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Learning to read is an essential foundation for success in our society. Research shows that children who are not proficient readers by the end of 3rd grade have difficulties throughout the course of their schooling, perform poorly in other subjects and may never graduate. Further, the alternatives to reading achievement — grade retention, special education assignment and long-term remedial programs — are costly and typically less effective for students. In a technological society, the demands for higher literacy are ever increasing, creating more serious consequences for those who fall short.
The knowledge and practices exist to teach all but a small percentage of students to read at or above grade level. Unfortunately, what is known about teaching students to read and preventing and/or correcting reading problems is not disseminated to or used in all schools across the country. While not the sole reason, some experts believe that the intense debate between phonics and whole-language supporters has interfered with teachers' access to clear, helpful and adequate information about reading approaches and programs.
Results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test show that some improvements have been realized since 1992 for 8th grade students, but that 4th-grade students' reading scores have remained largely unchanged. Between 1992 and 2003, even with gains for most student groups at both grades, gaps have changed little. Between 2007 and 2009, there have been no significant changes in the racial/ethnic gaps, gender gaps, or gaps by type of school at either grade. Compared to 1992, only the White-Black gap at grade 4 and the female-male gap at grade 8 have narrowed.
Researchers at the National Institutes for Health have studied how children learn using pure phonics, pure whole-language and combinations of both. Their conclusion is that children learn to read best if they are first given "phoneme awareness" (understanding that sounds heard in spoken words correspond to letters seen in print), and then taught the letter-sound relationships of traditional phonics. All along, teachers should expose children to literature by reading to them and giving them interesting books as in the whole-language method. Consequently, researchers and educators are urging policymakers to avoid mandating a particular reading method and allowing teachers to select the most appropriate approach.
When it comes to "what works," the greatest agreement seems to be that no approach alone works best for all children under all conditions, nor will one particular method reverse the troublesome NAEP scores. Many reading experts believe that the more strategies teachers have at hand, the more they are able to switch gears and adapt their approach to the student's needs, and the more likely children will learn to read well.
Despite the debate over phonics vs. whole language, there seems to be some general agreement about the basic reading skills that students should acquire during the primary grades, including the following:
Over the years, research and practical experience have yielded a "what's-needed" list to increase students' chances of mastering reading. This list includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Phonemic awareness (understanding that sounds heard in spoken words correspond to letters seen in print)
- Common sound-spelling relationships in words
- Decoding strategies (reading words by sounding out their parts and blending them together)
- Vocabulary development and building
- Comprehension strategies (understanding the meaning of reading materials).
Despite differing opinions on the most appropriate ways to teach reading, a fairly extensive research base exists on how children learn to read. If so much is known, why aren't more students reading at grade level? Several reasons have been suggested, including a lack of prevention, diagnosis and intervention related to reading problems; inadequate teacher preparation and professional development; and the absence of reading standards and accountability. Policymakers can have a positive impact on improving student reading, and many states are responding with policies targeted at student readiness, intervention, teacher quality and accountability. The most effective strategy is a comprehensive initiative that addresses all of these policy areas, closely tracks student progress and uses solid information to make adjustments so that all students read more successfully.
- Provide diagnostic and intervention services as early as possible
- Use a variety of reading strategies and materials to meet individual student needs, expand vocabulary and strengthen comprehension
- Provide high-quality preservice and professional development so teachers have sufficient knowledge and practical skills to teach reading to any student (especially those at risk), and can integrate the most appropriate practices into their classroom
- Keep groups or classes as small as possible through innovative staffing, for example, by using other certified building staff, teachers aides and tutors
- Set reading achievement as a top priority and devote as much time as possible to reading in the early grades
- Involve parents in developing their children's readiness, ability and desire to become good readers. | <urn:uuid:cb2728b1-312b-46e8-b5a2-d8d8b25328d5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ecs.org/html/issue.asp?issueID=97 | 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 | 0.958953 | 970 | 3.96875 | 4 |
The cyclometer you need depends on your training goals. The casual mountain biker may need only a rugged, basic model with current and average speed plus trip and total distance. Someone training for a triathlon or a season of racing, however, is going to want a more advanced model—one with a multiple-ride stopwatch, a cadence measure and perhaps an altimeter. Some high-end models are now GPS-enabled for easy navigation and have a heart-rate monitor for training data.
If you ride a road bike and a mountain bike, there are models available that can be switched between bikes. Consider this option if you regularly use more than one bike.
Some wireless models offer a coded transmission so that your computer doesn't read the signal off your riding buddy. These are good if you ride mainly in a pack, road racing or training. Other models are mountain-bike specific and provide a readout even at a low speed level.
Models available from REI cover the full range, from the most basic and moderately priced to very sophisticated for the elite athlete or competitor.
Shop REI's selection of bike computers.
Here are the most common ones to consider:
This feature is found on all bike computers and can help with pacing.
By slowly increasing your average speed over the same route, you can help increase your anaerobic threshold.
Downhill racers benefit most from this feature.
This info is helpful when following the route described in a guidebook. Knowing your past mileage can also allow you to strategically increase your training loads.
Tells you know how many miles your bike has traveled. This is handy for determining when it is time to change out your tires.
Measures the number of pedal revolutions per minute, allowing you to choose the optimum gear for pedaling efficiency.
Putting sprints into your workout can increase overall muscle and cardiovascular strength. Plus, nothing beats a race against the clock to improve your endurance. Some models feature an auto start/stop, so that only your time in the saddle is measured.
Measures the highs and lows of your ride. Useful if you're training for a specific race or to keep an elevation record of your tour.
Lets you know when it's time to head home for dinner. Some models have alarms, too.
Most cyclometers are so light that any weight differences are negligible.
By T.D. Wood
Read Author Bio
Last updated: Tue Jan 15 08:55:34 PST 2013
In This Article
How are we doing? Give us feedback on this page. | <urn:uuid:e15ff965-9bc2-45f0-83b5-d8b8348eb4df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/bike-computer.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946567 | 528 | 1.757813 | 2 |
The Mighty “I” in iTunes
So you’ve kicked the bucket; this is unfortunate not only because you’re dead but because it would sure be a shame to let your stellar iTunes collection go to waste. Would it have been possible to bequeath your digital library to your grieving friends and family?
As this article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out, some of your digital treasures could be passed on by your starting a trust or storing your password for your loved ones. But when it comes to iTunes, when you’re dead, so is your collection. This is because of the iTunes user terms of service, which makes the trust or password-sharing illegal.
We’re here to tell you why, and what could be done about it in the future.
When you buy music or eBooks off iTunes you’re effectively the owner of said music or eBooks, right? Wrong. Consumers don’t actually own purchases from these companies – they have a license to use them as stipulated in the user terms of service. This means that what you’re paying for is your exclusive right to use the content, not the actual property rights. And, since it is a “non-transferable” license, only the purchaser is authorized to use the files.
So, thanks, Wall Street Journal, but giving someone access to your iTunes account via your password would violate its terms of service. Apple could then discontinue the use of its licensed products, leaving the heir to your iTunes fortune with a barren device. In fact, since sharing a password violates the iTunes Commandments, if Apple found out, you could be left with the barren device while you were still very much alive.
Of course, Apple would have to spend a lot of time and money pinpointing deceased users and the continued use of their digital stuff, so you’d get away with it, most likely. But from a legal perspective, the terms of service say, explicitly, “Don’t reveal your Account information to anyone else.” Not much wiggle room there.
And putting your Tunes on a CD and leaving it in your will may land your CD beneficiary in a legal battle because, again, the license allows the initial purchaser to use those files, but not to transfer or give them to someone else.
Creating a legal trust to hold your digital media, as a U.K. paper falsely reported Bruce Willis tried to do, might be possible but its success is far from guaranteed. Again, this would be an example of trying to transfer what is supposed to be non-transferable.
Still, some attorneys are boldly venturing where no man has gone before, by creating and selling legal software to help establish trusts for digital files, including iTunes products. One company claims to do so without violating license terms and without potential liability to beneficiaries. But as they don’t disclose how they’re able to do this, it’s caveat emptor, I suppose.
If you’re thinking it’s rather unfair that you can buy and resell your books and CDs but you can’t do the same with your digital media, I’m with you. But that’s the law.
But under the laws of copyright, tangible items that are legally purchased may be resold without obtaining the copyright owner’s permission. This is known as the first sale doctrine, which was enacted to limit a copyright owner’s exclusive right to distribute. This doctrine is what allows libraries, second-hand bookstores and even eBay to exist, and was the government’s way of balancing a copyright owner’s distribution right with the public’s right to access information.
Here’s a history lesson for you digital music junkies: People are allowed to resell lawfully obtained items, but only that particular copy of those items. In other words, if you bought a CD and wanted to resell it, you were golden. If you made a copy of that CD and wanted to sell the copy, not so much.
Apple was able to avoid the first sale doctrine by convincing copyright owners to issue licenses to copyrighted works rather than ownership rights. A great move by them, less attractive to those of us who were taught to “share and share alike.”
The only hope that you’ll be able to bequeath your Tunes lies with a combination of advances in technology and legislative means.
Legislation has been tried before, and failed. In 1997 Congress proposed the Digital Era Copyright Enhancement Act , which sought to make license terms that were non-negotiable unenforceable and to extend the first sale doctrine to digital files. The Act was not passed but the idea of extending the first sale doctrine to digital media lives on.
The American Library Association supports amending the first sale doctrine to include right of access to a copyrighted work as well as selling or disposing of a right of access without the authority of the copyright owner. This statutory change would allow people to resell access to their iTunes, or to transfer their electronic media upon the death of the purchaser. And through software, copyright owners would be able to manage the number of authorized works available.
Just think: You would be able to meet your maker, knowing that the great-grandchildren of your great-grandchildren would be rocking to The Grateful Dead or Flying Lotus, or even, if you’re my eccentric friend Liz’s descendants, to Hanson.
Meantime, your best bet would be to take those antioxidants and live long enough to see legislative and technical advances that will allow you share your iTunes from the hereafter. | <urn:uuid:59ff8fbe-be1a-4ff6-afc5-96693f8acc8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lasisblog.com/2012/09/24/the-mighty-i-in-itunes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954873 | 1,178 | 1.664063 | 2 |
utility payments aren't on credit report
Some time in the near future I will be looking to finance
my first home, so I obviously have been taking a more serious look at my credit
However, when I look over my report, I don't see
things such as utility, TV or Internet bills. I thought such things
would help my score and go on the report ... or do they only show
up as a negative when I pay late?
Can you clarify what things actually make it on there?
-- Andrew Attenuate
It would be unusual for a creditor to not report your payment history
to at least one of the three principal consumer reporting agencies
(Equifax, Experian or TransUnion), but other businesses you deal
with make a decision whether or not to report your payment history
to the credit bureaus. You can't force a business to report
your payment history, but if they chose to do so they have to follow
the reporting requirements of the Fair
Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA.
Not seeing the information on one credit report doesn't
mean that it isn't on one of the other two. Check with all three
credit agencies. You are eligible for one free
credit report from each agency every year. If you haven't taken
advantage of this right, Bankrate provides the contact
asked Rod Griffin, the senior manager of public education at Experian to provide
a little more background about businesses reporting payment history on a credit
report. Here's what he had to say:
companies, cellular telephone service providers and cable
do not typically report information to the credit
reporting companies. In
fact, some states prohibit utility providers from
reporting account payment
"These kinds of accounts are what the industry
is calling 'alternative
credit data.' Experian is studying these and other
relationships that could be part of a credit report. Experian
that utility payments and other similar relationships could help
like your reader establish a positive credit history and gain access
the traditional credit marketplace ...
"For now, though,
utility, telephone and cellular service payments are
not reported regularly."
A credit score is based on the information in your
credit report. Each credit reporting agency has its own credit score.
A new credit score called a VantageScore uses the information in
all three reports. A Bankrate feature, "New credit score now
online," explains VantageScores
in greater depth. You can estimate your FICO
credit score for free on Bankrate.
To ask a question of Dr. Don, go to the "Ask
the Experts" page, and select one of these topics: "financing
a home," "saving & investing" or "money." | <urn:uuid:e8b3eea9-7990-4331-8b5c-aa85655b552b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/dls/news/DrDon/20070320_credit_score_report_a1.asp?prodtype=pfin | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940422 | 574 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Leon Mugesera has been returned to Rwanda where he can be expected to stand trial for incitement to genocide. His final procedural gasps succeeded on very temporarily in resisting transfer from Canada.
This is the third important recent development regarding transfer or return of genocide suspects to Rwanda to stand trial. In earlier postings on this blog, reference has been made to recent rulings of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and of the European Court of Human Rights, both of them favourable to such transfers.
Now, Rwanda faces a great challenge. It must ensure that the accused persons receive fair trials.
Great efforts have gone into building a justice system in Rwanda that is capable of ensuring this. Compared with the justice system I saw when I first visited Rwanda in January 1993, the progress is absolutely incredible. But that doesn't make the challenge any less daunting at this point.
If Rwanda succeeds, it will represent a very important milestone in the delivery of justice and in the struggle against impunity. It needs all of the support and encouragement we can provide at this point. | <urn:uuid:54d772c5-acfd-4766-8397-e2aac663962b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://humanrightsdoctorate.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/mugesera-is-now-in-rwanda.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949845 | 215 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Published in the July 8, 2003 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study provides the first description of a molecule called GAIP interacting protein N terminus (GIPN) that plays a key role in the degradation of G proteins, which are switches that turn activities on or off in the cell.
Senior author Marilyn Farquhar, Ph.D., a UCSD professor and chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, noted the findings should be of interest to the pharmaceutical industry since G proteins regulate everything from hormone secretion to the beating of the heart.
The researchers found that GIPN appears to specifically target G proteins for degradation and thereby regulates G protein signaling by controlling the amount of G protein expressed in the cell. This occurs via GIPN binding to the N terminus of G alpha interacting proteins (GAIP), which is the mechanism that sets the ubiquitin system in motion.
The ubiquitin system is used extensively by the cell for the turnover and degradation of proteins in both the cytoplasm, the material surrounding the nucleus, and in cell membranes. Ubiquitin, itself, is a small peptide tag that marks a protein for destruction. The interaction of GIPN and GAIP, which was also discovered by the UCSD team, is part of the machinery that places the little ubiquitin tag on a protein.
A source of study by numerous research labs, the ubiquitin system is crucial for nearly every significant activity in the cell. Although this system of protein turnover was first identified in the 1930s, the molecular mechanisms responsible for the process have remained largely unknown. | <urn:uuid:fbd06ea8-c76c-4cf0-b99e-822079a83b3f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/UCSD-researchers-determine-mechanism-for-degradation-of-G-proteins-6079-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950964 | 333 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The New Statesman Essay - Yes, we still need meritocracy
Roy Hattersley is wrong, but Blair will be sunk if he fails to address his concerns, argues Peter Ke
Did you know about the torrid affair between the elderly plumber and the young and ravishing Lady Avocet? Probably not, unless you are familiar with the latest American edition of The Rise of the Meritocracy. Michael Young's introduction recounts the difficulty he had finding a publisher in dour, 1950s Britain for his mischievous satire. "I hawked it around from one publisher to another - 11 of them - and was always turned down." Chatto & Windus urged him to rewrite it as a more conventional novel. Young had a go, incorporated his Lady Chatterley-style liaison, but Chatto still said no. Finally, Thames & Hudson agreed to publish the book in its original form. The rest, as they say, is history. Young's book has been published in seven languages and sold in countless countries, giving us not only a new word, meritocracy, but a tenacious worm that has been chomping its way through the apple of socialist thought ever since.
Young's warning - that a true meritocracy would be a mean and divided society, in which the "deserving" winners would contemptuously hold down the "undeserving" losers - has been given new voice by Roy Hattersley since the general election. In the Observer, on 24 June, he accused Tony Blair of having led a "coup d'etat" against Labour's "legitimate philosophy" by choosing meritocracy as "his destiny".
Three days later, Hattersley returned to the attack in the Guardian. "I hoped that [Blair] instinctively shared Young's view that a society which regards rewarding intelligence and industry as part of its defining ethos betrays the deprived and disadvantaged." Sadly, Hattersley was forced to conclude that Blair either had no such instinct, or did not understand what meritocracy really meant. "I do not know which distresses me most, the apostasy or the naivety."
In one sense, Hattersley is absolutely right. Blair has turned Labour into a very different animal from the one that its former deputy leader spent three decades trying to nurture. To the accusation that he has abandoned Hattersley's brand of social democracy, the Prime Minister's only sensible response is: "Guilty and proud of it." On the other hand, any open-minded jury would surely acquit the Prime Minister of mounting a coup d'etat. From almost his first day as Labour's first truly democratically chosen leader, Blair made his purpose clear. At each stage since, he has been candid with the party and the public about his intentions. Hattersley may dislike the 1997 and 2001 manifestos, but he cannot seriously maintain that they offered a dishonest prospectus of the way Labour would govern. The real, democratically despicable "coup d'etat" would be for the Prime Minister now to declare: "Forget the election promises we made last month. I have decided to break most of them and revert to the policies I persuaded the party to abandon six years ago."
However, it is not enough, as Downing Street seems to think, simply to mock Hattersley, deputy leader at the time of two crushing Labour defeats, for patronising the man who has led the party to its two biggest election victories. Strip away the lurid language, ignore the accuser's past failings; there is an important argument that needs to be fought out. What role should meritocracy play in today's Labour Party?
Hattersley builds his case on two main propositions, one moral and the other social. His moral argument flows from the idea that merit comprises the combination of intelligence and effort. "Both intelligence and effort are inherited characteristics. So Young concludes, as all socialists should, that 'being a member of the lucky sperm club confers no moral right to advantage'. Yet that is what meritocracy aims to provide. To them that hath, more shall be given." (Note that the term "lucky sperm club" implies that only male genes matter. Is the failure to acknowledge female hereditary influences accidental or deliberate?)
Hattersley's social argument is that, far from helping to create a fairer society, a true meritocracy will preserve, and possibly widen, the gap between rich and poor. "Meritocracy removes the barriers to progress which block the path of the clever and industrious . . . But . . . the Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape. Meritocracy only offers shifting patterns of inequality."
In the Guardian of 29 June, Young himself joined the debate. He wrote that his 43-year-old prediction, that meritocracy would reinforce the curse of inequality, had come true. "I expected that the poor and disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later employment. They can easily become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who have done well for themselves. It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that."
What is more, argues Young, the losers "have been deprived by educational selection of many of those who would have been their natural leaders". Two of the giants of Attlee's postwar government, Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison, had left school early and been errand boys before beginning their rise through the working-class labour movement. Under a meritocratic system, they would have stayed at school, gone to university, and followed a very different career path. They might still have ended up as Labour ministers, but the link between their adult lives and the daily experiences of the poor would have been broken.
Hattersley and Young fear that the government's latest education policy will make matters even worse. By abandoning its faith in "bog-standard" comprehensive schools, and moving towards specialist secondary schools, Hattersley and Young see a thinly veiled attempt to divide Britain even more cruelly between winners and losers. Those children whose aptitude and diligence qualify them for a high place on the meritocratic scale will (they argue) be given a superior education to those who are never going to make the grade.
This is precisely what Young predicted in The Rise of the Meritocracy. His pro-meritocracy anti-hero offers this justification for reintroducing educational selection: "No longer is it so necessary to debase standards by attempting to extend a higher civilisation to the children of the lower classes."
That, then, is the case against meritocracy in general and Blair's political strategy in particular. It is not a silly or negligible case. Meritocracy is undoubtedly a double-edged weapon. But that is far, very far, from saying that it should be decommissioned, dismantled and locked away. To adapt Churchill's comment about democracy: "Meritocracy is the worst form of social organisation except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Let us start with an observation that should command wide agreement. A modern society needs its scientists and surgeons, its generals and engineers, its teachers and town planners, its bankers and broadcasters, its artists and athletes. The question is: by what criteria should they be selected? To a depressingly large extent, the playing field remains appallingly uneven. Look at the House of Commons, the higher reaches of the civil service or the boardrooms of companies in the FTSE 100, and count the number of black or female faces. Look at the top universities and count how many undergraduates come from inner-city comprehensives.
Unless we believe that talent is tied to class, race or gender, we see a society in which all kinds of conscious and cultural prejudices still hold sway. When the Prime Minister talks about building a more meritocratic Britain, he does so having studied data on discrimination that has been compiled for him over the past year by the Downing Street Policy Unit. Those who have seen this evidence say that it paints a terrifying picture of the way our schools, universities and employers too often fail to spot, recruit and nurture people with potential, because their face or voice does not fit. This is as true of the public sector - central and local government and the armed forces - as it is of private industry. It is a national disgrace, and recognised as such by those closest to Tony Blair.
The case for meritocracy is that it seeks to sweep away these horrors, and make sure that people progress at different stages in their lives according to their aptitudes alone, rather than according to factors that should have no place in a just and democratic society. Hattersley and Young make a number of important criticisms of meritocracy, but they do not propose any alternative. Is this omission accidental or deliberate? It is certainly convenient, for it allows them to evade the logic of their argument. The implied position of the anti-meritocrats is that nothing should be done to remove the glass ceiling that impedes the careers of many women, or to make sure that black and Asian Britons enjoy their fair share of opportunities to reach the top, or help working-class children achieve entry to the best universities.
True, this case for meritocracy does not provide a complete answer to the "lucky genes" argument. But neither does any other system of social organisation, unless we are to fill jobs at random - so that we end up with engineers who can't count, athletes who can't run and doctors who faint at the sight of blood. I doubt whether Lord Hattersley would happily fly the Atlantic in an aircraft whose captain had not passed a wide range of stringent tests. As long as we live in a society in which different jobs require different skills, some mechanism will be needed to decide whom to prepare, train and finally pick. And as long as those skills reflect innate aptitudes, at least to some extent, the rules and benefits of the "lucky genes club" are bound to apply.
Indeed, the choice is not between a "lucky genes club" and a "random genes club" society. The decision is whether people advance because of relevant aptitudes or because of irrelevant qualities, such as skin pigmentation, family wealth or the balance of X and Y chromosomes. The battle for meritocracy is not the same as the battle for equality - Hattersley is right about that - but it is a central plank of the battle against discrimination and prejudice.
What, though, about the danger that a truly meritocratic society would be mean and divided, with successful men and women looking down contemptuously on the unsuccessful, who would end up poor, demoralised and leaderless? To some degree, this argument implies a rosy view of Britain's past, in which upper-class white men understood that they did not deserve to dominate the country's power and wealth. This is a novel view of history. To a depressingly large extent, success has always acted contemptuously towards failure. Far from softening that contempt, the "undeserving" factors in success, such as race, class and gender, have helped to reinforce it. Indeed, one definition of prejudice is that it is a set of attitudes which make people feel innately superior for quite the wrong reasons. Sure, there is a danger that meritocracy-winners will sneer at meritocracy-losers; but it is not immediately obvious why they should sneer any more viciously than past winners who owed their success to a mouthful of silver spoons at birth.
Yet, even if it is not true that meritocracy will make Britain's divisions worse, the danger remains that neither will it do anything to build greater unity. It could end up simply replacing one set of social divisions with another. If Labour is serious about the creation of a one-nation society - and even more if it is serious about winning "the battle for true equality", as Tony Blair said in his speech to the party conference in 1999 - this danger must be faced.
The critical task is to reconcile meritocracy with "equal worth" (the Prime Minister's preferred concept). The real value of Young's satire is to show how difficult this will be, and how cruel society could become if the effort does not succeed. What, then, is to be done? Here are three suggestions.
First, address Hattersley's point that Labour should "change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape". Nobody should be condemned to material suffering by the operation of meritocratic mechanisms. Had this argument been raging four years ago, when Labour first came to power, proposals would have included the introduction of a national minimum wage, lower unemployment, higher child benefit rates, better training for school leavers, more financial support for low-paid workers with children, and greater help for the inner cities. Four years on, these things have all been done. There is still much more to do. Sadly, Gordon Brown has lost the battle to retain the freedom to increase tax rates for very high earners. But this is already the most redistributive Labour government Britain has ever had - and far more redistributive than any of which Hattersley was a member.
Second, make sure that everyone has access to the high-quality services and facilities that are needed in order to build an "equal worth" society. This includes healthcare, education, decent housing, transport, freedom from the fear of being mugged, accessible banks, and accessible shops selling fresh food at reasonable prices. If the move towards specialised secondary schools ends up with middle-class suburban children continuing to receive a better education than working-class inner-city children, then Hattersley's fears will be fulfilled, and his condemnation of new Labour, wholly justified.
The test will be whether diversity raises standards all round - and, in particular, for the kinds of pupils whom the comprehensive system has not served well during the past 30 years. Hattersley sees the new policy as a way of doing down children from poor families; ministers see it as a way of rescuing these same children from a system that too often fails them. If the government cannot demonstrate in the years ahead that it is right and he is wrong, then new Labour really will be in deep trouble.
Third, meritocracy must mean downward mobility for middle-class families, as well as upward mobility for working-class families. This point was made explicitly in a paper written by Geoff Mulgan, the director of Blair's Performance and Innovation Unit, and published just before the general election campaign. Without a reduction in the "barriers to downward social mobility for dull middle-class children", too few places would be available higher up a meritocratic hierarchy for bright working-class children. So far, Blair has not shown any inclination to endorse Mulgan's analysis, even less act on it.
That is far from a complete list of measures which could help to reconcile meritocracy and "equal worth". Its purpose is to show that Hattersley and Young are too fatalistic. Reconciliation is possible, but far from easy. Meritocracy is best regarded as a powerful and mainly beneficial drug, but with potentially nasty side effects. The drug is needed, and in larger doses, if Britain is to make both social and economic progress; but the side effects need attention, too. Britain needs more meritocracy, not less. Meritocracy alone, though, is not enough.
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- Eleanor Margolis | <urn:uuid:8c6e0ee6-c5f9-4257-96ed-e64aebdfd388> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newstatesman.com/node/140704?quicktabs_most_read=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967857 | 3,312 | 1.71875 | 2 |
This page is about free forums, workshops and presentations we run. Topics include:
This free program is facilitated by health professionals. It runs in small groups over one day or four weeks. It's attended by people diagnosed with cancer, and their family and friends. It's a chance to learn more about cancer, its treatment and your emotional reactions to it. More on the Living with cancer education program.
A chance for family and friends caring for someone with cancer to share experiences. Topics include:
Cancer and its treatment often result in a loss of sexual confidence. Come along with your partner to learn ways of coping and enhancing your relationship in a safe, supportive environment. | <urn:uuid:6ca271ab-b059-4ba1-b6bd-de36e7c57f91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cancervic.org.au/how-we-can-help/programs-for-people-with-cancer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98019 | 136 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Why Shopping Online Will Be Big This Holiday Season
Traditionally, the December holiday season is the most important
part of the year for many businesses, especially those in
retail. But so far, predictions aren't that rosy for this year's
profits. High gas prices, high cost of living, and low consumer
confidence are expected to put a damper on the holiday shopping
plans for many.
But that's not entirely true for everyone. You can expect online
shopping to be bigger than ever. Why? Let me outline a few
reasons why online retail sites like Amazon, to small home-based
operations will be raking in the cash in the weeks ahead.
1. Very few are going to blow off the holidays, even if funds
are low. And most people will buy cheaper gifts rather than
cross some loved ones off their shopping list. When people don't
have a lot of disposable cash, they look for low prices.
Suddenly bargain hunting becomes the order of the day.
Expect masses of North Americans to flock to online retail sites
in ever greater numbers. The super-low overhead of online retail
allows sites to offer wide selection at the lowest prices on
Earth. After a decade of Internet shopping, millions of people
are now fully aware of this truth. Expect a very large
percentage of them to purchase some or all of their gifts online.
2. Gas is still high and may go even higher in the weeks ahead.
This means wading through clogged streets filled with holiday
shoppers is something most of our pocket books just don't want
to go through. High gas prices also mean paying for online
purchases to be shipped to you is no longer an imposition. Many
will be thinking "The 3 bucks for shipping is a lot less than
the $20 I'll spend driving all over town to the malls."
3. People are working harder than ever. The demands of one, two,
even three jobs while taking care of family is leaving millions
of Americans will zero free time. This means they need to
sandwich holiday shopping into their lunch break or even during
a slow period at work. Yes, expect these folks to also do their
shopping online in unprecedented numbers.
The bottom line is clear: if you're a consumer, give yourself a
needed break and do your holiday gift buying online. If you're
an online retailer, get ready for a holiday buying season you
may not soon forget.
About the author:
Sharon Isaac is owner of an online consumer electronics store at
http://www.mystore.vstoremarket.com. Get everything from
computers to video games to books at incredibly low prices...
and have them all shipped in time for the holidays. Reach Sharon | <urn:uuid:26bd3d95-5a84-4139-a933-e52c1dd7d84b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://instantof.com/shopping/why_shopping_online_will_be_big_this_holiday_season.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942022 | 585 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Facebook facing data protection questions
November 20, 2007
Very interesting story on the Channel 4 website today.
Apparently, a Facebook user has logged an official complaint with the UK Privacy Watchdog after it transpired that trying to leave Facebook didn’t actually mean that your data was all deleted and removed from their servers. Actually, when you try to leave Facebook all it does is deactivate your account and keep the data on their servers so anyone who changes their mind can easily sign back up again.
Now that’s all well and good, but storage of personal data and photos of someone who doesn’t actually want to use your service is blatantly against the UK Data Protection Act (I believe). The act is designed to protect people like you and me from having their personal data misused in any way. Facebook definitely have the resources and technical know how to offer a way to delete the data for those who really want to delete an account. By not doing so they are making it very difficult for users to clean up their trail of data, it could take hours to go round the site deleting everything you’ve ever posted or uploaded.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out! I do wonder whether MySpace and Bebo etc offer this full deletion service or whether they are also possibly infringing on ex-users privacy. | <urn:uuid:09c663b2-84ae-4a99-975d-5f0e4a23a332> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://23musings.com/2007/11/20/facebook-facing-data-protection-questions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973025 | 271 | 1.875 | 2 |
12 May 2006
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, will visit Guatemala from 15 to 18 May.
During this visit the Special Rapporteur will assess developments in the country regarding the protection and promotion of the rights of indigenous peoples since his first visit to Guatemala from 1 to 11 September 2002. The Special Rapporteur will focus particular attention on issues such as the implementation of relevant provisions on indigenous rights in the Peace Agreements singed in the country in 1996; improvements in the access to the system of administration of justice by indigenous peoples; indigenous participation in public life; the access to land; the fight against discrimination; improvements in the situation of indigenous women; steps being taken regarding indigenous children, and policies to ensure access to basic social services such as education and health by indigenous peoples. These issues were the subject of recommendations by the Special Rapporteur after his 2002 visit.
The Special Rapporteur is expected to hold talks with Government officials, including Vice-president Eduardo Stein, indigenous representatives, civil society organizations, members of academia and representatives of various institutions related to indigenous peoples. In addition to Guatemala City he will travel to the city of Antigua.
The Special Rapporteur will present a full report with his findings and recommendations in 2007. | <urn:uuid:4b48241a-e64e-4cef-89ff-bfafc06d9d8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=5538&LangID=E | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932596 | 272 | 2.21875 | 2 |
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Fan’s Reaction: Is Yoga Safe?
Yoga has been in the news a great deal over past week and a half. Some say that it is a safe practice, and others claim that it can be dangerous. As one who considers themselves a yogaholic, I decided to go over three articles that made the news in regards to the safety of yoga and put them together, offering my reaction as a yoga fan.
It began with a story about a yoga instructor named Glen Black, who recalls using yoga to alleviate the pain in his back due to a ruptured disk. Some time later, Black recalls his back getting worse and says, "Then, in 2007, while doing the extended-side-angle pose, a posture hailed as a cure for many diseases, my back gave way."
Black's story mentions another person who had difficulty walking after performing a yoga posture for hours every day. I think we can learn that moderation is the key to everything. On rare occasions, even water can harm the body in amounts that are excessive by causing hyponatremia, and we all know that water is good for us. Yoga is good for us too, but we should still practice it in moderation and follow the correct form. We also have to know our own body and its limits.
Following Black's story was an article about how to practice yoga safely. This article points out that any type of exercise has the potential to cause injuries, including weight training and golf. I have to agree with this, and I do feel that it is unfair for yoga to be singled out. I also feel that it is worth pointing out that Black's back was already damaged from the ruptured disk, so to solely blame a yoga pose is ludicrous-not to mention-we don't know if Black used the correct form while performing the extended-side-angle pose or pushed himself too far.
The most recent news article is titled, "The Great Yoga Divide," and it details how the original article was looked at upon as a joke in India. This excellent article points out that yoga is practiced very differently in the United States than it is in India. In the U.S., we wear tight clothing during yoga, while those in India wear loose clothing. They laugh at the idea of yoga being an aggressive form of exercise or a cardiovascular workout because it is very different from how they practice yoga. This brings home the point that we have turned yoga into our own unique form of exercise for our culture that differs from the original Indian type. This means that Black, who was a yoga instructor, should have known not to blame the practice of yoga itself. Since he was an instructor he should have known the history and risks, as well as the benefits of yoga.
I will not give up practicing yoga because of what happened to one person. Again, any type of physical activity carries both benefits and risks. Each person must educate themselves and decide what is best for them. I personally feel that the benefits of exercise, including yoga, outweigh the potential risks. Exercise keeps me feeling young and healthy, and it allows me to maintain my weight. I find yoga very relaxing and rejuvenating at the same time. I do think it is good to know what happened to Black so that others and I have a full understanding of both the risks and benefits. However, I do not think that yoga should be looked upon as dangerous or unhealthy in any way, shape or form. Anyone who takes that mindset is closed minded and may as well not participate in any form of exercise at all.
Is yoga safe? I believe that yoga is as safe as any form of exercise and safer than most.
More from Rebecca Bardelli:
Rebecca completed courses in Medical Terminology, Administrative Medical Assisting, and Coding and Billing. She is recognized by the National Healthcareer Association as a Certified Billing and Coding Specialist (CBCS) and Medical Administrative Assistant (CMAA). In addition, Rebecca is a former gymnast and is avid about yoga, swimming and other athletic activities.
Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content. | <urn:uuid:92f472f8-6302-4dc1-a19b-11df4d6efe05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ycn-10844913 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981865 | 889 | 2.25 | 2 |
“Be beautiful if you can, Wise if you want to… But be respected-that is essential.”
“If one doesn’t respect oneself one can have neither love nor respect for others.”
“If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.”
-John W. Gardner
The people that know me IRL(In Real Life) will tell you know much I value respect. I think if you asked me what trait I value most in a person, second to faith would have to be respect. The word respect to me means so many things it is hard to explain, it also has so many levels it cannot be contained in one post. I live my life with respect in mind, respect for myself, respect for others, respect for situations and even objects.
Lets take motorcycles; I love riding them but respect them quite a bit. They are machines that can potentially end my life if I do not exercise respect. A lot of people do not see them as something you should respect, but rather use and sometimes abuse. I do not say that those people are wrong for doing it, just that I chose not to.
Now on with today’s quotes. It was hard to just pick one, so I posted 3 the first one is very loaded… and I want you guys to tell me what you think… I lean toward the self-esteem angle on it, but lets see what the quote says to you. The second quote is probably my favorite, it sums up the saying you have to love yourself before you love others, or better yet if you don’t love and respect yourself who will?
The last quote is very interesting, because it strikes a chord on me that resound quite loud. I have seen many people talk about charity and give their opinions on situations while not respecting the person or the situations. I think this quote speaks to that. If you really want to help someone you should start by respecting him or her first. | <urn:uuid:2c393e80-9960-478b-94b5-5f6165aa724a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.logtar.com/2004/10/28/respect/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969536 | 427 | 1.9375 | 2 |
My Culture Quest
Play the Game!
My Culture Quest opens up the world of museums and galleries, giving you the opportunity to explore objects from many different countries. Answer questions correctly in order to create your own exhibition.
On the adventure you are aided by one of the mini museum guides - choose from the language expert Manaza, the very intelligent Ravi or the navigator Suzi. Points awarded depend on collecting similar objects from different cultures, objects with the same theme (conflict, religion, celebrations) and the number of objects. This scoring system encourages you to think about themes that affect both your community and other communities around the world. It will also show you how all cultures around the world, including your own, can be linked in a variety of different ways.
Once you have finished collecting objects they will be arranged into an exhibition. You will then be given a score based on the success of the exhibition. You can even enter your name on the international scoreboard.
You can also play an off-line version of My Culture Quest with the My Culture Quest card game. Download the cards here
You can see the real works of art featured in this learning journey by visiting the galleries of Museums Sheffield and Bradford's Cartwright Hall | <urn:uuid:82d3c4c3-205b-4138-814d-98033d708184> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mylearning.org/jpage.asp?jpageid=931&journeyid=238 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930779 | 251 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Source: Columbia Basin Herald (WA)
Washington State is still battling an outbreak of pertussis. According to the Grant County Health District, there have been 2,092 cases recorded in the state this year, with 13 cases in Grant County itself. Free Tdap shots for those without insurance who have close contact with infants and young children are being offered by the Health District and several clinics. “If you think you qualify for this program, first contact your healthcare provider,” said Carol Schimke, Immunization Coordinator and Public Health Nurse. “If you do not have a healthcare provider or your provider does not have the free Tdap vaccine, please contact” the Moses Lake Office. | <urn:uuid:bd844efc-5fe6-47f9-a2fb-5c15a20673b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.immunizationinfo.org/pressroom/news-briefs/2012-06-30/whooping-cough-outbreak-continues-washingtons-county | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959639 | 146 | 1.609375 | 2 |
University of South CarolinaColumbia, S.C. June 29, 1889 O.P. Temple, EsqMy dear Judge I have read with great interest every word of the Knoxville Journal, concerning John Sevier, etc. The occasion was on of deep historic interest. I hope you will send me the more permanent publication which will doubtless be issued hereafter. Your own [...]comments
Stories, quotes and anecdotes.
Tag Archives: Scots-Irish
St. Patrick’s Day is only a couple of weeks off, and one of the things you’ll always find plenty of at that celebration is shillelaghs. The shillelagh [siúil éille is an old Gaelic word meaning "oak club"] is a wooden cudgel associated with the Shillelagh Forest in County Wicklow, Ireland, famous for its once massive [...]comments
January 25 marks the 253rd birthday of poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), who continues to be widely loved in the Scots-Irish community. Many of the bard’s songs and poems have become international favorites – even among those who find his use of Scottish lowland dialect difficult to decipher. If you find yourself in Franklin, NC this [...]comments
Ringing out the old, ringing in the new. Everyone’s doing it tomorrow night. One New Year tradition in Appalachia is the New Year baby. The custom of using a baby to signify the New Year originated in ancient Greece, the baby symbolizing in this case not birth, but re-birth. The Germans added the twist of [...]comments
Scots-Irish Impact on the Appalachian region Please welcome guest blogger Byron Chesney. By day a computer applications engineer in Knoxville, TN, Chesney is also an active observer of the Southern Appalachian scene on his numerous Tennessee and Knoxville area related websites. Somewhere in all that he manages to eat and sleep! Stubborn, proud, independent, rugged, [...]comments | <urn:uuid:dca4140e-092c-45c1-a5ef-8694734897ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.appalachianhistory.net/tag/scots-irish | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92915 | 404 | 1.867188 | 2 |
The Dictionary of American Names, page 232, states that a Whipple was originally "one who came from Whimple (white stream) in Devonshire [England]."
