No lack of enforcement
Despite not enacting a heat stress ETS, OSHA still has several tools at its disposal to issue citations to companies if workers suffer heat stress:
- The GDC: OSHA can cite an employer for violating the GDC if the company has exposed employees to serious, recognized heat hazards. In the past 25 years, OSHA has issued 43 GDC violations for heat exposures in the following industries: landscaping, roofing, farming, construction/paving, tree cutting and garbage collection.
- The Recordkeeping regulation: If a worker receives intravenous fluids, the case must be recorded on the OSHA 300 Log.
- The Sanitation standards require employers to provide potable water that is readily accessible to workers.
- The Medical Services and First Aid standards require people be adequately trained to administer first aid if medical facilities aren’t close by.
- The Safety Training and Education standard requires employers in the construction industry to train employees in the recognition, avoidance and prevention of unsafe conditions in the workplace, and
- The Personal Protective Equipment standard requires every employer in general industry to conduct a hazard assessment to determine appropriate PPE to be used to protect employees from identified hazards. Similar standards also exist for the shipyard, maritime and construction industries.
You probably noticed the headline of this story says OSHA doesn’t plan on a heat stress standard “for now.”
The second reason is this sentence from OSHA’s letter, stating its rejection of an ETS for heat stress: “Although OSHA is not planning on promulgating a standard to address the risks associated with exposure to extreme heat in outdoor workers anytime soon, the Agency has recently taken a number of actions to protect workers from this hazard.”
As the above sentence notes, the agency hasn’t exactly closed the door on the idea.
Rejecting the request for an ETS was just practicality on the part of OSHA. Other attempts at creating an ETS for other occupational hazards have failed in court. Having to defend the ETS in court would just take the agency’s time and scarce resources.
And a recent report shows it takes, on average, eight years to enact a new OSHA regulation. Even if OSHA started the process of creating a heat stress standard tomorrow, it wouldn’t take effect for years.
Should federal OSHA enact a heat stress standard? Or do you think the enforcement tools it already has at its disposal are sufficient? Let us know what you think in the comments below. | <urn:uuid:0ee407c2-dbf6-44ae-819e-288926e41108> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.safetynewsalert.com/osha-wont-enact-heat-stress-standard-for-now/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937499 | 832 | 2.3125 | 2 |
A Spanish of the coterie gathered about Meléndez, Valdés, born at Salamanca, 31 October, 1748; died prematurely at his native place in 1791. He pursued his studies at the famous University of Salamanca, and in 1783 took Holy orders at Madrid. During his lifetime he published two rather mediocre poems, "La niñez Laureada" (dealing with an infant prodigy, who at the age of hardly four years underwent a university examination), and "La Teclogia". Before producing these he had composed his really important poems, which are chiefly satirical and epigrammatical in their nature. In fact, as a satirist he is to be ranked only lower than the great Quevedo. Certain portions of his satirical lyrics provided offense to the authorities, and the 1798 edition of them was put on the Index by the Inquisition. The necessity of this action was denied by some of his warm friends. Among the better-known editions of his works are those of Barcelona (1820 and 1837), of Paris (1821), and of Madrid (1841). They are most readily accessible in the "Biblioteca de autores Españoles", vol. LXI, which contains about 38 letrillas in the composition of which he excelled besides a numbers of satires, epigrams, odes, anacreontics, ecologues, etc. Not long since, some of his unedited poems were published by R. Foulche-Delbosc, in the "Revue Hispanique", vol. II.
APA citation. (1910). José Iglesias de la Casa. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639a.htm
MLA citation. "José Iglesias de la Casa." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639a.htm>.
Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Christine J. Murray.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. June 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.
Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads. | <urn:uuid:c9695fb3-f5d5-4465-a2d7-4e1ae197b9a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07639a.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947234 | 566 | 1.898438 | 2 |
PP21B-2011: Excess volcanic cooling as recorded by tree ring densities
Authors: Martin P Tingley, Alexander Stine, Peter Huybers
Author Institutions: Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Tree ring records are arguably the most important indicators of continental temperatures over the last centuries and millennia, though their fidelity has come into question on the basis of under-representing Arctic warming since approximately the 1960s. Here we explore divergences between tree ring densities and other markers of temperature over the last 600 years, using a recently developed Bayesian Hierarchical Model that explicitly models spatial and temporal covariance and thus allows us to compare inferences from spatially distinct data sets over common regions. We find that reconstructions based on tree ring densities alone consistently diverge from non-dendro-based temperature estimates after 1960, but that, at low frequencies, divergence occurred during no other interval since 1400. We additionally identify a novel type of divergence, wherein tree ring densities systematically overestimate the magnitude of cooling in the years immediately following volcanic eruptions. Comparing inferences from the tree ring density series and the instrumental record since 1850 reveals a statistically significant divergence in volcanic response, with the densities inferring, on average, 0.12C of excess cooling relative to the instrumental record. Comparisons of the volcanic responses inferred separately from the densities and from ice core records over longer time intervals likewise indicate that the densities are biased towards a colder response to volcanic eruptions. Our results demonstrate that divergence between temperatures and tree ring densities is not confined to the post-1960 interval, consistent with separate evidence (Stine and Huybers, AGU abstract 2012) that aerosol injection into the Arctic atmosphere from volcanism or anthropogenic sources leads to a reduction in tree ring density via a decrease in photosynthetically active radiation. | <urn:uuid:bfa206a4-92c2-4bdf-b1e4-cb7eb45f6c2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/pp21b-2011/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910679 | 386 | 2.453125 | 2 |
What is Propaganda?
While most persons who give the matter a thought make distinctions between an objectively written news report and propaganda, they encounter difficulty when they try to define propaganda. It is one of the most troublesome words in the English language. To define it clearly and precisely, so that whenever it is used it will mean the same thing to everybody, is like trying to get your hands on an eel. You think you’ve got it-then it slips away.
When you say “policeman” or “house,” everybody has a pretty clear idea of what you mean. There’s nothing vague about these terms. But when you try to mark off the exact boundaries of “propaganda,” you wrinkle the brows even of the men who spend their lives studying the origin and history of words. And the problem of defining propaganda is all the more tangled because in the first World War it acquired certain popular meanings that stick to it like burrs to a cocker spaniel.
To some speakers and writers, propaganda is an instrument of the devil. They look on the propagandist as a person who is deliberately trying to hoodwink us, who uses half-truths, who lies, who suppresses, conceals, and distorts the facts. According to this idea of the word, the propagandist plays us for suckers.
Others think especially of techniques, of slogans, catchwords, and other devices, when they talk about propaganda. Still others define propaganda as a narrowly selfish attempt to get people to accept ideas and beliefs, always in the interest of a particular person or group and with little or no advantage to the public. According to this view, propaganda is promotion that seeks “bad” ends, whereas similar effort on behalf of the public and for “good” ends isn’t propaganda, but is something else. Under this definition, for example, the writings of the patriotic Sam Adams on behalf of the American Revolution could not be regarded by American historians as propaganda.
The difficulty with such a view is that welfare groups and governments themselves secure benefits for a people through propaganda. Moreover, national propaganda in the throes of a war is aimed to bolster the security of the nonaggressor state and to assure the eventual well-being and safety of its citizens. No one would deny that this kind of propaganda, intelligently administered, benefits every man, woman, and child in the land.
The experts have plenty of trouble in agreeing upon a satisfactory definition of propaganda, but they are agreed that the term can’t be limited to the type of propaganda that seeks to achieve bad ends or to the form that makes use of deceitful methods.
Can you distinguish propaganda from other forms of expression or promotion by saying that it is something that depends upon “concealment”—on hiding either the goals men are working for, or the means that they use, or the identity of the people behind the propaganda? A few authorities say “yes” to this question, but most of them say “no.” Most analysts of propaganda do not limit the term propaganda to “veiled” promotion. Nor do they think it accurate to describe propaganda as an activity that resorts only to half-truths and downright falsehood. They say simply that some propaganda hinges on deceit and some does not. As a matter of fact, they recognize that a shrewd propagandist prefers to deal above the table, knowing just what the reaction of a propaganda-conscious public will be to dishonest trickery when it is exposed.
Some people limit the term propaganda to efforts that make use of emotional appeals, but others will differ about this idea. In a campaign to capture public opinion, a propagandist may rely heavily upon emotional symbols—but he may appeal to logical thinking as well.
Some people assert that propaganda is present only in controversial situations. One writer, for example, says, “Propaganda is an instrument of conflict or controversy, deliberately used.” And another says, “If the report is deliberately circulated to influence attitudes on controversial issues it is propaganda.” When existing loyalties, customs, and institutions are attacked, there is controversy. In a democratic system, propaganda replaces violence and censorship as a method of bringing about change. All this may be granted, and yet the question can be raised whether the word “propaganda” should be limited to efforts to influence attitudes on controversial matters only.
Take, for example, the campaign in the United States, conducted under the direction of the Surgeon General, for the control, cure, and eradication of venereal disease. This systematically organized campaign tried to gain its ends by direct appeals to the people. Those who handled it considered carefully just what agencies to use in reaching the people—whether newspapers or magazines, the radio or the public platform, or a combination of these. They used both emotional and logical appeals. They planned the campaign to persuade diseased persons to decide to visit a physician to get cured. Their campaign used the techniques of propaganda, persuaded persons to a course of conduct, and promised a reward—good health. It used, as has been said, both emotional and logical appeals.
Unless “controversy” is interpreted to include minor debates and the making of choices in matters that command general social approval, a definition of “propaganda” that insists on stressing controversy hampers one’s approach to an understanding of the subject.
All this will indicate that there is a lot of difficulty in working out any formal definition of propaganda. Most students of the subject agree that propaganda has to do with any ideas and beliefs that are intentionally propagated. They agree also that it attempts to reach a goal by making use of words and word substitutes (pictures, drawings, graphs, exhibits, parades, songs, and similar devices). Moreover, although it is used in controversial situations, most experts agree that it is also used to promote noncontroversial, or generally acceptable, ideas. Types of propaganda range from the selfish, deceitful, and subversive to the honest and aboveboard promotional effort. It can be concealed or open, emotional or containing appeals to reason, or a combination of emotional and logical appeals.
While propaganda influences the behavior of individuals, it is important to bear in mind that it is only one of the means by which man’s behavior is influenced. There are other forms of inducement employed in winning assent or compliance. In limited or wholesale degree, depending upon the political organization of a given country, men have used force or violence to control people. They have resorted to boycott, bribery, passive resistance, and other techniques. Bribes, bullets, and bread have been called symbols of some of the actions that men have taken to force people into particular patterns of behavior.
Whatever propaganda may be, it differs from such techniques because it resorts to suggestion and persuasion. | <urn:uuid:95b815d8-21a8-447e-afcd-c1376b8119e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.historians.org/projects/giroundtable/Propaganda/Propaganda8.htm | 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 | 0.952919 | 1,431 | 3.046875 | 3 |
An internal affairs investigation found Kruger brought "discredit and disgrace upon the Bureau and the City," when Kruger nailed "memorial plaques" of five Nazi soldiers to a tree on the east side of Rocky Butte Park sometime between 1999 and 2001.
