text stringlengths 213 24.6k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 1 value | url stringlengths 14 499 | file_path stringlengths 138 138 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.9 1 | token_count int64 51 4.1k | score float64 1.5 5.06 | int_score int64 2 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
I have been waiting for this one. There have been hints in the news, then announcements that announcements were to be forthcoming, and finally there are pictures and stories and everything: a huge Anglo-Saxon gold hoard has been found! This past July, in a farmer’s field, by a metal-detecting enthusiast, Terry Herbert.
I have used a metal detector a grand total of once, years ago. A friend had made one from a kit, I think, and had planned to make a living (that summer, anyway) walking up and down the beach and finding buried car keys, watches, and other things that tourists would gladly pay him lots of money for. I don’t think anything actually ever came of it. My friend gave up too quickly. Mr. Herbert, on the other hand, has been at this for 18 years! I would love to know what sorts of things he has found in that time, to keep him going.
But back to July’s find. Over 5 kg of gold, over 2.5 kg of silver, and seemingly all of it significant. The metalwork is superb, and the collection large enough to suggest that this belonged to someone of real importance. It includes the gold decorations from sword hilt plates and pommel caps, buttons, cheek plates (or at least one) from a helmet, armbands, crosses, and more (check out the slide show at that link–I don’t know how to link to it directly. Most stunning to me is the photo of a couple of pieces of the treasure sitting on the surface of the field, having been plowed up by the farmer. Just sitting there. Beautiful, historical, ancient, gold). It appears to be primarily if not totally a male collection; trophies from battles (one, or several?), as described in Beowulf. The collection includes “boxes and boxes” of items, literally hundreds of individual pieces. Many, I am sure, would have been significant finds by themselves; taken together, this is staggering.
Terry Herbert took his gear
And set out for the field;
He had his hopes, but no idea
Of what the day would yield.
For eighteen years, he’d searched for coins
Through rolling hill and fold,
When in the field of a farmer friend
This summer, he found gold.
The largest Anglo-Saxon hoard
To date, is what he found.
Five kilograms of gold, and more,
Lay buried in the ground.
Gold fittings from the hilts of swords
Inlaid with precious stones
The trophies of a battle?
There are still a few unknowns.
As treasure, art, and history,
This find is just immense.
The Queen, by law, now owns it,
Though she’ll pay a recompense.
And Mr. Herbert’s place is sealed
In the annals of collectors;
Me? I’m investing in whoever sells
His brand of metal detectors. | <urn:uuid:eeec7053-bd01-483c-9764-d9d6929383f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2009/09/24/gold/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966122 | 631 | 2.09375 | 2 |
I think the days when the "Feynman method" was all that was needed to make progress on basic problems in Discrete Geometry are over. Recently there have been a slew of results which make progress on long-standing open problems in Discrete and Computational Geometry that use techniques from a variety of areas in mathematics: algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, complex analysis and so on.
This is wonderful news for the field. Though, two things to consider:
1. So far, apart from the kind of work going in "Computational Topology", this has mostly been a one-way street. There have been fewer cases of discrete and computational geometers going into topology, algebraic geometry etc. and making a similar impact there. Similarly, there are very few collaborations between mathematicians in other areas, and discrete geometers (ed: Mulmuley also argues that the GCT program will only come to fruition when this reverse direction starts happening)
2. From my experience, current graduate students, by-and-large, still seem to be stuck with the general outlook that "If I'm clever enough, and think hard enough, I can solve any problem directly". Such optimism alwayscheers me up. I used to think that too, but the more I learn about other areas, and as the recent work reveals power of techniques, it has become clear to me that it is misguided to think that. I would really advise students to take courses in algebraic topology, differential geometry and so on.
Below I list some such recent breakthroughs.
Given n points in $R^d$, can one find a point in "many" simplices spanned by these points ?This has been studied for more than 30 years, with several partial results. The current best result was published this year by M. Gromov, which in fact proves a stronger topological theorem, with better bounds than for restricted earlier cases. Matousek and Wagner have improved this bound slightly for 3D by improving a combinatorial part of Gromov's argument. Gromov's argument is a complicated topological argument that I did not have the background to follow. J. Matousek gave a nice talk at the Bernoulli conference in September with the title "Also Sprach Gromov"!
2. Colored Tverberg Theorem.
Let be disjoint subsets of , called colors, each of cardinality at least . A -subset of is said to be multicolored if for . Let be an integer, and let denote the smallest value such that for every collection of colors of size at least there exist disjoint multicolored sets such thatThe conjecture is that $T(r,d) = r$, and this was proved recently via topological arguments (for all $r$ such that $r+1$ is prime) by Blagojevic, Matschke, and Ziegler (see Gil Kalai's blog for a detailed post on this). Matousek, Tancer and Wagner have translated this argument to a geometric proof. As they state in the abstract, "The purpose of this de-topologization is to make the proof more concrete and intuitive, and accessible to a wider audience."
3. Distinct Distances problem.
The Guth-Katz dramatically improves the best known bound via techniques from algebraic geometry. Terry Tao has more details on this.
4. Joints problem.
A joint is a point formed by the intersection of three non-coplanar lines in 3D. What is the maximum number of joints achievable by a collection of $n$ lines in 3D ?This was again solved by Guth and Katz via techniques from algebraic geometry. It was subsequently simplified wonderfully by Elekes, Kaplan and Sharir, and Kaplan, Sharir and Shustin.
5. Lower-bounds for eps-nets.
It was very widely believed that for "natural" geometric objects, eps-nets of linear-size should exist. Shockingly, Alon showed that an easy application of Hales-Jewett density version immediately gives a non-linear lower-bound for a simple geometric-system in the plane. While DHJ is a combinatorial result, it was first "proved by Furstenberg and Katznelson in 1991 by means of a significant extension of the ergodic techniques that had been pioneered by Furstenberg in his proof of Szemeredi's theorem". Like earlier proofs, it is possible to "de-ergodicize" it (the polymath project).
6. Regression-depth partitioning conjecture.
(ed: see here for a description of regression depth - it's similar to halfspace depth)
Partial results were shown by Amenta-Bern-Eppstein-Teng in 2000. Recently almost proven by Karasev using topological techniques that I do not understand.
This is just a partial list, there are probably several others that I have missed. | <urn:uuid:eb630b98-8f70-4df3-b4c1-7a825f8876de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://geomblog.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956867 | 1,041 | 1.992188 | 2 |
October 29, 2010
Today in History -- October 30
1485 – One of the few English monarchs with a head for business, Henry VII of England is crowned at age 28.
1735 – Lawyer, statesman, and future U.S. President John Adams is born at Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts.
1864 – A few months after discovery of gold there, the little Montana hamlet of Last Chance Gulch reorganizes itself and changes its name to "Helena."
1905 – Russian Tsar Nicholas II grants Russia’s first constitution. It will turn out to be too little and too late.
1938 – Mercury Theater of the Air, a CBS radio summer replacement series with dismal ratings, gets huge bump in listenership when it broadcasts a radio version of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. The broadcast is so popular that Campbell’s Soup signs up as a regular sponsor.
1947 – Representatives of 23 countries sign the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade—the predecessor to the World Trade Organization—at Geneva.
1961 – Josef Stalin’s body is removed from its place of honor inside Lenin’s tomb and buried elsewhere. Can you Imagine how evil you have to be to be unworthy of sharing a tomb with Lenin?
1968 – Film star Ramon Novarro (top left), who made as much as $100,000 per film during the silent era and prudently invested in Los Angeles real estate, is beaten and killed in his home by two young men who steal $20 from him.
October 29, 2010 | Permalink
TrackBack URL for this entry:
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Today in History -- October 30: | <urn:uuid:a2537f8c-5e00-4116-ba8f-572a246734a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2010/10/today-in-history-october-30.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 | 0.936615 | 362 | 2.359375 | 2 |
May 15, 2008 Innovative prism glasses can significantly improve the vision and the daily lives of patients with hemianopia, a condition that blinds half the visual field in both eyes. The peripheral prism glasses, which were invented by Dr. Eli Peli, a Senior Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute, were evaluated in the first community-based multi-center trial of such a device, which is published in the May issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology. The study was coordinated by Dr. Alex Bowers, a Senior Scientific Associate at the Institute.
"This is the first real breakthrough in the rehabilitation of patients with this condition," says Peli, a world-renowned low vision expert, the Moakley Scholar in Aging Eye Research at Schepens and a Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Peli had searched for a solution for his hemianopia patients for many years before designing the peripheral prism glasses, creating a prototype in his laboratory.
More than a million Americans suffer from hemianopia, which blinds the vision in one half of the visual field in both eyes, resulting from damage to the optic pathways in the brain. Most commonly caused by strokes, it can also be the result of brain damage from tumors or trauma. A patient with this condition may be unaware of what he or she cannot see and frequently bumps into walls, trips over objects or walks into people on the side where the visual field is missing.
Peli's goal was to find a way to expand the visual field. He did this by attaching small, specially designed high power prisms on the top and bottom of one spectacle lens, leaving the center of the lens untouched. The prisms pull in images missing from the visual field above and below the line of sight on the side of the vision loss, and alert the patient to the presence of a potential obstacle or hazard. The patient can then move his/her head and eyes to examine the prism-captured image directly through the clear center of the lens.
Prisms by their nature can shift images from one side of the visual field to the other side (e.g., from the right side of the field to the left side). Before Peli's invention, others had tried to develop prism glasses to bring the missing part of the patient's visual field into view. However, these previous techniques placed the prisms in the center of the glasses, which resulted in double vision, which is disturbing and confusing. Peli's solution was to keep the central part prism free and place prisms above and below.
The Archives of Ophthalmology study evaluated the glasses' ability to improve a patient's walking mobility, which includes obstacle avoidance. Forty-three patients were fitted with prism glasses in 15 community-based clinics around the country. The clinicians interviewed them at six weeks and after 12 months. Success was measured by how many patients continued wearing the prism glasses and by their ranking of the prisms' effectiveness in assisting with obstacle avoidance while walking.
Thirty-two participants (74 percent) continued wearing the glasses at week six. At 12 months, 20 (47 percent) were still donning the spectacles eight hours a day and rating them as "very helpful" for obstacle avoidance. These 12-month-plus patients were reporting significant benefits for a variety of obstacle avoidance scenarios (e.g. walking in crowded areas, unfamiliar places, shopping malls). According to Bowers, the first author of the paper, "These results indicate that the glasses have great promise for helping patients resume normal daily life".
Dr.Peli partnered with a small optical company in Vermont--Chadwick Optical, Inc. who funded the study in part through a National Institutes for Health (NIH) small business grant. Peli and Karen Keeney, the President of Chadwick Optical, created a permanent version of the prisms with higher optical quality and better durability than the temporary prisms that were fitted at the start of the study. These permanent prisms were provided to 15 of the study patients when they became available.
A new, higher power, version of the permanent prism glasses recently developed by Chadwick Optical should also further expand the visual field and be even more beneficial for patients' mobility, according to Peli. The prototype used in the study expanded the peripheral upper and lower visual fields by 20 degrees without obstructing central vision. The new glasses expand the field by 30 degrees.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:da5ef700-925a-4411-9e52-fbf8915b5a0d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080512163833.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954954 | 948 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Remembered movies... images from a dream... scenes from another world—the photographs of Rocky Schenck are endlessly evocative, though the photographer asserts that "my approach is rather simple: I record on film what I see and what I feel as I travel through life." Still, these haunting images are no mere reproductions of everyday reality. By manipulating both the film's negative and the print's surface, Schenck creates images that are "illustrations of my conscious (and perhaps subconscious) dreams, emotions, and longings.... When I shoot these images, they are usually not premeditated or contrived.... I simply take my camera with me where I go and try to remain open to whatever life shoves... or gently places... in front of me."
This volume is the first book-length publication of Rocky Schenck's photography. The images range from human spaces—hotel rooms, store windows, lobbies, living rooms, even information booths—to natural places—oceans, lakes, forests, fields, and roadways—he encountered on trips through North America, Europe, and Mexico. For all their variety, however, Schenck's images form a coherent whole. Like lost scenes from a silent movie, they suggest bits of a story set in a vaguely threatening landscape in which loneliness and alienation are offset by moments of pure beauty. Refusing easy resolutions, Rocky Schenck never quite closes the story, leaving viewers to navigate their own way back to the daylight world.
Accompanying the images is an appreciative foreword by John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and a collector of Schenck's work. Connie Todd's introduction links Schenck's work with the nineteenth-century pictorial tradition and twentieth-century modernism and also provides a brief biography of the photographer. | <urn:uuid:2b494427-7bfa-4caf-b372-952562bb6ed8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/schroc.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929543 | 380 | 1.820313 | 2 |
New York State Bottled and Bulk Water Program 2009 Annual Report
The Bottled and Bulk Water Program 2009 Annual Report is a summary of those 2009 certification program activities under the purview of Section 225(u) of the Public Health Law (PBH) of the Laws of New York. The standards for bottled and bulk water facilities are contained in Subpart 5-6, Bottled and Bulk Water Standards, of the State Sanitary Code. Subpart 5-6 requires that all bottled or bulk water sold, offered for sale or delivered for human consumption, food preparation, or culinary purposes be certified by the New York State Department of Health (Department).
Initial certification of bottled and bulk water requires the submission of the following items:
- an engineering drawing for the source site and bottling facility;
- a detailed engineering report outlining sanitization, maintenance and operational procedures;
- samples of product labels;
- water quality data;
- product samples; and
- an inspection report.
To be eligible for recertification, bottled and bulk water facilities must submit the following on an annual basis:
- current water quality analyses for each source and finished product;
- a current inspection report;
- labels used for distribution in New York State;
- a completed questionnaire; and
- disinfection waiver documentation (if applicable) annually to be eligible for renewal (see Bottled or Bulk FAQs).
In 2009, 5 bottled water facilities and 5 bulk water facilities received initial certification to sell, offer for sale or deliver for human consumption, food preparation, or culinary purposes their products in New York State. By the end of 2009, the total number of bottled and bulk water facilities certified by the Department reached 208. Of these 208 certified bottled/bulk water facilities, 71 are located in New York State, 102 are located out-of-state but within the United States and 35 are located in foreign countries.
|Certification Type||Facility Location||Bottled Water||Bulk Haulers||Totals|
|Out of State (within USA)||2||1||3|
|Out of Country||3||0||3|
|Initial Certification Total||5||5||10|
|Out of State (within USA)||68||31||99|
|Out of Country||30||2||32|
|Renewal of Certification Total||124||74||198|
Uncertified Bottled and Bulk Water in New York State
As required under Subpart 5-6.2, "No person shall sell, offer for sale or deliver bottled or bulk water for human consumption, food preparation, or culinary purposes unless certified by the Commissioner in accordance with the requirements of this Subpart". Therefore, after the Department is notified that facilities are illegally selling and/or distributing bottled and/or bulk water in New York State, the Department requires the facility to cease their activities of selling and/or distributing their product in New York State until they have obtained the necessary certification. Accordingly, the Department sends a letter to each uncertified bottled or bulk water facility stating that they must cease and desist from selling, offering for sale and delivering their bottled and/or bulk water in New York State as well as instruct their offices, branches and distributors to remove all the bottled water products from the New York State market.
In 2009, 5 bottled water companies were notified by the Department that they were not certified to sell, distribute, and/or offer for sale bottled water products in New York State, 3 bulk water haulers were notified by the Department that they were not certified to sell or distribute potable water in New York State and that all bulk hauling for human consumption, food preparation or culinary purposes within New York State must cease.
Failure to Maintain Certification
In 2009, the Department notified 43 bottled and bulk water facilities they were no longer certified for failure to meet the renewal requirements outlined in Subpart 5-6, Section 5-6.16(d) and were instructed to withhold from selling, offering for sale or delivering bottled or bulk water in New York State, for human consumption, food preparation or culinary purposes. Of these 43 bottled and bulk water facilities, 29 certifications have been reinstated.
The Department's required public notice of those certified bottled and bulk water facilities that are no longer certified includes monthly updates pursuant to Section 225(u)(vi) of the Public Health Law of the Laws of New York. The facility will appear on the top of each notice the month it becomes no longer certified and will be repeated on 11 successive monthly notices unless the facility becomes recertified within 12 months. After 12 months, the notice requirement has been met and the facility is dropped from all listings until such time as the facility applies for certification.
129 certified bottled water facilities reported, that of the approximately 4,865,758,373 total gallons they produced during 2008, approximately 745,007,435 gallons were distributed to New York State. This distribution is an aggregate of several product types including but not limited to: well, spring, mineral, carbonated, distilled, deionized, drinking, and sparkling waters. 79 certified bulk water haulers reported that approximately 74, 892,158 gallons of potable drinking water was distributed in New York State in 2008.
NOTE: 2009 production numbers will be reported in 2010.
An annual inspection must be made of each bottled and bulk water facility. The inspection may be conducted by the New York State Department of Health, local county health department or district office, or by a third party approved by the Department. Out-of-state bottling facilities must provide certification from the appropriate regulatory agency of the state or country having jurisdiction over the bottling operation, indicating that the facility has been inspected and approved to bottle or package water for human consumption. Annual inspection of facilities consists of sampling and an evaluation of the source, bottling and treatment processes, sanitation and maintenance procedures as well as compliance with good manufacturing practices.
- Annual Requirements
New York State certified bottled and bulk water facilities are required to monitor for organic chemical, inorganic chemical and radiological analyses, on an annual basis, for each source and finished product type. All monitoring required by Subpart 5-6 of the State Sanitary Code must be conducted by a laboratory certified by the Department's Environmental Laboratory Approval Program (ELAP).
- Monthly Requirements
New York State certified bottled and bulk water facilities are required to monitor, on a monthly basis, microbiological analyses in accordance with Subpart 5-6, Section 5-6.11, Table 1A - Microbiological Sampling Frequency.
- Surveillance Monitoring
Approximately 50 bottled and bulk water surveillance and/or complaint investigation samples were collected by Department (both field and central office) staff which were analyzed for either inorganic chemical, organic chemical, microbiological and/or particle identification parameters. These samples were collected primarily in response to consumer complaints or to verify results received for initial certification of new products.
Bottled and bulk water facilities are required to submit a Monthly Operating Report (DOH-357) no later than the 10th of the month following the month of the reporting period. The required amount of monthly monitoring is determined by the number of gallons produced for New York State distribution or the number of potable water gallons hauled in New York State and is outlined in Section 5-6.11, Table 1A of Subpart 5-6 of the State Sanitary Code.
In 2009, the Department sent 64 violation letters to certified bottled water facilities and 60 violation letters to certified bulk water haulers for non-submittal of Monthly Operating Reports. Also, the Department sent 43 violation letters to certified bottled water facilities and 58 violation letters to certified bulk water haulers for non-submittal of monthly microbiological results from a New York State Health Department certified laboratory (see Monthly Violations for 2009 table below). All data were complete at time of renewal of certified bottlers.
|Certification Type||Failure to Submit Monthly
|Failure to Submit|
In 2009, the Department sent 14 violation letters to New York State certified bottled and bulk water facilities when monthly microbiological sample results tested positive for coliform and/or E. coli for their source or their finished products. The facilities were required to take follow-up samples, determine the source of the problem and take the necessary course of action. Also, the Department sent 47 action letters to bottled and bulk water facilities when results of a Standard Plate Count (SPC) or Heterotrophic Plate Count (HPC) result was greater than 500 cfu/mL.
In 2009, the Department did not initiate any administrative tribunal enforcement actions against bottled/bulk water facilities for violations of Subpart 5-6 of the State Sanitary Code in addition to issuing notices of violation and conducting subsequent follow-up investigations.
The New York State Sanitary Code Subdivision 5-6.7(i), requires bottled water facilities have on file a written recall plan which details the procedures for recall of any particular batch as identified by the production date code. This recall plan may be initiated when it is determined (by the bottler and/or State Health Department) that a potential contamination incident has occurred.
In 2009, there were no incidents of contamination of bottled water products that constituted a recall of bottled water products.
The Department addresses bottled/bulk water complaints based upon the nature and severity of the complaint at hand. For complaints related to distribution or financial issues, the complainant is referred to the vendor or the bottler. Complaints that suggest illness, possible water quality standard exceedances, imminent or widespread public danger will be referred for investigation to the Department which works in concert with the appropriate local county health department or district office in which the bottler is located. Complaints dealing with aesthetic concerns are addressed by either the bottling facility or the appropriate level of Health Department.
In 2009, approximately 80 consumer complaints were received and/or referred to the Department for investigation and follow-up. The majority of the consumer complaints consisted of isolated incidents involving taste and/or odor problems associated with bottled water products or household contamination of the product. In most cases, sealed bottled water products from the same production run, or as close as possible to the production run, were sent to the Department's Wadsworth Laboratory for testing.
Public Education and Outreach
In 2009, the Department's Bureau of Water Supply Protection (BWSP) fielded hundreds of telephone, e-mail and letter inquiries concerning the Bottled and Bulk Water Program. Typical inquiries included regulation questions, certification questions and complaints. These inquiries were received from consumers, field staff, bottlers, bulk water haulers and other state and foreign agencies. | <urn:uuid:0da13444-ec56-43e1-9231-d0948b6c0495> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/water/drinking/bulk_bottle/report_2009.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94091 | 2,190 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A form of cancer that begins in melanocytes (cells that make the pigment melanin). It may begin in a mole (skin melanoma), but can also begin in other pigmented tissues, such as in the eye or in the intestines.
Thanks to darker skin pigmentation, African Americans are less likely than members of other racial and ethnic groups in the United States to develop skin cancer. However, this does not mean that African Americans should ignore the possibility of skin cancer completely. Although the rates of occurrence of various types of skin cancer are lower in African Americans, they are not zero. African Americans can develop skin cancer, and when they do, the outcome is often more serious than it is for other Americans.
One reason why the outcome of skin cancer is often poorer in African Americans is that the disease is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage, when treatment is more difficult. Also, the type of melanoma most frequently found in African Americans is acral lentiginous melanoma, which is more dangerous than the types of melanoma that predominate in white Americans.
Statistics from various parts of the United States indicate that survival rates for African American patients diagnosed with melanoma are lower than those of white patients. For example, the California cancer registry reported a five-year survival rate of 70% for African American melanoma patients, as compared to 87% for white patients. Similarly, at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, the five-year survival rate for African American patients was 59%, compared to 85% in whites.
Studies have shown that the following are risk factors for the three most common types of skin cancer:
• Sunlight: Sunlight is a source of UV radiation. It’s the most important risk factor for any type of skin cancer. The sun’s rays cause skin damage that can lead to cancer.
• Severe, blistering sunburns: People who have had at least one severe, blistering sunburn are at increased risk of skin cancer. Although people who burn easily are more likely to have had sunburns as a child, sunburns during adulthood also increase the risk of skin cancer.
• Lifetime sun exposure: The total amount of sun exposure over a lifetime is a risk factor for skin cancer.
• Tanning: Although a tan slightly lowers the risk of sunburn, even people who tan well without sunburning have a higher risk of skin cancer because of more lifetime sun exposure.
• Family history: Melanoma sometimes runs in families. Having two or more close relatives (mother, father, sister, brother, or child) who have had this disease is a risk factor for developing melanoma. Other types of skin cancer also sometimes run in families. Rarely, members of a family will have an inherited disorder, such as xeroderma pigmentosum or nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome, that makes the skin more sensitive to the sun and increases the risk of skin cancer.
• Certain medical conditions or medicines: Medical conditions or medicines (such as some antibiotics, hormones, or antidepressants) that make your skin more sensitive to the sun increase the risk of skin cancer. Also, medical conditions or medicines that suppress the immune system increase the risk of skin cancer.
Often the first sign of melanoma is a change in the shape, color, size, or feel of an existing mole. Melanoma may also appear as a new mole. Thinking of "ABCDE" can help you remember what to look for:
• Asymmetry: The shape of one half does not match the other half.
• Border that is irregular: The edges are often ragged, notched, or blurred in outline. The pigment may spread into the surrounding skin.
• Color that is uneven: Shades of black, brown, and tan may be present. Areas of white, gray, red, pink, or blue may also be seen.
• Diameter: There is a change in size, usually an increase. Melanomas can be tiny, but most are larger than the size of a pea (larger than 6 millimeters or about 1/4 inch).
• Evolving: The mole has changed over the past few weeks or months.
Exams and Tests
If you have a change on your skin, your doctor must find out whether or not the problem is from cancer. You may need to see a dermatologist, a doctor who has special training in the diagnosis and treatment of skin problems.
Your doctor will check the skin all over your body to see if other unusual growths are present.
If your doctor suspects that a spot on the skin is cancer, you may need a biopsy. For a biopsy, your doctor may remove all or part of the skin that does not look normal. The sample goes to a lab. A pathologist checks the sample under a microscope. Sometimes it’s helpful for more than one pathologist to check the tissue for cancer cells.
You may have the biopsy in a doctor’s office or as an outpatient in a clinic or hospital. You’ll probably have local anesthesia.
There are four common types of skin biopsies:
• Shave biopsy: The doctor uses a thin, sharp blade to shave off the abnormal growth
• Punch biopsy: The doctor uses a sharp, hollow tool to remove a circle of tissue from the abnormal area
• Incisional biopsy: The doctor uses a scalpel to remove part of the growth
• Excisional biopsy: The doctor uses a scalpel to remove the entire growth and some tissue around it. This type of biopsy is most commonly used for growths that appear to be melanoma.
Treatment for skin cancer depends on the type and stage of the disease, the size and place of the tumor, and your general health and medical history. In most cases, the goal of treatment is to remove or destroy the cancer completely. Most skin cancers can be cured if found and treated early. Sometimes all of the skin cancer is removed during the biopsy. In such cases, no more treatment is needed.
If the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, these lymph nodes may also be removed. After surgery, you may receive a medicine called interferon.
Treatment is more difficult when the melanoma has spread to other organs. When it spreads to other organs, it usually cannot be cured.
Treatment involves shrinking the skin cancer and making you as comfortable as possible. You may receive:
• Chemotherapy: Medicines are used to kill cancer cells. It is usually given if the melanoma has returned or spread.
• Immunotherapy: Medications such as interferon or interleukin help your immune system fight the cancer. They may used along with chemotherapy and surgery.
• Radiation treatments: These may be used to relieve pain or discomfort caused by cancer that has spread.
• Surgery: Surgery may be done to remove cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. This is done to relieve pain or discomfort associated with the growing cancer.
Melanoma can spread to other parts of the body very quickly. Treatment can cause side effects, including pain, nausea, and fatigue.
When to Contact a Medical Professional
Call your health care provider if you notice a new growth or any other changes in your skin. You should also call if an existing spot becomes painful or swollen, or if it starts to bleed or itch.
The best way to prevent skin cancer is to protect yourself from the sun:
• Avoid outdoor activities during the middle of the day. The sun’s rays are the strongest between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. When you must be outdoors, seek shade when you can.
• Protect yourself from the sun’s rays reflected by sand, water, snow, ice, and pavement. The sun’s rays can go through light clothing, windshields, windows, and clouds.
• Wear long sleeves and long pants. Tightly woven fabrics are best.
• Wear a hat with a wide brim all around that shades your face, neck, and ears. Keep in mind that baseball caps and some sun visors protect only parts of your skin.
• Wear sunglasses that absorb UV radiation to protect the skin around your eyes.
• Use sunscreen lotions with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15. (Some doctors will suggest using a lotion with an SPF of at least 30.) Apply the product’s recommended amount to uncovered skin 30 minutes before going outside, and apply again every two hours or after swimming or sweating.
Clinical trials are currently studying many alternative treatments for melanoma. These include new forms of immunotherapy, such as monoclonal antibodies and vaccines. Your doctor may recommend that you join a clinical trial if one is available in your area.
What You Need To Know:
People sometimes use complementary therapies along with medical treatment to help relieve symptoms and side effects of cancer treatments. Some of the complementary therapies that may be helpful include:
• Acupuncture, to relieve pain.
• Meditation or yoga, to relieve stress.
• Massage and biofeedback, to reduce pain and ease tension.
• Breathing exercises for relaxation.
Mind-body treatments like the ones listed above may help you feel better. They can make it easier to cope with cancer treatments. They also may reduce chronic low back pain, joint pain, headaches, and pain from treatments.
Before you try a complementary therapy, talk to your doctor about the possible value and potential side effects. Let your doctor know if you are already using any such therapies.
Complementary therapies are not meant to take the place of standard medical treatment, but they may improve your quality of life and help you deal with the stress and side effects of cancer treatment. | <urn:uuid:dde34200-6f6a-47de-bbff-59449a4dd0b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blackdoctor.org/melanoma/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939974 | 2,026 | 3.859375 | 4 |
CTIC and its partners lead initiatives at the local, regional and national level to address agriculture’s pressing conservation needs. Each initiative includes public and private sector partners, shares information about new technology and tools and promotes agricultural systems that are both economically viable and environmentally beneficial.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) and Conservation Information Technology Center (CTIC) partnered to provide information to watershed professionals throughout the...More
CTIC's Upstream Heroes campaign features success stories about farmers who have developed and adopted sound nutrient efficiency strategies - protecting their bottom lines as well as...More
Today there are thousands of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) nationally that require an National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. Producers and their...More
Water quality credit trading may be, in many areas, a successful market-based approach to improve water quality. It is an innovative, voluntary tool that connects industrial and municipal...More | <urn:uuid:bf933dbe-db37-4bdc-ad91-a91d05d77aaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conservationinformation.com/CTIC%20HOME/FIND%20INFORMATION/CTIC%20Initiatives/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907092 | 197 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Posted on Jul 10, 2011
By David Sirota
When I heard the news last week that the Department of Education is aiming to subject 4-year-olds to high-stakes testing, all I could do was shake my head in disbelief and despondently mutter a slightly altered riff off “The Big Lebowski’s” Walter Sobchak.
You don’t have to be as dyspeptic as Walter to know this is madness. According to Stanford University’s Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed President Obama’s education transition team, though we already “test students in the United States more than any other nation,” our students “perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science.” Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative “reform” rather than what it’s always been: insanity.
In light of this craziness, it’s no wonder we’re being out-educated by countries going in the opposite policy direction.
Though bobo evangelists like David Brooks insist—without data, of course—that reduced testing “leads to lethargy and perpetual mediocrity,” Hammond notes that “nations like Finland and Korea—top scorers on the Programme for International Student Assessment” have largely “eliminated the crowded testing schedules used decades ago when these nations were much lower-achieving.”
Finland’s story, recounted in the new documentary “The Finland Phenomenon,” is particularly striking. According to Harvard’s Tony Wagner, the country’s modernization campaign in the 1970s included a “transforming of the preparation and selection of future teachers.”
“What has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession” in Finland, says Wagner, who narrates the film. “There is no domestic testing … because they have created such a high level of professionalism, they can trust their teachers.”
The inherent parallels between Finland and the United States make the former’s lessons indisputably relevant to us. As Wagner says, Finland is a fellow industrialized country “rated among the highest in the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity.” And though Finland is more racially homogeneous than America, Wagner points out that “15 percent of the population speaks a second language”—meaning the country’s schools face some of the same cross-cultural challenges as our schools.
That said, for all the similarities, Finland finds its comparative success in how it chooses to differ from us.
Where Finland rejects testing, nurtures teachers, and encourages its best and brightest to become educators, we fetishize testing, portray teachers as evil parasites and financially encourage top students to become Wall Streeters.
Just as important, Finland’s tax and social welfare system has made it an economically equal society, and its education quality doesn’t vary across class lines. By contrast, America’s low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world’s most stratified nation—and our Separate and Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore underperforming in poor areas.
This is the ugly secret that America’s education “reformers” seek to hide.
As Joanne Barkan reports in Dissent magazine, data overwhelmingly show that “out-of-school factors” like poverty “count for twice as much as all in-school factors” in student achievement. But because economic inequality enriches wealthy titans like Wal-Mart’s Walton family, and because those same titans fund education policy foundations and buy politicians, the national education debate avoids focusing on economics. Instead, it manufactures a narrative demonizing teachers and promoting testing as a panacea.
It’s certainly a compelling fairy tale. Unfortunately for “reformers,” Finland, South Korea and other successes prove the story’s dishonesty—and too bad for America’s kids that those successes are being willfully ignored. | <urn:uuid:6c7bef70-0480-4f83-8d99-02adc03444fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prn.fm/2011/07/13/david-sirota-david-swanson-the-finland-phenomenon-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947516 | 894 | 2.203125 | 2 |
New Approach to Optical Networks Security: Attack-Aware Routing and Wavelength Assignment
Source: University of Zagreb
Security issues and attack management in transparent WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) optical networks has become of prime importance to network operators due to the high data rates involved and the vulnerabilities associated with transparency. Deliberate physical layer attacks, such as highpowered jamming, can seriously degrade network performance and must be dealt with efficiently. While most approaches are focused on the developing fast detection and reaction mechanisms triggered in case of an attack, authors propose a novel approach to help deal with these issues in the network planning and provisioning process as a prevention mechanism. | <urn:uuid:b0db1359-a342-415b-aac6-6dd7476a152a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techrepublic.com/whitepapers/new-approach-to-optical-networks-security-attack-aware-routing-and-wavelength-assignment/2189555 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94274 | 137 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Emissions from a cement plant in Jilin, China, 1 Mar. 2009. The cost of reducing China’s total GHG emissions is likely to reach $438 billion a year within 20 years.
"The Essential Pillars of a New Climate Pact"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
September 20, 2009
Authors: Sheila M. Olmstead, Former Research Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources Program, 2001–2002, Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements
THE climate change summit at the United Nations on Tuesday is aimed to build momentum for the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December, where nations will continue negotiations on a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. To be successful, any feasible successor agreement must contain three essential elements: meaningful involvement by a broad set of key industrialized and developing nations; an emphasis on an extended time path of emissions targets; and inclusion of policy approaches that work through the market, rather than against it.
Consider the need for broad participation. Industrialized countries have emitted most of the stock of man-made carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, so shouldn't they reduce emissions before developing countries are asked to contribute? While this seems to make sense, here are four reasons why the new climate agreement must engage all major emitting countries — both industrialized and developing.
First, emissions from developing countries are significant and growing rapidly. China surpassed the United States as the world's largest CO2 emitter in 2006, and developing countries may account for more than half of global emissions within the next decade. Second, developing countries provide the best opportunities for low-cost emissions reduction; their participation could dramatically reduce total costs. Third, the United States and several other industrialized countries may not commit to significant emissions reductions without developing country participation. Fourth, if developing countries are excluded, up to one-third of carbon emissions reductions by participating countries may migrate to non-participating economies through international trade, reducing environmental gains and pushing developing nations onto more carbon-intensive growth paths (so-called "carbon leakage'').
How can developing countries participate in an international effort to reduce emissions without incurring costs that derail their economic development? Their emissions targets could start at business-as-usual levels, becoming more stringent over time as countries become wealthier. If such "growth targets'' were combined with an international emission trading program, developing countries could fully participate without incurring prohibitive costs (or even any costs in the short term).
The second pillar of a successful post-2012 climate policy is an emphasis on the long run. Greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, and major technological change is needed to bring down the costs of reducing CO2 emissions. The economically efficient solution will involve firm but moderate short-term targets to avoid rendering large parts of the capital stock prematurely obsolete, and flexible but more stringent long-term targets.
Third, a post-2012 global climate policy must work through the market rather than against it. To keep costs down in the short term and bring them down even lower in the long term through technological change, market-based policy instruments must be embraced as the chief means of reducing emissions. One market-based approach, known as cap-and-trade, is emerging as the preferred approach for reducing carbon emissions among industrialized countries.
Under cap-and-trade, sources with low control costs may take on added reductions, allowing them to sell excess permits to sources with high control costs. The European Union's Emission Trading Scheme, established under the Kyoto Protocol, is the world's largest cap-and-trade system. In June, the US federal government took a significant step toward establishing a national cap-and-trade policy to reduce CO2 emissions, with the passage in the House of Representatives of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Other industrialized countries are instituting or planning national CO2 cap-and-trade systems, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand.
Linking such cap-and-trade systems under a new international climate treaty would bring cost savings from increasing the market's scope, greater liquidity, reduced price volatility, lessened market power, and reduced carbon leakage. Cap-and-trade systems can be linked directly, which requires harmonization, or indirectly by linking with a common emissions-reduction credit system; indeed, this is what appears to be emerging even before a new agreement is forged. Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism allows parties in wealthy countries to purchase emissions-reduction credits in developing countries by investing in emissions-reduction projects. These credits can be used to meet emissions commitments within the EU-ETS, and other systems are likely to accept them as well.