According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, Whimple is from the Welsh "gwyn" (white) and "pwll" or "poll" (pool, stream). Variant forms of the name include Winple, Wimpoll, and Wympol.
The oldest record of the name is in the Domesday Book (A.D. 1086), where it is spelled "Winple."
The Whimple History Society (http://www.whimple.net/hist_soc.htm, from Whimple, Old England) presents a compelling argument that the name Whipple means other than "white stream". Under archives-Placenames Background, it asserts that Whipple probably should have been interpreted as "fair" or "fine" stream. [Submitted by Charles M. Whipple, Jr.]
Although published books claim that Henry De V. Hipple was the first Whipple, none of them provide supporting documentation. Blaine Whipple has written a more complete answer.
No. A notable example is the Whipples of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana--descendants of George Whipple of Baden-Baden, on the western foothills of the Black Forest in the present-day German state of Baden-Württemberg. The 1900 census of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, shows George's son, Charles Frederick Whipple, as a head of household. Charles was born 20 Feb 1841 in Baden-Baden; he immigrated to the U.S. in 1844 (according to the same 1900 census).
(Additional research is needed to determine which German surname became the anglicized Whipple surname. Might Charles Frederick have been named Karl Friedrich in Baden-Baden? Was his father named Georg--without the final "e"? If you have insight, please share it with us!)
The first Whipple in America was John Whipple, who arrived in Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts in about 1632 as a teenager. (In 1658 he moved to Providence, R.I., and later became "Captain" John Whipple.)
Brothers Matthew and John Whipple arrived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1638. Both were born in Bocking, Essex County, England. This John is generally referred to as "Elder" John Whipple (to differentiate him from the "Captain" John who settled in Rhode Island. Note: Several John Whipples have been referred to as "Captain"; it is a good idea to use additional modifiers when referring to anyone named "Captain" John Whipple.)
In the fall, 2006, William Wyman Fiske published a significant article in The Genealogist, proposing two additional ancestral generations for the Whipples of Ipswich. He convincingly proposes that Matthew Whipple (the "Elder")--father of brothers Matthew and John who immigrated to Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1638--is the son of Thomas Whipple of Braintree and Newport, Essex, England, whose father is Thomas Whipple of Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, England.
One published genealogy claims (without documentation) that a Marion Whipple--wife of Richard Rathbone and grandparents of John Rathbone who died in Block Island, Rhode Island in 1702--is an aunt of Matthew and John of Ipswich. Marion and Richard are "believed to have sailed from England [to New England] in the Ship Speedwell about 1621. W.W. Fiske (see above) did find a Richard Rathbone who is the uncle of Matthew and John Whipple of Ipswich. (See pp. 192 and 203 of his article.) However, this second Richard Rathbone was married to Margaret (not Marion) Whipple. Margaret (Whipple) Rathbone--aunt of the brothers Matthew and John Whipple of Ipswich, Massachusetts--was buried in Bocking on 19 Jan 1627/8. According to Fiske, "there appears to be no basis in fact" for the assertion that the Marion Whipple and Richard Rathbone who migrated to America in 1621 (if they existed at all) are the aunt and uncle of the brothers Matthew and John Whipple of Ipswich, Massachusetts.
Whipple research has been unable to establish any relationship between Captain John Whipple (who settled in Providence, R.I., after living in Dorchester for 26 years) and the Ipswich brothers, Matthew and John. However, researchers continue to look for a connection. Blaine Whipple has a more interesting answer to this question.
Note: William Wyman Fiske (see FAQ 2.1 above) is aware of the absence of information regarding the parentage of Captain John Whipple of Rhode Island. In his fall 2006 article on the ancestry of the Ipswich Whipples, he alludes to that fact in his discussion of John Whipple (John, Thomas), b. abt 1535, of Bishops Stortford, England. (This newly documented John Whipple would be a first cousin once removed of the brothers Matthew and John of Ipswich, Massachusetts. This John is not the Captain John Whipple of Providence, R.I., by the way!). Here is Fiske's reference to Captain John:
The family of John is included here on the chance that a future connection might be made with the English origin of Capt. John Whipple of Providence, who is believed to have been born say 1610. Both men chose to name their second sons Samuel; as trivial a coincidence as this might seem, it does provide at least one avenue for further inquiry into Capt. John Whipple's origin, which to date remains unknown.
2.21 - Where is Bishop's Stortford, England?
The Google Maps web site shows Bishop's Stortford 21.8 miles west of Bocking, on highway A120. (Click here for a map and driving directions.) Bishop's Stortford is located opposite London Stansted Airport on the M11 expressway (the main highway from London to Cambridge).
2.3 - Are you certain that Captain John Whipple of Providence, R.I., is not the same person as John Whipple, "The Elder," who lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts?
Before Captain John of Providence settled in Rhode Island, he lived in Dorchester, Massachusetts (not all that far from Ipswich). Both Johns had a wife named Sarah (according to some sources). It would be easy to conclude that they are the same person. (In fact, the L.D.S. Church's Ancestral File has [incorrectly] merged the two.)
However, the 19th-century writer, John Osborne Austin, wrote (at least) two different books about families in New England. In the first book of interest, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (Albany, 1887; reprinted Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1978), Austin gives information on the Whipples (including Captain John) who settled in Rhode Island. His second book, One Hundred and Sixty Allied Families (Salem, Mass., 1893; reprinted Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1977), gives information about the Ipswich Whipples (including John). Reading the two books side by side, it is clear that there were two different Whipples named John, each with separate occupations and friends, and each figuring prominently in his community.
2.4 - What about Remember Patience Whipple? Didn't she sail on the Mayflower?
Remember Patience Whipple, whose Diary of Remember Patience Whipple is available in bookstores, is a fictional person--her diary is historical fiction. No Whipples sailed to America aboard the Mayflower in 1620.
Although no Whipples sailed aboard the Mayflower, Elizabeth Sprague, who married William Whipple and had 17 children, was a descendent of Richard Warren who not only sailed on the Mayflower but also survived that first winter (which claimed the lives of more than half of those that sailed on the Mayflower). Richard also signed the Mayflower Compact. Therefore, all who are descendants of William and Elizabeth have a Mayflower connection.
We are not sure where Captain John was born, other than somewhere in Great Britain. (Various authors give different places of origin, but none are documented adequately. See Blaine Whipple's research on this topic.)
This question has at least three answers: Yes, No and Maybe
Dorchester is in present-day Boston. (It was annexed by Boston in 1869.) Dorchester was founded on June 6, 1630, by a colony of 140 persons who sailed from Plymouth, England, aboard the ship Mary & John. Dorchester was the first settlement in present-day Suffolk County (Boston's county).
Captain John Whipple lived in Dorchester before settling in Providence, R.I. Many of his children were born in Dorchester.
The gravestone of Captain John Whipple's wife, Sarah (in the North Burial Ground, Providence, R.I.), indicates that she was born in Dorchester in about 1624. (It reads: "She was born in Dorchester, in New England; and died in / Providence, Anno Dona, 1666 / aged about 42 years.") According to Thayne Whipple, "there are numerous histories of the area that indicate European settlers there prior to 1630 and the official founding of the city. It is presumed that they left when the 'chartered' colonists came, but it will take a lot of work to really prove anything one way or the other."
A Whipple Website Weblog post of October 27, 2009, gives a good summary. We quote it here:
It was the young John Whipple who later became known as Captain John Whipple and died in Providence, Rhode Island. It was not the John who came to New England with his brother Matthew six years later in 1638.
Whipple genealogical researcher and publisher Blaine Whipple recently responded to that question as follows:
(See two versions of the Lyon passenger list on this site.)
It isn't entirely clear exactly what John did militarily to merit the designation "Captain." It seems related to King Phillip's War, however. "King Phillip" was a Wampanoag Indian chief who tried to drive the white settlers out of Providence. In the year 1675, John and about 25 others met in a Providence town meeting to decide whether to flee to Newport in order to avoid King Phillip. Most of the residents of Providence accepted the offer and fled to Newport, leaving Providence nearly deserted. John was one of a small number who "staid and went not away" to Newport, choosing instead to remain and defend Providence. In 1676, King Phillip attacked Providence, burning many houses and injuring those who had remained in Providence. John Whipple's house survived the attack.
It appears that the Rhode Island General Assembly must have given John the designation "Captain," in 1679. That was the year the General Assembly appointed John to a committee to report on King Phillip's War. From that time onward, John was called Captain John.
(Sources: A Brief Genealogy of the Whipple Families Who Settled in Rhode Island, by Henry E. Whipple (Providence: A. Crawford Greene, 1873), p. 8; Sons and Daughters of Jesse: A 360 Year History of the Whipple Family, by Charles M. Whipple (Oklahoma City: Southwestern Press, 1976), p. 11; Whipple Family Tree, by Dwane V. Norris (Jackson, Mich., 1996), p.81)
Apparently someone named Whipple received a Coat of Arms in the past. (Check out our large graphic of the coat of arms.) We are unaware of any Whipples who can actually claim (and prove) to be descendants of whoever received it. It is described on page 1100 of Bernard Burke's General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales (London: Harrison,1884) as follows:
Earlier in the book, the author defines some of the terms in the above description:
Charles H. Whipple's Genealogy of the Whipple, Wright, Wager, Ward, Pell, McLean, Burnett Families (1917) includes a drawing of the Whipple coat of arms on page 9. Above (and separate from) the shield is a drawing of an elephant. Charles quotes the 1878 edition of Burke's General Armory, as follows:
The 1878 description is identical to the 1884 description except for the addition of "Crest, an elephant passant ermine." Rothery's Concise Encyclopedia of Heraldry gives the following definitions:
Based on these definitions, it seems that the elephant crest is not part of the coat of arms per se, but is rather a figure placed on the helmet. A knight might carry a shield bearing the coat of arms and wear a helmet that has a figure of an elephant? (Please share your insight with the webmaster [firstname.lastname@example.org].)
"Fidele et Brave."
4.1 - "I am a descendant of William Whipple who signed the Declaration of Independence. (My grandmother told me so!)"
None of William's children survived past infancy. Some sources indicate that he might have had as many as seven children, but we know of only one for certain. Unfortunately, no one alive today is a descendant of William Whipple, the signer of the Declaration of Independence. (See William Whipple, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, on this site.)
4.2 - Do relatives of General William Whipple (signer of the Declaration of Independence) get to attend college free?
Donna Wilson (DWilson33@aol.com) originally asked:
I heard that if a person is related to the Whipple that signed the Declaration of Independence, they and their children or grandchildren could attend college free. Do you know anything about that? A person in the Genealogical Society I belong to said she read it in a Readers Digest.
What does it mean to "be related" to someone? William and his wife Katharine (Moffat) Whipple had one known child--who died in infancy. Thus, contrary to many popular rumors heard today, no one alive today is a descendant of General William Whipple!
At least one other Whipple descendant who signed the Declaration of Independence: Stephen Hopkins. He was a colonial governor of Rhode Island.
Whipple's disease is a multisystem disorder caused by chronic infection with a bacterium, Tropheryma whippelii. Many patients have malabsorption, which means an impairment of the body's ability to absorb certain nutrients. The disease frequently causes weight loss, irregular breakdown of carbohydrates and fats, resistance to insulin. Most patients have dysfunctions of the immune system. When recognized and treated, Whipple's disease can be cured. Untreated, the disease is usually fatal. Read more at the National Digestive Diseases Clearing House or at Whipple's Disease Online.
Whipple's disease was named after George Hoyt Whipple, who first observed the disease in 1907 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Whipple was a staff member there from 1905 until 1914. He won the 1934 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. (See Blaine Whipple's article on this site and George Hoyt Whipple's ancestry in the Whipple Genweb.)
(This question was answered with the help of Dr. med. Axel von Herbay, Privatdozent für Pathologie, Pathologisches Institut, Universitätsklinikum, Im Neuenheimer Feld 220, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. von Herbay can be reached by email at Axel_von_Herbay@med.uni-heidelberg.de, on the Web at www.WhipplesDisease.net, by telephone at +49 6221 562675, or by fax at +49 6221 562675.)
The Whipple Procedure is a pancreaticoduodenectomy, first performed by Dr. Allen Oldfather Whipple in 1934, when he was a Professor of Surgery at Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Whipple performed 37 of the procedures during his career.
The primary program is called GED2HTML (GEDCOM to HTML). It converts files in the GEDCOM (Genealogical Data Communication) format to the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) format used on the World Wide Web. GED2HTML was originally available for download from www.gendex.com. (It is now a dental imaging site.)
From time to time the webmaster adds a new program or feature to the Whipple Genweb. Here are a few additions:
Prior to 2003 the page generation process took place exclusively on Windows. The process required constant attention. In late 2003, the webmaster converted the generation process to run on the FreeBSD operating system. Since that time the entire process of generating the Whipple Genweb is automatic, requiring invocation of a perl script called gengenweb.
Now the only step of the Whipple Genweb generation process that occurs on Windows is the entry of information into Personal Ancestral File, and the export of the information to a GEDCOM file.
Prior to the conversion of the update process from Windows to FreeBSD, updates occurred every month or so. With the move to FreeBSD, regeneration requires (perhaps) five minutes to export a GEDCOM file, transfer it from Windows to FreeBSD, and invoke a program called gengenweb ("generate genealogical web"). Recently (May 2003) updates have been occurring every week, generally on Sunday afternoon or evening (October 2004).
See "Scope of This Site" to read about the focus and what names we accept.
Instructions are posted on the "About This Site" page.
It has been under consideration for several years. It make take several years to take place--if it is implemented.
We generally modify indicate that dates are approximate by using modifiers "Abt," "Aft," "Bef" and "Bet":
In just about every case, "Abt" dates are the closest to the actual date. Other dates can be far from the actual dates.
The three United States Ships (USS) named Whipple (see History of the USS Whipple) were named after Abraham Whipple (1733-1819), Commodore in the U.S. Navy during the American Revolution. (See his genealogy in the Whipple Genweb. See also The Commodore's Page on this site.) Commodore Whipple led the Colonies' first armed opposition to the British forces when they burned the ship Gaspee on June 10, 1772.
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© 2011 Whipple Website. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:085e16fa-caa5-47d9-b134-f201575308ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whipple.org/docs/faqs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946609 | 3,975 | 3.015625 | 3 |
3:06 PM EDT, May 23, 2012
The wheels are turning as some Virginia lawmakers toss around the idea of raising Virginia's gas tax. The last time The Commonweath saw the gas tax go up was 26 years ago.
Given the fragile state of the economy, drivers say it's hard to imagine lawmakers would consider anything that would make fuel prices go up.
"Mmm. Wouldn't be good," says Doug Hairston, a driver.
"Just what we don't need," says Francis Thompson, also a driver.
But if some Democrats get their way, they will raise the state's gas tax. Currently, at 17.5 cents per gallon, it is one of the lowest in the country. Senator John Edwards believes drivers won't see much of a difference.
"(Take) North Carolina for example. It's about twice as high as Virginia yet the price of gasoline doesn't reflect that. It's about even," says Democratic Senator Edwards, who represents Roanoke's 21st District.
By tying the tax to the inflation rate, Edwards says Virginia's transportation budget can stop being shortchanged and start addressing billions of dollars in road, bridge and other maintenance projects. Not everyone agrees.
"Well there are so many other ways, efficient ways, different ways to fix transportation such as the ever inflating sales tax, revenues have generated. Sharing a portion of that and that's a tax that the Governor has said he might be interested in, in streamlining and I'm all for that," says Senator Ralph Smith who represents the 22nd District.
By lowering the sales tax rate and broadening the base to include some services that are currently exempt, the Republican Senator says the state may find a transportation solution.
The jury is still out on what will happen, but if history repeats itself, the House of Delegates will shoot down the proposal agin during next years session. For now, drivers say that's fine by them.
"I mean we pay taxes on everything else, personal property, business, all that I mean. I don't see why they raise gas," says Eoby Greer, a driver.
Copyright © 2013, WDBJ7-TV | <urn:uuid:54810d6f-98f3-4838-9f60-f223330dcfcf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wdbj7.com/news/wdbj7-are-virginians-on-the-verge-of-having-to-pay-higher-gas-taxes-20120523,0,6941313,print.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968767 | 451 | 1.695313 | 2 |
It is known that humans and Drosophila “buffer” their double dose of sexual chromosomes (females have two X chromosomes whereas males have only one). Basically one of the two X chromosomes becomes inactive during development.
This week there is a paper published in the Journal of Biology that shows that birds behave differently “sexualchromosomicallywise”. In the case of birds, males are the ones with the double dose. But in this case both chromosomes are active, in fact males express sex-linked genes at higher levels than females.
It’s speculated that this might be involved in the generation of sexual dimorfism. | <urn:uuid:1551cb04-5a0a-465c-bb6d-b7234304ee87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vivalaevolucion.blogs.ie/2007/04/09/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941209 | 135 | 2.953125 | 3 |
|This book is written in the time of Henry VII. It features Varina Westcott and the queen Elizabeth the Good. Varina is a chandler(candle maker and carver of beeswax) she is brought to the queen to do some personal carvings for her. She is then mixed up in a quest to find the truth of the murders of the twin princes by Richard III. Lots of suspense and a great look at the women and their lives in that time period. Readers of Karleen Koen and Philipa Gregory will enjoy. | <urn:uuid:3479289d-f8dc-451a-ba5f-37386f620d19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.carmel.lib.in.us/wrp/saverate.cfm?rate=3&idnum=18767&ref= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947577 | 113 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Our cluster of galaxies, the milky way, our solar system, the earth, our hemisphere, our country, our state, our county/parish/region/city/town/village...etc. and timeline we witness in the average human lifespan is so insignificantly miniscule. Throughout the course of human history there have been many upon many gods. What would make one group (religion) today think they are so right? By the books they read? The preachers who preach a history that might or might not be true?
If one man is willing to blow himself up for the dedication to his god, should I not believe him more than you who has to muster the motivation to go to church once a week, month or even year?
Could you be like that child who plugs his ears making la la la sounds while saying "I can't hear you I can't hear you." To be so blinded by the fact that your particular religious group is claiming no different than any other religious group speaking in the same manner, claiming the same evidence?
But yet most humans countinue to do just that; hiding away in their own private corner of their world, with their eyes and minds shut off from anything outside of their own little security blanket.
Are you praying to the god you KNOW FOR 100% FACT EXISTS????? Or are you just praying that you might have the right answer? Because let's face it. If you are claiming 1 religion, 1 god, out of the whole big picture is the CORRECT one, the chances of you, a human being, being right are very, very small indeed.
Dan says: Just the creation account is enough to believe in a Creator. Joyce, there is a reason the devil went to the woman.
My son replied: Yes, but what creator? Who created the creator? And yes, mom, that seems to be the case with every religion I've come across. but let's keep this civil :) And what is the reason the devil went to the women Dan? Just curious...
The "creation account" is pretty much a result of the God of The Gaps. They didn't have a clue how things started, so made up a story that might fit or explain things that were unexplainable at the time. We know through thousands of years of learning, discovering, and evolving that there are distinct clues to the origin of the universe.
The devil made me do it... ;-D | <urn:uuid:9c42b4cd-a912-46ae-b0ff-dad0e29835d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topics/my-sons-facebook-post?commentId=1982180%3AComment%3A493127&xg_source=activity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973563 | 507 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Aemilius wrote:What are your grounds for saying that? That line of thinking presupposes that Buddha Shakyamuni knew only shravakayana, that he didn't know Mahayana, that he didn't know the symbolic transmission outside the sutras! Which is worse than ridiculous! Bhagavan Shakyamuni was fully enlightened, he didn't hold back teachings, but taught everything, including Mahayana and the symbolic transmission of Zen/Dhyan school, when the situation or opportunity arose for it.
The only presupposition is the fact that Shakyamuni taught only what we know as Sravakayana to his arhat disciples, since those were the only type of teachings transmitted for the first several hundred years of his dispensation. The Mahayana teachings only appeared later, and we have to accept this as fact. My faith in the Mahayana is not predicated on the need to blindly accept the mythic narrative of Mahayana traditions, which flies against the face of reality on the ground, vis a vis textual history and archaeological evidence.
Aemilius wrote:There is no need to believe that few narrow minded individuals were the essence of Dharma, that there was nothing else. Have you read the Transmission of the Lamp (or Transmission of the Light)? What causes your unbelief in these early masters of Mahayana?
As a Mahayanist, I believe Bodhisattvas must retain their faculties of intellect and reason, and not abandon these in favor of blind fundamentalism. That is one of the greatest homage I can pay to the masters of Mahayana, in return for the teachings they left behind.
Aemilius wrote:As it is only your personal lack of faith, it should not be presented as "truth". It has no other justification than your lack of insight in and knowledge of the nature of Mahayana/Chan.
It is widely known that Dharma existed as an oral tradition for several hundreds of years, and even more than a thousand years. This should not be forgotten and dismissed as nonexistent, when it carries the true nature of Dharma. It has been the true nature of early Mahayana Dharma, and also the nature of much of the later transmission of Dharma.
I have no problem if you think that I have lack of insight in these matters. The fact is that the Mahayana sutras all contain information about the state of the Sangha and historical developments that prove that they were not composed during the time of the Buddha, since they reflect the philosophical and soteriological concerns of the day.
There is absolutely no need to force oneself to believe that sutras such as the Lanka, Lotus and Avatamsaka were spoken by the historic Buddha. For me, I believe that the teachings of these sutras were inspired by dhyana masters who received them amidst visions of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas in samadhi, and hence written down and passed on to posterity. If you truly accept the concept of the timelessness and unobstructed nature of the Dharmakaya, then this won't post a problem. | <urn:uuid:4ffe3baf-6b43-4565-91cd-50689fc742e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=10589&start=20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976859 | 645 | 1.921875 | 2 |
There are two locations in the GUI for setting metric, imperial or auto (detect from CRS). This can be confusing to the user, especially because the two locations actually do slightly different things.
- uDIG preferences (General -> uDIG UI) is used by the DistanceTool directly to affect the units displayed by that tool. It is also used by the scalebar when first adding it to the map, so it's initial setting is taken from this preference.
- Scalebar Style editor allows the user to change the choice specifically for the scalebar. This allows for the distancetool and scalebar to have different settings, but might be confusing to the user, if that was not their intention.
If the user sets the units in the scalebar, and then starts using the distance tool, they might be surprised that it did not get those settings. | <urn:uuid:f0bbd526-767a-4e8b-a5da-6f204ad407ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/UDIG-1495 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921301 | 179 | 1.945313 | 2 |
For a 200-pound person, this amounts to a 10 to 14-pound weight loss. The cornerstone of diabetes prevention is weight reduction, which is achievable through a healthy diet and regular exercise. But to lose weight—and keep it off—people must understand how different food groups can be combined to form a well-balanced diet that sustains energy, while facilitating weight reduction.
To reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes, the American Diabetes Association suggests the following food-wise choices:
- Substitute whole grains (whole-wheat bread, oatmeal, brown rice) for refined grain products (white bread, white rice). Get 14 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories you consume.
- Limit dietary fat to about 30 percent of your total calories. Avoid trans fats (found in foods such as cakes, cookies, crackers, donuts, pies, potato chips, popcorn and French fries). Reduce intake of saturated fats (found in whole milk, cream, ice cream, whole-milk cheeses, butter, meats, palm, coconut oils and cocoa butter).
- Have a minimum of one serving of non-fried fish every week. If you are pregnant, you should consult with your physician. Vary your menu with skinless poultry and lean meats—for example, round steak, sirloin tip or extra lean ground beef.
- Eat more low-fat or nonfat dairy products each day such as yogurt or cottage cheese.
- Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. | <urn:uuid:f5f71e50-6aaf-40b8-af21-0cbf4f0a4d72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.memorialcare.org/medical_services/diabetes/diabetes-prevention.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918876 | 308 | 2.859375 | 3 |
2010 Report: Public Health Preparedness
Appendix 2: Overview of CDC Organizations Involved in Preparedness Activities
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) builds and strengthens systems at local, state, and federal levels to respond to all hazards. For more information, see CDC’s Emergency Preparedness and Response website (emergency.cdc.gov).
CDC’s emergency preparedness and response is a collective effort among the different offices and national centers. The Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR) provides strategic direction, support, and coordination for CDC’s preparedness and emergency response activities that receive Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response funding. In addition to the programs that OPHPR manages directly, other CDC organizations and programs make significant contributions to emergency preparedness and response and are also listed below. (Please note: the listing below reflects the new structure developed as part of CDC’s 2009 organizational improvement process. For more information see www.cdc.gov/about/organization/cio.htm.)
The Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR) (formerly the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response) coordinates terrorism preparedness and emergency response activities across CDC and strategically distributes funds that support a range of activities at CDC and state and local public health departments. OPHPR manages the following divisions and offices:
- The Division of State and Local Readiness (DSLR) manages the Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) cooperative agreement, which funds state and local efforts to strengthen response to a public health emergency and provides technical assistance to promote these efforts. In response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, DSLR also administered funds through the Public Health Emergency Response (PHER) grant to upgrade pandemic influenza preparedness and response capacity.
- The Division of Strategic National Stockpile (DSNS) operates and maintains the Strategic National Stockpile, a national repository of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, life-support medications, and medical supplies. During a public health emergency, state and local public health systems may become overwhelmed. The Stockpile is designed to supplement state and local public health departments in the event of such an emergency. DSNS also provides technical assistance to local officials to help ensure that local, state, and federal agencies can work together to receive, stage, store, distribute, and dispense medical assets from the Stockpile as well as other sources.
- The Division of Emergency Operations (DEO) coordinates CDC’s preparedness, assessment, response, recovery, and evaluation prior to and during public health emergencies. DEO has overall responsibility for the CDC Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which maintains situational awareness of potential health threats 24 hours a day and is the centralized location for event management when activated. The EOC is equipped with state-of-the-art communications technologies to support information pipelines with state, federal, and international partners.
- The Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) through the Select Agent Program regulates the possession, use, and transfer of biological agents and toxins (select agents) that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety. This program is designed to ensure compliance with the select agent regulations by providing guidance and evaluating and inspecting registered entities.
- The Office of the Director (OD) manages strategy, budget, policy, workforce and career planning, communication, research, and science for terrorism preparedness and emergency response activities. In addition, OD manages the Career Epidemiology Field Officer program, which recruits and supports skilled epidemiologists in state and local public health departments. Through this program, state public health departments can choose to spend PHEP cooperative agreement funds to support a field officer in their agencies. OD also manages the Centers for Public Health Preparedness program (will be known as Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Centers in FY 2011), a national network of colleges and universities that collaborates with state and local public health departments and other community partners to provide preparedness education and training resources to the public health workforce, healthcare providers, students, and others based on community need.
The Center for Global Health (CGH) (formerly the Coordinating Office for Global Health) provides leadership and works with global partners to increase life expectancy and years of quality of life, and also to increase global preparedness to prevent and control natural and manmade threats to health. CDC’s global health presence includes more than 200 CDC staff assigned to more than 50 countries and international organizations.
CGH coordinates international response with the CDC Emergency Operations Center during international emergency response events and serves as the principal CDC point of contact for CDC programs, federal agencies, foreign governments, and other organizations concerned with international terrorism preparedness and response. CGH also works to build global public health capacity to identify, investigate, and contain outbreaks and other major public health emergencies. In addition, CGH provides epidemic aid and epidemiologic consultation and reference diagnostic services to state and local health departments, other federal agencies, and national and international health organizations.
The Office of Infectious Diseases (OID) (formerly the Coordinating Center for Infectious Diseases) strives to protect the public’s health by preventing and controlling infectious diseases. OID’s ongoing public health preparedness activities include developing vaccine, improving diagnostic methods for select bioterrorism agents, and improving the Laboratory Response Network. Their mission is to lead, promote, and facilitate science, programs, and policies to reduce the burden of infectious diseases in the United States and globally.
- The Influenza Coordination Unit (ICU) is responsible for all aspects of CDC’s pandemic influenza preparedness, from strategy through implementation. The ICU coordinates and synchronizes all pandemic influenza-related activities within CDC to ensure preparedness for a possible pandemic. These activities include setting priorities and promoting science, policies for the programs related to CDC’s pandemic influenza activities, exercising readiness plans, and facilitating community preparedness.
- The National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID) (formerly the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases and the National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases) aims to detect, prevent, and control infectious diseases from spreading, whether they are naturally occurring, unintentional, or the result of terrorism. NCEZID manages the biological testing component of the Laboratory Response Network, an integrated network of national, reference or sentinel laboratories whose goal is to detect, characterize, and communicate about confirmed biological agents, decreasing the time needed to begin the response to an intentional act or accidental exposure. In addition, NCEZID tests the continuing effectiveness of existing drugs against bioterrorism agents and prepares U.S. ports of entry to reduce the risk of natural or intentional introduction of infectious diseases into the country.
- The National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) works to prevent disease, disability, and death through immunization and by control of respiratory and related diseases. During the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, NCIRD provided leadership; laboratory, epidemiology, and clinical subject matter expertise; and vaccine delivery expertise. To prepare against natural and intentional outbreaks, the center also conducts surveillance and laboratory activities for vaccine-preventable diseases and viral and bacterial respiratory diseases. As part of the Anthrax Vaccine Research Program, NCIRD has recently completed a large-scale human clinical trial of the anthrax vaccine and immunological studies in animals. NCIRD is also evaluating the use of anthrax immunoglobulin for severe systemic anthrax.
Noncommunicable Diseases, Injury and Environmental Health
The Office of Noncommunicable Diseases, Injury and Environmental Health’s (ONDIEH) (new office established as part of CDC’s 2009 organizational improvement) mission is to increase the potential for full, satisfying, and productive living across the lifespan for all people in all communities. ONCDIEH preparedness activities include providing technical expertise in epidemiology, surveillance, and communications during emergencies for populations with physical and developmental disabilities and chronic diseases as well as at-risk populations.
- The National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD) is conducting ongoing projects to develop and strengthen intramural research and surveillance capacity related to emergency preparedness for at-risk populations.
- The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) has produced a number of publications addressing issues surrounding persons with chronic diseases following natural disasters.
- The National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (NCEH/ATSDR) conducts ongoing projects to improve surveillance systems, laboratory capacity, and emergency response. NCEH/ATSDR manages the chemical testing component of the Laboratory Response Network, an integrated network of state and national laboratories whose goal is to detect, characterize, and communicate about confirmed chemical agents, decreasing the time needed to begin the response to an intentional act or accidental exposure. In addition, NCEH/ATSDR is improving various surveillance systems for chemical exposures, hazardous substance spills, and morbidity following disasters. NCEH/ATSDR also works with state and local public health departments to improve response to chemical, nuclear, and radiologic terrorism.
- The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) links to the injury care community to decrease morbidity and mortality from injuries caused by explosions. NCIPC is moving toward this goal through curriculum development for healthcare providers, development of clinical guidance resources for management of blast injuries, and translation of lessons learned from international and U.S. military experience. NCIPC is also working to improve surveillance systems for blast injuries due to bombings and behavioral/mental health outcomes associated with disasters and incidents of mass violence and is providing educational materials to prevent or reduce the impact of these events on mental health and behavioral health outcomes.
Occupational Safety and Health
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) provides leadership to prevent work-related illness, injury, disability, and death through information gathering, scientific research, and translation of knowledge into products and services.
The mission of the NIOSH Emergency Preparedness and Response program is to advance research and collaborations to protect the health and safety of emergency response providers and recovery workers by preventing diseases, injuries, and fatalities when responding to emergencies.
State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support
The Office for State, Tribal, Local and Territorial Support’s (OSTLTS) (new office established as part of CDC’s 2009 organizational improvement) vision is to improve the health of America by supporting state, local, tribal, and territorial public health agencies to expand and develop their capacity in programs and policies related to the improvement of the health status of the nation. OSTLTS’ activities will focus on public health systems (government relations, partners and strategic alliances, workforce development, and information technology and management which includes the Public Health Information Network), public health practice (Public Health Law program, technical assistance, and capacity development and improvement), and performance and accountability (public health standards and accreditation as well as program review, assessment and analysis).
Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services
The Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services’s (OSELS) (new office established as part of CDC’s 2009 organizational improvement) mission is to provide scientific service, expertise, skills, and tools in support of CDC’s national efforts to promote health; prevent disease, injury and disability; and prepare for emerging health threats. OSELS will lead the development, adoption, and integration of sound national and international public health surveillance and epidemiological practices, based on advances in informatics, epidemiology, laboratory science, and public health research.
- The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) conducts and supports statistical, methodological, and epidemiological activities that will provide the data needed to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of health services in the United States.
Among the surveys fielded by NCHS is the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. The survey is used annually to monitor emergency department crowding and has occasionally included supplements that help illustrate if emergency departments have the necessary training to recognize and treat patients suffering from diseases such as exposure to anthrax, and have formal plans to respond to mass casualty events. These data provide important context for planning and evaluating emergency preparedness programs at the national level, and may be used as benchmarks for individual states.
- Page last updated September 21, 2010
- Page last reviewed September 21, 2010
- Content source: Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR, formerly the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response [COTPER])
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- Contact CDC-INFO | <urn:uuid:71658bf4-642c-4177-8137-5739093bd9d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emergency.cdc.gov/publications/2010phprep/appendix/appendix2.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915556 | 2,699 | 2.671875 | 3 |
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells Poster
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." --- H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
Description: a terrific original cover design for a fantastic Victorian SF novel.
Details: A1 size, 84 x 59.4cm. Printed on 150gsm silk matt paper. The poster comes rolled.
Free UK delivery if you spend over £30. | <urn:uuid:5b344314-bc0a-4c51-8ffc-acfd952059d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theliterarygiftcompany.com/the-war-of-the-worlds-poster-670-p.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982348 | 158 | 1.546875 | 2 |
The Internal Revenue Service collects only on your taxable income. So an easy way to cut your tax bill is to reduce your taxable income.
You do that by claiming deductions when you file. But the exact way you take these deductions depends on your personal circumstances.
There are two common deduction methods: standard or itemized.
Most taxpayers take the standard deduction, which can be claimed on any of the three individual tax returns. These filers find that the standard deduction exceeds the amount they could achieve by itemizing. Even better, it also means they don't have to keep track of each possible tax-deductible expense throughout the year.
In addition to deductions, each filer gets to claim exemptions to help reduce taxable income. Exemptions are the tax-form version of the allowances you enumerated on your W-4. This exemption amount -- for you, your spouse and any dependents -- is available to every filer, regardless of which deduction method is used.
Bankrate wants to hear from you and encourages thoughtful and constructive comments. We ask that you stay focused on the story topic, respect other people's opinions, and avoid profanity, offensive statements, illegal contents and advertisement posts. Comments are not reviewed before they are posted. Bankrate reserves the right (but is not obligated) to edit or delete your comments. Please avoid posting private or confidential information, and also keep in mind that anything you post may be disclosed, published, transmitted or reused. | <urn:uuid:ca9820a7-045b-4270-91be-549e08322cd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/deductions-cutting-your-tax-bill.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94521 | 299 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On May 20, 2010, Mexican President Felipe Calderon was invited by the Administration and Democrats to address a joint session of Congress. In his speech he ripped Arizona’s new law, commonly known as SB1070, which was written to potentially add muscle to the Federal law in clamping down on illegal immigrants. Aside from the audacity of a foreign head of state coming into this country and criticizing our laws, most grievous was the standing and cheering of House and Senate Democrats and White House officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano – two officials who earlier confessed to not even reading the law. The law which had not yet been implemented, Calderon claimed, might cause racial profiling.
On August 13, 2012, Jon Hammar, the 27-year-old former Marine from Palmetto Bay, Florida, was arrested by Mexican officials as he crossed between Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico on bogus charges after declaring an antique shotgun, a family heirloom, which U.S. Customs had cleared and provided the proper documentation for Mexican customs. He was immediately imprisoned in the notoriously dangerous CEDES prison for almost five months, run by a drug cartel and chained to a bed, before his release just before Christmas.
I suspect all American citizens would hope that our State Department would intercede when they are arrested and imprisoned under questionable charges. If that failed to produce results, one would further hope that our President would pick up the telephone and call Mexican President Calderon or after December 1 to newly elected Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who began his six-year term on that date. Such calls with Mexican officials seem not only to have never taken place but no public statements were forthcoming from the White House or State Department. One might expect at least a statement saying how pleased that Hammar had finally been released and critical of the injustice of his Mexican imprisonment.
I now see that anything that interferes with the President’s narrative is at least never the recipient of any comment and at worse never criticized. Thus, a foreign head of state can come into our own Congress and criticize a law that might racially profile a person while millions have crossed the border illegally and applaud such criticism because he is reliant on the Hispanic vote for his re-election. But when a U.S. citizen enters Mexico legally and is imprisoned on trumped-up charges, the Administration remains mute, never finding fault with the nation that is the major contributor of the illegal population in this country.
The day after the November elections I wrote about the disappointment and disheartenment at the results of the presidential election. One of the glowing, biggest disappointments I had then was the silence by the Administration and the spin in which surrogates had used to provide cover for the attacks in Benghazi and the murder of four Americans. I had expected that Congress would vigorously pursue attempts to get the entire real story surrounding Benghazi and the Administration’s actions or lack of actions but also expected the Administration would employ some of the same tactics seen during the Watergate fiasco. That strategy would be to stall testimony that might render it a presidential cover up until another crisis would present itself or be created to capture the headlines. I surmised that the new crisis would take center stage, either real, like the national debt and sequestration, or manufactured for some unexpected and unanticipated event.
How naive was I! Obama in his re-election victory speech talked about reaching across the aisle to solve problems and of the need for finding common ground. But immediately he began another campaign to increase “fair share” taxes on the rich, totally intransigent to any attempts to find common ground with absolutely no recommendations for any cuts to a bloated Federal government. Obama’s blame game of Republican intransigence is alive and well, aided and abetted by a liberal press that has dropped their coverage of Benghazi in favor of covering their support of his rhetoric. I suspect this was always the game plan and the prime reason that Obama never devoted any time to working on a solution that he knew should have been pursued prior to the November election. But why work today on something that can be called a crisis tomorrow. It was the crisis on which he could launch his next campaign for more taxation.
It was so obvious, like the nose on one’s face, that the fiscal cliff would be the new crisis, already loaming on the horizon. Additionally, unexpected and unanticipated, the Gaza rocket attacks on Israel, the actions of the new Egyptian dictator, the Syrian rebellion, and the Michigan legislature and governor’s approval of the right-to-work state law further robbed the spotlight of Benghazi from liberal press coverage.
