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Maintaining drinking water quality and quantity is a resource management challenge worldwide. In the United States, there are federal, state and local laws to further drinking water quality protection, but few regulations that address water quantity. The first part of this article summarizes existing water protection laws, especially the division of water quality protection and local land use regulation between federal and state government. The second part assesses current water quality and quantity trends. The third part concludes the article with a discussion of drinking water case studies in the United States, to give a snapshot of current use and protection trends, highlighting planning tools, best management practices and intervention solutions. Given the current status of water protection laws and policies in the U.S., this discussion of best management practices is targeted towards municipalities, with the aim of linking it to sustainable development policies.
To read online, click here. Or to download PDF, click link below.
Full Text: PDF | <urn:uuid:47565f4b-b321-4f7e-92b1-f75d5bc4fbe6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.consiliencejournal.org/index.php/consilience/article/view/236 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900005 | 186 | 3.40625 | 3 |
HPPR hosts & contributors
Thu December 13, 2012
Gravity Never Sleeps, And Other Lessons Nations Learn From Space Programs
Originally published on Thu December 13, 2012 3:51 pm
Sputnik 1 just beeped. China's first satellite, launched more than a decade later, simply radioed a communist anthem back to Earth. So far, North Korea's first satellite appears to be less accomplished.
And that shouldn't be a surprise.
Given the history of first orbital space shots, North Korea's apparent struggle with its mission is fairly typical, says David Akin, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland.
"You generally don't have high aspirations for either the longevity or the scientific return of a first satellite," he says.
There are conflicting reports about whether the satellite, launched Wednesday, is safely circling Earth. U.S. officials have been quoted as saying Kwangmyongsong-3 is "tumbling out of control," while South Korea's Defense Ministry says it's too soon to tell if the craft is functioning properly.
Glenn Lightsey, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas, says if the satellite is in fact tumbling as it orbits, then it's not going to be very useful for anything other than propaganda points.
"They may not be able to point the radio antenna in a direction where they can communicate with the satellite," he says.
Akin says that like a lot of small satellites, North Korea's probably doesn't have an attitude control system — either in the form of rocket thrusters or other devices that use either electromagnets or gyroscopes.
Not being able to control the satellite in orbit is just one of many things that can go wrong, says Akin.
Just getting into orbit is a precise maneuver. "The problem with launching a satellite is that you have to get to the right altitude, going at the right speed and in the right direction," he says. "If you miss any one of those, you're not going to be in the orbit you want to be in."
And if North Korean mission control can't stop the satellite from tumbling, its low-Earth orbit could decay in weeks or months, says Lightsey.
"It depends on a lot of things — how high the orbit is and the [atmospheric] drag on the satellite, which will depend on its size and mass and the shape of its orbit," he says.
By all accounts, the satellite is small, says Akin, and "a lightweight satellite, kind of like a shuttlecock, is going to fall back into the atmosphere a lot sooner than a bowling ball."
Not every nation's first satellite suffers the apparent fate of the North Korean mission. One example: the U.S. Explorer 1, launched in 1958 just months after Sputnik 1.
Explorer reached a fairly high orbit and had a radiation detector aboard. It made an important discovery — the Van Allen radiation belt that surrounds the Earth and had previously been unknown.
"That was sort of the jackpot, but it was kind of happy circumstance," Akin says.
Sooner or later, the North Korean satellite may suffer a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Small objects that plunge from space generally are destroyed long before reaching the surface. But when it's a big one, such as NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) that came down last year, some debris survives.
Statistically, about two-thirds of the time, this plunge occurs over water. That's what happened to UARS, which crashed harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.
But hitting land can mean problems. In 1978, Soviet spy satellite Kosmos 954 came down over northern Canada, spreading radioactive debris from its nuclear reactor over a large swath of wilderness tundra. | <urn:uuid:0fe3a56e-f3c7-4ddb-ab9e-86c8dd7c82a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hppr.org/post/gravity-never-sleeps-and-other-lessons-nations-learn-space-programs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956425 | 787 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The Mysteries of Myths of Heat: A
Brief History of Hot and Cold
Published in Issue #37, May/June
by Eugene F. Mallove
It is astonishing to realize that many modern conceptions
(or "laws") in the science of heat- thermodynamics- arose during
the nineteenth century, a period of utter confusion about the
fundamental nature of heat. How could it have been otherwise,
given that the very existence of atoms was still in question!
of heat is as old as the history of contemplating whether atoms,
"smallest units of matter," exist. Much of what we know-or think
we know-about heat came about in the nineteenth century, but thinking
about what heat really is goes much further back. Primitive peoples
clearly knew that rubbing sticks together could make heat and then
fire, but connecting the idea of atoms to this "heat" was beyond
even the imaginative ancient Greeks.
A brief perusal of Isaac Asimov's Biographical
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology1 unearthed
this ancient background of atomic and pre-atomic theory: Greek
philosopher Anaximander (610-546 BC) imagined "a formless mass that
was both the source and destination of all material things." His
name for this unobservable substance was apeiron, translation:
infinite. Indeed, the precursor of later 19th century theories of
the aether, and their present emergent forms after their
twentieth century Einsteinian demise, traces that far back. It will
most likely be determined in the affirmative-after many more bloody
battles-that an energetic aether gives rise to matter and is also
the repository of its localized extinction. This aether, forming
a universe perhaps infinite in time, is nearly certain to vanquish
the unsupported myth of Big Bang cosmology.
Another Greek philosopher, Leucippus (born 490 BC), is generally
regarded as the primary authorof "atomism." Greek philosopher Democritus
(440-371 BC), a student of Leucippus, put forth the idea of a void
in which atoms moved and interacted. Finally, influenced by this
early Greek thinking, atomism was codified and elaborated by Roman
writer Lucretius (Titus Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Carus
Carus- 95-55 BC) in his work "DeRerum
Natura"("On the Nature of Things"). Atomism continued to play a
role in scientific thinking into the Second Millennium, but since
no one had seen atoms or knew their nature, it was possible even
for some leading scientists, e.g. Ernst Mach (1838-1916), to doubt
their existence into the second decade of the twentieth century.
With kinetic theory of gases theorist Ludwig Boltzmann listening
in January 1897 at the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, Mach
had loudly announced, "I don't believe atoms exist!"2
It is fascinating that the first known
heat engine (a machine that converts heat to work) was also of ancient
Greek vintage-the primitive aeolipile of Hero (sometime in
the first century AD, about year 75, some think), which used the
jet action of steam to produce the rotation of a sphere. In a remarkable
example of how an invention can arise and then disappear if it is
not manufactured and then used widely, it was not until the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries that heat engines came into being as utilitarian
devices, initially to drive crude water pumps. A fascinating story
of their development is told by John F. Sandfort in Heat Engines.3
In the process of developing the early heat engines, few people
seem to have given much thought to what was this "heat" produced
from burning wood or coal. The so-called "father of chemistry,"
French scientist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), is perhaps
most identified with the invisible fluid concept of heat, which
acquired from him the famous name "caloric." It was supposed
that driving this caloric out of material by rubbing, or by combustion,
produced the manifestations of heat-caloric was heat. That led to
the obvious question: how much caloric could be contained within
a given mass of material?
Lavoisier in his Elementary Treatise
on Chemistry (published posthumously in 1798) listed the then
known "elements"-even though the very reality of atoms was still at
issue. In that list of elements Lavoisier included, believe it or
not, light and heat! Now as Asimov remarks, "He had eradicated
one imponderable fluid, phlogiston, but it was only partly through
his influence that caloric, just as false, remained in existence in
the minds of chemists for a half a century." We might add that Lavoisier's
dogma of the non-transmutability of "elements"-as he then knew them-has
also endured. This two-hundred year-old dogma combined (in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries) with modern theories of
atomic structure to deny experimental proof of low-energy nuclear
reactions. Strong myths and dogmas, once begun, have rather long lives.
The caloric theory of heat was surprisingly
enduring. It survived far into the nineteenth century, despite many
experiments which showed that caloric, if it existed, had no weight.
And there were theorists who founded the kinetic theory of gases,
James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906),
whose theories provided very strong support for atomism. Even the
convincing experimental work of Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814), an
expatriate from England's American colonies (what are now Massachusetts
and New Hampshire) who became Count Rumford in Bavaria, could not
kill the idea of caloric. In his work in the late 1790s boring
brass cannon barrels for his German patron, Rumford determined that
the metallic shavings from this horse-driven boring appeared to
have the same heat capacity after the drilling action as before.
He suggested that the supply of heat in matter was without limit-an
exceedingly revolutionary concept that contradicted the caloric
theory. He wrote: "The more I meditated on these phaenomena [sic],
the more they appeared to me to bid fair to give a farther insight
into the hidden nature of Heat; and to enable us to form some reasonable
conjectures respecting the existence or non-existence of an igneous
fluid: a subject on which the opinions of philosophers have, in
all ages, been much divided. . . It is hardly necessary to add that
anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue
to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance:
and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible,
to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited or
communicated, in the manner the Heat was excited and communicated
in these Experiments, except in MOTION." (quoted by J.F. Sandfort3).
Today a scientifically literate person understands that the excited,
chaotic motion of atoms and molecules creates in our bodies or in
measuring instruments a sensation of hot or cold. But this concept
of heat is relatively modern-an outgrowth of the work of Rumford
and other knowledge developed in the nineteenth century, in particular
the work of James Prescott Joule (1818-1889). According to Isaac
Asimov, earlier scientists had conceived of heat as a form of motion,
among them Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Robert Boyle (1627-1691),
and Robert Hooke (1635-1703), but caloric endured, until Maxwell,
it is said, finally killed it off.
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, French Engineer
It is astonishing to realize that many
modern conceptions (or "laws") in the science of heat- thermodynamics-
arose during the nineteenth century, a period of utter confusion
about the fundamental nature of heat. How could it have been otherwise,
given that the very existence of atoms was still in question! One
sees the shakiness of the claim that the laws of thermodynamics
had reached a state of "near perfection" in the twentieth century
(see Von Baeyer4), when they in fact rested on this very
Much before the nineteenth century
there was only a very weak conception of a relationship between
heat and energy. So it is not surprising that the important paradigm
of the conservation of energy, which later became known as the First
Law of Thermodynamics, was long in coming. The name firmly associated
with introducing the conservation of energy are German physicist
Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878), who predated both James Joule's
and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz's (1821-1894) statements
of the conservation of energy. Mayer in 1842 had published a paper
on the general equivalence of all forms of energy and he gave the
first estimate of the mechanical equivalent of heat. Because Mayer
was not of the scientific establishment, his then heretical concept
of the conservation of energy was not accepted. It was James Joule
who performed the definitive exhaustive series of experiments that
showed the convertability of mechanical action to a heat equivalent.
Though Joule began lecturing about and publishing his work in 1843,
it was not until a critical meeting at Oxford University on June
27, 1847 at which he lectured that his ideas began to receive acclaim.
There, man of the establishment William Thomson (1824-1907), already
well-published by his then age twenty-three, became impressed with
Joule's solid work on the mechanical equivalent of heat. (William
Thomson was knighted as Lord Kelvin in 1866, by which name he is
more commonly known.)
But for three years after that meeting
there continued a deep confusion in Thomson's mind, based on the
earlier work of French engineer Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796-1832),
with which he was also impressed. Carnot in 1824 (the year Thomson
was born) had published a remarkable paper, which mathematically
defined the upper limit in efficiency of steam engines of the time-and,
by extension, the maximum efficiency of all heat engines. Carnot
stated that the most general heat engine required a high temperature
input reservoir (at Thigh) and it had to exhaust its
wasted heat to a lower temperature reservoir (at Tlow).
His formulation that the maximum efficiency of a heat engine was
(Thigh-Tlow)/Thigh later became
enshrined as dogma in both physics and in practical engineering.
A heat engine that could convert heat to work at 100% efficiency
from a single temperature reservoir would be deemed impossible under
this Carnot restriction. This is the basis for contemporary mockery
of attempts to make what are called "perpetual motion machines of
the second kind," of which Xu Yelin's device (see p. 31) is one
So what was William Thomson's problem?
Thompson in 1847 was still a firm believer in the caloric theory!
After all, Carnot had been too, and Thomson firmly believed Carnot-Thompson
in fact had rediscovered Carnot's obscure paper and had promoted Carnot's
ideas. But Carnot had developed his efficiency limitation on heat
engine performance from the perspective of the caloric theory. So
here James Joule was presenting in 1847 material that was equally
convincing to Kelvin, but energy conservation flew in the face of
the caloric theory. Just as Thomson's ideas on resolving the paradox
were jelling three years later, German mathematical physicist Rudolf
Clausius (1822-1888) published the solution to the paradox in May
1850, "On the Moving force of Heat and the Laws of Heat Which May
be Deduced Therefrom."
German mathematical physicist
In one fell swoop Clausius "scooped"
Kelvin and cast into precise form both the First and Second
Laws of Thermodynamics-energy conservation, and the limitation of
Carnot efficiency. The actual form of Clausius' statement of the
Second Law is: "It is impossible for a self-acting machine, unaided
by an external agency, to convey heat from one body to another at
a higher temperature." In 1851, Thomson would claim independent
discovery of the Second Law. His statement of it would be: "It is
impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical
effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature
of the coldest of the surrounding objects." Both the Clausius and
Kelvin statements are said to be equivalent. Clausius' collected
thermodynamic theory was published in 1865; it included introducing
the seminal concept of entropy, a measure of disorder that, it is
said, stays constant or inevitably increases, but never decreases
in a closed system.
From that time forward, physics moved
in lock-step with the presumed inviolability of the Second Law.
It is true enough that the Second Law, in general, mandates that
heat cannot spontaneously flow from a cold body to a hot body (but
be aware, there may be exceptions even to this connected with "advanced
Maxwell's Demons"). Generations of students had this Second Law
and Carnot's maximum efficiency formula "proved" to them by a mathematical
demonstration that is nothing short of circular reasoning: If Carnot's
principle concerning the maximum efficiency of a reversible heat
engine were violated in such and such system (elaborately diagrammed
in colorful and expensive thermodynamics texts), that would violate
the Second Law. Ergo, Carnot's efficiency limit is supposedly proved
by reductio ad absurdum. The proof is used the other way around
too-to prove the Second Law from Carnot! Isaac Asimov, for one,
is embarrassingly clear in admitting the circular logic that is
implicit: "It is possible from Carnot's equation to deduce what
is now called the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Carnot was first
to be vouchsafed a glimpse of that great generalization."1
Sad to say for the physics establishment
and the technology establishment, that turned out not to be the
case. For the sake of Humankind, it is very good news indeed that
this almost two hundred year old dogma will now come crashing down.
As Maurizio Vignati in his exhaustive book5 and Xu Yelin in his
experiments show (and in the work of others still to come no doubt),
the Second Law is simply this: A limitation based on the belief
that no macroscopic violation of that limitation had ever been seen
or would ever be seen.
As we will see in the paper Dr. Paulo
and Alexandra Correa published in this issue, another much more
serious challenge to the Second Law of Thermodynamics has arisen.
It appeared in January 1941, as I have outlined in my editorial,
when Wilhelm Reich attempted, in vain, to get Einstein to "look
through his telescope" to see a persisting temperature anomaly that
was in direct violation of the Second Law.6 Einstein,
in effect, refused to "look through that telescope" and we have
been suffering delayed awareness of an energetic aether and sound
thermodynamics ever since. But now a pathway to a much greater understanding
of fundamental physics has opened. We have barely begun to reformulate
the theory of heat that will extend far beyond the useful but highly
limiting concepts we inherited from the nineteenth century.
Through new physical descriptions of
the energetic aether and other emerging understandings of the flaws
of classical thermodynamics, all the textbooks will need to be rewritten.
If anyone thinks this will be easy, given the behavior of the scientific
establishment since the discovery of low-energy nuclear reactions,
think again. As with cold fusion, to get the ossified scientific
establishment even to listen will require irrefutable devices embodying
these principles. It is now certain that these will come.
1. Asimov, I. 1982. Asimov's Biographical
Encyclopedia of Science and Technology (Second revised Edition),
Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York.
2. Lindley, D. 2001. Boltzmann's Atom: The Great Debate That
Launched a Revolution in Physics, The Free Press, New York.
3. Sandfort, J.F. 1962. Heat Engines: Thermodynamics in Theory
and Practice, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New
4. Von Bayer, H.C. 1998. Maxwell's Demon: Why Warmth Disperses
and Time Passes, Random House, New York.
5. Vignati, M. 1993. Crisis of a Dogma: Kelvin and Clausius Postulates
at the Settling of Accounts, Astrolabium Associazione Culturale.
6. 1953. The Einstein Affair. Orgone Institute Press, Rangeley,
Maine, the correspondence between Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich,
in original German and in English translation. | <urn:uuid:f08665fd-9f36-4c57-a794-a9bd796e560c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue37/mysteries.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938948 | 3,707 | 3.109375 | 3 |
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. When I read the first announcement via MSN news, I dug a little further and it really burns my butt that big name companies can play with our lives all for the love of profit and sales. What about the agencies that are suppose to regulate them and be our eyes and ears out there? I mean really … who the hell are we suppose to trust? Years ago I learned Coke could remove rust from chrome and make an old copper penny look like new. I’m not a Coke or Pepsi lover and really glad I stayed away from it all these years. Here’s what different sources are saying.
Coke and Pepsi are making some changes to their formula to avoid having their cans slapped with a cancer warning label. The companies directed their suppliers to reduce the level of the chemical 4-methylimidazole, which is a component of the caramel coloring and can be found in trace amounts in the soda. The change comes following a California law that demands drinks with a certain level of carcinogens display a warning, and while scientists say there are no immediate health concerns associated with the product, the two companies are changing the way they make their coloring to comply. Fortunately, the drinks will still be packed with all the sugar and empty calories you can handle.
4-methylimidazole has been one of the listed ingredients of Coke and Pepsi for as long as most people can remember but, if the Center for Science in the Public Interest, or CSPI, has its way, caramel color will no longer be used to make colas.
Citing studies that link several types of cancer to a chemical in caramel coloring, the head of the CSPI says jeopardizing people's health simply to give colas their familiar brown hue is just not acceptable. "There are 310 million Americans and we're saying that about 15-thousand of us will develop cancer as a result of the caramel coloring," said Michael Jacobson, CSPI's executive director.
In response, the American Beverage Association issued a statement questioning the science of the studies cited by the CSPI. The statement reads, in part, "This is nothing more than CSPI scare tactics, and their claims are outrageous. CSPI fraudulently claims to be operating in the interest of the public's health when it is clear its only motivation is to scare the American people."
You be the judge and please decide/choose wisely what's best for you and your family. | <urn:uuid:a9188c68-4aba-48d1-88e1-50bd089c89a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cynthiahelwig.blogspot.com/2012/03/are-coke-pepsi-danger-to-us.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961973 | 521 | 2.03125 | 2 |
We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of the peculiarities that drive the politics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Here, a look at Delaware, the First State. FiveThirtyEight spoke with Dr. Joseph A. Pika, a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware.
Senator John James Ingalls, who represented Kansas from 1873 to 1891, is said to have described Delaware as a “state that has three counties when the tide is out and two when it is in.”
Mr. Ingalls’s point, that Delaware is very small, is as true today as it was then. At just under 1,950 square-miles, Delaware is the second smallest state by land area. It is about 1/40th the size of Mr. Ingalls’s home state of Kansas, the 15th biggest state.
Despite its small stature, Delaware has undergone the same political realignments as larger states in the Northeast, and those changes are easier to see in a state which has just three, fairly distinct, counties (no matter what the tide is doing).
In the latter half of the 20th century, Delaware was a swing state, even a national bellwether in presidential elections. It voted for every winning candidate from 1952 through 1996. In the 1988 election, Delaware favored George Bush, a Republican, by 12 percentage points, more than his seven-point margin nationally. Now, however, Delaware is a solidly blue state. President Obama is a virtual lock to carry its three electoral votes.
In the 1990s — as the Republican brand became more defined by cultural issues like abortion and, more recently, same-sex marriage — Republican support began to erode in Delaware, where the middle of the road tends to be preferred. According to Gallup’s State of the States survey, 41 percent of respondents in Delaware described themselves as moderate, the highest rate in the nation. Many of these voters began to leave the Republican Party as it moved to the right. It is the same trend that made reliably Republican New Jersey a reliably Democratic state.
The exodus of moderate Northeastern Republicans from the party was one prong of a two-pronged realignment that essentially flipped Delaware’s partisan landscape, Mr. Pika said.
At the northern end of the state is Wilmington’s New Castle County, the most urbanized area in Delaware. About half of the companies in the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware, where the legal framework is seen as corporate friendly. The Wilmington area is home to thousands of bankers, lawyers and other white-collar, business-focused voters who tend to hold moderate views on social issues. When they stopped voting Republican, New Castle County went from politically competitive to overwhelmingly Democratic territory.
At the same time, Delaware’s southernmost county, Sussex, moved in the opposite direction. Sussex County is mostly rural, mostly white and culturally conservative. And Sussex County voters who were traditionally Democrats became reliably Republican.
Democrats in southern Delaware “were like those in South Carolina or Mississippi, ” Mr. Pika said, “They moved into the Republican Party in large numbers as the party became more connected with the Christian Right and social issues.”
The transformation has been complete. Sussex County is now Tea Party territory. It was ground zero for the 2010 Tea Party rebellion in Delaware, when conservative voters fueled Christine O’Donnell’s upset victory over the establishment-backed candidate, Representative Michael N. Castle, in the Republican primary for the Senate.
Almost all of Sussex County is rural. It is the top poultry producing county in the country. Along its coast, however, more than two decades of investment has cultivated a string of resorts, Mr. Pika said, and now liberal pockets can be found there. Rehoboth Beach, for example, has a substantial gay community.
Sandwiched between dark blue New Castle County and ruby red Sussex County is Kent County, the most politically competitive region of the state. Kent County is home to Dover Air Force Base, and many military families have settled in the area. Former President George W. Bush carried Kent County in 2000 and 2004. But New Castle’s suburbs have slowly been expanding south into Kent, Mr. Pika said, moving it closer to the ideological center. Mr. Obama won Kent by eight percentage points in 2008, although much of the Democratic improvement in Kent — and Delaware generally — can be attributed to the presence on the ticket of its native son, Vice President Joe Biden.
The Bellwether: There Is None
Delaware does not really have a county that tends to match the statewide two party vote shares. New Castle is more Democratic than the state as a whole. Kent County is moderately more Republican. Sussex is a lot more Republican.
The Bottom Line
Delaware might not have a bellwether county, but political buffs wanting to know what’s happening in the First State need only focus on New Castle County. With almost two-thirds of the vote, New Castle’s political preferences tend to overwhelm the wishes of Delaware’s other two counties. Republican presidential candidates carried both Kent and Sussex Counties in 1992, 2000 and 2004. Yet, they still didn’t come close to carrying the state.
That’s unlikely to change. The Democratic margin of victory in New Castle County has increased in every election since 1984, and Gallup ranked Delaware as the sixth most Democratic state by party affiliation. One in five Delawareans is black, the eighth-highest share in the nation.
On top of Delaware’s default Democratic lean is the home state increase produced by Mr. Biden, who is still popular there, Mr. Pika said. It all virtually guarantees that Delaware will be one of the first states in Mr. Obama’s victory column this November. And not surprisingly, he is a 100 percent favorite in Delaware according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. | <urn:uuid:4767cf0a-40c2-497d-86c7-b8e9a5c99d25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/delaware-a-small-example-of-a-larger-trend/?emc=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964575 | 1,239 | 3 | 3 |
Article Archive >> Community
Dinner Diva: Try New Fruits S -Z
Try New Fruits S -Z
Let's finish off the fruit, shall we? We've already seen how much is out there that we probably didn't even know existed, or if we did, we certainly had no idea what was bound inside those strange, little fruity bodies. I left you last week with new fruits, I thru R. That leaves us with S thru Z. Let's get to it, shall we?
S is for star fruit, a yellow, oval shaped fruit with five prominent ribs, giving it its obvious name, after the fruit is cut open. The star fruit's flavor is reminiscent of a tart apple and grape, mixed together. Nutrition-wise, star fruit excels in vitamin C and shines in the fiber department, too.
T is for tangelo, a hybrid of grapefruits and tangerines. Juicy and mildly sweet, varieties of tangelos include Minneloa, Orlando and Honeybell. High in fiber and vitamin C, tangelos can be a tasty add-on to your line up of citrus grazing.
U is for ugli fruit. Yes there is such a thing as ugli fruit. Google it and you'll see why! This great big baggy looking thing is a heavyweight, and yes, that means juicy. A citrus fruit that also will give you high points in vitamin C and fiber.
And V is for Valencia oranges, great for juicing and delicious for eating. Not as popular as the thicker rinded navel orange, it is this writer's opinion (and being a California native has certainly influenced it), that Valencia's are more flavorful than navels.
W is for watermelon. Surprised? Well, not just your garden variety watermelon, but those cute little seedless guys, about the size of a cantaloupe. These extra juicy, extra flavorful watermelons pack about 25% of your daily value of vitamin C and only 80 calories in a 2 cup serving.
X...eek. X. Well, X is for xray, xylophone and xtra special. That's all I have for X.
Y is for Yuzu, also known as Japanese citrus. This bright yellow, orange-y looking citrus fruit contains a lot of pips (seeds) and is quite tart, with a tangerine, grapefruit-esque flavor. Yuzu can be used in place of lemon wedges or juice to add tart flavor to iced tea, seafood and salad dressings.
Z is for Zinfandel grapes, a deep, blue-black grape bursting with flavor and that same blessed resveratol, the antioxidant known for its cancer fighting properties. One is most likely to partake of zinfandel in a glass, but as they say, life is too short for cheap wine!
A Votre Sante! Enjoy your fruit, y'all!
For more dinner solutions, visit savingdinner.com Copyright 2008 Leanne Ely. Published with permission for this publication.
<< back to Articles on Community
<< back to All Articles | <urn:uuid:45dd047b-a3f9-49aa-99c6-5b5746cad3fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.picketnews.com/archiveDetail.asp?cID=3&id=7580 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943697 | 659 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Portrait and Personal Photography – A Creative and Satisfying Style For Numerous Photographers
Individuals are tricky beings. From time to time they’re exceedingly tough to understand. Some tend to hide their genuine nature from the world and put out a very discreet personality. Some others, on the other hand, have become open with whom they are and so they don’t waste a moment trying to hide his or her self from society. It is this very quality that can make them tough subject matter. It is usually this actuality that could make portrait pictures a remarkably unique and fulfilling style of photography for many a photographer.
A portrait, by explanation, serves as a interpretation of a person, frequently of their face. It also actually does good deal more than that. A portrait will be able to record bits and pieces of a person’s individuality and clearly show that in the direction of viewer’s. That, ultimately, often is the goal of every photographer.
One of many tips you are able to as a portrait photographer is enabling the subject do what they wants to do.
When shooting snapshots of moving young children, make sure you adapt the shutter speed, the exposure level and in addition the aperture levels of your camera. For implementing this, you will shoot every movement they make and as such catch a glimpse of their nature and character. It’s also possible to entice your subjects to have interaction alongside one another during the photo. This helps make a relationship concerning the two subjects and sets a narrative within your photograph. I am reasonably confident you have seen a picture of a mother interacting with her little tot that really grabbed your attention. It will be that candid honest emotion that a photographer aims to obtain and transcend through the film.
One other tip you can apply to your portraits is usually to position the subject off centre.
It sometimes gives a varied mood from the picture and pulls the attention toward the subject. Viewers love it if there is space within your snapshot. This may easily really help to generate a strong shot. Motivate your subjects to keep as natural as they can be. Before you take the photograph, it’s the photographer’s job when making their subjects cosy and at ease, to help you elicit a true emotion from them. In the event of children and kids, you can encourage them to find quirky amusing poses, get on the exact same level as the little one. Thus giving subtle indicators of their personalities and they make truly entertaining photos. Eye-to-eye contact can be a subjective element in photography. By making your subject focus their attention on an item beyond the frame, you build a sense of mystery. Your viewers can be interested and will also make them think, ‘What is she contemplating?’.
I hope these suggestions have helped you develop your portrait skills. Even if you have a point-and-shoot camera or possibly a DSLR, the most significant instrument you could have is your imagination. For certain, we can’t all be Annie Lebowitz, except there’s no problem with aiming. Irrespective of if you’re from Ayrshire, Central london, Rome, or anywhere in the world, it doesn’t matter. Do not be afraid to try various things. With these helpful tips in mind, you single-handedly are able to push the limitations of your photo’s. Enjoy your pictures, and always take the time to practice! | <urn:uuid:f65a0c79-f106-4a88-8974-a9150a3e3b8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lordloxley.com/92/portrait-and-personal-photography-a-creative-and-satisfying-style-for-numerous-photographers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960957 | 708 | 1.617188 | 2 |
In 1913, one year before the outbreak of World War I, Archbishop McNeil was painfully aware of the gaps and overlaps in the assistance being given to the poor and needy of the Archdiocese. By this time, several Catholic organizations in Toronto had been serving the needy for years, including St Mary's Sacred Heart Orphanage, Infant homes, Misrecordia and the House of Providence (run by the Sisters of St. Joseph), the Parish conferences and the Children's Aid Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a shelter for young women lawbreakers provided by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, St. John's Training School for boys in trouble with the law (the Christian Brothers) and the recently formed St. Elizabeth Visiting Nurses' Association.
Nonetheless, Archbishop McNeil saw a clear need for some control over admissions to existing institutions, for coordinating the work of all the Catholic welfare societies and, above all, for a central body to plan for the future and to keep the Chancery informed of what was happening. Fr. Patrick Bench was made the Superintendent of Catholic Charities, and instructed to tackle these problems. He was given a small office but no budget, as Catholic Charities was to be a coordinating and referral body. His only obligation was to make a formal annual report to the Archbishop on the work of the past year.
The Early Years
Catholic Charities moved into several new areas, taking responsibility for Catholic men and women who were on probation and developing an employment bureau for women. It was also largely responsible for the launch of the Catholic Big Brother Movement in Toronto, and later the Catholic Big Sisters Association in 1919. The Sisters of Misericordie opened a home for unmarried mothers and girls (which eventually became Rosalie Hall) during this period.
Each member agency was responsible for its own financing until 1919, when all agencies in Toronto doing social welfare work got together, regardless of religious orientation, and formed the Federation for Community Service.
Brother Barnabas took over as Superintendent of Catholic Charities in 1921, which by now had a small staff. Archbishop McNeil's next step was to call for a Social Welfare Survey - now known as a needs assessment - of the entire Archdiocese of Toronto. This led to the Catholic Welfare Bureau being set up, to take over the direct service aspect of Catholic Charities' work, including family and child care matters.
In 1927, for a variety of reasons, the Federation for Community Service announced that it would no longer support any Catholic agency or institution. Rallying from the shock, Archbishop McNeil turned to the religious and lay leaders of the archdiocese. By the fall of that year, the Federation of Catholic Charities was founded, to raise money for Catholic agencies. Within three weeks $ 178,000 had been collected.
Besides fundraising, the Federation of Catholic Charities had to coordinate the work of Catholic charitable organizations. Not surprising, the Board of the Federation of Catholic Charities had tough decisions to make during the Depression. In 1933, it could not even provide financial support for any of the children's summer camps. To help meet the needs of the poor, other agencies and projects had materialized. Columbus Boys' Camp was started in 1929, the Catholic Settlement House Day Nursery was founded in 1931, and the newly formed Rosary Guild's 825 members each provided at least two articles of new children's clothing once a year.
Impact of World War II
World War II brought about improved economic conditions and many who had been unemployed now found lucrative jobs in war work. As a result, in 1941 and 1942, the Federation of Catholic Charities once again exceeded its goals in the annual campaign for funds.
A desire to defeat the common enemy and to restore peace brought both Catholics and Jews into a closer relationship with the majority of Toronto citizens, and the United Community Fund was established in 1943. It replaced 18 former individual campaigns, and supported all charitable organizations. After several name changes, it evolved into United Way in 1973. In 1946, the Federation of Catholic Charities changed its name to become the Council of Catholic Charities. Over the next three decades, many new Catholic agencies and programs were established.
In 1976, United Way of Toronto voted to admit the Planned Parenthood Association of Toronto to its membership. Under leadership of Archbishop Pocock and after much soul-searching, the Board of Catholic Charities and its member agencies unanimously decided to withdraw from United Way. Within a few months, ShareLife was formed to raise money and Catholic Charities undertook the allocation of these funds to its member agencies.
Catholic Charities Continues to Grow
The need for services in the pastoral zones outside Toronto led to Catholic family service agencies being developed in Simcoe, York, Peel and Durham Regions between 1979 and 1981. In addition, agencies that cared for particular client groups became members of Catholic Charities, including Our Place, Silent Voice Canada, Matt Talbot House, Pelletier Homes for Youth and Natural Family Planning Association. The number of agencies rose from 13 to 24 in less than five years, and by 1982 these agencies were serving between 50,000 and 60,000 annually.
During the 80s, the Society of Sharing: Inner City Volunteers, Les Centres d'Accueil Heritage, Rose of Sharon, Rose of Durham and Mary Centre became Catholic Charities agencies, and now 28 Catholic Charities' agencies are serving over 500,000 people in need, throughout the archdiocese.
During the 90's, Marguerite Bourgeoys Family Fertility Care Programme Centres, St. Bernadette's Family Resource Centre, and Vita Centre joined the member agencies of Catholic Charities.
- 1850 — Bishop de Charbonnel invited the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Sisters of St. Joseph to come to Toronto.
- 1850-1851 — St. Vincent de Paul Society organized five parish conferences.
- 1851 — Sisters of St. Joseph assumed responsibility of "The Orphan Asylum".
- 1857 — House of Providence was established.
- 1893 — Catholic Children's Aid Society was established.
- 1908 — St. Elizabeth Visiting Nurses' Association was formed.
- 1913 — Catholic Charities' office was organized and started Catholic Big Brothers and Catholic Big Sisters.
- 1922 — Catholic Welfare Bureau was organized.
- 1927 — Federation of Catholic Charities was incorporated to raise money for Catholic agencies.
- 1943 — United Welfare Fund was established with the participation of Catholic and Jewish agencies in joint community fund raising.
- 1946 — Name of Council of Catholic Charities was adopted.
- 1976 — Catholic Charities withdrew from United Way of Toronto.
- 1977 — ShareLife was organized and Catholic Charities undertook allocation of funds to agencies.
- 1977 — To present Catholic Charities membership increased from 13 to 29 agencies.
- 1978-1981 — Catholic family service agencies were developed in Simcoe county, York, Peel and Durham Regions.
