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If Steve Jobs Had Made a Hoodie, this is the One He Would Have Made – The Lessons of Good Business Really are Transferable
Ok, let me first state – I don’t think I’ve worn a “Hoodie” for decades, and I never wore one much. I’m certain I don’t currently own one, and have no plans to buy one.
So, when Slate published This Is the Greatest Hoodie Ever Made: How American Giant created the best sweatshirt known to man by Farhad Manjoo, I thought I would just skip it. I’m a big fan of Mr. Manjoo, but hoodies really are outside of my interest. But, in the midst of a moment when I needed to just unwind, I read it. (Yes, I read articles when I want to unwind). (By the way, American Giant designs and makes it clothing in the United States).
Here’s what I learned. This article should be must reading for any one tackling any project in business. It is filled with insight about the design and execution process of a unique company. Here’s a key excerpt:
Philipe Manoux, American Giant’s creative director, had come to the apparel world from a career in industrial design; in addition to Apple, where he worked on the coverglass and touch module for the first iPhone, Manoux spent many years in the medical device industry. When he started at American Giant, he approached sweatshirts as he would a tech product: He obsessively experimented with perfecting every part, then created dozens of prototypes until he’d arrived at an ideal version.
The result is a sweatshirt with several design elements you won’t find on the competition.
If you read the full article, you will learn that this is a company that is dead serious about making clothing that will last. It is…different. And better. And simple.
I thought back to the presentation I gave on the Walter Isaacson book, Steve Jobs. Here are my takeaways, the most important lessons from the book (and the life, & career) of Steve Jobs, which came at the end of that presentation:
1) Care about the product, not about the money. The money must – must! — be the by-product, not the focus.
2) Everything matters. Everything. Including what no one can see. Insanely great cuts no corners!
3) Do few things. Do them really well.
4) Absolute control. Because such control created consistent quality. (No “crap”!)
5) Don’t ship junk.
6) The customers do not know what they want “until we’ve shown them”…
7) Build a team of A Players – Keep them A Players. Non-A Players create more non-A players. (They drag people down…) A Players are genuinely, truly critical.
American Giant seems to be doing all seven of these. I suspect most of us could be more successful if we tried to do likewise.
You can purchase my synopsis of Steve Jobs, with audio + my comprehensive handout, at our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com.
And just in case you’ve never seen this, watch this 2 minute video of Steve Jobs: “We Don’t Ship Junk.” It is brilliant.
No comments yet. | <urn:uuid:54cc0846-a6b6-41fd-8ad0-05e1e16c243d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/if-steve-jobs-had-made-a-hoodie-this-is-the-one-he-would-have-made-the-lessons-of-good-business-really-are-transferable/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94071 | 727 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Experts say infections could be five times higher than the official figures
Flawed method of data collection has raised doubts over the malaria control programme in Mangalore, which records highest incidence of the disease in the State.
While the official figures put the total number of malaria cases in the city in the last five months at 1,485, the community health experts said the actual figure could be five times higher than that. They said the health officials did not have an effective mechanism to record all instances of malaria.
According to the statistics provided by the Department of Health and Family Welfare, 1,370 people were found with parasite P.vivax (Plasmodium vivax) and 12 with P.falciparum (Plasmodium falciparum) parasite among a total of 1,485 people who contracted malaria.
Those infected with P.falciparum parasite are said to be in serious condition compared to those infected with the other plasmodium variant.
In Dakshina Kannada district, 1,669 cases of malaria have been reported. Of them, 1,538 have been found with P.vivax, while 131 cases have been detected with P. falciparum. “This is 35 per cent less than what was reported last year,” said O.R. Srirangappa, District Health and Family Welfare Officer.
The numbers would increase during monsoon, he added.
Dr. Srinivas Kakkilaya, who is involved in raising awareness about prevention of malaria, disputes the official statistics. “The actual number is five times more than what is revealed in the statistics,” he said. The official figures, he said, reflected only the detection at a few testing centres such as the one at the Corporation Building and the Wenlock Hospital. Moreover, the authorities were accepting detections made using peripheral smear examination, which was less sensitive and not including those done under the QBC (Quantitative Buffy Coat) test that were carried out in many private hospitals, he said.
Dr. Kakkilaya said the practice of collecting reports from all hospitals had been stopped now. Similarly, the mobile testing van had also stopped functioning. “The city corporation should have been proactively involved in combating malaria. But nothing is happening,” he said. In the absence of accurate data, the experts feel, the strategies to combat the dreaded disease too could be flawed.
Conceding that there were issues with regard to data collection, Mangalore City Corporation Commissioner K.N. Vijayaprakash said better coordination was needed among various agencies to effectively tackle malaria. “There are several reasons for ineffective implementation,” he said.
Mr. Vijayaprakash said a proposal was being placed before the corporation's council to increase by five times the penalty on the builders who failed to take measures to prevent breeding of mosquitoes. Instructions had been issued to health inspectors to carry out regular testing of malaria and also collect reports from all hospitals. “I will hold a meeting soon to take stock of the preparedness,” he said. | <urn:uuid:5eb4a191-2714-478d-95ba-3732fdf46b79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Mangalore/flawed-data-collection-raises-doubts-over-malaria-control-programme/article2095958.ece | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969567 | 644 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Immigration issues are at the forefront of the American political discussion at the moment. This is an election year, and some voters will undoubtedly be affected by the candidates' stances on immigration law. Immigration policies will affect North Carolina significantly. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, our state is home to approximately 325,000 "unauthorized immigrants," a category that the Center has created for immigrants born outside the U.S. but who do not fall under the heading "undocumented immigrants."
Already immigrants in North Carolina are demonstrating their resolve. This past week, a number of immigrants engaged in one of the most time-honored American traditions: political protest. They marched on a General Assembly meeting to oppose stricter immigration measures that the lawmakers were considering. They responded strongly when a legislator asserted that immigrants without papers were responsible for crimes involving guns and drugs.
Police charged three of the protesters with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor offense, and took them into custody. In accordance with immigration law, the jail examined their immigration records. The jail then contacted ICE and informed the agency whether the three were citizens of the United States.
It appears that the three protesters did not have U.S. citizenship, but ICE has stated that two of them will not undergo deportation because they do not have a prior criminal record. This is in line with the government's newly articulated policy of only pursuing deportation against illegal immigrants with criminal records. The third protester, however, does have a criminal record and could face deportation proceedings.
Source: Fox News Latino, "Undocumented Protesters in North Carolina Will Not Be Deported," Mar. 2, 2012. | <urn:uuid:308151dc-d73f-485e-998a-9ec4bf0633cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greensboroimmigrationlawblog.com/2012/03/ice-declines-to-deport-two-immigrants-in-north-carolina-protest.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979051 | 326 | 2.109375 | 2 |
BACK TO THE LIST
St. Joseph Church at 48th and Hermitage Ave. on the south side of Chicago
was founded to serve Polish families who had settled southwest of the
Union Stock Yards in the old Town of Lake. The nearest Polish parish
was St. Mary of Perpetual Help in Bridgeport, which had been organized
in 1882 as a mission of St. Adalbert Church at 17th and Paulina St.
Rev. John Radziejewski, pastor of St. Adalbert Church, contributed funds
for the erection of a church building at the southwest corner of 48th
and Page St. (now Hermitage Ave.). Although 1887 has been regarded as
the founding date of the parish, property was purchased in 1885, and
St. Joseph Church was dedicated on Dec. 19, 1886.
St. Joseph Church remained a mission of St. Mary of Perpetual Help Church
until March 1889, when Rev. Stanislaus Nawrocki, a diocesan priest, was
named first resident pastor. Rev. Vincent Barzynski, CR, pastor of St.
Stanislaus Kostka Church, tried to staff St. Joseph Church with a member
of his order. However, a shortage of Resurrectionists led to the appointment
of Father Nawrocki, who had been an assistant at St. Mary of Perpetual
Father Nawrocki resided at nearby St. Rose of Lima Church until a rectory
could be constructed. With the generous support of his congregation,
the pastor was able to enlarge the frame church and to open a parish
school under the direction of the Sisters of St. Francis.
On May 3, 1891, Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan appointed Father Nawrocki pastor
of St. Mary of Perpetual Help Church. His successor was Rev. Victor Zalewski,
who had been an assistant at St. Adalbert Church.
Father Zalewski continued to serve the growing Polish parish of St. Joseph until
January 1894, when he was named pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in South
The third pastor of St. Joseph Church was Rev. Michael Pyplacz, who had been
pastor of Immaculate Conception Church since 1884. Father Pyplacz had been born
in 1851 in Brzeczkowice, Poland which was then under Prussian domination. With
nationalist feelings running high, he encountered some opposition from members
of St. Joseph parish who considered him to be more German than Polish.
On more than one occasion, Father Pyplacz's administration of St. Joseph
Church was called into question by members of his parish. In August 1895,
erupted over the construction of a brick church. Max Kucharczyk, the parish
organist, stated that the cost of the church, with improvements to the school,
to no more than $26,000. In a letter to the Illinois StaatsZeitung, Kucharczyk
In regard to your article about the discord in St. Joseph Parish, I
wish to state that the root of the evil is the jealousy of certain
contractors who lost out on bids for the construction work on the
new church building As to the leader of this disturbance, his bid
was rejected on the grounds that his previous work was unsatisfactory.
A building he put up adjoining
seven years ago sank three inches because of an error in construction.
On Aug. 31, 1895, a mass meeting was held by parishioners in Columbia
hail at 48th and Paulina St. In its account of the meeting, the Chicago
reported that M. Koska, a contractor, accused the parish organist, Max Kucharczyk,
being the "real pastor of the church." Koska called for a Board
of Directors who would control parish funds.
On Sept. 8, 1895, Father Pyplacz called a parish meeting, after which the
board of trustees examined the financial records of this parish. Correspondence
in the Dziennik Chicagoski (Polish Daily News) of Sept. 17, 1895 makes it
clear that the financial ledgers were found to be in good order.
The letter, which was signed by members of St. Joseph Church, refuted charges
against Father Pyplacz and added: "He who claims that the organist /Kucharczyk/
received and disposed money of the parish without control is a prevaricator."
Construction on the new brick building proceeded according to the plans of
Polish architect T. Lewandowski. On Oct. 6, 1895, Rev. John Nepomucene Jaeger
St. Joseph Church. According to the Inter Ocean:
The church will not be completed for fully three years, but when finished
it will be one of the finest on the South Side. It occupies the southwest
corner of Paulina and Forty-Eighth streets, and is 162
by 77 feet.
It will be
of stone and pressed brick, and will cost $90,000. A steeple 175 feet high
will ornament the front of the church.
In its account of the dedication ceremony, Dziennik Chicagoski reported
that only the basement and main floor of St. Joseph Church had been
funds permit, the remainder of the new church will be finished."
On Nov. 12, 1895, Rev. Anthony Kozlowski, a former assistant at St. Hed-wig
Church on the northwest side of Chicago who had organized the independent
church of All Saints, held a meeting in the Town of Lake. Although members
of St. Joseph Church were reported to have attended the meeting, no independent
Polish church was organized in the vicinity.
Following the turn of the century, St. Joseph parish continued to grow. School
enrollment increased from 419 students in 1895 to 710 students in 1903. In
1903, work began on an addition to the combination church and school building
had been constructed in 1895 at 48th and Paulina St. On Oct. 6, 1903, The
New World reported that: "The erection of the new school house is well underway
and promises to be quite an addition to the parish." This structure
is still in use as St. Joseph grammar school.
After the present rectory at 4821 S. Hermitage Ave. was constructed in 1903,
the old parish residence at 4812 5. Paulina St. was remodeled as a convent
to accommodate the Felician Sisters who staffed St. Joseph school.
When Father Pyplacz took a leave of absence from St. Joseph parish in 1908,
Rev. Louis Grudzinski served as administrator. On July 18, 1909, a group
protested the return of Father Pyplacz to his post.
On Aug. 7, 1909, the Chicago Record Herald reported that the pastor had applied
for an injunction the day before "to restrain further interference with
religious services." The controversy in St. Joseph parish continued
until Father Pyplacz resigned his poSt. He died in Chicago on Apr. 9, 1920
age of 62.
Rev. Stanislaus Cholewinski was appointed the next pastor of St. Joseph Church
on July 5, 1910. Father Cholewinski was born in Poznan, Poland in 1875 and
came to the United States as a young child. He attended St. Mary of Perpetual
and served at the first Mass celebrated in St. Joseph parish in 1887. Following
his ordination in 1902, Father Cholewinski was assigned to St. Josaphat Church
and since 1906, he had been pastor of Assumption, BVM Church in West Pullman.
The Polish population "Back of the Yards" increased to such an
extent that two new national parishes-St. John of God (1906) and Sacred Heart
were formed. Despite this loss of territory, St. Joseph parish continued
to increase in membership and by 1912, 1,212 children were enrolled in the
In 1912, Father Cholewinski organized a one year commercial department at
St. Joseph school for boys and girls of the parish. The program was a popular
but it was disbanded in June 1918 in order to provide additional classroom
space for the 1,300 pupils who were enrolled in the grammar school.
Through the generosity of his parishioners, Father Cholewinski was able to
break ground for a new church in 1913 at the southeast corner of 48th and
Ave. On Aug. 10, 1913, Auxiliary Bishop Paul P. Rhode laid the cornerstone
of St. Joseph Church. The imposing Romanesque structure, completed at a cost
$200,000, was dedicated by Archbishop James P. Quigley on Sept. 27, 1914.
During the early years of his pastorate, Father Cholewinski worked with the
pastors of Sacred Heart and St. John of God parishes to organize Guardian
Angel Day Nursery.
The settlement for Polish immigrants, located at 46th and Gross Ave. (now
McDowell Ave.), expanded its services to include a free medical dispensary
and a residence
for working girls. Guardian Angel Day Nursery operated in competition with
a settlement run by Mary McDowell of the University of Chicago.
A second convent was constructed at 4818 S. Paulina St. in 1925 at a cost
of $83,000. In that year, 1,530 students were enrolled in the school under
of 25 Felician Sisters.
On Nov. 21, 1937, George Cardinal Mundelein presided at the golden jubilee
of the founding of St. Joseph parish. The priests and people had cause to
celebrate: the parish had been free of debt for several years.
In 1937, 30 Felician Sisters staffed the school, which had an enrollment
of 1,424 children. More than 500 of the students paid no tuition during the
Under Father Cholewinski's leadership, many parish societies were formed,
including branches of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America and the
In 1938, St. Joseph coeducational high school was opened with an enrollment
of nearly 90 pupils. A commercial course was added to the curriculum two
Ground for a new high school was broken in 1940 at 4831 S. Hermitage Ave.
Archbishop Samuel A. Stritch dedicated the three story brick structure on
Sept. 1, 1941.
When the new building was opened on Sept. 8th, its enrollment of 300 pupils
included the entire student body of Sacred Heart parish high school, which
had been consolidated
with St. Joseph high school.
In 1946, Father Cholewinski was named a Domestic Prelate with the title Right
Reverend Monsignor. After serving as pastor for 55 years, he retired in January
1965 due to serious illness. Msgr. Cholewinski died eight months later on
Oct. 21, 1965 at the age of 90.
Rev. John F. Koziol, former pastor of St. Adalbert Church, was appointed
pastor of St. Joseph Church on Feb. 12, 1965. On Jan. 8, 1967, he was invested
Domestic Prelate with the title Right Reverend Monsignor.
Under Msgr. Koziol's leadership, extensive repairs have been carried out
on the aging buildings in the St. Joseph parish plant.
In 1978, 572 children were enrolled in the grade school under the direction
of seven Felician Sisters and nine lay teachers. Enrollment in St. Joseph
then numbered 433 young men and women under the direction of 16 nuns and
13 lay teachers.
Rev. Aloysius C. Zielinski is associate pastor and Rev. Casimir J. Czaplicki,
CSC is in residence. From 1971 to 1975, Father Czaplicki served as pastor
of the Polish parish of Holy Trinity on Noble St. Leonard J. Kay is the first
deacon to be ordained from St. Joseph parish
From "A History of
the Parishes of the Archdiocese of Chicago" - 1980
Reprinted with the permission
of the Chicago Archdiocese. | <urn:uuid:57cf43c6-84a8-4b2f-a80b-75e849f5cbff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pgsa.org/ArchChiPolPar/archchicago_descr.php?pageID=37 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969008 | 2,570 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Reaching hard-to-count groups has been a major factor behind ballooning costs to the census, which sustains its biggest costs when it has to send survey-takers to households.
"An Internet option cannot come at the expense of reaching hard-to-count communities. Because of disparities in Internet access, this is no silver bullet to increasing response rates and could make racial and language minorities, as well as rural residents, even harder to count than they are now," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of various civil rights groups.
"The bureau cannot use this as an excuse to scale back the field offices and programs that ensure everyone gets counted, regardless of race, language, or ZIP code," he said.
Census officials say planning for the 2020 census is under way, and that money saved by implementing an Internet option could possibly be used to pay for additional efforts to track hard-to-count groups.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:8cd2fdd3-694d-45ce-85a7-c4a011fba6c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2012/12/17/census-to-offer-internet-option-in-govt-surveys?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964232 | 224 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Pet Care Features
Did you know that cigarette smoke increases the risk of cancer in cats, dogs and birds? Learn more about how you can protect your pet.
Learn more about protecting your pet during the winter with tips from the Lexington Humane Society, the ASPCA and more. Learn more.
Did you know there are many hazards to your pet lurking in your yard? The ASPCA Guide to Pet-Safe Gardening offers tips for pet-safe gardens.
Each year, approximately four million cats end up in shelters. Thousands of kittens are born in the spring and summer. Many people don't realize the surge of cats and kittens shelters experience during this time. All of them are looking for good homes. Learn more.
May brings two very important events for animal lovers. The first is National Be Kind to Animals Week. This event, celebrated since 1915, is sponsored by the American Humane Association and celebrates the unique bond between animals and people. Learn more.
Spring is a beautiful time of year. However, like every season, it brings its own special concerns for our animal companions. Many of the wonderful things we enjoy are hazardous to our pets. Learn more.
During challenging economic times, finding the money to do what is right for your pet may become increasingly difficult. Fortunately, many organizations are working hard to find ways to help you help your pets. Learn more about the resources available.
February is National Prevent a Litter Month. Did you know that, according to the experts at North Shore Animal League, spaying and neutering just one male and one female cat will prevent more than 2,000 unwanted births in just four years -and more than 2 million in 8 years?! Many area shelters are offering assistance on February 24, National Spay Day. Resources are listed below. Also, don't forget your pet on Valentine's Day. Below you will find tips on how to keep your pet safe during this holiday.
Valentine's Day Pet Safety
- The ASPCA wants you to enjoy a pet-friendly Valentine's Day. Review their tips for keeping your furry valentine safe.
National Prevent a Litter Month
- North Shore Animal League has timely information available about National Prevent a Litter Month.
- The Humane Society of the United States Pet Overpopulation Estimates also provide important statistics on why pet overpopulation is something we should all work to prevent.
- The Woodford Humane Society provides "Top Ten Reasons to Have Your Pet Spayed or Neutered" as well as a list of local, low-cost spay/neuter and TNR programs in Central Kentucky.
Holidays can be fun for people, but distressing for pets. While it may seem exciting to us, pets can become very stressed and even in danger from holiday activities and decorations. Pets thrive on routine and anything that disrupts that routine can be very upsetting to them. Take a few minutes now to review some important tips on how to make the holidays fun and safe for your pet.
- Keep your Pets Safe and Happy During the Holiday Season from Humane Society of the U.S.
- Holiday Pet Safety Tips from the ASPCA
October is National Pet Wellness Month. Keep your pet's health and well-being in mind as you celebrate. Halloween festivities can be fun for people, but distressing for pets. Pets thrive on routine and anything that disrupts that routine can be very upsetting to them. Take a few minutes now to review some important tips on how to make Halloween fun and safe for your pet.
- Spare Your Pet the Spooks this Halloween from the Humane Society of the United States
- Halloween Safety Tips from the ASPCA
- 7 things you can do to make Halloween safer for your pet from the American Veterinary Medical Association
Are you prepared to care for your pet during a disaster? Have you gathered your resources and formulated a plan for your pets should a disaster occur? Have you thought about and made plans for all of your pets? They are counting on us to provide for them no matter what circumstances arise. Take a few minutes to review some of the resources available to help assist you as you make your preparations. You faithful companions will thank you should a disaster ever strike. And remember, If you evacuate your home, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PETS BEHIND!
Resources to help you plan:
- Disaster Preparedness for Pets from the Humane Society of the United States
- Preparing your Pets for Emergencies (pdf) from the Department of Homeland Security
- Pet and Disaster Safety Checklist (pdf) from the Red Cross
- FEMA Information for Pet Owners
Review these warm weather tips for you and your pet today.
- Keep Pets Safe in the Heat from the Human Society of the United States
- Keeping Pets Cool in the Summer from Healthypet.com provides information for you to consider as warm weather approaches.
- Hot Weather Tips from the ASPCA
Have you gone green with your pet care routine? The following links may provide some
Do you have experience or expertise in some aspect of pet care? Share your knowledge here!
E-mail Melanie Justice with your ideas, articles, and stories.
UK Work-Life does not endorse listed websites. Work-Life provides them for your information as leads to further your search for information. | <urn:uuid:fee05950-8b13-455c-8859-4f90b675f9e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uky.edu/HR/WorkLife/petcarearchives.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943152 | 1,084 | 2.25 | 2 |
This workshop is for couples in any relationship stage: dating, committed, engaged, or married.
Wherever your relationship is now…take it to the next level, with tools that will help you have meaningful, healthy communication. Our workshops are fun, interactive, and practical – you will walk away with skills that you can use right away.
Topics we will cover:
“We are so thankful for the Lasting Relationships seminar. The tools have been a great equalizer and ‘field leveler’ in our communication and we are enjoying the discovery phase for the first time in our 15 year marriage. I would be exaggerating if I said we used the tools every time. In reality we still blow it on occasion, but for the most part we are communicating much easier and about much deeper and more difficult things than we could before, without incident. We are beginning to implement the communication tools in our relationship with our 13 year old daughter.” -Rick
Research is proving that when it comes to teaching your children about making healthy choices and being responsible it’s not so much about what is being taught—it’s what is being caught.
This Healthy Relationship and Parenting class is designed to teach parents how to improve the quality of relationships within the home using the proven parenting techniques of Active Parenting Now. Active Parenting Now is an education program targeted to parents of 4-12 year olds. The program teaches parents how to raise a child by using encouragement, building the child’s self-esteem, and creating a relationship with the child based upon active listening, honest communication, and problem solving. This class will equip parents with the tools of natural and logical consequences to reduce irresponsible and unacceptable behaviors, and includes skills parents can use right away. Additional skills to improve the quality of relationships and communication with other adults in the home, social and workplace environments are included to support how we as parents model healthy relationships.
This workshop is for singles or couples who want to learn skills they can use in any relationship – with partners, children, relatives, friends, and co-workers.
This unique approach to our workshops will start out with a concentrated look at communication and problem solving skills which can be applied to any kind of relationship (spouse, parent, friend, co-worker, etc.). The later part of this series will take a closer look at specific topics including parenting, money management, marriage, and more.
“You know, it seemed hard at first, putting some of these skills into practice, but each week gets better and better. Like the puzzle pieces are fitting together. This has been great for us!” Amber – Healthy Relationship Workshop participant
This program is for singles and couples who want to gain control of their finances and learn how to effectively communicate about money matters.
Money is an important issue for everyone – in any economic situation. Finances and relationships can affect each other in positive and negative ways. When finances are going well, they can help the relationship; when finances are not going well, they can cause relationship damage. It’s important to get your money on track, for yourself and for your most important relationships. Our workshop will give you a little bit of both – money skills and some important relationship skills, so you can actually talk about money with the significant people in your life!
In this workshop, we will cover these topics:
“My husband and I have been able talk about money in better ways, and are even able to have those hard discussions with my kids whom we have supported beyond our means in recent years.” - Judy
This workshop is a great opportunity to gather skills and tools to help individuals succeed in the variety of relationships they encounter. Our connections with others in the workplace and at home doesn't have to be a challenge!
CareerFit is a two-part workshop series open to everyone looking to better develop their job search skills. Community experts and NWFS staff cover topics including writing an effective cover letter and resume, how to conduct a job search, and proper interviewing techniques. Our programs are in English and Spanish.
General Outline of CareerFit:
Becoming Resumé Ready
Acing the Interview
Come and learn some great tips and encouragement in your job search and gain some more information about our new employment assistance program.
To get more information or upcoming dates, contact NWFS at 503-546-6377.
Within My Reach is about developing healthy relationships. Some of the focus is on forming romantic relationships, and some of the focus is on skills you can use in any relationship, such as how to deal with conflict. Within My Reach also includes information about how adult relationships affect children. Join us for our interactive and informative workshops designed to strengthen singles' dating relationships. These workshops will help you learn skills for starting a relationship on the right foot. Topics covered:
“Wow! I really am valuable and I can do a lot of things. All my life I felt I couldn’t do anything right, because that is what I was told as a child. Your group has given me so much power.” - Becky
Northwest Family Services is offering workshops in the community to educate people about healthy relationship skills, positive parenting practices, maintaining strong marriages, and money management. Our goal is to give people practical tools to help them succeed in their relationships. NWFS is training Mentor Facilitators to offer workshop series throughout the greater Portland community.
Individuals and Couples will be asked to provide workshops (usually in a four-week format) on the skills that will be taught in the training. Typically, one can expect to provide 2-3 workshops per year.
Steps to becoming a Mentor Facilitator include:
Application; training workshop which includes project history and grant objectives, as well as curriculum training in the style of workshop you hope to facilitate; co-presentation of a workshop series with NWFS staff; ongoing support and skill development. Contact CarrieAnn Baker for more information. | <urn:uuid:31f834de-908a-4066-ad5f-d738e5bead7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lastingrelationships.org/programs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960986 | 1,231 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Currently, I'm generating the following pdf with pdflatex: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2682197/book.pdf Unfortunately, this document is a bit incompatible with adobe screen reader (for blind people). ...
I need the generated PDF to have "alt" text associated with each image so that a screen reader can read the alt text to the visually impaired user. I understand that essentially just including the ...
I have noticed that my PDFs (which I compile from LaTeX using PdfTexify on Windows 7 in MikTeX 2.9 with WinEdt) sometimes do not render properly on Mac OS X (e.g. the contents of some figures may not ...
ebook readers let user select only a single word in the most PDF documents. However, when I try to select a word in a PDF generated with pdflatex (and also with latex), the ereader (i.e. sony prs600) ...
I will teach a blind person how to use LaTeX this week. Has anyone any hints for me or package recommendations?
For a variety of reasons I am very interested in having audio versions of various texts. In some cases I can get these texts in LaTeX format (with equations). Obviously I can use "normal" ...
Accessibility for the visually impaired is becoming a big issue. The posts that I have linked to below ask questions about alt-tags or tooltips, both of which would be great options. I would like to ...
Is there an easy way to add hover text to all incidents of math mode where the hover text would contain the LaTeX code?
Adding hover text (I believe the technical term is a tooltip) to any part of any LaTeX document can be accomplished using cooltooltips.sty, as I have recently learned. I would like to do something ...
Does anyone know of any LaTeX modules that makes the pdf output generated by pdflatex Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)/Seciton 508 compliant? Specifics: With regard to math. One simple ...
How to create tagged PDF such that they will be: good enough for PDF/UA "reflowable" on smaller screens and ebook readers Any syntax & any engine will do. Preferably using LaTeX with ... | <urn:uuid:cda6800b-0957-418b-89cf-7035e62b9a22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/accessibility | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904375 | 480 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The total number of pseudomonas cases and colonisations notified to the Public Health Agency (PHA) today (2nd February) are as follows:
Total number of confirmed pseudomonas infections associated with the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital (RJM) outbreak: seven (in RJM).
Number of babies currently in neonatal units who have confirmed pseudomonas colonisations and are associated with the RJM outbreak: six (in RJM).
Number of other babies currently in neonatal units who have confirmed pseudomonas colonisations: six (in Altnagelvin, Craigavon and Antrim).
Colonisation means that pseudomonas has been found on the babies’ skin or secretions and confirmed by a lab.
Once a baby has been reported as colonised, it retains this status until it is discharged from hospital.
Photo credit: Janice Haney Carr. | <urn:uuid:1e541697-34b3-4076-8a2f-a60136174113> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publichealth.hscni.net/news/public-health-agency-pseudomonas-statement-%E2%80%93-thursday-2nd-february-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917295 | 187 | 2.1875 | 2 |
To contribute to the 2012 celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, the Cultural Heritage Administration of the Republic of Korea (CHA) and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC) recently launched the World Heritage Youth Storyboard Competition at the national level. Adapting the theme of the 40th anniversary on the role of local communities, the storyboard competition aims to sensitize young Koreans to the significance of World Heritage and teach them how to preserve and conserve World Heritage sites, especially in Korea.
In April 2012, one storyboard will be selected by UNESCO and the winning young author will see his/her storyboard developed into an animated film which will be shown during the 40th anniversary closing event in Japan in November 2012.
- Contestants choose one of the ten World Heritage sites in Korea and tell a story, describing the role of young people in preserving and conserving the site and finding ways to overcome challenges it faces.
- A storyboard should consist of 16 to 24 cartoons.
- Anyone from the age of 12 to 18 (as of January 1, 2012) can participate in the competition as an individual, or as a group of three members or less.
- The original storyboard should be submitted by March 16, 2012.
- Only one set of storyboards per individual or group will be accepted.
Winners and Awards
- The winners will be selected:
1) by the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) in March 2012. (ten final entries)
2) then by UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC) in June 2012. (top three winners)
- Ten final entries will receive a certificate and prize money of 500,000 won from CHA.
- WHC will examine the ten final storyboards and select three winners, who will each receive a UNESCO certificate and a medal.
- The storyboard of the first-prize winner will be developed into an animated film and distributed at the WHC website and through DVDs, including at the closing event of the 40th anniversary of the Convention in Japan.
How to Apply
- Contestants should send by post the original storyboard along with the signed application form to the International Affairs Division of CHA.
- Address: International Affairs Division, Cultural Heritage Administration
(189 Cheongsa-ro, Seo-gu, Daejeon, 302-701, Republic of Korea)
- Aapplication form is available at the CHA website (www.cha.go.kr)
- Plagiarized work will not be considered. If a storyboard is revealed to be plagiarized after selection as a winner, the prize awarded will be canceled.
- A4-size white paper should be used, with only one or two cartoons on a sheet.
- For more information, please contact Ms. Minok Kim (firstname.lastname@example.org, 042-481-4734) at CHA. | <urn:uuid:3cc00907-d5cb-4ac8-9ed2-becc541f5f81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/840/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91472 | 599 | 2.296875 | 2 |
This article is the second article in this series. The first, “Why Process Sounds Stupid” was published by BPM Institute in May, 2011.These two articles look at organizational culture and three strategies to become a more process oriented organization.
Process maturity assessment has become popular in the last few years, as companies want to understand their current level of maturity and what it entails to get to the next level. But once you assess where you are on a process maturity scale, what kind of approach is best for your organization – top-down, middle-out, or bottoms-up? How would you know, what steps should you take, and what challenges might you anticipate?
For this discussion, I will use the Capability Maturity Model Integration developed by Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon. Below is a picture of the model with simple descriptors to distinguish each level. There are other models available, but whatever model you use, you are still facing the question of how do I move the organization along.
There are several common elements that are relevant to each maturity level; I have created the following graphic to depict these common elements. Process is at the center of the model: it represents the workflow and information flow in the organization. Business Integration and Leadership provide input and structure to process selection, improvement and monitoring. Processes provide information for Data and Learning. Processes also provide outputs that contribute to organizational results. The arrows indicate how each element impacts another element.
I want to explore three methods for moving up the maturity scale from level 1 to 2 to 3 within departments, functions, divisions, and enterprises. They are strategies that we know well:
The most common method I see for top-down at these levels goes like this:
Leadership: Executives or leaders get excited about process improvement and decide to make process improvement an important initiative for the company. They take an orientation to process improvement and how it can help the company.
Business Integration: Executives begin with communication across the company about the forthcoming initiative.
Processes: Executives designate a small internal process improvement staff group who starts to map current processes from the top down. They also choose a software application to use to model the processes (possibly a BPM suite, but it could be an application like Visio or Aris). They begin to make a comprehensive categorization of company processes. Process Owners are named as processes are modeled.
Learning: The organization provides training in process improvement concepts from a reputable firm for employees en masse.
Data – There is limited data gathering at this point.
Advantages- A clear statement from executives is a powerful beginning. Training to large numbers of employees begins to build common understanding and nomenclature. A full list of key processes and their documentation gives a comprehensive perspective.
Challenges - This process can take a long time with very little business result. Often there are many activities but not much return from actually analyzing and improving processes. Although processes have process owners, their role and their authority are unclear. Typically process owners are not leading any improvement efforts. Training provides concepts and tools, but these are not yet applied to real work. Sometimes managers and employees just get tired of doing this work and not seeing any change.
Leadership: Managers in specific departments who are early process adopters lead the charge. They select processes in their departments and engage their employees in the process improvement efforts. These managers are actively involved in the process improvement efforts. They are strong advocates to other colleagues of their improvement efforts and results.
Business Integration: Managers pick processes that need fixing in their own area and that employees want to fix as well. Their department benefits from the improved results.
Processes: Have a narrow breadth, often within the department. Improvements are suggested and implemented under the manager’s authority.
Learning: Managers get their own training to lead these efforts. They have participated in process improvement training by a vendor, internal company training, or they may use a consultant as a coach. Employees learn from the manager or similar training as well.
Data – The manager “knows” what the problem is so will probably not feel the need to collect baseline measures or get customer feedback. After a process is improved the team promotes their results, but again they have limited quantitative data to show the level of change.
– The bottoms-up effort just needs a single manager, a process and a team to get started, so start up effort is minimal. Efforts can be quite focused—on specific defects, at a customer touch point, or a full process. Business improvements start happening in the work place. Employees and leaders are learning and applying principles and tools to real work examples.
- Smaller improvements may be contained and not widespread. There is no enterprise strategy for a process focus, so the initial improvement efforts do not have a big impact on the corporation as a whole. This effort can spread virally, but if may also die with just a few early adopter groups. Leaders may not have the ability and resources to influence and implement projects outside their departments.
Leadership: Executives or managers in specific divisions or functions select the processes to work on based on real needs in their divisions, choose team members, and provide the time and budget to do the work. These executives or managers are active sponsors for the process improvement efforts they select. This is similar to leadership in the bottoms-up effort but at a higher level in the organization. Business Integration: The executive or division leader identifies key improvement goals for the processes, in alignment with their strategy and company goals.
Processes: The processes have a breadth relative to the size and scope of the executive’s authority, but their span is larger than in bottoms-up. Usually the process will be entirely within the executive’s span of control, but it could also include other departments that are key contributors before or within the process. Two executives may choose to lead this effort if a process spans two areas of authority. Teams for each process include subject matter experts for all elements in the process, no matter what department they come from.
Learning: The executive or manager hires a consultant to assist him/her and the teams. Unlike the bottoms-up approach the leader is unlikely to do all the work himself. The company’s learning and development department can also provide just-in-time training to teams as they have projects. Team members learn process skills while doing the work and often see the process from end-to-end for the first time.
Data: The team gathers internal baseline measures as well as customer feedback for the process. After a process is improved the team measures again to determine the impact of the improvements. Benchmarking is often part of the process.
The biggest advantage of this approach is that real work is being done to improve processes that are important to the executive sponsors, and secondarily to the enterprise. With processes of wider span the opportunity for larger results is much greater than in bottoms-up. Employees and managers are learning from doing, as with bottoms-up. Implementation is successful because all involved want to make it happen.