Kruger was a Portland officer at the time, but was not on duty when he erected the plaques as a shrine. Kruger called the memorial "Ehrenbaum" or "Honor Tree."
Kruger had taken the plaques down while he was facing federal lawsuits between 2002 and 2005 alleging excessive force during downtown anti-war protests. He gave them to the city attorney's office, which stashed them away for years, until an internal affairs investigator recently located them.
The chief found Kruger violated a bureau directive on professional conduct, and Portland city code, which says no person shall attach anything to property in a city park. The investigation also found that Kruger placed the plaques on a tree at Rocky Butte so they were visible from Interstate 205, and even returned to inspect and clean the plaques.
"Your conduct, the publicity surrounding it, and negative perceptions about its nature raise legitimate questions about your ability to be effective in your job," Reese wrote in his disciplinary letter to Kruger.
The chief said he expects Kruger never to engage in conduct that "denigrates others or their differences" on duty or off duty, and that he participate in a "mentorship arrangement" that the chief and mayor have not yet defined, but will last at least six months to up to two years.
Kruger wrote a letter of apology to the chief, the bureau, the City Council and community. He described himself as a European and military history buff, but denied any admiration for Nazis, and said he had no knowledge that one of the officers he honored was involved in war crimes.
"Why did I take such an action? I did so as an expression of my interest in military history; many military historians have erected similar remembrances all over the world," Kruger wrote. "What I didn't think about was the misperception that could occur if this action became publicly known. I deeply regret this action and apologize for the poor reflection this has caused for the Portland Police Bureau, the City of Portland and my community."
Kruger also directed his apology to his co-workers. "I ask that community members focus on my life's work and not on a poor decision made years ago."
Robert Seaver, a former friend of Kruger's who had filed a formal complaint against him, said he thought Kruger should have been fired and said the bureau didn't look at other transgressions that came out of the internal affairs investigation.
"There's more that should have been done, but at least they're willing to do this and taking it seriously," Seaver said.
Seaver said he questions why Kruger wasn't disciplined for removing the plaques while he faced federal litigation. "The way I read that is tampering with evidence," Seaver said.
In the city's disciplinary letter, the chief wrote that Kruger's "past choices" placed the bureau and himself in a difficult situation.
"On the one hand, this event occurred 11 years ago, the Bureau had an opportunity to investigate it in early 2004, and you have been promoted twice since then," Reese wrote. "On the other hand, we have a responsibility to the community, your co-workers, and the organization to develop and retain personnel whom we are confident can effectively carry out the bureau's mission and priorities."
Reese said he considered terminating or demoting Kruger, and might have had the conduct occurred more recently. Kruger waived his right to any arbitration challenging the discipline.
Unlike Tuesday's decision to fire the officer who fatally shot Aaron Campbell in January, the bureau did not release the internal affairs investigative material, or Performance Review Board documents that spurred Kruger's discipline. Lt. Kelli Sheffer, bureau spokeswoman, said the bureau did not release Kruger's internal affairs documents because "it's an internal employee issue. It doesn't even compare to the officer-involved shooting, in which a man was killed. That's kind of a different animal." | <urn:uuid:ce4a7fe8-4756-4725-8d38-1ed117409678> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/11/portland_police_chief_suspends_1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984181 | 869 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Not all college degrees are created equal. If you're thinking of going to school, read this before you choose what to study.
The value of majoring in subjects like Latin or English is part of an ongoing debate.
But it seems to be that career-focused degrees tend to lead to higher earning potential.
For example, a finance degree is associated with an average mid-career salary of $91,500, according to PayScale's 2010-2011 College Salary Report. That's over 50 percent higher than a fine arts degree ($60,300).
Apples and oranges, you might say. And we agree. It's when you start comparing more similar subjects that the results get more interesting.
Before you choose what to study, take a look at these related degrees and their different potential average salaries...
If you're interested in English, study Marketing.
English isn't the only area of study that makes use of reading and writing. Marketing, for example, also explores how words can sway, influence, and move us. When it comes to selling products and ideas to the masses, word choice is a key part of the marketing process.
Why not put yourself into a position for high earning potential and a career you love?
Marketing degree: $77,300
English degree: $67,500
Marketing Careers and Average Salaries:*
Market Research Analysts: $61,070
Marketing Managers: $97,260
If you're interested in History, study Economics.
Try as we might, we can't escape our past, which is one reason why people are drawn to studying history. But by studying economics, history buffs could get their fix by studying the economic theories and thinkers that have influenced past and present. A career in business and finance could follow.
The average earning potential for econ majors doesn't hurt either. [Find Business schools and degrees now]
Economics degree: $97,800
History degree: $73,000
Economics Careers and Average Salaries:*
Financial Analyst: $73,150
Financial Managers: $99,330
If you're interested in Art, study Graphic Design.
Graphic design degree programs are more career-focused than art programs. When studying graphic design, you'll get to draw upon your real love for art by turning it into a valuable, transferable skill.
Advertisers and computer design firms are two big reasons why graphic designers are in demand, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Graphic Design degree: $56,800
Art degree: $54,800
Graphic Design Careers and Average Salaries:*
Graphic Designers: $42,400
Advertising Managers: $80,220
If you're interested in Sociology, study Paralegal Studies.
Sociology, a social science, is the study of society and could lead to a rewarding career in journalism, social work, or education, among others. But if money and security are primary concerns, you may be better served by studying a more specific area like paralegal studies, where you would likely study the law's effect upon society and prepare for a specific career track.
While job opportunities for reporters are expected to decline through 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor sees a 28 percent jump in paralegal job openings from 2008-2018.
Average Salaries and Average Salaries:*
Paralegal degree: $51,300
Court Reporters: $49,710
If you're interested in Philosophy, study Criminal Justice.
Debating questions of right and wrong are a large part of philosophy's appeal. Did you know that similarly intellectually-stimulating principles are often at the heart of criminal justice degree programs?
Much faster than average job growth is expected for private detectives through 2018, according to the Department of Labor, which cites the study of criminal justice as a common way to start a career.
Criminal Justice degree: $58,000
Criminal Justice Careers and Average Salaries:*
Police Officers: $51,410
Police Supervisors: $75,490
If you're interested in Theater, study Communications.
Actors and directors are all-too-familiar with the hard work, long hours, and low pay their careers often require. When compared to a niche major like theater, it's easy to see how a communications degree could have a broader application and a higher earning potential. No matter your career, the ability to communicate is likely going to be paramount. The earning potential of communications grads reflects that.
Communications degree: $72,200
Theater degree: $59,600
Communications Careers and Average Salaries:*
PR Specialists: $51,280
PR Managers: $89,430
*Unless otherwise noted all salary information for degrees comes from PayScale's 2010-2011 College Salary Report that details average earnings in mid-career for graduates with a bachelor's and no higher. Salary information for careers reflects average annual earnings for 2008 from the U.S. Department of Labor. | <urn:uuid:98ef747e-6be8-45f7-9c8e-2c25fde73ca8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://education.yahoo.net/articles/majors_and_earning_potential.htm?wid=1004&svkid=1I4CF | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946185 | 1,060 | 2.53125 | 3 |
In the beginning, Salman Khan, was simply trying to help his cousin learn mathematics over the Internet. Soon others began seeking his help and he started posting Youtube videos. The popularity of his videos grew and seeing the large amount of people in need, he decided to create the Khan Academy website as a way to consolidate the lessons.
Starting from the topic of mathematics, Khan Academy has branched into the sciences and humanities. The site is recognized as a valuable educational resource and has received several grants and other donations from notable sources. You can go through some in-depth training in higher level mathematics, bank practices, or settle into some art history. Available worldwide, all for free. | <urn:uuid:a3298755-7ac0-4d41-ae34-cdbefba8dd29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://shenandoah.co.lib.va.us/blog/learn-just-about-anything/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981676 | 137 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Sam Green/Cortez Journal
Sam Green/Cortez Journal
CORTEZ – The Four State Ag Expo on Thursday opened as it has every year since 1982 to highlight the old and new in farm equipment, products and services that contribute to country life.
“We average 10,000 to 15,000 visitors a year,” said Radiance Beals at the information booth. “We see license plates from the four states – Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona – and beyond.”
Ranchers, farmers and backyard gardeners could bone up on grafting, the use of fertilizer, colic in horses, rangeland forage insurance, conservation easements, beekeeping, genetically modified seed, and poultry and egg production.
In the Grange hall, Rod Sharp, an economist from the Colorado State University Extension in Grand Junction, explained how a “tool” developed by a couple of colleagues can tell cattle and dairy cow owners whether it’s smarter to buy hay or sell their herds.
The tool is a computer program, which, when loaded with specific information, indicates whether the value of keeping an animal is greater or less than the salvage (sale) value.
Input includes number of animals in a herd, typical conception and weaning rates, days per year that hay is fed, market value of an animal and knowledge of tax laws related to livestock sale because of drought.
The stubborn drought was the catalyst for developing the decision tool, Sharp said. The tool is a mouse click away, at www.coopext.colostate.edu/ABM.
Marc Garlinghouse of Lewis, who raises alfalfa and 50 head of breeding cows, seemed impressed.
“I think this could help me,” Garlinghouse said. “The drought hurt me in 2012.”
In the main exhibition hall, more than 100 vendors and exhibitors sat or stood ready to answer questions about products ranging from earth-moving equipment and tires to an oleander-based anti-aging product and a weight-loss system.
Among equipment exhibitors, first-timer David Staheli had something new – a machine with a diesel-fueled boiler that mists hay as it is baled to maintain a 12 percent moisture content.
The Staheli West factory in Cedar City, Utah, has sold 75 of the machines from Texas to Kansas to Oregon and is set to export to Australia this year, Staheli said. The $165,000 machines are best used on ranches of 500 acres or larger, he said.
Staheli developed the misting concept in the mid-1990s using his wife’s pressure cooker. He began to market his product three years ago.
The Ag Adventure Barn contained a variety of exhibits for visiting schoolchildren.
Carol Wilson, a third-generation resident of Lewis, exhibited the canned and dehydrated fruits and vegetables that feed her family.
Nancy Nelligan with the Alpaca 4-H Club demonstrated how alpaca fiber is carded and wrapped around a small portion of hand soap to create a washcloth for bathing. Club members sell the washcloths to raise money.
The name of the club dates from the time when alpacas were the only activity for the youngsters, Nelligan said.
Cathy Sumeracki traveled from New River, Ariz., to give instruction on handling stock dogs. Sumeracki said her training method is the only one certified by well-known dog trainer, handler and behaviorist Dawna Sims.
“I teach dogs and people to handle stock,” Sumeracki said.
