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School Board seeks comments on proposals to conserve energy use in school
(download memo in pdf format
September 12, 2008
Over the past few years, Ernie MacVane, our facilities manager, has spent
a great deal of time and effort assessing all of the school system's energy
demands. As a result of this work, many modifications have taken place in
our buildings that have significantly lowered those demands. Even with all
of his work, decreasing demands continue to require larger payments due to
ever increasing unit costs.
During the summer, several members of the school community sat together to
look at the savings. Clearly, we are monitoring:
the use of lights;
temperatures in our buildings;
the use of appliances in our food service departments;
fuel and operating times of our buses, for both transportation to and from
school and travel related to athletic and field trips;
the ever-increasing use of our buildings late into each evening;
control over the use of technology;
copiers and printers after school hours; and,
the focus of money needs of our educational programs versus energy
At the school board meeting on Tuesday, September 9, based on these discussions
and input from a variety of sources, I presented a list of possible areas
1. Remove all electrical appliances, including refrigerators, coffee pots,
microwaves, etc. from classrooms. No individual heating units should be placed
in rooms. Ensure that appropriate appliances are readily available in the
2. Turn off lights in classrooms and other sections of the schools when that
area is not in use.
3. Set daily temperatures in all classrooms at 65 degrees and nighttime levels
at 50 degrees except in areas where activities are occurring. (Daytime
temperature is currently set at 70 degrees). Keep parents well informed of
the temperature changes and ask that staff and students come to school
4. Addressing issues of extreme cold with the maintenance supervisor and
the building administrator. Thermostats/heat sensors should not be changed
except by the maintenance supervisor or his designee, and no one should use
any means to increase the heat except by the maintenance supervisor.
5. Limit after school access to buildings, closing all floors/areas as soon
as possible. Custodial work will be done by areas and, once finished, that
area of the building is locked and lights are turned off.
6. Plan on at least one night per week when the buildings are closed, except
for cleaning. Issues regarding scheduled practices may require the lower
floor of the high school to be open but all precautions need to be taken
to avoid unnecessary use of energy.
7. Staff who stay late in their classrooms will know that custodial services
to their rooms will have to be completed on a timely basis and that there
may be some interruption.
8. All computers, copiers, printers, etc. should be turned off completely
at the end of the day.
9. Students in buildings must be supervised by an adult at all times and
that adult must ensure, prior to leaving, that all lights are turned off
and all doors and windows are appropriately shut and locked. Avoiding any
additional cold air into the building must be carefully monitored.
10. The possibility of moving to a four-day week, at least in the winter
months, was the subject on a recent article in the Portland Press Herald.
The lengthening of these school days by at least 90 minutes was proposed.
Although this may be a logical decision for some districts with extremely
long bus routes and very high energy costs, we must first consider several
issues including demands of:
a. Academically appropriate realignment of programs to meet each student's
b. Day care services for the no school days versus day care changes for elongated
c. Athletic program schedules and either limiting to certain non-academic
times or changing plans for participating on academic days; and
d. Aligned curriculum and instruction to meet all student needs.
The feedback of staff, parents, students and the general public is welcome.
Please send your comments to my administrative assistant, Andrea Fuller,
of the School Board.
Although energy prices continue to fluctuate, we know that the demands and
costs will continue to affect our spending on energy.
Alan H. Hawkins | <urn:uuid:e3ce7e3c-1a28-4ddb-97a6-115d7383a795> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cape.k12.me.us/sup_pages/news/2008/energy_update08.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942176 | 902 | 2.125 | 2 |
Inadequate funding portends an uncertain future for Pennington
A financial report delivered to the state Board of Regents last fall by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center suggests the 25-year-old institution is facing serious financial challenges—including no money to open and operate two new buildings and a third being refurbished on its 234-acre Perkins Road campus. "We're doing very well on one level. But [financially] it's like a cliff. … At some point we're going to plummet," says Executive Director Dr. Steven Heymsfield. The recent financial woes have served as a wake-up call for officials at Pennington, and they're now scrambling to find solutions. Along with a rebranding effort and a new marketing campaign, they're seeking out new industry partners and trying to create synergy with research programs. "We have to be more entrepreneurial, more businesslike," says LSU System President John Lombardi. "Other places in the world do that and have developed that, and they started out like us. The only question for us is, do we have enough time?" Read the complete cover story by Senior Editor Stephanie Riegel in the new issue of Business Report here.
Survey: Education reform, job creation top priorities in La.
The latest round of results from the 2012 Louisiana Survey, released this morning by the LSU Public Policy Research Lab, shows the state's residents are predominantly aligned when it comes to identifying top priorities. "Louisiana residents are more united than one might expect. Clearly, the public's top priorities are reforming public education and strengthening the economy," says PPRL Director Kirby Goidel. "Compared to Democrats, Republicans are slightly more inclined to favor addressing the economy over reforming primary education, but the differences are fairly small." In addition to party affiliation, race and income level also contribute to some variation in residents' priorities, especially when it comes to reforming public health care.
Among the specific results:
• 43% of blacks identified public health care reform as a top priority, compared to 30% of whites;
• 40% of respondents making less than $30,000 said public health care reform is a top priority, compared to 30% of those making $75,000 or more;
• 42% of Democrats identified public health care reform as a top priority, compared to 26% of Republicans;
• 49% of Democrats said public school reform is a top priority, compared to 41% of Republicans;
• 46% of Democrats identified improving roads, bridges and other infrastructure as a top priority, compared to 28% of Republicans.
The Louisiana Survey annually aims to serve as a barometer of statewide public opinion on a number of issues. The overall survey included 731 randomly selected respondents, who were polled via phone. Complete survey details, results and methodology can be found here.
Today's poll question: What do you think Louisiana's top priority should be?
Fitch downgrades some Livingston Parish bonds, calls outlook 'negative'
Citing "continued concerns" over a diminished general fund and uncertainty surrounding a dispute over FEMA reimbursement for debris removal following Hurricane Gustav in 2008—for which Livingston Parish could be on the hook $60 million—Fitch Ratings has downgraded $6.9 million worth of general obligation bonds in the parish from "A+" to "A." Fitch added that "the ratings outlook remains negative." In a news release, Fitch says the parish's general fund has been diminished by "one-time and ongoing support of other governmental funds." As for the continued litigation on the parish's debris removal debacle, Fitch says: "While officials cannot presently speculate on the outcome of the lawsuit or potential total liability amount, potential costs could require the parish to issue debt to repay the liability, which could drive up key ratios," adding it will "continue to monitor credit pressures that may arise from the lawsuit." The $6.9 million in downgraded bonds were issued in 2004. Fitch says Livingston Parish's overall financial position has been weakened because of growing long-term liabilities and an above-average debt burden. On the bright side, Fitch notes financial reporting is improving in the parish and that the tax base is expanding. See the full release here for more details and analysis.
March was the warmest on record in Baton Rouge
The National Weather Service says the average temperature at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport in March was a pleasant 68.7 degrees—7.2 degrees above the historical average and the warmest on record. The old record of 68.3 degrees was set in March 1945. But March wasn't all sunshine. Though the NWS says it was a "fairly dry month with only 10 days of measurable rainfall," the 6.42 inches of rain recorded at the airport made it the 16th wettest on record. More than half that rain—3.37 inches—fell in a single day, March 21, also a record. Despite the record warmth on average, Baton Rouge did not break any single-day high temperature records last month. The NWS says it was also the warmest March on record in New Orleans—with "a whopping 70.7 degrees" average—and 8.1 degrees above the historical norm. The old record in the Crescent City was 67.2 degrees, set in 1974. The contiguous United States also experienced the warmest March on record, dating back to 1895, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Thousands of daily temperature records were set in the lower 48 states over the month.
New taxes in downtown N.O. proposed for 'hospitality zone'
With the French Quarter and other downtown areas poised to receive $40 million in infrastructure improvements in the run-up to next year's Super Bowl XLVII, Mayor Mitch Landrieu and tourism leaders want to raise the hotel-motel tax, as well as a sales tax on downtown dining, to maintain the improvements and promote the city. As The Times-Picayune reports, the extra money—which largely would come out of visitors' pockets—would amount to an estimated $16 million annually, officials said Tuesday at a French Quarter stakeholders' meeting. About $11 million would be spent by the city's two main tourism marketing agencies, with the rest earmarked for the upkeep of streets and other spending authorized by a new state-sanctioned board. Landrieu strongly supports the creation of a "hospitality zone" bounded by the Mississippi River, the Pontchartrain Expressway and Claiborne and Elysian Fields avenues. Under a package of bills pending in the current session, such a designation would allow the city to levy special taxes in the area, which stretches from the Warehouse District to the Seventh Ward, and use the revenue to provide extra sanitation, police and other services in those neighborhoods. Under the proposals, the hotel-motel tax levied at properties citywide would rise from 13% to 14.75%. The sales tax on food and beverages consumed in restaurants and bars within the hospitality zone would rise from 2.5% to 2.7%. Read the full story here.
Judge asked to sign off on BP oil spill settlement
BP and a team of plaintiffs' attorneys this morning presented a federal judge with the formal terms of a proposed class-action settlement designed to resolve billions of dollars in economic damage claims spawned by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The London-based oil giant and lawyers representing more than 100,000 individuals and businesses are asking U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to give preliminary approval to the settlement agreement. The judge hasn't indicated when he will rule. BP has estimated it will pay about $7.8 billion to resolve these private-party claims, which would make it one of the largest class-action settlements ever. But the settlement doesn't have a cap on the amount of money BP would pay. Today's court filing says the agreement "creates a comprehensive compensation system" and is "more than fair, reasonable and adequate." The agreement, initially announced March 2, doesn't resolve separate claims brought by the federal government and Gulf Coast states against BP and its partners on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig over environmental damage from the nation's worst offshore oil spill. The settlement also doesn't resolve claims against Switzerland-based rig owner Transocean Ltd. and Houston-based cement contractor Halliburton. Barbier has scheduled a May 3 status conference to discuss plans for a possible trial for those claims. Barbier also is expected to hold a "fairness hearing" on the settlement before deciding whether to give final approval to it. Read the full story by The Associated Press here.
News roundup: Another Webster Parish fire chief arrested … Geithner: U.S. facing big tax, budget test at end of 2012 … Twitter's pledge changes tone on patent litigation
Five alarm: Webster Parish Fire Chief David Camp was arrested Tuesday on improper spending charges, bringing the five-year total of parish chiefs arrested to five. The arrest of the 47-year-old came just hours before a counterpart in a neighboring district resigned amid a criminal investigation on similar allegations. In January 2010, former Shongaloo Fire Chief Charles Ray Duke Jr. was arrested on multiple felony charges related to allegations he used taxpayer money and donations to pay household bills and make personal purchases. Former Cullen Assistant Fire Chief Mark Eubanks was arrested in 2007 on child pornography charges. Camp was booked on charges of malfeasance and unauthorized use of an access device over $5,000. His bond was set at $20,000.
Down the road: The government will face a major test on whether it has the capacity to govern when it faces big tax and budget decisions at the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said today ahead of a meeting on Friday of finance ministers from the Group of 20, representing the world's leading industrialized and emerging market economies. Before 2013, the country will be forced to deal with the expiration of tax cuts that affect nearly all taxpayers, automatic budget cuts, as well as another debate over raising the country's debt limit. "It will be a big test in Washington, a big test of the country to govern itself," Geithner says. Reuters has the complete story here.
Trolling for company: With companies like Yahoo, Facebook, Google and Oracle waging intellectual property wars in the courts, Twitter on Tuesday took an intriguing stand by pledging it will not impede innovation in the future by becoming a patent troll, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. Twitter drafted an "Innovator's Patent Agreement," or IPA, that the San Francisco firm proposes as a new standard licensing document for the entire tech industry. "The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers," Twitter vice president of engineering Adam Messinger wrote in a company blog. Get the full story for more details on the IPA and industry reaction to it here. | <urn:uuid:e8fa16cc-16c5-49d3-8d91-1f0cd74443af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessreport.com/section/daily-reportAM&date=20120418 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958829 | 2,229 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The current scenario is talking about the digital books. Gone are the days when people used to carry books in hand for reading. Now the techno savvy world has switched from physical books to digital versions. This has incredibly increased the demand of eBook conversion services to a great level today.
Number of steps is involved in the conversion of the normal physical book to an eBook. Mainly, the authors and the publishers look for such services for getting their written material converted into the digital format. To find the right eBook Publishing Companies, make a list of the requirements that you want these services should provide you.
There are various things to be kept in mind when selecting the best eBook Conversion Services. Let’s check the points you should search for:
- Look for if the company is capable enough for processing your source file? Is the company you are going to hire capable for converting children books to eBook format?
- Are Digital Rights Management are provided to you? Sometimes there are techniques that do not allow the interference of the user and also block the user to do certain things on their eBooks.
- Confirm for if they can create the files for different reading devices that you want because people use different file formats, not everybody is using the same format. For example ePub file format is used by iPhone and Sony readers but Kindle uses the azw file format.
- Can they provide you with Kindle conversion services because eBooks are the products of Amazon and are gaining more popularity at a greater rate? Many of the authors do not want their books to get into all types of devices but they want it to get converted into Kindle as it is the most common these days.
- Ask them if they can provide you with the services that the images in the book will adjust them accordingly to the screen on which they are being read which is also known as Fixed Layout Conversion.
Benefits of eBook Conversion Services
- The eBook formats are accepted universally now and is compatible with almost every device. These formats can be read on desktop software or any online reader
- The ePub formats for eBooks are compatible with a huge number of reading devices
- It reduces the cost of conversion for multiple distribution channels
- It is easy to convert these files into any other formats like .mobi or RTF
- It is easy to sell your eBooks from various number of outlets
- It is a cost effective method of distribution
- These formats have maximum flexibility and effectiveness
Connect to us via our other social media buttons. Just pick your click! | <urn:uuid:18236913-7875-4db1-b6b0-6868a00d333c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://self-publishingresources.com/Categories/e-book/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945708 | 512 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Marisa Montes, 59, of Walnut Creek, California, died Aug. 18, 2011. She was born in San Juan Puerto Rico on Nov. 5, 1951.
"At the time of her death, she was working on compiling an anthology of stories by Latina women about pivotal moments in girl's lives."
Marisa was a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and of the State Bar of California.
Source: Rene Colato Lainez at La Bloga (via Struve and Laporte Obituaries).
I only knew Marisa online and in passing, but I did have the pleasure of interviewing her and illustrator, Yuyi Morales, about one of my all-time favorite picture books, Los Gatos Black on Halloween (Henry Holt, 2006).
In the video below, watch the 2008 Tomas Rivera Award Luncheon Speech by Marisa. Los Gatos Black was the winner that year. Marisa talks about the growth of Hispanic and Latin American children's-YA literature, related challenges and the importance of such award programs.
For Spanish-language speakers: Univisions Encuentro en la Bahia interviews Marisa on the importance of books and reading.
Don't miss Marisa's classic online craft article Notes on Writing a Picture Book.
My condolences to Marisa's family, friends, and many fans. | <urn:uuid:45abaed0-3eb2-4347-a770-95f9bb0664b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2011/09/in-memory-childrens-author-marisa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913653 | 286 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Is there anything Millville man won't braid? Knot!
You name it and he will braid it.
DeWitt Palmer of Millville braids leather, baling twine, wire, horsehair, rawhide and anything else he can get his hands on.
"I braid just about anything you've ever wanted to braid," Palmer said.
The 85-year-old lifelong cowboy decided at age 27 that he wanted to learn to braid his own reins and bridles. So he started braiding.
Palmer said he read books about braiding and talked to other braiders, but he taught himself most of what he knows.
"It's a lot of trial and error," Palmer said. "I've just kept with it."
Even after braiding for 59 years, Palmer said "There's always something new to try to master."
He has mastered braids ranging from three to 16 strands. When braiding with an even number of strands, it forms a round braid, Palmer said, and when braiding with an odd number of strands, the braid lies flat.
After working with braids for so long, a braid with many strands does not even phase him, Palmer said.
"That's the easy one," he said of the eight strand braid as he gathered four strands of leather in each hand.
To make the braid, he brings one strand from the left across the underside of the rope to the right side where he goes under two strands and then over two strands. Then he repeats the process alternating left and right sides.
He said he usually braids around a core rope. The thickness of that core determines how many strands he will use in the braid.
"I had to use a 12 strand on this one, or there would have been gaps in the braid," Palmer said as he showed a completed rein.
Sometimes for functional purposes, Palmer said he will make portions of the braid thicker by "mousing it up" or wrapping extra string around certain points of the core rope.
On average, Palmer said, the braiding materials shrink about one-third of their original length when braided. However, if he wants to make something that is 7 or 8 feet long, he will usually use 14 foot strands to make sure he has enough because tying in extra length does not work very well, Palmer said.
When working with such long strings, Palmer wraps each end around his hand and puts a rubber band around it to form a tamale, he said. Then as he braids, he can pull more string out of the middle and not have so much to work with.
The process is tedious, he said.
"To get them tight, I have to stop and pull each one tight," Palmer said. "It takes a lot of time."
He estimates that he can braid about eight inches in an hour.
It is because of the amount of time he spends braiding that a set of his reins will cost anywhere from $150 to $200. He said he started braiding reins and other gear for his own use, but many people liked them so much he started to sell them.
He sold a lot of his braids at the Festival of the American West while he demonstrated braiding there for 10 years.
He has since taught braiding classes braiding in the adult education classes at Logan High School.
He makes "fun, little novelty things," such as keychains and neckerchief slides that he donates to the Utah Reining Cow and Horse Association to be sold as a fund raiser, Palmer said. Palmer won the 1987 Utah Governor Folk Art Award for his braiding and has had his work displayed at the Utah State Fair many times.
But he would keep braiding, even without the recognition, he said. He simply likes to braid, he said.
"It's something we do to keep out of the pool halls," Palmer said. | <urn:uuid:0dcf74bd-2c37-4dc8-905b-4cadcf5eaf18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/feb2001/0212_braid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980672 | 821 | 1.820313 | 2 |
State of the Arts
A combination of curatorial imagination and financial firepower has enabled the Middlebury College Museum of Art to stage a show stylishly in sync with the nation’s current conversation about “post-racial” politics.
Some big names on the international art scene are represented here by prints that reinterpret historical themes and events. And because most of the artists are African American, “Confronting History: Contemporary Artists Envision the Past ” also interrogates orthodox concepts of race that are undergoing radical reconstruction at the dawn of the Obama era.
Emmie Donadio , the museum’s chief curator, has built the show around a portfolio of 15 lithographs and silk-screen prints created by Kara Walker, a 39-year-old art star. Walker’s sexually and racially provocative work was the subject of a recent retrospective seen in Minneapolis, New York and Los Angeles. The suite hanging in Middlebury — titled “Harper’s Illustrated History of the Civil War (Annotated)” — was donated to the college last year by Richard and Kathy Fuld , parents of two alumni.
That’s the same Richard Fuld who was at the helm as the Lehman Brothers ship sank. The investment firm’s bankruptcy filing last September helped precipitate the global financial crash and cast Fuld in the role of a leading Wall Street villain.
“I wanted to accompany the Walker pieces with work by some other really good artists,” Donadio says. And so, with the help of other influential friends of the college, she was able to arrange a couple of loans from the Museum of Modern Art. Glenn Ligon’s “Runaways” series comes to Middlebury from MoMa, as does “Deluxe,” a set of 60 obsessively collaged prints by Ellen Gallagher . The college had meanwhile purchased some of the works of three other artists included in the show: Enrique Chagoya , a Mexican American; William Kentridge , a white South African; and Middlebury’s own Robert Gober (Class of ’77).
Besides the ability to draw on the college’s collection and connections, Donadio had the prescience to realize a year ago, when the show was being conceived, that the Obama phenomenon had artistic as well as political reverberations. The timing of the exhibit’s opening in February, Black History Month, was not coincidental.
Despite its hip premises and bold-face roster, “Confronting History” isn’t very visually exciting. Most of the prints are small in scale and monochromatic. Some are quite texty, too — for example, Adrian Piper’s “Everything #18,” which looks a lot like what one would expect from a Harvard-trained-philosopher-turned-conceptual-artist. Ligon’s “Runaways” are word-driven as well, though they prove to be funny, in a disturbing way, once viewers pick up on their irony.
Walker’s superimposed cut-paper silhouettes have a madcap quality that enlivens a show they also physically dominate — even as they risk causing offense with their denigrating caricatures of black people. Visitors’ responses may vary in accordance with just how “post-racial” their dispositions are.
The show’s sprightliest piece, by far, is Chagoya’s LOL rendering of Obama’s triumphal entry into Washington on January 20, 2009. The new president is depicted as Atlas, clad in a stars-and-stripes loincloth. Hillary Clinton preens as the mighty Obama struggles to hold up the planet. First Lady Michelle (or is that Condoleezza Rice?) flanks our hero, along with Vice President Joe Biden (or maybe George W. Bush?), who happens to be wearing a dress. | <urn:uuid:76762ba5-918f-4f41-bb2b-127d37d73105> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.7dvt.com/print/28580 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952877 | 828 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Connected TV is the term generally used by the television industry to describe a product or service that combines ‘traditional’ broadcast digital television with new services, applications and programming such as Catch-up TV and Video on Demand (VoD) delivered via broadband.
The digital switchover was rolled out on a region-by-region basis across the UK. It began in late 2007 with Copeland in Cumbria and was completed in October 2012 in Northern Ireland.
DVB-T2 is the new digital TV system that the UK is introducing to bring you high definition TV through your TV aerial.
A simple guide to what those digital TV logos and combinations of 720, 1080, p and i actually mean. | <urn:uuid:74df7fef-4131-481b-9428-9018cb4cdfb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dtg.org.uk/consumer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959743 | 146 | 1.929688 | 2 |
IT SEEMS there is just no getting away from dogs’ dirt, writes Janet Thomson.
Whilst steps are being taken in Forfar to highlight the anti-social effects irresponsible dog owners are having in the town (see story above), in Kirriemuir Tayside Police’s community liaison officer Constable Alan Bell has put together a flyer which he is about to distribute throughout the town.
He has been spurred on by the on-going problem of dogs’ mess in and around the town, and at the popular beauty stop at Kirrie Hill.
Constable Bell told the Dispatch and Herald: “I am intending to create this as a flyer with the intention of putting it through the letter boxes of the worst areas in a hope to have the public help us detect those responsible.
“I am a dog owner myself and am getting more and more frustrated at this blight on our streets.
“However, more and more people are taking it upon themselves to pick up ‘orphaned’ dog mess.
“These people are true ambassadors. You can set a good example, too. If you see orphaned dog mess, pick it up with one of those extra bags you’re carrying. Your actions will encourage others to do the same, and soon this will be a non-issue, because everybody will simply pick up without giving it a second thought. Keep the streets and playparks of Kirriemuir clean Dog mess destroys the good reputation of responsible dog owners.
“If you want to help keep the streets of Kirriemuir free from dog mess, help us by telling us who the culprits are. We will visit them and advise them accordingly. Persistent offenders will be fined.
“All calls will be treated confidentially and any information can be left on the Community Office answer service on 01575 576625. Together we can make a difference.”
Constable Bell has compiled a list of 10 points which he hopes will help make a difference in Kirriemuir.
They are as follows:-
1, It’s the law. Just like littering, it’s unlawful not to pick up after your dog - if you don’t, you could be fined.
2, It’s common courtesy. Cleaning up after your dog shows respect for your neighbour and community. Only irresponsible dog owners leave their dog’s mess for other people to look at, step in or clean up.
3, Dog mess is unhealthy. Abandoned dog mess can host diseases and/or parasites which can infect other dogs that come into contact with it. It can also be transmitted to people who accidentally step in it and track it home. Particularly at risk, of course, are children who play on the ground. Disposing of dog mess immediately helps all dogs stay healthier and reduces faeces-borne parasites and illnesses. 4, Dog mess biodegrades slowly. Some people think it’s fine to leave dog mess because it will break down naturally. However, the biodegrading process is very slow, and, especially in places where the dog population is high, abandoned dog mess can accumulate faster than it breaks down. In cold weather, dog mess freezes and, because it’s then almost impossible to clean up, it will remain where you left it for several weeks to several months.
5, It’s not fertiliser. In fact, dog mess impedes landscaping efforts - leaving it there encourages other dogs to mark that spot (by urinating over the previous dog’s scent). Dog mess left on the grass contributes to the problem of ‘nitrogen burn’.
6, Dog mess pollutes the water. Dog mess, like any faeces, contains high levels of nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, which actually pollute the water supply. Cleaning up after your dog is environmentally responsible. Please do not dispose of dog mess into drains.
7, Dog mess is unsightly. Everybody knows that. It’s disgusting. Pick it up. We all deserve to live in a clean environment where we can be proud and walk along without worrying what we might step into.
8, Dog mess is amongst the top complaints about dogs. Most complaints about dogs involve people not cleaning up after their dogs. There are more complaints about dog mess than dog aggression, nuisance barking and unsupervised dogs.
9, Dog mess makes owners look bad. One of the worst things about dog mess is that it’s bad for public relations. Dog mess is the number one reason for negative public sentiment against dogs. Every time you don’t pick up after your dog, you are giving one more reason for others to dislike dogs and dog owners.
10, Your actions set an example for others. When you pick up after your dog, you are part of the solution. Your actions will help convey the message that it’s the right thing to do. Many people even carry extra bags to offer to others as a subtle and neighbourly hint that cleaning up after our dogs is what responsible dog owners do.
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Weather for Forfar
Tuesday 21 May 2013
Temperature: 7 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 14 mph
Wind direction: West
Temperature: 3 C to 13 C
Wind Speed: 21 mph
Wind direction: West | <urn:uuid:217f7f6e-b6ae-4222-bb82-0f61f1bcf8fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forfardispatch.co.uk/news/local-headlines/police-call-for-help-in-detecting-those-responsible-for-mess-1-2751409 | 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 | 0.939991 | 1,126 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Working Knowledge: Expanding Use; July 2006; Scientific American Magazine; by Mark Fischetti; 2 Page(s)
Implantation of stents--mesh cylinders that widen clogged arteries--is growing so fast that some doctors say the procedure is overused. Yet the inserts have been evolving for 20 years, proponents note, and represent an alternative to more invasive open surgery.
For decades, coronary patients whose arteries had been narrowed by accumulated plaque underwent openheart surgery; a section of healthy artery or vein was sewn in as a bypass around the compromised vessel. Similar measures were taken with patients who had blocked arteries elsewhere, or the artery was cut open and the plaque scraped out. The advent of balloon angioplasty reduced the intrusiveness for certain patients; a balloon was fed along a catheter to the blockage, then expanded to crack and compress the plaque, leaving a wider conduit for blood flow. Yet arteries often renarrowed if walls recoiled or if fibrous tissue grew. | <urn:uuid:04eb9c83-7cc9-4c7b-b3af-1626645e9b18> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=B01EA564-2B35-221B-6B01BA666EE53238 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95878 | 207 | 2.59375 | 3 |
New Phishing Scam Targets Novice Fraudsters
BackBy Ben Warden, associate editor —
Hackers and cyber criminals constantly change up their methods to catch unsuspecting victims in new ways, which can make stopping them a challenge. A Moroccan group of hackers named Mr. Brain recently turned the tables on its own by creating a program to target aspiring Internet scammers. As potential cyber criminals set up fraudulent Web sites to steal from consumers, they’re unknowingly sending their intended victims’ sensitive information back to Mr. Brain headquarters, allowing the novices to essentially do the work for them.
Paul Wood, senior analyst at MessageLabs, commented on how the process of more experienced hackers targeting amateur phishers has evolved.
“The way threats evolve in an Internet environment is that highly specialized individuals or groups who have access to the vulnerabilities around particular applications develop tools to target them,” he said. “That requires some specialist knowledge, especially programming skills.”
According to Wood, as these specialists commoditize their phishing knowledge into more user-friendly tool kits, the number of attacks has increased greatly during the past few years.
“We saw the phishing numbers increase in 2007, not only in volume but also in terms of the proportion of attacks made up of phishing attacks compared to malware viruses,” Wood said. “Certainly, the vast majority of bad things intercepted at MessageLabs are phishing attacks. In January of this year, one in 147 e-mails contained some kind of phishing attack, and the reason it’s gone up is because people are now using these tool kits.”
By lowering the barrier of entry of those wishing to run a phishing scam, Wood said, it becomes infinitely easier for the real specialists, such as those at Mr. Brain, to run more scams and run them more confidentially. Less experienced cyber criminals are “almost being used as mules by the criminal fraternity because it reduces the level of risk by finding someone else to actually implement the attack and then they can skim off some of the proceeds.” | <urn:uuid:62ab2898-6d91-49e1-a8be-fff53f35f9cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.certmag.com/print.php?in=3305 | 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 | 0.955019 | 434 | 1.992188 | 2 |
I want database connectivity (MYSQL) with PHP page, and I want department name in a drop down menu . And when a user select a department all related forms should appear in next popup drop down or simple drop down list
All information (Department name and forms name) is stored in database.
Connectivity part i have done
Can you help in javasript haw a pge load each time when user select from first drop down list....to get back to server and taking back withcocern values.....
For example .it is like when a user selects a country name from a drop down menu in next drop down all state of selected country appears in next drop down menu.
Please help me. And please tell me full code, or as much u can ..
first I doubt anyone is going to do your whole project for you. especially when you have posted no code to show you have tried to solve this, then you posted you want it to work like the country/state select, well I would of started http://www.bitrepository.com/dynamic...-counties.html that is a link that shows you how to do the state select. look at that code try and get it to work then try to implement it to your code, show people that you have given this a shot before they spend there free time on helping. follow that link and give some of that a shot | <urn:uuid:99854014-2780-420f-815d-5c71aed92ece> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?208891-java-script-and-page-load-for-database&p=1005123 | 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 | 0.940527 | 291 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Unless one is wearing Brown colored glasses, it is easy to see that California is a mess. We rank second in unemployment and millions of Californians have fled the state since the millennium — most as economic refugees seeking to carve out a better life for themselves where taxes are lower and job opportunities are better.
Most taxpayers see as their biggest obstacle to an improved life those elected officials who work against their interests, while bowing and scraping before those who provide millions of dollars in campaign cash. What it comes down to is that the Sacramento politicians are making war against regular folks, while assisting narrow, well-heeled, special interests to prosper.
What happens when an average Californian travels to Sacramento and requests an office meeting with a state representative? Those few ordinary citizens who attempt this pilgrimage are in for a rude awakening. First, you’re lucky if you get a meeting. If you do, it will most certainly be with a junior staffer just barely old enough to vote. Not so for those lobbyists whose firm or organization contributed thousands of dollars to the politician’s most recent campaign fundraiser. Those who provide campaign cash expect access to “their” lawmaker at a moment’s notice and they demand “correct” votes on the legislation they care about. And no, this is not a partisan issue; representatives from both political parties are more than willing — and some are eager — to take contributions from powerful special interests.
In 2010, corporations, business groups and labor organizations gave $89 million dollars to the Sacramento politicians. Unions weighed in with $25 million in direct contributions, while major corporations ponied up $48 million.
Saying these payouts were made to advance good government would not pass the “laugh” test. Look at these examples. PG&E donated $561,000 playing in 70 percent of state legislative races. BNS Rail infused another $400,000 into 94 percent of legislative races, while AT&T was good for $760,000 to 99 percent of races. These records demonstrate that the goal of these firms is to buy influence with whoever is elected.
For the unions and corporations these expenditures are a great deal, even if for average taxpayers it is not. A few hundred thousand dollars invested in politicians can provide big payouts in return. Of bills passed by the Legislature, 60 percent are written by lobbyists and attorneys for special interests.
This corruption of the legislative process is nothing new, but with our state’s failing economy and high taxes, it can no longer be ignored. This fall, California voters will have the opportunity to strike a major blow against the system of influence peddling that currently dominates Sacramento.
A just-qualified initiative, Stop Special Interest Money Now, will appear on the November ballot. It will accomplish three things that will diminish the control of special interests over elected officials. First, it will prohibit corporations and unions from contributing directly to the campaigns of political candidates. Second, it will bar contributions to officials by those contracting with, or seeking to contract with government — no more “pay to play.” Finally, it will stop labor unions from taking money, to be used for political activity, directly from workers’ paychecks without their explicit permission.
While there may be no foolproof way to totally prevent special interests from trying to manipulate the system for their benefit, the passage of Stop Special Interest Money Now will go a long way toward leveling the playing field so that the concerns of average Californians are given the same consideration as those of big corporations and unions in the deliberations of government.
Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association -– California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights. | <urn:uuid:9e7e00c9-468e-442f-94d1-d66d086f87e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smdp.com/stop-special-interest-money/80286 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947618 | 769 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Drafting proposals in the open
[By Fabiana Kubke and Daniel Mietchen, Original post in
This is the first of a series of initially 5 posts in which we – Fabiana Kubke, Daniel Mietchen, and anyone interested to join us – are planning to reflect on a number of projects related to science in the digital age. We have applied for (and admitted to) the Getting your CC project funded course at P2P University that started today and is scheduled to help participants on their way to submission-ready grant proposals by mid-July.
Default to open
The underlying assumption is that open collaborative environments would have a positive impact on science and the relationship between science and society.
“I definitely believe that science in general is more effective the more open people are,” says evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen of the University of California (UC), Davis, who keeps much of his research open. “There are unquestionably risks for people that come with [openness], but the benefits to society are enormous. Given that taxpayers are paying for our work, I think that the default should be to be open unless you can prove that it’s a bad idea.”
The ultimate goal of defaulting to ‘open’, as Eisen suggests, requires suitable (and sustainable) collaborative environments with low adoption barriers. The initial focus must therefore be on how to ‘build’ those environments (or on how to re-purpose existing technology to serve this goal).
Reusing and repurposing existing knowledge
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other.” Paulo Freire
What we want to address is how to encourage the re-use and re-purposing (Freire’s re-invention) of scientific knowledge through collaboration between the scientific community and the wider society. This ‘invention and re-invention’ is currently hindered by the traditional systems through which science operates: closed notebooks, manuscripts behind pay-walls, no access to the primary data, etc., and especially copyright and licensing limitations. This inevitably leads to duplication of efforts that could otherwise be avoided if the processes were to be made more open. (See also .)
One place to start is by making existing scientific literature licenced under Creative Commons (or other open licenses) available in ways such that it can be edited, updated, commented upon and re-purposed. The goal is to shift the scientific literature from its current static format to a more dynamic one that is more aligned with both how science is done and how information is used.
The bigger picture
“Increasing the number of things you have can be useful, but increasing the amount of knowledge you have can be transformative.” Clay Shirky
The general scheme of how we think of the bigger picture is here :
We see science as providing information; but that information can only be transformed into knowledge when the different spheres of society can interact with it in a usable manner. One crucial initial step is to make the information available in a way that allows diversifying the ways in which information/knowledge is being put to use so that it can have the desired transformative effect.