The processes that division leaders select are important to them but they may not be the highest priority for the organization. In fact improvements in one area might have a negative impact on another area. In other words, the organization is not looking at its processes fully from end to end. But it has taken good initial steps.
The question really is – where are you now, and how do you move up the maturity level? More importantly, would moving up a step on the maturity scale result in improved performance or profitability? John Alden (who developed another process maturity for the Object Management Group) says that moving up the maturity scale does not guarantee an increase in business performance, but these elements are inter-dependent.
What to do? At process maturity levels 1, 2, and 3 these considerations are all important:
The table below lays out the best approaches for Management of Work (MOW) level and each process maturity level.
Note that many of the squares in the table are X’ed out. That is because those cells would just not exist. For example, when an organization was at process maturity level 3, 4, or 5 they could not have a Traditional Management-of-Work level. On the other hand, when an organization had a MOW of Matrix they would not be operating at a process maturity level of 1 or 2.
Many boxes have two choices. Hence, there is no one right way. Additionally as you move up the maturity levels there needs to be more top down guidance. But not top down guidance like I mentioned earlier in the article when organizations are beginning on this journey. Here top-down would mean alignment with strategy, prioritizing processes based on strategic need, monitoring results at the company level, and resourcing across the enterprise. Data and metrics for processes and comparing processes within the organization becomes critical starting at process maturity level 3.
What’s important is that having a good idea, getting executive support and having sufficient budget does not guarantee a successful implementation. Instead, it is critical to pay attention to your culture (exemplified by the management work levels.) Only then can you make a reasoned judgment of how far and how fast you can move the company. If you don’t pay attention to your culture you will most likely fail. So start there, even though you may expect to change the culture over time.
Bottoms-Up A fast growing Fortune 5000 high tech company with a culture of strong involvement and customer responsiveness was at level 1 process maturity. They used a bottoms-up approach in one retail store, selecting a process that was key to sales and customer satisfaction. They mapped the current process and talked with potential customers to understand their need. Then they developed a new process with specific resources targeted at this customer segment. Success spread to other retail stores because of the business results, employee empowerment, and viral communication.
Middle-Out One biopharmaceutical company had a process MOW and was at process maturity level 2. Department managers had the flexibility and autonomy to run their departments as they saw fit. Their executives were strong advocates of a process approach and provided the general direction but did not get directly involved. Because of the cultural elements, they began with choosing less complex processes at departmental level, getting success, and then going to divisional or cross divisional processes.
Top-Down A utility company had strong involvement between employees. They were at level 2 process maturity for the organization and level 3 for some individual processes. They used a top-down approach initially, defining and modeling core process for the enterprise, choosing process owners and executive sponsors over multiple process owners, and a BPM support center of experts. They struggled with how long it took to model As Is processes. They began to make progress when they focused on processes for one early adopter executive sponsor and used a middle-out approach with that person as a leader. The combination of top down and middle out was more successful.
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Login or register below to read and comment. | <urn:uuid:91495aec-6137-44e6-88f3-29750a667c75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bpminstitute.org/resources/articles/which-best-us-top-down-bottoms-or-middle-out | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962751 | 2,281 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Photoshop CS5′s new Puppet Warp feature can be extremely useful if you need to make minor adjustments to your photos. In today’s quick tip tutorial we will demonstrate how to correct a Photo with this new tool in minutes. Let’s get started! Step 1 First, let’s load our image.
No doubt you’ll have heard of the term Cinemagraph since it exploded onto the Internets. Originally coined by Photographers Kevin Burg and Jamie Beck, a cinemagraph is a clever revival of the classic animated GIF. It combines features of video and photography to create a the illusion of a still image but with cool motion effects. Let’s take a look at how to create your own animated GIF cinemagraph by playing around with Photoshop’s animation tools. Some of the best cinemagraph examples can be found on the creators’ own website .
An Out of Bounds entry, referred to as OOB throughout this tutorial, refers to an entry which makes use of the image borders to add to the 3D feel of the image. This is how “I” do it, mostly. Though I only use Photoshop, I’m sure all the same ideas can be applied to whatever program you are using. The single most important element in any OOB entry is the source picture. I’m a purist, so I tend to only use ONE source pic, so I will be showing you how to go from i th s.. to this (which is not exactly like my original entry, but I chose to do this over for the tutorial)
Yo Stumbler follow me on twitter @designshard – Yeehaw! lets ride this design wave.
In this tutorial I will show you how I created “A Life Of Aquatic Sounds”. We will realize it using a variety of blending mode tricks, photo filters and other useful Photoshop techniques. At the end of this process we will have a beautiful photo manipulation, realized in a short time and a very easily way.
There are a lot of new and spectacular text effects tutorials created every now and then. Many people found text effects as one of the most interesting thing to do in Photoshop. We have decided to collect those best tutorials that could help and inspire you to create your own text effects techniques. For those who like text effects, this collection is a great guide to create your own and learn some tips.
In this category we want to give you an advice to other great sites, where you can get a lot of very useful information, inspirations and materials. Here I collected 10 great Photoshop tutorials, which can help you to expand your skills. Create a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop Create Quick Particle Effect on Photo via Custom Brush Options in Photoshop Create a Surreal Upside Down Mountain Painting in Photoshop Business Man – Awesome Black & White Tutorial
I have been playing a lot with the Displace filter in Photoshop and I still get impressed with how powerful it is. Even though I have written some tutorials using it, I decided to try to recreate a different effect that I saw in one of the images submitted for the Daily Inspiration. It was a brick wall deformed like it was made of cloth.
Photoshop actions are great. If you’re not familiar with actions, they are simply prerecorded adjustments made to a Photoshop file that can be saved and applied to other projects. The concept is simple, but the process to create some actions can be very complicated.
Published in Design , Photoshop Tutorials Photoshop allows designers to create amazing posters that can be used for a variety or purposes like movie promos, product promos, event promos, as well as just for fun and practice. There are a lot of quality tutorials out there that teach the process of designing a poster in Photoshop.
Published in Design , Photoshop Tutorials Photoshop allows designers with unlimited possibilities when it comes to creative effects, including lighting effects. There are plenty of different ways to create lighting effects in Photoshop, and there are equally as many different possible uses for them. If you’re interested in learning more about how to create awesome lighting effects in your own work, here are 25 tutorials that can help. Create a Glowing Superhero Show Me the Light – Digital Art Tutorial
Published on Wed, Sep-22-2010 by Ricardo In this Photoshop tutorial we will show you how to create nice unique photo effect from sketch and your photo. We will use many tools in Photoshop and also you will need some skills in drawing as to create this effect you will need to draw sketch. Also in this tutorial you will be able to learn the Photoshop technique how to use sketch and combine it with a real picture, as a result you will get a very unique and fantastic effect. So lets start to learn. | <urn:uuid:d57d71d6-a79b-4dca-a1dd-cbc6e3db816c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pearltrees.com/chasevincent/photoshop-tutorial/id3877248 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934945 | 990 | 1.9375 | 2 |
That was Stephanie Rawlings-Blake last December on occasion of becoming the latest mayor of a Baltimore City that had been surrendering residents since World War II. In a attempt at reversal, to regrow the Charm City’s population numbers (and not insignificantly, its tax base, too), Mayor Rawlings-Blake has in her brief tenure issued an attention-grabbing executive order relaxing the policing of immigration status meant to convince new arrivals to the United States that they’re wanted in Baltimore.
As an economic tactic, Baltimore’s bid to curry the favor of immigrants has a good deal weighing in its favor. Where you find growing U.S. cities, research shows, you tend to find a healthy helping of immigrants, too. New arrivals to the United States open up businesses at a greater rate than native-born Americans do, and immigrant entrepreneurs are especially plentiful in the tech and innovation fields in which Baltimore already has footing. Of course, though, it’s not quite as straightforward as simply adding new Americans to the urban mix and watching a city inexorably rebound. I have a look at why not in a new case study-style piece for Next American City, in partnership with the National League of Cities, called “The Rise of the New Baltimoreans.”
(Photo credit: Andy Cook via Next American City) | <urn:uuid:3fbbb89a-5ebe-41e9-8881-d796ea594c34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nancyscola.com/2012/11/a-shrinking-city-simply-cannot-stand/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958528 | 277 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Dengue: guidelines for diagnosis, treatment, prevention and control
The magnitude of the dengue problem has increased dramatically and has extended geographically to many previously unaffected areas. It remains the most important arthropod-borne viral disease of humans.
This new edition has been produced to make widely available to health practitioners,laboratory personnel, those involved in vector control and other public health officials, a concise source of information of worldwide relevance on dengue.
The guidelines provide updated practical information on the clinical management and delivery of clinical services; vector management and delivery of vector control services; laboratory diagnosis and diagnostic tests; and surveillance, emergency preparedness and response. | <urn:uuid:0e8b6cbc-16f1-4dd5-9c1e-4117d47e80bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/dengue_9789241547871/en/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908509 | 135 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Installation: Vapor Retarders
- For most of North America, vapor retarders should be installed in exterior walls on the warm-in-winter side of the insulation (toward the interior).
- For some warm and humid areas, such as Florida, the Gulf Coast and Hawaii, the vapor retarder should generally be installed facing the outside. Check local building practice and/or building codes to be sure.
- Vapor retarders are not a standard recommendation for attics. Except for very cold regions and in isolated cases where there is high humidity in the house during the winter, attic vapor barriers aren’t required provided the attic is sufficiently ventilated (as a rule of thumb, one square ft. of vent opening is needed for every 150 square ft. of ceiling).
- If installed in an attic, a continuous vapor retarder is usually used to reduce air infiltration. If this is accomplished and a similar air infiltration retarder is installed in sidewalls, mechanical ventilation such as a heat recovery ventilator should be installed to prevent trapping air pollutants and moisture within the house. Moisture build-up can cause mildew on the walls and ceilings.
- In other warm, humid regions, especially southern coastal areas with a long cooling season and high exterior humidity, air conditioning causes continuous moisture flow from the exterior toward the interior cooled area. If a vapor retarder is used, it should be on the exterior of the wall.
- In some areas of the South, it may be difficult to determine where the vapor retarder should be placed. Where there is uncertainty, it is best to follow local practice and local codes.
- Never leave faced insulation exposed. The facings on kraft-and foil-faced insulation will burn and must be installed in substantial contact with an approved ceiling wall or floor construction material.
- Flame-resistant foil (FSK-25) is the only insulation facing that can be left exposed.
- Separate vapor retarders are used in some constructions. They should be installed to the warm-in-winter side of framing. A 2-mil nylon film (MemBrain™, the Smart Vapor Retarder), available in rolls, is rolled out horizontally and stapled to the face of the framing. It is recommended that the vapor retarder be stapled at the sides and the excess material folded back into the room. If more than one sheet of the retarder is required, a double fold should be made at the meeting of the two pieces and stapled, or the sheets may be overlapped and taped. The pieces, if stapled, should meet only at a stud or a joist.
- Cover the retarder with gypsum drywall or other approved interior material, as required by local codes, as soon as the insulation and vapor retarder has been installed. | <urn:uuid:91165bf8-3bf3-426e-8207-c97e2a90c145> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.certainteed.com/learning-center/insulation/?qid=75 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90566 | 582 | 2.125 | 2 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A member of a people living in west-central Africa along the lower Congo River.
- n. A Bantu language of the Kongo used as a lingua franca in the southern Republic of the Congo, the western Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and northern Angola. Also called Kikongo.
- n. the Bantu language spoken by the Kongo living in the tropical forests of Zaire and Congo and Angola
“They have been noticed north of the Zambesi, at the head of Lake Nyassa, in the Nguru mountains near Zanzibar, on the Lulua, on the Sankuru and in the horse-shoe bend of the Kongo, in the Kuango valley, in French Kongo, on the Aruwimi, on the Blue Nile, and in Abyssinia.”
Africa and the American Negro...Addresses and Proceedings of the Congress on Africa Held Under the Auspices of the Stewart Missionary Foundation for Africa of Gammon Theological Seminary in Connection with the Cotton States and International Exposition December 13-15, 1895.
“The kingdom of the Kongo was a well-established polity in the interior, south of the Zaire River, when the Portuguese first arrived there in 1481.”
“Kyoto, the Emperor, being desirous that Kobodaishi should write the tablet for the great temple called Kongo-jo-ji, gave the tablet to a messenger and bade him carry it to Kobodaishi, that Kobodaishi might letter it.”
“The Kingdom of Kongo which is now the regions of Congo and Angola the language was Bantu and it declined after the explorations and the invasion of the Portuguese.”
“I think Cain can do to Rothwell what he did to Kongo which is use his wrestling and pound him out for 3 rounds.”
“Enter the ways of the Kingdom of Kongo, now occupied by the countries of Angola, Cabinda, the Republic of the Congo, and the western portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
“The central African forest culture of the Kongo brought the polyrhythms that later underscored dance rhythms from Harlem to Havana, Rio, and Trinidad.”
“In the Kongo, a ritual space is created when you mark the symbol of a Greek cross + on the ground.”
“May I introduce you to Alice, Wonder of the Kongo?”
“By that time the Kongo drinking game had taken its tole with you my friend.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Kongo’.
This is not a scientific list based on unified criteria, the sole aim was to collect as many language names as possible.
The list contains the names of the following artificial langua...
Looking for tweets for Kongo. | <urn:uuid:55421763-e0a8-405f-99e6-762e097bf4b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/Kongo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924903 | 631 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Electronic banking (or net banking) refers to an application of the Internet that allows customers to dial into bank networks or their websites, by using their own telephones and computers, and to get a host of banking services directly on their home or office PCs.
Net banking offers the customer easy chair convenience and access to their account information from anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night. That means, as long as you have a computer, a phone, a modem line and an Internet connection, you don't need to worry about bank holidays or taking time out to go to the bank, or standing in long queues for a simple transaction. You can access most of the bank's services from the comfort of your home/office Internet banking, Internet bank, online banking, virtual bank, cyber bank are some of the jargons being bandied about everywhere. But can all these terms be used interchangeably? Answer is yes and no. There is a slight difference. An Internet bank, or rather, an Internet-only bank is a virtual bank, or a cyber bank, one that does its business entirely on the web. Internet banking is a branchless banking. Internet banking and online banking can of course be used interchangeably. The fundamental principle here is the same that is, using the internet to perform banking transactions. An important difference between an Internet Bank and online banking is that you don't need any special software to access the Internet banking services. You just need a computer and an Internet connection. But to access the services of an online bank, special software is necessary, at least for some services. What attracts people to Internet-only banking is the convenience, as in free bill paying and the fact that there is no need to change banks if you relocate. Another important is the free service they offer.
The bank's costs are significantly lowered, since it has to support only a single online computer network. When a traditional bank goes online, it has to support large networks, additionally to its ATMs, branches, etc. These cost savings for the bank may be translated into significantly lowered fees or possibly no fees at all for the internet banking services. Some Internet banks offer24-hour Internet access to the account, no-fee checking, unlimited check use, and a VISA check/ATM card all for no charge. The interest paid in an Internet bank account may be varied. Some banks might offer low interest or no interest at all; some might offer high interest rates (higher than the rates offered by traditional banks). In the former case, the internet bank account may be used just to pay the bills.
Internet banks are technologically capable and may give more information than a traditional bank. Suppose you withdraw money from an ATM, the transaction will be revealed within an hour on the bank's website. If you have more than one account, transferring money to and from the accounts will be very easy.
You will have a user name and password to access your online account. Just as with any information used to access any other financial account, you should keep these codes secret. Your bank will tell you what to look for,usually an icon of a locked padlock to ensure you are accessing your account over a secure line. | <urn:uuid:5b5d016d-0db1-4541-aad7-0cd5e2ad6f3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indianmoney.com/6-capital-markets/26-savings-bank-account/2-All-You-Must-Know-About-Online-Banking/Read-Article.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948366 | 655 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Hard Drives Prices Shoot Up
In this age of consumer electronics, we pay little to no attention to the components that make up the devices we use. However, the floods in Thailand have caused us to realize just how important these components are, especially when prices of these components shoot up, causing the devices themselves to become more expensive.
Worse still is the delay of product shipments due to the lack of components. Tech Crunch reported that Nikon (their products are mostly made in Thailand) and Sony have already had their shipment of new cameras delayed.
According to Tech Crunch however, the hardest hit industry is the hard drive makers. Hard drive manufacturers have their factories seriously affected by flood water, and production has since been halted.
But the main gist of the article is that hard drive prices have spiked by as much as 400% since reports of the floods started. Retailers have inventory of cheap hard drives, but their stock has since been depleted, and there is nothing left to do but to raise the prices for the remaining hard drives they have.
We're sure some of our readers have already encountered the price hikes at Sim Lim Square or Funan Center. Tech Crunch was also optimistic regarding the prices of hard drives, and said that the prices could come down fairly quickly. However, they also mentioned that it will be a year or more before production levels go back up.
Source: Tech Crunch | <urn:uuid:6346c4e8-2ea0-4abe-8fd5-7c9d79539030> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/product-news-hard-drives-prices-shoot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984037 | 282 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Scotland and Wales are countries, and their parliament and assembly are acknowledgement of that fact. Northern Ireland is also recognised as a political and constitutional entity within the United Kingdom (UK) with its own assembly. For reasons not adequately explained, England is denied recognition as a country or as a political and constitutional entity and the people of England are denied the right to express their will through their own parliament.
The people of England have the same right to a parliament as do the people of Scotland, and they should be equally free to determine their own system of local and regional government. Devolution for England should start with an English Parliament.
The aim of the Campaign for an English Parliament (CEP) is to put the issue of a separately elected English Parliament, with its own Executive, on the political agenda.
The CEP’s strategy is to assemble the most powerful coalition of expert and public opinion possible with a view to securing an English referendum on the question of establishing a Parliament and Executive.
An English Parliament will represent all those for whom England is their chosen or inherited home and who are legally entitled to vote. Read the full policy statement
Ultimately, an English Parliament cannot come about without the co-operation and agreement of the House of Commons. The CEP’s role is working with academics, business groups, trades unions, think tanks and the media to create the conditions where MPs see that there is no alternative to holding a referendum.
We need an English Parliament
- so that England can be recognised politically and constitutionally
- to rebalance the Union!
- to ensure the future existence of England
- to ensure an equal voice in Westminster
- to ensure an equal voice internationally
- to ensure all citizens of the UK have equal representation and enfranchisement
- to represent us when laws are imposed upon us
- to ensure the accountability of MPs
- to assure equality of funding
- to assure equitable taxation
- to allow us to control our own assets
- to deliver government for England that is appropriate for England and of equal value to that of the rest of the UK
- to support and protect English culture
- to prevent the submersion of England into Britain and to separate an English identity from a British identity
- to prevent conflict and to discourage discrimination on the grounds of nationhood.
- because the people of England want it
- because other proposals for England’s future do not answer all the questions arising from the current imbalance. | <urn:uuid:839cd5b4-7429-4708-914b-de4134134cb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thecep.org.uk/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949272 | 506 | 3.03125 | 3 |
You are here
The National Center for Science Education, a non-profit organization that defends the teaching of evolution in the public schools, seeks candidates for a position in its Public Information Project.
While legislatures focus on antievolution bills, a new video helps students see how evolution works
Oakland, California, May 6, 2008 -- As attacks on evolution education remain in the news, with proposed antievolution legislation in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Missouri in the headlines, a new video rebutting the basic premise of "intelligent design" creationism is now available on www.ExpelledExposed.com.
Nathaniel Abraham's lawsuit against Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was dismissed on April 22, 2008. Contending that he was fired, in violation of his civil rights, for not accepting evolution, Abraham filed suit against the research center on November 30, 2007, alleging that his rights were violated under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
When the Florida legislature ended its session on May 2, 2008, legislative attempts to open the door to creationism died in the House of Representatives.
House Bill 6027, introduced in the Michigan House of Representatives on April 30, 2008, and referred to the House Committee on Education, is the very latest so-called "academic freedom" bill aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution, joining similar bills currently under consideration in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Missouri.
House Bill 923, introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives by David Grimes (R-District 73) on April 24, 2008, and referred to the Education Policy Committee, is the latest in a string of "academic freedom" bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution.
With drastically different House and Senate versions of what was once the same antievolution bill in the Florida state legislature, it remains uncertain whether antievolution forces will be able to devise a compromise bill to be sent to the governor before the legislature adjourns on May 2, 2008 -- especially with a host of other issues crowding the legislative calendar. | <urn:uuid:707211b1-861d-4cff-a9db-803d3756ab05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncse.info/news/2008?page=9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932723 | 428 | 2.125 | 2 |
by Giles Foden
Knopf, 291 pp., $25.00
A hundred years ago, on February 28, 1900, the South African town of Ladysmith was relieved from being under siege. The half-starved British garrison, which had held out against the Boers and their Prussian-made artillery for 118 days, watched in disbelief as the enemy’s ox wagons set out on their long retreat over the mountains toward the Transvaal. That evening, the first cavalry patrol from the relief army commanded by General Redfers Buller splashed through the Klip River shallows and into Ladysmith.
The young Winston Churchill (the sort of brat correspondent who tells generals in the middle of a battle that their plan is all wrong)wrote an eyewitness description of this liberation moment: “Suddenly from the brushwood up rose gaunt figures waving hands of welcome….” This was all invented. Churchill only reached Ladysmith many hours afterward, when night had fallen. In much the same way, Buller staged a victorious entry into Ladysmith two days later, although he had in fact already ridden into town forty-eight hours before and had met the garrison commander, shaky old General Richard White, almost accidentally on the street. From the military point of view, this was the supreme moment of the entire Boer War. The two Englishmen glowered at one another in soldierly embarrassment. “Well, how have you been getting on?” Buller is supposed to have asked. “All right, thanks,” replied White. After that, they couldn’t think of anything else to say.
There were three famous sieges in that war: Kimberley, where Cecil Rhodes in person spooned out soup to the citizens, Mafeking, and Ladysmith. For a long time, Mafeking was much the best remembered in British folk memory. It had little military importance, but its relief by the British army touched off an orgy of patriotic street celebration (“mafficking”) in the cities of Britain. Ladysmith mattered more, all the same. This was in part because its defense was decisive for the outcome of the war. The Boers, to the astonishment of the world, had defeated the mighty British army in a string of battles at the outset of the conflict, and the fall of Ladysmith might well have persuaded Britain to seek a negotiated peace. As it was, the focus of the war in 1899 had narrowed down to the success or failure of Buller’s drive to relieve the town.
But Ladysmith was important in other ways. The siege of this little Natal railway town and the long, bloody campaign to rescue it involved tens of thousands of men in the fighting and tens of thousands of noncombatants, mostly women and children, in the misery, displacement, and destruction which took place around it. The suffering of Afrikaner Boer families and the mass murder by disease and hunger inflicted on them in the British “concentration camps” are well known. The equal or greater suffering of African people in the region, the first to be conscripted as wartime beasts of burden and the last to be considered for food or relief supplies … | <urn:uuid:9fd4da86-f886-4042-9d0e-275b05ff17a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/jun/29/under-siege/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969879 | 677 | 2.625 | 3 |
Cooks' Questions on Christmas
Q: We are spending Christmas in Sydney, Australia this year, my parents are coming over for a holiday, so I want to cook something really special for Christmas lunch. Do you have any ideas, that don't involve turkey.
We think you should take advantage of the abundance of lovely fresh fish and seafood and maybe adapt one of Delia's recipes to make use of some local specialities - you could start with a lovely retro-style Prawn Cocktail
And try Delia's Iced Christmas Pudding with Glacé Fruits.
Iced Christmas Pudding with Glace Fruits
Q: I am on a three-year posting in Barbados and have joined a small cookery group which meets once a month. For our pre-Christmas meeting I have been asked to cook a turkey breast with a difference. I would love some advice.
We would suggest that you try a different festive bird such as goose if you can get hold of it. There are a whole host of ideas on the site. If you do want to stick with turkey there are also plenty of traditional ideas too.
Q: I make 2 Truffle Tortes at Christmas but have found it difficult to purchase liquid glucose, even from the pharmacist at Sainsburys in Swansea. Can I substitute with another type of sugar which is more easily found?
There is no real substitute. All we can recommend is that you try a larger pharmacist or look on the shelves where all the baking products are (baking powder, food colourings etc.) in a large supermarket as sometimes it is positioned there.
Q: When ordering the Christmas Goose (Prunes & Armagnac) my Butcher told me to make approx 30 skewer insertions in the body of the goose to let the fat run out. Is this necessary as Delia makes no mention of this practice?
This is not necessary, it just allows the fat to be released more quickly and it means the goose is self-basting. We recommend that you follow the instructions as Delia mentions as all her recipes are tried and tested.
Q: I want to try "prunes in Armagnac" with my goose this year, I can’t see Armagnac in the shops. What is it and what is a good alternative?
Armagnac is one of the two finest brandies, the other being Cognac. It is made in Gascony, which is in the South East region of Bordeaux. We would suggest that you substitute this for a Cognac.
Q: My son is allergic to nuts, specifically Brazil nuts. With Christmas coming up this becomes more of a issue than at other times of the year. Can you tell me what I can use as an alternative for such things as marzipan on the cake and ground almonds in pastry and puddings?
Delia only uses her home-made almond paste for Christmas cakes and we know of no alternative. But you could try contacting The Anaphylaxis Campaign on 01252 542029, who may be able to direct you to a source that can help you with a nut-free alternative for marzipan and ground almonds in pastry. The simplest thing to do would be to omit the marzipan altogether and ice the cake quite thickly either with royal icing or fondant icing on or around Christmas Eve – any sooner and the dark colour of the cake might start to seep through.
Q: How long does the Christmas Chutney keep for?
If the jars have been properly sterilised and sealed with a non-metallic lid, it does have a long shelf life of about 1 year.
Q: I refer to Delia’s Christmas Dried Fruit Compote. I would like to make this without alcohol, but what could I use instead of port? I think you can use tea, but not sure. Any ideas?
If you don't use alcohol, obviously you will not get the characteristic richness, flavour and 'warmth' associated with it. You can, however, substitute fruit juice to make up the liquid content when making the compote.. You could also use cold tea for this – Earl Grey would be especially good.
Q: How far in advance is it safe to prepare prawn cocktail as a starter for Christmas day?
We would recommend that you make prawn cocktail only a couple of hours beforehand, and keep it refrigerated until 30 minutes before serving it.
Q: I have successfully made Cheese and Parsnip Roulade from Delia Smith's Christmas but can no longer source Sage Derby cheese locally.
Sage Derby is becoming increasingly difficult to find and Delia acknowledges this by suggesting an alternative, Lancashire, in the recipe. However, because it hasn't been tested using an alternative cheese, there is no quantity given for the sage. Sage does have rather a strong and distinctive flavour so you don't want to overdo it. We would suggest you try about six (fresh) leaves, VERY finely chopped. Taste the mixture as you go so that you can add some more if you don't think it's strong enough.
Q: All the recipes I have seen for chocolate yule logs have no fat in them. I am desperate to find a recipe with some form of fat ingredient, so that the yule log will last more than just a couple of day...
Most recipes for Swiss rolls, Yule logs, etc. use a fatless sponge mixture as their base because this type of sponge cake tends to be more flexible and easy-to-roll than a sponge with fat in it. Delia's chocolate roulade-type recipes all use a fatless sponge base, as you will no doubt have discovered, but her Lemon Roulade does use a sponge with fat . You could try altering this recipe – omit the lemon and substitute 1 oz of cocoa for 1 oz of the flour. Delia has never tested this adaptation, nor has she checked how long it will keep, but it might be worth a go. The only other thing we can suggest you try is to use a truffle-type mixture and, as it starts to set, shape it into a log and allow to firm up fully before decorating it. This would produce an extremely rich dessert so you would need to serve it sparingly! And it's not something that we've tried so we can't guarantee its success.
Q: I would like to make the Cheese and Parsnip Roulade for Christmas day but will be very short on oven space. Is it possible to either make it on the day before and then reheat it, or to make in advance and freeze? Please tell me the best way. Thanks
Delia says, 'I would make it the day before, then reheat it in the microwave, although I haven't tested timings. The other idea is to cover it with foil and pop it in the oven with the roast potatoes.'
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Science Backs Acupuncture: Whether it Likes it or Not
To heal eye ailments, practitioners of acupuncture often insert a needle into the little toe. For acupuncturists, this is an obvious method of treatment as the toe and the eyes are on the same meridian. Scientists, however, weren't buying it.
Western doctors were free to doubt acupuncture’s power until a recent tool of their own making proved them wrong. A real-time MRI showed that the brain's visual cortex was stimulated by the acupuncture that was taking place in the toe.
Sorry, guys, this stuff is for real.
This is not the first case of science accidentally substantiating acupuncture, but the toe findings have pushed the modality into another notch of legitimacy. Americans are becoming increasingly interested in exploring acupuncture for themselves.
“Before, more patients were rather skeptical,” said Lixing Lao, associate professor at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and a licensed acupuncturist who is also fully trained in western medicine. “Now, not only patients want to see me, but also doctors say, ‘Hey, I want to make an appointment.’ There’s been a big change." | <urn:uuid:6520fe74-85cb-4b21-9914-5b6455a1e367> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://life.gaiam.com/article/science-backs-acupuncture-whether-it-likes-it-or-not | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962333 | 265 | 2.296875 | 2 |
COLUMBIA, S.C. — COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina textile magnate Roger Milliken, who at one time was ranked among the nation's wealthiest people and helped turn the state's Republican Party into a powerhouse, has died.
Company spokesman Richard Dillard says Milliken died Thursday in Spartanburg. A cause of death was not immediately available. He was 95.
Milliken became president of Spartanburg-based Milliken & Co. when his father died in 1947 and built the family business into an industry giant. He served as president until 1983, when he became chairman and chief executive.
In 2000, Milliken was ranked 338th on the Forbes magazine list of the 400 richest Americans, with an estimated worth of $850 million. He fell off the list by the end of the decade as the American textile industry declined. | <urn:uuid:34b22e02-d86e-4cc7-ad6a-0c1e5346b8b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/dec/30/sc-textile-giant-once-among-richest-in-us-dies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986649 | 181 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Debate and discussion of any biological questions not pertaining to a particular topic.
For extra credit, my biology teacher has challanged us to find mistakes in movies regarding biology. They can't be obvious, sci-fi types of mistakes that intentionally require a suspension of belief(For instance, saying Spiderman is a biological impossibility doesn't count.). It's supposed to be something that the movie was trying to explain/do correctly, but did it incorrectly.
One example was in A Few Good Men, where there was a wrong explanation about fermentation. After hours of scouring the internet, I found one; in Mission Impossible II, they show a virus replicating. . . in red blood cells.
If anyone knows any mistakes like the ones mentioned above, I would very much appreciate a recomendation. Thanks so much!
CSI is full of mistakes and head banging moments, and not just for biologists.
The twelve monkeys. When the guy release the virus a the airport from an empty vial
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)
There was a movie where a scientist looked at Ebola viruses with an electron microscope and saw them moving and squirming about, although nothing moves in an electorn microsocope since the samples are fixed - and viruses don't "move" anyway. I'll give you the name if I can recall it!
i always found the biology/chemistry in stargate sg1/atlantis tv series to be really stupid. anyone here watch that?
actually the physics and engineering there was worse
Oh anyone here watches Heroes, the tv shows? It's like x-men. That tv series is full of mistakes, it's like a goldmine unscientific things.
oh yeah just remembered, jurassic park. especially the part about having amphibians dna being more closely related than birds.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests | <urn:uuid:17b0beee-5246-43d5-8039-f7ae45ada082> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/about16672.html?hilit=Twelve | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951065 | 436 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Bishop Kevin Dowling
No doubt you've been reading about the Pope's visit to Africa and also his statement made on the plane beforehand asserting that the use of condoms doesn't stop the spread of AIDs but actually makes it worse. I thought I'd post something about Kevin Patrick Dowling, C.SS.R., a South African prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, a Redemptorist, and the second and current Bishop of Rustenburg. Why? Because he disagrees with the Pope on this - South African Bishop Opposes Vatican's Ban on Condoms - NPR.
The NPR story is current, but I thought I'd post this short 2005 story from TIME about him below ......
European Heroes 2005 - Bishop Kevin Dowling: Lives in the balance
breaking with catholic doctrine, bishop kevin dowling advocates the use of condoms to help save lives
In 1998, when Bishop Kevin Dowling first got involved in setting up a health clinic in Freedom Park, one of the massive shack settlements in his diocese of Rustenburg, South Africa, the suffering shocked him. He watched countless young women—many of them driven to prostitution by poverty—die of aids. He knew that condoms could have prevented most of these deaths.
The dilemma has placed him at odds with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. Four years ago, he became the first African bishop to call on the church to consider lifting its absolute ban on condom use. They should be accepted as a tool for protecting millions of vulnerable lives against aids, he argued, rather than denounced as a form of birth control. “The challenge to the church is a challenge to all of society,” says the 61-year-old bishop. “We have to find the best means to protect life, and the best means to prevent the transmission of this virus.”
Over the past seven years, Dowling has developed his initial makeshift clinic into a program that provides comprehensive treatment and counseling to hundreds of people a year. “He is the aids bishop,” says Father James Keenan, a professor of theological ethics at Boston College, Massachusetts. “The issue of the Catholic Church and condoms has to be resolved by listening to men of the church who have the experience, tenacity and wisdom of Bishop Dowling.”
Dowling’s argument hinges on the church’s teaching on the sacredness of life: without condoms, people will continue to die unnecessarily, he argues. “There are hundreds of thousands of women in sub-Saharan Africa facing the same situation,” he says. “They look into my eyes and tell me there is no hope.” Dowling reasons that the church has always allowed exceptions to its 1968 Papal ban on contraception; when, for example, a woman’s health is at risk. Likewise, he argues, in poor communities where aids is rife, the church must allow condoms for the same purpose. Bishops and Cardinals are beginning to agree with him, although when addressing African church leaders in June, Pope Benedict reiterated the church’s opposition to condoms. But to Dowling, the church’s credibility is at stake. With thousands of poor men and women dying, he says, the church needs to send the message that “we are authentically pro-life, in the widest sense of that word.” —By Megan Lindow | <urn:uuid:58610840-8490-4c36-8a88-3ace25847067> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2009/03/bishop-kevin-dowling.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967562 | 699 | 1.914063 | 2 |
The last Emperor of the Aztecs, Moctezuma II (usually anglicised as ‘Montezuma’) suffered an ignominious end: defeated by the Spanish, some accounts have him being stoned by his former subjects, while others claim he died of starvation, refusing to eat food not worthy of an emperor, still more claim Cortés had him killed. Many of his descendants embraced Christianity and found favour from Mexico’s new overlord, the King of Spain.
The fallen leader’s daughter, Doña Isabel Moctezuma Techichpotzin Ixcaxochitzin (Her two latter Nahuatl names meaning “Lord’s Daughter” and “cotton-flower”), was known for her excessive generosity to the Augustinian friars, to the extent that she was actually asked to stop donating.
Moctezuma II’s son, Don Pedro de Moctezuma Tlacahuepan Ihualicahuaca also embraced Christianity and his son (M2′s grandson) Don Diego Luis de Moctezuma Ihuitl Temoc moved to Spain. Don Diego Luis’s son Don Pedro Tesifón de Moctezuma y de la Cueva was created Count of Moctezuma by Philip IV of Spain in 1627. In 1766, the holder of this title was named a Grandee of Spain.
In 1865 this line of descent was further honoured by being elevated to Duke of Moctezuma by Isabella II of Spain. The current head of this branch of the House of Moctezuma is Juan José Marcilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Jiménez, 5th Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo, 15th Marquis of Tenebrón and Viscount of Ilucán.