Countries meeting in New York this week, and in Copenhagen in December, should consider these three essential elements as they negotiate a new climate agreement. A new international climate agreement missing any of these three pillars may be too costly, and provide too little benefit, to represent a meaningful attempt to address the threat of global climate change.
Sheila M. Olmstead is associate professor of environmental economics at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Robert Stavins is professor of business and government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
For more information about this publication please contact the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Coordinator at 617-496-8054.
Full text of this publication is available at:
For Academic Citation: | <urn:uuid:0aa886d3-f2cc-443e-ae24-c8fa9b6cb18a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19563/essential_pillars_of_a_new_climate_pact.html?breadcrumb=%2Fpublication%2F19643%2Fthree_pillars_of_post2012_international_climate_policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930412 | 1,129 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Your article on SUVs was enlightening, and deeply disturbing (8 March, p 12). It also seems incomplete, as there is no mention of injuries and fatalities inflicted on pedestrians and cyclists. It seems probable that being hit by an SUV, at whatever speed, is going to be worse than being hit by a car. Bull bars will make it worse still. There are also fewer places where a walker or cyclist can go that SUVs cannot. Are there no statistics to support this intuition? Can they not also be reported?
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content. | <urn:uuid:0ab25b00-c2f3-4897-b534-7f9f28626237> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17823894.300-suv-accidents.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979976 | 134 | 1.515625 | 2 |
John Rogers, Shirin Vossoughi, Sophie Fanelli
How might we systematically assess teacher “effectiveness”?
Is it accurate or fair to evaluate teachers based on student test scores?
These questions lie at the heart of recent debates surrounding teacher quality and evaluation. Most centrally, these debates have focused on the appropriate use of “value added measures” in judging teacher effectiveness and making decisions about teacher compensation, promotion and dismissal.
Here, we present a series of questions and answers (as well as resources for more in-depth analysis) aimed at disentangling this complex issue. | <urn:uuid:ac7f6c40-803c-4784-8a4c-478d0e496c07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://idea.gseis.ucla.edu/newsroom/idea-news/publications/value-added | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93172 | 124 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Jacob's prophetical blessings of his twelve sons: his death.
And Jacob called his sons, and said to them: Gather yourselves together that I may tell you the things that shall befall you in the last days.
Gather yourselves together, and hear, O ye sons of Jacob, hearken to Israel your father:
Ruben, my firstborn, thou art my strength, and the beginning of my sorrow: excelling in gifts, greater in command.
Thou art poured out as water, grow thou not: because thou wentest up to thy father' s bed, and didst defile his couch.
Simeon and Levi brethren: vessels of iniquity, waging war.
My strength: He calls him his strength, as being born whilst his father was in his full strength and vigour: he calls him the beginning of his sorrow, because cares and sorrows usually come on with the birth of children. Excelling in gifts, etc., because the firstborn had a title to a double portion, and to have the command over his brethren, which Ruben forfeited by his sin; being poured out as water, that is, spilt and lost.
Grow thou not: This was not meant by way of a curse or imprecation; but by way of a prophecy foretelling that the tribe of Ruben should not inherit the pre-eminences usually annexed to the first birthright, viz., the double portion, the being prince or lord over the other brethren, and the priesthood: of which the double portion was given to Joseph, the princely office to Juda, and the priesthood to Levi.
Let not my soul go into their counsel, nor my glory be in their assembly: because in their fury they slew a man, and in their selfwill they undermined a wall.
Cursed be their fury, because it was stubborn: and their wrath because it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and will scatter them in Israel.
Juda, thee shall thy brethren praise: thy hands shall be on the necks of thy enemies: the sons of thy father shall bow down to thee.
Juda is a lion' s whelp: to the prey, my son, thou art gone up: resting thou hast couched as a lion, and as a lioness, who shall rouse him?
The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations.
Slew a man,: viz., Sichem the son of Hemor, with all his people, Gen. 34.; mystically and prophetically it alludes to Christ, whom their posterity, viz., the priests and the scribes, put to death.
A lion's whelp: This blessing of Juda foretelleth the strength of his tribe, the fertility of his inheritance; and principally that the sceptre and legislative power should not be utterly taken away from his race till about the time of the coming of Christ: as in effect it never was: which is a demonstration against the modern Jews, that the Messiah is long since come; for the sceptre has long since been utterly taken away from Juda.
Tying his foal to the vineyard, and his ass, O my son, to the vine. He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape.
His eyes are more beautiful than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.
Zabulon shall dwell on the sea shore, and in the road of ships, reaching as far as Sidon.
Issachar shall be a strong ass lying down between the borders.
He saw rest that it was good: and the land that it was excellent: and he bowed his shoulder to carry, and became a servant under tribute.
Dan shall judge his people like another tribe in Israel.
Let Dan be a snake in the way, a serpent in the path, that biteth the horse' s heels that his rider may fall backward.
I will look for thy salvation, O Lord.
Gad, being girded, shall fight before him: and he himself shall be girded backward.
Aser, his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield dainties to kings.
Dan shall judge: This was verified in Samson, who was of the tribe of Dan, and began to deliver Israel. Judges 13. 5. But as this deliverance was but temporal and very imperfect, the holy patriarch (ver. 18) aspires after another kind of deliverer, saying: I will look for thy salvation, O Lord.
Gad being girded: It seems to allude to the tribe of Gad; when after they had received for their lot the land of Galaad, they marched in arms before the rest of the Israelites, to the conquest of the land of Chanaan: from whence they afterwards returned loaded with spoils. See Jos. 4. and 12.
Nephtali, a hart let loose, and giving words of beauty.
Joseph is a growing son, a growing son and comely to behold; the daughters run to and fro upon the wall.
But they that held darts provoked him, and quarrelled with him, and envied him.
His bow rested upon the strong, and the bands of his arms and his hands were loosed, by the hands of the mighty one of Jacob: thence he came forth a pastor, the stone of Israel.
The God of thy father shall be thy helper, and the Almighty shall bless thee with the blessings of heaven above, with the blessings of the deep that lieth beneath, with the blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
Run to and fro: To behold his beauty; whilst his envious brethren turned their darts against him, etc.
His bow rested upon the strong: That is, upon God, who was his strength: who also loosed his bands, and brought him out of prison to be the pastor, that is, the feeder and ruler of Egypt, and the stone, that is, the rock and support of Israel.
The blessings of thy father are strengthened with the blessings of his fathers: until the desire of the everlasting hills should come; may they be upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of the Nazarite among his brethren.
Benjamin a ravenous wolf, in the morning shall eat the prey, and in the evening shall divide the spoil.
All these are the twelve tribes of Israel: these things their father spoke to them, and he blessed every one, with their proper blessings.
And he charged them, saying: I am now going to be gathered to my people: bury me with my fathers in the double cave, which is in the field of Ephron the Hethite,
Over against Mambre in the land of Chanaan, which Abraham bought together with the field of Ephron the Hethite for a possession to bury in.
The blessings of thy father: That is, thy father's blessings are made more prevalent and effectual in thy regard, by the additional strength they receive from his inheriting the blessings of his progenitors Abraham and Isaac.
The desire of the everlasting hills: These blessings all looked forward towards Christ, called the desire of the everlasting hills, as being longed for, as it were, by the whole creation. Mystically, the patriarchs and prophets are called the everlasting hills, by reason of the eminence of their wisdom and holiness.
The Nazarite: This word signifies one separated; and agrees to Joseph, as being separated from, and more eminent than, his brethren. As the ancient Nazarites were so called from their being set aside for God, and vowed to him.
To be gathered to my people: That is, I am going to die, and so to follow my ancestors that are gone before me, and to join their company in another world.
There they buried him, and Sara his wife: there was Isaac buried with Rebecca his wife: there also Lia doth lie buried.
And when he had ended the commandments, wherewith he instructed his sons, he drew up his feet upon the bed, and died: and he was gathered to his people. | <urn:uuid:20068992-9cfe-41f0-9aa4-75125678efce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=1&ch=49&l=32 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98009 | 1,725 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Summer/August 2006 Catalog > Sports > Boston Braves & Red Sox
< previous lot | next lot >
Lot 1555: Fenway Park Green Monster Section (Framed)
Offered is a genuine piece of the most important and ancient baseball stadium in existence, a 3x3" section of the green facade that made up Fenway's infamous left field wall, known as the Green Monster. Stadium artifact is original and beautifully painted. One of baseball’s few remaining classic ballparks, Fenway has become just as big a piece of baseball lore as the legends it has housed over the years. The ballpark stands almost exactly as it was in 1934 with renovations being few and far between, making this unique item all the more significant. Nicely matted in a display with photo and dedicated plate beneath.
|The bidding for this lot has ended.| | <urn:uuid:8e2ee551-8aa2-4a5f-a837-7c0c26b63357> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lelands.com/Auction/AuctionDetail/30446/Summer-August-2006-Catalog/Sports/Boston-Braves-and-Red-Sox/Lot1555~Fenway-Park-Green-Monster-Section-(Framed) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951864 | 177 | 1.601563 | 2 |
This month I was involved with two long and complex books — The Folks and Tess of the D’Urbervilles — with alternate, multiple postings. Thanks for your patience.
Ruth Suckow, The Folks. This 1934 novel tells the lives of an Iowa couple, the Fergusons, and their extended family, beginning before World War I and ending during the Great Depression. I have commented by sections:
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Sarah (A Rat in the Book Pile) and I have been reading this classic together and commenting jointly.
I – The Maiden and Maiden No More
II – The Rally and The Consequence
III – The Woman Pays and The Convert
IV – Fulfillment
Pietra Rivoli, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. I learned about globalization in Paris z dozen years ago. I penetrated into a real French department store (no English spoken here) and went looking for t-shirts. I didn’t know what they are called in French, of course, but I quickly learned they are called t-shirts. In this fascinating book, an economist follows her t-shirt on its travels, beginning in the cotton fields of Texas and ending in the second-hand market of Dar Es Salaam.
Michael Lewis, Moneyball. I avoid professional sports and I avoid talking about professional sports, so who would predict I would enjoy this book about how to manage a professional baseball team when you don’t have a lot of money to spend on star players? It’s a great little morality tale about conventional wisdom in any area of life.
I have posted on the two books together: Not Dismal at All.
Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March. Three generations of the Trotta family serve and are served by the long-lived Hapsburg Franz Joseph, ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Neither Franz Joseph nor the Trottas survive the Great War.
Yoko Ogawa, The Diving Pool. This book contains three novellas by the author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. Each story is told in first person and is unsettling in some way. I found the narratives hard to understand and the emotions difficult to relate to. The author’s detached tone worked for me in The Housekeeper and the Professor, but leaves these stories outside my circle of enjoyment.
Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Conservative. New York Times columnist and Novel laureate (economics) describes the ups and downs of liberal programs in modern America and suggests areas for improvement. The book, published in 2007, does not include the collapse of the housing bubble, the ensuing financial crisis or the election of Obama.
Geraldine Brooks, March. Pulitzer-Prize winning novel imagines the story of Mr. March, the father of the four girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. In that book, March is with the troops, but we do not hear what he is doing there. In this book, we find that his life is greatly changed by his wartime experiences.
Josephine Johnson, Now In November. This 1930s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel brings us hard times on the farm. A family struggles to extract enough from the natural world to deal with the outside world of hard time economics and the cruel circumstances of a drought. | <urn:uuid:5885b663-df98-4425-8dbb-96c17f0f66f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://silverseason.wordpress.com/tag/josephine-johnson/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951404 | 706 | 1.75 | 2 |
I attended a talk this morning given by Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear scientist who was detained for 11 years on charges of treason. He was released in July as part of the high-profile spy-swap with the United States.
Hearing Sutyagin’s description of the Russian justice system, as well as the “gulag” he was sent to for over a decade, brings into focus the enormous difference between legal systems within Europe. In the UK we can confidently expect that courts and judges will uphold the rule of law and act with impartiality. Whilst there are notable exceptions, our legal system has checks and balances in order that poor decisions can be weeded out. That system is imperfect but at least it is predictable and, on the whole, fair.
Sutyagin’s says his experience was anything but fair. He spent 11 years in detention including the time before and after his conviction in 2004 for spying for the United States. He has always protested his innocence (see this recent BBC interview). Notably, during his years as a researcher he never had access to secret documents, and he always maintained that the “classified” information which he was accused of passing to foreign sources was publicly available.
After his arrest in 1999, Sutyagin spent five years in detention and was the subject of three criminal trials, before he was finally convicted and sentenced to 15 years in 2004. This morning he described his extreme surprise when, after the break-down of his first trial, the judge suggested that the prosecutor find more charges to bring. Charges were brought and dropped until eventually he was convicted.
During his time in prison, he was listed as a political prisoner by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and he recalled the support he received from strangers who wrote him thousands of letters. He eventually signed a confession as part of the prisoner-swap process, having relented “because of his family and because he was told that otherwise the entire exchange of prisoners would be cancelled “.
Grigory Pasko, who interviewed Sutyagin and is himself a former political prisoner, said that the justice system in Russia was unlikely to change under the current regime. Amnesty International agree that there are significant problems: they said in their 2009 country report that the “trial procedures did not always meet international standards of fair trial and there were continuing concerns about lack of respect for the rule of law. In some cases with a political context, the treatment of suspects amounted to persecution. The right of suspects to legal representation during investigation was repeatedly violated.“
The UK courts have also expressed concern over the Russian justice system recently in the extradition case of Dudko v The Government of the Russian Federation (see our post). Under the Human Rights Act, the UK cannot extradite someone if s/he is likely to be subjected to a justice system which would breach their Article 6 rights to a fair trial. The High Court noted that within the Russian criminal justice system it was not possible to seek documentation in relation to the trumped-up nature of charges and the corrupt nature of the prosecution nor to raise those matters at all in the trial of the charges. The court ultimately rejected the extradition request on other grounds, but expressed concerns over the “the role and accountability of the prosecutor in relation to the fairness of a criminal trial”.
In the European Court of Human Rights, the Russian Federation has been reprimanded repeatedly for failing to implement judgments of the court, notably in two recent decisions which are discussed here.
The UK Human Rights Blog concentrates on decisions within the UK, or which have relevance to the UK. This is because covering human rights issues and case-law in the UK keeps us busy enough. The UK justice system is often criticised by those who work within it, but Sutyagin’s experiences provide an excellent reminder of the benefits of living and practising in a country with a well-developed and predictable legal system which upholds the rule of law.
The film of the talk will be available shortly on Robert Amsterdam’s blog.
- Russian mafia bribe police officer wins battle against the Times
- The increasing role of human rights law in extradition and deportation cases
Sign up to free human rights updates by email, Facebook, Twitter or RSS | <urn:uuid:5cb5fad4-d05c-4d18-8aca-4e6280c4ef23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2010/09/28/a-russian-reminder/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983094 | 874 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Chicago at one time operated the largest TC system in the world. During its 43 year life, 713 coaches provided service on 20 different routes. IRM has 6 units from this system including coach 84 from the very first order in 1930 (the oldest surviving trolley coach in North America), and the 631 from the final group purchased (the last trolley coach to carry passengers on the streets of Chicago, April 1,1973).
While the electric trolley coach looks much like a motor bus, it is a very close relative of the electric streetcar. In fact in some cities they were known as "trackless trolleys". The propulsion systems share much of the same technology and both are powered by 600 volts DC. Good performance and quiet dependability were hallmarks of trolley coaches. Transit managements appreciated their low maintenance costs.
Trolley coach operations have declined in the United States, but their usage in the rest of the world is increasing with about 350 cities currently under double wire. However with the recent concern about vehicular pollution, a renaissance may yet occur here in America.
|Copyright © 1995-2010, Illinois Railway Museum. All rights reserved.||$Id: trolleycoaches.html,v 1.2 2010/04/09 08:39:56 jamesk Exp $| | <urn:uuid:d9c4c757-7777-45ac-af51-c51e4c216a34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.irm.org/history/trolleycoaches.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963883 | 267 | 2.34375 | 2 |
By Sean Pendergast
By Sean Pendergast
By Sean Pendergast
By Jeff Balke
By Richard Connelly
By Jeff Balke
By Casey Michel
By Craig Hlavaty
In these modern times, it seems most people need a Palm Pilot to schedule their next trip to the bathroom. So it's hard to imagine that our fine Texas legislators would shun computers. Especially when it comes to tracking the contributors who bankroll their campaigns.
But according to Texans for Public Justice, several Houston-area officeholders argue that computers are nothing more than a nuisance. By claiming an exemption to a 1999 law that requires state politicians to file donor data electronically, these public servants are making it harder for others to discover who funds their runs for re-election.
Not that anybody should care, apparently.
"The average Joe is out flying kites with his kid, not looking on the computer wondering, 'What's that scumbag doing?' " says matter-of-fact state Representative Joe Nixon. Nixon, a Republican in the 133rd District seat of west Houston, is one of nine area incumbents who have made the Texans for Public Justice "Luddite List." That statewide roster totals 36 legislators, 20 judges and ten other Texas officials.
"It's hard to believe they're working on index cards," argues Craig McDonald, the TPJ director. "It's unfathomable in this day and age."
The Austin-based watchdog group says the law is important because it makes donor information accessible via the Internet. Before the bill passed, the only way to discover which lobbyists were courting your rep was to travel to Austin and flip through dusty file cabinets, or wait for the Texas Ethics Commission to look up the information. Now, unless a candidate claims an exemption, anyone can log on to the commission's Web site and get the information by searching either the names of candidates or contributors.
"It's public access to information I think is relevant to their decision," says Karen Lundquist, general counsel for the commission. Legislators and judges have to file campaign contribution and expenditure reports with the commission each January and July. Lundquist says the commission provides free software to the legislators, making the electronic filing process as painless as possible. They can even file by e-mail.
Still, the group says some legislators use loopholes to keep on filing the old-fashioned way. The law exempts politicians from electronic filing if they raise less than $20,000 in contributions or if they sign an affidavit claiming neither they nor their fund-raisers uses computer equipment to keep current records of contributions. McDonald thinks exemptions that were meant to protect "mom and pop campaigns" are now being abused by seasoned legislators.
TPJ names state Senator Mario Gallegos -- a Democrat from the 6th District who has spent 10 years in the legislature -- one of the leading Luddites. Although the ethics commission reports that Gallegos raised nearly $250,000 from July 1999 to last December, Gallegos still says his fund-raising doesn't involve computers.
"There's no excuse for it," says McDonald. "Gallegos raised a quarter of a million dollars. He could have spent $100 to get someone to type the information into the software."
A spokesperson for Gallegos's office declined to comment, saying that only his chief of staff could speak to the issue -- and that she was away dealing with her flooded home.
Nixon, also on the list of exempted officials, thinks the issue is something that matters only to political junkies. He claims that he and most of the listed legislators run such small campaigns that using a computer to track donor data is not necessary. In fact, most of them run unopposed.
"I don't raise much money and no one runs against me, thankfully," says Nixon, a seven-year state rep. According to the commission, Nixon raised around $40,000 over an 18-month period -- fairly small potatoes in the world of campaign finance. But it's not a question of money, says Nixon. It's a question of practicality.
"The only people who look that stuff up are those who are very interested in politics," he says. "Most people are out there living life and having fun."
State Senator Jon Lindsay may quarrel with his colleague's assessment that nobody cares. Lindsay's 19-year reign as Harris County judge in 1994 ended amid fallout from -- among other controversies -- allegations over misuse of campaign money. He was accused of pouring nearly $200,000 of campaign cash into his son's scuba-diving enterprise in the Caribbean. Lindsay left that office and still had loads of leftover contributions to help in his senate bid.
In fact, he's donated nearly $122,000 of his political treasury to philanthropic causes -- and rolled up $150,000 in campaign contributions over the 18 months ending last December.
But the legislator, who could not be reached for comment, swore he lacked a computer to track all the largesse. So Lindsay's another name on the Luddite list.
TPJ argues that it's the spirit of the law that counts. If -- as Nixon suggests -- the average citizen is too busy flying kites and having fun, McDonald says he should realize that less than 5 percent of all campaign donations comes in amounts less than $100.
That means it's the big corporations and special-interest groups that are deciding who has the power, he explains.
To remind Texans of that, TPJ is busy preparing a new list of legislators who have claimed exemption to the electronic disclosure law by stating that they have raised less than $20,000 in contributions -- when the group claims that they in fact have raised more than that. The organization newsletter claims these representatives are guilty of "false modesty."
Find everything you're looking for in your city
Find the best happy hour deals in your city
Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%
Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city | <urn:uuid:75aa07cc-2460-493e-8420-ed932e79f7f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.houstonpress.com/2001-06-21/news/does-not-compute/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967889 | 1,243 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Archives for "August, 2008"
Hope you have all had a pleasant summer holiday, even if the weather has not been brilliant. Here is a nice little starter for all those 10/11 year olds going back to school next week. Oh well, just think of all the peace and quiet at home during the day! Free maths worksheet: Wordsearch make [...]
I have just been informed that the URBrainy site is up and running. This is a brand new site providing maths material for the Early Years – children between the age of 3 and 5. To start with they have launched an excellent selection of free maths worksheets and they will soon be coming up [...]
- © 2009 Maths Blog | <urn:uuid:12dd0db9-1567-403b-8dd3-1c73db5daf66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathsblog.co.uk/2008/08/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960393 | 146 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Patrick Chovanec ’92, associate professor at Tsinghua’s School of Economics and Management, recently had an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal on the worrying health of China’s banking system. Prof. Chovanec’s op-ed piece, which is entitled “Chinese Banks Are Worse Off Than You Think”, argues that the while officials reassure that Chinese banks are in good shape based on a few important indicators, in actual fact these indicators disguise underlying intrinsic problems which afflict the entire banking system. The full article can be found here.
Prof. Chovanec is regularly featured in both prominent Chinese and Western media about a wide variety of economic issues. He regularly blogs about his thoughts on China’s economy on his personal blog which can be found here. Recently, the PAABJ has been fortunate to hear directly from Prof. Chovanec in a series of dinners co-hosted together with the Stanford Alumni Association of Beijing.
Our friend Peter Lighte *81 has just completed a collection of stories from his time in Beijing in the early ’80s. Below is an introduction to the collection as well as the links to explore in detail. Hope you will take a look.
I’ve worked with Peter with Pieces of China.
Pieces of China
These snapshots of bygone days gathered in Pieces of China very much resonate in the present. Told in a deceptively breezy voice by Peter Lighte – unlikely Ming scholar and unlikelier banker – his stories illuminate shadows of the Cultural Revolution, the hilarity of bureaucracy, the complexity of relationships and the daily adventures of a young man who thinks he somehow fits into a world beyond the looking glass.
All profits from Pieces of China will be donated to Half the Sky, a foundation which seeks to bring a caring adult into the life of each orphan in China www.halfthesky.com
To order a copy, see www.peterlighte.com | <urn:uuid:df9ff688-89c0-4eef-92be-db9f19fc3e62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paabj.org/category/active-alumni/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945221 | 412 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Wildlife Crime in Lincolnshire
In a rural county the size of Lincolnshire with over 90 SSSI's and many rare and threatened species, wildlife crime is a serious issue that affects our nature reserves and all of us. But the legislation is very complex - there are over 150 Acts relating to wildlife.
Particular areas of concern locally are:
- badger crime (including digging and lamping),
- hare coursing,
- habitat damage (caused quad-bikes and four-wheel drives for example),
- bird persecution ( shooting, illegal trapping and egg collecting),
- bat crime.
For further information about Wildlife Crime in Lincolnshire and contact details for Wildlife Crime Officers see the Lincolnshire Police Website.
Reporting Wildlife Crime
Reporting wildlife crime, ensures incidents are formally logged on the police computer, enabling easier research of wildlife crime at a later date if it is required. There is no reason to approach individuals who are committing offences, observation from a distance is the best policy.
How to report wildlife crime in Lincolnshire:
- Ring the police on 01522 532222.
- State you are reporting a crime.
- Give relevant details.
- Obtain an incident number.
- Ask to be updated with the results. | <urn:uuid:01c7b4aa-9353-4348-8c95-58ff65480605> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lincstrust.org.uk/wildlife/liaison.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902594 | 261 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Latest update: May 22nd, 2013
Several weeks ago I published a letter from an elderly Holocaust survivor who expressed her fear regarding the world situation, specifically the hatred of Israel and escalation of anti-Semitism that is reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Europe. Her letter provoked a torrent of e-mails from young and old readers, several of which I published, but I had not responded to her directly. B’ezrat Hashem, I will do so now.
My Dear Friend:
First, allow me to apologize for the delay in responding to your specific questions, but since you are familiar with my columns you are aware I always allow my readers to respond to the challenges under discussion.
I wish I could tell you that your fears are unfounded, that your imagination is running away with you, that reality proves you wrong. Sadly, however, you are right on target and those who make light of your worries are sleeping, even as our people slept in pre-Holocaust Europe.
What we are witnessing today was predicted by our prophets and sages but, alas, we are no longer familiar with their teachings. Ours is a generation of which the prophet Amos said: “And days shall come saith the L-rd, and I shall send a hunger into the land – not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water, but a hunger for the Word of G-d.”
This is the spiritual famine we are witnessing today. We simply do not comprehend and we continue on our merry way with business as usual.
Maimonides taught that when suffering is visited upon us, we are commanded to cry out and awaken our people with the sound of the shofar. Everyone must be alerted to examine his or her life and commit to greater adherence to Torah and mitzvos.
Maimonides warned that if we regard the tragedies that befall us simply as “the way of the world” – natural happenings – we will be guilty of achzarius, cruelty.
At first glance, it is difficult to understand why Maimonides would choose the term “cruelty” to describe those who view trials and tribulations as natural happenings. Such people may be unthinking, apathetic, foolish, blind or obtuse, but why accuse them of cruelty?
The answer is simple. If we regard our pain and suffering as mere coincidence, we will feel no motivation to examine our lives, abandon our old ways, and change. So, yes, such an attitude is cruel, for it invites additional misfortune upon ourselves and others.
It would be the height of cruelty to dismiss what is occurring in the world today as mere happenstance. Great Torah luminaries of past generations, such as the Chofetz Chaim and Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, told us we are entering the final stages of history – a period called “Ikvesa D’Meshicha” – Footsteps of the Messiah.
Our Torah foretells four exiles through which our people would suffer: that of Egypt, of Babylonia, of the Persian-Mede empires and of the Greek and Roman empires – the exile in which we presently find ourselves, for it was the Romans who exiled us when they destroyed the Second Temple.
In Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, an early midrashic work, it is written that before the coming of Messiah we will have to contend with a fifth source of tribulation that will come from Yishmael – the Arabs – who will cause terrible suffering to the world and to our people. This teaching is reaffirmed by Rabbi Chaim Vital, the illustrious disciple of the Arizal, who wrote that before the final curtain falls on the stage of history, Yishmael will inflict torture on our people in ways the world had never before seen.
One need not have great powers of discernment to recognize the painful veracity of these predictions. Just consider the constant, senseless, brutal acts of terror – the suicide bombers, decapitations, hijackings, missiles, etc.
We are the generation that has been destined to witness the fulfillment of the prophecy given to Hagar (Genesis 16:11-13): “Behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son, and you shall name him Ishmael…. and he shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him .”
The long arm of Ishmael’s terror has indeed reached every part of the world.
There is yet another amazing prophecy in the Yalkut Shimoni – a medieval/midrashic compilation that eerily foretells the events of today and should give us all pause. Rabbi Yitzchok said, “The year in which Melech HaMashiach will be revealed, all the nations of the world will be provoking each other. The king of Persia [Iran] will provoke the king of Arabia. The king of Arabia will go to Edom [the leader of the Christian nations] to take counsel and the King of Persia [Ahmadinejad] will threaten to destroy the entire world.
“The nations of the world will be outraged and panic. They will fall on their faces and will experience pains like birth pangs. Israel too, will be outraged, and in a state of panic ask, ‘Where do we go?’
“But say unto them, ‘My children, do not fear. The time of your redemption has come. And this last redemption shall be different from the first that was followed by further bondage and pain. After this last redemption, you shall not experience any further pain or subjugation’ ” (Yalkut Shimoni, Isaiah 59).
Referring to this teaching, the Klausenberger Rebbe, zt”l, said, “Remember these words. They are perhaps not understood now, but in time they will be, and will be a source of strength to our people.”
Had you heard these prophecies centuries ago, when they were written, you might have laughed and scoffed. Even if you read them as recently as 1970, you would have been hard put to believe it, for of all Muslim countries, the Shah’s Iran was probably the friendliest. But today, the impossible has become possible and events are unfolding so rapidly we have difficulty absorbing their impact. So how are we to understand it all?
The Yalkut compares our suffering to birth pangs. But birth pangs are deceptive – when the contractions begin, it’s easy to ignore them since they are mild and occur between long intervals. As birth becomes imminent, however, the contractions intensify and the pain becomes more intense. And just when it appears the woman can no longer endure the pain, the baby is born and new life enters the world. It is these labor pains to which we are witness today.
How long will the labor last? It’s anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain. Please G-d, the birth is sure to take place. In the interim however, we may very well ask, “Is it possible to ease the suffering? Is it possible to protect ourselves from these painful contractions?”
The answer to that is a most emphatic “Yes!”
(To be continued)
About the Author:
You might also be interested in:
You must log in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:defa9fd8-8ec2-464e-8485-972d76e255ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/rebbetzins-viewpointrebbetzin-jungreis/the-tragic-vacuum-part-three-2/2011/04/13/ | 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 | 0.954844 | 1,567 | 1.859375 | 2 |
||These dynastic dictatorships are doomed|
The Times - July 4th 2011
If you want a sense of time standing still, go to the “demilitarized zone” between North and South Korea and the place where the truce was signed between those two countries and the United Nations forces in 1953. When I visited Panmunjom last week with a group of British parliamentarians and diplomats, it felt as if barely a speck of dust had moved since my previous visit, a quarter of a century earlier, right down to the ritual of North Korean soldiers peering through the window at visitors, just to show that they are there. But then a strange, small sign of another sort of déjà vu planted a little hope in my mind.
In one of the UN buildings, where ancient Bakelite phones are used to convey messages across the border, among the pictures on the wall was one I immediately recognised. It was a framed cover of The Economist, from 2000 when I was that magazine’s editor. The picture was of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s weird “dear leader”, the topic was the first summit between the two Koreas since the truce, and the headline (written by my deputy, Clive Crook, I hasten to add) was the wonderful “Greetings, Earthlings”. Yet it was something else that caught my eye.
In the smaller headlines advertising other stories were two simple words: “After Assad”. For this was also the moment when the brutal dictator of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, died after three decades in power, handing over to his supposedly reformist son, Bashar. Now you can probably guess the hopeful thought that popped into my mind. It was that soon, possibly very soon, those words will appear again on magazine covers and newspaper front pages. For family dictatorships do not last forever.
Among the bravest people in the world right now must rank the protesters in Syria, who are coming out every week, in city after city, in their hundreds of thousands, despite the Assad regime’s continued brutality. When the Arab uprisings began in Tunisia last December and then spread to Egypt, many wondered whether the revolt might also spread to Syria but then dismissed the idea, especially once the regime had shown it was still willing to kill to stay in power, and able too to shut off the internet, keep out the foreign media and retain the loyalty of the army.
That is proving to be wrong. Syrians’ bravery and determination, shown especially in the city of Hama, where Bashar’s father ordered his army in 1982 to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians to suppress a previous revolt, is steadily weakening the regime’s grip. Whether the Assads will fall before or after the Qaddafis in Libya is hard to say, of course. But time will not stand still for either of them. Both families look doomed.
The early euphoria about the Arab uprisings has turned into a mixture of fatigue—so many chaotic revolts, so many troubled countries—and, as the Libyan war grinds on, grim pessimism. Yet in reality patience and optimism, particularly in the light of so much bravery, are called for. The pressure for freedom and change continues to be felt right across the region.
Even the old monarchies are feeling obliged to make concessions, with Morocco’s referendum last week and Bahrain’s commencement of a “national dialogue” on reform. Both of those gestures look inadequate, and likely to invite further pressure. In the oil-rich Gulf, there is enough money to buy off dissent and keep the army happy, but even there the fall of the dictatorships of Syria and Libya will cause new flutters of nervousness, happy though the monarchs will be to see the end of the awkward Assads and Qadaffis.
What, though, could this mean for those bleak remnants of the cold war on the Koreans’ border? Perhaps nothing: for as long as I can remember, when asked how long the North Korean regime might last, experts have answered “about ten more years”.
That is what many said when Kim Il-Sung, the country’s founding dictator, was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Il, in 1994, and now that that Kim is planning to bequeath power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-Eun, the same may be said again. The chubby 27-year-old has even been reported in the South Korean press to have had plastic surgery to make him look more like his grandfather. Nevertheless, the tottering Assad regime in Syria should counsel against making firm assumptions about the Kim regime’s durability.
Having China as your ally and neighbour does help. But the contrast with China’s authoritarian political system is also telling. The strength of family dictatorships, you might think, is trust and the ability to concentrate power. But their weakness lies in their rigidity, and their need to keep rewarding other groups to maintain their grip—in Syria’s case the security services and the monopolist businessmen with whom the Assads have surrounded themselves, in North Korea’s case, the army—in ways that reinforce that rigidity.
China’s Communist Party last week celebrated its 90th birthday, prompting plenty of reflection on how long it, too, can survive in power. The key to its resilience, however, is that it is a system, not a family. There is plenty of corruption and cronyism, naturally. But during the 1980s and, especially, the 1990s, the party shed most of its dynastic ties to Mao’s Long Marchers and turned itself into a bureaucracy, with entrance exams and term limits that enforce rotation and keep something of a lid on corruption.
Most of all, the Communist Party has been flexible, allowing society and the economy to evolve around it. One day, the revolts against the party might become too much, especially if the economy turns sour. Some of the new team of leaders that will take over in 2013, including Xi Jinping, the next president, are the sons of Long Marchers. But as long as the party remains flexible, permitting China to evolve, the day of reckoning may well be staved off.
That is what neither Syria nor North Korea has allowed, albeit in their very different ways and circumstances. Every effort the Chinese have made to encourage the Kim regime to follow their example with economic reform has been rebuffed or quickly abandoned. Rigidity, strict control, cannot be relaxed. It has served the Kims well for more than 50 years. But, albeit in a less hermetically sealed country, rigidity and strict control served the Assads well for decades too. Not for much longer. | <urn:uuid:5e04927d-5f15-449a-8875-38baeac329e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.billemmott.com/article.php?id=322 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970249 | 1,409 | 1.71875 | 2 |
The Federal Election Commission appears poised to approve a method for donors to make small campaign contributions via text message. But I’m giving the news just one cheer because I’m not convinced text contributions will live up to the buzz.
Why? For one, fundraising via text will be expensive. It also introduces barriers to donor follow-up, and it may benefit only high profile campaigns.
Text collection fees can run 50 percent or higher. While 50 percent may be an acceptable acquisition cost for a new donor, campaigns won’t get the donor’s name, or any contact information other than the mobile phone number. And 50 percent is a very high processing cost for repeat donors when compared to email or web processing for repeat donations.
Not only will campaigns just get mobile phone numbers, but FCC requirements may limit how campaigns can contact those numbers subsequently. The real payoff will not come from a $10 donation, but from the opportunity to re-solicit and otherwise engage the donor. If campaigns can’t successfully contact donors, a $5 net per text won’t go far.
There is one, and only one, big story about text messaging fundraising success – Haiti. But the Haiti earthquake was a disaster of rare proportions with multi-day wall-to-wall news coverage. This is the rare condition that can trigger impulse giving on a mass level. The Obama and Romney campaigns, and perhaps a few other high profile campaigns, are likely to have some success with text fundraising. But for typical campaigns, the text donation payoff is likely to be tiny.
At Aristotle, we’re excited about any new fundraising technology. We’re just not convinced that text message fundraising will be as big a factor as the news coverage to date seems to expect.
David Mason, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is senior vice president for compliance services at Aristotle International. | <urn:uuid:a216c916-ef74-4dbd-be75-efea1234b3e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.campaignsandelections.com/email/campaign-insider/321712/one-cheer-for-text-message-contributions.thtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914635 | 388 | 1.8125 | 2 |
India and Bangladesh are to launch this week joint celebrations of the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, the globally revered poet who wrote their respective national anthems.
Indian Vice President Hamid Ansari arrived in Dhaka on Thursday to launch the celebrations jointly with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a function scheduled for Friday.
The Indian part will be opened in New Delhi on Saturday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Ansari, who arrived on a two-day visit, is accompanied by wife Salma, Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur and a 59 member delegation that includes three lawmakers.
Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni received Ansari, Star Online , website of The Daily Star reported from Dhaka.