- 1980s — Groundwork begins on Catholic Charities role in promoting caring communities in parishes.
- 1981 — Legal structure of Catholic Charities Council was changed to establish Board of Directors as advisory body to the Archbishop of Toronto.
- 1987 — Parish Outreach Committee formed and focused on ministry with elderly and disabled.
- 1987 — Catholic Charities organizes 1st Volunteer Conference for the Archdiocese.
- 1988 — Mary Centre begins serving older adults with developmental disabilities.
- 1991 — Loyola Arrupe Centre for Seniors joined Catholic Charities as a non-funded associate member agency.
- 1993 — Council of priests and Catholic Charities develop proposal for social ministry in the Archdiocese with Catholic Charities asked to take major leadership role to implement proposal.
- 1994 — Marguerite Bourgeoys Family Care™ Programme Centre joined Catholic Charities as a non-funded associate member agency.
- 1994 — Parish Social Ministry Outreach Committee is formed.
- 1998 — Parish Social Ministry adopts a regional model. Vita Manor added as a non-funded associate member agency serving young parents and their young children.
- 1999 — First Parish Social Ministry Conference attended by 300 people.
- 2002 — Parish Social Ministry and Liturgical Resource Committee convene a "Joy in Service" 4th conference that is attended by 400 people.
- 2002 — Catholic Charities plays pivotal role in World Youth Day. | <urn:uuid:032e7612-b4b1-4bf3-ae71-2fb4c5319438> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholiccharitiestor.org/About_us/history.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9696 | 1,714 | 2.859375 | 3 |
It’s spring, and in Utah that can mean sunshine one day and thunderstorms, rain and even snowfall the next.
Indeed, northern Utah’s mid-week forecast seemed oblivious to the official start of spring with the advent of the Vernal Equinox at 5:02 a.m. Wednesday. And after a day of intermittent rainfall and evening thunderstorms, the Wasatch Front was expecting snow showers early Thursday and again in the afternoon.
High temperatures were to range in the mid-40s Thursday, down from Wednesday’s upper-50s.
Springtime was making more of an impression in breezy southern Utah, though. Highs on Thursday were to reach the mid-70s, mirroring Wednesday’s forecast.
Air quality statewide heading toward the weekend was rated "Green," or healthy statewide, according to the Utah Division of Air Quality.
The Utah Avalanche Center graded the mountains in the Logan, Skyline and Uintas districts at "moderate" risk for dangerous backcountry snow slides, while the remainder of the state’s mountains earned "low" avalanche risk assessments.
Salt Lake City’s high temperature Thursday was pegged at 44, up from Wednesday’s forecast of 57 degrees; Ogden looked for 43 and 55 degrees, respectively; Provo 49 and 60; Logan 37 and 45; Wendover 50 and 59; Duchesne 48 and 56; Cedar City 57 and 65; St. George 74 and 76; and Moab 64 and 68 degrees.
Copyright 2013 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:a8c63a95-c832-4c1a-a41f-68b5611f1bb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56034408-78/utah-spring-thursday-wednesday.html.csp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935146 | 340 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has urged Muslims not to fall into the new US/Israeli trap, which seeks to instill Iranophobia and fuel strife between Shias and Sunnis, especially during the Hajj rituals in Saudi Arabia.
During a visit to the western Iranian province of Kermanshah, Ayatollah Khamenei said Shias and Sunnis must remain vigilant and counter the new smear campaign against Iran through cooperation and dialogue.
Iran's Foreign Minister says the Israeli lobby has played a key role in forcing Washington to accuse Iran of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington in cooperation with a Mexican drug cartel. But he also warned that using the ploy as an excuse to invade Iran won't be without a cost.
A number of Iranian officials likewise told Press TV that the new US-Israeli ploy seeks to disrupt the Hajj rituals, create tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and disturb the delicate balance of power in the Middle East. | <urn:uuid:e980957c-4969-4bc9-a227-10352d401edc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://presstv.com/detail/204585.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943542 | 201 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Lakes are an integral part of our landscape, covering more than a million acres of our state! Maine lakes provide immensely valuable habitat for fish and wildlife, numerous recreational opportunities for people, and drinking water for nearly two-thirds of our population. Many communities are defined in large measure by their lakes. People relate to lakes in a way that is profoundly important to them and their families.
Habitat and water quality of lakes is vital to both state and local economies. Lakes generate 3.5 billion dollars for Maine's economy annually, including 52,000 Maine jobs. Tax revenues from shoreline properties are significant in many communities, thus deterioration of a lake resource can result in serious change to local economies. Restoration of a degraded lake is extremely expensive and is never as effective as protection. Invasive species are the most recently identified threat to Maine lakes and can alter human and wildlife use of a lake resource permanently.
Maine statutory water quality goals include that all of our lakes be free of nuisance algal blooms, and have stable or improving water and habitat quality. Maine DEP (along with LUPC in unorganized territories) is charged with protecting Maine lakes and regulating certain human activities that affect habitat and water quality. Because rainwater falling on nearly half of the land in Maine passes through our lakes, most of these regulations pertain to how land is used. Additional information about lakes and invasive species can be found through the links below and on Site Law, Stormwater, and NRPA pages.
Programs and Information
- Questions/ Topics Information for Lake Users, boaters, and camp owners. Aquatic phenomenon and water level management information.
- Monitoring and assessment
- Publications and Newsletters
Lake Links. Off-site links to agencies, organizations, and more
Resources/ Reports (Lakes of Maine, TMDL's. Impaired waters and more)
Lakes of Maine: Your Source of Information About Maine's Lakes (off-site)
Watershed planning. Information from the Division of Watershed Management.
Training Center. Page includes the the erosion control contractor list, information on the Front Runner program, and more.
Watershed Protection Grant
Regulatory Programs, Shoreland Zoning. etc.
Boating laws and rules. Information from Inland Fisheries & Wildlife (off-site)
Fishing licenses Information from Inland Fisheries & Wildlife (off-site)
Permits. DEP - Natural Resource Protection Act (NRPA) permits (NRPA)
Shoreland Zoning Page
Sustainable Water Use Program | <urn:uuid:778cbb22-2379-4336-b083-5197f595e9bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maine.gov/dep/water/lakes/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919846 | 524 | 3 | 3 |
Our ultimate objective is to make programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do. We shall…say that a program has common sense if it automatically deduces for itself a sufficient wide class of immediate consequences of anything it is told and what it already knows.John Mccarthy, “Programs with Common Sense”, 1958
Machine learning has been and still is a large part of research area in academic circles. But in last decade or so it has made heavy in roads to the practical world of tech industry and today it’s no secret that most of the large players are using numerous machine learning techniques to enhance various aspects of their workflows. In this post I’m hoping to look at few ways how a SaaS application (presumably run by a startup) can use machine learning to enhance its overall experience.
Personalise user experience
In your experience of using SaaS products, how many times you may have found that your favourite item is at the bottom of the list and you have to scroll half a mile or navigate through several layers of menus ? Usability usually favours the majority and you may discover the bitterness of being stuck in minority.
If you go into the same coffee shop every morning and buy the same drink, if they are any good at their business then they should know your preferences after few days and you don’t have to go through the ordering routine everyday. It may be just that the shop owner confirms “Same as usual ? ” and that’s it. So if your app is bit more intelligent (good at its business), it could do the same and not irritate users by dropping their most used features to the bottom of the page and having them crawl over the page every time they use your app. However to be on safe side, just as in the case of coffee shop owner’s confirmation you may need to give an extra setting option to the user confirming whether it’s preferable for the app to learn user behaviours and adapt.
Reduce your support requests
Say you have a hot product in your hands and it’s getting more and more traction. If you have experienced this situation, one thing that you won’t miss is the number of support requests that’s sky-rocketing in parallel to the hotness of your product. Given that startups have limited man power, there’s no need to emphasise the importance of your team’s man hours and whether to spend them answering easily avoidable support issues or somewhere more useful fixing bugs and adding new features. The school book remedy in this situation would be to evaluate the usability of your app which certainly is a good option but it doesn’t hurt to make your app bit more intelligent to identify obvious pitfalls.
In your neighbourhood if you notice someone is wondering back and forth looking up and down wouldn’t you assume he is lost and offer your help ? Taking a leaf out of this situation your app can do the same and be kind enough to identify a stranger wondering throughout your app and offer him help. Not only will you be saving your team’s man hours but you will be saving user’s precious time and as an added bonus impress the user even more so on your product.
Make search intelligent
Search is a window to your application data and improving the quality of search will directly influence the user experience. Rather than making the user guess under what keywords his target content is indexed under, what if your application is good at identifying user intent behind the search ? That would certainly be the icing on top of your search functionality. To make it even better, mix some fuzzy-ness to auto correct a search term when there’s an obvious error. Of course all this is easier said than done and every company is not a Google. But you can take an initiative by analysing search terms to identify week spots, start addressing them first and moving forward as a minor experimental optimisation process.
On another note, a good application wide search will greatly help answer most questions your users may have. From experience most of the support questions are recurring in nature so if users can easily find answers from your community forum or support articles, it will help lighten your support inbox.
Finding more details about users
Well, this is more of a grey area. Gossiping on other’s juicy dirty secrets is usually frowned upon, but a little awareness of what’s going on around you could be useful and even healthy. Most of large companies are already digging up your day-to-day buying patterns to better target you but the amount of how deep you dig into user information (or abstain from it) is certainly up to you. One way to look at this would be how you treat advertisements – as long as they are relevant and useful in achieving your goal you won’t mind it. But the second it falls below your requirements and becomes nagging, it will be a nuisance and spamming. Likewise if you can give users a coupon they can’t ignore it’s likely they won’t mind and you can comfort your conscience by thinking you are doing a service rather than snooping around.
Gauging user reaction to new features
It’s a normal practise for apps to use a simple voting system to get to know most desired new features of a SaaS app. Usually what happen is that app admins put up a set of features they feel important and users vote on them. But taking this one step further and crowdsourcing, you can know what users really need and same time know more about your users. Of course collaborative filtering is not a new technology and most of the social sites are using it to rate new items and know preferences of new users back and forth. So even though you are not running a social network, you can still use it to get to know attributes of your user base such as technical savviness, seeking automation. etc.
This only sums up some of the more obvious situations where machine learning techniques can play a part in improve a SaaS application. It certainly is an exciting field in which I’m trying to get a grasp on as a passive interest and hoping to carry out experiments to learn the applicability of various theories. It would be exciting to hear more ideas and how well they have worked so please feel free to share them here.
Some pointers to get started/keep an eye on:
- Good place to have some quick practical experience - Stanford online ML course by Prof. Andre Ng
- CMU Machine Learning course by Prof. Tom Mitchell
- Probabilistic Graphical Models by Prof. Daphne Koller
- Lots of theories by Prof. Andre Ng – Stanford CS229
- MLSS resources – 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.
- MIT ML lecture notes
- Various research publications – Google, Microsoft, Academia
- Google prediction API
- What’s happening in the world of big data – NoSQL weekly | <urn:uuid:d86b4c92-7813-41c1-8e46-2f0c85dda80f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mytechgossips.com/2012/03/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949948 | 1,438 | 1.554688 | 2 |
There are two general kinds of three-cent U.S. coins. The first are the silver coins known as trimes among numismatists but called “fish scales” by mid-19th-century consumers due to their diminutive size. These were struck between 1851 and 1873. Three-cent nickel coins designed to replace the silver ones were minted between 1865 and 1889.
The introduction of trimes coincided with the lowering of postal rates from five cents to three. The coin was essentially conceived as a denomination to purchase this postage, which was important because the widely available copper large cents in circulation at the time were routinely refused by merchants, which made them understandably unpopular with the public. In addition, the majority of silver coins in circulation, foremost among them Seated Liberty quarters, were either being hoarded or melted for their bullion value, which was greater than their face value. Small trimes injected a much-needed supply of coinage into the economy.
The three-cent trime was designed by the U.S. Mint’s chief engraver, James Barton Longacre, who also created Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents, Shield nickels, and Liberty Head double eagles. There are three types of silver trimes, beginning with the Type I coins minted in Philadelphia and New Orleans in 1851, as well as those minted in Philadelphia in 1852 (the largest mintage) and 1853 (second largest). These feature a shield within a six-pointed star on the obverse and the Roman numeral III surrounded by a large “C” on the reverse. The composition of these Type I trimes is 75% silver and 25% copper...
Type II trimes were struck between 1854 and 1858. While their silver content was increased to 90% to bring them into line with other U.S. silver coins in circulation, their weight was reduced to discourage bullion speculators. To differentiate these coins from the Type I trimes, Longacre added two rims around the star on the coin’s obverse, as well as an olive branch and bunch of arrows within the “C” on the reverse.
Type III trimes were minted between 1859 and 1873 in far fewer numbers than the Type I and Type II varieties that preceded them. The Civil War was one reason, a period when metal of all type was scarce, making coins prime targets for hoarding. But after the war, the coin was minted concurrently with the nickel three-cent pieces designed to replace them. These featured Longacre’s engraving of Lady Liberty on the obverse and the Roman numeral III, surrounded by a wreath, on the reverse. These new three-cent coins would continue to be struck until 1889, although in generally fewer numbers after 1875. As for the overlapping Type III silver trimes? In 1873, about 74,000 of them, representing nearly all of the trimes produced for circulation between 1863 and 1873, were melted down by the U.S. Mint.
Interviews & Articles
I started collecting coins when I was five years old, and I started dealing when I was 13 or 14. Most kids start with coins of cir… [more]
Best of the Web (“Hall of Fame”)
Legendary Coins and Currency
Society of U.S. Pattern Collectors
Clubs & Associations: US Coins
- Society of U.S. Pattern Collectors
- American Numismatic Association
- American Numismatic Society
- Numismatic Bibliomania Society | <urn:uuid:45b163ec-7285-47ca-b190-509e14c71898> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collectorsweekly.com/us-coins/three-cent-pieces | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978625 | 748 | 3.625 | 4 |
Edgewood Apartments for Rent(hide neighborhood information)
Standing at 3175 Thomas Avenue in Montgomery, Alabama is a symbolic piece of American History. Also referred to as the “Thomas House,” Edgewood is the oldest existing residence in Montgomery – it’s also how the Edgewood neighborhood acquired its name. Placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1973, Edgewood is the epitome of southern Federal-style homes that this area was known for during its construction.
Although Edgewood is only a couple miles from Downtown, the neighborhood was once considered quite rural. Woodley Road, which runs through the northern section of the neighborhood, was a gravel road until the 1930s. Huntingdon College borders Woodley Road in the northern section of Edgewood. In its early days, Huntingdon was called Women’s College of Alabama.
Bordering Edgewood’s western edge is Audubon Road. The eastern border is comprised of Narrow Lane Road and the southern boundary is Wedgewood Drive. The homes within the community vary from the quaint cottage-style to the more grand estate structures. Some of the oldest homes, like the Thomas House, are found right in Edgewood.
Due to its location, Edgewood’s residents are as eclectic as the homes. Along with Huntingdon College, Alabama State University is about a mile to the north, which attracts younger generations to the area. To the east of the community are Montgomery Country Club and Standard Country Club – both are popular with area golfers. Families enjoy Edgewood for its locality near many shopping venues, good public schools, and nearby public parks.
Bellingrath Park, which offers various athletic fields and a playground, is approximately one mile to the west. Just north of the park is Faircourt Shopping Center. Normandale Shopping Center is to the south, and Old Town Shopping Center and Montgomery Mall Shopping Center are southwest – all are within a one-mile radius of Edgewood. | <urn:uuid:93f15417-978a-406a-8ce6-77e26c526b7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apartmentfinder.com/Alabama/Montgomery/Edgewood-Neighborhood-Apartments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969964 | 417 | 1.710938 | 2 |
LSU scientists home from Antarctica
POSTED: Monday, December 7, 2009 - 6:47pm
UPDATED: Thursday, June 3, 2010 - 11:59pm
A team of LSU scientists are literally breaking the ice when it comes to life on the world’s coldest continent.
The research crew has brought back thousands of pounds of ice core samples to the campus from Antarctica.
In these samples they've found evidence that backs up new scientific theories that not all organisms stop functioning when frozen.
For this team- its a huge discovery. Up until a couple years ago, it was believed the southernmost continent was too cold to support any kind of life. | <urn:uuid:ef11b78b-91a4-4e0d-b6cb-3c91fcb442ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/lsu-scientists-home-antarctica | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957627 | 139 | 2.5 | 2 |
There used to be “old China hands” who spent a lifetime trying to figure out China. I’m beginning to conclude that it could take another lifetime to figure out who China is and where it is going today.
A conversation with Zhu Jiangang, director of The Institute for Civil Society, a non-government organization connected with Sun Yat-sen University’s anthropology department convinced me that words such as “democracy” and “civil society” are much more complex in this country than we think when we look at China from a U.S. perspective.
We tend to look at China as having a relatively entrepreneurial and open economic system and a totally repressive, totalitarian political system. According to Zhu, it is not as clear-cut as that.
He believes China is in transition moving towards a “third way” to solve problems, somewhere between one-party rule and democracy. The growing number of NGO’s are on the cutting edge of this gradual and hopeful change.
Chinese NGO’s developed in recent years as a result of international NGO's such as Oxfam and the Heifer project, he explained. His Institute for Civil Society is partly funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
What, I asked, is a Chinese NGO?
It includes everything from charitable organizations, which help orphans, to those who represent farmers, migrant workers, and gender issues—a similar wingspan as we see in the U.S. His NGO, for example, recruited hundred of volunteers to help with the earthquake tragedy and continues to console families and advocate for standards for reconstruction. Their mission is also to train NGO leaders and coordinate their efforts.
Then there are government NGO’s called GONGO’s, a new word for me. Exactly what is a GONGO? Is it simply a mouthpiece of the government? Not necessarily, according to Jennifer Adams from the Agency of International Development. Sometimes these government NGO’s enable the government to get input from the public because, as she told me “politicians here don’t get out among the people very much.”
Sometimes a GONGO may have some independence and be more radical than a non-government NGO, Zhu explained. One problem is that NGO’s must get registered, which is difficult. But it is easy to register an NGO website and function without being registered.
Wait a minute.
I asked about the Lions Club because the executive director of the NGO is also the executive director of the Goungzhou Lions Club. He explained that the Lions Club is divided into three parts: a GONGO, a grassroots organization, and an international organization.
I thought I would ask a more simple question.
How many NGO’s are there?
His answer was that it depends on which numbers you believe, anywhere from seven million, which is the same as the US, to 10–20,000 “true NGO’S.”
How much freedom do these organizations have?, I tried to find out. “You cannot go directly against the government, but gradually they are becoming a force. For example, after the earthquake, the government action was not enough. Then the Premier and later the President visited the earthquake site and praised the NGO’s, so the public felt it was safe to associate with them and the organizations themselves gained new legitimacy.
His purpose is to foster collective actions outside government and develop a quality called “civic virtue.” They are not anti-government; they still hope that government can solve their problems.
The challenge for him and other NGO’s is to figure out, day by day, where the government will draw the line, how much grass roots collective action they will accept and when and how they will clamp down.
To make matters more complex, not all levels of government agree on how much free rein to give them. Not even all the people within one level of government will agree. Some people in the national government want NGO's to flourish, others do not.
“It must be like reading tea leaves,” I noted.
He looked perplexed. The Chinese, despite being tea drinkers, do not know that expression, but he knew what I meant, when I added that he had to maneuver carefully through a difficult channel.
“We do not want to fight the government. We want to help people build a new life, and solve their problems.” He added that there are even “rights-defending lawyers,” something like our Legal Aid lawyers.
His vision is that people must change gradually. What he wants is for the NGO’s to have legitimacy.
The by-word for China used to be “stability,” which arose out of the fear of chaos. This was discussed when I was here in 1991. Today the by-word is “harmonious,” a state “that will be achieved through civil society.”
“We can disagree, but not fight. We want to have common values, that is my dream.” His role model is Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America.
“But we must be very careful. If we do it too quickly, things will explode.”
“Does outside pressure help, like from the United States?” I asked.
“We need some pressure from the outside and the inside, from the grass roots.” But he feared that the government would react badly to too much outside pressure.
“Do you consider yourself a pioneer?” I asked.
“Yes,” we are pioneers.
“Everything is new. Sometimes we do stupid things, we try to learn, and I don’t know what will happen in the future. But I am optimistic and patient. Let us become stronger. Our slogan is “Be realistic, demand the impossible.”
We laughed when I told him that the motto of our Institute for Sustainable Communities is more modest and enigmatic. It simply says, “What is possible.”
Madeleine M. Kunin is the former Governor of Vermont and was the state's first woman governor. She served as Ambassador to Switzerland for President Clinton, and was on the three-person panel that chose Al Gore to be Clinton’s VP. She is the author of Pearls, Politics, and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead from Chelsea Green Publishing. | <urn:uuid:552ccf17-18eb-4607-8789-acfa847431e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chelseagreen.com/blogs/madeleinekunin/2009/05/14/china-journal-may-14-2009-ngos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972058 | 1,351 | 2.203125 | 2 |
This job is no longer available
Setting the standards for medicines
We are the MHRA (The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) – the government agency that plays a key role in safeguarding the nation’s health. We do this by ensuring that all medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe.
Development Opportunity for a Scientist
Training Grade HEO, £29,992 - £31,582;
(Progression to grade SEO on achieving Accreditation £37,175 - £39,196)
An important part of the influence we bring, and the expertise we offer, is in annually publishing the British Pharmacopoeia and the British Pharmacopoeia (Veterinary). These legally enforceable publications define the official quality standards for human and veterinary medicines in the UK.
We require a scientist with a working knowledge of pharmacopoeias and/or knowledge of the publication of technical documents or books. Once trained, you will co-ordinate the work of designated BP Panels of Experts and provide scientific support to Expert Advisory Groups. This is a unique opportunity to make a significant contribution towards the protection of public health by setting robust standards that are used world-wide.
You will need to have a degree, or equivalent, in Biochemistry, Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Chemistry or Pharmacy, and experience of the standard setting process for medicines. Exceptional communication and team working skills and the ability to prioritise work are essential in this challenging and important role. Well-developed IT skills are also essential.
For more information and to apply, please click the 'Apply now Button'
Closing date: 30th November 2012. | <urn:uuid:f99a92d6-5c5c-444a-9628-68f56561ccf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jobs.newscientist.com/job/1401391976/scientist-london/?shortlist=True | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905511 | 336 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Aug. 24, 2008 Tempting treats are being offered in small package sizes these days, presumably to help consumers reduce portion sizes. Yet new research found that people actually consume more high-calorie snacks when they are in small packages than large ones. And smaller packages make people more likely to give in to temptation in the first place.
Authors Rita Coelho do Vale (Technical University of Lisbon), Rik Pieters, and Marcel Zeelenberg (both Tilburg University, the Netherlands) found that large packages triggered concern of overeating and conscious efforts to avoid doing so, while small packages were perceived as innocent pleasures, leaving the consumers unaware that they were overindulging.
"The increasing availability of single-serve and multi-packs may not serve consumers in the long-run, but—because they are considered to be innocent pleasures—may turn out to be sneaky small sins," write the authors.
One fascinating aspect of the research is the difference between belief and reality. In an initial study, researchers found that consumers believe that small packages help them regulate "hedonistic consumption," where self-restraint is at stake. When participants were asked to choose phone plans, those who thought the plan was for social rather than work purposes tended to choose smaller plans.
The researchers then moved on to food. Participants in one group had their "dietary concerns" activated by completing a "Body Satisfaction scale," a "Drive for Thinness scale," and a "Concern for Dieting scale." They were then weighed and measured, in front of a mirror, to fully activate their awareness. Then those participants (and a control group, which didn't have its "dietary concerns" activated) watched episodes of Friends interspersed with commercials. They believed they were there to evaluate the ads. But researchers were really monitoring their consumption of potato chips. Chips were available to participants in large packages or small ones. The study found that consumption was lowest when dieting concerns were activated and package size was large. People were less likely to open large packages, and participants deliberated longer before consuming from the larger packages.
"Maybe the answer lies in consumers taking responsibility for their consumption and monitoring internal cues of sufficiency, rather than letting package size take control," conclude the authors.
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
- Coelho do Vale et al. Flying under the Radar: Perverse Package Size Effects on Consumption Self‐Regulation. Journal of Consumer Research, 2008; 0 (0): 080619111338432 DOI: 10.1086/589564
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:93142d0a-bbcf-403d-aef9-4e9e1d756f63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080822160351.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969396 | 567 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Monday, May 13, 2013
Last year the azaleas in front of our house bloomed in nice, neat, round bushes, as they have for years. They gave the entrance a pleasing and colorful approach. Most of the other azalea bushes in the neighborhood behaved in a similar way. They were polite. Refined. At the end of the season, I pruned the bushes to remove some dead branches, being careful about pruning off the buds that are laid down after the plants bloom. I expected another year of dignified flowering.
This year they flowered, right on schedule, sending out their customary peachy blossoms. Only something changed. The bushes became exuberant! They shot out beyond their customary shape and reached for the sun. There is no restraint here. I had never seen anything like it.
Each time I think I should do something about the wildness, I end up smiling instead. When I come home, I have to stop for a minute to enjoy the fullness of the bushes and the in-your-face burst of flowers before going inside. My friend, coming to visit, stood dumbfounded when she saw the azaleas. “They don’t usually grow like that,” she said. Certainly not in suburban gardens. Then she said something about them fitting in with my energy.
That got me thinking. There are thousands of varieties of azaleas, with different colors, heights, petals, and growing patterns - in their own particular way. There are billions of people expressing themselves in their own particular ways. And why not? There is energy in diversity. If we can tolerate, even desire, variety in Mother Nature then why not in human nature, too? There may be surprises, sometimes problems, but most often there is dynamic growth.
A helpful guide to growing azaleas:
For FAQ and in-depth answers, try the Azalea Society of America’s website:
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Strawberries – Big, Yummy, and Organic
I love strawberries. They usually are small to medium in size but the package I just bought has huge berries! Not only are they big but they are yummy, too. What a Spring treat.
Which leads me to a distressing subject – the quality of our food. Strawberries are on “The Dirty Dozen” list. So are cherries, grapes, spinach and potatoes, among others. This list indicates that certain fruits and vegetables retain the highest levels of pesticides.
Other than growing our own produce, what can we do to get the best quality food for our families? Well, I buy mostly organic. What does organic mean? According to the USDA Consumer Brochure: Organic Food Standards and Labels: The Facts, “Organic food is produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations…Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.”
While there is no way to guarantee that organic food will be pesticide free (considering the air, water, and soil quality), at least we can support programs that attempt to produce food without adding chemicals into the process.
I tend to buy organic, especially of the most pesticide-susceptible foods. More stores, even the larger supermarkets, are carrying organic products now. But the choice is ours to make. I see organic farming as not only offering us healthy foods but also as supporting our planet. These strawberries are a responsible – and delicious - example of what can be produced.
Check out “The Dirty Dozen” and find some safer produce items:
USDA definition and regulations:
If you want more detailed (and somewhat scary) info:
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Groundcover Plants Add to a Garden
I have pachysandra growing in my backyard. It is flowering now; delicate white blossoms are peeking out from their green leaves. Pachysandra is a groundcover plant. Groundcover is exactly what it says – a plant that covers the ground. It spreads easily and makes the space where it’s planted a garden feature.
We have another groundcover in our front yard, too. It is Vinca or periwinkle, a plant that sprouts little purple flowers and can take over a lawn.
I love the way these plants seem to take care of themselves. Whatever the season, they bring green vibrancy to the area where they grow. In Spring, they send up flowers that are a nice reminder of what is ahead. In Winter, they remain green under the snow and slough off the frigid temperatures. The rest of the year they just grow – and spread – as the garden goes through its cycles.
There are a variety of reasons to plant groundcover. A steep incline can be kept from losing soil with a covering of St. John’s Wort, for instance. Shady spots that could use a little color would look nice with a covering of blue Ajuga leaves. There is a plant for almost every need. Plus, I think, groundcover plants add an air of sophisticated neatness to a garden.
It’s almost as if groundcover knows it has a chore to do and just does it. It makes me think of the idiom to “cover a lot of ground” which means to deal with a lot of information or to travel a great distance. It implies a purpose and determination, a stick-to-it quality. I hope I have that when there is a job to be done. There is a positive energy to the phrase, a hint of admiration when someone covers a lot of ground. These plants seem to embody the concept and I do admire them for it.
Some varieties to investigate:
Monday, April 22, 2013
I like to see the magnolia trees around my neighborhood. Their flowers are full and fancy, the petals soft to the touch, and the fragrance is enticing. I tended to think of magnolias as only southern trees. Not so. They grow in a wide range of areas. In fact, there are some 200 varieties around the world and they all are beautiful.
But there are positive and negatives to most things and magnolias are not an exception. Here are some of the positives:
Magnolia trees definitely have that WOW factor. They are magnificent trees that are hard to ignore.
They are relatively fast growing.
They produce incredible flowers, which come in many colors depending upon the variety, that are a delight to our senses.
They come in many choices including evergreen or deciduous trees.
You can find a variety that suits your location and preferred blooming time.
Some of the negatives:
Spent magnolias flowers literally cover the ground when they fall.
The flowers produce pollen – good for the beetles that feed on them but not so good for allergy sufferers.
Their roots are ropy and can get tangled around the base and they also extend farther out than most trees, which makes them hard to transplant.
They can be large and dominate a landscape, up to 80 feet tall and 50 feet wide, though there are smaller options that are more in the 25 feet tall and 20 feet wide size.
Magnolia wood is soft and is prone to breakage in storms and damage by mowers and string trimmers.
So it is kind of a balance among factors - beauty, maintenance, drama, practicality, delight, appropriateness – at least for us as homeowners and planters. The yin and yang of nature. Most of life is poised between the two. What seems positive at one time may shift to negative at another and vice versa. The magnolia just follows its genetic path being magnificent and troublesome, depending on one’s point of view. Why shouldn’t we enjoy the positive even as we deal with the negative?
Monday, April 15, 2013
“April showers bring May flowers.” Remember that old saying? Well, here we are in April, experiencing a variety of showers from the drizzle today to the downpour a few nights ago. The early bloomers are drinking it up while the soil is warming up and loosening for Spring planting.
It’s nice to have the illusion of predictability that the saying implies, especially as the seasons have been a little different lately – hardly any snow in winter (at least not around my backyard though some places had whopper storms that slammed them with feet, not inches) and eighty-plus degrees before Spring had a chance to take a deep breath. But plants are not relying on the saying to do what they do. It has as much to do with where they are growing, whether they are annuals or perennials, when they develop their bulbs or seeds. Even so, rain does bring warmer temperatures and moisture that stimulates plant growth and energizes the earth.
If we look deeper into the saying, however, we can see that it is as much about us as it is about rain and flowers. It hints of sunny times following clouds, of the value of patience, and of keeping a positive outlook even when things seem dark and dreary. Sort of a prompt to our growth as well. Not a bad way to start the season, whenever the season starts for you.
An overview of how flowers grow: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/04/do_april_showers_bring_may_flowers.html
And a look into the origin and symbolism of the saying:
Monday, April 8, 2013
Lavender is Lovely
I went to my local market today and was surrounded by a familiar scent as soon as I went through the door – lavender. There were pots and pots of the plants gracing the flower stand. The flowers were just beginning to open and more buds were peeking out. I passed them by to do my shopping but I went back before I paid. They were just too enticing to ignore.
I had planted lavender in my garden in years past but not recently. I decided this year I would do it again. This is a lovely plant. Tiny purple flowers delicately rise along a thin, green stem. The leaves are subtly elegant with a hint of gentle fuzz that is pleasing to the touch. The smell of lavender can be heady, announcing its presence before the plant is even seen, which must be why it is used in soaps, oils, candles, sachets, even in teas - a treat for the senses.
But then lavender is lovely in other, more important ways. It has a long history of medicinal use and is a staple in aromatherapy. Some is proven, some not, but it is used in a variety of applications for many conditions. One of its uses is for its calming effect. Lavender oil embraces the whole body in the bath. Sniffed, it seems to relax tension and may help with insomnia.
At the very least, lavender is a lovely addition to a garden, as it will be to mine – and maybe to yours?
Look at this lovely plant’s uses:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/838.html
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
The daffodils are now in full bloom in my backyard. Such a beautiful display. Vibrant yellow flowers brighten up even a cloudy day. The purple periwinkle flowers add their own vibrance in the groundcover that ambles through various spots in the garden. Soon nurseries will be advertising flats of blossoming plants to begin the spring planting season.
I appreciate the rejuvenation of the outside perennials each year yet I don’t want to neglect something that has been blooming all through the winter – my African Violet. It is an indoor plant that has been putting out pretty pink blossoms for much of the year.
I don’t take my African Violet for granted. I know it needs proper tending. The plant needs light, though not direct sunlight, so the north-facing windowsill where it resides is perfect. It likes water but not too much. When the soil seems dry, I give the plant a drink. The recommendation is to water it from the bottom so as not to get the leaves wet. I usually do though sometimes it gets a good soak from the top. No doubt the nurseries wouldn’t approve but my sweet plant doesn’t seem to mind. If the leaves appear a little droopy, I give the plant some food and it perks right up.
All living things have their particular requirements. I value this plant and want it to thrive so I give it what it needs. I value relationships and want them to thrive, too. I try to nurture them in ways that will keep them strong and healthy. We may not all need the same things but care and attention is something everyone – and everything – can benefit from. My African Violet seems to like the interest I take in it. Surely friends and family deserve as much.
Here are tips for caring for African Violets:http://www.uri.edu/ce/factsheets/sheets/africanviolet.html | <urn:uuid:fce606b9-d9a9-4523-9dcd-e5c16fb8b3b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://feridasbackyard.blogspot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963948 | 2,780 | 1.78125 | 2 |
The campaign against the war in Iraq was the largest, most intensive antiwar mobilization in history. On February 15, 2003 an estimated 10 million people demonstrated against the war in hundreds of cities across the globe, the largest single day of antiwar protest ever recorded. A month later another massive wave of global protest occurred, this time at the local level, as millions of people gathered in 6,000 candlelight vigils in more than one hundred countries in a last minute plea against war. People across the globe spoke out as never before in a unified voice against invading Iraq.
The New York Times dubbed this mass movement a global ‘superpower,’ an unprecedented transnational mobilization that exerted significant influence on numerous governments. In the United States the antiwar movement reached levels of mobilization in the course of a few months that during the Vietnam era took years to develop. Almost every major religious body in the country spoke out again the war, as did many trade unions, women’s organizations, Hollywood artists, musicians and others.