Another daughter of Moctezuma II, Princess Xipaguacin Moctezuma, married Juan de Grau, Baron of Toleriu and died in Toleriu in 1537. Her descendants compose the noble house of Grau-Moctezuma de Toleriu which continues today.
Among the other Spanish nobles who count the blood of Moctezuma II in their veins are the Dukes of Ahumada, the Dukes of Abrantes, the Counts de la Enjarada, and the Counts of Miravalle. The last family were granted life pensions by the Kingdom of Spain in 1550, which continued to be paid by the government of Mexico until 1934 when the administration under President Abelardo L. Rodríguez suspended the payments. | <urn:uuid:20cba953-6260-482b-878f-798d074ea5bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.andrewcusack.com/2010/10/24/moctezuma-family/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954676 | 555 | 2.671875 | 3 |
A friend said to me, “Time is Territory.”
I immediately said, “I want to use this in a column. Who said it?”
She wasn’t sure. Whoever said it, thank you!
I sat down to write about this and then wondered what would I write? I knew it was a powerful statement and it resonated in my spirit.
Everyone is so busy, just ask them. There isn’t enough time. They are going here and there, it makes one tired to keep up. I hear artists and writers all the time say they can’t find time to do their art. Their excuses are many:
Other people do not consider that artists have a real job so keep them for hours on the phone.
They are stripped of their productive time because people expect them to do things.
Another excuse is that no one considers they have a real job.
They can’t get motivated so they watch television.
A lot of wawa’s.
The sad thing for me is that they allow their time to get away and lose the opportunity to take territory that belongs to them.
So as I pondered this statement, “Time is Territory” I remembered someone I have enjoyed reading; his name is William Blake, one of the greatest artists, poets and engravers who ever lived. Blake said when his energies were diverted from his drawing or writing that he was being devoured by jackals and hyenas.
Blake wrote about living in the now. That seems simple enough to do but try it some time. When someone looks at a sunset and ponders the colors, the sweep of the clouds and the sun going down, he is living in the now. Another looks at a sunset and says that’s nice but I’m too busy, he has not captured territory that comes with the moment.
Territory can be all sorts of things for all sorts of people. It can be money, position, praise or even a good name. Territory for artists and writers are things they create that bring others in contact with beauty with change, with difference and most important truth.
An old proverb says, “Truth uttered will live into eternity.” William Blake in 1827 was buried in an unmarked grave in the Non-Conformist Burnhill Fields in London. His wife, Catherine, borrowed money to bury him. Apparently he didn’t gain any territory on earth, even where he lay he didn’t own. His words did not gain acclaim or commercial success for years after his death and he was labeled an eccentric or worse, he was thought to be insane and demented.
Blake was a man who believed that he saw angels and talked to God. He is quoted by saying, “I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy.”
I laugh when I think of his wife, Mrs. Blake. How happy was she living on art alone? For me as an artist and writer, if a word I write or a stroke of paint on a canvas turns my time into territory that lives beyond myself, as Blake said, “I am quite happy.”
Blake’s words and paintings still live in hearts because he took time to write them down over two hundred years ago and because they are truth. His words have taken residence in hearts, making a difference thereby claiming territory.
Final brushstroke: My children remind me all the time that I go too deep; they tell me, “Keep it simple.” I think, it’s pretty simple, you embrace the moment then you gain the purpose of it. That is turning time into territory.
E-mail your comments to’firstname.lastname@example.org
Regarding your article, “Artists are Made to Fly.” I too have been in a cage, it was many years ago. I kept painting when ever I had the chance.
But the caged bird can sing. It was for a season Now, I’m free.
Your column on “Untamed Passion” was a great story — touched on so many levels and facets of the human experience.
I thought it was interesting that Willa Cather made her heroine a woman — this was written at the turn of the century, so she was way ahead of her time! And what a great role model for all women reading the novel or watching the movie..
Willa Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1895. This is not the norm for that time in our history. A great “women’s” movie.
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” Camille Pissarro | <urn:uuid:532e7161-eecb-44fd-b28c-d7d2542b15d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pagosasun.com/archives/2009/10october/101509/artistslane.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980013 | 1,036 | 1.921875 | 2 |
February 3, 2004 By Blake Harris
His latest offering is The Naked Corporation: How the Age of Transparency Will Revolutionize Business, co-authored with his long-time partner, David Ticoll. The book has generated controversy and praise.
Dr. Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google Inc. said of the book, "Tapscott and Ticoll's capacity to combine a fresh and authentic perspective with real-world data has once again opened the aperture on our emerging network economy. A brilliant work."
More traditional business leaders, such as Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO, have reacted with skepticism. In an interview with Government Technology's Public CIO, Tapscott discusses the controversy, praise and criticism of this new work.
Public CIO: For those who haven't read your new book, perhaps you might start by giving a general overview. Obviously the Internet's impact is fueling the shift toward greater transparency, but you also said leaders see transparency either as a threat or an opportunity.
Tapscott: Well first of all, given Enron, WorldCom and the current crisis of trust, most people think of transparency these days as the obligation to openly disclose financial information. They think of transparency as having to do with corporate governance. This is a narrow and old-fashioned view. Basically transparency is a powerful new force in the economy, not just for shareholders, but all stakeholders who interact with companies and other institutions. To deal with companies first, that includes customers, employees, business partners, and to some degree, broader society. These stakeholders have unprecedented visibility into the behavior, performance and management of corporations. They can find out information that is pertinent to them -- information that hurts them if they don't have it and helps them if they do. Moreover, people cannot only find, but they can inform others. And they can organize.
This force has been relatively nascent for half a century. But in the last decade, and particularly in the last half decade, it has really built up a head of steam. It is now bringing about profound changes in the behavior of corporations -- the way they interact with other institutions and society, and for that matter, the nature of the corporation itself and its role in society. As I use the term, transparency is also something that can be done to you. Companies can be passively transparent or naked. But transparency is also a force that can be harnessed to build trust and create sustainable business models. That is, companies can be actively transparent.
Public CIO: So why, in your view, is all this coming about?
Tapscott: There are a number of big factors. One clearly is technological. The Internet is the antithesis of the previous dominant media of this century. Print, and then radio and television were all one way, one size fits all, one-to-many and centralized. They tended to carry the values of their owners. But the new media -- the Internet, and as it is emerging, the Hypernet -- are interactive. They are one-to-one and many-to-many. They are not centralized, but highly distributed. And they maintain an awesome neutrality. They will be what we want them to be, and people will want these media to be powerful tools for understanding the world around them.
Our world is becoming filled with smart communicating devices. Kids sitting in the movie The Hulk communicated through SMS to their friends. That movie was dead before the first day because kids just communicated with each other. They could find out from others, and they kind of organized on the Net. Then all of a sudden this was into all the movie chat groups online, and that was the end of The Hulk. Other dogs got killed this summer as well, so technology is a factor.
The second factor is economic. Companies need to have more candor toward their employees because we have knowledge workers now. People need to have knowledge just to work. They need to know a lot more about corporations they work for. The IBM salesman 20 years ago didn't even know if the company was going to announce a new product architecture on Monday. Then IBM, like every other computer company, didn't pre-announce its products. Today the IBM salesperson needs to know everything about IBM's product strategy, their business strategy, who's on the board, whether or not the compensation program of their CEO is a legitimate one, why they adopted Linux, why they did deals with SAP and Siebel for applications, and on and on. So just to work, people need knowledge. That means companies need to be more open.
Public CIO: You also argue that the push toward greater transparency springs from the economy's new nature in general.
Tapscott: Absolutely. Another big economic driver is the unbundling of the vertically integrated corporation that was the dominant institution for wealth creation in the 20th century. These companies did everything from soup to nuts. The Internet is having the effect of dropping transaction costs between companies, which means many companies are now unbundling and focusing on what they do best, and they partner to do the rest. This doesn't mean companies will be small. It means companies that are focused have a chance to be large. The small companies will be the vertically integrated ones on their way to extinction. That means a lot of information flows that were within the boundaries of the corporation are now between corporations. Companies within their business webs and supply chains need to have a high degree of transparency and openness just for these new business models to work.
Then you have a number of geopolitical factors -- the success of global capitalism. This has resulted in trade barriers falling. We have the liberalization of international markets with integration of global financial markets. These are leading to several things. One is greater scrutiny of corporations on a global basis. Twenty eight of the 100 largest economies in the world are corporations. But there are no global governments to monitor them, nor will there be in our lifetimes. So we are seeing the rise of global institutions that scrutinize companies, and the rise of the so-called civil society filling the vacuum that exists on a global basis. When the Rainforest Action Network decides Home Depot is logging old growth forests, they don't go to some government to complain. They go to the Internet. Two years later, Home Depot is a leader in protecting old growth forests.
We also have demographic factors -- the rise of the Net Generation, which I have written about. The children of the baby boom are the first generation to grow up bathed in bits. These kids, rather than being the passive recipients of television, spend a lot more time interacting online. When they do that, they are authenticating and organizing information. They scrutinize and are telling their stories, composing their thoughts and reading. And they have great BS detectors. This generation is a huge force for transparency and openness. The oldest are 24 now and coming into the work force and the marketplace.
And finally we have a series of political factors. We have the spread of democracy around the world that also gives rise to the rule of law, and generally, an increase in the environments of transparency. We have the proliferation of all these new regulatory regimes for corporate transparency. We have the gradual shift to network forms of global governance and accountability. So you put all that together, and you have a series of powerful historic forces that re-create a much more open business environment.
Public CIO: In the book you made an interesting statement. "In a transparent world with unprecedented access to information, employees, shareholders, business partners, and even to a degree, consumers want evidence that firms are trustworthy and behave according to their values." I underlined both "evidence" and "values." In other words, it is not just more information, but actual proof of trustworthiness and appropriate values.
Tapscott: Yes, people can find out, they can inform others and they can organize. What can they find out? If their employer is a good employer by going to internalmemos.com, or thevault.com or fuckedcompany.com. They can find out if their pay is appropriate for the kind of work they do by comparing it to the pay of other people in the company, which is now revealed in many companies, or by comparing it to international standards. They can find out if their company is trustworthy -- if trust is the expectation that a company will be honest, that it will be considerate of my interests, that it will abide by its commitments, and will have candor and be open. If you are going to buy a new car today, you go online and find out who has the best mileage, performance ratings, safety and the other things you care about, such as protecting the environment. You find out how much your dealer makes on the sale. You want to go to your dealer armed with knowledge. Knowledge is power. There is a power shift happening right now toward customers. You can't make garbage smell like roses any more. Tide's got to wash whiter. You can't just say Tide washes whiter -- it's got to wash whiter.
Shareholders can find out -- not you and me, but the people who make decisions about investments for big institutions -- and they are getting more active. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund has 200 people who do nothing but scrutinize companies. When they invest in a company, they want to know everything about it, including how management thinks. Business partners know more. If you increase transparency on the supply chain, you drop transaction costs and improve the metabolism of the whole supply chain. But you can't have unethical practices. You may be a computer company, but if somebody is suffering from environmental pollution in one of your plants somewhere in Taiwan, then you are going to get nailed for it. So companies now need strong values.
Public CIO: Another thing you write about, which is relevant to corporations but possibly more relevant to government, is the obstacle to transparency. The trend may be toward being more transparent, but it is not always easy.
Tapscott: No, and there is a battle under way. It is a battle reflected in the reactions to this book. The Economist basically said it is the most important business book in years, whereas BusinessWeek said basically, "Fresh and compelling thesis backed up by powerful evidence, but we don't buy it. Companies will never change." And Jack Welch called me a jackass on national television in Canada because the book questions the transparency of CEOs and their compensation plans. So it is a controversial book. We have people, on one hand, saying we are too tough on corporations. On the other hand, people are saying we are too easy on them. That gives me comfort that we are probably about right.
Public CIO: In the interest of minimizing controversy, could you define transparency as you are using the term?
Tapscott: It is access to pertinent information -- information that is beneficial to you as a stakeholder if you have it and hurts you if you don't.
Public CIO: So you are not talking about information about everything?
Tapscott: No, and that's an important distinction because there are lots of things we know or don't know about corporations that are not pertinent. That has nothing to do with transparency. If I'm working in a company, the fact that someone is having an affair with someone in another department probably is not pertinent to me.
Public CIO: Another key point you highlight is that transparency must be managed.
Tapscott: Yes, and we are not suggesting, as some people have said, you need to get completely naked. Companies have legitimate trade secrets. They need to protect the privacy of customers and employees. There are many aspects of the corporation not revealed to all persons and all media, and at all places and times. So you do need to have a strategy. Most companies and institutions don't. They just muddle their way into it. They have no internal process to figure out what will be released. They don't have a policy that delineates who will decide what gets released to what media. And they have no formal way to track or evaluate the release of that information afterward. Was it a good idea to reveal this information?
There are many other impediments to transparency as this battle is unfolding. There are structural obstacles. Bill Watkins at Seagate wants to be the most open company in the world, and the main people fighting him are his own lawyers. On the other side, we have transparency fatigue. We just all know so much. Maybe it eventually just becomes so overwhelming we throw up our hands. Then there is false transparency, or apparent transparency, which is a form of deceit. Take companies that publish 200 pages of numbers in their annual report. Warren Buffett says, "If I can't understand the numbers in two minutes, somebody's hiding something."
Another barrier is that there are limits to knowledge. I'm sure I had mutual funds investing in Enron in 1998. I thought it was a pretty good company. I thought it had a pretty great business model. On the Enron chat group, I never noticed the dissertation from someone with the handle JanisJoplin298 that said Enron's off-balance sheet financing and other monkey business is going to put it under. How do you parse out that little factoid surrounded by tens of thousands of breathless comments about how Enron is America's corporation for the next two centuries? In other words, we don't have transparency literacy. We don't know how to behave in this highly open world. But having said that, the train has left the station -- transparency is a broad, historic force being accelerated rapidly by these big drivers. It is an unstoppable force. The only thing that could stop it would be something like fascism or some radical change in the whole geopolitical and economic situation. But fascism, because of transparency, is a lot less likely because all of this applies to governments.
Public CIO: In one way, government might emerge as a leader when it comes to transparency. Many government institutions already have to be more transparent than corporations.
Tapscott: That is interesting because the accountability mechanisms of democracy have been stronger than the accountability mechanisms in the private sector, which is the markets. When you can put a $100 million into advertising for a lousy product, and people don't have a way of finding out, of informing others and self-organizing, you can get away with it and sell the product. That's not to say governments are completely transparent.
Public CIO: There is a lot of use of PR in government -- spin and so on. But governments might jump on board faster, which is an interesting reversal. Government has often lagged in terms of technology, and the organizational impact and effects of technology.
Tapscott: We were actually going to get into government in the book. We were interested in these anti-war demonstrations -- not in terms of having a view pro or against the war, but in terms of how fast they happened and how big they were. I was involved way back in the '60s, and these demonstrations in some cities were an order of magnitude bigger than the biggest demonstration at the height of the anti-war movement when almost 50,000 Americans had been killed. And they happened in 18 weeks, not in 18 months, which is how long it used to take to organize a big march on Washington. You had to start 18 months in advance. The government still went ahead with war and still has a lot of popular support for the war. But I think people are getting more engaged. Will it lead us into polarization? I don't know. I hope not. But if you look at the best-seller books right now, they are extreme books attacking George Bush or in favor of George Bush.
We also had a whole section in the book on stakeholder webs and implications for governments. We cut it out because we wanted to focus on the corporation. Stakeholder webs are networks of stakeholders that scrutinize companies and try to change their behavior. There are also stakeholder webs for government. With governments, we are not just consumers; we are also owners. We can learn a lot by studying the market and seeing that also applies to government, but governments are also different because here market forces are not everything. So there are these amazing conversations going on. Every government at every level has a stakeholder web.
This means we have a wonderful opportunity to reinvent democracy if you think about it. Just like we had broadcast media, we sort of had a broadcast model of democracy. Now we are moving to a much more participatory model of democracy where engagement is the big deal.
The big scandal in the last election in the United States is not hanging chads or pregnant dimples or any of that stuff. A hundred million Americans didn't vote. They just don't give a damn. They don't see real differences. Political parties used to be ways of engaging citizens; they are now just tools for political candidates to raise money. And we have a very explosive situation shaping up here. On the other hand, we have this powerful new media. We have the Net Generation becoming voters and citizens who die for engagement. You think people don't vote today -- wait until that generation comes to the fore. It is either, "Engage me, or I'm not interested." They sure aren't going to vote a certain way because some guy has negative advertising on television.
Public CIO: You also talk about the dark side of transparency. Not only are corporations becoming increasingly transparent to different stakeholders, but customers are also becoming increasingly transparent to corporations.
Tapscott: That brings up an important clarification. Just because today transparency is in the interest of corporations, that does not mean individuals should reveal everything about themselves via the Web. Humans have a basic right to privacy, which corporations don't have. Corporations have a right to security. But there is no right of privacy to corporations, and I would argue against trying to extend such a concept to the corporation. The irony is that because of reverse transparency, we are increasingly leaving a trail of digital crumbs as we travel around, and these are being dumped into large databases.
On one hand, it is great to be treated as an individual with one-on-one marketing, but we need to be vigilant that corporations are using that information for the purposes for which it is collected, and not for other purposes. So a lot of people have gotten alarmed and said I was in favor of transparency. Therefore, I was saying that all us individuals ought to open up the kimono too. No, it's the opposite. It is because of transparency in this new information-rich world that individuals need to protect their own information even more carefully.
Public CIO: That is especially important for government institutions to recognize.
Tapscott: Governments should be more transparent and fiercely fight for the privacy of their citizens like never before.
Public CIO: So what is now demanded is a constant vigilance as to what information other people have a right to know.
Tapscott: Totally. You hear it a lot these days -- because of terrorism, privacy is dead and you may need to know everything about people. I think that is both wrong and dangerous. If you destroy privacy, you give away a free society. But it is also just incorrect because there are many things that can be done to ensure governments have the information they need to create a secure world without destroying the privacy of individuals.
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to | <urn:uuid:f74a0584-04c8-47d5-9ac6-2a4d2c3f30db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govtech.com/magazines/pcio/Governing-in-the-Age-of-Transparency.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969688 | 4,004 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Updated 10/27/2011 06:40 PM
Lauringburg hosts job fair as County grapples with unemployment issues
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LAURINBURG, N.C. — North Carolina's unemployment figures far exceed the national numbers and parts of the tar heel state are facing tougher times than others.
On Thursday, an urgent unemployment opportunities summit was held in what can be considered the epicenter of unemployment, Scotland County. Residents with resumes in hand came to Laurinburg looking for jobs and ideas to find any openings.
Scotland County has the highest unemployment rate in North Carolina.
“In Scotland County the unemployment rate is 17.6 percent that's really awful. It now takes longer to find a job than anytime in the last 60 years. It takes over 40 weeks and if you can find a job it is 17 percent reduction in pay,” said Rep. Bill Faison, an Orange County Democrat.
Preachers, teachers, politicians and employers gave their best advice to those who are searching for jobs. They said those who are in need of employment should keep their eyes and ears open to the plethora of information and resources are available.
Scotland County resident Irene Davidson hopes the summit will open doors to an opportunity for her but she walked away with some good advice for all job seekers.
“For those of you are are unemployed, keep your head up be strong stay diligent get your resume out there do the leg work, it's worth it,” said Davidson.
New county unemployment numbers will be released Friday by the Employment Securities Commission. | <urn:uuid:252e9758-d864-4acc-aa6d-c448c38b7bee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://triangle.news14.com/content/648741/lauringburg-hosts-job-fair-as-county-grapples-with-unemployment-issues | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942286 | 348 | 1.585938 | 2 |
You have an overactive bladder. Doctors call it urge incontinence. The condition is very common, especially in postmenopausal women.
Urge incontinence is the inability to hold back urine after feeling the urge to urinate. Leaks happen because the bladder has not received the signal to remain relaxed. Instead, it contracts, squeezing out the urine without warning.
But less than half of the estimated 15 million women in the United States who suffer from it seek treatment. Many regard urinary incontinence as a normal part of aging.
As a result, a lot of women resign themselves to wearing pads or other types of protection that absorb urine. But urinary incontinence at any age is not normal. And in most cases, nonsurgical therapies can cure or dramatically reduce it.
Sometimes a urinary tract infection causes urge incontinence. A simple urine test can determine if you have one. And some medications and overuse of alcohol or caffeine can make it worse.
Treatment of an overactive bladder usually starts with exercises to strengthen the pelvic-floor muscles. The most popular are Kegel exercises. These involve contracting your pelvic-floor muscles. This will help to improve control of the urethra. Contracting these muscles also signals the bladder muscles to relax. This allows the bladder to hold the urine.
You can retrain your bladder with timed urination. You can slowly increase the bladders storage capacity. If you normally have urine leakage about every three hours, urinate every two hours. Focus on suppressing the urge. Gradually, the intervals between urinating become further apart.
If Kegel exercises and bladder retraining dont work, you doctor may suggest other therapies. These include:
- A medicine to relax the bladder muscles. Drugs prescribed include oxybutynin (Ditropan), fesoterodine (Toviaz), solifenacin (Vesicare) and tolterodine (Detrol). These help prevent urine from being forced out when the bladder is full. Once your bladder is retrained, you may be able to use the drug less and less.
- Biofeedback to help the mind-body connection. A pressure probe is placed in the vagina. The probe is hooked up to a monitor that displays a graph. It lets you know if youre doing Kegel exercises properly.
- A vaginal ring with a very low dose of estrogen if you are going through menopause or postmenopausal.
- Botox injections. Botox can be injected into the main muscle responsible for bladder contraction. Botox relaxes the muscle to allow the bladder to fill more and help prevent urine from being forced out. | <urn:uuid:477c6fb2-29e5-47dd-987b-b001b354185f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW011/9103/8471/1472996.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916661 | 553 | 2.484375 | 2 |
On Sunday I preached through Psalm 32. The text deals with the deep agony of harboring sin and the soaring joy of confessing sin in the life of a believer. In the sermon, we explored the reality that sin creates a rift in the enjoyment of our relationship with God when we refuse to bring it to the light and confess it to him. There is a burden-lifting, conscience-cleansing sweetness that we feel when we ask the Lord’s forgiveness for our sins, but I realize that sometimes Christians get out of the habit of confessing sin to God and, thus, it becomes hard to identify the specific sins we keep hidden below the surface. Therefore, let me offer a few suggestions for helping us examine our spiritual lives:
- Remember sin is active and passive – Meaning, sin is doing the things we should not do and not doing the things we should do. Sin includes neglect of God’s will also.
- Remember that desires can be sinful as well – In addition to our actions, words, and thoughts, our desires should be confessed to God when they yearn for something evil or yearn for something more than God.
- Remember the sin lists and the virtue lists – Go to sin lists like Galatians 5:19-21 and ask yourself, “Are these sins I am guilty of?” Then, go to the virtue lists like Galatians 5:22-23 and ask the same thing.
- Ask those who know you best – We are often to blind to things in our lives that our loved ones can see quite clearly. Ask your spouse, parent, or best friend what they see in you that God would not be pleased with.
- Ask motive questions – Ask yourself why you chose to do something. Often, our actions and words do not seem sinful on the outside, but when we ask questions of our motives, we see an idolatrous desire for respect, comfort, security, pleasure, freedom, etc.
This exercise is not meant to move you to morbid introspection that leads to despair, but rather to help you identify sin so you can take it to Jesus in confession and have the joy of his salvation restored to you. If you are a believer, you are already forgiven of all your sins because of his sacrifice, so do not be afraid to spill it all out before him. You will never find him with his back turned. | <urn:uuid:badc083b-816e-4891-93de-84aebdaa8ec3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pewtopractice.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/when-you-cant-see-the-sins-you-need-to-confess/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945405 | 494 | 1.5 | 2 |
Even though I'd been reading science fiction since the early 60s at the time I first heard about composites/hybrids, I tended to avoid the hardware-oriented stuff. So if it was mentioned anywhere before the mid-80s, it had passed me by. Interesting to hear from someone who was there at the beginning.
The UARS satelite was designed and build in the 80's. At what was then GE Aerospace, there was a lot of research going on. The spacecraft plant actually made their own composites from raw materials. So, to some extent to call it science fiction is not really far off. It was pretty close.
naperlou, when I answered I was thinking of mil/erospace apps back in the mid-80s, which is when I first heard of the concept of a hybrid that combined plastic and metal in some way. I remember my first response being "Huh? How is that possible?" It sounded like science fiction at the time.
Ann, this is just a guess, but I expect you are correct. When I worked on spacecraft, the carbon fiber tubes were attached to metal components at the junctions. The UARS satelite (the one that just fell to earth recently) was like that.
Actually, this looks a lot like a Lotus 7. If you are not familiar witht that car, it was (is?) a kit car. They are lots of fun to drive and to build. They certianly an acquired taste, thogh.
As for the safety aspect, the Lotus 7 was open with minimal doors. This is much like pre-war (WWII) cars. That is one of the reasons it was a kit car. To pass safety tests that are now required would require much more structure.
@Ann- ....not just carbon fiber, but specifically it said "hybrid carbon-fiber tubular-steel" which I don't clearly understand but would like to.Do you know-? To me, Carbon-Fiber meant polymers while Tubular-Steel meant metal extrusions.A quick Google check did not yield much clarity; I found only one reference from the Oil & Gas Journal (Petroleum Engineering) using the same term applied to drilling apparatus, but no real explanation as what the material actually is.I'd like to know more.
When I first met Gordon I had offered to do an art show of his designs and I asked him if it was OK to call it Automotive Architecture and he responded , "Yes, exactly!" and went on to tell me about being a young designer with Duesenberg and was out in San Francisco and saw a book in a window and he was fascinated by it and went in, looked at it and mentioned that it was absolutely inspiring. He commented that he designed the 20 Grand after that and he even wrote to the architect complimenting him and received a reply. He confided in me that he thought that the architect was a marvelous writer but he went to see one of his buildings in France and thought that it was terrible.
I immediately told him that the book was "Vers un Architecture"
I told him that some people might disagree since he was considered to be one of the 3 greatest architects of the 20thC.
But we had a great show and a great time.
Several years ago I was invited by his Daughter and Grandson down to the ACD museum for the unveiling of the Gordon Buehrig Gallery and got to see the the letter that Frank Lloyd wright had sent with accolades to E.L.Cord. Batting 2 0ut of 3 gives him a .666 batting aveage.
Gordon went on to talk about the 20 grand which now resides in the Nethercutt museum in California. Gordon mentioned to me that he used to love to go back into the paint shop and mix colors. He said that the 20G was the first car to have a darkened aluminum/silver paint job so I have strong suspicions that they have not correctly restored that vehicle.
Gordon was a joy to know, has a wonderful Daughter and Grandson in NY.
Architect I raise my glass to both this and your preceeding comment. I, personally, find use of Retro Design regressive, especially this one. I have attached links to yester years Cords and Auburns in support of this my point. Both car makers contributed to the Pure AND Tecnnical advancement of Automotive Design and Engineering advances.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution. | <urn:uuid:3bc4b45a-685d-4717-b475-280091b4606d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=245250&piddl_msgid=551711 | 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 | 0.983988 | 1,103 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Press ReleaseAs Israel's front-running Hellenist city, Modi'in is slammed from an unlikely direction - Israel's Civil Right's organization, ACRI. Granted ACRI doesn't have the best objective agenda, and their voice was loudly missing when it came the Disengagement in 2005, but they are to be praised for doing the right thing when it comes to Modi'in.
October 30, 2012
ACRI to Modi'in Municipality: Restricting Entrance to Public Parks is Illegal Municipality's 'overcrowding' rationale suspected to be a pretext for denying entry to Orthodox Jews from Modi'in Illit
Today (October 30) the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) sent a letter to the Mayor of Modi'in, Haim Bibas, demanding that that he terminate the city's policy of restricting entrance to the Anava River Public Park during parts of the year.
The municipality of Modi'in-Macabim-Reut enacted the policy – which prohibits nonresidents from entering the park during the summer months and on holidays - prior to the festival of Sukkot in October. Despite the official rationale for the policy – overcrowding in the park – the municipality's actions raise a suspicion that its true purpose is to exclude Orthodox Jews from neighboring Modi'in Illit.
This is not the first time a local authority has tried to restrict entry to public parks. In 2000, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense filed a petition against the Ra'anana municipality after it began charging nonresidents an entrance fee at one if its city parks. Following the petition, the national law was amended and a clear ban on charging entrance fees to public parks was established. Further discussions in the Knesset emphasized that the purpose of the amendment was to regulate access to public parks for the enjoyment and benefit of the public at large.
Some months ago, ACRI wrote a letter to the municipality of Kiryat Ata, after learning that the city was charging nonresidents entrance fees at its public park. In that case, the suspected purpose of the policy was to prevent the entrance of Arabs from nearby communities.
The letter to Mayor Bibas, written by ACRI Chief Legal Counsel Dan Yakir, warns that the restriction is illegal; it violates the right to equality, and in practice constitutes prohibited discrimination against a religious group. Although the municipality procured a legal opinion from Professor Ariel Bendor that sanctions the policy, ACRI disagrees with the opinion's conclusions.
Attorney Dan Yakir: "The fact that the park was built on municipal land does not mean that the municipality can do whatever it wants with it. Public space, such as this park, is designated for the public at large. It is unacceptable for local authorities to attempt to restrict the public's ability to access parks under their control. "
And while we're on the topic of the Hellenist city, a friend of mine started getting Halloween orders for food...from multiple residents of...Modi'in. I guess caroling isn't enough.
However, one must keep in mind that living in Modi'in is still far better according to the Talmud and the Rambam, than living in the holy cities of Brooklyn, Monsey or Lakewood.
Update: For those not familiar with the story in Modi'in, you can read about it over at AddeRabbi's blog, a resident of Modi'in. (here and here)
Quote from AddeRabbi:
For those not following along at home, my fair hometown of Modiin has barred non-residents from visiting its spacious and beautiful Anabe Park during vacations and on Hol Ha-Mo'ed. This is a result of a pishing contest between Modiin's Mayor Haim Bibas and Modi'in Ilit's Mayor Yaakov Guterman, plus it plays into a strong anti-Haredi (and occasionally anti-religious) sentiment amongst a minority of Modiin residents (a political party, Modiin Hofshit, ran on an anti-religious platform and got only a few hundred votes for city council).
The new policy upsets me greatly, and I wanted to see how the policy was being implemented generally. As I got in line to enter the park, I could see that a few cars ahead of me the line was being held up by a Haredi family insisting on entering the park. Since the new regulations allow for Modiin residents to bring guests, I went and invited the family in as my guests. After a while, the guards let us in on that basis. Serendipitously, a reporter from Haaretz was there at the time. Her report is here (Hebrew) and here (English - paywall). The paragraphs relevant to my story are:
As the argument continued, a Modi’in resident, Eli Fischer, decided to see whether everyone was really being barred from the park, or only those in ultra-Orthodox garb.
“He’s my guest, let him in,” said Fischer, in an effort to help Tirnauer, at first without success. The guards checked Fischer’s identity card, and then started questioning Tirnauer and his family about their relationship. One of the ushers called a municipal security guard to help.
“He’s not really your guest, he’s here to make a provocation,” the security guard told Fischer. But Fischer persisted after the getting approval of his superiors the security guard allowed Fischer and his new acquaintances into the park.
“The park is empty, and I wanted to see what would happen, since according to the instructions that were publicized, [the park] is reserved for Modi’in residents and their guests,” said Fischer. “I don’t know why they were questioning me.”
The municipality said that the confrontation involving Tirnauer and Fischer was the first to occur since the instructions were issued, claiming it was a planned provocation by the media.
“During all the days that entrance to the park was restricted, there wasn’t a single incident, except for one in which a visitor who isn’t a city resident came with a reporter to create a provocation and get a headline,” the municipality said.The Hebrew version also includes a Gemara that I cited for the benefit of the reporter, from Sukkah 27b: "All Israel are fit to dwell in a single sukkah."
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Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד | <urn:uuid:5b48e488-1e97-4d8e-8cf1-391ac70875cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muqata.blogspot.com/2012/10/acri-slams-modiin-stop-illegal-policies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963145 | 1,387 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Tuesday, Nov. 10, will mark the 40th anniversary of “Sesame Street,” the PBS standby that taught multiple generations to read and count and gave many children perhaps their earliest glimpses of multicultural community.
“It is almost too perfect that the first African-American president of the United States was elected in time for the 40th anniversary of ‘Sesame Street,’” Alessandra Stanley writes. “The world is finally beginning to look the way the PBS show always made it out to be.”
Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer behind Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since the show’s debut in 1969, and Carol-Lynn Parente, executive producer, are taking questions submitted by Times readers. Anything you’ve always wanted to know about “Sesame Street” and its denizens but have been afraid to ask? Here’s your chance. | <urn:uuid:b8f9aa4f-efed-439c-aa82-be629668351c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/carol-lynn-parente/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962506 | 194 | 1.890625 | 2 |
[ODE] multiple geoms on body and relative positions
yordan at gyurchev.com
Sat Feb 5 21:49:13 MST 2005
I remember there was something about geom relative positions (or was it mass
relative positions) but I cant find it in my archive.
Obviously its possible to have multiple geoms for one body. But for me there
is little point of having multiple geoms if I cant set their relative
positions and orientations with respect to the body frame of reference.
Is this possible?
More information about the ODE | <urn:uuid:2d477fa8-1547-4595-be8b-909c8c5e5c9c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ode.org/old_list_archives/2005-February/015081.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915901 | 120 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The winter months can be particularly harsh for some businesses, especially those that must endure the ebb and flow of seasons.
Think ice cream stores, golf courses, lawn care businesses and the like.
For Rodney Reagan, owner of Farm Fresh Produce, the coldest season of the year can be a difficult one for a small operator such as him.
Peaches, strawberries, tomatoes and plants are this Sutherland Avenue store's specialty when in season. During the winter months, "we sell friendship," Reagan confided.
"It's slow in the wintertime," he said. "A lot of places like us close for the season. The people who come now are the reason you stay open. They just come to support you, and we need all the support we can get."
Reagan has worked on his family's farm in Grainger County as long as he can remember and has owned the Sutherland Avenue property for years, supplying the previous owners with his plants and produce.
He took it over five years ago and hopes that eventually one day his children will step in to run it.
Word-of-mouth has been the best form of advertisement, and the 37-year-old said he has a lot of loyal customers to thank. Still, "the more the merrier, especially for a small business, because it's tough."
Farm Fresh Produce, he added, has been helped by folks who are embracing a shop-local and buy-fresh attitude.
"Everybody is looking for a place like this to shop," he said, noting that the fruits and vegetables are fresher because they haven't been hauled on a truck from far away.
The University of Tennessee's closing of its apartment complex for students across the street has hurt a little, he said.
The residences helped to buffer lower sales during winter months as students who didn't have a way to drive would often visit his store for groceries. But an optimistic Reagan said that maybe crowds at the intramural fields currently under construction will make up for it.
This week, the business has been closed as Reagan works to fix up the place. He is repairing the floor, painting the walls and dropping the ceiling. He also is having the roof to the greenhouse replaced. And an additional 10 parking spaces in the rear of the building will welcome customers when he reopens next week.
Reagan always closes the week after Christmas to let his employees take time with their families and thought that this time of year would be good to work on the building.
"I've just been down a week longer than I usually am," he said. "I hope we're not causing any inconvenience." | <urn:uuid:404c0da6-cd58-4f40-8148-7446abcaa19c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jan/11/carly-harrington-farm-fresh-tackles-the-winter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986599 | 543 | 1.539063 | 2 |
"Glitch in the matrix" becomes a scientific reality with acoustic levitation
(CBS News) Back in April we showed you an amazing video that used sound and an adjustment on a camera's frame rate to create the optical illusion (or glitch in the Matrix) of liquids appearing to stop or go backwards in their flow. It was mind-blowing. Well, get ready to have your jaw drop, as the optical illusion previously on display has been made into a scientific reality. Check it out.