And then came December 14 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut with the murder of 20 young students and 6 educators. This was a horrible tragedy and words can never adequately express the anger and sorrow of any murder and particularly those of our innocent youth. But with this tragedy the Administration had yet another diversion, one they didn’t need to hype, for the media would do it for Obama.
And yet another crisis is just over the horizon. The next will be Federal debt limit debates in which Obama will be campaigning to increase another one to two trillion dollars. And the supportive news media will give audience to those professing that the President should again have the last word, totally oblivious to the tragedy of Benghazi that occurred four months ago and the many unanswered questions surrounding the event.
Perhaps there is no cover up. Perhaps the failure of providing enhanced security on the anniversary of September 11 was the result of incompetency on the part of the Administration and State Department. Perhaps Ambassador Rice’s assertions of the attack were simply rather stupid interpretations of known facts. Perhaps the attempts to lay blame on a video leading to a non-existing demonstration in Benghazi was not politically motivated.
However, if these suppositions bear any resemblance of fact, why has the Administration and State Department continued to remain mute on providing the details? For an Administration formerly professing it would set the standard for transparency, why has it continually demonstrated its lack of honesty and openness?
Absent any formal statements from our President and Secretary of State, it gives rise to speculation that the Administration does not want their actions and reasoning made known to the public. And without such statements we are left to either blindly accept this absence or speculate.
During the campaign, the narrative was advanced that “Osama Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” Further, the assertion was that al-Qaeda had been driven into the ground sufficiently with only a few “remnants” of the radical Islamic terrorist organization remaining. However, remnants typically don’t grow and spread as the attack and murders at Benghazi demonstrated. To sustain the created narrative, it was paramount that another alternate justification for the attacks be pursued.
My own speculative beliefs are assumptive of the following:
- The Administration and State Department erroneously believed the Muslim world was increasingly supportive of the President and hence promoted the theory that al-Qaeda was reduced to a minimal threat.
- That belief manifested itself in the lack of concern for security in the American embassies in Muslim states, and hence rejection of expanded military security at potential hotspots. Beefing up security would signal that the narrative was in error.
- When the actual attack began, someone in the re-election campaign expressed concern that the action would run counter to the narrative and potentially backfire in the President’s face.
- The search began for something on which to blame the attacks and an obscure video was remembered or found to present the best available foil.
- U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was either summoned or volunteered to present the talking points of 1) a spontaneous demonstration that became violent, and 2) the cause for the spontaneous demonstration was the video.
- As the actual facts became clearer through the reports of some honest reporters, the Administration began using the “no comment, it’s being investigated by the FBI” rhetoric.
- The strategy of the re-election campaign then prompted the President to avoid any reference to the attacks until after the election when another crisis could take the forefront of the news cycle.
- The fiscal cliff was that crisis and the President’s adherence to his single and repeated demand for taxes on the wealthy and his resistance to propose any meaningful tax cuts is the ploy to keep Benghazi off the news and further rob the spotlight of Benghazi from liberal press coverage. The unexpected and unanticipated Gaza rocket attacks on Israel, the Egyptian dictator’s actions, the Syrian rebellion, and the Michigan right-to-work state law and finally the Sandy Hook murders were further news stories that could distract news people. Truly icing on the cake.
- The strategy of the Administration was to break the back of the Republican Party on the tax issue. As the President emerged victorious with his “tax the rich” campaign, attempts by Republicans to pursue further investigation of Benghazi would then allow the Democrats to claim he is the victim of petty politics.
- And should the Republicans pursue Benghazi, as they well should, the strategy will then morph into the Watergate stall, likely with claims of executive privilege to forestall any meaningful appearances before Congress.
It appeared that finally Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be testifying before both House and Senate committees later this month, answering questions regarding the sequence of events prior to the attacks, and how State hopes to prevent future similar such incidents. I doubt that anything new will come out of her testimony but a simple recap of everything already on the record. Likely the silence buried deep in our newspaper by the main stream media is hoped by the Administration to remain there.
However, the significant questions that Congress needs to ask U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice under oath are 1) who specifically either directed her to give the video interviews on five networks, or, 2) did she volunteer to give the interviews, 3) who provided her the talking points she presented, and, 4) did she accept the talking points at face value or question their validity. Again, I expect nothing significant to come of her testimony, should it ever happen.
I don’t personally believe that the President or the Administration in advance knowingly suspected the potential of four American being murdered. There was at the very least an absence of good judgment in not anticipating the prospects of trouble on or around September 11 and thereby directing enhanced security at those embassies. I do however believe the Administration was so politically married to their narrative that they felt any deviation would dilute the power of its message and acceptance and contribute potentially to the President’s defeat. Rather than an honest admission of error they, like Richard Nixon, have thus engaged in covering up the mistakes in hopes that over time, with the able assistance of main stream media, they will evaporate like a morning fog.
If you were truly without blame in the shoes of the President, wouldn’t you seek to banish or refute the suspicions surrounding Benghazi? With his silence of four months it portrays the impression that he is covering up the errors of his Administration. But expect the President to attempt to make the debt ceiling and gun control the leading stories in the national news. The big question for me is will Congress have the resolve, commitment and persistence to not be distracted and truly seek the truth of Benghazi. | <urn:uuid:41942df8-2038-4cad-a764-97bd6e4aab95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.economicnoise.com/2013/01/13/another-crisis-another-distraction/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975579 | 2,323 | 1.890625 | 2 |
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Search our database of more than 4,500 film reviews. We have been discovering spiritual meanings in movies for nearly four decades.
By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Directed by Frieder Schlaich
Facets Multi-Media, Inc. 11/01 DVD/VHS Feature Film
One of the most virulent forms of prejudice is xenophobia, the anxiety and bigoted behavior aroused by strangers and the strange by anything different from ourselves. The "other," because of skin color, language, dress, or religious belief, is seen as a threat. Because of this prevalent attitude, many strangers in society live in a kind of prison, one built by prejudice.
Otomo is a riveting German film directed by Frieder Schlaich. It is loosely based on a well-publicized 1989 incident in Stuttgart where a West African immigrant stabbed two policemen to death when they tried to apprehend him for a previous altercation on a train. Otomo presents a fictionalized reconstruction of the last day of this African's life.
Otomo (Isaach de Bankole) arises early in the morning to cast stones, do some pushups, and pack his bags. It is his birthday but no one is there to celebrate with him. He stands on line for some menial work but is denied on account of his inadequate papers. Racist remarks are directed his way, especially ridiculing his scuffed shoes. On the train, a bigoted ticket collector harasses him. After punching this official, Otomo flees from the train, leaving behind his backpack containing some soil from his homeland. A bulletin is put out for him by the police. Two young cops eager for promotion are determined to apprehend him.
The hotel manager tells them that Otomo has been in Germany for eight years and that his rent was paid by a Catholic charity organization. The ill-fated African stops at a church to pray while a young minister is preaching a sermon about the small gestures that can make a difference "A gentle word can save a life." But all that Otomo receives in church is a cold stare from a woman while he kneels in front of a portrait of the crucified Jesus.
The only one to reach out to this immigrant is a little girl who gives him a flower while he sits in dejection by the river. Her grandmother (Eva Mattes) is sympathetic to his down-and-out plight. She takes him to her daughter's apartment and eventually gives him the money he needs to pay a trucker to take him to Amsterdam. For one brief moment, Otomo connects with another human being telling her that this is the first time in eight years he's ever seen the inside of anyone's home in Germany. He shares with her his dream of becoming a helicopter pilot.
Otomo draws our attention to the dehumanized treatment of refugees in Germany and elsewhere where they are viewed as "vermin." Hostility instead of hospitality greats outsiders in many large cities. Hopefully this morally provocative German film will eventually be released in video so that many human rights activists can see it.
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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
The Most Spiritually Literate Films of: | <urn:uuid:b4053687-f164-403c-85b8-efc02d648d1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=3553 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971895 | 691 | 2.1875 | 2 |
LEETOWN, WV, Dec. 17, 2012 -- A byproduct resulting from the treatment of acid mine drainage may have a second life in helping clean waters coming from agricultural and wastewater discharges, according to a recent study by scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey Leetown Science Center.
The report, published in the Journal Water, Air, and Soil Pollution, shows that dried acid mine drainage sludge, or residuals, that result from treating acid mine drainage discharges can be used as a low-cost adsorbent elsewhere to efficiently remove phosphorus from agricultural and municipal wastewaters. The phosphorus that has been adsorbed by the mine drainage residuals can later be stripped from the residuals and recycled into fertilizer. The mine drainage residuals can be regenerated and reused for a number of additional treatment cycles. Application of this novel, patented technology has the potential to simultaneously help to decrease acid mine drainage treatment costs, prevent degradation of aquatic ecosystems, and recycle valuable nutrients.
"This wonderful result shows the inventive application of some very sophisticated environmental chemistry to create a new life cycle for what otherwise would have been some problematic waste products," said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "It sets the bar high for future studies in environmental remediation."
Acid mine drainage is produced whenever sulfide minerals associated with coal and metal deposits are exposed to air and moisture. The resulting acid and dissolved metals are toxic to most forms of aquatic life, and untreated acid mine drainage has impacted more than 5000 miles of streams in the Appalachian region, with associated economic impacts of millions of lost dollars in the tourism and sport fishing industries.
When acid mine drainage is remediated, it is neutralized with a base, such as limestone or lime, and an iron-rich sludge is formed that must be disposed of, sometimes at considerable cost. The new process of using the sludge to filter wastewaters has the potential to reduce the need to dispose of the sludge, while providing an added and previously unknown benefit of using the residuals to effectively reduce phosphorus from wastewater discharges wherever needed.
Excess phosphorus releases to the environment from agricultural and municipal wastewaters have resulted in significant impairment of aquatic ecosystems such as the Chesapeake Bay and other bodies of water worldwide. At the same time, as depletion of high-grade phosphorus-bearing deposits continues, the possibility of future shortages of fertilizer phosphorus has been suggested.
Current technology for the removal of phosphorus from wastewater consists of addition of aluminum or iron salts to precipitate and adsorb phosphorus, but this is too expensive for the low concentrations and high volumes often encountered in many wastewaters. This new technology provides a more efficient and cost effective option.
"As environmental scientists, we kind of hesitate to use this analogy, but it really is like killing two birds with one stone," says Philip Sibrell, lead author of the study. "This new technology could reduce or eliminate the need to dispose of acid mine drainage sludge, instead making that same sludge useful in addressing the urgent need to reduce the amount of phosphorus going into aquatic ecosystems; it's a win-win situation." | <urn:uuid:f7817520-d45b-4b96-8bd3-d0794e877166> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.waterworld.com/articles/2012/12/mining-wastewater-byproduct-capable-of-helping-clean-wate.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942165 | 639 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Warren Buffett is a tough negotiator, which is one reason why he’s the second-wealthiest person in America.
So when the President refers to his new initiative to raise taxes on millionaires as the “Buffett rule” we might expect he’d start the bargaining from a tough position.
But this is Barack Obama, whose idea of negotiating is to give away half the house before he’s even asked the other side for the bathroom sink.
Apparently Obama will propose that people earning more than $1 million a year pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class earners. That’s aiming mighty low.
America’s median income is about $50,000. The typical taxpayer at that level pays approximately 20 percent in taxes.
Granted, that’s a higher rate than most of today’s super rich pay because of countless deductions, credits, and loopholes – including, especially, their ability to take their incomes in the form of capital gains, taxed at 15 percent. That’s a big reason Buffett’s hundreds of millions a year are taxed at just over 17 percent — a lower rate than his secretary faces, as Buffett often says.
But a 20 percent rate is still ridiculously low compared to what millionaires and billionaires ought to be paying. Officially, income over $379,150 is supposed to be taxed at 35%.
And even 35 percent is a pittance compared to the first three decades after World War II. Before Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the rich in 1981, the highest marginal tax rate was over 70 percent. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are now paying a far lower share of their incomes in taxes than at any time since World War II.
The estate tax (which only hits the top 2 percent) has also been slashed. In 2000 it was 55 percent and kicked in after $1 million. Today it’s 35 percent and kicks in at $5 million. Capital gains – comprising most of the income of the super-rich – were taxed at 35 percent in the late 1980s. They’re now taxed at 15 percent.
Meanwhile, the top 1 percent’s share of national income has doubled over the past three decades (from 10 percent in 1981 to well over 20 percent now). The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share has tripled. And they’re doing better than ever. The last time the top 1 percent got that much was in the roaring 1920s.
So much money is now concentrated at the top that what we really need are more tax brackets at the high end, higher marginal rates in each bracket, and a tax code that treats all sources of income – whether ordinary or capital gains – the same.
The marginal tax rate ought to be raised to 50 percent on income between $500,000 and $5 million, 60 percent on income between $5 million and $15 million, and 70 percent on income over $15 million.
In light of our history, and in the face of future budget deficits that will otherwise cause taxes to be raised on the middle class and government services to be sliced, this is the least we should expect from the richest among us.
Why shouldn’t the President be calling for this, instead of asking that millionaires and billionaires pay at a rate average earners pay?
At least begin from a tough negotiating position, Mr. President. You might as well. Congressional Republicans will oppose any tax increases on the wealthy, whom they call “job creators” — even though big companies are sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash and aren’t creating any jobs at all, while 99 percent small-business owners, who account for most new jobs, make under a million dollars a year. (GOP Budget chief Paul Ryan has already accused the President of waging “class warfare” with his millionaire tax plan.)
And you can also bet Republicans, as well as their allies on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, will continue to harp about the large portion of low-wage earners who pay no income taxes — without mentioning that they pay a higher portion of their incomes than anyone else in payroll and sales taxes.
Besides, the public supports raising taxes on the rich. (In an August CBS News/New York Times survey, 63% of respondents favored increasing taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year to help close the budget deficit.)
We don’t yet know the details of the President’s proposal. The White House hasn’t said what the minimum rate on millionaires will be, or how they’ll define a “middle class” income. Maybe he’ll surprise us by starting out much higher and tougher.
I hope so. But as he’s proven time and time again, when it comes to negotiating Barack Obama is no Warren Buffett. | <urn:uuid:0438aac5-470f-4c06-9c84-8379e980bcca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vruz.tumblr.com/tagged/OBAMA | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96012 | 1,020 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Join Astronomy magazine for a star party in the Bay Area
For two days in late August, you can observe the Moon and planets and join in a variety of astronomy-related activities.
July 6, 2012
Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California, will play host for a two-day public star party and astronomy weekend Friday, August 24 and Saturday, August 25. Celestron and Astronomy magazine are sponsoring this event, which features astronomy demonstrations, live planetarium shows, illustrated talks, a telescope-makers workshop presented by the East Bay Astronomical Society, giveaways, and even a moonlight hike.
Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California, (seen here at night) combines exhibits, telescopes, a planetarium, and a giant-screen theater to bring science to life for visitors. The center will host a public astronomy event co-sponsored by Celestron and Astronomy magazine August 24 and 25.
Photo by Image courtesy Chabot Space & Science Center
In addition, staff from Chabot and Celestron will have high-quality telescopes set up both nights so visitors can view celestial wonders in the late-summer sky. “We picked this weekend mostly based on what’s in the sky those nights,” says Astronomy Senior Editor Michael E. Bakich. “On Friday, the Moon reaches First Quarter, so it won’t overwhelm other objects the telescope operators want to target. Plus, we can start observing it even before it gets dark.”
Mars and Saturn will be in the southwestern sky for two hours after sunset. The two planets will form a pretty triangle with blue Spica, Virgo the Maiden’s brightest star.
Visitors also will have the opportunity to observe Neptune, our solar system’s most distant planet. August 24 is the date Neptune reaches opposition — a position in its orbit directly opposite the Sun in our sky. On Friday, then, the blue world rises at sunset and shines at its brightest all year.
On Saturday, Astronomy Editor David J. Eicher will present a highly illustrated talk titled, “Astronomy’s new frontier.” In it, he’ll cover the latest research in dark energy, the structure of our Milky Way Galaxy, and black holes, and he also will provide an up-to-the-minute census of extrasolar planet discoveries.
And because Friday marks the 23rd anniversary of the Voyager 2 spacecraft’s encounter with Neptune and Saturday is that probe’s 31st anniversary of its Saturn flyby, Bakich has chosen “How Voyager Changed the Solar System” as his talk. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions after both talks.
The star party hours are 6 to 10 p.m. Friday the 24th and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday the 25th. General admission to Chabot is $15.95 for adults and $11.95 for youth 3 to 12 years old. General admission includes all activities.
Chabot Space & Science Center is located in the beautiful Oakland Hills just off Highway 13 in Oakland, California. A Smithsonian affiliate, Chabot is an educational science center whose mission is to educate students of all ages about planet Earth and the universe. This 86,000-square-foot center offers interactive space and science exhibitions, immersive digital-dome planetarium shows, and giant screen MegaDome shows. Chabot is also home to the largest research-quality telescopes open to the public west of the Mississippi. Learn more at www.chabotspace.org.
Alex Zwissler, Executive Director, Chabot Space & Science Center, summed the event up by saying, “Chabot’s mission of science education and our astronomy emphasis makes this event a particularly exciting one for us, and we’re thrilled to work with two important businesses in the astronomy industry. Leveraging each other’s efforts means we can introduce more people to the wonder and excitement of star and planet observation and discovery.” | <urn:uuid:01e30719-28d0-469e-9067-d98250edd9d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astronomy.com/~/link.aspx?_id=d4fc027f-1646-4d64-8024-4fd36e6bd83f | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910054 | 847 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Additional Product Added to Dog Food Recall List
A vegetarian dog food has now been added to the dog food recall list of potentially contaminated products.
Posted: April 18, 2007, 7 p.m. EST
Menu Foods Inc., the Canadian manufacturer that has recalled more than 5,000 products due to suspected contamination by the toxin melamine, recalled an additional dog food on April 17.
Menu recalled Natural Life Vegetarian 13.2 ounce canned dog food with the date “Nov/22/09” and product code 12344-07114.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to investigate the recall of pet food products suspected in the deaths and illnesses of potentially hundreds of animals, said Stephen Sundlof, DVM, the agency’s top veterinarian.
Although the FDA suspects that wheat gluten contaminated by melamine, a synthetic plastic used in dishware and some Asian fertilizers, is related to the problem, it has not confirmed that it is causing the animal illnesses.
“FDA is not 100 percent certain that melamine, a relatively nontoxic substance, is the cause of the spate of pet illnesses and deaths,” the FDA said in a statement. “Although some studies have shown a toxic effect of melamine in rodents, research is scarce on melamine’s effect on cats and dogs.”
Adding to the confusion, Natural Balance of Pacoima, Calif., recalled all its wheat-free Venison dog products and its dry Venison cat food on April 17.
The company confirmed that melamine was present in some of its cat and dog food, which might have resulted in kidney failure in cats and dogs that ate the affected products. It suspected melamine was attached to its rice protein concentrate ingredient.
A complete list of recalled dog food products can been seen at http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_dog.html, and a full list of recalled cat food products is at http://www.menufoods.com/recall/product_cat.html.
For all DogChannel coverage of the ongoing dog food recall, visit www.dogchannel.com/dog-news/dog-food-recall-updates.aspx.
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Get New Captcha | <urn:uuid:3439a939-28b2-436d-b798-85e93eb74c26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dogchannel.com/dog-news/dog-food-recall-new-product.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940127 | 495 | 1.609375 | 2 |
UNDP and Equator Initiative at the IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC)
UNDP and Equator Initiative participated in the recent IUCN World Conservation Congress (WCC) in Barcelona, Spain, from October 5-14, 2008. The WCC, held every four years, provides an opportunity for IUCN's member organizations, partners, and commissions to meet, discuss, debate and decide on the world's most pressing environment and sustainable development issues. The three thematic streams of this year's forum, which was attended by over 8,000 global environment leaders, were: A new climate for change; Healthy environments - healthy people; and Safeguarding the diversity of life.
Equator Initiative Activities
The main forum for local and indigenous community participation at the WCC was the Community Poble dialogue space, organized by UNDP. Equator Initiative partners came together with local and indigenous groups to discuss grassroots initiatives in biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and a range of other key issues. The Community Poble consortium - together representing 19 countries - met, worked, and organized to share best practice and participate in the wider WCC. Daily reports and photos are available from all Community Poble sessions.
After a two-day orientation introducing community representatives to the Equator Initiative, the dialogue space concept, the WCC, and, ultimately, to one another, the week started with a bang with the Equator Prize 2008 Award Ceremony. The Equator Prize is awarded biennially to recognize and celebrate outstanding community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
Held at Palo Alto - an industrial warehouse that has been refurbished into a fashionable reception space - the award ceremony was one of the premier events of the WCC. Among many other prominent dignitaries in attendance (including Prince Albert of Monaco, who joined for the opening reception), Ted Turner, Chairman of the United Nations Foundation (UNF) gave the keynote address. Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy; Russ Mittermeier, President of Conservation International; Poul Engberg-Pedersen, Director-General of NORAD; Brett Jenks, CEO of RARE; Jeff McNeely, Chief Scientist at IUCN; Sara Scherr, President of Ecoagriculture Partners; Kathy Calvin Bushkin Executive Vice President and COO of the United Nations Foundation; Konrad Ublerhoer, Government of Germany, and other leaders of Equator Initiative partner agencies participated in the evening program. Veerle Vandeweerd, Director, Environment and Energy Group, UNDP provided the opening and closing remarks. The evening featured all 25 winners of the Equator Prize 2008 and announcement of the five communities receiving "special recognition". Members of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the Equator Prize 2008 Jury were duly recognized for their valuable contributions. The ceremony closed with a statement on behalf of the Equator Prize 2008 winners by representatives from all three regions of prize eligibility - Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Community Poble programme got underway the following day. Consistent with past dialogue spaces, the Poble was designed as a platform for local voices to provide input into international policy discussions. The Poble, however, had the notable distinction from other Equator Initiative dialogue spaces of being the first to be physically located in the heart of a conference center.
Over the four-day event, community representatives - including all 25 winners of the Equator Prize 2008 - worked cooperatively with Equator Initiative partners to offer workshops, sessions and presentations covering:
• The Community Knowledge Service (CKS)
• Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs)
• Marine Biodiversity Conservation
• Community-Based Approaches to Climate Change
• Biodiversity and Business: Local and Indigenous Entrepreneurship
• Local and Indigenous Peoples and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD)
• Conservation of Agricultural Biodiversity
The flagship session of the Community Poble was the Local-Global Leaders Dialogue; community representatives came together with international conservation leaders for a round-table discussion. Addressing the theme of biodiversity and business, the panel included Veerle Vandeweerd as well as leaders from The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, the United Nations Foundation, RARE Conservation, Ecoagriculture Partners, the Government of Norway, Kijabe Environment Volunteers (KENVO), Chalalan Eco-lodge, and the Conservation Society of Pohnpei. International panelists expressed a willingness and desire to learn, stressed the importance of communities in their respective work, and acknowledged the need to develop a range of local knowledge sharing tools.
Perhaps one of the most interesting outcomes from the Community Poble was the democratic election by community representatives in attendance of a council that will advance collaborative work between Equator Prize 2008 winners in the future. Local and indigenous representatives self-organized to elect the council, ensuring both regional and linguistic representation. A complement to the Community Knowledge Service (CKS), the council plans to create a list-serve as a starting point for collaboration. While no conclusions were reached at the Poble, the group discussed the possibility of pooling a percentage of each community's Equator Prize monetary award into a shared trust, to grow their collective financial resources for future projects.
The efforts of the indigenous and local groups present at the Community Poble were well documented in the media, including:
• An official press conference moderated by Veerle Vandeweerd (UNDP), attended by Erika Harms (UNF), and featuring representatives of the special recognition communities;
• A number of articles on prize-winning communities in national and international press.
• An IUCN media video short featuring interviews with the five communities receiving special recognition, Veerle Vandeweerd (UNDP) and Erika Harms (UNF);
• Coverage of the launch of the World Resources Institute's (WRI), The World Resources Report 2008: Roots of Resilience - Growing the Wealth of the Poor, in which former Equator Prize winners are featured;
• Victor Quinches Saldarriaga, President of the Asociación de Pobladores por el Progreso y Desarrollo de Campo Amor - Zarumilla" (ASPOPRODECAZ), was interviewed as an Equator Prize 2008 winner on the World Bank Peru website;
• A press release on the Equator Prize 2008 Award Ceremony and the special recognition communities;
• A media advisory announcing the 25 winners of the Equator Prize 2008; and
The contributions of the UNDP Equator Initiative, and of the communities gathered in the Community Poble, were well received at the IUCN World Conservation Congress. A transcript from the WCC's concluding plenary session reads: "The Equator Initiative...led by UNDP, was especially eloquent in calling for more opportunities for the voices of local communities to be heard, and listened to. The UNDP [Community] Poble provided a venue where these issues could be discussed in more detail, and generated new sources of inspiration from communities that have succeeded in adapting to changing conditions for many generations."
Other UNDP Activities
In addition to managing the WCC's local community component, the UNDP and the Equator Initiative also participated in the launch of four important publications:
• The World Resources Institute's (WRI) The World Resources Report 2008: Roots of Resilience - Growing the Wealth of the Poor;
• The International Institute for Environment and Development's (IIED) The Governance of Nature and the Nature of Governance;
• The Poverty-Environment Partnership's (PEP) Making REDD Work for the Poor; and
• The World Resources Institute's (WRI) Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers.
UNDP colleagues also organized side events and made presentations throughout the Congress. Among their contributions were:
• The launch of the World Resources Report 2008, where Veerle Vandeweerd (UNDP) participated on a panel with Manish Bapna, Executive Vice President, World Resources Institute; Warren Evans, Environment Director, World Bank; Frances Seymour, Director General, CIFOR and Benson Venegas, Executive Director, Asociación ANAI Talamanca, Costa Rica and Equator Prize 2002 winner to launch the joint UNDP, UNEP, WB, WRI publication. Featuring Equator Prize winning communities, the report argues that properly fostered nature-based enterprises can improve rural livelihoods and, in the process, create resilience to economic, social, and environmental threats.
• Alliance Workshop: Local Action for Biodiversity (LAB) where Veerle Vandeweerd (UNDP) participated on a panel with Stephen Granger, Chairperson, LAB Steering Committee; Maria Mbengashe, Chief Policy Advisor, Department of Environment Affairs, South Africa; Margarita Pares, City of Barcelona; and Sebastian Winkler, Head, Countdown 2010 on how to improve urban biodiversity management through the sharing of lessons between participating local governments, and to improve the support for urban biodiversity management by raising its profile in the urban context.
• Delivering Multiple Benefits from Forest Carbon Markets, where Charles McNeill presented and moderated a panel that included His Excellency Barnabas Suebu, Governor of Papua Province, Republic of Indonesia; Joshua Bishop, Chief Economist, IUCN; Glenn Prickett, Senior Vice President, CI and others who explored the key elements necessary to ensure forest carbon activities, including REDD and forest restoration are designed to optimize biodiversity and human livelihood benefits.
• Conservation in the Real World: Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Production Landscapes, a World Bank led event, where Nik Sekhran made a presentation on UNDP supported work to reconcile development with biodiversity conservation and sustainable use of resources in the Okavango River Delta. Also presented was a successful joint WB- UNDP supported initiative in the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa, aimed at re-gearing production practices in agriculture and other key sectors to ensure that they accommodate biodiversity management needs. This is being achieved through changes in government policy, planning and regulation; sectoral policies and practices; market incentives, and private and community activities.
• The GEF and Indigenous Peoples Forum, where Delfin Ganapin, Global Manager, Small Grants Programme (SGP) presented the programme's work with indigenous peoples in various participating countries.
• Too Small to Be True? Grants that Make a Difference, where Delfin Ganapin, Global Manager and Terence Hay-Edie, Programme Coordinator of GEF-SGP organized an event with Fonds Français pour l'Environnement Mondial, the National Committee of the Netherlands for IUCN, and four small grants recipients representatives from NGOs, which shared multiple small grants funds experiences, challenges and lessons learned. The event focused on the big impact small projects can have on global environmental issues and civil society capacity building and in what way a small grant can make a difference. Ms. Achala Adhikari from the Community Development Center (Sri Lanka), both an SGP grantee and Equator Initiative 2008 finalist, presented the achievements of her community-based organization in protecting traditional varieties of yams and tubers.
• PACT 2020: Protected Areas and Climate Turn Around Strategy: Organized by IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and TNC, this event debated the role Protected Areas can play in engineering adaptation to climate change and mitigating emissions from forest and wetland degradation. Nik Sekhran and Adriana Dinu Wright sat on a Panel called to discuss the functional relationship of protected area systems and climate change adaptation/mitigation strategies, the governance mechanisms needed to optimize climate dividends (adaptation/mitigation) from PA management, the effectiveness of monitoring, and cost /benefit equations.
• Alliance Workshop: Protected Areas for Life: Safeguarding Human Wellbeing and the Financial Sustainability of National Systems of Protected Areas, where Andrew Bovarnick, Lead Natural Resource Economist, UNDP participated in a panel discussion on financial sustainability and social and fiscal benefits generated by protected areas, and how to build solid financial and economic arguments to decision makers.
• Conservation and Livelihoods in Production Landscapes: Coffee and cocoa consumers push sustainability in tropical agriculture, where Andrew Bovarnick, Lead Natural Resource Economist, UNDP participated in a panel that explored how coffee and cocoa farmers can be engaged as front-line conservationists. The panel included: Juan Marco Alvarez, Executive Director, SalvaNatura; Roberto Gómez, Assistant Manager for Rural Development, Fundación Natura Colombia, Nespresso; and Tensie Whelan, Executive Director, Rainforest Alliance.
• Meeting of the Indigenous and Community Conservation Areas Consortium + donors and partners: Terence Hay Edie and Nik Sekhran participated in this closed event, called to discuss measures to support community management of indigenous and community conservation areas, which may cover as much as 10% of the Earth's surface, but are not formally recognised as Protected Areas.
• Mangroves for the Future (MFF): Investing in Coastal Ecosystems, where Sergio Feld, with UNDP's regional service centre in Bangkok, participated on a panel displaying the work of this partnership-led initiative to promote investment in coastal ecosystems for a healthier, more prosperous and secure future for Indian Ocean coastal communities.
• Community Voices: Have we been included sufficiently in the intellectual property and plant varieties protection debate? where Savita Mullapudi Narasimhan, Intellectual Property, Trade & Biodiversity, Inclusive Globalisation Cluster, Poverty Group, BDP facilitated an interactive session on the issue of intellectual property rights, traditional knowledge and plant varieties protection.
• Restoring Nature's Capital: Integrating Ecosystem Service into Economic Development Decisions, where Charles McNeill facilitated a panel that addressed the opportunities and obstacles of the on-the-ground realities of mainstreaming ecosystem services in decision making. Panelists included: Janet Ranganathan, Vice President,WRI; Carlos Rodriquez, Conservation International; Peter Carter, European Investment Bank; Gerben de Jong, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands; Jim Salzman, Duke University.
• GEF Partnership on Climate Change Adaptation and LULUCF: Nik Sekhran and Adriana Dinu Wright represented UNDP in a GEF round table discussion discussing the integration of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies with natural resource management.
• Donor Meeting on Western Africa Program on Biodiversity: Abdoulaye Ndiaye represented UNDP at a donor meeting to discuss strategies for supporting biodiversity conservation in West Africa.
• Programme of Work On Protected Areas (POWPA): Adriana Dinu Wright participated in the POWPA consortium meeting to discuss the status of the POWPA and develop strategies to strengthen the Programme of Work in support of the 2010 Biodiversity Targets. | <urn:uuid:2e5406e7-0515-4ab0-a886-28bedbbf5a82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.equatorinitiative.org/pt/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=441%3Apoblereport&catid=52%3Acommunitypoble&Itemid=467 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901801 | 3,100 | 1.695313 | 2 |
When I was running a computer games development company, every games publisher wanted something that was both radically new and that had been a proven success in the past. Hollywood is no exception. And these are among our most creative industries. They say that cloning puts evolution on hold, weakening the gene pool and making viruses (constantly evolving) inherently more dangerous -- in business, it's continuously innovative competitors you have to beware of.
The desire to repeat past success is one of the fundamental constraining factors in business. The assumption that you minimize risk by replicating what has worked in the past underlies much of management theory. We focus on minimizing investment risk rather than maximizing return. "Return" has uncertainty written all over it; "investment" is a little easier to control. So much of our strategic thinking is asset-based: we are good at X and we have Y resources, what return can we generate with them? It's not considered sound corporate practice to ask: we want to make $X million, what opportunities can we create? Startup entrepreneurs do it, because they have not yet become experts. And, because they have very little to lose, they focus on the returns rather than the investment risk.
I suspect that what passes for expert intuition is sub(un?)conscious pattern-recognition of the kind that allows "lesser" creatures to recognize lunch, avoid becoming lunch, and find their way when they migrate. The less experience you have, the more you feel a need to be analytical. The more experience you have in a particular field, the less you have to consciously make yourself think analytically, if you don't want to. You instinctively recognize patterns and react accordingly. But therein can lie the danger. If the world has changed, if there are factors at play today that were not there five years ago, a lazy reliance on instincts can cause you to miss opportunities for innovation, or, worse, just make mistakes.
That is why corporations that take problem-solving and decision-making seriously insist on having everybody trained in the use of analytical methodologies, and why they work at getting those methodologies into the culture of the business. If you have to work with the system, it's not that easy to get lazy and fall back on instinct. | <urn:uuid:6c25a100-e03d-417a-9228-11d95eff2091> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://parkinslot.blogspot.com/2004/06/problem-solving-training.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968709 | 461 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Prentis, Noble L.
The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.
Noble L. Prentis, a leading Kansas editor for twenty-one years, and for the last decade of his life identified with the Kansas City Star, was born on April 8, 1839, in a log cabin three miles from Mount Sterling, Brown County, Illinois. His parents were natives of Vermont, descended from English settlers, and on both sides of the family came of brave Revolutionary stock. His parents died at Warsaw, Illinois, of cholera during the epidemic of 1849, leaving him an orphan at the age of ten years. He went to live with an uncle in Vermont and remained there until he was eighteen, when he moved to Connecticut and served an apprenticeship at the printer's trade. He then came west and worked for a time in a newspaper office at Carthage, Illinois. At the opening of the Civil war he enlisted as a private in the Sixteenth Illinois Infantry and served four years, when he was honorably discharged. He published a paper at Alexandria, Missouri, until Capt. Henry King of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat induced him to come to Topeka in 1869 and assist him on the Record. During the succeeding eight years he was engaged on the Junction City Union and the Topeka Commonwealth, and about 1877 began to work on the Atchison Champion. He remained with that paper during Colonel Martin's term as governor and in 1888 took charge of the Newton Republican. In 1890 he accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Kansas City Star, which he held until his death. In 1877 he went to Europe, and his book, "A Kansan Abroad," was one of the results. He also published many interesting letters, and during the last year of his life wrote a History of Kansas. He died at La Harpe, Illinois, at the home of his daughter and within a few miles of his birthplace, on July 6, 1900.
Source: A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans | <urn:uuid:67aa0557-17ef-4f08-8c68-71da998c919c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scripts/data/database.cgi?file=Data&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0021103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989574 | 426 | 2.0625 | 2 |
While the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling left intact a requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance, preserving the law's centerpiece, the court also undercut the law's mechanism that would have given millions more Americans access to Medicaid, a health insurance program aimed at low-income citizens.
The court ruled that the federal government cannot coerce states into accepting the Medicaid expansion by threatening to withhold existing levels of Medicaid funding. That means states can simply maintain their current level of Medicaid coverage and ignore the law's attempt to broaden the program.
On Sunday night, Governor Rick Scott of Florida announced that he would be opting out of the expansion. Scott, a Republican, joined two other Republican governors, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who will refuse the extra Medicaid funding.
The Medicaid expansion would make an additional 16 million Americans eligible for free health insurance and is central to the health care law's goal of universal coverage. The federal government is set pay for the vast majority of the expansion, which would cost some $930 billion between 2014 and 2022, including picking up the entire tab for the first three years.
But Republican governors are already renouncing the measure as a budget-buster. In a press release, Scott rejected spending approximately $1.9 billion more taxpayer dollars required to implement a massive entitlement expansion of the Medicaid program.
Scott also joined his Republican counterparts in refusing to implement the private health insurance exchanges that are the centerpiece of the law. Americans who earn under a certain amount but are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid would get government subsidies to help them purchase insurance on the insurance exchanges, where different insurance companies would compete to appeal to customers.
The health care overhaul stipulates that every state must have an insurance exchange in place by 2014, but many Republican governors and legislatures have so far resisted building them.
Doing so carries a risk. If states do not set up the private marketplaces, the federal government will intervene and do it for them. But Republicans are hoping it won't come to that. Now that the Supreme Court failed to overturn the individual mandate that says everyone has to purchase health insurance, opponents are placing their hopes on Mitt Romney winning the presidential election and moving to repeal the law.
The full law does not take effect until Jan. 1, 2014, provided it is not repealed before that date, a press release from Scott's office noted, adding that should there be any legal obligation to implement ObamaCare, the state will follow the law.
This is not the first time Scott has turned away federal money. In 2011, the governor warned that the government had become addicted to spending, as he rejected $432 million intended to build a high-speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa. | <urn:uuid:a7443d55-230a-4728-9d79-b9f319d08391> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibtimes.com/florida-joins-republican-pushback-against-medicaid-expansion-720986?cid=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958795 | 548 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Once upon a time, an old witch lived in a small cottage in the woods. Her house was made of gingerbread but it kept the rain off.
One day, two evil Muggle children came and began to tear the witch's house apart and eat it.
"Begone," she said, but they only laughed and tore off the roof.
So she cooked and ate them and she and her cat lived happily ever after.
"Another," said Draco. "Another, or I shan't go to sleep."
Lucius sighed and turned the page. "Once upon a time, there was a poor hungry wolf..." | <urn:uuid:356e8e23-7791-461c-a90f-d7985149c7b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prillalar.com/fic/stories/000269.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986205 | 130 | 1.710938 | 2 |
HERE'S SOME ADDITIONAL FACTS:
There's the ever-expanding global demand for The Best web-addresses and a very limited supply of them - simply stated, it's called Supply and Demand.
This address is Supreme because it includes the web address extension (.st) to complete the spelling of the entire address making it impossible for any other web address extension (.com, .net .org etc.) to ever match or surpass this one.
Any due diligence proves that today, the first web-addresses to be sold out whenever a new extension is created are the ones where the extension is included to complete the spelling of any dictionary word.
EVERY INDUSTRY is competing for what this address simply says. All sports teams, academic institutions and businesses strive for and compete intensely to claim this honor. The Oscar’s, for example, awards The Best Actor, The Best Movie, etc.
Our parents taught us to “Never settle for anything less than The Best!”