Ansari's itinerary includes meeting President Zillur Rahman, paying homage to the martyrs at the National Memorial at Savar and to the martyrs of the War of Liberation in 1971.
India and Bangladesh had decided to jointly celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore during Sheikh Hasina's visit to New Delhi in January last year.
Both the countries have chalked out elaborate programmes to mark the year-long birthday celebrations of the poet who has penned the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
As part of the celebrations, the two countries have decided to produce two feature films, prepare a tourist circuit and dramatise the Nobel laureate's novels and poems on Tagore, who lived and worked in Bengal and visited several other nations. | <urn:uuid:e216a376-24db-4301-aca2-f0c0da4b34fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.4to40.com/newsat4/index.asp?p=India-Bangladesh_to_celebrate_Tagore_birthday&country=Bangladesh | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965122 | 314 | 1.554688 | 2 |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Is the new requirement that people buy health insurance unconstitutional?
That's the principal question before the Supreme Court this week as it takes up the 2010 health care reform law.
The Affordable Care Act is meant to help more people get affordable health insurance coverage -- including the 49 million uninsured today -- and bring health costs under control. But those goals could be harder to achieve if the court strikes down the "individual mandate."
Just how much harder is not certain.
The individual mandate is intended to work in conjunction with two other new rules in the law: Insurers must offer everyone coverage regardless of health status, and insurers may not charge people with pre-existing conditions more than other policyholders in their geographic area who have the same plan.
The argument goes like this: The mandate, which wouldn't start until 2014, would mean the vast majority of Americans will be insured, and that would reduce the costs imposed by the uninsured on everyone else.
Why? Because the uninsured seek care when they need it the most -- often by going to emergency rooms. When they can't pay for that care, the cost is absorbed by hospitals. The hospitals in turn raise the cost of their services on the insured. And then insurers raise their premiums on policyholders.
So what would happen if the Supreme Court. which is expected to decide the case in June, finds that the mandate is unconstitutional?
Much depends on how the court rules. If it also finds the mandate is not "severable" from the overall health reform law, the whole law could get struck down and most of the potential benefits from it eliminated.
But the court could also find that the mandate is unconstitutional and can be repealed on its own.
In that scenario, experts say, some premiums would go up and fewer people would have insurance relative to how many there would be with a mandate. On the other hand, these analysts say, neither change would likely be so drastic as to totally undermine the benefits of the law's other provisions.
The Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that 16 million fewer people in 2021 would be insured as a result. The Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, estimated about 8 million fewer people would be insured overall.
The CBO further estimated that premiums for people who would buy policies on the new insurance exchanges or on their own could go up by between 15% and 20%.
But that doesn't necessarily mean a bigger bite for everyone. Many individuals would still get federal subsidies that would help absorb the premium increases. The Lewin Group estimated that two-thirds of everyone buying insurance outside their workplace would be eligible for subsidies.
That's also one reason why the reduction in the number of insured might not be as drastic as feared without a mandate.
In terms of the federal cost burden, both the CBO and the Urban Institute estimate that without a mandate the deficit would drop -- by $282 billion, according to CBO. That's in part because without a mandate there would be fewer people than expected to subsidize on Medicaid and on the exchanges.
But the bang for the buck that the government would get for subsidizing coverage would go down too, said Matthew Buettgens, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute.
|The Obamacare myth about small business|
|Make $30 an hour, no bachelor's degree required|
|Apple set for showdown on Capitol Hill over corporate taxes|
|Meet David Karp: Tech's newest superstar|
|Investors shift focus to Bernanke|
|Overnight Avg Rate||Latest||Change||Last Week|
|30 yr fixed||3.67%||3.62%|
|15 yr fixed||2.80%||2.76%|
|30 yr refi||3.65%||3.61%|
|15 yr refi||2.80%||2.76%|
Today's featured rates:
|Latest Report||Next Update|
|Home prices||Aug 28|
|Consumer confidence||Aug 28|
|Manufacturing (ISM)||Sept 4|
|Inflation (CPI)||Sept 14|
|Retail sales||Sept 14| | <urn:uuid:df24e8c9-7d58-4bd1-ba0f-b5ef7b7c1b52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/26/news/economy/health-reform-mandate/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955895 | 858 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Saudi cement factories produce a 70.7 million output in 2001
Saudi cement production totaled 20.73 million tons in 2001, reported Al-Hayat . Official statistics show that there are eight operating cement companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in addition to one white cement company. These companies operate 33 cement-producing factories in the Kingdom.
Official statistics released by the cement sector show that the domestic demand for cement grew by 15 percent in 2001. Local cement sales increased from 15.36 million tons in 2000 to 17.67 million tons in 2001, however, Saudi cement exports declined by 2.2 percent in 2001 compared with 2000 due to competition from cement companies in the other Gulf States. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com) | <urn:uuid:b38b5f24-6c84-42fb-ab32-c38bb7363d3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albawaba.com/business/saudi-cement-factories-produce-707-million-output-2001 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933571 | 162 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Retire American Flags at SMS
November 7, 2011 · 4:47 PM
Do you have any stained, torn, worn out or tattered American flags? If so, please bring them to Snoqualmie Middle School, 9200 Railroad Ave. S.E., Snoqualmie, to be properly retired. The middle school is sponsoring this community service project for the third year. As part of the school’s Veteran’s Day Assembly on Thursday morning, Nov. 10, the American Legion will have representatives on hand to officially take the flags and store them until they can be properly retired by the American Legion Post.
Drop off your worn flags at the school’s main office before November 10, between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. To learn more, e-mail to Thomas Burford, eighth grade U.S. History teacher, at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:ea1043f1-0d9c-41bb-ac42-babcb09dce78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.valleyrecord.com/news/133401763.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928403 | 195 | 1.507813 | 2 |
[Jukka] wanted a bike light that wasn’t afraid to go into the woods during the dark winter. He put together a lamp that uses eight 3 Watt LEDs to pump out 1680 lumens (english translation). The high power LEDs were mounted on a large aluminum heat sink and use lenses to optimize the beam of light. The system uses a 2 amp driver board that he assembled himself. Power is provided by sixteen AA Nickel Metal Hydride batteries that are housed along with the driver circuit in a water bottle.
This more than doubles the output of the last bike light we thought was too bright. Where will this lumen-arms-race stop? | <urn:uuid:13d442d0-0d8c-4656-b82a-8403a204ebac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hackaday.com/2009/10/22/unreasonably-bright-bike-light-apparently-hunts-deer/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=104f7cb3e5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962375 | 135 | 2.09375 | 2 |
A controversial ending to the South Carolina high school basketball game has prompted a call in the Palmetto State's legislature to propose instant replay in high school games.
The play that started the controversy was from the SCHSL (South Carolina High School League) Class 4A boys championship game between Spartanbug and Summerville. Summerville held a two point lead with 1.7 seconds left and at the free throw line. A missed free throw was rebounded by a Spartanburg player who made a couple of dribbles and launched a 70 foot shoot that rattled the rim and fell in for an apparrant game winning three pointer. The officials huddled and discussed what took place. After consulting with each other, the officials ruled the shot came after the final buzzer, nullifying the game winning basket. That decision sent Summerville into a frenzy celebrating their first basketball championship. Here's a link to a video of that shot. You can decide if it was made in time. http://videos.thestate.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=1755440
A member of the South Carolina Legislature from the Spartanburg area has written and sent a bill to the Statehouse proposing the High School League to implement instant replay in state championship games. The proposal would have the replay be mandatory only in basketball and football. Since the championship games are played at the University of South Carolina, the technology is in place to easily do this.
While instant replay has proved to be successful in college and professional sports, I don't believe a state law is the way to go about this. The government shouldn't be getting in the business of telling a high school sports sanctioning body how to conduct their business. The SCHSL could easily implement a rule if they feel one needs to be added or changed. There has been no discussion about if the proposed law would make the replay rule like in college or professional. Would the coaches have challenges or would every play be reviewable from an official in the booth?
Secondly, this proposal only calls for it being used during the championship games. Who's to say that a pivotal call could be made in the first round of the playoffs that could potentially knock out a team that would have made the championship game had the call went their way with the use of instant replay.
I just don't feel that a law from a state government should be what drives this proposal. It's bad enough that a member of a state governing body feels the need to write a bill and send it in for consideration. It's another thing that the legislator that did this is from the area of the team on the losing end of a basketball officials decision, creating the discussion of did the representative have sour grapes over the call. We all have seen split second calls that could have gone in your team's favor, but a law making instat replay mandatory isn't the right way to go about it. | <urn:uuid:186c404f-9d10-4455-95c1-4d6aab68f01a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/162640-instant-replay-in-high-school | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978255 | 592 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Cosmology: Man's place in the universe
Intelligent life first appeared on earth some 10 or 20 billion years after the universe began a complex sequence of events ranging from nuclear reactions under hot, dense conditions, through galaxy formation, further nuclear reactions in stars, chemical processes, and biological evolution. The individual events and their sequencing appear both natural and likely, given the microscopic physics we observe in the laboratory and the large-scale parameters of the universe. But they are also rather sensitive to these being as they are and not otherwise. This suggests the existence of a deeper level of underlying physics that we have not yet fully understood.
Access to the full text of this article is restricted. In order to view this article please log in. | <urn:uuid:764ac854-601b-4af0-8fe1-d879647cc2cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osa-opn.org/home/articles/on/volume_12/issue_1/features/cosmology_man_s_place_in_the_universe/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937087 | 147 | 3.296875 | 3 |
In what can only be interpreted as a “punt” the California Supreme Court today ruled both that Proposition 8, which amended the Constitution to read that marriage is only between a man and a woman, did not violate the California Constitution and that despite what the definition of marriage in California is there are still 18,000 gay couples who are “married.”
I’m offended as a philosopher.
The Court effectively created three classes of citizens in California today (Bonus! Extra class! There used to be just two in the “marriage” discussion.) There are heterosexual couples, who are the only couples who can be married in California and whose domestic partnerships can be called “marriages.” There are homosexual couples, who cannot be married in California and whose domestic partnerships cannot be called “marriages.” And there are other homosexual couples who are married and whose domestic partnerships can be called “marriages.”
The Court has declared that the Constitution of California recognizes more inequality than even Proposition 8 would have introduced to it.
What the Court hasn’t done is settle the matter. The voters of California want marriage defined a certain way; the California Constitution now protects that definition; but it is also clear that California does recognize gay marriage. So, what about recognizing gay marriages performed in other states? Should the rest of California’s gay couples who want to marry do so in Vermont then dare the California government to refuse to recognize those marriages? Should a challenge be immediately issued in the Federal courts under the Equal Protection clause? (Because really? The only difference between legitimate and illegitimate gay marriage in California is calendar date? Rights don’t evaporate when Monday becomes Tuesday.)
Even more annoying: California’s Constitutional Amendment process that requires only a 50% majority has been demonstrated to be the process that holds sway on questions of marriage rights. Proposition 8, the Court ruled, was not a revision of the Constitution, which would have required legislative approval before being put to the voters. Proposition “To Hell With 8” in 2010, then, will not be a revision either, so it will only require a 50% majority to change the Constitution to explicitly recognize gay marriages. And the direction of the support for gay marriage in California has been up over the years, not down, so the likelihood of an amendment recognizing gay marriage is higher than it would have been ten years ago. Maybe it can be passed.
And around and around and around it will go. This either ends with the U.S. Supreme Court or it never ends.
The California Supreme Court made no decision at all today, except that they didn’t want to be called “activist” again. Well, congratulations, Court.
You are inactivist judges. | <urn:uuid:76b30d5b-834a-4f74-a2c2-27f5bee9a44b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://backpackingdad.blogspot.com/2009/05/california-supreme-court-do-we.html?showComment=1243537523868 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961628 | 575 | 2.140625 | 2 |
“Humility,” Family Home Evening Resource Book, (1997),196
Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers.
—Doctrine and Covenants 112:10
Humility is a feeling that comes when we realize how much we depend on our Heavenly Father. We show humility by being teachable and by serving our fellowmen. Great blessings come to us when we are humble.
IDEAS FOR LESSONS
Lesson 1: What Is Humility?
Make wordstrips describing what humility is and is not. For example, humility is: teachable, loving, dependent on the Lord, obedient to God, gracious. It is not: proud, arrogant, boastful, self-depreciating, weak, lacking confidence. Prepare a chart as follows:
Humility Is Not
As each person chooses a wordstrip, discuss what each means and place it in the appropriate column. Discuss the differences between being truly humble and belittling oneself.
Read Mosiah 4:19.
Explain that real humility begins when we understand our true relationship to Heavenly Father. When we know that we owe everything to him, we realize that our achievements and possessions are not our own.
Point out that, knowing that we are important to our Heavenly Father and that he is willing to help us, we can be confident.
Together make a list of achievements and successes of the members of your family, including at least one for each person. For example, one child might have a musical talent or a gift for making friends. Perhaps someone has won a place on a sports team or written a beautiful poem. After you have finished this list, give a word of praise for each item on the list. You might mention how hard each person had to work for each achievement listed.
Ask each person to tell who is responsible for his achievement or ability. For example, a child might tell how he worked for the achievement he listed (for example, “It took a lot of time to learn how to play soccer well enough to make the team, and I had to miss out on a lot of other activities to practice”).
Then have him talk about other people who helped make his success possible (for example, “Dad taught me the rules of the game, and Mark practiced with me on Saturdays. Mom let my chores wait whenever I had a game”). Last, have him tell how Heavenly Father is ultimately responsible for this achievement (for example, “I can play soccer because Heavenly Father blessed me with a strong, healthy body. And our family has enough material blessings that I can afford to spend some time in such an enjoyable way”).
Point out that being humble does not mean denying our achievements. But it does mean acknowledging the source of our blessings. Challenge your family to develop a humble spirit by remembering that all good things in our lives come from Heavenly Father.
Lesson 2: The Savior’s Example of Humility
To help your family understand how the Savior showed humility, discuss these:
Have your family name other specific times when the Savior showed humility. (See Luke 23:1–9.)
Read the parable in Luke 18:9–14 and discuss how the differences between the Pharisee and the publican can help us define humility.
List things family members can do to develop Christlike humility. Set a goal and work on one thing at a time, individually or as a family.
Lesson 3: Blessings of Being Humble
To discover the great blessings the Lord has promised the humble, have each person read one or more of the following scriptures and tell what blessings the humble will receive: Doctrine and Covenants 112:10, 136:32, 67:10, 12:8, and D&C 1:28; 3 Nephi 12:2; Ether 12:26–27.
Have each person choose his favorite scripture, write it on a card, and decide at least one way he will practice humility during the coming week. Family members may wish to memorize their scripture.
Psalm 34:18 (The Lord is near those with broken hearts and contrite spirits.)
Isaiah 57:15 (The Lord dwells with those with humble spirits.)
Mosiah 4:11 (Humble yourselves and be steadfast in the faith.)
See also “Humility, Humble” in the Topical Guide.
Song and Hymns
“Father Up Above,” Children’s Songbook, p. 23.
“More Holiness Give Me,” Hymns, no. 131.
“In Humility, Our Savior,” Hymns, no. 172.^ Back to top | <urn:uuid:43e07b4d-d8e1-4023-919c-bb05550729e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=0981a41f6cc20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=5158f4b13819d110VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94779 | 991 | 3.109375 | 3 |
As economic conditions around the globe deteriorate and super powers vie for military, political and financial position, governments are increasingly putting their focus on the acquisition of resources.
In China, where the government essentially owns all aspects of the economy, national wealth funds are being rapidly diversified into everything from agricultural resources and international energy exploration, to precious metals and rare earth minerals. Take, for example, the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 2008, which the People’s Republic cited as a political annexation. While politics certainly played a role, there was a much more sinister and strategic power-play at the core of the military occupation. Tibet is rich in one key resource that China lacks for its 1 billion strong population – fresh, clean water. That alone is motivation enough to send in the army when your own rivers and eco-systems have been destroyed because of unsustainable manufacturing practices.
The U.S., for its part, is very much involved in similar strategic machinations. Given the trillions of dollars being generated, who could realistically deny that our primary purpose for military hegemony in the middle east is focused solely on the acquisition of cheap oil resources (Iraq) to keep the U.S. economy afloat and rare earth deposits like uranium (Afghanistan) that provide essential components for the defense industry | <urn:uuid:95ef1b47-5f6f-4295-a86b-c573f7685418> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://whtc.com/blogs/post/rkingman/2013/feb/05/beware-resource-domination/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951049 | 260 | 2.125 | 2 |
The mission is clear, but it's certainly not easy.
Whoever becomes the next governor of the Bank of Japan will be expected to make full use of the central bank's tools to reflate the Japanese economy, while avoiding accusations that it is igniting a currency war by deliberately depressing the yen.
Further aggressive easing of monetary policy in the world's third largest economy looks all but assured -- thanks to the early departure of the bank's current governor and a new prime minister with a strong mandate for bold action to stimulate growth.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to name candidates for governor early next month, after Masaaki Shirakawa announced he would stand down on March 19, several weeks before his term was due to end.
Abe based his election campaign last year on a commitment to take radical steps to end years of deflation, combining promises of looser monetary policy with pledges of fiscal stimulus.
"Any Abe government pick for the Bank of Japan will move quickly after his confirmation with a more aggressive monetary policy in line with the government's wishes," analysts at the Eurasia Group wrote earlier this month.
Shirakawa agreed last month to double the bank's inflation target and adopt open-ended purchases of government bonds but is opposed to some of the more extreme proposals considered by the bank and has been accused of doing too little, too late.
While a surprise candidate could still be put forward by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, three frontrunners have emerged - Toshiro Muto, Kazumasa Iwata and Haruhiko Kuroda.
Kuroda, head of the Asian Development Bank, appears willing to follow through on Abe's plans, telling the Wall Street Journal this week that Japan has "plenty of room for monetary easing."
"If necessary and if appropriate, of course additional monetary easing this year could be justified," he said. | <urn:uuid:07c1c5bb-daec-4d58-a1b5-769305505969> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyff4.com/news/money/A-tough-job-for-the-next-Mr-Yen/-/9323996/18556646/-/wu6lf9/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965808 | 378 | 1.75 | 2 |
A new strategy based on pharmacophore-based virtual screening in adenosine deaminase inhibitors detection and in-vitro study
1 Center of Excellence in Electrochemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
2 Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Drug Design & Development Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 2012, 20:64 doi:10.1186/2008-2231-20-64Published: 22 October 2012
Background and the purpose of the study
Adenosine deaminase (ADA) inhibition not only may be applied for the treatment of ischemic injury, hypertension, lymphomas and leukaemia, but also they have been considered as anti- inflammatory drugs. On the other hand according to literatures, ADA inhibitors without a nucleoside framework would improve pharmacokinetics and decrease toxicity. Hence we have carried out a rational pharmacophore design for non-nucleoside inhibitors filtration.
A merged pharmacophore model based on the most potent non-nucleoside inhibitor erythro-9-(2-hydroxy-3-nonyl) adenine (EHNA) and natural products were generated and applied for compounds filtration. The effects of filtrated compounds based on pharmacophore and docking studies investigated on ADA by UV and Fluorescence spectroscopy techniques.
Extracted compounds were find efficiently inhibit ADA, and the most potent (2) shows an inhibition constant equal to 20 μM. Besides, Fluorescence spectroscopy studies revealed that enzyme 3D structure bear further change in lower concentrations of compound 2.
3 non-nucleoside inhibitors for ADA are presented. According to obtained results from UV and fluorescence spectroscopy, such interesting pharmacophore template with multiple approaches will help us to extract or design compound with desired properties. | <urn:uuid:7d5c0715-e830-4089-aa43-492461f52845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.darujps.com/content/20/1/64/abstract | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900749 | 415 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Study of Intermarriage between Asian and Jewish Americans
A new study is underway of intermarriage between Asian and Jewish Americans by Helen Kim, PhD, and Noah Leavitt. The research will be published in a book that will examine the racial, ethnic, and religious identities of Asian-Jewish couples and families.
While much attention has focused on interfaith marriages between American Jews and their non-Jewish spouses, we know very little about marriages of racially and ethnically diverse couples where there is at least one Jewish partner. There is a dearth of information about Asian-Jewish families. Our project aims to fill this gap.
The research covers a wide range of subjects including childhood and adolescent experiences, family dynamics, religious and cultural practices, professional involvements, civic and community commitments.
We are looking for a wide range of participants, including those who have children, and those who do not, those who are more religiously involved, and those who are less involved, and individuals from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian backgrounds. We are also seeking participants who have converted to Judaism, and those who have not. The questionnaire in anonymous and the Interviews are confidential.
If you are interested in being part of this study, please contact Helen Kim or Noah Leavitt at email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.org. Thank you for being part of this important research.
Link to the Asian Study Survey | <urn:uuid:c4ee881b-6be8-42f4-9cdb-39294e0ec6fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bechollashon.org/projects/asian_study.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956525 | 297 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Green Babies at St Fagans!
Over the last couple of months we have held a total of 5 Green Baby days at the T? Gwyrdd here at St Fagans Museum. The idea behind the Green Baby days was to promote greener practices and to lessen the environmental impact raising a baby can have.
To help us achieve this we invited a number of experts in to help us, all of whom I’d like to thank!
Obviously one of the main ways of lessening environmental impact when raising a child is through the use of re-usable nappies. This is also a great way of saving money, around £700! These re-usable nappies have moved on a great deal since the days of terry towelling and enormous safety pins! It was great to see peoples reactions when shown examples of the fancy newer nappies and to hear their stories!
So I have to give a massive thank you to the 3 re-usable nappy providers who helped us over the 5 days. First of all to mamigreen who are based in Cardiff and came to help us on the first 2 Green Baby days. Secondly a huge thank you to Gemma at Little Gems Nappies (based in Pontypridd) who came to help us over 3 days last week during the Easter holidays. And also a big thank you to Melanie at Little Lion (based near Bridgend) who lent us a variety of re-usable nappies that we were able to showcase!
If you are interested in learning more about re-usable nappies or are considering using them then check out their websites. They all cover most of the southWalesarea and offer phone consultations as well as home visit consultations!
We also had a stand by Fairdos which is a Fairtrade shop based inCanton inCardiff. As a stockist of all kinds of Fairtrade products this was a great opportunity to showcase their range of Fairtrade cotton baby clothes, toys and bibs. A big thank you to the Fairdos volunteers who gave up their time to man the stand!
The final area we covered was baby food. Making your own baby food is healthy, cheap, eco-friendly, and you know exactly what’s in it! We had Welsh Government advice and recipe documents for different stages available to read, and many visitors asked us where they could find these documents themselves. So here we go…
Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who came to see us during the event and for sharing your knowledge, especially those who entered our competition by posting tips on our Green Babies ideas tree! We will shortly be picking a winner and contacting them about their prize.
Leave a comment | <urn:uuid:302d13d6-98f7-42e0-87ae-8aa097f9c369> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/blog/2012-04-24/Green-Babies-at-St-Fagans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970298 | 561 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Head and Shoulders
The head and shoulders pattern is found in candlestick, point and figure, and chart patterns and is considered one of the most reliable reversal patterns.
The price forms a high on column one, followed by a period of consolidation. A second high is created followed by another period of consolidation, the right shoulder is then formed followed by a sell off. High volume should be seen on the last downward move.
Parralel support and resistance lines can be drawn as well as a visible neckline.
The height of the highest high should give a projection of the drop of the final downward move. | <urn:uuid:8b552469-ff13-4fed-947a-31b6d06b13f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stockdiamond.com/Point-and-Figure/head-and-shoulders.html?change_font=small&change_sifr=Times | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95524 | 126 | 1.601563 | 2 |
In most dog fighting cases, pit bulls are generally euthanized. They are judged not by behavior, but by breed and upbringing and the entire lot of them are usually destroyed for fear of adopting them out and having the unthinkable happen.
I should say up front, I don’t entirely disagree with this approach. When I see how inbreed the act of retrieving is for my Golden Retriever and herding is for my mixed-breed heeler, I have to consider the fact that a dog breed for aggressive fighting qualities may also retain those traits. Let’s just say I would never leave such a dog with other pets or children unattended and don’t think he can be adopted into just any home.
But in Michael Vick’s case, a new approach was taken, in part because Vick could afford to pay the price to care for the animals for the remainder of their lives ($1 million dollars). The dogs were evaluated based on temperament and not breed. In the end, only two dogs were euthanized from the entire bunch: one for aggression, the other for illness. Some of the dogs were sent to Best Friends in Utah because they were dog aggressive and will spend the rest of their lives at that facility. The rest were put into foster homes and are doing well in terms of interaction with other pets, people, and the community.
Thankfully, the people who agreed to foster these dogs are very well-versed in the breed and probably also wouldn’t leave these dogs with children or other pets unattended. Many of these foster families have reported though that many of these dogs are lovable lumps who are adapting quite well into their new environments. I am glad to hear it. Not all fighting dogs get this second chance — and few may get such a chance in the future. So it’s interesting to follow their progress to see whether or not dogs breed for fighting can be rehabilitated into a family pet. | <urn:uuid:c7798b97-30d1-4f13-860d-9eee707e9a30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mysanantonio.com/animals/2008/07/michael-vicks-dogs-showing-progress/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983888 | 403 | 1.976563 | 2 |
The New York Times is reporting that North Korean despot Kim Jong-il has put together a team of hackers to farm gold in popular South Korean MMOs. Police in the region said that the team created software that allowed them to breach the servers of MMOs, such as Lineage and Dungeon and Fighter (which seems to be Dungeon Fighter Online, possibly either named with the “and” in Korea, or a translation error on someone’s part), which granted “round-the-clock play by ‘factories’ of dozens of unmanned computers.”
The farmed gold was sold for real money, as is the thing to do when forming gold farming networks, along with the actual farming software. The police said in a little less than two years, the team made around 6 million bucks, giving 55 percent of said 6 million to the hackers. The police also said that they believe the money gained helps Kim Jong-il finance nuclear weapons programs, as well as helps to smuggle Rolex watches and other “luxury goods.”
What was not mentioned in the report is exactly how many skill points the team has gained over the years. | <urn:uuid:da57d218-8a04-4da5-83bd-af985e16f08d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geekosystem.com/kimg-jong-il-gold-farmers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976984 | 241 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Kids create car that can do close to 2,000 MPG
June 25, 2011 at 7:04 PM
What’s more impressive than a car that can do over a thousand miles per gallon? One that was designed by school kids.
In the UK, students from regional schools and universities took part in the annual Mileage Marathon Challenge near Leicester, England, each team vying to set new gas mileage efficiency records in a race around a track. Cars were allowed to coast, but had to maintain a minimum speed of 15 miles per hour. Students worked on the vehicle prototypes, many in partnership with design and engineering firms.
The winner of the 20-team competition, pictured above, was a vehicle driven by 14-year-old Sam Chapman-Hill, which reached a 1,980 mile-per-gallon efficiency. Its aerodynamic design, reminiscent of something from a sci-fi film, weighs just under 100 pounds and is made mostly of plastic reinforced by glass.
One driver, 11-year-old Kitty Foster, completed her race in a model that used a Cambridge Design Partnership oxygen concentrator and micro-diesel engine to reach 1,325 miles per gallon:
The car was also tracked using GPS to optimize its strategy during the race, communicating to Kitty when the perfect moment to stop the engine and start coasting arrived. Those with smartphones were encouraged to track the car’s speed and location during the race.
The Challenge is organized to excite students about tech and engineering, and the prototypes built are unlikely to be mass produced anytime soon. They do demonstrate what’s possible, however, and could inspire car manufacturers to keep innovating towards greater efficiency. | <urn:uuid:f40f420d-7923-4459-87c6-d48174317f72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobile.cafemom.com/group/114614/forums/read/14365516/Kids_create_car_that_can_do_close_to_2_000_MPG?last&use_mobile=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976043 | 344 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Wind Energy Could Produce 20 Percent of U.S. Electricity By 2030
The U.S Department of Energy (DOE) today released a first-of-its kind report that examines the technical feasibility of harnessing wind power to provide up to 20 percent of the nation's total electricity needs by 2030.
Entitled "20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030", the report identifies requirements to achieve this goal including reducing the cost of wind technologies, citing new transmission infrastructure, and enhancing domestic manufacturing capability. Most notably, the report identifies opportunities for 7.6 cumulative gigatons of CO2 to be avoided by 2030, saving 825 million metric tons in 2030 and every year thereafter if wind energy achieves 20 percent of the nation's electricity mix. As part of President Bush's Advanced Energy Initiative announced in 2006, clean, secure and sustainable wind energy has the potential to play an increasingly important role in the Bush Administration's long-term energy strategy to make investments today to fundamentally change the way we power U.S. homes and businesses and to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions growth by 2025.
"DOE's wind report is a thorough look at America's wind resource, its industrial capabilities, and future energy prices, and confirms the viability and commercial maturity of wind as a major contributor to America's energy needs, now and in the future," DOE Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy Andy Karsner, said. "To dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance our energy security, clean power generation at the gigawatt-scale will be necessary, and will require us to take a comprehensive approach to scaling renewable wind power, streamlining siting and permitting processes, and expanding the domestic wind manufacturing base."
Prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy and a broad cross section of stakeholders across industry, government, and three of DOE's national laboratories - the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA; and Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, NM, the report presents an in-depth analysis of the potential for wind in the U.S. and outlines a potential scenario to boost wind electric generation from its current production of 16.8 gigawatts (GW) to 304 GW by 2030. For its technical report, DOE also drew on the expertise of the American Wind Energy Association and Black and Veatch engineering consultants and the report reflects input from more than fifty energy organizations and corporations.
The analysis concludes that reaching 20 percent wind energy will require enhanced transmission infrastructure, streamlined siting and permitting regimes, improved reliability and operability of wind systems, and increased U.S. wind manufacturing capacity. Highlights of the report include:
1. Annual installations need to increase more than threefold. Achieving 20 percent wind will require the number of annual turbine installations to increase from approximately 2000 in 2006 to almost 7000 in 2017.
2. Costs of integrating intermittent wind power into the grid are modest. 20 percent wind can be reliably integrated into the grid for less than 0.5 cents per kWh.
3. No material constraints currently exist. Although demand for copper, fiberglass and other raw materials will increase, achieving 20 percent wind is not limited by the availability of raw materials.
4. Transmission challenges need to be addressed. Issues related to siting and cost allocation of new transmission lines to access the Nation's best wind resources will need to be resolved in order to achieve 20 percent wind.
"The report correctly highlights that greater penetration of renewable sources of energy - such as wind - into our electric grid will have to be paired with not only advanced integration technologies but also new transmission," DOE's Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Kevin Kolevar said. "In many cases, the most robust sources of renewable resources are located in remote areas, and if we want to be able to deliver these new clean and abundant sources of energy to population centers, we will need additional transmission."
With the U.S. leading the world in new wind installations and having the potential to be the world leader in total wind capacity by 2010, DOE's report comes at an important time in wind development. Last year, U.S. cumulative wind energy capacity reached 16,818 megawatts (MW) - with more than 5,000 MW of wind installed in 2007. Wind contributed to more than 30 percent of the new U.S. generation capacity in 2007, making it the second largest source of new power generation in the nation - surpassed only by natural gas. The U.S. wind energy industry invested approximately $9 billion in new generating capacity in 2007, and has experienced a 30 percent annual growth rate in the last 5 years.
For more information on DOE's Wind Program, visit http://www.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy
Related World News News | <urn:uuid:25a7f20d-f595-48d8-9832-b26b0435edd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsblaze.com/story/20080512112216tsop.nb/topstory.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92178 | 998 | 2.890625 | 3 |
The market isn't there for the cold hard facts that many of the Theravadin Bestsellers present. As Ben mentioned booksellers have pretty tight margins, so when they stock their 'spirituality
' shelves they're going to ask themselves what's going to sell the more?
It's not going to be your Theravadin texts, which offer a fairly grim picture for all those still infatuated with life.
It's probably gonna be your Mahayana and Pseudo-Buddhist texts, which more often appeal to the romance of the human condition, in a more 'life affirming' way.
PeterB wrote: " With a Foreword By HH The Dalai Lama" is usually a reliable indicator that it need not detain one.
Except of course "What the Buddha Taught" by Bhikkhu Bodhi
"But, Udāyi, let be the past, let be the future, I shall set you forth the Teaching: When there is this this is, with arising of this this arises; when there is not this this is not, with cessation of this this ceases." - Majjhima ii,32
Nanavira Thera's teachings - An existential approach to the Dhamma:http://bit.ly/LDsGHg | <urn:uuid:f20c5f7b-542c-457e-8e07-d3b1f0f89d75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3996 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946111 | 266 | 1.703125 | 2 |
The following links may be of use to you:
All Wales Convention Event Gallery
You can now view photos from all of our public events. The photos are hosted by the external site Flickr.
You can join the debate by visiting the official All Wales Convention Facebook group.
Keep up to date with all the latest Convention news on Twitter.
Welsh Assembly Government
The Welsh Assembly Government is the devolved government for Wales. Led by the First Minister, it is responsible for many issues, including health, education, economic development, culture, the environment and transport.
National Assembly for Wales
The National Assembly for Wales is the representative body with legislative powers in devolved areas. It has sixty elected members and meets in the Senedd.
Government of Wales Act
The Government of Wales Act 2006 (the 2006 Act) has major implications for the future governance of Wales. It changes, in a number of significant respects, the original devolution settlement for Wales laid down in the Government of Wales Act 1998. | <urn:uuid:a30581eb-eb0c-45b8-b0d3-79d028a37639> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allwalesconvention.org/getinformed/links/?cr=1&lang=en&ts=3&skip=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919653 | 204 | 2.234375 | 2 |
When the school opened in 1958 it had specialist Rural Studies status and an attached farm unit. The original building (since demolished) was the prototype for hundreds of other schools throughout the country. The county architect responsible for the design was awarded a C.B.E. Not only was the building innovative but also the school was the first in the county to have a covered sports area outdoors - and its school farm was the first to keep cows.
The original school population was 314 and it remained at around 390 until 1973 when the raising of school leaving age to sixteen took effect. A new Maths and craft block was built to accommodate the additional one hundred students staying on for a fifth year. In 1976 the school became a comprehensive and the numbers on roll increased again so a third teaching block was added. Sixth Form teaching began in 1980 - with just eleven post 16 students at first.
The Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced the National Curriculum and Ofsted inspections began soon after. Following Tuxford School's first inspection in 1995 the chief inspector recommended it for a Good School's Award and the Minister for Schools came to present it.
In 2002 the school became a technology college and in 2007, it was designated a training school. The new school building was constructed 2005-2007 to replace the old ones. By the time the new school opened the student population had grown to approximately 1300 including 230 at Post 16 level.
The school today is both popular and successful. Expectations are high, examination results are impressive and parents are supportive. Everyone associated with the school is justly proud of what has been achieved over the years through teamwork and determination.
Click here for more School History...
To find out more about the different memories of the school, click on the links below:To find out about Tuxford School's Memorial Garden, please click here. This is an ongoing project in school.
Mr Peter Stead
Ms Lena Snowden
On Task, On Target book | <urn:uuid:1e7a7753-b5c1-4e9d-9443-67c4b47b2050> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tuxfordschool.com/School-History | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985295 | 397 | 1.882813 | 2 |
How do doctors report maternity-related deaths?
In 2003, California put a new checkbox on death certificates asking if the deceased was pregnant within one year of death. This caught a certain number of deaths that would have slipped through the cracks previously. The codes used on the death certificate also changed slightly in 1999. Most importantly, the World Health Organization, which controls these codes, added definitions for obstetric death.
Why isn’t the rise in deaths simply attributable to better reporting?
Basically, the rise is too big. Doctors are seeing a greater than 300 percent increase between 1996 and 2006. Part of that is certainly attributable to better reporting, but how much? Donna Hoyert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Vital Statistics found that the change in reporting codes resulted in about a 13 percent increase.
The checkbox issue is a little more complex, however, because every state asks slightly different questions on the death certificates. What Hoyert found was an across-the-board increase between 2002 and 2003. In states that asked about pregnancy on the death certificate in a single year – 2002 or 2003 – there was a 20 percent increase in maternal mortality. In states that had a question or a checkbox both years, there was a 40 percent increase in maternal mortality.
Note that collection practices hadn’t changed in either example. The difference, 20 percent vs. 40 percent may reflect the fact that states with better collection of data are better able to see changes. So how much is caused by the addition of the checkbox? You can get an idea by comparing states with a checkbox both years (40 percent increase) to states that instituted the checkbox in 2003 (53 percent increase).
Considering this information, Dr. Elliott Main has estimated that 30 percent of the rise can be attributed to better reporting. That leaves 70 percent that could be caused by changes in population and changes in hospitals.