How are we planning to achieve (some of) this?
One proposal on how to achieve openness in scientific information was led by Daniel Mietchen and took the shape of the COASPedia project that aimed to “demonstrate to the scientific community that scientific articles published online under CC-BY-licenses can be arranged in a different and — importantly — more efficient manner than those published in classical journals.” The COASPedia project – initially presented at COASP 2010 – was a finalist in the Wissenswert initiative of Wikimedia Deutschland, but did not get funded.
We have now signed up (and were accepted into) a course on “Getting your cc-project funded”, run by P2PU. The course starts on April 26th, and we will be working on expanding on the original project during the course and after and drafting a proposal to get the project funded. To be admitted into the course we had to offer 3 ideas; each will specifically be described (and opened for discussion) in each of the following posts. They all sit around the concept of a basic repository (whatever shape this may take).
“Hence, in the name of the ‘preservation of culture and knowledge’ we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture.” Paulo Freire
This basic framework of our ideas for the course is not too different from what was proposed in the original COASPedia proposal: What we would like is for information to become useable, findable, and linkable while still capturing not only the original work but also the different contributions and their authors (i.e., preserving the cultural heritage of science). The 2 other ideas sit more specifically around how the usability, findability and linkability can help transform the way we relate with the information at hand.
The ultimate goal is not simply a modernisation of the way that information is made available, we also hope to capture the possibilities that this modernisation affords to improve the outcomes of science as a whole – with respect to how it interacts with society, how it becomes transformed into knowledge, and how it becomes part of our cultural heritage. Or in Shirky;’s words:
“what matters now is not the new capabilities we have but how we turn those capabilities, both technical and social, into opportunities” (emphasis added)
In the spirit of openness, we will keep the entire drafting process as open as possible, so as to invite feedback and other contributions from early on.
In order to help us identify the platforms that are best suited to a collaborative writing process of this kind, we will use this series of blog posts to experiment a bit with several potential drafting environments.
An aggregated view of the project will be maintained at https://tuhura.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/mahara/view/view.php?id=295.
Footnotes and references:
We will link directly where possible, and use the endnotes mainly to store the metadata of some key references.
Wald, C. (2010). Scientists Embrace Openness. Science. doi:10.1126/science.caredit.a1000036
Quote was taken from Freire, P. (1985). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth Middlesex: Penguin. A website devoted to this work (http://www.pedagogyoftheoppressed.com/) has useful information on both the author and the text.
Radder, H. (2010). The commodification of academic research : science and the modern university. Pittsburgh Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press.
In Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus : creativity and generosity in a connected age. London: Allen Lane. (ISBN 978-1-846-14218-5) (see book review here)
This mindmap began as a discussion with Tabitha Roder over a NZ olpc testing session in Auckland. These ideas were thrown into a prezi and the derived mindmap now includes modifications suggested by Claudia Koltzenburg | <urn:uuid:12a65614-d11b-4832-8500-364f40a73dba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/drafting-proposals-in-the-open/ | 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 | 0.940625 | 1,535 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Usually we only discuss popular Linux OS such as Ubuntu, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS etc. However the real power of Linux is harnessed by several handheld electronic gadgets.
eBooks are among them. We invited Foxit Software's Erik Bryant to tell us about the exciting things going on in the eBook world.
So Erik, tell us some thing about the eSlick Reader.
eSlick Reader is a simple device that helps you to read any PDF document on the go. You can store thousands of books and PDF documents on the device and read for a couple weeks on a single battery charge.
The OS is Linux based, right? Tell us some thing about it.
Yes, eSlick uses Device OS Linux 18.104.22.168 . We found that embedded Linux is small in size and it suitable for our device with 32MB NAND flash.
Why Linux and not any proprietary software?
Linux is free and Open Source and useful for small devices, we can customize all the UI items our self. It would not have been possible with proprietary OS.
Which formats can be used with the eSlick?
With the included software, any printable document can be converted to PDF and supported by eSlick. eSlick natively supports PDF and TXT. eSlick also supports MP3 format.
How did you manage to achieve the low prize of $229?
That was our starting introductory price and we did this to get many devices out in the market. We now sell at $259.99 for a limited time. The MRP is $299.99.
What is being planned for the next version?
The next version will have wifi and more buttons. And the version after that will have some way to input text.
What factors differentiate the eSlick Reader from other eBook Readers?
eSlick can natively support PDF much better. We have many viewing options with PDF files and they are displayed correctly and faster. Also, Foxit has a lower price than many competitors.
What future do you see for eBook readers?
The future has many great new advancements to come. There will be color possibly next year. The eBook readers will have larger screens and be thinner. More books will be available and there will be multiple ways to input information into the eBook reader. eBooks will never replace a computer. But in the future, books will be more readily available. The prices of the devices and books will go down. There will be screens that can roll flat and unroll for easy viewing. There will be many ways to take notes on the device.
Why should a consumer choose an eBook reader over say, the iPhone?
The reason why a consumer would choose an eBook reader would be:
1) Battery life. A user can read thousands more pages on a battery
2) Simple to use. eBook readers are normally more simple to use than iPhone
3) Larger screen. Can read more text without having to turn the page as often
4) Healthier. The electronic ink does not harm eyes like an LCD screen would after reading for hours.
Thanks Erik, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading that. | <urn:uuid:766de420-1649-4729-8a07-1ccd8852caef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://helpforlinux.blogspot.com/2009/05/interview-with-erick-bryant-of-eslick.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934168 | 654 | 2.109375 | 2 |
In a measure that could expand India’s affirmative action programs, the government introduced a bill Wednesday that would make it easier to grant promotions to members of India’s lowest castes and tribal people in government jobs.
The bill, which was introduced in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, was waylaid Wednesday by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which has repeatedly disrupted Parliament’s “monsoon session” over the recent coal concessions scandal. But the legislation is expected to be addressed again as soon as Parliament gets back to work.
Ultimately, the bill is expected to pass both houses of Parliament. But questions are already being raised about whether it will withstand the scrutiny of the courts. It represents the latest volley in a series of battles between lawmakers who have pushed for broader quotas, in part to garner votes, and the courts, which have regarded many such measures as violating the constitutional right to equal treatment.
The bill “may be liable to be challenged on constitutional grounds,” said P.P. Rao, an expert in constitutional law and a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court. The main concern, he said, is whether the bill violates what is called the “basic structure” of the Constitution, most prominently the “right to equality,” by guaranteeing some citizens preferred treatment without demonstrating “compelling reasons” for such measures.
The central government, not surprisingly, has said the bill is sound. “We have brought this bill after understanding every aspect of this matter,” Law Minister Salman Khurshid said in a televised interview on Wednesday.
Since independence, India has introduced a large and often controversial system of quotas or “reservations,” aimed at creating a level playing field for disadvantaged groups by guaranteeing spots for them in state universities and government agencies. “It is because of reservations that the weaker sections of society have been able to make some progress in this country,” Kumari Mayawati, a proponent of the bill and a leader of the Dalits, once known as the untouchables, said in Parliament in April.
India’s so-called scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, which make up 16 and 8 percent of the population, respectively, are entitled to 15 percent and 7.5 percent (again, respectively) of jobs and university seats administered by the central government.
The bill introduced this week, which if it passes would amend the Constitution, would go a step further by making it easier to establish quotas for promotions in government, a particularly divisive issue.
In 1992, the Supreme Court forbade quotas in promotions. But Parliament amended the Constitution three years later, making that ruling null and void.
Another blow to the reservations system came from the country’s highest court in 2006, when it set three criteria for quotas in government jobs: the groups in question must be truly “backward,” or disadvantaged; data must show that they are underrepresented in government jobs; and the proposed quota mustn’t make the government less efficient.
Following those criteria, the Supreme Court in April struck down as unconstitutional a law passed by the government of Uttar Pradesh setting quotas in promotions. The state failed to provide data, the court said, to show that scheduled castes and tribes were not adequately represented in state jobs.
The new bill would essentially remove the requirement that states collect and present such data. A note attached to the bill reads, “It has been observed that there is difficulty in collection of quantifiable data showing backwardness of the class and inadequacy of representation of that class in public employment. Moreover, there is uncertainty on the methodology of this exercise.”
The bill would also let central and state governments reserve the same ratio for promotions in jobs for a given group as is reserved for the jobs themselves. States in India have the power to set their own quotas for government jobs, and they vary widely. Tamil Nadu, for instance, reserved 69 percent of seats in educational institutions and public sector jobs for disadvantaged groups, while most other states have reserved close to 50 percent.
A broad range of parties have declared their support for the bill, most prominently the Bahujan Samaj Party, which represents Dalits. It is opposed, however, by the Samajwadi Party, which represents another group of socially and economically disadvantaged, known as the “other backward classes.” “This bill makes juniors senior and seniors junior,” Mulayam Singh Yadav, head of the Samajwadi Party, told reporters outside Parliament House. “Who will tolerate this?” | <urn:uuid:16acde10-81bc-47d8-a11c-ec70c53e65be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/indias-latest-reservations-bill-stirs-controversy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96683 | 955 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Besides deciding what college or university to go to, high school students have to also find a way to pay for it. Well students from 8th grade and up in the Idaho Falls area school districts have a chance to win some extra money to put towards tuition thanks to the Mayor’s Scholarship Fund.
The Mayor’s Scholarship fund was created in 2006 by Mayor Jared Fuhriman. Since then 166 scholarships have been awarded in the amount of $154,000.
“To qualify for the scholarship you have to be a city of Idaho Falls resident or attend a District 91 or 93 school, we actually try to target students in what we call the forgotten middle, those are the students that have between a 3.0 and 3.5 GPA”said Heidi Gummow the program coordinator for the Mayor’s Scholarship Fund.
After a student receives the scholarship, the money is held until they graduate, then they get to use that money for tuition at any Idaho institution.
“Promise Scholarships are awarded in the amount of $500 and Senior Scholarships are for $1500” continued Gummow.
The Mayor’s Scholarship fund gives out at least 12 scholarships a year.
“Their faces when we meet them, they are so grateful and so excited, we hear from them for years after, the Mayor receives letters from the, updates about college, updates about where they are in their careers and that’s by far the most rewarding part of this program” said Gummow.
The Mayor Scholarship Fund application deadline is this Friday February 1st. You can drop off those applications at either of the school district offices.
The awards ceremony for those receiving scholarships will be held on April 24th. | <urn:uuid:146465e2-3963-4be7-b535-4c40f66a8368> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kpvi.com/content/news/local/story/Mayors-Scholarship-Fund-Accepting-Final/ePX7-GdoS0SbFN7oh5uUEA.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965909 | 360 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Among four states, the economy lost over 75,000 jobs last month compared to June. The BLS reported that “Over-the-month statistically significant declines in employment occurred in Illinois (-24,900), Florida (-22,100), Minnesota (-19,800), and Indiana (-10,100)”. Florida already has one of the highest unemployment rates in the US at 10.7%.
Michigan was the only one of the states with very high unemployment to see an improvement in July.” The four states reporting the largest over-the-month statistically significant job gains were New York (+29,400), Texas (+29,300), Michigan (+23,000), and Tennessee (+14,300),” the BLS wrote in its month report on state jobs.
The new figures show that a few areas continue to hurt the total jobless rates for the US. If these states had unemployment rates near the national average, the US figure would drop by nearly a percentage point. “Nevada continued to register the highest unemployment rate among the states, 12.9 percent in July. California recorded the next highest rate, 12.0 percent,” the BLS reports. Michigan’s rate is 10.9%. Florida’s is 10.7% Georgia’s is 10.1% and South Carolina’s 10.9%. Among them, these states have nearly 83 million residents–over a quarter of the total US population.
Unemployment remains much more a regional problem than a national one.
Douglas A. McIntyre | <urn:uuid:8e2e971b-8a2d-4a2a-bfd2-36a68d60d06f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://247wallst.com/2011/08/19/four-states-account-for-over-75000-lost-jobs-in-july/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960427 | 323 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Mark Trahant is a writer, speaker and Twitter poet. He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and lives in Fort Hall, Idaho. Trahant’s new book, “The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars,” is the story of Sen. Henry Jackson and Forrest Gerard.By Mark Trahant
Which rally drew more people? One Nation Working Together or Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor? Left or right? Liberal or Conservative?
“Per usual the rally’s attendance numbers are being disputed by the left and right,” writes John Hudson in The Atlantic Wire. “While a number of progressive bloggers claim the “One Nation” rally drew a larger crowd than Beck’s August event, the Associated Press and others are challenging that claim.”
The logic here is counting people at a rally is evidence that Americans want a smaller, less taxing government, the kind of government that the Tea Party advocates.
But if you really want to count numbers then consider that while tens of thousands of Americans marched for or against government policy, compare that to Europe where ten times as many marched against their governments’ austerity measures. (These marches, I should mention, are small by European historical standards.)
Nonetheless: Austerity is our future.
It’s one thing to think about “budget cuts” as an abstract phrase. It’s quite another when basic services are eliminated, steady jobs disappear and young people’s ambitions are blocked because college is no longer affordable.
Why is this our future? Let’s explore some math. There is one item in the federal budget that is set to expand in coming years: Interest on the debt. This is the money that’s paid to people who lend to the United States through bonds and other devices. We’ve been lucky in recent years because interest rates are low – so the net cost of debt service has been manageable. But that fortune won’t last forever.
The severe austerity we’re facing is tied to our national debt. “Net interest payments accounted for about 5 percent of overall federal spending in 2009,” the Congressional Budget Office estimates. “That figure is expected to rise to 6 percent in 2010 and then climb to nearly 14 percent in 2020.”
The Federal Budget is, essentially, divided into three spending areas: Net interest, mandatory spending (programs that people automatically qualify for such as Medicare and Medicaid) and discretionary spending. Interest gets paid pretty much no matter what. The election will debate what cuts, if any, can or should be made to mandatory spending. The third part of the budget is discretionary spending, including the cost of the military. But most of the attention (even if it’s the smallest number) centers on domestic, discretionary spending. That’s what funds everything from transportation to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
This is important because we already spend more on interest payments than on the kind of programs that invest in our future. And, despite the common rhetoric, we are not spending enough on these essential programs. In the mid 1980s federal discretionary spending amounted to between 3.2 to 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. It went up after Sept. 11 and with the temporary boost from the Americans Recovery and Reinvestment Act that number still only reaches 4.7 percent GDP.
This matters to Indian Country because tribal governments are at the tail end of the rhetoric that drives public policy. The arguments about what to cut – and how much to cut – focuses on the tiniest slice of the pie. At least during the Obama Administration, both the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service have avoided any deep cuts, but that’s going to change over the next few months and years.
How should tribes prepare for the inevitable? I would hope in two ways: Looking at their own budgets, finding ways to trim costs now (while protecting employees and services). Second, and perhaps, more important, look for new revenue sources such as foundation funding or federal funding that will be protected over the next few years, such as money designated for community health centers in the health care reform bill.
Of course none of this is limited to the federal government. The same pressures are present in states, cities and tribal governments. But before this era of austerity ends we will question many of our basic assumptions about government. What happens when there are not enough police on a shift? Or when there is not enough to repave a highway? Or when a state cuts loose its public university?
Will we take to the streets then? I hope not. Our challenge is to get past the shouting, the differences, and the look at the facts on the ground. No matter how loud we are the net interest on the debt will remain the same. Our only recourse is to work together to balance spending and revenue at all levels of government.
The Center for American Progress lays out alternatives for budget cuts – and the implications of such actions. Here is a sample from the report: “But it’s evident that cuts of the scope and magnitude we have laid out really will do harm to the country, especially for the plans that cut the most. They are cuts that we’ll end up paying for one way or another. We may pay for them in delays at the airport or in the emergence of a new disease without a cure. It may cost us in traffic jams and rough roads or in unsafe food. It may mean lower economic growth as the infrastructure crumbles, education suffers, and investments in research and the technologies of the future languish. Or our armed services may be late arriving at an international hotspot. Whatever the consequences, and you can go through the list and imagine them, there will be some. And as bad as the consequences might be from what we’ve outlined here, the consequences from the alternatives we considered were, in our view, worse.
But these are, in fact, the kinds of choices we’re going to have to make.”
Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, austerity, buffalo post, Bureau of Indian Affairs, federal budget, Glenn Beck, Indian Health Service, Mark Trahant, Obama Administration, One Nation Working Together, Restoring Honor, Stimulus, Tea Party, The Last Great Battle of the Indian Wars | <urn:uuid:9046890b-0e46-4c9c-b6b1-8fac94e27350> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffalopost.net/?p=12161 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944471 | 1,317 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Welcome to the Computer Technology Department
Computer technology and the principles of business touch our lives in many ways. Our goal at Paul VI Catholic High School is to prepare our students to recognize the areas in life where technology is used and how to effectively utilize specific skills to enhance their performance in school and in life ahead.
We aim to do this through a combined approach centered on building a solid foundation of computer and technology skills. This foundation will serve as a knowledge base from which students can draw on in their current classes and ultimately build upon in college and in life. We also strive to integrate these skills across the curriculum such that students will use the knowledge they have acquired in other subjects.
This general course of study includes studying Computer Information Systems. Please continue to explore our website to learn more about the courses we offer or feel free to contact us with more specific questions. | <urn:uuid:a1c74b1d-6a84-47ea-a3d1-bc19c5c697e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.paulvi.net/page.aspx?pid=324 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963821 | 173 | 2.484375 | 2 |
KINGSTON, R.I. – November 9, 2011 –Sara Sweetman knows how to get teachers excited about science and how to inspire young students to seek answers through the scientific method, even those in kindergarten.
The director of a nationally renowned science education network at the University of Rhode Island, Sweetman has even been at home in New York, working with the cast and crew of Sesame Street to help guide 12 of the show’s science, technology, engineering and math segments.
But she was never prepared to star in four Sesame Street episodes and the 6- to 12-hour filming sessions needed to get those segments just right.
“I never aspired to be an actor,” said Sweetman, a resident of Bristol and former Jamestown teacher who spoke while taking a break from another teacher training session at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus. “It’s not my forte. My forte is teaching youngsters and teaching teachers how to build their science lessons on an inquiry-based model.
“I was on hand for the filming to ensure that the science was covered accurately when the education content producer and a writer asked me to jump into a scene.”
Soon, Sweetman was having on-camera conversations with Murray the Muppet and a bunch of youngsters from New York public schools. They shot in June in the New York Hall of Science, the Liberty Science Museum, Public School 138 and Central Park.
“We were in Central Park when we filmed in 90-degree heat in direct sunlight,” Sweetman said. “When we were between takes, we had to pat the sweat off our faces. We ate lots of ice cream during those days. I was amazed at the kids’ ability to stay focused on one topic for up to 6 hours. Sometimes, we did two segments in one day, which required an amazing amount of discipline by the students.”
Sweetman, who is director of education for URI’s Guiding Education in Math and Science Network (known as GEMS-NET), has been working behind the scenes with Sesame Workshop since February 2010, first in a series of seminars in New York and then continuing with regular conversations with the group that produces Sesame Street and The Electric Company.
Actors, producers, set designers, directors, game developers and those from the book divisions of Sesame Workshop, formerly the Children’s Television Workshop, learned about best practices in science education from Sweetman. Two members of the Sesame Workshop team joined the URI educator, her staff and a group of Rhode Island public school teachers last June during a workshop on improving the science network.
That behind-the-scenes work led to Sweetman becoming an on-camera talent for Sesame Street.
One segment on bubble science has already aired. With Murray the Muppet, played engagingly by actor Joey Mazzarino, Sweetman and her student team came up with an experiment to test what kind of a surface would be best for catching bubbles. Dirt, aluminum foil and soapy water were among the surfaces tested. The students with soapy water on their hands were the most successful at catching bubbles.
“One of the things Murray taught the students was how to set up an experiment that would test the variables,” Sweetman said.
The schedule for each of the segments featuring Sweetman on Channel 36, Rhode Island PBS is: ""The Bubble Fest," Jan. 18, 2012, 7 a.m.; "Elmo and the Monarch Butterfly," Oct. 31, Dec. 7 and Feb. 9, 2012, 7 a.m.; and Falling Leaves, Jan. 2, 2012 and Feb. 21, 7 a.m. The schedule for each of the segments featuring Sweetman on Channel 36.2, WSBE Learn is: "The Bubble Fest," Jan. 17, 2012; "Elmo and the Monarch Butterfly," Oct. 28, Dec. 6, 2012 and Feb. 8; and "Falling Leaves," Dec. 30 and Feb. 20, 2012. The overall Rhode Island schedule for Sesame Street is Rhode Island PBS, Channel 36, weekdays at 7 a.m. and on Channel 36.2, WSBE Learn weekdays at 10 a.m. and Sundays at 9 a.m.
Sweetman and her student actors did not have scripts. “Because these were actual experiments the crew wanted the children, Murray and me to be in a real setting,” she said. “It was hard for the production crew because they couldn’t anticipate certain elements.
“Everybody was fascinating and a pleasure to work with,” Sweetman said. “They all have such passion. They brought out the best in the kids.
As the Sesame Workshop’s science, technology, engineering and math advisor, Sweetman said she has a deep respect for the science needed to put together a show.
“I told the crew and the kids while we were filming that STEM is all around them, even in such areas as simple machines, which is one of our lessons in GEMS-Net,” she said. “During one shoot, a camera mounted on a track kept squeaking. One of the crew came out and squirted baby powder on the track and it worked. It was a great lesson about how to counteract friction.”
So what’s the biggest lesson she learned and she wants to impart to teachers and young students? “Keep yourself open to opportunities and crazy, wonderful things can happen.”
HER PAL MURRAY: Sara Sweetman, director of a nationally renowned science education network at the University of Rhode Island, talks science with Murray the Muppet during a shoot for a Sesame Street segment. Sweetman worked with the cast and crew of Sesame Street to help guide 12 of the show’s science, technology, engineering and math segments and she appeared on four episodes that will run this season.
SHE’S NO GROUCH: Sara Sweetman, director of education for URI’s Guiding Education in Math and Science Network (known as GEMS-NET), who has been working behind the scenes with Sesame Workshop since February 2010, hangs out in Oscar the Grouch’s trash can on the set. | <urn:uuid:a79ddcc7-e3f0-44f1-87fb-65a1fbc9f831> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uri.edu/news/releases/?id=6034 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965451 | 1,310 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Ideological Bias in Social Psychology?
Posted by The Situationist Staff on March 2, 2011
On January 27th, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt gave a provocative talk at the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. His presentation has since received a lot of press (including John Tierney’s New York Times article on the talk). Edge has posted a version of Haidt’s talk as well as a variety of responses (here). Below, we’ve posted the response by Situationist Contributor, John Jost.
* * *
Social psychology is not a “tribal-moral community” governed by “sacred values.” It is wide open to anyone who believes that we can use the scientific method to explain social behavior, regardless of their political beliefs. Nor is our “corner” of social science “broken” when it comes “race, gender, and class,” as Jonathan Haidt claimed in response to Paul Krugman. Rather, social psychologists have made cutting edge advances in understanding the subtle, implicit, nonconscious biases that perpetuate inequalities concerning race, gender, and class.
Haidt’s essay sows confusion; he misrepresents what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. By focusing on scientists’ personal beliefs rather than the quality of their work, Haidt perpetuates the myth that social scientific research simply exemplifies the ideological biases of the researchers. No doubt this energizes those who are eager to dismiss our findings. But polling firms are paid by clients, including political campaigns, and this fact neither determines nor invalidates the poll’s findings. Similarly, the personal beliefs of social scientists may (or may not) be one of many factors that affect the decision of what to study, but those beliefs are, at the end of the day, scientifically irrelevant.
This is because we, as a research community, take seriously the institutionalization of methodological safeguards against experimenter effects and other forms of bias. Any research program that is driven more by ideological axe-grinding than valid insight is doomed to obscurity, because it will not stand up to empirical replication and its flaws will be obvious to scientific peers — all of whom have been exposed to conservative perspectives even if they do not hold them.
If we do concern ourselves with the results of Haidt’s armchair demography, we should ask honestly whether social scientists are too liberal or society is too conservative. After all, when experts and laypersons disagree, we do not usually rush to the conclusion that the experts are biased. Haidt fails to grapple meaningfully with the question of why nearly all of the best minds in science find liberal ideas to be closer to the mark with respect to evolution, human nature, mental health, close relationships, intergroup relations, ethics, social justice, conflict resolution, environmental sustainability, and so on. He does not even consider the possibility that research in social psychology (including research on implicit bias) bothers conservatives for the right reasons, namely that some of our conclusions are empirically demonstrable and yet at odds with certain conservative assumptions (e.g., that racial prejudice is a thing of the past). Surely in some cases raising cognitive dissonance is part of our professional mission.
We need science, now more than ever, to help us overcome ideological disputes rather than getting bogged down in them. We do not need conservatives to become conservative social psychologists any more than we need liberals to become liberal social psychologists. Our “community” still holds that policy preferences should follow from the data, not the other way around. Sadly, Haidt puts the ideological cart before the scientific horse. I simply cannot agree that — especially in this political era — it would be good for our science to reproduce the ideological stalemate and finger-pointing that has crippled our government and debased our journalism.
* * *
Read the other responses here.
Related Situationist posts:
- “The Situation of Ideology – Part I,”
- “Ideology is Back”
- “Ideology Shaping Situation of Vice Versa.”
- “The Great Attributional Divide,”
- “Naive Cynicism,”
- “Legal Academic Backlash – Abstract,” and
- “The Situation of Polarization.”
This entry was posted on March 2, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under Education, Ideology, Situationist Contributors, Social Psychology. Tagged: bias, Ideology, John Jost, Jon Haidt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. | <urn:uuid:04151c87-b0b6-43da-8f36-bcb2188665c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/ideological-bias-in-social-psychology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935461 | 994 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The power of a true story resonates in the heart. A true story inspires and uplifts. And a true story often connects the generations and brings us closer together. In this eighth volume of the "Vision of Greatness Series", the noted author, Rabbi Yosef Weiss, has compiled another amazing collection of true, stimulating and inspiring stories from the world over. Stories about great Torah personalities and extraordinary stories about "ordinary" people. Meet great Torah luminaries such as the Satmar Rav, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum; the Manchester Rosh Yeshivah, Rabbi Yehuda Zev Segal; and the maggid of Yerushalayim Rabbi Sholom Schwadron, and observe how they conducted themselves in their everyday life. Other vignettes portray simple, unremarkable people; yet we find that their responses to their own circumstances contain much from which we ourselves can learn and grow.
|Dimensions||6.25" x 9.25"| | <urn:uuid:07798e05-ef7a-47d4-990f-5185a9a01c00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eichlers.com/books/books/visions-of-greatness-volume-ix.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904162 | 203 | 1.789063 | 2 |
To compare and contrast the manifestations and surgical management of subglottic stenosis in patients with airway obstruction attributed to granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), previously known as Wegener granulomatosis, and those with idiopathic subglottic stenosis (iSGS).
Retrospective medical chart review. Review of subglottic stenosis cases seen in the otolaryngology department of an academic medical center from 2005 through 2010. Data were obtained on disease presentation, operative management. and findings.
Tertiary referral center.
A total of 24 patients with iSGS and 15 patients with GPA-associated subglottic stenosis (GPA-SGS).
All individuals with iSGS were female, and 40% of patients with GPA-SGS were male (P < .01). Patients with iSGS tended to have a higher Myer-Cotton stenosis grade at the time of dilation than those with GPA-SGS (P = .02). Individuals with GPA-SGS were more likely to undergo tracheotomy as a result of disease-related complications than individuals with iSGS (P < .01). No patients with an open airway reconstruction in the iSGS group required follow-up mechanical dilation. In contrast, all patients with open airway reconstructions in the GPA-SGS group underwent more than 1 subsequent airway dilation (P < .01).
While surgical utilization is the mainstay of treatment in iSGS and GPA-SGS, iSGS occurs almost exclusively in females and presents with a greater degree of stenosis at the time of endoscopic dilation. In contrast, GPA-SGS is associated with greater rates of tracheotomy. Open airway reconstruction may be used in the treatment of iSGS and GPA-SGS but is much more effective in iSGS. | <urn:uuid:5c868820-023a-4765-8a10-b3e9b84f7b4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archotol.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558018 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940103 | 399 | 1.664063 | 2 |
As the second largest island in Japan, Hokkaido is a beautiful and perfect place to visit. This island has many interesting stories. One of them is the story of Ainu People. The Ainu are indigenous people of Hokkaido. They used to live in Hokkaido long time ago. They were traditionally hunters-gatherers and fishermen. They hunted bear, sea otter, deer and other animals.
Last week, my friend and I went to Noboribetsu, about 1,5 hours drive from New Chitose Airport Hokkaido, and visited a traditional mock of Ainu Village.
The village shows many basic Ainu culture and lifestyle, including food, clothing and housing, and also many cultural artifacts. To get a real feel of Ainu tradition, we wore traditional Ainu clothes that called Atsushi. It is a kimono like clothes and the most noted garment worn for ceremonial occasions. Atsushi is made from thread made from tree bark of Ohyou Elm. The texture of it is very soft and flexible.
Wearing traditional Ainu clothes, we were strolling around the village, took photographs, and do some levitation.
This levitation project, we called, “Living The Ainu Tradition”.
Please enjoy our project.
That was our experience in Ainu Village. Thank you for stopping by. | <urn:uuid:a426c381-f15c-4367-99af-34070613aa0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://junantoherdiawan.com/tag/levitation-in-ainu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971257 | 283 | 2.5 | 2 |
Do it Real Quick,
Or The Death of the Adverb
The adverb is an endangered species in Modern English. One should neither wring one’s hands nor weep on hearing this news. In the course of the last thousand years, English has shed most of its ancient endings, so that one more loss does not matter. Some closely related Germanic languages have advanced even further. For example, in German, schnell is both “quick” and “quickly,” and gut means “good” and well,” even though wohl, a cognate of Engl. well, exists. Everybody, at least in American English, says: “Do it real quick.” Outside that phrase, which has become an idiom, adverbs are fine: he is really quick and does everything quickly. During his visit to Minneapolis after the collapse of the bridge, President Bush said: “We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible.” This is not a Bushism: few people would have used quickly here despite the fact that my computer highlighted the word and suggested the form with -ly.
Adverbs come from many sources. Some are ossified forms of nouns in the genitive or the dative (Old English had four cases). Such is, for example, whilom “once, formerly,” which Byron spells with an -e at the beginning of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: “Whilome in Albion isle there dwelt a youth.” The same ending occurs in seldom. It comes from the dative plural. In nowadays, -s is the ending of the old genitive, though we are apt to take it for the plural. An adverb may have no ending at all: consider oft, an archaic doublet of often. But the most common feature of adverbs is the suffix -ly: slow / slowly, and so forth. Unfortunately, the use of this suffix is inconsistent. In Old English, some adverb could be formed from adjectives by adding -e: wid “wide” versus wide “widely.” If an adjective ended in -lik “like,” the corresponding adverb had -like. In Middle English, final -e was dropped. As a result, many adjectives and adverbs merged. This is why long is ambiguous: a long day (adjective), and it lasted long (adverb). Sore, now an adjective, can function as an adverb, though this usage is archaic (I was sore afraid; they are sore oppressed; Childe Harold was sore given to revel and ungodly glee). Today we associate -ly with adverbs; yet adjectives having it are plentiful: consider brotherly, elderly, monthly, homely, westerly, and even likely. Monthly is an adjective in monthly payments, and an adverb in I am paid monthly. To confuse the already significant confusion, some words behave in an unpredictable manner. He works hard on his projects and he hardly works at all puzzle beginning students of English. In Old English, the distinction was clear: heard, adjective, versus hearde, adverb. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives many examples of hardly “firmly, with an effort, rigorously,” as in “what is made is slowly, hardly, and earnestly earned” (1840); citations with hardly “barely” do not antedate the middle of the 16th century. Contrary to expectation, late is both an adverb and an adjective, whereas lately is only an adverb. Pretty has a partner (prettily), but it has become a reinforcing adverb. We say: “The show was pretty dull, and the reception was pretty boring.”
Still another factor that makes the line between adjectives and adverbs blurry is the rivalry of such constructions as the moon was shining brightly and the sun shines bright. In the first case, brightly modifies the verbal form (how was the moon shining?); in the second, it is the sun that is bright, though the idea in both statements is the same. Usage is capricious, and analogy sometimes works for us and sometimes doesn’t. A celestial body can shine bright and brightly, a rose smells sweet or sweetly, but a remark can sound only clever, not cleverly. A man looks stupid when he puts his foot in his mouth and looks stupidly at the mess he has created.
Individual cases are hard to explain, and valid generalizations are hardly earned, but the tendency is obvious: adverbs are on the retreat in Modern English. Do it real quick has become the norm. We want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible is a borderline case (quickly seems to be more appropriate). But it is enough to listen to the people around us, to observe adjectives replacing adverbs. A boy of ten comments on the speech of a person with an accent: “You are talking funny.” As ill luck would have it, the adverb funnily is rare, so that the boy had little choice. To a conservative taste he did it real good is a bit too much, but I fully realized what odds adverbs are facing only when I read in an undergraduate paper: “She sings beautiful.” On the same day I heard: “She is fragile and walks slow.” Another century or so, and the difference between those who speak good and those who speak bad will disappear. When that day comes, what will happen to the following exchange between Lady Bracknell and her nephew? “Good-afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. –I am feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. –That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.” It looks as though adjectives and adverbs also prefer to part company.
Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins…And How We Know Them. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears here each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to firstname.lastname@example.org; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” | <urn:uuid:f0447e2d-895d-4621-b67b-11c3f39ab3ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.oup.com/2007/08/adverb/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973872 | 1,319 | 2.359375 | 2 |
U.S. Task Force: Baby Boomers Should Be Tested for Hepatitis C
MONDAY Nov. 26, 2012 -- A U.S. task force suggests that people at high risk for the hepatitis C virus should be screened, which includes those with a history of intravenous drug use and those who received blood transfusions before 1992.
But, the guidelines also address another, lower-risk group -- the baby boomer generation.
The new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, released Monday and updated from 2004, take a somewhat softer stance than those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which say that all baby boomers should get screened for hepatitis C. By contrast, the task force suggests that clinicians "consider" screening for this age group, which includes those born between 1946 and 1964.
Screening for hepatitis C involves a simple, inexpensive blood test. Unlike other types of hepatitis, there is no vaccine available for hepatitis C. Treatment typically involves a course of antiviral medication.
Hepatitis C is considered a silent killer because it is often symptomless. Undiagnosed and untreated, hepatitis C can result in liver cancer, liver failure and liver transplants.
Risk factors for hepatitis C infection include a history of blood transfusions before widespread adoption of screening and infection control measures, long-term dialysis treatment, exposure to hepatitis C in health care settings, having HIV/AIDS, tattooing in unregulated or unsafe parlors and IV drug use.