Okay, seriously, just how cool is science? The stunning video was posted by Argonne National Laboratory who write about the development:
If you'd like to learn more about acoustic levitation you can do so by clicking here and to see more videos by Argonne National Laboratory you can visit their YouTube page by clicking here.
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a way to use sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing different pharmaceuticals. While the connection between levitation and drug development may not be immediately apparent, a special relationship emerges at the molecular level.
- Bluegrass rendition of Daft Punk's "One More Time"
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- Cat won't be trying to eat fish in aquarium anymore
- Daft Punk music medley is an epic mix and tribute | <urn:uuid:7bc51421-46db-45b8-8b93-7ffad5448208> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-57514381-10391705/glitch-in-the-matrix-becomes-a-scientific-reality-with-acoustic-levitation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925049 | 414 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Brazilian 'genius' architect Niemeyer dies
updated 10:19 AM EST, Thu December 6, 2012
Niemeyer was considered one of the patriachs of Brazilian modernist architecture. He'd been hospitalized since early November suffering from kidney failure. This is an aerial view taken on April 30, 2009 of the famous Museum of Contemporary Art in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro, designed by Niemeyer.
Niteroi Museum of Contemporary Art
Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center
Cathedral of Brazilia (1960's)
Brasilia's Cathedral interior
Federal Supreme Court in Brasilia
Oscar Niemeyer with his grandson
Planalto Palace, Brazil
Ravello's Auditorium Oscar Niemeyer
Pele kisses hand of Oscar Niemeyer
National Museum of the Republic
Oscar Niemeyer Museum
Oscar Niemeyer Museum
Brazil's National Congress
Oscar Niemeyer sculpture
Footbridge in Rocinha
Church on grounds of presidential palace
- He was one of Brazil's geniuses, the nation's president says
- He was 104
- The mayor of Rio de Janeiro called for three days of mourning
(CNN) -- Brazil's most influential modern architect Oscar Niemeyer, whose resume includes the United Nations building in New York, passed away on Wednesday.
He was 104.
Niemeyer spent the last month in a hospital in Rio de Janeiro in frail health, according to his doctor Fernando Gjorup. Neimeyer died after suffering respiratory complications, Gjorup told reporters.
Niemeyer was one of Brazil's geniuses, said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
"We have to dream, or else things won't happen," Rousseff said, using one of Niemeyer's famous sayings. "Few have dreamed so intensely and accomplished so many things like him."
The president offered the presidential palace, one of Niemeyer's well known designs, to his wife for his wake.
Eduardo Paes, the mayor for Rio de Janeiro, has declared official mourning for three days.
"(He was) one of the greatest geniuses that Brazil gave the world, Oscar Niemeyer was more than a brilliant and innovative architect. He defied logic and twisted ways to create true works of art," Paes said.
Born and raised in Rio, Niemeyer was an early master of modern architecture in Brazil, a fingerprint that became clear after he was commissioned alongside his mentor Lucio Costa to design Brazil's new capital, Brasilia.
Niemeyer "incorporated curves and raw, unfinished materials" with a "balance between horizontal and vertical buildings, rectangular volumes," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said.
Brasilia is a World Heritage Site.
Among his other works are the presidential palace, the ministry of justice building and the presidential chapel.
In Rio, his sinuous curves inspired the works of many poets, writers and songwriters. He designed the Sambadrome, where the samba schools hold their parades every year. In Sao Paulo, he worked with a landscape architect to build one of the largest city parks in Latin America, the Ibirapuera Park.
Paes summed up what many felt when he said "Brazil and the world lost today a man who dedicated his entire life to produce beauty."
People we've lost in 2012: The lives they lived
Part of complete coverage on
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Robert Fowler spent 130 days held hostage by the same al Qaeda group that was behind the Algeria massacre. He shares his experience.
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As "We are the World" plays, a video shows what looks like a nuclear attack on the U.S. Jim Clancy reports on a bizarre video from North Korea.
The relationship is, once again, cold enough to make Obama's much-trumpeted "reset" in Russian-U.S. relations seem thoroughly off the rails.
Ten years on, what do you think the Iraq war has changed in you, and in your country? Send us your thoughts and experiences.
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Musician Daniela Mercury has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide over a career span of nearly 30 years.
Photojournalist Alison Wright travelled the world to capture its many faces in her latest book, "Face to Face: Portraits of the Human Spirit."
updated 7:06 PM EST, Tue February 5, 2013
Europol claims 380 soccer matches, including top level ones, were fixed - as the scandal widens, CNN's Dan Rivers looks at how it's done.
updated 7:37 AM EST, Wed February 6, 2013
That galaxy far, far away is apparently bigger than first thought. The "Star Wars" franchise will get two spinoff movies, Disney announced.
updated 2:18 AM EST, Fri February 8, 2013
It's an essential part of any trip, an activity we all take part in. Yet almost none of us are any good at it. Souvenir buying is too often an obligatory slog. | <urn:uuid:447a5a52-d803-42b9-a213-17b3e960afc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/world/americas/brazil-niemeyer-obit/index.html?hpt=hp_c3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957199 | 1,211 | 2.4375 | 2 |
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) - A company going door-to-door to test water has confused quite a few residents throughout the valley, causing them to wonder if their water is safe.
"One afternoon this young gentleman came to the door asking whether they could test the water in the house," said Jim Raff, local resident approached by a salesman.
Colorado Environmental Resources is a completely separate entity from area water providers, and they don't deny it.
"We are water treatment and purification company," said Vice President of Colorado Environmental Resources Miguel Favorel. "In no way are we affiliated with the city or state."
But somewhere along the way, confusion has come knocking on doors.
"All three water providers have had customers calling saying, 'We had someone coming to the house asking to sample our water,'" said Kristin Winn, spokesperson for the City of Grand Junction.
"I didn't even really think much about it," said Raff. "I just kind of figured Clifton Water is testing water."
One week later, CER called back with the results, and that's when Jim realized what was going on.
"They said, 'Well, we're into the water treatment,' and I politely said no thank you and hung up the phone," said Raff.
Colorado Environmental Resources claims they always inform their customers who they are. "Everybody that we collect a water sample for on that program is given a disclaimer that explains who we are," said Miguel.
If residents are still unsure, know this. Thanks to sampling stations throughout the community, area water providers will not spontaneously appear at your door.
"Unless you have a problem with your water, and you've called because there's an odor problem or a taste problem," said Kristin, "then we would come out to your home and check your water.
So just be aware.
"They were just trying to sell a product which I didn't need, so I told them no thank you," said Jim.
Those in the market for cleaner water may find this company beneficial, but for water customers thinking CER is affiliated with their water provider, that is not the case.
For further identification, the city says area water providers will always be wearing company clothing and driving company vehicles.
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College enrollment among 18- to 24-year-olds hit an an all-time high in 2008, my colleague, Tamar Lewin, reports.
“We have anecdotally got this sense that there’s been this college enrollment boom,” said Richard Fry, a senior research associate at the Pew center who wrote the report, “but now we’ve got confirmation, and we know that at least among young adults, the increase seems to be a two-year college phenomenon.”
“What’s behind this,” Mr. Fry added, “is that we have the biggest pool of young adults we’ve ever had who’ve finished high school.”
Ms. Lewin reports that the rise in college attendance “was attributable almost entirely to increased community-college enrollment. About 3.4 million, or 11.8 percent, of young adults were enrolled at community colleges, up from 3.1 million, or 10.9 percent, in 2007.” | <urn:uuid:48ab7ff7-317c-4d33-a313-43d434d0c19c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/enrollment-in-colleges-set-a-record-last-year/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967361 | 215 | 1.851563 | 2 |
CERN1 and HP2 today announced that HP would join the CERN openlab for DataGrid applications. This group is an industrial collaboration formed to push the limits of emerging Grid technologies by developing novel solutions to the massive data storage and analysis challenges of both the research community and the IT industry.
CERN's next-generation particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, will begin generating data at the rate of millions of gigabytes – or petabytes – per second, starting in 2007. Even though only a minute fraction of this data will be stored for further analysis, this will still result in dozens of petabytes per year. The huge datasets will be distributed worldwide so that scientists everywhere can have access to them.
Other collaborators in the CERN openlab include Intel3 and Enterasys Networks. HP will initially supply CERN with advanced hardware to construct a 32-node cluster of computers optimized for data-intensive scientific computing. Code-named the "CERN opencluster," it will be powered by Itanium® 2 processors provided by Intel and linked to CERN's emerging DataGrid infrastructure via a high-speed 10 gigabit Ethernet backbone provided by Enterasys Networks.
Going well beyond the hardware, the collaboration will enable researchers from CERN and HP Labs to explore solutions beyond today's Internet-based computing. Deploying the CERN opencluster into the demanding worldwide grid environment being used for physics simulations could provide valuable insight for how the grid could be used in future information processing infrastructures and utilities.
"The research alliance with CERN provides HP with a demanding testbed for some of our most advanced IT solutions and it will be an excellent proving ground for our hardware," said Jim Duley, director for technology programs, HP University Relations. "We look forward to contributing to the CERN openlab and using the experience to help bring the benefits of grid computing to the enterprise."
"It's a win-win arrangement," said Manuel Delfino, IT Division leader at CERN. "CERN gains access to some of the world's most advanced technologies for building IT infrastructure, and provides in return a focused and extreme computational challenge with which to test it. HP will bring invaluable experience to the group and we are thrilled to have them join us."
For more information about the CERN openlab for DataGrid Applications collaboration, see website.
1. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and Unesco have observer status.
2. HP is a leading global provider of products, technologies, solutions and services to consumers and businesses. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. HP completed its merger transaction involving Compaq Computer Corp. on May 3, 2002. More information about at HP
3. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. | <urn:uuid:cab94a1d-2624-40ec-baef-890b6acf9bad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2002/09/hp-joins-cern-collaboration-advance-grid-computing-technologies | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91837 | 669 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Last mission to repair the Hubble telescope Hubble space telescope discoveries have enriched our understanding of the cosmos. In this special report, you will see facts about the Hubble space telescope, discoveries it has made and what the last mission's goals are.
For their own good
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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Expanding impact, stagnant funding
By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published February 27, 2007
Alzheimer's disease costs Medicare and Medicaid billions of dollars a year, not to mention the financial and emotional burden it imposes on individual families.
And that's before baby boomers triple the caseload.
This year's budget from the Bush administration calls for $643-million in federal spending for Alzheimer's research, the same amount spent in 2006 but down slightly from previous years.
People with a personal stake are aghast.
"I get so furious to see that we are actually cutting funding," says Terri McNulty, a vice president at Bright House Networks, whose 58-year-old sister is already deep into Alzheimer's.
"It isn't a designer disease. It isn't a star disease. We put people away and don't talk about it. But it will destroy the public health system in 10 years if we don't have a breakthrough."
Steve Younkin, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, says that relatively low funding levels are driving promising young scientists away from Alzheimer's work, even though researchers are homing in on possible causes and cures.
The federal government now funds only about 10 percent of grant applications, compared with about 25 percent a few years ago, Younkin says.
"We are paying Halliburton (for multiple contracts in Iraq), but not Alzheimer's (research). What are our priorities?"
Here are a few of those priorities, according to a sampling of the budget:
- HIV/AIDS research gets four times more federal money than does Alzheimer's.
- Breast cancer gets a little more, as do eye diseases and vision disorders.
- Infant mortality and low birth-weight programs receive a little less, as do dental and oral diseases. | <urn:uuid:ae48ecad-8c0f-444c-89f9-33f263179a3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/27/Lifetimes/Expanding_impact__sta.shtml | 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 | 0.948591 | 496 | 2.046875 | 2 |
About a month ago, British High Court Justice Peter Smith ruled that Dan Brown had not plagiarized an earlier work ("Holy Blood, Holy Grail") when writing his best-seller (you may have heard of it), "The Da Vinci Code." It turns out that the judge's opinion contains an odd pattern of italicized letters, sometimes just one in the middle of a word, and the first ten of these letters spell out "SMITHY CODE." The next 30 are a jumble, and experts around the world immediately started feverish efforts to crack the Smithy Code.
Actually, nobody noticed for about three weeks, which may tell you how closely people read judicial opinions. Eventually, Dan Tench, a partner at a London law firm, noticed it and mentioned something to a legal-affairs reporter, whose paper published a small item about it. In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, Justice Smith refused to confirm or deny anything about a code, saying "I can't discuss the judgment until after I retire."
But then he did. A lot. Clearly disappointed that nobody had noticed his handiwork, he then emailed back with a series of cryptic comments. He first admitted there was a code, and then that he had plagarized -- I mean, borrowed -- the idea from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," to which potential code-breakers might want to look. Then he emailed back to say "Think mathematics," a reference to a method used by characters in Brown's book. Then he said people might want to look at his own reference in "Who's Who," which, it turns out, mentions the judge's lifelong interest in Jackie Fisher, who, as you are aware, was a British admiral who came up with the idea for the dreadnought battleship.
You know, this started out as an intriguing mystery, sort of.
Finally, the judge said "Start with 's' and keep looking up to Page 18 approximately where the fonts stop." (Oh, just tell us what it is already.) Well, the decoded message, which took less than 24 hours to decode with the judge's clues, turns out to be "Jackie Fisher, who are you? Dreadnought," and frankly is kind of a letdown. Shouldn't it be some revelation about Jesus killing a guy with his bare hands for no reason or something like that? Hm. The judge insisted that his coded message "reveals a significant but now overlooked event [the invention of the dreadnought, I guess] that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial." Fair enough. | <urn:uuid:9893c21b-696a-4b0f-bcac-3a0504e39a57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.loweringthebar.net/2006/04/da_vinci_code_j.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978291 | 536 | 1.789063 | 2 |
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama announced Thursday that his administration will investigate to see if fraud or manipulation in oil markets is behind the spike in gasoline prices.
"We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain," Obama said at a town hall meeting in Reno, Nev.
He vowed that a broad government task force under Attorney General Eric Holder would "root out any cases of fraud or manipulation" in gasoline prices — "and that includes the role of traders and speculators."
Financial speculation is widely considered to be a possibly prime factor driving up global oil prices. Despite turmoil in the Middle East, there's been no significant interruption of oil production, and supplies remain abundant. Meanwhile, financial institutions have been purchasing contracts for future oil delivery as an investment strategy, driving up prices.
Other factors believed contributing to the rising prices are fear of future supply interruption rising from Middle East turmoil and projections of rising oil demand as the global economy recovers.
Obama's under political pressure to address gasoline prices that are nearing an average of $4 a gallon. The average price of regular this week hit $3.84 per gallon, according to AAA, up 30 cents in a month and almost a dollar from a year ago.
A McClatchy-Marist poll this week showed that only 11 percent of drivers blame Obama and the Democrats. Still, the sticker shock at the pump likely contributed to a drop in Obama's overall job approval and a big increase in the ranks of Americans who feel the country's headed in the wrong direction — a significant political barometer now at the worst level since November 2007.
In Washington, Holder announced that a Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Working Group, comprised of regulators from many federal financial agencies, would focus on fraud in energy markets. An Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group would probe oil and gas markets for potential violations of civil or criminal laws. It also will examine commodities markets and the role of speculators and index traders in oil futures markets, he said.
"Rapidly rising gasoline prices are pinching the pockets of consumers across the country," Holder said in a statement. "We will be vigilant in monitoring the oil and gas markets for any wrongdoing."
Speculation has been on regulators' minds as oil prices have climbed from the $80 range late last year to more than $112 a barrel Thursday.
There's no shortage of oil supplies, with excess production capacity globally and flat demand as the global economic recovery remains sluggish. McClatchy has reported on the impact of financial speculation on oil and gasoline prices since 2008.
One regulator whose agency will participate said this task force isn't for public relations purposes alone. In the past when oil prices soared, prosecutors tried to make examples of gas station owners or middlemen profiting from climbing prices. This task force is looking at financial markets, and seeking much bigger targets.
"We are definitely looking at trading in the markets that isn't nickel-and-dime stuff. They're big enough that we would want the Justice Department involved. We would want people potentially to go to jail," said the regulator, who requested anonymity to speak freely about ongoing investigations.
Commodities markets rely on speculation, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's excessive speculation that regulators are trying to curb.
Bart Chilton, a Commodities Futures Trading Commissioner, whose panel regulates futures markets, has argued that speculation is excessive. But he said that determining how much of the oil price spike stems from speculation, rather than a "fear premium" rising from Middle East instability, isn't a simple calculation.
"It really is more nuanced than that," he said. "They're having an impact, and I think a fairly large impact. It's adding several dollars to the cost of a fill-up."
Proving market manipulation isn't easy. For most of the past decade, the Justice Department — focused on prosecuting terrorists — showed little appetite for tackling oil speculation.
"Up until recently, 75 percent of our criminal referrals to Justice were rejected. We end up with decent outcomes, but nobody goes to jail because it's not criminal prosecution if we do it," Chilton said, referring to the CFTC.
He tried unsuccessfully to convince Congress last year to give the agency the power to bring criminal charges in such instances, instead of civil cases that yield fines but do little do deter big Wall Street firms.
Large-scale investment from big institutional investors, such as pension funds, is also thought to be pushing up oil prices. They're buying up contracts for future delivery of oil on the assumption that prices will just keep going up. Futures markets are designed to hedge against price shifts, but these new players treat their oil contracts like stocks.
MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
For more McClatchy politics coverage visit Planet Washington | <urn:uuid:f127097b-8929-48ab-8368-45a8dbd87e3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/21/112619/obama-orders-probe-to-find-whats.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967415 | 991 | 1.625 | 2 |
New variants of the prolific Bagle worm were spreading across cyberspace Thursday morning, prompting several antivirus firms to issue alerts.
Bagle-AY and Bagle-AX spread through tainted e-mail messages. Kaspersky Lab of Russia issued a severe-risk alert to its customers, while Danish security firm Secunia labeled the worms a medium-risk.
At this point, Bagle-AY appears to be spreading more rapidly. In addition to e-mail, Lynnfield, Mass.-based antivirus firm Sophos said this variant also spreads through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. And it will try to disable antivirus and other security tools running on infected PCs.
"Everyone should be cautious of unsolicited e-mail attachments and be wary of what they download from Internet file-sharing networks," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, said in a statement. "So far, 2005 has been fairly quiet in terms of brand new virus outbreaks. If everyone applied computer security common sense it would help keep it that way."
According to Sophos, the worm uses such subject lines as:
- Delivery service mail;
- Delivery by mail;
- Registration is accepted;
- Is delivered mail; and
- You are made active.
Finnish security firm F-Secure said Bagle-AY sightings had been reported in several different countries by early Thursday morning. The firm said this variant was similar to Bagle-AX in that it is polymorphic, arrives in e-mails with variable subjects
Secunia's advisory links to alerts from seven antivirus firms and includes different aliases each use to identify the new variants. | <urn:uuid:0efd8135-f378-454c-9147-095687a5824e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1047932/New-Bagle-variants-spreading | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954981 | 342 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Since there are two groups of people who identify themselves as such, I'm referring to this definition:
Many of us, easterners and westerners, have been profoundly influenced by our study of Buddhism, and yet do not find ourselves attached to any one particular sect or interpretation of Buddhism. Further, many of us, especially westerners, find the fundamental ideas of Buddhism deeply meaningful, but cannot, without being dishonest with ourselves, accept certain other ideas usually associated with Buddhism. This leaves us with a somewhat ambiguous sense of who and what we are.
For example, many of us are unable, or do not desire, to attach ourselves to one or another of the monastic traditions. And we are often unable and unwilling to take certain beliefs literally. The many gods and demons, heavens and hells, that some traditional Buddhists accept as real, are things that strain our credibility. And rebirth strikes many of us as a metaphor rather than a literal reality. Because of these things, to some traditional Buddhists we are just not Buddhists at all.
We are heartened by the fact that Buddha himself seems to have considered arguments about cosmology and gods and the reality of life after death as irrelevant to the more immediate concern, which is the practice of the eight-fold path. It is, of course, a little presumptuous to say which of the many sutras are the ones we should pay attention to, and which should be considered some kind of later addition or modification. We will never know exactly what the Buddha said and did not say. We can only be "lights unto ourselves" and do the best we can.
This by no means suggests that we look down upon other Buddhist orientations or that we have a better or purer understanding of Buddhist life. We only want to acknowledge our debt to the teachings of the Buddha. For this reason, I would like to recommend the term Navayana Buddhism ("new vehicle of awakening") to all those who wish to so identify themselves.
May 1, 2002 | <urn:uuid:1403ec5f-4fdc-47be-88bd-0c893046aab1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?p=95395 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966398 | 410 | 2.359375 | 2 |
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While tales of external conflicts fill history books, the challenges from inside a ruler's ranks often prove the most destructive. Travel to ancient Egypt and 16th-century Turkey to explore two troubled downfalls.
- King Tut: Unraveling the Boy King's Death Investigates new clues into the sudden and mysterious demise of Tutankhamen, the young pharaoh famous for his golden mask.
- Suleiman: Breaking with Convention Examines the sultan's unconventional decision to allow conquered subjects to keep their religion and the political rivalry that forced this ruler of the Ottoman Empire into seclusion. | <urn:uuid:49eeee0b-1fa6-4fff-bcbd-7b98e51ed8bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://store.discoveryeducation.com/product/show/48316 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902565 | 125 | 2.125 | 2 |
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - A local group that responds to women's needs now has a new mission: To help curb smoking and obesity in Staten Islanders.
The Staten Island Sisterhood, which is comprised of representatives from borough women's groups, recently held the first meeting of the Sisterhood Women's Health Committee. Headed by Soroptimist International of Staten Island President Carol Lundrigan, the initiative aims to develop an Island-wide Healthy Heart Awareness program to address issues related to smoking, weight control and exercise.
The next committee meeting will be March 27 at 6:30 p.m. in the Regina M. McGinn, M.D. Education Center on Staten Island University Hospital's Ocean Breeze campus. Groups concerned with women's issues are welcomed to send a representative.
The Sisterhood, which serves as a united voice to enhance the lives of Island women, started in 2010 with representatives from 19 local groups. The presidents of each group meet during the year to establish guidelines and bring up issues they believe to be of importance.
For more information, call Rosemarie Dressler at 718-226-2486. | <urn:uuid:97816bce-a19b-4158-b6a4-5beea7c7c7e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.silive.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2012/03/new_committee_to_focus_on_islanders_health.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938263 | 234 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Will Ben Bernanke Save Alternative Energy with Quantitative Easing 3?
Jonathan is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
Alternative energy needs high fossil fuel prices to be competitive. Despite the hopes for it and all its promise that attracted so many billions in venture capital and public sector financial support, there is no form of clean energy that can even come close to matching the present price points of oil and, in particular, natural gas. According to a recent article in Wired magazine,"Clean Tech Meltdown" by Juliet Eilperin, the collapse in the price of natural gas has devastated the clean energy sector.
From her Wired piece, "Perhaps the biggest force working against not just Solyndra but clean energy in general is this: Because natural gas has gotten so cheap, there is no longer a financial incentive to go with renewables. Technological advances in natural gas extraction from shale – including the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – have opened up reserves so massive that the US has surpassed Russia as the world’s largest natural gas supplier.”
While fossil fuel prices have fallen over the last year due to a decline in demand from lower growth and greater supplies due to fracking and other new technologies, the exchange traded funds for both oil and natural gas have risen in recent market action. Down 13.57% for 2012, United States Oil (NYSEMKT: USO) rose 10.50% last week. Off 24.23% for the same period, United States Natural Gas (NYSEMKT: UNG) last week jumped by 2.14%.
Why is this? Not since JR Ewing has there been a more prominent supporter of higher prices for fossil fuels than Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke with his quantitative easing policies and programs.
Oil and natural gas prices have risen lately on the hopes that Quantitative Easing 3 will be announced by Ben Bernanke when he speaks at the Jackson Hole economic policy summit in late August. When Chairman Bernanke introduced Quantitative Easing 2 back in the summer of 2010, oil rose drastically in price. This was not due to greater demand for crude around the globe for economic growth, rather speculators fleeing the US dollar for hard assets.
Quantitative Easing 2 consisted of the Federal Reserve, through an accounting mechanism, inflating its balance sheet to underwrite the budget deficit of the United States Government. From November 2010 through June 2011, about $700 billion in US Treasurys were purchased by the Federal Reserve. Over that period, United States Oil rose from trading in the low $30s to the high $40s. United States Natural Gas did not rise due to a variety of factors, ranging from greater production due to fracking to less demand as a result of warmer weather.
With hopes for Quantitative Easing 3 mounting, speculators and traders are now driving up the price of oil and natural gas, despite the lack of fundamental economic demand. As a result, PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy (NYSEMKT: PBW), an exchange traded fund for alternative energy, has also risen in recent trading.
Year to date, PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy is down by 7.11%. For the last 52 weeks of market action, it is off by 46.74%. But over the last month of trading it has gained 14.25% per share. The last week has witnessed another 5.54% boost for PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy.
Should Chairman Bernanke introduce Quantitative Easing 3 when he takes the microphone in Jackson Hole late next month, the share prices for United States Oil, United States Natural Gas and PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy should continue surging.
jonathanyates13 has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. The Motley Fool has no positions in the stocks mentioned above. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.If you have questions about this post or the Fool’s blog network, click here for information. | <urn:uuid:3237e517-1527-4a8e-8eb4-dc8c7aa9e2f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beta.fool.com/jonathanyates13/2012/07/10/will-ben-bernanke-save-alternative-energy-quantita/6602/?logvisit=y&source=eednaslnk0000001&published=2012-07-10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937189 | 866 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Note: This is another post for International Pagan Values Month.
When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
I have been thinking about the post I wrote yesterday on sources for pagan values, and I have realized (partly because of a conversation that I had about the post with my brother) that there is at least one big gaping hole in my presentation. In a nutshell, my thesis was that as pagans we should be looking to nature and the pagan past–mythology in particular–for our values and not just taking western liberal values and looking for a pagan justification for them. While I do think that we should be looking for authentic sources for our values, and I do think that just adopting western liberal values and inventing a pagan justification for them creates a morally meaningless religion, I presented the two options as a false dichotomy. My assumption was that if pagans have values that do not come from nature or mythology, they must simply be spouting out liberal pop culture values. While I think that is in fact what Brendan Myers does in The Other Side Of Virtue, it is not fair to accuse all pagans of doing the same. The problem that dawned on my shortly after writing my post is that I left out a major and significant source for the majority of pagans: the Age of Aquarius!
Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Okay, so the song is more than a little over the top. I kid because I love. But in all seriousness, when we talk about modern paganism, we’re including a lot of people who self-identify as pagans that are heavily (if not primarily) influenced by the 20th-century New Age movement. Whether or not it was that way from the beginning, Wicca has pretty much adopted New Ageism whole-cloth, and even though it makes the Reconstructionists’ heads asplode, Wiccans are by far the most numerous of the self-identifying pagans. In any case, the New Age movement has its own set of values, a utopian vision of a world of peace, free love, spiritual connectedness, and enlightenment (and probably also vegetarianism): the Age of Aquarius. And because so much of neopaganism draws on New Age sources, these Aquarian values are held by so many neopagans that they go virtually unquestioned outside of Reconstructionist circles.
I’m not really talking about whether Aquarian Utopianism should be a source for pagans to derive their moral values from; I’m saying that it is in fact such a source. Not for all pagans, no, but it is prominent enough that it deserves mention and a seat at the table. And when we are talking about “pagan values,” their prominence among pagans and New Ageism’s influence on neopaganism generally is such that it is not unreasonable to say that Aquarian values are pagan values.
Aquarian values are not ancient, the way our pagan heritage and our mythology are (and they’re definitely not ur-primoridal the way nature it elf is), but that does not make them somehow invalid. As John Michael Greer is usually quick to point out, the age of a spiritual tradition has nothing to do with its valididty; a functional, productive religion is functional and productive whether it is a billion years old or was invented last week. They have not yet stood the test of time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t. And for us, the only thing that matters really is whether they work.
The trick is that we as pagans need to be at once mindful that the New Age Aquarian vision is a major source of our collective values, and simultaneously mindful that it is not our only source of values. It is not the be-all end-all; there should not be an automatic presumption of Aquarianism. The easy mistake that I think a lot of pagans make is simply to buy into Aquarian values whole cloth without really thinking about what they are doing. The lessons we get from nature, from mythology, and from our pagan past may completely contradict what Aquarian New Ageism teaches us, and although I do think that a reasonable neopagan could conclude that in such a situation, Aquarianism trumps its opponents, I don’t think that’s the kind of decision one can make responsibly without thinking it thorugh and realizing what one is doing.
If we do add Aquarian ideals to the mix of mythology, heritage, and nature, then the result is a pretty diverse set of sources from which we can derive our values. This is a situation that invites careful thought, deliberate scrutiny, and difficult weighing. It also means that different pagans are going to come up with different answers. Paganism is pretty diverse, so that won’t really change anything–hells, look around at the pagan values blog carnival I linked to at the top and you’ll see evrything under the sun represented–but if we’re all going to come under the same umbrella, we need to have some kind of common ground, especially in critical areas like moral reasoning. If we can at least acknowledge the sources for our moral values, then we are in a much better position to think critically about them ourselves and discuss them with each other and with non-pagans in a principled and productive way. And if despite our differing conclusions, we actually do share a common set of moral sources, then we have more common ground than we otherwise might think we do.
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
The Age of Aquarius | <urn:uuid:63121532-842d-4616-8990-9a57ba9726bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://byzantium.wordpress.com/tag/enlightenment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943181 | 1,228 | 1.539063 | 2 |
In conjunction with its Prineville data center announcement this morning, Facebook outlined some basic features of its facility, which it says are designed to be energy efficient (and, implicitly, to save power costs):
- It has an "evaporative cooling system" to keep the servers cool, which Facebook says is less energy intensive than traditional "chiller" systems.
- An "airside economizer" brings colder air in from outside to keep things frosty.
- Heat generated from the servers will be re-used to warm adjacent offices.
- And Facebook says it has a proprietary system for maintaining a uninterrupted supply of electricity to it servers that uses up to 12 percent less electricity.
I asked Bob Jenks, executive director of the Citizens' Utility Board, for his perspective.
"They obviously use an awful lot (of electricity), but they need to be located somewhere," Jenks said. "They ought to be located where they're as energy-efficient as possible."
Facebook has contracted with Pacific Power to supply electricity for the Prineville data center. Seventy percent of Pacific Power's energy is generated by coal, according to Jenks. But the utility isn't building any new coal-fired plants, he said, and Facebook's arrival won't change that.
"We're not going to argue with industrial growth in Oregon," Jenks said, "as long as it's paying its cost on the power system." | <urn:uuid:1e7b4c55-070a-4a0e-bf83-033ee6e2dad5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.oregonlive.com/siliconforest/2010/01/facebook_touts_energy_efficien.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97657 | 294 | 2.40625 | 2 |
by James Lehman, MSW
Note from Elisabeth Wilkins, EP Editor: Empowering Parents will continue to honor James Lehman’s teachings by helping you to use his techniques in your daily life with your children. One last gift James left us were the many interviews, articles and audio recordings he created before his death. Even in his final act, he still had much to share with all of us. James’ goal was always to empower parents. We hope this article helps you in those moments when you’re having trouble dealing with your child’s hurtful language and excuses.
“I was just kidding! Can’t you take a joke?” If your child gives you this excuse after he’s said or done something rude, it might leave you feeling frustrated and unsure of how to handle the situ ation. Later, you might question yourself when he says, “But I didn’t mean it that way.” In this article, James Lehman explains why disrespect and inappropriate behavior are really nothing to laugh at—no matter what the excuse.
“But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter to you why he does it. That’s like saying, “He lies because he’s afraid.” That doesn’t matter; it’s an excuse.”
We all know that a sense of humor is vital. Kids learn humor from their parents, their peers, their teachers, and from T.V. They absorb it and take it all in and then they experiment.
One of the things with which they experiment is how they talk to their parents. When they’re feeling hostile, lonely, depressed, or upset, one of the things they try to do is give a smart answer or sarcastic joke. There’s so much of this type of behavior on T.V. One guy says something and the other guy gives a rude response. It’s very much a part of our culture. Kids learn to mimic that kind of communication from an early age because they think it’s cool.
Kids also have peers around them using sarcastic and mean language. They pick up on that because they’re afraid that they’re going to be the next target. Often, children manage by using that humor themselves. It’s similar to a child who’s afraid of being bullied—so he becomes a bully himself. Much of this reaction and attitude is fear-based. I personally think it’s good for parents to adopt a philosophy of, “This is our home and this is the way we talk to each other. I don’t care what your friends said at school. I don’t care what your brother said in the parking lot. I’m telling you, in this home, this is how we talk to each other.” Lay that out for your kids so they understand that there’s an “inside” and an “outside.” Kids often don’t really comprehend the concept of there being an inside, which is your home, and an outside, which is the world. I think you can explain this to your child by saying, “When you’re inside, you have to follow certain rules and expectations. That’s your responsibility. If not, there will be consequences. If you’re outside, and you get yourself into trouble, then we’ll deal with that when the time comes. But at home, this is the way you need to act.”
How to Respond to: “I Was Just Kidding!”
When your child responds to your reprimand or someone being upset with “I was just kidding,” I think you should say, “What you’re saying is hurtful. I need you to stop.” If he doesn’t stop, give him a consequence. I think an effective one is to take away two hours of phone or computer time (or whatever it is your child values) and build up from there. You can set it up by saying, “If you’re able to talk in a nice way to people for the next two hours, you get your phone back.”
If your child lies and then says, “I was kidding,” you can say, “Well, you’re going to get consequences for that lie. Don’t kid about the truth.”
When your child is young, up until the age of six or so, you can just correct them when they’re joking in an inappropriate way. The kind of thing you would say to a young child is, “We don’t joke by saying hurtful things. And that was hurtful.” If your child says it again, you should go ahead and give him a consequence. If your younger child uses a curse word, I also teach parents to say, “That’s a hurtful word. Don’t say it.” That way, you’re setting those limits and training him from an early age.
When kids are in early adolescence, they may develop a much more challenging way of talking to you. At that age, they’re testing adult authority and they’re pushing limits. One of the ways they push the limits is through speech. Simply put, they want to see what they can get away with. I think parents have to be very, very responsive to that.
I think if your child says something inappropriate and then he says he’s only kidding, you have to make it clear that it’s not going to fly. You can say, “We don’t kid that way. If you say hurtful things when you’re kidding, you’re going to be held responsible for them. There’s no excuse for verbal abuse.”
If you’re not sure if what your child is saying is hurtful, I think you should ask him point blank, “What did you just say?” Speak very seriously, so your child knows you’re listening. If his comment is not way off-color or hurtful, you can say, “Oh, all right, that is funny.” But if it is, I think you should say, “Listen, that’s a hurtful thing to say and it’s not funny. You know what we said about joking in a mean way.” And then give him a consequence.
Is this kind of behavior part of adolescence? Absolutely. So is calling a parent by their first name instead of “Mom” and “Dad.” These are all ways your child tests you and challenges your authority. Personally, I think it’s important to be called “Mom” and “Dad” because that’s your role as a parent. Think of it this way: your child doesn’t know how to relate to Tommy and Betty—he knows how to relate to Mom and Dad. Your title as a parent gives you authority and status. Kids will often try to test the limits by taking away your title, but I think it’s a mistake to go along with that.
“Joking” with Siblings and Others
What if your child hurts siblings’ or other people’s feelings and uses the “I was only joking” excuse? If you overhear your child being hurtful to a sibling or friend, don’t jump in right away unless it’s abusive. Try to see what the conversation is about—find out if the other child is doing the same thing. If the other child is using the same kind of language and tone, I think you have to leave it alone. Later on, you can comment and say, “I heard you and Max playing earlier today and I don’t think the things you were saying were very nice.”