Donald Trump says “You’ll never run out of customers as long as you’re selling The Best.”
Every city newspaper, large and small, publishes an annual section called The Best of the City.
Employees seek The Best companies to work for
Employers seek The Best employees
Awards Always Go To The Best
Whenever people come into money, the first thing they seek are The Best ideas. They search for The Best education for their kids, The Best medical care and The Best security and protection for our family, homes and investments. | <urn:uuid:ba8ab243-9eb8-4d79-b58d-b2d077d920dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lovethename.com/The_Best.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935086 | 327 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Year 5 visited Gibson Mill in Hardcastle Crags (near Hebden Bridge). We walked along the bank of the River Hebden whilst identifying key features of the river. When we arrived looked around the old cotton mill, which is now completely self sufficient. Year 5-what was your favourite part of the day?
Monthly Archives: May 2012
If you have any elderly relatives or family friends that have knowledge about Keighley in Victorian times (1839 – 1901), ask them what they remember or were told by their parents/grandparents. Make some notes and use these to post us any facts and memories you have found out.
Mr Clarke & Miss Vaughan
Here is a selection of the work presented in today’s assembly.
Georgina brought her fantastic diary with accurate and relevant detail about her character’s thoughts and feelings as well as the events of Hajj.
Corey shared his excellent, independant research work on river deltas.
Ahmed brought his maths work. He has only been at Nessfield for two weeks, he has settled well, made lots of new friends and has shown a positive attitude to his learning by working really well in his new class.
Hassan had written a very thoughtful diary recount of a trip to Mecca. His contribution to RE lesssons has been very valuable.
Ben has shown interest in his extreme climate work and remembered a lot of detail about life in polar regions.
Heena brought her detailed crayon picture of another extreme weather – a tornado.
Children from Class 10 showed a very striking poster about Elizabeth I, which they had created by using several different information sources.
A judging panel of adults spent a long time pondering, oohing, aahing and wowing as well as wishing Mr. Smith had not given them such a hard task. However, they were resilient and rose to their challenge, eventually choosing the four winning models which can be seen below.
Best model made with minimal adult help – London Eye by Thomas McGrogan
Runner up model made with minimal adult help – The River Thames and The Millennium Dome by Mickey-Lee Whittaker
Best model made by child and adult – The Taj Mahal, constructed from recycled pots and containers) by Ellis and Noah Jalil
Runner up model made by child and adult – Big Ben (with fully working clock face!) by Lucy Puntillo.
Many thanks to all families who took part in this activity. Nessfield families are clearly very creative and talented.
Year 1 and their families were set a homework challenge to build a model of a famous landmark from the places around the World they had been studying. Like the recent Year 3 Pirate Ship challenge, Nessfield families put their creative muscles into gear, got out the paints and glue, rolled up their sleeves, worked very hard together and produced the most amazing set of models. A lot of the models also have hidden and working features. Feast your eyes on the photographs below. The landmarks are not labelled as they are so famous. Can you name them all? Please leave a comment to tell us which is your favourite and why?
World Landmarks by Year 1 Families
All of Year 6 were in Good Work Assembly today for the massive amount of hard work they put into this year’s SATs. Great job, Year 6, Well done.
Luke had written a thoughtful and beautifully descriptive story based on classwork from “The Wind in the Willows”.
Bailey also brought his writing, this was about night-time. He has written some well punctuated and descriptive sentences.
Joshua’s teacher says he works hard in every lesson and sets a fantastic example. He had made an excellent start to his topic on rivers and his work shows a good understanding of different river features. Unfotunately Joshua’s work was a little too big for the scanner!
Danesh brought his maths book to show how his presentation had improved since the start of Year 3. His teacher was pleased that he has also been trying really hard in maths.
Like Bailey, Olivia has also written about night-time, she had remembered lots of interesting facts and correctly punctuated every sentence. This is an extract of the two full pages she had written.
Lucy had designed and written a postcard from the Gobi Desert. It is full of detail and fascinating facts.
The children in Year 1 and their parents were congratulated on the famous landmark models they have been creating at home. We hope to feature these in a seperate post very soon.
Today’s selection from our Friday Good Work Assembly.
Caitlin and Kaishi entered the annual Airedale Writers’ Circle Children’s Competitions and had their work selected to appear in the anthologies for their age groups. Kaishi wrote a poem titled “Dark Night” (Highley Commended) and Caitlin wrote the short story “Hold Me” (Second)
Hrishikesh brought his clearly presented fact sheet about Egyptrian mummies.
Aimee shared her brilliant book based on “Meerkat Mail”. In Aimee’s words, “This is a story about a little lion called Leo, he goes on an adventure, will he get back to where he started? Read on to find out!!!”
Year 2 have been preparing for Oympic Week and have adopted Italy as their country. In preparation they have written to Italian restaurants to ask for their help to find out more about Italian customs and culture. Milly’s work is above and an extract of Imogen’s letter below.
Alex brought his maths work to show how much he has improved his perseverence and his ability to work independently.
Oliver was chosen by his teacher for a consistent positive attitude and enthusiasm throughout all topics. He works well with others. He also brought his pencil sketch of Anne Boleyn.
Luke brought his best ever piece of writing, persuading people to look after the environment.
Alisha and Jade worked together to produce the contents page for the group work done in class, which was a fact filled booklet about Egypt.
Jade used shading and cross hatching techniques to draw in the style of E. H. Shepherd as part of Yera 5′s work on “The Wind in the Willows”.
Abbie had reimaged ”The Wind in the Willows” story and was selected for her fantastic use of description and dialogue. | <urn:uuid:f834d58e-090d-4efa-9a61-78abcb643ef1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bradfordschools.net/blog/nessfield/2012/05/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986066 | 1,348 | 2.484375 | 2 |
I don't think the couple minutes of soaking is actually doing anything; it'll pull a bit of stuff out of the leaves, and get them wet, but what really matters is the hot water. It sounds like this is a way of getting lower temperature water, similar to your proposed "protect the tea from hot water" explanation. This is indeed good for green and white tea, and maybe oolong, but essentially unnecessary for most other teas.
You don't actually always want boiling water for tea. Joe provided this table of temperatures in his comment. Some temperatures for common types of tea, in decreasing order of temperature: maté, rooibos or herbal (208F / 98C); black (195-205F / 91-96C); oolong (195F / 91C); blooming (180F / 82C); white or green (175F / 80C). So for some teas (black, maté, rooibos, herbal), it's pretty close to boiling - by the time the water's poured in, and transfers some heat to the cup, it'll be a few degrees below boiling, so you don't need to worry about it much.
But other kinds of tea (green or white tea), you ideally want to add somewhat lower temperature water. If you have a way to get water somewhere around 80C - for example, some electric kettles can automatically turn off at a lower temperature - then just do that. But if it's easiest to make boiling water, then if you fill your cup a bit less than 1/4 of the way with water at room temperature (20C) then fill it the rest of the way with boiling water, the result will be around 80C, just right for green tea! | <urn:uuid:411ff1cb-d612-4874-ab6b-8b64df0b2d9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/32171/pre-soaking-tea-in-cold-water-prior-to-brewing?answertab=oldest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927737 | 365 | 1.828125 | 2 |
literally strewn with his dead and wounded. Colonel Walton's ammunition was exhausted about sunset, and his batteries were relieved by Colonel Alexander's. Orders were given for fresh supplies of ammunition, and for everything to be prepared for a renewal of the battle at daylight.
On the 14th, there was little firing between the sharpshooters. The enemy, screening his forces under a slight descent in the ground, held a position about 400 yards in front of us. In the afternoon I sent Captain [Osman] Latrobe, of my staff, to the left, to place artillery in position to play along the enemy's line, with instructions to Colonel Alexander to use such artillery there as he might think proper. The point was selected, and pits made by light the following morning. General Ransom was also ordered to strengthen his position on the Marye Hill by rifle trenches. Similar instructions were sent along the entire line. These preparations were made to meet the grand attack of the enemy, confidently expected on Monday morning. As the attack was not made, this artillery and General Ransom's sharpshooters opened upon the enemy and drove him back to cover in the city.
During the night the enemy recrossed the river. His retreat was not discovered until he had crossed the river and cut his bridges at this end. Our sharpshooters were moved forward and our old positions resumed. Four hundred prisoners, 5,500 stand of small-arms, and 250,000 rounds of small-arm ammunition were taken.
Our loss for the number engaged was quite heavy. Brigadier General T. R. R. Cobb fell, mortally wounded, in the heat of the battle of the 13th. He defended his position with great gallantry and ability. In him we have lost one of our most promising officers and statesmen. A tabular statement and lists of the killed, wounded, and missing accompany this report.
Much credit is due Major-General McLaws for his untiring zeal and ability in preparing his troops and his position for a successful resistance, and the ability with which he handled his troops after the attack.
I would also mention as particularly distinguished in the engagement of the 13th, Brigadier-Generals Ransom, Kershaw, and Cooke (severely wounded), and Colonel McMillan, who succeeded to the command of Cobb's brigade, and Colonel Walton (Washington Artillery) and Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander (reserve artillery).
Brigadier-General Barksdale with his brigade held the enemy's entire army at the river bank for sixteen hours, giving us abundance of time to complete our arrangements for battle. A more gallant and worthy service is rarely accomplished by so small a force.
I refer you to the reports of these officers for more detailed accounts of the engagements. I desire to call the attention of the Government to the gallant officers and men mentioned in their reports.
Major-Generals Anderson, Pickett, and Hood, with their gallant divisions, were deprived of their opportunity by the unexpected and hasty retreat of the enemy. A portion of General Anderson's command was engaged in defending the passage of the river, a portion of General Hood's in driving back the attack against our right, and a portion of General Pickett's did important service near the Marye Hill. I refer you to their reports for particular accounts.
Major [John J.] Garnett held three batteries in reserve in the valley between the positions of Generals Pickett and Hood, and was much disappointed not to have the opportunity to use them.
My staff officers-Major [G. M.] Sorrel, Lieutenant-Colonel [P. T.] Manning, Major [J. W.] Fairfax, Captains [Osman] Latrobe and [Thomas | <urn:uuid:5bab4830-4cc7-44f4-82f3-a99da6eef09c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/recordView.cfm?Content=031/0571 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983746 | 772 | 2.28125 | 2 |
How to Meet the Sky
Philip Johnson said that outdoor sculpture ”lights up the sky”. He was talking about the way solid and void energize each other in an interplay of figure and ground, a principle that certainly applies to tall buildings.
Flatiron Building postcard view
Much of the Flatiron Building’s appeal to artists and photographers, for example, lies in its siting on an acute intersection where views allow the sky to nearly engulf the building and come to earth. The figure of the tower becomes more positive by virtue of the emptiness of its background, while the complementary interlocking form of the background gives the sky a positive quality.
Jean Nouvel’s proposed MoMA tower
This principle is what City Planning Chair Amanda Burden may have had in mind during last month’s public hearing when she said of Jean Nouvel’s MoMA Tower design, “How this building meets the sky is not only in the tradition of great New York City architecture, but it’s absolutely essential that it culminate in a very sophisticated and distinguished apex.” Her enthusiasm for a design that exceeds its allowed zoning height testifies to its appeal. Speaking in the hearing, Nouvel said of his tower that ”It has to disappear into the sky”. It will do this by tapering to a point as viewed from east or west, and by becoming translucent when viewed from the north or south. This light-permeable aspect may be what earns this building – one of countless glass skyscrapers, after all – the name ”Tower Verre”.
Tower Verre would rise above its context.
When the design’s flatter-topped aspect was questioned during the hearing, a photo-montage showing it in context was put forward in support of Nouvel’s case for his tower’s role as “the missing piece of the puzzle” in the ups and downs of the skyline as viewed from Central Park.
Amanda Burden appears to be betting that the building’s proposed height will enhance the kind of slender, sky-backed silhouette that graced prewar New York’s mythic skyline. As reported in The Architect’s Newspaper, she placed Nouvel’s design squarely in this context last week, saying “It must be iconic, it must be distinguished. To get to that height in the sky, it’s got to be great. I don’t have a problem with the height. But let’s see it, and see where it falls with the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and if it deserves it.”
Whether any building can recapture the magic of New York’s prewar icons in today’s crowded sky is questionable.
Lower Manhattan’s prewar skyline in a postcard view
Analyzing the shape of skylines, Rudolf Arnheim wrote that “A sharply horizontal boundary tends to produce an abrupt break between architecture and sky. This is not the case when we see irregular contours, which may build to peaking clusters. The diminishing width of spires and towers supports the same visual conception. The architecture diffuses gradually into the sky.” (The Dynamics of Architectural Form, University of California Press, 1977, p.26) The contours Arnheim describes belong to a lost New York, when slender, loosely spaced towers reached into an enveloping sky that interlaced with their soaring fingers. This is the New York of photos by Andreas Feininger and Samuel H. Gottscho, taken before broad boxes filled in the sky spaces, and created Arnheim’s ”abrupt break between architecture and sky”.
Long before the Coen Brothers lyrically recreated the prewar skyline for their 1994 movie, The Hudsucker Proxy, David O. Selznick recorded it, still intact, in Portrait of Jenny, his 1948 movie about an artist who falls in love with a ghost from an earlier time. Making a theme of the sky’s supernatural associations, this film begins and ends with views of it and uses the Manhattan skyline throughout to make its presence palpable. The dated nature of the story takes nothing away from Portrait of Jennie’s achingly romantic lost skyline. The story in fact parallels the viewer’s seduction by the backdrop ghost city, as irretrievably lost as Jennie.
David O. Selznick’s spectral Jennie, played by Jennifer Jones, enters an early scene in “Portrait of Jennie”, delivered to earth by a sky reaching down between the Pierre and Sherry-Netherland Hotels.
Joseph Cotton’s garreted artist Eben Adams is haunted by Jennie, for whom the skyline becomes a leitmotif. Watching over his shoulder, we are haunted by the lost skyline itself.
What chance would Nouvel’s tower have of bringing a piece of this city back to life, assuming it’s approval effort succeeds? The 1,250 foot height that makes it such a lightning rod would increase its figure-ground interaction with the sky. The rest depends on the vitality of its design. A fake antique like 15 Central Park West would only emphasize our distance from the authentic prewar spirit. Nouvel’s challenge is to recapture the wonder-inspiring newness and strangeness that skyscrapers had so long ago. His design seems to borrow new life from popular undercurrents of skyscraper psychology. New York’s skyline has long influenced the cityscapes of fantasy drawings and science fiction movies. Nouvel is a film lover who has been said to interpret ”cinema as the creator of today’s myths and icons“. His design for the MoMA tower may capture reflections from parallel fantasy worlds well beyond the Hugh Ferriss renderings that he presents as its inspiration. Tower Verre’s tapering expressionistic asymmetry and spidery frame have an eeriness evocative of other worlds that Selznick – or any member of today’s targeted 13-year old male movie demographic – would grasp and savor immediately. Prewar New York remains distinct because it was frozen for so long and followed by such different architecture. It’s this sharp definition that makes it such a compelling ghost and its lifeless replication such a trap. Whether Tower Verre succeeds, it is notable for attempting to reincarnate prewar New York’s true spirit in a new body.
A century ago, the cover of “Life” magazine’s 1909 Real Estate Number showed elongated caricatures of New York skyscrapers breaking through clouds into their own celestial realm.
The “Life” cover is echoed by the opening shot from Portrait of Jennie, which also provides the cover art for James Sanders’ book “Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies“, (Knopf, 2001).
A cartoon from the the 1909 Life real estate issue suggests a supernatural side of skyscrapers. Its caption reads, “The Heaven-Reaching Skyscraper: The Amalgamated Angel Labor Union of 1910 at Work”. Spiritual implications carried over to skyscrapers from church spires, formerly the tallest of structures.
Titled “Some Day”, this is another of the same “Life” issue’s several cartoons that feature fantasy airships communicating among skyscrapers. The zeppelin mooring mast at the top of the Empire State Building tethers skyscrapers’ advanced technology to fantasy. Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis and countless films since have explored this overlapping territory. The prewar Manhattan skyline has had an afterlife in the visionary sets of films like Kerry Conran’s 2004 ”Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” and Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” movie, for which Anton Furst’s Gotham City design ”completely turned its back on postwar New York”, as noted by James Sanders in “Celluloid Skyline“.
The Empire State Building is prewar New York’s physical and temporal climax. For City Planning Chair Amanda Burden, it’s also the measure of Tower Verre. | <urn:uuid:2bc335be-21a4-429f-ad80-8c92a12ad1c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.architakes.com/?p=1657 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934856 | 1,741 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Marlo Donald was kicked off Social Security for kicking someone almost 20 years ago. The bizarre tale of a "fugitive felon."
By Freda Moon
Published April 26, 2007 in the New Haven Advocate
Marlo Donald is not what you'd expect a "fugitive felon" to look like.
At 35, she has a young face, soft features and a tendency to erupt in unprovoked laughter. She's lived most of her life in Waterbury-the wife of a police officer, an active member of her church, a mother of three and a daycare worker.
But in 2001, an emotional breakdown led to several hospitalizations and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Soon, her eight-year marriage was over, she was jobless and surviving on a Supplemental Security Income check of $603 a month. In October 2005, without notice Donald's monthly deposits stopped appearing in her checking account. She called the local Social Security office and was told that her benefits had been canceled. According to their records, she was a "fugitive felon" and therefore ineligible for government aid.
"You've got to be out of your mind," she remembers thinking. "I ain't never committed any crime that warrants no felony." All they could tell her was the warrant was out of Westborough, Mass. "Now I'm really buggin,'" she says, "because I ain't never even been to no Westborough, Massachusetts." In fact, she had been in Westborough-once. But it was so long ago, she says, that she didn't remember.
Having recently lost her wallet, Donald was convinced an identity thief was responsible. She sought the help of a local Legal Aid attorney, Julia Bradley, who tracked down the warrant and discovered that it wasn't identity theft, but an "Assault with Shod Foot" arrest from when Donald was 17 years old that had triggered the cancellation. Donald had kicked a Job Corps counselor who was trying to restrain her. Donald, who thought the charge was resolved long ago, was stunned. Without income, she had to live in a women's shelter, where she was supported by a local pastor who Donald refers to as "the Christian lady." It was a difficult and stressful time.
Donald can thank the so-called Welfare Reform Act, passed by Congress in 1996, for her ordeal. Within three years, the landmark law, signed by President Clinton, had pushed 4.7 million poor people off the welfare rolls, according to the White House's "welfare reform works" website, by putting strict limits on who could receive benefits and for how long. Even the law's official name was a cruel irony: the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
Much of the law was controversial, but Section 202, "Denial of SSI benefits for fugitive felons and probation and parole violators," was not. Section 202 said that a "fugitive felon"-someone who's fleeing to avoid prosecution, custody or confinement after conviction, or violating a condition of probation or parole-cannot receive governmental assistance while on the lam. No food stamps, no housing aid, no income support. It seemed like common sense. Not even the most radical opponents of welfare "reform" would argue that justice-evading murderers should be able to sip mojitos in a Florida beach house on the taxpayers' dime.
But after years of dealing with the policy in practice, some disabilities advocates and Legal Aid groups had enough. The Social Security Administration relies on an error-laden database, they say, and the agency's practice of cutting off people without an opportunity to dispute or satisfy the warrant is unfair. It's ineffective bureaucracy and bad policy, opponents say.
In 2005, Connecticut Legal Services, Inc., Greater Hartford Legal Aid, Inc. and New Haven Legal Assistance Association signed on to a brief filed with the U.S. Second District Court of Appeals in New York in a case challenging the fugitive felon policy. The brief described the case of a Connecticut woman, "Christina R." whose benefits were canceled because of mistaken identity.
Christina R. got notice from SSA that there was an outstanding warrant for her from Natick, Mass. for passing bad checks. But while the name and birth date on the warrant were the same as Christina R.'s, the social security number was different. And, according to the brief, Christina R. had never been to Massachusetts and had never committed a crime there. The court in Natick eventually recalled the warrant, but the Social Security Administration continued to try and collect the more than $23,000 in "overpayments"-withholding 10 percent of her monthly payments until, after six months, she filed an appeal. It took more than a year for an Administrative Law Judge to decide in her favor and find that she hadn't been overpaid.
The brief goes on to tell the story of "Wayne C.", an HIV-positive, wheelchair-bound Bridgeport man, who was referred to Connecticut Legal Services by his mental health social worker. Wayne C. suffered from depression and post traumatic stress disorder and lived in a supportive housing program for people at risk of homelessness. When his benefits were canceled, Wayne C. worried that he'd lose his housing. He tried to turn himself in to the Bridgeport police but the police department was "unwilling to deal with his charges," according to the brief. He became suicidal. In time, his attorney tracked down the original warrant, from Chicago, and found that it was for the attempted theft of less than $300-a misdemeanor offense. Eventually, Wayne C.-who the brief calls "neither a fugitive nor a felon"-had his benefits reinstated.
Jane Gelfand of Positive Resource Center, a San Francisco-based legal services nonprofit for people living with HIV-AIDS, says that it's not uncommon for fugitive felons to try and turn themselves in. "But the police department's like, 'We don't want you, Georgia doesn't want you. Go home.'" Many departments, says Gelfand, are not interested in putting money and manpower toward a crime that's relatively minor or very old.
Wayne C., Christina R. and Donald are among thousands of "fugitive felons" in Connecticut, according to Social Security Administration data provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. It's impossible to know exactly how many because the SSA's database matches warrants to SSA beneficiaries based on where the warrant was issued, not where someone's living and receiving benefits. But between 2000-when the SSA began tracking the data-and 2006, there were 2,800 "verified" Connecticut warrants.
Between 1996 and April 13, 2007 the SSA says that the policy stopped benefits for about 323,000 people and led to the apprehension of 44,500.
Because the Fugitive Felon Program deals with people who, by definition, are the most vulnerable (SSI's designed to provide "a minimum level of income to financially needy individuals who are aged, blind or disabled"), the effects of a benefit shutoff can be huge. "To lose income and health insurance for even a month," says Gelfand, "often means eviction-that lives spiral out of control."
The Appeals Court suit, Fowlkes v. Adamec, argued that the SSA's policy of canceling benefits simply because a warrant pops up in a database violates due process. The Appeals Court agreed, saying that the SSA has to show that the "fugitive felon" was intentionally fleeing. But Connecticut Legal Aid lawyers say the SSA has continued to cancel benefits based on a warrant alone-and with no proof of intent.
"The bottom line," says Joanne Lewis, a Legal Aid attorney in New Britain and one of the signers of the brief, "is that while pretty much anyone would agree that we shouldn't be giving benefits to somebody to help them run from the law, the net is so wide." Many of those who get caught in that net, according to Lewis, are people who committed very minor crimes a long time ago-a 20 year old probation violation and a charge from the '70s for passing bad checks, are two examples she mentions. In a letter to the federal Commissioner of Social Security arguing against a strengthening of the fugitive felon provisions, she writes, "We are concerned that these proposed regulations will perpetuate most of the injustice and suffering we have witnessed." She adds, "They put too much burden on vulnerable individuals."
In a 2003 audit, the SSA analyzed the cases of 300 fugitive felons and found that of the 192 who had their benefits cut off, 180 were disabled. Of those 180, 106 suffered severe mental disability, including mental retardation and schizophrenic disorders. There were 108 cases where benefits weren't canceled for various reasons, including: the beneficiary was found not to be a fugitive felon; he hadn't actually been receiving benefits; the warrant couldn't be verified, the beneficiary was ineligible for benefits for other reasons; the beneficiary was incarcerated, had died or was the victim of identity theft.
"Poor, disabled and elderly people are not necessarily fleeing just because a warrant was issued and remains unsatisfied," writes Lewis. The burden, she says, should be on the state to prove that the SSA has identified the right person (because cases of identity theft and mistaken identity are common). It's also the state's responsibility to prove the underlying crime is a felony and not a misdemeanor, and that the accused is intentionally fleeing and not simply unable-for financial or health reasons-to return and resolve the warrant, Lewis says.
In 2004, despite public comments from advocates for the disabled and Legal Aid lawyers like Lewis, Congress passed the Social Security Protection Act, which expanded the existing fugitive felon rules to include not only SSI beneficiaries, but Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and survivors and retirement beneficiaries as well. Unlike SSI, retirement and SSDI money has not traditionally been considered a benefit. Instead, it's considered an "entitlement program," which every worker pays into and is entitled to receive when they retire or become disabled. This money, unlike welfare, is earned.
Like the Welfare Reform Act before it, the Social Security Protection Act was controversial. In Connecticut the vote broke straight down party lines, with Democratic Reps. Rosa DeLauro and John Larson voting against it, and Republican Reps. Rob Simmons, Christopher Shays and Nancy Johnson voting in favor. It passed the Senate with unanimous consent.
So how did the fugitive felons program come about? "Somebody, somewhere wanted to save money and came up with the bright idea that we really shouldn't be paying money to criminals," says Gerald McIntyre, an attorney at the National Senior Citizen's Law Center and one of the leading opponents of the fugitive felon rules.
The Fugitive Felon Program saved the SSA $83.4 million between 1996 and 2003, including $9.3 million that it recovered in "overpayments" from felons who had received benefits while they were ineligible and were required to pay the government back, according to the SSA's 2003 audit. A 2002 report, by the U.S. General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office) says the "erroneous payments" to fugitive felons continued to cost the government $1.64 billion in 2000. It recommended strengthening the Fugitive Felon provisions.
Marlo Donald sits at her kitchen table in a modest apartment on Vine Street in Waterbury. She's wearing a white turtleneck beneath a grey Aeropostale sweatshirt, sweatpants and slippers. As she walks me through the details of her life, soap operas play on mute on a small television in the corner. She's candid, sharing intimate details without embarrassment. Her mental illness, the breakup of her marriage and her arrest all receive the same, steady treatment.
When Donald was 17, she went to a Job Corps center in Grafton, Mass. While there, she got pregnant. While pregnant, she got sick. Her parents encouraged her to return home to Waterbury. But when she told the Job Corps counselors she was leaving, Donald was told she couldn't go. "I figured, I signed myself in, I should be able to sign myself out," she says.
"They pushed me in a room and onto a bed and were trying to restrain me," she says. Donald remembers "yelling, screaming, kicking, biting" to free herself and that the counselors got on top of her to keep her from trying to leave. But her arms and legs swung wildly. "I was telling them to get off me, 'I'm pregnant,' I said." In the melee, she kicked one of them.
"I admit that I did it," she says. "I don't admit to straight-out attacking these people, but I admit that we had an altercation." The Job Corps workers called the police. The next day, her things were packed for her and she was put on a bus and sent away. "All this time, all this stuff was going on," Donald says. "I wasn't even thinking about going to court."
A couple of years later, one of her roommates was arrested on drug charges and Donald was brought in with him. In preparation for trial, her roommate's attorney asked her about her criminal history, she says, and she told the lawyer about the Job Corps fiasco. As Donald explains it, she was given a "conditional probation" as a youthful offender and was under the impression that her plea applied to both the Massachusetts "shod foot" arrest and the drug charges. "I thought it was all dealt with," she says. "It never ever came up again." After that, Donald was not in trouble again until her divorce, when arguments between she and her then-husband, a police officer, led to a domestic violence call, she says, and both were arrested.
When Donald was told by the SSA that she had an outstanding felony warrant, the Massachusetts arrest didn't even occur to her, she says. She'd been receiving SSI payments for two years by the time the arrest warrant popped up, which made her think it had to be something new-hence the identity theft theory. And she'd been working in child care, where record-checks are standard, and her arrest had never been an issue. She didn't realize the assault charge was a felony in the first place, she says, but if it was, why was it just now appearing? The Job Corps center was in Grafton, not Westborough, and after 15 years, she didn't remember being taken to another town's jail. "I didn't flee Massachusetts," she says, "I was kind of pushed out."
Julia Bradley, the Connecticut Legal Services attorney assigned to Donald's case, went before administrative law judge Joyce Krutig Craig in Hartford to get the benefits cancellation overturned. But the judge was unsympathetic to Donald's argument-that she didn't know the Massachusetts warrant existed-and said that the only way benefits could be reinstated is if Donald got the charges formally dropped.
To do that, Donald had to get a Massachusetts attorney and make two trips for court appearances in Westborough. The Westborough prosecutor contacted the counselors who were at the Job Corps center when Donald was arrested more than a decade before. Two couldn't be reached; one said she didn't remember the case and the third counselor-who did remember and did appear in court-agreed that Donald's charges should be dropped.
Donald, college-educated and physically healthy, was fortunate among those caught up in the fleeing felon net. She knew to get an attorney and she had a network of friends and family to support her during her 10-month fight to restore benefits.
The benefits attorneys at Connecticut Legal Services, Greater Hartford Legal Aid, Inc. and New Haven Legal Assistance Association had seen the flaws in the seemingly flawless logic of the fleeing felon exclusion: It was targeting the most vulnerable members of society-elderly retirees, the disabled and the mentally ill-for often-minor offenses that were years, sometimes decades, old. Like Donald, many of the people being booted from the benefits rolls were not murderers or rapists.
Of the 2,814 warrants from Connecticut, 42 percent are for a probation violation, 25 percent for failure to appear, 8 percent for larceny, 3 percent for burglary, 2.5 percent for assault, 2.2 for forgery, 2.1 percent for drug violations, according to the SSA's database. Crimes against persons, parole violations, escape or fleeing to avoid prosecution, sexual assault, robbery, fraud or impersonation follow-in that order-with less than two percent each, followed by offenses with only a handful of warrants, which range from stolen property (seven warrants) to homicide (two warrants), contempt (one warrant) and statutory rape (three warrants).
A report by the San Francisco-based Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice on the impact of the fugitive felon regulations on SSI recipients tells the story of "Frank," an HIV-positive and mentally ill man who moved from his parent's home in Connecticut to California. Before he left, he stole (and subsequently returned) a VCR from a friend. Though his friend didn't want to press charges, according to the report, the warrant remained. Frank relied on SSI to pay for housing in San Francisco. When he lost benefits, he lost his housing and his access to a substance abuse treatment program. Without income, he couldn't afford to return to Connecticut to resolve the warrant.
"Who walks into a federal building to apply for benefits?" asks Jane Gelfand of Positive Resource Center. "These are nothing warrants, and half the time they're nonexistent, half the time they're aliases or the warrant number doesn't correspond to anything. There are huge problems." Gelfand estimates that about one eighth of the Resource Center's cases deal with benefits suspensions relating to the Fugitive Felons Program.
In other cases, "fugitive felons" are the victims of the criminal justice system in different states failing to work together. Donald's attorney, Julia Bradley, is now dealing with a second fugitive felon case, involving a man who was jailed in Florida, released and extradited to Waterbury based on an outstanding Connecticut warrant. Still on probation in Florida, the state issued a warrant for probation violation after he missed meetings with his probation officer. Stuck in a Catch-22 of absurd proportions, Bradley's client was on probation in two states simultaneously. "Some people have no brains," says Bradley.
Donald's just glad it's over. She's since remarried, has a new job and is working to rebuild her life. "When all was said and done," says Donald, "I was just so thankful" to have it resolved. Even so, she has questions. "Why did it take 17 years for this to pop up? Why not when I first applied?"
The Social Security Administration denied the Advocate 's request for an interview, but issued a written statement saying that following the Fowlkes ruling they are no longer using warrant information to cut off benefits to fugitive felons. They do, however, continue to cancel benefits based on probation and parole violations, which were not protected by Fowlkes. | <urn:uuid:05c6b0e6-c072-448e-88fb-a3fb64c70744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://journalism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/moon/Booted.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981806 | 3,973 | 1.5 | 2 |
CNET GLOSSARY: Terms for the techie
point of presence
An access point to the Internet, operated by an Internet service provider (ISP). ISPs maintain or lease PoPs throughout the areas they serve. A PoP (pronounced "pop") is likely to contain modems, digital leased lines, and multiprotocol routers.
Can't find your term here? Have a question about the glossary? E-mail us. | <urn:uuid:910bb08b-1f79-44c1-8413-417accc5c5e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6029_7-6040226-1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922128 | 92 | 1.976563 | 2 |
- Harry: "Well, it'll be hard work, pretending to Aunt Marge I got to that St. Whatsits-"
- Uncle Vernon: "St. Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys!"
- Harry: "Exactly. It's a lot to remember. I'll have to make it sound convincing, won't I? What if I accidentally let something slip?"
- Uncle Vernon: "You'll get the stuffing knocked out of you, won't you?"
- — Harry Potter stands his ground against Uncle Vernon's threats.[src]
St. Brutus' Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys is an institution for "mentally subnormal" and violent adolescent males. This was the centre that Vernon Dursley told his sister Marge he was sending Harry Potter to school. Saint Brutus is the patron saint for this school. Whether it actually exists, or was simply dreamt up by Uncle Vernon to hide Harry's true nature is unclear, although given that there is no Saint Brutus, it is probably imaginary. He described it as a "first-rate institution for hopeless cases."
In his third year Harry was forced to pretend he was being sent to St. Brutus's in exchange for Vernon's signature on his Hogsmeade permission form, because Vernon was so worried Marge would find out about Harry's true identity. As part of that ruse, he asserted that students there were customarily disciplined with a cane. However, as Harry unintentionally inflated Marge, he did not receive Uncle Vernon's signature.
By the summer of 1995, even the neighbourhood children in Little Whinging had been told that Harry supposedly attended this institution. Despite this, they were in general still more scared of Dudley Dursley, who had a fearsome reputation for hitting people, whereas Harry left the neighbourhood children alone.
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (First mentioned)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film) (Mentioned only)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mentioned only)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Mentioned only) | <urn:uuid:9489e103-7147-4c61-beac-53e879e87ccf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/St._Brutus'_Secure_Centre_for_Incurably_Criminal_Boys?interlang=all | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976499 | 448 | 1.828125 | 2 |
“It’s a triple win,” API president Jack Gerard said. He said that the industry could create jobs, generate hundreds of billions in tax revenue and double North American oil production — although the main production increase would occur in Canada.
The ad cites a study by Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm hired by API. Scott Mitchell, who oversaw the study as head of North America upstream research at Wood Mackenzie, said that only a third of the 1.4 million positions created would go to people working directly for the petroleum industry and that the rest would be indirect and induced jobs.
“To be confident about the induced job effects of additional spending is incredibly complex,” said Mark Fulton, head of research at Deutsche Bank’s team of climate change advisers. Citing such figures involves “going another step toward lack of accuracy,” he said.
The Wood Mackenzie study also makes assumptions about current policy. For example, it assumes that current regulations limit the number of Gulf of Mexico exploratory wells to 20 a year. But the number of exploration wells being drilled now is already well above that. As a result, gulf exploration would have little effect on job creation.
Josh Bivens, an economist at EPI, said the amount of job creation from industry spending depends on economic conditions. “In today’s economy, if an oil company decided to do something new, that would create jobs,” he said. “If unemployment were 4 percent, it would suck people away from other employment and there would be no net increase in jobs.”
Felmy, the API economist, retorted: “You may be moving jobs around,” but wages would rise because companies would be bidding for skilled workers.
Drilling further into the API numbers of existing petroleum industry jobs shows just how murky these numbers and definitions can be.
According to the BLS, the number of people in the United States drilling wells, extracting oil and gas, refining petroleum and manning gasoline stations is about 1.1 million. If sole proprietors and business partners are included, the number rises to about 2 million, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Kurt Kunze, an official at the BEA, said, “The big discrepancy in oil and gas extraction is that there are some big master limited partnerships with lots of partners. There is no way to separate out the people digging holes in the ground from someone who is just a financial partner.” He said given the number of partnerships, he would tend to use the lower BLS figure.
API used the higher figure. If half a million people were taken out of its baseline projection, the final total would have been reduced by 1.8 million.
Most of the jobs provided by big oil companies are overseas. At Royal Dutch Shell, for example, 21 percent of its 97,000 employees worked in the United States; the rest work in 89 other countries. Exxon Mobil has 4,970 people working in its Canadian Imperial Oil subsidiary, 885 in Norway and about 2,000 in Malaysia.
A study by Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee last month found that the four biggest oil companies combined — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and BP — reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees between 2005 and 2010. BLS statistics show that although the number of oil and gas extraction positions has risen, the number of gasoline station jobs has dropped. The Democratic lawmakers noted that the four companies earned $546 billion in profits during that period.
Jobs-bill vote may put senators in tight spot
For GOP hopefuls, no tailor-made remedies
PHOTOS: A look at some of America’s disappearing professions
PHOTOS: 20 occupations with largest growth potential
Get the latest news from Post Business | <urn:uuid:e4f5f99e-c391-476b-8a08-1f8ed7fbdd33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/companies-use-fuzzy-math-in-job-claims-candidates-still-buy-in/2011/10/07/gIQAqoYBbL_story_2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963239 | 789 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Whadda concept. Reverse graffiti uses grimy urban surfaces as canvasses—creating art by washing images and words onto soot-covered tunnels and filthy walls.
Authorities are not quite sure what to make of this—can you arrest someone for cleaning the city? When Brazilian artist Alexandre Orion created a mural of skulls in a Sao Paolo tunnel to remind drivers of the environmental impact of car emissions, authorities responded by cleaning the wall. Orion then clean-graffitied the other side. And according to inhabit.com, the authorities responded by cleaning every tunnel in Sao Paolo.
Reverse graffiti. What do you think? | <urn:uuid:c04bba24-a9f0-4311-b41d-b16d57d3877e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patriciaklichen.com/2011_08_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925142 | 132 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Key Concept ~ I frequently speak about the strategic imperative of expanding creative thinking throughout every touch point of an organization in today’s business environment. Adaptive challenges, challenges in which we do not currently have the answers, confront our society beyond the business world as well. Our firm recently conducted a series of workshops for therapists and counselors from the Veterans’ Administration, the Department of Youth Services and a shelter for abused women in rural Missouri. An economically challenged area that endemically leads the nation in meth amphetamine lab seizures. These highly motivated professionals, from resource-constrained agencies, are facing unprecedented challenges. I’d like to share some of their feedback from their experience of getting out of the box and into the round pen.
We recently returned from an extended engagement with a client in Missouri who brought us in to provide a series of training workshops in our approach to Equine Facilitated Learning/Therapy for their greater community. Our primary objective was to create a foundation for the expansion of our Warriors in Transition program for veterans and their families. Rural America has borne a disproportionate burden in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the VA was simply not prepared nor positioned to suddenly handle two million veterans returning home once these conflicts have wound down. PTSD and/or PTSD/TBI is effecting upwards of 400,000 combat veterans returning from these conflicts. Truly unprecedented challenges the VA will be dealing with for the next forty to fifty years.
The societal challenges, exacerbated by the recent economic shift and downturn, extend deep into many of our communities. During one session with teenage boys from the county detention facility, I found myself facing an eleven year old boy. An eleven year old, sparkling eyed, intelligent and engaged boy incarcerated with seventeen year old, multiple offenders. The counselors from the department shared their frustration and seemingly impossible task of trying to get these young people onto the right path and then returning them to the environment that has set their downward trajectory.