"Our recommendations are that people who are known to be at high risk -- such as people with a history of IV drug [use] and those who had blood transfusions prior to 1992 -- should be screened," said task force member Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, an associate professor of medicine and of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
People at highest risk have about a 50 percent chance of being infected with hepatitis C; whereas people born between 1946 and 1964 have a 3 percent to 4 percent chance of being infected, she said.
Bibbins-Domingo said the task force took less a stringent stance on testing for all baby boomers because many people with hepatitis C will live for a long time without progressive disease, and current treatments don't help everyone. "We have effective treatments, but not everybody who has hepatitis C will go on to develop liver failure or liver cancer," she said. "We are in an era where treatments are rapidly evolving, and recommendations may change as treatments get better."
One liver disease expert weighed in on screening for the 47-to-67 age group.
Dr. David Bernstein, chief of hepatology at North Shore-LIJ Healthcare System, in Manhasset, N.Y, said baby boomers should get screened for hepatitis C. "I think the guidelines should have been a little stronger for people born from 1945 to 1965," he said.
"The current therapies have cure rates of 70 to 75 percent," Bernstein said. "In a couple of years, newer therapies may be available which will have much higher cure rates but this is [already] very high."
Get screened, he advised. "Hepatitis C is the most common reason for a liver transplant and development of liver cancer, but if you catch it, you can halt the progression of disease and cure it."
The task force guidelines are now open for a period of public comment.
Get the facts about hepatitis C at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Posted: November 2012 | <urn:uuid:e35ef2be-4ae0-4fc4-ad3e-3b4a30f61b39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drugs.com/news/u-s-task-force-baby-boomers-should-tested-hepatitis-c-41700.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951994 | 742 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Flying While Muslim
(All emphases by Always On Watch)
Just in time for the Hajj, which begins on December 29, CAIR, now the legal representative of five of the six praying imams and pursuing an out-of-court settlement, is stirring the pot:
American Muslims making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca are being encouraged to file civil rights complaints if they feel discriminated against by airlines.Apparently CAIR has distributed materials specifically delineating how to promote this flying-while-Muslim agenda:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), citing what it called the "airport profiling" of six imams removed from a recent flight, yesterday said Muslims traveling this month to the holy site in Saudi Arabia need to be aware of their rights.
"Given the increase in the number of complaints CAIR has received alleging airport profiling of American Muslims, we believe it is important that all those taking part in this year's hajj be aware of their legal and civil rights," said Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR spokesman.
A guide issued by CAIR advises Muslims that "as an airline passenger, you are entitled to courteous, respectful and non-stigmatizing treatment by airline and security personnel."CAIR recently held this day-long conference:
"You have the right to complain about treatment that you believe is discriminatory," the guide says.
Those treated in a discriminatory manner are advised by CAIR to "ask for the names and ID numbers of all persons involved in the incident. Be sure to write this information down."
On December 9, the Maryland and Virginia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MD/VA), in cooperation with the D.C. Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (DC-CCMO) and the Fairfax Institute, will hold its first annual Imams' media relations conference in Herndon, Va."Basic media relations skills"? And something else, too, including the distribution of materials as to how to intimidate the airlines from following proper security-procedures? According to one airline official,
The one-day conference is designed to teach Imams, community leaders and activists how to interact effectively with media professionals. Sessions will cover basic media relations skills.
"You do wonder what the ultimate aim is here [with regard to the six praying imams and CAIR's involvement]; to eliminate a discriminatory practice that does not exist, or is there some other agenda afoot."The above-cited article in the Washington Times also contains the following with regard to CAIR's possible agenda:
Pilots and air marshals called the incident a "PC probe" to intimidate passengers and crew from reporting suspicious behavior by Muslim passengers and are fearful the incident will set off a domino effect of lawsuits.Although CAIR likes to promote itself as representative of all or of the majority of American Muslims, such is not the case:
Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, thinks this is a ploy to extort money from the airlines.
"I think CAIR is soliciting complaints, and if they don't get it, they will make it up," said Miss Burlingame, who is also a director for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation.
M. Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), said the announcement by CAIR "continues the tired stoking of the flames of victimization."
"They are unfortunately exploiting, for purely political reasons, what should be a sacred and purely spiritual story of our faith's annual holy pilgrimage to Mecca," Dr. Jasser said.
"We need new leadership and organizations which use their passions and the bandwidth of the media to lead the ideological fight against radical and political Islam rather than this tired pre-emption of supposed discrimination." | <urn:uuid:de9069e4-8d0f-4bfe-a19d-1a904f28083f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://alwaysonwatch.blogspot.com/2006/12/flying-while-muslim.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961023 | 797 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Three Infections From Other Medications
October 17, 2012 by UPI - United Press International, Inc.
ATLANTA, (UPI) – Three more infections have been linked to medications created by the same pharmacy linked to 15 deaths and 214 cases of meningitis, U.S. officials said.
Two heart transplant patients who were administered cardioplegic solution from the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., during surgery have a fungal infection, officials of the Food and Drug Administration said.
The same compounding pharmacy shipped about 17,000 doses of the injectable steroid methylprednisolone acetate used to treat back and joint pain to 23 states. Some 14,000 of the steroid doses are estimated to have been used. Some of those sickened by the tainted medication had strokes and some have been hospitalized and are seriously ill.
“A third patient with possible meningitis potentially associated with an epidural injection of an additional New England Compounding Center product, triamcinolone acetonide, has been identified and reported to the FDA, officials said in a statement.
“Triamcinolone acetonide is a type of steroid injectable product made by the New England Compounding Center. The cases of meningitis identified up until Monday have been associated with methylprednisolone acetate, a similar steroid injectable product produced at the same pharmacy.”
The FDA has not confirmed that these infections were caused by a New England Compounding Center product, officials said.
“Investigation of these patients is ongoing; and there may be other explanations for their Aspergillus infection. Cardioplegic solution is used to induce cardiac muscle paralysis during open heart surgery to prevent injury to the heart,” the FDA said.
“The sterility of any injectable drug, including ophthalmic — eye — drugs that are injectable or used in conjunction with eye surgery, and cardioplegic solutions produced by the New England Compounding Center are of significant concern, and out of an abundance of caution, patients who received these products should be alerted to the potential risk of infection.”
At this time, no cases of infection have been reported in connection with any New England Compounding Center-produced ophthalmic drug that is injectable or used in conjunction with eye surgery, but the FDA said this class of products could present potentially similar risks of infection.
The FDA does not urge patient follow-up at this time for products of lower risk such as lotions, creams, eyedrops not used in conjunction with surgery and suppositories, officials said.
President Barack Obama said he is concerned about the illnesses’ severity. White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters the president had been briefed on the issue and was “as concerned about it as you would expect given the severity of the impact on some people who have either died or gotten very sick.”
“At this time, the CDC does not recommend empiric anti-fungal therapy for symptomatic patients who have normal cerebrospinal fluid laboratory examination. These patients should be closely monitored and re-evaluated for progression of symptoms,” the CDC said on its website. “Should the patient have progression of symptoms, a lumbar puncture — a spinal tap in which a thin needle draws fluid surrounding the spinal cord and the brain — should be repeated immediately, using a different site than was used for the epidural — lower back — injection when possible.”
The CDC listed a series of recommendations for physicians treating patients who were given the steroid based on growing evidence that Exserohilum rostratum — a brown-black mold, or fungus — was the predominant pathogen in this outbreak, and expert opinion and published literature indicated the drug voriconazole might be effective in treating infections due to brown-black molds as well as infections due to the Aspergillus species, another fungus found to have contaminated the steroid injections.
The CDC said it continued to consult with national experts on treatment options for patients associated with this cluster of illnesses. In addition, the CDC recommended physicians of patients who have symptoms of fungal meningitis or infection should consult an infectious disease physician to assist with diagnosis, management and follow–up, which might be complex and prolonged.
Dr. J. Todd Weber of the CDC said treating the patients sickened by the tainted steroid is “new territory” because it has never caused meningitis before.
Detailed recommendations for physicians treating fungal meningitis patients is at : http://www.cdc.gov/hai/outbreaks/clinicians/interim_treatment_guidance_central_nervous_system_parameningeal.html. | <urn:uuid:2734655b-65d4-4ce5-8c73-8b3e0ef46187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://personalliberty.com/2012/10/17/three-infections-from-other-medications/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=836876f408 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952415 | 989 | 1.914063 | 2 |
Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment we're going to talk about how to water roses. Now, roses are such a beautiful addition to your garden. They bloom all summer long, and they'll grow in almost any climate, cold climates to warm climates, and they do really well almost anywhere. And in the wintertime in the northwest we don't really have to do anything to em', cause they like to be on the dry side and we get plenty of rain and moisture. If you live in a warmer climate you've got to water em' year round. And there's a few tricks that I like to follow when I water my plants. The best time to water a rose is depending on the season, so in the summertime when it's really, really hot I actually water them at night, because it's so dry and hot that I want em' to soak up all the water for the next day. In the spring and the fall I'd rather water them in the mornings, cause' that way they'll never get mildew and they won't stay too moist either. When selecting a water nozzle too for my roses I love the ones that give you the options, so I can have a jet, a shower, a center, a cone, a full, or a mist. So, when I'm watering the whole plant itself I put it on the full, but if I'm watering any flowers in bloom, and that goes for any parts of my garden, I like to put it on the mist. So, by misting them you can protect the blooms and they won't be damaged in any way. And make sure and water em' in the morning or the evening, cause' if you water them in the middle of the day on a hot summer day they'll get water spots, and the water spots just like on your car. If you water wash your car in the middle of the day a lot of times you get water spots if you don't wipe em' off, and they don't dry completely. But either way, I water my roses whenever I get the chance, and if they look a little wilty I soak em'. I go to the point where they almost a little bit droopy, and I soak em' again, and that way they do really well, because they really want to dry out in between watering. So, water them when you get the chance, and make sure and let em' dry out in between. | <urn:uuid:7ac32238-7d73-4e82-a66a-b3c592ebffd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardenguides.com/video-56429-water-roses.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971061 | 508 | 2.046875 | 2 |
I want to understand class files and inner/nested classes a bit better and I'm wondering about the following things:
- Is the
InnerClassesattribute used to refer tothe inner/nested classes in the ´containing´ class or is it used in the inner/nested classes to refer to the ‘container’ class?
- Is the
InnerClassesattribute in class files sufficient? E.g. Do inner/nested classes have to follow the name mangling with
$or is this just a convention?
- Is there a way to make a class look like an inner/nested class to the JVM without setting the
InnerClassesattribute and does this depend on the JLM vendor? (I remember hearing that IBM's implementation had less strict requirements in some parts.)
- How much does the class loading mechanism of the JVM interact with Java reflection? Would it be possible to make the JVM disagree with the results from Java reflection?
I tried looking it up in the JVM specification but didn't find a description of the actual mechanism.
I only found this sentence in “The
InnerClasses Attribute” remotely connected to my question:
The Java virtual machine does not currently check the consistency of the InnerClasses attribute with any class file actually representing a class or interface referenced by the attribute. | <urn:uuid:7e9fdee1-dd41-4727-8012-b65b6ac24fec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8082142/how-can-a-jvm-decide-if-a-class-belongs-e-g-inner-or-nested-classes-to-anot | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920769 | 286 | 2.75 | 3 |
Posted Dec 06, 2011By mleyba
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Several hundred anarchists clashed with riot police outside Parliament, where Greek lawmakers were debating the 2012 budget before a vote expected after midnight.
The rioters were part of a march to commemorate the third anniversary of the fatal police shooting of a teenager in central Athens. Anarchists threw stones, bottles and firebombs at the police, who replied with tear gas and stun grenades. The rioters moved away from Parliament.
In a separate march earlier Tuesday, about 2,0000 students commemorating the teen’s shooting hurled rocks and bottles during at police, as well as smashing two nearby store fronts and three bus stops. Other groups of teenagers attacked two suburban police stations with rocks and bottles.
Police dispersed the youths with a small amount of tear gas after the protesters used at least two fire bombs.
Police reported 14 officers were injured; nine people were arrested and six detained.
May 18, 2013 | photo
Riot police clashed with protesters during multiple demonstrations against Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erd
May 17, 2013 | photo
Colorado’s newest state park, Staunton State Park, west of Conifer, will open to the public May 18. It has be
May 16, 2013 | photo
Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis clashed with police after gathering to protest against newly proposed
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All content © 2013 http://www.denverpost.com | <urn:uuid:8aaf97a4-403f-47e3-96a6-5366e921e948> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photos.denverpost.com/2011/12/06/photos-greek-students-clash-with-riot-police-on-shooting-anniversary-of-alexis-grigoropoulos/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957599 | 304 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Minimise our differences, not perpetuate them
MAY 21 — When Hindraf first gained national prominence, the movement was greeted with some voices of apprehension from various commentators, activists and politicians.
Not all were reacting out of fear of the movement as a political threat. Even those who were empathetic to Hindraf's cause felt uncomfortable with the racial nature of the movement. The way forward for the Indian community and the nation at large, some felt, was to adopt an inclusive, non-racial approach.
In an ideal world, that would certainly be true. After all, we are all Malaysians, no? Go Bangsa Malaysia!
In the real world, however, much of Malaysian life remains defined by ethnicity and religion. The historical and present experiences of each ethnic group are so unique and disparate that we are often living parallel lives.
It's hard to expect, say, a middle-class Chinese Malaysian to fully grasp what it means to see your temple demolished. Or grow up with a lack of opportunities in an estate. Or face police brutality. It seems only natural that in such a racial society, challenges manifest themselves along similar lines. Likewise, the impetus to change will come from those most directly affected.
Nevertheless, while the reality of Malaysia's past and present dictates communal politics, it is by no means written in our destiny.
Hindraf has admirably given the Indian Malaysian community, particularly the marginalised, a voice. The movement, so violently cracked down upon and demonised by the authorities, has undoubtedly altered the political landscape in Malaysia, bringing Indian Malaysian issues out of MIC and onto the front pages.
Addressing longstanding issues such as education, poverty and crime, however, requires Hindraf to chart a new way forward for both the Indian Malaysian community and the nation. This new way forward has to be one that also rejects the racial divisions we are so accustomed to, which is largely responsible for the state of affairs to begin with.
Very slowly but surely Malaysian politics is in the midst of turning a page on race. How the story progresses is still undetermined, but at a time when non-Muslims are openly supporting PAS, when the DAP no longer spooks all Malays and the multi-racial PKR is the largest opposition party in Parliament, it is regressive to see another ethnic-based party being formed.
The Malaysia Makkal Sakti Party isn't the first new Indian Malaysian party to be formed in recent years. Hindraf leader P. Uthayakumar himself formed Parti Reformasi Insan Malaysia, while Datuk Nallakaruppan put together the Malaysia Indian United Party after his departure from PKR.
Is another Indian Malaysian political party a step forward? The present lines between ethnic groups were drawn in the past, but our future does not have to be a mere continuation of failed ideas and formulas.
The different communities that make up Malaysia have every right to articulate and express their concerns or dissatisfactions. There's nothing racist about that. After all, the fact is our lives, challenges, experiences are very different. The solution, however, is in minimising these differences. Not continuing to perpetuate them. | <urn:uuid:e7a77689-cf9b-4966-a70c-7d81c1c90ed1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/litee/opinion/article/Minimise-our-differences-not-perpetuate-them/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962337 | 650 | 2 | 2 |
Max Guitar Processor, Part 4
At this point, we have a pretty useful guitar processing "rack", but it could use a little spice. This spice will come from two additional processors: a looping delay unit, and a basic reverb system. Also, to help keep the output useful, we will drop a limiter on the back end of the entire rig.
Tutorials in this series:
The first processor we will add is an alternative version of the delay line – one that provides tap tempo, looping and sound-on-sound functionality. Unlike our previous delay module, this one will not provide modulation (for flanging and pitch shifting effects); rather it will be focused on capturing a loop, and allowing overdubs of additional sounds.
As with any delay line, the most important setting is the delay time. We use a standard floating-point number box for entry, but it is probably most convenient to use the "tap tempo" function that is implemented. By clicking on the tap tempo button four times, you generate a delay time that will match your taps.
The tap tempo function is provided by the taptempo abstraction at the top level of the patch. It counts four incoming bang messages, determines the three intervals between the taps, takes the average and uses that for the tempo calculation. Since it is assumed that we are tapping quarter notes, but want to use a four bar measure, the result is multiplied by four to give us a delay time value. This is an area where you might want to modify the function to meet your needs – if you really want to have the delay run at the rate you tapped, you can remove the [* 4] object at the end of the processing chain.
The basic delay design, as found in the loop_handler subpatcher, is very similar to the layout of the modulating delay. The few tweaks provided are there to support the looping functions. First, when the "Freeze" button is "on", the feedback is switched to 100% feedback. This gives us a standard looping function. The feedback loop has a lowpass filter in it, which will change the audio in the loop if it is not fully open. The "Input Active" button is very important – it determines if the input signal is sent into the delay path. If it is off, the only output of the delay line is whatever is currently playing – if the delay is "frozen", you will hear the loop, while with freeze off you will only hear the remaining contents of the loop line feedback. What is cool about this is that, when you freeze the delay line, you can still overlay audio parts onto the loop – giving you sound-on-sound overdubbing.
I've also implemented a click track that cycles at the same speed as the delay time. This way, if you want to work up some one-bar loops, you can hear the timing (in quarter note click) even before you begin recording. Most of these concepts are classic delay techniques, but this sort of looping processor is exactly why many people first get into Max/MSP. Even if you aren't into guitar processing per se, you may find this looping delay system can jump-start your Max experiments.
What would an effects processing rig be without a reverb? As is typical for any processing rack, I've installed a reverb as the last effect in the system – this way, we will get consistant reverb from both our looped and our live guitar lines. To provide reverb, I've gone to a third-party external object: Nathan Wolek's gverb~. I happen to like the sound of it well enough, and I've wrapped it up in another abstraction so I can replace it in the future (if I decide to do that).
If you look into the subpatcher reverb_handler, you'll see that I expose the reverb time control to the top-level patch, but I also provide a reverb mix control that uses the pan2 abstraction found in Max's examples folder. This gives me a decent equal power pan – but why would I need to pan? In fact, I don't; but I can use them as equal power mixers as well. By using only one output of the panner, and reverse panning the live sound, I can get a decent mixing function will little effort. This may not be the most efficient processing stream, but it sure was easy to implement!
And a Limiter at the end…
Finally, to make sure everything stays under control, I've added a limiter to the end of the processing chain. I'm using the omx.peaklim~ object, which implements a good quality limiter. The parameters for this object are a little weird, so after some experimenting, I found a set that worked for me. These are loadbang'd into the object during startup, and never change. I also reconfigured the output section of the Presentation Mode to make everything fit a little better, but the functionality should all be familiar from previous weeks' articles.
This is the conclusion of new module additions, but far from the conclusion of this series. For my money, some of the most important information will be found in our next article, where we will cover preset management ('cuz I don't want to be mousing too much on-stage) and MIDI parameter controls (using my FCB-1010 foot controller). Get familiar with our new modules, and prepare for a big finale with our next Guitar Processing entry! | <urn:uuid:8b911273-fd85-475e-aa3b-823fd5c4e5f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cycling74.com/wiki/index.php?title=Max_Guitar_Processor,_Part_4&direction=prev&oldid=3708 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937461 | 1,141 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The Christmas Bird Count is 113 years old and is the longest running citizen science survey in the world! Groups of birders get together to count birds over a single 24 hour period between mid December and early January.
This year counts will be held on any day from December 14 to January 5 inclusive. You can find a Christmas Bird Count for your area in Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology in Wisconsin, there are over 100 counts that take place from mid-December through early January. http://wsobirds.org/?page_id=2353
The Cofrin Center for Biodiversity will be joining the Dykesville Count on December 16th as this circle includes the Point au Sable Natural Area. Contact graduate student Tom Prestby at email@example.com for more information. A Green Bay count that includes the UW—Green Bay campus will occur on December 15th. Contact John Jacobs at Jacobs_jp@co.brown.wi.us for more information.
The Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count arose out of a 19th century tradition of competitive holiday hunts where groups of hunters competed to see who could kill the greatest number of birds and mammals killed in a single day. The participants of an 1896 side hunt in a small community in Vermont shot more than 550 birds and mammals. Frank M. Chapman, noted ornithologist and American Museum of Natural History curator, proposed an alternative contest. In the December 1900 issue of his new magazine “Bird Lore” he proposed that people go out and count rather than kill birds and then send their lists back to the magazine. The first year 25 lists were made by 27 people across the country.
Today, people are participating in the Christmas Bird Count all over the world. Last over 64 million birds were counted in over 2200 areas across 20 countries including Antarctica. That number represents one quarter of all known bird species. Everyone follows the same methodology regardless of country. “Count circles” with a diameter of 15 miles or 24 kilometers are established and at least 10 volunteers count in each circle. Birders divide into small groups and follow assigned routes counting every bird they see along the way. In most count circles individuals are assigned to watch feeders instead of following routes. A supervisor is designated for each circle and supervises, compiles, and submits data after the count. The circle that tallied the highest number of species last year was Yanuyaca, Equador, whose team reported 492 species. In the United States the highest count was 244 species reported by Matagorda County-Mad Island Marsh, Texas.
Visit the National Audobon Society’s website for links to Christmas bird counts throughout North America and the Caribbean http://birds.audubon.org/christmas-bird-count
Christmas Bird Count data summaries http://birds.audubon.org/american-birds-annual-summary-christmas-bird-count
Can’t make the Christmas Count this year? Consider participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count Feb. 15-18, 2013. http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc/
Origins of the Christmas Bird Count from the North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier VT http://www.northbranchnaturecenter.org/cbc.html | <urn:uuid:05f81bc3-4936-404d-8dc8-d623c9438735> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/category/citizen-science/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932059 | 682 | 3.28125 | 3 |
January 16, 2013
By Brian Slattery
After long delays, Russia has deployed a new ballistic missile submarine, or nuclear submarine, for the first time in more than 20 years. This marks a significant step forward for its navy, which has pledged tens of billions of dollars to revitalize its fleet. The U.S. Navy, unfortunately, has had trouble both in revitalizing its subs as well as its overall naval fleet.
The Russian navy made the announcement that the Yury Dolgoruky (Project 955) — the first-in-class of the new Borey-class submarine — was operational as it prepares for one of its largest naval exercises since the end of the Cold War. In fact, Russia’s commitment to increasing naval strength has been a central theme during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tenure as president, despite Russia’s historically meager performance as a naval power. The Borey-class subs were first designed in the 1980s and the Yury Dolgoruky construction was launched in 1996.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has shrunk significantly since the Reagan years. The days of the 600-ship fleet have long since ended, and now U.S. naval leaders are struggling to find ways to meet a new requirement of around 300 ships. Currently around 285, the fleet will shrink further if more investment isn’t made in naval modernization.
The U.S. fleet was eroding long before the Budget Control Act and “sequestration” became part of the equation. In 2010, the Congressional Budget Office reported that actual funding levels for 2005-2010 fell below the CBO’s and the Navy’s estimates to achieve fleet goals.
Predictions show current funding levels would reduce the fleet to 263 ships. While the sequestration cuts to defense have been temporarily delayed as part of the fiscal cliff deal, they are still a looming possibility and would shrink the fleet to its lowest level since 1915.
Russia’s strategic fleet
While Russia has shown improvements in its strategic fleet (two more Borey-class subs are under construction), the United States has fallen behind its own standards. The legal minimum for the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet is 12 boats.However, the Obama administration has delayed the development of an Oho-class replacement for two years, which will in turn cause the fleet to fall below 12 boats for a 14-year period. As rogue states such as Iran and North Korea get closer to having nuclear weapons and increasing ballistic missile technology, the significance of this fleet is certainly not shrinking.
Both Congress and President Obama need to maintain America’s robust naval fleet. As Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has argued, “Quantity has a quality all its own.”
-Brian Slattery is a researcher in the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
First appeared in The Youngstown Vindicator.
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What to know about vegetable beans.
BEANS: THE PRINCIPAL TYPES
Full Details of How to Grow These Nutritious Vegetables
Beans as a group constitute one of the largest of the vegetable food crops; their culture is extensive and widespread. They mature crops quickly when used as green vegetables, thrive successfully in most temperate and warm climates and are valuable items in the diets of many peoples, especially when the seeds are used in the dry state. Of considerable importance is the fact that the pods and the seeds in the green stage are well adapted to preservation by freezing at low temperatures. The general classification of Beans for marketing purposes is as follows: String or Snap Beans, Shell Beans, Lima Beans, Soy Beans and Broad or Fava Beans. Most Beans belong in the genus Phaseolus. Exceptions are the Soy or Soja Bean, Glycine hispida, and the Broad Bean, Vicia Faba.
Snap, String or French Beans
The green-podded varieties are represented by both dwarf or bush kinds and climbing types.
The number of varieties listed for sale is large and varies in different localities. Recent years have seen the introduction of many of the stringless varieties which are superseding the slender, long-podded kinds formerly favored and grown as exhibition specimens. Popular now, but not necessarily new ones, are Bountiful, Stringless Greenpod, Tendergreen, Valentine and Dwarf Horticultural; the last named may be used as a Snap Bean in the young stage, as a green Shell
is Bean when partly mature, and later as a dried Shell Bean.
Climbing varieties include Kentucky Wonder, excellent as a Snap Bean and of wonderful flavor, which crops for a long period provided the beans are not allowed to mature; Horticultural Pole is the climbing counterpart of Dwarf Horticultural and may be used in a similar manner. The Scarlet Runner, a favorite and standby in Europe, prolific and of excellent quality, is grown to some extent in the United States but not in any appreciable quantity.
Wax Podded or Butter Beans. These are varieties of the Snap or String Beans, described above, that have yellow pods. While in some demand as a "green" vegetable, they a.re not grown to the extent that the green kinds are; from these the Wax Beans differ slightly in flavor. Both bush and climbing varieties are cultivated and are represented by Golden Wax, Pencil Wax, Brittle Wax among the bush varieties and by Golden Cluster Wax and Kentucky Wonder Wax among the climbers.
Methods of Cultivation. Beans of the Snap types are tender subjects and consequently should not be sown until danger from frost is past. They respond to good cultivation and succeed in most soils; a light, friable, loamy medium is best suited to their requirements. Acid soils should be brought to a neutral or slightly alkaline condition by liming. Preparation of the ground should begin during the fall or winter season by plowing or digging to a depth of 1012 in., if possible, and by incorporating with the soil well-rotted manure and bone meal or superphosphate to ensure good fertility. The seedbed should be prepared in spring when the soil is in good workable condition by discing or light cultivation, drills being made for the seeds 24-36 in. apart. The seeds should be dropped in the rows from 3-6 in. apart (the closer distance for the earlier season planting) and be covered with 1-1 1/2 in. of pulverized soil. A side dressing of fertilizer, applied at this time, will benefit the growing plants if it is cultivated into the soil at the first operation. Beans of the climbing varieties need supports to which to attach themselves. Suitable support may be afforded by strong brushwood, by poles arranged as a fence, or by strings. Cultivation to control weeds and conserve moisture should be carried out methodically and periodically. Successive sowing every ten days or so to ensure a continuous supply of Beans throughout the season should be made until it is too late to sow with fair expectation of the crop's maturing before frost. Under no circumstances should one walk or work among Snap Beans when their foliage is wet; to do so encourages the spread of disease.
These are an important food crop and are grown in many sections. They require a longer growing season than Snap Beans, some 80-90 days. Rather more tender and susceptible to injury from cool or excessively rainy weather than Snap Beans, Lima Beans are a decidedly warm-weather crop. Many varieties, both of Bush Limas and of the climbing types or Pole Limas, are offered by the trade. The Bush or Dwarf Lima is favored for early sowings, germinating more reliably and also maturing quicker than the Pole kinds. The Pole Limas are heavier croppers, however, and have a more extended season. Fordhook Bush, Henderson's Bush and Burpee's Bush are grown extensively and are all excellent. Leviathan and King of the Garden are standard Pole kinds. The Caroline or Sieva Bean is a small-seeded Lima Bean favored by many people and is popular for canning and freezing. It is a wonderful cropper, stands rainy weather better than do the large sorts, and is less liable to suffer from mildew. It may be had both in Bush and Pole varieties.
Methods of Cultivation. It is entirely impractical to sow seeds of Lima Beans until all danger of frost has passed and the weather has become warm and really settled. Soil preparation may follow that advised for String Beans. Good ground is necessary and, in order to facilitate germination of the seeds by providing as warm a seedbed as possible, sowings of the Pole varieties are usually made in hills (groups of a few seeds spaced at wide intervals), except in the warmest sections. Single poles, some 7 ft. or so of which should be above ground, are set 3 ft. apart in rows, the rows being not less than 4-5 ft. apart. Hills are drawn about the poles with a hoe, or may be plowed in ridges and then formed about the pole, a sprinkling of fertilizer is worked into the hill and 5 or 6 beans are sown at a depth of 1 in. or so. Later, should all the seeds germinate, they may be thinned out so that 3 or 4 plants remain. In the warmest and most congenial parts of the country, where climbing Limas are grown in quantity as field crops, no supports are provided; the vines are permitted to trail on the ground. In order to grow Limas successfully by this method, care must be taken to keep the growth within limits until the plants are well advanced, so that weeds can be controlled by cultivation. A favorable climate is also necessary for this method of Bean culture.
Other Shell Beans
Under this heading are grouped those Beans grown exclusively for use as dried Beans. These are mostly of the String Bean type. They form valuable articles of diet and are grown in great quantities as field crops. Navy or Pea Bean, Yellow Eye and the Kidney varieties, particularly Red Kidney, are standard sorts.
Soy or Soja Beans
This Bean, which was mildly popular both as a Green Bean and Shell Bean some few years ago, has not taken its place as a major vegetable. The variety Bansei is the one generally grown for this purpose. The Soy Bean is a valuable article of food and is used considerably in the preparation of oils, flour, seasoning and sauces. The flour prepared from it is widely used with other flours and food mixtures. It is cultivated in the same way as are Lima Beans.
Broad or Fava Beans
Popular in Europe, the Broad Bean occupies a place in the diet there somewhat approaching that of the Lima Bean in America. It does not compare in quality and flavor, however, with the Lima Bean, but is valuable because it withstands much colder and damper climatic conditions, and comes into bearing early. Fava Beans grow some 3-4 ft. in height, carry many pods, each 6-7 in. long, and vary considerably in minor characteristics according to variety. Windsor and Longpod are staple varieties.
The Fava Bean needs cool weather for its development. When grown in the East it is very essential that the seeds be sown just as soon in the spring as the ground can be worked. They should be set 8 in. apart in double drills (8 in. between drills) with each set of double drills spaced 3 ft. from the next. Alternatively, they may be sown the same distance between seeds in single drills spaced 2 ft. apart. The soil should be rich and deeply prepared.
When the lower trusses of flowers have faded and set their pods, the tip of each plant should be pinched out. This encourages the development of earlier and finer pods and serves to some extent to discourage black aphids, which are a serious pest of this vegetable.
Fava Beans thrive in the Canadian Maritime Provinces, in British Columbia and in Washington and Oregon. In California and some other parts of the South they may be grown in winter. | <urn:uuid:bffcf251-a5e1-4c0a-bc9b-479247f68163> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.backyardgardener.com/gardening/beans.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95615 | 1,884 | 3.234375 | 3 |
La Recoleta Cemetery located in the exclusive Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The layout of the cemetery was designed by the French engineer Próspero Catelin, and was remodeled in 1881, while Torcuato de Alvear was mayor of the city, by the Italian architect Juan Antonio Buschiazzo.
The Cemetery includes graves of some of the most influential and important persons of Argentina, including several presidents, scientists, and wealthy characters. Internationally, Eva Perón is the best known person buried in this cemetery. The entrance to the cemetery is through neo-classical gates with tall Greek columns. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums. | <urn:uuid:e53ff84b-2902-414f-9a5a-d0e8da83f04f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://public.fotki.com/lente62/recoleta/?view=roll | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976227 | 187 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Greetings Pythonists and fans of British humor. Today, we're going to take a look at a great little Python module called PyGNOME. With this piece of software in hand, we can, without fear of being forced to use some other uncomfortable programming language, dive into the big world of GUI (Graphical User Interface) programming. You see, PyGNOME gives us a complete Python interface for dealing with the GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) development/desktop environment. In this article, we will take a closer look at something called panel applets, which are essential elements on the GNOME desktop. Panel applets are usually developed in C, but this article will teach you how to use PyGNOME to develop GNOME panel applets with Python!
This question may sound trivial to some of you, but the answer is not that obvious. Most people think of GNOME as a modern desktop environment. While that is true, GNOME is much more than a desktop environment; it is also a complete framework for GUI development. The GNOME development framework provides libraries and components that programers can use to easily build standardized GUI applications and utilities. And, in addition to a desktop environment and GUI development standard, GNOME is also a large set of free software, including everything from word processors to CD players. All these software components follow the GNOME standard, and they therefore look and act basically the same.
The GNOME desktop comes with the panel, the bar that is located at the bottom of your GNOME desktop. From the panel, you can access your menus and quick-launchers. In addition, the panel can hold small programs, usually referred to as applets. Applets are programs designed to run inside another program. They are mini-applications. GNOME panel applets run on the panel instead of in a window of their own. If, however, you ignore the difference in where they are located, panel applets are just like any other program. Everything you can implement in a "real" GNOME program can also be implemented in a panel applet. (Although, when developing an applet you will have a much smaller area of the screen to work with).
So, why would you want to develop applets instead of real GNOME applications? Well, this depends on what kind of program you want to create. If you're out to develop an advanced office suite a la StarOffice, or a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, panel applets are not for you! On the other hand, if you want to develop a CD or MP3 player, and you want to be able to control this program all the time, no matter what other programs you're running, you should probably do it as a panel applet. This is the whole idea with panel applets: to have access to certain programs permanently, without having to bother about minimizing and/or maximizing other windows. The panel is always visible, and therefore so are the applets on the panel.
Figure 1. Taskbar applet with the Gimp currently running (click for full view).
Figure 1 shows a typical GNOME panel. The elements on this panel are, from left to right, the GNOME menus, four launchers, the pager applet, the taskbar applet (with The Gimp currently running), and the date/time applet (currently showing the time 12:54 PM).
What we want to do is to create a program that resides on the panel, just as the pager, taskbar, and date/time applets do in Figure 1.
We, however, don't just want to develop applets; we want to do it with Python. For this, we need to install the PyGNOME package. PyGNOME gives you access to the GNOME development libraries through Python. We will start out by downloading and installing PyGNOME on your system.