If you find the hurtful joking is a one-way street, with one child being mean or rude and the other taking it, then you should intervene. I think you can pull your child aside, correct him and then say, “What can you say differently instead of saying this?” Hopefully he’ll think of something. If he can’t, suggest something to him. This is so important because it’s exactly what we want—we want our kids to be appropriate the next time they feel that way.
“You Take Everything Too Seriously!”
When you start to crack down on the mean joking in your household, many kids will say something like, “We can’t have fun around here anymore because you take everything too seriously.” I think you should say, “You’re right, I take hurtfulness very seriously. I take disrespect very seriously—and they’re no joking matter.” I think you can continue with, “On the other hand, I’ve heard you come up with jokes that aren’t disrespectful or hurtful, too. I think they’re really funny. Those are the kind of jokes that I accept. But the other ones are hurtful and I really don’t see their place in our family.”
Talk to Your Child about the Difference between Joking and Hurtful Language
I think it’s a good idea to talk to your child about the difference between joking and being hurtful—especially if you’re going to start calling them out on their language. Call them into the room and say, “That was a hurtful way to say what you said, and I don’t like it. Can you think of a different way to say it?”
Also, catch your child when they’re being good. If they make a funny joke, say, “See, that was really funny and appropriate. I really appreciate that.” Whenever you can, catch your child being good.
If you have a child who’s gotten a lot of attention and laughs for being smart alecky and wisecracking in a hurtful way and you want to put a stop to it, I also think you need to talk to them about what they’re doing. Sit down with your child when things are going well—not when there’s a crisis or when he’s angry. If your child is sitting in the living room, sit down next to him. I would tell him that you’ve decided that you find certain things offensive and you want to talk to him about it. And then you say, “The jokes that you make, even though you say you’re only kidding, are really hurtful. And as of today, you have to stop being hurtful and sarcastic to others. If you don’t, you’re going to be held responsible for that.” Give your child room to discuss what you’ve just told him by saying, “Do you have any questions? Would you like an example? Do you understand what I mean?” Give examples. Write some things down ahead of time.
I recommend that whenever you talk with your child, write down what you want to say on an index card in simple sentences so you don’t get distracted. If he’s resistant or explosive, you can say, “All right, well you have no video game privileges until you’re ready to talk about this.” Use the “Stop the Show” technique that I explain in the Total Transformation Program. Don’t give your child an audience for his outburst—just give him a consequence and leave the room.
I know some parents have children with behavioral or social problems who have learned to use humor to deflect or compensate for their lack of social or problem-solving skills. I’ve met many kids like that, and I was that kind of child myself. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter to you why he does it. That’s like saying, “He steals because he doesn’t have anything.” Or, “He lies because he’s afraid.” That doesn’t matter; it’s an excuse. Instead, we stop the behavior. We challenge it, we teach our kids other things, and we eliminate it— with no excuses.
Rudeness and Disrespect: How Kids Try to “Defuse” It reprinted with permission from Empowering Parents. For more information, visit www.empoweringparents.com
James Lehman, MSW was a renowned child behavioral therapist who worked with struggling teens and children for three decades. He created the Total Transformation Program to help people parent more effectively. James’ foremost goal was to help kids and to “empower parents.” | <urn:uuid:0ce81ed0-242a-45d3-b45c-36b8217bc481> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mumsafari.com/kids-rudeness-disrespect/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972108 | 2,738 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Instructors: Drew Endy and Natalie Kuldell
- What are you thinking? [link to Survey]
- iGEM review
- what was the problem this team chose to address and why?
- is this an important problem and why or why not?
- did they succeed in part or in total?
- if you could ask this team one question what would it be?
- letter examples
- reading/presentation response form
Team building resources
Not long ago when biology meant
looking and prodding and fixing what’s bent
there were armies of scientists working away
to list what they found
and to know life’s display
But not all was well as they tried to discover
how life could be programmed since some but not other
experiments worked and each person designed
their template for learning
as they were inclined
“Share!” said the engineers “and try to remember
that others will use your work only whenever
the tools you develop are standard and simple
think of most screwthreads and
think of the wheel.
Maybe in this way life by design
could work out of the box and others will find
lots of interesting ways to build up from the bottom
making useful new parts
then new systems. No problem!”
By combining devices in new and fun ways
the biologists builders could spend their workdays
learning what’s out there and making new widgets
to responsibly meet
the needs of our planet | <urn:uuid:0693bfbf-1ceb-41cc-91ad-64f10238e685> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://openwetware.org/wiki/20.20:People | 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 | 0.947529 | 314 | 2.59375 | 3 |
This section defines a number of basic terms used in this module. These terms will be highlighted in purple throughout the module, allowing you to rollover on the term to see the definition.
Core components of an intervention: The most essential concepts (those that contribute significantly to changes in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors), activities, and ideas included in the intervention.
Evidence-based: A practice that has been proven to be effective through scientific research and, once applied locally, is measurable and evaluated consistently for its effectiveness.
Incentive: A method or action to used to reinforce program participation and/or the exhibit of prosocial skills or behavior.
Mentoring: “The practice of matching up an individual who has a stable educational, professional and personal life with another individual who is in need of guidance in those areas.”1
Post-release interventions: Interventions designed to aid the individual’s transition from jail to the community and to sustain gains made through prerelease interventions. Examples of discharge interventions include resource packets; referrals to community agencies; scheduled appointments in the community; a temporary supply of medication; identification documents; updated transition plans; transportation to a service provider, home, or probation office; and contact information for key individuals who will facilitate the individual’s service plan in the community.
Pre-release interventions: Interventions delivered either by jail staff or community-based providers in the jail. Examples of prerelease interventions include provision of informational resources such as resource packets, information bins in the facility, or a designated resource officer; brief training programs that prepare individuals for reentry; services such as drug and alcohol treatment, educational programs, and job training; access to community-based and informal social supports such as family, mentors, and members of the faith community; and case management to facilitate continuity of care.
Jail-based and community interventions include the distribution of resource packets, working closely with case managers or treatment managers, and participating and completing an evidence-based cognitive-behavioral program. Before delivering interventions, a detailed resource inventory should be drawn up. It is important to keep the inventory updated. Interventions that are provided should have empirical studies that show them to be effective. Such interventions must be targeted to those who have the greatest risks and needs. Carefully considered incentives may promote program participation.
1 of 1
1 Institute on Women & Criminal Justice, Mentoring Women in Reentry: A WPA Practice Brief (2008). Available here. | <urn:uuid:f22242d3-01e3-4a7a-b50d-4206f0a45fb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urban.org/projects/tjc/toolkit/module8/section5_1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933158 | 503 | 2.96875 | 3 |
(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)
+ + +
I want to emphasize again, as I did in the other posts, that I am aware that the three "educations" don't separate neatly, that they are overlaid upon one another and every element supports every other (and in some ways contains every other). It is really a sort of trinity, and carving it up into three separate purposes necessarily obscures the whole.
That doesn't stop me from trying, because I think it will help. Here is a carefully chosen subset of the elements of the necessary content of education that relates most directly to religious and spiritual development and the reception of the sacraments.
Elements of moral, religious and spiritual development that THE FAMILY is expected to inculcate and teach
That true happiness is found in God alone, the source of every good.
The family teaches that the material and instinctual dimensions are subordinate to interior and spiritual ones.
The family must teach children a sense of true love, understood as sincere solicitude and disinterested service.
The family must introduce children to personal dialogue with God.
The family must teach children to know God, to worship, and to love their neighbor.
The family must teach children the Gospel.
The family should educate children so that, if they marry, they can by means of that education establish their family in moral conditions which tend to promote or facilitate the establishment of that family.
The family is called to give children a sex education that is built on the premise that love is self-giving.
The family must educate the child for chastity.
The family must teach children to know and respect the moral norms of human sexuality.
The family builds the proximate preparation for the sacraments of Christian marriage upon the foundation laid in the remote preparation for marriage.
The family will teach, in that proximate preparation, that marriage is an interpersonal relationship of a man and woman that has to be continually developed.
The family will encourage, in that proximate preparation, the study of the nature of conjugal sexuality.
The family, in proximate preparation, will prepare young people for the family apostolate, for collaboration with other families, and membership in groups set up for the human and Christian benefit of the family.
The family must begin the formation of the child's conscience, awakening the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law.
Elements of religious and spiritual development that THE INDIVIDUAL is enjoined to seek for himself
Each person must form his conscience to enjoin him to do good and avoid evil.
Each person must form his conscience to bear witness to the authority of truth in reference to God.
Each person must form his conscience to welcome the commandments.
An individual becomes capable of respecting and fostering the nuptial meaning of the body by building on the virtue of chastity.
An individual grows responsibly in human sexuality by building on the moral norms that are taught by the parents.
An individual learns control and right use of his inclinations by building on the moral norms that are taught by the parents.
A layperson is encouraged to receive a sufficient formation in theology.
+ + +
To these I should add that, on the cusp of entering into marriage, the individual is responsible for obtaining the educational content of immediate preparation for marriage.
Recall that we have been restricting the discussion mostly to the case of young people who will likely be called to marriage and family life, so preparation for holy orders need not here be considered. In the Roman rite, the formation in the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist, penance and confirmation generally take place under the parents' auspices, unless for some reason confirmation was delayed. (It isn't unheard of for Catholic parents to agree to let a young person decide for himself when -- if ever -- to be confirmed. Let's not debate right now whether that is a good idea, and simply point out that it could happen that a young adult might put off confirmation until later.). But the immediate sacramental preparation for marriage is educational in nature and is the responsibility of the engaged couple.
It seems pretty clear that a complete foundation in moral and religious training -- as distinct from "theology," which is an academic subject -- is the responsibility entirely of the parents. Latent competency in practically every aspect of the Christian life, married or single, ought to be developed before the child is emancipated.
In this day and age, it seems to me, parents need to anticipate future challenges and aggressively head then off by equipping their children with the tools to find answers to those challenges. This may mean stepping outside comfort zones and being more frank than parents of earlier generations would have had to be.
Here is an example that is highly specific to Catholicism. Parents can expect young adults to encounter aggressive promotion of contraception as a necessary and good part of a healthy marriage. Unfortunately, we can expect them to encounter the viewpoint that contraception is healthy and necessary even from organizations that are directly connected to the Catholic church. Many of us have heard stories from people who claim they were given permission to use contraception in the confessional itself.
Because parents can expect young people to encounter this view, parents have (I would argue) a serious responsibility to equip their adolescents with clear information about trustworthy sources of Catholic teaching, to provide enough medical and biological information about licit means of family planning to counteract common falsehoods about its efficacy and difficulty, and to discuss family planning as a specific area in which to live the truth that love is self-giving.
That is just one example.
Parents should not count on a religious college to inculcate values that they have failed to pass on. It seems plausible that parent and offspring together could come to the conclusion that a particular private religious school could offer necessary support to a particular young person's development, and that the extra cost would be well spent. But it doesn't seem plausible to conclude that a private religious school is objectively necessary.
Very little of the religious and spiritual formation delineated here is dependent on formal enrollment in an institution of higher education. Mostly, it seems, the individual is called to maintain and build upon the foundation laid in childhood and adolescence: to continue forming his conscience, to distinguish good from evil in ever thornier dilemmas, to deepen his resolve through constant practice of right living.
Remember that the young person not enrolled in a private religious school still has access to a parish (and that needn't be the one his parents and younger siblings attend); he still has access to voluntary religious associations and clubs; he still has access to religious publications; he still has access to the sacraments; he still has access to private prayer. If he is enrolled in a public college or lives near one, there are likely student religious organizations available. Many of the same advantages of studying at a private religious college can be found in these other environments. | <urn:uuid:5e7f1cfb-d9b3-4515-a207-6eaeebed359c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/post-secondary-education-questions-the-religious-education.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969969 | 1,424 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Green Tea (pronounced: lu cha) is one of the first beverages recorded in history. Over 4,000 years ago monks drank it to stay awake during their long hours of meditation. Today tea drinkers and health conscious consumers around the world are rediscovering the benefits of this revitalizing ancient drink. It is considered by many as one of the healthiest beverages on Earth. Uncle Lee's green tea (Camellia sinensis) begins as young tender leaf buds, plucked fresh at the height of potency and flavor. Each leaf is simply steamed, rolled and gently flash-dried to hold in the delicate flavor and aroma. Every batch is carefully, hand inspected to ensure goodness and purity.
Green tea is cultivated in farms throughout the world, but mainland China is still known to this day as the region where some of the highest quality green teas in the world are grown. The varying taste of green tea is a reflection of many factors: soil, altitude, weather and farming methods. Green tea is a rich source of plant antioxidants. Studies have suggested that daily consumption of green tea may reduce the risk of certain types of cancer including stomach and throat. Green tea contains Vitamin C - the average amount in two small cups of brewed tea is nearly equal to that in a cup of orange juice. Green tea also has antibacterial properties which was discovered by the ancient Chinese who used it to purify their drinking water.
Packaged in air-tight foil tea bags for guaranteed highest quality of freshness that you come to expect from Uncle Lee's. | <urn:uuid:d5c6666f-6a2c-4925-94c8-0d32b54e687b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.4allvitamins.com/product_info.php?products_id=1520&product_configuration_id=2466 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966296 | 316 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Habitat and History. The prairie pothole region is in the center of the geographic range of the mink in North America (Hall 1981). Unlike the other studied carnivores, populations of this predator may not have been affected greatly by settlement (Bird 1961). Although minks are distributed throughout the region, they are not common everywhere or every year (Bailey 1926; Soper 1946, 1961). Minks depend on aquatic habitat. Rivers, streams, freshwater lakes, and deep marshes that contain prey such as fishes, crayfishes, and muskrats (Ondatra zibethicus) are preferred (Bailey 1926; Eagle and Whitman 1987). Minks also inhabit shallow prairie wetlands where their diet includes meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), waterbirds, aquatic insects, and tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) larvae (Eberhardt and Sargeant 1977; Arnold and Fritzell 1987b).
Minks that inhabit shallow prairie wetlands lead a precarious existence because annual fluctuations in water level affect abundance of food and availability of shelter. Frequent widespread and local droughts characteristic of the region lower reproductive performance by minks (Eberhardt 1974) and availability of prey. Shallow wetlands often freeze to the bottom during winter. The widespread severe droughts of the 1910's, 1930's, 1960's, and 1980's (Stoudt 1971; Kiel et al. 1972; Reynolds 1987) probably had catastrophic effects on the abundance of minks in the region.
Population Structure. Mink populations in spring are composed of territorial males that occupy large areas and females that occupy small areas (Gerell 1970; Whitman 1981; Eagle and Whitman 1987; Eagle 1989). Nearly all studies of spacing and movements in minks have been in riverine, lacustrine, and coastal habitats where home ranges are best measured in terms of lengths of waterways or lengths of used shorelines rather than size of used areas. In prairie pothole habitat, minks tend to occupy circular home ranges that may encompass many wetlands. Arnold (1986) reported that home ranges of adult male minks during May through July in pothole habitat of Manitoba (near the Moore Park study area) averaged 6.5 km2 (range = 3.2-16.3 km2) and included an average of all or parts of 285 wetlands. Female minks rearing kits seem to restrict their activities in spring to one or few wetlands (Eberhardt and Sargeant 1977; Eagle 1989).
Distribution and Abundance. Minks were detected in only three study areas in Canada but were present in all nine small unit management study areas in the United States (Fig. 11). (No data on mink tracks were available from the eight Central Flyway study areas.) The percentage of study areas where minks were common or more abundant was greater in the United Stated than in Canada (Appendix Table 6). Mink tracks were found in all nine small unit management study areas each study area-year except in one (Eldridge) in 1987 (Appendix Table 5). In addition, minks were seen in all those study areas except one (Eldridge) during one or more study years (Appendix Table 10).
Although minks were not numerous in any study area, they were common in the three study areas in Minnesota and in two (Kulm and Litchville) in North Dakota. They were most common in the three study areas in Minnesota where their tracks were found in 43-67% of quarter sections searched each year and about twice as abundant as in any other area (Appendix Table 5). The relatively high abundance of minks in the study areas in Minnesota reflected favorable habitat that included numerous permanent wetlands and streams in and near each area.
The higher mink populations in small unit management study areas in North Dakota than in study areas in Canada (Fig. 11) probably reflected locations of study areas in the more temperate part of the prairie pothole region and selection of study areas. Although no data on mink tracks were collected in the Central Flyway study areas, no minks were observed in those areas during 3,468 observation-hours (Appendix Table 10), indicating low populations. Drought prevailed when those areas were studied. A criterion for choosing the small unit management study areas was that each should have many and diverse wetlands. One study area (Eldridge) with no mink sightings (Appendix Table 10) and the lowest mink track index of any small unit management study area (Appendix Table 5) had the fewest semipermanent wetlands of any such area.
In Canada, mink tracks were found in three study areas (Ceylon, Craik, Moore Park; Fig.11). In each of those areas, the tracks were in only 1 or 2 adjoining quarter sections, indicating presence of a single mink; abundance in each area was scarce. No minks were seen in any study area in Canada during 23,954 observation-hours by field personnel (Appendix Table 10). Although minks were more difficult to detect than larger carnivores, we are confident that the data from Canada accurately portrayed populations in study areas as very low or absent. Many excellent sites for mink tracks were examined in each area. The drought and absence of rivers, continuously flowing streams, and permanent wetlands in most study areas probably contributed to the low mink populations.
Fig. 11. Percentage of searched quarter sections (in black) by study area in which mink tracks were found or in which the abundance of tracks was estimated during two systematic annual searches in April-June in >= 1 study year and ratings of the abundance of minks in each area, 1983-88. Results for study areas searched >1 year were averaged; study areas are in the prairie pothole region. | <urn:uuid:bb0b8a1d-02d7-4986-963a-7410a5ccf791> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/resource/birds/predator/species/minksm.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963311 | 1,214 | 3.671875 | 4 |
Shouldn't that read single platter ???, there is no need for dual platter in 500GB drives
Seagate Technology Group on Tuesday introduced its new, third-generation, hard disk drives with NAND flash cache. The new solid-state hard drives (SSHDs) for notebooks, ultra-slim notebooks and desktops will ship this spring and will enable solid-state drive levels of performance for inexpensive storage devices.
Seagate’s laptop SSHDs will be available in 1TB (2.5”/9.5mm form-factor, dual-platter) and 500GB (2.5”/7mm form-factor, dual-platter) capacities as well as with 5400rpm spindle-speed. The solid-state hard drives are equipped with 64MB DRAM cache as well as 8GB multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash cache. Seagate’s laptop and laptop thin SSHDs provide up to 40% faster storage performance than previous generation mobile hybrid hard drives. Seagate SSHD technology is up to 5 times faster than a standard 5400rpm notebook hard drive.
Seagate’s SSHDs are based on a new version of Seagate’s own Adaptive Memory technology, which identifies and stores only the most critical data a system needs to go fast. As a result, SSHDs will cost you just slightly more than a standard hard drive while delivering dramatically faster performance.
The Seagate desktop SSHD features up to 2TB of capacity and 8GB of NAND flash making it ideal for accelerating the most commonly used PC applications and delivering high desktop performance with all the storage capacity needed for any computing scenario.
“Seagate’s engineers have really out done themselves this time. Our new SSHDs serve up your favorite content with the lightning-fast performance you have to experience to believe. With these new drives it’s like adding a turbo-charge to your PC, without having to sacrifice capacity, at a price that’s easy on your wallet. Now consumers can create, store and consume digital content like a pro without having to spend like one,” said Scott Horn, Seagate’s vice president of marketing. | <urn:uuid:30782e7d-c90c-4d98-be8b-ccacee86ebbd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20130305083417_Seagate_Introduces_Third_Generation_Hybrid_Drive_Technology.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912149 | 466 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The Sechelt Indian Band (SIB) launched a class action lawsuit against the government of Canada this week in an attempt to gain compensation for day scholars who attended residential schools.
“They were left out of the original settlement, but they suffered the same abuses,” said SIB Chief Garry Feschuk.
SIB council has been meeting with members of the Kamloops Nation for quite some time to craft the lawsuit, Feschuk said.
“I would say probably close to three to four years now we’ve been meeting with Kamloops about coming together, wanting to see if we can join forces to put together a suit to go after Canada,” he said.
In 2005, the government of Canada issued a residential school settlement, admitting that their policy of assimilation through residential schools was wrong. The settlement awarded millions of dollars to former students and their families; however, day scholars were not included in the settlement.
“Our community thought they were included in the first settlement package. That’s why our community wanted our leadership to get involved and see if we can seek redress for them, and that’s what we’re doing,” Feschuk said, noting there are about 120 former day scholars in the Band.
Two bus loads of SIB members travelled to Vancouver Aug. 15 to witness the class action suit being filed, and Feschuk said many more were to meet them in Vancouver.
“Our national chief and our regional chief will be standing with us plus a number of other leaders from across the province, and there will even be some chiefs from Saskatchewan joining us because they want to join the class action now,” Feschuk told Coast Reporter Aug. 14.
The class action suit is divided into three parts, Feschuk explained.
“The way we’ve set out the suit is that the first part of the class action is for the survivors, which is the people who attended the residential school. And then also we have another suit for the decedents of the survivors who actually went through that same cycle of abuse that’s been handed down from the schools,” Feschuk said. “Then the third class that we’re doing is a Band class for the erosion of our language and the erosion of our culture.”
If the court agrees to certify the lawsuit, Feschuk suspects many more will get involved.
“The way it has been set up, other Nations can either join in now or they can start their own suit because all the work has been done on how to get this resolved and seek redress for our respective communities,” he said.
Feschuk noted the SIB tried to address the issue of compensation for day scholars with the federal government before going the class action route.
“After it’s certified, I think we’ll get the government’s attention because we’ve been trying to meet, we’ve been sending numerous letters to the prime minister, to the minister about seeking redress for the day scholars and the people who attended day school and each letter came back denying us,” Feschuk said.
In addition to monetary compensation, Feschuk wants to see healing for former SIB day scholars, which is why the Band is working on a wellness plan.
“I think the biggest part of the plan, even though we’re seeking damages for the people who attended the school, seeking damages for the Nation for loss of language, loss of culture, is we also want to have a wellness plan so that our communities now can begin to start healing the wounds that have been inflicted upon them from the residential school,” he said.
“I think these stories need to come out to find out what actually happened in these schools because their main goal was to take the Indian out of the child, that was their main goal. The stories of abuses that happened in those schools are just horrendous.”
Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) John Duncan said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the class action lawsuit while it is before the courts.
Instead media spokesperson for AANDC Michelle Perron told Coast Reporter that “according to the provisions of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement [IRSSA] that were agreed upon by all parties and approved by the courts, non-residential elementary and secondary schools were not included in the agreement. Canada is only one of many parties which negotiated and agreed to the IRSSA, and Canada must respect the terms of the original agreement.” | <urn:uuid:3750bf94-8ccf-4184-96a4-f4be6eebc5ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20120817/SECHELT0101/308179976/-1/SECHELT/sib-sues-government-of-canada | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978081 | 961 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Like every government agency, every so often the DEP needs to outsource some of its work. They need studies done to determine the efficiency of their procedures or they need construction done on new or existing facilities.
The fact that some of their work is outsourced actually should benefit the public. We don’t need the costs of training and maintaining additional DEP staff worked into our water/sewer rates. What we pay for water is already high enough. Let the DEP worry about being the best at distributing water to New York City and let them pay others to be the best at other things, like environmental impact studies and rate analysis studies.
Considering how often work is outsourced, it’s a good thing government agencies have a system in place to ensure that the outsourcing is executed fairly and efficiently. Whenever work needs to be outsourced the DEP puts out a Request for Proposals (RFP) and anyone interested responds in writing with what they can do to complete the work and how much they’ll charge to do it. The DEP now has to look at two things in each bid: 1) Can this company complete this job effectively? and 2) who will do it for the least amount of money?
After all, it is our money that these government agencies are throwing around. Following the rules above ensures that they’re not abusing that right.
If only this was how the DEP obtained their contracts. Steven Lawitts, Emily Lloyd and other past DEP commissioners found a way to bypass the contract bidding process and they milked it for all it was worth.
The purpose of the Water Board is to be a regulatory agency, constantly monitoring the DEP and keeping them in line. After all, the DEP’s capital budget is over $1 billion. Someone’s gotta make sure all that money is being used correctly. Ideally, as a regulatory agency, the Water Board should be watching everything the DEP does and telling them where they’ve overstepped their bounds. In actuality what the Water Board does is back up and support every action that the DEP takes.
Since the Water Board controls the DEP’s finances and blindly supports their every move, it stands to reason that all the DEP has to do is ask the Water Board for money for a specific project and the Water Board will hand it to them with a big smile on their faces. So instead of finding the company that will complete a job most effectively for the least amount of money, they just pick the company they want to work with and ask the Water Board to give them any amount of money they ask for without any regard for whether or not they’re the right people for the job.
This is how we got ourselves into the current Booz Allen Hamilton rate study mess. Years ago (under former DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd), the DEP asked the Water Board to pay BAH to audit its customer service and collections procedures. BAH came back (after asking for more money and turning in their report after the deadline) and said that in order to maximize collections the DEP needed to perform a rate study. Then they got the DEP to hire them (without putting out an RFP) to perform that rate study. They released their results a couple of weeks ago and they are woefully lacking.
Let’s break down the string of failures here, shall we? Audit of customer service and collections procedures goes straight to BAH without an RFP – failure #1. BAH asks for more money (which they get) and turns in the report late – failure #2. BAH report’s only conclusion is that to increase collections BAH should be hired again for more money to perform a rate study – failure #3. Rate study goes straight to BAH without an RFP – failure #4. Rate study comes back with no analysis or conclusions – failure #5.
So where we started with a simple, minor problem–the DEP giving a small contract to BAH without letting others bid on it–now we have a major problem in that we’ve shelled out millions of dollars for a report with no conclusions or recommendations. The original contract may have been small but because of it we ended up with bad advice and a poorly run agency!
At a recent Water Board hearing, Chairman Alan Moss asked if one of these days newly appointed DEP Commissioner Caswell Holloway could be brought in on a hearing. Moss’s reasoning behind the request? He wanted to assure Holloway in person that the Water Board is behind the DEP 100%. Does that sound to you like the right attitude for a regulatory agency to have?
Maybe if the Water Board started actually auditing the DEP’s expenses and maybe if the DEP stopped using the Water Board to bypass contract bidding, there wouldn’t be so much wasteful spending with our money.
[CORRECTION - 3/3/10: The assertions above, that the Booz-Allen contracts were obtained without competition, are incorrect. The public records indicate that the Booz-Allen contracts were procured through a competitive Request for Proposal process. The Water Board's website posts the official minutes from past Water Board meetings. The minutes from the June 2008 meeting summarizes the competitive process the Water Board used to award the Booz-Allen contract.
We apologize to the DEP, Water Board and the public for the error .] | <urn:uuid:54e4008e-c6e6-4473-9f17-16919c8c267c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://waterwatchnyc.com/tag/nyc-water-board/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963113 | 1,124 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Cymbalta for Fibromyalgia
Cymbalta (duloxetine HCl) is a prescription drug originally developed as an anti-depressant medication. It was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2008 to also treat the pain associated with fibromyalgia, as well as to improve overall functioning in fibromyalgia patients. In addition to major depressive disorder and fibromyalgia pain, Cymbalta is also approved to treat generalized anxiety disorder, diabetic nerve pain, and for the management of chronic musculoskeletal pain resulting from chronic osteoarthritis and chronic low back pain. An estimated 30% of fibromyalgia patients suffer from depression and as many as 20% also suffer from generalized anxiety disorder; therefore, the fact that Cymbalta is approved to treat fibromyalgia pain as well makes this medication a potentially useful therapeutic option for many fibromyalgia patients.
Cymbalta belongs to a class of drugs called selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). SNRIs are predominantly antidepressant medications , and work by regulating the amounts of various neurotransmitters in the brain. SNRIs affect levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine, both of which are thought to play a key role in the way that pain signals are transmitted throughout the body.
Cymbalta is available in capsule form in 20mg, 30mg, and 60mg strengths, and is typically taken once per day to relieve fibromyalgia pain. It can be taken with or without food, however the capsule should never be broken, opened, or chewed. The maximum dose generally used to treat fibromyalgia pain is 60 mg/day. Patients will typically be started at 30mg/day and treated at that dose for one week, then the dose will likely be increased to 60mg/day. Studies have shown that for most patients, there is no advantage to taking 60mg/day versus 30mg/day, and exceeding 60mg/day typically results in an increase in side effects.
In clinical studies where Cymbalta was studied in relation to its effect on fibromyalgia pain and functioning, the most frequently reported side effect was nausea. Other common side effects included daytime sleepiness, fatigue, constipation, dizziness, agitation, decreases in appetite, dry mouth, and increased sweating. Post-market side effects reported for Cymbalta for all approved indications have also included heart palpitations, vertigo, blurred vision, chills, rash, and hot flushes.
Studies of antidepressants in general have shown that both adults and children with major depressive disorder may experience increased symptoms of depression or possible onset of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Therefore, it is very important to understand that SNRI medications like Cymbalta have the potential for such side effects. In fact, Cymbalta is not approved for use in anyone under the age of 18. Furthermore, patients who take Cymbalta, as well as their friends and family members, should be attentive to new or deteriorating psychological symptoms, changes in behavior, the onset of suicidal thoughts, increased anxiety levels or agitation, panic attacks, sleeping troubles, aggression, or noticeable increases in hyperactivity. These may occur following initiation of therapy with Cymbalta, after increases in dose, or at any other time. If such changes do become evident, patients, or their friends or family, should contact the treating physician without delay.
In addition to the potential worsening of psychological symptoms, Cymbalta has the potential to interact negatively with a variety of other medications. Individuals who have taken (or recently taken) medications known as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) should not take Cymbalta. Examples of MAOIs include Marplan, Nardil, and Parnate. In addition, Cymbalta has the potential to aggravate pre-existing bleeding disorders, and therefore should be used with caution when taken concurrently with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen or naproxen, or blood thinning medications such as warfarin (Coumadin).
Cymbalta has also been shown to cause orthostatic hypotension in some patients. Orthostatic hypotension is low blood pressure that occurs when rising from a sitting position to standing. It can result in lightheadedness, dizziness, or even fainting. Treatment with Cymbalta has also been reported to result in serotonin syndrome and neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Serotonin syndrome is characterized by excess levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the body, and can lead to potentially life-threatening seizures and fever. Neuroleptic malignant syndrome is also life-threatening, and characterized by high fever, sweating, unstable blood pressure, disorientation, muscle rigidness, and nervous system dysfunction. Finally, treatment with Cymbalta should be discontinued gradually in order to minimize the risk of withdrawal symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, headache, fatigue, vomiting, increased irritability, insomnia, diarrhea, and anxiety.
Cymbalta should not be taken by individuals with pre-existing liver disease or those who have a history of heavy alcohol use, due to the potential for liver damage. Individuals with narrow-angle glaucoma or those with kidney problems should not use Cymbalta. In addition, those with a history of seizure disorders, abnormal blood pressure, and digestive difficulties should use Cymbalta cautiously.
Overview of Cymbalta Research
Several randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (the “gold standard” of research design for studies that seek to investigate the effectiveness of a particular treatment) provided the initial base of evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of Cymbalta as a treatment for fibromyalgia pain. The first study, conducted by Arnold and colleagues in 2004, randomized 207 fibromyalgia patients (all of whom met the American College of Rheumatology [ACR] diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia) to receive either 60mg of Cymbalta or a placebo twice a day for 12 weeks. At the conclusion of the study, those treated with Cymbalta showed significant improvements in pain severity, number of tender points, stiffness, and various quality of life measures when compared to control subjects (Arnold et al., 2004). A subsequent study published the following year by the same group of researchers randomized 354 female fibromyalgia patients to receive 60mg of Cymbalta once a day, 60mg Cymbalta twice per day, or a placebo for a period of 12 weeks. Following analysis of the findings, the researchers found that those who were treated with Cymbalta, regardless of dose, experienced significant improvements in pain severity and several quality of life measures when compared with control subjects. Roughly half of the patients in both Cymbalta treatment groups experienced at least a 30% improvement in their pain severity, versus only 23% in the placebo group. The researchers concluded that both doses of Cymbalta (60mg daily, or 120mg daily) were safe and effective at treating the pain associated with fibromyalgia (Arnold et al., 2005). Russell et al. (2008) randomly assigned 520 fibromyalgia patients (all of whom met ACR diagnostic criteria) to receive either 20mg, 60mg, or 120 mg of Cymbalta, or a placebo, daily over the course of six months. After both three and six months of treatment, those receiving 60mg and 120mg of Cymbalta showed significant improvement in pain severity when compared to those who received 20mg or placebo (Russell et al., 2008).
Since gaining FDA approval in 2008, researchers continue to evaluate Cymbalta as a treatment option for fibromyalgia. Recently published articles by prominent fibromyalgia researches have demonstrated its effectiveness in relieving stiffness (Bennett et al., 2012), as well as its use as part of a combined therapeutic regimen involving other medications (Choy et al., 2011). | <urn:uuid:160eff5c-929a-46d7-a42f-4f35fe33a4d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fibromyalgia-treatment.com/cymbalta-side-effects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938626 | 1,657 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Georgia Recycling Coalition to promote shoe recycling
Along with soda cans and old newspapers, Georgia residents
can bring their gently worn shoes to be recycled.
In partnership with Soles4Souls®, the Georgia Recycling
Coalition (GRC) will place bins at their locations to
offer an alternative to residents throwing their worn
shoes away. The collected shoes will be shipped to Soles4Souls
for distribution to the 1.5 billion people without shoes.
Soles4Souls takes gently worn shoes and repurposes them
in one of 125 countries around the world. A small percentage
which cannot be distributed will be recycled. | <urn:uuid:3514592f-c6c8-40ca-95dd-c8a1e1153528> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanrecycler.com/1109/georgia.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937732 | 137 | 2.359375 | 2 |
In a twist of irony, many visitors to August's Republican National Convention will travel between their hotels and the downtown Tampa, Fla., event on a busy road named to honor President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat.
Kennedy Boulevard, a gateway to downtown from the west, was so named in 1964 partially because of a special connection between Tampa and the 35th president. Kennedy had waved to massive crowds lining that road from an open-topped Lincoln Continental on Nov. 18, 1963. The next time he rode in that car, four days later in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, he was shot to death.
A statue of JFK now stands at the present site of the University of Tampa, looking out over his eponymous thoroughfare.
The Tampa-JFK connection is just part of Florida's rich presidential history. It includes Andrew Jackson's role as Florida's first territorial governor in Pensacola, Harry S. Truman's "Little White House" in Key West -- the winter quarters hosted a total of six presidents -- and the famous compound kept by the Kennedy family at Palm Beach. After Kennedy became president, a secret bunker was installed in an island off the coast in case of a nuclear attack.
Rest for Rough Riders
There's more in Tampa, too. A stone's throw away from Kennedy's statue is a grand structure topped with curiously ornate minarets that was once called the Tampa Bay Hotel. Built by railroad magnate Henry Plant, it
In more modern history, as the Tampa Bay area grew up and Florida became a critical swing state, visits by sitting presidents have become relatively common, and Tampa has become a required campaign-trail stop for any candidate who hopes to win over the many swing voters here.
For visitors to the Aug. 27-30 convention, there is plenty more to take in.