I was part of that movement and helped to create one of the major antiwar coalitions, Win Without War. In contrast to the Vietnam antiwar movement, the Iraq campaign was relatively effective in communicating its message to the media. The movement was largely internet-based and was an early manifestation of the power of online activism to mobilize massive levels of social participation on short notice with limited resources. The major player in Win Without War was MoveOn.org, which mobilized local action and raised funds from a list that tripled in size to more than 2 million in the months preceding the war.
On the first and second-year anniversaries of the invasion, Win Without War and other coalitions continued to organize protests and prayer vigils, but the level of street protest gradually diminished and by 2006 was barely visible. Opposition to the war did not end, however. It merely changed form as the movement began to adopt the methods of conventional political action. Activists increasingly focused on lobbying Congress in support of legislation to withdraw U.S. troops and cut funding for continued occupation. In the Republican-dominated 108th and 109th Congresses (2003-06), neither approach garnered much support. This prompted many to shift toward electoral politics, with the goal of electing an antiwar Congress and hopefully an antiwar President.
The 2006 congressional elections were a turning point. Antiwar activists were heavily involved in many local races and played a significant role in the election of dozens of new antiwar members. Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives and gained a slight edge in the Senate, a result widely seen as swayed by antiwar sentiment. In Virginia antiwar activists helped Jim Webb win a razor-thin victory for the Senate, and in Connecticut they propelled Ned Lamont’s upset victory over pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary, although Lamont lost the general election. The results of the elections sent a clear message that antiwar activists were a force to be reckoned with in the Democratic Party—a message that was not lost on the junior Senator from Illinois.
The principal distinction of Barack Obama’s candidacy was his forthright stance against the Iraq War. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored, with substantial financial backing and the support of many Democratic Party leaders, but she waffled on ending the war and was burdened by her Senate vote in 2002 to authorize the use of military force. Obama by contrast had spoken against the invasion at an October 2002 antiwar rally in Chicago, and he remained unequivocally opposed to continuing the war. He repeatedly pledged to withdraw all U.S. troops and end the war. This won him the endorsement of MoveOn’s antiwar support base and generated a massive wave of volunteer and financial support from the seasoned activists of the antiwar movement.
Obama’s electoral strategy played to the strengths of this activist constituency. His campaign created an extensive field presence in dozens of states, built on the foundations of already existing activist networks—principally the antiwar movement, but also labor, women’s, environmentalist, African American, Latino and other established organizing networks. Obama’s victories were concentrated in caucus states, where success is determined by the strength of local activism rather than big name endorsements and large television advertising budgets. In Washington Obama won two-thirds of the caucus delegates but only 51 per cent of the popular vote and came away with two-thirds of the state’s delegates. In Texas Clinton won the popular vote, but Obama won more of the caucus delegates and ended up with the majority of the state’s delegates. Nationwide Clinton won the popular vote, but Obama held a two to one margin in the 13 caucus contests, enough to win the nomination. Obama’s victory was the result of his superior ability to mobilize tens of thousands of strongly committed loyalists from the antiwar movement.
That activist support base also propelled Obama to victory in the general election. The Obama campaign pioneered the use of social media to harness volunteer and donor support. The campaign had 13 million people on its various email and Facebook lists. Many of these names were drawn from the MoveOn list (which had grown to 5 million) and other pre-existing activist networks. With 8 million visitors a month, the Obama web site was used to create 35,000 volunteer groups and organize 200,000 offline events. The campaign had 3 million online donors, who gave a total of 6.5 million contributions at an average gift size of $80. Obama raised twice as much money as McCain, a record $750 million, two-thirds of it from grassroots contributions.
Scholars often consider participation in institutional politics and mobilization for street protest as distinct subjects, but in the case of the Iraq antiwar movement the connection between the two was direct and strategic. Organizers made a conscious decision to shift their activism from street protest to voter canvassing. A similar pattern had developed during the Vietnam antiwar movement, although with less impact. The ‘Dump Johnson’ movement on behalf of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 came within a few votes of defeating Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. This opened the door to the candidacy of Robert Kennedy and convinced Johnson to withdraw from the race. Johnson also announced a temporary bombing halt and the beginning of peace talks and refused the Pentagon’s request for 200,000 additional troops. This was a major turning point in the war, although it took several more years to end the slaughter.
The election of Obama was more decisive and led directly to the end of the war. Soon after taking office Obama established a schedule for the withdrawal of troops. In December 2011 he announced that the last troops had left the country. The Pentagon and most military analysts had expected that at least some troops would remain. Writer Tom Ricks predicted that the U.S. would keep 25,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. The Iraqi government would not stand for it, however, and insisted on sticking to the December 2011 target date for the departure of U.S. troops stipulated in the security agreement signed with the Bush administration in 2008. As the deadline approached in 2011 Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno called for keeping a residual force in place, but Obama stood firm.
On the day of the President’s announcement I received a phone call from the White House Office of Public Engagement. “We just want to say thank you,” the director of the office said, “to you and other activists in the antiwar movement. What the president accomplished today would not have been possible without the work you and many others did over the past few years.” I was humbled and overjoyed to receive the call and grateful that what he said was true.
Patrick E. Tyler, “Threats and Responses: News Analysis; A New Power in the Streets,” New York Times, 17 February 2003, A1.
Rebecca Solnit, “Acts of Hope: Challenging Empire on the World Stage,” Orion (20 May 2003).
Michael T. Heaney and Fabio Rojas, “The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009,” Mobilization: An International Journal 16(1): (2011): 45-64. See also Michael Grunwald, “Opposition to War Buoys Democrats,” The Washington Post, November 8, 2006.
“2008 Democratic Primary Election Results,” http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?f=0&year=2008&elect=1; see also “Caucuses vs. Primaries: A Report,” http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/5/27/92144/7994
Martin Walker, “The Year of the Insurgents: The 2008 US Presidential Campaign,” International
Affairs 84 (2008): 1095-1107. See also Jose Antonio Vargas, “Obama Raised Half a Billion Online,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/11/20/obama_raised_half_a_billion_on.html; see also http://opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php; and Monte Lutz, “The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social media Toolkit,” (Washington, DC: Edelman.com 2009).
Charles DeBenedetti, Charles Chatfield, assisting author, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 200-01, 211-12; David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 159-60.
Tom Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). | <urn:uuid:7a722d6e-4cc5-42f4-9e35-40ac15b70643> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/from-the-streets-to-the-ballot-box-ending-the-war-in-iraq/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959442 | 2,065 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Located at the north eastern tip of the island, George Town in Penang is the seat of administration and the commercial hub of the state. This bustling metropolis combines the best of East and West as seen in its fine old buildings, each bearing the stamp of different foreign influences in its colourful history. Much of its charm also lies in its famous golden beaches and calm warm seas. Penang today is a resort island in full bloom - an idyllic playground for worshippers of the sun and sea. Its multi-racial population contributes to a wealth of cultural attractions and festive celebrations for visitors to witness and enjoy.
George Town, the state capital of Penang, has an unparalleled collection of buildings from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. It is a living, breathing historic settlement where temples, mosques, churches, guild clan and houses, wet markets, bazaars, retail shops and old-fashioned hawkers have survived the transition into the 21st Century and provide a fascinating window into the past as the city sets its sights on becoming a World Heritage City. Penang teems with enchanting buildings that bear great significance to the history of the region.
George Town and Melaka have developed over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges between East and West in the Straits of Malacca. The influences of Asia and Europe have endowed the towns with a specific multicultural heritage that is both tangible and intangible. The two towns constitute a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in the East and Southeast Asia.
* Must Do....
Trishaw Ride to see the narrow streets of Geoge Town up close
Stop and drink the "Teh Tarik" - strong, sweets and milky tea
Enjoy the Chinese Opera performance during the religious festivals
Visit Batu Feringgi Beach to let the sea breeze blow away your stress.
Being a Penang hotel near George Town, guests of PARKROYAL Penang Resort can easily access this prime destination.
photo courtesy of Jeremy Tan | <urn:uuid:7372a800-b410-41fa-88b3-cde6b6bc7e7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.parkroyalhotels.com/en/hotels/malaysia/penang/parkroyal/destinations/georgetown.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941619 | 406 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Jennifer Ulrich is the archivist in charge of processing the Timothy Leary Papers at the New York Public Library, their new home. She’s been blogging about the entire process, and providing a few peeks inside at a few goodies while she’s at it.
Jennifer’s latest post provides documentation directly from the archives that will correct misinformation and enhance the information we already have. She discusses how Tim liked to annotate documents in his archives, and sign them, just as he was dedicated to revising and updating his books whenever a new edition was in the works.
Jennifer’s second post explains in more detail what the project involves, and what kinds of archival resources will be accessible online when it is completed.
Her first post gave us an introduction to the current goals of the project, and some interesting history about Tim’s Starseed period, which began when he was in Folsom prison in 1973, to serve out the rest of his sentence, plus five years for the escape.
Terra II, referenced on page 63 of Tim’s Annotated Bibliography, is “a manual for space colonization” (and secondarily, a prison escape fantasy connected to the approach of Comet Kohoutek), written in Folsom Prison by Leary and co-prisoner Wayne Benner, with illustrations done by another prisoner, Harold Olson.
From the bibliography:
“The subject of the work is the evolution/migration from Terra I (Planet Earth) to Terra II (an orbiting space colony between Earth and the Moon)…Like the monographs Neurologic and Starseed, the proceeds of the sale of Terra II were intended to help pay expenses of costly legal appeals by Leary to win his freedom from prison.”
Such legal appeals did not work, and Leary wasn’t released until he was pardoned by then and now California Governor Jerry Brown, on April 21, 1976.
In Leary’s own words:
“Terra II…defined migration from the planet as the goal of our species. To me this was the ultimate escape plot.”
In some copies of the book there was inserted as a promotional bookmark, “Ticket to Ride,” designed by Michael Horowitz and Disney artist Dana Reemes who appropriated R. Crumb’s drawing of Tim from El Perfecto Comics (1973).
These were given away to the audience at the “Wake-Up for Timothy Leary,” an event held in Berkeley in 1975 to bring attention to the fact that Leary was being held deep in the federal prison system for many months without anyone having access to him.
At age 53 he was serving a 10-15 year sentence in California and threatened with a 75-year federal sentence, after being labelled the”Hippie Godfather” for his connection to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (More details about this in a futher post.) | <urn:uuid:4c39add4-cf1b-4f60-870a-937175017c10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timothylearyarchives.org/latest-nypl-post-on-processing-the-leary-papers-annotations-and-fact-clarification/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960536 | 617 | 1.554688 | 2 |
This has to take into account the changes in physical as well as mental health that contribute to reduced independence. Such changes result in predictable occurrences, including increased needs for affordable home care, homes that offer the physical environment conducive to the needs of increasingly frail seniors, and the identification and treatment of depression and other mental health problems.
The county's Office on Aging, therefore, brought together three additional partners in creating its "team." Family and Children's Services of Central Maryland assumed responsibility for the provision of home care. Older Adult Consultation Services addressed the mental health of seniors. And Our House youth home offered home modifications designed to enhance the ability of the client to function safely in his or her own residence.
A steering committee (on which I was privileged to serve), consisting of representatives from all of the component organizations, provided ongoing oversight and coordination. The committee was also responsible for providing joint training for the agencies involved, determining the best way to track and monitor the project and the progress of clients being served, developing community awareness and outreach, and making necessary changes to increase the initiative's effectiveness.
Because of the multiple needs of seniors, a key element in the initiative was the coordination of intake and referrals though the Office on Aging. A client who came to the attention of one component-say, for example, home modification services-might also be referred to Family and Children's Services for home care, or Older Adult Consultation Services for a mental health evaluation. The Office on Aging was responsible for ensuring that information about all clients was entered into a county tracking system used by all agencies providing services to them.
This coordination and collaboration across all components of the initiative "expands our ability to help older people stay in their homes," says Sallie Hedenstad, MA, director of elder services at Family and Children's Services. For example, if one of her staff made a home care visit and found that the client had a fall, or was depressed, one could easily tap the initiative's other components-mental health services and home repair-to provide necessary assistance. Howard County's initiative was one of the few in the nation that functioned in concert with multiple critical components, all working together to provide a seamless web of appropriate services.
Interestingly enough, it was the home modification component of the program that brought about the initiative's most cost-effective results. The success stories were both touching and instructive. They suggested that, in many cases, it takes little more than appropriate (and inexpensive) changes in the physical environment to forestall more expensive facility placement. Mrs. W., for example, continued to live in the home where her husband had died from a fall down the stairs. Despite severe arthritis, hypertension, osteoporosis, nerve damage, a history of falls, and macular degeneration to the point of legal blindness, she was still able to handle most of her activities of daily living. The initiative provided her with assistive devices to help sort out her many medications, use the telephone, do her laundry, and generally navigate throughout her home. It prescribed behavioral and environmental modifications and installed new handrails, lighting fixtures, grab bars, and stairway modifications. Mrs. W.'s enthusiastic acceptance of the initiative's help and the resulting success became the subject of a feature article in the Washington Post, and Our House, the organization providing the home modifications, was prominently featured on Oprah Winfrey's TV talk show.
But Howard County wasn't through. While the aging in place initiative was a demonstration, a demonstration that worked and for the most part continues to work, it pointed to the need for even greater attention to more overarching issues that prevent seniors from continuing to age in place. Perhaps the most critical of these was the absence of information and referral sources for those eager to productively age, regardless of the setting. So Howard County applied for and received a grant from the federal government enabling it to become one of only 12 "aging resource centers" across the country. These centers are designed to serve as single points of reference for seniors and others looking for information they might need in planning for a productive retirement. Maryland Access Point offers information regarding an entire array of support services and information, from financial planning to housing, from healthcare to transportation.
So, there you have it-a small success story, perhaps, but one that reflects a growing need for similar initiatives. Aging in place is not, after all, a denial of the critical need for facility-based long-term care services. Congregate care, assisted living, nursing facilities-all are important to the continuum of long-term care. But all of them share one characteristic: a perception by most potential residents that they reflect an option less desirable than remaining in one's own home. That is not an indictment of facility-based long-term care. It is simply a reflection of customer preferences.
You, readers of Nursing Homes/Long Term Care Management, can look at Howard County as a precursor of trends that will become ever more prevalent across the entire country. You can look at those trends as having serious implications for market share-and you would be right. As such, you might be inclined to oppose them-and you would be wrong. | <urn:uuid:8daab852-878e-47fc-9bfa-875bfa98c83a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ltlmagazine.com/article/get-ready-community-based-long-term-care?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963531 | 1,052 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Wolf-Peter Funk writes (New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, p. 328):
Original language, date and place of origin: although there is no firm evidence for it, it is generally assumed that the extant Coptic copy of 2 Apoc. Jas. goes back to a translation from the Greek. The occasional appearance of a name or a loan-word in a Greek inflected form can be interpreted as an indication of the Coptic translator's lack of attentiveness; here and there the idea of a translation from the Greek is also helpful for our understanding of the Coptic text. The translation into Coptic will have taken place at the latest shortly before the making of the codex (middle of 4th cent.), hence in the first half of the 4th century, but at the earliest in the second half of the 3rd century. We know nothing of the original place and date of origin of the document; for lack of direct connections with literature which can be historically located, no firm indications can be gained from the content itself. We may however raise the question in what period and region the document would best fit according to our conception of it. Along these lines conjectures have been advanced which tend towards the 2nd century (middle, or even first half). In many respects the text stands close to the Fourth Gospel, as well as to the Antitheses of Marcion, although it cannot be recognized to be dependent on either of the two. The prominent role of James the Lord's brother appears to speak for the geographical area of Syria and Palestine rather than for any other.
Charles W. Hedrick writes (The Nag Hammadi Library in English, pp. 269-270):
The tractate as a whole is clearly gnostic in character, yet it shows remarkable restraint in treating usual gnostic themes. Nor can it be identified with any of the known gnostic systems of the second century. On the other hand, the author has made extensive use of Jewish-Christian traditions. James, who held a position of special prominence in Jewish-Christian circles, is regarded as the possessor of a special revelation form Jesus and is assigned a role in the gnostic tradition that rivals, and perhaps exceeds, that of Peter in the canonical tradition. For example, James is the "escort" who guides the Gnostic through the door of the heavenly kingdom and even rewards him (55,6-14; cf. 55,15-56,13). The description is similar to Peter's charge as the keeper of the keys of heaven (Mt 16:19).
As to the date and place of composition, little can be said with certainty. Because of the basic Jewish-Christian traditions out of which the tractate is composed, it is probable that its origin is to be associated with Jewish-Christian circles. The absence of allusions to the later developed gnostic systems, and the almost total absence of allusions to the New Testament tradition suggest an early date for the origin of the tractate.
Wolf-Peter Funk writes (op. cit., p. 330):
On the question of relationships we are faced by one (or several) of the major riddles of this document, which is further aggravated by the destruction of some passages but would probably remain even if the text had been handed down complete. The name of James' father and Mary's husband is given not as Joseph but as Theudas (p. 44.18), and the special relationship of Jesus with James consists to all appearances not in the usual (half-)brotherly relationship, but on the one hand in a 'foster-brother' relationship through James' mother and on the other in some kind of blood relation through James' father (p. 50). There has been much speculation about the last statement; we probably have to read (despite a small lacuna) with a high degree of certainty 'he (Jesus) is a brother of your (James') father' - whatever is to be understood by 'brother' here. It is, however, to be noted that 2 Apoc. Jas. (in contrast to 1 Apoc. Jas.) contains no express rejection of a bodily brotherhood relationship between Jesus and James, and that here (even more clearly than in 1 Apoc. Jas.) the author works with the latent consciousness of this brotherly relationship (cf. the course of the conversation at p. 50). A certain natural relationship between Jesus and James is in any case of fundamental importance for the development of the main ideas fo the document. In addition the family, as already mentioned, is placed in a relation to a Jerusalem Temple priest (pp. 44 and 61; cf. the priest from the Rechabites in Hegesippus, Euseb. H.E. II 23.17).
Charles W. Hedrick writes (op. cit., p. 269):
The tractate contains at least four sections artistically arranged. Because of their balance and stylized form they have been described as "harmonic prose" possessing a "hymnic" quality. Three of these units are aretalogies. One (49,5-15) is a series of self-assertions by the resurrected Jesus in the "I am" style. Another (58,2-20) is a series of predications about the resurrected Jesus made by James in the third person (i.e., "he is"). In a further aretalogy (55,15-56,13) the resurrected Jesus describes James' special role in the second person (i.e., "you are"). The entire description in the third aretalogy suggests that James is intended to perform the function of gnostic redeemer.
The fourth and final unit is the prayer of James, set shortly before his martyrdom.
Go to the Chronological List of all Early Christian Writings
Please buy the CD to support the site, view it without ads, and get bonus stuff! | <urn:uuid:58d1fa0b-6659-45a4-a979-2f3baae57bb5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/apocalypsejames2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954994 | 1,218 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Bridging the knowledge gap in this challenging disease state requires a concerted effort from the healthcare community.
Research involving NETs is ongoing
Currently, there are over 1,000 trials in various stages of activity registered with the U.S. National Institutes of Health1
- One example of topics being explored is the influence of various pathways on gene transcription and cell cycle progression 2
Basic and clinical medical research continue to improve our understanding of the biology and clinical behavior of NETs.2,3 While much work remains to be done, it is likely that the appearance and growth of NETs involve a series of genetic alterations leading to the activation of oncogenes, and/or inactivation of tumor suppressor genes, and the resultant failure of apoptosis.3
The cellular proteins and receptors that may be implicated in these processes include vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptors (VEGFR1-3), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), insulin growth factor-I receptor (IGF-IR), and the phosphoinositol-3-kinase (PI3K)–phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted (PTEN)–AKT–mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway.2
A related area of interest is in building regional and national databases and tissue banks to identify molecular prognostic factors for NETs. This information may help us better understand the natural history of NETs and identify high-risk patients.3,4
A need for new biomarkers
Another key research focus is on the identification and validation of new NET biomarkers.
A number of biomarkers currently are used in the diagnosis and management of NETs. These include general tumor markers, such as CgA and neuron-specific enolase (NSE), and specific tests for measuring hormones. Although these biomarkers are useful, they all have limitations and their results should be supplemented with imaging and/or endoscopic techniques and biopsy.5,6 Some biomarkers are not sensitive or specific enough to provide clinically useful diagnostic and prognostic information.7 Others appear promising but have not yet been validated in large clinical trials.8
Overall, new biomarkers are needed that can more reliably and cost-effectively be used to screen populations at risk for developing NETs, and assess the potential aggressiveness of a patient's tumor.8,9 | <urn:uuid:40ee30a2-0a32-4e31-aab1-f25a1435ec28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neuroendocrinetumor.com/health-care-professional/tumor-biology.jsp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910267 | 492 | 2.5 | 2 |
When you’re first starting out at internet marketing, you should know that you need to steer clear of certain mistakes. Keep reading to find some easy to miss mistakes that are essential to finding success.
Missteps and blunders are common when starting a new business, however choosing not to create your own email list can cost you your new Internet marketing business. When suggesting that new Internet marketers develop their own contact list, most successful marketers will also stress the importance of it. They suggest this so that you are no longer focused on short term goals, but instead create a sustainable online business. Your contact list should include those who will respond positively, creating for you a valuable asset for your business. You will find more success with creating a list of contacts from visitors to your site and building a relationship with them, than with a “rent a list” program which is more miss than hits! It is simple to create your own list by finding a good auto responder and target the traffic on your landing page. The more contacts you gather the more you can weed out the negative responses and focus on those truly interested in what you offer. To make this possible you will need to stay in touch with subscribers, by sending them valuable information that they can use. On top of this, your list can be even more profitable with existing customers. Your existing customers are more likely to buy from you again, so be sure to send them stuff they will find convincing. You can bet that the best way to ensure round the clock profits is by creating your own email list profits.
Another blunder commonly made by internet marketers is not putting in the work to highlight themselves amongst all the other internet marketers competing against them. When you market on the internet, you should focus on creating a unique selling point because you’re going to be up against many other marketers. The unique selling point might be a cheaper cost on your product, but you should think creatively. Another way to beat the competition at their own game is to give away high quality bonuses along with the product you’re selling, so that you’re easily able to stand out of the competition.
It’s essential to refrain from the mistake of not doing the proper research when it comes to keywords for campaigns that have to do with SEO or PPC. Having good keyword research skills is really important if you really want to get something out of your business. You may discover that there are aspects to internet marketing where keyword research isn’t necessary, but you will find that keyword research is needed if you want to get lots of targeted visitors and to market your products in the right manner.
This may be confusing at the start, but you’ll see it gets more clear as you progress.
Many consider internet marketing as a scam. In all actuality, it’s merely about offering products online.
Filed under: Internet Marketing
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more! | <urn:uuid:b10fcc3c-2831-4568-8d9c-f3039cc698c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.exitplansprofits.com/costly-mistakes-to-be-aware-of-when-developing-your-internet-marketing-strategy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952199 | 605 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Given the maturation of the IT outsourcing market and the introduction of more standardised offerings like cloud computing, you might assume that negotiating IT service deals is getting easier.
Not according to the lawyers hammering out the agreements.
KPMG reports that 41 percent of outsourcing attorneys surveyed for its 2012 Legal Pulse report indicated that complexity in contracting for outsourced servicesÂ?as evidenced in things like service levels, contract structure, pricing models, use of global sourcing ?has actually been increasing. (The survey included outsourcing attorneys at 31 law firms.)
Sure, buyers and suppliers are more experienced and new out-of-the-box services are gaining traction. But that may be increasing complications in contracting. More sophisticated buyers are seeking higher-value benefits from outsourcing, globalisation is increasing, and business leaders are sending more complex functional and process work out the door.
"As buyers gain more experience they continue to push the envelope in terms of scope, complexity of work outsourced, number and diversity of service providers utilized, geographical scope and mix of service delivery models. Complexity comes with the territory," says Stan LePeak, KPMG's director of research for advisory services. "So while the outsourcing market is maturing, it is not necessarily getting simpler, easier, or safer."
Address IT complexity upfront
A complex contract, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It can result in greater benefits for the outsourcing customer or may better address issues of pricing, performance and risk "Problems arise when complexity is not adequately addressed, recognized or accounted for upfront and in the ongoing management of the outsourcing efforts," LePeak says.
The key is to make sure that the level of complexity in the legal documents is commensurate with the nature and goals of the outsourcing arrangement and not just the result of a once-burned buyer or overzealous counsel.
Typically, as services markets mature, best practices in contracting tend to cement themselves in the way of standardised pricing, performance assurance and "?particularly" ?defined terms. However, 27 percent of the attorneys polled reported little or no standardisation in defined terms, which LePeak says also points to the fact that while outsourcing is maturing, it's also been expanding into uncharted territory in terms of scope, objectives, and geography.
The survey asked about the most contentious issue in outsourcing negotiations. The most challenging contractual terms to reach agreement on were limitation of liability, indemnities, step-in rights, pre-defined direct damages, and supplier financial risk - ?all of which involve potential financial exposure to supplier or client. The most challenging commercial terms to come to consensus on were termination fees, termination rights, service levels, transformation and transition feesÂ?all of which involve service provider risk.
Arguments over terms related to transformation rated 17 percent higher than last year as more buyers are attempting to include transformation goals in their outsourcing engagements. "Transformation involves building into the contract terms, conditions, or measures for process transformation or for innovation or other nebulous but value-laden keywords," says LePeak. "The challenge is translating a somewhat conceptual idea like transformation into contracted terms and conditions and factoring in all the events and conditions that could impact transformation being achieved or not."
IBM, Accenture and HP play hardball
The toughest negotiators by far continue to be the traditional global outsourcers like IBM, Accenture and HP, according to the attorneys surveyed. Contracting with India-based service providers such Infosys, TCS and Wipro tended to be a less complex, contentious and lengthy process, according to the KPMG Research, while the easiest to deal with were regional or niche suppliers.
"Some of the legacy firms just have more and more aggressive lawyers, and there are also situational variances and exceptions across all classes," says LePeak. "But as some respondents noted, legacy firms negotiate harder but remain professional and are less likely to come back later with requested changes and some Indian firms were easier to deal with but would come back later with requested changes or would not negotiate as solid a contract as is possible. So some of it is style and some of it is substance."
And like complexity, a little back and forth during negotiations can actually be a good thing if it leads to a better or more equitable deal. "Were one side to roll over in negotiating, or if contentious points were ignored or not resolved before the deal is signed, it would be worse," LePeak says.
"Ultimately you want the best deal and contract and one that has no holes, meets both sides' needs and reflects the spirit of the effort, and sometime it's harder and more contentious to get to that point," LePeak says. "The key is that when all is said and done both sides are satisfied with the deal, and any contentiousness was not so bad that they can't stand each other and can't possibly work together going forward. | <urn:uuid:ba355fc8-6e12-4cf6-80ab-da6ce5c307e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.computerworlduk.com/in-depth/outsourcing/3354794/outsourcing-contracts-and-negotiations-is-getting-more-complex/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967226 | 1,007 | 1.5 | 2 |
All of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in Kindergarten. Wisdom is not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
These are the things I learned…
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Give them to someone who feels sad.
Live a balanced life.
Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day.
Take a nap every afternoon.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
by Robert Fulgham | <urn:uuid:ba8e04ff-9b7a-4c48-b61f-6695c1223b37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mtpedron.tumblr.com/post/18105810798/all-i-ever-really-needed-to-know-i-learned-in | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945248 | 257 | 1.945313 | 2 |
It all started with a single apple tree.
Years ago, Grovetown resident Jim Mayfield planted one apple tree. Now he has the pleasure of picking from a variety of 32 apple trees and six crabapple trees.
"They are just getting to a fruit-bearing age, but I don't have quite enough to sell," Mayfield said.
Over the years, Mayfield has learned that in order to get any apples at all, it's critical to plant them in the right combination.
"Most apple trees have to have a pollinator," he explained. "For example, I planted a Lordi variety along with an Arkansas Black. The Lordi serves as the pollinator.
"Most people don't know that apple trees need pollinators," he said. "So, if you plant one without it, you'll have a nice tree, but no fruit."
Mayfield says this was all new to him at first, but "I sat down and did some research and I'm on the right track now."
Satisfied with the bounty of his apple trees, Mayfield branched out into a different family of fruit-bearing trees, plums.
"I absolutely love plums," he said. "I have a couple of Santa Rosa variety, and I've had wonderful success with them."
While it's quite common to enjoy them straight from the tree, Mayfield said plums are good for other things, too.
"I make preserves and jellies with my plums," he said. "And, of course, if you don't do anything to them, you've got prunes."
Mayfield says he thought long and hard about planting peach trees but didn't.
"Well, I have a friend in South Carolina who grows plenty of them, and I get them for free, so I changed my mind about growing too many of those," he said.
But he did plant two. "I have a Georgia Belle and Red Haven," he said.
Of all his trees, Mayfield says his persimmons are among his favorite.
"I grow a Japanese variety called Fuyu," he said. "They bear heavy and are about the size of an apple. They have very few seeds and are just delicious."
Much like his plums, Mayfield enjoys doing something a little different with his persimmons.
"I make pies with them," he said. "People always ask me for the recipe, thinking it's an apple pie. When I tell them I use persimmons, they can hardly believe it."
Mayfield says growing trees doesn't require that much space. "Even the smallest of yards can have one plum tree or a couple of apple trees," he said.
Just be ready to do a little work.
"Fruit trees aren't the easiest thing to grow," he said. "They have to be sprayed on a strict regime and some require quite a bit of husbandry."
But Mayfield says growing fruit trees is just like anything else for a homeowner: "If you really want to do it, you can. It's not an impossible thing to do."
The Columbia County News-Times ©2013. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:deb8af11-fc97-4603-97e8-2c11583bb1c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2007/07/22/new_136568.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988902 | 664 | 2.015625 | 2 |
When your child's birthdate barely meets the cutoff for starting kindergarten, you may wonder whether it's better to enroll them, or wait a year. Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. You'll have to weigh the evidence, based on your child's personality. To be eligible for kindergarten, a child must turn five by a certain date. This date could be April 1st, before the fall term; or, it might be after the term starts, such as October 31st, December 1st, or January 1st. Studies suggest that when fall or winter cutoff dates are used, a percentage of children will not be developmentally ready to start school, though their age allows them to do so. This is especially true for boys. Compounding the problem is the fact that many of today's kindergartens are simply an earlier version of first grade. Experts say this creates unrealistic expectations for children of that age. They also claim that children who are youngest in their class tend to have a more difficult time academically. Still others say such differences usually disappear by third grade. The final decision depends on you and your child. Consider how advanced they are for their age, and if there'll be other children in the class with birthdays near theirs. | <urn:uuid:c642d27b-0928-4a90-aea5-023600f6bede> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mytvwichita.com/guides/parenting/kindergarten/story/Starting-kindergarten-early/0GkPhmb7mE2yClx42ia-ww.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976149 | 252 | 3 | 3 |
Creation… the fall of man… God’s relationship with his people… the birth of Christ… his resurrection.
A fresh new telling of an old, old story – from the perspective of the angels.
In The Beginning, God creates the heavens… and the visible realm, including the earth and everything in it. The crowning glory of creation is man and woman, who live and move in both the visible world and the spiritual world, ruling creation in full fellowship with their Creator.
Until… until the Garden is invaded by the succulent, deadly Tree of Knowledge and the allures of the fallen Angel of Light… until the unthinkable is done… until the bodies of Adam and Eve shrivel and are blinded to the heavenlies… and the Door between heaven and earth is closed.
The Beginning is the first of a five-book series entitled “The Chronicles of Heaven” (The Beginning, The Escape, The Birth, The Triumph, The Return.)
God’s voice breaks into Abram’s consciousness. The livestock farmer responds with faith, following God’s direction to an unknown land.
Meanwhile, in the heavenlies, the angels eagerly watch as God promises to make the childless Abram into Abraham, the father of a great nation – a people through whom God will fulfill his purpose in creation.
Abraham . . . Isaac . . . Jacob and Esau . . . Joseph and his brothers . . . a famine that forces the clan’s move to Egypt, where they suffer in slavery . . . the unglamorous rise of the great leader Moses.
Finally the stage is set for some of the greatest events in human history: the escape of the Israelite people from Egypt, their miraculous survival in the desert, and their arrival at the land they would call their own.
In The Escape, you can experience the drama in a new way by watching the events from two perspectives: that of the earthly participants and that of the angels in the glorious heavenly realm. At those times when the door opens to join heaven and earth, you will understand with new insight the mysteries of God at work in his creation.
The Escape is the second book in a five-book series entitled “The Chronicles of Heaven.” (The Beginning, The Escape, The Birth, The Triumph, The Return.)
A Tale Of Three Kings
The story of the life of David. This is the largest selling book Gene has written. It has been translated into many languages. A TALE OF THREE KINGS has brought encouragement, healing and transformation to hundreds of thousands of believers. By all means, we recommend that you read this story of brokenness. | <urn:uuid:17e3e4df-4d70-4006-9a21-177d2785f781> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geneedwards.com/?page_id=132 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928757 | 551 | 1.734375 | 2 |
LoC killings: Is a third-party probe the way ahead?
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of Thomson Reuters)
The death toll on the Line of Control in Kashmir is four since Jan. 6: two from India’s military, two from Pakistan’s. One thing is sure: neither side started it, judging by what you hear from both countries’ armed forces and from media reports.
The killings threaten to muffle talk of a thaw in relations, something that would have been welcome after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and years of fighting and death in Kashmir before a 2003 ceasefire.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it was prepared for an investigation by a U.N. military observer group. India’s foreign minister Salman Khurshid suggested that the situation could be contained. So why not submit to an independent probe?
The peace process has been steady lately; incidents like these — especially when only one party could be right, yet both insist the other is wrong, should be avoided. It would be a shame of the most ironic proportions to start a war over a runaway granny.
D. Suba Chandran, the director of Delhi-based think tank Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, agrees.
“It’s up to India and Pakistan to address how serious they are. But I’m quite positive this will not and this should not become a major issue at the Indo-Pak level. It should be an issue at the cross LoC level and should be settled at the LoC level.”
A similar view comes from across the border.
“It is more important to keep it going than to move fast. It is because the process has been interrupted so often that it is so tenuous,” said Beena Sarwar, editor of the Aman ki Asha (Hope for Peace) initiative.
It is a shame that you can’t seem to get a reliable report on what happened. Stories of an Indian soldier’s body being mutilated provoked anger in Indian media. On the Newshour show, Times Now Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami repeatedly asked panellists from Pakistan to admit that the mutilators were “cowards”. The channel’s consultant strategic affairs expert Maroof Raza told the Pakistani guests to “shut up”. On Headlines Today, a TV show aired with a banner which read: “Teach Pakistan a lesson“.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, blogger Ali Ahmed criticised Indian media, and seemed to suggest that, just like at the Line of Control, the Pakistani media wouldn’t be able to restrain itself from hitting back.