What about the various definitions: pregnancy-related mortality, maternal mortality, and pregnancy-associated mortality?
Pregnancy-associated mortality lumps in all deaths (including women who die in car crashes) of any mother who dies within one year of pregnancy. So, that’s not a very useful measure.
Maternal-mortality refers to all deaths directly relating to pregnancy and birth within 42 days. This misses women like Nancy Lim, who was injured during a cesarean section in 1993, and died from complications of that injury some nine months later. The numbers are slightly lower, but this is the most commonly used measure. California Watch used maternal-mortality numbers to show how the California rate had increased to 16.9 in 2006. This is the most conservative method of counting maternal deaths. Using that rate, California Watch determined that 95 women died in 2006.
A second method – called pregnancy-related mortality – catches some deaths missed by the maternal-mortality rate. Pregnancy-related mortality counts all deaths directly relating to pregnancy and birth within a year of birth (or the end or pregnancy). If you applied that method to California, there were 108 pregnancy-related mortalities in 2006. And the California pregnancy-related death rate was 19.2 per 100,000 that year.
What exactly is the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative?
It’s a group founded by the California Department of Public Health and the California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative. It includes state agencies, nonprofits, professional organizations (like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), universities (it’s based at Stanford), and health care systems (like Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health). The group is funded through multiple sources, including some state money and support from Stanford University.
The task force formed in 2004 and began conducting the maternal mortality review in 2006.
What exactly is this review that California is conducting and what does it have to do with the report referenced in the story?
It’s called the California Pregnancy Associated Mortality Review, and it’s the first in the state. Researchers carefully went through all the administrative data – the numbers from vital statistics – to see if this rise in deaths was meaningful. They found that, if anything, poor reporting had been hiding the problem and they put together the report referenced in the story. It was meant as a call to action.
Then they began a much larger review. Researchers are checking all the maternal death certificates against baby birth certificates to make sure no women are missed. And then they are examining the medical records of every woman who died after or during a pregnancy. So far, the researchers have completed analysis of the years 2002 and 2003, and information from that data informs the story.
Why haven’t we heard about this before?
For one thing, everybody in obstetrics knows that maternal mortality is a problem in poor countries and that, since the 1930s, it’s been getting better every year in rich countries. So, any evidence to the contrary is hard to swallow.
There’s also the fact that these deaths are so rare that a doctor will probably go his or her entire career without seeing a death: it’s impossible for individuals to see the trend. In fact, you need a population the size of California’s or bigger to get statistically relevant information. Looking at the entire U.S. population would provide even better information, but the national data is messy because every state collects data differently.
Finally, when a mother dies it is often so painful for the family that people don’t talk about it. California Watch was able to find only four relatives of mothers who had died from pregnancy related causes who were willing to talk. California Watch obtained a list of women who had died within one year of pregnancy from the state in 2007, and with this information, we were able to contact about a dozen family members of women who had died from representative causes, but not one of them wanted to share their story.
How much of this problem is caused by cesareans?
There are many, many studies with many different results. On the face of it, cesareans look like they are clearly more dangerous. More women and infants die during or after cesarean delivery than vaginal delivery. But that conclusion is confounded by what’s called sampling error: the sample of women in the C-section group are at a higher risk than the sample of the women in the vaginal-delivery group because some of them are getting cesareans as a last-ditch effort in an emergency, and others are getting cesareans because they have some underlying risk factor.
So what’s the upshot of all this? For a healthy woman, a C-section is pretty safe. The consensus is that it may be slightly more dangerous than vaginal birth. But if you look at the second third and fourth births after that C-section, the risks go up dramatically. That’s because with every new surgery there is more internal scarring, more risk of placenta problems. | <urn:uuid:c0a2579a-e4bf-4adc-81a7-379531f0487b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://californiawatch.org/health-and-welfare/qa-pregnancy-related-deaths-explained | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969971 | 1,453 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Aegir provides an easy method of making entire copies of a site. This includes the actual site files, modules and so on, as well as a copy of the actual database.
This feature is called 'Clone' in Aegir, because it is a method of duplicating a site with a new URL or 'site name'.
The feature is very closely linked to the Migrate feature because it is almost the same, except that rather than move the site, it leaves the existing site in place and just copies it to a new name.
For this reason, enabling the Clone feature also enables the Migrate feature.
The Clone feature is disabled by default on a fresh Aegir installation. To enable it, visit
/admin/hosting/features in your Aegir frontend, check the 'Clone' box and submit the form.
Now when you visit a site node in your frontend, you'll see there's a 'Clone' button in your list of available tasks for the site.
Cloning a site
To clone a site, simply click the Clone button. A modalframe dialog will appear with a form. If you are familiar with the Migrate feature, you'll likely notice the similarities between the two forms.
The clone form has these options:
- Domain name - this is the URL for the new site, which must be unique.
- Platform - this is the target platform to clone the site to. It may be the current platform or a different platform that meets the requirements for hosting this site (has all the correct or newer versions of relevant modules)
- Database server - this option is only available if you have a remote database server configured, otherwise it is implied.
- Site aliases - If you have the Site Aliases feature enabled, you are also able to set new Site Aliases for this clone at this point. If the original site also had aliases, you will have to change or remove the aliases that load in this form before you can submit it.
As with the Migrate form, you can view the package comparison table between the current platform of the original site and that of a target platform, by clicking the 'Compare platforms' link. You can only clone a site to another platform if it meets the requirements for successfully hosting that site. In other words, the target platform has to contain the same or newer versions of modules. If the packages are missing on the target platform, those missing modules may be disabled.
Once you have made your selection and submitted the form, a 'Clone' task is spawned and added to the Task queue ready for dispatching.
What Clone does
The Clone task makes the following actions in the system:
- Makes a backup of the original site. This tarball will be used to 'deploy' a copy of the site
- Generates a new Drush alias for the new site
- Deploys the backup tarball to the new location as a new site
- The new site is imported and verified into the Aegir system, and relevant configurations are saved (HTTP vhost file, etc)
When might I want to use Clone?
Clone can be a very useful tool in a variety of situations. Commonly, people use Clone for:
- Testing what a 'Migrate' might do to a site, without migrating it. In other words, Clone can be used as a simulation tool to anticipate results of upgrading a site to a new release or build safely.
- If you have a 'template' site, often with a custom install profile, and anticipate having to generate multiple sites that are very similar, you can use Clone to rapidly do this.
- Cloning a live site to a 'development' version of a site, especially to a development platform residing on a remote 'development' web server, can be a useful and fast method of working on a site by ensuring the dev environment has the latest database and files from production.
Is there any relationship between the original and cloned site?
Currently there is no real relationship between the original site and any of its clones.
In future, Aegir development is likely to develop natural relationships between these sites, which will allow for 'rules' to be established, for example
- being able to regularly 're-clone' a site 'over the top' of previously-made clone, or
- automatically schedule clones after the original site has been migrated (upgraded) to keep a clone 'up to date' with the original.
Other uses may develop in time. | <urn:uuid:2a8274db-05e5-482c-8649-09a45d471103> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.aegirproject.org/node/24/revisions/229/view | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911325 | 935 | 1.921875 | 2 |
The Department of Biomedical Engineering includes a diverse body of research groups, led by various faculty members. Learn more about some of these researchers' laboratories below.
Cardiovascular Computational Mechanics Laboratory
Sandra Rugonyi researches novel ways to visualize and calculate how biological systems respond to varying conditions, using mathematical and computational models. Dr. Rugonyi's group currently is focused mainly on the study of cardiovascular systems, which includes the analysis of blood flow through vessels and the heart, as well as the interaction of flow with tissue.
Vu Nanobiotechnology and Cell Imaging Research Group
Tania Vu's group researches imaging nanotechnologies in order to study and diagnose aberrant cellular signaling in disease at the level of single molecules in single cells. These new technologies allow us to detect the amount and sub-cellular location of key cellular signaling proteins with cutting-edge of sensitivity and spatial resolution. Using such new technological capabilities, we seek to understand how cell function emerges from the spatiotemporal interactions of a groups of single proteins. A primary effort is to work with clinicians and industrial partners to translate our technologies into concrete molecular-based personalized diagnostics in the area of cancer and neurological disorders.
Yantasee Laboratory (functionalized nanomaterials in medicine and medical devices)
Wassana Yantasee's Lab researches functionalized nanomaterials in medicine, development of animal models of cancer, kidney disease, and metals-related diseases, and development of engineered nanomaterials to diagnose, prevent, and treat disease.
Oregon Center for Aging & Technology (ORCATECH)
BME Faculty Tamara Hayes, Pete Jacobs and Misha Pavel are part of the Oregon Center for Aging & Technology (ORCATECH). ORCATECH seeks to facilitate successful aging and reduce the cost of healthcare through:
- Development of key independent living technologies
- Creation of research infrastructure to support aging-in-place research
- Partnerships with industry and academic thought leaders
- Establishing the evidence-base for technologies supporting aging
Biomedical Optics (Jacques Lab)
Steven Jacques and his lab develop novel applications of light in medicine and biology. Light can be diagnostic or therapeutic/surgical:
- Where tissue affects photons, light is used for diagnostic imaging, spectroscopy and sensing,
- Where photons affect tissue, lasers are used for therapeutic and surgical cutting, dissecting, machining, processing, coagulating, welding, and oxidizing tissues and biomaterials.
The Jacques Lab develops novel microscopes, cameras and optical fiber probes for use in medical research and clinical care. | <urn:uuid:0d04fc1b-fb42-4768-83c4-80b842423cea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/education/schools/school-of-medicine/departments/basic-science-departments/biomedical-engineering/bme-labs/index.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90071 | 539 | 1.960938 | 2 |
If I may ask: how will you acknowledge the Feast of Vali?
"I know that I hung on the windswept world tree for all of nine nights- wounded by spear, a sacrifice to Odin- myself to myself- on that tree who's roots no one knows. None handed me bread, nor horn they upheld...."
From this entire passage, the term that truely sings to me is "a sacrifice to Odin-myself to myself"
That's Odin's highest sacrifice and central to his legend- running himself through with a spear, bleeding out, then placing a noose around his neck to hang from Yggdrasil for nine nights. Nine is sacred to Asatruar because of it's relationship to Odin. Like Odin, it gives itself unto itself...
Demonstration. Multiples of nine.
When both numerals of a multiple of nine are added together, they equal nine. Notice how the numerals on the left are in numerical order from 0-9, and on the right the numerals are in reverse order from 9-0. At Ragnarok, Thor takes nine steps before falling dead after battling the serpent Jormungand.
The entire passage about Odin's time on Yggdrasil is as follows...I know that I hung, on a wind-swept tree
for all of nine nights,
wounded by spear, and given to Odin
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from what roots is rises.
They dealt me no bread, nor drinking horn.
I looked down, I drew up the runes,
screaming I took them up,
and fell back from there.
Fimbul spells I got from the famous
Son of Bolthor the father of Bestla.
I had a drink of the dear mead
that was drawn out of Othroerir.
Then I began to grow
and waxed well in wisdom.
One word led me to another,
one work led me to another.
You will find runes, meaningful staves,
very powerful staves,
very strong staves,
that Fimbul dyed,
that the Ginnregin shaped,
that the God Hropt carved.
Odin among the Aesir, but Dain for the elves,
Dvalinn for the dwarves,
Asvith for the etins.
I carved some for myself.
Know how to carve them, know how to read them,
know how to stain them, know how to wield them,
know how to ask them, know how to bloody them,
know how to send them, know how to sacrifice them.
It is better not to ask than to sacrifice too much.
A gift always looks for a gift.
It is better unsent, than over-sacrificed.
So Thund carved before the doom of mankind.
He rose up and came back after that...
- Havamal, stanzas 138-145, James C. Chisholm translation
After this portion of the Havamal come the eighteen rune-charms......"I know a charm that will heal with a touch. I know a charm that will turn aside the weapons of an enemy. I know another charm to free myself from all bonds and fetters. A fifth charm: I can catch an arrow in flight and take no harm from it. A sixth: spells sent to hurt me will hurt only the sender. A seventh charm I know: I can quench a fire simply by looking at it. An eighth: if any man hates me, I can win his friendship. A ninth: I can sing the wind to sleep and calm a storm for long enough to bring a ship to shore. For a tenth charm, I learned to dispel witches, to spin them around in the skies so that they will never find their way back home again. An eleventh: if I sing it when a battle rages it can take warriors through the tumult unscathed and unhurt, and bring them safely back to their homes and hearths. A twelfth charm I know: if I see a hanged man I can bring him down from the gallows to whisper to us all he remembers. A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a child's head, that child will not fall in battle. A fourteenth: I know the names of all the Gods. A fifteenth: I have a dream of power, glory, and of wisdom, and I can make people believe my dreams. A sixteenth charm I know: if I need love I can turn the mind and heart of any woman. A seventeenth, that no woman I want will ever want another. And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows is the most powerful secret there can ever be."
* * * *
The feast of Vali has been a source of a little debate lately. It's a more modern establishment, and I know that a lot of Asatruar don't practice it. It's on many official Asatru calendars, but a discussion has arisen as of late about it's importance and validity. Vali is a bit of an obscure
God. In the lore, his role is pretty limited to the slaying of Hoder in Baldrs Draumar
. The sun of Odin and the giantess Rind, he was conceived, born, and slayed the blind God Hoder in the same day. After that, it is only mentioned that he survives Ragnarok with his brother Vidar (who plays a much more prominent and important role in the lore than Vali). A large part of the association between Vali and February is the similarity between the words Vali
, or valiant
, and has nothing to do with romantic love. That may sound silly or superficial, but it's borrowing a page from the converting Christians- it's about making associations. If the idea, though, is to celebrate love in February- then a blot to a Goddess would be more appropriate. Perhaps Freyja, maybe Frigga, Sif, or Nanna... who in mourning flung herself onto her husband Balder's pyre.
That said, I've never celebrated the Feast Of Vali in February. If some of the discussion taking place now is any indication, I don't think many people do- and before too long may be off the official calendars. Of course this is not to say or even imply that Vali isn't deserving of honor, because he is- it is only unfortunate there are only twelve months in a year. | <urn:uuid:1c19f622-302f-46d3-810d-2b0ec30bc6ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wicca.com/forums/index.php?topic=2293.msg84600 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955466 | 1,386 | 1.609375 | 2 |
This is the preface of a series of articles I intend to post in the coming weeks about simple ideas, ubiquitous among all programmers, but rarely understood, and too often preached for without any justifiable reason.
Follow me in the coming weeks to understand, once and for all, what's so important in the following concepts, and why.
Do that, and you'll be able to explain, both to yourself, and to your friends and co-workers, why you, as a programmer, make all those (somewhat intuitive) design decisions that you make.
What I'm going to talk about is why and when the following concepts are considered a bad thing:
- Global state
- Global access
- Tight coupling
- Multiple responsibilities per class
- Operator overloading
- Bad or inconsistent naming conventions
But first, a few key notes you should be aware of:
It turns out that, as programmers, we rely heavily on intuition. Why is that? Simply because we can never be bothered to learn and understand all the smallest peculiarities found in Computer Science. We often feel competent as soon as we think we get the general idea of something, without bothering to philosophize about it, which can be quite a time waster, accumulatively.
However, it is fundamental that we understand that that's exactly what makes up our intuition. Things which we kind of get, but not entirely.
This may often prove to still be valuable and useful, but we must never assume that it is unquestionably correct.
One obvious problem resulting from reliance on intuition is dogmatism.
When we don't understand an idea to its core, but know that it is preached for and is widely considered a good idea, we tend to apply it even where it's redundant or even harmful.
One side effect of not knowing how to explain such ideas is transitive fanatic evangelism. Meaning, if you manage to use your charisma to persuade other people that an idea is good, without explaining it thoroughly, they will often listen to you, and evangelize others in exactly the same way.
This is how many common bad ideas are formed.
We often find ourselves asking such unnecessarily general questions, such as "Is this idea important?".
It is vital to understand, once and for all (get it in your head) that there is no such thing as "important things".
One must always define a context. When a context is not defined, or implicitly and unambiguously rendered, one should not bother to answer questions.
Self-rationalization is a disease. If you wish to open yourself to practicality, you must embrace objectivity. Nothing is good or bad without a context. Nothing!
While subjectivity may often lead to quite humorous catchy mnemonics, such as this quote from some guy at CodeReview.SE:
"Daddy, Daddy, he defined a global!"
"Now son, what have I told you about using language like that?"
It should also be explicitly taken into consideration that, for example, defining a global variable might not always be a bad idea, until it is proven otherwise.
A lack of practical examples justifies avoidance, but does not constitute groundless aversion.
I would like to clarify that everything I say is based on personal first-hand experience.
If anything portrays me faithfully, it is the ability to never skip making impulsive mistakes, but, quite fortunately, to learn from some.
I hope that you find sympathy, understanding, and enlightenment in the upcoming posts. | <urn:uuid:5907c9ad-4ab1-4dcb-9299-aa9d39031768> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ymarcov.blogspot.com/2011/10/simple-ideas-explained.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958062 | 724 | 2.75 | 3 |
In a January issue, the lead article of The Economist was “The Rise of State Capitalism”, featuring China as its leading example, of course, with comparisons with the recent problems in the world’s free-market systems suggesting that “the era of free-market triumphalism has come to a juddering halt”. But in all objectivity, after careful analysis, in the end the long essay arrives at the wise conclusion that state capitalism’s biggest failure has to do with liberty.
I would add that we are certainly seeing serious problems in China as a result of this void in liberty, both in human and economic terms, and the most significant deficiency in the state economic model is the absence of Joseph Schumpeter’s principle of “creative destruction”, the bane of all state capitalistic models, which deprives the system of the natural function of rewarding success and disposing of failure and replacing old technologies with new ones, thereby rationalizing the allocation of capital. In fact, The Economist admits this in an indirect way, when it says “By turning companies into organs of the government, state capitalism simultaneously concentrates power and corrupts it.” A related deficiency is that this concentration severely limits the free flow of ideas which drive innovation. So as long as China disallows creative destruction to work its will, the days of its economic miracle are numbered, and when the bust comes and its corrupt system of crony capitalism hits the wall, as it most assuredly will, the good news will be the further discrediting of the state capitalism model one more time.
And it will further signal the day when it will no longer be possible to segregate the dynamics of the liberty of markets and human liberty, which is the elephant in the room in our diplomatic relationship with China. The Chen affair is but the most recent manifestation of their moral dilemma and the trade off between human rights concerns and the need for open U. S. – China diplomatic dialogue. President Obama says that “human rights are on the table in every conversation” with China. Yes, but they are not pushed, and the elements of our relationship with China need not be mutually exclusive. Ronald Reagan advanced both elements of our relationship with the Soviet Union forcefully and vocally–”the evil empire”, “tear down this wall”, etc. It can and has been done successfully.
The leadership of the Chinese Communist regime has serious legitimacy problems, they know this, and they don’t know how to respond to the human rights issues as framed by a dissident like Chen without further undermining their legitimacy, but it’s only a matter of time until this facade crumbles. | <urn:uuid:f3533f5c-3ca6-4ce0-bc4e-6e03fbfdde20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.texaspilgrim.com/?p=1356 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952983 | 560 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Share & Connect
Phoenix, U.S.A. – The Affordable Care Act is a hot, debatable topic right now. Whether it is one you support or not, it generates awareness regarding the need for affordable healthcare in our country. It has become nothing less than a necessity to find a solution to the healthcare problems we face as a country.
According to data released by Kaiser EDU, Health expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over ten times the $256 billion spent in 1980. This has created a dilemma for the tens of millions of Americans who cannot afford necessary medical tests because they either don’t have insurance at all, or have a policy with a restrictively high deductible.
Dr. Scott Hastings, Family Practice doctor in Show Low, Arizona, founded BidOnHealth.com, a website that allows consumers to purchase medical tests at an affordable price. The BidOnHealth.com model follows the ever so popular trend of purchasing items online at a discounted rate. Anyone who has used a website like Priceline.com will find this concept familiar. Priceline is best known for their bidding option where the consumer makes choices within certain parameters, offers the amount they are willing to pay, and then enters a credit card number in hopes that their offer is accepted.
BidOnHealth.com uses a similar approach for medical tests and healthcare services. Consumers choose their geographic location along with the tests or services they need, and make offers based on what they are willing to pay. Using this bidding option, consumers can save up to 90% off the average retail price of the tests or services they are purchasing. However, bidding is not a requirement at BidOnHealth.com; tests and services can also be purchased immediately at an incredible discounted rate of 60% off.
BidOnHealth.com is contracted with reputable laboratories, radiology facilities and providers to ensure a quality end-product. The services and facilities remain constant whether the consumer is saving 60% or 90%. This is one instance where the old adage, “you get what you pay for,” does not ring true.
BidOnHealth.com has been recognized across the country for their innovative approach to healthcare. | <urn:uuid:ce9dced0-4899-4250-9f7f-240ba0353949> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toonaripost.com/2012/08/us-news/solution-to-u-s-healthcare-problems-necessary/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954835 | 456 | 1.828125 | 2 |
On a two stroke engine, the fuel pumps must be
retimed when the engine is required to reverse direction
(i.e. run astern). This is done by moving the fuel pump cams or fuel
pump cam follower positions relative to the crankshaft.
If one cylinder of the engine is considered
(left), the piston is just before TDC with the engine running
ahead and the crankshaft rotating clockwise. The piston is
moving up towards TDC. The picture on the right shows the fuel
cam at this point; where the cam follower is rising up the lift
of the cam as it rotates clockwise. This point can be considered
as the start of injection.
The fuel pump cam follower is moving up the
rise of the cam on the delivery stroke. The cam is correctly in
time with the engine
If, at this point the engine is stopped, and is
started in the reverse direction (astern), the crankshaft now
moves in an anticlockwise direction. Then the piston in this
particular unit is now moving down the cylinder
and is just after TDC. At this point fuel injection should
have just finished. However, by studying the picture of the cam
(right) it can be seen that the camshaft has reversed direction
(because it is directly driven from the crankshaft), and is also
In the picture the follower is moving down the cam
which means the fuel pump plunger is just finishing the suction
stroke; i.e completely out of time with the
Here the fuel pump cam is in the wrong
position. When the piston is just after TDC, fuel delivery should
have finished and the follower should be approaching the peak of
So that the Fuel Pump cam is timed correctly with
the crankshaft when the engine is reversed, the fuel pump cams are
rotated by a hydraulic servomotor which changes the position of
the cams relative to the crankshaft. The angle through which the
cams are turned is known as the Lost Motion angle.
Although this can be made to happen when the engine is still
rotating, it is probably easier to think of the engine stopped
as shown left and the camshaft moving as shown on the animation below.
Once the fuel cams have moved, the engine can then start running
in the reverse direction (anticlockwise).
Because the engine is started using compressed air admitted
through the air start valves, the operating mechanism for these
must also be retimed.
More details on the operation of the reversing servomotor as
used on the Sulzer RTA engine can be found in the
The angle that the cams move through is the
lost motion angle.
This is not the only method of reversing a two stroke
engine. Other methods include moving the whole camshaft axially so that
a different set of cams are used, and a rather clever method used by
MAN-B&W which alters the position of the cam followers.
In case you are wondering, it is not necessary
to retime the exhaust valve operating cams on a Two Stroke
engine. Think about it!!
If you can't work out why, | <urn:uuid:b18772a8-37ab-4334-ae5e-fbba69f19a1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marinediesels.info/2_stroke_engine_parts/Other_info/lost_motion.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909131 | 686 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Even if I am exceptionally good at saving and budgeting money I often forget about small expenses, and whoever said “Don’t sweat the small stuff” obviously didn’t have an expensive daily coffee habit. Despite being organised and striving to be financially secure, if I look at my weekly purchases there are so many small ways I could save money. All these small things add up, and at the end of the month I could have saved myself a lot of money if I had just been more conscientious.
Now it’s not worth beating yourself up about that extra cup of coffee or the magazine you did not really need, but when you fritter away money on small expenses it can make a large dent in your potential savings. Those 3 take away cups of coffee a day add up and could be your whole credit card payment at the end of the month.
More often than not we don’t count small things unless we are really broke and watching every penny. But in order to be financially secure and stable accounting for every penny needs to happen all the time. Work out how much you spend on little things and see if you can make changes to your daily routine that will help you save cash. A little monetary consideration before you put your hand in your pocket is worthwhile and there are many alternatives to spending on the little things so you can save for the big.
For example; if you buy 2 coffees a day, cut down to one and either keep instant coffee in your drawer at work or drink water. If you enjoy a quick visit to the casino every few days switch to mobile casinogaming as you will avoid a whole slew of small expenses such as gratuities, parking fees and exorbitant drinks prices. Snacking can also be an expensive trait and homemade snacks are generally healthier and cheaper to make, as are home cooked meals over ready meals or take always.
You will be amazed at how little purchases can add up and if you monitor your minor expenses you may find you could even afford a holiday or a weekend away with the small change you have saved.
Do you have any tips for cutting back small scale spending to save big? | <urn:uuid:65f61acf-0ace-43a5-9ac1-240162b88d3a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.makelovenotdebt.com/tags/savings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962836 | 444 | 1.71875 | 2 |
NOT PJ: Avian Swine Flew
This week Bernard Darnton has a headache and feels nauseous. . .
Load up the Land Rover with the 12-gauge and three months worth of baked beans. Bird flu is here. No – mad pig disease. Wait – the Y2K09 bug.
One thing there has been a serious outbreak of is word games. The U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is upset that this week’s fashionable worry has been called “swine flu” because of the possible effect on pork sales. Israeli Deputy Health Minister has suggested “Mexican flu” because he finds the reference to pigs offensive. The Mexican ambassador to Israeli got all huffy because he found the reference to Mexicans offensive. If this really is a serious health threat it’s good to see that world’s governments are suitably focused.
Here in New Zealand, all those people who’ve toiled away for years on pandemic preparedness plans are suddenly feeling important and putting on reflective jackets and hanging out in command centres with giant plasma screens, presumably watching CNN on the big plasmas to find out what happens next.
The death toll in Mexico, the “epicenter” of the “pandemic” is claimed to be 160. The population of Mexico City is 28 million. If a disease of the same virulence swept through a city the size of Christchurch the death toll would be two. Surely sad for the families of those two but I wouldn’t go as far as crossing live to a rain-soaked reporter for an exclusive update.
I’m no virologist, or biologist, or anything-else-ologist for that matter. I don’t even have a beard. I’ll leave it to the lab-coated ones to work out what’s actually going on. But my biggest worry isn’t that some previously unknown disease is coming to wipe us out; it’s that a previously well-known parasite will grow and spread because of this.
In its most virulent form this parasite strikes millions of people dead in short periods. In its modern form in the first world it suffocates and strangles. And there’s nothing it likes more than a crisis.
In his thriller State of Fear author Michael Crichton suggested that it wasn’t the emergence of a military-industrial complex that we should worry about but the emergence of a media-political complex.
His story was far-fetched but the point is valid. At no time in history have we been richer or healthier than we are now but we still worry just as much. We worry about aircraft – noise from aircraft, exhaust gases from aircraft, people with stubble and olive skin on aircraft, people sneezing on aircraft – and there’s a whole lot of other stuff starting the letters B through Z to worry about as well.
The media dishes out fear because it captivates audiences. Those audiences then demand that the government “does something” to address the fear.
The government has sweeping emergency powers that might not be out of place during a Black Death outbreak. The real problem is that the law is so vaguely worded that those same powers could be used during an outbreak of obesity, or anything else that some Sue Kedgley-type dreams up as a health risk.
I don’t feel the need to run out and buy a face mask but if anyone has the antidote to big government I’ll take it. If governments around the world don’t take advantage of avian/swine flu to increase their powers, pigs will fly.
* * Bernard Darnton writes every Thursday here at NOT PC * *
PS: Bernard Darnton, otherwise known as NOT PJ, will be in Auckland tonight seeing the guy who really is PJ, i.e., PJ O’Rourke’s gig at Sky City. If you’d like to catch up with us, Bernard and I and Annie Fox will be in the London Bar beforehand from about 5:30 on – and before that in the garden at The Castle. Maybe we’ll catch up with you?
PPS: And thanks to Crusader Rabbit for the cartoon. | <urn:uuid:c3b275ec-404c-49d6-b218-6560da37333e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pc.blogspot.com/2009/04/not-pj-avian-swine-flew.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95156 | 895 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Why is algebra so important?
Algebra is known as a gatekeeper subject, so when should your child take it?
By GreatSchools Staff
Last fall results from national math exams stirred up a tempest in a standardized test. It turns out math scores rose more quickly before No Child Left Behind was implemented, and fourth-grade math scores haven’t improved since 2007. As reported in the New York Times, the achievement gap remains a chasm between the haves and the have-nots.
What does this mean for your child? While pundits and politicians battle over the big issues, it's up to parents to stay on top of the little ones: their own kids' academic development. Make sure your tween or teen is on track for high school math with this guide to algebra.
Why algebra matters
It is frequently called the gatekeeper subject. It is used by professionals ranging from electricians to architects to computer scientists. It is no less than a civil right, says Robert Moses, founder of the Algebra Project, which advocates for math literacy in public schools.
Basic algebra is the first in a series of higher-level math classes students need to succeed in college and life. Because many students fail to develop a solid math foundation, an alarming number of them graduate from high school unprepared for college or work. Many end up taking remedial math in college, which makes getting a degree a longer, costlier process than it is for their more prepared classmates. And it means they're less likely to complete a college-level math course. For middle-schoolers and their parents, the message is clear: It's easier to learn the math now than to relearn it later.
The first year of algebra is a prerequisite for all higher-level math: geometry, algebra II, trigonometry, and calculus. According to a study (pdf) by the educational nonprofit ACT, students who take algebra I, geometry, algebra II, and one additional high-level math course are much more likely to do well in college math.
Algebra is not just for the college-bound. Even high school graduates headed straight for the work force need the same math skills as college freshmen, the ACT found. This study looked at occupations that don't require a college degree but pay wages high enough to support a family of four. Researchers found that math and reading skills required to work as an electrician, plumber, or upholsterer were comparable to those needed to succeed in college.
Algebra is, in short, the gateway to success in the 21st century. What's more, when students make the transition from concrete arithmetic to the symbolic language of algebra, they develop abstract reasoning skills necessary to excel in math and science. | <urn:uuid:ce45c622-78d3-4819-bf6e-dcbaf5a78fca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/354-why-algebra.gs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957633 | 561 | 3.109375 | 3 |
|About Us | What's New | Search | Site Map | Contact Us|
AWADmail Issue 334Nov 23, 2008
A Weekly Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
From: Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
Obama's Use of Complete Sentences Stirs Controversy:
Meh chosen for 30th anniversary of Collins English Dictionary:
From: Allen Cosnow (marv78rpm aol.com)
I recall a radio commercial that played for years in the 40s and 50s, I think for some laxative, that spoke of "that listless, logy, ache-all-over feeling". My father and I liked the cadence of it and used to go around repeating it like a chant.
From: Anne Reece (areece hchc.edu)
Not long after emigrating to the US, our family acquired a purebred German short-haired pointer whose official name was "Kildrummy Loge von Lunenberg", Loge being the Norse God of fire, and a character in a couple of Wagner's Ring Cycle operas (my father was an ardent Wagnerian). Since we emigrated from Scotland, the dog's shortened name was inevitably "Logie" which is a common Scottish surname. You can inmagine the bewilderment of our new American neighbors, for this dog was anything but "logy" -- which had to be explained to us.
From: Robin Kay (robin clearnight.com.au)
In Australia, it's a bad idea for any politician to be perceived as elitist. In 2005, then Labor party leader (and Rhodes scholar) Kim Beazley tried unsuccessfully to prove he had the common touch by admitting, "I am trying to improve on my prolix habits, mate, so you don't have to worry about that." It didn't work.
From: Henry Willis (hmw ssdslaw.com)
This word, in its French version, figures in Grand Illusion, Renoir's classic film about a group of French prisoners of war during World War One that keeps returning to the difficulties that all of its characters have in communicating with each other and their efforts to overcome them.
Some of these difficulties are linguistic -- Marechal, the Frenchman, cannot make himself understood to a stereotypically obtuse British officer and never could understand most of what his German guards were yelling at him (but does manage to communicate with the German widow he meets at the end of the story).
Other difficulties have more to do with class -- when Marechal, who is working class, asks one of his fellow prisoners what he does, he replies that he is "un cadastre". Marechal mulls over this for a few seconds, then asks (in French of course) "Qu'est que c'est cadastre?" -- pronouncing that word from the back of his throat one syllable at a time as if it were something unpleasant or ridiculous.
You can read his question any number of ways, as either resentment at being high-hatted by someone who can't even use an intelligible word in response to a simple question or maybe amusement at the pomposity of the word. In either case Renoir makes the point again how language can divide as well as unite us.
From: Edward Floden (techren techren.com)
"Corpulent" is a fair description of a hog; but my wife has adopted a variant of this word to describe the result of a lack of exercise: "porculent".
From: Sharon Ellis (sharon.ellis oag.state.tx.us)
I met the love of my life through AWAD on May 24, 1999, on the weekly AWADmail. Though I had never taken the time to read it before that date, I was drawn to open that particular newsletter and read the various responses to a question posed on your daily post. Among them was one with an email domain and name that I thought I recognized as a local acquaintance. In fact, I did not know this person who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, rather than Austin (my home).
We started an occasional correspondence about the word of the day and humor, which evolved over time into our meeting and falling in love. He died this past May, nine years almost to the day after our first AWAD contact. I miss him terribly. But each time the A.Word.A.Day pops into my mailbox, I smile pondering how he would sculpt a humorous gem with the word.
Thank you, Wordsmith, for immeasurably enriching my life.
From: Grant Barrett (gbarrett worldnewyork.org)
The American Dialect Society is now accepting nominations for the "word of the year" of 2008. What is the word or phrase which best characterizes the year 2008? What expression most reflects the ideas, events, and themes which have occupied the United States and its residents? Nominations should be sent to (woty at americandialect.org).
They will be considered for the American Dialect Society's 19th annual word-of-the-year vote, the longest-running vote of its kind in the world and the word-of-the-year event up to which all others lead. It will be held in San Francisco on January 9, 2009.
The best "word of the year" candidates will be:
Sub-categories for "word of the year" include most useful, most creative, most unnecessary, most outrageous, most euphemistic, most likely to succeed, and least likely to succeed. Past winners can be found on the society's website.
You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. -Ronald Searle, artist (b. 1920)
Contribute | Advertise
© 2013 Wordsmith | <urn:uuid:be29de4b-2d1d-4f9c-b293-7cc843768d49> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wordsmith.org/awad/awadmail334.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963394 | 1,242 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Accusations go public, finally.
"In accusing China and Russia of conducting widespread and effective economic espionage against America, the US intelligence establishment on Thursday brought into the public domain what many in government, the private sector and the media have been saying for years."
"The 31-page document directly blames the governments of the two rival powers for campaigns to steal American technology, reflecting what analysts said was a deep feeling of frustration at being unable to stop the spying through either diplomatic talks or technological defences."