Tampa's former Latin quarter, Ybor (EE-bor) City, adjacent to downtown, was for the first half of the last century the cigar manufacturing capital of the world, with more than 200 factories once lining the narrow streets. That heritage is celebrated here and still alive in the cigar shops mixed in among the bars and restaurants in what is now a bustling entertainment district. In the so-called "Cigar City," aficionados can put fire to a fine stogie rolled minutes before right in the window of one those Ybor City shops.
A can't-miss sandwich
Don't fancy a cigar? Then how about a Cuban sandwich? That's the other product virtually synonymous with Tampa and is similarly interwoven into its history.
A staple of the early immigrant communities in Ybor City, the sandwich of ham, roasted pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard on pressed Cuban bread remains a Tampa favorite, with many restaurants and sandwich shops claiming to have the best or most authentic version. (Like pizza, Cuban sandwiches are hardly ever bad, regardless of who makes them.)
The area is expected to benefit directly from the convention, to the tune of around $175 million, according to the host committee, and down the road attract potential visitors from among the millions of people watching it on TV around the world. The event will attract three times more media members than the Super Bowl, which Tampa has hosted four times.
"It's coverage that you can't buy," said Travis Claytor, spokesman for the area's tourism bureau. "Every time they do a cut-away shot of the skyline of downtown Tampa or the Tampa Bay Times Forum, or show beauty shots of the beaches and the attractions, that's promoting the destination like we've never been able to promote it before. This is an opportunity that has never come along before, and it's priceless, to be honest with you."
The bay at large
Tampa will be the focus for convention visitors, of course, with its big-city skyline, world-class aquarium, Busch Gardens theme park, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, and the riverfront arena where all the convention floor action will take place. But the area is what it is -- cool and cosmopolitan enough to attract Super Bowls, NCAA Final Four tournaments and now, a political convention -- because of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and the rest of what is collectively known as Tampa Bay.
Visitors will do themselves a disservice if they don't cross the bay and check out St. Petersburg's stunning waterfront downtown area, as well as the youthful vibe of Clearwater Beach. Some of the best white-sand beaches anywhere are close by, too. Two of them -- Fort DeSoto Park and Caladesi Island -- have topped the list from Stephen P. Leatherman, a Florida International University professor dubbed "Dr. Beach" for his annual rankings of the nation's best coastlines.
A Greek enclave
Just north of Clearwater is Tarpon Springs, a small town established by Greek immigrant sponge divers in the early 20th century whose descendants have worked hard to maintain the distinct Mediterranean flavor. The sponge docks now cater to tourists with a string of wonderful Greek restaurants, bakeries and gift shops.
"It was presented (to the RNC) as a complete area and all we have to offer," said convention host committee spokeswoman Aileen Rodriguez. "The community really came together to put the bid together and get it in. Now we're excited about showcasing the whole area to the guests who are coming into Tampa Bay."
Delegates and other visitors will be utilizing hotels on both sides of the bay, with a network of as many as 400 buses shuttling them to and from the Tampa Bay Times forum for the four nights of the convention. | <urn:uuid:da401990-1964-4af2-b4f5-52c7dd86bcbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.contracostatimes.com/east-county-times/ci_21275597/all-about-tampa-republican-national-convention-host-city | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959835 | 1,148 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Region 6 - Office of Public Health & Science
The Regional Health Administrator for the U.S. Public Health Service is Joseph P. Iser, M.D. Regional staff represent the Office of Public Health and Science (OPHS) which, under the direction of the Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General David Satcher, provides leadership to the nation on issues of public health and science.
The theme of OPHS is: Healthy People in Healthy Communities through Public Health and Science. OPHS is focusing its efforts on six health priorities:
- Assure a healthy start for every child;
- Promote personal responsibility for healthy lifestyles and behaviors;
- Eliminate racial disparities in health status and health care access and quality;
- Enhance mental health prevention, treatment, and outcomes;
- Increase awareness of and attention to global health concerns and their effects on the American people; and
- Lead the national response to the health consequences of bioterrorism and promote the safety and availability of the blood supply.
OPHS will achieve success with these six priorities by employing four cross-cutting strategies:
- Strengthen the science base for decision making by fostering research integrity, demonstration projects, and evaluations;
- Improve the policies, programs and practices required to achieve priority objectives;
- Increase the number of effective networks, coalitions and partnerships addressing priority objectives; and
- Improve communications with various audiences to increase awareness and understanding of the major health problems confronting Americans. | <urn:uuid:bd348837-dc3b-4c0c-9d9a-ce654e390e2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dhhs.gov/about/regions/r6ophs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920007 | 300 | 2.65625 | 3 |
It isn't just the inhumanity of apartheid that's illustrated in "Skin," but the out-and-out lunacy of laws and classifications intended to keep blacks and whites apart. This is a straightforward drama - sometimes veering into melodrama - based on the life of Sandra Laing, a South African woman with black features who was born to white parents.
Laing's life, in almost every important way, is defined by a genetic quirk, that her skin and hair appear nonwhite. The consequences are dire. We see her kicked out of a white school in the 1950s by racist administrators who reclassify her as black. She's later examined by a panel of officials and legally considered colored. Later still, because of a change in the law, she's suddenly white again.
She develops a rebellious streak, in part because she's enjoyed the strong support of her father (Sam Neill) and mother (Alice Krige), shopkeepers who serve a black clientele. The mother is friendly with blacks - a bit of a stereotypical liberal. The father wants the best for his daughter and urges her to never back down, but he's absorbed some of the racist attitudes he was brought up with. He's also rigid and quick-tempered.
Sandra's troubles escalate when she finds herself attracted to a black man, Petrus (Tony Kgoroge). The relationship puts in motion a new set of woes for Sandra. Among other problems, she finds that, to acquire a marriage license, she must have herself reclassified again.
The main story is bookended by celebratory scenes set during South Africa's first free elections in 1994.
Director Anthony Fabian lets the story sell itself, and it does so partly on the strength of the lead performance by Sophie Okonedo ("Hotel Rwanda") as the adult Sandra. Ella Ramangwane capably plays Sandra as a child. | <urn:uuid:abf86517-8b21-4ab9-a1e0-0828fedd38e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Review-Skin-reveals-more-layers-of-apartheid-3211464.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971626 | 394 | 1.5 | 2 |
From the Editors
On the second day of the presidential elections I went to Nazlet Al-Semman, the village adjoining the Giza plateau just outside Cairo – home to the majority of those pro-Mubarak thugs who waged the Battle of the Camel, taking their camels and horses over to Tahrir Square to attack protesters with a view to disbanding the sit-in. The event was crucial to toppling Mubarak after thirty years in power.
Nazlet Al-Semman is best known for tourism – they provide tourists with horse and camel rides in the vicinity of the Pyramids – which has been affected badly by the revolution. As soon as I stepped in the neighborhood it was clear that the majority of the residents blame the revolution for loss of income: everyone explained how tourism had all but ended in Egypt, leaving them poorer than ever.
Waiting to be served an LE1 dish of fuul from a vending cart, for example, Ashraf Farghali, forty-seven, used to earn LE150 a day from tourism; now he makes LE15 a day serving tea. “I want to vote for whoever is good, I haven’t decided yet,” he said. But financial frustration had already led many to vote for “remnants of the old regime”: Amr Moussa or Ahmed Shafiq. Others have gone with the Islamist candidates: Mohamed Mursi or Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh.
“If you came here eighteen months ago,” said the horse trainer Sabry Mohamed, forty-five, “you would’ve found the place too jam-packed by tourists to walk. Now all that is gone.” For many Amr Moussa and Ahmed Shafiq are familiar figures of whom they knew before the hard times of the revolution. “We need security, no development will ever take place without it,” Abdel-Aziz Hussein, fifty, said, explaining why voted for Shafiq. Like him, the majority don’t want a candidate with an Islamist agenda because they realise such a candidate might place restrictions on tourism – whether by imposing dress and behaviour codes or covering up “an idol” like the Sphinx.
Residents who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi associate “God’s law” with security. “We’ve had enough of politicians who rob us, we need a man of morality,” Mohamed Khaled, thirty-nine, said as he exited the Ramsis School polling station.
Revolutionary voices were very low here. Only one lady wanted to vote for the young leftist Khaled Ali; she will vote for the Nasserit Hamdeen Sabahi because he is more likely to win. Others said they voted for Sabahi because after listening to him they felt he represented them.
Polling stations were calm, almost empty. I didn’t see long lines like the ones seen during the constitutional referendum or during the parliamentary elections. Fewer voters is one reason for this but another could be that the voting process is simpler. The judges at the polling stations, elections monitors and candidates’ representatives all agreed that citizens were following the rules and violations were rare.
It was also clear that people were not comfortable disclosing who they voted for; I had to press them for the information, and then they found it hard to justify their choice – perhaps because Egyptians by and large are not convinced of their candidates; they are choosing “the best of the bad”, an expression repeated.
Many in Nazlet Al-Semman regretted being identified with the blood of the revolutionaries after the Battle of the Camel. They say that no one was going to Tahrir Square to kill protesters, only to ensure that their support for former president Hosni Mubarak reach the media – but they became the scapegoat. “If I knew that going to Tahrir Square that day would result in toppling Mubarak I would have never gone there,” Mohamed said.
[Developed in partnership with Ahram Online.]
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- On the Margins Roundup (June) | <urn:uuid:c3ea022d-d73d-4934-b03f-33dabef9ab94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/5692/nazlet-al-semman-district_not-everybody-loves-the- | 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 | 0.935126 | 1,360 | 1.617188 | 2 |
- SPECIAL REPORTS
Many people want to be a star in their profession, regardless of the challenges and obstacles they have to overcome. Many manufacturers have the same ambition, regardless of how long they’ve been in business or the products they make.
Since July 1982, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has helped thousands of manufacturers become a Star through its Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP).
More Work Than WishingVPP requires management, labor and OSHA to work cooperatively and proactively to prevent fatalities, injuries and illnesses through a safety and health system focused on hazard prevention and control; worksite analysis; training; and management commitment and worker involvement. Union support is required for applicants represented by a bargaining unit.
To participate, a manufacturer must submit an extensive application to OSHA and undergo a rigorous onsite evaluation by a team of safety and health professionals. The onsite evaluation lasts three to five days. On the final day, the OSHA representatives present their findings to company management, make improvement recommendations, and indicate whether or not the company is likely to be awarded Star or Merit status.
The VPP Star is awarded to a manufacturer that has implemented effective safety and health management systems, including ergonomics, and maintained injury and illness rates below national averages for its industry. Merit facilities are those that OSHA feels have the potential and commitment to achieve Star status within three years.
Facilities that earn Star and Merit status are exempt from OSHA programmed inspections while they maintain their VPP status. However, these facilities are not exempt from their responsibilities under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Complaints, accidents, chemical spills and other significant events will result in an OSHA enforcement inspection according to agency policies.
Also, OSHA re-evaluates Star facilities every 2 1/2 to 5 years and Merit facilities every 18 to 24 months to confirm their continuing qualification for VPP.
Success StoriesOn Oct. 31, 2007, ABB in New Berlin, WI, earned its first ever VPP Star award. The facility is the first and only ABB location to achieve this status.
More than 500 people work at this facility, which includes three buildings that encompass 220,000 square feet. Workers at New Berlin manufacture energy-efficient, low-voltage electric drives and engineered drive systems for a wide range of industrial and commercial customers.
“We’re a true assembly shop,” says Rick Kegel, plant and safety engineer. “We don’t use any robots at this facility.”
Nearly 150 workers perform assembly, including extensive fastening with electric screwdrivers and nutrunners; wiring; soldering; and adhesive bonding. In 2010, the plant produced and shipped more than 175,000 products.
ABB’s journey to the Star award began back in July 2005, after it became one of the first U.S. companies to be OHSAS 18001 certified. OHSAS 18001 is an international standard for occupational health and safety management systems.
In late 2005, ABB turned its attention to the Star award. The company submitted its application in January 2006, but OSHA didn’t make its audit visit until July 2006. After the audit, ABB was told it had achieved Merit status rather than Star. The reason: Not enough employee involvement in its safety and health management system.
After ABB increased employee involvement, OSHA revisited in February 2007 and was impressed. ABB further increased employee involvement over the next eight months, and in October 2007, earned the VPP Star. Last fall, in October 2010, the company completed recertification and is awaiting OSHA’s approval.
ABB began improving its ergonomics program in 2006-before the facility even applied for the Star award. For example, the company purchased arm braces for assemblers to limit their exposure to vibration; adjustable-height pneumatic tables and pedestals to assure comfortable assembly; anti-fatigue mats; and hoists and cranes to assist in lifting heavy parts.
For ABB, the main benefit of winning the Star has been the opportunity to network with other VPP Star sites. “We get together and contact each other to assess and discuss best practices,” says Rich Bizek, North American safety manager. “We’re proud of the award, and safety is now a daily part of our culture.”
For the past 14 years, LENOX in East Longmeadow, MA, has maintained Star status. The company’s 500,000-square-foot facility initially earned this honor in 1997, making LENOX the first cutting-tool manufacturer in the United States to do so. LENOX earned recertification in 2000, 2005 and 2010.
Products made here include industrial band saw blades and hand tool blades, along with other power tool accessories. The facility employs 720 people, although only about 100 of them do assembly. There are two groups of assemblers. One group manually threads arbors onto hole saws. The second group welds the saws using specialized equipment.
“Earning our first Star was a two-year process,” says Mike Avery, director of safety and security. “But earning recertification was even harder to achieve. It was almost as if our first Star award never happened.”
During follow-up audits in 2000, 2005 and 2010, LENOX provided OSHA a series of notebooks, each of which detailed one component of the company’s enhanced health and safety management system. This greatly impressed OSHA during the evaluation, and helped LENOX maintain its Star status.
In 2008, in addition to the safety team, LENOX formed an internal ergonomics team. Soon after, ergonomics training took place, consisting of one- or two-day training sessions for the company’s managers and engineers. All other employees attended a two-hour overview.
The company also began making changes in the plant to improve ergonomics. Job rotation was instituted for high repetitive tasks, so people were not working the same body parts all day. Adjustable workstations also were installed for greater worker comfort.
In addition, equipment setup and plant lighting were re-evaluated and adjusted, anti-fatigue mats were placed in all assembly areas, and adjustable-height conveyors were installed in the shipping department. LENOX also began a mandatory, twice-per-day stretching program for all employees in high repetitive jobs, including a few office areas.
“It’s all about the well-being of our employees,” says Avery. “They have a better mindset when they work, focusing on safety and looking out for any problems.”
Another major benefit of the safety and health system is much lower workers’ compensation costs thanks to fewer accidents. Avery says LENOX paid $1.6 million in costs in 1996, but just $46,000 in 2010.
“Being awarded Star status has brought a sense of pride here, as well as cooperation among employees at all levels of the company,” says Avery. “OSHA is like a co-worker. It’s a true partnership.”
Out west, in Palmdale, CA, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (LMA) has maintained a VPP Star certification since first earning it in 1999. More than 3,100 people work at the company’s Palmdale facility, which operates as a development and prototype organization with production of specialized parts for contracted aircraft programs.
“Next-generation manned and unmanned aircraft are developed and tested, but we do not perform high-rate final aircraft assembly,” says Jeff Ho, manager of the safety and health department.
Currently, the facility produces leading edges, radomes and antennas for the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II aircraft. Additionally, the facility maintains and modifies the U-2S Dragon Lady and recently retired F-117 Nighthawk aircraft.
LMA was awarded its Star through the VPP program of the California Div. of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA). After LMA submitted its application in 1999, a Cal/OSHA team performed both a one-day initial site visit and a week-long audit.
The audit was performed by four Cal/OSHA team members and two special team members from VPP-certified companies. LMA was given a list of recommendations, which included an expansion of its ergonomics programs.
Once LMA addressed the recommendations to the team’s satisfaction, the company was granted Star certification. LMA has successfully maintained its Star status through two subsequent recertification visits, in 2003 and 2008.
“After the initial Cal/OSHA visit, we implemented a program where the company purchases ergonomic tools and equipment for different departments to evaluate,” says Ho. “Based on results, additional tools and equipment are procured by the site. We also hired an on-site physical therapist trained in ergonomics to conduct ergonomic evaluations and recommend corrective actions.”
After earning its first VPP Star, LMA began training many of its manufacturing and facilities engineers on ergonomics. The company also has an ergonomic expert evaluate new manufacturing processes to address ergonomic concerns.
To help assemblers, LMA has replaced many of its older power tools with new, lightweight, ergonomic tools. The company also installed rotating and adjustable trunnions and tooling on its manufacturing lines to eliminate awkward positions by workers as they perform composite layup.
“The Star award has made us much more responsive to safety concerns,” says Ho. “Where in the past we may have asked ‘Is it required by regulations?’ we now ask ‘Will it improve safety?’”
In Mesa, AZ, TRW Vehicle Safety Systems continues to maintain its Star status, which it earned in 2004, 2006 and 2009 from the Arizona Div. of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH). Nearly 400 people work at the TRW facility, which manufactures air bag inflators for all U.S. automakers, as well as several in Europe. The company makes three types of inflator-stored gas, pyrotechnic and hybrid.
Production is on the upswing, and the company estimates it will produce 180,000 to 190,000 units per week in 2011. The inflators are used in driver-side, passenger, side-impact, knee-bolster, rollover and other types of air bags.
Assembly is mostly automated and involves welding, crimping or press fitting of inflator parts. Some assembly lines are fully automated, while others feature automated and manual processes. On fully automated lines, conveyors bring parts to the welding, crimping or pressing equipment. On mixed lines, workers place one or more parts in a workstation every 6 to 7 seconds, then flip a switch to activate the equipment.
“Adhesives are used to join parts on certain driver-side bag inflators,” says Scott Detwiler, health, safety and environmental manager. “The dispensing and pressing is fully automated.”
TRW began using ADOSH’s VPP guidelines as a benchmark in 2002 to improve its safety and ergonomics programs. Over the next year or so, the company hired a consultant to create a more detailed job-hazard analysis of each workstation. TRW also hired an ergonomist to educate workers on body mechanics and posture.
In 2003, TRW invited ADOSH to do a preaudit. TRW continued to improve its safety and ergonomics program, then submitted its VPP application and completed the on-site audit in early 2004. A few months later, ADOSH awarded TRW the Star.
Improving ergonomics is an ongoing priority. Changes in recent years include better lighting, adjusting the height of equipment, and redesigning workstations to minimize worker movements.
“VPP is a great way to promote involvement,” Detwiler says. “Great safety and ergonomics programs are the result of employees and management working together.” | <urn:uuid:54ff13ae-e5e7-4f3a-9dae-fd181152c566> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/87591-reaching-for-the-ergonomic-star | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958124 | 2,541 | 2.078125 | 2 |
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Here at UK Kids Golf we are committed to not only providing great golfing opportunities for your young golfer but also the information you require to make their relationship with golf a long term success. We have teamed up with a number of leading experts in the fields of Nutrition, Fitness, Psychology and Coaching to make sure you have everything you need to keep your kid on course.
Have a look at the latest articles below or select one of the categories to see articles on just coaching, fitness and so on.
A great coach is a “custodian of the flame”, the fire that burns within each enthusiastic athlete. He will help and encourage the young golfer, without creating undue pressure, to develop their skills, achieve their potential and develop as a person.
As a parent you will want a coach who you and your child feel comfortable with, so ask about their philosophies and values.
When asked about finding a coach, US PGA Pro Davis Love said: “You don’t necessarily want somebody who is a good shop merchandiser or who is the best player in the area. You want a pro who teaches a lot, a specialist who is on the practice range all day, every day. Ask around and find a person with a reputation for teaching- period.”
UK Kids Golf Advisor
Author: Paul Ashwell | <urn:uuid:417e9f31-b646-4232-a392-081d8b892f9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ukkidsgolf.co.uk/articles/320 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953125 | 284 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Food stamps are supposed to help you buy food. Not to completely give you free food for the month. I guess in Newark that stunt was to guilt Democrats into giving food stamp receivers a complete free ride. Food stamps as well as disability social security has exploded under Obama.
I suspect you are right in that food stamps are meant to be supplement to other resources, such as food banks and government commodities which offer great values on food staples for those who qualify. Depending on someone's total income though, food stamps may be the only means of purchasing food items at the store.
My sister is a single woman. Recently, for reasons I'm not getting into here at this time, her monthly income was reduced to $800. As a result she qualifies for and received $120 in food stamps for the month of November. When she ran out of groceries three days early, I took her grocery shopping. I paid for about two bags of grocery staples which came to $83. Trust me, there were no extravagant purchases involved. I did buy her a bottle of dish soap and some toilet paper in that purchase. Food stamps cannot be used for non-food items such as these.
Just so you know, we are working on fixing the problem that resulted in the income reduction, which will increase her monthly income by almost $700 per month. When that happens (which I pray is sooner rather than later) she will no longer qualify for food stamps. The food stamp situation for her is just a stop-gap and a way of life.
The reason food stamps and other public assistance has "exploded" as you put it, is because a lot of folks have been either unemployed or underemployed since the economy crashed. The requirements for SSD have not changed since President Obama has been in office. Generally speaking, SSD benefits are initially denied to anyone who applies at least twice. Most people like my sister, wait at least two years for a court date where they/their attorney can argue their case in hopes of being granted SSD. Getting on SSD is not as easy as you apparently think it is. | <urn:uuid:f5c5e6bb-a669-439e-be17-72ebbdc3d037> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=450695.msg6475977 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988357 | 426 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Associate Professor Claire Bowern is in the Department of Linguistics at Yale University. Today she talks about why some languages become endangered and why we should care about this. Her main area of work are endangered Australian Aboriginal languages.
Robyn Williams: Languages – we each have one or two or three, and they are good for your brain. They keep it tuned and enrich your culture. Languages also tell us who we are and how we think. So it’s more important than it seems that we preserve as many as we can. The point is how.
In some places in our region there are hundreds of different languages, up in the north of Australia for example and in Papua New Guinea, more than in Europe. So it’s going to be a challenge for Dr Claire Bowern, who is a professor at Yale University in the United States, a challenge that’s sometimes hard to fathom.
Claire Bowern: The 22nd June this year was a red letter day for endangered languages. Google released endangered-languages.com a website which catalogues more than 3000 or roughly half of the world’s currently spoken languages. The site is the result of collaboration between academics, language speakers and communities and Google. Languages are now being lost at a rate faster than ever before. Most of this diversity is unrecorded and will disappear without trace unless we act now. I am one of the endangered language sites 12 regional directors; our job is to curate the content of the site for a particular part of the world. I am in charge of the Australian portion of the site and so my talk today takes examples primarily from Australia.
As a catalogue the site is second to none and I say that even though I am a bit biased of course. No other site houses this much information on language endangerment and at this scale. There are of course local language catalogues such as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies catalogue called austlang, but none of these catalogues has the global coverage of endangeredlanguages.com. Furthermore the site is an unparalleled opportunity to make use of crowd sourcing to get accurate information about speaker numbers and language use.
Each language page has a place to upload samples. The language page for Navajo for example contains sample sound files so you can hear what the language sounds like. Users can upload their own materials, correct information on the site, or offer their own perspective on the language situation on their community. With each regional director responsible for hundreds of languages there is need for those on the ground to contribute their own sense of what is happening to their languages. The knowledge sharing portion of the site contains podcasts, vodcasts and samples from linguists and community members. The Coushatta tribe of Louisiana for example give details about their language project and I have uploaded some short lectures which are aimed at language speakers recording their own languages.
The site is also important as a focal point for language activists. Here is a graphic illustration of what we as humans stand to lose when we lose linguistic diversity. Here’s a site which tries to address the problem on a global scale. You might think of it as putting a name and a face on the somewhat abstract idea of language shift. While half the world’s languages are now at risk the situation is even worse in Australia, where every single one of Australia’s indigenous languages makes it onto the catalogue.
Cataloguing the world’s languages is no easy task however. The project staff had to make many difficult decisions. Perhaps the trickiest decision was what counts as endangered. We could have used absolute numbers of speakers and said that any language below say 500,000 speakers is threatened, below 100,000 is severely endangered and below 10,000 is critically endangered. That would work in some areas but in Australia the largest languages have only about 6,000 speakers. Aboriginal languages like Djambarrpuyngu, Arrernte, Murriny-Patha and Pitjantjatjara have more speakers now than they probably ever have had before. Aboriginal children are growing up with these languages and they are known by just about everyone in their communities. So in that respect they are considerably healthier than some other languages with many more speakers. Scots Gaelic for example has more speakers, between 20,000 and 30,000 in fact but very few children are learning that language. The situation is even starker in some African countries. In Tanzania for example there are languages with several million speakers which are not used by anyone under the age of 20. Younger people instead use the national language, Swahili. It is therefore only a matter of time before those languages are gone. We should remember that there isn’t necessarily safety in numbers when it comes to language shift.
We ended up using four different criteria in defining language endangerment. Speaker numbers was one but that was not the only one. We also looked at whether children were learning the language, what the speaker number trends were and the domains of language use. In my previous example Djambarrpuyngu would score higher than Gaelic because lots of children are learning Djambarrpuyngu whereas few children are learning Gaelic. Speaker trends refer to how quickly the community is shifting to another language. Djambarrpuyngu speakers in Northeast Arnhem Land for example are often multilingual, speaking not only Djambarrpuyngu and English but other Aboriginal languages as well. And this has been the case for some time for generations in fact. But Djambarrpuyngu is not safe since the language receives very little support outside the community and it’s not used much outside of Arnhem Land.
When working with the Australian portion of the catalogue some additional concerns came up that didn’t apply so much elsewhere in the world. One was the question of what to do with languages which are sleeping, no longer actively used, or have no or very few confirmed speakers. Excluding such languages would have seriously misrepresented Australia’s linguistic landscape. The late Ivy Booth for example did not speak her language fluently (Gooreng Gooreng), because she was taken away from her family and put in a dormitory at the age of 6 where she was punished for speaking her language. There are no known speakers of Wadikali or Pirlatapa because almost all were shot in the Mindiri massacre of the late 1800s. Punthamara people no longer speak their language because around 1930 a cattle truck turned up in western Queensland and carted all the women and children off to Cherbourg mission about 750 kms away and they were forbidden from speaking anything but English there. So if this site is about putting names and faces to language shift why should these languages not have a place too, just because the causes of the shift occurred 80 years ago in my grandparents’ time rather than right now?
Some Australian languages are being reclaimed. They never wholly fell out of use with families passing down words and phrases, if not the full language. Now some of these languages are being used in school programs and community contexts such as greetings and welcomes to country and language revival efforts are well underway. The Mobile Language Team for example co-ordinates information about Aboriginal languages in South Australia and the Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative provides language support in coastal New South Wales. These organisations support languages which have a presence in their communities, even though it’s difficult to gauge the exact number of speakers and how fluent they might be.
Finally, sometimes we find that languages that we thought had gone still in fact have speakers. Professor Peter Austin from SOAS wrote on the Endangered Languages and Cultures blog in 2010 about how Diyari, a language of South Australia, had been presumed to be extinct the last speaker after all had died in 1994 as far as we knew. The language continues to be spoken however by at least one Diyari family. So we shouldn’t be too quick to nail down the coffin lids on languages and I really wanted to take that into account when producing the catalogue.
Endangered-languages.com has been pitched as a tool to save languages, to preserve them and to catalogue them. You might have seen headlines along the themes of “Google fights for endangered languages” or “Google aims to preserve endangered languages”. As a linguist I found these headlines rather misleading after all just because we now have some awareness of how many languages are under threat it doesn’t mean that our awareness will translate into action. It’s easy to commission surveys, inquiries and reports. It’s harder to act on the recommendations of those reports.
The Australian government for example has been quite good at commissioning surveys about language use in education and conducting inquiries, but it has been quite slow to act on the findings at least in relation to language. For example none of the 2007 Ampe Akelyernemane “Little Children are Sacred” recommendations relating to language have been enacted despite five years of the intervention. That report also noted that its language and culture findings were largely identical to those in the 2004-2005 report on Indigenous Language and Culture in Northern Territory Schools and few, if any, of those findings had been enacted by then either.
We must remember that putting an endangerment index next to a language name will not stop the shift away from smaller languages. It won’t stop the social processes that lead to language endangerment in the first place. No one can save a language except if speakers continue to speak it. Unless language communities want to continue using their languages nothing any linguist, any government, or any school program can do to make those languages continue. Irish Gaelic for example has been in decline for years despite substantial educational and governmental support. Conversely there are many inspiring stories of Aboriginal people who have passed on their languages despite many barriers.
There is a big gap between the type of material encouraged on the endangered-languages.com site and the amount of material typically generated in language documentation, making a lasting record of a language takes years, a lifetime. No documentation is ever complete. It’s not just a case of uploading a couple of clips to youtube. There are no simple languages in the world; all languages have thousands of words. Some words are easy to translate, while other might be very specialised, or have a lot of different sentences and so may take a lot of work to describe. Languages are complex codes and without the key to that code they are undecipherable. In my desk at work there is a copy of a cassette, it’s the only recording of a language from western Queensland made in the 1960s. It’s a 20 minute monologue recorded from an Aboriginal man who was the last speaker of that language. There’s no indication as to the content and no translation. As it is we know that this language is closely related to its neighbours, so all is not lost here but the neighbouring languages are also quite poorly documented so there is no guarantee we’ll ever be able to fully decipher this narrative.
It can be difficult for someone brought up as a native speaker of English to appreciate what the loss of linguistic diversity might mean for the world. There’s the allure of a common language of course. “Why do we need all these languages?” people ask, “What’s wrong with English?” My favourite argument along these lines is one that goes something like “well we could prevent wars if we had fewer languages. If we had a common language we would understand each other better.” I strongly suspect that if we had a common language we would just be able to insult each other more effectively. A common language after all didn’t prevent the Rwandan genocide, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, or the Hundred Years War. In fact the Hundred Years War involved two common languages between the two countries – French and Latin so they were doubly unlucky there.
The loss of linguistic diversity to science is just as much of an issue for at least two reasons. Languages let us find out about the past and they show us how speakers conceptualise the world today.
In looking at the past we can use information about current patterns in language to make inferences about languages in prehistory and about their populations. In this way modern languages are rather like fossils. We can work out when language groups diverged, where they came from and who they were in contact with. The endangerment of half the world’s languages is, from this point of view, rather like seeing half the fossil record disappear from the world. The record in both cases isn’t perfect, so we need as much information as we can get. Language endangerment on this scale is therefore really a disaster for language prehistory.
Languages also give us a view on human cognition and variation. Some parts of language are universal. For example all pretty much all languages seem to have a way to distinguish nouns from verbs, but other areas of language are extremely variable. Giving directions is one area. Languages like English, Russian, Japanese and Spanish tend to use left and right, that is directions based on the point of view of the speaker. But some other languages use north and south, so speakers might talk about their northern hand rather than their left hand. English speakers usually only use these sorts of absolute directions north and south and so on with large fixed objects, so we might talk about the island to the north, or the easternmost mountain, we don’t use them for body parts. Some languages use several direction systems depending on what speakers are referring to. The Kimberley language Gooniyandi is one of those languages. They have four of five different systems. But while direction systems show quite a lot of variation they aren’t limitless. For example no language to my knowledge uses into the sun as a direction, even though plenty of languages use east or west, or upstream or downstream, uphill or downhill, or upwind or downwind to give directions.
Let’s hope that the endangered languages catalogue will help us target endangered language documentation efforts and language maintenance programs. Otherwise it will unfortunately just be a clear monument to how we lost in a couple of generations thousands of monuments to human creativity that took thousands of years to build up.
Robyn Williams: Wouldn’t that be tragic? Claire Bowern is a professor at Yale University in the United States.
Next week: more extinctions, this time of birds when Sue Taylor talks about her magnificent new book: John Gould’s Extinct & Endangered Birds of Australia.
- Associate Professor Claire Bowern
- Department of Linguistics
- Robyn Williams
- Brigitte Seega | <urn:uuid:e98d2c04-1284-46a5-b0f7-1ec3ca6b6899> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/endangered-languages/4382458?site=centralvic | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960514 | 3,043 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Darpa looks to use small ships as drone bases
The US military is planning to use fleets of small ships as platforms for unmanned aircraft to land and take off.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said it needed to increase its airborne "surveillance and reconnaissance".
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known as drones, are commonly launched on land - but deploying them at sea is harder because they need to refuel.
They currently require large aircraft carriers with long runways.
The new project has been dubbed Tern (Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node) after a sea-bird known for its endurance.
Darpa programme manager Daniel Patt, said: "Enabling small ships to launch and retrieve long-endurance UAVs on demand would greatly expand our situational awareness and our ability to quickly and flexibly engage in hotspots over land or water."
He added: "It is like having a falcon return to the arm of any person equipped to receive it, instead of to the same static perch every time."
About 98% of the world's land area lies within 900 nautical miles of ocean coastlines, and Darpa increasingly sees conflicts being fought out at sea. | <urn:uuid:1393d3cf-7dbe-4974-89af-25d98761d254> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21653364 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959179 | 257 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Law School Headlines
MMK Honoree Seeks to Understand Bioethical Challenges through Theatre
A look at how issues of bioethics are dealt with through plays staged since the 1960s was the topic of the McDonald Merrill Ketcham (MMK) Lecture at the law school on February 7, 2013. This year’s MMK honoree was Karen H. Rothenberg, J.D., M.P.A., Marjorie Cook Professor of Law and founding Director of the Law & Health Care Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. She served as that law school’s dean from 1999-2009.
The McDonald Merrill Ketcham Lecture and Award in Law and Medicine brings leading scholars and policy makers in the fields of law and medicine to the IUPUI campus for presentations at both the law and medical schools.
Following Rothenberg’s lecture, a panel discussion lead by Janet Allen, artistic director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre, also examined the MMK lecture topic. Other panelists included Dr. Margaret Gaffney and Dr. Peter Schwartz, both of whom are faculty investigators at the IU Center for Bioethics, and Professor William Schneider, director of Medical Humanities at IUPUI. | <urn:uuid:0cc5dd14-5aa1-432c-9c0b-f61ad8af19b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://indylaw.indiana.edu/news/current.cfm/archive.cfm?nid=790 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949177 | 260 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Spruce it up. That is what Islanders did when they planted spruce trees in their yards. Fairly common on the Island, spruce found its way here because of its usefulness and beauty. These conifers prefer more northern climes, thriving in boreal forests.
Perhaps that is why large-scale planting of this species in the State Forest did not produce the quality crop for which the Commonwealth’s foresters had hoped. In its native environs, spruce is a healthy tree that can be quite profitable, but few takers were found for commercial harvesting of the planted areas in the center of the Island.
Spruce’s pulp is valued for papermaking and its lumber is used in construction, for furniture and instrument making and, of course, whole trees for Christmas decorating. Traditional canoes were made from this wood, and its roots functioned as rope to lace those boats together.
But that isn’t all. To provide protective magic, one is advised to carry a green spruce twig next to the skin. Chewing its resinous buds was thought to cure toothaches.
However, this epicurean is far more intrigued by spruce’s culinary potential.
Young, male catkins can be eaten raw or cooked, and immature female cones roasted provide a sweet and syrupy center. Grinding the inner bark yields a powder that can be used as a thickener or added to grains for bread. Resin
from its trunk can be chewed like gum and oil can be extracted for flavoring. And spruce’s shoot tips and needles brew a tea that cures everything from tuberculosis to rheumatism.
Arguably, though, the best option is making beer. To prevent scurvy, Captain James Cook imbibed vitamin C-rich spruce spirits in 1784 during a voyage on the Pacific Ocean.
He describes life aboard the ship: “Two of our men were employed in brewing spruce beer; while others filled the water-casks, collected grass for the cattle and cut wood.... Besides fish, we had other refreshments in abundance. Scurvy-grass, celery and portable soup were boiled every day with the wheat and pease; and we had spruce beer for our drink. Such a regimen soon removed all seeds of the scurvy from our people, if any of them had contracted it. But indeed, on our arrival here, we only had two invalids in both ships.”