“The irresponsible and sensationalist stances taken by the Indian media can thus push their counterparts in Pakistan into a very uneasy corner. Already there is valid criticism on the media for not presenting Pakistan’s case as well, and as forcefully, as it should have. Parts of the media have in response taken sterner lines.”
Geo TV in Pakistan appears to be doing its own version of supporting the home team. A video about the death of soldier Muhammad Aslam carries the headline: “Indian aggression on LoC: Pakistan army soldier martyred.” The video features shots of his distraught mother crying for her son, as well as sad music to make viewers understand that this is a sad story.
There is plenty of speculation about India’s motives, such as a government or military attempt to divert attention from the Delhi rape case. (Here is one example which we spotted on Twitter today: Could this renewed LOC crossfire by #India, a ruse to make people take their focus off the Delhi rape case? Seems quite likely. #Pakistan). On Pakistan’s motives, Headlines Today’s Rahul Kanwal said on his show, “The Pakistani army wants to show the nation why it is important. It is escalating tensions as part of a deliberate, calibrated strategy.”
In a conversation that I had with Smruti S. Pattanaik, a research fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, she said that, “[S]ince there is a divergence between what the civilian government thinks and what the Pakistani army thinks, it is inevitable that India has to live with … at one hand the peace process and on the other hand this problem on the border.”
If that is the case, why wouldn’t India want a third party to investigate the incident? If Pakistan and India must live with a problem on the border, wouldn’t this be the best way to help make it go away?
(Follow Sankalp on Twitter @sankalp_sp) | <urn:uuid:3b40f18f-6006-40df-b6f3-7b64d1ee0dad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2013/01/11/loc-gunfights-is-a-third-party-probe-the-way-ahead/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959702 | 999 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The presence of another weapon only increases the likelihood of more deaths in these situations. The 22 year old could have easily became one of the targets. Based upon the stories - he was out-gunned. It isn't too difficult to imagine the consequences if the police or security came upon a 'second' shooter.
It doesn't make me comfortable to know that there are people carrying guns in the Mall, or any mall. Arguably there is not much difference between the 'bad' mall shooter and the 'good' mall (potential) shooter. The existence of a 'permit' doesn't prevent wrongful firearm use. The requirements for a concealed weapons permit isn't that stringent.
The apparent mental illness that triggers these mass attacks is not obvious. According to a July, 2012 Psychology Today article Mass Murders Are On The Rise "[s]evere mental illness in and of itself was not a predictor." And "the mass murderer is typically a white male, a loner, has a college degree or some college, from a relatively stable background and from an upper-middle to middle class family."
[See this story published after this post: Sandy Hook: Police say shooter forced his way into school. The shooter falls well within the profile above - "the mass murderer is typically a white male, a loner, has a college degree or some college, from a relatively stable background and from an upper-middle to middle class family."]
Thus given what is known about the mass shooters, it is not likely that meaningful legislation can be devised to prevent mass shootings. And having that discussion post a mass shooting is irrational - because the causal connection between the shooter and the event is undetectable and, therefore, unpreventable.
That is not to say that efforts shouldn't be made to reduce the amount of weapons available to the public under the guise of constitutional rights. One doesn't need to have a mass shooting to be a catalyst for discussion about the availability of weapons in our society. Adults, and children too, are being killed daily by guns. That availability is difficult, if not impossible, to justify in a civilized society.
The vast majority of people go about their daily lives without the need for a gun. But I can see the desire of many to fire those types of weapons and even to collect them. These people are not the shooters that we need to worry about. But, surely there are legal means to reduce the availability of firearms while accommodating those who find it entertaining to fire or collect firearms?
Maybe a place to start is to have that rational discussion about preventing the death of children from firearms. The statistics are alarming. According to the Center for Disease Control "in the latest reported year, 153 Canadian children were killed by guns while France had only 109 children killed. In Japan, the number was zero. The United States had 5,285 childhood gun deaths that same year." [Thousands of children are killed by guns in the U.S]. See too a 2012 Chicagoist article More Illinois Children Die From Firearms Than From Car Crashes.
Surely failure to protect children from firearm deaths cannot be justified by protecting constitutional rights of adults? | <urn:uuid:b75aa864-29ad-4a51-bf87-f5f19caf185c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oldtownperspective.blogspot.com/2012/12/part-of-problem-not-part-of-solution.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967197 | 643 | 1.796875 | 2 |
I've just been sent a fun paper by Harvard mathematician Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan on the physics of flying carpets. It's published
in a recent edition of the physics journal Physical Review Letters
It addresses this question: "From a physical perspective ... [is] a flying carpet possible and, if so, under which conditions might it operate?" The answer turns out to be a tentative yes, carpets can fly, if vibrated appropriately.
Mahadevan and colleagues begin by point out that manta rays and dropped pieces of transparency are both flat sheets that 'fly' in one way or another. They start their science more simply, though, performing their calculations for a 2D carpet frantically rippling with waves along its length as it tries to stay aloft in a fluid.
After working out the fundamental laws that govern how those waves affect the way it interacts with the fluid around it, the physicists plug in some real numbers.
They work out that a 10cm long carpet 0.1 millimetres thick would have to vibrate with 0.25 millimetre high waves 10 times a second to stay aloft in air and fly horizontally at 0.3 metres per second.
That, they say, is "within the realm of possibilities in nature and in technology." But there is some bad news too:
"Making a heavy carpet fly would of course require a much more powerful engine, and our computations and scaling laws suggest it will remain in the magical, mystical, and virtual realm as it has existed for millennia."
They throw a final bone to magic carpet fans, though, noting that it is much easier to fly them underwater where the density of water offers more support.
The closest thing to such an underwater flying carpet today is probably this robotic manta ray
.Tom Simonite, online technology reporter
Labels: physics, robots | <urn:uuid:529661d3-483c-4f49-ab20-bf47bd6a8c80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2007/12/physics-of-flying-carpets.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938085 | 383 | 2.5625 | 3 |
A while ago I was gathering feedback on different tech comm deliverables. I asked a user if she preferred videos or written material when learning software. I thought she would immediately say “videos,” but it was a toss up for her. In her mind, videos involved long stretches of narration that included sitting passively at her computer, waiting for the narrator to get to her question but never really getting there.
A lot of people feel the same way about videos. In a recent post, Kristi Leach explains an attitude she once held about instructional videos:
I rarely appreciate video instructions, either–they take too long, because I’m pausing, following the step, playing, pausing again. I was having trouble imagining how videos were going to improve our help systems or fit into our schedules.
For Kristi, prior to her turnaround screencast moment, videos seemed to take too long and were difficult to follow along with in a step-by-step way.
When you write a script for a video (or when you create a general outline), you can avoid the problem of the eternal video — which I refer to as a sense of rambling — by simply keeping the video short. Don’t try to cover too much ground. You can generally speak about 100 words a minute, so keep that in mind with your script. 200 words is a good length.
If you don’t believe me, when you watch videos, look at the video’s time counter and note when you start losing your attention. My patience times out at about three minutes. So I always try to keep my videos at three minutes or less.
Guidelines for video length are somewhat controversial. Part of the problem is that video content varies dramatically. If you’re watching an episode on Hulu.com, that’s different from a humorous clip on youtube, which is also different from an instructional video about a software application.
Brooks Andrus says we should consider Twitter a model for brevity when creating videos. He explains:
… most [users] don’t have the tools or narrative capabilities to hold the attention of an audience for any real span of time. This is especially true in the screencasting realm which is why I’d like to propose the notion of TweetCasts–120 seconds or less of webcam or screen video. That’s all the time you get to make your point. If you need more time, break your content into chunks, give viewers a rest between segments and try engaging them through a different medium.
I agree with Brooks. As informal video producers, we don’t have the time to implement mesmerizing Hollywood cinematic techniques to keep our audience’s attention. It’s better to break long segments up into little chunks. It might be good to actually keep videos at 120 seconds, as Brooks recommends. Although sometimes you need up to three or four minutes to actually explain a feature, there’s no reason you can’t have several videos about the same feature.
Look at how Lynda.com approaches their videos. The following is a breakdown of videos about PowerPoint.
This approach allows the user to skip to the part he or she wants to know. For example, in the above list of videos, I viewed only the videos with the eye icon next to them. Because the videos were chunked into small units, I could skip the video content I didn’t want to sit through. Small chunks give the user control and avoid the problem of never-ending rambling that I explained earlier.
Advantages to Short Videos
Aside from maintaining the user’s attention, keeping your videos short has several other advantages:
No worries about load time. A three-minute video rarely results in a file size of more than 10 MB. In contrast, with a 10 minute video, it could easily be 30 MB, which creates more problems when you deliver it. With large file sizes, you have to consider how to optimize the video. Do you reduce the visual and audio clarity? Do you force users to wait for it to load? Do you resort to streaming options? You don’t have to worry about file sizes and load time when your video is short.
You make fewer mistakes creating it. When you record a video, if you only have two minutes, you’re less likely to make mistakes than with longer videos. If the script is short, you can more quickly rehearse and practice the steps so you know what you’re going to say, what you’re going to click, and you can make sure all the glitches are out before recording. In contrast, with a 10 minute video, you set yourself up for numerous mistakes in both narration and demonstration.
Post-production is easier too. If you have a short video, it’s a lot easier to edit in post-production than a long video. With a long video, you may end up with multiple video segments on your timeline, with several audio tracks, each at specific points on the timeline. Editing an eight or ten minute video can be a nightmare in video choreography. Sliding over audio in one section can produce gaps in another section, and so on. It’s just a lot easier if the video is short.
No need for a TOC pane. If you have a long video, you usually need to add a table of contents so the user can see what you’re covering and when. But adding a TOC pane takes up precious screen real estate that usually you don’t have. If you record your videos at 1024 x 768, adding a 175px TOC pane on the left increases your video’s size to about 1200px, in addition to whatever space the browser frame takes up. You usually can’t assume your viewers will have that much screen real estate. If you shrink your videos, you often end up with fuzzy displays. In contrast, short videos don’t need a TOC because the purpose of the video is focused.
Active learning increases. If your video is short, you increase the sense of active learning that takes place. By active learning I mean you give users control to make decisions, to click to the video they want to see. This keeps the users more engaged. In contrast, if you force users to sit for extended periods of time in a passive state of mind, without allowing them to choose their own adventure, their minds turn numb. To keep their attention in a long video, you have to resort to all kinds of interactive strategies or cinematic techniques so they don’t fall asleep. Quizzes, branching, let-me-try situations, bending window panes that fly in and out, dynamic illustrations and diagrams — these are all good, but if you don’t have time to implement them, keeping your videos short decreases the need for these tactics.
It can be hard to keep the video short, because sometimes we feel we have to tackle an entire component in one go. But it’s not hard to break a video up into multiple subvideos about the same topic. And what viewer wouldn’t rather click on several two-minute videos than sit through a ten-minute video with an eternally rambling narrator? | <urn:uuid:f7d6461e-7688-497e-ab0e-849acdd1e8d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://idratherbewriting.com/2010/03/09/3-avoiding-a-sense-of-rambling-developing-a-personal-voice-in-audio-series/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936408 | 1,503 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Animal Rights Articles
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Celebrating Coretta, Who Celebrated Nonviolence - and Stopped Eating Animals
By Stephanie Ernst
This is the day when we annually celebrate the life, spirit, contributions, and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. But I'm not going to write about MLK today. I'm going to write, just briefly, about Coretta. Those opposed to the idea of animal rights, those who consider the fight for animal rights to be distinct from and lesser than other social justice movements, and--most clearly--those who consider veganism extreme could learn something from Coretta Scott King.
For more than the last decade of her extraordinary, compassionate, and passionate life, Coretta Scott King was a vegan. Really. Not an "extremist," not a "fanatic," not a "one-note," "single-issue" zealot - just a vegan.
In addition to fighting against racial injustices, Coretta Scott King fought openly and loudly for LGBT rights. She opposed war and violence and championed peace. And for the last 15 years of her life, she improved her own health and life and saved hundreds of animals' lives by refusing to eat their bodies or what came from their bodies.
On her health, she said in Ebony in 2003, "I feel blessed that I was introduced to this lifestyle more than 12 years ago by Dexter. I prefer to eat mostly raw or 'living' foods. The benefits for me are increased energy, a slowing of the aging process, and I have none of the diseases like hypertension, heart disease and diabetes that many people my age seem to get." And Coretta and Martin Luther King's son Dexter, also a vegan and, as noted, the one who introduced his mother to the lifestyle, considers veg*nism the "logical extension" of his father's philosophy of nonviolence, reported Vegetarian Times in 1995 in the write-up of the magazine's interview with him.
Every time someone remarks or implies that vegans are nothing but animal rights "fanatics" or health-obsessed neurotics who care about nothing else, who are vegans to the exclusion of caring about or fighting against any other injustices, one of the many people who comes to mind as proving this wrong is Coretta Scott King. So today I remember and honor not only Martin Luther King Jr. but Coretta Scott King as well. If I must be an extremist or a fanatic simply because I am a vegan, then I am at least happy with the company.
Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?"
Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?"
Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?"
But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?"
And there comes a point when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
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Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org. | <urn:uuid:3f0967bf-b5d7-4b0b-8c6e-35fbbe192417> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.all-creatures.org/articles/ar-celebrating.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935941 | 988 | 2.1875 | 2 |
I just asked for a package for Rarig yesterday and Scoundrel already had to act twice at that thread. I'll try here to make it a productive post, that can be used by all.
I recently had to create a website for a girl-friend of mine, who is an artist and also has to learn almost everything about using a computer without sending her files accidently in the trash can.
So I asked her to bring her directories with the pictures of the frames she had painted, to create the galleries. I wouldn't use anything else than a command line with convert do change the 3 and 4 MB wide pictures into something that can fit in the galleries, of course, but later she will have to manage by herself. What can I do ? Teach here how to use Irfanview ? (win32 app). Teach here how to use ConversionMagick ? (win32 app too, a gpl gui to Image Magick) I tried that, she didn't understand anything about what things do there, although this one seems quite simple to me. I want to install PCLinuxOS in her machine and make her learn to use it, but I don't know yet if she has enough motivation to learn even the basics.
Anyhow very small app doing little, but right what we need to make pictures small very easily would be a very good idea. This can help under PCLinuxOS for the simple thing most people do at least once a while : send pictures to the family. We have to fancy that many many people just know how to start, shutdown and well, what is the difference between left click and right click ? You can't imagine how many times I have started to explain that to some friends of mine !
This intro is long enough now, the environment has been described.
Install Image Magick and it's depends.
One shell script I use:
for i in `ls *.*`;do convert $i -resize 25% -quality 85 -interlace line modif/$i ; done
#for i in `ls *.*`; do convert $i -rotate 270 alendroit/$i ; done
"modif" stands for modification. The script here after it converts an image to 25% of it's original size retains 85% of it's previous quality, makes it appear progressively (interlace line) and sends the result to the directory "modif".
This is good for batch resizing. 85% offers optimal ratio quality/weight. I have done tests with 80%, 90% and I came back each time to 85%. Sometimes I change 25% to another value, according to the first result I get.
This script is not perfect, as when I start it from the directory where there are images, it tries to convert itself as well, which results each time with an error. If you know how to fix it ?
The second part where it's commented is for eventual pictures not being correctly oriented. the option rotate can take other arguments, such as 90, and 180.
I also often add the "-strip" argument that takes of the exif informations, allowing to reduce the size of the image even more.
Resizing with Gimp : it is difficult to use for this purpose without loosing quality. There is a method, working on the canvas, but it's complicated, I have not succeeded in retaining how to do that the one time I was shown, and it's not ok for several images at same time.
ImageMagick gui : many menus, I use the one "view > resize", once a while when I have only one image to resize. Or I use the command line "convert -resize ... image_origine.png image_destination.png". In this case, you need to provide a name for the new image created.
There is a trick with "crop", I think, so that you can replace the image source by the image modified, but I'm not sure.
Another tool which is very nice to use, for batch resizing is fotoxx. I tried it recently and I found it to do even a better job than the command line ! The images I got from there were a bit smaller in weight that the ones with the Image Magick command lines (convert and options), and the images looked like there even had a nicer look.
For people who are very beginner I was told about and tried Rarig, for which I am requesting a package now:
(New) Rarig - image resizing made easy - http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,88565.0.html
Really easy, although I would have liked one or two more features in a program such as this one, but well, it's very very simple to use.
At the packages suggest thread, Ramchu and pirate state that KIM is enough for their needs : he men ! you're not alone around here, many people including me never use KDE !!! And therefore don't use Dolphin either !
Now I can say it, I'm not in packages request here !
Ok, please if you have more tricks for image resizing, you are welcome to continue the discussion. | <urn:uuid:87eb4d1b-5669-4367-8610-83141a3b7ab3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php?topic=88607.0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967439 | 1,086 | 2.0625 | 2 |
|Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
||New International Version (NIV)
21 And He is changing times and seasons, He is causing kings to pass away, and He is raising up kings; He is giving wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those possessing understanding.
21 He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.
|Young's Literal Translation is in the public domain. (Young's Literal Translation - The Bible Online)
||Scripture quoted by permission. Quotations designated (NIV) are from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica. All rights reserved worldwide. (New International Version Bible Online) | <urn:uuid:a3c88add-2d49-4db3-af21-a4d22877bc59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biblestudytools.com/parallel-bible/passage.aspx?q=daniel+2:21&t=ylt&t2=niv | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911382 | 173 | 1.65625 | 2 |
|This is Part 2 of a three-part series that we began last week.|
he phrase "under the law" occurs at least ten times in Paul's epistles, so we know it is a crucial concept in his theology. In Galatians 3:23, for example, He writes, "Before faith came, we were kept under the law" (Gal. 3:23). Now, however, he says as Christians we are "not under the law" (Gal. 5:18).
I often hear Christians recite the phrase "not under the law, but under grace" as if it meant no standard of law whatsoever is ever binding on believers. Grace is seen as a grand permissiveness, contrasting with the uncompromising moral standard of the law.
One man wrote,
The notion that no law is binding on the Christian is antinomianism. This type of thinking sets grace against law, as if the two were antithetical. It has some dire theological consequences.
It is crucial to understand that in terms of moral standards, grace does not permit what the law prohibits. "Grace" never signifies the lowering of God's moral demands. The word grace in scripture signifies a lot of things, but licentiousness is not one of them. In fact, those who turn the grace of God into promiscuity are expressly condemned as false teachers (Jude 4).
Grace according to Scripture is the undeserved kindness of a sovereign God. More than that, grace means that God mercifully gives us the very opposite of what our sin merits. Grace includes not merely pardon for our sin, but also the power to live a transformed life.
In other words, the grace Scripture describes is a dynamic forcethe sovereign influence of a holy God operating in the lives of undeserving sinners. This is the key to grace: it is God working in us to secure our working for Him (Phil. 2:13). Grace first transforms the heart and thus makes the believer wholly willing to trust and obey. Grace then conveys upon us both the desire and the strength to fulfill God's good pleasure. Far more than mere pardon, grace also is a motive for obedience; it gives us a true love for God; it transforms our lives in every sense. Ultimately grace totally conforms us to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). Even now, grace is doing what the law could not do: it is fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law in us (Rom. 8:3-4).
So the moral standard set by the law does not change under grace. Indeed, it could not; it is a reflection of God's character. But divine grace actually empowers us to fulfill the moral demands of the law in a way that the law alone could never do.
Just what does the apostle Paul mean when he says we are not under law? There are two ways Scripture clearly teaches we are not under law:
We are not under the ceremonial law
Paul's epistle to the Galatians uses the expression "under the law" several times (3:23; 4:4-5, 21; 5:18). Paul wrote this epistle to confront the influence of the Judaizers. They were Jewish legalists who were trying to impose the ceremonies and rituals of the Mosaic law on all Christians. According to the Judaizers, in order to become a true Christian, a Gentile first had to become a Jewish proselyte.
Circumcision and the dietary laws became the test issues. This had been a running dispute in the early church from the very beginning. The earliest church council in Jerusalem had been convened to deal with this very question. According to Acts 15:5, some Pharisees who had converted to Christianity rose up and demanded that Gentiles who joined the church be circumcised and directed to obey the law of Moses. Luke records what happened:
The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, "Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will." (vv. 6-11).
The council saw a heated debate on the question. But led by James, they ultimately came to consensus: "we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but . . . write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood" (vv. 19-20).
This meant that the ceremonial requirements of the Mosaic law were not to be imposed upon the church. Circumcision could not be required of the Gentiles. Strict adherence to the dietary laws was not to be prescribed. But in order not to offend the Jewish brethren, the Gentiles were asked to abstain from the most offensive dietary practices: the eating of meat offered to idols, the eating of strangled animals, and the eating of blood. Even those restrictions were not imposed as binding matters of legal necessity, but were required of the Gentiles only as a matter of charity toward their Jewish brethren.
How do we know that these prohibitions against eating certain things were not meant to be a permanent standard for the church for all time? As Paul wrote to Timothy, nothing is to be viewed as ceremonially unclean if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Tim. 4:4). But these measures were called for by the Jerusalem Council in the primitive church as a matter of charity to the many Jewish believers who saw such practices as inherently pagan. The apostle Paul summed up this principle of freedom and deference in Romans 14:14-15: "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love."
A side note is necessary here with regard to the restriction against "fornication." The biblical prohibitions against fornication are moral, not ceremonial, commandments. So why was it necessary to include a ban on fornication in the Jerusalem Council's instructions? After all, fornication would clearly be deemed morally reprehensible and strictly forbidden under any standard in the early church. And from the beginning the dispute that prompted the Jerusalem Council had to do only with the ceremonial aspects of Moses' law.
The answer lies in an understanding of the pagan religions from which many of these Gentile converts had come. The practice of ceremonial fornication was common. Many of the pagan shrines featured temple prostitutes, with whom acts of fornication were deemed religious experiences. So when they forbid "the things polluted by idols, and . . . sexual immorality," the Council was prohibiting the observance of pagan religious ceremonies. And when they called for abstinence "from what has been strangled, and from blood," they were asking the Gentiles to have respect for the deeply-ingrained scruples of their Jewish brethren, resulting from lifelong obedience to Mosaic ceremonies.
In other words, pagan religious ceremonies were forbidden, and Jewish ceremonies were not made the standard. But charity was enjoined upon all.
It is crucial to see that this Council was explicitly not establishing the Mosaic ceremonial lawor any portion of itas the standard for the church. The New Testament is explicit throughout that the types and ceremonies of the Law are not binding on Christians. The dietary and ceremonial requirements of Moses' law "are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ" (Col. 2:17). The priesthood and Temple worship of the Old Testament economy also "serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things" (Heb. 8:5). Christ is the fulfillment of all that, and He is the Mediator of a New Covenant. To cling to the types and shadows of the Old Covenant is in effect to deny that Christ, the One foreshadowed, is superior. Therefore, the ceremonial aspects of Moses' law have no place whatsoever in the Church.
Why did both Paul and the writer of Hebrews view the Judaizers' doctrine as such a serious error? Because by retreating to the types and shadows of the Old Covenant, these people were guilty of replacing the all-important reality of a living Savior with outmoded symbols that only pointed to Him. Their attachment to those now-barren religious emblems necessarily thrust them into a system of works. To return to the Old Covenant was a de facto rejection of Christ in favor of obsolete types and symbols.
In one of the most unusual encounters between two apostles recorded anywhere in Scripture, Peter and Paul had a very public conflict over the question of obedience to the ceremonial law. Paul describes the confrontation in Galatians 2:11-14:
when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?"
The issue at stake here was no longer the question of charity toward Jewish brethren, but the whole doctrine of justification by faith. Apparently, even after the Jerusalem Council had rendered its decision, the Judaizers nevertheless reverted to demanding circumcision for every Gentile convert. They were actually suggesting that observance of the ceremonial law was essential for justification. And as Paul suggests, Peter, of all people, should have known better, "we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified" (v. 16).
We are not under the law for justification
The centerpiece of New Testament theology is justification by faith. This is the doctrine that makes Christianity distinct. Every other religion in the world teaches some system of human merit. Christianity alone teaches that the merit necessary for our salvation is supplied by God on our behalf.
Justification is defined theologically as that act of God whereby He declares the believing sinner righteous. When God justifies a sinner, he looks at the person and says, I accept that person as completely righteous. It is a divine "not guilty" verdictand more. It elevates the sinner from the condemnation he deserves to a position of divine privilege in Christ.
Justification poses a huge theological problem. Proverbs 17:15 says, "He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord." In other words, God Himself strictly forbids us to declare a guilty person righteous. And God says definitively in Exodus 23:7, "I will not acquit the wicked."
Two obstacles exist with regard to justifying sinners. One is our sin. We accumulate guilt every time we sin, and true justice demands that every sin be punished. To let an evildoer go unpunished is by definition unjust. So God is obligated by His own perfect standard of justice to exact a full penalty for every sin.
The second obstacle to justification is our utter lack of merit. Not only do we accumulate guilt (or demerit) every time we sin, but we also lack the necessary merit. Even if our slate could be completely wiped clean, all we would have would be a blank slate. But in order to be acceptable to God, we are required to have the full merit that comes with perfect obedience His law. Forgiveness for our sin isn't enough. We still need the merit of an absolutely perfect righteousness (Matt. 5:20, 48).
From the human perspective, those would seem to be impossible obstacles to the justification of any sinner. We can certainly understand the disciples' bewilderment when they saw these same difficulties: "Who then can be saved?" (Matt. 19:25).
However, there were people in Paul's day who thought if they could just be as good as they could possibly be, they might earn enough merit to please God. This was the attitude behind the Judaizers' insistence on adhering to the ceremonial laws. They were trying to justify themselves before God through their own works. They were trying to earn their own righteousness. That is the very definition of "self-righteous."
Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was an attack on that kind of thinking. He pointed to the Phariseeslegalists who kept the law more fastidiously than anyone else. By human standards they were as "good" as it is possible to be. But Jesus said their goodness is simply not good enough to earn God's favor: "I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:20).
Jesus was teaching as plainly as possible that God will be pleased with nothing but an absolutely perfect righteousness. He taught that it is not good enough to avoid killing; we must also avoid the sin of hatred (v. 22). He said if you lust in your heart, it is the same as committing adultery (v. 28). He set the standard as high as possible, and then said if you don't have a righteousness that perfect, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And thus He condemned us all.
The apostle James perfectly understood that the law's own perfection destroys any vestige of hope we might have for being justified by law. That's why he wrote, "whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it" (Jas. 2:10).
What are we supposed to conclude? That we cannot be justified by the works of the law. It is utterly impossible. The apostle Paul underscores this same truth again and again:
- Acts 13:39: "You could not be justified by the law of Moses."
- Romans 3:19-20: "Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin."
- Romans 4:15: "The law brings wrath."
- Galatians 3:10: "All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.'"
- Galatians 3:11: "No one is justified before God by the law."
Paul could not state it any more clearly than that. To make the fatal mistake of thinking you can be justified by being good enough to make yourself acceptable to God is to put yourself under the condemnation of the law.
That was the heart of the problem in Galatia. People were teaching that it was necessary to obey the law in order to be justified. In chapter 1 Paul calls this "another gospel," and he pronounces a solemn curse on those who were teaching it.
When Paul spoke of those who were "under the law," he was speaking of people who thought they could be justified by obedience to the law. Two parallel expressions in Galatians make this extremely clear. One is Galatians 4:21: "Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?" (emphasis added). If they had listened to the law itself, they would have heard that it establishes impossible conditions for justification. It condemns those who fail to obey it. For sinners, the law could be a means of condemnation, but never a means of justification. For a sinner to embrace the law as a means of justification is sheer folly. Yet there were those in Galatia who "desire[d] to be under the law" (4:21).
Notice the parallel expression in Galatians 5:4: "You who are seeking to be justified by law" (NASB). Those who were seeking to be "justified by law" in Galatians 5:4 were the same as those who desired to be "under the law" in 4:21.
Therefore, to be "under the law" in Paul's terminology is to be under the law as a means of justification. It is crucial to understand the way the apostle Paul uses this expression. When he says we are not under the law but under grace in Romans 6, he is not discarding the moral teachings of the law. He is not lending credence to any sort of antinomian doctrine. He is not minimizing the sin of disobedience to the moral teachings of the law. He is not disparaging the law itself. In fact, in Romans 7:12, he calls the law "holy and righteous and good"
Paul's consistent teaching with regard to the law is that it can never be a means of justification. And when he says we are "not under law," he means we do not ground our justification in our own personal obedience. We are no longer trying to justify ourselves by obedience to the law. We are justified by grace through faith, not by the works of the law (Gal. 2:16). And therefore we are no longer under the condemnation of the law. | <urn:uuid:a24cdec8-fc79-49bf-864e-3b934a7a24e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2010/06/hoe-does-grace-free-us-from-law.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97458 | 3,783 | 2.5 | 2 |
Finally available in a popularly priced, non-illustrated, smaller-format edition, which is ideal for the college market and general reader alike, this extraordinary best-seller is a brilliant evocation of the noted scholar's teachings on mythology.
Among his many gifts, Joseph Campbell's most impressive was the unique ability to take a contemporary situation, such as the murder and funeral of President John F. Kennedy, and help us understand its impact in the context of ancient mythology. Herein lies the power of The Power of Myth, showing how humans are apt to create and live out the themes of mythology. Based on a six-part PBS television series hosted by Bill Moyers, this classic is especially compelling because of its engaging question-and-answer format, creating an easy, conversational approach to complicated and esoteric topics. For example, when discussing the mythology of heroes, Campbell and Moyers smoothly segue from the Sumerian sky goddess Inanna to Star Wars' mercenary-turned-hero, Han Solo. Most impressive is Campbell's encyclopedic knowledge of myths, demonstrated in his ability to recall the details and archetypes of almost any story, from any point and history, and translate it into a lesson for spiritual living in the here and now. --Gail Hudson | <urn:uuid:f25b0b70-504f-468b-b050-a8babd712b56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanpoems.com/store/1052-1000-0385418868-The_Power_of_Myth.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927496 | 260 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Irving Feldman was born in Brooklyn in 1928. He was educated at the City College of New York and at Columbia University. He has taught for many years and is currently Distinguished Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Feldman’s collections of poetry include Beautiful False Things; The Life and Letters; All of Us Here, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; New and Selected Poems; Leaping Clear and The Pripet Marshes, both National Book Award finalists; and Works and Days, winner of the Jewish Book Council’s Kovner Poetry Prize. Feldman has received awards... Read More
Format: Hardcover, 464 pages
Publisher: Schocken On Sale: October 19, 2004 Price: $28.50
Irving Feldman is a master chronicler of our collective experience and an overlooked treasure of American poetry. Feldman’s rich body of work exhibits his mastery of language from the biblical to the conversational, his Yiddish flair for the comic, his profound social insight and lucidity. He writes about everything from the...
Read more > | <urn:uuid:af2cb8da-6133-44c2-b98e-0904f12ba752> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/catalog/author.pperl?authorid=58039 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964803 | 229 | 1.703125 | 2 |
“False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.”
Jean de la Bruyere
Recently, Andy Davis wrote Pastorally Speaking: Andy Davis on “Gossip amd Slander: Poison in the Lifeblood of the Church on the Between The Times blog here.
Here is an excerpt:
“So, if you feel that someone has sinned and the sin needs addressing, follow Matthew 18 rather than the promptings of the flesh or the devil. Go to that person directly and with humility work it out. Galatians 6:1 speaks of doing it with humility and gentleness. Jesus said in Matthew 7 we are to take the plank out of our eye and then we can see clearly to remove the speck from our brother’s eye.”
Then, he adds a zinger:
“One final word. The issue of gossip and slander is especially poisonous when it is directed against the elders of a church.”
I believe that Davis inadvertently showied us his true colors. In today’s churches, particularly in Calvinista circles, we see that church leadership appears to dividethe church into two groups: the “important” and must be protected crowd (pastors and leaders) and the rest of the congregation.
However, I might be able to make the case that Davis engaged in similar behavior himself. Do leaders get in trouble? TWW wrote an article on Davis and his church on 12/8/11 titled: Andy Davis is Biblical; I’m Not link.
You can read this posts directed at Davis who recounted his history “reforming” First Baptist Church, Durham. I happened to know one of the couples he discussed in this post and became incensed how those who disagreed with Davis were portrayed. Here is what he said about those who disagreed with him.
“During this time, the ministry of the Word of God was having a powerful and divisive effect on the church. The genuine saints were being deeply challenged and were growing and flourishing, while the nominal, unregenerate church members were becoming openly hostile.” (Said couple had given years of service to that church, btw).
As readers can see, it appears that it is hunky dory for Davis to judge the state of the souls of the dissidents and call them names (hmm-gossip? and slander? because I, along with others, knew to whom he was referring?) but he implies that it is not alright for the dissidents to use language towards those who are pastors/elders. By the way, some of these folks had been in church leadership but I guess being a pastor trumps being a lowly leader. Then he gets to write an authoritative post on gossip and slander? Takes one to know one, I guess.
Why bring this up? I think this sort of attitude is helpful in understanding the state of leadership in today’s churches and how that may have affected the Tom Rich situation.
Pastors and elders can gossip and “slander” as much as the next guy.
Then they cry foul when the rest of the world joins in. Matt Chandler called a man a “narcissistic zero" in a public setting. Driscoll called British Christians “cowards” in a public setting. Davis called some people "unregenerate" (which I believe is a horrible epithet. I thought only God could judge a man’s soul) on a public blog. Mac Brunson called Tom Rich a sociopath in the local newspaper.
So why do they get a pass? Oh yeah, that’s right, sometimes they don’t thanks to bloggers like Tom Rich. Wade Burleson wrote a great post on ths matter here.
"Last Friday First Baptist Church, Jacksonville settled the defamation lawsuit that came as a result of Tom Rich being publicly identified as "a sociopath" by their pastor. Last Sunday, Rev. Brunson read a statement of apology to his churc):
"In April of 2009, I was quoted in a Times-Union article regarding an Internet blog which concerned this church. The article stated that I had labeled the author of the blog "obsessive compulsive" and a "sociopath." I did use those words and those conditions to describe Mr. Tom Rich, the author of the blog. These are serious and debilitating conditions. These statements have resulted in protracted litigation for myself and this church. Mr. Rich and his family were longtime members of this church. Mr. Rich is not obsessive compulsive and is not a sociopath. I regret making those statements. I want to apologize to Mr. Rich and his family. I also want to apologize to you and the church.
Sometimes the world makes stubborn pastors and elders do the right thing.
No church is above the law, no matter how much they quote Matthew 18.Wade pointed out that as recently as February 18, 2012, Brunson refused to apologize for his statements. Let me assure you, Tom Rich would have stopped the litigation a couple of years ago if only Brunson had apologized to him. Brunson refused to do so. Think of all the years wasted and all the money spent by Brunson (or the church-I don’t know) in pursuing this matter. What a waste!