From yesterday's FT, FYI,
November 3, 2011 9:12 pm
US goes public with spying frustrationsIn accusing China and Russia of conducting widespread and effective economic espionage against America, the US intelligence establishment on Thursday brought into the public domain what many in government, the private sector and the media have been saying for years.The 31-page document directly blames the governments of the two rival powers for campaigns to steal American technology, reflecting what analysts said was a deep feeling of frustration at being unable to stop the spying through either diplomatic talks or technological defences.The incidents mentioned in the report include the attack on Google’s network in 2010, where the company later claimed part of its source code may have been taken, and a 2011 study by McAfee that described an intrusion it called “Night Dragon” which took data from the systems of energy companies and which was traced back to an address in China.It also lists the cases of three ethnic Chinese employees of American companies who were arrested for stealing proprietary information which they had allegedly planned to sell to new employers in China.The incidents described in the paper released to Congress had been reported previously in isolation, yet at the time government officials refused to assert on the record that they were part of major strategic thrusts, especially by China.Officials had kept quiet so as not to jeopardise ongoing negotiations or to reveal exactly what they knew about specific Chinese actors and their methods. Most companies that have been victims of such cyber-spying have also sought to avoid putting the blame on China.Google was a rare exception, when in January of last year it linked an intrusion it suffered to China. The company, which has vested voting control in just three individuals, partially withdrew from the country as a result.“We believe that more information sharing and dialogue around security is a positive trend for the industry. This is a topic that people should take very seriously,” Jay Nancarrow, a Google spokesman, said on Thursday.But even as an understanding of the pattern has become more prevalent, other companies have declined to follow suit. RSA, the security company owned by EMC that admitted a breach earlier this year, blamed an unnamed government, though people familiar with the case said it was obviously China.Even big technology security concern McAfee, now owned by chipmaker Intel, has pulled punches. A report it issued in August documented a spying effort that targeted defence contractors, nonprofits, manufacturers and Olympic committees noted that the evidence pointed to one country, but did not say which. Both EMC and Intel do substantial business in China and were reluctant to offend their hosts and business partners, according to people briefed on internal discussions.Many companies do not disclose breaches at all, the new government report observes. They are often unaware of what has occurred, or lack the ability to pin the thefts conclusively on one group of actors. In other cases, they fear adverse customer and investor reaction.One security expert said increased openness was the right thing for customers and shareholders. But he said he did not know what it would mean for the US relationship with China. “I just don’t know the end game,” he said. “Possibly it even helps China to be a more responsible world power.”The Google incident last year contributed to a sharp deterioration in US relations with China, which also included disputes about US arms sales to Taiwan, Tibet and climate change. While some of these disagreements have been patched up this year, the public accusations in the report run the risk of fanning new diplomatic tensions.Indeed, the Chinese government wasted little time in denouncing the report. “China’s economic development and prosperity is the result of an effective national development strategy and the hard work of the Chinese people,” a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Beijing said. The allegations in the report were “unwarranted and irresponsible”.A western government official added: “This report is very direct and unusual in its tone. This issue is very sensitive and Russia and China have not responded well when people have tried to make these accusations in the past.”While the report attempts to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour behind individual acts of internet espionage, it admits that it is difficult to conclusively prove that they were all government-directed. Indeed, the evidence against Russia in the report is relatively thin, with one of the few specific cases being the much-derided spy ring that was arrested last year. Intelligence experts say that it is almost impossible to get a perfect “smoking gun” of government involvement in such cases.Additional reporting by James Blitz in LondonCopyright The Financial Times Limited 2011. | <urn:uuid:7cdb700a-3cfa-4c26-93e6-c6428570540e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fivedoves.com/letters/nov2011/ksrajan115-2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977091 | 1,044 | 1.625 | 2 |
You wouldn’t think that I, a lowly LACMA volunteer, would have anything in common with Thomas Eakins, the greatest American realist of the nineteenth century. I like two-for-one sales and cats; he was more into dissecting horses and organizing nude photo shoots. Also, I can’t paint. Yet I think we share a common trait, Eakins and I: perfectionism.
Eakins found it hard to cope with failure. Whilst studying in Paris he sent home frantic letters to his father promising to become a better painter. He had two nervous breakdowns in his lifetime: one following the death of his mother, whom he had “failed” to nurse back from mental illness; the other was after his dismissal from teaching (due to alleged “misconduct”). Some might say he overreacted.
Perfectionists always do. Subject to polarized thinking (seeing situations/people as either “wonderful” or “awful”) the perfectionist crafts a self-oriented world that either helps or hinders them in their quest for the ideal. If the latter, the perfectionist dreams up scenarios in which everything turns out right.
For Eakins, this meant that his drawing master, Leon Gerome, was “raised above the swine,” whilst his Philadelphian detractors were compared with an “evil person.” It meant creating “enchanted” worlds in his art: rivers, woodland grottos, sports arenas. Even his infamous “surgery” paintings feel like a magic show.
But the driving force of the perfectionists’ anxiety is that, deep-down, we know wishes don’t come true—at least, not as we imagine.
This explains why, in his paintings, Eakins turned his frustrations on himself. In The Gross Clinic (1875) his bloody body lies passive on the operating table. In The Champion Single Sculls (1871) Eakins, seen rowing in the distance, is a towering emblem of male strength and self-reliance. But look closely at his reflection: this fantasy is cut through by a gash of paint slicing the body.
I struggle with my own, more mediocre, self-destructive tendencies. (Will I EVER get to the gym?) But, whilst perfectionism can be a difficult character trait to live with, it can also birth greatness. Eakins’s work is testament to the fact that it’s okay to aim high… just so long as we can allow ourselves, and the world, to occasionally fall short. | <urn:uuid:51f99b24-fa0e-4092-a50f-2214b8381532> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/the-perfectionists-anxiety/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=bcc517a348 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977608 | 554 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Teens need an average of one or two hours more sleep than their 9- and 10-year-old siblings.
Any parent with a teenager is familiar with how difficult it may be for them to get enough sleep. But some parents are finding help in a little pill: melatonin, a dietary supplement that helps regulate the body's sleep cycle. But should they?
Is it a good or bad idea to give this supplement to kids whose sleep schedules may be thrown off by a time change or some other factor?
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN chief medical correspondent: You're not likely to have a doctor ever advise giving the sleep hormone melatonin to your teenagers, but sleep experts tell CNN they've seen a tremendous upsurge in the use of melatonin in kids, by parents. It's not a prescription medication, it's a dietary supplement. Melatonin products are usually synthetic versions of the hormone made naturally by the pineal gland, in the brain, which helps regulate the body's sleep-wake cycle. Its production is determined by light and dark. When darkness falls, the gland produces more melatonin, which promotes sleep.
According to the National Institutes of Health, there is limited study of melatonin supplements in children under age 18 years old, and its safety is unclear. Having said that, we do know sleep is key: Teens need an average of one or two hours more sleep than their 9- and 10-year-old siblings, yet studies show most teens gets a few hours less. Teens are notorious for getting too little sleep.
What happens when teens don't get enough sleep?
Gupta: Sleepiness is associated with poor school performance and disciplinary problems, depression and attention deficit disorder, increased accidents among teen drivers, and even teen suicide.
But some people find that melatonin works. And we see how important it is for kids to get sleep. So does it make sense for teens having trouble sleeping to take melatonin to help them adjust, especially when it comes to adjusting to time changes?
Gupta: Based on available studies and clinical use, melatonin is generally regarded as safe in recommended doses. That means only for kids older than age 10, in doses of three mg or less, for short-term use. But because you probably can, doesn't mean you should use melatonin. Sleep experts say you're much better off getting your kid on a regular schedule than giving them melatonin. But, if you insist on melatonin for your kid, start it a day or two in advance to get the desired effect. But there are natural ways of enhancing teen sleep, in situations such as adjusting to daylight-saving time: Go to bed an hour earlier on Saturday. Get as much natural light as you can on Sunday, to help your body clock adjust. And make Monday a light day, as much as possible, because missing as little as one hour of sleep can affect performance.
The information contained on this page does not and is not intended to convey medical advice. CNN is not responsible for any actions or inaction on your part based on the information that is presented here. Please consult a physician or medical professional for personal medical advice or treatment. | <urn:uuid:3f52bc3d-98c6-4d1c-8528-c8b467e3d2fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/dailydose/11/24/melatonin.teen.use/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95362 | 650 | 2.796875 | 3 |
LOS ANGELES — Unified Grocers here said Monday it will move forward with its partnership with Guiding Stars and Vestcom's healthyAisles to provide its members with a shelf-tag program to help their customers make more healthful food choices.
More Nutrition Label News: Guiding Stars' Play for Dominance
After testing the programs at single stores in Washington and Oregon since March, Unified said it plans to make the program available to its entire retail store base over the next few months.
The Guiding Stars nutrition-rating program, which was developed by Delhaize's Hannaford Bros. chain, has been available since 2006, is offered by more than 1,700 supermarkets; healthyAisles is a program from Vestcom International, a Little Rock-based shelf-tag provider, that lists specific attributes of various foods (organic, gluten-free, whole grain, etc.) based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's MyPyramid program. | <urn:uuid:72c19da8-8426-41ad-ad18-a2d0bba0a26d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://supermarketnews.com/print/health-amp-wellness/unified-rolls-out-nutrition-labels | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960977 | 198 | 1.5 | 2 |
We all know the benefits of eating organic foods and using organic cleaning products in the home—fewer toxins, environmental responsibility, saving natural resources and more. The same is true for your skincare and makeup. Organic beauty products effectively work in harmony with your skin's natural functions to make you look and feel your absolute best. And they work! Consumers in Europe have bought into organics–Lavera holds 1/5th of all natural skincare sales in Europe—and they are certainly increasing in popularity here in the U.S. as consumers are learning that what you put on your body can be just as harmful as what you put in your body.
Why is it so important to choose natural and organic products that are free of toxins? Well, for starters, your body absorbs up to 60 percent of what is applied to the skin into the bloodstream — which includes those not-so-good for you, unpronounceable ingredients that could be doing your body harm. By going organic, you avoid absorbing ingredients linked to allergies, hormonal changes, cancer and other conditions and diseases.
Since natural and organic products contain a higher concentration of natural actives, they are better able to support the skin's natural processes of cell renewal, hydration, oxygenation and protection. All Lavera products are made from 100 percent natural ingredients and follow the strict BDIH standards in Europe. Wherever possible, these ingredients are sourced from certified organic agriculture. In circumstances where a product is not all-organic, it's because certain organic ingredients don't have year-round availability or the ingredient is not ever available from an organic source.
You may be wondering what qualifies a product as organic or natural and what the differences are. Natural products are made from plants, minerals and/or animal derived ingredients rather than from synthetic materials. However, there is no legal definition or regulation of natural ingredients at this time, and many companies claim products to be "natural" — even if they aren't. However, you can be certain that products labeled with the BDIH Certified Natural Cosmetic stamp, such as those found on Lavera products, are made without synthetic compounds such as parabens, petrochemical derived compounds, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or raw materials from dead animals.
Organic cosmetics, on the other hand, is governed differently. If a product bears an official "certified organic" stamp, you can be confident that the majority of its ingredients (at least 95%) have been grown and processed according to strict, government-controlled, organic agricultural standards, and then verified by a third-party certifying body. Organic agricultural standards do not allow for any use of synthetic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, sewage sludge or GMO's. However, "certified organic" products do allow up to 5% of "other" ingredients.
When shopping for skincare and makeup products, read the labels! Remember that not everyone is completely truthful when stating their products are "natural". Even ingredient labelling rules allow ingredients to be omitted. It's important to look for products that actually bear certification labels from known certification bodies such as BDIH or USDA. Without those labels and the rigorous standards they stand for, "organic" or "natural" has little meaning.
For more information about this topic, visit our Education section on the Web site. Thanks for reading, and remember that you can always contact Lavera with any skincare or makeup ingredient questions. | <urn:uuid:9ae12d8e-814e-4648-9c40-66d474ac28b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lavera.com/blog/post/view/identifier/going-natural-and-organic-what-you-need-to-know/?cat=180&page_id=going-natural-and-organic-what-you-need-to-know%2F | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948365 | 708 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Major Corporations Agree: It’s Time to Do Away with DOMA
A court case against the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that denies same-sex couples any recognition or protection under federal law, has drawn support from a number of major corporations who say in a friend-of-the-court brief that the anti-gay law hurts businesses as well as families.
"Seventy employers are represented in the brief, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Google, NIKE, Levi Strauss and Co., CBS, Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass., Time Warner Cable, Xerox, Zipcar, and Stonyfield Farm," the source article reported. "The cities of New York, Boston, and Cambridge are also represented."
Because DOMA not only denies same-sex families federal recognition but also permits states to ignore the Constitution’s "full faith and credit clause" in the single instance of the marital contract and refuses to honor marriages performed elsewhere in the Union, gay and lesbian families face a legal patchwork that can see them transformed from state-level legally wedded couples to legal strangers simply by crossing a state line.
For national corporations operating across the nation, following such widely disparate laws for families can be a chore. The corporations note in the brief that DOMA’s prejudicial treatment of same-sex families poses "unnecessary cost and administrative complexity" for employers, including tax situations that see married gays and lesbians pay more out of pocket for the privilege of their marriage--a financial burden that heterosexuals do not face. Some companies reimburse their gay employees for these additional costs, but even for those who do not the disparity creates additional paperwork.
The brief "also complains that the law harms workplace morale and a company’s ability to recruit gay employees, causing companies to become ’the face’ of government ’discrimination,’" the source article said.
"Employers are obliged to treat one employee spouse differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful," noted the brief.
"The burden of DOMA’s dual regime is keenly felt by enterprises that conduct operations or do business in jurisdictions that authorize or recognize same-sex marriage," the brief went on to say.
The source article referenced the San Francisco Chronicle in noting that while there are a number of federal suits against the anti-gay law, Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the first to be taken up by an appellate court. The case is likely to head to the Supreme Court after the verdict is delivered.
The Obama Administration announced earlier this year that it would no longer defend DOMA in court because two federal courts have ruled portions of the law to be unconstitutional. Anti-gay Congressional Republicans have hired a private attorney to defend DOMA in federal court at taxpayer expense.
Seattle-based software giant Microsoft, which has extremely gay-friendly policies, put out a statement of its own on the court case, reported the Seattle Times on Nov. 4.
"Microsoft has joined dozens of corporations, organizations and governments in support of a challenge on constitutionality grounds to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA," the Microsoft statement said.
The LifeSiteNews article put the word "marriage" in quotes whenever it appeared in relation to gay and lesbian couples, despite the full state-level legality of same-sex weddings in marriage equality states. This is a common practice among anti-gay "religious" online publications.
The article also referred to DOMA as a "pro-marriage statute," despite the deliberate harm it inflicts upon American married couples and their families, as well as the role the law plays in blocking access to marriage by couples who otherwise would enter into matrimony.
When DOMA was signed 15 years ago, it was the result of a much different political climate. The bill was a response to a court decision in the state of Hawaii that seemed to be opening the door to marriage equality for gay and lesbian families. Since then, 30 states--including Hawaii--have amended their constitutions in order to shut same-sex couples out of marriage parity, but eight states have approved marriage equality. In two of those states--Maine and California--voters yanked marriage rights away from gay families by approving anti-gay ballot initiatives.
But a bare majority of Americans now say that gay and lesbian families ought to be granted relationship rights--a significant shift from the public attitude toward gays and their families in the mid-1990s. Moreover, the Tea Party-led electoral victories that Republicans saw take place in November were driven more by financial stress than by voter concern over social issues.
Indeed, Tea Party leaders indicated last year that they did not wish to see DOMA continue.
Tea Party philosophy embraces limited government, including an emphasis on states’ rights, over social policies that punish GLBT individuals and their families. Conservative bloggers have said that it shouldn’t be a surprise at all that some among the movement support last year’s ruling by federal court judge Joseph L. Tauro striking DOMA down in the Massachusetts ruling.
"Although the likes of Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo smugly attempt to marginalize the Tea Party movement by falsely stating that it is populated by anachronistic racists, homophobes and rednecks, the fact is that many actually are supportive of the recent U.S. District Court decision out of Massachusetts which struck down the federal ban on gay marriage," a July 13, 2010 posting at Before It’s News.com said.
The article referenced a July 13, 2010, article at the Washington Post that noted the contrast between the Tea Party and other conservative groups, the latter of which lost no time in decrying Tauro’s ruling.
Others from the fringe right saw the matter differently. Conservative chat site Free Republic, where gay news is followed closely and discussed with ardor, featured a number of postings on the story.
"One man. One woman. Not two sexual deviants or a freak and his goat," posted one chat participant.
"Good boycott list," another individual posted.
Agreed another, "Thanks for posting the complete list. This one will be easy because there are relatively few companies I would purchase from anyway, mainly Levis, Nike, New Balance, even Scorchbucks (which I avoid because their coffee sucks, except that my daughter likes to go there, but now I will refuse)."
"Sort of tells you how wide spread the intimidation of the radical Homosexual agenda is," another wrote. "It never ceases to amaze me how a group of people who only have a neurotic desire for unnatural sex in common can become so powerful." | <urn:uuid:19a4eba8-8ddd-4c73-8f6c-31ad8e2650df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edgedallas.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=national&sc2=news&sc3=&id=126574 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95946 | 1,389 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Vatican City, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - Pope John Paul II said this morning that “it is to be hoped that the Church in Mexico will be able to enjoy full freedom in all areas where she develops her pastoral and social mission.”
In his message to Javier Moctezuma Barragan, the new ambassador from Mexico to the Holy See, the Holy Father underscored the re-establishing of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Holy See in September 1992.
“Over the years, marked by rapid and deep changes in the political, social and economic spheres of the country, the Catholic Church, faithful to her own pastoral mission, has continued promoting the common good of the Mexican people, seeking dialogue and understanding with diverse public institutions and defending her right to participate in national life,” he said.
In this sense, the Pope stressed that “the Church does not seek privileges nor does she wish to be in spheres not proper to her, but rather desires to fulfill her mission in favor of the spiritual and human good of the Mexican people without barriers or impediments.”
“Thus, it is necessary that State institutions guarantee the right to religious freedom of persons and groups, avoiding all forms of intolerance or discrimination. In this sense, it is to be hoped that in a not too distant future, … steps will be taken to advance in areas such as religious education in diverse milieux, spiritual assistance in health care, social and welfare centers in the public sector, as well as a presence in the media,” he added.
The Pope also recalled that the first foreign apostolic trip of his pontificate was to Mexico 25 years ago. He noted that in October 2004 the 48th International Eucharistic Congress will be held in Guadalajara.
“One must never give in,” the Pope said, “to the pretences of those who, having an erroneous concept of the principle of Church-State-separation and of the lay character of the State, aim to reduce religion to a merely private sphere for the individual, not recognizing the Church’s right to teach her doctrine and to give moral judgments about matters that affect the social order.”
Turning to the question of “building a democratic culture and consolidating the state of law,” John Paul II noted that “recently the Mexican bishops…made a pressing appeal for national unity and dialogue among the leaders of social life.”
He highlighted “the sad and vast problem of poverty,” calling it “an urgent challenge for politicians and leaders in the public sector. Its eradication requires means of both a technical and political nature” but “one must never forget that these means will be insufficient if not animated by authentic ethical values. A model of development that does not decisively confront social imbalances cannot prosper in the future.”
The Holy Father dedicated closing remarks to the many indigenous peoples in Mexico, asking that special attention be devoted to them “for they are often relegated to the realm of the forgotten.”
He also expressed concern for the “growing phenomenon of migration of Mexicans to other countries, especially the United States,” noting how negatively this affects families. The causes of emigration “must be found and remedied,” he said, and “Mexicans residing abroad must never feel forgotten by the nation’s leaders.”
Vatican City, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - The Pontifical Academy for Life published yesterday a report containing the reflections of a study group convened by the Holy See to tackle the problem of sexual misconduct by priests. The report states that the help of experts in diverse areas is necessary to address the problem.
The report contains the results of a scientific symposium which took place in April of 2003 and was entitled, “Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church—Legal and Scientific Perspectives.”
According to the Holy See, rehabilitation with psychologists and psychiatrists can offer useful means to prevent cases of misconduct and to protect victims.
The symposium of 2003 brought together experts in the field from the US, Canada, and Germany, as well as therapists who specialize in helping those who suffer from this problem to recover.
Representatives from various Vatican dicasteries, such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Congregation for Clergy, among others, also attended the event.
Chicago, Ill., Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - The renowned film-reviewing duo, Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, has given Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of The Christ” their highest trademark rating: two thumbs way up.
The pair offered an early review of the movie, which will hit theaters Feb. 25, on their syndicated series “Ebert & Roeper.”
“This is the most powerful, important and by far the most graphic interpretation of Christ's final hours ever put on film,” said Roeper, calling Gibson “a masterful storyteller.”
Ebert said it is the only religious movie he has even seen, with the exception of “The Gospel According to St. Matthew”, “that really seems to deal with what actually happened.”
The movie “focuses relentlessly on the price that Christ paid for redemption and it emphasizes that Jesus wanted this to happen,” said Ebert. “His death was the instrument of his purpose, and we should be grateful to him instead of critical of those who were the instruments of his will.
“I don't think the movie is anti-Semitic,” said Ebert, addressing the film’s controversy that has swept the media. Roeper added that the movie “does not blame all Jews past and present for the death of Jesus.”
“Christ was born as a Jew, his disciples were Jewish,” said Ebert. “Yes, some Jewish priests call for his death. They were threatened by his assault on their establishment. … Most of the Jews in this movie are horrified by what they see.”
Vatican City, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - The Office of Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff published today the calendar of celebrations that are scheduled to be presided over by the Holy Father until April.
The schedule includes Ash Wednesday, a celebration of the word in the Vatican Basilica at 10:30 a.m., with blessing and distribution of ashes.
This Saturday, February 28, the Pope will preside at Mass at 6 p.m. in Paul VI Hall with the following Roman parishes: St. Anselm, St. Mary, Star of Evangelization, St. Charles Borromeo, St. John the Baptist de la Salle. And on Sunday, February 29, the first Sunday in Lent, the Roman Curia will begin their spiritual exercises in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel. The retreat ends on March 6.
The March schedule includes the following activities:
· Saturday, 13. At 6:30 p.m. in the Paul VI Hall, Rosary with university students.
· Saturday, 20. In the Paul VI Hall at 6 p.m., Mass with the following Roman parishes: St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Patrick, St. Mary Mediatrix and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
· Sunday, 21: Fourth Sunday in Lent. At 9:30 a.m. in the Vatican Basilica, Beatification of Servants of God Luigi Talamoni, Matilde del Sagrado Corazon Tellez Robles, Piedad de la Cruz Ortiz Real, Maria Candida dell’Eucaristia.
· Saturday, 27. At 6 p.m. in the Paul VI Hall, Mass with the following Roman parishes: St. John of the Cross, St. Felicity and Sts. Chrysanthus and Daria.
And in April, the Pope will preside at:
· Sunday, 4: Palm Sunday, 19th World Youth Day in St. Peter’s Square at 10 a.m. Blessing of palms, procession and Mass.
· Thursday, 8: Holy Thursday. Chrism Mass in the Vatican Basilica at 9:30 a.m. At 5:30 p.m., also in the Vatican Basilica, the beginning of the Easter Triduum with the Mass of the Last Supper.
· Friday, 9: Good Friday. In the Vatican Basilica at 5 p.m., Celebration of the Lord’s Passion. At 9:15 p.m. in the Colosseum, Way of the Cross.
· Saturday, 10: Holy Saturday. In the Vatican Basilica at 7 p.m., Easter Vigil.
· Sunday, 11: Easter Sunday. In St. Peter’s Square at 10:30 a.m., Mass and “Urbi et Orbi” blessing.
· Sunday, 25: Third Sunday of Easter. In St. Peter’s Square at 10 a.m., Beatification of Servants of God Augusto Czartoryski, Laura Montoya, Maria Guadalupe Garcia Zavala, Julia Nemesia Valle, Eusebia Palomino Yenes and Alexandrina Maria da Costa.
Denver, Colo., Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - Archbishop Charles J. Chaput urged people to wake up, organize and act in order to defend the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for the sake of raising a family.
“Our goal in defending marriage is to defend children and families, … [and] to ensure that we have a healthy future as a people,” said the archbishop of Denver at the "Stand Up for Marriage" rally Feb. 20 on the west steps of the state capitol.
“The Church; nor any individual or couple; nor any court or civil authority, has the right or the power to change its definition,” he said.
The morning rally was organized by State Rep. Kevin Lundberg, who, along with fellow Republican Sen. Steve Johnson, introduced a resolution in the Statehouse in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defends the traditional definition of marriage.
Lundberg said the rally was organized to give everyday Coloradans the chance to stand up and be heard on this issue.
"The courts have already set in motion the legal logic that will redefine the family," Lundberg said. "Our only option is to clearly establish the true meaning of marriage in the U.S. Constitution.”
The archbishop said the challenges to the natural meaning of marriage are “very real, very damaging, and our children and families will pay a very costly price as a result.
“Stable family life flows from the love of one man and one woman in marriage. If we undermine this understanding of marriage, we undermine the family,” he continued. “And in doing that, we harm ourselves and our children in ways we can't fully imagine.”
Madrid, Spain, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - During a conference which took place at the University of Navarre in Spain, Bishop André Léonard of Namur, Belgium, explained that the adoption of the children by homosexual couples implies an injustice because it provokes “an anti-natural situation which will not be healthy for the child’s development.”
After underscoring that it is difficult that all children grow up in an ideal family environment, Bishop Léonard said this anomalous situation should be resolved. “What is not just is to provoke an anti-natural situation which will not be healthy for the child’s development. His reference points become destabilized, and we willfully disturb the foundation of society and jeopardize its future,” he said.
Bishop Leonard added that “we cannot call marriage that which is not. We must respect the meaning of words and their nature, and marriage has always meant ‘a stable union between man and woman.’ If two men or two women want to live together under legal protection, fine, but they should not be treated legally equal as a true marriage.”
Likewise, in reference to experimentation with adult stem cells, Bishop Leonard underscored that “today they are the most promising,” while “those from embryos carry the danger that they many be carcinogenic, and the multiplying of these cells is still not controllable.” “And yet embryonic stem cells are exploited to show the omnipotence of science.”
According to the Belgian prelate, the Church is not opposed to progress but rather “takes a more realistic position and shows more respect to the constitution of the human person.” “We are not things, we were all once embryos,” he emphasized.
As an expert in Metaphysics, Bishop Leonard affirmed, on the other hand, that today we are living “an individualism that is of a practical and not a philosophical nature. There is no philosophy that is articulated, it’s a vitalistic individualism, almost irrational.” “The heresies of today are not as intelligent as those of the first centuries of the Church,” he added.
Lastly, referring to the loss of faith in Europe, Bishop Leonard indicated that “there are thousands of reasons to despair, but there are hundreds of thousands of motives to be hopeful.”
Havana, Cuba, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - Yesterday thousands of people attended the funeral rites for Auxiliary Bishop Salvador Riverón of Havana, who died Sunday at 55 years of age from advanced cancer.
Bishop Riverón was hospitalized a week ago due to his critical health, according to the Cuban Bishops.
Visitation took place in the Cathedral of Havana, where later Cardinal Jaime Ortega celebrated the Mass of Requiem.
Bishop Riverón was born in Camaguey on July 7, 1948, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1982.
He was named Auxiliary Bishop of Havana on April 24, 1999, by Pope John Paul II.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb 24, 2004 (CNA) - In a move to protect homosexuals from discrimination, the Archbishop of Cincinnati has joined more than 40 religious leaders of all faiths in supporting the repeal of an amendment, which prohibits City Council from passing rights laws for homosexuals.
Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk called the amendment morally wrong. His support for the repeal was announced yesterday.
"I believe now, as I believed at the time of its passage (in 1993), that Article XII is as detrimental to the public good as the ordinance that it invalidated," he wrote in the diocesan newspaper, Catholic Telegraph.
"Homosexual behavior is not tolerated by the Church," he wrote. "But homosexuals still should be protected from discrimination."
The archbishop added that he still opposes blanket rights for homosexuals because it makes "homosexual behavior as legally acceptable as heterosexual behavior."
State Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr., who serves on the campaign to keep Article XII, said the archbishop misunderstands the amendment and added that it is “completely consistent with Church teaching.”
“It does not discriminate, nor does it give special treatment to homosexuals. It has always been equal rights — not special rights," said the Catholic Republican.
Cincinnati is the only city in the United States with such an amendment. | <urn:uuid:6b909394-91a3-4375-8d76-df3761b12fdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/archive/2004/02/24/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961535 | 3,250 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Reborn in America
French Exiles and Refugees in the United States and the Vine and Olive Adventure, 1815-1865
Publication Year: 2011
Published by: The University of Alabama Press
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
Download PDF (50.8 KB)
List of Illustrations
Download PDF (51.2 KB)
Download PDF (39.0 KB)
Download PDF (203.7 KB)
In the mid-1960s a crisis shook the old Franco-American alliance. France asserted its independence, left NATO, and condemned the actions of “the American war apparatus” in Vietnam.1 Yet on October 28, 1967, the two nations exchanged tokens of friendship in Demopolis, Marengo County, Alabama. After months of preparation and two weeks of commemorative celebrations, the people...
Part I: Treason and Terror
1. A Critical Moment
Download PDF (250.3 KB)
In the early months of 1814, an exhausted French nation watched almost impassively as its territory was invaded, and Paris offered vain resistance to the allied forces that took it on March 31. Napoleon had worked wonders to drive back the invaders, but the enemy’s crushing numerical superiority finally overwhelmed...
2. The “Chief Culprits”
Download PDF (237.6 KB)
On the day after the battle of Waterloo, Louis XVIII wrote to Wellington expressing his satisfaction with the success of the allies over the French troops. The allies and their English supreme commander had, it is true, made a distinction— in theory—between the French nation and Napoleon, waging war only against the latter. But the royal delight at the imperial chaos, even if it was comprehensible...
3. Political Reaction in Gironde
Download PDF (295.7 KB)
In the Europe of 1816, Belgium was the refuge of the Frenchmen rejected by the Bourbons; it was the closest and most accessible continental destination from Paris and northeastern France. But others, whose legal situation was particularly critical and urgent, had to flee as soon and far as possible. This, we shall see, was so for...
Part II: Across the Atlantic
4. Maritime Exodus
Download PDF (394.1 KB)
Jacques Lajonie’s stay in Switzerland was brief. After years under Napoleon’s rule, the new Confederation had just returned to the control of the old elite, from whom the fleeing French could expect no help: the right to stay was denied to many, and others were taken back to the border and handed over to waiting French gendarmes...
5. A Conflictual Friendship
Download PDF (369.6 KB)
America was for a time to become an area of turbulence between two antagonistic forces of a foreign nation: official France, well established in Washington and in its consulates, and the émigré France of renegades driven out by the newly restored Bourbons. Situated between the good and the bad Frenchmen, the host country strove to be pleasant to one group without displeasing the other, but diverging...
6. Settling in America
Download PDF (404.0 KB)
After eighteen months in America, General Bernard expressed his gratitude for a welcoming country, blessed by the gods and destined for a bright future. Even if his heart remained in France, like that of his compatriots in exile, his abilities were so exceptional that they could not model their integration on his. The French arriving in the United States, thought Hyde de Neuville, were a second-rate population...
Part III: Alabama’s Exotic Roots
7. Grape Harvests in America
Download PDF (278.6 KB)
Lieutenant Buonaparte’s reading notes prove that his interest in the United States, a new but harsh country, began very early. In France, he wrote, four acres of land are enough for a living; there over forty are needed, and fishing besides. There is plenty of wood, but it would not pay to export it. The fur trade is declining. Tobacco grows well in the central part of the country, but it depletes the soil. On...
8. The New Thebaid
Download PDF (330.4 KB)
In August 1816, the Abeille Américaine published a letter from a subscriber who preferred to remain anonymous so as not to influence anyone and to welcome all initiatives, since the common interest should come before his personal ambition. After a glowing tribute to the superiority of American republican institutions over...
9. A Gift from Congress
Download PDF (309.0 KB)
We do not have the text of the Colonial Society’s petition for lands, but this is
scarcely a hindrance, since we know its driving principles and the names of its signatories.
The important thing is to understand that, in a generally favorable climate,
there was every chance the petition would succeed. The “era of good feelings,”
10. A Family Affair
Download PDF (383.2 KB)
Jefferson had turned down the Colonial Society’s request to draw up its rules, but he did not doubt that its members would succeed in their settlement and bring happiness to their descendants. The society seemed to be established upon a firm foundation with encouraging signs of its development guaranteeing its outcome: its builders were experienced men and their plans aroused increasing interest. Six...
Part IV: French Lands in Alabama
11. Routes to the South
Download PDF (357.4 KB)
In the first half of April 1817, in Philadelphia, the Colonial Society deliberated over how to get to its future place of settlement and retained three options accessible to each other at various connection points. None of the proposed routes— land, maritime, and river—was without its risks, but on the scale of pitfalls and...
12. The Promised Land
Download PDF (816.8 KB)
After July 1817, one arrival followed another, so that by the beginning of the following year, according to Pénières, more than 150 colonists to whom Congress had granted land were clustered on the White Bluffs.1 Depending upon the conditions of their emigration and their reasons for joining the Colonial Society, their presence in Alabama was either the fulfillment of a dream, the default choice of...
13. The French and the Others
Download PDF (388.9 KB)
The colonists could have enjoyed their new environment right away, if one complication had not followed another. The trials of the journey and then of marking the boundaries of their lands made many realize how far they were from cities and the conditions of a comfortable existence. However, while not an Eden, for the thermometers soared in the summer, it did offer advantages: abundant rain, fertile...
14. A Model Colonist
Download PDF (527.4 KB)
The nature of the relations between the French colonists and those who shared their environment does not sufficiently explain the success of some and the failure of most. The Indians, pushed west of the Tombigbee, were peaceful, and the slaves docile. Some Anglo-American farmers were certainly unfriendly, taking advantage of the naïveté of the French, occupying their lands, defaulting on payments...
Part V: Choice of a World
15. Rebirth in America
Download PDF (390.6 KB)
Jacques Lajonie, heroic farmer and winegrower, was not the exception in the French colony. For varying lengths of time, in their own way and with the means at their disposal, others also put a lot into its development: his associates Mangon and Fougnet, General Lefebvre-Desnoëttes, Roudet the nurseryman from Isère, and...
16. Return to the Homeland
Download PDF (424.8 KB)
Of 352 observable cases, 86 members of the Colonial Society—that is, one-fourth of them—left America to return to Europe permanently, in ways determined by the conditions of their departure: motivated by economic considerations or political harassment, those who had left voluntarily could return whenever they wanted; on the other hand, those condemned to death or banished, victims of the proscription...
Download PDF (169.2 KB)
Download PDF (765.3 KB)
Download PDF (1.1 MB)
Download PDF (485.8 KB)
Download PDF (581.6 KB)
Page Count: 572
Publication Year: 2011
Series Title: Atlantic Crossings
Series Editor Byline: Rafe Blaufarb | <urn:uuid:67b51014-12b1-4d55-86bb-e1cbe10d147f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780817385118 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94334 | 1,790 | 2.34375 | 2 |
This is the heartfelt story about a lonely boy, new to the country and overwhelmed by the language, who finds companionship in the most unlikely of forms: an imaginary friend. This friend, The Magician of Primary, guides Louie through the stresses of home life and the alienation of school life, and introduces him to a world of acceptance, tolerance, and social fluency. Louie’s world, once filled with Anti-Magic Toxin, is now quite magical indeed, as Louie is taught to believe in magic, miracles, and himself. Written by a now-thriving high school student about to begin his promising college career, the Magician of Primary is an inspirational tale to all, but especially to ESL students searching for success and acceptance in a foreign place.
The definition of b’noodles
"B'noodles is a unique and cool word that means unique and cool. I made it up because it's uniquely cool and fun to say." --Gio, A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE
A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE is b’noodles
“Blackstone keeps things fresh with insight and wit... achingly real...PRETTY DARN B'NOODLES.” -- Booklist
“Quirky and surprisingly upbeat, it’s Rene’s voice laughing at himself and yet taking his needs seriously that will lure readers into his head and into his heart.”
--School Library Journal
"Charmingly heartbreaking...filled with moments that will make you literally laugh out loud. The contrast in style between Rene's anxious explanations and Gio's chilled-out view of the world draws you into their equally troubled lives completely.”
"Blackstone makes a bold and idiosyncratic debut with this boisterous novel. Honest...humorous...compelling."
"Many teens will recognize someone they know in Rene and gain some understanding of the kid who does not fit in." --VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates)
Theme: Coraline by Automattic.
- The Magician of Primary
- FROM BEDSIDE by Fred Goldstein
- THE PULL OF GRAVITY by Gae Polisner
- Review from Booklist
- Review from School Library Journal
- Chapter One, A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE
- Bookanista Review: Something Like Hope
- A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE Giveaway!!!!
- A FEW QUIRKS by Stasia Ward Kehoe
- POSSESSION author Elana Johnson: Me and My Routines
- My quirks, my “things,” my obsessions
- Publishers Weekly Review!
- Bookanista Thursday: Bad Taste in Boys
- Teen Author Summer Reading Nights
- LIKE MANDARIN by Kirsten Hubbard
- NINTH WARD by Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Bookanista Thursday Review: EDGES by Lena Roy
- Bookanista Thursday Review: THE HATE LIST
- I Love Your Guts: Part 3
- I Love Your Guts: Part 2 | <urn:uuid:e97806c5-73e9-4d5d-bf2b-bae8525deb8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mattblackstonebooks.com/author/admin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908434 | 661 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Nathaniel L. Clapton
||The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies. (October 2008)|
Nathaniel Langford Clapton was born on 1 September 1903, the only son of Nathaniel Clapton, ironmonger's manager, of St Dunstan's Crescent, Worcester.
He attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester, before gaining a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, where he gained first class honours in Mathematical Moderations in 1923 and in the Final Honour School of Mathematics in 1925.
He was successively Senior Mathematics Master at Watford Grammar School for Boys and The Glasgow Academy. He became Headmaster of Boteler Grammar School, Warrington, in September 1940, and was appointed Headmaster of King Edward VII School, Sheffield, in 1950.