Now, our approach to Equine Facilitated Learning isn’t what one would necessarily call conventional. It is however, based in peer-reviewed, scientific research that points to what is occurring within us neurologically, biochemically and psychologically during our ground-based exercises with the horses. Most importantly, it is efficacious in creating a powerful, experiential shift in perspective. By integrating novel, scientific concepts that are then experienced first-hand with a horse in a round pen delivers an immutable response in participants.
In doing so, we open the door for rational cognition that enables the experiential learning exercise to imprint a kinesthetic lesson with the client. Our novel, yet grounded approach, empowers people to get off the dance floor and into the balcony, opening them up to exploring creative ways of approaching adaptive challenges. The discovery of one’s ability to co-create and achieve a goal with a 1,200 pound, sentient being, simply through the use of one’s presence, intention and self-regulation typically makes a lasting impression as to what we are truly capable of creating and becoming if only we first bring ourselves into alignment.
Here are some of the comments from the licensed counselors and therapists that attended our workshops:
“Information was useful and presented some different, creative ways to approach therapy. I expect several clients will be responsive to this type of workshop…”
“He [the co-facilitator] made me feel comforable and open to learning new information. I think this workshop would be very beneficial for the clients I serve. I think many of them would benefit greatly from it”
“Don’t know if that its ‘the’ answer for everybody, but I can think of a number of people for whom this would be really relevant, really helpful and for whom I would highly recommend it. It hits all the right notes for so many people who come through my office.”
“Very good for relaxing, creating an open atmosphere to learn intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. I was surprised at the intuitive understanding that emerged without the use of words being necessary.”
“I think it would be a great experience for the youth and help build their confidence. I loved that the approach is nonjudgemental and very de-stressing.”
“This would be an amazing workshop to conduct with my clients. Meeting the herd, boundary exercises and round pen exercises were/would be very helpful. I think this would plant a seed of hope for my clients!”
The adaptive challenges we face in business pale in comparison to the challenges these remarkable professionals are wrestling with every day. If our approach was this powerful for them, just imagine what it might deliver for your organization!
© 2012, Terry Murray. | <urn:uuid:f7ac27af-2c7b-426d-b08e-85f29d300e88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://terrymurrayblog.com/2012/05/09/getting-out-of-the-box-and-into-the-round-pen-an-innovative-approach-to-creative-thinking-in-leadership/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96252 | 972 | 1.960938 | 2 |
Student Learning Outcomes
Library Services Student Learning Outcomes
The Student Services Division at Allan Hancock College has identified learning outcomes
to support student programs and services. The assessment of those outcomes enables
the college to understand its effectiveness and improve student services and support
- Students will navigate a physical or virtual library to find a variety of resources
to answer information needs.
- Students will use the research process to efficiently locate and use the most appropriate
source of information for a problem or question.
- Students will evaluate the quality of information sources for bias, currency, authority,
accuracy, and coverage.
- Students will use information ethically by citing sources, not representing work attributable
to others as their own, and requesting permission for use of copyrighted materials.
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"It is very exciting to be involved in Career and Technical Education at Allan Hancock College. We receive tremendous support from our students, the administration and the community at large. With access to the most advanced technology and drawing from the experience of our quality staff, Hancock students are truly able to go anywhere in today's global economy."
Read More » | <urn:uuid:e11408b3-5991-4d8d-bdaa-aa03d3ecf740> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hancockcollege.edu/library/slos.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914151 | 229 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Pundits often lament that in recent years we've become an “entertainment culture” obsessed with celebrity. It seems to be an obsession without limit. As John Prizer writes in his review of Air Force One (see page 7), we have even begun to measure our presidents by their pop celebrity appeal as well as by their ability to lead. And, as Prizer notes quite rightly, despite some worthy predecessors, our current chief exec-utive—he of the hipster shades and sax appeal—is a true master at the game.
There's nothing inherently wrong in recognizing and playing to the obsession as Bill Clinton so masterfully has done, first as a presidential candidate and since 1992 as president. Why not show a sense of humor and try to win over the younger generation by waxing hip on MTVand blowing the sax on late night TV? Some observers found his overtures to the younger generation endearing and even a little daring.
The problem is that popular appeal in our celebrity culture is more about image and perception than about reality or truth. And Clinton's image consultants have mostly succeeded in getting the public to see him in a positive light. But as hip, or as concerned for the common man, or as moderate on abortion (pro-lifers know the truth about that) as the general public might think him, Clinton still can't seem to shake the wide-spread perception that he is too ready to bend with the winds of popular opinion. Even many of his supporters don't think him a man of any real mettle. Apparently the image consultants can't fool the public all the time.
In sharp contrast stands Pope John Paul II. Like Clinton or any leader, the Pontiff has his supporters and his detractors. (Most detractors think him too full of mettle.) But John Paul, who is recognized, even by critics, as telegenic and as an effective communicator, has proven he has plenty of staying power in the fickle celebrity culture. This despite declining to tender his message to garner popular support.
And a simple question underscores his appeal to youth: How many world leaders could draw nearly half a million young people from all over the world, as John Paul II is expected to do for World Youth Day next week in Paris?
The Pope doesn't accommodate his message based on polls or pundits because he isn't concerned about protecting his image—only about furthering the profound truths proclaimed by Christ 2000 years ago. People, especially young people, sense that and are drawn to it. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope John Paul II makes the same point: “(When the young seek me out) in truth it is not the Pope who is being sought out at all. The one being sought out is Christ…”
That even our president seems a product of the celebrity culture is disconcerting. But not all the world's youth have bought into the narcissistic gospel that image is everything and that we should all aspire to our 15 minutes of fame on the daytime TVtalk shows. Though almost everyone gathering from around the world in Paris next week came of age in the midst of our celebrity culture, their presence at World Youth Day presumably means they haven't fallen for the culture's prevailing siren song.
In Paris, the Pope will hold up two persons whose lives offer a bold alternative to the celebration and pursuit of celebrity. The two: Frederic Ozanam, who at 20 co-founded the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the charitable group that's now combating poverty in more than 130 countries; and St. Theresa of Lisieux, who though she entered the cloister at 15 and died just nine years later, has had an immeasurable impact on the faith of many with her “little way” of spiritual devotion. Both Ozanam and Theresa lived and died last century, but how they chose to live offers a relevant counter-cultural example for our times.
The pull to devote oneself to cultivating an image is strong and persistent in our culture. But, more often than not, what lies behind the pose is emptiness and nihilism, and none of the richness that must have filled Frederic Ozanam or Theresa. Both were young and restless and searching for something deeper—just as are many youth today. When half a million of them gather together in Paris, they'll be reminded they aren't alone. | <urn:uuid:499befc3-7f04-4da5-a848-31016d5b189b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/turn_off_the_image | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977926 | 892 | 1.570313 | 2 |
As a unit of Intercultural Student Services, the Diversity Development Office is responsible for the four Cultural Centers at Oregon State University. This includes the Asian & Pacific Cultural Center, the Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center, Centro Cultural Cesar Chavez, and the Native American Longhouse. The Centers are committed to the retention of underrepresented students by providing facilities, events, activities, support services, and leadership development opportunities for students.
The Diversity Development Office includes the Cultural Centers Staff Coordinators, the Cultural Centers Graduate Teaching Assistants, and the student staff of the Cultural Centers.
Web Site: Diversity Development
Adelante Leadership Program
The Center for Latino/a Studies and Engagement (CL@SE) and CASA Latina/o de OSU invites you to the launch of the ADELANTE Leadership Program 2012. This program is designed for students who wish to increase their leadership skills and involvement in OSU programs. Today’s employers are looking for people with strong leadership skills and experience in team-work, social engagement, multicultural awareness, and excellent communication skills. ADELANTE is designed to help you develop those skills and become an active part of your community.
Web Site: Adelante Leadership Program
Leadership Partners and Friends
Student Leadership and Involvement
The Department of Student Leadership & Involvement supports students and student groups by providing opportunities for leadership development and campus community involvement.
Web Site: Student Leadership and Involvement | <urn:uuid:287b9a3d-411e-42fa-86e4-680b9a51b8e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pass-osshe.uoregon.edu/dept/iss/leadership | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904388 | 300 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Several years ago I was commissioned to create a painting of Pierre L’Enfant, the person who created the city plan for Washington DC. There is no known portrait of L’Enfant other than a silhouette of him created while he was alive. Many older publications have used portraits identified as L’Enfant that were not actually his likeness and when the Washingtonian magazine decided to do a profile on him they wanted to create a realistic likeness of what he may have looked like.
I worked with the District of Columbia Historical society to find all of the information I could about him and went about creating this likeness. I found a very good pastel portrait of L’Enfant’s father and was able to use that as a reference along with the authentic silhouette image. For my initial drawings I used the silhouette and projected the facial lines to get his basic proportions. I then photographed a model with features similar to L’Enfant’s to provide a reference for details. The costume is accurate based on my research and the medal is one that he would have worn had he posed for a portrait at that time. | <urn:uuid:8ae29e27-445a-4ba4-ac02-cebde92273e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bryanleister.com/tag/city-planning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985916 | 236 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Blick is proud to offer its line of professional, artist-grade oil colors. Every color is formulated using the finest hand-ground pigments. Highly pigmented, they offer artists a luminous satin finish and dense, buttery feel.
Color Swatch created using heavy application/medium application/50% tint and was applied on acrylic primed canvas (7 oz) material.
organic, vat dyes
complex, insoluble anthraquinone
Indanthrene Blue is a clear, clean, deep blue organic pigment. It has moderate to high tinting strength and is not as overpowering as Phthalo Blue. Hansa Yellow Deep, Benzimidazolone Orange, and Raw Umber are its best mixing complements.
Indanthrene Blue is permanent with excellent lightfastness in both masstone and tints.
Indanthrene Blue varies in its acute toxicity, though toxicity is generally slight.
Indanthrene Blue is the oldest vat dye, discovered and patented in 1901 by Rene Bohn. It is considered the first anthraquinone vat dye, a group of dyes characterized by excellent lightfastness. The pigment originates from this dye.
Lamp black is a very opaque, heavily staining black pigment that does not have much covering or tinting power. It is typically the most opaque black in watercolor form. Though a very pure black, it tends to muddy slightly in mixtures. Natural sources may be brownish or bluish in tone because of impurities. When used in oil paints, it is one of the slowest drying pigments, and should not be used in underpainting or applied in layers underneath other colors.
Lamp Black is very lightfast and absolutely permanent. It is used in all techniques in permanent painting.
Carbon itself is not considered hazardous, however other combustion products that are hazardous are often present as impurities when Lamp Black is produced from natural materials. For this reason, commercial preparations of the pigment should be considered slightly toxic. Avoid skin contact and inhalation. Where such impurities are present, Lamp Black is a possible human carcinogen.
Lamp Black is a carbon based black traditionally produced by collecting soot (known as lampblack) from oil lamps. It has been used as a pigment since prehistoric times. It is the black found in Egyptian murals and tomb decorations and was the most popular black for fresco painting until the development of Mars Black.
Carbon Black, Channel Black, Furnace Black, Oil Black, Vegetable Black. Flame Black is an impure version of Lamp Black. An alternate spelling is Lampblack, in which the first syllable is stressed and the two words are elided to form a closed compound.
organic synthetic, quinacridone
Quinacridone Red is a high performance, transparent pigment with an average drying time and uneven dispersal. It is another name for Quinacridone Violet (PV19) and Quinacridone Red (PR192). Quinacridone pigments have relatively low tinting strength in general. For this reason, quinacridone colors are often expensive, because more pigment is required in the formulation.
Quinacridone Violet has excellent lightfastness and is considered the most lightfast organic pigment in this shade range.
Quinacridone Violet has no known acute hazards. Overexposure to quinacridone pigments may cause skin irritation. Quinicridone pigments contain a compound found to be a skin, eye, and respiratory irritant.
Although quinacridone compounds became known in the late 19th century, methods of manufacturing so as to make them practical for use as commercial pigments did not begin until the 1950s. Quinacridone pigments were first developed as coatings for the automotive industry, but were quickly adopted by artists.
Quinacridone Red (PR192), Quinacridone Red (PR19). | <urn:uuid:c9923c48-012b-4c08-9b97-e4c1d2a60285> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dickblick.com/items/01595-2563/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944848 | 821 | 2 | 2 |
If you’re like me, you’ve rented many apartments and/or small houses in your life, and only spent the money, and time to decorate minimally. Maybe you are an awesomely important and busy person who doesn’t have the time to pay attention to your decor, since you are hardly home anyways. Do you have style that is larger than your small apartment, but don’t have the bucks to style a lavish home base? Do you suffer from small-space-good-taste-itis? Then I have some very helpful tips to make your small space not only seem larger, but for it to look fabulously decorated and seem like you spent way more money than you did.
Mirrors: Mirrors not only brighten up your space by reflecting light into dark spaces, but they also reflect the width, and or depth of your apartment deep into the mirror, making your place look twice as big. The bigger the mirror, the bigger the space looks. You don’t want to get one so big that it takes up your whole wall and therefore taking up too much space.
Layering mirrors is a good way to create a bright grouping. Placed in a corner, they reflect the light from the rest of the room, making the space seem larger.
This is a nice way to group mirrors that don’t match, by selecting ones without frames. It’s a great way to bring in the sunlight.
This wall of mirrors would work well for a small narrow space to elongate it, or in a bedroom or other small room with low light. It would be a great way to reflect light into the space.
Let there be light! One great way to make a small space seem larger is to let the light in. While dark curtains are great for sleeping in, light or sheer curtains are a great way to let any natural light in while still lending a hand to privacy. Using brighter bulbs in your lamps will also shine some light in your small space, and keep the dark from creeping in the corners. Try using a CFL (compact flourescent lightbulb). Not only will you save money on your energy bill, (A CFL of 15 watts is about equal to a standard bulb of 60 watts and will last over 1000 hours longer) your light will shine brighter.
This room looks larger than it is with it’s light airy curtains, and pastel accent colors. One great trick to making your windows look larger than they are is to hang them on the outside of the windows.
This is a great example of how to hang window treatments.
The curtains in this room bring in ample amount of light, and make the room look taller with the way that they are mounted up high by the ceiling.
Paint: If you choose the right paint colors, your space will not only look bigger than it is, it will also look fresher, newer, cleaner, and more stylish, for little money. Most landlords would love for you to paint the walls, in a neutral, approved color of course. And some will even let you paint the wall if you paint it back to the original color when you leave. Using a crisp gray with a hint of purple is a popular color right now, and will make the room look large, and glamourous, with the way it will fool the eye into seeming almost shimmery, and metallic. A light blue will bring the outdoors in, and bringing the wall color onto the ceiling will make the room seem open and airy (as long as the color is light enough.)
This beachy, natural looking room with it’s brightly colored walls is perfectly designed. Both rooms seem to flow together into one, and the light furniture opens the space up.
This example is proof that gray doesn’t have to be a cold sterile color. Mixed with creams, neutrals, and deep wood tones, it is a very warm and inviting color.
Painting one wall is an inexpensive way to add instant style. You can choose a brighter and more outgoing color without having it feel overwhelming. The mirror on this wall reflects into the bright areas of the room, opening up the dark wall.
Art: You can add style and personality to a room with a simple piece of art. I have many friends that are artists, and have very different style, and would love a chance to paint a picture (for a small fee) for a friend, and have their art enjoyed. You can also purchase a nice piece of art for a small price at retail stores like Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and many furniture stores. You can even browse your local art galleries for inspiration to do your own art.
The art on this wall is the perfect size to fill the space. Not overly large and obscene, or too small. Too many pieces of small art grouped together can sometimes look clutter-y, and mis-matched. Large art draws the eye over a larger area of the space, making the wall look bigger.
This is a piece of art by a personal friend of mine, Tatiana. You can see more on her Facebook page, under “Tatiana Le’Artist”. Amazing, cheerful, and full of color. Love it.
Texture: You can add big style with a mix and match of textures in a room. A faux fur rug is great. You can get a big ‘ol piece of faux fur at the fabric store, and cut it to look like a skin rug for a fraction of the price of the real thing. A woven hemp rug adds great texture to a room, and is eco-friendly. Curtains that flow and drape with small splashes of color like fringe, or a pretty curtain rod look rich and add a little eye candy to a room. Don’t forget my favorite thing, pillows! Pillows are a great way to change out color and style for little cost, and little effort. You can splash some great color in a room like red satin, faux fur like a zebra print, or a beautiful cobalt blue.
These pillows add a great splash of color.
How cool are these?
Doesn’t these pillows from West Elm look expensive, and super cozy? Starting at $25, they aren’t too shabby on the budget.
Shop with simplicity and style in mind: When you are at the store, shop for what you love. Do you love it? Is it “you”? Then get it! You don’t have to buy something that doesn’t fit your personality just because it’s cheap. You want to make sure your room flows and that your style is consecutive. And of course, like I haven’t mentioned Target enough, it’s a great place to go that has stylish lamps, rugs, bathroom items, chairs, entertainment centers, dressers… and many other home accessories for a great price.
Where to start… Lost on your own style? Not sure what you are looking for? Hit the books! Check out Pinterest! Go through magazines, put post it notes on every page that jumps out at you and go from there. Did you love the rug in the picture? The sofa? Take your pictures to the store, bring a friend, grab a coffee, and have fun. Decorating is a great time, and even better when you see the end result! Happy decorating! | <urn:uuid:57c5327b-4ca7-44a1-be4e-95588d2ff304> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://practicalenrichment.wordpress.com/category/shopping/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94051 | 1,545 | 1.523438 | 2 |
many romance novels are not as harmless as they look. In fact, some marriage therapists caution that women can become [...] dangerously unbalanced by these books’ entrancing but distorted messages. (Feldhahn)Concerns about women's reading are nothing new. This week I've been reading Kate Flint's The Woman Reader 1837-1914. She suggests that in this period considerable effort was expended in attempting to answer the question "what moral, sexual, religious, ideological dangers may lie in a woman’s being absorbed by so preoccupying a pursuit?" (4). However, as she also notes, even in that period "the debate about what women should, and should not read, and how they read, was not a new one, nor has it disappeared" (16). According to Flint
Renaissance prescriptive remarks concerning woman's reading were remarkably close, in outline, to ones which were repeated during the next three centuries [...]. Whilst too great an acquaintance with light reading might lead her sexually astray, either in imagination or reality, it would also distract her from developing intellectually and spiritually. Edward Hake makes this point in A Touchestone for this time present (1574): "Eyther shee is altogither kept from exercises of good learning, and knowledge of good letters, or else she is so nouseled in amorous books, vaine stories and fonde trifeling fancies, that shee smelleth of naughtinesse even all hir lyfe after" (qtd. in Flint 23).One can easily find modern equivalents of this moral condemnation of women's reading of "amorous books" which may ensure that the reader "smelleth of naughtinesse." Just recently one Christian former reader of romances wrote that
An editor casually described the genre's most sexually explicit fare as soft-core pornography. I was horrified. That remark put an entirely new spin on my romance addiction—and explained why these books were so difficult to put down. [...] Romance novels could have caused dissatisfaction with my husband; I knew of wives who compared their all-too-ordinary Mr. Steadys to the books' rich and handsome heroes. (Marvin)It has often been suggested that women readers are particularly vulnerable, liable to be excessively influenced by fiction:
in an article of 1859 by the critic and moral crusader W. R. Greg, entitled ‘False Morality of Lady Novelists’. He states that:From a very different perspective, but nonetheless also seeking to shield women from writing which may damage their characters, we can turn to Julie Bindel. It wasn't that long ago that we analysed her article about Mills & Boon romances (in considerable detail). She claimed that romance was "propaganda [...]. I would go so far as to say it is misogynistic hate speech" and her main concern was that "such novels feed directly into some women's sense of themselves as lesser beings, as creatures desperate to be dominated."novels constitute a principal part of the reading of women, who are always impressionable, in whom at all times the emotional element is more awake and more powerful than the critical, whose feelings are more easily aroused and whose estimates are more easily influenced than ours, while at the same time the correctness of their feelings and the justice of their estimates are matters of the most special and preeminent concern. (Flint 4)1
Yet others have detected harmful elements in fiction, but felt that the reader could nonetheless benefit from if guided and supervised in her reading:
Mary Hays, for example, writing to a woman friend in 1793, advised her not to be too alarmed at her daughter’s predilection for novels and romances. More, Hays thinks, would be lost by forbidding these than by taking the opportunity to discuss the books with her, since this would damage the daughter’s confidence without correcting her taste. [...] Hays claims that ‘The love of the marvellous, or of extraordinary and unexpected coincidences, is natural to young minds, that have any degree of energy and fancy.’ To avoid risking the loss of these characteristics, a mother should read with her daughters, should converse with them about the merits of various authors, and should ‘accustom them to critical and literary discussions’. Eventually, they, like their mothers, should disapprove of anything that has ‘an improper and immoral tendency’. (Flint 30)A modern equivalent can be found in the advice offered by Diana Mitchell, a ninth-grade teacher:
I decided I might instead learn to use these books in ways that can provoke thought and encourage readers to look closely at what these novels really say, especially about male and female roles. By helping students become conscious of such issues as the gender expectations shown in the books, I can help them think about their own values and expectations for males and females. [...] this questioning process may be slow, but, over a period of time, with gentle urging from the teacher, romance-series readers can learn to be more objective about what they read.Greg was particularly worried about the effects of " 'light literature;' [...] this literature is effective by reason of its very lightness: it spreads, penetrates, and permeates, where weightier matter would lie merely on the outside of the mind" (144). It is true that for all that romance has often been described as "fluff," a sort of candy-floss for the brain, it does deal with a great many serious topics. Linda K. Christian-Smith, for example, wrote in 1990 that
Thus, since many of our female students have a natural attraction to the romance series either as a way of finding solace in an increasingly demanding world or as a way to reassure themselves of happy endings, we as teachers need to use this interest as an opening instead of fighting the losing battle of warning students against reading them.
woven throughout teen romance fiction’s saga of hearts and flowers is an accompanying discourse that a woman is incomplete without a man, that motherhood is women’s destiny, and that a woman’s rightful place is at home. These themes are part and parcel of the New Right’s political and cultural agenda regarding women, representing the conservative restoration of women to their “proper” place in society.(2)Also commenting on the moral and ideological content of romance, though this time romances written for adults, Robin stated that she sees
love and relationships (especially marriage) as inherently political, because of the power negotiations involved. And because Romance is so particularly focused on the idealization of love and marriage (historically, at least, for the marriage part), I see it as intrinsically political, as well — active in creating different images of a social ideal.and in the same comments thread RfP commented that
A lot of romances strike me as political, though I’m not always sure the author is aware of the strength of the subtext. In that respect it’s much like so many other issues in romances–some authors are mindful of it, some relatively unreflected, some put substantial effort into working through the issue.Similarly, some readers are mindful of the subtexts, while some may not reflect on them much at all (though they may angrily reject a novel which appears to "preach" at them). It can be difficult to work out the precise relationship between a reader and the books she reads. To what extent is any woman reader influenced by what she reads, and how much do factors such as her own pre-existing attitudes, her social context, her individual personality etc affect both her interpretations of what she reads and the selections she makes when at the library or bookshop?
Furthermore, why is the female reader still of so much interest? It could be to do with the fact that, nowadays, on average women tend to read more fiction than men. Maybe, because I work on romance, which is a genre mostly written by women and mostly read by women, I've just not seen the studies which analyse the dangers of reading for men. But could it be that women are still seen as fundamentally different from men in how we read and respond to literature? Is it that we are considered more likely than men to absorb ideas about who we are and what we should be from our reading? Or is it that because women have traditionally had less power, even small changes in our attitudes are seen as posing a significant challenge to the status quo and so our reading of particular texts must, depending on the author's view, either be strongly encouraged or strongly discouraged?
And finally, isn't it interesting that the centuries-old tradition of concern about women readers seems to have focussed, in the present day, on women readers of romance? This is a genre which has been criticised by some for encouraging women to have overly sexual thoughts and become dissatisfied with their husbands, and yet has also been criticised by others for not making women dissatisfied enough with their husbands, gender roles etc. It would seem that any genre that's thought of as one written by women for women, and which deals with the issues of women's sexuality, aspirations and gender roles, is likely to remain controversial.2
- Christian-Smith, Linda K. Becoming a Woman Through Romance. New York, London: Routledge, 1990.
- Cummins, Daisy and Julie Bindel. "Mills & Boon: 100 years of heaven or hell?" The Guardian. 5 Dec. 2007.
- Feldhahn, Shaunti and Diane Glass. "Harm in reading romance novels?" The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 27 June 2007.
- Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader 1837-1914. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
- Greg, W. R. "False Morality of Lady Novelists." National Review 8 (1859): 144-167.
- Marvin, Elizabeth. "Under Covers: How I Overcame My Secret Addiction to Steamy Romance Novels." Today's Christian Woman 30.1 (January/February 2008): 42.
- Mitchell, Diana. "If You Can't Beat'em, Join 'em: Using the Romance Series to Confront Gender Stereotypes." The ALAN Review 22.2 (1995).
1 It should be noted that Greg criticises a number of novels for not concluding happily but instead presenting the reader with "a picture of love abandoned and happiness trampled under foot in obedience to misty and crooked notions of what honour and dignity enjoin" (155).
2 As I've said before, I tend to stress the diversity, rather than any supposed homogeneity, within the genre and among its readers. If one accepts that such diversity exists, it becomes much more difficult to come to any definitive conclusions about whether the genre as a whole is harmful or beneficial to its readers.
The illustration is Robert Martineau's The Last Chapter (1863) and I found this copy via Wikimedia Commons. Flint describes this painting as one which depicts a woman
reading for escapist pleasures. She is unmistakably caught up in one of the fashionably controversial 'sensation novels'. As we watch her consuming the text avidly, by firelight, we conclude that the book has the power to keep her up and awake beyond the customary hour at which the house goes to bed. Her pose is testimony to the compulsive nature of these fictions: moreover, the lighting of the picture and the angle from which she is portrayed invest her with something of the melodramatic mystery and self-importance of the heroines about whom she reads. (3)The text of Greg's article, along with a great many other Victorian primary texts on the topics of the "Condition of Women," "Empire" and "Science, Evolution, and Eugenics" are available from the University of Minnesota. | <urn:uuid:c4c6385f-5f63-4010-a54b-b93d3130b09d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teachmetonight.blogspot.co.uk/2008/06/dangerous-reading.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968337 | 2,454 | 1.742188 | 2 |
I have created several .java files. All of them are located in one directory. I used a text editor to write these files. Now I want to switch to Eclipse. How can I do it? I have tried many ways. None of them works.
I think the common way is to have source in the eclipse folder called "workspace". So, how do I get my files in these directory. Should I use eclipse to create a new project from existing source and Eclipse will put all file to the workspace? Or I should manually copy all my files to the workspace? Where should I put my class files than? Should I create a subdirectory? With which name?
When I try to create a project with name "game", the eclipse writes me that a project with such name already exist. But how can I open this project?
In my "workspace" I have created a subdirectory called "game". I copied all my .java file into this subdirectory. Then with Eclipse I created a new project with the name game. As a result, Eclipse created
.project files in the directory "game". It also created
src subdirectories. And now I think it is not the correct way to go. The source files are supposed to be in the "src" directory. Right? And at the moment all my .java files are in the "workspace\game".
I did it other way around. With Eclipse I have created a new project with the name "game". As the result, Eclipse created a folder called "game" into folder "workspace". In "game" the folder I found "src" folder. I copied all my .java files into this folder. But now in the "Package Explorer" I cannot open "src" folder. So, how can I access my source files from Eclipse? Why Eclipse does not want to open the "src" folder? | <urn:uuid:02c8d67b-79b5-4d31-acde-d4fecc5229ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2636201/how-to-create-a-project-from-existing-source-in-eclipse-and-then-find-it | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942616 | 390 | 1.664063 | 2 |
If any part of a blast is connected in parallel and is to be initiated from powerlines or lighting circuits, the time of current flow shall be limited to a maximum of 25 milliseconds. This can be accomplished by incorporating an arcing control device in the blasting circuit or by interrupting the circuit with an explosive device attached to one or both lead lines and initiated by a 25-millisecond delay electric detonator.
Title 30 published on 2012-07-01
no entries appear in the Federal Register after this date.
This is a list of United States Code sections, Statutes at Large, Public Laws, and Presidential Documents, which provide rulemaking authority for this CFR Part. | <urn:uuid:7c0f846e-ecce-4dae-810e-2cc88362aece> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/30/57.6406 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921276 | 138 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Last week, I helped my next-door neighbors whip up their first batch of homebrew. They started off with a very simple recipe: hard apple cider. It really is easy — the yeast does all the heavy lifting.
They borrowed one of my carboys and filled it with a blend of two varieties of store-bought apple juice (the kind that’s made with real juice, not apple-flavored corn syrup, and that’s pasteurized rather than having any yeast-murdering chemical preservatives). Then they dropped in a package of wine yeast that we picked up at the local brew supply store, and capped the carboy with an airlock.
That’s the extent of the recipe: apple juice and yeast. It really is that simple.
Then came a week of waiting as the carboy bubbled and the airlock released the sweet smell of cider in their kitchen. was bottling day. The carboy was still bubbling pretty strongly. If they’d waited longer to bottle they would have had a stronger, drier cider. But they were aiming for something more on the sweet side, so we bottled early.
They sterilized some bottles in their dishwasher, washing without soap and using the “heated dry” feature. And they sterilized some bottlecaps (also purchased at the brew supply store) by boiling them briefly.
They added a little more sugar to the mix by boiling a cup of powdered dextrose in a cup of water, cooling this, and then adding it to the carboy. This gives the yeast a little more to feed on while the cider is in the bottles, to make sure that the end product winds up well-carbonated (though given that it was still bubbling fiercely in the carboy, this may not have been necessary).
Then they used a tube with a racking cane and bottle filling attachment (sounds complicated, but it amounts to seven or eight dollars worth of plastic parts) to fill the bottles, and a hand-cranked capper to cap them. They left a few bottles uncapped and passed them around so we could all taste the cider as it is today. Unlike homebrewed beer, which really needs to sit in the bottle and ferment and become carbonated before it tastes right, this young hard cider was very drinkable.
They ended up with about 35 or so capped bottles worth of cider from their original five gallons of apple juice. Over the coming weeks, the cider will continue to ferment in the bottles, becoming stronger and drier and more carbonated until the yeast is overwhelmed by the alcohol or the pressure and gives up the ghost.
There’s a tax angle here, of course. Last I checked, the federal excise tax on hard cider was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25¢ per gallon, and in my state at least there’s a significant state excise tax too (and one the government is aiming to raise soon). When you brew your own, you don’t have to pay the government for the privilege of sipping a cold one.
But even without the tax angle, the frugality, self-sufficiency, and craft angles make homebrewing attractive.
My neighbors were so enthused by the project that they ran out to buy more apple juice to try again. And they’re eager to try a more complex recipe like beer. | <urn:uuid:a0187b66-dab0-4c0c-aef8-169dc07bc3c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=01Dec08 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974041 | 699 | 1.820313 | 2 |
According to an Associated Press report,
Senate Democrats sidestepped a Republican boycott Thursday, pushing a climate bill out of committee in an early step on a long and contentious road to passage....
Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, had delayed the crucial vote for days because of a Republican protest over whether the cost of the legislation had been fully examined. But the California Democrat moved quickly to pass the bill Thursday, which for the first time would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases, without any of the seven GOP senators on the panel present. The measure cleared the panel on a 11-1 vote.
Boxer said the Republican demand for more analysis was "duplicative and waste of taxpayer dollars."
"Advancing the bill is a necessary step on the road to garnering the 60 votes we need," said Boxer, who introduced the bill along with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. in late September. "We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have had the will to move this bill forward."
Radical environmentalists and internationalists have been increasing their pressure on the United States to pass “cap-and-trade” before the upcoming UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. The reason for the pressure is that a fundamental element of the proposed Copenhagen agreement is a massive redistribution of wealth from the First World to the Third World — ostensibly to aid the transition of the poorer nations to a "green" economy. But without a U.S. commitment to help fund such transfers, it is far less likely that other areas of the developed world — the European Union, for example — will take the economically disastrous step of committing to such massive transfers. Thus Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), had a public meltdown about Obama’s inability thus far to force approval of “cap-and-trade” in time for the Copenhagen conference:
“I personally feel he (Barack Obama) ought to do a lot more (…) He really has to assert himself to see that the US passes legislation (…) He has to get the Senate to legislate the Kerry-Barbara Boxer bill (…) He had not (yet) put his weight behind it,” Rajendra Pachauri said according to AFP.
The IPCC chair added that he was cautiously optimistic on the chances of getting US legislation in place before the Copenhagen conference; that it is “critically important that the US be part of this world deal” and that a US bill “could make all the difference in the negotiations.”
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has taken the outrageous step of personally interjecting himself into the American political process by directly lobbying key members of the Senate. And now it appears that the annual bill for global wealth redistribution will not be a “mere” $100 billion, but may be as much as $400 billion in giveaways to the Third World. Thus, one may expect “cap-and-trade” and other means of taxation will only increase in the coming years to meet the expanded redistribution, if the United States agrees to the Copenhagen agreement.
The farce of Sen. Boxer’s concerns regarding “waste of taxpayer dollars” is obvious when considering the commitment to an endless waste of the tax dollars of the American people to be contemplated at the upcoming UN conference. Boxer’s actions are also simply the latest example of a blatant disregard for compromise, and for established bipartisan rules and procedures that have come to characterize the age of “Hope and Change.” According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):
Under Senate committee rules and precedent, two members of the minority are customarily required to make a quorum for marking up a bill. But Republicans balked at Democratic efforts to pass the energy tax-and-ration bill before a complete analysis of its economic impacts had been done by EPA. The bill, S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Security Act, was introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.). The chief co-sponsor is Chairman Boxer.
“We congratulate Chairman Boxer and the committee’s Democrats for their methods. They have so poisoned the atmosphere in the Senate that the terrible Kerry-Boxer bill is now dead,” said Myron Ebell, CEI Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy. “We also congratulate Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and the committee’s other Republicans for their steadfast opposition. They have made clear that the Democrats cannot move this catastrophic bill without violating the Senate’s rules.”
“This transparent end-run around agreed Senate rules not only is an admission that the bill's floor chances are non-existent, but it further dooms them,” said Christopher Horner, CEI Senior Fellow and energy policy expert, in an earlier statement. “What we see now is the acting out of the global warming industry's frustration over politicians valuing their own jobs, even if they recklessly flirt with threatening the jobs of others.
“The aim now is to wave around a committee-passed bill at the December ‘Kyoto’ talks in Copenhagen, as the ultimate 'offset' for the lack of political will to impose energy rationing on America, even through this back door,” said Horner. “But, as one key senator recently said, there's no bill so bad that it can't be voted out of the Senate Environment Committee.”
But what is voted out of committee is likely to encounter virtually insurmountable opposition as it comes before the full Senate. A commitment to a new, economically ruinous form of taxation for dubious environmental benefit, all so that more American dollars can be given away to other nations, is a hard sell when unemployment is over 10 percent, and federal budget deficits are reaching once-inconceivable levels. | <urn:uuid:2137c494-a8b3-4b17-8840-552b2ac856b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/2233-boxer-violates-senate-rules-for-cap-and-trade-bill | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951868 | 1,234 | 2.015625 | 2 |
NACI is a national committee of recognized experts in the fields of pediatrics, infectious diseases, immunology, medical microbiology, internal medicine and Public Health. The Committee reports to the Assistant Deputy Minister of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, and works with staff of the Centre for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the Public Health Agency of Canada to provide ongoing and timely medical, scientific and public health advice.
NACI makes recommendations for the use of vaccines currently or newly approved for use in humans in Canada, including the identification of groups at risk for vaccine-preventable disease for whom vaccine programs should be targeted. All NACI recommendations on vaccine use in Canada are published every four years in the Canadian Immunization Guide. Additional statements and updates are published in the Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR). NACI also advises on the need for national vaccination strategies and makes recommendations for vaccine development research. | <urn:uuid:105a86bf-0fd3-4d6c-b23a-2a0724203acf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/naci-ccni/index-eng.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928669 | 187 | 2.34375 | 2 |
An 180-foot sailboat, submerged in the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Tim Kuklewski, Associated Press/U.S. Coast Guard
To save the oceans, should we zone them?
- Article by: Justin Moyer
- Washington Post
- December 16, 2012 - 8:36 PM
Nuclear power plants and Mexican restaurants don't mix. To keep fission reactors away from pico de gallo, governments zone neighborhoods, preventing utilities from annoying businesses and businesses from annoying homeowners.
According to some researchers, the same kind of zoning that might prevent your state from running subways lines through your back yard could also protect a place without back yards: the ocean.
"If you zone the sea, you can separate incompatible purposes," says Elliott Norse, chief scientist at the Marine Conservation Institute, a nonprofit he founded in 1996. "You can give everyone a chance to do what they need."
Unlike a ban on offshore drilling, ocean zoning would allow what Norse calls "extractive activities" but would limit them to specific areas. Australia successfully tried zoning in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in the 1970s, Norse says; President Obama has proposed such a policy, but the House defunded it in May.
How much of the ocean should be declared off-limits to hooks, harpoons and oil wells?
"A really good compromise that would allow us to save nearly all species of marine life would be to save 20 percent of each biogeographic region," Norse says. The current set-aside? According to Norse, just 1.2 percent, resulting in the loss of fish from the waters of Israel, New England and the Chesapeake Bay - which, he says, is "much more like a soup of algae than a place that used to be lined with oysters."
And for Ariel and Nemo, time is running out.
"The fire is already spreading in the basement, and no one seems to be running down there with fire extinguishers or hoses," Norse says. "Right now we are having a low-level conversation about what to do and not acting nearly fast enough."
© 2013 Star Tribune | <urn:uuid:7197bcfd-1749-43a9-a1f3-1a0584639ccb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=183706611 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957147 | 455 | 2.53125 | 3 |
About Gay Bloomington
Find out why Bloomington is known as the gay capital of the Midwest! Here you'll find interesting facts and figures about this progressive community.
- Bloomington is home to the nation's fifth largest per capita population of same-sex households, many of whom chose Bloomington after a nation-wide search of gay-friendly communities. (source: 2000 Census)
- The Advocate named Bloomington the “#4 gayest city in America” in its February 2010 issue:
“This forward thinking college town is a magnet city for gays in the Grain Belt. It’s also home to Indiana University, where Miss Gay IU – said to be the first student-sponsored drag competition held on any campus – is in its 20th year. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction is also here, inspiring the entire town to be heteroflexible.”
- Both the City of Bloomington and Indiana University offer health benefits to domestic partners, regardless of gender.
- Both the City of Bloomington and Indiana University include gender identity protection among their human rights ordinances.