The world is watching so don’t try to hide behind the church doors.
Christian are naïve if they think keeping an event “quiet” will help the cause of Christ. In fact, the watching world is more appalled when the church clumsily tries to hide a problem. Those outside the church want to see Christians handle our foibles honestly, not deep six them, like everybody else.
Why not go and sin boldly? Why not show the world that we are sinners and we want to do the right thing when we fail? Many people are quite forgiving when others admit their faults. Instead, we think we are oh so clever by hiding our faults. But, we don't. And we wonder why outsiders and insiders are rejecting the faith or running from the church.
For a perfect example, Mac Brunson was recently designated one of the scariest people in Jacksonville by a local newspaper here. Does the church really think they are fooling anybody by donning facades of moral righteousness? They see through us, folks! I cannot stress this enough. We are positionally holy but are functionally still sinners.
If a church or pastor uses the media to promote their agenda, then they better be prepared to be critiqued.
Today’s churches and pastors love to use the media to plug their churches and their books. They have all entered the public square by doing so. Think of it this way. They are all pretending to be Paul (on steroids) at Mars Hill, setting off fireworks to get the attention of people. If they want the world to look at them, they cannot complain when the world does so and doesn’t like what it sees.
Do these people actually think that people should buy their books and join their franchises and not say a word about the weirdness that surrounds some of these ministries? Do they really expect us to cough up the dough and keep our mouths shut? Do such leaders get a pass that the rest of the world is not entitled to, just because they are “pastors?”
Pastors and leaders need to apologize when they fail to live up to their stated standards.
What ever happened to “I’m sorry?” I mean, an honest-to-goodness apology. Wade Burleson, in the referenced post said,
“Thankfully, last Sunday, Rev. Mac Brunson apologized for his statement. Nobody knows the motive for why Rev. Brunson apologized after three years, but there are at least two possiblities:
(1). The Holy Spirit brought Rev. Brunson to repentance for his statement in less than eight weeks (February 2012 to April 2012) after He could not bring the gift of repentance to Rev. Brunson during the previous three years (February 2009 to February 2012). After all, the Holy Spirit is the One who enables us to display to others "what Christian life is all about," right? Or,
(2). Part of the settlement of the lawsuit, which included an undisclosed financial payment to the Rich family, included reading an apology to the church for the original statement by Rev. Brunson that Tom Rich is a "sociopath."
I hope the apology was real. If not, Brunson will have to answer to God. However, many people, looking on, will have a tendency to believe that this was a coerced apology. Think about how effective such an apology would have been if Brunson had called the local media, prior to the depositions, and sat down and talked about how wrong he was and how God forgives sinners. He then could have publicly apologized to Tom Rich. Such a step takes true humility. Sadly, that chance has been lost and this apology will forever be suspect.
Blogging is here to stay. Churches must learn to deal with it.
Churches should engage the blogging world like they purport to engage the non-Christian world. For all the yip yap about Paul and Mars Hill, many pastors hide out in their safe world inside a building somewhere. They need to get out into the world and start debating. Warning: They should not play the game of deleting critical comments on their blogs. Everyone knows when they are doing it. It is discussed elsewhere and they end up looking like wusses who cannot stand the courage of their convictions.
Could some bloggers be modern day prophets?
Something struck me the other day. Did you know that some of the pastors criticize bloggers, saying that they are men in their bathrobes, living in their mother’s basements, eating Cheetos? (Digression: It obviously does not apply to your glam TWW bloggers.)
How was the prophet, John the Baptist, described? He came in from the desert wearing a camel hair shirt, eating locust and wild honey. In other words, he didn’t dress up in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt with a hoodie, looking very manly and cool. He looked a bit odd. Yet he was called by God. Could it be that these pastors are missing the point with their silly little putdowns? Would they have done the same to John?
Recently, Mark Driscoll wrote on the Mars Hill blog that the Scripture indicates that there are the prophets, priests and kings in local churches. He identified some in his church by name. Although I do not agree with his “exegesis,” I will use his example. Driscoll, of course, gets to identify his prophets who, of course, would probably fall all over themselves agreeing with him
In the Bible, the prophets were called by God to confront unbiblical behavior. They were not always a part of the inner circle. They also really, really irritated the kings and leaders. And, if John is any example, they might even have looked a bit odd. My guess is that Mac Brunson and Mark Driscoll are not very good discovering the “prophets” in their lives.
I want to end this post with a final quote from Wade’s blog.
“Finally, just a word to my fellow pastors. If you are publicly criticized, censured, or condemned, it would be good to follow the advice of King David, who when verbally castigated by one of his subjects and asked by Abishai if he could "go cut that dead dog's head off," responded, "Let him alone. God hath bidden him to speak."
Could it be that some of these bloggers have been sovereignly placed here, for such a time as this, to keep church leadership honest? Could it be that God is using the Internet for His purposes? Come on, guys, you are the Calvinists who constantly assert that God is sovereign.
I think Tom Rich is one of those prophets that FBC Jacksonville and Mac Brunson not only overlooked, but treated poorly. Maybe they should spend some time in self-reflection instead of planning the next “delightful” cruise for the well-to-do at FBC Jacksonville. | <urn:uuid:2fb206fb-2a81-4ef6-aa01-6fc9c7169aa4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thewartburgwatch.com/2012/04/05/tom-rich-mac-brunson-a-davis-m-driscoll-when-church-leaders-gossip-and-slander/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977967 | 2,639 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The City of Joy
by Dominique Lapierre, translated by Kathryn Spink
Doubleday, 464 pp., $17.95
Calcutta, despite its former resplendence as the first capital of the British Raj, has a dark reputation. One thinks of the Black Hole, or as some Indians prefer to call it, “the alleged Black Hole,” where British ladies and gentlemen died horribly during an uprising led by the nawab of Bengal in 1756. One also thinks of all the travelers’ tales of living corpses gnawed by giant rats right in front of the best hotels; of terrible riots, crippling strikes. Even the goddess after whom the city was named is the most frightful in the Indian pantheon. Kali the Terrible, depicted with a tongue dripping blood and a garland of skulls around her neck is worshiped in Calcutta at a temple next to one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the destitute and around the corner from a filthy stream where corpses decked in flowers are cremated. In front of the temple is a guillotine where goats bought by worshipers are sacrificed to the goddess.
So when an Indian diplomat in Hong Kong said I’d find Calcutta “a friendly sort of place,” I thought he was indulging in some kind of Indian humor. I was too geared up to assume the worst to believe him. And as my plane came to a stand-still at the terminal of Dum Dum Airport (yes, even dumdum bullets were invented in the shadows of Kali) there was a small scene which appeared to confirm my worst expectations. A burly Indian businessman, while chatting to his friend, grabbed his heavy bag from the overhead rack and clumsily, though accidentally, bashed it on the head of the Thai International Airways stewardess. In Thailand the head is believed to contain the soul and being touched—let alone hit—on the head is a grave humiliation. The stewardess was furious and demanded an apology. The Indian did not say a word, he did not even look at the woman, or acknowledge her presence in any way. She was a servant who had stepped out of her role of silent subservience. So she had to be ignored.
In fact, the diplomat in Hong Kong had not been joking. People are remarkably friendly in Calcutta. Just as Kali the Terrible has another identity as a sweet, motherly goddess, Calcutta is not only the “City of Dreadful Night” that Kipling described. Creativity blooms in the midst of poverty and violence, for Calcutta is also a city of poets and dreamers, of splendid though crumbling palaces as well as of ghastly slums. It is telling of the city’s schizophrenic nature that the two most revered Bengalis, endlessly depicted in garish posters sold in the streets, are Rabindranath Tagore, the poet, playwright, novelist, and part-time holy man, and Subhas Chandra Bose, who tried to topple the British Raj by collaborating with Hitler and the Japanese. Tagore was the consummate Bengali Renaissance man, artistic, spiritual, rational, and enlightened. Bose, like many dreamers in the 1930s, had a great fondness for uniforms and … | <urn:uuid:c304ca25-201f-4a8c-81ef-974de208a7d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/may/29/city-of-dreadful-night/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974585 | 689 | 1.992188 | 2 |
The Bicycle & Pedestrian Program of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Human Environment promotes bicycle and pedestrian transportation use, safety, and accessibility.
Each State has a Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator in its State Department of Transportation to promote and facilitate the increased use of nonmotorized transportation, including developing facilities for the use of pedestrians and bicyclists and public educational, promotional, and safety programs for using such facilities. The State Coordinators can help you with questions specific to your State.
The FHWA Bicycle & Pedestrian Program issues guidance and is responsible for overseeing that requirements in legislation are understood and met by the States and other implementing agencies.
On this site you can find information about the amount of federal funding spent on pedestrian and bicycle projects in your state, available federal funding sources, existing legislation, and guidance about accessible design.
FHWA also sponsors resources such as the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center to provide information on a wide variety of engineering, encouragement, education, and enforcement topics. The Center was established with funding from the US DOT and is operated by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center.
Section 1807 of SAFETEA-LU created the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program. The goal of this program is to demonstrate how improvements to walking and bicycling infrastructure can increase mode share for walking and bicycling. Four communities (Columbia, MO; Marin County, CA; Minneapolis Area, MN; Sheboygan County, WI) have each received over 25 million dollars to improve their walking and bicycling networks. According to SAFETEA-LU, "The purpose of the program shall be to demonstrate the extent to which bicycling and walking can carry a significant part of the transportation load, and represent a major portion of the transportation solution." A final report to Congress describing the program outcomes was submitted in April, 2012.
This policy statement, released in March 2010, emphasizes the needs and requirements to integrate walking and bicycling into transportation systems and provides some recommendations on how to do so.
The final report for the International Scan on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility has been released. The FHWA/AASHTO Scan Team visited Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom in 2009. The report describes how these countries have made walking and bicycling safer and more convenient through policy, engineering, education, enforcement, encouragement, and evaluation strategies. A follow-on review of Public Policies for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility has also been released.
Learn more about the many benefits of walking and bicycling. In this section we list many research studies that attempt to quantify the health and environmental benefits of walking and bicycling.
Enjoy the benefits of active transportation. Whether you are interested in commuting to DOT Headquarters or are just visiting, in this section you can: | <urn:uuid:ccbe9f09-e656-4213-8a95-e649c90c7406> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/index.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945679 | 583 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Officials are urging Americans to get flu vaccinations with the start of what could be a particularly bad season.
Flu season is off to its earliest start in nearly a decade, with several states reporting a dramatic jump in cases and health officials urging Americans to get vaccinated.
Their insistence is driven in large part by a particularly nasty strain of the flu that wreaked havoc in the winter of 2003-04, when more than 48,000 died (and led to the establishment in 2005 of National Influenza Vaccination Week, which began on Sunday). The current batch of vaccines matches well with that strain, which makes it all the more important to get it, officials say.
“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press.
But while the flu vaccine is the best way to protect yourself (it is particularly recommended for children over 6 months, pregnant women, people over 65 and those with chronic diseases such as asthma and diabetes), it is not a guaranteed defense. Whether or not you get the shot - an estimated 63 percent of Americans have not - there are many everyday, elementary things you can do to lessen the odds of falling victim.
Here are a few of them, via the CDC.
• Wash your hands, a lot. Use soap and water. But if they are not available, sanitizer will suffice.
• Try not to touch your eyes, nose and mouth too much. That’s how germs spread.
• Stay away from sick people.
If you do get sick, the best you can do is stay at home, away from healthy people. The CDC also recommends asking your doctor if it makes sense to take an antiviral drug. These drugs can ease symptoms and help them fade faster. | <urn:uuid:0864a0ff-e313-4241-bc9a-31bd024a7e99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/health/The-Flu-Has-Arrived-Heres-How-to-Stop-It-182029891.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957873 | 387 | 2.90625 | 3 |
By VERENA DOBNIKAssociated Press
NEW YORK (AP) - A final steel beam was lifted Monday atop a new World Trade Center skyscraper - the first expected to open at the site next year since the twin towers were decimated on 9/11.
With gospel superstar BeBe Winans offering a powerful rendition of "God Bless America," workers raised their hardhats in tribute as the mammoth beam rose slowly into the Manhattan sky, swaying from a steel rope hoisted by a crane.
A U.S. flag attached to the bottom of the beam fluttered above several hundred spectators at the topping-off ceremony.
"Ten years later, it's pretty remarkable," said a teary-eyed Sally Rexach, a nurse who aids workers constructing 4 World Trade Center.
She was at ground zero just after Sept. 11, 2001, supporting workers who combed through the smoking debris in search of human remains.
"This is a very proud moment; it's full circle," she said, glancing across the 16-acre site where the uncompleted One World Trade Center in the northwest corner is already New York's tallest structure.
In the southeast corner facing the 9/11 memorial, the 72-story tower that was topped off Monday is to open for business in the fall of 2013 - the first occupied high-rise at the new trade center site since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The 1.8-million-square-foot skyscraper, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki, will primarily house commercial offices. A third of the office space will be set aside for the headquarters of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site.
An atrium will house shops and restaurants.
At the moment, it is the second tallest skyscraper on the rebuilt World Trade Center site after One World Trade Center, although two other towers eventually will surpass the height of 4 World Trade Center.
On Monday, more than 100 construction workers signed their names to the white-painted steel, with elected officials and developer Larry Silverstein looking on.
"Everybody's put their blood, sweat and tears into this," said John Rzeznik, a project manager at the site.
Minutes earlier, in the half-completed, marble-graced entrance, Winans opened the ceremony by singing "The Star Spangled Banner." Listening to it, some construction workers were moved to hold their hardhats over their hearts.
Silverstein told those assembled that his goal as a developer was "to give New Yorkers back the city terrorists tried to take away."
After years of funding and planning disagreements that at times threatened progress at the site, Silverstein acknowledged, "It's been a very tough time." But, he added, "I've always believed in downtown New York."
In his remarks, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver remembered that certain naysayers had warned lower Manhattan "was dead" after the terror attack.
"But Larry, you were right," Silver said. "Never bet against New York."
Some workers wore yellow T-shirts bearing the words, "Yes we can."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:fbd1824c-a656-4ec1-9b1c-5942074d3f8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfoxspokane.com/news/headlines/story/final-steel-beam-lifted-4-world-trade-center | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961047 | 675 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Salem State University Preschool Sponsors
Annual Book Drive
Needed Gently Used or New Books
“Reach Out and Read Programs”
Lynn Community Health Center and the East Boston Community Health Center
and the Salem State student mission to Liberia over Spring Break 2013
February 11-15, 2013
Each year the Salem State Preschool collects books to donate to local organizations to promote early literacy. Last year we collected over 400 books!
Children going to see the doctor for a sick or well visit may take home a book and build their home library. Please help us again this year to collect new or gently used books for children six months (board books) to 10 years old.
Plus, this year a student teacher from the preschool will travel to Liberia over spring break and will be taking books for the Ganta Mission School.
Our community service committee chairperson, Michelle Sedgwick, is coordinating this annual activity. Please talk to your child about this project and how important it is to help others.
Collection boxes on campus:
- Preschool on Upper South Campus
- English department in Meier Hall
- Salem State Library on Central Campus
- Education Department, Sullivan Building, room 303
Thank you in advance for your help with this worthwhile community project which supports early literacy. | <urn:uuid:70e61495-73df-4c6b-822c-374119083af4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.salemstate.edu/arts/25050.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910953 | 267 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Once upon a time, there was a very smart man, Ira Magaziner, who devised a 1000-page plan — dubbed the Greenhouse Compact — to reinvent Rhode Island’s flagging economy by using $750 million in public investment to seed the high-tech businesses and high-wage jobs of the future. Yet despite broad support across business and labor, voters resoundingly rejected the plan because of concerns about prototypical Ocean State insider dealing.
That was in 1984.
Magaziner went on to work in the Clinton White House and to become a prosperous consultant. Yet 24 years later, the need to reinvent Rhode Island’s economic infrastructure — which remains anemic compared with most of its neighbors in New England — is more urgent than ever.
With a crushing $434 million deficit looming for the next fiscal year, the situation is exacerbated by how Rhode Island is just one of nine US states in a recession.
To name a few key indicators, the state is shedding jobs and residents; infrastructure is crumbling (weight restrictions have been placed on a few bridges, including one on Interstate 95 in Pawtucket); and corruption remains a concern (as seen by the ongoing trial in US District Court of two former officials with drug-store giant CVS, one of the few large corporations headquartered here).
All in all, things haven’t been this dire locally since the credit union crisis of the early ’90s.
Rhode Island has long since shed its image as a smudge on the way to Cape Cod, and, as always, the state has some key advantages — including its location between Boston and New York — upon which to draw.
The seemingly intractable nature of the Ocean State’s money problems, however, has led Leonard Lardaro, a professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island, to aptly dub the state “Rhode Island and Sisyphus Plantations.”
The recurrent cycle is evident in a series of key contradictions:
• The state desperately needs economic development, but NIMBYism tends to stand in the way of capital improvements — a container port, airport expansion, and so on — that could generate jobs and related activity.
• Economic development officials envision an “innovation economy,” but students at the state’s decaying urban schools continue to under-perform.
• Perhaps most symbolically, Rhode Island’s smallness is seen as its catalytic “secret sauce” by Saul Kaplan, executive director of the state Economic Development Corporation (EDC), yet parochialism and tradition persistently preclude efforts to boost efficiency by consolidating and regionalizing state and local government.
In a worst-case scenario, Rhode Island’s bond rating agency could lower the state’s bond (currently “on watch”) one notch, posing significant additional costs.
It’s enough to make one wonder, as Jimmy Breslin titled his book about the 1962 New York Mets — one of the worst teams in baseball history — “Can’t anybody here play this game?” (Even by this historic standard of incompetence, Rhode Island compares poorly; the Mets unexpectedly became world champions seven years later, in 1969 — in less than a third of the time that has elapsed since voters rejected the Greenhouse Compact.)
So, will the state continue on its current path, taking the proverbial two steps forward and three steps back? | <urn:uuid:4cb4c377-6cba-436a-87ef-091f627f2fc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/62020-cant-anybody-here-play-this-game/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952782 | 713 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Suntech Power’s photovoltaic module sales have risen steadily over the years from around 358 million megawatts in 2007 to 674 million MW in 2009. We attribute this to various benefits and subsidies provided by governments on adopting solar energy and lower inputs costs, resulting in lower prices and higher demand for PV modules.
We expect Suntech’s PV module sales to keep growing driven by environmental concerns that will spur adoption of solar energy systems and continued government subsidies that will keep prices affordable for consumers. While we expect Suntech’s PV module sales will reach 4.35 billion MW by the end of Trefis forecast period, Trefis members predict the sales will reach close to 5.4 billion MW, suggesting potential upside of 13% to our STP stock price estimate.
We currently have a Trefis price estimate of $10.68 for Suntech Power’s stock, versus the current market price of around $10.50.
Government Subsidies on Solar
Despite all the positives, solar energy hasn’t become as popular as other energy sources because of the heavy initial costs involved and its reliance on subsidies. As prices of traditional energy sources like coal and oil rise, government subsidies and tax breaks for investment in solar energy will drive growth in the renewable energy industry as alternative energy sources become a more economical alternative.
Japan, for instance, introduced incentives for solar energy in 1994. Due to this program, the solar energy market in Japan has expanded considerably in terms of availability and efficiency in distribution. The program has also cut the average cost of solar energy systems by more than 70%.
Other countries are following Japan’s footsteps. Last year, the Indian government offered a 30% subsidy on rooftop solar panels for consumers. Europe has reportedly made investments of around $65 billion in solar plants including major markets being Germany, France and Spain while China is highly ambitious of increasing its solar power installations to 20 Gigawatts by 2020.
Environmental Concerns Will Push Solar Energy Growth
Fossil fuels are limited in supply and the reserves are depleting quickly due to rapid economic growth and a scarcity of new sources. As the world approaches peak oil (the point when highest level of oil production is reached) and as drilling becomes more expensive, oil prices will rise further. Such a scenario will spark the need for renewable energy sources. In addition, current energy production methods release pollutants like smog and carbon dioxide gas, which contribute to greenhouse gases and global warming. Solar energy production produces little, if any pollutions or emissions, making it one of the cleanest sources of energy.
Trefis Community Forecast
Trefis members forecast Suntech’s PV module sales will increase from near 2,175 million in 2011 to 5,425 million by the end of the Trefis forecast period, compared to the baseline Trefis estimate of an increase from 1,825 million to 4,355 million during the same period. The member estimates imply an upside of 13% to the Trefis price estimate for Suntech Power’s stock. Combined with our current forecast this translates to around 20% upside from current market levels.
Like our charts? Embed them in your own posts using the Trefis WordPress Plugin. | <urn:uuid:2b489a16-780c-4dd8-9cd2-c20ae6d1003d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/02/22/suntech-to-12-on-higher-photovoltaic-module-sales/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926197 | 669 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Maimeri was founded in 1923 by noted Italian impressionist painter, Gianni Maimeri, who was searching to satisfy his own desire for artistic excellence in paint. The result of his passion is a line of highly concentrated, lightfast watercolors.
Color Swatch created using heavy application/diluted application and was applied on cold press watercolor paper (150 lb) material.
cobalt titanium oxide
Cobalt Titanium Oxide is a low intensity color with a weak tinting strength, similar to Cobalt Blue. It has an average to fast drying time.
Cobalt Green has excellent permanence and lightfastness.
Cobalt Green is considered toxic due to its cobalt component. Do not breathe its dust.
Since ancient times, smalt blue has been used to color glass and ceramics. Cobalt salts, which give smalt its characteristic blue color, were identified in the 18th century. Techniques for manufacturing various cobalt salts, offering a range of blues and greens, were developed in the 19th century.
Cobalt Teal, Cobalt Turquoise, Light Green Oxide
® Maimeri is a registered trademark. | <urn:uuid:f9da80cc-f1a8-4191-869e-118f98c253e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dickblick.com/items/00396-7910/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963962 | 246 | 1.539063 | 2 |
By Michelle Edelbaum, March 11, 2010 - 11:32am
Since I’ve become a mom, it’s a challenge for me to get enough sleep. It’s become harder for me to fall asleep because I’m thinking about work, the baby, all the stuff that needs to be done around the house, what to make for dinner the next night...and the list goes on. (At least I’ve got a handle on the dinner thing—I either make one of these cheap, 30-minute dinner recipes or make a super-easy meal in my slow cooker.)
I’m not OK with getting less than the recommended 8 to 9 hours per night, since sleep is so important to my health and my figure (research links weight gain with sleep loss). (Find 5 foods that do the weight-loss work for you here.)
So in the interest of giving myself the best chance for a good night’s sleep (especially with the spring time change), I took a look at advice from EatingWell Nutrition Advisory Board member Dr. Rachel Johnson on which foods and drinks can help promote better sleep. Here’s what the research says:
Carbohydrate-Rich Dinners (This one works!): A light bedtime snack can stave off hunger, a known sleep robber. But eating quickly-digested carbs (a.k.a, “high-glycemic-index” or “GI” carbohydrates such as jasmine rice) hours earlier at dinner—might also help. A study found that when healthy sleepers ate carbohydrate-rich suppers of veggies and tomato sauce over rice, they fell asleep significantly faster at bedtime if the meal included high-GI jasmine rice rather than lower-GI long-grain rice. The study authors speculated that the high-GI meals triggered greater amounts of insulin, which increased the ratio of tryptophan relative to other amino acids in the blood, allowing proportionately more to get into the brain and make people drowsy.
Warm Milk: Decades ago, scientists looked into this folk remedy and posited that tryptophan, an amino acid in milk (and turkey), might be responsible for its supposed sleep-inducing effects. Earlier research had shown that when tryptophan is released into the brain, it produces serotonin—a serenity-boosting neurotransmitter. But when milk (and other tryptophan-rich foods) were tested, they failed to affect sleep patterns, perhaps because other amino acids in those foods competed with tryptophan to get into the brain. Warm milk at bedtime may be comforting, but it won’t boost sleep-promoting serotonin.
Herbal Tea: Chamomile, lemon balm, hops and passionflower are all touted for their sleep-promoting properties. You’ll often find them in “sleep-formula” tea blends, but unfortunately their effectiveness hasn’t been proven in clinical studies, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Some experts say that these teas may work for some, and a warm liquid before bed may make you sleepy by generating body heat. That said, a cup of “sleep-time” tea might be worth a try.
Caffeine: Caffeine affects everyone differently, so if you’re sensitive it might be worth trying to cut down—or limit caffeine to the morning only. This can mean more than just cutting out a cup of coffee. The major sources of caffeine in Americans’ diets are coffee (71 percent), soft drinks (16 percent) and teas (12 percent) but chocolate is also a source. Our ability to excrete caffeine decreases with age so while you might have tolerated four cups of coffee a day when you were 20, you’ll probably need to cut down as you get older. Cut down on caffeine or limit it to the morning; if insomnia persists, consider going cold turkey. Try this drink to cure a headache & 4 more home remedies for common ailments.
Alcohol: Though a glass of wine may help you fall asleep, excessive alcohol use can make you wake up in the night. One theory is that alcohol suppresses the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep state that’s critical to a good night’s sleep. Drink moderately, if at all; avoid drinking within a few hours of bedtime.
Sleep Supplements: Shelves in supplement stores are stacked with sleep formulas. According to one NIH survey conducted in 2002, 1.6 million people tried complementary or alternative therapies like these, and over half of them reported their insomnia improved “a great deal.” However, those glowing anecdotes haven’t been backed up by rigorous scientific study; evaluations of most nutritional supplements haven’t shown any effects whatsoever. The one exception is valerian root, which seemed to help improve sleep (with rare, and mild, side effects, such as stomach upset). But finding an effective formulation of valerian root is tricky, since the FDA doesn’t regulate herbal supplements. Don’t waste your money on sleep supplements; hold off on using valerian until standardized formulations become available.
What foods help you sleep? Tell us what you think below. | <urn:uuid:48d06c1a-28be-468c-a649-466f6c408b60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eatingwell.com/blogs/health_blog/1_food_that_can_help_you_sleep_and_5_that_might_not | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942107 | 1,096 | 1.59375 | 2 |
With her academic chops and journalist’s training, Jane Mayer is able to tell in-depth stories to the American public that otherwise would not get the treatment they deserve. By publishing stories The New Yorker about corporate influence on politics and government cover-ups, she enables the public to scrutinize current events and hold public officials accountable.
Mayer grew up in New York City and attended Yale College before continuing her studies at Oxford University in England. She began honing her journalism skills at Time magazine. In 1984, Mayer became The Wall Street Journal’s first female White House correspondent. She also took on duties at WSJ as a foreign and wart correspondent. She covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the last days of the Soviet Union, and the first war in the Persian Gulf. She joined The New Yorker magazine as a staff writer in 1995. Mayer has become known for her coverage of the War on Terror as well as her profiles of public figures, including, Sarah Palin, the Koch brothers, Osama Bin Laden, Art Pope and President George W. Bush.
Between 2001 and 2008, Mayer published a series of articles about the United States’ secretive War on Terror that ranged from allegations of torture to the machinations of the Bush administration´s inner circle.
When reports of unusual interrogation methods caught Mayer´s attention, she began investigating the role of psychology operations in the War on Terror, discovering a history that stretched back beyond the Cold War to World War II. Her research eventually led her to write and publish the 2008 book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.
The Dark Side revealed many unsettling facts about US government actions after 9/11. For example, she documented how warnings from government and military officials about the legal and moral risks of using torture were swept under the rug. Mayer´s reporting revealed that government officials knew that some of the things they were doing were illegal and, even as they did them, sought to protect themselves from future prosecution. Mayer´s research turned up no convincing evidence that the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually produced valuable intelligence in the fight against terrorism.
In a 2008 interview with Harper’s magazine, Mayer said that most political figures will never be held accountable for their behavior as long as the public believes they were acting in the country’s best interest. She said, “My guess is that the real accountability for President Bush will be in the history books, not in the courtroom.”
In a 2010 article in The New Yorker, Mayer detailed the influence of the billionaire philanthropist brothers, David and Charles Koch. Owners of an empire ranging from oil fields to industrial products, Koch money has been connected to a variety of libertarian, pro-corporate rights and anti-climate change think tanks and foundations. By funding think tanks, Political Action Committee (PAC) advertising, and providing financial support to academics who support their corporate interests, the Kochs´ money has had a significant impact on America´s political landscape.
Mayer’s writing and investigative journalism have earned her many accolades, including the Ridenhour Book Prize, Georgetown University’s Edward Weintal Prize, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She was also nominated more than once for a Pulitzer Prize when she was at The Wall Street Journal. The Dark Side was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Mayer lives in Washington and writes for a number of publications in addition to The New Yorker, including the New York Review of Books and The Washington Post. | <urn:uuid:c0fbb0d4-8324-4329-8125-098d7b27f9c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/jane-mayer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961925 | 735 | 2.609375 | 3 |
FUKUOKA, Japan (NNS) -- U.S. 7th Fleet commander, Vice Adm. John M. Bird, called the U.S. alliance with Japan "vital to the peace and security of the region", and cautioned not to take the region's security for granted.
At a May 1 press conference aboard the 7th Fleet command ship USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19) in Fukuoka, Bird called 2010 a "very special year for our two countries" because it marks the 50th anniversary of the alliance.
"It's a year in which we can reflect on just how significant and how valuable the alliance has been in terms of bringing security and stability and ultimately prosperity to so many different people throughout this region," he said. "The alliance has secured extraordinary benefits for the entire Asia-Pacific region and made possible the unparalleled progress of the past five decades."
The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan was signed in Washington Jan. 19, 1960, following a pledge by President Dwight Eisenhower to establish an "indestructible partnership" based on "equality and mutual understanding." The alliance serves as the basis for the U.S. Navy's partnership with the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF).
"I view the security in this part of the world as good, but having said that, I never take it for granted and know that it can change very quickly and dramatically," Bird said. "That is why the the 7th Fleet and the JMSDF must maintain constant vigilance and always do our duty and perform to the best of our capabilities."
The visit by USS Blue Ridge to the port of Hakata in Fukuoka was the flagship's first in 29 years. Bird hosted a reception on board for local community leaders and elected officials, and the 7th Fleet Band performed public concerts and marched in a local parade.
Asked why U.S. Navy ships often visit civilian ports around Japan rather than just military bases, Bird said it was an important for Sailors to see the nation that they defend.
"It gives our men and women a chance to see a country that they have sworn to defend, and it gives the people of Japan who don't ordinarily see the U.S. Navy the chance to meet us," he said. "It's also an outward sign to those who may observe the commitment of the U.S. to the defense of Japan."
Bird said that the alliance and the U.S. Navy's partnership with the JMSDF would be even more important in its second 50 years.
"As I look at the Western Pacific now and into the future, I am convinced that the alliance will become even more critical and even more important," he said. "Together, 7th Fleet and the JMSDF must continually work in this very strong alliance to ensure security and stability on the high seas, and throughout the region."
For more news from Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, visit www.navy.mil/local/c7f/. | <urn:uuid:92908d9e-8c88-4d3c-98ed-cb4494718d56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=53042 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970151 | 628 | 1.710938 | 2 |
“You’d be surprised how interested people are in bathrooms,” the chief curator of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, tells the Hartford Courant. Actually, I’m not, having read Anne Trubek‘s A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses, a fine cross-country study of writers’ houses of all stripes, from the stately Mount to Jack London‘s burned-down Wolf House to a ramshackle Poe cottage in the Bronx. Wherever she winds up, Trubek finds either a curious fixation on “authentic” details—Dickinson’s chamber pot! Emerson’s hat!—or an enthusiasm for rewriting the past, as in the theme-parkification of Mark Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Trubek is a friend of mine, so my enthusiasm for the book only counts for so much. But even if I didn’t know her I believe I’d still admire her skill at blending elements of personal essay into a more rigorous study of literary reputation. Happily, though, she is a friend, so I get the opportunity to talk with her in public this weekend: If you’re in the D.C. area on Sunday, January 30, please come to Politics & Prose, where I’ll be doing a brief Q&A with her before her signing.
Patricia Chu, an English professor at George Washington University who specializes in Asian-American literature, delivers a three-part response to the Wall Street Journal excerpt of Amy Chua‘s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chu argues that the excerpt plays into “model minority” stereotypes about Asian-American families, and looks at how “Asian Extreme Parenting” plays out in a handful of novels. “In many books, it seems that Asian Extreme Parenting is supremely successful,” Chu writes, “because the children work hard in order to get out of their parents’ house as soon as possible.”
Cynthia Haven reports from an onstage conversation at Stanford University earlier this week where Tobias Wolff and Tim O’Brien discussed the kitschification of Vietnam in fiction—the “ossified conventions” of the form, as Wolff put it.
And speaking of Herman Melville: the unusual path of his copy of Robert Burton‘s The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Revisiting Elizabeth Hardwick‘s New York stories.
Barnaby Conrad lasted all of five months as Sinclair Lewis‘ assistant in 1947, after which Lewis stole his girlfriend and ran off to Paris. But Conrad has finally made good on his promise to Lewis to write a novel about John Wilkes Booth.
Do financial types read? The post’s author might’ve rung up Martha McPhee, whose 2010 novel, Dear Money, had plenty to say about how people who work in high finance relate to art. (Short answer: They care about it more than you’d think, though they care about how money moves in that world about as much as you’d expect.)
In a letter to his hometown paper, Alan Gribben immodestly defends his “gribbenization” of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “I have published 40 or 50 scholarly articles celebrating Mark Twain’s genius as a craftsman with words. No one has a better or lengthier record in print of admiring his prose style than I do.”
The final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English, which was scheduled to come out last year, won’t appear until
2012 this fall (correction per the comment from chief editor Joan Houston Hall below). In the meantime, samples from it are appearing on its Twitter feed, @darewords.
Asked to consider the notion that Martha Gellhorn might have looked at Ernest Hemingway as her muse, Victoria Best has an angry retort: “Ernest Hemingway, who sucked the vitality out of every woman he married, who exploited them, ignored their emotional needs, insisted they serve his every whim? The Hemingway who argued and physically fought with Martha Gellhorn because she wouldn’t give up her work for him, and who bewildered him by her inability to ‘tag along and like it’, as other wives had done? This man is to be considered a muse?” (What follows isn’t so much about the Hemingway-Gellhorn relationship as it is about giving and receiving criticism, and it’s worth reading in its own right.) | <urn:uuid:2f85d317-8607-4694-a150-f4fffe835e1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanfiction.wordpress.com/category/martha-mcphee/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956638 | 982 | 1.570313 | 2 |
The documents below offer concise discussions of important aspects of genetic determinism of intelligence and its social effects. They are the distillation of many years of research. I am eager to share them with as many people as possible, but they are copyrighted and should not be reduplicated without my consent.