First, one must be able to positively identify this terrific tree. Often confused with firs, spruce can be differentiated in this memorable way: firs have flat needles and spruces have square needles — f for flat and fir, s for square and spruce.
Even with all of these benefits, a Scandinavian legend tells a different tale of the downfall of spruce. This story of original sin starts with the assertion that spruce was the famous ‘tree of life’ in the Garden of Eden. Describing this tree, however, as one with juicy fruit, large leaves and blossoms doesn’t jibe with the plant we know today.
It wasn’t until Eve ate its forbidden fruit that spruce was transformed. To punish the tree for its tempting part in the sin, its fruit was altered to rough, dry cones, and the leaves were shrunken to sharp, pointed needles, more in line to the spruce we see today.
If it was spruce that was the original Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, I’m happy to be able to report that since the original disgrace, there has only been the knowledge of good things that we have derived from this handsome and useful tree.
Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown. | <urn:uuid:53571931-0c64-440c-8644-c2b72c38cc96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:ads@mvgazette.com/news/2013/03/07/forbidden-fruit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975204 | 792 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Whether you see things more from the evolutionary or creation point of reference, there was always a time that preceded modern medicine. In times of old, healers were considered to be mysterious people, having special abilities or powers that the average person did not. Healers who chose to serve those in need using what they had were the pioneers of mind/body/spirit medicine.
As a professional in the Health and Wellness field for the past 35 yrs, I study and research the many applications that come to the public, both old and new. The field itself has become of great interest to many as we review our own health: | <urn:uuid:8950d384-a189-4f9f-a4ed-b19f9c3f83c5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.transformationarts.org/category/topic/health-and-wellness | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986892 | 127 | 1.546875 | 2 |
In our busy, stressful lives, two things can be in short supply (especially at the holidays) - time and money. We don’t have time to go to the gym or stick to a fitness routine. And, we don’t have money for all the presents we want to give or all the donations we want to make. These simple, active solutions solve both problems at once!
1. Walk someone’s dog.
Both dogs and their walkers get real health benefits. For older folks or those with disabilities, getting a dog out and about can be difficult. Offer to regularly walk a friend or neighbor’s dog and everyone wins. You’ve given someone a real gift, plus both you and the dog will be in better shape. Shelter dogs also need walking, which can be your donation to the facility. To give equal time to both my grand-puppies, this is Lilli who lives in Philly on a walk to the local dog park with me this fall.
2. Play with someone’s kids.
Children nearly always have more energy than busy parents, especially single parents. And, most American kids aren’t getting anywhere near the 60 minutes of daily activity they need. Set up a regular playdate for sledding, biking, Frisbee® or shooting hoops - and you will give your nieces, nephews, or neighbors (and their parents) a precious gift.
3. Remove someone’s snow.
In Montana and many other states, getting rid of snow can be a regular fitness activity for several months of the year. Helping a relative, friend, or neighbor keep their sidewalks and driveway clear can be a real gift to them - and outdoor physical activity for you! (To be safe and injury-free, make sure to wear hat and gloves; warm up before starting; and shovel small amounts carefully.)
4. Help with someone’s yard work.
All across the country, yard work is a year-round activity (which can be very expensive to pay for). If working outside is something you enjoy, give a neighbor, friend, or relative the gift of your time and energy. Better yet, offer to share yard time with someone: By working together in each other’s yards, you’ll have someone to talk to and the time will go faster.
5. Introduce someone to your favorite fitness activity.
If you belong to a fitness center or gym - or take regular dance or yoga classes, invite a friend to go with you. Most businesses offer free passes to potential new members and many offer a two-for-one package, especially around the holidays. While there may be a small price-tag for this gift, you can offer courtesy ‘chauffeur’ services to get them there and back. | <urn:uuid:e22a4e6a-3f7e-4bd3-a535-fed177feeefb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://eatwellatschool.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953756 | 586 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Category: Economic RecoveryThe analysis published under this category are as follows.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Index of Leading Economic Indicators Underscores Continuing Recovery / Economics / Economic Recovery
The Conference Board's Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) posted a solid 1.1% gain in November after a revised 0.4% increase in October. The LEI has risen at an annual rate of 8.7% in the three months ended November compared with a 0.4% gain during the previous three months (ending August). The accelerated increase of the LEI implies continued growth of the economy and at a stronger pace compared with the trend seen in recent months. The possibility of a double-dip discussed frequently in the summer months is almost irrelevant now.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, December 17, 2010
Construction of new homes increased 3.9% to an annual rate of 555,000 in November, following an 11.1% drop in the previous month. Starts of single-family units advanced 6.9% in November to an annual rate of 465,000. The November level of single-family starts is marginally above the three-month moving average of single-family starts (see Chart 1), which suggests that stronger gains are necessary before we declare that home construction activity is out of the woods. Multi-family starts fell 9.1% in November, marking the third consecutive monthly decline.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, December 11, 2010
U.S. Trade Deficit Narrows in October, Provides Lift to Q4 GDP Growth / Economics / Economic Recovery
The trade deficit narrowed to $38.7 billion in October from a gap of $44.6 billion in the prior month. The 3.2% increase in exports of goods and services and a 0.5% decline in imports of goods and services brought about a narrowing of the trade gap in October. Overall, this reading is a big plus for real GDP growth in the fourth quarter.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
U.S. Consumer Confidence Advances in November, Another Bullish Report for the Month / Economics / Economic Recovery
The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index rose to 54.1 in November from 49.9 in October. Both the Present Situation Index (24.0 vs. 23.5) and Expectations Index (74.2 vs. 67.5) advanced in November. There is a bullish tone in economic reports of November - payroll employment, auto sales, factory production, retail sales, regional purchasing managers' surveys and consumer confidence measures among other reports that have been disappointing - home sales, jobless rate, durable goods orders.Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Recessions Are on the Margin
A Rose is Still a Rose
If It Feels Like a Recession
The Rough Road Back
And the data out over the last few weeks tells us it is getting better. Does this take us out of the double-dip woods, even as the Fed is lowering its forecast? And what is a recession? Yes, we all know it's when the economy doesn't grow, but we are in a rather unique economic environment, this time. Maybe things are getting better, but is it enough to get us back on the road to full employment?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Real consumer spending rose 0.3% in October, following a 0.2% gain in the prior month. A large part of the increase was from purchases of cars and other recreational vehicles. Outlays on services held steady during October after a 0.1% increase in September. The October consumer spending data combined with conservative projections in the last two months of year points to moderate growth during the fourth quarter.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Index of Leading Economic Indicators Posts Second Impressive Monthly Gain / Economics / Economic RecoveryThe Index of Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) rose 0.5% in October, following an upwardly revised 0.5% gain in September. The June-August readings of the LEI cast a shadow on the nature of the recovery. Moreover, the three-month annualized increase of the LEI, at 4.8%, is the largest increase since June 2010 (see chart 2). The reversal of the 3-month annualized change of the LEI supports predictions of faster economic growth in 2011.
Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Is the Philly Fed Survey the Precursor of More Bullish Economic Numbers? / Economics / Economic Recovery
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's business survey results for November show a strong rebound. The broadest measure of factory conditions increased to 22.5 in November from 1.0 in the October (see chart 1). The index tracking new orders rose to 10.4 in November from -5.0 in the prior month. Indexes measuring shipments (16.8 vs. 1.4 in October), number of employees (13.3 vs. 2.4 in October) and the employee workweek (22.3 vs. 15.9 in October) also advanced in November.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
INCIDENT: The visit by Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Beijing a week ago, follows by a scant three weeks the visit by China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to Ankara on 78 October as part of the latter's European diplomatic tour also including Belgium, Germany, Greece, and Italy in the margin of his participation in an EU-China summit.Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
U.S. Factory Production Moves Ahead in October, Energy Costs Pushing Up Inflation / Economics / Economic Recovery
Industrial production held steady in October after a 0.2% drop in the prior month. Activity at the nation's mines (-0.1%) and utilities (-3.4%) declined in October and offset the gains in manufacturing output. Factory production rose 0.5% in October after holding nearly steady for two consecutive months. Nearly all major categories of manufacturing posted gains in October - autos (+5.0%), wood products (+2.5%), machinery (+1.4%), computers (+0.7%) and furniture (+0.8%). The small reversal of a decelerating trend (year-to-year change, see chart 1) is the important aspect to note from the October data.Read full article... Read full article...
Thursday, November 11, 2010
U.S. Jobless Claims Decline and Trade Gap Narrows, Exports Continue Boost Economy / Economics / Economic Recovery
Initial jobless claims fell 24,000 to 435,000 during the week ended November 6. Initial jobless claims have dropped in three out of the last four weeks. The 4-week moving average at 446,500 is the lowest since September 13, 2008 (see chart 1). Each of these developments is noteworthy and encouraging. In addition, the date is haunting because this is the last weekly reading before the Lehman Brothers debacle in September 2008.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, November 06, 2010
U.S. October Employment Report Shows Economy is Slowly But Surely Retreating From the Cliff / Economics / Economic Recovery
Civilian Unemployment Rate: 9.6% in October, virtually steady for five straight months. The unemployment rate was 5.0% in December 2007 when the recession commenced. Cycle high for recession is 10.1% in October 2009 and the cycle low (for the expansion that ended in December 2007) is 4.4% in March 2007.
Payroll Employment: 151,000 in October vs. -41,000 in September. Private sector jobs increased 159,000 after a 107,000 increase in September. Net gain of 93,000 jobs after revisions of private sector payroll estimates for August and September.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
ISM Manufacturing Survey Shows Continuing Sluggish U.S. Economic Recovery / Economics / Economic Recovery
The ISM composite index of the manufacturing sector rose to 56.9 in October, the highest since May 2010. The headline and details indicate that the factory sector is back on its feet after a sluggish performance in the third quarter. The index tracking new orders, a forward looking indicator, increased to 58.9 in October vs. 51.1 in the prior month.Read full article... Read full article...
Saturday, October 30, 2010
U.S. Economy Continues to Grow, But Momentum Not Enough to Lower Jobless Rate / Economics / Economic Recovery
Real gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. economy grew at annual rate of 2.0% in the third quarter, after a 1.7% increase in the second quarter. However, final sales advanced only 0.6% in the third quarter, following a mild 0.9% increase in the second quarter. As shown in chart 1, final sales show a decelerating trend after an increase of 1.2% in the fourth quarter of 2009.Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, October 01, 2010
U.S. Real GDP Revised Higher, Stronger Consumer Spending, Jobless Claims Trending Down / Economics / Economic Recovery
Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.7% in the second quarter vs. the preliminary estimate of 1.6%. The 2.2% growth in consumer spending represents an upward revision from the earlier estimate of a 2.0% gain. The strength came from an upward revision of consumer outlays on services. A larger inventory accumulation was also reported for the second quarter compared with the prior estimate ($68.8 billion vs. $63.2 billion in preliminary report). A decline in non-residential structures and smaller growth of government spending provided most of the offset. Going forward, the U.S. economy is projected to grow at a tepid pace in the second half of 2010 of roughly 1-3/4%.Read full article... Read full article... | <urn:uuid:7d8063e0-3328-4db6-a99d-94f02e2eb68d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/News-catid-209-startnum-46.html | 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 | 0.940228 | 2,094 | 1.8125 | 2 |
As a general rule, a marketing letter is:
What do conservative people say?
- Addressed to a specific person by name and title;
- Brief, short, and direct—seldom more than one page;
- Intriguing, never boring;
- Written by you, never canned;
- Tailored to the audience;
- Warm and personal, not cold and analytical; and
- Infused with energy, excitement, and enthusiasm.
Some conservative businesspeople resist writing "sales letters." They say, "That's fine for salespeople, but it really wouldn't work for me. I'm an accountant (or a lawyer or an engineer . . . or whatever) and we're very conservative."
That's true. Some businesspeople are conservative, but not all of them. If you're an executive or a professional, all this means is that you have to tone down your sales letter to meet your market. You have to tailor your approach to your recipient (choose the right appeal).
There are at least five kinds of letters:
When you draft your thoughts, think about who will receive them. A doctor? A lawyer? A union steward?
If you're conservative, you can still use a marketing letter, but cool it off to match your audience. It's still a sales letter, because it's selling, but it's a subtle soft-sell. It's less obvious, but it's loaded with benefits for the reader.
As you page through this collection, you'll find examples of soft-sell letters that any professional could feel comfortable sending. | <urn:uuid:68913a39-77c5-4eaa-845f-7481a4202ddd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cover-letters.com/Cover-Letters/About-Cover-Letters/How-To-Write-A-Great-Letter/To-Summarize.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964187 | 330 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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KUT News Staff
While State Cemetery Prospers, Austin Resting Place in Disrepair
Cemeteries in many cities are considered important historical places, memorials to famous and influential people. Consider the Granary in Boston, Highgate in London, the Pere Lachaise in Paris. But in Austin only one cemetery fits that category – and the State Cemetery is maintained by Texas.
And the contrast between the state cemetery in Austin and the city owned ones - is breathtaking.
Dewayne Hill walks through the tombs of the Texas State Cemetery at Seventh and Navasota Streets. “I see nice headstones,” he says, “the lawn is manicured, the tombstones taken care off. Basically, it’s nice.”
There’s a pond. Birds are chirping. A Texas flag is flying proudly.
Just a few blocks from the state cemetery is Oakwood Cemetery. At his office in the Parks and Recreation Department, Gilbert Hernandez lists some of the differences between the two places.
“We have irrigation systems that were installed in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and have not been upgraded since – you know? We also have facilities that are not ADA or code compliant,” Hernandez says. “We have fences that have to be either refurbished or repaired.”
A metal bridge at Oakwood is completely corroded and falling apart. Headstones are damaged, trees listing. The list goes on.
Harry Bradley is the state cemetery’s superintendent. He says there’s a couple of reasons why the state cemetery looks like a park. For one, the place went through extensive renovations in the 1990’s. And since then, the state has been committed to its maintenance.
“I came here before the renovation project started out,” Bradley says. “I worked for Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock and it was his big project. We wanted the cemetery to look as nice as the state capitol.”
Texans pay about half a million dollars a year to up-keep the cemetery. That figure includes staff salaries.
The city will not discuss the cost of maintaining its five cemeteries. For the last 20-plus years, a subcontracting company has managed them, with an independent budget – and complaints and reports of poor maintenance have risen during that time. As of March, that relationship is over. The city is requesting bids from new contractors.
Gilbert Hernandez with the Austin Parks and Recreation Department says in the future, the city will oversee bringing the cemeteries into this century.
“The voters in that regard dedicated two million dollars in the 2012 bond program specifically for cemeteries,” Hernandez says. “So, we anticipate that that will – you know? – help us deal with some of these long term differed maintenance items that currently exist.”
Hernandez adds that – for the first time - the city has started the process to develop a cemetery master plan. Phase one will be unveiled this fall. | <urn:uuid:ec96d98d-752d-4275-ac83-fcdedb677abd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kutnews.org/post/while-state-cemetery-prospers-austin-resting-place-disrepair | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961761 | 735 | 1.679688 | 2 |
We want our students to pursue excellence in their music-making and to create wonderfully as God created wonderfully. The Bible has much to say about music and its purpose for humanity. LCA desires for its students to grapple with these elements as well as to develop his or her talent to its full potential. We want students to remember that music is a way to offer thanks to God for all that He has given us. Music is a gift enjoyed by God and also by the makers of the musical praises themselves. Whether or not students intend to pursue music as a vocation, we seek to equip them with technical skills essential for reading, interpreting, and performing music as well as an understanding of both musical history and theory.
It is our hope that when students leave LCA, they will have a resume of meaningful performance experiences. We also expect that they will have grasped truths that justify and bring meaning to their musical performance and which enable them to communicate with their listeners. At Lexington Christian Academy, students have the privilege of studying music with the knowledge of the truth that it was created and given to us by God, and to explore all the implications of that truth. Here at LCA, students have the unique opportunity to be prepared physically, intellectually, socially and spiritually for a life of music-making. | <urn:uuid:3a29ed84-27dd-4c1a-b588-dd4b025336d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lca.edu/page.cfm?p=360 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986789 | 260 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Credit default swaps have allowed banks and investors to improve the management of their credit risk, but they may represent a lurking source of contagion in a crisis.
When credit default swaps (CDSs) were introduced in the early 1990s, they offered banks a valuable new tool for managing credit risk. In an era when banks tended to originate and hold credit risk, portfolios largely reflected the lender's regional footprints, and industry and credit-assessment expertise developed to deal with the characteristics of locally active firms. While a modest market in whole loans did exist, and syndication of large loans was a well-established practice, banks still found it hard to avoid credit portfolio concentrations driven by their particular market circumstances.
One incentive for banks to merge and broaden their market reach was to improve diversification of their portfolios. I have argued elsewhere1 that, as end-users, smaller regional banks gained more from the emergence of liquid credit risk transfer instruments than global giants. The anonymity of CDS contracts allowed regional banks to continue serving established clients, where their industry expertise and experience gave them a competitive edge, while limiting excessive portfolio concentrations by buying credit protection in the CDS market.
Of course, the above discussion relates to the impact of the CDS market on banks as end-users of these instruments. The impact of CDS contracts on banks as market-makers is a separate discussion. Market-makers stand ready to buy or sell an instrument subject to a bid-offer spread. The realities of day-to-day deal flows require them to hold temporary open positions. Nevertheless, market-makers seek to maintain a broadly balanced book in the long-run by adjusting their bid-offer spreads, to encourage the type of trades that reduce such exposures and discourage the ones that increase them. Of course, if exposures reach unacceptable levels, they may be forced to pay away the bid-offer spread to another professional market-maker to bring their positions closer to balance.
A well-known aspect of the financial crisis that struck in earnest in September 2008 was that one major player - namely, AIG Financial Products - was not behaving in the manner just described. Rather than running a more or less balanced book, it was simply writing unhedged insurance on what became almost $500 billion of largely unexamined credit exposure. It seems unlikely any player in today's CDS market is following such a foolhardy strategy. Nevertheless, the CDS market may represent a lurking source of systemic risk in the face of the snowballing eurozone crisis.
It has been interesting to see the term 'counterparty risk' tripping off the tongues of politicians and pundits of all kinds. At least it indicates a useful broadening of interest in this important subject. However, the CDS market presents a particularly dangerous form of this type of risk. In part, this is because CDS exposure represents a form of systemic wrong-way risk: CDS contracts are triggered by defaults that inevitably rise during a severe business downturn, which simultaneously strains the financial stability of major market-makers.
A second source of concern is that the sport exposures of CDS trades balloon dramatically when companies once thought to be sound begin to experience credit down-grades. The usual method of estimating potential future exposure involves simulating values at a level of confidence somewhere between 95% and 99%. Since the default likelihood of high-grade names is typically below 1%, these methods tend to yield CDS exposure estimates that are a very small proportion of the full face amount of protection sold. When an underlying reference name is suddenly downgraded, this exposure can balloon to a large multiple of the previously estimated amount.
In this situation, stress testing is an essential component of effective risk management. Fortunately, the CDS book lends itself to a simple calculation in this respect. Banks and supervisors should be examining the implications of a default by Greece and all other potentially suspect eurozone countries on the configuration of exposure of all CDS market-makers. Assuming there are no foolhardy players such as AIG that are just writing unhedged insurance policies, such a stress test will yield only a modest increase in net exposure. What is far more interesting is how such a default would alter the gross long and short positions that would underlie that net exposure.
The most likely way fallout from a European sovereign default could damage US banks would be if a significant portion of their purchased CDS hedges were written by a European bank that also had direct exposure to the defaulting country. Individual bank management should have a thorough grasp of how one or more European sovereign defaults would scramble the composition of the gross long and short positions in their CDS books. Supervisors can potentially go further, by sharing information on which banks would be worst affected by the initial default and so present a secondary threat to other market-makers to which they have sold protection.
1 See Rowe D, Competitive Implications of Holistic Balance-sheet Management, The RMA Journal, July-Aug 2008, pages 76-77. | <urn:uuid:ed0dd4de-ea38-4282-80a4-a05dd409c7f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kamakuraco.com/DavidMRowePHD/tabid/389/EntryId/357/CDSs-Lubricant-or-Landmine.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954411 | 1,009 | 1.890625 | 2 |
A new century of social innovation
Man has in him two distinct master impulses, the individualistic and the communal, a personal life and a social life, a personal motive of conduct and a social motive of conduct. The possibility of their opposition and the attempt to find their equation lie at the very roots of human civilisation.
-- Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man
The upcoming decades will be different from what has gone before. Our global society is in the midst of great transformations that will usher in new social and cultural formations. Many nations have been living the high life as a result of the prosperity afforded by rapid industrial, technological and material growth. The long tail of this -- the technological revolution -- has been fundamental in stretching tentacles of dependency far and wide. Complex structures of supply, demand and energy are now near to their breaking points.
The new century for humankind begins as the traditional structures provided by governments and social and political institutions are overwhelmed and no longer capable of serving humankind in its best interests. Problems and difficulties are likely to continue rising up, like a tsunami, and manifesting in our immediate social environments. Yet unlike a natural tsunami, these social uprisings can also serve to clean the slate and clear the brushwood. They can provide the opportunity for individuals and communities to re-evaluate their life priorities. It can be a time for reconstruction and reorientation based on newly-emerging perceptions of how better to lead a fulfilling life. Yet this outcome, perhaps, will not be for everyone: There will still be many who choose to return to the old, familiar, tried-and tested ways. However, this will prove difficult, as some of the old systems will no longer be functional.
New forms of social innovation need to be encouraged to emerge from the chrysalis of the fossilized structures. By this it is meant that more appropriate and creative social, economic, technological, cultural and political edifices can replace current dysfunctional systems. For example, new -- or previous -- skill sets can return for inclusion in our social and community roles. This may force many people to shift from office and administration jobs, from the service and manufacturing sectors, toward functions that serve a regional and localized need. These may include community teaching (in both theory and practical skills), maintenance and construction, localized economies (both currency and barter), permaculture, farming, creative inventions, regional management, community committees and more. Many farms may need to shift (or return) to organic forms of agriculture and crop growth in order to combat the rise in soil depletion. As many of us are now aware, petrochemicals and synthetic fertilizers negatively polarize the soil. While they may produce apparently abundant growth in the short term, in the long term they deplete the soil and exhaust its natural growing capability. The food produced is thus often lacking in nutrients and minerals. In short, many methods now employed will be forced, or catalyzed, into change.
Never doubt that individuals have the necessary skills to respond to critical needs. As the expression goes, necessity is the mother of invention. New knowledge sets can be learned and passed on; apprenticeships can become widespread once again as sustainable skill sets become more valuable and appreciated than institutional and service-sector jobs. Never doubt that communities can find the resources to reshape local cohesion and growth. Creativity and inventiveness are central to the human talent for tinkering. Innovation is the prerogative of people, not the governments. Let us not forget that transformation comes from the tiniest changes.
As events begin to unfold around the world and social changes become more manifest, it is likely that more and more people will feel the "pull-and-push" toward downsizing and re-evaluating their life principles and needs. The old thinking and energies of self-survival and material gain will need to be replaced with a new paradigm of creation, communication and collaboration. The new imperatives and opportunities now arising will require us to embark on a path toward revitalized partnership relations of community. The era of global excess and greed, which filtered down to the masses as consumer excess and credit greed, is no longer a viable future path. We have now been getting a wake-up call we cannot ignore. As one-time business advisor David Korten put it: "Rather than to give in to despair in this often frightening time, let us rejoice in the privilege of being alive at a moment of creative opportunity unprecedented in the human experience ... Let our descendants look back on this time as the time of the Great Turning, when humanity made a bold choice to birth a new era devoted to actualizing the higher potentials of our human nature -- We are the ones we have been waiting for."
We have been waiting for the opportunity and challenge to adjust to new changes. In this respect, we have been waiting long enough for what will be an epochal transition. The challenges facing us are not so much about a "one-off change," which once enacted will leave us to sit comfortably in our newly-adapted state. Rather, we are being encouraged to shift into a permanent state of adaptation so as to be better placed to face uncertainty. Such uncertainties may push social affairs toward reorganization at more contracted levels and scales of activity. In the face of these contractions, individuals need to start thinking soon about what courses of action to take. We can walk into the future willingly, or we can be back-flipped kicking and screaming like children. Either way, it seems highly likely that novel social innovations are coming down the line.
According to social commentator James Howard Kunstler, those of us who presently live in the comfortable Western countries are facing "the comprehensive downscaling, rescaling, downsizing, and relocalizing of all our activities, a radical reorganization of the way we live in the most fundamental particulars." This may come as a shock to many people who are still somewhat unaware of the vast changes occurring in the world today. Yet does this mean we are to be transported back into the Dark Ages where tumultuous events will play out over a prolonged period of time? Not necessarily; rather it may be the case, I suspect, that once the social turbulence has passed, which may well be a relatively short-lived situation rather than a protracted one, there will be a different kind of age. It may well be a return to values and relationships no longer obscured by unbalance and folly. And it could very well lead to a new century of social innovation. This is my hope. | <urn:uuid:819759de-71a7-432e-9744-dbbe84e6173d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.saybrook.edu/forum/phs/new-century-social-innovation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947904 | 1,329 | 2.515625 | 3 |
For every young Chinese woman in 1930s Shanghai, following the path of duty takes precedence over personal desires
For Feng, that means becoming the bride of a wealthy businessman in a marriage arranged by her parents. In the enclosed world of the Sang household—a place of public ceremony and private cruelty—fulfilling her duty means bearing a male heir.
The life that has been forced on her makes Feng bitter and resentful, and she plots a terrible revenge. But with the passing years comes a reckoning, and Feng must reconcile herself with the sacrifices and terrible choices she has made in order to assure her place in the family and society—even as the violent, relentless tide of revolution engulfs her country.
Here is what The Queen Bee had to say....
<br /> Both a sweeping historical novel and an intimate portrait of one woman’s struggle against tradition, All the Flowers in Shanghai marks the debut of a sensitive and revelatory writer.
This is the story of Feng and her life in 1930's Shanghai. As her sister is prepared to marry into the very wealthy Sang family, Feng is living the innocent life of a young teenager. Taking walks with her grandfather, meeting a boy and falling in love. Her life as the second daughter would be devoted to her parents, as they grow older she will be with them to care for them. Then, just before the wedding, her sister gets ill and dies. To save face the family offers Feng as a substitute for her sister. It is decided. In Shanghai, saving face is of utmost importance. Have a daughter marry in to a wealthy family brings up the status of the brides family. She was given no say in the matter. Once a bride marries she goes off to live with her husband's family, seeing her own family maybe only once or twice a year. Her husband's family, the Sangs, did not care for the new daughter-in-law but would wait to see if she produced an heir. She did get pregnant, but had a baby girl and as an act of spite gave her away. An action that would haunt her the rest of her life.
If you have read any of Lisa Lee's books about life in China, you know that although these books are fiction they are based on facts. Very hard to understand how anyone, especially a woman, ever survived life in these places and times. I liked this book. It was alittle slow to start but I found myself picking it up every night to read a few more chapters. Recommended.
It sounds like a great read to me and I can't wait to dive into it! You can pick up your copy today on Amazon...
I am so excited to tell you that Harper Collins is giving one lucky RBM reader a copyof All the Flowers in Shanghai! Thanks so much to the sponsor and here is how to enter...
a Rafflecopter giveaway Pin It | <urn:uuid:7dcd6849-c2b7-4718-a7d1-53977c4a0e62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reviewedbymom.blogspot.com/2012/02/all-flowers-in-shaghaireview-giveaway.html?showComment=1329790261290 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979103 | 592 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Veggies as Tasty as Candy: The Quest for the Perfect Tomato
If junk food is carefully engineered to be as addictive as possible, should scientists do the same for vegetables? Humans have evolved to love sweetness; tens of thousands of years ago (or even much more recently), the calories that sugar provides might have meant survival. Now, the craving for sweetness drives the candy industry and growing waistlines. But sugar isn't the only source of a sweet taste, as Rachel Nuwer reports at the Smithsonian:
The sweetness of a farmer’s market strawberry or a hand-picked blueberry comes largely from volatiles, or chemical compounds in food that readily become fumes. Our nose picks up on and interacts with dozens of these flavorful fumes in any given food, perfuming each bite with a specific flavor profile. The sensations received by smell and taste receptors interact in the same area of the brain, the thalamus, where our brain processes them to project flavors such as sweetness.
By changing the volatiles within a piece of produce—but not the sugar levels—scientists can theoretically make healthy food so much tastier that people actually want to eat more of it. Harry Klee, a researcher at the University of Florida, is using volatiles in his quest for the perfect tomato.
The bland, flavorless tomato that's so common now is a result of consumers wanting to eat it out of season, Klee says in this interview. In the 1940s, growers started breeding cheaper tomatoes that could last through the winter. The tomatoes lasted, but the flavor disappeared. Klee has been working for several years to bring it back, through a process of breeding—aided by genomics—that selects the best traits of heirloom tomatoes, and the perfect blend of volatiles, with a perfect piece of produce as the result.
In some ways, it seems like a noble quest. He isn't using genetic modification, just cross-breeding varieties of tomatoes using the best available scientific information. But do we really need to redesign the tomato? Why shouldn't we just eat existing heirloom tomatoes only when they're in-season locally, and already delicious? If getting people to eat healthier food is a design challenge, maybe it's one that should focus on behavior change rather than changing the food itself (or on marketing, as in this study that found placing an Elmo sticker on an apple made elementary students 65 percent more likely to eat it).
This month, we're challenging the GOOD community to host a dinner party and cook a meal that contains fewer ingredients than the number of people on the guest list. Throughout March, we'll share ideas and resources for being more conscious about our food and food systems. Join the conversation at good.is/food and on Twitter at #chewonit.
Original tomato image via Shutterstock. | <urn:uuid:87ad7ce3-190e-4209-a3ec-730f9d871534> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.good.is/posts/veggies-as-tasty-as-candy-the-quest-for-the-perfect-tomato | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95782 | 580 | 2.75 | 3 |
I was treated with chemo and radiation for Ewing Sarcoma at the age of 12, 26 years ago. The tumor was on the tibia right below the knee. Since then I the leg has atrophied to 50% of the size and has lost many functionalities. Some Dr.'s have attributed this to fibrosis of the veins. Qs.
1- Is there anyways to stop the atrophy?
2- Will exercise improve the limb or further accelerate the atrophy?
3- Is there any cosmetic suggestion for coping with the disfigurement?
It is impossible to say with confidence the reason for the atrophy of the limb. However, it is reasonable to conclude that the sarcoma, or the treatment of the sarcoma, are likely to be in some way responsible.
Please consult a neurologist for advise.
All the best, and God Bless!
The Content on this Site is presented in a summary fashion, and is intended to be used for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as medical advice or a diagnosis of any health or fitness problem, condition or disease; or a recommendation for a specific test, doctor, care provider, procedure, treatment plan, product, or course of action. Med Help International, Inc. is not a medical or healthcare provider and your use of this Site does not create a doctor / patient relationship. We disclaim all responsibility for the professional qualifications and licensing of, and services provided by, any physician or other health providers posting on or otherwise referred to on this Site and/or any Third Party Site. Never disregard the medical advice of your physician or health professional, or delay in seeking such advice, because of something you read on this Site. We offer this Site AS IS and without any warranties. By using this Site you agree to the following Terms and Conditions. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your physician or 911 immediately. | <urn:uuid:92427b67-80a8-471f-9ce4-367574c62d9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Chemotherapy/Post-Cancer-treatment-severe-atrophy-of-the-limb/show/1035671 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943775 | 401 | 1.773438 | 2 |
This is a generic question. Let me put forth an example scenario. Say, I had 2 techniques for allocating my daily budget within 4 stocks. Upon allocation, I get the data about the stock's performance the next day. (Am lazy, and go to a movie after allocation).
Problem 1:I have to evaluate or come up with an experimental design to test the two techniques in this sequential experiment over a given number of days.
Problem 2 with caveat: If I split my budget into half and have "one" of the two techniques allocate it amongst the four stocks in the same quantities in two parallel experiments at the same time-I find the following issue on the second day. Though everything from the budget to the allocation was the same. Both the experiments gave different performances -the next day- due to the randomness in the system. Under this situation- where performances are different even under "one" technique- How would I evaluate or design an experiment for comparing two techniques over a given number of days?
Problem 3: If instead of getting the performances the next day- I get minute by minute or hourly performances, and would like to evaluate the two technqiues-what would be your line of thought? | <urn:uuid:6bf270f1-52e6-4c31-9ea8-1a5d9839a1ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/24371/sequential-experiment-controlled-design-and-metrics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945435 | 248 | 1.59375 | 2 |
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama _ Calhoun Community College acted responsibly in modifying expansion plans for its Huntsville campus.
After the state Board of Education last year rejected plans for Calhoun to buy 51 acres to build a new facility in nearby Thornton Research Park, Calhoun last week submitted a request to expand its existing campus building off Wynn Drive.
The revamped $34 million plan calls for a new parking garage and a three-story addition in space now occupied by Sci-Quest Hands-on Science Center, which announced in July it was relocating to Madison.
Expanding Calhoun's Huntsville campus, rather than building anew, will be more cost effective. The parking deck signals confidence that enrollment will remain strong for years to come.
The makeover will give Calhoun's industrial-looking education building a modern new look that may attract other nearby redevelopment. The long-closed Chrysler building across the street would be a great place to start.
The Wynn expansion drew no pushback when unveiled at the state Board of Education meeting last week. The proposal will face a final board vote Aug. 23.
"We kept our heads high (after the Thornton site rejection last year) and we told people we would go back and look at options," Calhoun spokeswoman Janet Martin told reporter Paul Gattis of The Times.
State school board member Charles Elliott of Decatur, whose district includes Calhoun's main campus in Decatur, told Gattis he likes the current plan better than the one he voted against last year that called for a $3.8 million land purchase in Thornton Research Park near the Bridge Street Town Centre, then investing $60 million to $70 million in capital projects on the new campus.
Elliott also said he liked that Calhoun was remaining at its current footprint, which he said is a "more appropriate use of funds."
The revised expansion plan calls for $20 million in renovation and expansion, $12 million for a multistory parking deck and $2 million to restructure the campus traffic flow. A glass-and-brick look will be added to the front of the existing Calhoun building to match the new structure.
A wild card in Calhoun's Huntsville campus expansion is how that would impact postsecondary rival Drake State Technical College and neighboring four-year universities, Alabama A&M and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Drake, now armed with accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, intends to seek full community college status and expand its general course offerings.
Alabama A&M and UAH could feel the pinch of students who will choose to get some core courses out of the way at Calhoun's expanded Wynn campus rather than having to drive to Calhoun's main campus in Decatur.
Calhoun says its Huntsville campus enrollment is "maxed out" with 4,600 students but the expansion will increase that capacity to 7,500.
At a time when education tax dollars are scarce, state board of education leaders need to find the right balance between providing ease of access for students and avoiding duplication that would strain the education budget even further.
By John Peck for the editorial board. Email: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:698f4abd-2959-4f62-b4da-cf2be2fa7a9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.al.com/times-views/2012/08/growing_calhouns_campus_in_hun.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956394 | 660 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The task was unlike any AT&T's workers had seen before.
Restoring service to a critical cell site on top of a 22-story building with no power in a flood zone presented a big problem: Building codes prevented on-site generators from being installed on the roof, and there was no hope of getting power restored anytime soon.
But 2 Wall Street in New York's financial district, whose cell site serves the New York Stock Exchange, needed to be brought back online quickly after Superstorm Sandy knocked out power everywhere in Manhattan below 39th Street.
"We could prepare for almost every possible situation, but this was unique," said Tom DeVito, AT&T's general manager of the New York and New Jersey region.