Sumeracki was assisted by Ignacio resident Shawna Davis, an apprentice trainer who is scheduled to teach stock dog training in Kline this summer. | <urn:uuid:9626b5e6-f9c6-46fa-818d-810ea8bbcde1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://durangoherald.com/article/20130314/NEWS01/130319754/0/frontpage/Four-State-Ag-Expo-opens-four-day-run | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940529 | 798 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The Cato Institute's Tad DeHaven has an interesting graph of what the $61 billion in cuts proposed in the House Republicans' plan to fund the rest of 2011 would look like against the total budget. The answer? You guessed it: not much.
As the chart shows, the proposed cuts amount to less than a third of what taxpayers will pay in interest on the debt alone this year.
The $61 billion in cuts, which are woefully insufficient, would come from a relatively small category of government spending (non-defense, discretionary spending). However, that merely indicates the need to tackle defense spending and budget-busting "mandatory" programs. [emphasis mine]
As DeHaven notes, "Senate Democrats are balking at the $61 billion in cuts and the president has issued a veto threat." If Democrats can't even stomach to cut this much from the budget, the prospects for long-term reform are not good. | <urn:uuid:9213299d-0057-4552-87d6-625ca91f3a0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.org/blog/show/what-do-the-administrations-budget | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963459 | 192 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Grandmaster Kim Bok Man is one of the most recognized authorities of taekwondo in the world. He worked tirelessly with General Choi Hong Hi as a founder of taekwondo curricula used today by the many international taekwondo organizations.
Originally published in 1979, this book provides defense techniques taught to military, law enforcement officials, and black belts. Beginners will have a chance to see the application of their training in actual weapon defenses.
Advanced students will learn techniques and fundamental training that has been "field" tested since the inception of the art in the 1950s.
- History and the theory of power
- Defense against weapons: knife, baton, pole, sword, bayonet, and pistol
- Sparring: releases, grabs, throwing, falling, free-sparring
- Patterns: Silla pattern 1, Silla pattern 2, Silla knife pattern, and Silla pole pattern
- Training: stretching, calisthenics, action principles, hand & foot techniques, using a heavy bag
- Body parts for attack & defense, stances, vital points for striking
This book catalogs the essence of the fighting art of taekwondo as it was originally intended. | <urn:uuid:da3e8648-b9b6-4663-af38-9a337a1bd4e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ymaa-store.com/e2559.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918729 | 250 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Trigonometry is an odd subject. Some schools devote a whole class to it, while others spread trig material through geometry, algebra, and precalculus classes. Just as trigonometry isn’t necessarily cohesive as a subject, students sometimes understand the subject in a scattered or incomplete way. Trigonometry tutoring can help.
Flagship's Trigonometry Tutors Help Students to...
Intuit when memorization is hard. There are a lot of rules in trigonometry, and some contain a lot of specific details that are tough to memorize. A good trigonometry tutor shows a student the patterns in the rules, so that the student begins to develop a feel for them. Often, the patterns are best observed visually, so trigonometry tutors take time to provide plenty of visual aids.
Memorize when intuition fails. Not every student finds trigonometry intuitive! Even strong math students need to spend some effort memorizing the particular rules and operations. Trigonometry tutoring helps a student decide what to memorize and gives tips for how to memorize quickly.
Recognize the different problem types. In trigonometry, there are many ways to solve for angles and for side lengths, so students sometimes have trouble knowing which to use. A private trigonometry tutor can articulate explicitly which situations call for which strategies, making the process much more straightforward.
Call for a Free Consultation
Flagship is glad to offer a free consultation to determine how trigonometry tutoring with a private trigonometry tutor can help a student. See our Academic Tutoring page for more about what makes Flagship special, or contact us today to talk to one of our academic experts. | <urn:uuid:298965e2-a28f-4b39-9085-021c157601c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flagshiptutors.com/academic/math/trigonometry-tutoring | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905363 | 349 | 2.15625 | 2 |
There's a great rundown of the current state of Chinese science fiction books over at Global Times. Among other things, this is the third boom in SF book publishing in China — the first two being the late 19th century, with translations of Jules Verne, and the second being the years right after the death of Mao and the first moves to open the country up.
Current science fiction authors say the newest boom in SF publishing is partly aimed at addressing people's sense that everything has gotten "surreal" in the wake of the country's development boom. As writer Han Song says, "There is one aspect of China that has not been written enough, and that's this kafkaesque absurdity of reality." And that, in turn, explains why Han chose to write a novel about a subway train that disappears into a seemingly endless tunnel. On board the train, passengers "eat and mate with each other, eventually evolving into new life forms." And this turns out to be a government project, aimed at communicating with the rest of the universe.
China's Science Fiction World magazine, which was having some trouble a couple years ago, is booming again, with sales reaching 400,000 copies per issue.
The book publishing boom is also fueled, in part, by the popularity of Liu Cixin's novel The Three Body Problem, which has been a runaway bestseller in China and is being translated into English by award-winning author Ken Liu. Here's how Global Times describes Liu's novel:
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans its invasion of Earth, while on Earth, people form into different camps to either welcome the superior beings to take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.
Heavily influenced by science fiction legend Arthur C. Clarke, Liu's novels place more on technical and scientific explanations than on characters or plot. The basis of Three Body, which took him over five years to finish, is the "three-body problem" where a system with three interacting objects is highly unpredictable. Its technical depictions can make the books seem cold and detached, but they still depict a grand imagination and draw readers into a different world.
Can't wait to read the English version of that novel. [Global Times] | <urn:uuid:ebcc07a0-778f-4a75-a504-1ac3bf073b94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://io9.com/5973968/science-fiction-novels-rule-a-china-where-development-leaves-people-feeling-surreal-and-confused | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955742 | 486 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Certainly parliament ought always to be impartial and free to consult the commonwealth's interests as well as is possible according to the occasion; nor should they be so devoted to their previous opinions that they should feel scruples later on about voting more wisely for themselves or the commonwealth when God has given them the understanding and the opportunity to do so.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
On Politicians of Two (or more) Minds
Some have in their heads the idea that it is bad for politicians to change their mind, not to mention 'flip-flop.' Any thinking person will tell you that this idea is stupid. Listen to John Milton's seventeenth-century prose: | <urn:uuid:b65349cc-8c5c-4981-b9f5-70ffc7e2bb6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pie-eyed.blogspot.com/2006/11/on-politicians-of-two-or-more-minds.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974184 | 140 | 1.507813 | 2 |
S.156 - Ojito Wilderness Act
A bill to designate the Ojito Wilderness Study Area as wilderness, to take certain land into trust for the Pueblo of Zia, and for other purposes. view all titles (6)
All Bill Titles
- Short: Ojito Wilderness Act as introduced.
- Short: Ojito Wilderness Act as passed house.
- Short: Ojito Wilderness Act as reported to senate.
- Short: Ojito Wilderness Act as passed senate.
- Short: Ojito Wilderness Act as enacted.
- Official: A bill to designate the Ojito Wilderness Study Area as wilderness, to take certain land into trust for the Pueblo of Zia, and for other purposes. as introduced.
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Official Summary10/26/2005--Public Law. (There are 4 other summaries)(This measure has not been amended since it was passed by the Senate on July 26, 2005. The summary of that version is repeated here.) Ojito Wilderness Act - (Sec. 3) Designates certain public land known as the Ojito Wilderness in New Mex
10/26/2005--Public Law. (There are 4 other summaries)
(This measure has not been amended since it was passed by the Senate on July 26, 2005. The summary of that version is repeated here.) Ojito Wilderness Act -
(Sec. 3)Designates certain public land known as the Ojito Wilderness in New Mexico ( wilderness area) as a component of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Requires that the wilderness area be managed by the Secretary of the Interior in accordance with the Wilderness Act. Provides for the addition of specified land in New Mexico and any land within the boundaries of the wilderness area to the wilderness area if such land is acquired by the federal government.
Permits grazing of livestock in the wilderness area where grazing rights were established before the enactment of this Act. Prohibits anything in this Act from:
(1) affecting the jurisdiction or responsibilities of New Mexico with respect to fish and wildlife in the state;
(2) constituting a reservation by the United States of any water or water rights with respect to the land designated as wilderness by this Act;
(3) affecting any water rights in the state existing on the date of enactment of this Act, including any water rights held by the United States;
(4) establishing a precedent with regard to any future wilderness designations; or
(5) affecting the interpretation of, or any designation made pursuant to, any other Act.
Declares that the Secretary shall follow the procedural and substantive requirements of the laws of the state in order to obtain and hold any water rights not in existence on enactment of this Act respecting the wilderness area.
Prohibits the President, any other U.S. officer, employee, or agent from funding, assisting, authorizing, or issuing a license or permit for the development of any new water resource facility (as defined by this Act) within the wilderness area.
Directs the Secretary to seek an exchange for state land within the boundaries of the wilderness area within three years after enactment.
(Sec. 4)Requires the Secretary to hold in trust certain public lands for the Pueblo of Zia (Pueblo) and include such lands as part of the Pueblo's Reservation. Requires the Pueblo to pay the Secretary the fair market value (determined by an appraisal) of such public lands placed in trust. Authorizes the Secretary to use funds paid by the Pueblo to acquire non-federal lands in New Mexico. Preserves public access to Pueblo trust lands for recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, paleontological, and conservation uses. Authorizes a civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico to enforce right of public access.
Preserves existing rights-of-way in the trust lands. Requires the Pueblo to grant any reasonable request for rights-of-way for utilities and pipelines in such lands.
...Read the Rest | <urn:uuid:d1e1cc19-cd76-43df-ad0a-f964dacaf602> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opencongress.org/bill/109-s156/show | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928535 | 894 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Benign appendage tumour generally considered to be of eccrine origin. Lesions are usually multiple and appear as small firm, translucent to skin-coloured or yellowish papules, varying in size from 1 to 5 mm. Common locations include the face, neck, and the front of the chest. Syringomas are most likely to appear at adolescence, but they may occur at any age. Females are more often affected than males.
Syringoma, Disseminated, Hidradenoma, Eruptive, Eruptive Hidradenoma
Eruptive hidradenoma, HIDRADENOMA ERUPTIVUM, Hydradenomes eruptifs | <urn:uuid:f2fd6fb0-5152-413e-98d0-f2c884f669d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dermis.net/dermisroot/en/21828/diagnosep.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909377 | 146 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Interamerican Symposium on Authenticity
in the Conservation and Management of the Cultural Heritage
San Antonio, Texas, USA - March 1996
Margaret MacLean, PhD
Chair of the Symposium Scientific Committee
Authenticity is a notion central to contemporary preservation work. Within the context of the World Heritage Convention, it is a primary criterion for considering nominations to the World Heritage List. As the concept of "cultural heritage" has extended from its original European roots to the entire world, encompassing new categories of cultural resources, the meaning of authenticity has come under new and productive scrutiny. The worldwide debate is just starting to delve into the question of why authenticity matters, and has since 1994 been exploring the role of authenticity in the conversion of a building into a monument, a place into cultural heritage.