All documents are in Adobe PDF format. If you do not have a PDF reader, download Adobe Reader.
Lecture on Genetic Determinism
In this document, I summarize the evidence for genetic determinism of intelligence and other socially important traits and innate racial differences in them. It was originally a public lecture and is accompanied by three handouts that I distributed before the lecture and to which I refer during it.
- Download Genetic Determinism.pdf
- Download Handout I.pdf
- Download Handout II.pdf
- Download Handout III.pdf
Critique of Gould
Since its publication in 1981, Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Manhas been the Bible of the opponents of genetic determinism of intelligence. In this document, I quote from reviews in the popular press, which were uncritically adulatory, and then reviews in scholarly journals, by experts, all of whom demonstrate that it is a mosaic of blatant lies and gross misrepresentations.
In the introduction to this document, I point out that Gould was a professor at Harvard for decades, where he taught a course entitled Biology as a Social Weapon, which consisted of attacks on genetic determinism. If genuine evidence or arguments against genetic determinism of intelligence existed, Gould would have known about them. In fact, if anyone would have been able to find or fabricate plausible lies, it would have been Gould. Instead, he was forced to rely on lies and distortions whose fraudulence is immediately obvious to everyone who is familiar with this subject.
Critique of Goleman
Since its publication in 1995, Daniel Goleman'sEmotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQhas been the flagship of a fleet of books that Goleman authored or co-authored, and the foundation text of a world-wide movement that claims that what has been universally regarded as intelligence is merely one type of intelligence – cognitive intelligence – and is not as important as another type of intelligence – emotional intelligence.
In this document, I analyze every book and article that Goleman adduced to denigrate the importance of cognitive intelligence and the tests that measure it. I show that not one of them says what Goleman claims it says, and many say the opposite.
- Download Goleman.pdf (Updated October 4, 2006)
Sub-Saharan Africa Since the End of European Colonial Rule
This document consists mainly of quotations of observations on the catastrophic economic decline of sub-Saharan Africa since the end of European colonial rule. Most are from the impeccably liberal New York Times, New Republic and New York Review of Books.
(Some of these quotations are from pages 120-21 of Michael Levin's Why Race Matters and from Gedaliah Braun's Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit.)
- Download Post-Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa.pdf (Updated February 13, 2011) | <urn:uuid:8a7acd5b-ebdd-4198-88d7-3852209adeb3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.affirmativeactionhoax.com/more-on-genetic-determinism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952325 | 654 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Scientists and engineers have created and used microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) since they mastered the fabrication techniques used to transform lab curiosities into sensors, microphones, security devices, engines, and even electromechanical switches for smartphones.
Researchers at the Sandia Corporation have created machines complete with gears and microscopic transmissions, as shown in the photo below. But like all mechanical components, MEMS devices suffer from a variety of failure mechanisms.
(Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratory.)
The US National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) recently publicized a new direction for MEMS devices by "machining" diamonds -- the hardest substance known. According to NIST, semiconductor makers hope the diamond-etching techniques will let them develop components for long-lasting micro-machines. In the abstract for a research paper, authors Craig McGray, et al., note:
Etching of monocrystalline diamond in oxygen and water vapor at 1100C through small pores in a silicon nitride film produced smooth-walled rectangular cavities. The observed cavities ranged in size from approximately 1μm up to 72μm wide, in each case exhibiting smooth, vertical sidewalls, a flat bottom, and a depth equal to half its width. Cavity boundaries were determined to lie along slow-etching (100) crystallographic planes, suggesting the possibility of a powerful class of techniques for micromachining of diamond.
This image shows the box-like shape of a pit the NIST team etched into a diamond surface
and the pit's smooth vertical sidewalls and flat bottom.
(Photo courtesy of NIST.)
So far, the NIST researchers have created virtually indestructible nano-rulers, but the etching technology might lead to improvements in MEMS devices because moving parts made of diamond should last much longer than those fabricated from silicon. The inherent cubic-crystal structure of diamonds should also help researchers -- and later, engineers -- create precision structures.
According to NIST, the speed of the etching process depends on the orientation of the diamond crystal. Etching occurs more slowly in the direction of the crystal faces or planes, which can serve as a boundary of sorts where etching would cease as desired. The cavities created at NIST all have smooth vertical sidewalls and a flat bottom.
"We'd like to figure out how to optimize control of this process next," said McGray, "but some of the ways diamond behaved under the conditions we used were unexpected. We plan to explore some of these mysteries while we develop a prototype diamond MEMS device."
I don't relish the idea of having to develop a diamond-etching process with 1100C water vapor formed from hydrogen and oxygen in a reaction chamber, but additional research might uncover other etching and manipulation techniques that lead to diamond-based MEMS. The NIST paper and announcement made no mention of creating structures on the diamond surface, but perhaps deposition of diamond or diamond-like materials could lead to layers of complicated mechanical movements. And even a diamond substrate might improve reliability of present MEMS structures. | <urn:uuid:0ce88d97-f2da-4b3e-917f-8e5c2d625b60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1419&doc_id=234699&piddl_msgorder=thrd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924654 | 641 | 3.859375 | 4 |
- Apps: Don't visit your GP, use your mobile phone for a check-up instead... | Mail Online
- BBC News - GPs 'to prescribe health apps'
- Full of health and appyness
- Doctors told to prescribe smartphone apps to patients - Telegraph
- DH highlights health apps
- GPs are to "prescribe" smartphone apps to patients to help them manage their own health.
- NHS invites software developers to create healthcare apps - 8/22/2011 - Computer Weekly
- NHS to crowdsource the next wave of healthcare apps (Wired UK)
Tagged: patient record
Julie Meyer, Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital and online dragon for the BBC, talks about two of her favourite entries to Maps and Apps: Patients Know Best and Rally Round. Julie highlights the benefits for patients of being able to … – Julie Meyer talks about Patients Know Best
Published: 3 February, 2012
Technology website Mashable has provided this useful summary of five iPad apps currently in use by doctors, patients and medical students in the US. They include apps about interactive anatomy, electronic medical health records and radiology. >> Read the full … – Five useful iPad apps from the US
Published: 18 January, 2012
A new app helps clinicians estimate burn area percentages on patients, the necessary quantity of fluid and records patients’ details. The app works on Apple products like the iPad and was developed by the Mersey Plastic Surgery Unit, led by Rowan … – App to help treatment of burns victims is official medical device
Published: 12 January, 2012
Following some feedback on this blog, I am going to try to summarise some of the entries in five simple statements, under five headings, each written as a tweet. Let me know what you think. Impact on outcomes: Access to … – Profiling Maps and Apps entries in five tweets
Published: 18 September, 2011
Reading through more ideas, I see that frontline clinicians and service users are making very similar suggestions about similar problems, reflecting their day to day reality in their work/life that they would like to see a solution for. For example, … – Apps for GPs and apps for patients: two sides of the same coin?
Published: 1 September, 2011 | <urn:uuid:37a4233c-2922-4775-a101-42d49f2af7e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mapsandapps.dh.gov.uk/tag/patient-record/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920074 | 463 | 2.265625 | 2 |
It's a simple game, but this tutorial will get you playing in a very short time.
Latest Misc Articles - Page 9
Build your applications with built-in "mock types" (aka "services stubs") to facilitate continued development and unit testing even when essential systems services are unavailable.
Successful software projects have to begin with the premise that a fixed price, time, and project that is accurate may be a fantasy because there are too many unknowns—people sometimes being the worst offenders. Fix a time and price to what can be fixed and pay for what must be paid for.
Look at doing a simple stick figure animations, and then use similar methods to create a simple, fast-paced 2D vector animated game.
Discover a few points to keep in mind during and after the creation of your web site, such as form referrer check, URL canonization, and so forth.
Cover a few of the better-known sorting algorithms with sample code for VB6.
Latest Developer VideosMore...
Latest CodeGuru Developer Columns
The Transactional File System (TxF), which allows access to an NTFS file system to be conducted in a transacted manner through extensions to the Windows SDK API. MFC 10, has been extended to support TxF and related technologies. This support allows existing MFC applications to be easily extended to support kernel transactions.
The original release of the .NET Framework included collections as .NET was introduced to the Microsoft programming world. The .NET Framework 2.0 introduced generics to complement the System.Collections namespace and provide a more efficient and well performing option. Read on to learn more...
Learn how to use a for loop to loop through all of the images found on a web page and save them via the DownloadFile method of the WebClient object.
SOLID principles form the base for writing good and clean object oriented code in C#. Learn about the S.O.L.I.D principles and explore C# coding samples for each. | <urn:uuid:56d91006-7509-4d7a-920c-47a7f4204bfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.codeguru.com/vb/gen/vb_misc/48/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927188 | 419 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Hi there, I'm Ore from the BBC World News for Schools. It's Wednesday the 11th of May.
We hear from a girl who was hit by lightning.
A historic moment for Manchester City.
And the boy who's wearing his sister's skirt to school!
But first - two million dollars worth of food is being sent to one of the most remote island nations in the South Pacific - Kiribarti. This group of islands is really suffering because of rising world food prices. Because Kiribarti is so remote they have to buy in a lot of their food from other countries, and with the prices shooting up, it's very hard for poor nations to keep up.
Next - a ten year old girl from South Wales, in the United Kingdom, has survived being struck by lightning. Erin was watching a storm from her window when the bolt hit her...
CLIP: "Well I was just sitting up in the attic window minding my own business when it happened. I remember seeing the flash, I'll never forget it, I saw sparks and flash."
Her Dad heard a loud crack and a scream from Erin, but fortunately she wasn't seriously hurt...
Erin was really unlucky because being hit by lightning is very rare. She's ok but has been left with a red mark on her shoulder -
CLIP: "It looks like a snowflake and the doctors said they'd never ever seen anything like it in their lives!"
We think it sounds a bit like Harry Potter!
And for today's question we want to know how hot lightning can get?
Footy now and Manchester City have made it through to the Champions league for the very first time. They qualify for the ultimate football competition after beating Spurs last night 1-0. It was a frustrating match for Spurs fans with Peter Crouch scoring an own goal, pushing his team down the table into sixth place.
CLIP: "To Milner, Milner's got blocked, turns into the net... the congratulations are for Milner and it came off Peter Crouch, so it was an own goal, even though Milner's being congratulated."
Now being told what to wear to school can be pretty annoying - well one boy from England was so cross about not being allowed to wear shorts to school in the summer, that he's protesting by wearing not shorts, but a skirt! So what's he up to?
CLIP: "When I looked in my planner where there's the uniform policy, I saw it doesn't say that girls have to be the ones wearing the skirt. So I used this loophole to my advantage and I came in in a skirt for a peaceful march."
More news now, and New Zealand says it's checking reports that a rare kiwi bird has been found thousands of miles from its native land, in Russia. Russian media reports said the bird had been found in a garden and had been there for three days! Considering the bird doesn't fly, it's a bit of a puzzle how it ended up there, one zoologist suggested a cruise ship might have been the bird's mode of transport!
And funnily enough yesterday we asked what flightless bird New Zealand is famous for?... And you might have guessed it from that last story - the Kiwi of course!
OK, that's all from the World News for Schools team. We're back tomorrow.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. | <urn:uuid:923b1dff-9e62-48fa-a0f2-1afbc4332947> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/school_report/9484178.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978917 | 769 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Monday, October 15, 2007 | 11:09:00 AM
It's Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world take time to write about the environment. So, we thought it would be fitting to feature an AdSense publisher who has focused their site on increasing awareness and appreciation of the environment -- specifically, wild lands and wildlife.
Mongabay.com, run by Rhett Butler, originally focused on providing information about tropical rainforests, a topic Rhett is personally familiar with through his travels to a Borneo rainforest that has since been destroyed. In recent years, however, the site has expanded to include environmental news on numerous topics ranging from climate change to green business. He's also added a kids' version of the site aimed to spark interest in youngsters to learn about and appreciate rainforests. Rhett hopes through his work with Mongabay that more people will become aware of the beauty and importance of the environment so they'll be motivated to preserve our remaining biodiversity for the future.
On Mongabay.com, Rhett describes the concept of TREES, which are five basic steps we can take to saving rainforests:
Teach others about the importance of the environment and how they can help save rainforests.
Restore damaged ecosystems by planting trees on land where forests have been cut down.
Encourage people to live in a way that doesn't hurt the environment.
Establish parks to protect rainforests and wildlife.
Support companies that operate in ways that minimize damage to the environment.
The revenue Rhett's sites generate through AdSense has allowed him to quit his 9-5 job and focus on growing his environmental effort: traveling around the world to gain a connection to the efforts he is passionate about, garnering hands-on experiences, and looking for conservation opportunities. This travel also enables him to take these experiences and add valuable content to his website and further educate his readers.
Thanks, Rhett, for raising awareness about the importance of rainforests both to the global ecosystem and to people everywhere. | <urn:uuid:e23b838c-ad88-4dfe-92bb-0c600c8ff959> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://adsense.blogspot.com/2007/10/celebrating-blog-action-day-with.html | 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 | 0.966055 | 424 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Global Change and Extreme Hydrology: Testing Conventional Wisdom (2011)Water Science and Technology Board
Each report is produced by a committee of experts selected by the Academy to address a particular statement of task and is subject to a rigorous, independent peer review; while the reports represent views of the committee, they also are endorsed by the Academy. Learn more on our expert consensus reports.
As climate change warms the atmosphere, Earth's hydrology is shifting—with the potential to make floods and droughts more extreme. There is now a pressing need for decision-makers to better understand the ongoing changes in hydrologic extremes in order to make preparations for changing conditions. This report assesses changes in the frequency and severity of floods and droughts, abilities of communities to understand and forecast these changes, and strategies for better communicating the science to water resources practitioners.
- Global climate models and the basic laws of physics predict that the hydrologic cycle will accelerate as climate warms. Changing patterns of precipitation could potentially lead to more extreme floods and droughts.
- Recent analyses of a broad spectrum of water cycle variables, including precipitation, snow cover, and droughts, show that climate change is already affecting hydrology. However, some changes in hydrology have been unexpected.
- There is a disconnect between climate model predictions and observed patterns of floods and droughts, in part to the complexity of interactions between the atmosphere and land-surface systems. Often, the global climate models that predict increased precipitation are too large in scale and coarse in spatial resolution to tell scientists exactly how hydrology will change at local and regional scales. Smaller-scale regional climate models are not yet sophisticated enough to add significant information.
- However, these models don’t comprehensively address non-climate issues such as the construction of dams and changes in land cover that can also affect water cycles. More information on all these factors, and how they interact, is needed to gain a better understanding of how climate change will translate to floods and droughts on a regional and local scale.
- To prepare for shifting conditions, water resource managers will need new flood-frequency guidelines that draw on advances in hydrologic and climate science over the past 25 years.
- Many different groups, from climate scientists to atmospheric modelers to water resource managers, can help build a better understanding of changing hydrology; but currently, communication between disciplines is limited. A common vocabulary would facilitate collaboration between the scientists and practitioner communities.
- In the past, researchers placed considerable emphasis on the probability component of risk, but much less emphasis on vulnerability to hazards, which in this context means susceptibility to and ability to cope with losses caused by extreme floods or droughts. Without research to better understand all the dimensions of risk, the design of effective climate change adaptation strategies will remain unrealized.
- Uncertain flood or drought frequencies cause major problems with water engineering projects that have long life-spans, such as dams, levees, and sewers. One solution to this problem is to construct infrastructure in smaller units that have shorter expected longevities or design re-visit times (on the order of 10-20 years). In addition, engineers could use reconstructions of conditions during past periods of climate change to design projects that could adapt to predicted future conditions.
- Firm commitments by federal, state, and municipal agencies to retain observational networks are needed to advance abilities to prepare for, adapt to, and mitigate the impacts of hydrologic extremes as climate conditions change. | <urn:uuid:69fea457-1444-496e-9e93-bc2435d30cbb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dels.nas.edu/Report/Global-Change-Extreme-Hydrology-Testing/13211 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939738 | 719 | 3.28125 | 3 |
Last Updated: 2013-06-19 03:16:05 UTC
by Kevin Liston (Version: 1)
This weekend (June 22-23) the Amateur Radio Relay League and Radio Amateurs of Canada and holding their annual Field Day (http://www.arrl.org/field-day) exercise in North America. Amateur radio operators participate in an emergency preparedness exercise where they deploy their equipment outside the comfort of their home radio shacks and many operate on alternative/emergency power sources. Each year around this time, I realize that I've forgotten that this is coming up, and I hurriedly assemble my kit at the last minute and I try to fit in more than I can accomplish on my own. In other words, it's a realistic drill for me.
In the early days of the Internet Storm Center when large-scale scanning worms were threatening the basic infrastructure of the Internet we discussed falling back to packet radio as a communications option. Fortunately, those discussions remained theoretical and we didn't have to put it into practice. However, each year at Field Day, I'm reminded of the possibility that the right combination of disasters could fracture the Internet noticeably.
This makes me think of WinkLink 2000 (http://www.winlink.org/)
WinLink 2000 describes itself as "a worldwide system of volunteer sysops, radio stations and network assets supporting e-mail by radio, with non-commercial links to internet e-mail." Basically it provides e-mail service where the last mile is via amateur radio. It's used by ships at sea, and in emergency radio service when the local infrastructure is severely damaged.
I think this service would be very useful in an Internet-threatening scenario. Which is why I'm putting out the call to any readers who are also winlink-enabled. Send an email in to us (firstname.lastname@example.org) from your winlink account. Let us know if you'd be interested in participating in any Internet disaster response activities that we may have in the future.
Please choose a specific diary above to comment | <urn:uuid:8fa4a1bd-cd74-4897-abbe-5fb343a16ef4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://isc.sans.edu/diary/Analyzing+isc+sans+org+weblogs+part+2+RFI+attacks/contact.html | 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 | 0.944457 | 425 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Author: AlysonSerenaStone PM
Live instead of worrying about death. Life's too short.Rated: Fiction K+ - English - Hurt/Comfort/Spiritual - Words: 247 - Reviews: 3 - Favs: 3 - Published: 08-06-11 - Status: Complete - id: 2940456
|A+ A- Full 3/4 1/2 Expand Tighten|
Author's Note: This was originally a Mortal Instruments Fanfiction. It was published on on July 22, 2011. I decided that it could be used as an original work since there is no reference to the Mortal Instruments. "Our kind" refers to humans.
Date Finished: June 12, 2011
Memento mori is something that most of our kind seems to live by. It has a good meaning. It serves as a reminder that each day is a gift. Each day is one step closer to the end.
Life is an honour, not a right.
As one we step out into the battle, as one we prepare to die.
For that is what memento mori means, remember you will die.
It sounds dark and evil, but life is full of demons. Just like the ones we have to face now.
After the smoke clears and the dead buried, we pause to remember something.
What about life?
What about family, friends, and everything else that matters?
Justice has been served and mercy screamed its violent love.
And finally, the knights was getting his kiss and his princess.
The lost had taken the world off of his shoulders.
The pain still lingers, but it's from remembering all of the good times.
The little things…
Now our kind lives by memento vivere. Not everything is about darkness, evil, and death. Sometimes it's about light, good, and life.
Just remember memento vivere.
Remember to live. | <urn:uuid:dc3549dc-4722-451a-8536-6da1b07a19b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2940456/1/Memento-Vivere | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957706 | 405 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Robust Range-Free Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks
Source: University of Victoria
In wireless sensor networks, sensors should have some mechanisms to learn their locations since sensed data without associated location information may be meaningless. While many sensor localization algorithms have been proposed, security issues in sensor localization are usually not addressed in their original design. Secure sensor localization is very challenging due to limited computation and energy resources in sensors. It is highly desirable that a localization scheme is robust and is able to detect malicious attacks without using complex cryptographic operations. In this paper, the authors present and analyze detection methods purely based on geometric constraints in sensor networks. | <urn:uuid:503efa62-e419-40c4-8b78-9853f5ce82b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techrepublic.com/whitepapers/robust-range-free-localization-in-wireless-sensor-networks/4357291 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939331 | 125 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Court: State's Refinance of Bonds Constitutional
Minnesota's budget commissioner says a state Supreme Court ruling on refinancing bonds will save taxpayers "tens of millions of dollars."
The court ruled Wednesday the state has the constitutional authority to borrow money to refinance the bonds it sold last year using future revenue from the its 1998 settlement with tobacco companies.
The state sold $757 million in tobacco bonds to help with a budget gap. Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter says the savings will depend on market conditions when the bonds are sold. But, revenue officials expect the rates will be significantly lower than 4.75 percent.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press says the court ruled the type of debt the budget commissioner proposes is not the same as general obligation bonds which are based on the state's credit and taxing power.
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.) | <urn:uuid:6b7e22c0-1a95-4a63-a227-cb4644bcdc28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kstp.com/article/stories/S2819628.shtml?cat=12196 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903052 | 190 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Before pocket-sized puppies became the norm amongst the rich and famous, alligators and drunken deer could be found mingling at gatherings of noblemen and politicians. These strange pets were quirky sidekicks rather than illegal domestic beasts, providing unlikely friendship to some of history’s most influential figures. And that tradition isn’t entirely in the past — even now, celebrities will occasionally defy the teacup-poodle norm to join the ranks of our bizarre pet-owning forefathers (and raise their Los Angeles neighbors’ eyebrows in the process). Check out some lions, tigers, and bears after the jump.
Tycho Brahe’s moose
Aside from having a stellar mustache, 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe had a pet moose. But this wasn’t just any old moose — it was known to roam free during parties and consume more alcohol than its human counterparts. One evening, the animal allegedly drank too much beer with dinner, fell down the stairs, and died. Moral of the story – kids, don’t let your pet moose upstairs. | <urn:uuid:709c40ee-f3a1-4d4b-9235-517ba4fe2140> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://flavorwire.com/207572/famous-weird-pets-in-history-2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94976 | 228 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Is Google the global leader in maps? Nokia’s Conversations blog today popped up with a comparison of Nokia Maps – based on its Here platform – and Google Maps and says…. well, you’d expect this. No, Nokia is best.
Behind the scenes Nokia appears to be undertaking a global laser-based mapping exercise designed to give it superior mapping data.
….the critical feature is a rotating sensor called Lidar (light detection and ranging) which uses 64 lasers to capture 1.3 million points of digital information every second of each vehicle’s journey
In the meantime Nokia is making a play of its better offline mapping functionality (see the video below).
Nokia has traditionally been poor at communicating its user benefits, especially compared to its American competitors. 15 years of industry leadership lulled the company into arrogance and complacency. But it has been trying to break out and become better at building up its own heroics.
My view is they will have to work harder than this though to be convincing – by which I principally mean get the apps into the hands of other people who are going to write about it rather than rely on the Nokia blog.
And tell better stories about the Here platform’s success – for example it powers all local search for Toyota car’s navigation services, and includes user generated content around points of interest.
Nokia has a great mapping heritage, especially from the Navteq acquisition onwards. And those who know the company of old will remember it was Nokia who first began to dream about digitizing everyday life. That’s why they pioneered the use of high quality cameras in their phones.
I hope maps mean Nokia is back but until they really grasp the importance of creating the information layer around their products, I fear they will continue to struggle. The difference between success and share price stagnation is how well they help create the information layer around the future of the digitized self. It is there to be done. | <urn:uuid:b2e7971e-f45b-4153-acb2-12658457a638> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2013/02/19/is-the-nokia-map-app-better-than-googles/?commentId=blogAndPostId/blog/comment/1341-10358-4453 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956554 | 404 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Premiums could increase 17 percent for young adultsUnder the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect. Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That’s when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.
By: By Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press, The Jamestown Sun
CHICAGO — Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans — a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.
Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That’s when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.
The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.
Consider 24-year-old Nils Higdon. The self-employed percussionist and part-time teacher in Chicago pays $140 each month for health insurance. But he’s healthy and so far hasn’t needed it.
The law relies on Higdon and other young adults to shoulder more of the financial load in new health insurance risk pools. So under the new system, Higdon could expect to pay $300 to $500 a year more. Depending on his income, he might also qualify for tax credits.
At issue is the insurance industry’s practice of charging more for older customers, who are the costliest to insure. The new law restricts how much insurers can raise premium costs based on age alone.
Insurers typically charge six or seven times as much to older customers as to younger ones in states with no restrictions. The new law limits the ratio to 3-to-1, meaning a 50-year-old could be charged only three times as much as a 20-year-old.
The rest will be shouldered by young people in the form of higher premiums.
Higdon wonders how his peers, already scrambling to start careers during a recession, will react to paying more so older people can get cheaper coverage.
“I suppose it all depends on how much more people in my situation, who are already struggling for coverage, are expected to pay,” Higdon said. He’d prefer a single-payer health care system and calls age-based premiums part of the “broken morality” of for-profit health care.
To be sure, there are benefits that balance some of the downsides for young people:
— In roughly six months, many young adults up to age 26 should be eligible for coverage under their parents’ insurance — if their parents have insurance that provides dependent coverage.
— Tax credits will be available for individuals making up to four times the federal poverty level, $43,320 for a single person. The credits will vary based on income and premiums costs.
— Low-income singles without children will be covered for the first time by Medicaid, which some estimate will insure 9 million more young adults.
But on average, people younger than 35 who are buying their own insurance on the individual market would pay $42 a month more, according to an analysis by Rand Health, a research division of the nonpartisan Rand Corp.
The analysis, conducted for The Associated Press, examined the effect of the law’s limits on age-based pricing, not other ways the legislation might affect premiums, said Elizabeth McGlynn of Rand Health.
Jim O’Connor, an actuary with the independent consulting firm Milliman Inc., came up with similar estimates of 10 to 30 percent increases for young males, averaging about 15 percent.
“Young males will be hit the hardest,” O’Connor said, because they have lower health care costs than young females and older people who go to doctors more often and use more medical services.
Predicting exactly how much any individual’s insurance premium would rise or fall is impossible, experts say, because so much is changing at once. But it is possible to isolate the effect of the law’s limits on age-based pricing.
Some groups predict even higher increases in premiums for younger individuals — as much as 50 percent, said Landon Gibbs of ShoutAmerica, a Tennessee-based nonprofit aimed at mobilizing young people on health care issues, particularly rising costs.
Gibbs, 27, a former White House aide under President George W. Bush, founded the bipartisan group with former hospital chain executive Clayton McWhorter, now chairman of a private equity firm. McWhorter finances the organization. The group did not oppose health care reform, but stressed issues like how health care inflation threatens the future of Medicare.
“We don’t want to make this a generational war, but we want to make sure young adults are informed,” Gibbs said.
Young people who supported Barack Obama in 2008 may come to resent how health care reform will affect them, Gibbs and others say. Recent polls show support among young voters eroding since they helped elect Obama president.
Jim Schreiber, 24, was once an Obama supporter but now isn’t so sure. The Chicagoan works in a law firm and has his own tea importing business.
He pays $120 a month for health insurance, “probably pure profit for my insurance company,” he said. Without a powerhouse lobbying group, like AARP for older adults, young adults’ voices have been muted, he said. He’s been discouraged by the health care debate.
“It has made me disillusioned with the Democrats,” he said.
Ari Matusiak, 33, a Georgetown University law student, founded Young Invincibles with other Obama campaign volunteers to rally youth support for health care overhaul.
Age rating fails as a wedge issue because the pluses of the new law outweigh the minuses for young adults, Matusiak said.
“And we’re not going to be 26, 27, 33 forever,” Matusiak said. “Guess what? We’re going to be in a different demographic soon enough.”
Nationally representative surveys for the Kaiser Family Foundation have consistently found that young adults are more likely than senior citizens to say they would be willing to pay more so that more Americans could be insured. But whether that generosity will endure isn’t clear.
“The government approach of — we’ll just make someone get health care and pay for someone else — definitely NOT what I want,” said Melissa Kaupke, 28, who is uninsured and works from her Nashville home.
In Chicago, Higdon said he supports the principles of the health care overhaul, even if it means he will pay more as a young man to smooth out premium costs for everyone.
“Hopefully I’ll be old someday, barring some catastrophic event,” he said. “And the likelihood of me being old is less if I don’t have a good health plan.” | <urn:uuid:729e1cbd-53bc-461e-8fa4-800dfdd33596> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jamestownsun.com/event/article/id/107970/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953165 | 1,587 | 1.773438 | 2 |
On May 28, 1996, about 0711 hours Pacific daylight time a McDonnell Douglas MD-600 helicopter, N600RN, was destroyed during flight tests at Thermal, California. The pilot was not injured. The helicopter was in a flight test program for FAA certification under 14 CFR Part 27. The specific test point at the time of the mishap was part of a flight strain survey and involved cyclic control reversals. Use your browsers 'back' function to return to synopsisReturn to Query Page
The pilot set the parameters and executed the cyclic inputs as planned. Almost simultaneous with the aft movement of the cyclic there was a loud noise and immediate vibrations in the aircraft and controls. There was a chase aircraft for the mission and the chase pilot advised that the tail boom had been struck by a main rotor blade and had separated from the airframe. The pilot of the mishap aircraft then experimented with powered flight, but found that the right yaw was not controllable. He elected to continue the power off autorotation with a controllable left yaw. The autorotation was continued to a vacant field with some piles of brush and other desert debris. The pilot used available rotor rpm, cyclic, and collective control to execute a modified autorotation landing. The resultant landing was onto a brush pile with some skid and main rotor blade damage. The engine exhaust was adjacent to dry brush and grass which resulted in a grass fire. The ground fire destroyed the helicopter. | <urn:uuid:01310c13-b9a4-4241-a7d7-cc4b233490db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001208X05818&ntsbno=LAX96LA207&akey=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961225 | 300 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Businesses were difficult to start and maintain in nineteenth century Michigan, especially if you were black. No matter the barriers, Willaim and Wallace Goodridge thrived under the pressure and created the state’s first minority owned photography business.
Their journey began in 1847 in York, PA. The oldest of the Goodridge brothers, Glenalvin, became the first in the family to start in the fledgling trade. Photography as a commercial industry was nascent to say the least. The first wide-spread photographic process, the daguerreotype, had only been perfected by Louis Daguerre in Paris that same decade. Glenalvin soon developed a reputation for prizewinning ambrotypes. Unfortunately, an extortion scheme left him falsely accused of a crime. Glenalvin died during his unjust prison sentence.
Sanctuary in Saginaw
The two younger brothers, Wallace and William, re-established the studio in Saginaw, MI in 1863. They made a wonderful team. Wallace specialized in studio portraiture and William took the trade into the woods. Under contract to area railways, William photographed lumber camps on stereographic cards. William’s work reached critical acclaim when in 1890 (the year of his death), the Dept. of Agriculture sent his lumber views to be displayed as an American representative at the Centennial Exhibition in Paris.
Wallace continued the studio business in Saginaw until his death in 1922. It remains as an example of one of the most important minority-owned establishments in early photographic history. | <urn:uuid:55ec6a40-5974-4481-b8d4-4d8962f45351> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingmichigan.org/look/2010/02/16/better-than-good/comment-page-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974125 | 314 | 3.078125 | 3 |
When both parents are present in a household, the U.S. Census Bureau automatically assumes that the mother is the "designated parent." And when that "designated parent" is doing something radical, like working, the government wants to know what she is doing with her children.
According to the most recent data, dad takes care of the kids about 32 percent of the time. Yet, the Census bureau doesn't call this parenting, they call this a "child care arrangement."
The assumption is based on stereotypical and outdated gender norms, norms that assume children will have one female parent who mothers them and one male parent who will provide financially for them. The Census Bureau, by framing mothers as the "designated parent," normalizes these sexist assumptions about parental roles. As KJ Dell'Antonia, of the New York Times writes:
If, every morning, I go off to work and my husband stays home with a child, that’s a “child care arrangement” in the eyes of this governmental institution. If the reverse is true, it’s not.The Census Bureau's classifications implicitly normalize assumptions that women are naturally suited for care giving by referring only to the father's time with his children as "work." If the mom is caring for the children, that is parenting. If the father is doing it, it is a child care arrangement; a job. It implies that women find it easier and more natural to take care of children than men do, or that men are doing women a favor by taking on an extra "job" and watching the children.
Setting up the survey this way makes it difficult to track changes about who is doing what in families at a time when parental roles are rapidly changing. And it should offend parents. Not just women, who are assumed to be the "designated parent" and whose care giving isn't considered work, but also men, whose parenting is considered to be nothing more than baby-sitting. | <urn:uuid:f2ca16ef-1fc7-4b99-bc31-22e6ff99a42e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefeministmystique.blogspot.com/2012/02/is-dad-just-baby-sitter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970141 | 404 | 2.0625 | 2 |
mlimber writes "The New York Times is running a story about multicore computing and the efforts of Microsoft et al. to try to switch to the new paradigm: "The challenges [of parallel programming] have not dented the enthusiasm for the potential of the new parallel chips at Microsoft, where executives are betting that the arrival of manycore chips — processors with more than eight cores, possible as soon as 2010 — will transform the world of personal computing.... Engineers and computer scientists acknowledge that despite advances in recent decades, the computer industry is still lagging in its ability to write parallel programs." It mirrors what C++ guru and now Microsoft architect Herb Sutter has been saying in articles such as his "The Free Lunch Is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software." Sutter is part of the C++ standards committee that is working hard to make multithreading standard in C++." | <urn:uuid:cfd325a1-3062-432d-89be-8574d91b6b38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://developers.slashdot.org/story/07/12/17/1635200/faster-chips-are-leaving-programmers-in-their-dust/interesting-comments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947827 | 181 | 1.59375 | 2 |
George Osborne’s decision to bolster oil company profits by giving them tax relief while workers tighten their belts goes some way to explaining why he is so widely hated.
He and his coalition cronies shed crocodile tears over the cuts in living standards forced on the poor, insisting that everyone has to take a hit because “we’re all in it together.”
But the Chancellor takes pity on the very institutions and their prosperous shareholders who could afford to shoulder more of the financial burden of bailing out irresponsible private bankers.
He dresses up his state handout to the oil transnational corporations as a means of creating jobs, but this mantra is trotted out every time he responds to pleas from representatives of the hard-done-by 1 per cent elite.
His follow-up line that this tax break will deliver more revenue for taxpayers is nonsense.
It will cost the government — more accurately, those of us who pay tax, both direct and indirect — £100 million a year to persuade Big Oil to do what would be expected of it anyway.
Why should the Chancellor have to ask politely? Oil companies’ licences are subject to various conditions relating to pollution, employment requirements, depletion of resources etc.
He is in the driving seat, but he chooses to act as the oil companies’ chauffeur rather than ours.