You can get PyGNOME here. At the time of this writing, the latest version was 1.0.53. When the download is complete, go to the directory where you saved the file and issue the following command:
tar xvfz gnome-python-1.0.53.tar.gz
This will extract the files and place them in a directory called gnome-python-1.0.53. Now, go into this directory and run the configure script (which will make sure PyGNOME is compiled to suit your system):
configure now starts to examine your system, making sure everything is in place. Note that you need to change the
--prefix option to suit your system. However,
/usr should be correct for most systems (like Red Hat Linux). If configure exits with an error message, the problem is most likely a missing package. Then you just need to install that package and try again. For example, if configure reports it can't find the Python headers, you need to install the python-devel package.
Anyway, when configure exits without any errors (the last line should read
creating config.h), you are ready to start the compilation. This is done by simply running
make, as follows:
The compilation will now start. This can take a while, especially if you're on a slow system with not much RAM. After compiling, it's time to start the installation. (If you did not perform the last few commands as the superuser, you must change to your superuser or root account for the next command to work.) Use the following command to install your compiled package:
You should now have
PyGNOME installed under
/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages, and we're ready to start our panel applet production!
We will create a very simple panel applet to give you a view of how applets should be created. This example applet shows a label with a frame around it. This probably won't give you any revolutionary ideas of how panel applets can be used, but you'll learn the
PyGNOME basics. With a basic understanding of "usual" Gtk+ and/or GNOME programming, you won't have any problem extending this example. Let's take a look at the example program:
1: # Import the GNOME applet routines: 2: import gnome.applet 3: 4: # Import the Gtk+ routines: 5: import gtk 6: 7: # The main() function: 8: def main(): 9: # Create an instance of the AppletWidget class: 10: myapplet = gnome.applet.AppletWidget("Simple Applet") 11: 12: # Create a label to be shown inside the applet: 13: label = gtk.GtkLabel("O'Reilly") 14: 15: # Create a frame: 16: frame = gtk.GtkFrame() 17: 18: # Add the label to the frame: 19: frame.add(label) 20: 21: # Show the label: 22: label.show() 23: 24: # Show the frame: 25: frame.show() 26: 27: # Add the frame to the applet: 28: myapplet.add(frame) 29: 30: # Set the tooltip text for the applet: 31: myapplet.set_tooltip("This is a very simple panel applet.") 32: 33: # Show the applet: 34: myapplet.show() 35: 36: # Get into the Gtk main-loop: 37: gtk.mainloop() 38: 39: # This is plain old Python, so you should understand this: 40: if __name__ == '__main__': main()
If you have any GUI programming experience, the comments in the listing are probably enough for you. However, let us go through the example anyway, to make sure everything is clear.
To begin with, we import the GNOME applet and Gtk+ routines at lines 2 and 5. We do this, as you probably understand, to get access to the GNOME and Gtk+ routines that we want to use.
The heart of every GNOME panel applet is the AppletWidget object. An object of this class represents the panel applet in whole; it is this object that makes our program a panel applet, and not a usual "window-program." The AppletWidget instance of this example is created on line 10 and is called
myapplet. Also note that we pass an argument to the AppletWidget constructor. This is a string representing the name of the applet.
Line 13 creates a GtkLabel instance,
(label), and inserts the text "O'Reilly" into it. Line 16 creates a GtkFrame object,
(frame). By inserting the label into the frame on line 19, we get a nice frame around the text (no kidding!!). The calls at lines 22 and 25 show the label and the frame on screen. Line 28 makes the frame a child of the AppletWidget object. Since
label is a child of
label will automatically become a child of
On line 31, we set the so-called "tooltip" for our applet. The tooltip is the text that is shown if you hold the mouse pointer over the applet for a while. A tooltip is usually a short description of the program in question (as in this case). On line 34, we make the applet visible, and on line 37, we get into the Gtk+ main loop, which will take care of all user interaction.
To save yourself some typing, download the example from here. Make sure you save it in a safe place.
Figure 2. A simple applet running on the GNOME panel (click for full view).
It's time to test our new, unbelievably advanced and sophisticated (ehrm...) applet. To start it, you do as you would with any other Python program:
If everything is in place, the applet should now start and be visible on your panel. Of course, you need to have the GNOME panel running for this to work. Figure 2 shows our simple applet running on a GNOME panel.
Figure 3. The standard applet-menu (click for full-size view).
Our applet is the "O'Reilly" label with the frame around it, between the taskbar and the date/time applet. It has no functions or features, but it's our applet! However, all applets have a standard applet-menu. To see this, click with your right mouse button somewhere on the applet. From the menu that now pops up, you can remove or move the applet and also add other applets to the panel. This menu is also shown in Figure 3.
To bring up the tooltip, hold your mouse pointer over the applet for a little while. A tooltip like the one shown in Figure 4 should show up.
That was that, congratulations to your first PyGNOME applet!
Figure 4. The tooltip menu.
This article has taught you the basics of GNOME panel applet development with Python and the PyGNOME module. Although we have only touched the surface of this quite large subject, you should now have a basic understanding of what GNOME panel applets are, and when/why they are good.
When developing applets, it's important to remember that you can implement everything in an applet that you can in a "real" GNOME program; every GNOME/Gtk+ widget or feature can be used in an applet. Remember, a good panel applet can do everything a larger program can, it will just have the advantage of always being accessible. Did anyone say size matters? C'mon, get serious!
Daniel Solin is a freelance writer and Linux consultant whose specialty is GUI programming. His first book, SAMS Teach Yourself Qt Programming in 24 hours, was published in May, 2000.
Discuss this article in the O'Reilly Network Python Forum.
Return to the Python DevCenter.
Copyright © 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc. | <urn:uuid:96a9a8fe-f3ea-44fb-b1f9-037d6983c84a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onlamp.com/lpt/a/298 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910033 | 2,491 | 2.703125 | 3 |
This is an image we might particularly associate with the United States in the 1950s, when schoolchildren were taught to duck and cover in the event of the flash of an atomic blast. But its use in civil defence drills predates the Cold War (albeit without a Bert the Turtle to help kids remember the message). I've seen scattered references to it being used in ARP drills in British schools in the the 1930s, and the same thing may well have happened in the First World War. But details, and photos, seem to be rare. The above photo was actually taken in Melbourne, at Brighton Technical School, probably in 1942. (Here's another Australian one from the 1940s, and here's one from London in July 1940.) It's really just common sense: if the roof and walls are about to come crashing down and there's no time to get to a proper shelter, getting the students under their desks when the bombs started to fall would give them some protection and might save their lives.
I wonder about the handkerchiefs or rags the boys have in their mouths? My guess is that it's intended to guard against being choked with dust and plaster. Also, soaked in water, they might help against some forms of gas attack, such as chlorine. Soaking them in urine would be more effective, but that would probably be beyond the scope of most school gas drills!
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at airminded.org. | <urn:uuid:13f69152-9d56-424b-b03a-995eadba5271> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://airminded.org/2012/01/31/duck-and-cover-1942/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976496 | 328 | 3.234375 | 3 |
I seem to have a really big problem with religious trigger words. Especially of the bad variety. I've been coming on this site for a few months now and it's been really helpful. I've found a lot of rational arguments so that I am not as terrified as I was before. But it seems like scary religious words like devil and hell are all over the place. Anything from listening to music, to watching TV/Film, reading articles/newspapers, going on Facebook, or just simply having everyday conversations with people.
And the kicker is that most of the times these people aren't even referring to the christian devil or the christian concept of hell, they're just words in every day speak. Now they're allegorical or symbolic or whatever.
It just really bugs me that I can be doing really well and feeling safe and then I read an article that's not even about religion, but they'll compare someone to the devil and it sets me off again with my terror of the devil.
I've read different website articles and books to get rid of the fear. What-the-hell-is-hell is a good website to refute the concept of hell even from a christian perspective. And I've even read a site that says satan was just a tool of god, that god used, there is no evidence in the bible that satan is the devil or the serpent, etc. also that the name Lucifer wasn't referring to the devil.
I've found good sites that talk about how the concept of hell is BS, that the Hebrew word literally meant the grave Gehenna.
But because devils supposedly "exist" in other religions, not just Christianity, it's so hard for me to deal with this fear of the devil. If the Christians just incorporated the good vs. evil concept from Zoroastrianism, then how do we know Zoroastrianism is false?
Most religions I've ever read about all have some concept of evil forces, spirits, demons, devils, etc. It's so hard to let go of that fear that there is something evil in the world that can hurt me and punish me.
I've stopped believing in the supernatural. But then why am I still afraid of it? Why do I still get triggered? How can I still have the fear when I don't have the faith?
I think I know the answer, is that these religions are so insidious. They use fear because it is the most basic primal emotion, because self-preservation is the strongest drive of humans and other animals. We have an overactive fear, an overactive imagination, we are tormented by the things preached to us as real when we were so little.
But that doesn't help to kick the fear out of my brain. Leaving religion is like a supernatural horror story. A psychological thriller. It's not real, but it seems so real. I can't stand to watch that stuff, it really validates the fear of the supernatural.
I feel so lost, so helpless, so ashamed of myself for feeling this way, but I need to get better so I have to say it.
There is no devil.
There is no hell.
There is no punishment.
There is no retribution.
I don't have to believe in it. It isn't true anyway. I don't have to have faith. It isn't true anyway. I don't need to have fear. It isn't true anyway. I'm still a good person.
Anything in my head is just imagination, fed by religion, occult, spirituality, film, books, TV, and any bad things that have happened in my life. It's all rolled up into one big thing in my head. One big fear image. And when I hear those words, I think of the big fear image. And it feels threatening. But I need to know that it's not. Nothing can harm me. Nothing supernatural can harm me. It's made up. It's make believe. It's simply not real.
I can convince myself of this. I know I can do it. One day I will achieve freedom for real.
It was hard for me too while I was going through the process of leaving my faith but one day I reached what I would call the saturation point of the stupidity of the premise of religion and 100's of other illogical aspects of having faith and I never had any kind of problem of fearing hell again and that was 30 years ago.
Even when I went through a mid-life crisis and got really depressed, I had no inclinations whatsoever to doubt that decision I made so long ago to leave the stupidity behind. I have enough to deal with without all that terrible nonsense (religion) making things even harder because you can't see clearly when you allow yourself to be blinded with religious nonsense.
ty for sharing this.
I just joined this group, but I needed to reply and say thank you.
I am glad I am not the only dealing with this terror. (even though I am not glad you are terrified :) )
My trigger words are "blessing" and "miracle" and yes, devil, too. I have been replacing them with other words, such as "advantage", "amazement" and "evil".
I was just talking to my friend about this the other day. I still fear devils and demons and sometimes hell, although I know its all crap! But the lies of indoctrination run deep and I know it may be a while before I (or any new atheist I suppose) will be able to let it go. Don't feel bad. Things will get better.
Peace & Love,
Chantal, it is going to take a long time to erase the programs in the hard drive. I still hear that stupid song "Jesus love me" all of the time and it is making me sick.
Yes, the social and emotional part of the brain needs to unlearn all that stuff as well. Dr. Stephen Uhl (former Catholic priest, turned atheist and psychologist) urges us to be patient with people as they unlearn at different rates.
Maybe reclaiming the songs with new words will help!
From The Humanist Hymnal by Jerry Phillips:
Mother loves me, this I know,
For she smiles and tells me so.
When I need someone to care,
I know she is always there.
Yes, Mother loves me.
Yes, Mother loves me.
Yes, Mother loves me,
She smiles and tells me so.
Father loves me, this I know.
For he smiles and tells me so.
In his strong and loving arms,
I'm protected from all harm.
Yes, Father loves me.
Yes, Father loves me.
Yes, Father loves me,
He smiles and tells me so.
Another site: John Perkins' Anthology of Humanist Songs.
And we have a whole new set of words to the Hallelujah Chorus, created this last December by two A|N members. | <urn:uuid:299dfbe8-2ab9-4e6e-9e73-068d86bacf0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/realtalkfornewatheists/forum/topics/do-religious-trigger-words?commentId=2182797%3AComment%3A1750925&groupId=2182797%3AGroup%3A1033114 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972452 | 1,455 | 1.507813 | 2 |
No Proof That Smartphone Apps Help Drinkers Reduce Alcohol Use
Release Date: September 15, 2011 |
- A handful of apps available from the iTunes store aim to help users reduce their alcohol intake.
- Most iTunes apps geared toward curbing alcohol intake use proven principles of alcoholism treatment, like social support, but none have been tested for effectiveness.
- Mobile health outreach through media like iTunes apps appeals to public health researchers because it is more efficient than traditional education methods.
It’s easy to find a smartphone app to entertain you, help you locate a restaurant or track your expenses, but if you’re looking for an app to help you cut back on alcohol consumption, few exist and what is available has not yet been demonstrated to work, according to a new study.
“The use of mobile tech, smartphones and the Web is becoming huge in terms of communicating information to people, but we really didn’t find any empirically based apps to help people quit drinking,” said Amy Cohn, Ph.D., lead study author and an assistant professor in the department of mental health law and policy at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The study appears online and in the December issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
In January 2011, Cohn and colleagues inventoried iTunes store apps that addressed alcohol use and behavior. At the time they did the search, about 350,000 apps were available in the iTunes store. The authors did not survey apps on Google for Android or other smartphone platforms.
Only 767 iTunes apps — about 0.2 percent — dealt with alcohol use or drinking-related activities. Almost three-quarters of those suggested how smartphone owners could use alcohol for entertainment purposes, organize or catalogue favorite alcoholic beverages, find locations to buy drinks or create drink recipes.
Twenty-nine percent of the alcohol-related apps were what the researchers termed “intervening” apps; those that might help the user decrease drinking. Although 90 percent of the intervention-oriented apps used some form of the empirically-based principles of alcoholism treatment — such as social support, self-control training and self-monitoring and feedback — there was no evidence that any of the apps underwent testing for effectiveness.
“We don’t have any research right now to suggest that an app is good at helping someone reduce their drinking,” Cohn said.
She also cautioned that relying only on mobile tech applications might not be the best way for drinkers to modify their alcohol use behavior. “I don’t think apps should be a substitute for face-to-face therapy or for pharmacological interventions that have demonstrated efficacy,” Cohn said.
Using smartphone apps to help those who abuse alcohol is a logical next step in treating individuals with alcohol use disorders, but a lot more research needs to happen to examine whether apps can change alcohol-related behavior, said Michael Businelle, Ph.D. An assistant professor of health promotion and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health, he has no affiliation with the study.
“The authors point out that app-based interventions are very attractive because they may be used to assess, monitor and treat individuals with alcohol use problems at very low cost,” Businelle said. “It is unfortunate that so few clinical researchers have used smartphone technology in interventions that target alcohol use disorders.”
# # #
For More Information:
Reach the Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health, at firstname.lastname@example.org or (202) 387-2829.
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research: Contact Mary Newcomb at (317) 375-0819 or AcerJournal@earthlink.net or visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
Cohn AM, et al. Promoting behavior change from alcohol use through mobile technology: the future of ecological momentary assessment. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 35(12), 2011.
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Jessie Gruman | January 30, 2013 | <urn:uuid:9e2c94cf-e65c-41aa-b56a-7d751a85b994> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfah.org/hbns/2011/no-proof-that-smartphone-apps-help-drinkers-reduce-alcohol-use | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913844 | 1,022 | 2.21875 | 2 |
'); } -->
The rate of euthanizations at York County’s animal shelter in 2012 is about the same as the year before but the amount of animals rescued or adopted decreased slightly compared to 2011, the shelter’s director said.
Out of about 8,177 animals that came through the shelter’s doors last year, 5,233 animals were euthanized – a large number of them being feral or wild cats that had never been touched by a human, said Steve Stuber, shelter director.
York County Animal Shelter’s euthanization rate in 2012 and 2011 was about 64 percent.
The “out the door rate” decreased in 2012 by almost 2 percent, Stuber said, because the amount of animals taken in by the shelter decreased.
The “out the door rate” is made up by animals that are rescued, adopted or returned to their owner.
Most euthanized animals, Stuber said, weren’t able to be placed with families because they had medical or aggressive behavior problems.
“The dogs that we adopt are great. The cats we adopt are great,” he said. “They’ve had to jump through so many hoops to get to the adoption floor.”
The shelter has a medical staff that evaluates each animal during the intake process.
In addition to cats, dogs and horses, the shelter takes in wildlife such as raccoons, bats, foxes and birds. If the wildlife shows signs of rabies or other medical problems, Stuber said, the shelter staff euthanizes the animal.
Compared to 2011, the shelter euthanized 86 fewer animals in 2012. Intake also decreased with the shelter taking in 95 fewer animals in 2012 than it did in 2011.
Of the shelter’s 8,177 animals in 2012, 36 percent went back “out the door.”
“As the intake number goes down, hopefully that percentage goes up,” Stuber said.
The shelter works with about 200 rescue organizations, most of them either outside of York County.
For the past five months, a rescue group from New Jersey has visited once a month, picking up cats and dogs in need of homes.
The group chose 31 animals in December – two-thirds of the cats and dogs had families “waiting in line” in New Jersey, Stuber said. In addition, many out-of-state residents pick the pets from pictures available on York County’s website.
“We have such a wonderful shelter that they come down, searching for good animals,” Stuber said. “And they find them here.”
York County’s collection of stray or abandoned animals, he said, becomes a good thing for states such as New Jersey with more stringent spay and neutering laws.
More than 1,000 cats and dogs were spayed or neutered in 2012 at the York County shelter.
As more people learn to spay and neuter pets, Stuber said, the intake numbers at local shelters and rescue organizations should decrease.
Adopted animals from the county animal shelter are spayed or neutered before going home with families. The adoption fee is $77.
Cats at the shelter, Stuber said, are less likely to be adopted than dogs and the shelter takes in a higher number of cats than other animals.
From April to June, he said, the York County shelter’s intake nearly doubles.
Volunteers are needed to help with the growing animal population and to prepare animals for adoption, Stuber said.
Want to help?
Those interested in volunteering to help with animals can call Steve Stuber at 803-628-3190 or drop by the shelter located off S.C. 5 on Justice Boulevard, near the York County Sheriff’s Office. You must be at least 18 years old to volunteer.
Pictures of animals up for adoption and more information about the shelter can be found on the York County website under the “animal control” department at yorkcountygov.com. | <urn:uuid:35078488-fb8b-48b0-8d2a-86db0c816338> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lakewyliepilot.com/2013/01/26/v-print/1790405/york-county-animal-shelter-adoptions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958818 | 854 | 1.96875 | 2 |
The Man in the White Suit, 1951.
Directed by Alexander Mackendrick.
Starring Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker, Michael Gough, Ernest Thesiger and Howard Marion-Crawford.
A brilliant young chemist invents a fabric resistant to wear and tear, only for him to fall foul of the trade unions and mill owners who attempt to suppress his invention.
Try to imagine an unbreakable, unsoilable fabric. It never wears out. It never gets dirty. Tailors have to set about it with a blowtorch to cut a suit. Revolutionary, yes? Probably too revolutionary for economies that depend on textile industry. You’d only ever need to make one batch. Everyone would be out of business; there’d be redundancies from factory worker all the way up to senior management.
Now try to imagine the sort of mind that could invent this fabric. Now try again, because it’s probably nothing like the bashful, secretive, strangely charming Sidney Stratton. But if only Sidney Stratton could invent the ever-lasting suit, then only Alec Guinness could truly bring him to life, turning this nervous, indignant scientist into a lovable outcast. Oddly for a protagonist who cares so little for the consequences of his actions, we find we deeply care for him.
That’s all still to come, though. To begin with, we haven’t the faintest idea what Sidney is up to in his dark little corner of the laboratory at Corland Mills, his experiment tooting and plooting and bubbling away, confounding anyone to guess at its true purpose. Only Daphne Birnley (Joan Greenwood), daughter to one mill owner (Cecil Parker) and engaged to another (Michael Gough) even bothers to notice Sidney exists.
After several false starts at mills all over the country, Sidney finally perfects his formula at Birnley’s, working as an unpaid researcher so his name cannot appear on the books. Only Daphne, who had spotted him working at Corland’s previously, tumbles to his ruse. Sidney only just stops her from spilling a great many beans to her father, explaining the unprecendented significance of his work to her.
There’s something about the way director Alexander Mackendrick lingers on Daphne’s softened expression. Sidney is bumbling on about long chain molecules, but we see something else. We see, as she does, this weirdly wonderful little man for the first time, coming to life as he holds forth on the things that really matter to him. It’s to Joan Greenwood’s immense credit that we read every hint of fascination and wonder and affection for this man in those feline features of hers.
She and Guinness give some of their very best performances, skewing very subtle, far beyond most of their comedy contemporaries’ abilities. For all Joan Greenwood’s sultry looks and seductive purrs, she elevates Daphne Birnley above the typical functionality of a mere love interest role. Her own quirks and eccentricities offer new angles and alternatives to the usual hanging-on-the-hero’s-sleeve routine. Her character may not be a world-class chemist like Sidney, but she immediately dives into the nearest encyclopaedia in an attempt to educate herself about the possibilities of his discovery.
As this discovery gains momentum, certain vested interests start to take notice. Textile multi-millionaire/warmed up corpse Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesiger) appears with a warning to get a hold on Sidney and his invention, before it puts them all out of business. Similarly, the mill’s Works Committee cry havoc at the prospect of ever-lasting unemployment. For once, Capital and Labour are in agreement: Sidney Stratton must be stopped.
With the world against him, it’s easy to root for the underdog here and cheer Sidney on as he runs through the dark cobbled streets, shining in his luminescent suit for all his pursuers to see. Yes, it’s that classic Ealing trope, the all-cast chase on foot. And why not? It’s a marvellously visual device, with dozens upon dozens of angry people in black chasing a lone man in white. Ultimately, we’re brought crashing back down to Earth with the reality of that unsoilable white suit, when Sidney begs his landlady to hide him and she turns on him:
“Why can’t you scientists leave things alone? What about my bit of washing, when there’s no washing to do?”
The Man in the White Suit is classic Mackendrick, avoiding Ealing’s usual rosy-cheeked portrayal of British life and getting down to the hilarious facts of life. Who else could offer a tycoon laughing like a leaky gas pipe, scheduled office explosions, or even a roomful of men too embarrassed to ask a woman to seduce their prisoner? This isn’t your average movie-with-a-message. This isn’t your average anything. Go on. Try it on for size.
Flickering Myth Rating - Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing. | <urn:uuid:3c7c7bab-3f27-4b25-a917-254be8a1cab5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2012/11/blu-ray-review-man-in-white-suit-1951.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938355 | 1,160 | 1.609375 | 2 |
"I breakdown complex problems into simple, real-life concepts"
...Corporate financing and investment decision making, time value of money, asset valuation, capital budgeting decision methods, cash budgeting, and financial markets. Analysis of environment in which financial decisions are made; applications of analytical techniques to financial management problems. Mechanics of trading, behavior of security prices,...
10+ subjects, including accounting | <urn:uuid:6ed72995-1c0e-4d94-b694-c2d6acb2e2a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wyzant.com/Yonkers_bookkeeping_tutors.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911055 | 80 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Why we did it:
We feel many have lost their sense of adventure and are now disconnected from nature and from each other. Visiting new places and sharing a meal with others produces a sense of connection for the traveler. This connection makes them better prepared to manage the world’s resources and relationships. After hearing Ted Simon speak at the 2012 Overland Expo, we decided we could help make a difference and promote The Ted Simon Foundation. The foundation was started in 2011 to pair adventure travelers with mentors to develop the traveler’s ‘observations and insights into something of value for the rest of the world to share, whatever their medium of expression might be.’ The goal is to equip travelers with the ability to effectively share their experiences traveling in different cultures and thus promote world understanding. This allows us all to better ‘understand the beauties, the mysteries, and the tragedies of our world. No traveler, in our experience, ever came home with a message of hate.’
Ted Simon speaking at the 2012 Overland Expo
What we did:
On July 4, 2012 four adventure travelers set out to traverse the state of Idaho, from Wyoming to Oregon, on backcountry roads. We followed the Idaho Overland Route, which allowed us to traverse the state on as few paved roads as possible. The route took us from Wyoming across the Upper Snake River Plain, through Idaho’s Central Mountains, over the Owyhee Uplands, and finally into Oregon. We completed the journey in five days and covered roughly 725 total miles with over 600 miles on dirt/gravel roads. We had the opportunity to camp in some of Idaho’s most rugged places and see portions of the state few know about. Along the way we encountered road closures, mechanical failures, and flat tires. These obstacles only served to take four people, who barely knew each other, and turn them into lifelong friends who are now ready to tackle the next big expedition.
More information on our trip can be found on our blog, www.LivingOverland.com, by clicking here. Over the next few weeks (as work slows down) I will be posting information about each leg of the trip. | <urn:uuid:a52c07a5-82d6-4d42-8241-30be9a930fe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/81152-2012-Idaho-Overland-Expedition?p=1148474 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948307 | 451 | 1.578125 | 2 |
According to the experts, the start of the cold war with the Soviet Union began in July 1947 when Stalin refused to accept the Marshall Plan for the Soviet Union. Although Soviet—American tensions had been mounting ever since the Bolshevik Revolution, they were briefly relaxed during the alliance to defeat Nazi Germany. By the spring of 1947 the euphoria created by the allied victories was waning. Meanwhile the Soviet Union continued its free and unabated domination of a tattered Europe. Marxist principles appeared to be gaining a foothold in much of the world. It appeared to some Americans that the terrible sacrifices by so many during the war years had been in vain.
The menace of German agents, and fifth columnists had given way to Communist spies and “fellow travelers” more menacing than their predecessors, because they spoke without accents and looked much like the rest of us! The widespread and popular notion, many concluded, was that American Communists were conducting atomic espionage for the Soviet Union. It was in this capricious environment, that the conviction of Alger Hiss (1948), the rise and fall of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (1950—1954), and the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would open the door to one of the most disquieting periods in American history.
In 1946, for the first time since the Hoover administration, the Republican Party had won control of Congress. Political events in Europe and the rest of the world bewildered most Americans. Early polls indicated official U.S. foreign policy at odds with that of the average citizen. As a result, President Truman came to be regarded by many as being soft towards Communism, especially domestic Communism. Because of the newly empowered Republican majority and to combat these increasing uncertainties, Truman put into effect the first of many of the so—called anti—Communist loyalty acts. However, rather than shoring up a perceived weakness within his administration, these executive mandates lent credence to Truman’ detractors, and fueled his own self—doubts.
A revitalized HUAC (inactive during the war years) now under the leadership of the contemptuous J. Parnell Thomas, (R—New Jersey—who would later himself be jailed for accepting kickbacks) launched multiple investigations into Communist infiltration of organized labor, the Federal government, and most audaciously—Hollywood. The assault on the film industry was in many ways a predictable aftermath of the recent release of films of predominantly liberal sentiment. The apolitical fledging American style Film Noir which took a disparaging view of life under any system of government, was cresting. And there was, it must be said at least a modicum of factual substance to the committees charges. A number of Hollywood directors, screenwriters, and actors had joined the Communist Party or contributed funds to its activities during the Depression of the 1930s. It was to these especially strident participants that HUAC was most mindful.
In September 1947, Thomas’s committee subpoenaed 41 witness, nineteen of whom declared their intention to be unfriendly (ie, to refuse to answer questions about their political affiliations). Of the nineteen, eleven were directly questioned about their membership in the Communist Party. German emigre playwright Bertolt Brecht left the country the day after his appearance, leaving just 10—the infamous Hollywood Ten.
To counter what they claimed were reckless attacks by HUAC, a group of Hollywood liberals led by actor Humphrey Bogart, his wife Lauren Bacall, John Huston, William Wyler, Gene Kelly and others, established the “Committee for the First Amendment” (CFA). The CFA traveled to Washington to lend its support as the eleven unfriendly witness’ began their testimony. However, as the eleven began to respond to their inquisitors with as much disdain, and often with histrionics far more brusque than their accusers, the embarrassed First Amendmenters began to unravel. Director Edward Dmytryk one of the Ten, said later, “I was so happy with the support of the CFA and others, but when (screenwriter) John Howard Lawson began haranguing the committee members, I died. We lost it right then and there!” Humphrey Bogart wrote a piece for the March 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine entitled “I’m No Communist”, in which he admitted being “duped”. His trip to Washington, he said, had been “ill—advised”. John Garfield wrote a similar article called ”I’m a Sucker for a Left Hook. Edward G. Robinson lamented “the Reds made a sucker out of me”.
The Truman administration was by now largely responsible for much of the anxiety and anti—Communist fervor surrounding the post—war period. As the elections of 1948 approached, the White House grew more and more unreasonable in imposing the loyalty oaths now being administered to all Federal employees. In a speech at a Democratic fund raiser, Truman vowed that all Communists and Communist sympathizers would be, without deliberation, removed from the government! The President now emerged more and more inclined to apply any tactics necessary to ease the discerned tensions. He played right into the hands of the tyrannical red—baiters.
I have always believed that if the hearings had stopped after this initial round, the majority of historians and academicians might have taken a more objective view of them. After all, the Hollywood Ten who were all held in contempt of congress, later admitted to being or having been members of the Communist Party.
In his autobiography “Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist”, Walter Bernstein, contributing writer for The New Yorker, and former screenwriter, claimed that while he was working at Columbia Pictures, he and Director Robert Rossen, would set out deliberately to include some leftist point of view in a particular scene. They left it up to studio head Harry Cohn1 to delete the unwanted scenes. Rossen, an overt Communist, was perturbed at his exclusion as one of the original Hollywood Ten! He never got over “being snubbed in such an unsavory manner!” Here, for the first time, one of the key players of the Hollywood left admitted purposefully and deliberately to including pro—Communist messages in movie scripts.
It was the later HUAC hearings of March 1951 lead by John S. Wood (D— Georgia), and the 1952 Internal Security subcommittee headed my Senator Pat McCarran that the “naming—of—names” became the watch words. By 1951, Joseph R. McCarthy was in full blossom. The entire country, Congress, and the Truman administration share equally in what was to come. It was from these latter hearings in Washington and in Hollywood, that the infamous BLACKLIST evolved. By that time, and as a direct result of these more recent hearings, more than 324 people had been fired by the studios and were no longer permitted to work in the Motion Picture Industry, none more pathetic than actor Larry Parks. Parks literally begged the committee not to force him to his knees.
Abraham Polonsky. and Edward Dmytryk, two surviving members of the original Hollywood Ten were interviewed in the 1996 AMC production “Blacklist: Hollywood On Trial”. Polonsky still holds to his beliefs. He claims that the Party was simply a social club. Dmytryk rejects Polonsky’s cavalier demeanor asking, “is he still deceiving himself for Christ Sake! I’m surprised at that, he knows better. We worked for the Comintern, we were given directions by the Cominturn, the Party was in the middle of all of it! I eventually came to see the Party as a menace”. Edward Dmytryk went on to direct The Caine Mutiny (1954), Raintree Country (1957), The Young Lions (1958), Walk on the Wild Side (1962), and several other pictures.
At first glance it appears that the initial hearings were unjustified. Scholars and historians incorrectly grieve over how these initial hearings deprived hundreds of innocent people their ability to earn a living. But in point of fact, as a result of the 1947 hearings only the Ten unfriendly witnesses were sentenced; and only then for their refusal to admit and then disavow their affiliation with the Communist Party, however sophomoric and foreign that sounds today. The tenor of the times must be taken into consideration here. None can now say that in the late 1940s there was not a genuine Communist peril.
Producer (Salt of the Earth, 1954), Paul Jerrico was asked the inevitable question, “In the event of a war between Russian and America, would you support the United States?”. At the time, his silence suggested an allegiance to a “greater” cause. He is still steadfast in his beliefs. His reticence, he now claims, meant only that he opposed any war that would destroy humanity?
Had the Truman administration heeded the early signs of anxiety and mistrust, and been more forceful in putting them down, perhaps there would not have been a need for further hearings, or for a Joe McCarthy. In his biography “Whittaker Chambers”, Sam Tanehaus presents a contrasting view from what up to now has been the consensus attitude regarding Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. Moreover, there is now compelling evidence to the guilt of Hiss. And there are suggestions that some in Truman’ State department may have been less than sterling.
The initial hearings did produce some tangible results. Whether or not they were just or popular is a topic for another day. It is legal in America to be a Communist. But open subversion is another matter. In that regard, the question must be asked “were these men in concert with the Soviet Union, or were they as Robinson, Bogart, and Garfield, simply duped, disillusioned, or seduced?” | <urn:uuid:c0469856-0095-4304-ac79-9ec7794b5f21> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moderntimes.com/blacklist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977541 | 2,068 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Hypertextual fiction offers either a radically democratic approach to language and narrative or a meandering morass, depending on who's describing it. A literary theorist assesses the performances to date and the possibilities for the future
Ursula K. Heise
Navigating a hypertext document can be like a self-guided tour of Los Angeles--or like getting lost in its sprawling suburbs: It's either a well-structured survey of major sights or an odyssey among minor ones. As an innovative digital form of organizing and presenting information, hypertext has inspired far-reaching claims about its impact on the structure of knowledge and its democratizing implications. Through non-linear organization and virtually infinite links between different segments of information, hypertext enables the user to approach knowledge in a non-hierarchical fashion: Since hypertext information is structured as a web in which each node of information can function as a gateway to related nodes, users can follow a variety of itineraries in their gradual exploration and acquisition of knowledge rather than a single, linearly designed path.
This built-in diversity of approach can potentially be deployed to great effect in curricular contexts: Customized "electronic textbooks," for example, could accommodate a much greater variety of learning habits and individual or group preferences than conventional printed textbooks do. At the same time, hypertext structures are open-ended: Readers and users can add to the information they contain or comment on it by creating additional links, which makes hypertext documents an ideal medium for collaboration among groups of researchers or students. Theorists such as Richard Lanham (at UCLA), J. David Bolter (Georgia Institute of Technology), and George P. Landow (Brown) have therefore praised hypertext as a medium that allows much greater flexibility in organizing and transmitting knowledge and leaves much more room for interactivity than the printed book.
Hypertext unquestionably offers these advantages. The two most important hypertext software programs now on the market, Eastgate Systems' Storyspace and Apple's Hypercard, are both outstanding tools for research and teaching: Storyspace allows sophisticated visual displays of information structures that can convey in a sort of blueprint the conceptual underpinnings of an entire research project, whereas Hypercard, which creates digital stacks of index cards that can integrate textual, graphic, and acoustic information, is ideally suited for didactic purposes. And anyone who has visited the World Wide Web will no doubt appreciate the multiplicity of connections that hypertextual links offer to the user.
But surfing the net also illuminates the problems that come with this openness: Links may lead to important or irrelevant sites, to accurate or inaccurate information, with often no easy way for the non-expert to tell the difference. The use of hypertext documents in research and teaching can involve similar problems: If every participant can add his or her own modules of information, comments, and links to the whole, some filtering and control mechanisms must ensure the accuracy and relevance of the added material, or the document may disintegrate into an amorphous mix of information and misinformation. But introducing such mechanisms means somehow curtailing the openness and egalitarianism of hypertextual collaboration. The use of hypertext for creative purposes raises different but related problems. Hypertext has already begun to make an impact in literature and literary criticism, with not only critical works but also short stories, novels, and, most recently, even poetry written specifically for and as hypertext. In critical work, for example, George Landow and Jon Lanestedt's In Memoriam Web provides a rich array of historical and interpretive information on Tennyson's poem. And Eastgate Systems has published a series of narrative texts that are organized as textual nodes linked by paths, which leave the reader the choice of which narrative sequence to follow.