- The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction is located at Indiana University. The facility is free and open to the public; it includes a gallery with rotating exhibits from what is said to be the largest collection of erotic art in the world. The signature annual event is the Kinsey Juried Art Show, held in June and July in the School of Fine Arts Gallery on the IU campus, attracting artists and visitors from around the world.
- Advocate.com and OutTraveler.com named Bloomington the “#1 surprisingly gay small town destination” in October 2008:
“Why it's on our gaydar… This accepting, forward-thinking, progressive college town (population 70,000) is home to Indiana University and the famed Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (itself home to one of the world's largest porn collections). Filled with hip cafés and funky stores, Bloomington markets its many merits to lesbian and gay travelers.”
- Bloomington is home to Indiana’s only “out & proud” radio show – bloomingOUT, every Thursday evening at 6 pm on 91.3 FM.
- The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students ranked Indiana University as one of the top 20 gay friendly college campuses in July 2007.
- Bloomington’s annual PRIDE Film Festival is held every January and attracts crowds of over 3,000 attendees over the course of the three-day event. The weekend also serves as the annual Homecoming Weekend for the IU GLBT Alumni Association. | <urn:uuid:961506bd-2e8e-4ea1-a1c8-6bb02c8d0ae7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.visitbloomington.com/visitors/gay-travel/gay-bloomington/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944655 | 560 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Most Active Stories
Wed December 5, 2012
Op Ed: A Troubling Shortage Of Lawyers
People often complain there are too many lawyers in the world, and you may think they have a point. After all, an astonishing 40,000 students graduate from American law schools each year, and there are already well over a million lawyers in the U.S.
But whether you believe there are too many lawyers may depend on who you are. If you’re Hispanic, and you prefer to hire a lawyer who shares your cultural background, or speaks Spanish—you’re going to wonder where all the lawyers are.
Right now, only about 3 percent of lawyers in the U.S. are Hispanic, compared to 16 percent of the population. That’s a significant gap—and it’s growing. By the year 2050, one-third of the country will be Hispanic, but the percentage of Hispanic lawyers probably won’t be much higher than today.
In other words, while the country is becoming less white, the legal profession is whiter than ever, proportionally speaking.
Why so few Hispanic lawyers? For one thing, the pipeline is a trickle. Hispanics are much more likely to drop out of high school and college than whites or African-Americans. And many law schools put a huge emphasis on law school admissions test scores, where Hispanics tend to do worse than whites.
Here’s why this matters.
It’s not just about picking a lawyer who looks or talks like you. Fewer Hispanics in the legal profession means fewer with a voice in the legal system. It means fewer in positions of power relative to policy-making and the political process, and fewer role models to encourage the next generation to participate directly in law-making and our justice system.
If one-third of the country is Hispanic, but only 4 or 5 percent of lawyers and judges are, that’s not good for any of us.
For all its flaws, our legal system is extraordinary, the best in the world—and it’s the bedrock of this country. If a significant segment of the population feels shut out, the very legitimacy of this critically important institution is called into question. That’s something every American should be concerned about.
And that’s why diversity in the legal profession matters.
It’s worth remembering this as the U.S. Supreme Court grapples again with the hot-button issue of affirmative action. Right now, schools are allowed to consider race as one of the factors in admitting students. But that policy faces a sharp challenge in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case argued in October. The University of Texas, whose law school has one of the highest percentages of Hispanic students, wants to continue to consider race as one factor in creating a diverse student body – which leads, ultimately, to a diverse legal profession.
Next spring, when the Supreme Court issues its decision, let’s hope it agrees that our legal system should reflect who we are. That will keep our democracy strong.
Elaine McArdle is an award-winning journalist, book author, and lawyer who’s been writing about the law, politics, health, and many other topics for the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and others for over 20 years. She recently moved to Albuquerque from Boston. | <urn:uuid:badb656e-4061-48a4-b239-40200e7b7fa5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kunm.org/post/op-ed-troubling-shortage-lawyers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958363 | 693 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The removal of apex predators like sharks is one of the most prevalent and devastating human impacts on earth’s marine ecosystems. Overfishing and the use of indiscriminate, destructive fishing gear like gillnets is far-reaching. Sharks are becoming increasingly rare throughout most of the Belize Barrier Reef and this decline presents a major ecological and economic problem for Belize.
We know very little about the specific roles of sharks in Caribbean coral reef ecosystems, but current models and theories suggest that their loss causes ripple effects throughout local food webs and could lead to reef collapse.
With sharks and reef systems under similar threats worldwide, there’s an urgent need to develop a better understanding of the roles sharks have within reef ecosystems and whether protected reef areas are effective in helping populations recover. A goal of the project is to better describe the niche of the dominant shark species on the Belize Barrier Reef, including Caribbean reef, nurse, Caribbean sharpnose, great hammerhead, blacktip, lemon, silky, night and tiger sharks. Since no studies of shark abundance have ever been conducted before and after the establishment of a marine reserve in Belize, we have a rare opportunity - with your help - to significantly improve the management of these protected areas by observing their impact.
This opportunity is especially significant for Belize, where ongoing efforts to build a comprehensive network of marine reserves take place against a backdrop of increasing shark exploitation. Although Belize has 13 marine protected areas, not all of them include no-take marine reserves and several of them still allow longline and gillnet fishing for sharks inside or very near their borders. Showing whether and how the marine reserves in Belize are useful for shark conservation will be decisive in consolidating the existing marine reserve network and improving it over time. Working closely with local partners in the Wildlife Conservation Society-Belize and providing data to Belize’s Fisheries and Tourism Departments, as well as the Association of Protected Area Management Organizations, the scientists working on this project will be able to use your efforts to bring about real improvements in shark and reef conservation.
You’ll assist with the deployment, recovery, and maintenance of hook-and-line shark fishing gear in various locations at the Glover’s Reef study site, as well as in the measurement of associated environmental data like water quality, salinity, and pH. You’ll help the researchers tag, take tissue samples from, and release captured sharks. (All sharks are firmly secured to the side of the research vessel prior to data collection and are kept in the water for the whole procedure. Volunteers will be involved with all facets of this process except the securing and final release of the animal, which will be carried out by experienced staff.) You’ll also help collect shark tissue samples within several different habitats, from local fishermen’s catches, and from your own handline fishing and seine-netting. You will also conduct snorkel surveys to record habitat type, as well as abundance and diversity of coral and fish species. This data on the status of the reef will be collected for each site where a video is deployed, to allow comparisons between different habitats.
You’ll have opportunities to interact with tourists and Belizeans throughout the project to help assess their attitudes toward sharks, reefs, and marine reserves, helping produce, distribute, and score written questionnaires and add them to the database. You may also help transcribe video interviews.
Meet the Scientists
Dr. Demian Chapman
School of Marine & Atmospheric Science
Stony Brook University, NY, USA
Dr. Chapman is an internationally recognized shark expert who has been working on shark research and conservation projects in Belize for nearly a decade. He is a molecular ecologist and field biologist, and an expert in the integration of telemetry tracking into research on shark dispersal and reproduction. He’s the author of more than 20 scientific articles and has managed field research projects on sharks in The Bahamas, his native New Zealand, and Florida. He received his undergraduate degree in zoology and ecology from Victoria University in New Zealand, and his masters and PhD (Oceanography-Marine Biology) from Nova Southeastern University Oceanographic Center, FL, USA.
Dr. Elizabeth Babcock
Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science
University of Miami, FL, USA
Dr. Babcock is a quantitative fisheries scientist, with experience in fisheries stock assessment and marine fish conservation, for species including sharks, billfishes and sturgeons. Using innovative data sources and analysis methods to inform management of fisheries for which traditional fisheries data are lacking is a primary focus of her research, with an increasing emphasis on marine reserves and the ecosystem impacts of fisheries.
She has an undergraduate degree in Biology and Environmental Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and received her PhD from the University of Washington's School of Fisheries. After completing her PhD, she worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) as the first Constantine S. Niarchos Fellow in Marine Conservation, and did a project on bycatch of endangered Humboldt penguins in the gillnet fishery out of Punta San Juan, Peru. She then served as Chief Scientist for the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, which is now the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science. | <urn:uuid:bec6ca67-da97-445c-b2ff-4bd88e1b2bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/chapman_research.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938634 | 1,081 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Posted: January 28, 2011
Reviving Equality in Campaign Finance: What the U.S. Can Learn from Canada
Contrary to popular belief, the most significant aspect of last year's Citizens United v. FEC was not its conclusion that corporations have free speech rights. The Supreme Court actually settled this question long ago. Nor is the main problem the influx of anonymous corporate spending on federal elections. Citizens United may have exacerbated this problem, but it existed before - and, at any rate, identification of big spenders can be addressed through tougher disclosure and reporting laws.
The most significant and damaging aspect of the Citizens United decision was its obliteration of equality as a rationale that may sometimes justify limits on political spending. Overruling this aspect of the decision is a precondition to real campaign finance reform. In thinking about what can be done to promote political equality, the United States would do well to consider Canada's example.
Citizens United was correct to affirm that campaign-related expenditures - whether made by corporations or by individuals - have an expressive quality that warrants some degree of constitutional protection. Where the Court erred was in failing to recognize the consequences of the fact that money is essential to political participation. If effective electoral speech requires money, then those without money lack an equal voice in our democracy. The ultimate consequence is to skew political debate in favor of the wealthy, both in terms of who gets elected to office and the decisions they make once in office. This is anathema to a democracy committed to the principle of "one person, one vote." In effect, the have-alots have a much greater say in our political system than the rest of us.
Students of American campaign finance law might note that Citizens United's rejection of equality is nothing new. That is partly true. Since Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Court has purported to forbid campaign spending restrictions designed to promote equality. Buckley famously prohibited government from "restrict[ing] the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others." On this basis, the Court struck down limits on individual expenditures in federal campaigns.
Notwithstanding this proclamation, the Court subsequently allowed electoral equality as a rationale for spending limits. In Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), the Court upheld a prohibition on corporate expenditures in candidate elections, to curb "corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas." Although the Austin Court dressed its holding in the language of anticorruption, the reality is that equality lay at the heart of this decision. The notion of distortion rests on an alternative conception of what the political system should look like - namely, a system where political influence doesn't depend on wealth. But if one accepts such an egalitarian rationale for regulating corporate expenditures, it should apply with the same force to individual spending. After all, individuals as well as corporations generate wealth through the help of the corporate form, not to mention other state and federal laws.
There was thus a fundamental inconsistency between Buckley and Austin. While the former rejected political equality, the latter embraced it. Citizens United resolved this conflict - but, unfortunately, did so precisely the wrong way, overruling Austin. Even more depressing for reformers, even the dissenting justices in Citizens United backed away from Austin's egalitarian rationale, as Rick Hasen has observed.
Though Austin was the most conspicuous Supreme Court decision to allow equality as a rationale for campaign finance regulation, it was not the only one. There have been other cases in which the Court has allowed equality to come in through the back door, disguised as an anticorruption rationale. In McConnell v. FEC (2003), the Supreme Court upheld key portions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold), ostensibly based on the anitcorruption rationale. In reality, McConnell relied on a form of equality rationale - specifically, a concern that big money donors would enjoy disproportionate influence on the back end of the political process, because members of Congress would feel beholden to them. Although the Court used the language of anticorruption, the ultimate concern was inequality when it comes to the outputs of the legislative process.
In Citizens United, the Court returned to a narrower conception of corruption. Specifically, it rejected the government's argument that the prohibition on corporate expenditures was justified by the concern that they would "corrupt" the legislative process by giving corporations excessive influence. Instead, the Court suggests that corruption consists of an exchange of campaign cash for political favors - something that is very hard to prove. The anticorruption rationale has moved like an accordion, expanding in McConnell only to contract again in Citizens United.
There is zero chance that the current majority on the Supreme Court will suddenly see the error of its ways when it comes to equality as a rationale for campaign finance regulation. But the current Court will not sit forever. In the meantime, those who subscribe to an egalitarian vision of democracy have important work to do. We should outline a new jurisprudence, one that will recognize equality as a central democratic value without eclipsing other interests.
In doing so, American reformers should look to the example of Canada. The Canadian Parliament and Supreme Court have embraced an egalitarian vision of democracy with the same gusto that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected it. An example is Harper v. Canada (2004), in which Canada's Supreme Court upheld limits on outside spending to elect or defeat candidates. In a self-conscious rejection of Buckley, the Court declared that "the State can restrict the voices which dominate the political discourse so that others may be heard as well." By doing so, it promotes a "level playing field" for all its citizens.
Canadian case law also shows that acceptance of the equality rationale is not a rubber stamp for any campaign finance regulation that the government adopts. In two previous cases, which I've described here, Canada's Supreme Court struck down restrictions on campaign spending, without denying equality as a permissible rationale. In these cases, the Court reasoned that these restrictions had the effect of restricting outsider perspectives that would not otherwise be heard.
In addition, the Chief Justice of Canada's Supreme Court dissented in Harper on the ground that the restriction on outside spending went too far. This is a plausible argument - and the right question to ask. But the Harper dissenters did not outright reject equality as a rationale, as the U.S. Supreme Court has done. In fact, all of the justices on Canada's Supreme Court accept equality as a rationale for regulation; by contrast, none of the U.S. Supreme Court justices in Citizens United embraced the equality rationale.
Acceptance of equality as a rationale won't make hard questions surrounding campaign finance regulation disappear. It will, however, ensure that we are asking the right question: Whether particular regulations will really promote political equality, without unduly infringing other values like fair competition. The time has come for U.S. reformers to embrace equality openly, rather than continuing to disguise it in the garb of anticorruption. This approach will not find favor before the current U.S. Supreme Court. In the long run, however, it will lead us toward a healthier democracy that more closely approaches the ideal of equality for all citizens, regardless of wealth.
Dan Tokaji is an authority on election law and voting rights. He specializes in election reform, including such topics as voting technology, voter ID, provisional voting, and other subjects addressed by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. He also studies issues of fair representation, including redistricting and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. View Complete Profile | <urn:uuid:63a2059a-5ff0-4511-b345-82862cb0ea42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/comments/index.php?ID=8103 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959804 | 1,567 | 2.375 | 2 |
PHILADELPHIA, June 9, 2005 -- At the "Era of Hope" Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program meeting, researchers funded through this program will present innovative studies that offer a glimpse into the array of research currently being done on the prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Studies presented at the meeting explore topics such as the development of a hand-held device to allow for at-home screening for breast cancer; the role of exercise in restoring the immune system after chemotherapy; and correlating genetic changes in normal-looking tissues near breast tumors with risk of recurrence.
Prototype Imager Holds Promise for At-home Breast Screening
A hand-held device in development may one day allow women to screen themselves for breast cancer in the privacy of their homes. The device, tentatively named "iFind," monitors the differences in blood oxygen ratios in growing cancers and normal tissues, reported researchers from the University of Pennsylvania. If it picks up potential early signs of breast cancer, it alerts the user with either a light or a vibration.
"It's important to know that this would be part of a breast exam, not a full diagnostic device," explained Britton Chance, Ph.D., emeritus professor of physics and radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in Philadelphia, and developer of the device. "It would provide an indication of early signs of breast cancer that need to be followed up by a doctor."
The device measures oxygenation rather than blood volume to detect hypermetabolism -- the speedier growth rate of cancer cells. The prototype breast cancer detector performed with a positive predictive value of about 93%, which the researchers describe as a remarkably successful test for detecting breast cancer. Reliance on near-infrared light makes it a safe technology as well; women can use it as frequently as they wish. The study was conductePage: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Related medicine news :1
. Researchers suggest TB screening for all international adoptees2
. Researchers find vitamin B1 deficiency key to vascular problems for diabetic patients3
. Researchers link metal ions to neurodegenerative disease4
. RAND presents first Victor Fuchs Research Award to economists at Carnegie Mellon University5
. Wesley Research Institute study targets pharmacists to help diabetes sufferers6
. Researchers develop criteria to detect bone mass deficiencies in children with chronic diseases7
. Research probes seniors plans for end-of-life care8
. DFG approves 11 new Collaborative Research Centers9
. Research shows survival benefit for leukemia patients treated with arsenic trioxide10
. Researchers call for investigation into links between khat use and psychiatric disorders11
. Tony Hunter receives Robert. J. and Claire Pasarow Award for Cancer Research | <urn:uuid:33cffe2f-74db-497e-87da-57aa6f1d44e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-3/Research-results-from-the-Era-of-Hope-Department-of-Defense-breast-cancer-research-program-meeting-9480-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914177 | 561 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Last week, while reading about an insolvent California’s insistence on going ahead with the first leg of a proposed high-speed rail line (total cost of the system: an estimated $100-$300 billion), I heard the following story on a local ABC news affiliate about a nearby low-Sierra lake:
Monday, August 20, 2012
FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — Acts of vandalism have forced officials to shut down a popular campsite in Fresno County. The Pine Flat Campground located below the Pine Flat Dam on Trimmer Springs Road is closed indefinitely. Nearby Winton Park remains open but things aren’t looking much better there. Vandals tagged rocks, barbeques, and even trees with graffiti. “It was horrible. It didn’t look like nature. It looked like a nightmare,” said visitor Jose Zarate of Fresno.
Unfair to the Vandals
You can read the rest of story at KFSN’s Website; additional news items detailed similar stories at other local lakes — a veritable Vandal assault on the vestiges of civilization (actually, that allusion is unfair to the Vandals): copper wire stripped out of power conduits, toilets and sinks ripped out of bathrooms, and, yes, more gang graffiti painted on trees.
I think the latter horror is what earned the local media attention. Destroying public property, assaulting other campers, closing down recreation sites are one thing — but graffiti on trees? That’s an insult that no liberal can stomach. In the grand struggle of environmental correctness versus multiculturalism, green wins every time. (Why do a few liberals oppose illegal immigration? Because of worries about environmental damage along the border.)
The Tipping Point
I have a hard time timing car trips to Los Angeles because a large section of the 99 state “freeway,” north of Kingsburg, is still (after a half-century) two lanes, potholed, and crammed with traffic. But the rub is that the traffic is of a strange sort, one characterized by an inordinate number of drivers with loose brush, tools, appliances — almost anything — not secured in flat-bed pickups or piled too high in pickups and trailers. The debris commonly flies out on the road, causes an accident, and shuts down California’s main interior north-south lateral for several hours.
What is the common theme here?
When the liberal mind cannot cope with the concrete ramifications of its own ideology, it seeks a sort of tokenism. Unable to ensure that trees are not defaced? An ancient highway is not upgraded? Presto, zoom ahead to space-age high-speed rail, as if the conditions that created sprayed trees and mattresses lying among the pot-holes will not easily migrate to high-speed rail. That is, within 10 years I have no doubt that the Fresno-Corcoran (“rail to nowhere”) link will be periodically closed due to stripped copper wire conduit, mattresses thrown over the fence onto the tracks, and the general inability of the state to service the system due to the sort of daily vandalism seen at our local campgrounds.
If one third of the nation’s welfare population resides in California, and if seven million of the last ten million Californians added to the state population are now on Medicaid, and if Californians, as it is estimated, send approximately $10 billion a year in remittances to Mexico and Latin America, then something has to give. And the remedy for that something that gives is either teaching youth not to spray paint pine trees, or hiring unemployed ex-gang-bangers to pressure wash the graffiti off pine trees — or moving to a kinder, gentler Santa Cruz or Newport, feeling good on the beach, watching the sunset each evening, and cursing those evil conservatives who want to poison the 3-inch delta smelt and keep foie gras legal in California. | <urn:uuid:d9af87ae-cbd6-4dbe-adb9-8e7deca10887> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2012/08/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934702 | 818 | 1.5625 | 2 |
I swing my legs out of bed and sit up. I sniff the air.
My bedroom smells of bananas.
Oh good, he whispers. You’re up.
“I’m not up,” I mutter. “Dead man walking. Give me a minute.”
I stumble off to the bathroom.
Out in the kitchen Mr. Coffee gurgles at me, implying there may be hope after all. I fill my cup (ah, sweet nectar of life) and let the gravity of habit pull me down the stairs to my office, to my cluttered desk and my cluttered mind.
Are you up now? Bert asks.
So. Last time you said something about listening for instructions.
I have no idea what that means.
It means turning your attention inward. Listening to your body.
Why do that?
It’s where the feelings live.
Oh. Well, I already do that.
The hell you do.
(Startled:) Why so cranky?
If you were listening I wouldn’t be here now. I’d be upstairs in bed.
Oh. (Defensive:) But we have work to do.
Sure. There’s always work to do.
And that’s why you’re cranky?
No. I like working. Cranky is how I feel when I stop listening.
Oh. (Pause.) Most people I know are cranky, on some level.
Why is that?
Most people don’t listen. They’ve been trained not to. Actually they’ve been trained to act like they have no bodies at all.
As kids. We learn early on to stop listening to our bodies, to follow rules instead. To eat on schedule, sleep on schedule, poop in the right receptacle, and so on.
You’re saying that’s bad?
I’m saying it’s the thin edge of the wedge.
The wedge that eventually separates us from who we are. We stop listening to our internal voices — feelings, instincts – and as we get older the distance between us and the voices gets wider and wider. School widens it bigtime. Work widens it further. Eventually most of us forget how to listen. And end up permanently cranky.
On some level.
Yes. Not always a conscious one.
Does this wedge have a name?
Is there an alternative?
To socialization? Maybe, if you go live on a mountaintop by yourself. If you live with other people you get socialized.
I remember how shocked I was during my training when a supervisor told me that the healthiest anyone ever gets is neurotic. I didn’t understand. Or maybe I did and didn’t want to believe it.
What’s that mean, “neurotic”?
Split. Split by the wedge of socialization, into controller and controlled. Divided against yourself.
So. What’s the answer?
Answer? To what?
To the problem of neurosis.
You’re not listening. There’s no “answer.” Neurosis is inevitable.
I’ll ask it another way. How do I achieve happiness?
What? Unhappiness is inevitable?
Pretty much. What was it Freud said? Something about the goal of analysis being to transform neurotic misery into ordinary unhappiness.
But then Buddha said the same thing two thousand years ago. “Life is suffering.” The first Noble Truth.
Are you trying to bum me out?
No, no. This is actually good news.
How can you say that?
Look. Most of us don’t know what the hell we’re doing, or why we’re doing it. We have this idea that we’re supposed to be Happy, and if we aren’t, well, we must be screwing up somehow.
It’s a sort of secret perfectionism. We keep comparing how we feel to how we want to feel, and when the two don’t match we decide something’s wrong.
Nothing’s wrong. Life just hurts.
And we have to live with it. Like we live with bad weather.
Right. And there is great relief in giving up this perfectionism.
Where does listening to the body come into all this?
It’s something to rely on instead. It replaces chasing some mythic Happiness with the more achievable goal of getting our simplest needs met. Tired? Rest. Hungry? Eat. Sad? Cry. Like that.
Does sound simple, all right.
Simple, but important.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a client comes into my office all twisted up over some problem or other. And he’s looking to me for magic. To make the problem vanish somehow, so he can feel better.
What do you do?
I offer him a cup of water.
No. I push my hassock over to him and tell him to put his feet up on it. I may suggest he take off his shoes.
Then I put a pillow behind his head on the sofa and invite him to lean back.
Then I tell him to breathe. Just breathe.
Then I wait.
And what happens?
He feels better.
Almost always. Takes about five minutes, for most people. Some take longer.
Of course some people won’t even take the water, or put their feet up.
It scares them. Listening to feelings means not controlling them. And they think they need to stay in control.
Usually they’ve been traumatized. These are the seriously scared ones, the ones that never relax.
What’s the matter?
Nothing. I’m thinking I’d like to stop now.
I’m a little tired.
(Smiling:) May be hope for you yet. | <urn:uuid:a9d084b9-b973-4ded-ab0c-b240d94d5faf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://monkeytraps.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/the-illusion-of-control-2/ | 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 | 0.928438 | 1,289 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Ever seen the words confit, compote, creme fraiche or caramelized on a menu and wondered -- what do they mean?
Eating out when you're dieting or a diabetic can be a meal-time minefield.
The words on a restaurant menu are meant to sound as appealing as the food tastes, but when you're trying to stay healthy and fit, there are a few words you need to know to keep from sabotaging your weight-loss goals.
When most people read a menu, they pick out their entree by looking at the main ingredient.
"Then, they move from there thinking they're ok," says Chef Robert Brener, an associate professor at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N. C.
That's how things like tempura end up on the forks of the figure-conscious. It may be a vegetable, but don't be fooled. It is a battered and deep-fried vegetable!
"Often, food is marketed by terms that make it sound like something it's not," Brener said.
This is why America Now headed to Johnson & Wales University to brush up on our menu lingo.
Brener said even seemingly innocent words like saute can be sinful to your diet.
"Saute is using moderate heat and fat," Brener explained.
No doubt, you have heard of saute's cousins, seared or pan-seared, which Brener pointed out is just a fancier way of saying frying.
Instead, you may opt for a baked or grilled entree, but hold on -- if sauce is smeared on your food, it could be bearnaise or hollandaise sauce, which contains lots of butter and egg yolk.
If you are ordering a sandwich accompanied by aioli, that's the same thing as asking for flavored mayonnaise.
You may as well raise the white flag over trimming your waistline if you're eating a white sauce, because its probably a mixture of milk, flour and butter -- all of which are loaded with fat and calories.
If you skip the sauce and opt for an item that is stuffed, some stuffings are made with grains that are good for you, but most are bursting with white bread or breadcrumbs, which is a villain to the calorie-conscious and carbohydrate counters.
"It's just imperative that you know what that stuffing is," Brener said.
Another tricky word you'll often find on a menu is poached. It usually means a meat or fish was cooked in water, wine or broth. Keep in mind, lean meats are often poached in a hot bath of butter or cream to give them flavor.
The best thing for a dieter or diabetic to do is to ask your wait staff what's inside the food.
"Know why that food is tasting good, know what is being done to it," Brener said.
Your waiter or waitress should know how the food is prepared or who to ask to find the answers to your questions.
Make sure you tell them what diet you're on or if you have diabetes.
Also, be sure to ask if they have any good selections and substitutes.
Inquiring about the menu lingo and asking specific questions about how the food is prepared doesn't make you a problem patron. Most restaurants will happily help you count your calories and carbs because they want to keep you as a customer!
Copyright 2012 America Now. All rights reserved.
1115 Mt. Auburn Road
Closed Captioning Contact: | <urn:uuid:17d7997f-01b3-4c22-8ef8-a52c1b82a7f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.14news.com/story/19147296/menu-lingo | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963133 | 729 | 2.109375 | 2 |
EAST COUNTY Ample opportunities for nature aficionados and preservationists -- and hikers, bikers and recyclers, too -- await this weekend to explore and protect the upper part of the San Diego River.
The San Diego River Park Foundation has a half dozen "Save the Source" events planned countywide on Saturday and Sunday, including several in East County. The foundation's Save the Source initiative is one of the River Park Foundation's conservation and preservation efforts to provide for the health of the San Diego River, its wildlife and plants.
From 8 a.m. until noon Saturday the foundation is holding a Clean and Green Team Event, a river cleanup at Big Rock Road in Santee. The area is off state Route 52 and has been inundated with illegal trash and debris, according to the foundation's website. Volunteers are asked to dress for outdoor work, including closed shoes, and will meet in the field next to the Santee Equestrian Center at 7980 Mission Gorge Road.
From 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. Saturday, the Natural History Museum's Canyoneers group will guide a hike through the Old Flume Trail, starting at Lake Jennings. The Old Flume Trail follows switchbacks through chaparral and sage scrub to reach the area where a flume was built to carry water from the San Diego River to downtown El Cajon, the Grossmont area and the city of San Diego.
From 10:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturday, there will be an open house and tour of Boulder Creek at Fisherman's Camp near Descanso. Boulder Creek, an area shaded by majestic coast live oaks and home to wild rainbow trout and other wildlife, is the foundation's newest preserve acquisition. The tour will be led by River Park Foundation Executive Director Rob Hutsel. Representatives from San Diego Fly Fishers will share the history of Boulder Creek Preserve and Fisherman's Camp.
The foundation has worked to preserve more than 1,000 acres of wild land to protect critical wildlife and trail connections, including acquiring the trout habitat and the west face of El Cajon Mountain.
The San Diego River flows from Julian for 52 miles to its mouth at Ocean Beach. Much of the upper 20 miles of the San Diego River is wilderness area in need of care from the community. Other events for this weekend include a trail maintenance project at the Eagle Peak Preserve and an 8-mile guided hike at the Santa Ysabel Backcountry Visitors’ Center.
For more information, maps and directions to all events and to RSVP, visit sandiegoriver.org/calendar.php | <urn:uuid:a89881a2-722d-4b94-9172-9e7cbbef88c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/07/san-diego-river-events-planned/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932025 | 542 | 1.726563 | 2 |
84 Afghan schoolgirls fall ill from gas attack
Officials accused extremists of launching a poison gas attack yesterday that caused dozens of Afghan schoolgirls to collapse with headaches and nausea.
MUHMUD RAQI, Afghanistan – Officials accused extremists of launching a poison gas attack yesterday that caused dozens of schoolgirls to collapse with headaches and nausea as they waited in line for a Qur'an reading at their school in northeastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalists have regularly attacked girls schools in Afghanistan and the second apparent poisoning in two days has raised concerns that they have now found a new weapon to scare girls into staying at home rather than going to class.
Students were gathering in the yard of Aftab Bachi school in Muhmud Raqi for a morning reading of the Qur'an when a strange odour filled the area. First one girl collapsed, then others, said the school's principal, Mossena, who fought for breath as she described the event from her hospital bed.
"I saw several students fall on the ground," said Mossena, who like many Afghans goes by one name.
Teachers told the rest of the students to go home. Mossena said she did not know what happened next because she collapsed and woke up in the main hospital in Muhmud Raqi, the capital of Kapisa province, which lies just northeast of Kabul.
At least 98 people were admitted to hospital, including 84 students, 12 teachers and two cleaners, said Khalid Enayat, the hospital's deputy director. He said they were monitoring another 30 students to see if they developed symptoms.
Yesterday's incident is the third alleged poisoning at a girls' school in about two weeks. On Monday, 61 schoolgirls and one teacher went to hospital in neighbouring Parwan province with a sudden illness that caused some to pass out. In late April, dozens of girls were hospitalized in Parwan after being sickened by what officials said were strong fumes or a possible poison gas cloud.
"The enemies of Afghanistan are behind this poisoning," said Kapisa education director Abdul Gani Hedayat, using the government's term for the Taliban and other militants.
"I am 100 per cent certain it is poison," he said.
"Ninety-eight people suddenly fell sick. This isn't something that happens just normally." He said blood samples had been sent to Kabul for testing.
The Taliban and other conservative extremist groups in Afghanistan oppose education for girls.
Meanwhile in the eastern city of Khost, 11 Taliban suicide bombers struck government buildings in a daylong assault.
The assault led to running gun battles with U.S. and Afghan forces that killed 20 people.
Yesterday's assault began around 10 a.m., when a suicide bomber in a burqa attacked the governor's compound in Khost. That was followed by a suicide car bombing, said Wazir Pacha, aide to the provincial police chief.
Khost residents hid from explosions and gunbattles that lasted until 5 p.m. Twenty people were taken hostage
A Taliban spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed 30 suicide bombers had attacked the government buildings.
Taliban militants have launched multipronged assaults on government centres in Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand province's capital, Lashkar Gah, in the last year.
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- GTA new home prices hit record $644,427 | <urn:uuid:9634c7f0-1cb1-4bcd-9ec1-fe4c1408681f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2009/05/13/84_afghan_schoolgirls_fall_ill_from_gas_attack.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960525 | 785 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Author : ABED ALHAFEEZ JAAWAN | Readings : 95 | Date : 2012-06-12
The five athletes are currently training outside the Palestinian territories in various countries.
Swimmers Sabine Hazboune and Ahmed Jibril have, for the past two months, been staying at a special training camp organized by the Palestinian Olympic Committee in the Centre d’alt Rendiment Barcelona in Spain. Jon Fortoni, international trainer, is supervising the swimmers’ training.
Runners Woroud Sawalha and Bahaa al-Fara are staying at a training camp in Qatar and are being supervised by Palestinian athletics trainer Majed Abu Maraheel. Judo player Maher Abu Ramila is off to Uzbekistan for a final game before the Olympics.
“I am very happy at the training camp,” runner Sawalha told Al Arabiya. “There is a huge difference between training in Qatar and back in the Palestinian territories.”
Sawalha explained that the facilities available in Qatar make her training much more effective.
“Here the training follows a well-defined program. This applies to training hours and the nutrition system. I also have a real running track to practice unlike the small field in Nablus. There is also the psychological factor.”
Sawalha started her running career at school in the village of Aseera in the northern West Bank where she was the most distinguished among her schoolmates. She then enrolled in the School of Athletics at the National Najah University in the city of Nablus, also in the West Bank, where she excelled in running and practiced religiously until she was chosen with another three athletes to represent Palestine in the 2012 London Olympics.
“I am doing my best to represent Palestine in the most honorable way in the 800-meter race, but I know the competition is very fierce.”
Other players, she explained, have been practicing for years to get ready for the Olympics.
“I would be able to do a better job if I had been notified two years before the Olympics. I knew only one year before and then joined a three-month training camp. This is not enough to make a player capable of competing on the international level. However, I still think I will get good results.”
When asked whether wearing the headscarf was an obstacle for female athletes, Sawalha said it does not hinder her in anyway.
“Actually my veil is a good chance to show all veiled women that they can still do sports and to encourage them to fight traditional Palestinian beliefs about sports ruining women’s health or social lives.”
Sawalha added that her family has always encouraged her, especially her father.
“My father was the one who always told me to practice regularly and my participation in the Olympics is his dream come true.”
Sawalha’s participation is an honorary one in which countries whose players cannot qualify for the Olympics are allowed to take part through the points system. Honorary representation is restricted to athletics and swimming.
Palestine’s participation in the London Olympics is both symbolic and political, said al-Sayed Dawoud Metwali, member of the Palestinian Olympic Committee.
“It enables us to raise the Palestinian flag at such an international sports event,” he told Al Arabiya. “We want to prove that we are an independent entity and that we are represented in the international scene even if on a small scale.”
Eyad al-Omla, head of the Palestinian Athletics Union, finds it unlikely that any of the participating Palestinian players will get first places at the event.
“But we have to be patient,” he told Al Arabiya. “We are still starting, but we are already in a better condition.”
Omla explained that for the first time, Palestinian players were chosen a whole year before the Olympics.
“This gave them a good chance to receive proper training and be psychologically ready for the event.”
Judo player Maher Abu Ramila was the last of the five Palestinian athletes to be notified of his participation at the Olympics. The difference between Abu Ramila and the other four is that he was qualified for the Olympics after defeating several Judo champions throughout the past four years.
Abu Ramila’s victories gained him 20 points which raised the total of Palestinian points to 24 and he was consequently qualified by the International Olympic Committee to take part in 73 kilograms category.
Hani al-Halabi, the honorary head of the Palestinian Judo Federation, said that Abu Ramila’s ability to join the Olympics through the points system is an achievement.
“We hope his results would be good. He is being supervised by a group of experts at a training camp in Jerusalem and this is a political statement we cannot overlook,” he told Al Arabiya.
Palestine first participated in the Olympic Games in 1996 in Atlanta in the United States. Runner Majed Abu Maraheel, who is currently training the 2012 runners, was the first athlete to carry the Palestinian flag at an Olympic event.
Since then, Palestine’s symbolic participation in the Olympics has continued in 2000 in Sydney, 2004 in Athens, and 2008 in Beijing. However, none of the Palestinian athletes got advanced places during those years. | <urn:uuid:5610700a-95c6-4b3b-b308-ccd023d8569d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.group194.net/english/index.php?mode=article&id=30202.Five%20Palestinian%20athletes%20to%20fly%20their%20flag%20at%20the%20London%202012%20Olympics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971187 | 1,123 | 1.5 | 2 |
Canada’s tar sands are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, and threaten an area of boreal forest the size of Florida. We need real action to fight pollution and the climate crisis. It’s time for our governments to phase out the tar sands.
All Canadians are impacted by the tar sands, regardless of where you live in the country. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted with toxins, and your fish and wildlife may be dangerous to eat. In Saskatchewan, you are impacted by acid rain caused by tar sands pollution. In BC, oil supertankers are plying your shoreline carrying tar sands oil, and the Gateway Pipeline proposal would span northern BC, crossing about a thousand rivers and streams, and leaving them at risk to toxic spills, breaches and ruptures. In Ontario, you are exposed to harmful emissions from the refining of tar sands oil. Most importantly, no matter where you live in Canada, your desire to tackle the global climate crisis is being held hostage to the tar sands.
Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada is quickly increasing them, and fully half of that emissions growth is projected to come from the tar sands. Additionally, because Canada’s elected officials refuse to clamp down on tar sands operators, they also refuse to clamp down on other greenhouse gas producing industry across Canada for fear of a double standard.
But while Canadians are still beleaguered with political complicity in tar sands pollution, looking south of the border, there are signs that dirty tar sands oil may no longer be wanted.
In 2008, American decision-makers were only too glad to fuel their cars with Canada’s tar sands oil, despite all evidence that this was perilously fueling the climate crisis. However, when President Barack Obama announced during his victory speech that “change has come to America”, people around the world who are concerned about climate change had reason to be optimistic. Since then, Canadian citizens concerned about the damage wrought by the tar sands have taken heart with Obama’s position on ending the use of dirty fossil fuels, starting with the dirtiest ones such as tar sands oil.
Despite all this, here in Canada, our federal and provincial governments are still not dealing with the tremendous negative impacts of the tar sands.
Google Map of Canada's Tar Sands
Areas shown in red on map are existing tar sands extraction projects, while areas in yellow show areas with tar sands extraction permits and leases. Note that the areas depicted on map are at a fairly coarse scale and are not very accurate if you zoom in too much.
View Canada's Tar Sands in a larger map | <urn:uuid:d7dcebd8-e76d-427f-b33a-a0fbeea1ea2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wildernesscommittee.org/what_we_do/supporting_healthy_communities/canadas_tar_sands | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959568 | 538 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Careers for Extroverts & Other Gregarious Types [Secure eReader]
Click on image to enlarge.
eBook by Jan Goldberg
eBook Category: Business
eBook Description: Careers for Extroverts and Other Gregarious Types lets career explorers look at the job market through the unique lens of their own interests. The book reveals dozens of ways to pursue a passion and make a living--including many little-known but delightful careers that will surprise readers.
eBook Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies/McGraw-Hill, Published: 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002
Man absolutely cannot live by himself. -- ERICH FROMM
In everyday language, the word extrovert refers to a sociable person who makes friends easily. The Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung gave it a more technical definition by saying that extroversion meant "turning the interests and energies of the mind towards events, people and things of the outer world." In other words, extroverts are likely to be more focused on whatever is going on around them than on their own thoughts and feelings.
Are You an Extrovert?