As the largest global forum for preservation professionals, ICOMOS has been the principal arena for the recent discussions on authenticity in heritage preservation. In a number of ICOMOS national committees around the world, local culturally specific assumptions about what authenticity is were recognized as being in conflict with the assumptions underlying the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention. In 1994, meetings of heritage specialists took place in Norway and Japan [both of which are rich in traditional wooden architecture, particularly problematic in preservation], as well as Italy, to address various aspects of this complex topic. The meeting in Nara, Japan, proposed that regional discussions of authenticity around the world would set the stage for a comprehensive discussion at the 1996 ICOMOS General Assembly in Bulgaria.
After Nara, the subject was taken up in a European ICOMOS Symposium convened in the Czech Republic, and by African ICOMOS committees that gathered in Zimbabwe. Each discussion has been deeply meaningful locally, and accumulated wisdom on this subject promises progress in a broad understanding of the issues.
The Authenticity symposium, held March 27 -30, 1996 in San Antonio Texas, was the first assembly of the presidents of all the national committees of ICOMOS in the Americas convened to work on a single theme. This was a unique opportunity for open dialogue among preservation professionals to exchange ideas about the meanings of authenticity in preservation in the New World, and the implications for evaluating and managing this aspect of our native, colonial, and recent cultural heritage. Ideally, the symposium would enhance understanding among those whose experience and perspective differed, and would provide practical and useful ideas for these men and women whose daily work required a thoughtful knowledge of the issues.
The papers available on this webpage are the position papers circulated at the conference by ICOMOS national committees of the Americas. | <urn:uuid:586a005a-e5f8-458e-af72-cd29f1d88d06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usicomos.org/symp/archive/1996 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93563 | 524 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Product development has historically been predicated on a “build it and they will come” basis. But times are changing, consumer choice is increasing and the game plan has evolved.
Ethnography, a branch of anthropology, uses a variety of research methods to study people in a bid to understand human culture. Since top companies across several industries are treating ethnography as a means of designing for and connecting with potential customers, technology companies have recently begun investing significantly more research time and money into the field. At chip giant Intel, for example, the company spent approximately $5 billion on ethnographic research and development during 2004.
As the respective leaders in the hardware and operating systems markets, both Intel and fellow tech giant Microsoft have begun using teams of researchers to identify new market opportunities and improve existing products. | <urn:uuid:cc5a6981-fa4f-49d0-bc43-a445fbbf59a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.experientia.com/blog/how-to-build-a-better-product-study-people/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958561 | 162 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
It is the City of Peoria's priority to provide provide quality service and safe drinking water to its customers. To help achieve this goal the Cross Connection Control and Backflow Prevention Program was implemented and enforced in accordance with the rules and regulations set forth by The Safe Drinking Water Act and the Arizona Administrative Code, to ensure that all potential sources of cross connection can be minimized with the installation of approved backflow prevention assemblies at the point where all potential hazards of cross connection may exist.
What is Backflow?
Peoria’s water distribution system is designed to keep the water flowing from the distribution system to you the customer. However, when hydraulic conditions deviate from “normal” flow conditions, water flow can be reversed or backflow. When this backflow occurs, water can flow from the customer’s system back into the city’s distribution system.
What is Backsiphonage?
The positive flow or water can be reversed when there is a sudden reduction in water pressure in the distribution system, such as during firefighting or when a water main breaks. This can create a suction effect, drawing the non-potable substance into the potable water system.
What is Backpressure?
Backpressure is created when the pressure in a non-potable system, such as in a recirculation system containing soap, acid, antifreeze, or in a boiler system exceeds that in the potable water system that provides the make-up water to the system. This pressure can force the potable water to reverse its direction of flow through the cross-connection. Non-potable substances can then enter the potable water system.
Can you show me an example of Backsiphonage and Backpressure?
Please click on the link backsiphonage and backpressure.
What is a Cross Connection?
A cross connection is the actual physical connection between the potable (drinking) water and any substance of questionable quality. A cross connection commonly occurs when a water hose is left running, yet is submerged in a tree well or in a bucket of soap water. If a backflow event were to occur, these substances could enter the drinking water supply and possibly be distributed throughout the distribution system where numerous consumers would be exposed to these substances.
How can backflow be prevented?
Installing approved backflow prevention assemblies, such as Reduced Pressure Principle Assemblies, Double Check Valves, Pressure Vacuum Breakers, and the use of Air Gaps, can significantly reduce the chances of a backflow situation from occurring.
Where are the devices installed?
The devices are installed on the City's water supply line as close as possible to the customer's water meter and/or internally on any equipment that utilizes water that potentially may become contaminated such as boilers, carbonators, cooling towers, x-ray machines, etc.
Who is required to test and how often?
Backflow prevention assemblies are to be tested annually or more often if requested by the Environmental Division. The Cross Connection Program applies to and is primarily enforced on commercial businesses. However, circumstances may apply that would require these devices to be installed on non-commercial properties. It is recommended that when installed on residential properties that these devices be tested annually by a Certified Tester to ensure equipment performance.
Who performs the test?
Individuals recognized by the City of Peoria for backflow prevention testing and repair must perform the tests. A list of recognized testers is available by either calling the Environmental Division at 623-773-8444 or by clicking Recognized Tester List Upon completion, the tester will then submit the test report(s) to the Environmental Division for entry.
What is the cost for testing?
The cost of testing varies and is determined by the person or company who tests your device. Additional charges may be included for repairs or backflow assembly replacement.
What types of backflow preventers can be installed to help protect our home?
Pressure Vacuum Breakers can be installed on the water supply line to any landscape irrigation system or on the water fill line to swimming pools. Hose Bibb Vacuum Breakers are small inexpensive devices that are installed on hose bibs or threaded sill cocks where garden hoses are attached.
If I have questions about backflow prevention, whom do I contact?
City of Peoria Cross Connection Specialist - Environmental Division
8401 W. Monroe St., Peoria, AZ 85345
(Phone) 623-773-8444 | (Fax) 623-773-8490 | <urn:uuid:26ffadb6-e350-4217-9cac-b769432ce4fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peoriaaz.com/NewSecondary.aspx?id=22906 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933215 | 945 | 2.890625 | 3 |
No generation ever had as many choices as we do. Recently I went to purchase some orange juice. I stood there trying to choose which brand to buy. Afterward I had to choose between freshly squeezed or from concentrate. Then came the choice between no pulp, pulp added or much pulp. Next, I could choose which additive — Vitamin D and Calcium, Calcium, or Omega 3. I expect there will soon be one for those who don’t know what they want! We have multiple choices wherever we go. Some are merely short-term and make little difference. Some choices may affect our life for many years to come. Others may even determine the quality of life we will have in the future. To further complicate things, we are often forced to make moral decisions between right and wrong. In our culture the line between right and wrong has become blurred by changing values. What one person believes is wrong may not be the same for another. For most of us, our lives are a reflection of the choices we have made.
As a young person I did not have the number of choices that the youth face today. For example, one of my big temptations was not alcohol and drugs. For me, it was smoking and chewing tobacco. When I was in the sixth or seventh grade, some of my buddies were experimenting with cigarettes. One day I brought home a note from school encouraging my parents to join the Parent Teacher Association. Soon afterward my mother sent money for membership. I chose to take money for one of them and keep the other to buy tobacco. That was a bad choice. In those days you could purchase a small bag of tobacco with a string and a tag at the top to close it. There were small papers available to roll your cigarette. To impress my friends I put the bag in my back pocket with the string and tags hanging out. That was another bad choice. My plans were to put the tags in my pocket before I got home and hide the tobacco. I forgot to do that! Mother saw it and knew exactly what it was. I don’t remember what she did and it is probably better that I don’t. It cured me of wanting to smoke cigarettes.
Years ago a leader of Israel called his people together for an important speech. His people had made some bad choices and were going to suffer as a result. His challenge to them was, “Choose you this day, whom you will serve…..But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) Each of us must choose whom we will serve. Will your choice be self-centered and self-gratifying? Or will you choose to accept the invitation of Jesus to follow him and find in the Bible the foundation upon which you can make the right choices? | <urn:uuid:7baa5982-8786-4f9c-adae-780c9cd34216> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.starhq.com/living-with-a-bad-choice/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982333 | 573 | 2.15625 | 2 |
There is a move in the state legislature to quadruple the size of tax credits available for some historic renovation projects, in an effort to make Wisconsin a more attractive place to reuse old buildings.
Right now Wisconsin has a 5 percent state historic preservation credit. The proposed legislation would take that up to 20 percent. Supporters say that's in line with what Minnesota offers developers.
Jim Schmitt, the mayor of Green Bay, says his city has at least two large scale projects that are looking for private investors.
"We have an older city with a lot of opportunity for historic renovation, and we need to be competitive with these developers who look around the Midwest for opportunities and we also need to be competitive with suburban properties…It's sometimes cheaper to build new than to renovate."
One project mayor Schmitt is negotiating is a 1920's hotel in downtown Green Bay. He says making over the Northland Hotel could cost up to 25 million dollars.
"I think with this legislation, if this can get fast-tracked and get through our legislature and signed by the Governor in the next 60-90 days, that coupled with some other things that we have here in the city…I think we could find a developer to take on that project and really bring that back to a five-star hotel in downtown Green Bay."
Schmitt says just the prospect of the increased credits has made the project more attractive. He says a tentative deal between the city and investors could be unveiled later this week.
The Historic Tax Credit bill is just being introduced and is awaiting committee assignment. | <urn:uuid:66e374df-e236-4e12-a41d-ab3be35baa91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wpr.org/news/display_headline_story.cfm?storyid=72003 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97604 | 318 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Rogers County K-9 Unit is responsible for working drugs as part of their normal daily schedule. It may be as simple as arresting someone on a traffic stop for possession of drugs or as complex as working a large case which can take time. As information is gathered on suspected drug dealers or manufacturing operations, a file is started. All tips are investigated and as the information is verified or more tips are received we begin to "put the pieces together" and form a plan. Once enough information is received for a search warrant on a person or place, a judge will review the information. If the information meets the required criteria, the judge will sign the warrant. Officers will meet, finalize plans and execute the search warrant. Sometimes these plans can be finalized in days, but it can take weeks or months to work a large case.
Rogers County K-9 Unit consists of:
- Sandy a German Shepard, female, under the direction of Deputy Cooper
- Jack, a shepherd, male, under the direction of Deputy Tucker
We appreciate all information that the citizens of Rogers County provide to us. | <urn:uuid:831cf27d-7f3b-45bd-b3fe-166b5925b8b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rcsheriff.org/page.php?id=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966283 | 223 | 1.585938 | 2 |
There will be certain periods of the year when work is quiet, like Christmas, therefore it is imperative to have funds saved to pay the bills.
Here are 4 tips to help you budget:
Open a Savings Account
Freelancers- You will need to save up some money before you quit your job and freelance full-time. Once you are a permanent freelancer, make it a priority to add to your savings account as often as you can. We advise about 10 per cent of your monthly earnings.