Such experiments with narrative structure are not entirely new, of course, and neither are they limited to the medium of the computer: Postmodern novelists of the 1960s and '70s experimented with variable or aleatory sequence in such novels as Julio Cortázar's Rayuela [Hopscotch], which can be read according to two different itineraries, and B.S. Johnson's The Unfortunates or Marc Saporta's Composition No. 1 , loose-leaf novels whose chapters the reader can reshuffle in any order. More recent hypertext narrations such as Michael Joyce's Afternoon, A Story or Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden build on these earlier models, as well as other postmodernist experiments with interactivity: Italo Calvino's Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore [If on a Winter's Night a Traveler], which confronts the reader with a whole series of interrupted and unfinished stories; John Barth's highly self-referential short stories about writing and reading; or Alain Robbe-Grillet's narrative repetitions, which force the reader to choose between competing versions of the same events. Many postmodern authors and critics have claimed that such interactivity, like that of electronic textbooks, has a democratizing effect, extending the creative task from the author to the readers.
But hypertext novels, along with some of their print predecessors, also reveal the limits of interactivity. Many of the sequences the reader may choose, as even advocates of hypertext fiction admit, do not make for particularly compelling reading; this is not necessarily due to lack of talent on the authors' part, since by their very nature, hypertextual and interactive novels leave the completion of the work of art up to the reader. But this restructuring of the creative process, even as it may be more democratic than the earlier emphasis on the consumption of finished aesthetic products, does not automatically have the progressive ideological implications writers and critics have claimed for it. While such innovative forms of writing may shake readers out of a passive consumer attitude, these structures also force them to fall back on their own preconceptions. By refusing to present the reader with a completely different world of the author's making, interactive aesthetic forms can contribute to reinforcing the audience's pre-established world views--rather than disrupting them, as revolutionary works of art often do.
Part of the difficulty in assessing precisely what hypertext can and can't do, in creative as well as pedagogic contexts, may be that research in literary criticism has too often focused on textual structures and the social and historical context of their production, but much more rarely on their reception. There is relatively little empirical research on how readers select literary texts or how reading literature interlaces with other activities in a reader's daily routine. Once the actual process of reading is examined, however, it may turn out that as far as reception is concerned, even conventional texts are a good deal more discontinuous and open than literary criticism allows for. Similarly, pedagogic research might want to consider how the learning of material in one discipline might be affected by the student's experience of going to several classes a day that present completely different fields of knowledge. Hypertext obviously would be an invaluable tool for examining such cross-disciplinary connections and disjunctions. But hypertext might also serve as a conceptual tool, helping scholars analyze the discontinuities and multiple connections that occur in readers' reception of works of art as well as the inherent structures of knowledge and the production of texts. This new medium may help theorists envision the reading process in more empirical terms than they usually have to date--perhaps taking a step toward a truly systematic account of literary interpretation.
Hypertext Resources on the Web
George P. Landow, ed., Hyper/Text/Theory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995)
Landow, Hypertext and Critical Theory
Short History of Hypertext, Jakob Nielsen, Sun Microsystems
The Culture of Interactivity (conference, 1/17-18/98, Rockefeller U., Visual Arts Foundation, et al.)
Vision 2010: A commentary by Richard Lanham for the American Association of Universities provosts, 1995
Jerome McGann, "Radiant Textuality" (on academic uses of hypertext), U. of Virginia Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein, "The Hyper-Texted Body, or Nietzsche Gets A Modem," CTHEORY
Geoffrey Nunberg, ed., The Future of the Book (Berkeley: U of California P, 1996)
Postmodernism and the Postmodern Novel, The Electronic Labyrinth
URSULA K. HEISE, Ph.D., is assistant professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia and author of Chronoschisms: Time, Narrative, and Postmodernism (NY: Cambridge UP, 1997). | <urn:uuid:5753e3f7-55c3-4e41-a28c-94172c3d355f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-3.2/heise.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931641 | 1,773 | 3.0625 | 3 |
(July 15, 1949, ch. 338, title VI, § 601,63 Stat. 439; Aug. 2, 1954, ch. 649, title VIII, § 807,68 Stat. 645; Pub. L. 89–117, title XI, § 1106,Aug. 10, 1965, 79 Stat. 503; Pub. L. 90–19, § 6(h),May 25, 1967, 81 Stat. 22; Pub. L. 98–479, title II, § 202(c),Oct. 17, 1984, 98 Stat. 2228.)
References in Text
This Act, referred to in text, is act July 15, 1949, ch. 338, 63 Stat. 413
, as amended, known as the Housing Act of 1949, which is classified principally to chapter 8A (§ 1441 et seq.) of Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note set out under section
Section was enacted as part of the Housing Act of 1949, and not as part of the National Housing Act which comprises this chapter.
1984—Pub. L. 98–479
” for “section 5 of the Act of August 2, 1946 (5
1967—Pub. L. 90–19
substituted “The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development” and “he” for “The Housing and Home Finance Administrator and the head of each constituent agency of the Housing and Home Finance Agency” and “each”, respectively.
1965—Pub. L. 89–117
struck out provision that declared inapplicable the conflict-of-interest statutes in the case of members of advisory committees.
1954—Act Aug. 2, 1954, permitted heads of constituent agencies of the Housing and Home Finance Agency to establish advisory committees, inserted provisions relating to inapplicability of the conflict-of-interest statutes with respect to committee members serving without compensation, and inserted provisions relating to payment of expenses.
Termination of Advisory Committees
Advisory committees in existence on Jan. 5, 1973, to terminate not later than the expiration of the 2-year period following Jan. 5, 1973, unless, in the case of a committee established by the President or an officer of the Federal Government, such committee is renewed by appropriate action prior to the expiration of such 2-year period, or in the case of a committee established by the Congress, its duration is otherwise provided by law. See section 14 ofPub. L. 92–463
, Oct. 6, 1972, 86 Stat. 776
, set out in the Appendix to Title 5, Government Organization and Employees.
Ex. Ord. No. 10486. Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs
Ex. Ord. No. 10486, Sept. 12, 1953, 18
1. There shall be established the Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs.
2. The Committee shall make, or cause to be made, studies and surveys of the housing policies and programs of the Government and the organization within the Executive Branch for the administration of such policies and programs, and shall advise the Housing and Home Finance Administrator and the President with respect thereto.
3. The Housing and Home Finance Administrator shall serve as the Chairman of the Committee, and the other members of the Committee shall be appointed pursuant to the provisions of this Executive Order and Section 601 of the Housing Act of 1949 (63 Stat. 439
) [this section].
4. To work directly with the Housing and Home Finance Administrator in the task of directing specific studies and surveys and developing concrete recommendations, there shall be in the Committee an Executive Committee, consisting of members of the Committee designated for such purpose, and the Housing and Home Finance Administrator shall serve as the Chairman of such Executive Committee.
5. Administrative expenses in connection with the work of the Committee, including expenses of advisers and consultants appointed by the Chairman in connection therewith, shall, upon authorization therefor by the Chairman or his delegate, be paid pursuant to the authority therefor under the heading, “Housing and Home Finance Agency, Office of the Administrator” in the Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1954 (Public Law 207, Eighty-third Congress, approved August 7, 1953).
Dwight D. Eisenhower. | <urn:uuid:a9533311-5882-4187-8d79-e58813b42e64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/1701h?quicktabs_8=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921895 | 898 | 1.507813 | 2 |
You will undoubtedly be reading a lot over the next few months about 12 members of Congress who wield extraordinary power over the future of hundreds of federal programs and tax expenditures.
They are the members of the newly created Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction charged with identifying at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade. The committee can consider everything from spending cuts to tax reform to accomplish this objective.
The committee has an exacting schedule to make its recommendations and issue a final report to Congress by Nov. 23. Once Congress receives the report, it must come to the House and Senate floors for an up or down vote without amendments by Dec. 23.
Additionally, when the president recently unveiled his new jobs program, The American Jobs Act, he added yet another dimension to the panel’s mission. He tasked the committee with finding the additional deficit reduction necessary to pay for the program and still meet its deficit target. While NAFCU appreciates the president’s efforts to address our nation’s stubborn unemployment situation, we were disappointed that lifting the member business lending cap was omitted from the plan since it will help spur job creation. We will continue to advocate for its inclusion in any jobs bill going forward. The challenge facing the committee now has grown significantly. Most estimates put the cost of The American Jobs Act at $450 billion.
The panel is due to receive recommendations from congressional committees for items to consider by Oct. 14. This accelerated timeline underscores the need, when meeting with elected officials, to reinforce the service credit unions provide to America’s consumers on a daily basis.
The panel includes Republican Reps. Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Dave Camp (Mich.), Fred Upton (Mich.) and Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Pat Toomey (Pa.); and Democratic Reps. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Jim Clyburn (S.C.), Xavier Becerra (Calif.) and Sens. Patty Murray (Wash.), Max Baucus (Mont.) and John Kerry (Mass.). It is co-chaired by Hensarling and Murray.
One key item you can point to is NCUA’s second-quarter data, show a 52% increase in demand for consumer friendly, short-term small loans from credit unions as an alternative to predatory payday loans. This reaffirms the findings of a 2010 NAFCU member survey, which found that two-thirds of respondents indicated that they have an underserved area as part of their membership and 97.2% have loans outstanding in those areas.
Ironically, the nation’s fragile economic landscape today parallels many of the same conditions that existed when Congress established the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934. Today, credit unions provide a valuable, competitive difference to nearly 93 million members. According to a recent Credit Power Index comparison reported by The Street.com, “Our Credit Power Index figure for credit unions at the end of July was just 17.55…more than five and a half points better for consumers than the interest rate climate found at banks. It's no wonder these nonprofit institutions have seen their numbers swell since the recession as Americans seek out better rates.”
As you meet with your elected officials, it is worth noting credit unions have earned the respect and admiration of policymakers because of our sensible business model and member focus.
The former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank (D-Mass.), has often said, “If credit unions made all of the mortgage loans, then there would have been no subprime crisis, and therefore no economic crisis.” Indeed, Rep. Frank and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson both acknowledged that credit unions have been impacted by the current crisis through "no fault of their own."
Speaking of the financial crisis, let’s not miss the opportunity to remind lawmakers of how credit unions have endured during these difficult economic times. Without accessing TARP funds or being a party to a bailout, credit unions have continued to self-fund their recovery.
This congressional session is sure to test our mettle, making it all the more important that you remind your legislators that credit unions are about Main Street, not Wall Street.
Credit unions continue to provide a unique service to nearly 93 million members. Credit unions live up to the spirit as well as the letter of the 1934 Federal Credit Union Act. The defining characteristics of a credit union remain the same today: credit unions, regardless of size, are not-for-profit cooperatives that are member-owned. | <urn:uuid:bb3a0896-cb5c-4b8a-98bb-8a9a4a5a0bd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cutimes.com/2011/09/18/time-to-remind-congress-about-the-value-of-cus | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96107 | 928 | 1.507813 | 2 |
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France-based pharmaceutical manufacturer sanofi-aventis has announced the availability of several new media designed to help the company communicate with people who have diabetes.
• A blog, "Discuss Diabetes," offers health, nutrition, and lifestyle information, as well as a way to offer suggestions to the company. The blog is available at www.discussdiabetes.com.
• The company also recently launched a Twitter feed and a Facebook page.
• The GoMealsTM app, which the company says has been downloaded more than 300,000 times, is now available for Android® phones. Previously released versions were for the iPhone® and iPad®. The app allows users to quickly access nutritional information about various foods as well as find nearby restaurants and track their food intake. To download the free app, go to www.gomeals.com/.
Diabetes Health is the essential resource for people living with diabetes- both newly diagnosed and experienced as well as the professionals who care for them. We provide balanced expert news and information on living healthfully with diabetes. Each issue includes cutting-edge editorial coverage of new products, research, treatment options, and meaningful lifestyle issues. | <urn:uuid:0dd70999-5c88-405f-abd4-809e0130ca1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diabeteshealth.com/read/2011/04/06/7109/sanofi-aventis-announces-blog-app-and-social-media-sites/?isComment=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959542 | 293 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Doug Lung / 11.19.2010 12:00AM
FCC Chairman Pushes Spectrum Auctions
During a speech earlier this week at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Ga., FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski appeared to be pushing for an auction of more TV broadcast spectrum.
He observed that during the last century, the FCC, by providing spectrum for television broadcasting had helped to create an "extraordinarily successful U.S. content industry." However, this success was tempered by the reality that the use of this spectrum for broadcasting "makes it harder to do what's necessary in the 21st century."
"Fast forward to today," said Genachowski. "Less than 10 percent of us--down from 100 percent--still get our television programming from over-the-air broadcast transmissions. Instead, people watch TV through cable or satellite. The world has changed, but our spectrum allocations still reflect the previous era. This presents a real obstacle as we try to ensure a spectrum infrastructure for the new world of mobile broadband."
The Chairman fails to acknowledge that the amount of spectrum devoted to broadcast TV is significantly less than it was in the mid-20th century. In addition to the current VHF spectrum, TV broadcasting at one time had UHF spectrum extending from 470 MHz to 890 MHz—a total of 486 MHz of spectrum, including the VHF channels. Then channels 70 to 83 were stripped for cellular telephones in 1983, and last year channels 52-69 were taken away and allocated to public safety or auctioned to wireless services, including services like FLO TV that offered subscription mobile TV services.
Also, while some paint broadcast TV as a dinosaur ready for extinction, they don't recognize that broadcasters have just completed a complex transition to digital TV and now offer better picture quality and more variety, including a large number of specialty and ethnic channels.
Further, recent studies indicate a drop in cable TV subscriptions and an increase in off-air viewing. Every week I see articles advising consumers on how to "cut the cord" and get free TV off-air.
Unfortunately, to free up this desired 120 MHz block of spectrum--whether done voluntarily or not--many program channels will have to disappear, either as a result of channel sharing or surrendering spectrum in the most densely populated areas.
The Chairman's comments also ignore the advances in technology broadcasters have made in developing and rolling out mobile DTV using existing broadcast spectrum and infrastructure. This is not 1950's TV. The standard was adopted slightly more than a year ago and many stations have begun broadcasting mobile DTV, even before mobile DTV receivers are widely available.
Much of the growth in demand for broadband bandwidth is predicted to be for entertainment video. While broadcast TV can't duplicate YouTube (and I hope it never tries), it is, without question, the most efficient way to deliver live content such news, sports and popular entertainment shows. Mobile DTV makes those shows available on the handset or tablet, using one stream to reach thousands or millions rather than one stream (and associated bandwidth) per Internet viewer.
FCC Chairman Genachowski sees auctions as the way to reallocate spectrum, telling NARUC attendees.
"The concept behind incentive auctions is simple," said Genachowski. "Let's use the power of the free market to ensure underutilized spectrum flows to the uses consumers value most in the 21st century. And to encourage participation--encourage the supply of spectrum for the auction--let's create a mechanism that would allow the license-holder and the American taxpayer to share in the auction revenues. Everybody wins."
It depends on how the auction is structured. I question how much money the major broadband providers are willing to pay for more spectrum, and what the cost will be for broadcasters who decide not to participate. Ten percent of the population is still a lot of people. They probably won't complain if a channel running endless infomercials goes away, but I'd expect to see a lot of complaints if a local station that has been broadcasting live sports and news events and popular entertainment programming free to the TV in the living room, the portable set in the kitchen--and soon, the TV in the cell phone, netbook, notebook or tablet--becomes a "subscription only" service. | <urn:uuid:d269472a-c95b-435a-8dfd-73fc2643bfcd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0110/fcc-chairman-pushes-spectrum-auctions/207504 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946408 | 884 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Hard white wheat outlook improves
Consumers like it. Millers like it. Foreign buyers would like more of it. But U.S. wheat growers have been reluctant to expand their hard white wheat acres.
Many haven’t forgotten what happened the last time hard white wheat grabbed headlines. Growers who took a chance on the new crop found meeting the protein requirements difficult. Even if protein levels met a buyer’s specifications, producers couldn’t get the wheat to that buyer because country elevators didn’t want to handle a low-volume class of wheat that had to be segregated.
But that was 25 years ago, and times have changed.
Chris Cullan’s family passed on the chance to grow hard white wheat when it first came to western Nebraska in the 1980s, but they added hard white to their crop rotation five years ago. Early varieties just didn’t yield as well as the hard red varieties growers were accustomed to.
During the intervening years, wheat breeders worked to eliminate yield drag and to improve end-use quality traits.
“Yield pays,” says Cullan. “The first thing any producer looks at when choosing a variety is yield and the ability to turn that bushel into dollars.”
Gordon Gallup, who farms near Ririe in eastern Idaho, agrees. He has grown hard white wheat nearly every year over a decade. Yield drag has not been an issue on his dryland farm, but he has seen his neighbors with irrigated land struggle with hard white varieties when they try to plant after harvesting potatoes or sugar beets.
While growing hard white mimics growing hard red, fertility management is key. Most hard white end users want at least 12% protein. Top-dressing with nitrogen (N) at flowering is critical to reaching that goal, says Juliet Windes, a University of Idaho Extension cereal specialist. N application amounts depend on yield goals and environmental growing conditions that year, but timing is key.
Still, weather conditions can thwart even the most careful managers. Growers with hard red spring wheat that doesn’t meet protein specs can blend it with other hard red spring wheat and find a market for it. | <urn:uuid:cfb8f982-a320-4a98-a3c1-abc632725ee2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/production/hard-white-wheat-outlook-improves_145-ar16926 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962625 | 455 | 2 | 2 |
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Subscribing to sanitation | A new route for riverside drives
Salvaging local economies | Planning plantings around power lines
Taking the heat to suppress wildfires | A helpful package
Getting more to the lakeshore
Each year DNR staff distributes more than $200 million in loans or grants to Wisconsin communities for a broad spectrum of activities. Wisconsin offers environmental and outdoor recreation grants for more than 30 different programs – everything from wastewater treatment plants and recycling, funding outdoor trail and land purchases, building boat launches, buying equipment to fight forest fires and preventing runoff from farmfields and city streets.
Over the years, we've gotten skilled at putting together grant offers and efficiently tracking expenditures, but we realized we had more to offer communities, said Kathy Curtner, who directs the Community Financial Assistance program. As we reviewed the grant requests, we better understood improvements communities wanted to make and problems they were trying to solve. We knew about lots of different grant and loan programs offered by various state and federal agencies and nonprofit groups. We knew that aspects of the community problems might qualify for several different aid programs. And we knew if the communities could raise some matching funds on their own, we might leverage that money to get more grant aid for their dollars.
When DNR reorganized in 1995, one of our goals was to pull together the grants writers who had been working separately on wildlife, fisheries and environmental programs into one program where we would share expertise in securing grants, administering grants and working productively with communities.
Here's a look at some of the programs where that cooperative approach has made a difference.
Subscribing to sanitation
Lake Como Beach is a subdivision on the north shore of Lake Como, 946 acres of prime recreational water just north of Lake Geneva in Walworth County. The area was developed back in the 1920s when the Chicago Sun Times newspaper bought a tract of the shoreland, divided it into 20 x 100- foot lots, and offered readers lots as a subscription premium; one lot for every year they would extend their subscription. The region is a short commute from the Chicago metro area and offered the opportunity to own camping space or build a weekend/vacation getaway.
Since lots were small, many built modest cottages that were quite close together. The developer provided streets, but no water and sewer services. So individual septic systems and drinking water wells were built on the small, contiguous parcels. In addition, local geography offered other challenges. The area is riddled with springs. Over time, some of the septic systems failed and wells became contaminated.
Clearly the tight-packed development was ripe for a community well and collective sewage treatment, but those costs are darn high and expensive to install on turf that has been developed for 80 years. The estimates ran as high as $24 million for the 1,000 homes and businesses in the affected area.
By working with community planners, local elected officials and the Lake Como Sanitary District, state grant managers helped Geneva Township receive $30 million in US Dept. of Agriculture Rural Development Funds, $11 million in DNR wastewater treatment grants, another $4.4 million in zero-percent loans. That was well over half the cost of a new public well and sewers to provide safer water, protect human health and stem the flow of nutrient-rich waters into Lake Como.
"Without this money I don't think it could've been done. It was a good thing for our community," said Hubert Jensen, the General Manager of the Lake Como Sanitary District.
A new public wells and sewers have also increased property values, renewed interest in remodeling some of the homes and increased the tax base to further revitalize the community.
A new route for riverside drives
Sometimes it just takes a nudge to kick start a community. The Village of Tigerton, in southwestern Shawano County, is home to beautiful wide-open woods that run along the Embarrass River and people who stay there for the peace and quiet. It's hardly a place you'd figure would embrace an ATV park, but you'd been surprised how much pride and harmony now surrounds that community's newest recreation attraction.
The community wanted to make use of tax-delinquent lands along the river. Local ATV riders and civic leaders had an idea that was long on vision but shorter on cash. Gary Hanson, DNR's recreational trail coordinator for the Northeast Region helped that vision blossom. ATV trail funds helped purchase 584 acres land along the river, but it sparked a much bigger project. The community staked out and developed 20 mile of ATV trails winding through wooded hills and along the river. For riders who were more interested in testing their riding skills than seeing nature, park developers built a challenge riding courses of hills and turns.
Part of the relaxation and thrill for ATV enthusiasts is the chance to relax outdoors with good friends. So the park included 37 scenic, wooded campsites near the trails and a community center to host group events and public meetings. The center also houses restrooms and showers for campers.
Motorized trails aren't the only attraction. The Embarrass River ATV Park now includes a hiking trail that follows the river through a gorge. Walkers can also reach some quality fishing holes on the riverbanks. Some quality fishing hole, with fishing holes and wildlife.
Volunteers from the local ATV club provide much of the labor required to keep the park operating at minimal cost, greet visitors and keep the park clean.
Hanson notes the park has been good for the whole community. "Downtown businesses support the park too. It's a draw that has increased traffic in the area. In fact, some businesses in the village got together to develop a safe, legal way to link the recreation area to nearby businesses. They are in the final stages of connecting a permanent trail from the village to the ATV park so people can get in and out of town offroad safely." Additional money came into the community through a new gas station, restaurant, convenience mart and motel, which located with a few miles of the trails and park.
The park has been so good for Tigerton that they had to make room on a wall of the community center for a plaque from the Governor honoring the project as one of the top ten rural economic development projects for the year.
Salvaging local economies
A recent waste reduction and recycling grant will not only keep tons of waste out of landfills, it will keep quality housing more affordable in the capital city. The grant to the Dane County Habitat for Humanity underwrote part of the cost to open a "ReStore" in Madison. ReStores are retail stores that offer quality building materials at 50 to 75 percent off the normal retail price. The goods are donated to Habitat by contractors who have surplus supplies from their building projects, and demolition crews that salvaged perfectly reusable materials when older buildings are renovated or removed. Based on experiences at other ReStores across the country, Dane County can expect to keep an estimated 100 tons of construction supplies our of area landfills in the first four years of operation.
More than 50 ReStores now operate across the United States and Canada where Habitat for Humanity housing crews are building affordable homes. The stores provide community benefits in three ways: they offer quality building materials at a fraction of the new price, they divert tons of usable materials from landfills, and the proceeds from ReStore purchases raise enough funds to pay for 10 new homes annually, according to the Habitat for Humanity website.
Planning plantings around power lines
Communities grow and spread, but trees can't get up and get out of the way as new housing and businesses take root. DNR urban forestry grants are partnering with Xcel Energy in northwestern Wisconsin to replace trees on community property and private lands where trees were planted too close to power lines or where established trees are growing along proposed new transmission routes.
In this partnership, DNR grants buy new trees or other appropriate plantings and underwrite planting costs; Xcel Energy donates the fees for tree and stump removal. The program doesn't relieve the pain of losing mature trees, but it does ease the financial sting of such losses. The projects are completed at no financial cost to the property owner or the community. The Community Tree Removal program was piloted in Clear Lake in 1994. Other participating communities include Dresser, Hudson, West Salem, La Crosse, Menomonie, Durand, Tomah, Sparta, Viroqua, Altoona, Bayfield, Ladysmith, Park Falls, Athens, Neillsville, Holmen and Thorp. Currently the program is expanding into Galesville and Chippewa Falls.
Another urban forestry grant administered through the CFA funded a booklet for sixth graders that shares reasons to nurture community trees. It's offered free of charge to all public school teachers. Dave Stephenson, DNR's urban forester in South Central Wisconsin notes why it's valuable to plant that idea in tomorrow's leaders. Studies show social, economic and environmental assets in a community appreciate in value in communities that treat their trees as valuable assets too. "Properties with healthy trees are more valuable, and people tend to linger longer at commercial properties with trees, spending more money."
Taking the heat to suppress wildfires
Almost half (46 percent) of Wisconsin forested and there are large areas where fire departments are few and far between. To muster firefighters when needed, public foresters rely on assistance from a network of volunteer fire departments to quickly spot, contain and extinguish wildfires. These volunteer crews are often financially strapped as rural fire fighting departments spend their limited funds buying equipment to put out burning buildings like homes, apartments and businesses.
Fighting wildfire takes a different approach – you're trying to extinguish burning brush and trees, on rough terrain, often off-road. The vehicles have to be more sturdy and more mobile. The personal gear has to be lighter weight since wildfire suppression is often done on foot over hundreds of acres.
The DNR's Forest Fire Protection (FFP) and Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) grants help community firefighting volunteers buy lightweight fire-resistant shirts and coveralls, helmets, chainsaws and radios to improve communication to prepare for wildland fires, says Ken Terrill, Forest Fire Operations Specialist "This year, it appears communities need tools and equipment. Given grants, rural communities can install dry hydrants that allow them to draft water from ponds or rivers in remote areas, and set up emergency fire numbering systems to quick locate and respond to rural fires.
To qualify FFP grants, organizations sign agreements with the DNR to help suppress forest fires, train their staff in wildfire techniques and provide the proper equipment. Currently more than 660 departments that have these agreements to better protect their rural residents, their firefighters and forested landscapes.
A helpful package
DNR grants are but one of 12 partners helping local government and conservation groups develop a trail system for hiking, walking, running, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and nature education.
"Sometimes our grant programs don't fit into a neat little niche and we try to figure out how a package of grants can best protect the resource.We all put our heads together to make something happen," says Diane Conklin, DNR Community Services Specialist in Spooner. DNR grants were bundled into a long-term project to protect watersheds that feed into Deer Lake, five miles east of St. Croix Falls. The area first received a lake planning grant to analyze pollution sources and plan water quality improvements. That work led to nonpoint source grants that helped clean up watersheds and acquire land. Then trail grants gave the public access to the restored areas.
Cheryl Bursik, program consultant for the Deer Lake Conservancy says, "DNR grants helped finance and guide the work of the Deer Lake Conservancy from project planning, to implementing water quality projects, to providing recreational trails."
Walking trails now wend through a 20-acre prairie, a reclaimed gravel pit, woodland springs and restored wetlands. New sediment basins are capturing runoff from agricultural lands and more than 20 truckloads of discarded tires were removed from area streambeds. The Deer Lake Conservancy area has become such a community asset that they developed a tour guide to the walking trails and recreation areas.
Jim Miller, co-founder and past president of the Deer Lake Conservancy says, "we grew from a project that principally benefited lake water quality into a community and educational resource that benefits the entire area."
Cooperators included the Polk County Land and Water Resources Department and the Parks Department, the DNR, the Natural Resources Conservation, Pheasants forever, Ducks Unlimited and the Wisconsin Conservation Corps. The UW Geological Survey also worked on monitoring lake quality, partnering with Amery High school to get students involved.
Getting more to the lakeshore
Lakeshore improvements at Bender Park in southern Milwaukee County were 40 years in the making. The park is in Oak Creek on Lake Michigan between the mega-marinas at Milwaukee and Racine harbors. The park site was purchased and developed in the late 1960s- early 70s using Federal Land and Water Conservation (LAWCON) funds. DNR added more than $3 million in the past several years through development, shoreline enhancement, clean vessel and recreational boating grants. Milwaukee County's investment is even bigger. Now the lakeshore park has a launch site and ramp with room for 100 boat trailers, parking lots, a weather protected harbor with breakwater structures, a pavilion, lake front promenade and picnic areas, walking trails and restrooms, and a pump out station for boats to prevent waste from going into Lake Michigan.
"Our grant managers in Community Financial Assistance work as a team," says Kathy Curtner. "When we receive proposals, we try to package available state and federal funds to make it easier for customers to reach their goals in conserving and protecting natural resources. Sometimes, in cases like the Deer Lake Conservancy, we help them accomplish more than they originally planned. Those partnerships we form with local government and nonprofit organizations stretch their resources and their imaginations to envision innovative ways to protect Wisconsin's environment."
Megan R. Matthews communicates about community grants and recycling issues for DNR's Bureau of Communication and Education. | <urn:uuid:c7604af7-f751-4a09-8ff5-2345e19bf81d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/stories/2002/jun02/package.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957801 | 2,945 | 1.984375 | 2 |
With NASA's Mars rover Spirit nearing the end of its primary mission profile and its twin, Opportunity, more than halfway through its own, mission planners are preparing to give the two robots a longer leash while scaling back the number of people on the project.
Mission managers are looking ahead to an extended mission for both Spirit and Opportunity, which will kick in once the robots complete their first 90 Martian days, or sols. To prepare for what is expected to be at least a few more months of Mars exploration, NASA officials plan to cut the 300 scientists and engineers on the mission by more than a third, according to one mission manager.
"We are going to be reducing the staff and slowing down as [the rovers] get later into their lifetimes," Mark Adler, a manager for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, said during a press briefing Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We're trying to get more people on Earth time than on Mars time."
Much of the team had been waking and sleeping on cue to the Martian sol, which is almost 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.
A more earthly schedule
Rover project manager Richard Cook said that with the exception of about 10 people who are needed to maintain the rovers and man the Deep Space Network of receiving stations on Mars time, everyone else on the project will be living on a more earthly schedule.
"We're going to shift in kind of an incremental way," Cook told Space.com, adding that he is already on the Earth-time schedule. Those researchers and engineers not remaining with the rover mission will be shifted over to other JPL missions, he added.
JPL officials said downsizing the rover mission team is possible because the team itself has become more proficient at planning future activities. Where it used to take 18 hours each day to plan the next sol's worth of science and navigation activities at the mission's outset, it now takes much less time, Cook said.
In the meantime, rover controllers plan to upload new flight software that will enhance each rover's navigation system to be bolder in its self-guided drives.
So far, Spirit has had an average daily driving distance of about 121 feet (37 meters) when assigned to long treks. Mission planners would like to see it boosted up to at least 164 feet (50 meters) a day so that the rover can eventually reach some hills that lie a month's travel or more in the distance.
Spirit is currently on the edge of Bonneville crater, and the hills sit to the southeast.
"We'd like to get Spirit to the hills as quickly as possible," Adler said.
Opportunity in high gear
Opportunity will most likely be able to travel farther and faster from its landing site in Meridiani Planum, due to the flat and relatively rock-free environment.
"Because Opportunity is basically in a parking lot, we believe we'll be able to tell the rover to [drive] blind for many, many meters, maybe 50 to 100 in a day," Adler said.
Right now, he added, Opportunity's cameras can see far across Meridiani Planum, and there is nothing standing in its way.
To date, Opportunity has spent the bulk of its 52 sols in Eagle crater, near the same spot it landed, to study a rock outcrop that scientists have concluded was soaked with water in the distant past. Mission controllers plan eventually to send the robotic rockhound across Meridiani Planum to a crater about 2,624 feet (800 meters) away.
The updated software package is also designed to put the rovers in a deep-sleep mode at night, shutting down all electronics. including an alarm clock that routinely awakens the robots when it's time to make a nightly call to orbiting spacecraft and relay data back to Earth.
Adler said the deep-sleep procedure is needed chiefly to conserve energy, which will soon be at a premium because dust buildup on the solar cells, as well as the progressing Martian winter, will cut into the rovers' ability to generate power. The onset of winter also means that nighttime temperatures will be colder, requiring more power just to maintain thermal control.
The deep-sleep program will also help Opportunity counter the effects of a faulty heater that has been stuck on since the rover landed, cutting its power at night.
© 2013 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com. | <urn:uuid:33c23b9f-e79d-4f96-b5e1-f0061c0de85a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/4564820/ns/technology_and_science-space/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956817 | 910 | 2.21875 | 2 |
People who want to cheer at graduations seem to view it as a sports event. Why should “showing [your] happiness” require shouting and screaming? Your child has achieved something worthy of recognition, which is why a graduation ceremony is held. A ceremony, like first communion, or marriage, is generally viewed as a somewhat solemn occasion. The “pomp and circumstance” of graduation is shown by the wearing of special robes. Your child didn’t score a goal, but attained a degree. If your child is awarded a Medal of Honor, or a Nobel Prize, would you expect to whoop and scream your delight at the White House, or in Stockholm or Oslo? The rest of us expect you to be delighted, and we share in your joy – in a way appropriate to the occasion. | <urn:uuid:ee34cc98-ad44-41e6-ace7-ec87b902d9ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2012/06/18/graduation-is-a-ceremony-not-a-sporting-event/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968396 | 167 | 1.96875 | 2 |
|←Plate 29||Zoological Illustrations
Vol I. Pl. 30. Achatina marginata. Marginated Achatina.
- Testa ovata, vel oblongo-ovata, spira elevata, apertura subovale. Columella lævis, simplex, ad apicem truncata; labium externum tenue, internum inflexum integrum; umbilicus nullus.
Typus Genericus Bulla Achatina. Linn.
- Shell ovate, or oblong-ovate; spire elevated; mouth nearly oval. Columella smooth, simple, truncated. Outer lip thin; inner lip entirely inflexed. Umbilicus none.
Generic Type Bulla Achatina. Linn.
- A. testa ovato-oblonga, strigis inæqualibus ferrugineis; spira ad apicem obtusa, 5-voluta; sutura depressa linea sulcata marginali.
- Shell ovate-oblong, with irregular ferrugineous stripes; spire obtuse at the top, of five volutions; the suture depressed, with a marginal indented line.
- Lister 579. fig. 34. Gualt. pl. 45. B. Knorr, vol. iv. tab. 24. 1. (badly coloured.)
The largest shells hitherto discovered as inhabiting the dry land belong to this genus, instituted by the celebrated Lamarck, but still divided by the strict followers of Linnæus between the Bullæ and Helices, with a singular infelicity of even artificial arrangement. The simple characters peculiar in a greater or less degree to all, will readily distinguish them; and I apprehend most of the species of the first division (which includes the present) will be found to inhabit only the African continent, while Bulla virginea and the smaller shells placed in the second division are found principally in the new world; where also two or three gigantic species of Bulimus occupy the place of the larger African Achatinæ.