He who lives only for himself is truly dead to others. -- PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Are you the kind of person who looks outside yourself? Do you want to follow a career that allows you to interact with others? If you're not sure, take the following quiz and you'll find out!
1. Do you usually enjoy a good rapport with others?
2. Do you have a sincere desire to please others?
3. Do you enjoy working in groups?
4. Do you like the idea of working with others for the common good?
5. Would you rather work in a crowded office than in an isolated lab?
6. Does it bother you if you are cut off from dealing with people?
7. Do you find it easy to relate to a variety of people -- even if you don't know them?
8. Do you feel rewarded when others are enriched by your actions?
9. Do you adapt easily to a flexible schedule, one that might include more than forty hours per week and nights and/or weekends?
10. Would you be able to travel if necessary?
11. Are you willing to continue to attend seminars, workshops, etc., to keep your skills sharp and perhaps improve on them?
In this book, the following careers are explored as some of the occupations that extroverts would do well to consider: careers in acting, careers in music and dance, careers in sales, careers in politics, careers in marketing and advertising, and careers in public relations and fund-raising. Though these are, by no means, the only possibilities for extroverts, they will afford you a long list of careers to consider.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle. -- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Copyright © 2000 by VGM Career Books | <urn:uuid:4eec1d34-6d34-434c-bd39-aca76f634cf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b6680/Careers-for-Extroverts--Other-Gregarious-Types/Jan-Goldberg/?si=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957991 | 612 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Hadassah: One Night with the King is a novel written by Tommy Tenney and Mark Andrew Olsen about the Biblical story of Esther. Esther, or Hadassah in Hebrew, is a Jewish girl who is orphaned and taken into the care of her cousin Mordecai. They live during the time of the exile, in the citadel of Susa, Persia, known in the modern day as Iraq. The king at that time, King Xerxes, banishes his queen, Vashti, and winds up holding a pageant to find himself a new bride. Hadassah is taken into the royal harem for beauty treatments before she and the hundreds of other girls are presented before the king, for him to choose which one would become the new Queen of Persia. The authors have done an excellent job of setting the scene for this time in history, starting the story with a contemporary lady named Hadassah who receives a letter passed down her family for generations, from an ancestor named Esther. The writing succeeds in making the story come alive in the imaginations of its readers.
Hadassah: One Night with the King Review:
The almost seventy readers who gave their feedback on this Christian book gave it an average rating of 4.4 stars.
The readers loved the writing style, especially for its succeeding in presenting horrific sceneries without overwhelming the reader with the tragedy, particularly regarding Esther’s childhood. Some even commented on violent and sexual scenes having been written perfectly so as not to be offensive to evangelical Christians. The reviewers agreed that the authors had succeeded in bringing Esther’s story to life, complete with a look at political conspiracies alongside deep-heart encounters. One reviewer described the book as a “great piece of historical fiction,” that caused her to be gripped by the whole story. It was also found to contain all the elements of a gripping novel: romance, suspense, adventure, and even irony. Another reader described it as a refreshing take on the story of Esther without compromising Biblical truth. She especially liked how the presence of the enemy was linked to several years earlier with King Saul’s disobedience of wiping out the whole of the Amalekites.
One reader who loved the book did point out a few errors, although they were very minor: for example, he felt that having the Persians serve potatoes was not exactly accurate, as potatoes were reportedly introduced into the area after the Spaniards found Incas eating the starchy food. Still, he was very satisfied with the book anyway. Strangely, there was one buyer who gave the book a 2.0-star rating only on the virtue that he was unable to comment on it, since he bought the book to give to a friend abroad. This was of course unfair for the overall rating of the book.
Overall, we believe you will find this Christian book to be an interesting read, whether for entertainment purposes or for getting a richer insight into the Bible story of Esther. We would definitely highly recommend this book for you. | <urn:uuid:cf1b3666-9325-4c02-982d-f76bd6a85b1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://christianbookreviews.co/tommy-tenney/hadassah-one-night-with-the-king/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976289 | 616 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Genes key to rust resistance in wheat
|Kirby Nilsen, a University of Saskatchewan plant science graduate student, is researching rust-resistant wheat genes (David Stobbe photo).|
By Lisa Buchanan
Saskatchewan plant scientists are working to stay one step ahead of a fungal disease — stripe rust — that they fear may be moving into the province and starting to reduce wheat crop yields.
Rust is a fungal disease which occurs wherever wheat is grown around the world. It robs plants of their nutrients, reduces yield and lowers grain quality. Severe infection can kill an entire plant.
Stripe rust typically prefers cool, moist weather. But now researchers fear it may be adapting to warmer, drier areas, partly due to weather changes.
“Particularly in western Saskatchewan, which is usually hot and dry, recent summers have been hot and humid, resulting in more leaf diseases in cereals and other crops,” said Grant McLean, cropping management specialist at Saskatchewan Agriculture.
While leaf rust is common on the prairies, stripe rust, which appears as yellow stripes on leaf blades, usually blows in from the Pacific Northwest in mid- to late summer, infecting Canadian crops later in the season.
Last year, Alberta experienced what some have called a stripe rust epidemic. Plant pathologists suspect the rust overwintered on wheat in Alberta and Saskatchewan, allowing it to move to spring wheat earlier and cause more damage than usual.
“If stripe rust becomes more widespread, the damage could be quite severe because we don’t know as much about it,” said University of Saskatchewan plant science graduate student Kirby Nilsen.
“We want to know what resistance we have in our breeding lines so if there is ever a full-blown epidemic, we’ll be one step ahead.”
Research shows Lethbridge, Alta., experienced a wheat yield reduction of up to 75 per cent in 2011. Economic losses due to stripe rust on the prairies are difficult to calculate at this stage, but losses in the central U.S. were estimated to be $267-million in 2003.
With funding from the Canadian Wheat Board, Nilsen is looking for wheat genes that provide resistance to both leaf and stripe rust. While plant breeders already breed for disease resistance, he is looking to identify genes that provide long-term, durable genetic resistance to both forms of the disease.
“We feel that breeding for disease resistance is the most effective approach to limit the spread of wheat rust,” Nilsen said.
Nilsen’s supervisor Curtis Pozniak, a Canadian leader in molecular genetics and breeding of wheat, says Nilsen has identified a promising gene in Canadian wheat that provides effective resistance to both leaf and stripe rust.
“He is well on track to develop diagnostic DNA markers to track that resistance in breeding programs so it can be maintained in newly developed cultivars,” said Pozniak, who co-leads an international research team mapping the genome of the best Canadian wheat varieties with an $8.5-million grant from Genome Canada, the Western Grains Research Foundation, the Saskatchewan government, and other partners. “Disease resistance is a top priority for breeders locally and globally,” he said.
The genes Nilsen is looking for don’t provide resistance until the plants are approaching flowering. That’s when yield development is most crucial. It takes longer for pathogens to adapt to this type of resistance, making these genes more durable than others to which diseases are able to adapt rather quickly — sometimes within a few years.
His discoveries will potentially have commercial impact. Disease resistance reduces crop losses and lowers the need for fungicides, putting more money in producers’ pockets.
“As diseases adapt, the number of effective resistance genes diminishes, so working to identify new ones is of great value to plant breeding programs worldwide,” Nilsen said.
His cutting-edge research will serve him well as he embarks on a career in plant breeding.
“It’s something I really enjoy doing,” he said.
Lisa Buchanan is a graduate student intern in the U of S Office of Research Communications.
This article first ran as part of the 2012 Young Innovators series, an initiative of the U of S Research Communications office in partnership with the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Rate This Story | <urn:uuid:b6ed7434-37b2-4b73-b5b3-ccb72849c4a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usask.ca/research/news/read.php?id=1110 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941611 | 921 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Doug Lung / 02.16.2012 04:15PM
RF Shorts – Feb. 16, 2012
A Huge, Historic AM Antenna Celebrates its 75th Anniversary
Check out this video on the Australian Broadcasting Company's web site Celebrating World Radio Day with a trip around the world
. The 201 meter tall 3WV mast in Western Victoria has a 19 meter wide capacitive top hat. Its 594 kHz signal has been heard as far as Canada, Japan and South Africa. Horsham resident James Heard commented, "It really meant a lot to us. It must've been a big undertaking in 1936 to build it because cranes and things that are about today weren't even heard of."
Testing MIMO Radios
Radios with conventional antennas can be easily tested in anechoic chambers, but how do you test radios that use MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) technology that's now becoming common in 802.11n Wi-Fi and LTE radios? Test and Measurement World has a good overview in the article Test MIMO Wi-Fi and LTE radios over the air – OTA testing can simulate conditions such as reflections and fading in a controlled environment
by Fanny Mlinarsky.
The Advanced Communications Testbed
JPL describes a communications package with all manner of interesting equipment in its release about the Advanced Communications Testbed for Space Station
. The release says, "The testbed will be the first space hardware to provide an experimental laboratory to demonstrate many new capabilities, including communications, networking and navigation techniques that utilize Software Defined Radio technology. The SCaN Testbed includes three such radio devices, each with different capabilities. Two Software Defined Radios were developed under cooperative agreements with General Dynamics, West Falls Church, Va., and Harris Corp., Melbourne, Fla., and the third was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, Calif. JPL also provided the five-antenna system on the exterior of the testbed, which will be used to communicate with NASA's orbiting communications relay satellites and NASA ground stations across the United States."
More information and pictures are available on the web page Communications, Navigation and Networking re-Configurable Testbed (CoNNeCT/SCAN Testbed) | <urn:uuid:72b02a07-a75b-4aaa-b865-c8d496bce3b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tvtechnology.com/distribution/0099/rf-shorts-%E2%80%93-feb--/211893 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917257 | 465 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Death is confusing and difficult for anyone, but especially for children. This book, written in a simple language that kids can understand, will help children cope and understand their feelings. Filled with interactive pages to make this their story, kids can write and draw how they feel. When they're done, this book becomes a special keepsake that helps them remember the person they loved.
Customer Reviews for Someone I Love Died, Repackaged
This product has not yet been reviewed. Click here to continue to the product details page. | <urn:uuid:da3a4b0b-7321-4b55-92ad-27dfae9aa38a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reviews.christianbook.com/2016/702913/david-c-cook-someone-i-love-died-repackaged-reviews/reviews.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970021 | 107 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Maulid - a celebration of Prophecy
'Alamiyah Institue has been holding a formal gathering in celebreation of the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, every year since 2006.
The nature of the gathering differs each year, with is being an opportunity for students to share with each other and contribute somethign uniwue and personal that allows us to honour and celebrate together.
It is a gatheirng of joyousness and peace and thanksfulness, and it is eagerly anticipated by adults and children alike!
To date, our maulid program has included the following items:
Childrens dramatisation of key events in the leading up to the birth of the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him.
Martial arts displays
Talks on the biographies of the righteous, the inheritors of the Prophetic Way
Singing of devotional songs individually and as groups
and as always, followed by sumptious food prepared and shared by all students, including a special 'Sunnah Foods' table with a selection of food eaten by the Prophet peace and blessings be upon him, himself!. | <urn:uuid:ba8ad672-cb35-4239-a78b-b7ebc2821e3d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alamiyahinstitute.org/events/13/maulid-a-celebration-of-prophecy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935886 | 234 | 1.882813 | 2 |
NASA's Deep Impact mislays comet
Boethin goes awol
NASA has cancelled a scheduled liaison between its Deep Impact spacecraft and Comet 85P/Boethin because the latter has disappeared without trace, New Scientist reports.
Deep Impact completed its principal mission back in 2005, when it fired a 360kg probe into Comet Tempel-1 in an attempt to deduce the body's composition.
It then set off for a late 2008 hook-up with Boethin, a body which has been spied only twice, "first when it was discovered during a close approach to the Sun in 1975, and again during a second close passage in 1986".
It was supposed to put in an appearance in 1997 on another approach to the Sun, but may have escaped detection from Earth due to it being behind the star's glare. In October, astonomers deployed various telescopes including the Very Large Telescope array in Chile, and that at Hawaii's Subaru observatory to track it down, without sucess.
Quite what has happened to Boethin remains a mystery. While it may have broken up during its 1997 approach, Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, chief scientist for the Deep Impact mission, said such a heat-provoked disintegration was unlikely since it "never comes closer to the Sun than just beyond Earth's orbit".
He told New Scientist: "Disappearing in the sense of breaking up and dissipating is actually very rare. If it disappeared, then that is fascinating in itself - only one other comet has done that in recent memory."
The previous self-destructing comet in question was Linear-S4, which fell apart and disappeared back in 1990.
A'Hearn says it's more likely that Boethin "broke into a few large chunks that are still intact but have drifted too far from the original comet's orbit to have been spotted in searches to date". More plausible still is that since Boethin has only been seen twice, scientists did not correctly predict its trajectory and the telescopes have been looking in the wrong place.
Whatever the case, NASA will now send Deep Impact off for a meeting with Comet Hartley 2, around the same size as Boethin at 1.6km, although more active. The planned encounter will take place in 2010. ® | <urn:uuid:e148aeb4-bf40-4efb-a9cc-4c53b1fa163f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/17/deep_impact/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966528 | 477 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Dazzling Photo: Space Station Flies Through Big Space Storm
The International Space Station flies through Earth's aurora in this photo taken by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and posted on April 5, 2010. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is visible docked to the station. Full story.
An astronaut has captured the rare view of the International Space Station zooming through a dazzling display of Earth's aurora as the strongest geomagnetic storm of the year hit the planet.
In the stunning space aurora photo, the International Space Station is seen flying 220 miles (354 km) over an Earth lit up by eerie green auroras peppered by red hues. A Russian Soyuz spacecraft is backlit by the cosmic light show in the image.
Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi took the stunning photo and posted it Monday on Twitter, where he has been chronicling his six-month mission to the space station under the name Astro_Soichi [more aurora photos].
"Fly through Aurora at 28,000 km/h," Noguchi wrote, cheering his 1,000th tweet. The International Space Station orbits the Earth at about 17,500 mph (28,163 kph).
According to Spaceweather.com, Noguchi's aurora snapshot coincided with a strong gust of solar wind that hit the Earth's magnetosphere on Monday, creating the most powerful geomagnetic storm of the year.
The storm is subsiding, but has been creating spectacular auroras for skywatchers in high-latitude regions, Spaceweather.com reported.
Noguchi and his crewmates recently set a new space photography record for the most photos taken in a single mission. He and his five crewmates at the International Space Station are about to get extremely busy.
NASA's space shuttle Discovery will arrive at the station early Wednesday with a crew of seven astronauts, boosting the number of people aboard to 13 people.
The shuttle will deliver tons of supplies, spare parts and new science gear to the space station. It is one of NASA's final four shuttle missions before the fleet is retired in the fall.
- Images Stunning Auroras, Part 2
- Top 10 Snapshots From an Astronaut-Photographer
- Shutterbug Astronauts Smash Space Photography Record
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Philly to Debut 360-Degree History in 3-D
Forget your Imax 3-D and your 3-D TV. I have seen the future, and it’s called Liberty 360. Philadelphia’s soon-to-be newest attraction, scheduled to open in July, will be a mind-blower: the first 360-degree 3-D experience ever devised. Audiences will stand on a cantilevered platform in the center of a cinematic cylinder, 50-feet in diameter and 8 feet high, and find themselves entirely surrounded by a three-dimensional movie that begins with Benjamin Franklin and a mysterious box in his workshop then takes viewers on a “journey of discovery” of America’s most beloved symbols.
The attraction, designed by Niles Creative Group (the same firm that created the 2,000-square-foot, gazillion-pixel HD Video Wall in Philadelphia’s Comcast Center), is part of the completely redesigned Lights of Liberty attraction at the remodeled Historic Philadelphia Center at 6th and Chestnut streets, near Independence Hall in the city’s historic core. Admission prices to the 12-minute film are $7 for adults and $6 for children, seniors, and military personnel.
As with other 3-D technologies, viewers will have to wear special glasses (think Jackie O circa 1968), but they’re far more comfortable than traditional 3-D specs. Moreover, the state-of-the-art interference filter technology used to display the three-dimensional images eliminates the headaches, discomfort, and eyestrain often associated with other 3-D technologies, according to David Niles, founder of Niles Creative.
“But it’s not about the technology,” said Niles, who designed and built the world’s first HDTV studio in 1984, “it’s about the content. The technology is pretty amazing, though.” Holding a pair of the goggle-like glasses, Niles was clearly charged up by his accomplishment. “3-D is an optical illusion. It’s a brain function, not an eye function. To see 3-D completely around you is literally mind-boggling. This is a first for Philadelphia and a first for the world.”
Smart Traveler Mark Orwoll is also the international editor at Travel + Leisure. | <urn:uuid:75a7a842-6116-466e-a99b-cdd56e2cad39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-blog/carry-on/2010/6/18/philly-to-debut-360-degree-history-in-3-d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934624 | 499 | 1.765625 | 2 |
View Full Version : traffic system - thoughts and problems
05-31-2007, 10:54 AM
I have a city which I want to populate with flying cars - fifth element style.
So I drew a spline through all the houses added a pflow system where a speed by icon is following the spline.
The Pflow is then emitting cars which follow the icon.
The bad thing is, the path is really long so it takes the icon around 60.000 frames until it moves to the end. (I don't want the cars to race through the city, but slowly drive)
That means if I want to render a 100 frame animation of a populated city, PF needs 60.000 frames to precalculate until all paths are populated with cars.
When I try to render this, max runs out of RAM and crashes - not mentioning the time it takes to precalculate.
Do you have any idea for a more elegant approach, or how I could optimize this system?
thanks in advance
05-31-2007, 10:59 AM
Box#3 has a definite solution. You can pre-calculate the particle motion (without the car shape applied) and save it with Cache Disk operator. Then you can add car shapes to particles in post-cache process.
05-31-2007, 11:15 AM
caching is definitely a good idea. if the high amount of shape instances kills your system use a script by bobo to transfer the motion of your precalculated particles to geometry objects:
06-01-2007, 12:30 AM
Can you post a screen shot of the paths with some of the particles on them. I am certain there is an easier way to do this. If it takes 60,000 frames to get the cars where you want them, it is unlikely that you will see enough in 100 or even 1,000 frames to justify getting all the particles in position with the Paths. You could probably use objects to scatter the cars throughout some areas using simply a Speed op and only use Paths/Speed by Icon when it is absolutely needed.
06-03-2007, 04:41 PM
thanks all for your help:
Sorry I don't want to buy a plugin to solve this. Though I will have a look at caching it.
But how do I spawn particles and assign meshes later on? does this save ram / rendertime?
Thanks for the link. But I don't understand what this script does. Is it baking the animation/meshes? I've never scripted anything, but I may give it a try.
Thanks for offering me help:
I attached some pictures. The first one shows the path where 60.000 frames were needed to get some life into the street. I strapped that to a really shorter path.
zoomed to where they spawn - and get killed once they touch the plane on the right:
here's the flow:
I tried to use caching but I wasn't sure how it works best.
Now it emits from 0-4000 and I want to render from 3500-4000. The speed by Icon events need 3500 frames each to travel the path.
So I tried to just cache frame 3500 - took around 150 MB which I saved with the file, sent it the backburner manager - but they didn't render any of the particles. The precalculation Phase was really short (around 2 minutes instead of 3 hours) but if they don't render anything - this will not help me :)
Is it a good idea to only cache the first frame of the desired animation and save it with the file? Or is it better to use caching in a different manner?
06-18-2007, 04:23 AM
lehmi, I recently tryed to do something similar for a personal project (but faild:sad:) I trued to use Crowd instead but I couldn't get it to work right cause I just started learning Crowd simulation. My biggest problem was traffic jam! :D
But you should give it a try!
If you figure something out let me know.
Good Luck :buttrock:
06-29-2007, 09:24 PM
did everyone here forgot about the comp???? lol i cant beleive pshyco forgot about the comp. heres what you do first off seperate all your particles into sub sections like forground mid-ground and far-ground if your running out of ram turn down the amount particles and and render each section in passes like the forground you would need somewhat higher detail in the cars the other plates. so forground you might need to render that into a few passes each with only a few amount of cars in the scene then just render out a few of them and comp them together filling up the forground plate full of cars. you want to do the same with the mid-ground and faraway but the far away and midground cars need less detail and thus should start takeing up less ram. this is what i would do myself. and with all the passes you will have more control over the final look you can add more motion blur in the back ground cars or deth of feild ect all the fun stuff people like to do these days. I have been doing game effects for the last year and half so something that pops up into the brain is lods. im not sure if max supports it if it does its news to me but thats also something you can look into. right now my brain is burned out with e3 deadlines so i am starting to ramble and i might be missing something. sorry
07-01-2007, 09:52 PM
Good point feldy, totally forgot about compositing :banghead: Its a great and powerful way to cut corners. :buttrock:
And yes Max does suport LOD, its in the utilities panel » more » level of detail. I've used it before, it saved my butt many times :)
07-01-2007, 09:52 PM
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Volunteers will monitor water consumption and conservation with smart water meter
IBM and the city of Dubuque, Iowa, announced the launch of the Smarter Sustainable Dubuque Water Pilot Study. The IBM Smarter City Sustainability Model will help Dubuque understand and jointly manage water resource consumption and optimization.
Volunteer citizens in Dubuque will monitor their water consumption and conservation practices via a smart water meter that the city of Dubuque has installed. IBM will help collect the water consumption data of these citizens via a cloud computing platform, which will then be analyzed, providing information and insight on consumption trends and patterns that will enable both the volunteers and city management to conserve water and lower costs.
The study’s goal is to demonstrate how informed and engaged citizens can help make their city sustainable. By providing citizens and city officials with an integrated view of water consumption, the project will encourage behavior changes resulting in conservation, cost reduction and leak repair.
IBM’s water management technologies use a real-time advanced analytics system that tracks and reports on the condition of an infrastructure from filtration equipment, water pumps and valves to collection pipes, water storage basins and laboratory equipment. The ability to monitor these systems in real-time means that potential problems, such as a burst water main, a slow leak, a clogged drain or a hazardous sewage overflow, can be quickly identified and resolved. | <urn:uuid:f12cc994-5db0-47e2-90e5-e94af61767b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wwdmag.com/city-dubuque-teams-ibm-provide-smarter-water-services | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927312 | 289 | 2.4375 | 2 |
BBC- The Queen has declared the London Olympics officially open, before seven young athletes were given the honour of lighting the ceremonial flame.
The show featured British celebrities and sportspeople, including David Beckham and Bradley Wiggins, and screen characters Mr Bean and James Bond.
In a speech watched around the world, Games chief Jacques Rogge said: "The Olympic Games are coming home tonight."
Flag-bearer Sir Chris Hoy earlier led out Team GB to cheers and applause.
The identity of who was to light the symbolic flame was shrouded in secrecy ahead of the ceremony.
The group of seven, chosen by British Olympic champions, each lit a single tiny flame on the ground, igniting 205 petals, one for each competing nation or territory.
Long stems then rose towards each other to form a cauldron, signifying unity.
The flame made a dramatic arrival via the Thames on a speedboat carrying Beckham, who handed the torch to Sir Steve Redgrave.
The show, billed as a quirky take on UK life, started with iconic images of London and Britain being beamed to the world, and all four countries of the UK being represented in song.
The field at the stadium in Stratford, east London, was turned into a green meadow, with sheep, horses, chickens, ducks and geese among the cast.
The show took the watching world through "great revolutions in British society", from an agricultural setting through to the Industrial Revolution itself.
Steelworkers began forging material that transformed into golden Olympic rings, which appeared to float into the air to be suspended above the performers.
'Evening Mr Bond'
|James Bond was at Her Majesty's service as the Queen joined the opening ceremony|
There were cheers too as the crowd saw a film featuring an unlikely meeting between the Queen and agent 007 James Bond.
"Good evening Mr Bond," the Queen said in the clip, before they left together, apparently heading towards the Olympic Stadium in a helicopter.
The aircraft then flew over the stadium to the sound of the Bond theme tune, as two figures parachuted down, one dressed as the monarch.
As if by magic, the Queen appeared in the stands - part of a crowd of about 80,000 - amid cheers.
Mr Bond was not the only much-loved British character to take part. Mr Bean prompted laughter when he appeared as part of the orchestra playing the Chariots of Fire theme.
The ceremony also celebrated the National Health Service by featuring a cast of more than 1,000 volunteers recruited from hospitals across the country, including Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London.
All the action was played out to a soundtrack of some of Britain's most iconic bands - including the Clash, the Rolling Stones, Queen, the Sex Pistols and David Bowie - with Sir Paul McCartney performing live at the show's close.
The athletes taking part in the Games - led by Greece, the Olympics' spiritual home - made laps of the stadium bearing their nations' flags.
A Red Arrows fly-past marked the start of the pre-show at the symbolic time of 20:12 BST (19:12 GMT).
And Bradley Wiggins, wearing a yellow jersey, rang the world's largest harmonically-tuned bell to launch the opening ceremony.
As the 'Isles of Wonder' show began, artistic director Danny Boyle pledged a ceremony with a theme of "this is for everyone".
The Oscar-winning film director later tweeted: "Thank you, everyone, for your kind words! Means the world to me."
Earlier, crowds of people, many of them dressed in their nation's colours, streamed into the Olympic Park for the show.
The BBC's Claire Heald, at the stadium, said transport ran smoothly and the crowds moved quickly through security.
The day of celebration began at 08:12 BST (07:12 GMT) with a mass bell ringing. Big Ben rang for three minutes for the first time since King George VI's funeral in 1952.
In other developments:
Conservative MP Aidan Burley defends a tweet in which he referred to "leftie multi-cultural" rubbish in the Olympic opening ceremony, saying it was "misunderstood"
A number of cyclists were arrested during scuffles with police close to the Olympic Stadium as the opening ceremony got under way
A celebratory concert featuring Paolo Nutini, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics and Duran Duran was held in Hyde Park
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt narrowly avoided hitting a group of women with a bell after it flew off its handle on HMS Belfast during the co-ordinated ringing - he called the moment a "classic"
The three-and-a-half hour show was rehearsed more than 200 times, with each of the 7,500 volunteers spending on average 150 hours practising during the build-up.
The event used 12,956 props and boasted a million-watt PA system using more than 500 speakers.
Thousands of fans also gathered at other outdoor locations across the capital to watch the show on big screens. | <urn:uuid:2b692db1-8553-447b-91ce-7ccfabef7b36> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.medeshivalley.com/2012/07/london-athletes-light-up-olympic-games.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957453 | 1,040 | 1.601563 | 2 |
SAR, Vol 9, No 2, November 1993
THE SANCTIONS END GAME
BY DON RAY
Don Ray teaches political science at the University of Calgary and is an active member of Calgary's Committee Against Racism (CAR)
Now that, in the wake of Nelson Mandela's well-publicized appearance before the United Nations, sanctions against South Africa are fast disappearing, it's interesting to take a look at just how eagerly, in the final days of those sanctions, the Canada's Conservative government viewed the prospect of ending them. The Tories would no doubt argue that they deserve merely unalloyed praise for their having implemented sanctions in the first place. Yet those who have followed the issue closely will know that the Tory government, all along, did much to minimize their effectiveness. The manner of their playing out the sanctions' endgame provides a further revealing footnote to that contradictory record.
Thus, by the end of June 1993, Canadian business was aquiver at the prospect of ending all barriers against Canadian investment and trade with the apartheid regime. After all, President F. W. de Klerk had agreed to an election date (April 27, 1994) to choose a constituent assembly and thereby satisfied one of two major Commonwealth criteria (established at that body's October 1991 meeting) for the ending of sanctions.
The next step, and the second of the criteria, was to be the establishment of a Transitional Executive Council (TEC) to supervise the white government until the elections had taken place. And, as the ANC firmly stated (not least its Canadian chief representative Victor Moche), so long as the TEC was not in place to supervise the elections and effectively remove De Klerk's ability to manipulate their outcome through his control of government structures, there was no way it could be said that the second criterion had been met.
Enter the Canadian government. Despite the fact that this was a period when negotiations between De Klerk's government and the ANC to set up a TEC were still fraught with tension, strong rumours began leaking out of Ottawa that External Affairs Minister Perrin Beatty was about to announce the end of sanctions.
Not surprisingly, Canadian solidarity groups (including Calgary's Committee Against Racism/CAR) - committed to the premise that Canada should respect the Commonwealth criteria - became anxious that the government not jump the gun. For CAR, an invitation at the end of June to appear on CBC television phone-in show to discuss whether or not sanctions were a "good thing" prompted us to devise our own strategy. We believed that sanctions should be dismantled gradually in exchange for concessions from the apartheid regime and we didn't believe that the election call was enough of a step. We said as much on the air. In contrast, an apartheid diplomat, also guesting on the show, merely appealed to Canadians to come to South Africa and invest. But he did so without much apparent success; by the end of the programme, most callers were arguing vigorously for continuing sanctions. There were also other kinds of efforts to mobilize anti-apartheid sentiment, locally and nationally, on this issue - with phone calls and faxed messages to Beatty and other government officials in Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal.
At this time, Canada's remaining sanctions referred to trade and investment, financial loans, and arms sales. External Affairs responded to our pressure by pointing out that the UN mandatory arms embargo on exports to South Africa would remain in place until revoked by the UN and "a post-apartheid South African government is firmly established, with full democratic control and accountability" (External Affairs, News Release No. 139, July 2, 1993). And it repeated its (somewhat misleading) claims as to how much it had done on other fronts, notably trade and investment - while also telling CAR that even its entirely voluntary ban on private investment and bank credit to South Africa had worked, since the banks had closely adhered to this ban for fear of having to answer questions from their shareholders. (Here was an unsolicited testimonial to the work of solidarity organizations like CAR, the Task Force on the Church and Corporate Responsibility, TCLSAC, ICCAF and a host of others who had fought hard to make sure the banks heard from their shareholders!)
Yet by late July the direction in which the Canadian government was moving on the issue of sanctions was an open secret. In an important article, the Globe and Mail's Foreign Affairs Reporter, Linda Hossie, underscored (July 20, 1993) the difference between the ANC's position ("sanctions to be lifted only after a transitional executive is in place and working to prepare for elections") and "Canada's position [which] is to lift sanctions as soon as there is agreement on the formation of the council." She also cited one veteran Canadian academic observer who reinforced the point that "waiting until the [TEC] is up and running will make the progress towards democracy irreversible . . . To settle for anything less is to risk a political reversal at the last moment."
As it happens, the government's push during the summer months to lift sanctions (as encouraged by the Canadian Exporters Association) did show itself to be unseemly. In July, South Africa exploded in the violence that produced a death toll that was the highest since August 1990 (another moment, ironically, when it had looked as though negotiations would bring peace). This turmoil, together with the resistance here at home, sidelined any announcement of a TEC and stalled Canada's end-the-sanctions plan - although External Affairs again "specified agreement as the trigger point [that would prompt it to end sanctions], not the establishment of an interim government."
Of course, only a few weeks were to pass before the ANC itself called for an end to sanctions. And it did so at a point when, in fact, only agreement on the TEC, rather than its full established, had been reached. Had the threatened erosion of the position of countries like Canada been one of the factors that forced the ANC's hand in this respect? We may have a clearer answer to this in time. What might be claimed now is that the Canadian solidarity movement had played at least some role - and not for the first time - in forcing our government to live up a little more firmly to its rhetorical commitments than might otherwise have been the case.
- 30 -
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s) and not do necessarily reflect the views of the AfricaFiles' editors and network members. They are included in our material as a reflection of a diversity of views and a variety of issues. Material written specifically for AfricaFiles may be edited for length, clarity or inaccuracies. | <urn:uuid:304d64be-ccdd-433e-95a6-147725149291> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=4038 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97804 | 1,367 | 1.625 | 2 |
Rosamund Elwin and Michele Paulse. Illustrated by Dawn Lee.
Volume 19 Number 3
I am assuming this book for young readers is about having a mother who is gay and in a stable, long-term relationship with another woman. If that assumption is correct, then Asha's Mums will fill a void in that subject area for children. And it will also raise awareness about having different kinds of families and different kinds of relationships. But this book may also raise questions that were brought up but not answered in the simple text, and chances are good that children will be a little confused at the end of this rather didactic tale.
I would have thought a teacher attaching the title Ms. to her name would not question the inclusion of two names, instead of the customary one, on a permission form. And to add insult to injury, Ms. Samuels threatens Asha with forfeiture of the special trip to the science Centre if she doesn't bring back the form filled out correctly. All this happens during class within earshot of Asha's classmates, who are naturally curious. It certainly shows the teacher to be lacking in sensitivity and awareness.
I found the story slightly contrived, I as though getting their message across was the authors' sole purpose. The ending of the story is positive, with Asha's classmates full of curiosity and Asha full of happiness.
Dawn Lee's illustrations are not very appealing or expressive. The text mentions in detail a "favourite red sweat suit and yellow and white sneakers with hearts on the side," yet in the accompanying illustration of Asha there is no colour, no sweat suit and no patterned sneakers. Consequently, there is no connection and no reinforcement from text to illustration.
This book could be useful with the right resource person discussing it, since there are so few books about non-heterosexual relationships for this age group.
Marilyn Aldworth, North Vancouver School District, North Vancouver, BC.
1971-1979 | 1980-1985 | 1986-1990 | 1991-1995
The materials in this archive are copyright © The Manitoba Library Association. Reproduction for personal use is permitted only if this copyright notice is maintained. Any other reproduction is prohibited without permission Copyright information for reviewers
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Turn back the downward spiral of burnout Credit: Gary Newkirk/Allsport
Work out for any length of time and your bound to face it sooner or later ? the dreaded condition known simply as ?burnout.? No matter how enthusiastically you start out, and no matter how much you love working out, eventually you will hit a period when going to the gym doesn?t sound all that appealing.
This really isn?t surprising considering that most gym-goers tend to follow the same basic workout program for months and even years on end. If you had the same thing for breakfast every day you?d eventually get tired of it too, wouldn?t you? What makes your exercise program any different?
Humans thrive on change and variety, both physically and mentally. Our bodies need different stimuli in order to continue progressing. Keep doing the same program and your body will get used to it and your fitness levels will plateau. Perhaps even more importantly, our minds need the change to stay interested.
Just like riding a bike eventually became a mindless task once you got used to it, doing the same routine over and over again will result in your workouts becoming mindless tasks as well. Simply taking time off and coming back to the same old routine won?t solve this problem. Only by varying your workout techniques can you avoid this.
Sensing this growing trend among exercisers, progressive personal trainers everywhere have started to integrate some unconventional workout methods into a client?s overall program. Drawing from sports other than bodybuilding, in many cases these trainers have taken workouts outside the gym, adding to the program?s overall enjoyment in the process.
One of the most versatile and useful locations is the local track. Using a few portable pieces of equipment and a stopwatch, trainers have taken fitness to a new level, adding components of speed and agility to their client?s workouts.
Sprint training is also referred to as interval training in some circles, but no matter what you call it the benefits are numerous to say the least.
From a functional standpoint, sprinting just plain gets you moving faster. This translates over to a lot of everyday activities. From something as simple as running around to keep up with the kids to sprinting for a bus you?re late for, sprint training teaches the body to move quickly and fluidly again, something most people forget how to do as they age.
From an aesthetic standpoint, sprint training will firm the glutes and hamstrings better than any exercise you can do in a regular gym setting. Just take a look at the outstanding hamstring/glute development on a world-class sprinter.
Sprint training can also replace a few regular aerobics sessions. It takes less time to complete and burns just as many calories, if not more, than the more conventional, slower-paced aerobics.
One of the most common ways to ease into sprint training is to start with five sets of 25-meter dashes with 30-60 seconds rest between each one. You should work up gradually, adding 5-10 meters every few weeks until you have built up to 50 meters.
Once you have completed five sets of 50-meter dashes, start to add an extra set to the workout. Once you can complete 10 sets of 50-meter dashes, start to add 5-10 meters every few weeks once again until you reach the goal of 10 sets of 100-meter dashes.
You will need a good pair of running shoes for this, and individuals with high blood pressure or heart problems should avoid this type of training.
Plyometrics have been used in athletic programs for some time now and their inclusion in general fitness programs is beginning to pick up as well.
Much like sprint training, plyometrics help reverse the slowing down process many individuals go through as they age. By working on and strengthening the nervous system, plyometrics re-teach the body to move quickly and explosively.
Usually consisting of various jumping drills for lower body and medicine ball drills for upper body, plyometrics are being enthusiastically accepted as an integral part of many training programs. People find them to be very fun and exciting, and trainers are finding that their client retention is higher among those who use plyometric drills.
Plyometrics are not for everyone, however, and should only be undertaken after a you have built a strong base level of fitness. They also follow very different rules than more conventional exercises do.
First and foremost, they should never be performed ?to failure.? A set should consist of no more than 10-15 repetitions and must be stopped if speed and form can no longer be maintained.
Training to failure with plyometrics is counterproductive and very dangerous. Sets and rest intervals can vary depending on your goals and fitness levels.
Dr. Donald Chu is one of the leading experts on plyometric training, and his book Plyometric Exercises With the Medicine Ball is a must-read for anyone looking to integrate this training method into a strength program.
Most often used by football players, agility drills are another sport-specific training method that is gaining popularity among non-athletes.
Much like the previous two training methods, agility drills are designed to get someone moving faster and more fluidly. Ranging from something as simple as running backwards to the common shuttle run, these drills can be rather simple and fun to learn and implement.
One of the most common drills implemented makes use of the lines on the football field, usually found at the center of the track field. If no football field is available, some people will also set up small cones at distances similar to the lines on a football field.
Called "line runs" by some, this drill starts you at the goal line, running to the fifth line (25-yard line) on the field. After quickly reaching down and touching the line, reverse direction and run back to the goal line.
After touching the goal line, reverse direction and run to the forth line (20-yard line) on the field, repeat the touch, reverse and dash until you have worked your way down to the last line (5-yard line).
One to two sets are all that is necessary when starting out but, as clients progress, extra sets and longer distances are added to increase the intensity level.
There is a lot more that can go into an exercise program than simply spending three days in the weight room and three days on the treadmill. Over 80 percent of those who undertake an exercise and diet program give it up in the first year, mainly because their results stopped coming, and the routine got boring.
Considering how easy it can be to use some or all of the above suggestions to spice up an exercise program, this new trend is one that is bound to help us improve on the success rate.
Copy provided by International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA).
Shop for fitness equipment in the Active Sports Mecca
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Twitter basics for Farmers Ranchers and Dairymen
17 Tuesday Jan 2012
I get asked all the time how twitter works. So instead of explaining it to each one of you individually I will jot down the few things you need to know about the basics of Twitter. I find Twitter 1000x better on a smart phone than on a pc. Here it goes:
Twitter is NOT Facebook
Come to twitter for information and NOT gossip like facebook! Everyday I am amazed at the information on twitter – if you follow the right people! It is the best place to be for information with all things agriculture! You don’t come to twitter to find old friends, but people that are interested in the same things you are.
Add a Avatar – profile picture *Very Important*
Just add a picture! To be taken serious at all please don’t be an “egg head”. Don’t ask why – just do it!