This will reduce a lot of the stress that comes from not having a regular income stream. You also need to put away some money for unexpected expenses, such as medical issues, house repairs, or new equipment. Even if you have to live frugally in the beginning, make saving money a priority.
SME Owners- There are special business accounts which you can set up. It is vital that you keep the business’s income separate to your personal money, and you can achieve this by setting up a different bank account.
Choose the bank wisely to avoid bank charges; does your current bank offer the best rates? It may be that you could save money by switching provider.
For example, a business with Santander is offering a 12-month loyalty business term account of 3.05%, in comparison to RBS which currently has the Net Rate per annum (p.a) of 0.04% on certain accounts.
As an employee, you never had to worry about being responsible for your own tax affairs. However, as a self-employed freelancer and small business owner, you must now understand how taxes work.
You will need to know what must be paid and what methods are available to reduce the amount you have to pay. For all you need to know on registering a business, paying Corporation Tax, and filing a self-assessment tax return, visit HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
Plan for Retirement
You should also plan to put away a portion of your money for retirement. As much as you love your freelance career and your own business, there will come a day when you want to spend more time relaxing, than working.
You need to figure out how to best invest your money, and how much to invest in order to be able to retire at a reasonable age. Start putting a little away from the very beginning and speak to an independent organisation, like The Pensions Advisory Service, for expert advice.
Get Health Insurance
You don’t want to put off health insurance; it is a safety net that can save you a lot of time and money in the long- run. Even if you don’t need it now, you will someday; especially if you have a family to look after.
You may have to shop around to find the best rate, but at the end of the day it will give you peace of mind that should you suddenly have to give up work or sell the business, your loved-ones are taken care of.
If you treat your freelancing career and your business just like an ordinary job and put away money for taxes, retirement, and health insurance, you will find that your stress levels will drop drastically.
So make your self-employed career a success by budgeting for emergencies, and your future.
For more information for all freelancers, from freelance accountants to freelance web developers, visit Nixon Williams. | <urn:uuid:725839e1-cabd-46f0-9991-4271615d74bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bmmagazine.co.uk/in-business/finance/13424/the-essential-budgeting-guide-for-freelancers-sme-owners/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96422 | 696 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Watch This: AIDS in Black America
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in 2011 shows that although African Americans make up roughly 14 percent of the U.S. population, in 2009 they accounted for a disproportionate 44 percent of new HIV infections. One in 16 black men today will be diagnosed with HIV at some point in their lives. Two-thirds of new HIV cases in women occur among black women. Among adolescents, blacks account for 70 percent of new cases.
Endgame: AIDS in Black America, a special Frontline presentation airing on PBS stations Tuesday, July 10, at 9 p.m., personalizes those devastating statistics. Just one of the stories it includes is that of retired nurse and divorcee Nel Davis. She contracted HIV from her husband, who was diagnosed a year before they were married. From Everydayhealth.com:
One morning months later, as Davis was making the bed, her husband's Bible fell to the floor, an opened envelope slipped from between the pages. Davis drew the paper from its envelope. She stared down at the results of an HIV test her husband had taken in 2003, a year before they were married, stating that he was HIV positive. Having felt ill as early as their honeymoon at Disney World, Davis knew what that meant for her own health.
"During all that time taking care of others, HIV-AIDS just wasn’t really a health concern of mine," said Davis, whose background as a nurse didn't prepare her. It "was basically not something I worried about because of the lifestyle that I lived, which was not risky. I'd heard about it, but personally, I did not educate myself to it because my view on that was, 'Well, that would never happen to me.' "
Watch the trailer here: | <urn:uuid:5c877b9e-b96f-4091-a0e7-051e95c405a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theroot.com/buzz/watch-aids-black-america | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984724 | 367 | 2.25 | 2 |
Many of us have been living away from home for almost a month. Some of us either never left or have returned home because we had no choice or because things have improved. There is one recurring theme that many people have expressed. The feeling is that things are much worse now then they were at the time Sandy rudely entered our homes.
Now we know the true extent of the losses and damage. Now we know how little we are getting from FEMA and whether we will be fully, partially, or not covered at all by our insurance companies. This has put some families under intense economic pressure. Add that to other real life issues, and I sense a feeling of despair and hopelessness. This has affected shalom bayit (domestic harmony) and the sense of security that young children need to feel when they are with their family.
I think that comfort may be found in analyzing the Jewish laws of mourning.
We always go from intense grief (‘aninut’) to strict mourning at home
(‘shiva’) to more relaxed rules (‘shloshim’). And then with the passage of more time, recovery. The point is that there must be a process of grief. We cannot jump from extreme to extreme because then we fall off the cliff.
Sandy was similar in PHASE ONE: The flood (‘aninut’), the receding waters (‘shiva’), and the cleanup (‘shloshim’). But instead of getting easier, as in the case of mourning, things have gotten harder. (And this is sometimes true in mourning as well – sometimes the pain becomes much worse for a while, unexpectedly, before it gets better.)
Now we are faced with PHASE TWO: The shells of a house that once was, serious financial problems, deep concern about an uncertain tomorrow, and heart-wrenching stress. We are back to the most intense period of grief all over again.
I think it is important to acknowledge how bad the reality is, and how much people are suffering. This is real. We should find ways to talk openly about it to each other, so that we can support each other.
The reality is harsh, and difficult, and there’s a very long road ahead. No one should be naive about how long it will take to return to normal, or that for some families there may be a new “normal” for a long time. This is scary; this brings instability to our lives; this make us feel vulnerable.
Some of us may find that we and our spouses, or we and our friends are not all reacting in the same way. We may disagree with how someone around us is reacting, or even feel that their approach is not helpful.
This may make us feel lonely or afraid, or even feel like some of our relationships aren’t exactly what we thought they were before. But what we need to realize is that this is a second Hurricane Sandy – a much more subtle hurricane that is not attacking our personal property, but our mental health and our loving relationships with other people. The good news is that this hurricane is one that we can take concrete steps to avoid. We must deny Sandy the ability to take more than she has already taken.
We need to be attuned every day to our own mental health, and to the ways in which the people around us are feeling. For some of us, this may be the biggest challenge we have faced with our spouses as a couple, and as a family. We need to rise to the challenge. We need to find new ways of communicating openly and lovingly, despite fears and practical disagreements.
When we feel hopelessness and despair begin to overtake us, we are duty bound to raise ourselves by the bootstraps and ask ourselves: Are hopelessness and despair useful, productive feelings? No! It’s our obligation to ourselves, our families, and our future to network with our friends and loved ones to figure out how to expel the negative and unproductive feelings that only serve to drag us down and make us question our competence and ability to cope. We know that anger at our spouse or impatience with our children will only make a difficult situation worse. We need to acknowledge that trying circumstances are breeding grounds that bring out the worst in us. Knowing that is a prerequisite to utilizing strategies to prevent these negative feelings from defeating us.
We also need to know ourselves. What has uplifted us as a family or as individuals in the past? Bein adam lamakom, acts between man and G-d, may appeal to us; bein adam le chaveiro, acts between one man and another, may speak to us; some of us may connect to both! Is it setting aside some time to help others? Is it writing or drawing about our feelings? Is it saying Tehillim, psalms, for someone who is battling a life-threatening disease? Is it taking on a mitzvah (commandment) that we haven’t been so careful with? Is it participating in a chessed (charitable) project for those who are even worse off than we are? Is it taking on a family project such as restoring some old family photos and creating some albums of happy times and good memories? Is undertaking that project for another family the way to go? Is it reaching out to friends that we have lost touch with and think of fondly? Is making an attempt to repair a rift in an important relationship that we have neglected something we can do to uplift us? Whatever we focus on, it should be something that promotes positive thinking, something that feels like we are building, repairing, restoring, contributing to a greater good at a time that there is so much that has been destroyed, broken apart, set back, and lost. Just like the response to death has to be life, the response to destruction and devastation has to be restoration and reconstruction.
Here are some additional concrete steps we might take:
1) Have a “family meeting” once a week where we remind ourselves how much we love each other, and how we are strong, and we can get through this. Things may look different for a long time, but our love and all that we have been through together will help us through. We should encourage children to be open about their fears and we should validate them.
At the same time, we should try to alleviate their fears by turning aspects of Sandy clean-up and recovery into a game (for very young children), or something that valuable life lessons can be learned from (for older children). Some parents might want to start a support group where they share strategies of how to communicate with children at different age levels – share what has worked and what hasn’t.
2) The adults in the family should communicate openly with each other.
If a couple finds that they are responding very differently to the damage of the storm, they should find the time to “hear each other out” and strategize about how to move forward in a way that accounts for all of the relevant feelings.
In some cases, it might be helpful to bring an outside mentor in to help facilitate this conversation (whether it be a rabbi, a trusted friend, or a professional therapist). People should realize that all of these feelings are VERY NORMAL. We just need to find a way to get through this.
We need to realize that as terrible as things are – and they really, really are terrible – we truly are better off than many other people.
We have a very strong community that has helped ease some of the blow, and there are many places, not too far away from us, that have no safety net like the one that we have here. This doesn’t make anything better, but putting things in perspective always helps at least a little.
We are human beings. We are subject to the whims of nature and to the frailties of the human condition. For a long time, many of us were able to forget about this and to think that we had achieved very stable and self-sufficient lives. And Hurricane Sandy reminded us that we are indeed human. But part of being human also means that we can love deeply, support each other, communicate with each other, and bring out the best parts of ourselves.
The contents of this chizuk (encouragement) note are the collected thoughts of myself, my wife Rookie, and my daughter Shira. We have each faced times of challenge and through a collective family effort have found a way to find the light at the end of the tunnel and recover.
When all is going well and you are at the acme of success and, then, you are suddenly submerged in a bottomless black abyss and experience the lonely dark night of the soul, it is hard to climb back to the apex. However, it is doable: The Rov pointed out, citing Moshe Rabbenu, that after the breaking of the tablets Moshe had a crushing feeling of failure—yet he found the strength to climb Mount Sinai another time and accept the tablets for a second chance. At that moment, Moshe achieved true redemption and emerged greater than before his ordeal.
So let’s keep trying to do that. It is so, so hard. It will continue to be very hard for a long time. But we can do it. And we will emerge much stronger, in time.
Stay tuned for the spring 2013 issue of Jewish Action for more on Sandy relief efforts.
Rabbi Hershel Billet is the rabbi of the Young Israel of Woodmere. | <urn:uuid:b9acd4c3-7547-4130-baf3-c23c8b48de26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ou.org/life/relationships/marriage/practical-tips-emerge-stronger-sandys-new-normal-hershel-billet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970331 | 1,985 | 1.828125 | 2 |
There might be a sinister threat lurking behind the innocent smiles of the Powerpuff Girls. Scientists and parents alike are increasingly worried that excessive screen gazing might affect children’s development. But testing it scientifically presents a challenge. One new approach is to simulate the situation in mice: young mice were exposed to flashing lights and audio from shows such as Pokémon and the Powerpuff Girls for six hours every day (pictured). Following this ‘overstimulation’ their behaviour was assessed, and the mice showed poorer short-term memory, impaired learning, and unusual behaviour. There are parallels between patterns of brain development in humans and mice, and the researchers hoped to successfully mimic interference with neural circuitry. But overstimulation is a hard concept to define, and may not be the same for mice and children. Such studies must be interpreted with caution, but are not without scientific potential. This could be well worth watching.