He retired on health grounds in July 1965 and died in January 1967.
- Cornwell, John (2005). King Ted's (1st ed.). King Edward VII School, Sheffield. ISBN 0-9526484-1-5.
- MacBeth, George (1987). A Child of the War (1st ed.). Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-02436-1.
- Various (1995). Tha'll never gerr in theer... (1st ed.). King Edward VII School, Sheffield. ISBN 0-9526484-0-7.
|This English biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.| | <urn:uuid:8c131b17-8b2f-4e36-b873-0e689c265adb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_L._Clapton | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90139 | 316 | 2.015625 | 2 |
The coagulation (blood clotting) system
The human body depends on the blood circulating all the time to provide its organs such as the heart, brain and skin with oxygen and nourishment. To keep the blood flowing well, it needs to be of a certain consistency (not too runny and not too thick) and it needs to be able to plug any leaks that may occur, like when you cut your finger.
The wall of the damaged blood vessel is sealed off by a tiny blood clot (sometimes called a thrombus). This clot is formed as a result of proteins that circulate in the blood in a dissolved form. When an injury occurs they travel there to form a blood clot. This is a natural process and necessary to stay in good health.
If a clot forms when it shouldn't it can be carried in the blood to other parts of the body. This is called an embolism and this can then lead to serious problems, such as a stroke. This is the reason for the blood thinning treatment.
How warfarin works
Warfarin works by slowing the blood clotting process down. It is a 'Vitamin K antagonist' which means it prevents the clotting proteins from doing their job fully. Vitamin K is naturally present in food and milk (read more about diet below) and is used to treat overdoses of warfarin therapy or in people who have a high INR (clotting level).
You may have noticed that once you are on warfarin if you cut yourself it takes a little longer to stop bleeding. Everybody reacts differently to warfarin so the dose must be worked out each time for every patient.
The effects of warfarin can last quite a long time in the body but it takes about three to four days to see these effects. This means that a change in dose will not be reflected in the blood test until this time. All this needs to be taken into account when deciding on the dose of warfarin.
The only way to test how the treatment is working is by taking a blood sample and seeing how long it takes the blood to clot.
Why you might need to take warfarin
With some diseases or medical problems blood clots are produced more easily than normal. These diseases include:
cardiomyopathy (heart muscle problem)
following insertion of artificial heart valves
some heart operations, for instance the Fontan procedure or TCPC operation
previous clots or embolisms
The International Normalised Ratio (INR) test
Measuring the INR
The unit of measurement used is called the International Normalised Ratio (INR). This is simply a numerical scale.
Normal measurement – about 1.
The higher the number, the longer it takes the blood to clot.
Warfarin and target INR
We will try to keep your blood clotting to within a certain 'target' number depending on the medical condition requiring warfarin. This is known as the 'target INR'. The most common 'targets' are: two to three units of INR for Fontan type procedures (TCPC), and 2.5 to 3.5 units of INR for artificial valves. Many other medical conditions have a target of 2 to 3 units of INR. We will tell you the target INR required for your warfarin therapy.
Although we try to keep the INR within this target range, many things can affect how warfarin works in the body, such as other medications, diet and ill health. Many children and young people will not be in their range 100 per cent of the time – this is why regular blood tests are necessary.
Frequency of blood tests
A blood test is required regularly to check that your INR level is within the target range. Any adjustment in dose will require a blood test shortly afterwards. If the INR is too low, a dose may need to be increased or if the INR is too high, the anti-coagulation team may decide to miss a dose.
How is warfarin given?
Warfarin is given by mouth as a tablet. Tablets are scored and can be halved with a tablet cutter or a knife for half or quarter doses. For children, who cannot swallow tablets, or who need small dose increments, an oral liquid is available from Rosemont Pharmaceuticals. If your child is taking the liquid warfarin, shake the bottle well before use.
Warfarin tablets available:
Please do not adjust your warfarin dose without the advice of the anticoagulation team managing your treatment.
What are the side effects of warfarin?
Too much warfarin
Haemorrhage (severe bleeding) is the major side effect of warfarin. Seek urgent medical attention for major bleeding.
If you see any of these signs or other unexpected or unexplained signs you should do an INR check and ask your healthcare provider/anticoagulation team for advice.
Too little warfarin (signs of clotting)
More serious symptoms would be:
Other side effects of warfarin include:
Effects of other drugs on warfarin
The drugs you take regularly that are prescribed will have already been taken into consideration. Any new medicines may interact with warfarin and affect the INR level, such as some antibiotics or medicines you buy from the pharmacy for a cold.
Some other sorts of medicine you may buy over the counter at the chemist can also affect the INR level. For example, when you have a cold you may want to take some pain killers or other medicines. You must mention to the chemist that you already take warfarin as some medication may interact with it.
You should also check if you wish to use any herbal or homeopathic treatments as some also interact with warfarin. Some drugs stop warfarin from working as effectively, but some increase its effectiveness.
Some common drugs that will affect the INR
Some heart drugs such as amiodarone.
Some analgesics (pain killers); such as long term use of paracetamol.
Aspirin, although they should not be given to children under 16 years of age except on advice of a healthcare professional.
Some antibiotics such as erythromycin and clarithromycin.
The flu vaccine - side effects of the flu vaccine can include flu-like symptoms and it is advisable to check your INR level a few days afterwards to check it has not been affected.
This is not a complete list, it is important to check with a pharmacist if buying ‘over the counter’ medicines or your prescriber when starting any new medicines. Make sure your anticoagulation team are aware when you start any new medicines so that they can advise you if and when an INR check is needed.
Any change in lifestyle or wellbeing may also influence the effectiveness of warfarin therapy. An example of this may be going on holiday to a place where there is a big change in climate or diet.
If you are unwell, for instance, with flu, sickness or diarrhoea, or start any new medication you should inform your anticoagulation team and check your INR. They will advise you about the best time to check it and any dose adjustments if necessary.
You should also try to stick to a fixed time of day for taking your warfarin medicine- between 6pm and 7pm is ideal.
Some foods that you eat every day contain vitamin K which is involved in the blood clotting process. It does not really matter how much vitamin K you eat when you start warfarin as the dose is worked out around it.
Foods rich in vitamin K include; green leafy vegetables such as cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli and spinach. Avocado, soya bean products, Swiss hard cheese and cranberry juice are also rich in Vitamin K. Cranberry juice is known to affect warfarin levels so we suggest you avoid it.
You do not need to limit your diet, however binge (short-term) diets are not recommended as major changes in diet may have an effect on warfarin levels. You should eat a healthy balanced diet like everyone else.
Babies who are breast fed may need lower doses of warfarin than those who are bottle fed with formula milk, as formula milk contains some Vitamin K and breast milk does not.
Contact sports such as rugby or martial arts are not advised due to the risk of injury.
Sports such as football, hockey or cricket are fine provided you remember that any contact injury sustained during play is likely to result in bruising or possibly bleeding. Wearing protective gear is essential.
Children may do PE and games at school, however care should be taken with other more robust activities Please make sure your teachers, especially your sports teacher, know you take warfarin in case you get an injury.
Please talk with the anticoagulation team about any sports or activities you wish to do for further advice as necessary.
Letting your school/college know
It is essential that staff, in particular sports teachers, are aware of students on warfarin therapy should an injury occur. You can give a copy of our information sheet (PDF, 325KB) to your school or college. Further information is also available from the contacts listed at the end of this page.
Think about what to do if you have an injury
- Press for 10 minutes with a clean cloth.
- If bleeding does not stop, go to your nearest Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) department.
Head injury/bump to the head
Be more vigilant, as cuts to the skin can be seen clearly. However bumps to the head which may cause internal bleeding are not so obvious. If you have more than a very minor bump it is advisable to get checked by a doctor.
We strongly recommend wearing cycle helmets to reduce the risk of a head injury when riding a bicycle.
Symptoms to look out for following a head injury include:
If any of these symptoms happen you must go to your nearest A&E department straight away.
- If you have a nose bleed carry out normal first aid.
- Lean your head forward.
- Pinch your nose just above your nostrils for 10 minutes.
- Leaning forward and breathing through your mouth will let blood drain out of your nose instead of down the back of your throat.
- If nose bleed carries on for more than 10 minutes, you should go to your local A&E department for treatment and to get your INR checked.
- Contact your anticoagulation team to inform them so that they can manage your INR levels as required.
- When you go to A&E, make sure you tell the staff that you are taking warfarin.
General health and safety
Surgical or dental procedures
If you have any planned medical investigations, operation or dental procedures it may be necessary to interrupt the warfarin treatment for a few days. The doctor/surgeon will usually consult the doctor/ nurse responsible for your warfarin management and ask for the necessary advice.
Immunisations and vaccinations
All injections and vaccinations should be given under the skin (subcutaneously). Intramuscular injections (given into the muscle) should not be given to people on warfarin therapy as this may cause bruising.
Apply firm pressure to the site for 10 minutes afterwards.
Holidays and travel
If you are going on holiday in this country or abroad let your anticoagulation team know and arrange an INR check before you go. If you are away for more than one week you may need an INR checked locally.
Make sure you have enough warfarin tablets/suspension for your stay plus a few days’ extra and carry them in your hand luggage in case of lost suitcases! Travel insurance is essential if going abroad.
Diarrhoea and vomiting
If you are at home or in the UK, ensure you drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration, such as water, very dilute squash or rehydration sachets from the pharmacy. If symptoms worsen or persist for more than 24 hours, seek medical advice from your GP or nearest A&E department.
Diarrhoea and vomiting - which you may experience with foreign travel – will affect the absorption of your warfarin and your INR level very quickly. If you are abroad, the same advice applies about drinking plenty of fluid. However, it is important to ensure you drink only sealed bottled water in countries where tap water is not recommended for drinking purposes.
If symptoms carry on or worsen seek medical advice. If you are unsure how to do this, speak to your holiday representative or travel insurance provider for further information and support.
Anticoagulation record book
Your anticoagulation team will give you a book to record your INR, warfarin dose and all your treatment details. Always bring this to every medical appointment.
Growing up and getting ready for adulthood
As you grow your needs will change.
Medic alert jewellery
This provides all relevant medical information and is particularly useful if you are away from home. Information is available at www.medicalert.org.uk
We advise electrical razors rather than blades.
Periods may be heavy and last longer than normal.
It is very important that all girls taking warfarin should be told about the importance of contraception, as warfarin can be harmful to the baby, particularly in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Pregnancy will affect your INR levels so we advise discussing this with a member of the team before you get pregnant.
You may find it helpful to discuss these issues with a member of the team managing your warfarin therapy for further advice.
This is not recommended due to the risk of bleeding and infection.
Alcohol can affect your blood test and should be taken in moderation. Excessive alcohol should be avoided as it increases the risk of bleeding. Vomiting after drinking too much leads to dehydration which will affect your INR.
Keep medicines in a safe place where children cannot reach them.
Keep medicines in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight and away from heat.
If your doctor decides to stop treatment with warfarin, return any unused medicine to the pharmacist. Do not flush down the toilet or throw it away.
Important information about warfarin
If you forget to take a dose, take it as soon as you remember. Do not take a double dose.
If you vomit after taking the medicine, do not take a double dose.
Your family doctor (GP) will need to give you a repeat prescription for warfarin. Some medicines will need to be ordered by your community pharmacy (chemist) so arrange this in plenty of time. | <urn:uuid:1031904e-9a15-40a8-8902-6390fa757ab5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gosh.nhs.uk/medical-conditions/medicines-information/warfarin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9369 | 3,066 | 3.296875 | 3 |
The Colombian Psychoanalytic Society (Socolpsi) was formed as the Colombian Studies Group on May 6 1956, celebrating the birth centenary of Sigmund Freud, and was sponsored by the psychoanalytic societies of France and Chile. The founding group consisted of three training analysts and four students. In 1957 the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) recognised the Colombian Studies Group.
In 1961, the study group was recognized by the IPA as a Component Society, and in 1962 there was a conflict between two of the founders which ended with the departure of several members and students who later formed the Psychoanalytic Association of Colombia, which is currently recognised by the IPA as a Provisional Society.
The efforts of the analysts who remained in the Society were directed towards its consolidation and maintenance of being a psychoanalytic training institute. Despite these crises, the Society hosted the Latin American Congress of Psychoanalysis in 1968.
Since the 1970's, the Society grew more slowly but steadily, compared with some other Latin American societies, and it was internationally regarded as the Colombian traditional solid group.
Socolpsi received recognition as a Component Society on the appointment of Doctor Carlos Plata as Vice-President of the IPA in 1973.
For further information please visit the Society's own website shown above. | <urn:uuid:ce0f9b26-30ef-4de1-974b-22a356648f7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ipa.org.uk/en/Societies/Individual_Society_Roster_TS.aspx?ContactKey=47425ef9-1bcd-43fd-b3b3-6e5f1441fa03&ID=1028 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971526 | 268 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The Dog Daily: Play
Lessons Learned From Presidential Dogs
By Elizabeth Wasserman for The Dog Daily
In the White House, they play howl to the chief.
They are presidential dogs -- the most common presidential pets.
Throughout history, U.S. presidents have had faithful companions living with them at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. White House dogs have comforted their owners in times of great national stress, entertained the American public with their antics and done all of the things a normal dog will do -- often in the media spotlight.
“Every president that has a pet seems to be better-liked by the public,” says Claire McLean, founder of the Presidential Pet Museum, which contains a collection of photographs and memorabilia located at Presidents Park in Williamsburg, Va. “The dog-loving public seems to feel that they are much more real and down-to-earth if they have the same type of behavior as the average family.” That includes having to take the dog for a walk.
While most presidential dogs have been deemed a political asset, others have left a legacy of misbehavior. Pet owners nationwide may take comfort in knowing that even first families sometimes have pets with behavior problems, or unknowingly pick the wrong breed for their lifestyle. Some presidential dogs have even been put out to pasture, by being returned to their previous owners or sent to spend the waning days of the administration on the presidential ranch.
Here are some stories about presidential pet misdeeds and what experts advise if you encounter similar behavior:
Grits: The Dog That Snapped at People When Jimmy Carter moved his family from Georgia to Washington, D.C., after his election in 1976, his young daughter Amy was given a mixed breed dog by her former teacher. Amy named the dog Grits, after her father’s campaign slogan, referring to himself and Vice President Walter “Fritz” Mondale as “Grits and Fritz.” “It was a very belligerent dog,” McLean says. “It snapped at people and wasn’t very friendly.” Grits followed a long line of biting dogs in the White House, which included one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s terriers, Meggie, who once bit a senator. Pete, a bull terrier belonging to the other Roosevelt who occupied the White House -- Teddy -- nearly caused an international incident when he ripped off the French ambassador’s slacks during a function. Grits ended up in the doghouse, too, figuratively speaking, and was returned. The Carters then adopted a cat.
What You Can Do Aggressive behavior, such as snapping, biting or snarling, is hard for dog owners to tolerate. There are many reasons why canines exhibit such aggressive behavior -- in response to fear, to protect territory or as a result of a change in the dog’s social status. The Humane Society of the U.S. advises that pet owners get help from an animal behavior specialist to deal with aggression. Socialization is also key. “The best thing to do is start early. A lot of these dogs are received as puppies,” says Trish McMillan, director of animal behavior. “You only have the first four months of a puppy’s life, for the window of socialization, to introduce them to new things. I’m betting that some of these presidents’ dogs were not socialized enough as puppies.”
Lucky: The Dog That Pulled After Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, a March of Dimes poster girl gave his wife, Nancy, a small puppy. The first lady named the dog -- which was a Bouvier des Flanders, or Belgian Cattle dog -- Lucky. “She was just a little bundle of fur when I got her,” Mrs. Reagan wrote in her autobiography, “but she grew to be the size of a pony.” Lucky developed poor leash walking habits. The dog “used to pull them both around the White House,” McLean says. The final straw came after a White House visit by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when President Reagan was photographed being pulled across the White House lawn -- an undignified image for the leader of the free world. Lucky was sent to live on the Reagan ranch in California, leaving Rex, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, as the only pup in the White House.
What You Can Do Pulling on the leash may be indicative of other problems, such as a dog that is not getting enough exercise. That is especially true of dogs that are bred for herding, farm work, or other activities. The Reagans may have erred in thinking that Lucky could adapt to the more sedate lifestyle in the White House, but clearly found a better environment for the dog on a ranch later in life. If you don’t have a spare ranch, experts advise two options. First, you can train the dog. “The easiest way is to feed the dog meals on the walk,” McMillan says. “Have a bag of kibble in your pocket. Every time they pull on the leash, turn to your left when they’re on your right. But every time they walk nicely, keep the kibble coming.” Another option is to try one of a variety of new training devices, such as harnesses or halter apparatuses that will prevent the dog from pulling.
Buddy: The Dog That Chased Cats After the start of his second term as president, Bill Clinton decided to get a puppy. Buddy, a chocolate Labrador retriever, moved into the White House to join the Clintons’ other pet, a cat named Socks. But Buddy and Socks didn’t see eye to eye. “They never got along,” McLean says. “A lot of times you’d see them sparing on the lawn or running through the White House. The media loved to write about that.” The two pets were eventually kept in separate rooms in the presidential residence, and after the Clintons moved to Chappaqua, N.Y., Buddy went with them, but Socks moved in with Clinton’s secretary, Betty Currie.
What You Can Do The key to getting two or more pets to make nice under the same roof -- even if that roof is that of the White House -- is socialization. McMillan says that critical socialization period is when pups should be introduced not only to people, but to cats, dogs and other animals as well. If you’re introducing more mature pets, “The most important thing is to do a slow introduction,” says McMillan. “Have your dog on a leash, then bring the cat into the room.” Associate good things with the cat, such as treats. If the dog starts to chase, give it a “time out,” restraining it on the leash in a room by itself.
One thing that presidents have learned over the years is that a canine companion can help soften their image. President Herbert Hoover, who presided over the federal government during the Great Depression, had a German shepherd that was noted to be sullen and was often sulking around the White House. McLean says, “When they took a picture of Hoover with the dog, it made Hoover seem like a nice guy, when he actually had a cold demeanor.”
Elizabeth Wasserman, a Washington, D.C., area-based freelancer, has been writing about pets, among other topics, for more than 15 years. Her love of dogs, in particular, was handed down through the generations from her great-grandfather, Eric Knight, who wrote the book Lassie Come Home in the 1930s. | <urn:uuid:7d592243-a315-4c9c-9054-7d420ff5fba0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedogdaily.com/partner/content/worldnow-ftp/archive/2008-11-03/feature/lessons_learned_presidential_dogs/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973456 | 1,628 | 2.5625 | 3 |
New platforms like Adobe Air and Mozilla Prism are evolving that combine the benefits of Internet flow with the flexibility and power of desktop applications. They are part browser, part desktop app and are extremely efficient for certain types of applications.
Flash, Silverlight and Ajax get most web applications over the hump in terms of usability and are the technologies behind the fast transition of desktop applications to the web. But it’s not clear that they’ll ever kill off all desktop applications entirely. The bridge between them may very well be Air and/or Prism.
Matthew Gertner, who was a co-founder and CTO of startup AllPeers before it shut down earlier this year, is now working with Mozilla on their Prism project. I asked him to write a guest post discussing Prism and how it fits into the ecosystem v. Air as well as a number of emerging technologies for using web applications offline (Firefox 3, Google Gears).
Read Matthew’s blog, Just Browsing, here.
Thanks to innovations like Ajax and Flash video, web apps are quickly gaining ground on their desktop counterparts. With a few notable exceptions like Firefox and Skype, the big software hits of recent years have been websites such as Flickr, YouTube and Facebook. And yet web-based software cannot yet equal the high-quality user experience of the best native apps. This is the reason why Apple was forced to reverse its original decision to make Safari the official SDK for the iPhone. It also explains why online productivity suites like Google Docs are still struggling to compete with stalwarts like Microsoft Office. Web apps simply don’t provide the responsiveness, performance, whizzy graphics and access to local data that users crave, and they only work when you’re connected to the internet.
Single-site browsers (SSBs) aim to bring the best of the desktop to web applications. Rather than running programs in normal web browsers like Firefox or Safari, wedged in a tab between New York Times articles and TechCrunch posts, each app is given its own dedicated browser, which is customized to include many of the desktop features that users know and love. Some of the advantages are obvious. Apps like Gmail and Facebook get an icon in the dock (on Mac) or the taskbar (on Windows) for easy access, and in the case of Gmail the icon can be “badged” with the number of new emails, a popular feature of traditional mail clients. Superfluous elements like the back/forward buttons, generic browser menus and the URL bar can be hidden away, reducing user interface clutter. Other benefits are more subtle. Since each app is running in its own operating system process, for example, a crash in one program won’t bring down your whole browser.
Mozilla Prism is one of the oldest examples of a site-specific browser. It grew out of the WebRunner prototype created by Mozilla developer Benjamin Smedberg, which he showed off at the XTech conference in 2006 to demonstrate the capabilities of the Mozilla platform. Another Mozillian, Mark Finkle, recognized its potential and continued to extend and improve the prototype. It was rebranded as Prism and launched as an official Mozilla Labs project in October 2007. Rather than creating a new platform for standalone web applications, Prism aims to leverage existing web apps while integrating them more smoothly into the overall desktop experience.
With the release of Prism 0.9 two weeks ago, the project now comes with a Firefox extension that makes creating a single-site browser for a website a one-click process that can be performed directly inside Firefox 3. Surf to Gmail, for instance, choose “Convert to Application” in the Firefox menu, and a shortcut with the Gmail icon appears on your desktop. Clicking the icon launches Gmail in its own window. Extensive customization options are available to add things like dock badges, system tray icons and popup notifications. Web developers can add special hooks to their code so that these bells and whistles are automatically included whenever someone spins the app off onto their desktop. Prism is still very much a work-in-progress, but it has already met with some early success; recent Yahoo acquisition Zimbra, for example, is using it to deliver a desktop version of their popular web-based mail client.
A final contender is Google Gears, which was originally positioned as a way to take web apps offline so that they can be used without a live internet connection. Currently the only Google application to support Gears is Google Reader; users who install the plugin can sync their news feeds to their local disk and read them offline. It has recently become clear that Google has much bigger plans for Gears; a “Desktop Shortcut API,” for instance, lets Gears users add an icon to their desktop to launch an app directly. Gears developer Dion Almaer provides a laundry list of future APIs, including everything from notifications and cryptography to image manipulation.
As such, Gears represents a strong move on the part of Google into the browsing space, almost certainly to include site-specific browsing. Despite persistent rumors, it is now apparent that Google does not intend to create its own “GBrowser”. Instead, it is using Gears as a vehicle to add new features to existing web browsers (it currently works in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari), for use both by Google and by third-party apps. Google obviously realizes that its applications won’t be able to compete with the likes of Microsoft Office without significantly beefing up the capabilities of the web browser. At the same time, it would be too stiff a challenge to achieve broad market penetration with a completely new browser brand. Gears is its elegant solution to this problem.
Offline functionality is key piece of the site-specific browser puzzle. Internet connectivity may one day be ubiquitous, but in the meantime web apps need to function offline if they are to compete with their desktop brethren. HTML 5 includes a specification for offline web apps that is already supported by Safari 3.1 and Firefox 3. Gears is in many ways a direct competitor, although one of the HTML 5 editors, Ian Hickson, works for Google, and it is quite plausible that Gears will be adapted to support the specification in the future. Offline functionality is not inherently linked to site-specific browsers, but together the two form a powerful combination.
It’s pretty early to call a winner in the site-specific browser space, especially since heavyweights like Apple and Microsoft are probably poised to enter the game as well. But Prism has one big advantage: a killer app in the form of Firefox. By integrating Prism into a future version of Firefox, Mozilla could quickly get its technology into the hands of its 150 million users. AIR, on the other hand, has the advantage of using Flash and Flex to add sizzle to web app user interfaces, at the price of requiring potentially significant adaption on the part of the web app developer. However the space shakes out, the era of running applications in a tab in a traditional web browser may soon be coming to an end. | <urn:uuid:84b22be1-bbb4-46d1-ad45-f68605cd1c16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://techcrunch.com/2008/03/22/bridging-desktop-and-web-applications-a-look-at-mozilla-prism/ | 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 | 0.935992 | 1,437 | 1.921875 | 2 |
For "ordinary" antifreeze, the vehicle manufacturers generally recommend coolant changes every two to three years or 30,000 miles. Others say it's not a bad idea to change the coolant every year for maximum corrosion protection -- especially in vehicles that have aluminum heads, blocks or radiators. But such recommendations may soon be obsolete. Several antifreeze suppliers have just recently introduced "long life" antifreeze formulations that claim to provide protection for four years or 50,000 miles.
General Motors just introduced a new five year, 100,000 mile antifreeze in its 1996 cars and light trucks. The new coolant is called "Dex-Cool" and is dyed orange to distinguish it from ordinary antifreeze (which is green).
CAUTION: These new long life coolants provide extended life only when used in a clean system mixed with water. If mixed with ordinary antifreeze and/or old coolant in a system, the corrosion protection is reduced to that of normal antifreeze (2 to 3 years and 30,000 miles).
The life of the antifreeze depends on it's ability to inhibit corrosion. Silicates, phosphates and/or borates are used as corrosion inhibitors to keep the solution alkaline. As long as the antifreeze remains so, corrosion is held in check and there's no need to change the coolant. But as the corrosion inhibiting chemicals are used up over time, electrolytic corrosion starts to eat away at the metal inside the engine and radiator. Aluminum is especially vulnerable to corrosion and can turn to Swiss cheese rather quickly when conditions are right. Solder bloom can also form in copper\brass radiators causing leaks and restrictions. So changing the coolant periodically as preventative maintenance is a good way to prevent costly repairs.
The basic idea is to change the coolant before the corrosion inhibitors reach dangerously low levels. Following the OEM change recommendations is usually good enough to keep corrosion in check, but it may not always be the case. That's why more frequent changes may be recommended to minimize the risk of corrosion in bimetal engines and aluminum radiators.
One way to find out if it's time to change the antifreeze is to test it. Several suppliers make special antifreeze test strips that react to the pH (alkalinity) of the coolant and change color. If the test strip indicates a marginal or bad condition, the coolant should be changed.
Reverse flushing is the best way to change the coolant because draining alone can leave as much as 30 to 50% of the old coolant in the engine block. Reverse flushing also helps dislodge deposits and scale which can interfere with good heat transfer.
The concentration of antifreeze in the coolant also needs to be checked prior to the onset of cold weather. A 50/50 mixture of antifreeze and water is recommended and will protect against freezing down to -34 degrees F and boilover protection to 263 degrees F.
For maximum protection, up to a 70% mixture of antifreeze can be used for freezing protection to -84 degrees F.
CAUTION: Do not use more than 70% antifreeze, and never run straight water in the cooling system because it offers no corrosion, freezing or boilover protection. | <urn:uuid:15712bcd-3dd3-4782-8942-77e28d2985e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://autos.yahoo.com/maintain/repairqa/fluids_heat_air_conditioning/ques011_1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923684 | 691 | 2.359375 | 2 |
RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - Don't call Peter Bruce a trash collector -- that's just one of the many jobs he has as head of maintenance for the James River Park System.
It's just that trash is such a visible part of his daily routine, and the one that can get out of control the fastest, especially at the most popular spots in the park, like Pony Pasture, Belle Isle and Brown's Island.
"200-300 trash cans, and in the hot spots, if we miss one day, you've got a pyramid of trash," Bruce said.
He was born in eastern Henrico and is a long-time city resident. He's been at his job for 12 years, hired on full time under park manager Ralph White after Hurricane Fran in 1996.
His says his duties are mainly trash, roadway maintenance, graffiti, grass, repairs, painting -- whatever the park needs. The JRPS cares for more than 650 acres of park land, including 14 parks and many extra areas like the Manchester climbing wall, floodwall, the Slave Trail and Lumpkin's Jail sites.
There's a lot of work to be done year-round, and the park staff depends on help from volunteers for picking up trash, painting, cleaning graffiti, building projects and more.
"Volunteers are the stronghold of the James River Park System," Bruce said. Many of the groups they see are young people -- residents, college students and children from all over the area.
Bruce said he also has many volunteers from the African-American community -- people that may never have experienced the river that get good work skills. He says that people just want to do something positive in a positive atmosphere.
"At the end of the day, we thank the volunteers and they thank us, and you know, it's just amazing how people love the James River," he said.
Bruce wouldn't declare his favorite part of the park, but loves his job: "I tell everybody ... just get a map and come to the James river ... bring your family, get away ... just to walk and enjoy it."
People may enjoy the park a little too much. Bruce works long hours in the summer, including most weekends to keep the popular park system clean and safe.
"We need to get our people in the habit of placing material and waste in the right place," he said.
That includes recycling, which Bruce says helps fund the park signage and material for special building projects.
So now that you've met Peter Bruce, keep him in mind next time you're at the James river. Clean up your trash and put it in the right place to make his job a little easier.
If you want to volunteer with the James River Park System, call 804-646-8911 or visit jamesriverpark.org.
(c) 2009. WWBT, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
WWBT-TV NBC 12
P.O. Box 12
On Your Side
Video and Pics | <urn:uuid:0d4d132b-f2e3-42a6-aab6-51ff522bdb37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbc12.com/Global/story.asp?S=10718501 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968233 | 634 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Matt Miller, Contributor
I write about the media and tech trending with Millennials
There’s probably not many of you out there who don’t have your wifi password protected. A person can only try to watch Netflixso many times to find out that someone nearby is stealing and clogging up the Internet before locking it down with a password. Internet in the days of wireless is something to be protected from thieves.But what if you wanted people to use your Internet free of charge? What if having a stranger using your wifi for free was just sharing and not stealing?
This rather radical notion is the philosophy of the Karma wifi hotspot that launched in December.
“What we’re enabling is the social element of getting connected,” said Robert Gaal, 27, the CEO of Karma. “When I’m in a cafe and there’s no wi-fi and I see someone with a laptop there’s a way for me to connect with that person.”
And that’s exactly where the idea for Karma came from. Gaal noticed that people already share hotspots, whether it’s at your home when you have guests or a stranger in a cafe needs an Internet connection.
“We wanted to take an existing behavior and make it easier to do,” Gaal said.
Basically, the Karma is a pay-as-you-go wi-fi hotspot ($14 for every gigabyte), but when your hotspot is on anyone can use it. When a stranger sees, for example, “Matt’s Karma,” that stranger clicks on the network and logs in with Facebook and can use a free 100 megabytes of bandwidth. When that stranger uses the open wi-fi network, the owner of the network gets a free 100 megabytes. And if you think you’ve found a loophole to constantly having free Internet by having a friend or roommate constantly use your Karma, you’re out of luck. You can only get the free wi-fi once per person who uses your Karma signal.
Using this social sharing wi-fi, the Karma has sold a few thousand hotspot units with the backing of investors like Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.
“We’re living in a world where instead of using a resource for yourself, we’re more inclined to collaboratively consume, and it makes it that much more efficient,” Gaal said.
In the last two months Gaal said he has noticed that for every hotspot out there it is being shared with multiple people multiple times a day. And when people do use the hotspot for free they do end up becoming returning users.
These users, Gaal said, are all over the map – younger and older, but it’s the younger users who have more of a motivation to share and collaborate.
“It really fits with that generation that has grown up online and has experienced (sharing),” Gaal said. “They’re very interested in ecommerce – into what their friends are buying. You’re not just using something for yourself.”
Gaal added that younger generations have become used to solving problems online and in this situation, they are solving the problem of not being able to get online in person.But in today’s world how often are we without Internet? It’s something that I wouldn’t have considered asking only a few years ago, but today every cafe, book store even McDonald’s has free wi-fi. While there’s a pretty and useful theory around the Karma hotspot, are there many instances to use the device other than emergencies? The best place I could think of it being used is in airports and in planes, but even those now have Internet access.
With common sense telling people to keep all connections secure, Karma users might be concerned about the safety of giving total strangers access to their Internet. Gaal assured that the Karma hotspot uses the same type of Internet safeguards found in any open wifi at cafes and airports.
“Everyone who logs onto our hotspot is actually separated from anyone who has just connected,” Gaal said. “We make sure anyone who logs onto our Karma hotspot is not visible by any other person on that hotspot.”
All traffic while on the web is automatically encrypted through HTTPS, and all sharing capabilities are closed off.
These users are also protected from giving any social media information to Karma when they log on using Facebook. Gaal said when someone logs on with Facebook, the only way something would be posted to that user’s profile is if they specifically give the application permission. | <urn:uuid:4c517054-ffeb-4f0b-9144-4b5dc5a4fd73> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/mattmiller/2013/02/13/free-internet-karma/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945075 | 967 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Masters Students Celebrate their Accomplishments!
Welcome from Associate Provost Dr. Linda Hyman:
In the Division of Graduate Medical Sciences at Boston University we are committed to providing our students with all the tools and resources necessary to excel in biomedical research and beyond. This means we consider not just what we teach, but how best to teach it. We consider what knowledge, skills and experiences best prepare our students for the opportunities and challenges that await them.
GMS faculty and students redesigned some of the infrastructure around our teaching and training mission. The result of that effort is affectionately referred to as FiBS, which stands for Foundations in Biomedical Sciences. FiBS I focuses on first year course work while FiBS II focuses on professional development. FiBS II activities range from seminars and workshops to classes for credit and can be explored throughout a graduate student’s tenure at BUSM. The details of both phases of the FiBS curriculum are described below. We encourage you to read on and see the results of our efforts as a community of faculty, students and staff committed to excellence in research and training.
FiBS I is a new first year PhD curriculum that was introduced in 2011 and is the result of an intensive year-long study of a committee of GMS faculty leaders in graduate education. During its development the committee was tasked to develop integrated course work for first year students that would:
- Encourage students to think in a rigorous and interdisciplinary fashion
- Coordinate content across courses, programs and departments
- Reduce redundancy in course content
- Decrease lecture hours
- Promote collegiality among participating doctoral students
The curriculum is designed to be challenging, fast paced and interactive. In addition, because of its modular structure it can be modified to adapt to individual (or program) needs. In order to achieve these goals the following key elements have been incorporated into the FiBS I modular structure:
- A critical thinking component is integrated into each module.
These activities are carried out in small (6-8 students + 1 facilitator) break-out groups. Example activities for critical thinking include paper discussions, structural workshops, bioinformatics sessions, etc.
- Students can take program-specific courses beginning with their first semester of study.
The core curriculum is coordinated to span 1.5 semesters to allow for additional program specific courses. The second half of the spring semester will allow students to choose from elective offerings including translational genetics and genomics, molecular metabolism, and physiology of specialized cells.
- Each module has a separate course number, exam(s), and grade.
Each module has co-course directors who sit on a curriculum steering committee with the other module course directors.
- FiBS does not operate on the standard University calendar, so be sure to check the start and end dates for all modules
- As this is a new curriculum we are very interested in student feedback. Formalized, anonymous course evaluations will be made standard practice for all modules and participation in this effort is expected
- Students may need to engage in self-directed learning to manage deficiencies. Tutoring and extra help from TAs and faculty will be available – but the expectation is that students will be proactive | <urn:uuid:f7b5b083-64b1-4010-ba8f-7b1ff6c75d1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bumc.bu.edu/gms/gateway/prospective/fibs-curriculum/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946195 | 659 | 1.898438 | 2 |
The information technology (I.T.) department is the backbone of Molloy College. Our mission is to support the Molloy College community in its teaching, research, administrative and community service endeavors by providing leadership and expertise in information technology solutions. Basically, the information technology department handles all technology issues.
Every department at Molloy College is built from and interfaces with I.T. We provide users with advisory and analytical services and institutional research resources; accessibility to resources within the College and around the world; and the ability to communicate through a variety of media. The I.T. department is responsible for over 625 computers located on campus. And that's not all! The college also supports over 400 printers.
Molloy College runs a high-speed switched network that provides voice, data and video from virtually anywhere on campus. We have kiosks located throughout the campus for on-line student access. You can now stop for a moment to view course schedules, course offerings or even review your bill. Say "hello" online and "good-bye" to waiting on lines. We also maintain a weather station at Jones Beach which provides real time meteorological readings via the Internet. Pretty cool, huh?
Molloy College Helpdesk
The I.T. department offers a helpdesk. We assist with installing and maintaining all of the computers/printers on campus, trouble shooting a variety of problems from software malfunction to network connection and aiding those users who have everyday computer problems. The helpdesk handles problems relating to email, supported hardware, supported software and dreaded virus infections. We are your first point of contact. Our technicians will make sure your issues are handled promptly and professionally. Dial 6818 for service. Fill out a helpdesk work order here.
The Future of I.T.