Add a small description of yourself *Very Important*
Add a description to your profile so people know what you are about. They want to know your interest. Again, don’t ask why – just do it!
Find people to follow
Twitter is useless unless you follow people. People are defined by a “@” in front of their names (Twitter handle). Again Twitter is not Facebook – don’t be scared to follow people. They want more followers and will be very happy that you are following them. Here are a few people to follow in the agriculture community. Again, don’t ask why – just do it! @JeffFowle @KMRivard @RayProck @gilmerdairy @IndianaGrainCo Now go to their profiles and see who they are talking to. There you will find other people you will want to follow. Oh yeah – don’t forget to follow @FunWithBulls and @SDBreeders too!
Tweet something – anything! Your followers will see this in their timelines. Actually the whole world can see these tweets if they happen to be searching for the terms you are using. 140 Characters only. Why? I don’t know! But it keeps your timeline with short and sweet tweets. Don’t complain – just deal with it! If you try to tweet something and it won’t tweet – its because you are over 140 characters and you need to shorten it.
If you see a tweet you want to respond to – press Reply on that individual tweet. It will automatically place their twitter handle in the tweet. YES! You have to have that there or the people you are Replying to won’t know you are replying to their tweet and you won’t get a response back!
AKA as a RT. You RT tweets that you like, agree with or just find funny. Yes! You will be RT people as time goes on. On mobile devises you can “quote RT” You use this to add to a tweet. You will figure this out as time goes on. Again don’t ask to many questions….
These are basically punctuations and topics. They are usually added to tweets so people know exactly what they are tweeting about without needing to explain it. Some great Ag Hashtags are: #agchat #agvocate #agnerd #dairy #beef #foodchat #ranchlife #agproud You will find more hashtags as you go along. If you search these you will find great people to follow who are talking about these topics!
You will get followers – be proud! Yes! You will get spammers following you – don’t worry about them they are harmless! You can report and block them if you want, but they usually disappear over time.
You can DM someone if you want to keep a conversation private. Only you and the person you are DMing can see these tweets. If you get a DM from someone that you know that says “have you seen what people are talking about you” or “Have you seen this picture of you” or similar messages – DO NOT click on the link. They got hacked and you will too! If you get hacked just change your password right away.
I hope this helps all you new people to Twitter and please comment below if you have any questions! And don’t forget to subscribe to my blog! | <urn:uuid:f156fa2e-8ca4-413c-8abe-f963344527cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://funwithbulls.com/twitter-basics-for-farmers-ranchers-and-dairymen/ | 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 | 0.925095 | 912 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Strange Water, Strange Towers
The waters are clear and very heavy. When still, it looks like oil, it is so thick, and it is not easily disturbed. The water feels slippery to the touch and will wash grease from the hands, even when cold, more readily than common hot water and soap. I washed some woolens in it, and it was easier and quicker than any "suds" I ever saw. . . I took a bath in the lake; one swims very easily in the heavy water, but it feels slippery on the skin and smarts the eyes.
California Geological Survey, 1863
NO WAY OUT
Why is Mono Lake water so salty? Mountains surround Mono Lake forming a closed hydrological basin--water flows into the lake, but it doesn't flow out. The only way for water to leave Mono Lake is through evaporation. Four vertical feet of water can evaporate off of Mono Lake during the course of a year, and without fresh water streams to replace the evaporated water there would be no lake. Freshwater streams and underwater springs have brought trace amounts of minerals into Mono over the eons. Because the lake has no outlet, it is naturally saline. An estimated 280 million tons of solids are dissolved within the lake, and it is 2-3 times saltier than the ocean depending on its water level fluctuation over the years. Periodic eruptions of volcanic ash have also added considerably to Mono's chemical mix.
GREAT BASIN CHEMISTRY
As with most lakes, Mono Lake has a chemistry unique in all the world. Within Mono's waters are dissolved sodium salts of chlorides, carbonates and sulfates (Mono Lake has a lot of salt and baking soda in it). In contrast, the Great Salt Lake contains abundant chloride but relatively no carbonates. Mono Lake is also rich in borate and potassium (boron concentrations among the highest ever recorded for a lake). Mono is one of the few remaining inland lakes in the Great Basin, a large geographical region with no outlet to the ocean. Mono Lake, Great Salt Lake in Utah, and Lake Abert in Oregon are the last few large hyper saline lakes in the Great Basin that host productive ecosystems and large numbers of migrating birds.
A SOAP TO BE RECKONED WITH
High concentrations of carbonates in Mono Lake make it very alkaline. The pH of Mono Lake is approximately 10 (this measure of alkalinity is roughly equivalent to household glass cleaner). Because of this high alkalinity, Mono Lake water tastes bitter and feels slippery. Some observers of Mono Lake water claim it feels and behaves a lot like soapy water (sulfates and carbonates are a factor). William Brewer no doubt found this to be the case; however, you may not wish to repeat Mr. Brewer's laundry experiment--Mono Lake water has a high enough pH to deteriorate clothing and footwear after repeated soakings.
MONO'S SECRET RECIPE
You can make a close approximation of Mono Lake water at home or in the classroom: begin with one gallon of pure water, add 18 tablespoons of baking soda, ten tablespoons of table salt, 8 teaspoons of Epsom salt, and a pinch of borax or laundry detergent (in order to make tufa, just add fresh water containing dissolved calcium chloride). If you wanted to concoct a more accurate approximation of Mono Lake water, you might consider adding trace amounts of strontium, magnesium, calcium, fluoride, arsenic, lithium, iodine, and tungsten. If you really wanted to get picky, you might also throw in an abnormally high amount of the radioisotope carbon-14, a smidgen of uranium, thorium, and plutonium! Beginning to sound dangerous? It's not--because of extremely low concentrations. But why is plutonium, a man-made radioactive element, even present in Mono Lake at all?
A CHEMICAL JIGSAW PUZZLE
For as much as we understand about Mono Lake's chemistry, there is still much that we do not.
Temperature, wind, climatic variations, underwater springs, and even biological activity can affect Mono Lake's chemistry at different depths, locations and seasons. We are only just beginning to understand the more subtle changes in the lake's chemistry. A USGS scientist who had been studying Mono Lake chemistry for many years once remarked, "Every year there are new surprises." With such a unique chemical signature, Mono Lake will no doubt continue to provoke scientific study.
Current Lake Level (feet above sea level):
Predicted Salinity at 6383'(g/l): 80.8 (8.1%)
Lake Ph: 9.8
Click here for more statistics! | <urn:uuid:d3db24d9-4752-4f04-9a58-72c102cf1319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.monolake.org/about/geolake | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93432 | 973 | 2.9375 | 3 |
In October 2010, the Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega made news by claiming an "international currency war" had broken out.
According to Mantega, countries worldwide were simultaneously attempting to force down the value of their money in order to reduce the price of their products sold in foreign markets.
Central banks in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan had recently intervened in currency markets to control their currencies' appreciation. The Bank of England, similarly, had encouraged the pound to fall since 2008. The Swiss National Bank had intervened in foreign exchange markets as well.
For Mantega, such maneuvers signaled that these and other countries were entering into a competitive spiral of devaluations in an effort to export their way out of the ongoing economic slump.
And the inescapable conclusion for him and other finance ministers was that no country could gain if all countries devalued their currencies at once. They feared that such fiddling with currency would only serve to damage those countries most dependent on exports (such as Brazil), and increase political tensions worldwide.
The term "currency war" promptly became a global buzz phrase. Commentators and public officials—like Dominque Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and his counterpart at the World Bank, Robert Zoellick—warned about the dangers of conflicts over money. Such wars, they argued alarmingly, had proven disastrous historically and, most chillingly, had worsened, if not actually caused, the Great Depression.
Despite the hyperbole, currency wars as described by Mantega--where the world's leading economies race together to depreciate their currencies--are, in fact, exceptionally rare historically.
Currency manipulation and selective devaluations to promote exports, growth, and employment, however, are not. Nor are the fears of established economic and political powers that perceived up-and-coming rivals will unseat them from their economic thrones.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has enjoyed the "exorbitant privilege" (in the words of France's 1970s President Valery Giscard d'Estaing) of having the dollar as the world's default currency. And the U.S. government has held the position that it is the responsibility of other countries to adapt to the perceived needs of the United States, rather than vice versa.
As the then Secretary of the Treasury John Connally famously put it to European officials critical of the inflationary effects of U.S. currency policy on their own economies in the early 1970s, "The dollar is our currency, but your problem."
International tensions surrounding currency competition, and the dollar's privileged status, were apparent at the G20 Summit in Seoul in November 2010.
In advance of the summit, the U.S. central bank--the Federal Reserve--announced that it would be purchasing government bonds in a maneuver called "quantitative easing."
This policy entailed multiplying the number of dollars in circulation in order to buy these bonds, with an end result of depreciating the dollar relative to other currencies. It also meant that excess dollars would likely flow to foreign markets such as Brazil, China, and Korea adding to price inflation and financial instability in those countries unless they acted to block the inflows.
In addition, the Obama administration hoped to use the Seoul G20 Summit to wage its own form of "currency war" by applying pressure on China to increase the value of its currency--the renminbi--and thus, indirectly, cause the dollar to depreciate. The U.S. has long argued that China itself was a currency warrior, which had fired the first shots in the money wars by consistently undervaluing the renminbi.
Rather than addressing this highly sensitive political issue directly, the U.S. administration sought to establish new international rules requiring countries to limit their trade surpluses.
Effectively such rules would mean that surplus countries like China would have to institute policies to cause their currencies to appreciate relative to the dollar. American officials hoped that this would increase U.S. exports, growth, and employment without the United States having to make economic or budgetary changes of its own. | <urn:uuid:53ca7537-fc91-40e5-9d51-8d911ea9db1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://origins.osu.edu/article/currency-wars-or-why-you-should-care-about-global-struggle-over-value-money | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964594 | 844 | 2.3125 | 2 |
The inventor of the RU-486 abortion pill, French Professor Emile-Etienne Baulieu, holds some pills in this 1995 file photo. / Remy de la Mauviniere, AP
INDIANAPOLIS - Women who want a prescription for an abortion-inducing drug would be required to undergo an ultrasound before and after taking the drug if a bill that an Indiana Senate committee approved Wednesday becomes law.
Though the bill doesn't specify a transvaginal ultrasound, in which a several-inch-long probe is inserted through the birth canal to the woman's uterus, that's exactly what Indiana would be requiring because of the early age of the fetus, said Dr. John Stutsman, an Indiana University School of Medicine professor and obstetrician-gynecologist.
Eight states - Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia - now require women who have an abortion to have an ultrasound, some of which are transvaginal, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which monitors sexual and reproductive health issues in state legislatures. Two other states, North Carolina and Oklahoma, have passed mandatory-ultrasound laws that courts have suspended pending challenges.
Last year, Virginia lawmakers' efforts to require transvaginal ultrasounds before an abortion generated such adverse publicity that the state's governor asked the General Assembly to amend its bill to make sure that no woman would have to have such an ultrasound involuntarily.
Ultrasound bills have been introduced in nine states this year, the institute said. The Arkansas Senate approved a bill last month prohibiting abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detectable via a transvaginal ultrasound, which if it becomes law, would be the earliest point in a pregnancy in which abortion would be banned.
The ultrasound provision included in Indiana Senate Bill 371 also would require any clinic that dispenses the drug known as RU-486 to meet the same requirements as a clinic that performs surgical abortions though physicians' offices would be exempt.
Those requirements potentially would force the Planned Parenthood clinic in Lafayette, Ind., to close, opponents say. That clinic offers the abortion pill but does not perform surgical abortions. If the bill passes, the clinic would have to widen hallways and doorways to meet state specifications for surgery and install anesthesia, surgical and sterilization equipment.
Indiana Sen. Travis Holdman, a Republican from Markle, Ind., who wrote the bill, said the measure is intended to ensure women's safety.
Pushing back against senators Wednesday who questioned why the heightened standards would apply only to RU-486 and not to other prescription medicines dispensed in clinics, Holdman said abortion is different.
It involves "another human life," he said.
But the bill's opponents said it jeopardizes the lives of Indiana women by making the drug harder to get, leading some to get unsafe drugs from the Internet.
Ultrasounds are not considered medically necessary for first-trimester abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says.
"The requirements appear to be a veiled attempt to personify the fetus and dissuade a woman from obtaining an abortion," its policy paper says. Mandatory ultrasounds, often not covered by insurance, also can add significantly to the cost of a procedure.
Stutsman and Dr. Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, who also teaches at IU's Medical School, said the measure would require invasive, unnecessary ultrasounds. Under the bill, any physician prescribing an abortion-inducing drug would have to do an examination, including an ultrasound, and schedule a follow-up appointment that includes a second ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy was terminated.
While the woman is not required to keep that appointment, the physician must make a "reasonable effort" to ensure she does.
In his testimony, and in a letter Edmonds sent to the committee, both said better methods to determine if a woman is still pregnant after any attempted abortion, including blood and urine tests.
"I can only assume that the ultrasound mandate - a mandate for a costly, invasive test that confers no medical benefit to the woman subjected to it - speaks to the lack of clinical understanding and expertise of the authors of the bill," Edmonds wrote. "If not for lack of understanding, I would have to conclude that the mandate speaks to a lack of regard for the bodily sanctity and integrity of Hoosier women at large."
RU-486 is typically given in the earliest weeks of pregnancy, up to about nine weeks, Stutsman said.
Because of the small size of the uterus at that time in the pregnancy, he said a transvaginal ultrasound provides the best image. A regular ultrasound, taken over the skin of the abdomen, provides a better image at about 10 weeks.
Indiana law already requires those who perform surgical abortions to give ultrasounds to their patients although the Guttmacher Institute's list considers the law to require offering ultrasounds to women. Betty Cockrum, head of Planned Parenthood in Indiana, said about a third of those are early enough that they require a transvaginal ultrasound.
Attempts to reach Holdman after the hearing to determine whether he intended women obtaining RU-486 to undergo the more invasive transvaginal procedure were unsuccessful.
But at the hearing, he and supporters of the bill, including Indiana Right to Life, argued that drug-induced abortion is dangerous and should be regulated.
"I realize bills of this nature, folks have very firm beliefs on what we should or shouldn't be doing," Holdman said. "We are not requiring or practicing medicine without a license as some have alleged. ... We're just trying to control and regulate abortion-inducing drugs, which heretofore have not been regulated by the state of Indiana. I don't believe we're asking for anything that's unreasonable. We're talking about the life of the mother and the child."
Sue Swayze, legislative director for Indiana Right to Life, said RU-486 has become more prevalent as fewer doctors perform surgical abortions, but any physician can prescribe this drug.
Surgical abortions have a lower failure rate than those induced by a drug, she said.
"I'm not here to pitch surgical abortions by any stretch of the imagination," she said. "But if a woman's choosing that abortion, I'd much rather choose to see her choose a safer surgical abortion."
The senators were read a letter from a New York woman, identified only as Leslie, who said she had an abortion from RU-486 and that it caused her "the worst pain I've ever felt in my life" and lasting emotional pain.
"RU-486 is not a simple solution to a problem. It is a horrible drug," she wrote, urging senators to make it harder to obtain.
Others, though, told the senators that the drug is safe.
"In reality, the medication has a lower medical incidence rate than taking Tylenol," said Reba Boyd Wooden, executive director for the Center for Inquiry Indiana.
And Dr. Sue Ellen Braunlin, an anesthesiologist, called the bill "a fraud."
"It creates a health risk in a nearly risk-free treatment, and it does so to exert social control," she said.
By decreasing the number of providers who prescribe the pill or whose clinics do not meet the surgical standards in the bill, she predicted people will go online and obtain unsafe medications.
The committee also passed SB 489, authored by Sen. Mike Young, R-Indianapolis, which among other things mandates that clinics give women the already-required informed consent form, including illustrations, in color and not in black and white. Young said the bill also removes a provision in state law that requires women to listen to the fetal heartbeat.
"I don't want to force anybody to do anything against their will," Young said.
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Indiana bill wants ultrasounds with abortion pills | <urn:uuid:1135a07c-074f-451b-8c22-1e6cf20e560e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sctimes.com/usatoday/article/1935879 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959281 | 1,619 | 1.820313 | 2 |
President Obama on Friday evening formally ordered what he characterized earlier in the day as a "series of dumb, arbitrary cuts."
Known officially as sequestration, the president's order canceled $85 billion in federal funding over the next seven months.
As required, the White House budget office also sent to Congress a report detailing the magnitude of cuts that federal agencies will have to make.
In aggregate, defense spending must be cut by 13% over the next seven months and nondefense programs must be cut by 9%. Those percentage cuts will apply to all non-exempt programs, projects and activities.
In dollars, the spending reduction must be split evenly between defense and nondefense -- as a result, each category will lose nearly $43 billion in funding.
Some key areas of spending will be protected from the budget ax -- most notably military personnel, Medicare and Social Security benefits, as well as Medicaid and food stamps.
The funding reductions would come primarily from what's known as discretionary accounts, which make up the smallest part of the overall federal budget, accounting for a little over a third of all spending.
Discretionary spending supports a vast array of federal agencies from the FBI to the FDA to the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as education programs across the country.
Few would dispute Obama's characterization of the cuts. In fact, it's one of the few things about the so-called sequester that Democrats and Republicans agree on. They failed to agree on how to replace them, however.
Both chambers of Congress passed the sequester as part of the deal that put an end to the ugly fight over the debt ceiling in 2011. | <urn:uuid:4c7b51f3-5db7-4184-9b52-634345981b33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kitv.com/news/money/Obama-signs-order-triggering-spending-cuts/-/8905154/19147270/-/h0buoxz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960205 | 334 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Sony passed a notebook called the PCG-3111L through the FCC today. This model number doesn’t tell us much, however the device’s test report shows the use of a VGP-AC19V32 AC adapter – the same adapter used for Sony’s existing Z Series notebooks.
Specs on the PCG-3111L are hard to come by, but we do know that the device will rock a Gobi2000 processor from Qualcomm for worldwide 3G connectivity and GPS. The PCG-3111L will also have an optical drive, suggesting that it won’t be the smallest notebook on the block.
Toshiba’s NB line of netbooks has been well received. Their current model, the NB200 has won editor’s choice awards from Laptop Mag and PC Mag. Today, Toshiba passed their upcoming netbook, the NB300, through the FCC. While there isn’t much info available in FCC filings, what we do see looks good.
Like the NB200, the NB300 will have a 10.1 inch screen. However, Toshiba upgrades the NB300 with Qualcomm’s Gobi2000 chipset, giving the device broad coverage of 3G bands, including EVDO, WCDMA/HSPA, as well as CDMA2000 and EDGE. The Gobi2000 features GPS as well, an added plus for the navigationally challenged.
Judging from label pics of the NB300, the device will be about the same size as the NB200. Other than that, there’s not much else to report on. Toshiba hasn’t formally announced the NB300, and the filing today seems a bit too late for a Christmas release. But if the NB300 comes out in 2010, it may feature an Intel Atom PineView, which will definitely be worth the wait.
This notebook from Sony passed through the FCC today, thanks to a filing by Atheros. According to label pics, this device is known as the PCG-21212L. The test report further shows that the base model for this device is PCG-2121, with the next two characters varying based on the device’s specs.
The test report of the PCG-21212L shows that the device will feature 3G WWAN powered by a Qualcomm Gobi2000. The device will also have 802.11 b/g/n WiFi from Atheros, as well as Bluetooth.
FCC documents don’t give us much more info about the PCG-21212L, and as far as we can tell this is a yet-to-be-released notebook from Sony. The test report does note that the device uses Sony VGP-BPL18 and VPG-BPS18 batteries, however. To this point, these batteries have been used exclusively for Sony Vaio W series netbooks, so this may actually be another netbook model from Sony.
Qualcomm passed their Gobi2000 wireless module through the FCC today. The device promises users global 3G with support for a broad range of wireless standards, including GSM/EDGE, CDMA/EVDO and WCDMA/HSPA, in both US and international bands. That’s a huge benefit for globetrotting business users. The Gobi2000 also packs in GPS capabilities, as well.
Lenovo has already announced that the Gobi2000 will be available in X, T and W Series ThinkPads, and other laptop vendors such as HP are expected to follow suit.
Gobi2000 laptops are expected to arrive in early 2010. | <urn:uuid:3056bbbd-ef4e-468a-a709-aec9dccaba96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wirelessgoodness.com/tag/gobi2000/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948771 | 754 | 1.53125 | 2 |
WebMD Medical News
Louise Chang, MD
Dec. 14, 2010 -- Forget Facebook, it's the thousands of close encounters within real, live social networks at high schools that could prove dangerous to students' health.
A new study shows that on a typical day high school students engage in thousands of social interactions that put them at risk for spreading disease and could spur a pandemic flu outbreak.
Researchers say any interaction between two people within 10 feet of each other has the potential to spread infections, such as influenza, common colds, and whooping cough, via droplets transmitted by sneezing, coughing, or direct contact.
They recorded more than 762,000 such close encounters with the potential to spread disease on an average school day at a U.S. high school. Most of the interactions occurred within small social networks of students, and there were frequent repeated contacts within each group.
"Schools are particularly vulnerable to infectious disease spread because of the high frequency of close proximity interactions (CPIs) that most infectious disease transmission depends on," write researcher Marcel Salathe, of Stanford University, and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Droplets from an infected person can reach a susceptible person in close proximity, typically a distance of less than 3 meters [about 10 feet], making CPIs highly relevant for disease spread."
In the study, researchers used wireless sensors on 788 people at the school, including students, teachers, and staff, to track their movement and contacts during a typical day in January. They then used a computer model to simulate the spread of a flu-like illness throughout the school.
Researchers say the results of the simulated flu pandemic fit well with the absentee records from the most recent flu season and suggest that social networks may be used to create more effective immunization strategies and prevent future flu pandemics.
SOURCES:Salathe, M. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec. 13, 2010, online early edition.News release, National Academy of Sciences.
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The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of CW Arkansas
The Health News section does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See additional information. | <urn:uuid:614670f0-49b7-4b45-92ac-dbe6cb91978a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cwarkansas.com/webmd/flu/story/Flu-Spreads-Fast-Among-High-School-Students/n3OazWtZYkKK2iMILh2DpQ.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945679 | 460 | 3.421875 | 3 |
|Recent House Votes|
|Establishing the Rules of the House – Vote Passed (228-196, 5 Not Voting)
After electing the Speaker, the next order of business in organizing the House is traditionally establishing the rules for that Congress. This is typically a prosaic piece of business, but there were several controversial items in the rules package this year. The resolution reauthorizes the Houses Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to continue litigation defending the Defense of Marriage Act in the court system. It also authorizes the Oversight Committee to continue its civil action against Attorney General Eric Holder over documents related to the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. The last controversial provision concerns the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), a panel created by the 2010 health care overhaul to look for ways to lower health care costs. As envisioned in the health care bill, Congress would automatically vote on the panels recommendations; under the rules of the House in the new Congress, it will not be possible to consider those recommendations. The House passed a bill last March to repeal IPAB outright (Roll Call Number 126). It is worth noting that President Obama has not made any nominations to the panel, so it currently has no members and therefore no ability to make recommendations. Democrats attempted to revise the package twice, first with inclusion of a study regarding the voting rights of delegates from the U.S. territories and Puerto Rico, and later with legislative language to create national early voting. Both efforts were voted down.
Hurricane Sandy Relief Suspension – Vote Passed (354-67, 8 Not Voting)
Speaker Boehner caused no small amount of indignation when he adjourned the House at the end of the last Congress without taking up a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy. The delay caused the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to approach its borrowing limit, necessitating this suspension bill to raise the programs borrowing authority by $9.7 billion. The Senate passed the bill by voice vote later in the day. Boehner has pledged that the remainder of the roughly $60 billion in aid would be considered in the House January 15.
January 9, 2013
Perlmutter Watch 1-8-13: Recent Votes | <urn:uuid:b4e69606-f121-4585-87b1-58b63e1f670d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://conservativefirst.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/perlmutter-watch-1-8-13-recent-votes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946611 | 442 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Roumanian Fairy Tales and Legends, by E.B. Mawr, , at sacred-texts.com
MODERN history presents no greater catastrophe, nor one more nobly endured than that of the death of Brancovan. Already this Prince had reigned twenty-five years; an unparallelled event in Wallachian history.
Under this long reign, great ameliorations had been made in every branch of the administration. Laws were regarded, order and security exercised a salutary influence, agriculture flourished, commerce prospered; luxury was introduced in the towns, comfort in the country, magnificence at Court. Added to this material prosperity, was joined the elements of intellectual culture.
From the commencement of his reign, Brancovan, seeing the rising tide of Ottoman oppression submerge, one by one, the last traces of Roumanian independence, meditated, like some of his illustrious predecessors, the absolute freedom of his country.
On the other hand the Sultans, their Viziers, and their minions, contemplated its complete subjugation, in order to profit without obstacle or control, by "the garden and granary of Stamboul."
Both the intelligence and the resources of Brancovan were equal to the great work which he projected. Knowing thoroughly the character of the Turk, possessing immense wealth, wisely accumulated from year to year, notwithstanding the extortions, and the endless exactions of the Suzerain Power, politician enough to interest both the Empire and Russia in his cause, he could, according to all the rules of human prudence, calculate on success. Unhappily, circumstances were against him. The peace of Karlovitz, rendered help from the Empire hopeless, so he looked with confidence towards Russia, which Peter the Great was then making celebrated in Europe; but the jealousy of Cantimir, Prince of Moldavia, and the treaty of the Pruth, broke down all his clever combinations.
The Sublime Porte, informed by its spies of what was taking place at Bucharest, and of the projects of Brancovan, resolved to depose him, to seize his person, and to have him brought to Constantinople, to do with him according to its pleasure. But Brancovan was so rich, that his gold made him
friends even in the heart of the Divan; he sent the Viziers, the Sultan even, such magnificent presents, that they postponed his ruin.
He believed he had surmounted the danger, and credulous in his good fortune, like many other successful men, he remained deaf to the warnings of his friends, the entreaties of his family, even to the presentiments of one of his daughters, who, dying in the flower of her age, before expiring, had the frightful vision of the martyrdom of her father and brothers.
Accusations arriving from Bucharest, complaints covered with false Signatures, hurried on the catastrophe. On March 22, 1714, Capidji Moustafa Aga arrived at Bucharest, bearing the firman of dethronement. He was introduced into the palace with an escort of twelve Tchohodars, secretly armed, with poignards and pistols, and solemnly deposed Brancovan in the throne room, throwing upon his shoulders the black veil, and pronouncing the terrible word Mazil (deposed).
The Turkish Envoy set off again quickly for Constantinople, taking with him, as prisoners, Constantin Brancovan and his family.
On his arrival at Stamboul, the captives were conducted to the castle of the seven towers, a state
prison celebrated in Turkish annals for the multitude of its bloody tragedies. It was the threshold of agony, and agony did not keep them long in waiting.
The Sultan, Achmet III. himself presided at the slaughter, and the unfortunate Brancovan, his soul elevated by the sublimest Christian sentiments, washed, with his blood, any stains that might have been in his life.
By a refinement of savage cruelty, after having tortured the father in the presence of his children, before the father's eyes they cut off the heads, one by one, of his four sons. Each time that the head of these young Princes fell, the Sultan offered to pardon Brancovan, if he would embrace Mahometanism; the heroic father pointed towards heaven, and the slaughter continued. When Brancovan's turn arrived to lay his head on the block, he said with resignation: "If my death comes from God, as a punishment for my sins, His will be done; if it comes from my enemies, may Heaven forgive them." And, deaf to the voice of the Sultan, who still bade him deny his Christ, and with eyes raised to heaven, stood still as a statue! Achmet gave a sign, bright steel glimmered, a jet of blood covered the wall, and the soul of the good old. man had rejoined those of his sons.
There remained yet a sixth victim--a poor little child, the only grandson of Brancovan. Mad with terror, the child hid himself in the Caftan of Bostandjibachi, who, overwhelmed with benefits by the murdered Princes, much against his will, had been forced to be present at all these atrocities.
He had the hardihood to take the boy in his arms, and to cast an imploring look at the Sultan. The ferocious Achmet, regarding the child, and then the five corpses, made a sign of pardon, and so the last heir of this illustrious family was saved.
The heads of the five martyrs, stuck on lances, were carried about in the streets of Stamboul, preceded by heralds, crying, "this is the end of traitors." Their bodies were thrown into the sea, but at nightfall some Christian boatmen drew them out, and they were piously buried in a little Island in the Sea of Marmora.
The domains of Brancovan were confiscated, and his almost fabulous riches were shared between the Sultan, and the instigators of his ruin.
This touching and terrible catastrophe, made a profound impression not only in Wallachia and Moldavia, but throughout Europe. Transmitted from generation to generation, it has passed from history to legend, which is recounted from the Danube
to the Carpathians, in cities and in villages, and at the modest firesides of the Roumanian peasants. The native poet, Alexandri, has made it the subject of one of his most beautiful and touching ballads. | <urn:uuid:fe77bce4-dcff-4e07-a218-fee34684f98c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sacred-texts.com/neu/rft/rft14.htm | 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 | 0.978578 | 1,360 | 2.34375 | 2 |
It began as a sub-prime surprise, then became a credit crunch and is now a global financial crisis. At last week's World Economic Forum at Davos there was much retrospective finger-pointing--Russia and China blamed America, everyone blamed the bankers, the bankers blamed everyone--but little in the way of forward-looking ideas. From where I was sitting, the majority of attendees were still stuck in the Great Repression: deeply anxious, but fundamentally in denial about the nature and magnitude of the problem.
There were the people calling the bottom of the recession by the middle of this year. There were the people claiming India and China would be the engines of recovery. There were the people more worried about inflation than deflation. And, above all, there were the people trusting that Keynes would save us. I heard almost no criticism of the $819 billion stimulus package currently making its way through Congress (and mutating as it does so into something more like a pork barrel). The general assumption seemed to be that practically any kind of government expenditure would be beneficial, provided it was financed by a really big deficit.
There is something desperate about the way people on both sides of the Atlantic are clinging to their dog-eared copies of John Maynard Keynes's General Theory. Uneasily aware that their discipline almost entirely failed to anticipate the current crisis, economists seemed to be regressing to macroeconomic childhood, clutching the multiplier like an old teddy bear.
The harsh reality that is being repressed is this: the Western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Average household sector debt has reached 141 per cent of disposable income in the United States and 177 per cent in the United Kingdom. Worst of all are the banks. Some of the best-known names in American and European finance have balance sheets forty, sixty or even a hundred times the size of their capital. Average U.S. investment bank leverage was above 25 to 1 at the end of 2008. Eurozone bank leverage was more than 30 to 1. British bank balance sheets are equal to a staggering 440 per cent of gross domestic product
The delusion that a crisis of excess debt can be solved by creating more debt is at the heart of the Great Repression. Yet that is precisely what most governments currently propose to do.
The United States could end up running a deficit of more than 10 per cent of GDP this year (adding the cost of the stimulus package to the Congressional Budget's optimistic 8.3 per cent forecast). Nor is that all. Even before Barack Obama entered the White House, his predecessor's administration had already committed $7.8 trillion in the form of loans, investments and guarantees. Now the talk is of a new "Bad Bank" to buy the toxic assets from the banks which, despite the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme, are still in deep trouble. No one seems to have noticed that there is already a Bad Bank. It is called the Federal Reserve System, and its balance sheet has grown by 150 per cent--from just over $900 billion to more than $2 trillion--since this crisis began, partly as a result of purchases of undisclosed assets from banks.
Just how much more toxic waste is out there? Nouriel Roubini puts U.S. banks' projected losses at $1.8 trillion. Even if that estimate is 40 per cent too high, the banks' capital will still be wiped out. A Bad Bank could therefore represent another hole in U.S. public finances more than twice the size of the TARP. And all this is before any account is taken of the unfunded liabilities of the Medicare and Social Security systems, the net present value of which is estimated at around $60-70 trillion. With the economy contracting at a rate (excluding inventory accumulation) of minus 5 per cent, we are on the eve of a public debt explosion which the CBO's forecast--$4 trillion over the next ten years, but peaking at just 54 per cent of GDP--surely understates. The fact that so many other countries are adopting comparable measures means that a flood of new issuance is about to hit national and international bond markets.
The born-again Keynesians seem to have forgotten that their prescription stood the best chance of working in a more or less closed economy. But this is a globalized world, where uncoordinated profligacy by national governments is more likely to generate bond market and currency market volatility than a return to growth. After all, a rising proportion of U.S. public and private borrowing since 2000 has been financed from foreign sources, as a result of negligible domestic saving. The dramatic contraction of world trade means the end of the process of Asian and Middle Eastern reserve accumulation that previously funded American deficits. Already foreign investors are net sellers of long-term U.S. securities. Soon it is going to become painfully clear that new debt is not the solution, but could in fact make matters worse by driving up long-term rates, or pushing down the dollar to the point that Europe and Japan can justly accuse the Americans of "currency manipulation."
There is a better way to go, but is in the opposite direction. The aim must be not to increase debt, but to reduce it. In past debt crises--which usually affected emerging market sovereign debt--this tended to happen in one of two ways. If, say, Argentina had an excessively large domestic debt, denominated in Argentine currency, it could be inflated away. If it was an external debt, then the government simply defaulted on payments and forced the creditors to accept a rescheduling of debt and principal payments.
Today, Argentina is us. Former investment banks and German universal banks are Argentina. American households are Argentina. But it will not be so easy for us to inflate away our debts. The deflationary pressures unleashed by the financial crisis are too strong (consumer prices in the U.S. have now been falling for three consecutive months; the annualized rate of decline for the last quarter of 2008 was minus 12.7 per cent.)
Nor is default quite the same for banks and households as it is for governments. Bankruptcy can be a complicated business. Understandably, monetary authorities are anxious to avoid mass bankruptcies of banks and households, not least because of the knock-on effects on asset prices of distressed sales of assets.
The solution to the debt crisis is not more debt but less debt. Two things must happen. First, banks that are de facto insolvent need to be restructured--a word that is preferable to the old-fashioned "nationalization." Existing shareholders will have face that they have lost their money. Too bad; they should have kept a more vigilant eye on the people running their banks. Government will take control in return for a substantial recapitalization after losses have meaningfully been written down. Bondholders may have to accept either a debt-for-equity swap or a 20 per cent "haircut"--a disappointment, no doubt, but nothing compared with the losses suffered when Lehman Brothers went under.
There are precedents for such drastic action, notably the response to the Swedish banking crisis of the early 1990s. The critical point is to avoid the nightmare of a state-dominated financial sector. The last thing America needs is to have all its banks run like Amtrak or, worse, the Internal Revenue Service. State life-support for moribund dinosaur banks is an expedient designed to avert the disaster of a generalized banking extinction, not a belated victory for socialism in North America. It should not and must not impede the formation of new banks by the private sector. Financial history is, after all, an evolutionary process. When old banks die, new banks swiftly take their place. It is therefore vital that state control does not give the old banks an unfair advantage. So recapitalization must be a once-only event, with no enduring government guarantees or subsidies. And there should be a clear timetable for "re-privatization" within, say, ten years.
The second step we need to take is a generalized conversion of American mortgages to lower-interest rates and longer maturities. Currently around 2.3 million U.S. households face foreclosure. That number is certain to rise. For example, $97 billion of $200 billion of option adjustable-rate mortgages will reset in the next two years. The average monthly payment will increase by more than 60 per cent. As a result, up to 8 million households could be driven into foreclosure, driving down home prices even further. Few of those affected have any realistic prospect of refinancing at more affordable rates. So, once again, what is needed is state intervention.
The idea of modifying mortgages appalls legal purists as a violation of the sanctity of contract. But, as with the principle of eminent domain, there are times when the public interest requires us to honor the rule of law in the breach. Repeatedly in the course of the nineteenth century, governments changed the terms of bonds that they issued through a process known as "conversion." A bond with a five per cent coupon would simply be exchanged for one with a three per cent coupon, to take account of falling market rates and prices. Such procedures were seldom stigmatized as default. Today, in the same way, we need an orderly conversion of adjustable rate mortgages to take account of the fundamentally altered financial environment.
Another objection to such a procedure is that it would reward the imprudent. But moral hazard only really matters if bad behaviour is likely to be repeated. I do not foresee anyone asking for or being given an option adjustable-rate mortgage for many, many years. The issue, then, is simply one of fairness. One solution would be for the government-controlled mortgage lenders and guarantors, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to offer all borrowers--including those on fixed rates--the same deal. Permanently lower monthly payments for a majority of U.S. households would almost certainly do more to stimulate consumer confidence than all the provisions of the stimulus package, including the tax cuts.
Ever since the New Deal, American politicians have proclaimed their faith in the "property-owning democracy" and the "American dream of home-ownership." For years they have actively encouraged the expansion of the sub-prime market. But the result has been an American nightmare. With housing prices still falling precipitously--the latest Case-Shiller index put the annual rate of decline at minus 18 per cent--there is an urgent need for action.
No doubt those who lose by such measures will not suffer in silence. But the benefits of macroeconomic stabilization will surely outweigh the costs to bank shareholders, bank bondholders and the owners of mortgage-backed securities.
Americans, Churchill once remarked, will always do the right thing--after they have exhausted all the other alternatives. But if we are still waiting for Keynes to save us when Davos comes around next year, it may well be too late. Only a Great Restructuring can end the Great Repression. It needs to happen soon. | <urn:uuid:86b3c614-83bb-4a8c-8305-8e468cf219c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.niallferguson.com/journalism/finance-economics/beyond-the-age-of-leverage-new-banks-must-arise | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949373 | 2,287 | 2.046875 | 2 |
One of the most difficult things I’ve had to write recently was a guest post for the Fight! Fight! Fight! blog – a website dedicated to pondering what would happen if fictional characters did battle with one another. Yes, it is a niche market.
Part of my issue was that the page is run by my boyfriend, so I knew that when he gave me a deadline he actually had a few posts in hand and there was no real sense of urgency. If I missed my deadline, something else would take its place.
The other problem I had was that it was not like anything I’ve ever written before. I had a lot of false starts, because it turns out I’ve never written a proper fight scene – my stories and articles are generally pretty light hearted. I had no idea how to make it convincing, so in the end I didn’t bother.
It turns out, therefore, that I don’t actually have any helpful advice to give on the subject of writing a fight scene. Sorry for the misleading title of the post. Still, if you want an example of how not to do it, you should probably check out the site. FYI, you may benefit from familiarity with Pride and Prejudice and a thick skin in terms of creative language, as my fight is between Mr Darcy and Malcolm Tucker.
If you want to write a fight, by the way, he is always looking for contributors – you’ll find contact information on the top right of the Fight! Fight! Fight! page. Hooray for the internet! | <urn:uuid:0cefd303-471f-4828-be9a-da516271bcb8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://12books12months.com/tag/deadlines/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980716 | 329 | 1.507813 | 2 |