Written by Anthony Lewis
BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre the website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biomedicine. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe. | <urn:uuid:bef72b7a-dfe4-4afa-bb92-4d6812a304cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bpod.mrc.ac.uk/archive/2012/11/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93716 | 247 | 2.921875 | 3 |
WebMD Medical News
Laura J. Martin, MD
March 28, 2011 -- Parents should consider their children’s skills, interests, and overall physical and mental health before selecting a summer camp, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says in a revised policy statement.
The new statement also suggests steps parents can take to reduce homesickness. Those include:
The AAP recommends that parents avoid making pre-arranged pick-up plans in the event of homesickness, which could cause children to wonder about their readiness for independence.
Also, before choosing a camp, parents should “medically and psychosocially prepare their child” and work with their pediatrician, camp health providers, and administrators on a pre-camp health evaluation.
The revised statement was written by Edward A. Walton, MD, director of Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.
Walton, also national spokesman for the National Camp Association, urges camp administrators to follow specific health policies and have procedures in place to handle major and minor health problems.
The AAP recommends that all camps make an evaluation as to the need for an automated external defibrillator (AED) at the camp location.
The new guidelines also say that camps:
SOURCES:News release, American Academy of Pediatrics.Walton, E., Pediatrics, April 2011; vol 127: pp 793-799.
Here are the most recent story comments.View All | <urn:uuid:084dd4d2-1aad-495e-a9e9-b6b3aad91c6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtvq.com/webmd/parenting/youngchild/story/Tips-for-a-Healthy-Summer-Camp/T2bCuOoQ6Ui2bUew9BEtNw.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930726 | 306 | 2.390625 | 2 |
- Original Caption Released with Image:
(Released 21 May 2002)
This THEMIS visible image shows the northern interior wall of Coprates Chasma, one of the major canyons that form Valles Marineris. The cliff face seen in this image drops over 8 km from the plateau of Ophir Planum to the north (top) to the floor of Coprates. A complex set of ridges and chutes has been eroded into the layered rock that forms the canyon walls. Streamers of bright and dark material can be seen in many of the chutes, suggesting that loose material (sediment) is moving down the chutes toward the canyon floor. In many places this sediment has completely buried the wall. The uppermost layers near the rim of the canyon are brighter than the lower layers, suggesting that the upper layers are composed of different materials than occur further down the wall. Very few small impact craters can be seen in this image, indicating that the erosion and transport of material down the canyon wall and across the floor is occurring at a relatively rapid rate, so that any craters that form are rapidly buried or eroded.
From the smooth plateau of Ophir Planum (top of image), the dramatic canyon wall of Coprates Chasma falls in chutes and ridges for almost five miles to the dark floor of the canyon, where one lone, brooding impact crater can be seen. It is a rare sight in this part of the canyon, because all of the erosion on the cliff face happens so fast that most craters are rapidly buried or eroded.
You can see how looser material is transported down the canyon by observing all of the bright and dark streaks streaming down the wall. A particularly good example of this continuing descent is in the left-most canyon shoot, where material has tumbled down into its center crevice, gathering in a pile about mid-way down (left-hand side of the image, right at the point where the bright material meets the dark).
A canyon like this one is kind of like a slice through the geologic history of the planet. Each layer in the rock formed at different times, with different materials. You can tell that the bright material in this image is made of different rocks and minerals than the darker layers toward the bottom.
If a lander or a rover ever went to study a Martian canyon up close, a good place to land would be at the bottom. That's because all of the rock and soil from the top layers are carried down to the bottom. Without needing to climb up the steep canyon wall for a closer look, scientific instruments on the lander or rover would be able to study all the different kinds of materials right there at the bottom and determine what kinds of rock and soil formed through the ages.
Coprates Chasma is one of the major canyons that form Valles Marineris, the largest canyon system in the solar system. If Valles Marineris were on Earth, it would stretch all the way from California to Washington, D.C. Since it also slices a few miles down into the planet's interior, it's the perfect place to study the geological history of Mars.
- Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Arizona State University
Image Addition Date: | <urn:uuid:143cd609-8436-4179-9781-62a29e21b90f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03809 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931892 | 670 | 3.6875 | 4 |
We’ve had the launch of the iPad mini, the first Retina Macs, the departure of the man responsible for iOS, and both the arrival and departure of retail chief, John Browett.
The year began with a day of campaigning on some of the biggest sites on the Internet, including Wikipedia, which went ‘dark’ for 24 hours, and Google. They were protesting against two pieces of legislation, Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP, which would have given the US government significant powers to take action against non US websites accused of copyright infringement. Thankfully, both bills were shelved and haven’t been heard of since.
January also saw the New York Times run a piece criticising Apple for the conditions in the factories in China which make most of its products. The NYT was then itself criticised by Business for Social Responsibility, which claimed it had been mis-represented in the article.
In February, the FBI released a 191-page dossier it had kept on Steve Jobs which was less than complimentary about the former Apple CEO. And the iOS App Store recorded its 25-billionth download.
The onset of Spring saw Apple turn its attention to its $100bn cash pile and it announced that it would issue a dividend to shareholders for the first time since 1995. Google engineering director, James Whittaker left the company, complaining that it had lost its way. And Twitter bought Posterous.
When the unseasonably warm early spring turned to the more traditional rain and wind, a Russian software security firm claimed that 600,000 Macs had been infected with a piece of malware known as Flashback. Also in April, the US Justice Department charged Apple with colluding with publishers to fix prices for iBooks, and the father of the Commodore 64, Jack Tramiel died, aged 83.
In May, it became clear that the EU’s anti-counterfeiting treaty ACTA would suffer the same fate as SOPA and PROTECT-IP, with EU vice president for the digital agenda, Neelie Kroes saying ‘We have recently seen how many thousands of people are willing to protest against rules which they see as constraining the openness and innovation of the Internet. Now we need to find solutions to make the Internet a place of freedom, openness, and innovation fit for all citizens, not just for the techno avant-garde.’
May also saw Facebook announce what turned out to be a disastrous IPO and UK ISPs reluctantly enforce a court order to block The Pirate Bay.
Apple used its Worldwide Developers’ Conference in June to re-vamp the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines. Star of the show was the 15in MacBook Pro with Retina Display, the first Mac to feature the ultra hi-res screen. It also previewed iOS 6, which featured the new PassBook app and Apple’s own, soon to be controversial, Maps app.
Elsewhere, the European Telecommunications Institute ratified Apple’s design for a smaller SIM, known as the nano SIM, just in time for the iPhone 5. And Microsoft announced its Windows 8 tablet, Surface.
Join us on Monday when we’ll review the second half of 2012. | <urn:uuid:c1aa4173-41c3-4d08-9a10-1b430c82aab5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macuser.co.uk/7223-macuser-review-of-the-year-part-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969892 | 662 | 1.640625 | 2 |
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Senate Bill 68: An Act Regarding Eligibility Criterion for the South Carolina LIFE Scholarship
This bill would have amended the statutory provisions for class ranking as a criterion for homeschool students to be eligible for a LIFE Scholarship. Current law requires students to meet two out of three criteria in order to be eligible for a LIFE Scholarship. In addition to class ranking, the other criteria are an acceptable score on the SAT or ACT and required grade point average. This bill would have entitled class ranking of homeschool students to be determined by a homeschool association of which the student is a member. Students not complying with the homeschool law by membership in an association but by approval of their school district would have to have met the grade point and test score requirements to be eligible for the scholarship.
|01/11/2005||Prefiled and referred to Senate Committee on Education|
|04/07/2005||Senate Committee Report: Favorable with amendment|
|4/13/2005||Sent to House|
|4/14/2005||Introduced in House and Referred to Committee on Education and Public Works|
|6/15/2006||Bill died when the Legislature adjourned.|
HSLDA supported this legislation.
| Other Resources| | <urn:uuid:0937ec7c-18ab-4adc-bce8-fd5644fbfa03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/State/sc/2005/SCSB68/default.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922843 | 276 | 1.640625 | 2 |
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world...
I nearly spilled my coffee all over the Sunday Times article. A typo? No.
Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away...
I know all about the notion that data is plural. I have seen the complaints; but I had never before seen data used as a plural outside of the pages of a style guide. It's like graffiti: any Italian will tell you it's plural and so will Fowler and his ilk, but nobody writes like that. I mean style guides are all very pleasant to read, but nobody, I thought, acted on them. Data is there to complain about, not actually pluralise.
Data is one of those words that have been picked out at random for special pleading. It is, in Latin, a second declension neuter plural nomintative. But the same argument is never made about agenda and stamina, both of which are also Latin plurals. Nobody ever says, 'My stamina are failing,' nor does any pedant or grammarian suggest that one should. There's a list of 55 Latin plurals here.
Gallows was originally a plural (because a gallows is made from several pieces of wood or galgi). But the word was already singular in Shakespeare's time (the gallows is built stronger than the church).
I even used to know an enthusiastic scholar of breakfasts who insisted that porridge was plural as it was a shortening of porridge oats: so 'How are your porridge?'
Etymology is no guide to number, and the grammar of a dead and foreign tongue cannot be applied to English (otherwise you would have to say "interpretations of the datorum vary" (it is strange that the rules tend to stretch to the little learning of the pedant)). Fjords would have to be fjorder, as in the Norwegian. When discussing Alans Hansen and Shearer you would have to go further and discover what the Hindi plural of pundit is.
We would all have to return to proto Indo-European grammar and there would be a great hush.
People write angry letters to the paper when data is singular, but the reader receives a strange jolt when the word is plural. One maniac correspondent wrote "I rebel at the phrase 'the data shows' which has become well-nigh universal", which means I suppose that he is reacting against the universe. If a usage is universal, it is correct. Fowler said that the word was 'plural only', but that was half a century ago. One might as well insist that the second person singular be thou.
All of this comes under one simple rule that Bill Bryson and Kingsley Amis both agree on: number in English grammar is controlled by thought.
A gin and tonic is a drink, despite there being two nouns, because the drink is a single idea. One could conceivably say that gin and tonic are both ingredients in a gin and tonic, but it would be awkward. Fish and chips is a meal. Law and order (if considered as a single idea) is breaking down. The long and the short of it IS that:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps [singular] into this petty place
The Telegraph is therefore correct to write that "ministers have insisted that the Olympics is 'on budget'", because the budget would be for the games as a whole: a single idea.
Conversely, a singular noun can be treated as a plural. The couple are in love with each other. One could not reasonably say that the couple is in love with itself. The National Youth Orchestra are all in their teens, but the National Youth Orchestra is 61 years old. It depends how you're thinking about it/them.