When Oil and Gas UK economics director Mike Tholen reveals that “some very substantial projects” have been awaiting this announcement before approving investment in the North Sea, he lays bare the collusion between government and Big Oil in exploiting this massive national asset.
Contrast Osborne’s oily complicity with the industry against Venezuela’s dynamic governmental attitude to these amoral profiteers.
The Bolivarian government in Caracas lets the oil companies know who is boss and insists on the interests of the Venezuelan people taking precedence.
Little chance of that happening in Britain, where we have a conservative coalition intent on eroding working people’s standard of living and further widening the gulf between those who rely on salaries, benefits and pensions to exist and those who live luxuriously off unearned wealth.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s political outlook restricts his criticism of Osborne’s actions to complaining that he should have done the oil companies’ bidding earlier.
However, his assessment that more than half of the value of the North Sea’s oil and gas reserves, still worth an estimated £1.5 trillion, have yet to be extracted indicates that the British government has underplayed its hand.
The scale of these resources underscores the short-sighted nature of British governments over the past four decades which saw no further than handing over the entire operation to private oil companies.
Labour has retreated from its original policy, under then energy minister Tony Benn, of setting up in 1975 the publicly owned British National Oil Corporation to ring-fence oil revenues for industrial regeneration and an independent petrochemical industry rather than, as the Tories subsequently did, to squander them on short-term tax cuts as an election sweetener.
The value of contrasting approaches can be seen not only in Venezuela but also in Norway, where oil revenue was harnessed in the State Petroleum Fund, subsequently called the Government Pension Fund and now worth over £370bn.
Osborne’s actions confirm once again the falsity of Tory claims to be committed to higher living standards and green energy development.
If you appreciated this article then please consider donating to the Morning Star's Fighting Fund to ensure we can keep developing your paper. | <urn:uuid:8ede9caa-bf8a-4d4f-9d16-b1ab0c9a943a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/content/view/full/123595 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957695 | 729 | 1.679688 | 2 |
SAMBA: Integrating UNIX and Windows
Author: John D. Blair
Publisher: Specialized Systems Consultants, Inc.
Price: $29.95 US
Reviewer: Dan Wilder
Samba, a subject of previous articles in LJ, is a software package that lets a UNIX or Linux system provide file and print services for Windows clients, including Windows for WorkGroups, Windows 95, Windows NT, and OS-2 and, for that matter, UNIX using smbclient or Linux using that or the Linux SMB file system. It earns lots of interoperability points for Linux, allowing a Linux system to earn its keep as a file server in a Windows shop, instead of the more costly, and perhaps less robust, Windows NT server.
For some years I have administered such a Samba installation. From that experience, I can say with great enthusiasm that Samba is a fine package—proof that free software can achieve commercial-or-better quality. Once installed, it is simple and easy to use; so much so, I've even seen Samba used to share user home directories between Linux hosts. Unfortunately, the ones who witness my enthusiasm for this software too often say, “Yes, it sounds great, if only I could manage to configure it.”
Samba configuration, especially the initial configuration, is not always a breeze. While sample configuration files, offering good starting points, are provided in the source tree, there remain many parameters to set or tune. These parameters reflect in part the significant complexity underlying Microsoft networking, and in part the difficulties of mapping the Microsoft file system and security model to the UNIX models, with their corresponding wealth of alternate solutions that offer various tradeoffs.
There is a lot of information in Samba's man pages and source tree /docs directory. However, this information isn't highly integrated, notwithstanding some nice HTML pages, and it is by no means complete.
When I first installed Samba, there was less information than now but it was still substantial. It took me a week of browsing through it, off and on, before I was ready to attempt my first Samba configuration. I remember thinking several times as I struggled to master this information and the gaps in it, “I wish there was a good book on Samba.” Now there is.
Written by John D. Blair, who has been made a member of the Samba team, all the snippets of information in the Samba source tree are combined in a single volume. (The Samba Team helped out by providing last minute information and editing.) More, lots of information that never found its way to the source tree is collected here. For example, Chapter 2 gives an introduction to SMB (service message block networking protocol), including some discussion of protocol details. This chapter contributes much toward understanding the context in which Samba operates.
Well-organized and well-indexed, this book guides the reader through a UNIX-eye tour of Windows networking concepts, terms and history, past the unpacking and building of the package, and into the complexities of configuring, testing and troubleshooting an installation. The Table of Contents, nine pages long, contains enough detail to avoid many trips to the extensive index.
You will find discussions of network service browsing, name resolution, performance, authentication and access control, name mangling, multiple subnets, a very thorough chapter on problem diagnosis, and a whole chapter at the end devoted to the SMB file system.
Chapters 5 and 6 talk about the configuration parameters found in the main Samba configuration file, /etc/smb.conf. Perhaps the most important chapters for the working system administrator, each begins with an outline and its own index. This is a nice touch and potentially saves a lot of flipping back and forth to the main index or the Table of Contents. Options are grouped in these chapters by goal, rather than alphabetically as in the man pages, helping the reader draw connections between related options. Much of my week of browsing, when I first installed this software, was devoted to drawing connections between options.
The book comes complete with a CD-ROM containing Samba-1.9.18. This may be helpful for evaluating Samba; however, if you find this software useful, you should check the web site. At the time of writing this review (March), Samba-1.9.18p3 was current. No doubt a few more patches will be released between now and the time you read it.
Mr. Blair apparently felt obligated to include information on using both 1.9.17, which required the U.S. export-controlled DES library, libdes, and 1.9.18, which includes exportable limited-DES hashing code. You may already be familiar with the peculiar U.S. laws regarding export of encryption software. Even encryption software featuring the venerable and well-known DES algorithms, software written outside the US and freely available around the globe, is affected by these laws.
The Samba team has found a solution that may avoid the issue. Samba now includes the DES algorithm, in the form of a dedicated implementation used only to calculate a hash value as its output—this value cannot easily be deciphered to provide the original input. This method is apparently exempt from classification as encryption software. In any case, there are no obvious export restrictions on the present version, and the necessity of obtaining a DES library to link Samba against is avoided.
Having encryption support is nice, as it avoids multiple re-entry of passwords when signing onto NT. Without it, Samba shares that are marked for automatic network mount on NT login will result in your being asked to enter your password repeatedly, a situation that becomes quite frustrating. With encrypted password support, if you use the same Samba password on the server and locally on your NT system, you'll be prompted for your password only once when you sign on to NT.
The book covers the use of libdes with Samba-1.9.17, at some length, in several places. In each, there are words which sound like afterthoughts, to the effect that none of this is necessary with 1.9.18. I'd rather have seen this 1.9.17 information moved out of the way to an Appendix.
This is a minor blemish, however. I have enjoyed reading this book in its galley proofs, and it has helped me in a recent upgrade of several Linux systems from Samba-1.9.16 to the current version. I look forward to obtaining this book in its final printed form.
I believe SAMBA: Integrating UNIX and Windows will be of great assistance to those who like to get started with a good book. Use of the Samba software, combined with the information contained in this book, will enable Linux to continue to establish a foothold in mostly-Windows shops for use as a file server.
Free Webinar: Hadoop
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers
Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.
Some of key questions to be discussed are:
- What is the “typical” Hadoop cluster and what should be installed on the different machine types?
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- Are all microservers created equal for Hadoop deployments?
- How do I plan for expansion if I require more compute, memory, storage or networking?
|Designing Electronics with Linux||May 22, 2013|
|Dynamic DNS—an Object Lesson in Problem Solving||May 21, 2013|
|Using Salt Stack and Vagrant for Drupal Development||May 20, 2013|
|Making Linux and Android Get Along (It's Not as Hard as It Sounds)||May 16, 2013|
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- Designing Electronics with Linux
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- Validate an E-Mail Address with PHP, the Right Way
- Tech Tip: Really Simple HTTP Server with Python
- Build a Skype Server for Your Home Phone System
- Why Python?
- Drupal Is a Framework: Why Everyone Needs to Understand This
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1 day 7 hours ago | <urn:uuid:d4b5f69c-43ae-4126-8a1a-f8dc73bd5cbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2713 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922273 | 1,972 | 1.804688 | 2 |
MONDAY, Nov. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Among children hospitalized
with the pandemic H1N1 flu last year in California, more than
one-fourth ended up in intensive care units or died, California
Department of Public Health researchers report.
"While hospitalization for 2009 H1N1 influenza in children appeared to occur at similar rates as with seasonal influenza, this study provides further evidence that children, especially those with high-risk conditions, can be very ill with H1N1," said lead researcher Dr. Janice K. Louie.
"Fortunately, not many children died. Those that did had many underlying conditions. Antiviral medication given early seems to have lessened the chance of severe illness," she added.
Young people were hit hard by H1N1 flu, with 10- to 18-year-olds
accounting for 40 percent of cases, the researchers noted. This was
most likely due to a lack of immunity, which older people acquired
through repeated flu vaccinations of different strains of H1N1 or
exposure to other H1N1 strains, the experts pointed out.
Flu experts don't anticipate the H1N1 flu will pose a serious
threat in the 2010-2011 flu season, but the study authors say
doctors should promptly treat children with underlying risk
factors, especially infants, who get the flu.
"My feeling is that we are over the hump," said Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University in New York City. "I am expecting this to be part of the seasonal flu this year, unless it mutates," he said.
The many people exposed to the H1N1 flu and the sizable number
vaccinated against it have created a large herd immunity, which
should blunt this flu strain, Siegel said.
In addition, the current seasonal flu vaccine, which is
recommended for everyone 6 months old and up, contains protection
from H1N1 flu, he noted.
For the study, published in the November issue of the
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Louie's team examined the medical records of 345 children who were hospitalized or died from the H1N1 flu between April 23 and Aug. 11 of 2009. Their median age was 6 years.
During that time, 3.5 per 100,000 children were hospitalized,
most younger than 6 months, the researchers noted.
Most of these children (67 percent) suffered from other health
problems as well as the flu. Nearly 60 percent had pneumonia, 27
percent were admitted to an intensive care unit and 3 percent died,
Louie's group found.
"Overall, rates of hospitalization in this case series were similar to seasonal influenza, with infants under 12 months of age having the highest rates," Louie said.
Sixty-nine percent were treated with antiviral drugs, the study
authors reported. "Children who had a positive rapid test or who
were treated with antivirals early in their illness were less
likely to require intensive care unit admission or die," Louie
Intensive care hospitalization and death were more likely among
children with heart disease, cerebral palsy or developmental
problems, the authors added.
Hispanic and black children were less likely to die or need
intensive care than white children, Louie's team said.
"For children with influenza-like symptoms, especially those with high-risk conditions, clinicians should have high suspicion for infection with influenza," Louie said. And parents should get their children, especially those with underlying health issues, vaccinated against the flu, she stressed.
In another report in the same journal issue, researchers looked
at children hospitalized for H1N1 flu in Israel. Dr. Michal Stein
of Edith Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, and colleagues
found the number of children hospitalized and the severity of
illness were similar to the findings in the study by Louie and
"In conclusion, our study showed that the severity and mortality of 2009 influenza A (H1N1) in Israel were milder than those described in earlier publications and were similar to the figures reported in the literature on seasonal influenza," the researchers wrote.
"Children with underlying metabolic and neurologic disorders represent the group at highest risk for severe complications following 2009 influenza A (H1N1) infection," they concluded.
For more information on H1N1 flu, visit | <urn:uuid:e9dbe8ad-d40a-43d0-ac0c-2493e9a7bf7f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harthosp.org/HealthLibrary/News/default.aspx?chunkiid=625268 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974187 | 923 | 2.640625 | 3 |
I tend to stay away from topics I’m not involved with or have studied to some degree, but I am a follower of the greater Church Body, and an avid football fan (albeit Auburn Tigers Football not Penn State). I also try to steer away from current events as well, but in this case, it just deserves attention. While the Catholic Church has been having to deal with similar sexual sins for a while now, it is a self-governing body, while the top level of college football is governed by the NCAA, and this is basically their first large dealing with sexual sins and child abuse.
Today, the NCAA handed out the penalty it felt was justified for these horrific sexual sins against children, and it was a heck of a penalty. You can read the full pdf of the NCAA decision here, but the list of sanctions the NCAA placed on Penn State went well beyond the death penalty in my opinion, and rightfully so. The president of the NCAA made it clear that, at least Penn State, had put football, and winning football games, above all else, even the welfare of its own children. Living in a part of the country where football rises above everything, and is somewhat the religion of Saturday night, this penalty should raise awareness across the entire college football continuum. We love our football, but to what expense? Well, at least for the governing body of college football, the NCAA has made it clear, if you take football above the welfare of everything else, this is the list of what you get.
Punitive Component of the NCAA Penn State Penalty
- $60 Million Fine – this is the equivalent to the approximate average of one year’s gross revenue from the Penn State football program, to be paid over a five-year period to an endowment for programs preventing child sexual abuse and/or assisting the victims of child sexual abuse
- Four-Year Postseason Ban – they can’t play in a bowl game from 2012-2013 season until the end of the 2015 season. Some might think this isn’t that big of a deal, but this is where athletic programs get extra money, recruiting, and will basically disband any future NFL stars.
- Four-Year Reduction of Grants-in-Aid – the NCAA is limiting the Grants-in-Aid monies to 15 grants where in 2017-2018 they can go to 65
- Five Years of Probation – they are independently monitored for five years and any violation can mean higher penalties
- Vacation of Wins since 1998 – this is huge! This means Coach Joe Paterno will have these wins removed from his record as well
- Waiver of transfer rules and grant-in-aid Retention – this will allow any returning or new football player to be able to leave Penn State without any restrictions. This will basically have the affect of mass exodus with any football players of super high talent levels
- Individual penalties to be determined – open door for future action against specific people involved
Corrective Component of the NCAA Penn State Penalty
- Adoption of all recommendations presented in Chapter 10 of the Freeh Report (full PDF of Freeh report here)
- Implementation of Athletics Integrity Agreement (which is a huge list of things)
That’s quite a list, and in my view, which is just one of a mere spectator and lover of all things college football, this is worse than the death penalty that SMU received many years ago. I’m actually not sure the NCAA could put down a penalty or sanctions that would be too severe. Penn State removed the statue of their famed coach, and will probably begin to do what all quality higher education institutions in this country should be doing, focusing on winning through education, not football.
What does this have to do with the Catholic Church? Well, it is always interesting to me to see what secular institutions do when you compare that to what the church does. Although it is very hard to compare the Catholic Church and the sexual abuse of children by priests spanning centuries with college football, these were similar sins of the flesh, and above is how the secular world of NCAA College Football handled their sexual sin problem. How does, or how did the church handle their problem? In an overview, they instituted #7 above, and then whatever the court of law said they had to do.
Paul alone has a lot to say about the sexual sins of the flesh. They are not to be tolerated, and in his day, they were indeed worthy of the death penalty, but not the one where you can’t play football anymore, the capital punishment kind (see at a minimum Colossians 3:5). How can the church of today be less forceful against sin than a secular institution? There is of course a greater element of forgiveness and repentance involved, but in this particular case today, I think the church body can learn something from the punishment of the NCAA. This will really hurt Penn State right now, but in the end their football program will be one of integrity and honor.
I say the Catholic Church in this post only because they are the most prominent, the highest profile, and some of the worse abuse from within the greater Church Body. Things like this go on in Christian Church just like it goes on in college football, but that doesn’t mean we don’t meet these challenges as a Church Body with integrity and honor, and justice. After all, our governing body may be the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, or the United Methodist Church, but ultimately we are accountable to God, a much higher authority than even the NCAA, unless perhaps you ask someone from the state of Alabama on a Saturday night that is. | <urn:uuid:098b1a79-bef9-4df8-97c4-dff1e86bddfe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scottfillmer.com/2012/07/23/the-catholic-church-the-ncaa-and-penn-state-football/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967452 | 1,160 | 1.523438 | 2 |
control, and governance
CORPORATE VICTIMS OF IDENTITY THEFT
The Fargo Forum (subscription required) reports that a Toronto man is facing up to 30 years in prison for allegedly bilking 22 major banks of nearly US $1 million after accessing private information belonging to 15,700 people. One of the alleged corporate victims, U.S. Bank, asserts that its customer service center in Fargo, N.D., intercepted calls the man and his accomplices made when opening credit card accounts using stolen identities and personal information. According to bank experts and federal investigators, the fraud scheme — which allegedly took place between 2004 and 2009 — was among the largest and most complex they’ve ever seen.
Frauds often start out small — with the fraudster testing the preventive and detective controls and gradually increasing the size and scope of the illegal activities. However, the vast amounts of information organizations collect — and do not always safely secure — can create control weaknesses so large and tempting that a fraudster cannot resist. In this case, a suspected fraudster allegedly stole 500 identities by accessing private data and user identities to create fraudulent bank accounts — against which credit card and other transactions were recorded.
While a fraud as complex as this alleged case of stolen identities requires considerable effort to maintain and conceal, technology often renders committing fraud schemes less complicated. In addition, fraudsters are not limited to a specific bank, location, or country, which can make the fraud more difficult to detect as well as increase the time and effort to prosecute. However, the same attributes that make it hard to prevent and detect the fraud also can give law enforcement latitude in where they choose to prosecute and what the charges will be. Many countries have extradition treaties and are willing and able to turn over their citizens who have committed crimes. This can affect possible sentencing and send a strong message to other potential fraudsters.
Organizations also need to think about the bigger picture when considering prosecution. Were other jurisdictions involved? Was the fraud committed via the Internet? The nature of the fraud can expand the possible charges to include mail fraud, tax evasion, or other crimes that can have more serious consequences, as well as allow the local authorities to bring in additional law enforcement agencies. This case involved 25 investigators and nine police departments and took five years to investigate and prosecute, but its success will help counter the belief that frauds originating outside the United States but targeting U.S. residents are not prosecuted to the full extent possible simply because of the difficulties they present.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE
Internal Auditor is pleased to provide you an opportunity to share your thoughts about the articles posted on this site. Some comments may be reprinted elsewhere, online, or offline. We encourage lively, open discussion and only ask that you refrain from personal comments and remarks that are off topic. Internal Auditor reserves the right to edit/remove comments. | <urn:uuid:b2ed7044-7c41-4822-9b66-513140914ca2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theiia.org/intAuditor/fraud-findings/2011/12-05-corporate-victims-of-identity-theft/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952925 | 583 | 1.929688 | 2 |
If you are a Deaf sign language user, myFriend gives you:
- Free video calls from your computer (myFriend) through fixed line connection or through Wifi or with a dongle, through 3G mobile broadband (data charges apply)
Using your mobile application (myFriend Mobile, you can use your 3G connection (sim card needed) or Wifi
- Real Time Text (RTT) is a new standard to allow you to see all the text as it is typed. It means you can make text calls even when the signal strength is too weak for video call
- A video mailbox where, if you are unable to take a call, your friends can leave you video messages (in sign language, or spoken language or in text)
- You can have direct conversations in text with textphone users and with RNID’s Talk by Text users.
- Relay services are already operating (subscription may be needed) which allow you to talk directly to businesses or services through an interpreter or operator
- The REACH112 project has to set up a pilot service for access to 999 emergency service
- On myFriend mobile, you can use automatic speech to text translation with GOOGLE Translate. This allows people to speak into the phone and have it displayed as text, for you to read.
- Category: Your myFriend
- Published on Friday, 25 February 2011 13:10
- Written by Site admin
- Hits: 2709 | <urn:uuid:28088fc8-48be-4db9-b538-bf953cc2942d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myfriendcentral.com/index.php/myfriend-for-deaf-sign-language-users | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916648 | 305 | 1.671875 | 2 |
There is a new technology in the solar power industry you may have not yet heard of. New Energy Technologies have just unveiled their new solar window coating. The see-thru spray consists of the worlds smallest organic solar cells, and is easily applied to glass window surfaces without blocking the sunlight from your home or business.
Some of the highlights of this technology are:
- The solar cells in the spray are so small that they measure about a 1/4 the size of a grain of rice.
- The coating is very easy to apply and does not need costly vacuum or high temperature techniques but can instead be sprayed on at room temperature.
- The solar window coating conducts electricity from both natural light and does a much better job at generating electricity from artificial lighting. In fact it can generate up to ten fold the electricity from artificial light then traditional solar cells.
The aspect that really gets me excited aside from the ease of installation is the fact that it can generate quite a bit more power from artificial light then traditional PV cells. This is pretty cool because one of the disadvantages to today’s solar cells is it’s dependency on direct sunlight, this is a problem because it dictates where you need to place solar cells on your residence or business. What New Energy Technologies is proposing is that you will be able to use solar window coating on all of your glass windows and conduct energy from artificial light such as fluorescent as well, instead of just applying it to areas where there is direct sunlight.. How much energy and savings could be garnered from artificial light I am not quite sure about yet and will have to be seen, but the prospect non the less is interesting.
Unfortunately the companies website is a little vague on how the solar cells are actually able to do this, but it does state that in a scientific study:
“Under normal office lighting conditions, without the benefit of outside natural light from windows, New Energy’s ultra-small solar cells produced:
- Almost 2-fold greater output power density than monocrystalline silicon, an established commercial solar cell material;
- More than 8-fold greater output power density than copper-indium-selenide, known for its high optical absorption coefficients and versatile optical and electrical characteristics; and
- More than 10-fold greater output power density than flexible thin-film amorphous-silicon, a popular ‘second-generation’ solar thin-film material.”
So, we will have to see if the energy generated from artificial light is enough to be considered any value on it’s own, but as an additional source of energy combining with the energy generated from direct sunlight, along with the ease of use, solar window coating may be a strong contender. Time will tell, and we’ll keep you updated.
What do you think about Solar Window coating, breakthrough, or meh? Be sure to let us know.
Make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed so you can stay up to date when we post more information on renewable energy technology and thank you for visiting Solar Power Cost. | <urn:uuid:07b13326-82ec-4c5b-929d-cedfd1840698> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.solarpowercost.org/tag/alternative-energy-technology | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930625 | 628 | 3 | 3 |
I have always been fascinated by World War II and especially by the history of the Manhattan Project. And that leads inevitably to the B-29 Superfortress and Paul W. Tibbets, whose arc through history put him at the point of two of the war's biggest projectsthe bomb and the bomber that would deliver it.
Although it's not commonly known, the B-29 was actually said to be a larger undertaking than the Manhattan Project, at least in terms of total dollars spent. It was so beset with developmental problems that by 1943, when Tibbets showed up in Wichita to help sort out the airplane's shortcomings, there was some doubt that the airplane would be combat ready in time to have an impact on the war. The following year, Tibbets was selected to form what would eventually be the 509th Composite Group. He was 29 years old and responsible for what would become the most important weapon system of the war.
I never met Tibbetshe died in 2007but I saw him interviewed many times. Inevitably, he was asked if he ever lost any sleep over the horrific results of the Hiroshima attack. Not a wink, he said. It was his duty and he did what was expected of him. Given how complex getting the bomb on target was and how many things could have conspired to make it fail, the fact that Tibbets made sure that it didn't stands as one of the towering examples of military leadership in a war that produced many others. In Tibbets, history found the right man.
From the interviews I'd seen, I always took Tibbets to be a no-nonsense guy and probably not given to sentimentality. When I was preparing this podcast on the restoration of the Enola Gay, National Air and Space restoration specialist Ann McCombs told me that if you were in the cockpit of the Enola Gay today, at the Udvar-Hazy Center where the airplane is displayed, it would appear entirely as it did in 1945 save for one detail. There's an understated pad on the pilot's seat, in place of the hard pan that would have been softened (barely) by a parachute worn by each member of the flight crew.
The pad was placed there to accommodate Tibbets, who traveled to the Smithsonian a number of times and sat quietly in his old seat. Sentimentality? Nostalgia? Or a dedicated commander who well understood his airplane's place in history and wanted to make sure the world would see it as he thought it should be seen? Either way, I'd have given a barrel of pennies for those thoughts. Nearly as fascinating is the story of the Enola Gay's restoration, which you can hear in our long-form podcast. I hope you enjoy it.
Click here to listen. | <urn:uuid:2bcaae22-f06c-40ed-86aa-c00353e88fba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.avweb.com/blogs/insider/AvWebInsider_EnolaGay_200119-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988567 | 574 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Institutional repository `eKMAIR’: establishing and populating a research repository for the National University « Kyiv Mohyla Academy » :
« University libraries have an increasingly important role to play in supporting open access publishing and dissemination of research outputs. In particular, many libraries are playing a leading role in establishing and managing institutional repositories. Institutional repositories are, most often, Open Access Initiative (OAI)-compliant databases of a university or other research institution’s intellectual output, most typically research papers, although many other forms of digital media can also be stored and disseminated. Their main function is to provide improved access to the full text of research articles and improve retrieval of relevant research.
The National University « Kyiv Mohyla Academy » is a small-sized institution with approximately 3,000 students and 500 academic staff. Although it is a teaching-intensive university, developing research and knowledge-transfer capacity is a strategic priority and four research institutes have been established, with further research activity going on in the academic schools and research centres. » | <urn:uuid:27118ae0-146e-42c8-a409-4ebc4fb313b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://microblogging.infodocs.eu/?tag=institutional-repository | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907325 | 216 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Essential Oil Composition Affected by Plant Growing Conditions
Research published in April 2009 delved into the relationship between the chemistry of essential oils and the growing conditions of the plants from which they were distilled. We had just made a post regarding the chemistry of Helichrysum essential oil, and how the oil distilled from plants grown on the French island of Corsica have the most healing chemical profile.
This research was done on Helichrysum italicum specifically, using 48 plants grown in different locations and harvested at different times. The researchers evaluated the levels of 28 natural chemical constituents in the essential oil, and how these varied with changes in growing conditions. The results seem to indicate that soil chemistry was the most affecting factor in determining the essential oil constituent profile.
Helichrysum grown on the island of Corsica has long been considered the most healing of all Helichrysum varieties. We HAVE seen exceptional quality oil produced in the United States using genetics of the Corsican plants -- and it is likely that the soil these plants were grown in was very similar to that found in the moist Mediterranean regions. The Corsican oil contains the the highest levels of Neryl Acetate, the anti-spasmodic component of the oil. On a more esoteric level, this is the 'water' element coming through in the oil, which supports the musculature becoming more fluid.
Partitioning the relative contributions of inorganic plant composition and soil characteristics to the quality of Helichrysum italicum subsp. italicum (Roth) G. Don fil. essential oil.
Bianchini A, Santoni F, Paolini J, Bernardini AF, Mouillot D, Costa J.CNRS UMR-6134 SPE, Université de Corse, Laboratoire Chimie des Produits Naturels, Corti.
Composition of Helichrysum italicum subsp. italicum essential oil showed chemical variability according to vegetation cycle, environment, and geographic origins. In the present work, 48 individuals of this plant at different development stages and the corresponding root soils were sampled: i) 28 volatile components were identified and measured in essential oil by using GC and GC/MS; ii) ten elements from plants and soils have been estimated using colorimetry in continuous flux, flame atomic absorption spectrometry, or emission spectrometry (FAAS/FAES); iii) texture and acidity (real and potential) of soil samples were also reported. Relationships between the essential-oil composition, the inorganic plant composition, and the soil characteristics (inorganic composition, texture, and acidity) have been established using multivariate analysis such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and partial Redundancy Analysis (RDA). This study demonstrates a high level of intraspecific differences in oil composition due to environmental factors and, more particularly, soil characteristics. | <urn:uuid:4b0a047c-e4f5-43d9-8966-5fabf34b0da2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.anandaapothecary.com/aromatherapy-essential-oils-news/2009/07/essential-oil-composition-affected-by.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933213 | 590 | 2.609375 | 3 |
"The model of economic development that we are currently pursuing is unsustainable. Our energy consumption per unit of GDP is seven times that of Japan, six times that of America, and even 2.8 times that of India. China’s labour productivity is less than 10 per cent of the world total, and yet our emissions are over 10 times higher than the global average.
" ~ Pan Yue - deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Part of a new generation of outspoken Chinese senior officials, Pan has given rise to a tide of environmental debate, attracting enormous attention and controversy.
Read his articles here : -
China: economic powerhouse, environmentally unsustainable
- part one
and part two
posted by infini
on Jul 29, 2007 -
A Concrete Solution to Pollution
With concerns over global warming and pollution control reaching an all-time high, an Italian company has developed an interesting solution. It is called TX Active: a concrete that literally breaks down pollutants in the air. The effects are significant: 'In large cities with persistent pollution problems caused by car emissions, smoke from heating systems, and industrial activities, both the company and outside experts estimate that covering 15% of all visible urban surfaces (painting the walls, repaving the roads) with products containing TX Active could abate pollution by up to 50%.' Even more significant is that the cost is only 30% over that of normal concrete. Remarkable.
posted by PreacherTom
on Nov 10, 2006 -
I know this has been on everyone's
mind, but I just read this
article today and was astounded at my lack of foresight.
Silly me, here I was worrying about global warming when what I need to be fretting about is the decrease in fuel's impact on the structure of international banking!
Will we run out of fossil fuel before it's too late
to save the environment
from pollution and greenhouse gasses? The abiotic nuts
think we've got plenty more.
Personally, I think we can kiss the marvel that is suburbia goodbye
and start contemplating the fact that the focus on the post-post industrial revolution will not be information, but rather agriculture
And since solar panels and windmills and the like are made of materials that are extracted, transported, and fashioned by using oil-powered machinery, my money's on the folks who're stockpiling uranium
for all those shiny new nuclear plants we're going to need.
So, do we have a plan? You bet we do!
Oh. Well, we'll just rely on the advancement of technology
to allow us to weasel out of it!
Me? I've actually always wanted a horse
posted by Specklet
on Apr 14, 2005 - | <urn:uuid:dcb7b636-5ef3-4adc-8049-6d9e19c1e51a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metafilter.com/tags/Global+economy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94266 | 570 | 2.28125 | 2 |
I kind of have issue with this, as well. If you're truly going for the theory that Remus can smell an Animagus, that implies that they have their own distinct smell away from human or any other animal form. You've singled them out, you see. So, I think that Peter could smell like a rat to other humans, but to a werewolf there would be just a slight difference or an extra fine underlying layer not perceptible to humans.Quote:
Good point. That is also in the story. He was a human, giving him his distinct smell, but he was a rat and the rat smell probably covered most of his human smell.
Crookshanks is not human and Sirius admitted that the cat knew straight away that 'Padfoot' wasn't what he appeared to be. The same with Peter, which is why Crookshanks was attacking him all the time.
I think you could say that he smelled like a rat, but detail the special something that only Remus can smell.
As for Remus' scent, do you want all werewolves to have a particular smell, or each one differently? Please be careful with the chocolate thing. As one of the many Remus lovers, I can tell you that it gets a bit trying. If your story is more light and humour, then I'd say it could work, but other than that....
Yes, Remus gave out chocolate uring PoA, but no one seems to pick up the fact that he was the DADA professor, so he was well versed in the Dark Arts. He also knew, as I'm sure all of the staff did, that Hogwarts was going to be surrounded by the guards of Azkaban - Dementors. The effects of chocolate clearly combat the effects of the Dementors and that is why he carried it around, not necessarily to feed some chocoholic need. He was brilliant, after all ;) , and even Madame Pomfrey compilented him on finally being a DADA professor who knew what he was doing!
~Michelle (The One Who Marauds... with Remus, always) | <urn:uuid:ac5a4cf1-e41f-4992-a6c6-935fd5a4b72e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fanfiction.mugglenet.com/forums/printthread.php?t=15543&pp=10&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989397 | 439 | 1.625 | 2 |
Open Source codes are used by almost everyone in the tech industry and that is the reason why, large companies release different parts of their application with different licenses. The world would be a really bad place without Open Source software with people writing their own shitty implementations or stealing codes from others. Open Source has simplified all this at a simple cost: you have to give back to the community.
Though, as tech giants grow bigger, they seem to care lesser for this. All they want to do is suck out all that is there from Open Source codes. When it comes to giving back to the community, they go MIA.
Apple uses a mix of licenses in its iPhone, which includes BSD and LGPL codes. Clearly, these two licenses require that Apple gives back to the community. Apple makes all its Open Source releases on a website www.opensource.apple.com. Though it is interesting to see that the website has not been spotted distributing their WebKit code after iOS 4.3.0.
Apple has a process in place to do exactly this, which is appreciable. However, this negligence from Apple can cause immense agitation in the Open Source community. If Apple gets away with doing this (which they will not), it will send out a dangerous signal resulting in massive theft, violation and misuse of Open Source codes and principles.
Update: After extensive coverage and scrutiny by the FOSS community, the code is finally up for download. Congratulations Apple, this was long overdue. Next time, please be on time. | <urn:uuid:41725add-4039-42e8-b7e8-c89c60e8f318> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://techie-buzz.com/foss/apple-violates-webkit-open-source-license.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96765 | 309 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Posted May 28, 2012 – 5:41 pm in: Freeware
It’s no secret that we love installing Windows from USB flash drive here at IntoWindows. Readers who have been following us for a long time probably know that we have already covered numerous utilities and methods that help you install Windows on USB drive and run Windows from USB flash drive.
A little over a weak ago, we showed you how to create an image backup of a bootable USB flash drive so that you can ready your flash drive whenever you want to install Windows from USB, without having to execute commands and wasting too much time. This time around, we have a software that not only lets you create a bootable USB drive but also lets you backup the bootable drive.
WinUSB Maker is a free utility that helps you load Windows setup files onto the USB drive and then install Windows from USB drive. With the help of WinUSB Maker, you can create Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 bootable USB flash drives. This software can also be used to install Linux operating systems and other recovery discs based on Linux.
Unlike some programs that support only ISO files, this program can be used even if you have extracted setup files.
WinUSB Maker sports a straight-forward user interface. Using this tool is fairly simple. Run the program as administrator, select your USB drive that you wish to make bootable, click on Setup to USB menu in the left-side, select Windows ISO file or Windows setup folder and finally click Make USB Bootable button to begin transferring the files onto the USB.
The backup and restore functions are also very straight-forward. Currently you can restore the USB drive image backup to the same device only.
It’s a free software and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. Please note that the current version (2.0) is in beta stage but works great.Tags: Bootable USB, Freeware for Windows
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- Remove Watermark from Windows 7 desktop | <urn:uuid:ca319bab-911c-4fe6-a7f3-5e39484ef755> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intowindows.com/winusb-maker-utility-to-create-backup-and-restore-bootable-usb/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905013 | 450 | 1.578125 | 2 |
136 pages with an additional page accrued every 6 hours, capped at 136 pages
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It is the practical experience gained in the operating room and on the wards dealing with complications and deviations from the typical or average scenario that matures and fully develops a surgeon. The typical textbook demonstrates the “right” or standard way to do things and the implicit assumption is that if these guidelines are followed then the patient and the surgeon’s life will be complication free. Good results come from experience and experience is gained by making mistakes. The goal of this book is to minimize the frequency of surgical complications and maximize the outcome when they do occur by allowing the reader to learn from the operative and clinical experience of those who have gone before so that each generation can collectively stand on the shoulders of the preceding generation without the need to learn from one’s own complications.