The solution DeVito and AT&T's engineers devised to restore service was to bring a gas-powered generator to the sidewalk and snake a 3,000-foot power cord from the generator, up the staircase and to the cell tower. It was a shoestring and bubblegum approach, but it was successful.
There are countless stories of makeshift solutions similar to 2 Wall Street in the wake of Sandy. AT&T carried thousands of feet of cable up 180 Water Street's 26 stories to restore service there. And the nation's second-largest wireless network rolled out temporary "Cells on Wheels" at food and beverage stations set up by the mayor's office around the city, so that people could charge their smartphones and make calls while getting a bite to eat.
About 11,000 AT&T engineers were deployed, working 10 to 12 hour days without a day off for about two weeks to restore service to the region.
"This was one of the biggest mobilization efforts in AT&T's history," DeVito said. "This truly was an unprecedented storm."
AT&T's own New York headquarters were flooded, forcing the company to set up a makeshift command center in the back of its flagship retail store in Times Square. A conference room in the back of the store became DeVito's "war room," where the region's two dozen engineering managers devised a triage process to get the area's most cell sites back online.
Of course, AT&T is not the only telecom that had to undergo herculean efforts to restore cell phone service in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. But Verizon and Sprint declined requests to talk about their post-Sandy operations.
City Hall, the New York Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange were among the first sites to get cell service restored. Then, DeVito and his team labeled the remaining off-line cell sites with an A, B, C or D, prioritizing sites by the ease of their restoration, the number of people served by each tower, and the different characteristics of each site.
Every cell site in the world is unique in some way, but that's particularly true in New York, where building codes, height, access and other factors can vary tremendously. Some had generators that needed to be fueled. Others had air conditioning units that needed to be restored. Others had battery backups that were failing. Each of the cell sites in the area needed its own particular plan.
There are some exceptions in the hardest-hit regions, but practically every AT&T cell site in the storm area has now been restored.
AT&T said it has put several redundancies in place to ensure that its network doesn't become too overloaded again when a number of sites go down, yet DeVito said AT&T was probably as prepared as it could have been. Still, he conceded that Ma Bell may need to continue to harden its infrastructure in the wake of a continuing trend of severe weather.
"The storm of century seems to be happening every year now; that does not go unnoticed," DeVito noted. "When we see risk, we have to plan for the worst and hope for the best."
But there are times when all the planning of the world just can't overcome Mother Nature. | <urn:uuid:5cf7521a-c383-41a1-8d3f-4e95bbac6dd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kjct8.com/news/money/How-AT-T-got-service-back-after-Sandy/-/194312/17401820/-/3sucyp/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974182 | 816 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Vote no and no
The progress of American history can be marked by the slow but consistent march towards equal and fair treatment of all citizens. Every step of that march has made us a better people.
For gay Americans, as for women, minorities, interracial couples, and disabled Americans, today is the best day ever to be an American. Tomorrow will be even better.
The question is simply the speed with which we remove remaining institutional discrimination. This proposed constitutional amendment looks longingly backwards to the days of shame and judgment for gays. Voting it down would have been impossible even 5 years ago, but the march continues. Minnesota has a proud history of national leadership in matters of civil rights, and today, I believe Minnesota will be the first state to vote down this amendment.
In Minnesota, we have an excellent and fair voting system that promotes high levels of participation. This, along with an educated and involved population, results in Minnesota having the highest voter turnout in the nation. This is something to be proud of!
The voter I.D. amendment will change that.
Why pay $33 million of our state and local tax dollars in the first year alone, to fix what currently works exceptionally well? I could think of better purposes for that money!
Even if you are unsure about the moral questions behind voter I.D. and gay marriage, there is another important reason to vote no, no.
Look, we are talking about our Constitution here. You know, that document that exists, in large part, to ensure our liberties? Limiting our civil rights and access to voting is not what our Constitution is for.
Minnesota rocks! Let’s show the rest of the nation why!
Vote no, no! | <urn:uuid:c88a5289-213a-4a4d-9e26-eebc29c7da7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://brainerddispatch.com/opinion/open-forum/2012-10-15/vote-no-and-no | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951467 | 353 | 2.125 | 2 |
Erie Canal Museum
This long, low-slung 1850s building (318 Erie Blvd., at Montgomery St., 315/471-0593, www.eriecanalmuseum.org, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Sat., 10 a.m.–3 p.m. Sun., free admission) was once an Erie Canal weigh station for boats. Today, it’s home to a visitors center, historical exhibits, a theater where a good introductory film on the city is screened, and a 65-foot-long reconstructed canal boat. In the boat remain the original personal effects of some early passengers, including one heart-breaking letter from an Irishwoman who had just buried her husband at sea.
Syracuse is one of New York’s Heritage Areas—loosely delineated historic districts linked by a common theme. The Syracuse theme is transportation, and business and capital. Free walking-tour brochures can be picked up here.
West on Erie Boulevard
Heading west two blocks from the visitors center, you’ll reach the heart of the city, Clinton Square. The former intersection of the Erie Canal and Genesee Valley Turnpike, the square in days past teemed with farmers’ wagons, peddlers’ carts, canal boats, hawkers, musicians, and organ grinders. Today, many free outdoor events are held here.
In the mid-1800s, Clinton Square evolved from a marketplace into a financial center. The four bank buildings along Salina Street—all on the National Register of Historic Places—hark back to those days. The four-sided, 100-foot clock tower on the 1867 Gridley Building was originally lit by gas jets.
At the western end of Clinton Square, near Clinton Street, stands the Jerry Rescue Monument. The monument commemorates William “Jerry” McHenry, born into slavery in North Carolina around 1812. Jerry successfully escaped to Syracuse, where he got a job in a cooper’s shop making salt barrels. There he was discovered and arrested by federal marshals in 1851. A vigilante abolitionist group headed by Gerrit Smith and Dr. Samuel J. May attacked the police station and rescued Jerry, who fled to Canada a few days later. That rescue, which challenged the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was one of the early precipitating events leading up to the Civil War.
One block further west on Erie Boulevard at Franklin Street reigns the stunning Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation building. Completed in 1932, the steel-and-black structure is a superb example of art deco architecture. The edifice is especially worth seeing at night, when it’s lit by colored lights.
Armory Square District
Head south on Franklin Street three blocks, and you’ll find yourself in the redbrick Armory Square District, Syracuse’s answer to Greenwich Village. At one end hulks the old Syracuse Armory, while all around are shops, cafés, and restaurants. The district centers on the junction of Franklin and Walton Streets.
Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology
The old Syracuse Armory now houses the MOST, a.k.a. the Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology (500 S. Franklin St., at W. Jefferson St., 315/425-9068, www.most.org, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wed.–Sun., adults $5, seniors and children 2–11 $4). The MOST moved into this location in 1992. The armory’s former Riding Hall now holds exhibits on the earth, the human body, and the environment; the former Drill Hall showcases a 225-seat IMAX theater (tickets $9). Especially popular with kids are the old 1863 stables, now packed with hands-on exhibits, and the Silverman Planetarium.
Just 1.5 blocks east of the MOST stands the 2,922-seat Landmark Theatre (362 S. Salina St., at E. Jefferson St., 315/475-7979, www.landmarktheatre.org, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Fri., tours by appointment), designed in 1928 by Thomas Lamb, a preeminent movie-palace architect. The building’s relatively sedate exterior does little to prepare you for its riotous interior—an ornate Indo-Persian fantasy bestrewn with gold carvings. Nearly destroyed by a wrecking ball in the 1970s, the Landmark is now a beloved local institution.
Onondaga Historical Association Museum
One of the best county museums in New Yoprk State, the Onondaga Historical Association Museum (321 Montgomery St., between E. Jefferson and Fayette Sts., 315/428-1864, www.cnyhistory.org, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Wed.–Fri., 11 a.m.–4 p.m. Sat.–Sun., free admission) covers virtually every aspect of Central New York’s history, from the Onondaga Nation and early African American settlers to the Erie Canal and the salt industry. One display explores the 50 breweries that once operated in Syracuse; another, the city’s natural history. A plethora of historic maps, photographs, paintings, and artifacts are displayed.
Everson Museum of Art
Housed in a sleek 1968 building designed by I. M. Pei, the Everson (401 Harrison St., at State St., 315/474-6064, www.everson.org, noon–5 p.m. Tues.–Fri. and Sun., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Sat., free admission) contains one of the world’s largest collections of ceramics. The museum also displays small but fine collections of 18th-century American portraits, African and Latin American folk art, and contemporary photography. Temporary exhibits usually focus on one major American artist such as Winslow Homer, Ansel Adams, or Helen Frankenthaler.
© Avalon Travel and Sascha Zuger from Moon New York State, 5th Edition | <urn:uuid:da024444-38aa-42d8-8da0-79e6a9269982> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.moon.com/destinations/new-york-state/the-finger-lakes/syracuse/sights/downtown-sights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911246 | 1,271 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Weapons Technicians maintain and repair weapons, weapons systems and ancillary equipment. They are members of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Branch of the Canadian Forces. They also are responsible for the maintenance and repair of miscellaneous equipment such as scales, hydraulic lifts, locks and security containers, personal flotation devices, rebreathers, and equipment for heating, cooking and lighting in the field.
Weapons Technicians are primarily responsible for the maintenance and repair of the following equipment:
- Rifles, submachine-guns and handguns
- Machine-guns and non guided anti-tank weapons
- Sub-calibre adapters
- Training devices, including simulators
- Grenade projectors, mortars and launcher systems
- Light weapons and turret systems for armoured fighting vehicles
Weapons Technicians are employed at bases and stations across Canada and on deployed operations around the world. They experience the unique adventures and challenges that come with working in different environments. While on a base, they may be working in small spaces, like a workshop. In the field or on deployment they may work outdoors most of the time or in temporary accommodations.
The starting salary for a fully-trained Weapons Technician is $49,400 per year; however, depending on previous experience and training the starting salary may be higher.
Weapons Technicians who demonstrate the required ability, dedication and potential are selected for opportunities for career progression, promotion and advanced training.
The first stage of training is the Basic Military Qualification course, or Basic Training, held at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. This training provides the basic core skills and knowledge common to all trades. A goal of this course is to ensure that all recruits maintain the Canadian Forces physical fitness standard; as a result, the training is physically demanding.
After Basic Training, Army recruits go to a Military Training centre for the Soldier Qualification course for approximately one month, which covers the following topics:
- Army Physical Fitness
- Dismounted Offensive and Defensive Operations
- Reconnaissance Patrolling
- Advanced Weapons Handling
- Individual Field Craft
Weapons Technicians attend the Canadian Forces School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering in Borden, Ontario for 35 weeks. Through a combination of instruction, demonstrations and practical work, they learn the following subjects:
- Care and use of common and special tools and electrical test equipment
- Operation and principles of weapon systems
- Electricity and hydraulics
- Use of firearms, pyrotechnics and grenades
- Maintenance of small arms, mortars, recoilless rifles, towed field guns, self-propelled weapons, and turret systems for armoured fighting vehicles
- Basic identification and handling of ammunition
- Alignment of sighting devices
- Test-firing weapons
- Knowledge of various ancillary equipment
- Basic Soldiering skills, including fieldcraft, rescue techniques and first aid and
- Operation of light armoured vehicles, armoured reconnaissance vehicles and armoured personnel carriers
Weapons Technicians are posted to a unit on a Canadian Forces Base for about 18 months of on-job training which resembles a civilian apprenticeship program.
Weapons Technicians may be offered the opportunity to develop specialized skills through formal courses and on-the-job training, including attending further technical training. At the end of this training phase, a Weapons Technician's trade knowledge, skills and experience are comparable to those of a civilian journeyman.
There is also the possibility of taking training to reach Supervisor and Manager levels. The Supervisor level course takes about 15 weeks, and the Manager level course takes about nine weeks.
As they progress in their career, Weapons Technicians who demonstrate the required ability and potential will be offered advanced training. Available courses include:
- High Security Containers and Locking Devices
- Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer
- Leopard Tank
- GIAT Light Towed Howitzer
- Air Defence/Anti-Tank Missile System
- 35-mm Twin Anti-Aircraft Gun
This position is available for part-time employment through the Reserves. Reservists generally work part-time for a Reserve unit in their community. They are not posted or required to do a military move. However, they can volunteer to move to another base. They may also volunteer for deployment on a military mission within or outside Canada.
Reservists train with their home unit to ensure that they meet the required professional standards of the job. If additional training is required in order to specialize skills, arrangements will be made by the home unit.
Typically, Reservists work or train with their home unit for at least four evenings and one weekend per month, from September to May of each year. They are paid 85% of Regular Force rates of pay and receive a reasonable benefits package. | <urn:uuid:ad5e1a3e-0a09-4cf5-b26d-95be3c4c14cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recruiting.dnd.ca/en/job/weaponstechnicianland-38?s=68&t=20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944547 | 972 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Putting personas under the microscope
We recently came across a research study conducted by Frank Long at the National College of Art and Design that investigated the value of personas as a design tool. In his research paper, titled "Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design," Long concludes:
The results showed that, through using personas, designs with superior usability characteristics were produced. They also indicate that using personas provides a significant advantage during the research and conceptualization stages of the design process.
I’m impressed by Long’s efforts to gather evidence to support the claims of persona fans like myself, and am not surprised by the positive outcomes attributed to the use of personas. But in the debate over personas’ usefulness, I’m not quite ready to spike the ball and call it game over just yet.
As we all know, skeptics of personas abound. I won’t be dedicating my life to converting the non-believers, but I hate to see designers dismiss a useful tool simply because its’ worth has not been adequately demonstrated to them. Frank Long’s research is a great start, but I suspect that more work is needed to deliver compelling evidence that will persuade the detractors.First, a common understanding of the craft of developing and using personas is needed. Like any tool, personas must be made and employed properly in order to yield the best results. To this end, the Long study highlights an interesting phenomenon: Depicting personas with a sketch rather than a photograph impacts their effectiveness. The sketched persona felt, well, sketchy - and the design work that followed suffered as a result:
Using illustrations instead of photographs of the persona would seem to reduce effectiveness. It can lead to selective consideration of the persona characteristics and can increase the risk of self-referential details being superimposed onto the persona. The study also reported a lower level of empathy towards the illustrated persona and a diminished ability among students to recall details about the persona after time.
Another major aspect of effective persona use that is often overlooked is the importance of giving personas a workout, rather than simply creating them and then setting them aside. While personas alone are useful in establishing a common understanding of who the users are, their true power is realized when they are put to work in scenarios. Scenarios describe how the persona will ideally interact with the new system or service in order to achieve his or her goals. In so doing, scenarios elicit key requirements, and serve as the first broad strokes of the design. Though it makes little mention of them, the Long study used scenarios in conjunction with personas, maximizing their benefit.
Further investigation into the usefulness of personas presents an exciting opportunity to elevate the persona debate from the slippery slopes of opinion to the terra firma of evidence. Subsequent studies would ideally be conducted outside of an academic setting, include a larger sample size, and avoid secondary investigations into materials that may cloud results. They should also continue to follow best practice approaches for persona development and use, such as depicting the personas with photographs rather than sketches, and putting personas through their paces in scenarios throughout the design process. Here at Cooper, we’re not particularly well-positioned to take on an impartial research study of the efficacy of our methods, but we welcome scrutiny from academics and practitioners alike, and hope to see more investigations that pick up where Mr. Long left off. | <urn:uuid:ea7fe4b2-f15f-4386-9a85-0b2a6340ea9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cooper.com/journal/2009/06/measuring_the_effectiveness_of.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94579 | 708 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Genealogy in Grisolia
If you know (or you think) that your ancestors were from Grisolia, you could find info about your Italian family at Registrar of Vital Statistics in the City Office or at the parishes.
Registry offices in Calabria and in Cosenza province were established in early 1800: it means that you could find information in Grisolia registrar as of that date.
Before to start your genealogy research in Grisolia, we suggest you to read our tips for your search . They are useful to search in Italy and in Grisolia too.
In the next picture you can see the demographic trends in Grisolia from the Italian Unification (1861).
It could be important to know if the last name you are investigating is a frequent surname in Grisolia. As more your surname is common in Grisolia, as more it could be difficult to find the right info about your ancestors in Grisolia archives if you have not exact dates.
It could be useful for you to know that some of the most common surnames in Cosenza province are:
Aiello, Barone, Bruno, Caputo, Caruso, Chiappetta, De Luca, De Marco, De Rose, Esposito, Falcone, Ferraro, Filice, Fusaro, Gabriele, Gagliardi, Gallo, Garofalo, Gaudio, Gencarelli, Gentile, Giordano, Greco, Guido, Leone, Longo, Madeo, Marino, Martino, Mazzei, Morrone, Nicoletti, Nigro, Palermo, Perri, Perrone, Porco, Presta, Pugliese, Rizzo, Romano, Ruffolo, Russo, Salerno, Santoro, Spadafora, Sposato, Veltri.
Church archives in Cosenza province may instead contain even older information, but they are far less accessible from abroad (and almost impossible by email).
Then,parishes send information not easily.
If you have the opportunity to visit Grisolia and Cosenza province, you could plan to investigate churches’ archives by yourself, but from abroad is very difficult to obtain any result unless you find a reliable local help.
Another important source of information is the “Archivio di Stato” (National archive) in Reggio Calabria.
In any case, never give up! Probably the distance from your country and Italy, some difficulties in understanding and in translation, could complicate your search but this should not discourage you.
It’s important to plan your activities to carry on with simple goals (eg. search for a single date of birth, the name of an ancestor, the date of a marriage, etc.)
If you are interested to start or to continue your genealogy research in Grisolia, or if you have questions regarding your family tree
or your research is in a dead end and you need some help
Write us to firstname.lastname@example.org and we will try to help you! | <urn:uuid:67dbfe69-2279-4edf-b2c2-25d7a9a2bce4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.italianside.com/calabria/cosenza/grisolia/genealogy/ | 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 | 0.913668 | 651 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Jim Mone/Associated Press
Jim Mone/Associated Press
NEW YORK – In cities with professional hockey teams, it seems the only thing on ice these days is sales – at least at the bars, restaurants and other small businesses that cater to sports fans.
Bars and restaurants normally filled to capacity in St. Paul, Minn., on nights when there’s a Minnesota Wild game have empty tables. An impasse between the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association has resulted in games being canceled at the nearby Xcel Energy Center. That means fewer people are coming into town.
Business at the Great Waters Brewing Co., a brewpub located near the Xcel Center, is down 20 percent since the start of the lockout. For owner Sean O’Byrne, it’s a painful reminder of the 2004-05 lockout that wiped out the entire NHL season.
But he says the current dispute, which so far has resulted in games being canceled through November, is harder because small businesses like his are still recovering from the Great Recession.
“The economic times are different now, and I think the one thing that’s become apparent to me is the sort of ripple effect the hockey strike has,” he says. “It’s not just the bars and restaurants, it’s the local food vendors and their suppliers.”
Strikes and lockouts in major sports leagues – whether it’s this year’s NHL lockout, last year’s National Basketball Association lockout or baseball and football strikes of the past – can have a devastating effect on small businesses that cater to sports fans.
When 18,000 fans don’t stream into a downtown arena on a game night, restaurants and bars have far fewer people to serve and parking lots can sit empty. There are fewer shoppers in downtown stores.
It’s particularly painful in a town like St. Paul or Pittsburgh, where there’s no NBA team to help make up for the losses. And it’s tough for a business still being hurt by a weak economy.
So far, the NHL has canceled more than a quarter of the season. Each team plays 42 home games. The impact of the lockout stretches across 30 teams in U.S. cities including Nashville, Tenn., Los Angeles and Raleigh, N.C. Twenty-three of the teams are in the U.S. and the rest are in Canada.
In Pittsburgh, each canceled game at the Consol Energy Center is estimated to cost the city $2.2 million, says Craig Davis, president of VisitPittsburgh, the city’s tourism office. That amount includes tickets and food sales at the arena, spending at restaurants and bars, hotel rooms and parking. Not all of that money is lost by small businesses – many hotels, for example, are owned by big corporations. And downtown Pittsburgh hosts conventions during the fall, which helps mitigate some of the financial damage.
Still, for small companies that benefit from having a hockey team nearby, the timing couldn’t be worse.
“Businesses are coming out of the worst six years in the economy, and so they’re already in a precarious position,” says St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman. “They’re completely dependent on 42 days of hockey to make their year.”
St. Paul and nearby Minneapolis are big hockey towns. The previous NHL team, the North Stars, played in nearby Bloomington until they moved to Dallas in 1993. The Wild began playing in 2000. And the University of Minnesota team has many local fans.
St. Paul businesses had particularly high hopes for this season because the Wild recently acquired two big stars, forward Zach Parise and defenseman Ryan Suter, Coleman says.
“It’s a double whammy, the anticipation was so great that coming out of a recession, this was going to be a really good year for us,” he says.
Some business owners changed their approach after the 2004-05 lockout, says Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. One strategy many owners have adopted is to increase their marketing efforts to nearby businesses to expand their customer base, he says.
“A lot of people who saw that lockout as unbelievable and painful said, ‘we’ll never put ourselves in a position again where we’re dependent on a single business,’” Kramer says. “People have tried to be a little more careful about saying, ‘we’re a hockey bar.’”
An owner who can’t escape his connection to hockey is Tom Reid, a former North Stars defenseman who owns Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub, two blocks from the Xcel Center. Reid says his business is down 70 percent on nights when hockey games were scheduled.
The lockout means Reid has no need for his usual contingent of 30 to 35 servers. Right now, he has six.
“We’ve trained some people, but we can’t bring them in until we have the business to support it,” he says. | <urn:uuid:907d0c05-959f-4a52-9d4e-e4eb5c800140> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://durangoherald.com/article/20121028/NEWS04/121029640/0/Spo/NHL-lockout-hurts-small-businesses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964569 | 1,068 | 1.5 | 2 |
One thing i always "ASSumed" about 3D modeling and Consultant Coordination, was that in some way shape or form, everyone would "see" your model, and could derive object locations based on it. So when i heard that (for some reason), we had to provide actual coordinates for a floor opening that is (somewhat) random in design, i was curious. "Aren't they working with our model overlayed?" "Well yes, but..."
I digress. Its not the point anyway. A couple of people in the office began wondering how an object in Revit would report coordinates relative to a structural grid. Granted, the Spot Dim. tool reports coordinates, but our structural grid was not aligned with the coordinate system (and we couldn't adjust, there was another coord. system, etc...) So anyway...
My solution was a simple one, its been done many times. We use Parameters to Drive geometry, so i thought id just reverse engineer a family, so the geometry could drive the Parameters, giving a dimension. Its NOT a 100% intelligent tool, and its certainly not "user-proof," but i don't believe we'll ever be "User proof" :-)
All the family entailed, was two Crosshairs, which i just made from Specialty Equipment Families to be consistent. (The whole assembly is a Spec. Equip. family so it can be scheduled...) In any event, the Distance Parameters have to be shared, obviously... That way they can be reported in a schedule.
Where its UNintelligent, is in the smaller crosshair. Ideally, we could intelligently have it report where it lies, but i dont know of a way to accomplish this. So the accuracy of this tool rests in someone aligning the smaller crosshair to a common "origin" from which to report. With Revit's Multiple Alignment tool, this takes about two seconds. :) The DIMS go to the reference planes, which the Crosshair is locked to. In the project, this gives us pull tabs, which are great for this application.
For ease of use, i prefer to insert them and copy them around so they're already on the "random" points i need coordinates for. You can put them on the "origin" first, and stretch/align them, but then you have a number of points in different locations to deal with. Since they're all connected to the same Critical Origin, i like to get the random points out of the way when i drop them in. Then i can multiple align to the "origin". (I'm using the term in quotes because its not an origin, its just a base point... Just wanted to clarify). the little "legs" hanging out in space are what need to be aligned to a common point. Because of the pull tabs, you can literally just "align" with the Crosshair.
There are the pull tabs, if you choose to go that route... I prefer the align tool for this application, but i can see why it may not be ideal. The align tool is tough if your object isn't parallel with the Crosshair, so i was using a Component that was just an empty crosshair, that i placed on all the Floor Edges ahead of time. Again, not a perfect solution, as it requires of you to accurately pick the points to be located and scheduled.
I think a better solution could be had of those Spot Coordinates... I don't believe we can schedule them, but if we could... Wow, that could go places. Calculated values accounting for the grid orientation shift and/or the "origin" in use... And it would all stay live... BUT, you'd still have to clock the points. So I'm not sure its possible to eliminate us from the game. I guess we all get to keep our jobs today. :) So anyway, i put a bunch of them in, and did the multiple align to the two grids I'm using as my Benchmark.
I have to admit... After a few years at UB doing Ink on Mylar of obscure objects, part of me wanted to print this... for no practical use. But alas, save a tree, hit Print Screen, lol.
Those are all the markers after having the crosshair aligned to the "origin." About ten minutes of work, then i tagged them. That took a while, because we cant specify in the family, WHERE the tag goes in, so it defaults to the center of the family... Which makes me cry in this instance. I had to move the tags, which also is a liability in the fidelity of the model... But, since the coordinates and the schedule will always be right, its a visual mis-cue, if anything.
In the family, i put in a Visibility Parameter for the Connecting Line, so i could shut them off in the end. Here are the markers, with the lines disabled. Pretty simple, really.
Here's the schedule with the values reported. Some of them are horrible numbers (Rays rule for precision...), but that's what it actually is, right? Id like to play around with something similar in principle, but much bigger in design. Maybe take something like one of the Morphosis Buildings, and try breaking it down.
Gehry Tech.'s Digital Project is great at documenting complex relationships, where structure is based on form, which is based on some mathematical algorithm... But one has to wonder: What happens in a case like this, where someone ELSE'S software, that DOESN'T read the formulas, needs values for location off something like that? I liked this exercise for that reason alone... Its easy to say CAD standards are heading by the way side, and Schedules are live, and information now has to be displayed and conveyed in a fashion that doesn't compromise the integrity of our models... But with ArchiCAD, Revit, DP, RISA3D, Solidworks, and on and on and on... There is obviously a communication breakdown, save for things like IFC (which i know little about at this point). So what do we have to look forward to, in terms of breaking down information in to values everyone can appreciate? Because at the end of the day, I'm betting that a gorgeous 3D model isn't turning in to a building unless the Structural guy knows where to put the Steel. :-) | <urn:uuid:484d3988-3c3b-414f-ba6b-0323de6c35d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://malleristicrevitation.blogspot.com/2007/05/revit-random-and-different-platforms.html?showComment=1180784460000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961344 | 1,317 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Phishers caught hook, line and sinker
By Stuart Turton
Posted on 26 Sep 2007 at 16:14
Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have created an online game designed to teach web users how to recognise and avoid phishing attacks.
The game features a fish called Phil which the player must guide to the good worms while avoiding the bad worms, which are identified by their legitimate and fake URL addresses. There are four rounds in the game, each one harder than the previous and focusing on a different type of deceptive URL.
Group tests conducted by the university's Usable Privacy and Security (Cups) lab reveals that people who spend 15 minutes playing the game are better able to identify fraudulent websites than people who spend the same amount of time reading anti-phishing tutorials online.
"We developed this as part of our larger anti-phishing research efforts," Cups Lab director Lorrie Cranor tells PC Pro.
"We have found that anti-phishing education can be effective if you can get people to pay attention to it, but it is difficult to get them to pay attention. We thought that by presenting the materials as a game people would be more interested and engaged."
"We are also working with the US Airforce to deploy it as part of their cyber safety training programme for Airmen. We are also in conversations with a number of large companies about incorporating this game into their employee training programs."
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- Windows 8: what works and what doesn't | <urn:uuid:fdd905a1-6b66-485b-a6b3-5c9a711c4280> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/126386/phishers-caught-hook-line-and-sinker | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941069 | 507 | 2.921875 | 3 |
16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Tuesday, September 12, 1911: Had to run around town this morning and accomplished some errands. Have to sleep with Rufus tonight as the threshers are here.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Rufus refers to Grandma’s sister Ruth. The wheat and oats would have been harvested in last July. It would have been tied into shocks and left to dry in the field. Now a threshing machine would separate the grain from the straw.
The threshing machine would have been a huge steam operated contraption –and lots of labor was required. The owner of the machine would take it from farm to farm —and all of the farmers in the neighborhood would help.
Lots of food would have been needed to feed the men. People in central Pennsylvania used to say that a meal should have seven sweets and seven sours. I wonder if the Muffly women made Spiced Crab Apples for one of the sours to feed the threshers.
Here’s the old recipe that I use to make spiced crab apples. In the old days a large amount of spiced crab apples would have been prepared—and some would have been canned. I’ve adapted the recipe to make a smaller amount—and just store them in the refrigerator rather than canning them.
Spiced Crab Apples (Pickled Crab Apples)
2 pounds crab apples
1 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cup water
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
2 sticks cinnamon
1 piece fresh or dried ginger (approximately 1/2 inch cube)
Wash crab apples, and remove blossom ends; do not remove stems. Prick each crab apple with a fork several to prevent apple from breaking apart while cooking.
Stir vinegar, water, sugar, and spices together in a large saucepan. Bring to a slow boil. Add prepared crab apples and simmer for 25 minutes. Remove from heat and put the mixture into a large glass bowl. Refrigerate overnight. Remove spices from syrup.
The crab apples will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks.
My husband really likes this recipe. He says that it tastes just like Spiced Crab Apples that his Aunt Gertrude made when he was a child–and that they bring back wonderful memories of sitting in her kitchen eating them.
Lynne and Jim–Thank you for the crab apples! | <urn:uuid:ecf2d369-2747-472d-bbad-d85f20a008ff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ahundredyearsago.com/2011/09/12/old-spiced-crab-apple-pickled-crab-apple-recipe/?like=1&_wpnonce=8f8cc21eb5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967486 | 528 | 2.171875 | 2 |
More starts, better parts
The start-stop concept is hardly new. Toyota is said to have begun testing the technology in the mid-1970s on sedans in Tokyo traffic. In the following decades, Volkswagen, Audi, and Citroen introduced it on their production vehicles.
Adoption in the US, where gas prices are lower and highway driving is more prevalent, has been slower. But the technology is coming. To some degree, it has arrived already in the form of motor-generators on full hybrid vehicles, which inherently incorporate start-stop capabilities. It's also present in so-called mild hybrids, which use a motor-generator for start-stop capabilities and regenerative braking, but not for electric propulsion.
This decade's big change will be the emergence of the "micro hybrid" -- a conventional gasoline-burning vehicle that uses an enhanced 12V, gear-based starter to shut down the engine during short stops.
"It's a big change," says Robert Martin, director of engine electrical engineering for Denso International America. "We're talking about 10 times as many starts. If you start your car two or three times a day now, then you might be doing 25 or 30 activations a day with start-stop."
Suppliers say the new breed of starter motors will have to handle anywhere from 250,000 to 350,000 starts over the lifetime of a vehicle, versus about 30,000 today.
As a result, next-generation starters will be designed and built differently. They will still employ magnet-based DC motors and internal planetary gear sets, but all of the wear components -- such as bushings, commutators, and brushes -- will be upgraded. Brushes will migrate from copper to a harder copper-carbon blend. Bushings will be replaced by needle bearings. Commutators will be reinforced. Mechanical components, such as overrunning clutches and engagement mechanisms for the starter's pinion, will also be upgraded. Stainless steel will replace steel and plastic in some components. Springs will be improved.
"You need to consider all kinds of components," says Frank Frister, product manager for the starters and generators division at Robert Bosch LLC, which makes start-stop systems. "The duration of operation is much longer in all of them." | <urn:uuid:7fcfd443-27f3-486f-bc68-5b270a1a5b7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=237015&page_number=2&piddl_msgorder=asc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951693 | 469 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Arizona immigration law faces challenges
The new Arizona law making it a crime to be in the state without proper documentation is already being challenged in federal court and the state promises a vigorous defense. But first, attorneys and law enforcement official are puzzling on how to enforce the new law.
For one thing, it's going to be expensive. And there are all kinds of issues that have to be worked out. Principally, how are you to determine it's not "profiling" when all or most of those stopped look Mexican? How are legal immigrants who are not carrying papers to be handled? Can the county jails handle the crunch? Remember that the state of Arizona has been hit by budget crunch more so than other states. (For the enforcement difficulties see Arizona Republic.)
State prosecutors even fret about how to handle cases in court. The state law is tied to federal law, but to an antiquated law rarely used. It's a federal misdemeanor for an alien who entered the country legally to be here beyond 30 days without registering. The law goes back to the early 1940s and was meant for Nazi and Fascist sympathizers. Also the requirement for registration does not apply to those under 14 years (see Arizona Republic). The law may not be enforceable, even if it gets through court challenges.
Arizona apparently can expect no sympathy at the Supreme Court, if it gets that far. First, it has to wind through federal court, which will be influenced by a recent decision favorable to a legal resident facing deportation.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case of a legal Mexican immigrant who was convicted on two occasions of a misdemeanor drug offense. His convictions led an immigration judge in Texas to deport him because he was guilty of an "aggravated felony." The justices were unanimous in striking down a lower court decision. The offenses were slight and the state courts gave out minor penalties. The case had wound through the 5th Federal Judicial Circuit - notorious for being less compassionate to immigrants than other districts. The 5th Circuit is often deaf to claims of undocumented detainees for a stay a deportation order to remain in the country. The decision is national and so a major step toward equal justice toward legal immigrants. (See LA Times.)
Despite all the challenges the Arizona law faces, some, encouraged by the favorable national polls and the enthusiastic support of the Tea Party supporters, want to push it further to ban issuing state birth certificates to the U.S. born children of the undocumented (see LA Times). | <urn:uuid:dc76089c-69a4-4ab8-b5dd-fa70824545f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uscatholic.org/node/22297 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961011 | 503 | 1.5 | 2 |
Illustration Courtesy of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and Robin Ade
Animal migrations represent an easily accessible source of food and are one of nature's great spectacles. The migrations of the Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L., may cover thousands of miles from the natal river to the sub-arctic regions of the North Atlantic Ocean and precisely back; although 'landlocked' populations, that complete their life in freshwater, occur in some countries. However, the dominant life-cycle involves migration to the ocean where salmon grow rapidly on the abundant food resources available. It is because of this life-cycle that rational management requires international cooperation.
The mechanisms by which salmon navigate with such precision are not fully understood. In the ocean, the earth's magnetic field and the stars may be important. When the salmon reach coastal waters smell and taste allow precise homing to their river of birth. NASCO has established the International Atlantic Salmon Research Board (IASRB) to investigate the factors responsible for the increased mortality of salmon at sea and the opportunities to counteract them. Read more...
The Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L. is sometimes referred to as the 'King of Fish'. Life for this regal fish begins in the gravels of rivers from Portugal, Spain and New England (USA) in the south to Ungava Bay (Canada) and Russia in the north. Spawning occurs in the autumn and winter with female salmon depositing between 1,000 - 2,000 eggs (ova) per kilogram of body weight into a nest (or redd) in the gravel. Hatching occurs the following spring and, initially, the young salmon, or alevins, are nourished by the yolk sac until they emerge from the gravel as fry to commence feeding. After the first year of life the young fish are known as parr.
Marine migrations of Atlantic salmon
Courtesy of Chad Keith, NOAA Fisherie
Following a period spent in fresh water, which is dependent on latitude and may range from one year in the south to seven years in the north, the young fish undergo an enormous behavioural and physiological change that allows them to adapt to the salty waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. These smolts migrate to the ocean in the spring and, after one or more years at sea, the adult salmon return to their natal river to complete the cycle. Most salmon die after spawning but a small proportion, mainly females, return to spawn again. | <urn:uuid:e722702c-886c-43ab-ada6-8932581a4007> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasco.int/atlanticsalmon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930282 | 499 | 3.5625 | 4 |