Information technology is an ever-changing and dynamic industry. Molloy College's I.T. department are in the process of implementing many projects, one of which will give students access to data anywhere on campus through our "Molloy unplugged" wireless campus project. Anyone with a laptop and wireless network card will be able to surf the net, check email and do many other things wirelessly. Molloy College remains committed to satisfying the modern demands of our students. | <urn:uuid:ead3bab2-fd2c-4d5b-b403-ae6ea3a7eabe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.molloy.edu/offices-and-services/information-technology-planning-and-research | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937956 | 467 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Singapore -General Info
Singapore is an island of 646 sq. km, about the size of Chicago. It is located at one of the crossroads of the world. Singapore's strategic position has helped it grow into a major center for trade, communications, and tourism. Its geographical location is 96km north of the equator, between longitude 103 degrees 36' East and 104 degrees 25' East.
Singapore was first mentioned in a 3rd Century Chinese account, which described it as "Pu-luo-chung", or island at the end of the peninsula. In the 7th Century, a Malayan Buddhist Empire was established on the island of Sumatra.
Singapore's population of approximately 3,612,000 (June 1996) comprises 77.3% Chinese, 14.1% Malays, 7.3% Indians, and 1.3% people of other descent. Singapore's indigenous people were the Malays, but after the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles and the establishment of a British trading post, Singapore became a magnet that drew thousands of migrants and merchants.
Singapore is not just one island but a main island with over 60 surrounding islets. However, its compact size belies its economic growth. In just 150 years, Singapore has grown into a thriving center of commerce and industry. Its former role as an entrepot has diminished, as the Republic increased its manufacturing base. | <urn:uuid:1bad3725-4f34-4ad8-8b50-7108e90460ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.singaporehoteltour.com/travel_guide/general_info.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969611 | 290 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Star Trek's George Takei Beams Down to Goddard
As helmsman of the Starship Enterprise, Lt. Hikaru Sulu explored strange, new worlds, sought out new life and new civilizations, boldly going where no one had gone before. But on June 3, Mr. Sulu’s course did not take him to Vulcan or to a rendezvous with the Klingons.
Instead, George Takei -- famous for portraying Star Trek’s Sulu on the small screen and the silver screen -- visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to deliver a presentation entitled “Leadership, Diversity and Harmony: Gateway to Success.”
Takei’s lecture linked the diversity displayed in the original Star Trek series, which aired from 1966 to 1969, to the diversity he encountered at Goddard.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, frequently reminded us that the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth, and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity,” Takei said. “I see [at NASA] the same diversity that we had on Star Trek.”
Takei reminded a full auditorium that the racial climate and Cold War tensions of the 1960s made the Enterprise crew a “political fiction.” Aside from the Japanese-American helmsman, the bridge crew included Lt. Uhura, of African heritage, and Mr. Chekov, of Russian descent.
But now, the International Space Station is just one example of how far society has come since then, Takei said. The cooperation shown on the ISS “was a utopian dream four short decades ago.”
Takei attributes this progress to people he calls “change agents”: “Change agents can envision a world better than the one we have today and act” to make it better, he said, adding that he sees a lot of change agents at Goddard, both social and technological. “You folks are the real pioneers of our time.”
Takei also spoke of his own experiences with discrimination during his speech.
The Japanese-American Takei was born in Los Angeles in 1937. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps dotted across the country. Takei and his family spent the rest of the war in these detention facilities.
As a gay man, Takei has also been deeply involved in activist organizations, such as Frontrunners and the Human Rights Campaign. Goddard’s Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender and Asian Pacific American advisory committees partnered to invite Takei. The timing of his visit coincided with the end of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (May) and the start of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month (June).
A Science-Fact Tour for a Science-Fiction Star
Prior to the lecture, Takei and his partner of 20 years, Brad Altman, toured Goddard’s environmental and engineering test facilities, to get a sneak preview of the centers’s upcoming missions.
The tour started at the second-floor gallery, outside the High-Bay Clean Room, current residence of components that will be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope as part of Servicing Mission 4.
Mike Adams, Hubble’s carriers development manager, and Dr. Kevin Boyce, the system lead for repair of the Advanced Camera for Surveys, briefed Takei and Altman on what role Goddard’s clean room plays. The High-Bay Clean Room houses exact replicas of Hubble sections, which makes it the perfect place to test new telescope components prior to launch.
Next stop was the Acoustic Test Chamber to see the Solar Dynamics Observatory. SDO will essentially observe the weather of the sun to study its effects on Earth. The Acoustic Test Chamber can blast a payload with 150 decibels of sound, which is about the level you would hear standing next to a jet engine during takeoff. A rocket can create a lot of noise when it goes up; making sure a satellite can withstand the racket is an important step in preparing for launch.
Glenn Bock, a test conductor for SDO, pointed out some of the satellite’s key components on a nearby actual-size model. To make sure SDO always points in the correct direction, he said, it will make use of devices called Star Trackers.
“Not Trekkers?” Takei jokingly asked. Bock chuckled and said he would see what he could do about changing the name.
“I was floored by his energy and interest in what we do,” Bock said later. “Lots of us grew up with Star Trek; it’s in our minds when we’re doing all this.”
Just a few paces away from the Acoustic Test Chamber is another clean room, the temporary home of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission in NASA’s planned return to the moon. Among its objectives is to find possible landing sites for future manned missions.
Takei and Altman spoke with Craig Tooley and Catherine Peddie, LRO’s project and deputy project managers, while technicians fully garbed in clean room “bunny suits” took short breaks from their work to take pictures and issue Takei the Star Trek trademark “live long and prosper” salute.
"It was inspiring to show George and Brad our test facilities," said Ed Packard, of the Environmental Test Engineering and Integration Branch. "He had a sincere interest in how we do things. He made us all feel like we were on the bridge of the Enterprise." Packard explained to Takei and Altman how Goddard's Thermal Vacuum Chamber works to simulate space conditions.
Not only does the chamber use a combination of pumps to eliminate all but the tiniest trace of air, it also can be cooled to minus 310 F and heated to 302 F, simulating temperature swings that spacecraft and their components might experience on their journeys to the final frontier.
“It’s such a thrill to be here with you folks at NASA, because you’re the real pioneers of our time,” Takei said of the Goddard experience. “So many people here told us that [they] watched “Star Trek” as a student in college or in high school, and that’s what inspired [them] to go into this. But you guys are the inspiration for us. You truly are our heroes of the 21st century.”
Takei was not the first Star Trek guest to receive a warm welcome at Goddard. Connor Trinneer, who played Chief Engineer “Trip” Tucker on “Star Trek: Enterprise,” toured the environmental and engineering test facilities on July 7, 2006.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center | <urn:uuid:004d18b5-0a3b-463f-bb13-e628fc95c558> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/takei_feature.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946943 | 1,429 | 2.625 | 3 |
Green Light Toward An Art of Evolution
written by George Gessert
MIT Press | ISBN 9780262517300
Paperback – 264 pages
Member’s price: $19.76
Usually ships within 2–11 business days.
Humans have bred plants and animals with an eye to aesthetics for centuries: flowers are selected for colorful blossoms or luxuriant foliage; racehorses are prized for the elegance of their frames. Hybridized plants were first exhibited as fine art in 1936, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York showed Edward Steichen's hybrid delphiniums. Since then, bio art has become a genre; artists work with a variety of living things, including plants, animals, bacteria, slime molds, and fungi. Many commentators have addressed the social and political concerns raised by making art out of living material. In Green Light, however, George Gessert examines the role that aesthetic perception has played in bio art and other interventions in evolution. Gessert looks at a variety of life forms that humans have helped shape, focusing on plants--the most widely domesticated form of life and the one that has been crucial to his own work as an artist. We learn about pleasure gardens of the Aztecs, cultivated for intoxicating fragrance; the aesthetic standards promoted by national plant societies; a daffodil that looks like a rose; and praise for weeds and wildflowers. | <urn:uuid:b1c35611-6cf1-42f0-8d65-6b8d2c9d0ca5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/shop/item/9780262517300/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957417 | 291 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Debtor days refers to the average number of days required for a company to receive payment from its customers for invoices issued to them. A larger number of debtor days means that a business must invest more cash in its unpaid accounts receivable asset, while a smaller number implies that there is a smaller investment in accounts receivable, and that therefore more cash is being made available for other uses.
The size of the debtor days experienced by a company is driven by a number of factors, including the following:
- Industry practice. Customers may be accustomed to paying after a certain number of days, irrespective of what the seller demands as its payment terms.
- Early payment discounts. A company may offer substantial discounts in exchange for early payment, in which case the cost of the discounts must be considered.
- Billing errors. If a company issues incorrect invoices, it can take a substantial amount of time to correct these billing errors and be paid.
- Credit practices. If the credit department issues excessive credit to customers who are clearly unable to pay, this will increase the number of debtor days.
- Investment in collections staff. The amount of money, training time, and technology aids invested in the collections staff correlates closely to the amount of cash collected in a timely manner.
The calculation of debtor days is:
(Trade receivables / Annual credit sales) x 365 days
For example, if a company has average trade receivables of $5,000,000 and its annual sales are $30,000,000, then its debtor days is 61 days. The calculation is:
($5,000,000 Trade receivables / $30,000,000 Annual sales) x 365 = 60.83 Debtor days
The number of debtor days should be compared to that of other companies in the same industry to see if it is unusually high or low. Alternatively, the measure can be compared to benchmark companies located outside of the industry to obtain the highest possible target figures to set as goals. | <urn:uuid:b8ff78d9-b47f-426e-bf4d-b0170c8fdaab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accountingtools.com/questions-and-answers/what-is-the-debtor-days-calculation.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956111 | 410 | 2.25 | 2 |
If you've read this blog before you probably have noticed that I blog quite a bit about starting seeds and especially about frugal ways people can start seeds at home. You can start seeds in plastic shoe boxes that are pretty inexpensive, empty plastic bottles makes great seed starters and even plastic sandwich bags can be used for germinating seeds. Since the day I dawned on me that so many seed starting kits and seed starting bio domes were unnecessary I haven't purchased a product like this seed starter kit from Burpee. In fact, my track record remains because it was sent to me for free by a representative of Burpee to review in my garden. So, what made me change my mind and give one of these commercial seed starters a try? I was intrigued by the manufacturing of the product. It is one of the new eco-seed starter kits that are made from biodegradable plastic. | <urn:uuid:5b7fb6c7-c3ae-4e6c-b88b-9b8be3ede17b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mrbrownthumb.blogspot.com/2011_06_21_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976876 | 182 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Tresor Berlin Berlin Tresor
How Techno became the soundtrack to the reunification & regeneration of Berlin as a cultural symbol."The walls were very thick and the energy in there multiplied. That's why the ceiling was dripping. That's the way it had to be."
Tresor's famous underground dancefloor, which hosted millions until the club's original premises closed in 2005, saw many things. It saw the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when creatives flooded into East Berlin to squat, set up galleries and host clubs. It saw the explosion of techno in Europe, with the arrival of a new wave of DJs from Detroit attracted to Tresor's aggressive aesthetic and sound system. It saw an "anything goes" door policy which helped cause clashes with the police. And it saw closure, and reinvention, in a new building.
Tresor was born just after the fall of the Berlin wall bringing east and west youth together to the soundtrack of the minimal electronics sound from Detroit. The exhibition will include archival material from tresor archive, memories from ordinary punters that attended the club, film and documentaries, as well as special screening of SUB BERLIN a new documentary by Tilmann Kunzel with a Q & A session with a specially selected panel.
The exhibition will also try to look into the impact that the club has had into the regeneration and re-branding of this new Berlin.
exhibtion opening hours are between noon and 6pm
TRESOR LIVE MUSIC EVENT: SAT 16TH 2012 DJS AND LIVE ACT tbc
No reviews available | <urn:uuid:b84b61ee-baa4-43b0-8f06-43017e6a7e57> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://redgallerylondon.com/exhibition/tresor-berlin-berlin-tresor/2012-06-07 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966135 | 329 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Freedom in the World 2012 - Sierra Leone
|Publication Date||22 August 2012|
|Cite as||Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2012 - Sierra Leone, 22 August 2012, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/503c72253.html [accessed 21 May 2013]|
|Disclaimer||This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.|
Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 3.0
Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 3
Despite efforts by ruling and opposition parties to dissuade violence and encourage tolerance, tensions mounted in the lead-up to the 2012 elections. In July, the main opposition party elected former junta leader Julius Maada Bio as their candidate to face incumbent Ernest Koroma in the 2012 presidential race. During the year, the government passed a series of laws to increase protections and incentives for investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs to engage in agricultural and industrial development.
Founded by Britain in 1787 as a haven for liberated slaves, Sierra Leone achieved independence in 1961. Siaka Stevens, who became prime minister in 1967 and then president in 1971, transformed Sierra Leone into a one-party state under his All People's Congress (APC) party. In 1985, Stevens retired and handed power to his designated successor, General Joseph Momoh. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) launched a guerrilla insurgency from Liberia in 1991, sparking a civil war that would last for more than a decade. Military officer Valentine Strasser ousted Momoh the following year, but failed to deliver on the promise of elections. Brigadier-General Julius Maada Bio deposed Strasser in 1996, and elections were held despite military and rebel intimidation. Voters chose former UN diplomat Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) as president.
In 1997, Major Johnny Paul Koroma toppled the Kabbah government and invited the RUF to join his ruling junta. Nigerian-led troops under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) restored Kabbah to power in 1998, and the 1999 Lomé peace agreement led to the deployment of UN peacekeepers. By 2002, the 17,000-strong UN peacekeeping force had started disarmament in rebel-held areas and the war was declared over.
Kabbah won a new term in the 2002 presidential elections, defeating the APC's Ernest Koroma (no relation to Johnny Paul Koroma). The SLPP took 83 of 112 available seats in parliamentary elections that month. However, the SLPP government failed to adequately address the country's entrenched poverty, dilapidated infrastructure, and endemic corruption, and in 2007, Ernest Koroma won a presidential runoff election with 55 percent of the vote, leaving SLPP candidate Solomon Berewa with 45 percent. In the legislative polls, the APC led with 59 seats, followed by the SLPP with 43, and the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) with 10.
Chieftaincy elections and parliamentary and local council by-elections held between 2009 and 2011 were marred by political violence initiated by APC and SLPP supporters. Following serious clashes in the lead-up to a local by-election in the Pujehun district in March 2009, a UN-facilitated joint communiqué was issued by the APC and SLPP calling for an end to all acts of political violence. A Commission of Inquiry was launched in 2009 to investigate incidences of rape and sexual violence that allegedly occurred during the March attacks, and an independent review was conducted in 2010 to investigate the causes of the political violence. However, by the end of 2011, the government had yet to release the results of the review, and had failed to implement numerous communiqué recommendations, including calls for the establishment of an independent police complaints commission.
By-elections confirmed a regional polarization whereby the ruling APC enjoys support in the north and west, while the opposition SLPP dominates the south and east. In December 2010, President Koroma reshuffled his cabinet in an attempt to diversify geographical representation and include more SLPP partisans.
Political violence continued in 2011. In May, clashes were reported during a parliamentary by-election in Kailahun district. The opposition SLPP held its national convention in July amidst intra-party dissension and elected retired brigadier general Julius Maada Bio, who deposed Strasser in 1996, as their 2012 presidential candidate. A political fracas occurred in the district of Kono in September when the convoy of the Minister of Internal Affairs was attacked, causing his security and police to discharge their weapons. That same month, SLPP presidential candidate Bio was attacked with stones in the city of Bo, and APC party buildings were torched in response.
The government was quick to launch investigations into the September incidents, which resulted in the identification for prosecution of more than 50 people from both political parties. The police also placed a moratorium on political rallies in September. The ban was lifted in December, however, following the signing of an agreement among the country's main political parties to promote cooperation with the police and increase security during political processions. The SLPP and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) did not sign the agreement, arguing that the government does not have the right to ban political party rallies. Koroma requested International Criminal Court prosecutors to monitor the Sierra Leonean electoral environment in the lead-up to the 2012 elections.
Renewed calls were made in 2011 for a formal inquest into the military junta's 1992 executions of the former police inspector-general and 27 others. The APC government first announced plans to launch an inquest in May 2010, but went silent on the matter following criticism from civil society and the international community that such a move would inflame political intolerance and target current opposition SLPP members who served with the junta. Family members of the victims, however, argue that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not thoroughly investigate the extra-judicial killings.
Political Rights and Civil Liberties
Sierra Leone is an electoral democracy. International observers determined that the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections were free and fair, and that power was transferred peacefully to the opposition. Of the unicameral Parliament's 124 members, 112 are chosen by popular vote and 12 are reserved for indirectly elected paramount chiefs. Parliamentary and presidential elections are held every five years, and presidents may seek a second term.
The APC and SLPP are the main political parties. Other parties include the PMDC, the NDA, and United Democratic Movement (UDM). Both the All Political Parties Women's Association and the All Political Parties Youth Association, which became operational in 2011, play key roles in promoting peaceful electoral campaigning, dialogue, and participation.
Much of the Administration's efforts in 2011 were focused on cementing the electoral framework in preparation for the 2012 elections. The government finalized key management capacity support agreements to ensure that the National Elections Commission (NEC) will be able to credibly undertake electoral administration and voter registration. In March, a critical consultative workshop was held regarding electoral law reform, and resulting recommendations called for the need to address the legal deficiencies that occurred during the 2007 elections, including the authority of the NEC to nullify votes, rules for the election of the president, and forfeiture of parliamentary seats. Measures were also taken to reform the Political Parties Registration Commission to ensure sanctions are in place for any breaches of the code of conduct by political parties. The country's first biometric voting registration system was also established. President Ernest Koroma has also pledged to promote a 30 percent quota for women to be represented in elective positions, and a draft gender equality bill to that effect was introduced in Parliament in September 2011; however, it had not passed by year's end.
While corruption remains a serious problem, Koroma has actively encouraged and supported the work of the Anti-Corruption Commission. Several key cases were concluded in 2011, including the acquittal of the director-general of the National Revenue Authority and the conviction of numerous public officials. In August, senior civil servants signed performance contracts, and the new Civil Service Code of Conduct was put into effect. In September, a public sector pay reform program was also launched. Sierra Leone was ranked 134 out of 183 countries surveyed in Transparency International's 2011 Corruption Perceptions Index.
Freedoms of speech and the press are constitutionally guaranteed, but these rights are occasionally restricted. In June 2010, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) was officially launched as the independent national broadcaster. The APC and SLPP relinquished control of their radio stations in 2010, allowing for incorporation into the SLBC, and in 2011, the High Court upheld decisions made by the Independent Media Commission (IMC) to deny a license to the APC-run Freetown City Council and to close down the SLPP radio station. In June 2011, a journalist with The Exclusive, a private daily newspaper, was murdered by protestors participating in a violent dispute over land outside of Freetown. The police arrested three suspects, including a police officer; the investigation was ongoing at year's end. The IMC is working with the SLBC to determine coverage policies and regulatory mechanisms for the 2012 elections. Numerous independent newspapers circulate freely, and there are dozens of public and private radio and television outlets. The government does not restrict internet access, though the medium is not widely used. A proposed Freedom of Information bill remained pending in Parliament at year's end.
Freedom of religion is protected by the constitution and respected in practice. Academic freedom is similarly upheld.
Freedoms of assembly and association are constitutionally guaranteed and generally observed in practice. However, police used force, including tear gas and live ammunition, to break up the September 2011 demonstrations in Bo. The government also implemented a ban on all political demonstrations and meetings from September to December in the wake of the protests. Workers have the right to join independent trade unions, but serious violations of core labor standards occur regularly. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civic groups operate freely, though a 2008 law requires NGOs to submit annual activity reports and renew their registration every two years.
The judiciary has demonstrated a degree of independence, and a number of trials have been free and fair. However, corruption, poor salaries, police unprofessionalism, prison overcrowding, and a lack of resources threaten to impede judicial effectiveness.
Drug trafficking and other crimes pose a threat to the rule of law and the stability of the wider Mano River region. The Sierra Leone Transnational Organized Crime Unit continued to register success in 2011 in carrying out substantial drug interceptions.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), a hybrid international and domestic war crimes tribunal, has been working since 2004 to convict those responsible for large-scale human rights abuses during the civil war. The trial that began in 2007 of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, accused of fostering the RUF insurgency, concluded in March 2011. However, judgment regarding the eleven counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other gross violations of international law had not been delivered by year's end. Efforts continued in 2011 to transfer the SCSL to a Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague as a follow-up mechanism to the SCSL.
The Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone continued its work in 2011 despite funding and logistical shortcomings. In June, the Commission held its first public hearing for 235 former soldiers who had been forcibly retired, ostensibly due to chronic illness and/or mental imbalances. The Commission found that the retirees had been subject to discrimination, inhumane treatment, and violation of their privacy. The government did not appeal the decision, and has been supportive of the Commission's independence.
Continued progress was made in 2011 in rendering Sierra Leone more attractive for business. Infrastructure investments were made in thermal and hydro-power plants, and major roads were upgraded. In July, Parliament passed the 2011 Finance Act, the revised Petroleum Exploration and Production Act, and the Intellectual Property Rights Law, while the National Electricity Act regulating electricity and water usage was adopted in November. This bundle of legislation has created increased incentives for investors, businesses, and entrepreneurs to engage in agricultural and industrial development, particularly in the manufacturing sector. It also safeguards against piracy, makes it easier to pay taxes, and to register businesses. Major investments were made in the iron ore and oil industry in 2011, and production will begin in 2012; GDP is consequently expected to increase by 51 percent in 2012.
Laws passed in 2007 prohibit domestic violence, grant women the right to inherit property, and outlaw forced marriage. Despite these laws and constitutionally guaranteed equality, gender discrimination remains widespread and female genital mutilation and child marriages are common. | <urn:uuid:3b74a84e-7bf1-4c2c-abdd-cddf91f5222a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=country&category=&publisher=&type=&coi=SLE&rid=&docid=503c72253&skip=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967276 | 2,636 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Diplomats like to use code phrases to describe what transpires in conversations behind closed doors. Examples:
“There was a candid exchange of views.” Meaning: We made no progress at all. Each side staked out its position and stacked sandbags around it.
“The talks were businesslike.” Meaning: We made a good beginning. Both sides put their demands on the table, agreed on an agenda to deal with them, and may have reached agreement on a few minor points.
“The meeting was cut short.” Meaning: We should have stayed at home. Our counterparts threw angry words (and perhaps a few shoes) at us, then stormed out of the room.
“An announcement is forthcoming.” Meaning: We’ve agreed on something rather significant. In fact, this might be one for the history books.
Thoughtful readers can discern in these communiqués whether a summit meeting made real progress or was just another stalemated “exchange of views.” So can the readers of your story dialogue.
Ask yourself these questions about each significant conversation in your narrative:
Do my characters simply state or restate their positions, or do they begin to change positions? Do they reveal their emotions or speak with cool detachment? Do they give the reader any clues about what will happen next? In fact, does their conversation advance the plot at all?
Of course, you won’t be able to answer any of these questions if you have no significant conversations in your story, but that raises a bigger question: Why aren’t there? | <urn:uuid:6eeada2b-a861-488d-95b1-1294986c158d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hoosierink.blogspot.com/2012/07/conversations-that-matter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966808 | 335 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Dishing Up Dignity
Today Christianity Today published my essay on two Denver-based restaurants: Café 180 and SAME (So All May Eat) Café. These restaurants, however, are not your typical lunch cafes. They both run on a pay-what-you-can model. That means customers are asked to donate either money or volunteer time for a meal. The effect of this model is, I believe, nothing short of revolutionary.
Several months ago I ate lunch with both Libby Burky, the Director of SAME Café, and Cathy Mathews, the Co-Founder of Café 180. Libby opened SAME Café in 2006 after working several years at a food shelf. She became frustrated by the poor quality of food at the food kitchen, and came to the conclusion that poor food, as well as simple hand- outs, rob people of their dignity. So she opened SAME Café off of historic Colfax Avenue on a new model. Serve organic food, cooked using clean energy, and make it available to all regardless of ability to pay. If they can’t pay, then customers are asked to volunteer one hour for a meal. Working for your meals restores to the unemployed or homeless the dignity of earning your keep.
Cathy Mathews, who I focused on for the article, has a similar story. With some help from Libby, she opened Café 180 in Englewood in 2010. Cathy’s story, however, flows out of the desire for community. She lives in Cherry Hills Village, and realized she knew very few of her poorer neighbors in Englewood. She desired a solution that would go beyond charity – a way to share not just money or food, but our lives with one another. And Café 180 has become just that – a community of rich and poor, secular and Christian, Republican and Democrat, all eating around a common table.
As I spent time with Libby and Cathy, what began to impress me was the way these restaurants can bring together people from drastically different walks of life. Both those who believe in the mission (the wealthy) and those who need a meal (the poor) volunteer in the kitchen. In doing so, they share their lives. Also, because the food is amazing, those who can pay full price arrive come faithfully for lunch. And those who haven’t had a great meal in a while, they too can each Mediterranean pizza or French Dip sandwiches.
The past two decades have led to the drastic gentrification – wealthy people moving into historically poor neighborhoods – of cities across the US. This can often cause class and racial tensions because when property values rise through redevelopment, the poor often must leave their neighborhoods for the cheaper suburbs. But pay-what-you-can restaurants have the potential to bring together these two wary neighbors around a good meal and a mission based on justice and hope.
Cathy Mathews shared with me that the desire to open Café 18o came from an extended time of prayer and silence. She felt “prompted” to see if she could assume the lease. Although Cathy is extremely humble about her faith, Cafe 180 is a great example how an individual put her faith into action at work.
So, I have a host of questions for discussion:
(1) What do you think about pay-what-you-can restaurants? Do you think this business model could work in other sectors?
(2) How can businesses make social good the primary bottom line? Do products and services you offer lend themselves toward building community and bringing people from different walks of life together?
(3) Could a pay-what-you-can restaurant work in your neighborhood? Why or why not? | <urn:uuid:f5a6d3ec-9d7c-4f37-b878-991c92bdaa00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jeffhaanen.com/2013/01/16/dishing-up-dignity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972032 | 757 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Sure, there are medals and podiums, course records and personal records, age group awards and overall awards... Most importantly, thereand#8217;s the satisfaction of personal achievement. Thatand#8217;s an extraordinary feeling that few things in life can provide us in quite the same way that athletics can.
But what else are we getting out of sports? Itand#8217;s no secret that, with endurance sports in particular, the spectacular moments are certainly speckled among some really tough moments.
As much as we may love getting out there, we all have those days where we question our sanity to want to work so hard and push ourselves to such extreme limits, without a guarantee of success, and with so many chances for things to go wrong in our performance.
But at the same time, that is part of what makes sport special. It is rare to find something in life that you can feel so passionate about, and willing to invest so much of yourself in, without the conventional reward of a guaranteed return. In sport, there is no end-of-the-week paycheck (at least for the majority of us).
But I am confident that what I have gotten from my participation in athletics throughout my life is invaluable.
Without a doubt, by participating in sports from the time I was very young, I have provided myself with a healthy lifestyle that allows me to be both physically and mentally fit.
But, more than that, I firmly believe that my participation in sports has helped shape my identity as a person. It is as much a part of who I am as any other element in my life.
Being an athlete has taught me so many lessons that are applicable to every other aspect of my life. I have learned the value of truly hard work, and how to understand what that really means.
I have learned the difference between intrinsic motivation and#8212; a desire rooted deep in oneand#8217;s heart and#8212; and motivation that is artificial. I have learned how to hold myself accountable, and that Iand#8217;m the only one who really knows whether Iand#8217;m pushing to my fullest potential and#8212; and the only one who suffers if Iand#8217;m not.
Because of athletics, Iand#8217;ve experienced the indescribable satisfaction of achieving a goal, and the bitter disappointment of coming up short and#8212; and have learned how to handle both. Iand#8217;ve learned how to win, and how to lose.
I have gained a sense of confidence and self-awareness that Iand#8217;m sure I could not have found elsewhere. Iand#8217;ve discovered an inner strength I might otherwise never have known, that has helped me to overcome adversities both in and outside of sport. Iand#8217;ve learned the value and importance of and#8220;sportsmanship,and#8221; crucial in so many situations beyond sport. Iand#8217;ve formed lasting bonds and friendships.
Thanks to sport, Iand#8217;ve found a sense of true passion and inspiration and#8212; something I think many people go their whole lives without. Mostly importantly, because of my involvement in endurance sports, Iand#8217;ve given myself the life-long gift of a love for the outdoors and a desire to be active. That is something I am sure will never change.
And Iand#8217;m confident, too, that others will find these same far-reaching rewards, lessons and values in sport. So, if you havenand#8217;t yet, give athletics a try. You just may get far more from the effort than youand#8217;d ever expect.
and#8212; Kara LaPoint is an elite amateur triathlete competing for LUNA bar, and working up to the pro ranks. She has earned numerous overall amateur podium finishes and age-group wins across distances from Olympic to Ironman, and finished the 2011 season ranked as an All-American nationally among her age group (25-29). Read more about her racing and training at www.karalapoint.wordpress.com. She may be reached at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:be0d64ec-29c8-446b-92f6-009b8327fe7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tahoedailytribune.com/article/20120907/SPORTS/120909937?layout=320 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959053 | 899 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The nonfiction novel is a curious beast at best—it’s too frilly in nature for the stylistically antiseptic practitioners of modern-day journalism (your Jane Mayers and Bob Woodwards) and more concerned with the quotidian lives of ordinary people than many current novelists would prefer (Roberto Bolano to Stephenie Meyer). By using multiple and overlapping points of view and creatively smoothing out some corners that were likely more jagged in the resolutely “true” telling, the nonfiction novel can easily fall prey to charges of distorting history for the sake of art, similarly to how a Hollywood prestige blockbuster “based on actual events” is often critiqued.
Of course, as Tim O’Brien notably observed in his work, the truth is not always the truth. In O’Brien’s rightfully legendary linked collection of Vietnam War short stories, The Things They Carried, there are stories that could have popped straight out of the teller’s mind, with no relation to reality, that can bring you closer to some kind of authenticity than any number of you-are-there dispatches of straight fact. O’Brien writes “a true war story is never about war” and inserts a comment after one such narrative, describing it as “a true story that never happened.”
Due perhaps to that immediate frisson between the real and the unreal captured by the nonfiction novel’s hybridized approach, there is something about the genre that lends itself to the momentous event or catastrophe. Look at some of the most famous elements of the genre. Capote’s fractured and borderline amoralistic In Cold Blood used the approach in order to find a way to wrap the reader’s head around a horrendous crime that just made no real sense in the end. Although for its audience, still devouring the thing in droves decades later, Capote’s take on the brutal and pointless 1959 killing of a family was a revelatory thing, for the writer the hall of mirrors that his story opened up was a devastating and devouring thing; it ended his literary career.
John Hersey’s Hiroshima—which predates by two decades Capote’s 1966 work that supposedly launched the genre—also used the nonfiction novelistic method of multiple points of view and a coolly evocative literary framework in order to bring across to readers the momentous devastation of that cataclysmic day. Other writers who dipped into the genre in later years, but it almost always seemed to be for the big event; there were few nonfiction novels to be found about the ordinary lives of ordinary people in ordinary times.
There was Norman Mailer, in his mammoth, densely-reported take on the October 1967 anti-war demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Armies of the Night (1968), whose subtitle, History as a Novel, the Novel as History, makes his approach on the subject obvious for all.
In Dispatches (1977), Michael Herr also used the genre for his kaleidoscopic stitching together of the welter of frenzied night-terror missives that he had sent back from the frazzled borderlands of the Vietnam War. Herr opens his book in furious poetry—“Going out at night the medics gave you pills, Dexedrine breath like dead snakes kept too long in a jar”—and never lets up.
Herr can let his novelistic tendencies get the better of him sometimes, there’s a suspicious whiff there of stories too perfectly encapsulated to have actually occurred. And yet the deathly thrumming of his narrative is ultimately so overpowering, so transportive, that it can utterly strand the unwary reader in a lonely firebase in the dead of night, the stink of corpses in their nostrils and fear on the wind. It was a feat that even the best of the Vietnam novelists (Larry Heinemann, say) weren’t able to match.
With the likes of Mailer, Herr, and Capote, it was as though the limitations of traditional journalism—or at least what they might see as its limitations—could not encompass the enormity of the events that they were trying to describe for the folks back home, wherever home might be. And they likely understood, as most of us do, that fictions set against the backdrops of the real have a hard time living up to the actual thing. Everyone knows the twisting torture that novelists put actual events through in order to make them align more cogently with the demands of structured fiction. This character needs a love interest, that killing needs to happen at a juncture that heightens its sad tragedy, and so on. | <urn:uuid:1443e15f-464c-40da-8527-c8df6fabad16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/109399-chronicling-catastrophe-dave-eggers-and-the-american-nonfiction-nove/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961927 | 981 | 2.0625 | 2 |
|East Valley Tribune, 09/20/2003|
South Mountain Freeway Revived
|Oft-discussed route getting new look from planners
By GARIN GROFF TRIBUNE -- CONTACT WRITER: (480) 898-6554 or firstname.lastname@example.org
The idea of a South Mountain Freeway has been around since the 1980s, but it has been nothing more than a dotted line on the map because of a funding shortage. Now that a new effort to fund freeways is in the works, planners are taking a fresh look at this segment of the Loop 202 freeway.
Transportation planners had developed an approximate route in the 1980s. But the studies for that alignment are now dated and need to be redone so the state can apply for federal funding. That could change the segment’s alignment significantly. The Arizona Department of Transportation is studying routes now, which require environmental assessments and public meetings that include an Oct. 1 session with Ahwatukee Foothills residents. The freeway would run from the Pecos Road exit of Interstate 10. It could continue on Pecos Road or shift south of housing developments and into the Gila River Indian Community.
The original alignment had the freeway rejoining I-10 in the West Valley near 55th Avenue. Now, ADOT is studying that path and routes that connect near 71st Avenue or the Loop 101 interchange with I-10. The Valley needs this freeway to handle a booming population, said John Godec, a consultant working with ADOT on the plan. The Valley will grow from 3.3 million people to 5.5 million people by 2025.
"We will have 22 percent more cars and trucks on the streets than we have roads to put them on," Godec said. But if the South Mountain Freeway were built, the road shortage would fall to 15 percent, he said. The freeway would carry 155,000 cars a day, similar to traffic on I-10 from Warner to Elliot roads. The freeway would span at least 21 miles and cost $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion.
Ahwatukee Foothills residents have mixed feelings on the freeway, said John McComish, president of the Ahwatukee Foothills Chamber of Commerce. The freeway would improve access, said McComish, who also is president of the Ahwatukee Foothills Village Planning Committee. But residents don’t want the 1980s-era alignment on Pecos Road because it would be too close to their homes, he said. "Most people hope it gets built, and that it gets built on the Gila River Indian Community," McComish said.
The freeway’s construction depends upon voters extending the 20-year, half-cent transportation sales tax, which could be on the May 18 ballot. | <urn:uuid:c64355d4-4b3b-465b-8fe9-e88007e34917> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azdot.gov/Highways/Valley_Freeways/Loop_202/South_Mountain/articles/20030920.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964787 | 592 | 1.757813 | 2 |
NEW DELHI: It's the most common drink in the country after water. So what added benefits can a 'national drink' status bring to tea, especially since it is unlikely to be accompanied with special incentives or tax breaks? Plenty, say tea industry insiders and experts, claiming there is much more at stake than just prestige.
Last week, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said the government was considering making tea India's national drink. The announcement, he said, was likely to be made next year. The debate it has triggered - with dairy giant Amul making a pitch in favour of milk - isn't a storm in a teacup, so to say.
The status is likely to bring lasting paybacks to the tea industry, feel insiders. "In terms of consumption, tea is already India's national drink," says S K Jain, managing director of LMJ International, tea makers and exporters. "But getting a formal tag will help us build tea into a bigger brand."
As India's national drink, Jain said tea would get more prominence in the government's promotional activities and functions, strengthening the beverage's association with India in global markets and helping in exports.
"The tag will definitely boost domestic demand for tea," says Indian Tea Board chairman M G V K Bhanu. "It would also fetch long term benefits, as the government is likely to give priority to addressing its problems."
Saying that tea is a natural choice for the tag, Bhanu adds that such recognition will help the board promote Indian tea as a health drink, focusing on "scientific data that says that black tea is just as beneficial as green tea".
Montek's statement comes at a feel-good time for the tea industry. "The industry has overcome a period of slump. Demand is up and so are wages for workers this year," says Alok Chakraborty, secretary of trade union INTUC's West Bengal unit and member of the tea board.
Exports are also looking up, says S K Jain.