Data is singular so long as I consider it so and plural when the whim strikes me. Teams, orchestras, armies, quintets, convocations, councils, countries, sets, groups, flocks, herds, prides and opera must bend and bow to my ineffable will.
There is, of course, mistakes in number. Often a writer forgets, after a subordinate clause, how many subjects their verb had. People forget that neither or nor nor give the plural. There are cases, occasional and rare - perhaps once in a century, that requires that two words distant in meaning cannot reasonably be considered a single idea. I even noticed in a previous post that I had made a country singular and then plural with no reason for the change, a shift that Fowler rightly objects to.
As a bit of trivia (another second declension nominative neuter plural), plus, being a preposition, does not change the number of a noun. One and one are two, but one plus one is two. "Tom, plus his friends, has arrived."
And then there are those confused serpents like Mr Fry who think that none has to be singular. It does not. Evidence and video are to be found in my previous post here.
How many legs?
P.S. There's a Polish word that's plural but used as a singular in English, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Anybody? | <urn:uuid:828601cd-0ebc-4373-9ff3-0547e00d9876> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.inkyfool.com/2009/12/data-singulars-and-plurals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97476 | 1,086 | 2.234375 | 2 |
See this article in: Arabic (PDF) ~ Chinese (PDF) ~ German (PDF) ~ Gujarati (PDF) ~ Hindi (PDF) ~ Italian (PDF) ~ Polish (PDF) ~Portuguese (PDF) ~ Punjabi (PDF) ~ Russian (PDF) ~ Spanish (PDF) ~ Tamil (PDF) ~ Turkish (PDF) ~ Urdu (PDF) ~
Pain relief in labour
When your labour starts, you may need some pain relief to help you cope with the contractions. There are several options for pain relief. All of them have some advantages and some disadvantages. This article will tell you what they are.
You can use the phrases at the bottom of this sheet to tell your midwife what you would like to use. Remember, you may change your mind about pain relief once your labour starts.
There are also things you can do to help yourself cope with labour. You can try:
• warmth – a hot water bottle placed on your back, tummy or groin will help relax your tense muscles and relieve pain. A warm bath can help too.
• breathing - focusing on your breathing will help you get through each contraction. Take a deep breath at the beginning of the contraction. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. As you breathe out, try to relax.
• rest – try to rest in early labour and in between contractions later on. You'll find it much easier to cope if you're not exhausted.
• positions – trying different positions to find one that feels most comfortable.
• Stand up and lean on the bed or your partner.
• Kneel down and lean on the seat of a chair.
• Kneel with one leg raised to make lots of room in your pelvis for your baby to come out.
• Get on all fours to help ease backache.
• Sit for a while in a chair, then get up and walk around.
• Rock your hips as much as you can to get your baby moving.
Entonox (gas and air)Entonox, also called gas and air, is a gas made up of 50 per cent oxygen and 50 per cent nitrous oxide. You breathe the gas through a mouthpiece at the beginning of each contraction. The gas helps take the edge off contraction pain.
• Easy to use.
• Doesn’t stay in your system.
• Contains oxygen that is good for your baby.
• Can be used for a home and/or water birth.
• Only a mild pain-killer.
• May make you feel sick.
• Dries your mouth out.
PethidinePethidine is a synthetic form of morphine. You can be given pethidine by injection or via a tube inserted into a vein. Pethidine is a painkiller and it will also help you to relax.
• Helps you relax.
• Your midwife can give it to you.
• Can be used for a home birth.
• It may make you sleepy or dizzy.
• It can make you feel sick or vomit.
• It may slow labour down.
• It may affect your baby’s breathing and make her sleepy for a few days.
• Your baby may need to have an injection as soon as she is born to reverse the effects of the pethidine in her system.
EpiduralAn epidural is an injection into the small of your back. The injection numbs you from your belly button downwards to your legs and feet so you won’t feel the pain of contractions. You can only have an epidural if you have your baby in hospital.
• More than 90 per cent of women get complete pain relief.
• Your mind remains totally clear.
• Can help to control high blood pressure.
• Can put you back in control of your labour, and restore your confidence.
• A 'low-dose' epidural may give you pain relief while allowing you to move around. Ask your midwife if your hospital offers one.
• You may find that a small part of your tummy has not been anaesthetised.
• You usually have to stay in bed.
• You may need to have a drip in your arm in case your blood pressure falls.
• You will probably have a catheter into your bladder.
• You may have to be told when to push.
• Can increase the length of labour.
• Your baby’s heartbeat will have to be monitored after each dose.
• Greater chance of having a forceps or ventouse delivery.
• Can cause problems passing urine.
• In rare cases, a large dose may cause short-term breathing problems for your baby.
TENSTENS stands for "Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation". A translation of this is Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. TENS is a machine that gives out pulses of electrical energy which help prevent pain signals from your womb from reaching your brain.
• Easy to use.
• Doesn’t stop you being mobile.
• No lasting side-effects.
• Won’t affect your baby.
• Can be used for a home birth.
• Not every hospital offers this option.
• You will probably have to buy or hire the TENS machine yourself.
• May only help in the first half of labour.
• May have to be removed for electronic monitoring of your baby’s heart.
• If you want to use a birthing pool, you can use TENS before you get in the water, but not when you are in the pool.
• Makes it more difficult for your birth partner to massage your back.
For use at the hospital / For your midwifeYou can use these phrases to tell your midwife which type of pain relief you would like to use:
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Should We All Be Vegetarians?
From Volume 4 Issue 3 of Unless the
Lord ... Magazine
There has been a growing interest in health issues among Christian families and especially home schooling families. Many have chosen to eat organic produce, to avoid sugar and processed foods, and to seek healthier food from a variety of sources. We read that, Americans, on the whole, eat too much meat and particularly too much red meat. Though nutritional experts differ on a number of matters, yet there is considerable consensus for more whole, natural, and unprocessed foods of all sorts, as well as at least moderation in the eating of certain meats.
There has also been a significant growth in the popularity of a vegetarian or a vegan (no animal products of any sort, i.e. no eggs or milk) diet. The vegetarian lifestyle has become very popular among many non-Christian groups, especially those somewhat involved in eastern or "new age" religions and philosophy. Vegetarianism has also grown dramatically among conservative Christians in recent years.
The Seventh Day Adventist churches have always taught adherence to the Mosaic food laws and recommended a vegetarian lifestyle as well. In more recent years vegetarianism has been encouraged by Christian naturopathic doctors, the Hallelujah Diet, and numerous other sources.
Most nutrition experts would support the idea that a purely vegetarian diet, if well planned, can be very healthy and is certainly healthier than the typical American diet. Examples are given of superior health among large groups of vegetarians as compared with the population as a whole.
There are also many among the vegetarian movement who have chosen this lifestyle because they donít like the idea of animals being killed and eaten. Thus vegetarianism is common among animal rights activists.
the Bible Advocate a Vegetarian Lifestyle?
Today there are Christian advocates of the vegetarian lifestyle that argue that all Christians ought to be vegetarian (or even vegans). For example, consider some of the assertions by Rev. George Malkmus, the author of "Godís Way to Ultimate Health," and the creator of the Hallelujah Diet:
"Godís Way to Ultimate Health is based on the simple premise that the human body was created by God to be nourished and sustained in perfect health on a vegetarian diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Mankind has strayed far from that original diet handed down in Genesis 1:29. The price tag for our modern diet and lifestyle is a massive health care crisis beyond compare with any time in history."
"When God created man, He placed him in a garden and told him his diet was to consist of raw fruits and vegetables. On this diet, man lived an average of 912 years without sickness! Following the flood, meat and cooked food were added to manís diet. As a result, sickness entered the human race and manís life span declined from an average of 912 years to 100 years by the time you get to the end of Genesis!"
"All meats are harmful to the body and the cause of up to 90% of all physical problems."
Consider also the following statement by the Christian Vegetarian Association:
"The CVA (Christian Vegetarian Association) believes that vegetarianism expresses the compassion and peace of Christ because the diet spares animals from suffering, alleviates world hunger, protects the environment and preserves human health."
With a statement like CVAís above, we might question whether this organization is Christian in more than just name. The reasons given in support of a vegetarian diet sound so much like those given by non-Christian vegetarians who draw their values from eastern religions or animal rights activists.
One of the strongest Biblical defenses Iíve seen for the vegetarian lifestyle, is that presented on the internet site JesusVeg.com. These arguments can be summarized as follows:
1) In Godís perfect world, as represented in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve ate no meat (Gen 1:29-30).
2) In the future, Jesus will usher in a new age of peace, in which even the lion to lie down with the lamb (Isaiah 11) Ė a return to an Eden like existence where only plants are eaten.
3) God cares about the animals of His creation, as is shown by many of Mosesí laws prescribed for the benefit and humane treatment of animals (Exod. 23:5; Deut. 22:6Ė7; 25:4). Todayís factory farms and slaughterhouses are far from humane in the way animals are raised and prepared. Eating meat supports those who cause so much animal pain and suffering. "As we do to the least, so we do to Him."
4) Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19), so we should care for our bodies as gifts from God. Scientific studies indicate that vegetarian diets are associated with reduced risk for obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, colon cancer, lung cancer, and kidney disease. Jesus ate a predominately plant-based Mediterranean diet. Pesticides and dioxins become concentrated in animal fat and are consumed by meat eaters and dangerous blood mercury levels can result from eating lots of fish. Farmed animals are bred to grow quickly and given little exercise (so often high in saturated fats, elevating the eatersí cholesterol levels), are often given hormones to increase muscle development, and are routinely fed antibiotics to prevent infections in crowded and stressed conditions (promotes antibiotic resistant bacteria). High-speed slaughterhouse operations predispose meat to bacterial contamination.
What Does the Bible Teach?
Garden of Eden Diet. In Gen 1:29, God declares that He has given to man for his food: every plant yielding seed on the surface of the earth and every tree that has fruit yielding seed. In verse 30, God declared the same concerning the animals, that plants would be their food. Then in Gen 2:16-17, God told Adam that he could eat from any tree within the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Certainly this diet was adequate for manís health, as being prescribed by God. The Garden of Eden included every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food (Gen 2:9). With the inclusion of the fruit from the Tree of Life, these fruits were apparently intended to sustain Adamís body indefinitely Ė without experiencing death (Gen 2:16-17).
Post-Flood Diet. In Gen 9:3-4, God again speaks concerning what man is to eat and now includes "every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with itís life, that is, its blood." Some argue that this was just a "concession to human weakness," and a short term necessity because of the plants destroyed by the flood, and not truly Godís best. Yet in context, God seems to be authorizing this diet change without any hint of it being less desirable than the previously authorized vegetarian diet. No specific reason is given for this change, but there is no later indication of any disapproval on Godís part, except for the requirement of eating meat without the blood and the dietary laws of Moses designating certain animals as unclean and instructing not to eat the fat of an ox, sheep or goat. Apparently things changed for the animals as well, either after the fall or after the flood, as many animals became meat eaters.