Of these, the shell now figured is one of the rarest, and has hitherto been overlooked as a variety of the Linnæan Bulla Achatina; the colour of both is subject to much variation; but this will be found at best a most indecisive and vague character for specific distinction when unaccompanied by others more important and connected with the formation of shells. I have therefore not hesitated in making this a distinct species, from having had the means of examining at different times near twenty specimens, all of which presented the following characters. Spire of five whorls, the last or terminal one very small and flattened; the apex obtuse; the suture depressed, as if flattened on the shell, and margined by one or sometimes two indented lines, parallel, and at the top of each whorl. In the colour of its mouth it varies in sometimes having a tinge of rose-colour at the base and top of the spire, but the mouth is more generally white. The body whorl is more or less ventricose; the outer lip is a little reflected, and the whole shell, when full grown, much thicker and heavier than any of the other species. The epidermis is yellowish-brown, beneath which the shell is nearly white, beautifully marked with broad remote stripes of chesnut, with others more slender (and sometimes broken into spots) between. I have another specimen which agrees tolerably with Lister's figure in being more than usually ventricose, and which I think is accidental. The only constant variety appears to be that figured by Knorr, ii. tab. 3. fig. 1. having the spire entirely rose-colour.
The marginal line and the correct number of whorls in the spire are well expressed in the figures of Lister, Gualtieri and Knorr. The first of these figures is accidentally more ventricose; the second, like all the other figures of Gualtieri, is defective at the apex; and Knorr's I suspect has been outrageously coloured from the real pink-mouthed Achatina.
It inhabits the coast of Guinea; and I am informed the animal is eaten by the natives. | <urn:uuid:d46731fb-6dbf-4e58-84e4-94e67b29abf7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zoological_Illustrations/VolI-Pl30 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900493 | 910 | 3 | 3 |
ChemSpider – Is This The Future of Linked Chemistry on the Internet?
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ChemSpider was developed with the intention of aggregating and indexing available sources of chemical structures and their associated information into a single searchable repository and making it ...
ChemSpider was developed with the intention of aggregating and indexing available sources of chemical structures and their associated information into a single searchable repository and making it available to everybody, at no charge. There are now hundreds of chemical structure databases such as literature data, chemical vendor catalogs, molecular properties, environmental data, toxicity data, analytical data etc. and no single way to search across them. Despite the diversity of databases available online their inherent quality, accuracy and completeness is lacking in many regards. ChemSpider was established to provide a platform whereby the chemistry community could contribute to cleaning up the data, improving the quality of data online and expanding the information available to include data such as reaction syntheses, analytical data and experimental properties. ChemSpider has now grown into a database of almost 25 million chemical substances, grows daily, and is integrated with over 400 sources, many of these directly supporting the Life Sciences. This presentation will provide an overview of our efforts to improve the quality of data online, to provide a foundation for a linked web for chemistry and to provide access to a set online tools and services to support access to these data.
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The Kathmandu-based EU Missions together with Embassies of Norway and Switzerland expressed disappointment over the failure of the political parties to agree on a new constitution and urged them to forge consensus for peace, stability and constitution.
"We express our disappointment over the failure of the political parties to agree on a new constitution, which resulted in the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly on 27 May. We are concerned by the possibility of prolonged political uncertainty and the effect this could have on Nepal's socio-economic development," said a statement issued by the Embassy of Denmark representing the EU on Thursday.
The EU missions called on all the political parties to build consensus on the way forward, preserve the achievements of the past four years and find a solution to the legal problems at hand which is acceptable to all and in the best interest of the country.
"We believe that respect for fundamental democratic principles is essential to guarantee that the aspiration of Nepal's citizens for peace, stability, and prosperity is met," the Kathmandu-based EU missions said while reaffirmeing their continuing support to efforts by the political parties to find ways and build the necessary trust to conclude the peace agreement they reached in 2006, and deliver a democratic and inclusive constitution. nepalnews.com | <urn:uuid:e4cdc29d-883a-4ec0-b2d8-a5a9044f4e94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nepalnews.com/home/index.php/news/2/19165-eu-norway-switzerland-regret-failure-of-nepals-parties-to-forge-consensus-on-statute.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962975 | 253 | 1.585938 | 2 |
North American had been developing a 1600-km range, Mach 3 missile for the US Air Force since March 1946. The vehicle started out as a derivative of the German A9 boost-glide vehicle, but soon developed completely revised aerodynamics, guidance, and improved propulsion. In February 1948 this project was redefined by the customer as only the first step of a revised three-phase program for a family of vehicles using a rocket booster and ramjet cruise. Phase 3 would be the final intercontinental version, carrying a 4500 kg nuclear warhead to an 8000 km range. In order to obtain the necessary accuracy, North American began development of the XN-2 navigation platform, which coupled the XN-1 inertial system with a star tracker to ensure continued accuracy even in long-range flights. In order to achieve the longer ranges, North American began study of a version of the missile, which would use a separate, jettisonable rocket booster. This would allow the cruise stage to be ignited at near-cruise velocity, and to be filled with only ramjet fuel, which would vastly extend the range while the basic cruise missile remained nearly the same size.
By July 1948 the preferred intercontinental Navaho configuration was a delta-winged, recoverable aircraft-type booster looking very much like the B-70 bomber of the 1960's or the reusable boosters of the original space shuttle designs of the 1970's. The cruise stage used a single enormous ramjet engine with a nose intake. By May 1949 North American favored a tandem in-line configuration - a boost stage with a single-ramjet cruise stage atop it. By April 1950, the final Navaho configuration had been settled - a twin-ramjet cruise stage launched strapped to the side of a liquid-rocket booster. This arrangement minimized the length of the vehicle, making handling and erecting on the launch pad easier.
In July 1950, just as the Korean War began, the program was altered yet again. Now the Phase 3 vehicle, dubbed the G-38, would have to carry a 3150-kg 20-kiloton W-4 nuclear warhead over a 10,200 km range. The G-26 phase 2 vehicle, a 2/3 scale version of the G-38, would precede the G-38 in flight test.
Design of the G-38 was begun in 1952. But there were further changes, as the booster fuel was changed from alcohol to kerosene, and the Air Force increased the payload requirement to 4500 kg. These required the vehicle to be somewhat larger than originally planned.
By the time the G-26 pathfinders began flight test in 1956, North American management could see the ballistic missile competition gaining on them. The Thor, Jupiter, Atlas, and Titan development programs were all underway on a crash basis and would begin flight test in 1957. The first tests of the G-26 were dogged with failures - by Independence Day 1957 four launches had been made, all failures. The first in a series of 2,800 km long auto-navigator test flights had been attempted ten times in the first three months of 1957 ever getting off the ground. Wags at the Cape dubbed North America's bird the "Never-Go Navaho". The new ballistic missiles were equally unsuccessful at first, but a Jupiter made a full-range 2100-km flight on 31 May. It was clear that these ballistic missiles, each little more complex than the booster stage of Navaho alone, could deliver a nuclear warhead over the same ranges - at seven times the speed.
Air Force Headquarters terminated the Navaho development program on 12 July 1957. By the end of the month the total staff laid off at North American alone amounted to 15,600 employees. At the time the program was canceled full-range G-38 missiles were in fabrication with first flight test planned by the end of 1958.
The booster followed the same design and layout as that of the G-26, but at 77,140 kg liftoff mass, was 50% larger and equipped with three engines rather than two. The stage was made primarily of 20-24ST aluminum alloy, heliarc-welded and chem-milled between the weld lands. The liquid oxygen tank was forward, the fuel tank aft. Two small fixed separation fins were attached to the intertank structure to ensure the booster would fly away from the cruise stage once released. Aft of the fuel tank was the engine bay, with three gimbaled LR83-NA-1 engines. Two large fixed canted fins were attached to the engine bay, providing vehicle stability during ascent.
The cruise stage had the same fundamental layout as earlier Navahos, but differed substantially in detail. The vehicle had a higher fineness ratio for the increased cruising speed and range. A single slab vertical stabilizer provided yaw control. The trapezoidal wings were completely different from the deltas of the earlier Navahos, with the elevons replaced by independently-moving wingtip elevons for roll control. The full flying canard provided pitch control. At the higher cruise speed and flight duration the G-38 would reach temperatures of 400 deg C. This mandated use of titanium for the nose, wings, and stabilizers. The cruise stage had a mass of 54,400 kg. Its RJ47 ramjets provided 89.26 kN of thrust, allowing the vehicle to cruise at Mach 3.25, reaching an altitude of 21.6 km at the end of mission.
The weapon system would have been guided by an N6B stellar-inertial system and a PIX10 autopilot. The enormous payload bay was sized for one or more nuclear weapons, up to 4500 kg total.
The operational G-38 would have been the first weapon system fielded using all-transistorized avionics and etched circuit boards. The systems were hardened against electromagnetic pulse from nearby nuclear explosions and impervious to jamming. The booster would have produced more thrust than anything America would fly until the Saturn I space booster.
Operationally, missiles would be moved on mammoth transporter-erectors along the interstate highway system (a three-lane road was required) or between shelters on large-area military bases. Missiles on alert status would have the N6B navigation systems operating at all times. This would allow the missile and its support caravan to stop, the missile to be erected, and fired within 30 minutes of a launch order.
Development Cost $: 679.800 million in 1985 dollars. Flyaway Unit Cost $: 24.000 million in 1956 dollars. Standard warhead: 4,500 kg (9,900 lb). Maximum range: 10,200 km (6,300 mi). Number Standard Warheads: 1. Standard warhead: W36. Boost Propulsion: Liquid rocket, 3 x Lox/Kerosene. Cruise Thrust: 89.260 kN (20,066 lbf). Cruise engine: RJ47-W-7. Maximum speed: 3,700 kph (2,200 mph).
Stage Data - Navaho G-38
AKA: WS-104A; SM-64A; Navaho III; SSM-A-6.
Status: Development ended 1958.
Gross mass: 131,540 kg (289,990 lb).
Payload: 4,500 kg (9,900 lb).
Height: 65.00 m (213.00 ft).
Diameter: 2.37 m (7.77 ft).
Span: 12.25 m (40.19 ft).
Thrust: 1,801.20 kN (404,926 lbf).
Apogee: 22 km (13 mi). | <urn:uuid:30c4c931-7f1c-4b15-af78-484045889e25> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/navhog38.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953778 | 1,586 | 3.578125 | 4 |
Learn something new every day More Info... by email
Market failure is a situation in which the demand for a given product is not in sync with the supply that manufacturers are currently providing for sale. The failure may be in the form of a glut of available products that consumers are not purchasing at a pace that keeps up with the production, or involve a situation in which suppliers are unable to keep up with the current level of demand from consumers, creating a temporary shortage. There are several causes of market failure, with some having to do with pricing and quality, while others are connected to the current general state of the economy.
One reason for market failure has to do with externalities. These are simple factors that are outside the control of consumers or the companies producing the goods and services offered for sale. Examples of this include negative situations such as natural disasters that temporarily reduce production, or downturns in the economy that prompt consumers to greatly reduce their consumption of certain products. Positive events may also qualify as externalities, such as an economic recovery that increases consumer confidence and motivates increased purchases of non-essential and luxury products. In the former instance, companies may find that the demand for their products drops suddenly, leaving them with high inventories of finished goods that are not wanted at any price. The latter positive example may mean that, until producers can increase production to meet demand, they will not be able to adequately keep up with customer orders.
Other causes of market failure have to do with an imbalance between the price of a product and its perceived level of quality. Price and quality may create a positive or a negative situation, because if consumers think that the price is reasonable in relation to the quality, demand will be high. Unless producers can keep up with that demand, there is a failure to meet market expectations. At the same time, if consumers see the quality of the products as not being worth the purchase price, demand will drop and the producer is left with a large inventory. Depending on the nature of the products, it may be possible to reverse these problems by lowering the price to a level that consumers find more in line with the quality and begin to move the backlog of finished goods.
Markets that are controlled by monopolies can also cause some products to fail. When a particular market is dominated by one or two companies, this can make it extremely difficult for smaller competitors to build client bases and sell enough products to keep their operations viable. Setting production schedules based on unrealistic projections for demand can also lead to market failure.
Since so many different elements can affect the balance between supply and demand, many companies are constantly reviewing customer expectations and buying habits while also attempting to project how the economy will change in the months and years ahead. Doing so can aid in adjusting production accordingly and either prepare the company to meet increased demand or curtail production so that the business is not left with a glut of finished goods for which there is not a great deal of demand. | <urn:uuid:bed03a41-1f1c-45f2-8d9e-cf4770dd0319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-the-causes-of-market-failure.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972041 | 593 | 3.25 | 3 |
While BP (BP) has come a long way since the Deepwater Horizon disaster a few years back, it has never quite regained the glory it had before the disaster. Some of this can be attributed to new natural gas entrepreneurs who have been producing so much natural gas that even they cannot turn decent profits on it. This new energy revolution is ushering in a new energy mix, one that has potential to drive many from oil to natural gas, at least in the United States.
The oil giant has certainly not been helping itself out lately as in two days it reported two different outages. First, in Blaine, Washington, BP accidentally sent sulfur dioxide into the refinery's flare, which caused a malfunction, and consequently an outage. Only one day later at a refinery in Texas, it reported another instance of flaring which again caused a shut down. While neither of these two situations was a major malfunction, they both happen during restarts at the respective refineries. Rest assured BP will not let this become a trend.
However, even with the malfunction at its refinery in Blaine, Washington, futures fell once production at this plant came online. With another refinery up and running, there will be more oil on the market, and being that demand is less than expected, this increase was not entirely soaked up. Analysts are consequently expecting the price of oil to drop due to this low demand.
Additionally, gas prices in California have been falling and are said to continue falling with the national average. This is in part due to the increase in production with bringing more refineries on line. Due to the shutdown at refineries such as the one in Blaine, Washington, gas prices have remained high on the West Coast. With maintenance work finished, consumers will be able to save at the pump.
The drop in gas prices might actually be a plus for BP as consumers might be willing to use more gas with a drop in price. Even a moderate drop in gas prices has the potential to increase demand by quite a bit, so a drop in gas prices could actually increase profitability for many oil companies.
As mentioned earlier, the biggest threat to BP and other oil companies is the potential of natural gas. With natural gas prices low, many large trucking companies are considering switching to natural gas, a switch that could save them $1 per gallon. Since natural gas is cleaner and more environmentally friendly than oil, I would expect current government incentives to increase when demand increase, at least at the beginning. Currently natural gas stations are few and far between, so vehicles that could use natural gas are held back by the logistics of refueling. However, trucking companies and government fleets could save tremendous amounts of money by switching from oil to natural gas, a prospect that many natural gas companies are trying to accelerate.
But don't expect oil companies to sit around idly and be replaced. New drilling explorations are in place throughout the globe and every major oil company has been making new investments. For BP, the hope is that new deep water explorations around Trinidad and Tobago will become a major source of production. As Trinidad is offering blocks to companies to drill off its coast, BP has gotten this contract at a steal. For Exxon Mobil (XOM), new investment lies in Liberia, who offered it 70% control of its offshore oil blocks. This is in addition to its deal with Rosneft to develop Arctic reserves in Russia.
The development of Arctic reserves will likely attract many of the top oil companies, as these Russian reserves are essentially untapped and have incredible potential.
Similar in nature, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) is investing billions to drill for oil off of the coast of Alaska. With an estimated 27 billion barrels of oil, a major investment could bring massive returns. Obviously this is what Shell is banking on. In addition, Nigeria has just renewed the drilling licenses of it and Chevron (CVX), a deal said to be worth trillions. These two companies also share the same fate in Ukraine, which just awarded both companies exploration rights for shale gas.
This also comes at a time when competitors like Marathon Oil (MRO) are still reeling from first quarter losses and trying to play catch-up. The further the big guns can separate, the better. This is another reason why these oil giants are investing in more huge drilling operations with hopes of returns. The time to do so is now.
Shell, Chevron, and Exxon, much more so than BP, have been diversifying product lines and expanding into shale gas. As mentioned earlier, natural gas has the potential to drastically change the energy portfolio in the United States. Needless to say, these companies want a piece of the developing market and do not want to be left behind.
However, for companies like BP that are heavier in oil, there is little doubt that the demand will run out. While the United States energy portfolio is changing, the rest of the world is increasing in oil consumption. With developing economies such as India and Brazil sucking up oil for cars, utilities, and factories to name a few, oil production actually needs to increase. Unless there is a breakthrough in entrepreneurship leading to huge supplies of a different type of energy, oil is here to stay, at least for now. Even with natural gas being used more frequently and commonly, oil is here to stay.
This leaves BP in a great situation. If it can keep its refineries up and running, which I believe it will, BP will continue to bring in profits hand over fist. However, like many of its competitors I expect to see it put money into developing natural gas. Right now natural gas is not very profitable and it cannot remain this way. I think smaller producers of natural gas will leave the industry, returning it to profitability. With the smaller companies out of the way, the market will be ready for the major players to divide. Until then, expect the likes of BP to do what it does best, bringing profit along the way.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. | <urn:uuid:aad61bcd-7a22-4995-a657-0bf9224abf02> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/631361-buy-bp-before-it-shoots-higher | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975628 | 1,237 | 2.171875 | 2 |
The new name signifies the importance of the first five years of life, a period of time during which a childs brain develops most dramatically, and conveys the overall purpose of the organization charged with distributing Proposition 10 tobacco tax funds.
The First 5 San Bernardino name provides an opportunity to emphasize the mission of the Commission in San Bernardino County, which is to help children reach their greatest potential in school and life, said First District Supervisor Bill Postmus, chair of First 5 San Bernardino. People will now be able to better identify First 5 San Bernardino programs as those working to help expectant parents and families with children prenatal to age five.
The First 5 San Bernardino name will be used in all San Bernardino County Commission efforts and will serve as an easily identifiable name for all programs and services implemented under the local Commission.
The statewide Commission formally adopted the name First 5 California in July in an effort to unify the many different elements of early childhood development programs.
First 5 San Bernardino not only reflects our local Commissions commitment to programs that support a childs readiness for school, but provides continual reinforcement that the first five years are crucial to brain development, said Don Larkin, executive director of First 5 San Bernardino. In addition to making an impact in our own community, we join the State Commission and other counties throughout California who are committed to creating an integrated approach to quality child care, health care and parenting education, thereby ensuring that these messages are heard and embraced statewide.
The Commission, established through the California Children and Families First Act of 1998, and partnering service agencies have initiated numerous programs to optimize early childhood development. San Bernardino County receives an allocation of approximately $27 million each year from a statewide, fifty-cent tax on tobacco products. Since the Commissions inception, thousands of children prenatal to age five and their families have benefited from the quality services provided through the program. For more information, contact CFC or visit their website at www.sanbernardinokids.org
|< Prev||Next >| | <urn:uuid:4f013a7f-3a75-4a3c-8e4e-6e704a0a1178> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blackvoicenews.com/more-sections/lifestyles/35252-children-and-families-commission-adopts-new-name.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936283 | 407 | 2.078125 | 2 |
France Honors American World War Veterans
France Honors American World War Veterans in the United States
Among his numerous missions and activities, the Ambassador of France to the United States regularly honors American veterans of the two world wars. Paying tribute to those men is a way to express France’s gratitude toward those who risked their lives—and in many cases, gave their lives—defending liberty. After submitting an application, most American veterans who served in France during World Wars I and II are inducted into the Légion d’honneur, or Legion of Honor..
The French Legion of Honor is an order of distinction first established by Napoleon Bonaparte in May of 1802. It is the highest decoration bestowed in France and is divided into five categories: Chevalier (Knight), Officier (Officer), Commandeur (Commander), Grand Officier (Grand Officer) and Grand Croix (Grand Cross). The highest degree of the Order of the Legion of Honor is that of Grand Master, which is held by the sitting President of the Republic.
Foreign nationals who have served France or the ideals it upholds may receive a distinction from the Legion of Honor. American recipients include Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Michael Mullen, and even, as an institution, the United States Military Academy at West Point. Today there are approximately 93,000 Legion of Honor recipients. American veterans who risked their lives during World War II and who fought on French territory qualify to be decorated as Knights of the Legion of Honor. Veterans must have fought in one of the four main campaigns of the Liberation of France: Normandy, Provence, Ardennes, or Northern France.
Thirteen American veterans of World War II were recognized on September 27, 2012, for their efforts in protecting France. French Veterans Affairs Minister, Kader Arif, bestowed the Legion of Honor medals to the recipients at a ceremony at the French embassy. Among the medal recipients were two sisters who served in France as part of the U.S. Army Nursing Corps. To read the full story, please click here.
For more information about applying to join the Legion of Honor, please contact your nearest French consulate. | <urn:uuid:e3ec3a5e-4531-470d-9563-3fba7379b7b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://info-france-usa.org/spip.php?article3150 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962753 | 451 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Medford, State Graduation Rates Up
Despite higher graduation rate, Medford's dropout rate creeped up 0.4 percent.
The four-year graduation rates for both Medford and the commonwealth overall were up for 2012 over 2011, according to figures released by the state Department of Education Friday.
The state said its dropout rate declined to 2.5 percent for 2011-2012, representing a fourth-straight year under 3 percent and "the lowest overall rate in decades."
Medford finds itself below the state overall on graduation rate and above the state's dropout rate.
The city's four-year graduation rate was 80.5 percent in 2012, up from 79.9 percent in 2011. Medford's dropout rate did creep up in 2012 to 8.1 percent from 7.7 percent.
"I am proud to see more students graduating on time, because now more than ever, having a high school diploma is essential to success in our 21st Century global economy," said Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement Friday. "But until we close the achievement gap, our work is not done, and additional investments in education are critical to ensuring all students have the opportunity to succeed." | <urn:uuid:2732f290-bc01-4669-986e-a9d5ab5c5fb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medford.patch.com/articles/medford-state-graduation-rates-up | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96368 | 249 | 1.5 | 2 |
As America votes today, what can be said about this nasty campaign is that it was dangerously disconnected from the actual problems the victor will face.
The textbook version of American democracy holds that elections, by exposing differences of views and values, make governing easier by demonstrating where the weight of public opinion lies. The result is a "mandate" or at least a sense of direction. This has rarely been entirely true, but the gap between political theory and reality seems especially pronounced in 2012.
To state the obvious: The problems confronting the United States are first and foremost economic. There's a triple threat to stronger economic growth. The first stems from the legacy of the 2007-09 financial crisis, which induced households and companies to shed debt and, more important, made both more cautious spenders. The second is an aging population that stunts expansion of the labor force. And finally, chronic deficits — caused increasingly by a surge of promised benefits — imply future spending cuts and/or tax increases, which might dampen economic growth.
Prosperity and political legitimacy feed each other. When people think they're getting ahead, they feel better about their leaders. The reverse is also true. Even before the financial crisis, the U.S. economy was decelerating. From 1991 to 2001, growth averaged 3.2 percent a year; from 2002 to 2011, the pace slipped to 2.3 per cent. When the economy slows, competition for scarce resources quickens. Wages and fringe benefits compete with profits. Guns compete with butter. All groups resist tax increases.
How democracy copes with weaker economic performance is a central question of our time. It's not just American. Europe and Japan — that is, most of the rest of the advanced world — also face aging societies, overcommitted governments and slowing growth. Indeed, pressures elsewhere are greater. In Europe, they're magnified by the euro crisis. Eurozone unemployment is now 11.6 percent. By 2050, Japan's 65-and-over population is projected to reach 40 percent of the total.
For Americans, the global nature of the political challenge means that we can't rely on strong demand from Europe and Japan — buyers of 27 percent of U.S. exports in 2011 — for faster growth. Just the opposite: Their weakness threatens ours.
Generally, what should be done is clear. Government needs to adopt progrowth policies that might cushion — it can't reverse — the economic slowdown. At the same time, it needs to curb some benefits and find ways to pay for the rest. Together, these steps might limit the competition for scarce resources. But of course, there is no consensus on putting these broad generalities into practice. In a better world, the campaign would have focused on rival ideas to do so.
It didn't. A campaign book might be titled "Profiles in Expedience." To win, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney each seemed willing to say almost anything, no matter how twisted or misleading.
To be sure, broad philosophical differences were clear. Romney is probusiness; Obama is progovernment. And some areas of agreement emerged: developing natural gas reserves, for instance. But mainly Obama and Romney evaded questions central to America's economic future. How big will government grow? Will larger government penalize economic growth? How much will spending on the elderly squeeze other programs? How can health spending (a quarter of federal outlays) be controlled? How should changes be timed to minimize any threat to the recovery?
Although the immediate questions involve the budget and economy, the ultimate consequences are social and geopolitical. Prosperity — more or less of it — affects Americans' pride, confidence, ability to support a strong military and willingness to be a global leader. The questions the candidates avoided remain. They will quickly reassert themselves as Washington confronts the "fiscal cliff" — the roughly $500 billion of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for early 2013 — and the need to raise the federal debt ceiling.
Whoever wins won't get much help with these problems from public opinion. The campaign has not prepared Americans for the debates and choices that lie ahead. Many may feel bewildered or betrayed. The silence of Obama and Romney followed standard political logic. Because the nation's problems lack painless solutions, the safest course was to avoid them. To practice candor was to court unpopularity. But the price of political expediency may now be paid in diminished public trust and increased odds of stalemate.
© 2012 Washington Post Writers Group | <urn:uuid:35d49707-2a5a-4a4f-91c5-7057fa185f8f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/our-disconnected-election/1260065 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951405 | 917 | 2.359375 | 2 |
You are being asked to take part in a clinical research study because you have either a relapsed (returned after initially responding to previous treatment), or refractory (has not responded to previous treatment)
advanced solid tumor (tumor in an organ) with normal renal function (renal function is how well the kidneys are working to get rid of water and body wastes as urine), or mild, moderate or severe renal impairment
(renal impairment is when your kidneys are not working as well as they should, which may cause drugs to stay in your body longer). Renal means the same as kidney so the word kidney will be used throughout this
consent form. The sponsor of this study is Allos Therapeutics, Inc. (Allos) and the investigational drug is called pralatrexate. Pralatrexate blocks how cells are made and therefore the growth of a tumor may be slowed,
stopped, or the tumor size decreased. More than 600 adult cancer patients have received pralatrexate for various types of solid tumor and hematologic cancers (cancers that affect blood, bone marrow, and lymph
nodes) in clinical trials. Pralatrexate has not been approved by any health authority for the treatment of advanced solid tumor, lymphoma, or myeloma in patients who also have kidney impairment, but it is approved for marketing by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients with relapsed
or refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) who have normal kidney function. It has not been approved for marketing by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), or any other regulatory agencies. This means that pralatrexate has not been formally tested in patients with kidney impairment.
This study is being conducted to find out how impaired kidney function affects how well the body is able to get rid of pralatrexate and how pralatrexate is tolerated by patients with varying degrees of kidney function.
You are being asked to take part in this study because you have an advanced solid tumor that has gotten worse after or has not responded to at least one prior chemotherapy treatment. You may have normal kidney function or various levels of impaired kidney function to be in this study. | <urn:uuid:33d053fb-ec4c-47cb-899f-df3c713efff5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.siteman.wustl.edu/ProtDetail.aspx?ProtID=5865&mid=153&id=1088 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95318 | 468 | 1.882813 | 2 |
The partnership is also aimed at providing a favourable policy environment and technical solutions for soil protection and management and at helping mobilize resources and expertise for joint activities and programmes.
The Global Soil Partnership will complement the 15-year-old Global Water Partnership initiated by the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank in 1996 to coordinate the development and management of water, land, and related resources in order to maximise economic and social welfare without compromising the sustainability of vital environmental systems.
GWP Executive Secretary Dr Ania Grobicki spoke at the launch in Rome, emphasizing the importance of a new global partnership coming together to protect the world's soil, as soil is a non-renewable resource. "Soil and water are both essential resources which ensure food security for people everywhere, and in many places they are both under threat. The Global Soil Partnership can provide the visibility and advocacy needed to raise the issue of sustainable soil management to the highest level," she said.
"The lessons learned from 15 years of GWP include the necessity to have an inclusive partnership linking stakeholders at all levels, from farmers and water managers to the scientists and engineers with the necessary knowledge, to politicians and decision-makers," she added.
Following the launch of the GSP, Dr Grobicki observed that the draft terms of reference for this new partnership state: “The Global Soil Partnership mirrors the Global Water Partnership and may be based on similar principles and working procedures.” She noted that this is a tribute to the successes of GWP, and that going forward, GWP will link closely with the GSP to help build food security and climate resilience in countries worldwide. | <urn:uuid:c039147f-6e6e-4139-aeec-89ff4ef00ccc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fao.org/globalsoilpartnership/news/detail/en/c/147602/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951378 | 338 | 2.953125 | 3 |
- The museum
- Calendar & Exhibitions
- Collection & Research
- Support Boijmans
from June 2 2012 until September 30 2012
This summer Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is devoting an exhibition to the fabrics of the Dutch textile designer Frans Dijkmeijer. Dijkmeijer’s fabrics are used for furniture upholstery and interior decoration and are still very popular among international furniture designers. Designer Bertjan Pot (1975) is supervising the fitting out of the exhibition, where the important design choices made by Frans Dijkmeijer are illustrated using material swatches, photos and video interviews.
The exhibition ‘Intervention #19 Frans Dijkmeijer - A Life in Weaving’ in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was originally planned for this autumn. Because of the death of Frans Dijkmeijer, the exhibition has been postponed and will now open on 2 June 2012. Dijkmeijer can be considered a key figure within the European weaving industry.
Frans Dijkmeijer (1936-2011) is known for his timeless and original fabric designs. Dijkmeijer’s fabrics are used for furniture upholstery and interior decoration and are still very popular among international furniture designers. From 1966 to 1980, Dijkmeijer worked at De Ploeg weaving mill. Currently, his fabrics are produced by renowned companies such as
the Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat. In 2000, Frans Dijkmeijer was awarded the Profile Prize for his contribution to the textile industry.
Watch de video of Frans Dijkmeijer here on ArtTube.
This exhibition is part of the ‘Design in Boijmans’ programme. This summer design has been spotlighted in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. With the renewed arrangement of the museum collection and several design exhibitions, in 2012 a lot of attention is paid to design in the museum.
The exhibition ‘Intervention #19 Frans Dijkmeijer - A Life in Weaving’, is sponsored by Kvadrat. | <urn:uuid:ba706d81-37ef-438f-bf82-1f6478c6f22c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boijmans.nl/en/7/calendar-exhibitions/calendaritem/886/intervention-19-frans-dijkmeijer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913565 | 446 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Library’s “Research the Right Way’ series offered
Helps students excel
University Branch Library, 14010 University Blvd in Sugar Land, will present a special series for students – “Research the Right Way” — in March. This series will help students learn how to identify authoritative resources from the Internet, access journal articles from the library’s databases, and create bibliographies and citations for their research papers.
The first class, “Research Skills: Internet Sources,” will take place on Tuesday,
March 5, beginning at 10:30 am, in the Computer Lab. Students will learn how to get quality research information online by using the Internet Links that are available on the library’s website. These websites have been selected by librarians, who have determined that the sites contain reliable information.
The second class, “Research Skills: Databases,” will take place on Tuesday,
March 19, beginning at 10:30 am, in the Computer Lab. Students will learn how to use the library’s online databases to retrieve authoritative research material from journals and newspapers.
The final class, “Research Skills: Citations,” will take place on Tuesday, March 26, beginning at 10:30 am, in the Computer Lab. Students will learn how to create bibliographies for their research papers by using online citation tools that ensure that their citations are done in the correct MLA or APA format.
The programs are free and open to the public. Seating is limited, however, and reservations are required. To register online at the library’s website (www.fortbend.lib.tx.us), click on “Calendar,” select “University Branch,” and find the program. Participants may also register by calling the library at 281-633-5150, or by visiting the library.
Short URL: http://www.fortbendstar.com/?p=27828 | <urn:uuid:35a48c6b-44d2-476a-b422-a3fc9ee8bc35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fortbendstar.com/2013/02/11/librarys-research-the-right-way-series-offered/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902833 | 413 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights
'This book is invaluable introduction to a critical reexamination of our relationship to animals. It deserves to be widely read.' – New Scientist
'Empty Cages is an excellent introduction for newcomers to the world of animal rights.' – Animal Guardian
'Every so often a book is written that is destined to change the way people think. Tom Regan has written just such a book. Empty Cages is compelling because it is logical, rational, and written in an elegantly simple style. It will educate and sadden you, and make you angry, but never is it inflamatory. Reading it may not convert you into an animal rights advocate, at least not immediately, but it will most definitely give you an understanding of and sympathy for the movement. And all animals, everywhere, will benefit. Please buy this book, read it, and tell your friends about it. Everyone needs a copy on their bookshelf.' – Jane Goodall
'Of value to everyone.' – Veg News
'Tom Regan delivers a searing indictment of the way we treat animals in the world we have made for ourselves, and presents a trenchant case that animals have or should have rights in the same way that human beings have.' – J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature
'Tom Regan is the Tom Paine of animal rights, the rational visionary who, while passionately defending the rights of man, no less passionately defends the rights of animals. His contributions are historically unprecedented. The animal rights movement may have evolved from the humane feelings of compassion and mercy. In Tom Regan, it has found the voice of reason.' – Paul Watson, cofounder of Greenpeace, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
'Empty Cages debunks myhts and exposes unscrupulous practices hidden from public view. People who are willing to 'question authority' need to read this original, illuminating, and thorough examination of the case for animal rights.' – Neal Barnard, M.D., president, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Tom Regan is professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
Englesko izdanje ove knjige možete naručiti putem e-maila email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:54f44ecc-2720-439a-a630-63e6ae48f07f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prijatelji-zivotinja.hr/index.hr.php?id=703 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916526 | 487 | 2.34375 | 2 |
for National Geographic News
Think life on Earth is weird? It might be even weirder on distant planets and moons, according to a new report.
Instead of thriving on water, extraterrestrial organisms might live in a sea of liquid methane. Or instead of getting energy from the sun, they might thrive on hydrochloric acid.
These possibilities could revolutionize future space missions in search of life elsewhere in the solar system, says the report, issued today by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
The report concludes that scientists need to consider an expanded list of characteristics that define life, including so-called "weird" life-forms that may thrive where Earth organisms couldn't.
Instead of dispatching spacecraft to dig into the subsurface of Mars, considered a prime candidate for primitive life because of its watery past, the report says the probes may have better luck on Saturn's moon Titan, which has seas of liquid methane and ethane.
In fact, the report concluded that Titan is the most likely candidate in the solar system for weird life.
"It's a carbon world, so there's plenty of different kinds of carbon compounds there, and the possibility is that there may be the carbon compounds that make up life," said John Baross, an oceanographer at Seattle's University of Washington, who lead the report team.