However, the industry still has to contend with problems of tapering growth. With land no longer available for expanding production, India's tea output has stagnated over the past few years.
Bhanu says the board has adopted a two-pronged plan. The first strategy is to encourage small growers to plant tea - a scheme that has shown good results in Assam. The second is to replant old gardens for which the government provides a subsidy.
The tag of being India's national brew will bring sharper focus to meeting these challenges, he says. | <urn:uuid:2df807ca-ff15-4878-9fb4-05684db60276> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-04-30/india/31506187_1_tea-industry-black-tea-tea-output | 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 | 0.973994 | 536 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Researcher Elizabeth Von Muggenthaler believes cats might have developed a purring mechanism as a way for kittens to communicate with their mothers even while they are nursing. One cat in the United Kingdom is making noise as the world’s loudest purer.
How loud is your cat?
The voice of one cat in Great Britain is topping the charts. With a purr that has hit 67.7 decibels, Smokey is nearly as loud as a lawn mower.
News outlets reported earlier this month the gray and white tabby has snared a place in the Guinness World Records—the ultimate cat’s meow for a feline that’s about 16 times louder than average.
Smokey, who roared into the record books with a little coaxing from a piece of ham, is rarely quiet, says pet parent Ruth Adams.
Ms. Adams admitted the hair dryer-loud rumble from her cat’s chest can be “annoying.”
“It’s not just the volume of her purr which is unusual,” Ms. Adams said. “She makes quite a unique sound, as if she has a dove stuck in her throat. My daughter thinks it is adorable.”
No matter whether it sounds like a bumblebee or a jet plane taking off, a cat’s purr can communicate a range of feelings. Most pet parents assume their cat is purring because she’s happy, but cats also purr when they’re sick or afraid.
Purring likely has a purpose, since so many kinds of cats, including cheetahs, pumas, servals, and ocelots, do it, according to an article by researcher Elizabeth Von Muggenthaler.
Ms. Muggenthaler believes purring’s purpose is therapeutic. She recounts one case in which a cat who was struggling to breathe made a dramatic recovery after starting to purr. Moments earlier, the cat’s health was considered so poor, euthanasia was considered.
Ms. Muggenthaler argues that the vibrations from purring just might contribute to bone healing and growth, pain relief, and improvement from respiratory distress. The vibrations might be why cats seem to have 9 lives and heal relatively quickly from injury.
Smokey’s purr could bring him some fame, but if Ms. Muggenthaler is right, it’s already brought her—and no doubt, her pet parents—many benefits.
To hear Smokey’s purr, visit her website at Smokey the Purring Cat. | <urn:uuid:8244068f-7fe4-46d3-b426-21c95f15454b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aspcapetinsurance.com/pet-insurance-blog/2011/06/default.aspx?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951664 | 551 | 2.203125 | 2 |
July 25, 2009 It may be possible to improve impaired attention after stroke — which could aid recovery — according to research reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Impaired attention is the most prominent stroke-related neuropsychological change and is reported in at least 46 percent and as many as 92 percent of stroke survivors, said Suzanne L. Barker-Collo, Ph.D., a senior lecturer and neuropsychologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Impaired attention can reduce cognitive productivity and the ability to focus on tasks. It’s key to re-learning motor skills.
In the first full-scale single-blinded, randomized clinical trial using Attention Process Training (APT), 78 stroke survivors were randomized to receive APT or standard rehabilitation care. APT is designed to improve the ability to maintain attention, as well as to shift attention (such as when having a conversation with more than one person) and to attend to more than one thing at a time. It’s been used successfully in people after traumatic brain injuries but hasn’t been tested in stroke patients.
Researchers tested participants in four aspects of attention — sustained, selective, divided and alternating — as well as visual and auditory aspects of attention. Patients receiving APT had up to 30 hours of individual training, in one-hour sessions for four weeks. They received on average 14 hours of training.
Researchers said people who underwent APT had a significantly greater improvement on a test of attention than those who received standard care. At six months, those who had APT had an average improvement of 2.49 standard deviations higher than standard care patients on “full-scale attention scores.”
The improvement in attention didn’t correlate with significant improvements in outcomes, but researchers said six months may not be enough time to gauge the impact of improved attention.
Differences on other measures of attention and broader outcomes were not significant.
Early identification and rehabilitation of attention should be part of stroke rehabilitation because APT is a viable and effective way to improve attention deficits after stroke, said the researchers, who recommend more research on the issue.
The New Zealand Health Research Council funded the study.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:cd0bd0f1-ca5e-42b6-af92-6792022aa51f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090723175430.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956874 | 473 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Ina was born in San Francisco, Calif., on June 10, 1914.
His father was an immigrant who worked for the local Japanese
newspaper and his mother came to America as a picture bride.
At age 5 Itaru accompanied his mother and sickly sister
to Japan and received schooling there. He returned to America
to rejoin his father when he was 16 years old. Itaru began
studying and writing haiku during his teen years. In 1939
he met Shizuko Mitsui, also an American citizen, who was
working at the Japanese pavilion on Treasure Island in San
Francisco during the 193940 World Trade Exposition.
They were married in March 1941. Pearl Harbor was bombed
in December 1941, and by March 1942 they both were incarcerated
at the Tanforan Assembly Center near San Francisco. Shizuko
was pregnant at the time and suffered a great deal while
confined to life in a horse stable. Itaru was desolate witnessing
his wifes suffering. and by the time they were transferred
to Topaz, Utah (September 1942September 1943), he
vowed to make a better life for his family by disavowing
his loyalty to America and requesting repatriation to Japan.
Now an enemy alien, he and his wife and newborn
son were transferred to Tule Lake Camp, a segregated prison
for those who were identified as disloyal. On June 30, 1945,
shortly after the birth of their second child, Itaru was
arrested at Tule Lake. Three days later he was sent to a
Department of Justice internment camp at Fort Lincoln in
Bismarck, North Dakota, where he was held until March 1946.
Eventually it was determined that renunciation of citizenship
under the duress of imprisonment was unconstitutional, and
Itaru and his family were reunited at the Crystal City,
Texas, family internment camp. They were finally released
on July 9, 1946.
the war the Ina family lived with relatives in Cincinnati,
Ohio, where their third child was born. They returned home
to San Francisco in 1950. During Itarus camp life,
he was an active member of camp haiku clubs and had several
poems published in camp haiku journals. He served as the
leader of the San Francisco Yukari Haiku Kai until his death
on October 31, 1977.
Tessaku (Iron Gate) was a publication of the
haiku group that met weekly at Tule Lake. There were a total
of 158 weekly meetings.
6: New Years Special (1945)
jimuhajime yosooi kuroku taipisuto
workday of the year
is dressed in black.
ni itoma ari
geese fly away
the tower guards
are on a break.
#1 (July 1September 30, 1945)
1, 1945. Sunday. Sunny, hot. Packing. Farewell. Imprisonment.
hanare-yuku ware tomo shirazu hiyake no ko
but the sun-tanned child
suzushi tesso suke-te sanga ari
through the windows iron bars
mountains and rivers.
hi ya yô o tsuku-tte
I make up an errand and
call the guard.
2, Monday. Sunny, hot.
itotonbo haya umareshi-ka goku no mado
at the prison window.
3, Tuesday. Leaving Tule Lake at 5:00 a.m. Train leaves
Klamath Falls at 8:30 a.m. A trip to Bismarck; 9:30 a.m.
Chiloquin; 10:40 a.m. Chemult; 2:15 p.m. Eugene; 3:35 Albany;
4:30 Salem; 6:20 Portland; 8:30 state of Washington.
no tsuki hanare-nu basu
ni natsu no tabi
following a bus
4, Wednesday. Fair. The second day in the train.
ya jyukai ni shizumu karasu
A crow sinks
into the sea of trees.
no me yurumu shasô
ni tsuki suzushi
softens at the train window
5, Thursday. Fair. The third day in the train. Tombstones
on the hill. A statue on the green hill. Summer thunderclouds
on the horizon. Fields of mustard green flowers. Nothing
but mountains and clouds. A circus village.
entenka umi ni wa tôki kuni
the blazing sun,
I have come to a country
far from the sea.
9, Monday. Fair. Solar eclipse.
no kuraki hikari mochi
willow seed-heads drift
in the gloomy light.
12, Thursday. Fair. A robins song. Acacia blossoms.
naki dakota no natsu no
the Dakota summer
is past its prime.
16, Monday. Fair. Hot. Morning glow at the airport. Mooing
cattle. Pressure of the sun.
umare doku-jin ôki
te o nobe-nu
dragonfly is born
The German extends
his large hands.
20, Friday. Thick fog in the morning, fair and sunny in
the afternoon. Blood test. Alien registration started. Firefly.
An outdoor lamp and a frog.
mishi takaburi same-zu
saw a firefly!
26, Thursday. Lousy weather. Received rationed clothes.
Went to a record concert by Germans. Excitement of listening
no ryûjo ga hikari
the dusk of the evening
pull the light along.
6, Monday. Sunny and cloudy, cool.
ka ogore-ru kuni ni noroi are
the scorching sun
on and on I curse
the arrogant country.
8, Wednesday. Fair. Strong wind. Watched a movie Love
of Edgar Alan Poe. Saw two snakes.
no naki kuni ni sumai-te
live in a country
where the roses are red.
11, Saturday. Fair, fog in the morning. Watched a movie: The Major & The Minor. Swing Shot with the
no semi naruran hitotsu
be yesterdays cicadas
one has started
12, Sunday. Fair. Hot. The news of a peace talk. Ate cold
ni mizûri-gawa wa
leaves alongside it,
the Missouri River is deep,
on its own.
13, Monday. Rain on and off. A snake was about to swallow
a frog, which we saved.
shisho no koe o hisome-te
of the joy of autumn.
14, Tuesday. Fair. Heard the siren of cease-fire.
aware karikusa no hi ni
out of the fire
onto the mowed grass
15, Wednesday. Fair. Saw a movie A-Haunting We Will
kakitsubata shiroshi yamai wa ie-gataku
their white disease
is hard to cure.
17, Friday. Fair. Hot and stuffy. Carpentry. My turn for
entenka tobaku ni shire-te nachisu-jin
the scorching sun,
the Nazis lose themselves
21, Tuesday. Cold in the morning. Fair. Carpentry (tank).
Movie, Lloyds of London.
ni nureshi batta ni asa
no hikari miteru
a grasshopper is suffused
with morning light.
23, Thursday. Fair. Cold in the morning. Did carpentry.
Record concert: Beethovens Symphony #9.
tsutsu kaeru mabataku hebi no kuchi
a frog blinks
in a snakes mouth.
25, Saturday. Fair, cold in the morning. Windy. Movie: Castle
in the Desert.
hitotsu ugoku nomi nari
29, Wednesday. Fair, hot. Alien Return Home Registration
began. Movie No Time For Love. Received a letter
suzushi akashi nokoreru
the glow of the searchlight
31, Friday. Fair, hot.
ni hi o amu toki ikusa
I was sunbathing
in the broiling weather,
the war ended.
1, Saturday. Fair, hot. Movie: The Iron Major.
yo no tôka ni nuku-mu
of the long night,
the ink bottle warms.
4, Tuesday. Fair, hot. About a hundred and eighty repatriated
ni te o fure aki no wakare
we touch hands
7, Friday. Rain, a little cold. Registration for those who
want to cancel returning to their country.
8, Saturday. Fair, warm. From today on, the administrative
office will be closed on Saturday. Movie: Rainbow
on the River.
9, Sunday. Windy and cold. Cloudy. Went to see the same
movie as yesterday. Built the trunk.(to be continued in
Modern Haiku 34.3)
note: We would like to thank the Ina family for allowing
us to publish these haiku and Leza Lowitz for making us
aware of their existence. Deep gratitude also to Satsuki
Ina for providing the biographical information about her
father. This selection is excerpted from From a Silk
Cocoon, a selection of letters, diary entries, and haiku
by Itaru Ina. Individuals interested in being notified of
the publication of this book can be added to a list by contacting
Satsuki Ina at <email@example.com>. | <urn:uuid:b99c4032-2920-4c56-bd6e-3a7b43bac44d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/itaruinahaiku.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908065 | 2,099 | 2.59375 | 3 |
At the 2009 CES, Advanced Micro Devices is set to launch its "Yukon" platform for ultraportable, lower-cost laptops. The AMD Yukon platform includes a new processor called the Athlon Neo MV-40 chip along with AMD graphics and chip set. To help boost AMD, Hewlett-Packard is launching a new notebook -- the HP Pavilion dv2 -- which will use the AMD Yukon platform. The AMD Yukon platform is slated to compete against laptops that use Intel ultra-low-volt processors.
is preparing to launch its much anticipated "Yukon"
platform for lower-cost, ultraportable laptops at the 2009 CES, and the chip
maker has lined up Hewlett-Packard
as the first PC vendor to offer a consumer laptop based on the new platform.
The AMD Yukon platform, which the company
plans to officially announce Jan. 6, consists of a new processor-the AMD
Athlon Neo MV-40 running at 1.6GHz-along with an AMD
chip set and a discrete ATI Radeon HD3410
graphics card. The Yukon platform
also offers integrated graphics for even lower-priced notebooks.
To support the AMD launch, HP is offering
a 12.1-inch laptop-the HP Pavilion dv2 notebook-that includes the new Yukon
platform, up to 4GB of DDR2 (double data
rate 2) main memory and a hard disk drive that ranges from 160GB of data
storage to 500GB. The HP Pavilion dv2, which weighs about 3.8 pounds, also
supports Microsoft Windows Vista as well as 802.11a/b/g and draft-n wireless
The starting price for the HP Pavilion dv2 is $699.
At the end of 2008, AMD
announced that it would expand its laptop offerings
by carving out a space
between fully configured, mainstream notebooks and the types of "netbooks" that
have been entering the marking since Intel
announced its Atom processor and platform less than a year ago.
While AMD is targeting those laptops with
screen sizes between 12 and 14 inches, the company is hoping to offer a
platform that makes those notebooks lighter, thinner and less expensive. In
addition to weighing less than 4 pounds, the HP dv2 notebook is less than 1 inch
In this case, AMD is not competing
against the Intel Atom, but Intel's line of more expensive low-volt and
ultra-low-volt processors that are used in high-end PCs such as the
Lenovo ThinkPad X300 and X301.
"The space that we see is between the sort of mininotebooks that use the
Intel Atom processor and the high-end, ultraportable notebooks like the [Apple]
MacBook Air or the Lenovo X300 in the commercial space." said David McAfee, a
marketing manager for AMD. "There is a gap
of products that have come into the market, and we believe we have the right
technology and the right feature set to deliver a platform into the space and
allow OEMs to build systems for this market."
Although Intel helped create a new market for low-cost, very portable laptops,
the market is now seeing a number of other players rushing in. In addition to
Intel and AMD, Qualcomm,
Texas Instruments and Freescale Semiconductor have all announced netbook and
mininotebook platforms that use ARM processors
. At the same time, Nvidia
has developed a chip set that combines its own graphics
and the Intel Atom
John Spooner, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said AMD's
Yukon platform is attempting to
expand the notebook market by allowing OEMs to build low-cost, lightweight PCs
that function similarly to the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 line.
"What AMD is trying to do is popularize
the lightweight consumer portable," said Spooner. "There are not too many
machines out there in the consumer space that offer this type of performance
and are lightweight. ... I think [AMD] will be
reasonably successful with it." | <urn:uuid:d3632ba8-3534-46da-8e8f-b4e825ed3e58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/AMD-HP-Combine-to-Launch-Yukon-Platform-for-Ultraportable-Laptops/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926279 | 865 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This is a revised review of a Canadian release from April 26, 2005
Peter Watkins is a firebrand filmmaker from the 1960s. He made history with British television documentaries that challenged what the staid BBC would broadcast. Culloden was an account of a famous historical battle from the point of view of the common soldiers, imagining what they would have said if a modern news camera were trained on them - a tactic used by an award-winning American history program on CBS called You Are There that put docu cameras
at famous events like The Alamo.
His next show was The War Game, a chillingly authentic looking pseudo-doc about the effect of a nuclear attack on England (Kent?) that showed the futility of civil defense measures and the idiocy of rhetoric about manageable atomic conflict. It had wrenching, taboo-defying images: Buckets of wedding rings from radiation victims, English policeman arming themselves and executing looters. The BBC refused to show the film because it was "too disturbing."
Watkins went on to the influential but now little-seen mainstream film Privilege, about a rock star whose popularity turns him into a religious figure. Then came a curious military fantasy called The Gladiators in which the United Nations solves national disputes by fielding 'war games' where select elite soldiers from each side fight to the death in a restricted combat zone, with TV cameras turning the 'competition' into a television show.
But Punishment Park is, to say the least, a radical leap forward. Reacting directly to the repressive swing in America in response to the brutal police attacks on protesters in Chicago, the murders of Black Panther leaders and the shooting of Kent State students by the National Guard, Watkins wanted a project that would express the political mess in confrontational terms.
The War Game remained banned in England for a long time and was eventually shown on American public television. But after being yanked from theaters after only a few days, Punishment Park has been screened only infrequently at film festivals and film studies classes. I caught one showing of The Gladiators at UCLA in 1970, when its makers presumably self-distributed it; I never recall Punishment Park being shown anywhere. Now it is on DVD.
1970. With growing activist resistance to the Vietnam War, President Nixon activates provisions in the 1950 McCarran act and sets up detention centers for undesirables deemed a threat to national security. In California's Mojave Desert, groups of dissidents are summarily convicted and given the choice of long prison terms or a 3-day ordeal in Punishment Park. While the tribunal starts to process a second group of belligerent, sullen detainees, the first group is sent on their 53-mile marathon across a desert where daytime temperatures soar over 100 degrees. They have three days to reach a flag and avoid capture by law officers and National Guardsmen in training. Even before they begin, most of the detainees - draft evaders, political activists, protesters and a couple who attended a poetry reading - believe that the police will simply murder them under one pretext or another.
Punishment Park is an angry scream of a movie that makes the 'reasonable' stance of most modern activist films seem like soft soap. An old Cold War law basically legitimizes the formation of political concentration camps, and Watkins' bitter film simply imagines what a political death camp, California-style, might be like.
Staffed by right-wing appointees, the Punishment Park tribunal holds court as a legal cover for what is essentially a murder camp. We see the young policemen and National Guardsmen being over-prepared for the use of deadly force against people they are told are the scum of the earth and the enemies of their country.
Already paranoid, the harrassed prisoners are given a two-hour head start for their goal, but are not told what the police will do to apprehend them beyond a vague statement that forceful resistance will be met with force. Since what they see is a platoon of armed men with their fingers on the triggers of their guns, most of the detainees assume that the game rules are a lie, that none of them will be allowed to finish the course and that the whole exercise is a cruel variation on The Most Dangerous Game - target practice to 'blood' inexperienced cops the way one might acclimate a hunting dog.
Watkins retains his preferred pseudo-docu format by having the camera represent the filmed record of a foreign television crew. Watkins is English and therefore fits the bill perfectly; we hear his voice from time to time making comments, and eventually screaming out threats at the uniformed policemen, who neither care what he films or what he says. The handheld camera was more of a novelty in 1971 and surely added to the "reality" of the events in the desert chase.
Things go wrong almost immediately. Several of the more cynical and rebellious dissenters refuse to play the game, hang back and murder the first pursuing officer, taking his pistol and rifle. Outraged, the police immediately decide that all of their prey have violated the game rules and that deadly force will be used. We never find out if this is an atypical 'run' or if other groups of detainees are treated more fairly. But since the cops lie to their prey - telling them that there will be water at the halfway point when there is none - we tend to think that in every case, a pretext is found to kill them all.
There are some brutal scenes, but the strongest violence is back in the trial tent where the next group is being
'arraigned' without benefit of trial by jury. Watkins apparently first thought of doing a movie about the trial of the Chicago Seven, and the same kind of confrontational rhetoric is used here. The judges accuse and condemn each defendant of basically being what they are, unhappy malcontents. Those defendants that are genuine dissenters openly defy the tribunal with obscenities and counterthreats, and are beaten and gagged. Women defendants are judged as anti-American for being foul mouthed. A bitter female tribunal panelist is all too eager to see them all sent to "the Park. The way it is mentioned, Punishment Park begins to seem like a Guantanamo Disneyland, a Gulag Magic Mountain.
The judgments all seem pre-ordained. On their refreshment break, the judges voice their pride in saving the country from these destructive elements. They insist that their own children are "under control," and have nothing in common with the radicals.
Is Punishment Park credible? That's a tough call. Nixon could have invoked the power of the McCarren act, but would probably have been checked by congress and the Supreme Court, and perhaps even by the military. One is limited by one's own opinions, but I still don't think the country was anywhere near a leftist revolution, or to a right-wing power grab, as postulated in Seven Days in May. Watkins pushes his metaphor just far enough to raise hackles and expose raw nerves. His film is not a fair look at anything - it's meant to agitate.
Watkins claims that his cast of non-professionals included some people (not all) playing that fully supported the rhetoric of their characters, judges, detainees and police as well. Much of the "script" was unwritten and improvised. One police commander seems all too authentic when he proudly demonstrates the lethal utility of pistols and shotguns and voices his eagerness to deal out justice to the enemies of his country.
Punishment Park is an exaggeration and a purposely confected worst-case scenario, but the most frightening thing about it is that nothing we see looks forced or unbelievable, especially now. Those advocating its suppression would probably liken its effect to the act of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and call it an irresponsible film likely to incite trouble. Watkins would doubtlessly argue that yelling "Fire!" is the only responsible thing to do when the theater is in flames and nobody listens to reason.
New Yorker's DVD of Punishment Park is the official U.S. release for this rarified curiosity. I have yet to hear direct claims that the film was ever banned or suppressed in the United States - plenty of pictures have disappeared after just a few days of empty theaters, without outside help. The government has barred many foreign pictures as propaganda but supposedly has no right to ban a domestic film - unless the Patriot Act now trumps the First Amendment. In the case of Punishment Park, the producers ran up against a stone wall in 1971 when trying to book the show into established theater chains. The assumption is that corporate chains wouldn't touch the subject matter with a ten-foot pole, but there's no actual proof of a no-show conspiracy.
The image quality is excellent, bright and colorful. Cinematographer Joan Churchill's handholding the entire show in the desert filming conditions must have been a grueling test of endurance. The sound is also clear, making the removable English subs a necessity only for the hearing impaired.
The extras on the disc range from a scholarly commentary to text essays and the original, unorthodox 1971 Press Kit. Filmmaker Watkins is present on camera for a half-hour 'introduction' that is the star extra attraction. He uses prepared papers, as if he were a radical filmmaker reading a blunt statement written for his own arraignment at Punishment Park. He's convinced that civil liberties are far more threatened now than they were in 1970, and he impresses as a very serious, idealistic man.
After thirty-five years of Vietnam rhetoric, I no longer believe that people listen to conflicting political opinions long enough to have their "consciousness raised," as we once believed was possible. Punishment Park is an artistic attempt to throw down a gauntlet, but it must be stressed that even now, 34 years later, not very many people have seen it. I suppose that conservatives would fear and loathe the film as pro-revolutionary propaganda, although only a couple of the detainees express sentiments of that kind. Most are just insolent, or silent pacifists looking for a way to personally get clear of the %$#% war. I can also see anybody with a connection to the police or the military being bitterly offended by this portrayal of law enforcement officers. Today, Punishment Park still plays like an open flame in a fireworks factory.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Punishment Park rates:
Movie: Very Good but a rough ride, politically
Supplements: 28 minute introduction by Peter Watkins; Feature length
commentary by Dr Joseph A. Gomez; The Forgotten Faces (1961) - 18 minute
amateur film by Peter Watkins; Text essay by media critic Scott MacDonald on
audience responses to Punishment Park; Original 1971 Press Kit;
Peter Watkins filmography; Cast & Crew Information
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: November 21, 2005
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2005 Glenn Erickson
Go BACK to the Savant Main Page. | <urn:uuid:8e5588c5-f06d-4e17-a6cc-0af3ce29b0bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/18893/punishment-park/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966239 | 2,266 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Scientists tell us that over millions of years, humans have developed specialized skills that have allowed us to survive and thrive as a species. From learning to create and use tools, to language, and social skills, we’ve adapted and innovated however was necessary to be successful in the given environment of each age.
Whether you accept evolution as fact or not, one thing is clear: In today’s world, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, there is certainly an “evolutionary” process that we must all undertake. In other words, there are skills that we must each learn and hone in order to thrive in today’s business world, and we need to be able to adapt those skills to our surroundings, or be left behind with the “entrepreneurial Neanderthals.” Below are 5 essential skills for today’s entrepreneur:
Decision Making – No one can deny that the ability to make decisions is a core skill that every entrepreneur must possess if he or she wants to be successful. From the very beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, you must make sound decisions, first of all, about which business to go into. From there, decisions on how to proceed with marketing, funding, product production (in some cases), vendor selection, and a host of other judgments need to be made. The key is to be decisive and learn from mistakes, rather than fearing mistakes to the point that you avoid decisions.
People Skills – It’s often said that no matter what business you’re in, you’re in the people business. How true that is! Even if you have a dog grooming business, it’s the people who bring their dogs to you who pay you and make the decision to use your service over your competition’s, so you’d better know how to deal well with people. This is a skill that nearly every highly successful entrepreneur has, and those who don’t have recognized the need to hire a “face of the company,” often in the form of a CEO or COO, to represent them in the business world. Whether dealing with customers, vendors, investors, the press, or employees, well developed people skills can mean the difference between success and failure.
Planning – Being able to project into the future and build a plan to accomplish your objectives is a skill that can take any entrepreneur far. Effective planning is what will guide your company and ultimately define what you’re all about. The skilled business planner knows that planning is only an effective skill when combined with action, so they don’t get bogged down in planning, and they keep their plans focused but somewhat flexible. With so many facets to effective planning, it could be called as much an art as it is a skill.
Sales – Just as it is said that every business is a people business, it is also true that whatever business you’re in, you’re in sales. You might not be a salesperson in the “What’s it gonna take for me to get you into this car today” sense, but if you are exchanging products or services for money, you’re selling. And the more skilled you are at sales, the more successful your business will be. It’s not just customers you need to sell to though. Selling your business plan to investors, your job opportunity to potential employees, or your marketing to your target audience is all dependent upon your ability to sell your ideas.
Communication – If ever the term “last but not least” was appropriate, this is it. The skill of communication plays a role in the execution of all of the other skills above. If you don’t have this skill, none of the other skills will be fully developed, no matter how hard you try. You can’t be a great salesperson without great communication skills; your planning skills won’t matter if you aren’t able to effectively communicate your plans; you can hardly claim to have strong people skills without being a good communicator; and it won’t matter what decisions you make if they aren’t communicated properly to those who are in a position to execute them. So of all the skills listed here, start working on your communication skills first, if they aren’t 100%. It will pay off in immeasurable ways.
Of course there are other important skills to have as an entrepreneur. What would you add to the list? Be sure to share with the community in the comments below! | <urn:uuid:004e580d-a0a2-4322-b0c2-b2934aac9390> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/5-essential-skills-for-entrepreneurial-survival-2011-5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961351 | 944 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Family & Children's Services Division
Who are we?
The mission of the Family and Children’s Services Division is to encourage and provide
for the safety, well being, and permanence of children by supporting and enhancing
Safety of children is our first concern, but the Family and Children’s Division
recognizes that the family is the fundamental resource for nurturing children, and
we seek to work in partnership with family members to ensure that all children are
nurtured and well cared for. Often a family crisis can be an opportunity for change
and DSS is committed to working with families to solve problems that may cause stress
within a family and put children at risk.
What do we do?
The Family and Children’s Division provides services to safe guard children when
someone reports that a child has been neglected or abused. Our foremost goal is
to keep families together whenever possible. When this is not possible, staff work
to find a permanent home for children who come into the custody of the Department
of Social Services. Click on one of the areas below to learn more about our services:
What causes child abuse?
Why would someone abuse or neglect a child? What kind of person abuses a child?
Not all abuse is deliberate or intended. Several factors in a person's life may
combine to contribute toward abusing a child:
- general stress
- the stress of having children in the family, when one didn't have children before
- dealing with a child who has a disability or difficult behaviors
- the stress of caring for someone besides oneself
- a personal history of being abused (childhood trauma)
- alcohol or drug use
- marital conflict
one has been able to predict which of these factors will cause someone to abuse
or neglect a child. A significant factor is that abuse tends to be intergenerational
- those who were abused as children are more likely to repeat the act when they
become parents or caretakers. Children who are neglected or abused are much more
likely to become involved with the juvenile justice system later.
Our children are everyone’s responsibility. It really does take an entire community
to ensure that families have access to good jobs, good schools, and a support system
to ensure that they can deal with the stress of raising a child. | <urn:uuid:048bfdb5-c2da-4006-9717-9620950747e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://co.forsyth.nc.us/DSS/children.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962528 | 480 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Nearing the end of his first term, President McKinley didn't attend the convention in Philadelphia. In a speech at his home in Ohio, the nominee trumpeted his party's passage earlier in the year of the Gold Standard Act, which required the government to back its currency with gold reserves; lauded the opening of the world's markets -- including China -- to American goods; and celebrated the nation's newfound status as a "bond-issuing" rather than a "bond-paying" nation.
He went on to defeat the Democrats' William Jennings Bryan in November, winning 53% of the popular vote. (Printable version of the speech)
Nearly two years after the end of World War I, Mr. Harding focused in his address on the turmoil that had recently ripped through the world and of America's changing relationship with Europe. He criticized the newly formed League of Nations, championed by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson but which the U.S. never joined, deeming it an encroachment upon American independence.
In November, with 64% of the popular vote against Democrat James M. Cox, Mr. Harding won the election. (Printable version of the speech)
With war under way in Europe, Mr. Willkie centered his address on the perils facing democracy. A Democrat until 1939, when he switched to the Republican party, Mr. Willkie piled criticisms on President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, describing it as "an attack on business." He also spoke about Germany's recent invasion of France, arguing that nation had fallen despite the wealth with which it ended World War I because of "unfruitful political adventures and flimsy economy theories."
President Roosevelt was handily elected to a third term, with 449 out of 531 electoral votes. (Printable version of the speech)
The threat posed by communism was a major theme of Mr. Nixon's acceptance speech, in which he argued a hands-off attitude by government was the best way to ensure "that the American economy ... can maintain our present massive lead over the Communist bloc." He spoke of the promise of freedom as the ultimate downfall of communism and called upon his listeners to work together to build a free new world.
John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election, with a margin of about 118,000 votes. (Printable version of the speech)
Facing high inflation and unemployment, Mr. Reagan spoke in his acceptance speech about the "indigestible economic stew" prepared by the administration of President Carter. Criticizing the nation's high tax rate, he mocked the Carter administration's argument for conservation of energy "so that we will run out of oil, gasoline, and natural gas a little more slowly," calling instead for investment in exploration and for more business-friendly policies.
Elected in November over incumbent Jimmy Carter, Mr. Reagan went on to serve two terms. (Printable version of the speech)
Promising to "extend the promise of prosperity to every forgotten corner of this country," Mr. Bush vowed that every man and woman would have a chance to succeed and every child, a chance to learn. He criticized the nation's lack of standards for public schools and called for major tax reform, notably by abolition of the inheritance tax, reduction of tax rates and doubling of the child tax credit. He also argued for creation of individual retirement accounts.
Mr. Bush won the election with a slim majority of electoral votes, despite Al Gore's victory in the popular vote. (Printable version of the speech)
John McCain seized the Republican nomination by pledging to rise above Washington's acrimony as president and strike a new tone by reaching across partisan divides. The pledge, made on the closing night of his party's convention, was designed to help him reclaim the image of an agent of change in a year when voters are clamoring for one -- and at a time when his image as a maverick has been questioned. (Printable version of the speech)
Mr. Bryan accepted the 1900 Democratic nod in a brief statement issued from his home in Lincoln, Neb. Fighting industrial monopolies and battling imperialism ranked high on Mr. Bryan's agenda. Saying he had "nothing to explain," he allowed that he planned to spend his time "in assaults upon Republican policies." Mr. Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate -- delivering his famous "Cross of Gold" speech advocating the silver standard at the 1896 convention -- but never won.
He lost the 1900 election to William McKinley by about 860,000 votes. (Printable version of the speech)
Mr. Cox, Ohio's governor, laid out many of his opinions in a column printed in the New York Times that summer before and after the convention. He mentioned many of the issues affecting the U.S. in the postwar period, opening with a discussion of the League of Nations. He was in favor of the League, calling it a "step in the right direction," and maintained that joining it would have helped to stabilize a weak dollar. Mr. Cox also discussed the importance of establishing a working budget and cutting taxes.
He lost the election to Warren G. Harding by a landslide. (Printable version of the speech)
President Roosevelt accepted the Democratic nomination as a matter of what he called "conscience." After two terms in office, he said he had hoped to retire but increasingly felt he couldn't abandon public service while asking Americans to serve in the war effort. In his address, he touched on the necessity of the draft, adding that "only the people themselves can draft a president." He also discussed the safeguarding of democratic institutions and the distribution of wealth.
Mr. Roosevelt beat opponent Wendell Willkie by almost five million popular votes. (Printable version of the speech)
When Mr. Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination, his theme was what he called the "New Frontier" facing Americans. Beyond it, he said, were "uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus." He called on his countrymen to rise to the challenge of competing with the Soviet Union and urged them to be brave in facing new challenges.
He defeated Richard Nixon in November, by a margin of about 118,000 votes. (Printable version of the speech)
President Carter, accepting the nomination for his reelection bid, spoke of the strengths of the Democratic party, referring by name to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. In a time of tense relations with the Soviet Union, he emphasized his vision of peace by contrasting it with the possibility of a nuclear arms race. He also spoke about the differences between the Democratic and Republican energy policies, stressing both environmental and economic divergences.
He lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan, garnering just 49 electoral votes, compared with Mr. Reagan's 489. (Printable version of the speech)
After two terms as vice president, Mr. Gore accepted the Democratic nomination with a speech touting the economic achievements of Bill Clinton's administration -- budget surpluses, home-ownership and jobs. The former senator from Tennessee then turned his focus to working families and issues he perceived to be important to them -- health care, Social Security and education. He referenced his own family, and promised to work toward restoring family values.
In November, he won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college and the election to George W. Bush. (Printable version of the speech)
In a football stadium packed with 75,000 supporters, Barack Obama made a hard pitch for his fitness as commander in chief and as a responsible steward of the economy, arguing that Republican rival John McCain would simply extend what Democrats consider the failed policies of President George W. Bush's administration. (Printable version of the speech) | <urn:uuid:2567c64d-ba6b-4b9f-8242-4cc82d70c971> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-speechCloud07-DD.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969911 | 1,597 | 2.71875 | 3 |
With the large portions frequently dished out in U.S. restaurants, diners are often given the option of taking home the leftovers in “doggie bags.” Lots of times that extra food is simply left on the plate and thrown away. In fact, about 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is wasted. That’s a shameful statistic.
A new concept, called “Halfsies,” limits the amount of food you’re served, and uses the extra money to help fight hunger—and reduce waste.
With Halfsies, instead of bagging up the leftovers or tossing them out, the remaining value in the dish is put to better use. What the participating restaurants don’t put on the table, they donate as cash to groups working for causes including hunger and homelessness.
The founders of Halfsies are four friends from Austin, Texas. They are working to launch the program in Austin this spring. The organization is currently signing up restaurants all over the city, and is hoping to bring the program to Brooklyn, N.Y., later this year.
Halfsies donations are split into three categories: Local, Global, and the Halfsies Fund. Sixty percent of donations go to institutions helping with local issues, such as food insecurity, food rescue and waste diversion, and homelessness. The global portion makes up 30% of total donations, which helps orphans and vulnerable children eat well. The last 10% of donated funds goes into the Halfsies fund, which covers the administrative and operating costs of Halfsies.
Halfsies provides healthier meal portions for patrons, reduces waste, and supports global nutrition. By offering this option, Halfsies gives restaurant-goers the choice to make a change in their own diets, as well as create change in the community and the world.
For more information, you can visit the Halfsies website. Halfsies is currently looking for volunteers, donations, and sponsorships.
Here's a video from the folks at Halfsies, promoting their cause.
For more insights and innovations check out CultureWaves®, the place to go for the latest observations in the World Thought Bank – events, ideas, trends and more. Add your own thoughts about anything in life – entertainment, design, technology, well-being and, yes, food trends. And, take a look at a few of our other Hot & Cool Food Trends. | <urn:uuid:a459c041-8240-4eb2-a7ed-f7ae1cdef9a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/giving-back-going-halfsies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939233 | 505 | 2.1875 | 2 |