Biblical Examples of Meat Eating. We find numerous examples of the people of God eating meat from the time of Noah onward. Abraham served a fatted calf along with bread, curds, and milk, to angels visiting him (Gen 18:7-8). Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job all were primarily keepers of livestock, whose primary purpose was meat and who also provided milk. Animal sacrifices were practiced by Godís people prior to the Law and were instituted as a major part of the Mosaic Law. All Israelites were commanded to kill and eat a lamb on the Passover. The priests received a portion of the animal sacrifices for their own food (Exodus 29:26-28 and others). David was a herder of sheep and presumably dined frequently on them and drank of the milk of sheep and goats. Jesus and His twelve disciples regularly ate fish (Lk 24:42-43 and implied elsewhere), and presumably ate meat at least on the Passover.
Daniel Eating Vegetables Only. When taken captive to Babylon, Daniel and his three friends sought permission to eat only vegetables to avoid defiling themselves with the kingís choice food. Presumably Danielís concern was with eating meat with the blood in it, or eating meat from animals stated to be unclean by the Law of Moses. Given the environment in which he was living, it was highly unlikely that any of the meat available to him would meet the requirements of the Law of Moses. Daniel and his friends did prove to have a very healthful appearance with eating only vegetables and drinking water.
Jesusí Words Concerning Food. In Mark 7:18-20, Jesus explains that "whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him," and then Mark adds the comment that, "Thus He declared all foods clean."
The Apostle Paulís Instruct-ions Concerning Food. In 1 Cor 8:8, in discussing eating meat sacrificed to idols, Paul states that "food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat." In Romans 14, again speaking to the issue of meat possibly sacrificed to idols, Paul refers to "he who is weak eats vegetables only" (vs 2) , and in verse 14, that he is convinced that nothing is unclean in itself. In verse 17, he further adds that, "the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking," and in verse 20, that "all things are clean." Yet throughout he stresses the importance of not causing a brother to stumble and that is better to not eat meat at all if it might cause a brother who sees it as sin, to stumble. Then in Colossians 2:16, Paul instructs us to let no one act as our judge in regard to food or drink, etc.
Conclusions From A Review of the Scriptures
Since the time of the flood meat has been clearly approved by God for the human diet. Nearly all men and women of God recorded in the Bible since the Flood have eaten meat and have been approved by God. The Jews were commanded to eat meat on at least one occasion of the year. The Levitical priests were expected to eat the meat of the sacrifices. Jesus Himself ate meat along with His disciples. So we cannot say we are more holy when we donít eat meat or that those who eat meat are more ungodly, else we would be accusing Jesus of ungodliness. However, God did place a stipulation on how meat is to be eaten Ė without the blood. And in the Law of Moses, certain meats were declared unclean and not to be eaten. Though whether they should still be considered "unclean" by Christians today is a matter for debate - in light of the verses quoted from Jesus and Paul.
Likewise, there is nothing ungodly about eating only plants. This was the pre-flood diet and was also followed by Daniel and his friends when faced with the alternative of eating meat that did not satisfy the requirements of the Law of Moses. To the apostle Paul, eating or not eating meat was a matter of no significance in and of itself. However, if some believers might stumble from seeing you eat meat that they presumed was sacrificed to idols, then it would be better not to eat meat at all.
Is a vegetarian diet more healthy than a diet that includes meat? I have not found any Biblical argument that would establish this. The Garden of Eden diet did not include meat, and we would suppose that it was a very good diet for the human body. Yet God did not say that the revised diet He authorized after the flood was any worse. We have no Biblical reason to conclude that a well selected diet including meat would be inferior or superior to one excluding meat.
The Cruelty to Animals Issue
Is it true that the factory farms and slaughter houses are practicing terrible cruelty to animals? Well it is true that there is a lot of overcrowding, that animals are often kept in unsanitary conditions, and are sometimes penned up much like human prisoners - only worse. So, yes, some of the horror stories are true, but these are greatly overplayed and exaggerated by some of the vegetarian proponents. And what is NOT mentioned is that there are alternative sources for meat of which none of these things are true. Often you have to look to co-ops or direct farm purchases to access such meat, and yes, it is a bit more expensive, but it is available in most every area of the country (and growing). So you can purchase meat without supporting factory farms that use methods you do not approve of.
Health Issues From Science
Current experts in nutrition generally praise a vegetarian diet as being a very healthy alternative. However, this does not mean that a well chosen diet that also includes meat would necessarily be less healthy. Though we suppose that the experts are probably right, they cannot be relied on in the same manner as Scripture. The conclusions of science have been know to undergo frequent revision Ė sometimes minor and sometimes major.
There seems to be considerable evidence that though God has made us very flexible in terms of what we can eat and live on, that we would generally be healthier if a large portion of our diet consisted of fruits and vegetables and if meat assumed a more minor role. Likewise we should be concerned about how all of our food is raised and processed, whether meat or plant food, in terms of chemicals used, and other factors (antibiotics, etc.) which might compromise the nutrition of our food or introduce greater risks of cancer or heart disease, etc.
Should We All Be Vegetarians?
I donít think either the Bible or science supports a conclusion that everyone should be vegetarian. A vegetarian diet is a very good and acceptable choice, but so is a wisely chosen diet which also includes meat. If you eat vegetables and fruits, you might want to consider organic and pesticide free options. If you eat meat, you might want to consider options for more natural meats coming from more humane farm processes.
We all have a responsibility to take care of the bodies God has given us, but we will not all reach the same conclusions as to which foods to eat or what other health practices are best. Letís purpose not to criticize one another or pressure one another to adopt our familyís choices. And letís also purpose to be a little flexible with our eating Ė not giving it an importance beyond what it is due. Letís also be careful not to let worldly philosophies influence our ideas about food contrary to Godís Word.V | <urn:uuid:e3ab3be2-53ce-4bcc-a77d-2f7d8f8e4e82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://unlessthelordmagazine.com/articles/Vegetareans.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970116 | 3,068 | 1.992188 | 2 |
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Manned moon outpost could be NASA's next big mission
Houston Chronicle | November 9, 2012 | Updated: November 9, 2012 2:05pm
NASA has secretly been working on a plan to develop a manned outpost on the far side of the moon, but the lofty plan has been kept quiet until after the presidential election, according to media reports.
According to Space.com, the plan has probably already been cleared by the Obama administration. Officials kept the plan under wraps in case Mitt Romney won the presidential election.
The plan would set up a manned station in an area of space called the "earth moon libration point," CNN reported. The spot is a point in space where the gravitational forces of the moon and Earth are roughly balanced.
The location would give the U.S. a presence in deep space that could double as the last stop before more ambitious missions, such as a trip to asteroids or beyond, according to Space.com.
But there are concerns about the potential outpost, particularly those involving the health of those on the station, according to Chiao.
"The radiation environment is much, much harsher," and "you worry about solar flares ... which could be acutely lethal," he told CNN, adding a manned tended base on the moon seemed more practical.
The base likely would also be extremely expensive. | <urn:uuid:a9869859-a90c-4350-ad28-7a52945ba5a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/space/article/Manned-moon-outpost-could-be-NASA-s-next-big-4023535.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970668 | 277 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Bishop Robert C. Harvey was born in 1917 and grew up in New Jersey. He recounts his memories of being 17 miles from Pearl Harbor on the morning that it was bombed, the torpedo battles he had with Japanese ships, and the events of his childhood that caused him to be interested in the military. The Bronze Star was awarded to him for his part in a rescue mission, saving men whose ship had been struck and set afire.
View Entire InterviewFull Video
View By SegmentBishop Robert Harvey | <urn:uuid:1f322b00-d73d-4863-bf14-10beb4e6661f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gpb.org/wwii/bishop-harvey | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994295 | 104 | 1.851563 | 2 |
In just 14 months, Americans will be required to prove that they have federally "qualified" health insurance or face an Obamacare tax of $695 to $2,085. That is unless you are in prison, below the poverty line, or are an undocumented immigrant, according to the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform.
When added together, those three groups total up to one-sixth of the nation's population of 314 million: 218,929 are in federal prisons, 12 million are illegals and 42 million are below the poverty line and eligible for welfare, though some fit into all three categories, according to federal reports.
ATR highlighted the groups eligible from the mandate to get health insurance in a mock Internal Revenue Service form they developed to show the extra paperwork Americans will be required to fill out once the full Obamacare law kicks in, January 2014. It is based on testimony from the IRS given in September that said, "taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment."
Based on other IRS requirements, ATR said that Americans will have to show that they have health insurance "qualified" by the Department of Health and Human Services. They will also have to disclose if they were covered by a qualifying plan during the year and for how long. And they could be subject to penalties and interest on unpaid Obamacare taxes for periods they were not covered.
Their mock form includes groups qualifying for exemptions from the Obamacare health insurance mandate and tax. "Classes of individuals who are exempt from the mandate include but are not limited to: those serving sentences in the federal penitentiary system; those persons not legally able to work in the U.S.; welfare recipients (since they are below the poverty line); and those qualifying for an HHS-granted religious exemption," said ATR, citing section 1501 of the Affordable Care Act that also exempts many others, including native Americans.
The anti-tax group had some fun with the mock tax form, calling theirs "Form OBMA." | <urn:uuid:c06dbf41-3644-4151-a42c-21dc42712918> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2512205 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973181 | 415 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Despite a spate of recent setbacks, plug-in hybrids are here to stay, and consumers and automakers need to be patient as the technology struggles toward competitiveness.
That's what experts are saying in the wake of three difficult months in which the reputation of electrified vehicles was marred by a fire and a temporary manufacturing shutdown for the Chevy Volt, as well as high-profile problems for startup manufacturers Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive.
"Every major car company in the world is developing plug-in technology right now because it has great promise," David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, told Design News. "The fundamental concept is a solid one. It's just not ready for prime time yet."
The Prius PHV looks like a conventional Prius, except for the charge port near the left front wheel.
Cole and other experts interviewed by Design News over the past two months have blamed the recent unfavorable impressions on an overzealous consumer market that wants electric vehicles to succeed today. As a result, low sales of Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs have clashed with high expectations, as have other public problems, such as the Volt's fire, Tesla's $40,000 replacement battery, and Fisker's fiasco at the Consumer Reports facility.
"For any new technology, there will be occasions where you have to learn from mistakes," noted Hrishikesh Sathawane, an analyst of EVs and energy storage for Lux Research. "This happens all the time."
Cole argues that the auto industry knew that EVs and plug-in hybrids would have a slow uptake, but says that many executives were swept up in an electric vehicle euphoria that wasn't grounded in reality. "Any way you look at it, the technology was really too expensive," Cole told us. "The people involved knew this. But when the $7,500 federal tax credit arrived, everything started to change." | <urn:uuid:24c9fdb5-5727-47aa-a5c5-b4a5c6144865> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1366&doc_id=241552&piddl_msgpage=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974898 | 392 | 1.640625 | 2 |