Baross chaired the committee that prepared the report released by the National Research Council, an arm of the NAS.
The report probes the question: How might life on distant worlds be different than life on Earth?
"We don't want to not recognize a life form because it doesn't exactly resemble Earth life," Baross said.
All life on Earth studied to date has certain characteristics and needs: water, carbon-based metabolism, a chemical- or light-based energy source, and the ability to evolve.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:e1affcf6-7159-4aba-aaaf-ef3321540dd2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070706-weird-aliens.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94441 | 392 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Most rulers have spouses and many have mistresses (or "misters?") as well. However, often only one of the couple exercises rule and the other is merely to decorate the palace, provide heirs, seal alliances and entertain the king.
A ruling couple, on the other hand, are equal or near equal
partners, and may even be Happily Married
. Rather then one ruling and one staying in the palace
they jointly rule. The rulers will rely on each other as trusted counselors and they will be The Good King
and The High Queen
in one. Perhaps they will show this by receiving audiences on two thrones. Perhaps the consort will have a regular seat in the royal council and a vote. Perhaps even the two of them will discuss deep and labyrinthine affairs of state during matrimonial activities
. And likely they will be addressed as partners and written down as such in the chronicles. If historians refer only to the reign of Alice or the reign of Bob then this trope might be averted. If however historians regularly refer to the reign of "Alice and Bob" then it is a ruling couple.
This usually refers to a monarchial government, as monarchy is intentionally a Family Business
. Only rarely can it be pictured in The Republic
On many occasions, they will also be a Battle Couple
Anime and Manga
- In Anatolia Story, Kail Mursili and Yuri Ishtar aspire to become this so they can justly rule over the Hitite Empire and fend off the Big Bad, Queen Nakia. They succeed. For more bonus points, Yuri is an expy of the below mentioned Queen Puduhepa, who in history was Mursili's daughter-in-law.
- In Things We Don't Tell Humans, Optimus Prime and Elita-One, as well as Megatron and Nightbird, are this. Despite Optimus and Megatron being the ones with the Matrix/official title, their consorts are held as equal (or at least, equally capable) ruling partners. It's Elita who takes over as leader of the Autobots in the Revenge Arc, rather than Prowl, his second-in-command.
- This is the case in 300. Leonidas depends heavily on Gorgo and even, at one point, seems to ask her permission to throw a Persian messenger in a well. Fact is, we see Gorgo. That is more than can be said of Leonidas' co-king who would be (historically speaking) ruler along side him.
- It's unclear if Brave's queen, Elinor, has any official power, but she's the one who runs the day-to-day affairs of her kingdom while her husband, Fergus, defends it from invaders or enchanted demon-bears.
- Belisarius Series: Justinian and Theodora (and in Real Life) for the Romans; Rao and Shakuntala for the Marathans; Kungas and Irene for the Kushans.
- Belgarion and Ce'Nedra of Riva, and Korodullin and Mayaserana of Arendia from the Belgariad.
- Rhodar and Porrenn of Drasnia divide their power: One for internal affairs, the other for external ones.
- Selenay and Daren of Valdemar. In fact, any royal spouse will become a co-consort provided that he/she is also chosen as a herald. There are several examples of this in the back story.
- Deryni: This seems to be Kelson's plan for Araxie in King Kelson's Bride, as it had been for Rothana in The Quest for Saint Camber. Since things with Rothana didn't pan out, and since Araxie is also a Haldane by birth, Kelson suggests triggering the Haldane potential in her as it has already been done in himself. Araxie is not averse to the idea and enters into thoughtful speculation on the matter; no Haldane has ever been Queen of Gwynedd before, and it isn't known if a female Haldane could have her potential triggered (or even that she carries it).
- Eugenides and Irene in The Queen's Thief series.
- Lord of the Rings: Celeborn and Galadriel, though Galadriel often seems to be the senior partner.
- After the second book in The Sword Of Truth series, the hero, Richard Rahl, ascends to his hereditary title as ruler of the D'Haran Empire. Two books later, he marries Kahlan Amnell, the Mother Confessor (basically, the ruler of a race of women that can permanently brainwash anyone just by touching them) and become, ostensibly, the most powerful husband and wife duo in the world. While Richard is undoubtedly the more active and usually the more dominant of the two, the two are practically equals, with people sworn to serve Richard also sworn to serve Kahlan and vice-versa. There are not very many moments in the story where the two are allows to rule as a partnership (almost every time they get together, they're torn apart or one is taken out of commission via Diabolus Ex Machina), but there are smatterings of it here and there.
- Cayleb and Sharleyan in Safehold. There are married rulers in the books, but these two are the only case where they're co-rulers with equal authority. A number of their decisions after their marriage are made partly to emphasize this fact.
- The Silmarillion: Manwë and Varda, the King and Queen of the Valar.
- Thingol and Melian also count to a degree; while Thingol does most of the day-to-day business of ruling, it's Melian's powers as a Maia that protect the kingdom from outside threats.
- 1632: Mike Sterns and Rebecca, though of course, Grantsville/USE is not a monarchy. Still the same sort of interaction applies.
- Vorkosigan Saga: Aral and Cordelia are Viceroy and Vicereine of Sergyar. Not bad for a culture where, just a few years earlier, a woman had to have a sex change operation to be allowed onto the Council of Counts.
- A couple of instances in The Wheel of Time. The Sea Folk have the Mistress of the Ships (always female political leader) and the Master of the Blades (always male millitary leader)- which takes precedence depends on whether the Sea Folk are currently at peace or war. Among the Aiel, male clan chiefs are the political and millitary leaders while female shaman-types called Wise Ones are the spiritual leaders- as it's not unknown for a clan chief to marry a Wise One, this trope sometimes results. Finally, in Tarabon the King handles external affairs and the Panarch (highest-ranked noblewoman) handles internal ones, though they're not neccessarily married (both are elected independantly from among the nobility following the death or downfall of their predeccessor).
- Princess Kristin and Prince Mark rule Tasavalta together in Fred Saberhagen's Books Of Lost Swords. Strictly speaking, Kristin is the ruler, and Mark is her consort, but in practice, the two of them share power. When Kristin was dominated by Murat using the Mindsword, the Tasavaltan army, and the royal court wizard, Karel (who is also Kristin's uncle), obeyed Mark's orders without question.
- This is instituted as a compromise in A Song of Ice and Fire. Daenerys conquers the eastern city-state of Meereen with an army of freedmen and a handful of (untrained but still scary) dragons, but she annoys a lot of the city's former ruling elite, and her officers start getting assassinated in the middle of the night in protest at her rule. Eventually she consents to marry one of the nobles and rule jointly, despite not liking or trusting him.
- Sheridan and Delenn on Babylon 5. In this case, it is a bit complicated, as rather than being heads of government, they are heads of a trans-state La Résistance that includes some government leaders. Later they both lead an interstellar confederation.
- King Arthur and Queen Guinevere as of the end of series four of Merlin.
- Arthur and Joan Campbell in Covert Affairs aren't royalty but they kind of act like a Ruling Couple.
- Farscape: This is why John ends up married to a Sebacean princess—their laws state that a couple must rule together and the princess can only marry a man who can provide her with healthy children.
- Game of Thrones portrays Renly Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell (who got very little focus in the books) as an example of this; for one thing, she's his Beard, since his real lover is her brother Loras, but she's also his ambitious Lady Macbeth (jointly with Loras — a Ruling One True Threesome, perhaps?), his counsellor, his spin doctor and his guarantee of support from her wealthy and powerful family (he himself is rightfully the Spare to the Throne, and needs all the legitimate power he can get). When we see them holding an informal court they're sitting in two equally prominent thrones. We never get to see what they would have been like as true rulers due to Renly's death, but as of season three Margaery is busy getting her hooks into her new fiancee, King Joffrey.
- Graham and Valanice of Kings Quest. It's implied that Alexander and Cassima will be this as well.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, it is possible to set up Queen Anora and Alistair as the Ruling Couple of Ferelden, but only if both agree to such marriage and the latter's personality has been hardened (if not hardened, he ends up as a puppet ruler more interested in partying than being useful).
- If playing as the Female Human Noble, romancing Alistair can make the Warden eventually become their Princess-Consort. It's lampshaded in the second game that they are clearly the ones wearing the trousers in the relationship and the people of Ferelden absolutely adore her, particularly now that the other countries are downright terrified of how much of a badass their Queen is.
Alistair: Just because she killed an Archdemon, she doesn't frighten me!
Teagan: You keep telling yourself that, Your Majesty...
- The Spartans had a subversion of this. They had two kings, and on top of that a whole busload of other institutions to rule. Most of the time, though, one king tended to get the upper hand, even though theoretically speaking both were equal.
- Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Isabella was Queen Regnant of Castile in her own right, and marrying Ferdinand of Aragon united their two kingdoms into one Spain.
- William and Mary of Great Britain, as a compromise — she had the better claim, but not by much (he was her cousin), and he already had considerable power in the Netherlands in his own right, while also being more popular with those who didn't want to see a woman on the throne.
- Nicholas and Alexandra of Russia, at least after World War I broke out. After Nicholas took personal command of the army and went to the front, Alexandra ruled in Petrograd in his stead. It didn't work out so well...
- Suleiman the Magnificent and his wife Roxelana who was an important advisor to him after being freed from his harem.
- Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora led the Byzantine Empire.
- Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Victoria and Albert had nine children. Needless to say, Victoria spent a lot of time pregnant (and, therefore, unable to attend to many matters of state); Albert was effectively the monarch while Victoria was otherwise occupied carrying and nursing the forbears of nearly every royal family of Europe. Still, even when Victoria was at her best, she relied a great deal on Albert's advice and support.
- King Hattusili III and Queen Puduhepa from the Hitite Empire. They ruled together, Hattusili was in charge of the military and Puduhepa handled the diplomatic pront. | <urn:uuid:9b99da74-aa49-4b2f-8419-d8c1247ded64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RulingCouple | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971996 | 2,591 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Storeowners often employ security personnel to protect them from shoplifters, and a store detective has the right to detain you if he or she suspects you of shoplifting. In order to protect themselves from accusations or liability lawsuits based on wrongful detention or false arrest, store security personnel generally follow certain established routines when investigating a suspected case of shoplifting. These routines include observation of the suspect, often using surveillance equipment, actually witnessing the item being taken and concealed, and establishing that no attempt was made to pay for the item. Store security personnel should generally wait until a suspect has actually left the store without paying for an item before stopping and detaining the culprit. Store personnel are not allowed to conduct searches of the suspect's person or belongings and are obliged to behave politely and professionally. If store security personnel have reasonable cause to suspect that a shoplifting offense has been committed, they should summon the police. Shoplifting as a first-time offense is generally charged as petty theft, which is a misdemeanor usually punishable by fine and probation. A repeat offense, or a first-time offense in which the dollar value of the stolen item warrants, may be charged as a felony, resulting in imprisonment. If you're accused of shoplifting, you should consider consulting an attorney. | <urn:uuid:46cf13b4-553c-4ff0-a528-09dfbb39c0c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cw15.com/guides/legal/criminal/story/Shoplifting-offenses/r-YiC_iQiUadb4D_tKPm2A.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960729 | 252 | 1.679688 | 2 |
The kangaroo court in Munich is now in session. John Demjanjuk, 89, in a wheelchair, half-conscious, and with no eye-witnesses testifying against him, is on trial in Germany for crimes alleged to have happened in Poland 66 years ago.
The chief question is whether the German state, in an illegal invasion of Poland, captured Demjanjuk and forced him to become a guard at Sobibor concentration camp. It is not the German state that is on trial, or even any Germans. It is not even alleged that Demjanjuk killed anyone. All of the 27,900 counts against him are for accessory to murder. By being a guard at the camp, he kept people from escaping so that Germans could kill them – in Poland, of which he is neither a citizen nor has he ever lived other than under the control of the German army.
The German are really grasping at straws to find non-Germans to prosecute in Germany for crimes perpetrated by a German government.
I made further observations back in April during the extradition proceedings. | <urn:uuid:f138fe96-9e95-4093-89d0-a3111d3dbb61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solomonhezekiah.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984082 | 223 | 1.835938 | 2 |
It’s important for Heels fans to remember what Lucas tells us in ‘Carolina Basketball’: while the ACC tournament is important to fans and programs for many reasons, winning on Sunday doesn’t necessarily lead to ultimate success at end of season. Of the last three Tar Heels’ NCAA championship runs, none started by winning the ACC tournament.
Enter to win a free copy of J. Samuel Walker’s ACC Basketball: The Story of the Rivalries, Traditions, and Scandals of the First Two Decades of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The ACC benefited from the economic growth and unprecedented prosperity in the South after World War II. Southerners generally had more disposable income than ever and many used it to attend basketball games at ACC schools, or at least to buy television sets that broadcast ACC games. Further, the stronger economic status of Southern states encouraged much-needed improvements in education, including the allocation of greater resources to public universities. One result was that members of the ACC took steps to upgrade their academic programs and prestige. Another result was the ability of several ACC schools to build modern basketball arenas.
The first two decades of ACC basketball laid the foundations for the success on a national stage that the league has enjoyed ever since. | <urn:uuid:16dcd1d9-2e7f-4863-b5bd-36026632f688> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uncpressblog.com/tag/acc-sports/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963657 | 259 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The believer’s lifelong fight against sin with the goal of victory over it; the Christian’s active putting to death of self and sin.
- From scripture:
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Colossians 3:3-10 ESV)
- From the Second Helvetic Confession:
Of Repentance and the Conversion of Man
… We also disapprove of those who think that by their own satisfactions they make amends for sins committed. For we teach that Christ alone by his death or passion is the satisfaction, propitiation or expiation of all sins (Isa., ch.53; I Cor. 1:30). Yet as we have already said, we do not cease to urge the mortification of the flesh. We add, however, that this mortification is not to be proudly obtruded upon God as a satisfaction for sins, but is to be performed humble, in keeping with the nature of the children of God, as a new obedience out of gratitude for the deliverance and full satisfaction obtained by the death and satisfaction of the Son of God.
- From Eighteen Words by J. I. Packer:
This is our aim; so to drain the life out of sin that it never moves again. We are not promised that we shall reach our goal in this life, but we are commanded to advance towards it by assaulting those inclinations and habits in which sin’s presence is recognized. We are not merely to resist its attacks. We are to take the initiative against it. We must seek, in Owen’s phrase, ‘not a mere disappointment of sin, that it be not brought forth … but a victory over it, and pursuit of it to a complete conquest’; not merely the counteraction, but the eradication of it. Killing, so far as we can compass that, is the end in view.
- From A Discourse of Mortification by Stephen Charnock:
Let us labour to mortify sin. If we will not be the death of sin, sin will be the death of our souls. Though the allurements of sin may be pleasant, the propositions seemingly fair, yet the end of all is death, Rom. v. 21. Death was threatened by God and executed upon Adam; death must be executed upon our sins, in order to the restoration of the eternal life of our souls. Love to everlasting life should provoke us, fear of everlasting death should excite us to this, the two most solemn and fundamental passions that put us upon action. ‘Why will you die?’ was God’s expostulation, Ezek. xxxiii. 11; Why should thou, O my soul, for a short vanishing pleasure, venture an eternal death? should be our expostulation with ourselves. This would be a curing our disease, bringing our soul into that order in part which was broken by the fall; by this the power of that tyrant that first headed and maintained the faction against God would be removed, and the soul recover that liberty and life it lost by disobeying of God. This would conduce to our peace. We have then a sprouting assurance when we are most victorious over our lusts: after every victory, God gives us a taste of the hidden manna, Rev. ii. 17. Unmortified lusts do only raise storms and tempests in the soul; less pains are required to the mortification of them than to the satisfaction of them. Sin is a hard taskmaster; there must be a pleasure in destroying so cruel an inmate. Gratitude engages us; God’s holiness and justice bruised Christ for us, and shall not we kill sin for him? An infinite love parted with a dear Son, and shall not our shallow finite love part with destroying lusts? We cannot love our sins so much as God loved his Son: he loved him infinitely. If God parted with him for us, shall not we part with our sins for him? He would have us kill it because it hurts us; the very command discovers affection as well as sovereignty, and minds us of it as our privilege as well as our duty. And to engage us to it, he hath sent as great a person to help us as to redeem us, viz, his Spirit; he sent one to merit it, and the other to assist us in it and work it in us, who is to bring back the creature to God by conquering that in it which hath so long detained it captive.
- Sinclair Ferguson: The Practice of Mortification
- Greg Herrick: “Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers” - An Outline, Exposition and Summary
- A. W. Pink: The Doctrine of Mortification
- Christopher Love: The Mortification of Sin
- Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Mortification of Sin (mp3)
Do you have a term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.
Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order. | <urn:uuid:a3c6e335-c452-4634-a37b-7bce059406d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rebecca-writes.com/rebeccawrites/2012/2/14/theological-term-of-the-week.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957731 | 1,244 | 1.546875 | 2 |
For the last five years, the world of Cash and Valuables in Transit (CVit) in the United Kingdom has been characterised by a steady, year-on-year rise in violent crime. The field has long been viewed by organised crime and opportunists as the target with the best reward to risk ratio, with unarmed guards working from 3,500 armoured vans across the UK carry around £700 billion around the street of Britain every year. This movement of cash is vital to the functioning of the UK economy with daily impact on cash-dependent businesses like banks and retailers. The problem is so severe that 75% of all CViT attacks take place in the United Kingdom.
DNA marking battles UK Cash in Transit crime
In the past, there has been little to prevent aggressors from targeting guards to steal CViT boxes. I met a young security guard who has been attacked a staggering 23 times over the course of his career. The guard, whose name can’t be mentioned due to privacy concerns, is trained in the martial arts and, remarkably is still working as a guard despite his multiple brushes with death.
Sophisticated measures are in place to have vans followed by the police, and many vans now carry the warning that “police follow this van”. Despite the warning, the real crime deterrent is the security features of the boxes themselves.
The CViT box is designed to prevent thieves from accessing stolen cash, and to ensure that thieves can be tracked and caught if found with or using the cash. The ability to link criminals to stolen cash is precisely what has finally led to the decline of CVIT attacks, since the peak of 1070 attacks in the UK in 2009.
Law Enforcement Technology at work
CViT boxes have been honed to be strong yet light enough to carry, technologically sophisticated yet user friendly. The core defence is a cash staining dye within the box, a highly corrosive ink originally designed to destroy the cash, but is now predominantly used to indelibly mark the cash and make it difficult to use. The unique taggants recently introduced in the UK provide the vital missing link between causing a mere nuisance for criminals, and actually allowing for convictions. When boxes are detonated, dye containing a unique DNA code is released onto the notes. Once the DNA makes contact with notes, it cannot be removed. Similarly, if the dye and DNA land on skin or other property, the DNA binds for up to 350 years.
In 2010, one gang who alone were responsible for 23 raids in the London area were caught and prosecuted using taggants. Now DNA has been used to identify and successfully prosecute 16 criminals who have been sentenced to an aggregate 122 years in prison.
DNA Taggants: a watershed moment
Taggants have created a watershed moment in the fight against CViT crime, in October 2010 Applied DNA Sciences became the first non-police organisation to win an ACPO award for Excellence in Policing, alongside Lancashire Police, for convicting the criminals responsible for shooting a Loomis security guard in Blackburn. CViT statistics have dropped for the first time in years. International interest is now focused on the UK and how taggants have impacted the fight against the CViT plague.
Applied DNA Sciences has expanded its use of SigNature DNA technology against robberies of banks, both at tellers and ATMs, most recently with security giant 3SI. Why is this technology so critical?
A blog post by Security InfoWatch blogger GEOFF KOHL gives us some great insight and has important information every security specialist should know.
According to the FBI, there were 5,086 bank robberies in the U.S. last year. That is down slightly year over year, but the monetary losses, and human victimization costs such as medical treatment and psychological damage from these attacks are still sky high. In certain areas, such as smaller communities, in-bank robbery continues to increase.
But apparently these are no longer ready for prime time; that’s seemingly reserved for computer hackers trying to break into online banking systems.
In 2011, direct monetary losses from in-bank robbery came to something north of $38 million in the U.S. Of that amount, only about $8 million was recovered. Eighty percent of stolen cash is lost. How can that be in an era when surveillance cameras are widespread in every city (and were used in 97% of robbery incidents), police-connected alarm systems are everywhere (activated in 89.5% of incidents), and when tracking technology seems to have been sharpened to a fine point? The truth is, we can see who is committing the crimes and police are clearing them at a record rate. But the criminals are not being linked to the evidence of their crime, in this case, the stolen cash.
The reality is that only 24% of the institutions involved had smoke and dye packs available, like the kind used by 3SI Security and others, now expanding to include our SigNature DNA evidence-marking system. Still fewer, 5.4%, had functioning electronic tracking devices. These technologies and others like them combine to produce powerful deterrence in some of the most vulnerable parts of Europe and sorely need to be considered.
Almost half of the 2011 loss was in the form of cargo theft--robbery or hijacking of goods en route to or from distribution centers. The figure also includes shoplifting-- which is now occurring in an organized and massive way--returns scams, credit card fraud, bar code switching, and insider schemes, as well as in-store robbery and burglary.
But it is more than the number of crimes that have retailers concerned: the nature of retail theft has changed dramatically since the economic crisis of 2007-8. Organized crime is much more systematically involved, violent crime is on an upswing, and the internet plays an ever-increasing role as an outlet to “fence” stolen goods.
Still, despite the increase in volume and violence in attacks, big strides have been made by retailers in working closely with law enforcement. With senior executives tuned in to the problem, and new approaches such as problem-oriented-policing, retailers are adopting new tools that will aid police in tracking and convicting criminals—and deterring future crimes as a result.
Those tools include effective new video systems, “lo-jack”-like tracking technology, and Applied DNA Sciences' smartDNA anti-intruder marking spray and evidence marking. The high-tech smartDNA spray douses a fleeing offender with a long-lasting DNA-marked fluorescing dye. As the crime is investigated, the fluorescing DNA mark assists police in linking the offender and stolen items to a specific crime scene.
More stolen goods are being recovered, due to better cooperation with law enforcement
Some NRF crime report highlights:
Top retail crime cities: Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Dallas. Making the top-ten list for the first time are Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Nearly six in ten senior loss prevention executives say their senior management understands the severity of the problem, a big step up from the 39 percent reported in 2005.
Companies are allocating more resources – including personnel and greater investment in technology – to combat the problem.
Among the top targets for theft: designer clothing, handbags, infant formula, over-the-counter drugs, the latest “i” devices, and gift cards.
An important trend for retailers: more goods are being recovered from physical and online fence locations, thanks to better cooperation with law enforcement and new technologies. This has made evidence marking more effective than ever in attaining convictions of the guilty, and therefore in deterring crime.
Applied DNA Sciences' smartDNA evidence marking works to microscopically mark cash and high value items in a way that is extremely difficult to detect or remove, and that links the evidence directly to a crime scene. DNA evidence marking from Applied DNA Sciences is used on over a quarter of all the cash being moved to and from banks in the United Kingdom, which suffers the highest rate of cash in transit crime in Europe. | <urn:uuid:574c836f-0389-42ae-b701-6ed8e6b13d4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adnas.com/category/applications/cash-transit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960716 | 1,666 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Radiology and Nuclear Medicine provide us with a clear view
The KLINIK am RING is equipped with the high performance technical instruments and equipment for the so-called magnetic resonance imaging or diagnostic imaging:
Dr. med. Rudolf Kirchner, accredited physician for diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine: “Aside all of the technique in our area, it is for us of utmost importance that the patient feels comfortable and secure. We want to help the patient to overcome his anxiety and fear of the “tube” as well as possible radio active substances”.
Dr. Bruno Frentz, accredited physician for diagnostic radiology: "Computer tomography is a medical imaging or x-ray procedure for the imaging of bones, inner organs, cavities, muscles soft tissue, and vascular structures. Detailed cross sections and three-dimensional reproductions allow an optimal and secure therapy planning. The magnetic resonance tomography, however, does show these images without x-rays and much more precise, meaning that also infections can be recognized”.
You will find more information on radiology under:
Radiology at the West German Prostate Center | <urn:uuid:a2727e28-a750-49b4-a088-c2346ae071d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wpz-koeln.de/en/informationen/team/radiology-and-nuclear-medicine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920597 | 237 | 1.648438 | 2 |
There are very few issues today that are more important than child safety. As adults, we are responsible for the safety of all children, especially ones in our care. Thus, it is of the utmost importance to remember all laws and common sense about the safety of children.
Your child must be BOTH 6 years old AND weight more than sixty pounds to ride in a vehicle without being in an approved safety seat. Children meeting that criteria must, of course, wear a seat belt.
Do you make sure your children are seat belted? Last year, 4,000 unbuckled children under the age of 16 lost their lives in traffic accidents.
You must STOP when you see a school bus flashing red lights, warning you of possible children crossing the road. All too often, people will slow, and then proceed, which is illegal. Always be mindful to drive extra carefully around any school or in neighborhood where children may dart into the road.
All bicycle riders and passengers under age 18 must wear bicycle helmets while operating a bicycle in a public place. The helmets must be properly fitted and fastened. | <urn:uuid:ec237ffc-0c1b-479f-a73b-9cbaa4fcae28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/police/child_safety/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963149 | 223 | 2.6875 | 3 |
View Full Version : How to get started
07-29-2009, 07:52 PM
I want to start my own animation studio. And create 3d films. For this I need top notch 3ds Max education. I have around 2-3 thousand dollars to burn on DVD tutorials etc. I've already purchased
Gnomology - Introduction to 3ds max
Digital Tutors - Introduction to lighting and mental ray.
What I want to do is create alluring footage like ASII (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVWhWsgHzKM) Trailer created by the famous DIGIC. I want to be all rounder for several months this means I would also need to learn Zbrush for detailing etc.
Please list some DVD programs that I should get to sharpen my 3ds senses :beer:. And even on how to get started with Zbrush. I've obviously started watching the Gnomology Introduction to 3dsMax and so far I am enjoying it.
Help would greatly be appreciated.
P.S: I am also thinking of getting in to game designing but that will come really later on maybe after 3-4 years of excellence in CGI.
07-29-2009, 08:19 PM
Simply max - http://www.simplymax.com/
Digital Tutors - http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/index.php
Gnomon Workshop - http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/
These are what I recommend if you are serious about learning. The training these guys provide is top notch.
07-29-2009, 08:56 PM
Yes I know but I am not sure what I want to learn yet.. I mean Modeler/Animator/Matte painter etc..
Do you recommend any programs. I want to have the exact realism that DIGIC has in Assassin's creed 2 Trailer in my films. I want to be an all rounder.
Edit: I can even start by creating short funny films that look similar to this image in your gallary
07-30-2009, 09:50 AM
Okay. I really don't want to be a killjoy and I think your enthusiasm is great, but you also need to keep your feet on the ground and be realistic here. That Assassin's Creed trailer was done by an entire team of extraordinarily talented, experienced artists at a very highly regarded studio, with a lot of resources at their disposal. You're simply not going to achieve that on your own, in a couple of years, especially if you're a fresh beginner.
So while I think it's important to have ambitions and goals, if your ambition is to achieve that quality of work on your own, you're likely to end up frustrated because it's not going to happen. At least not within the next ten years. Especially if you're aiming to be an all-rounder, because to master every aspect of 3D production to the level seen in that cinematic, it's going to take you years and years and years. And that's if you're good at it from the start.
07-30-2009, 02:52 PM
What if I specialize in one field (Texturing) and then find group of talented people and make a small studio? Would that be quicker to accomplish? I see they used tones of tools for them selves.
Actually, when I said All-rounder I actually thought I'd master one subject (which I did not know since I am pretty much a newbie in thie field) and then learn basics of other aspects for general purposes.
07-30-2009, 03:00 PM
I really think you're jumping the gun. Starting a studio is a huge, huge undertaking. It requires business sense and knowledge, leadership skills, an extremely good understanding of your craft, and a hell of a lot of money. Not to mention a team of excellent artists, as well as production staff, and other business types. Frankly, the best way to really develop in this field is to work at a couple of different studios over the course of a few years, getting experience and developing your understanding and skills, whether you're a specialist, or a generalist artist. Only after some years in the field should you be thinking about starting your own studio.
This really isn't something you can rush into. You should think of your own studio as more of a longterm goal than an immediate one.
07-31-2009, 02:48 AM
Alright thanks guys.
I've decided to work as a Texture artist and a set designer/environmental artist. Good job? I want to do something thats not pretty contested atm and yet is really fun.
07-31-2009, 02:48 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.
vBulletin v3.0.5, Copyright ©2000-2013, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. | <urn:uuid:4785e220-8143-41c0-8888-62da52ca54e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-790756.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952546 | 1,051 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Nestled into the magnificent Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado, Maroon Lake gracefully reflects what are widely considered the most photographed peaks in North America...the "Fourteeners" known as the Maroon Bells.
The Maroon Bells are actually one mountain with two peaks. The South Maroon Peak is the 27th highest peak in Colorado, and North Maroon Peak is the 50th highest. The stunning Bells achieve their amazing color from their composition of ancient mudstone.
This view was captured immediately after the skies released a dusting of snow on the Snowmass peaks, as if to warn of winter's coming. Maroon Lake serenely reflects back the richly detailed, pristine panorama, causing the scene to glow with a remarkable light fueled by the amazing autumn color of Colorado's Aspen groves and evergreen forests. | <urn:uuid:e7f9a4d7-9356-4754-9324-b7aea9e99749> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apertureacademy.com/qty-prints.iframe.php?pic=Upon%20Reflection | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945366 | 173 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Pop-Up-Farm takes a local perspective on a global challenge:
how to live sustainable lives by bringing sustainability education into schools and the wider community, making the global into the local.
It combines thinking and action around patterns of sustainable knowledge - the basic elements of water, waste, energy, food, growing, buildings, health and wellbeing we use to demonstrate different ways people can change their lives to the mutual benefit of communities and the planet.
Pop-Up-Farm is driven from the grass-roots up and connects people, ideas and challenges to make their own pattern for sustainable living.
Our farms pop up in unexpected places, initiated by the schools, groups and the wider community, always practical and solution driven.
They demonstrate that many of the challenges we face are inter-connected, and once we begin to think about and understand the connections we can create new solutions. | <urn:uuid:710db790-5131-4924-b482-3af8f0cdfeec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pop-up-farm.com/?p=920 | 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 | 0.940295 | 178 | 2.296875 | 2 |
While it’s unlikely to be a problem at Saturday’s Kansas City Marathon, Lewis Maharam wants runners to know they should avoid overhydrating.
By PETE GRATHOFF
The Kansas City Star
In fact, Maharam, who is medical director of a number of marathons across the country, including the New York City Marathon, believes you shouldn’t listen to your elders.
“You shouldn’t be drinking like grandma says, ‘drink, drink, drink, drink,’ ” Maharam said in a phone interview. “No one in the history of the world has died of dehydration. There’s not one reported case.
“But there are many cases of people who overdrank. Overdrinking is way more dangerous than underdrinking.”
That’s because too much fluid intake (particularly water) can lead to hyponatremia, which is a potentially fatal condition.
At least four marathon runners have died from hyponatremia-related trauma since 1993, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
When you run long distances, blood in shunted to the legs and less blood flows to the kidneys. Salt regulatory hormones increase, which causes an athlete’s kidney to concentrate their urine with salt and retain free water.
Hyponatremia is a reduced blood sodium concentration. When the sodium level falls below 129 millimoles per liter, it can create a general clouding of consciousness not unlike the slowing of brain function. And that’s considered a mild case.
The more water you drink, the more it falls.
“As you continue to drink, you’re just continuing to lower your total serum sodium, you’re diluting yourself,” said Maharam, who writes the “Ask the Running Doc” column in runnersworld.com. “Studies have shown that if you stopped at every water station along the course — and most of them have them every mile — and you drink one cup of Gatorade, you’re dead by the time you finish. Or your serum sodium is really low.
“Your body fills up with fluid, you get pulmonary edema and your brain starts to swell.”
While the weather forecast Saturday calls for frosty temperatures, it’s still worth knowing about this condition.
Maharam has some tips for avoiding hyponatremia:
•Follow the fluid recommendations. Drink only for thirst: Not more than one cup every 20 minutes.
•Try not to drink more than you sweat.
•Favor a sports drink that has some sodium in it over water, which has none.
•In the days before the race, add salt to your foods (provided that you don’t have high blood pressure or your doctor has restricted your salt intake).
•Consume one salt packet at the start. Carry a small salt packet with you, and during the last half of the race consume that second packet.
•After the race, drink a sports drink that has sodium in it and eat some pretzels or a salted bagel.
•Stop taking non-steroidal anti-inflammatories 24 hours before your race and do not start again until a minimum of 6 hours after finishing the race.
To reach Pete Grathoff, call 816-234-4330 or send e-mail to email@example.com | <urn:uuid:6b41d22b-95a8-47a6-b193-553539a5e27d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kansascity.com/2009/10/14/1509469/what-runners-at-the-kc-marathon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921551 | 729 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Dam in Queensland, Australia bursts, four missing
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A bladder holding 10,000 megalitres of water at the Bedford Weir near Blackwater, Queensland has burst, sending flood waters rushing into the Fitzroy River towards the barrage near Rockhampton. It is believed up to four people who were in the vicinity of the dam before the breach may be missing.
An urgent flash flood warning was issued at 5:40 p.m. AEST (0740 UTC) following the breach. A wall of water was seen rushing downstream, leaving several people clinging to trees. The water was expected to travel quickly and cause flash flooding at river crossings and bridges along the river.
The mayor of the Central Highlands Regional Council, Peter McGuire, said the break was a "disaster". "There are reports of people missing," he said. "I've heard three and four [people are missing] but I don't know if that's right."
He added that the dam holds 22,900 megalitres of water and that a bladder on top of the dam's concrete wall had burst.
Emergency services are at the scene, searching the riverbanks. A Queensland Police spokeswoman said a rescue helicopter was only on the way to the area to "cover all bases", but claimed to know nothing of the missing people, although rescue teams were being organised at the scene.
- "Qld dam bursts, four feared missing" — , November 23, 2008
- David Earley. "Four missing as weir bursts" — , November 23, 2008 | <urn:uuid:491edf25-e2d0-4870-9ed9-17ff5c3d6fe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Dam_in_Queensland,_Australia_bursts,_four_missing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980556 | 323 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Think plumbing when getting a new bathroom floor
Submitted by David Heffner of Heffner Plumbing
A new floor in the bathroom can be an exciting part of a remodeling project. There are some things to consider in terms of the plumbing, however, that most people don't know about.
Removing and resetting a toilet is not rocket science and yes, most people can probably perform this task without incident. If not done properly, the resulting damage can be costly.
When remodeling or for new construction, take into consideration what the finished floor is going to be (wood, tile or vinyl). This will help ensure that the level of the toilet flange will be flush with the finished flooring surface and that the wax ring that seals the toilet to the drain is making the proper contact.