This book is therefore designed less to address indications for operations than how to carry them out and provide postoperative care without complications. While the authors of the various chapters address the correct or right way to perform operations and care for patients after surgery, they have also been tasked to address and emphasize specific dos and don’ts for both intraoperative techniques and postoperative care that will reduce the incidence of complications. As some complications, alas, are inevitable, also addressed are the issues of timely recognition and appropriate treatment of complications when they do occur despite best efforts.
We do not deliver the extra material sometimes included in printed books (CDs or DVDs). | <urn:uuid:9be226df-54db-4cf0-b899-ed41182a3033> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ellibs.com/book/9780879934279 | 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 | 0.945644 | 306 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Welcome to Union College’s German Cultural Studies program. Our program offers a wide range of courses in language, literatures and cultures of German-speaking Europe. By combining exciting and thought-provoking content orientation with the development of sophisticated language abilities, our classes are challenging but conducted in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. Students who minor or major in German Cultural Studies are able to integrate their knowledge of the language and the multicultural society into a broad spectrum of careers, including (but not limited to) engineering, the arts, medicine, international business, law, or politics, to name only a few. Since Germany plays an influential role in unified Europe, proficiency in German language and culture are a vital asset for any student who wants to participate fully in the life and the opportunities of the twenty-first century.
As part of the German Cultural Studies, we furthermore offer an enthralling Term Abroad in Freiburg and Berlin each Spring, as well as the opportunity of a year-long study at a selected German university, organized and funded through the Verband der Deutsch-Amerikanischen Clubs e.V. (Federation of German-American Clubs, http://www.vdac.de/vdac/)
Requirements for the Major in German: A minimum of ten courses beyond the 101-level, including three 300 level, and two 400 level, and 489 (Senior Project). Majors are normally expected to take one Term Abroad and are encouraged to improve their language skills by living in the German House, attending the weekly German Table, and participating in other extracurricular activities. Students have the option of taking one MLT course (Literature in Translation) for German credit. In addition, majors are urged to take other courses related to German culture and history in other academic fields such as English, history, philosophy, music, art history, and political science.
Requirements for the Interdepartmental Major in German: A minimum of seven courses beyond the 101-level, including two courses at the 300 level and one course at the 400 level if the thesis course 489 in German is chosen; or it can include, in addition to two 300 level courses, two courses at the 400 level if the thesis (with a considerable German component) is written in the second field. Students have the option of taking one MLT course (Literature in Translation) for German credit. Interdepartmental majors are urged to take the Term Abroad and are encouraged to improve their language skills by living in the German House, attending the weekly German Table, and participating in other extracurricular activities.
Requirements for the Minor in German: A minimum of six courses for those who begin with 100, or a minimum of five courses for those beginning at the 101-level or above, including at least two 300-level courses. Minors are strongly encouraged to take a Term Abroad. Minors have the option of taking one MLT for German credit if they have participated in the German Term Abroad.
You are welcome to contact any of us in the German Cultural Studies section if you would like more information about our program! | <urn:uuid:bab4de58-c462-458f-b7cd-1783dc34bcb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.union.edu/academic_depts/modern_languages/German/index.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937585 | 639 | 1.65625 | 2 |
China, US have unique role to play for world peace: Locke
Updated: 2012-10-30 11:34
By Zhang Yuwei in New York (China Daily)
A factory of Sany Heavy Industry Co Ltd, a high-profile Chinese investor in the US, on the outskirts of Shanghai. US Ambassador to China Gary Locke said Chinese investors make "important contributions" to the US economy. Darcy Holdorf / Reuters
China and the United States, the two largest economies in the world, have a "unique role to play" in ensuring peace and prosperity in the world, Gary Locke, US ambassador to China, said during a town hall event organized by the National Committee on US-China Relations on Monday.
"We have a shared interest in working together, not just for the good of our own people, but really the entire people of the Asia-Pacific region, and indeed all the people in the world," said Locke.
The event, which took place in Beijing, was webcast live to 60 venues across the US, although several on the East Coast had to be cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy.
Locke, the featured guest at this year's event, is described by Stephen Orlins, moderator and president of the Committee as "a man of many firsts" - the first Chinese-American to serve as ambassador to China, commerce secretary and governor (of Washington state).
Relations with China have been a hot topic in the US presidential race, and on Monday - just eight days before Election Day - Locke's presentation highlighted issues affecting the dynamics between the two economic superpowers, including trade and investment, and intellectual property.
Bringing the town hall event to local audiences, Orlins said, is intended to elevate discourse that, during the presidential campaign, "has lacked depth and nuance".
With the increasing economic interdependence between the two nations, Locke highlighted the vital role Chinese investments have played in the US economy.
"Chinese companies with operations in America are also making important contributions to US output and employment," he said.
"This trend is a very positive development for both China and the US because Chinese companies benefit from gaining access to the world's largest market, to a well-educated labor force and to the most modern management and corporate governance."
At least 37 US states are home to Chinese investment from China in various industries, including auto parts, information technology and services. All contribute to about 30,000 jobs in the country. Chinese investment to the US has reached $6.3 billion so far this year, the New York-based research firm Rhodium Group estimated.
"Foreign investment, including Chinese investment, is vital to our economic growth, job creation and productivity," Locke noted.
"Forty years ago, it would be difficult to imagine the interdependence that characterizes our nations today," he said, referring to 1972 when US President Richard Nixon visited China, an important step to normalizing ties between the two nations.
Locke said the trade between the two nations is more than a $1 billion of goods and services every day, in contrast to the annual bilateral trade of less than $100 million 40 years ago.
Today more than 700,000 American jobs depend on exports to China, he added.
Despite the economic interdependence, the two countries, also have disagreements and conflicts, Locke said, citing recent disputed trade cases brought by the US.
The past four years have seen more cases brought against China by the US to the World Trade Organization than the previous (Bush) administration in eight years, Locke noted.
"We are constantly pressing China to do even more," he said, urging China to create a "level-playing field" for American companies doing business in China.
He called on the two nations to cooperate more, and to be responsible not only for themselves, but for the entire world.
"The world is looking for leadership from the United States and China," he said. "It's my hope that 50 years from now the history books will talk about the great accomplishments we together made, not that we failed to act." | <urn:uuid:7c7bd73d-6b2c-41a3-ad4a-0da99aebe91c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2012-10/30/content_15857020.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960735 | 837 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Picture a Bible no larger than a thumbnail, or a 2-inch-high volume of nursery rhymes, and you'll have some idea of the awesome fascination inspired by miniature books. Made for more than 4,000 years, this category of book collecting is the very definition of the phrase, "Good things come in small packages."
Not surprisingly, the very first examples were painstakingly hand-lettered by monks and scribes on vellum, in particular books of hours for use by royalty and the aristocracy (unless you count as books the much earlier small cuneiform tablets of the ancient Mesopotamia). Once movable type was invented by Johann Gutenberg, they could, of course, be printed in larger editions.
A classical scholar named Aldus Manutius formed the Aldine Press, which became the most important producer of early miniature books toward the end of the 15th century. From then until now, thousands of titles have been printed, covering the full range of subject matter - Greek and Roman classics, Bibles and other religious books, children's books, almanacs and other references, fiction, poetry and history, travel and science.
Particularly popular were what was known as thumb Bibles, minuscule abridgements, the earliest of which were written in rhymed couplets. Among the many other items of interest is a series known as the smallest English almanacs in the world (three-quarters by one-half inch), issued annually from 1836 to 1843, with engraved text and portraits of literary lights of the period by Albert Schloss.
The minibooks genre is roughly defined as comprising books of less than 3 inches - the current world record for the smallest specimen being a 1932 edition of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" of Naishapal, measuring five-sixteenths by five-sixteenths inch. These tiny books were a splendid vehicle for the bookbinder's art - meticulously crafted examples have employed chased silver and gold, mother-of-pearl and elaborate needlework, as well as the finest leathers dyed in rich tones, usually ornamentally gilded and sometimes embellished with jewels. One smaller than 2-inch 1670 Venetian "Book of Hours," for example, is bound in chased silver with the raised figures of the Madonna and child on the front cover.
Miniature books have played a role in the lives and careers of a number of important historic figures. One of Henry VIII's wives, Anne Boleyn, carried to her beheading a tiny gold-bound book of Psalms that bore a portrait of the husband who had ordered her execution, and Queen Elizabeth I had her own minivolume printed in 1570, with six of her poems translated into four languages. Napoleon traveled with a large (small) library on his military campaigns; Benjamin Franklin issued a miniaturized edition of "Poor Richard's Almanac" for easier carrying; the Bronte sisters, as young girls, constructed books in miniature; and Abraham Lincoln carried a scaled-down prayer book on his travels as a circuit lawyer.
During World War II, miniature books played a role in both sides of the conflict: President Franklin D. Roosevelt formed an extensive collection of them in his Hyde Park library, while Adolph Hitler published a large series of illustrated books during the same period.
A new book on the subject, far from commensurate in size, is the sumptuous "Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures" by two experts in the field, Anne V. Bromer and Julian I. Edison (Abrams), produced to accompany an exhibition of hundreds of extraordinary examples at New York's prestigious Grolier Club through July 28, then traveling to several other cities.
Copiously illustrated, it covers the full range - medieval and Renaissance manuscripts to modern examples, and includes fine leather, metal and jeweled bindings (including a striking Dutch one bound in 22-carat gold), dollhouse-scaled books made for adults, tiny treasures illustrated by Miro and Picasso, and a number of innovative novelty books.
Linda Rosenkrantz has edited Auction magazine and authored 15 books, including "The Baby Name Bible" (St. Martin's Press; www.babynamebible.com). She cannot answer letters personally. | <urn:uuid:35c6033a-0b22-4ef1-b939-14db8de1259b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bendweekly.com/news/6031.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963325 | 891 | 2.6875 | 3 |
SOKOLOWISKI (Sokolowski), MIKE, victim of strike violence; m. and had three children; d. 21 June 1919 in Winnipeg.
Almost nothing is known of Mike Sokolowiski beyond the few (and sometimes contradictory) details recounted by Winnipeg newspapers reporting on his death. The Winnipeg Tribune printed a photograph that showed a neatly dressed, stocky man in his late twenties or early thirties. He sported a tidy black moustache and a high peak of black hair. Even assuming that Sokolowiski was, as described, of “Austrian birth,” the Austro-Hungarian empire of the late 19th century had many ethnic groups. His address was given as 552 Henry Avenue (Street) in the city’s north end, but the only listing at that address in the city directory of 1919 is of a Mrs Sodosky. The Tribune also reported he was carrying a badge of the Department of Health, but there was no record of employment by that department. Other press reports called him a tinsmith. If indeed Sokolowiski had been in the act of throwing a rock at the police, as was claimed, he had clearly come prepared for trouble, since there were few missile-sized stones to be found on Main Street in June 1919. But whether he was actually a striker, a sympathizer, or merely an innocent bystander caught up in the violence of the moment is quite uncertain.
The confrontation during which Sokolowiski died was the culmination of many weeks of open labour unrest in Winnipeg, usually called the Winnipeg General Strike. It had begun in early May among the city’s metal and construction workers and it spread on 13 May when the Trades and Labor Council announced that a strike referendum showed 11,000 votes in favour of a general strike and only 500 against. By 15 May thousands of workers across the city were on strike, most of them part of the “general sympathetic strike” called in support of the original workers who had walked off their jobs. The notion of a general strike, a novel one in 1919, was regarded with great suspicion by Winnipeg’s ruling and middle classes, who saw it as the first stage of revolution. They organized a formal response in the shape of the Citizens’ Committee of One Thousand, devoted initially to keeping the city’s services running. Canadian federal authorities, equally fearful of the threat to social order, were quick to criticize the strike and to move against it.
At the outset, the strike was led by Winnipeg’s traditional labour leaders, most of them schooled in British labour organizations and tactics. Winnipeg was a particularly volatile place in 1919, however, partly because of the presence in the city’s north end of thousands of immigrants born in territory belonging to Canada’s enemies during World War I. A few of these immigrants were members of radical organizations and most were familiar with government repression of various sorts during the war. Sokolowiski was apparently one of these “aliens.” Also helping to inflame matters was a large contingent of Canadian war veterans, who had for some time been protesting against the aliens and who began demonstrating in support of the strikers at the end of May. Fearful of the pro-strike sympathies of the city’s police force, the authorities replaced them on 9 June with special police who created a riot the next day with their heavy-handed tactics. These specials would soon be replaced on the front lines by the Royal North-West Mounted Police, who had been stationed in the city from the onset of labour troubles.
Paradoxically, by 21 June the official strike had already lost most of its momentum. The federal government had ordered the arrest of its alleged leaders on charges of sedition four days earlier. The public demonstration of 21 June was organized by the veterans, who decided to protest the arrests. The mounted police charged into the crowd on Main Street, swinging baseball bats and firing three volleys. Sokolowiski was the only immediate fatality, reportedly killed instantly by a shot through the head; Steve Schezerbanowes would later die of gangrene poisoning as a result of gunshot wounds. In the end, 27 casualties and 94 arrests were produced. Countless small injuries were never reported. The Winnipeg General Strike was officially called off on 26 June at 11:00 a.m., leaving behind it a legacy of local ill will, a series of trials of its leaders, and further activity by the immigration department against aliens.
Manitoba Free Press, 23 June 1919. Winnipeg Tribune, 23 June 1919. D. H. Avery, “Ethnic and class tensions in Canada, 1918–20: Anglo-Canadians and the alien worker,” in Loyalties in conflict: Ukrainians in Canada during the Great War, ed. Frances Swyripa and J. H. Thompson (Edmonton, 1983), 79–98; “The radical alien and the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919,” in The west and the nation; essays in honour of W L. Morton, ed. Carl Berger and Ramsay Cook (Toronto, 1976), 209–31. D. J. Bercuson, Confrontation at Winnipeg: labour, industrial relations, and the general strike (Montreal and London, 1974). J. M. Bumsted, The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: an illustrated history (Winnipeg, 1994). Directory, Winnipeg, 1919. D. C. Masters, The Winnipeg General Strike (Toronto, 1950). M. K. Mott, “The ‘foreign peril’: nativism in Winnipeg, 1916–1923” (ma thesis, Univ. of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1970). Winnipeg 1919: the strikers’ own history of the Winnipeg General Strike, ed. Norman Penner (Toronto, 1973). | <urn:uuid:fdb77eb7-612a-4928-9163-d3d2b7a8dd4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=7712 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976999 | 1,216 | 2.140625 | 2 |
A horizontal structural member used to support and stabilize I-joists along their length. Girders used to support I-joist floor assemblies are typically made from glued-laminated lumber, parallel strand lumber, or multiple pieces of laminated veneer lumber (LVL).
Laminated veneer lumber - is an engineered wood product created by layering dried and graded wood veneers with waterproof adhesive into blocks of material known as billets. Cured in a heated press, LVL is typically available in various thicknesses and widths and is easily worked in the field using conventional construction tools. LVL is also known as structural composite lumber (SCL).
Parallel strand lumber (PSL) - is a high strength structural composite lumber product manufactured by gluing strands of wood together under pressure. It is a proprietary product marketed under the trade name ParaIlam®.
Glu-lam - is a stress-rated engineered wood product comprised of wood laminations, or "lams," that are bonded together with strong, waterproof adhesives. Glulam components can be a variety of species, and individual "lams" are typically two inches or less in thickness. ANSI/AITC A190.1 includes requirements for sizes, grade combinations, adhesives, inspection, testing and certification of structural glued laminated timber products. | <urn:uuid:97688841-3a8f-4e6e-9c01-849a1d1ce3d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.woodaware.info/fire_frame/floor/i-joist/product/girders.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959362 | 282 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Regional health officials on Thursday received an update on the devastating toxic algae bloom in a nearby Ohio lake and were offered tips on how to handle similar health-related incidents should they occur locally.
Michelle Kimmel, director of environmental health for Mercer County, Ohio, was a guest speaker at a meeting of the northeast chapter of the Indiana Environmental Health Association held at The Galley restaurant in Decatur. She related to the dozen health officials present how the two-year battle against toxic algae in Grand Lake St. Marys — which lies between Celina and St. Marys, Ohio — has been addressed by the county health department there.
The large, shallow lake was declared by state health officials to be potentially dangerous just before Memorial Day of 2009, due to the presence of cyanobacteria, a blue-green algae that contains neurotoxins will potentially can cause harm to the nervous systems and livers of humans. That determination was made based on the results of tests performed two years earlier, said Kimmel. Consequently, a public advisory was issued cautioning the public to refrain from all recreational activities — boating, swimming, fishing — in the lake.
Agricultural run-off was determined to be the single biggest contributor to the toxic algae bloom.
In the spring of 2010, the amount of algae in the lake exceed that of the previous year "and all optimism was gone" that a simple remedy would be found, Kimmel said.
The Mercer County health official said that while state regulators and governmental agencies have been active in developing an action plan for the lake, local health officials have been left to deal with a myriad of questions from the public surrounding health implications caused by the algae. Fourteen cases of human illness were reported, with one case directly linked to the toxins. Three dogs also died after exposure to the lake, and there were "some wildlife fatalities" which Kimmel said may have been related to the algae.
Public concerns ranged from the safety of drinking water wells in the lake watershed to recommended personal protective gear for first responders in the event of a lake-related emergency.
Human illness reports were followed up by health officials, and a public education campaign was launched aimed at home septic system owners, she said.
The action plan initiated by state officials called for increased funding for the installation of filter strips along streams in the watershed, and restrictions on manure hauling. Subsequently, many Mercer County farmers have been hauling their manure out of the watershed — to Indiana, Kimmel said.
A Jay County health official present at Thursday's meeting confirmed that he sees "load after load" of manure being brought into his county from neighboring Ohio.
Kimmel offered her comments to the Indiana health specialists because the blue green algae is not confined to Grand Lake St. Marys. She said that during the summer of 2010, some 23 Ohio lakes experienced similar algae blooms.
She said that while some algae has been discovered in the St. Marys and Wabash rivers, both of which are fed from Grand Lake St. Marys, health officials believe the algae will not survive in the rivers. The algae requires stagnant water and sunlight to prosper, she said. | <urn:uuid:52baa379-fc78-4382-84cd-797f99e2c2f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.decaturdailydemocrat.com/print/1588 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975206 | 642 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Nobel laureate Herbert Simon coined the phrase “satisficing” to describe a decision making process that takes the shortcut of defining what is acceptable and then settling on the first alternative that meets those minimum requirements. It’s a play on satisfy and sacrifice, meaning that you sacrifice the best alternative for one that adequately satisfies your demands at the current time. From where you park your car, to who you go out with for dinner, to how much you pay on your credit cards, you “satisfice” all day long without thinking about it.
Simon realized that most people don’t know how to adequately optimize. We don’t know exactly how to find the best choice among all choices. Most of the time, we’re in such a rush that optimizing is actually a luxury, whether it’s deciding where to go on vacation, who to hire, or what career path to take. Satisficing can be a very pragmatic and necessary approach in many cases. After all, you don’t want to experience the “paralysis of analysis” either. Many times it simply isn’t worth it to examine every single option.
The downside of satisficing
Given our tendency to satisfice, more often than not, the best we can get or achieve is just the minimum we’re willing to accept. “I’d be happy with that,” is the approach we take.
It sounds bad doesn’t it? But the truth is, we do it all the time. Herbert Simon believed the reasons we satisfice were fourfold:
- We have a hard time actually quantifying what we’re trying to accomplish. Selecting the “best” choice can be daunting.
- We usually do not know the relevant probabilities of outcomes. How many times have you been 100% sure of something, only to have it blow up in your face?
- We can rarely evaluate all outcomes with any precision.
- Our memories are bound by the recency effect. What happened yesterday is more fresh in our minds than what happened 2 years ago, even when the latter is actually more relevant.
How to overcome our tendency to satisfice
Set the bar high. Set standards that you won’t compromise. Start out with what is “right” rather than what is acceptable because you’ll probably have to compromise somewhere along the line. You’d much rather compromise a little when you’re close to a higher standard than when you’re close to just “acceptable.”
What does this have to do with personal finance?
Plenty. Set your standards high when it comes to living within your means. Set them high when it comes to paying down high interest debt. Set them high when it comes to living by a budget. Set them high when it comes to having the right life insurance or car insurance.
In these areas, “I can live with that,” will only satisfy you for a short period of time and may require a much larger sacrifice later on.
Photo by MOmilkman – Darin House | <urn:uuid:16d93d37-e23d-433d-b8b5-e019b5a9951e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thewisdomjournal.com/Blog/satisficing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93944 | 653 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Albert Einstein Inventions
Albert Einstein's inventions changed the world in a variety of ways and while most people know the man is one of the many geniuses to ever live, most people don't know exactly what he did or invented. Albert Einstein wasn't immediately known as a renowned inventor. He was a patent clerk working in Switzerland who was finally noticed for a number of his ideas and inventions, launching him into the public spotlight and making him one of the most famous inventors to ever live. Check out a number Albert Einstein inventions from the list below.
- The Refrigerator Few people know this, but one of the most important inventions in the history of human society was the Albert Einstein invention of the refrigerator. This was incredibly important because it allowed people to store food in a cold place for an extended period of time, rather than forcing them to eat it on the spot or lose money when the food spoiled. The refrigerator also helped reduce disease among people who would occasionally eat rotten food because they didn't know or were hungry and didn't have any other option. Think about how much we all rely on the refrigerator in our everyday lives and thank Albert Einstein for this invention.
- The Theory of Relativity This theory of relativity, also known as E equals MC squared, is Albert Einstein's most famous invention, as it is what led to the ability to create nuclear fusion. This Albert Einstein invention is both good and bad, as it allowed people to harness energy from nuclear energy but also allowed people to build the nuclear bomb, which has changed the way the world works because we harnessed the ability to destroy the world as we know it.
- Why the Sky Is Blue A little known Albert Einstein invention is the reason for why the sky is blue. Einstein solved this age-old question by calculating the scattering of light from molecules. He proved it through a simple experiment and forever gave annoyed parents an answer to their kid's question.
- Quantum Physics One of the the theories Albert Einstein invented was something called the photoelectric effect. This showed that when a quanta of light strikes atoms in metal, electrons are released. This was the basis for quantum physics, which Einstein also invented through his experimentation.
- Formula for Brownian Motion This was one of Albert Einstein's first inventions, based on experiments he did while he was in college. If you're like most of us and don't know what the Brownian Motion is, it's the movement of particles in liquids. No one had documented this effectively until Einstein came along. | <urn:uuid:9a06d6c7-8f3b-4ab0-a279-940cffc9c752> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mademan.com/mm/albert-einstein-inventions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9792 | 509 | 3.359375 | 3 |
But not all carbs were created equal. Benardot recommends eating highly digestible, starch-based carbohydrate before a competition; sugar consumption (yes, jelly beans count!) during a competition; and other types of carbohydrate, including fiber-rich foods like whole grains and vegetables, the rest of the time.
1. Have some fruit and yogurt as a morning snack. The fruit will provide the carbohydrate you need to sustain blood sugar, and the yogurt provides some high-quality protein to sustain the amino acid pool, allowing the muscles to repair themselves and, if you follow the right strategies, also increase in size.
2. After the last meal before practice or competition, follow a "sipping" protocol with a carbohydrate/sodium-containing sports beverage right up until the time the physical activity begins. This means you take one or two mouthfuls every 15 minutes or so to sustain hydration state, maintain blood volume (sodium helps do this, and is critically important for performance) and maintain blood sugar so you can keep your mind in the game. Most people don't realize that mental fatigue results from low blood sugar, and mental fatigue leads to muscle fatigue even if the muscles are filled with energy.
3. During competition or training, take every imaginable opportunity to take a sip of a carbohydrate/sodium-containing sports beverage. Don't wait until you feel thirsty. Just keep sipping whether you think you need it or not. You'll help your blood volume, blood sugar and your sweat rates by drinking up.
4. The moment you finish exercise is the time when carbohydrate stores are at their lowest point. So there's no better time to consume carbohydrate than immediately following physical activity. Want to make an even bigger impact? Have some high-quality protein at the same time (a whey protein, carbohydrate shake would be perfect) to reduce muscle soreness and improve muscle recovery. Benardot even recommends starch-based carbohydrates like leftover pizza, spaghetti, potatoes -- whatever carbs you like. Just remember to drink plenty of water to help your body store the carbs you eat for fuel. | <urn:uuid:f5cf8eee-bf1c-4250-a4ea-b421138ed89a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.self.com/blogs/flash/2011/08/why-you-should-eat-more-carbs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927058 | 425 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The Shallow Aquifer of Southwest Florida- Low Water-Level Contours, 1971
Puzzle Directions: Click on a puzzle piece and drag it where you want it. When you connect two pieces correctly, they will join together. This is an extra hard double-sided puzzle. The same map is printed on both sides the pieces. Some of the pieces are turned over to the wrong side. To flip a piece over, hold down the "T" key and click on the puzzle piece. Mix up the pieces again. View finished map in pop-up window.
Description: This is a map showing low water-level contours of the shallow aquifer for early May 1971. It shows the location of wells and the variation in water level. The water level is indicated by blue contour lines. It also shows cities, counties, roads, canals, wells and inland waters are also shown. "An extensive shallow aquifer underlies the Big Cypress Swamp and adjacent areas of southwest Florida." — Howard Klein. Please see the article The Shallow Aquifer of Southwest Florida by Howard Klein for more information. Source: U. S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Geology, Florida Department of Natural Resources, Florida Bureau of Geology (Tallahassee, FL: Florida Bureau of Geology, 1972) Map Credit: Courtesy the University of South Florida Library | <urn:uuid:160ed65f-9023-4daf-b0ca-6b96b5c1bff8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/maps/pages/8900/f8934/f8934p3.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910276 | 277 | 3.15625 | 3 |
A taste of tiling with X-Tile
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
For years, tiling window managers have been a popular, but minority interface choice for GNU/ Linux. Ion, dwm, awesome and others differ in implementation, but what all have in common is that they divide the desktop into separate frames to avoid problems with overlapping windows. You can even mimic tiling in Windows by selecting them in the taskbar while holding the Ctrl key, then making a choice from the context menu. Now, thanks to X-Tile (http://open.vitaminap.it/en/index.htm), you can mimic tiling in GNOME as well.
Why would you want tiling? The answer is that Metacity, GNOME's default window manager, does not open windows efficiently. Although Metacity makes some effort to avoid placing new windows on top of existing ones, it does not work with every application, particularly non-GNOME ones. Instead, far too many windows open in the upper left corner. At other times, intelligent placement of windows is thwarted by the fact that Metacity remembers the last position and size of a window. Search for solutions, and you find that the most common solutions are to use a patched version of Metacity, or another window manager (not that most other window managers do much better).
Of course, there are workarounds. You can use multiple workspaces with only one or two windows open on each, but that requires some organization as well as extra keystrokes or mouse-clicks. Similarly, while using Alt+Tab to cycle through the open windows on your desktop eliminates the need to sort windows, you may dislike working against the background of other windows, to say nothing of the concealment of any icons you might have on the desktop. For such reasons, X-Tile may be a welcome solution.
X-Tile takes the shape of a GNOME panel applet. It is available as a .DEB package for Ubuntu (which doesn't work in Debian), or source code. Since it is a small package, you can install it in less than ten seconds using dpkg -i, but you have to log out and back in before it is visible in the list of available panel applets.
To use X-Tile, click its icon on the panel to open a window with a list of all windows open on the desktop. Select which windows you want to tile, then choose how you want to orient them -- vertically or horizontally -- or whether you want to maximize or minimize all of them. You also have the option of whether to keep the X-Tile window open after the selected windows are rearrange.
The one complication in this basic functionality is that, as in the Windows XP implementation of tiling that I suspect it is based on, X-Tile's choices of "Tile Horizontally" and "Tile Vertically" are confusing. For instance, if you select "Tile Vertically," then windows are stacked one above the other on the desktop, which gives each a horizontal orientation. Similarly, "Tile Horizontally" arranges windows side by side, which gives each a vertical orientation. However, once you use X-Tile a few times, this choice of terms should become less confusing.
Besides sorting windows, X-Tile is particularly useful for comparing two documents side by side. However, if you use it with more than two or three windows, then the resulting windows are likely to be too narrow or too long for you to work in any of them conveniently. Instead, you have to maximize one window or minimize the rest. The result is that, with multiple windows, X-Tile is mostly a way to sort windows to make them all visible at the same time -- and, since you already can see from the panel's Window List what windows are open, its usefulness seems limited.
As I used X-Tile, I found myself wishing that it included an option for dividing the screen into quarters, which is what most of the tiling window managers do. With this arrangement, windows arranged by X-Tile might actually have dimensions in which you could actually work without maximizing or minimizing anything. But, the way things are, X-Tile seems more a proof of concept than anything that most users will want on their desktops.
Windowsits not a window its like a curtain where you can slide it by hand..
Linux and the confusionWow, seems like the tiles guy up there confused the topic a bit.
Anyway, I still remember my first Ubuntu install and I've been reading your magazine ever since!
James from http://www.mondaynightout.co.uk
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u do tiles toohi guys
i am a plumber with http://www.thetiledepot.co.uk/. and found u guys while searching for <a href="http://www.thetiledepot.co.uk/">cheap floor tiles</a>.
great to hear you do tiling too in ur field. i hope its as interesting as ours lol.
X-tileI haven't used (or seen) windows in a number of years and didn't realise that it could even tile
horizontally or vertically. Any similarity to another OS or windows manager is coincidental
and hardly surprising
http://www.blindsuk.net/ vertical blinds are horizontal strips *arranged* vertically,
nothing confusing there...
We allow more than 2 windows to tile as for all we know your monitor could be very wide!
Its up to the user to make a sensible determination of the number of windows to tile as trying
to come up with some kind of rule to decide how many we should allow them to tile
would be at best arbitrary and at worst removes choice.
I like the idea of dividing the screen into quarters and I'm off to implement that now...
Was really excited by the headline......but the screenshot makes it seem easier just to resize windows by hand. Hope it keeps developing, though. The Compiz plugin that provides tiling-type functionality is great but my system doesn't run Compiz well, and there's no way I'm learning a new WM just for tiling functionality. Definitely room here for more entrants.
Vendor D-Wave scores big with a sale to NASA's Quantum Intelligence Lab.
Many package updates and Steam integration highlight the latest from the Mandriva-based community Linux.
Richard Stallman calls for the W3C to remain independent of vendor interests.
The new release supports nine architectures, 73 human languages, and zero non-Free components.
Fedora developers release the first alpha version of Fedora 19, known as Schrödinger’s Cat, for general testing. The final release is expected in July 2013.
ack is a grep-like, command-line tool that has been optimized for programmers to search large trees of source code.
New features in SUSE Studio 1.3 include enhanced cloud integration, VM platform support, and lifecycle management.
The Linux Foundation recently announced that the Xen Project is becoming a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
Open source version of LiveCode is now available for developing apps, games, and utilities for all major platforms.
OpenDaylight is an open source software-defined networking project committed to furthering adoption of SDN and accelerating innovation in a vendor-neutral and open environment. | <urn:uuid:8587cc18-6013-4985-ac54-67f6b8cc4d20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/A-taste-of-tiling-with-X-Tile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935134 | 1,621 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Celebrating Black History Month at the VCU Libraries
Reviewed by Kevin Farley, Collection Librarian for the Humanities
Perhaps no other novel from the nineteenth century -- and perhaps no other novel in the history of American literature -- is as controversial as Uncle Tom's Cabin, by anti-slavery activist and novelist, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Even in its own time, the novel was extraordinarily divisive -- though not for reasons that 21st Century readers would expect. When first published in 1852, Stowe's depiction of the general brutalities of slavery, and of the particular inhuman acts of slave-owners, was seen by many white readers across the nation as excessive and improbable. And as the historical moment that incited Stowe to write her novel receded (the growth of the abolition movement, the Civil War), critical focus shifted to the depiction of the title character, a slave whose fortitude -- or perhaps docility, as is often argued -- enables him to endure the gradually worsening conditions of slavery, as, through a series of bargains, he is sold to lesser and lesser beneficent masters. Yet Stowe's Uncle Tom -- a name that now represents passive acceptance of unspeakable injustices -- embodies all of the virtues -- profound Christian faith, stoic indifference to the misfortunes of fate, and especially unparalleled moral and physical courage to defend the weak -- that her white readers claimed to value above all others. In showing Uncle Tom's virtues, and cataloging the lack of them in most of the novel's white characters, Stowe holds an unflattering mirror up to her society, daring an unflinching self-examination of their consciences. Stowe's conflicted depiction of Uncle Tom, however, perfectly captures the inherent racism of her times, as well as the ongoing presence of this problem in contemporary America. This new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, illustrated profusely with original and recent portrayals of the novel's characters, and annotated with insightful commentary by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (an acclaimed scholar of African American Studies), provides extensive historical context for the novel and also its critical reception, debate, repudiation, and abiding controversy. | <urn:uuid:97f31289-20bc-4aed-a858-15ae7ae6843f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.library.vcu.edu/blog/remarks/2007/02/the-annotated-uncle-toms-cabin.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966496 | 444 | 3.609375 | 4 |
I’ve had these fun Valentine’s Day Cards on my to-do list ever since Dana posted about it last year. I’ve seen them done a lot lately but have yet to see anyone do it at our school…so I believe we will be pretty unique.
We had a ball making these. And we are so happy with the results.
Except Astrid is now mad because she’s didn’t get her picture taken and she’s not holding any lollipops. So I gave her eight lollipops to eat just today so she would get over it.
She’s much better and awake FOREVER!
And maybe she will make friends next year so she can hand-out Valentine’s also. Let’s hope for that. Will you be Astrid’s friend?
How to Make These Cute Cards?
1. Take at least 100 pictures of each child. Finally pick the perfect one – smile, hair, hand position must be perfect and moons in alignment evidently.
2. Edit chosen picture in Picnik to add words, fun, hearts..etc. Not sure what to do next year now that Picnik is kaput
3. Print out pictures at home or your favorite local quick place
3. Glue picture to card stock of any color you choose.
4. Use a tack or other very thin sharp object to poke a hole above and below hand on the picture
5. Poke lollipop through holes so it looks like your child is holding/giving the lollipop
6. Ooh and aah over fancy cards | <urn:uuid:8564c06b-8feb-4c8e-9e31-eb754657c0df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sellabitmum.com/2012/02/09/custom-fun-photo-valentines-day-cards/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922027 | 345 | 1.578125 | 2 |