Plumbers have experienced countless times when a new floor goes in and the toilet flange is below the finished floor. "Put in two wax rings, and that always takes care of that problem," some say. That’s not correct. The height of the toilet flange needs to be raised accordingly and not by just adding a second wax ring.
Other things to consider:
1. Two-piece toilets: Two-piece toilets may have the seal compromised between the tank and the bowl when it is being moved. Make sure that this connection is not leaking after the toilet has been reset.
2. The supply tube for the toilet: If the supply tube for the toilet is not set right, it will leak. A leak that is small enough to go unnoticed for an extended period of time can be costly.
3. The shut-off valve for the toilet: Most of the water shut-off valves for toilets that come out of the wall or the floor will have a packing nut behind the handle. Opening and closing the valve can loosen the packing nut and cause it to leak. The nut can be tightened with an adjustable wrench or a pair of pliers and should be snugged up to make sure that the valve does not leak.
David Heffner is a licensed plumbing contractor in the state of Indiana and is bonded and insured. Heffner Plumbing is a highly rated company with Angie’s List and has received the Super Service Award every year since 2004. Heffner received the 2009 Contractor of the Year Award by the Greater Indianapolis Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors (GIPHCC).
As of Dec. 23, 2011, this service provider was highly rated on Angie’s List. Ratings are subject to change based on consumer feedback, so check AngiesList.com for the most up-to-date reviews. The views expressed by this author do not necessarily reflect those of Angie’s List. | <urn:uuid:0d14793a-9fa7-48fc-85fa-5baf4916b4bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.angieslist.com/articles/think-plumbing-when-getting-new-bathroom-floor.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945349 | 570 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Dominick & Haff Old "Louis XIV" Small Fork
Measuring 5 5/8" long and weighing a relatively heavy 1.0 T. oz., this three tine fork is suggestive of an oyster or seafood fork, but has a different and singular tine configuration. There are three tines, with the lower one exceptionally wide and having a beveled edge, while the other two are narrow and pointed. Two function possibilities are an escargot or a cheese fork. The maker was Dominick and Haff and the pattern is that company's old version "Louis XIV" dating from 1888. It is double die struck, meaning the pattern appears on the reverse as well as obverse. This is a high relief leaf and scroll design with a rococo sensibility. There is a script "MSB" monogram and the tine area retains a portion of an original gold wash surface. This is in mint condition, retaining clear pattern detail free of polishing or other wear. Marks are the D&H emblem, "Sterling," and the name of the retailer, Philadelphia's "J.E. Caldwell & Co." | <urn:uuid:f1bd9f5f-7851-466a-9ed9-92cf2b99e5d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cyberattic.com/stores/thurber/items/1169125/item1169125cyberattic.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941549 | 235 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Three years ago, a provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law said the companies themselves have to reveal the difference between worker pay and CEO pay. That reform still hasn't been implemented. And now the CEOs' lobbyists are pressuring House Republicans to repeal it.
As the regulations created by Dodd-Frank are chipped away, many are asking why the federal government is unable to enforce banking reforms even after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Dodd-Frank rulemaking process, now in its fourth year, has been so long, wonky and arcane that it has entirely lost the interest of the public and the press -- as perhaps was the plan of its detractors.
The rules on stay-at-home parents' access to credit have been reversed twice in the past four years but without much media attention along the way, despite the fundamental impact of the reversals on stay-at-home parents' ability to open a card in their names or to extend their credit lines.
All these men are honorable. None has broken any law. But they and their ilk in congress -- the Democrats who are now rolling back Dodd-Frank -- don't seem to appreciate the extent to which Wall Street has harmed, and continues to harm, America.
To do their job properly, financial regulators -- the people in charge of securing our economic future -- must understand how their policies affect these communities. And that's why we desperately need people of color in these positions.
No longer is financial performance the only metric by which a company is to be measured. Relevant in the mix of information when making an investment decision is the extent to which a company exhibits social responsibility.
A funny thing, wonderful in its own small way, happened last week. The Senate voted 99-0 in favor of an amendment to end subsidies to too-big-to-fail financial institutions. This vote is a harbinger of things to come -- if the public keeps ratcheting up pressure.
Unless Americans step up the way Cypriots did and demand real regulation, as well as send the message that they don't trust Wall Street by moving their money to community banks and credit unions, they can bank on being bilked. Again. | <urn:uuid:270aed5e-5f83-4685-ac0b-ec8bfd3035ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/dodd-frank | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974228 | 450 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Apple Turnovers Recipe
Versions of these are sold at almost every bakery in Paris, where they are called chausson aux pommes (“apple slippers”). Eaten plain and at room temperature, they’re a fun afternoon snack. Served warm out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream, they’re a full-fledged autumn treat.
- 2 apples (preferably Granny Smith, Gravenstein, or another firm variety), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-by-1-inch pieces
- 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon fine salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- Dash nutmeg
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
- 1 large egg
- 1 tablespoon whole milk
- 1 (14 to 16 ounce) package all-butter frozen puff pastry, thawed according to package directions
- Cinnamon or vanilla ice cream, for serving (optional)
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Place apples, lemon juice, brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter in a large saucepan and stir to combine and evenly coat the apples. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until apples are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Set a fine mesh sieve over a small bowl and pour in the apple mixture. Let apples cool to room temperature, and reserve the juice in the bowl.
- When apple mixture has cooled, whisk together the egg and milk in a small bowl until the egg is broken up; set aside. Spread the sheet of puff pastry on a lightly floured surface. Dust pastry lightly with flour and, using a rolling pin, roll into a 12-inch square. Using a sharp paring knife, trim just the uneven edges and cut the dough into four equal squares. Transfer the squares to the parchment lined baking sheet and place in the freezer or refrigerator until firm, about 5 to 10 minutes.
- Using a pastry brush, lightly brush a 1-inch border on the edges of the dough with egg wash. Reserve the egg wash. Spoon 1/4 of apple mixture in middle of each square, and fold dough in half to form a triangle. Seal the edges by pressing them together with the tines of a fork. Cut a few slits in top of each turnover with the tip of a paring knife. Cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about 15 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 425°F and arrange a rack in the middle.
- Remove the turnovers from the refrigerator, and remove the plastic wrap. Brush the top of each turnover with the egg wash. Bake until golden brown and flaky, about 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool slightly. Serve warm, drizzled with the reserved juice and with a scoop of ice cream, if desired.
Beverage pairing: Eric Bordelet Sydre Doux, France. Apples to apples is always a good call, and there’s no better place to find fermented apple juice than Normandy—and not many producers as accomplished as Eric Bordelet. This is his “sweet” style, though it’s not that sweet, which is good since neither is the dessert. Bright, fresh, and toasty, there are few more pleasurable things to drink. | <urn:uuid:8133b77c-f8dc-456d-a8d0-39574080d9b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chow.com/recipes/10431-apple-turnovers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901845 | 729 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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Virgin Queen: Wars of Religion 1559-1598 is a game of grand strategy for 2-6 players based on the military, political, and religious conflicts within Europe during the reigns of Elizabeth I of England and Philip II of Spain. Each player controls one or more of the major powers that presided over European politics in that day. Spain is the juggernaut, able to draw upon the vast riches of their global empire. But such a dominant power is sure to have many enemies. The Ottoman expansion towards Spain's Mediterranean outposts remains unchecked, Elizabeth's English sea dogs are poised to raid Spain's overseas empire. And the forces of Protestant reform will soon drag Spain into eighty years of rebellion in the Netherlands. Will Spain find aid from its Catholic allies? Perhaps not from France, where the Catholic Valois dynasty is soon to engage another group of Protestant believers in the bloody French Wars of Religion. And even Philip's relatives in Vienna who rules the Holy Roman Empire may dabble in the Protestant faith instead of remaining loyal to their Catholic heritage and Spanish brethren.Virgin Queen is the sequel to Here I Stand, another card driven game of grand strategy that covers the previous forty years (from Martin Luther's posting of his 95 Theses in 1517 through the abdication of Charles V in 1565). Players familiar with Here I Stand will find much that is familiar in Virgin Queen: over half of the rulebook remains unchanged. However, new game systems have been put in place to emphasize the changing nature of the conflicts here in the late 16th century. These new rules cover the following areas: religion, world map, diplomatic influence, weddings, patronage, and espionage. Beware, there is also a dark side to this period - a time of espionage and spymasters. In Virgin Queen you can ask your ambassadors to spy on foreign courts, send out handgun-armed assassins, invest in cryptology, and even recruit Jesuit priests for undercover missions of conversion.
These volume discounts are in addition to sale and special offer prices.
Over 4 hours
12 to adult
Spirit Games (Est. 1984) - Supplying role playing games (RPG), wargames rules, miniatures and scenery, new and traditional board and card games for the last 29 years
Contact Us | Policies | Postage and Package | Privacy | Links | Cookies | Site Map | <urn:uuid:d4aa187e-fddd-4dba-ba68-fc8dc1ad9062> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/single.php?menu=2&sub=n&tagno=&game=6820 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913037 | 562 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Cremorne NSW 2090, AustraliaHistory
0 older records found on this numberPhone Type
Local ServiceLatest Holder
Telstra Corporation LimitedNumbering Area
December 2002Other Formats
0299090063 / 9909-0063 / 99090063 / (02) 9909 0063Statistics for Cremorne
In 2006, there were 13,146 persons usually resident in Cremorne: 45.8% were males and 54.2% were females. Of the total population in Cremorne 0.1% were Indigenous persons, compared with 2.3% Indigenous persons in Australia. more
56.5% of persons usually resident in Cremorne stated they were born in Australia. Other common responses within Cremorne were: England 7.5%, New Zealand 3.5%, Japan 1.8%, South Africa 1.7% and China 1.2%.
There were 3,140 families in Cremorne: 35.2% were couple families with children, 51.7% were couple families without children, 10.3% were one parent families and 2.8% were other families.
73.9% of persons usually resident in Cremorne were Australian citizens, 31.4% were born overseas and 1.1% were overseas visitors.
* statistcs taken from the 2006 Census for postal area 2090 conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics | <urn:uuid:51f576a8-5342-4c02-b834-8ceb9adadcc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reverseaustralia.com/lookup/0299090063/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979163 | 287 | 1.640625 | 2 |
8 Art of Travel.
warm at night ; and in fact there is no such thing as travelling any considerable distance, or for any length of time, in this country without their assistance.' ` Women,' said he again, `though they do everything, are maintained at a trifling expense : for, as they always stand cook, the very licking of their fingers, in scarce times, is sufficient for their subsistence."'
Strength of Women.-I believe there are few greater popular errors than the idea we have mainly derived from chivalrous times, that woman is a weakly creature. Julius Caesar, who judged for himself, took a very different view of the powers of certain women of the northern races, about whom he wrote. I suppose, that in the days of baronial castles, when crowds of people herded together like pigs within the narrow enclosures of a fortification, and the ladies did nothing but needlework in their boudoirs, the mode of life was very prejudicial to their nervous system and muscular powers. The women suffered from the effects of ill ventilation and bad drainage, and had none of the counteracting advantages of the military life that was led by the males. Consequently women really became the helpless dolls that they were considered to be, and which it is still the fashion to consider them. It always seems to me that a hard-worked woman is better and happier for her work. It is in the nature of women to be fond of carrying weights; you may see them in omnibuses and carriages, always preferring to hold their baskets or their babies on their knees, to setting them down on the seats by their sides. A -woman, whose modern dress includes I know not how many cubic feet of space, has hardly ever pockets of a sufficient size to carry small articles ; for she prefers to load her hands with a bag or other weighty object. A nursery-maid, who is on the move all day, seems the happiest specimen of her sex ; and, after her, a maid-ofall-work who is treated fairly by her mistress.
)F - www.fastio.com | <urn:uuid:bb4c530f-0380-4813-a102-c78af421634d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://galton.org/cgi-bin/searchImages/galton/search/books/art-of-travel/pages/art-travel_0017.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985592 | 434 | 2.046875 | 2 |
The obvious question is whether this has something to do with the formal doping charges that were filed against Armstrong last week.
In those charges, the US Anti-Doping Agency said that more than 10 of Armstrong's former teammates and other cyclists had provided evidence against him.
USA Cycling, which runs the Olympic team, refused to discuss or speculate about the reasons why these men won't be considered for the team.
The four cyclists are:
- George Hincapie, who most consider to be Lance Armstrong's closest and most important former teammate and rode with him during all 7 Tour victories. Hincapie has competed in the last 5 Olympics and last year said he was excited about the possibility of competing in a 6th. Hincapie is said to have testified to a grand jury last year in the Armstrong doping probe, and many consider his testimony to be critical to Armstrong's case (for or against).
- Levi Leipheimer, who competed in the last Olympics. Leipheimer was injured earlier this year, so he might have been a longshot in any case.
- Christian Vande Velde, who just missed a spot on the 2008 Olympic team and therefore was very excited about competing in 2012.
- David Zabriskie, who earlier this year said he was very eager to compete for a slot on the Olympic team.
All four cyclists may be riding in the Tour de France this month (unconfirmed). An amateur cyclist who passed this news onto us said that the Tour de France would leave these cyclists in perfect physical condition for the Olympics and, therefore, that he found the news even more odd.
(Our thought was that the Tour might actually leave them too tired to compete, and some cyclists have had to choose between the two events. So it's possible that the juxtaposition of the two events is the reason the cyclists withdrew their names from consideration, though that hasn't been a problem in the past.)
The USADA has not publicly revealed the names of the cyclists who provided evidence against Armstrong. But the case will likely now proceed to an arbitration phase in which Armstrong will have a chance to challenge that evidence. Armstrong's response to the USADA charges is due on the 22nd of June, and the case will likely then proceed over the summer.
One obvious possibility, therefore, is that some or all of these cyclists are among those who have provided evidence against Armstrong and don't want the distraction or bad publicity associated with the arbitration taking place at the same time as the Olympics--especially if they themselves admitted being involved in doping.
Another possibility, presumably, is that they want to be available to defend Armstrong.
UPDATE: Earlier this week, VeloNews wrote about this issue, saying that the USADA charges could impact the selection of the US Olympic team. Apparently, riders selected for the team must be in good standing with the USADA, which those who provided evidence against Armstrong may not be (because they themselves may also have doped.) According to VeloNews, Zabriskie and Hincapie were both expected by many to make the team.
The reader who sent us the VeloNews article provided some further context:
This must be an awful time for everyone involved in this mess.
What's funny about USA Cycling's announcement was that is really wasn't necessary. [One of the riders selected for the Olympic team] Phinney was already in contention for the Time Trial slot. The other slots are chaotically and murkily decided anyway. There would not have been a story if they hadn't brought it out.
Also, the Tour is a week earlier than usual, specifically to give the athletes enough time to recover for the Olympics.
NOTE: Almost everyone has strong feelings about the Armstrong case, both pro and con. Lance Armstrong's supporters fiercely support him and don't want to see his amazing accomplishments tarnished any more than they already have been (and, doped or not, the accomplishments are still amazing). They also point out that this is all very old news and that the country has better things to focus on. Others, meanwhile, simply want to know the truth. I'm in the latter camp. I followed Lance Armstrong's Tour victories minute by minute, and those and his charitable work have always been hugely inspiring to me. Based on all that has come out about cycling in the past decade, I have come to assume that pretty much everyone in the sport doped and that you had to dope if you wanted to be competitive. Given this, I can certainly understand why Lance Armstrong would have doped, and if he did, I'm not going to get on some huge moral high horse about his "cheating." ("Cheating" gives you an unfair advantage over the rest of the field. You don't get that if everyone else in the field is doing the same thing.) If Lance Armstrong didn't dope, meanwhile, and everyone else--including his teammates--did, his accomplishments are that much more staggering. And inasmuch as we've come this far, I want to know the truth. | <urn:uuid:69486803-d99a-46f8-b237-23ea9a02682f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/four-former-members-of-lance-armstrongs-cycling-team-just-opted-out-of-the-olympics-2012-6?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983636 | 1,038 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Home The Americas US Midwest
Tibetan monks share teachings, practices of Buddhism in Terre Haute
By Laura Followell, The Tribune-Star, May 13, 2006
TERRE HAUTE, Indiana (USA) -- James Keep exposed his three children to something they had never seen prior to Sunday afternoon. He wants them to experience different cultures at a young age so they can gain a decent view of the world, he said.
“I want them to understand everyone is a little different and to celebrate the diversity that’s out there,” Keep said.
Keep and about 50 others listened to a Tibetan monk, Geshe Lobsang Samdup, at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation on Fruitridge Avenue as Samdup talked about what it means to be a Buddhist.
Samdup was in Terre Haute with seven other monks who are nearing the end of a year-long mission in the U.S. and Canada to share wisdom while educating the public about Tibet. The monks are also raising money for their refugee monastery, the Drepung Gomang Monastic College in South India.
In unison, the monks stood with their eyes closed and demonstrated part of the Buddhist tradition by chanting solemnly.
The Geshe, a doctor of philosophy in Buddhist studies, then talked about Buddhists’ belief in what he described as the practice of different faiths.
He chose a topic titled “A tribute to all Mothers.”
“Life begins with love,” Samdup said. “… From the first time consciousness enters the mind in a mother’s womb, a relationship is established.”
He talked about how many mothers care for their children through compassion, love and constant concern, while often worrying about the child’s education and employment
“The gratefulness of the world still isn’t enough to repay the kindness of mothers,” Samdup said.
In Buddhism, new parents come with one’s rebirth, or reincarnation. Samdup said it’s important to remember the kindness in one’s previous life and repay that kindness in their new lifetime. Once a Buddhist establishes the existence of their past life through consciousness, then they can accept the existence of a future life and be reborn multiple times, he said.
“It’s our responsibility to repay compassion and kindness,” he said. “We should be kind to everyone and everything.”
He said that people of all faiths should pray to bring happiness and peace to the world.
A woman listening to Samdup asked him if he had any wisdom to share with a mother whose child has died.
“Death is uncertain. It doesn’t help to get stressed out and depressed,” the Geshe said, then suggested thinking positively about life.
He also told the woman that he believes if one kills in a past life, their current life will be short.
Tenzin Namgyal, a translator for the monks, said Buddhists believe in karma, or cause and effect.
They believe in learning from other faiths how to obtain peace, understanding and harmony.
It hasn’t always been peaceful for Tibetan monks. According to Drepung Gomang Monastic College’s Web site, www.gomang.org, in 1949, Chinese communists attempted to establish control in Tibet with the invasion of the People’s Republic of China. Ten years later Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled the country and 80,000 refugees followed him.
Mary Pattison of Bloomington’s Tibetan Cultural Center said these monks, who were told to denounce their religion and practice Chinese communism, had to go through “great peril and great danger and great risk so they could practice religion in peace.”
Indiana State University’s Center for the study of Health, Religion and Spirituality co-sponsored the program at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation.
Jean Kristeller of ISU said Tibetan Buddhism has a culture of rich psychology, where monks embrace the mind, body and spirit through art, she said.
The monks taught children in attendance how to sculpt Tibetan motifs.
They sculpted colorful roses out of Play-doh. The adults watched another monk demonstrate sand painting, which is part of Buddhists’ sacred ceremony.
The monk used a brass funnel that was about 18 inches long with a hole two millimeters in diameter on one end where the sand poured out. The bigger end of the funnel, on the opposite end, had a 1-inch hole in which sand was scooped.
The monk used another funnel-shaped, silver, metal object and rubbed the brass funnel to make very fine sand pour onto a piece of black cardboard.
The monk used green, white, red and blue sand separately and created a lotus flower.
David Howard took a shot at creating a sand painting and diligently made a stick-figured cat.
“It’s very challenging, but very rewarding,” he said. “It gives you appreciation of someone who can do something like this and make it absolutely beautiful while showing the beauty of other cultures.” | <urn:uuid:dc75f623-da12-436b-bed3-3e8ac8f78ceb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=62,4138,0,0,1,0 | 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 | 0.948395 | 1,091 | 1.976563 | 2 |
SarahBirchwood School, OH, United States
DemiBirchwood School, OH, United States
HannahBirchwood School, OH, United States
12 & under
Jennifer JacksonBirchwood School, OH, United States
Books & Literature
We worked on this project by splitting our duties among the trio and then allowing each other to operate on her own, though occasionally interchanging our jobs. Eventually, when we were all done with our separate assignments, we combined our work and constructed out site like completing a puzzle. We also received quite a bit of aid from our mentor, Mrs. Jackson.
There was a lot of diversity within our group. Some of the countries that our ancestors and parents are from are America, China, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Slovakia, and the Phillipines. The religions widely vary. | <urn:uuid:c63c3d3d-b231-41b5-aa83-9fb86a269c4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thinkquest.org/pls/html/f?p=52300:100:5259317409077020::::P100_TEAM_ID:452618021 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957701 | 182 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Around a week ago, I boarded a big plane headed east to Atlanta, en route to Asheville. After I sat down in my window seat, a young woman – 19 years old perhaps – sat down next to me. It didn’t take long to notice that she was crying. She was trying to be discreet, but obviously, she was terrified. She explained that she had a serious fear of flying. Her father was sitting in the row behind us, and the man next to him kindly suggested he switch seats. Almost all the people in the rows around this poor, sad, panicking girl were very empathic, as we all murmured words of comfort and offered support. It warmed my heart to see so many people figuratively wrap themselves around a stranger with a serious case of fear of flying.
Now, even people with severe fear of flying know that air travel is statistically safer than traveling by car – but fear of flying is an emotional, rather than intellectual, response. Knowing statistics won’t help. There are tips and suggestions, though, to help people stay calmer on an airplane when they fear flying. In fact, there are a lot of tips out there for dealing with anxiety regarding airplane travel, many of which are very good (some, not so much). I’ve researched them, and created The Vacation Gals’ top 5 tips for helping reduce anxiety related to fear of flying.
5 Tips for Dealing with Fear of Flying
- Before your trip, know what to expect and, if possible, choose an aisle seat. Seat Guru is a useful site for selecting airplane seats before your travel date. Other booking sites do so as well, including each airline’s website. The aisle seat will help if part of your flying fear is the feeling of being closed in physically.
- Think positive. It sounds corny, but it’s true; trying to focus on the great vacation activities, or reuniting with your family, will put you in a better place emotionally than obsessing about the flight. Visualizing your relaxing vacation is a great technique for easing the tension in your mind and body, as well.
- Leave plenty of time to get to the airport and past security. Sure, there’s a chance your flight will be delayed anyway – this is the airline industry we’re talking about – but the heart-pounding anxiety of rushing to the airport at the last minute will do you no favors. Once you have a lot of time to spare after getting to the airport, you can escape the maddening crowds by paying a little extra to hang out in your airline’s lounge, day passes are typically around $50. This is a hefty fee, yes, but may be worth it in term of the reduced stress level.
- Pack an MP3 player and a great book. The distraction of music and a novel that’s a real page-turner can do wonders. Of course, there’s always an in-flight movie on long flights, but there’s no guarantee you’ll like it. If you have one, consider packing your portable DVD player and a set of headphones.
- If your fear of flying is completely overwhelming, normal distraction and visualization techniques may not suffice. Consider talking to a professional, and/or getting a prescription for anti-anxiety medication.
I’m not sure what the frightened young lady did to cope with her fear of flying, outside of listening to her iPod for most of the trip. However, the man who switched and sat next to me was in for a treat: He got to watch my embarrassing attempts at making a video for Starbucks VIA. I figured that a good laugh at my expense was the least he deserved for his kind act. | <urn:uuid:07add4e3-ae0c-49de-a659-8ddcda2e9e46> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thevacationgals.com/fear-of-flying-tips-for-easier-air-travel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966273 | 778 | 1.523438 | 2 |
What is Wab.exe error?
What are the causes of Wab.exe Error?
How to fix Wab.exe Error?
Windows Address Book is a component of Windows OS which comes with all the windows operating system versions. Its executable file is Wab.exe which is found under the directory C:\windows\System32. As its name suggests, the Windows Address Book is used to store addresses, contact details and email addresses similar to those applications like Outlook or Thunderbird. For People who store addresses and contact details on their windows operating system, this application is very important as thousands of people want to store contact details not in the outlook because it will certainly increase the size of PST file and cause problems in Outlook if grows huge. The Wab.exe should be running safe and should not be removed without your permission or otherwise you will see several unknown or unexpected error messages like this: (more…) | <urn:uuid:76ad77d4-5188-4c48-a424-90f06dfa24c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcfixtool.org/2011/10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91861 | 186 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Jan 7, 2009 05:50 PM | 1
Earlier this week, we told you that the incoming Obama administration was reportedly mulling increased cooperation between NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD) to bolster the manned U.S. space program. The media noted the cooperation might include NASA's adopting and modifying military rockets to launch future crewed missions into space. (NASA is currently developing its own rockets to serve that purpose under the embattled Constellation program, which would provide a next-generation transport system following the space shuttle's retirement, presently scheduled for next year.)
But commenters on our site and elsewhere pointed out that the rockets in question, Atlas 5 and Delta 4, aren't truly military in nature, and so their use in future space missions wouldn't necessarily require more DoD collaboration.
What's the deal? We checked with United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin that handles the Delta and Atlas programs, to find out. ULA spokesman Mike Rein says that although the rockets were not designed exclusively for defense purposes, that is their primary function today—hence the common "military" tag. And, as commenters have noted, NASA already uses Atlas 5 and Delta 4 for unmanned missions, but Rein adds that even those launches currently require consultation with the military.
"The Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets were developed by Lockheed and Boeing as commercial rockets to be used both by the government and by commercial and civil industries," he says. But now, he says, 80 percent of ULA business comes from the military and the National Reconnaissance Office (the U.S. intelligence agency responsible for recon satellites), with 15 percent coming from NASA and a scant 5 percent from commercial enterprise.
Rein says that ULA supports the Constellation program and will not participate in the debate over subbing in ULA rockets for proprietary NASA rockets on manned missions. But he notes that the "unmanned side of the house for NASA definitely uses Atlas and Delta." Even then, however, the military plays a role.
"We launch on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Vandenberg Air Force Base, so just by the fact that we launch on those two installations," Rein says, "you have the military involved in every launch you do."
Photograph of Delta IV rocket prepared for launch courtesy of NASA/KSC
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Learn More >>X | <urn:uuid:e36cfd3d-9bf8-4f6f-b7af-381e9e21b31f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=splitting-rockets-what-would-a-mili-2009-01-07 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948783 | 566 | 2.09375 | 2 |
The Diabetes Care Center of Community Hospital Anderson provides educational programs and services to any person interested in learning more about diabetes self-care and management. Services are provided in group or individual settings, as well as consultation for inpatients. A physician's referral is necessary for all programs. Family members are encouraged to attend and participate.
The staff is a multi-disciplinary team specialized and certified in diabetes. The team of nurses, dietitians and pharmacists is able to address the many management issues experienced with diabetes. Dr. Afia Naqvi, a board certified internist specializing in diabetes, is also available for consultation.
The Diabetes Care Center's education and management program is nationally recognized by the American Diabetes Association. This recognition certifies that the program has met national standards for quality diabetes education. It is the only ADA recognized program in Madison County.
The Board of Health accepts items at Community Hospital Anderson the first Monday of every month from 5 to 6 p.m. in the 1601 Building, just inside the front doors. No parking is necessary; just pull around the circle. If the first Monday of the month is a holiday, the date is moved to the second Monday of the month. The disposal date coincides with our free monthly diabetes support group meeting from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
This is a group class offered afternoons and evenings at Community Anderson, and includes:
The nurse and dietitian provide instruction for the expectant mother in an individual session. A blood glucose meter is provided if needed.
Individual instruction from a certified diabetes educator and registered dietitian accommodates specific learning needs. Individual instruction includes, but isn't limited to: insulin initiation and adjustment, glucose meter instruction, meal planning and nutritional counseling, and insulin pump therapy.
Many insurance plans will cover diabetes education. Medicare will reimburse for diabetes education and blood glucose testing supplies. The Diabetes Care Center staff encourages all patients to discuss coverage benefits with their insurance provider prior to attending class.
The Diabetes Care Center is located in the lower level of the 1601 Building on Community Anderson's campus. For more information, contact the Diabetes Care Center at 765-298-5365 | <urn:uuid:0a4785e2-ad5b-41aa-90d0-d4cea71c59d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.communityanderson.com/diabetes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92768 | 444 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The official New York state foliage report says trees around Lake Placid are changing colors quickly. They're expected to be a peak by the weekend, with near complete color change, and a mix of golds, yellows, reds, mixed in with the evergreens. Old Forge, and the Mount Arab/ Tupper Lake area are all expecting 95-percent color change this week and a mix of red, russet, orange and gold leaves.
Nina Bussuk is a professor in the Cornell Horticulture Department. While we all learn in school about chlorophyll making leaves green. She says that pigment breaks down in the fall. And if we're lucky a red pigment takes its place.
Law enforcement agencies from across the North Country took part in...
The Department of Corrections will close two more prisons this year, bringing to a total of nine the number...
Bussuk says some species don’t have the ability to turn red. But sugar maples, red maples, red and white oaks, can all turn red. White ash can turn purple.
But she says if there are overcast, cloudy, and rainy days, even those trees can go straight to yellow.
"The yellow is always there. It’s underneath the green, if you like. But to get those reds and oranges you need to have brilliant sunshine to get the process that occurs. So we really hope for those bright sunny days and cool nights and as much leaf retention as possible to allow those colors to form."
Bussuk says the Northeast U.S. and Northeast China are the only places in the world that have the variety of trees that can offer such a brilliant display in the fall. | <urn:uuid:dc4a1bd9-1aba-415c-9959-f2d310483372> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/18522/20111004/fall-leaves-reaching-their-peak-this-week-in-the-adirondacks | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946111 | 354 | 2.25 | 2 |
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Dave Olson is the public information officer for the Boise National Forest. He has been with the Forest Service since 1972 and with the Boise National Forest since 2001. This interview was conducted in the summer of 2011 by Bruce Reichert.
What changes have you seen in the Forest Service?
What's really nice about having a relatively new forest plan is that it really has some new thinking; the Boise National Forest plan really has a strong focus on restorative or restoration activities.
It really set the stage for kind of how we were going to manage the forest for the next 10 to 15, if not 20 years, and the focus really is on restoration. So, for example, we have a very strong aquatic conservation program that we're going to do to restore fisheries, habitat that is more accessible for bull trout and other aquatic organisms.
"The value of public lands was demonstrated to me when I moved from Idaho to Virginia for a period of time in my career, and what I found when I moved to Virginia was the immediate sense of loss of access to public lands."
We also have what is known as a wildlife conservation strategy, which is really looking not only at just wildlife, but also how vegetation should be managed, that would more mimic natural processes and sort of the natural eco-system that was here, particularly back in the 1800's or prior to white people coming into this area. That really has set the stage for focuses on such things as how we're going to manage vegetation through a timber sale program or some kind of restorative activity. If we have a new fire started by lightening in certain areas of the national forest, we're going to look at how that might best meet this fire adaptive eco-system that we are in.
And it gave us some incentive to really start looking at travel management, with the increase in motorized vehicles, and how that would be managed into the future.
What forces got you to where you are now on the Boise?
I think the ability to work together is key for public land management. Public land management is oftentimes very value-driven. I had a forest supervisor one time who said, I feel like I'm the trustee with about a hundred heirs to that trust, and I'm trying to manage all their interests and all their values and what they want to have come out of this family trust.
And I thought, that really defined what public land management oftentimes is about. You have so many people with different views about what should happen in public land management. It is always a challenging task and a balancing act in many ways to meet those values, meet the laws and regulations and really look at the long-term effects of what is going on in the national forests.
So I think what has kind of evolved over the past couple of decades, with all the different parties, is that they realize that many times they have the same interests. They really love the land, they appreciate the land. They may have different ideas about what should happen on the particular piece of ground or the forest as a whole, but I think that ability to kind of understand each other, to talk through various issues, to try to work for common ground is an evolution that we're seeing today.
Some have argued that maybe the Forest Service today has lost its mission.
With the forest plan developments and moving into the 2000 era, I think we've actually focused more on where we are and what we are trying to do with public land management or national forest management. And clearly the aspects of recreation, the aspects of restoration, the aspects of understanding what fire's role is on the environment, where public interests are as far as motorized recreation, and just getting out into the out of doors — we're trying to adapt to that and to meet some of those interests that are out there.
What is the effect on aquatics? We've always done that, but there is definitely an emphasis on that. What is the effect of vegetation management on wildlife? What has historically been happening on these public lands for centuries. Those are very key aspects that we're looking at now, realizing that there are social and economic values that also come into play. So you really have always that mix of social, economic and natural systems or eco-systems that have to be balanced in a way that is palatable.
I imagine there are some issues — like motorized vs non-motorized use — that can be incredibly difficult to resolve.
Just in the past five years most national forests now have a travel management plan in place. They have worked with the motorized users and the non-motorized users to create designated trails for motorized use, so both the motorized person and the non-motorized person can say, %"I know where to go if I want something or I don't want something." So that's very helpful in establishing this balance that you are always trying to seek in national forest management.
Consequently, I think there are always going to be issues surrounding motorized use and the access for motorized users, but I think it is getting more balanced these days, and I think there's a sense of an understanding that a compromise has been reached.
This whole idea of public lands, has it been a success or a failure as a national policy?
"That's the beauty of public lands, really. It allows everyone in the nation to have a bit of that national forest. Each person in essence could have their own little acre."
And I had come from working in the McCall area, which has vast tracks almost outside your back door. And what made a striking impression upon me is the importance of public lands, and the value of having those for folks who are seeking some opportunities to get out of the cities, to have some mountain recreation experiences, to go rafting, fishing, whatever it might be, that they enjoy doing and also to those who are trying to make a living off the national forests. You really need that balance of private and public lands, and to have public lands accessible is extremely important for our nation, and I think the founding fathers that put together the public lands as a whole are to be greatly applauded with a standing ovation.
But more than 60%, can that be good for a state?
But that's the beauty of public lands, really. It allows everyone in the nation to have a bit of that national forest. Each person in essence could have their own little acre and it really gives that opportunity for everyone to have a little bit of something instead of maybe one or two having virtually all of whatever it is that is available to them. So it's a nice balance.
I think what's good about what we have in Idaho is we do have a lot of public land, but we also have the intermix of private land. So, for example, if you focus just on timber, in the '80's there was certainly a lot of private timberland with Boise Cascade and some of the larger corporations. There is also then that intermix of Idaho Department of Lands and their objectives of what they're trying to do with the land. And then you have the national forests and the other public lands that are here. So it provides that kind of blend between all three of those entities in that particular example.
To me the simple worst case scenario would be the loss or disappearance of public lands because that would actually take away a resource that this nation has that anybody can enjoy if they so choose. | <urn:uuid:b89eb802-d01f-479f-81c0-5e20eed1ecd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/thepeoplesland/davidOlson.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982355 | 1,533 | 1.53125 | 2 |