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Electric vehicles are going mainstream, but one area that lags behind is the legality of driving a slow EV, or neighborhood EV, on public roads. Nebraska is taking steps to become the 36th state to allow NEVs on public roads, by moving forward with new legislation to make it legal for NEVs to travel on roads with posted speed limits of 35 and under. An initial vote passed 35-0 in the Nebraska legislature last week.
Senator Heath Mello proposed the measure to accommodate the booming low-cost NEV segment, saying, “As fuel prices continue to rise and Nebraska families and businesses look to save money, [NEVs] represent an alternative mode of transportation that has many potential uses.” The Nebraska law applies to NEVs with four wheels that weigh less than 3000 pounds, and drivers would be required to hold a valid driver’s license and maintain liability insurance. The vehicles covered under this proposed legislation would also need to be registered with the state and be capable of 20-25-mph travel.
Via AutoBlog Green | <urn:uuid:a48e43df-93ce-4c24-9a5e-66929b28be00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inhabitat.com/nebraska-prepares-nev-bill-to-allow-slow-evs-on-state-roads/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958812 | 213 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Time Limitations on Degree Completion
The integrity, coherence, and quality of advanced degrees are determined in part by currency of content. Rapid advancements in knowledge, in professional practice, in analytical structures, and in technological applications to scholarship and professional practice require continuous adaptation and change in undergraduate programs. University undergraduate programs accord emphasis to preparing skilled, systematic, and informed practitioners equipped both to employ contemporary methods, techniques, and technologies and to systematically assess emerging methods, techniques, and technologies.
Consequently, admitted undergraduate students are expected to complete their degree programs within five years of the onset of study. Students continuing beyond five years may be required to repeat previously completed course work or to complete course work not required at the time of their initial admission. Students are cautioned that, ordinarily, the applicability of undergraduate course work to graduate degrees awarded by the University expires five years after completion.
Waivers of the Five-Year Rule may be made by the Dean of the Graduate College upon the recommendation of the appropriate undergraduate program director should special circumstances be established to exist. These special circumstances relate only to the currency and applicability of work completed. | <urn:uuid:bce823de-9b3c-4e41-8e28-e34ecff9cd48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://williamwoods.edu/catalogs/online_2012/ugpoldetail.asp?ugpolID=41 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936009 | 227 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Audie Murphy was a star in more ways than one. He was the most decorated hero of World War II, after being rejected for service because of his youth and size. He returned from war hailed as a hero, only to see hard times once again as he tried to find civilian employment. But that was just the beginning of his story, as he became a movie star, songwriter, veteran's advocate, and a role model. His was a truly amazing life.
Audie Leon Murphy was born in Hunt County, Texas on June 20th, 1926.... READ ON | <urn:uuid:24f42a5f-1bab-4eda-a6ff-12292d9ad524> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mentalfloss.com/section/history/page/70/0 | 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 | 0.995086 | 116 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Why People Are Likely To Believe Falsehoods And Misinformation
Do you wonder why misinformation and outright lies about known facts often take root in people’s minds? What may come to mind immediately are recent examples: the claim that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., and that climate change is a hoax. Some recent research sheds light on what happens cognitively, that may underlie believing falsehoods.
Researchers led by Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia, reported in the journal Psychological Science, found that “Weighing the plausibility and the source of a message is cognitively more difficult than simply accepting that the message is true — it requires additional motivational and cognitive resources,” according to a summary of the research reported in Science Today. Moreover, If the topic isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, misinformation is more likely to take hold.
For the research findings, as summarized in Science,
The main reason that misinformation is sticky, according to the researchers, is that rejecting information actually requires cognitive effort. Weighing the plausibility and the source of a message is cognitively more difficult than simply accepting that the message is true — it requires additional motivational and cognitive resources. If the topic isn’t very important to you or you have other things on your mind, misinformation is more likely to take hold.
And when we do take the time to thoughtfully evaluate incoming information, there are only a few features that we are likely to pay attention to: Does the information fit with other things I believe in? Does it make a coherent story with what I already know? Does it come from a credible source? Do others believe it?
Misinformation is especially sticky when it conforms to our preexisting political, religious, or social point of view. Because of this, ideology and personal worldviews can be especially difficult obstacles to overcome.
Even worse, efforts to retract misinformation often backfire, paradoxically amplifying the effect of the erroneous belief. ”This persistence of misinformation has fairly alarming implications in a democracy because people may base decisions on information that, at some level, they know to be false,” says Lewandowsky. ”At an individual level, misinformation about health issues — for example, unwarranted fears regarding vaccinations or unwarranted trust in alternative medicine — can do a lot of damage. At a societal level, persistent misinformation about political issues (e.g., Obama’s health care reform) can create considerable harm. On a global scale, misinformation about climate change is currently delaying mitigative action.”
Though misinformation may be difficult to correct, all is not lost. According to Lewandowsky, “psychological science has the potential to counteract all those harms by educating people and communicators about the power of misinformation and how to meet it.”
In their report, Lewandowsky and colleagues offer some strategies for setting the record straight.
- Provide people with a narrative that replaces the gap left by false information
- Focus on the facts you want to highlight, rather than the myths
- Make sure that the information you want people to take away is simple and brief
- Consider your audience and the beliefs they are likely to hold
- Strengthen your message through repetition | <urn:uuid:4a8ab083-917d-4098-8d1a-f5e5748bac05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.progressiveimpact.org/why-people-are-likely-to-believe-falsehoods-and-misinformation/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928852 | 679 | 2.828125 | 3 |
It started as a whim, but snowballed into a life-long passion.
Estonian Tonu Tamm has dedicated the past two decades of his life to his obsession of creating artificial lakes.
Surrounded by water in the south of the small Baltic republic, his enthusiasm is infectious as he insists everyone should do their bit for the environment and take tiny steps that help bring calm to a troubled world.
"People might think it's very hard to make a lake, but you just need a suitable landscape and some knowledge, including about dams," the 71-year-old told AFP.
"It all started in the spring of 1981. After spending all our summers from 1966 to 1980 on wild nature trips to Siberia, where I made several TV documentaries, I decided with my wife Tiiu-Mall to buy a summer cottage in Estonia," he explained.
At the time, Estonia was under Soviet rule. As in other communist-bloc states, escape to the countryside was one way for urban dwellers to forget the political sloganeering of daily life.
Despite the Soviet command economy, it was still possible to buy a cottage or exchange a city apartment for one.
"The plan was just to have a cottage to relax at weekends and retire when we got old. But when we arrived here, for one day only, the beauty of nature stunned us so much that we decided to stay forever," Tamm said.
Having loved the lakes he saw on his travels, he dreamed of having one near his new home.
"So I decided to make a lake myself. And suddenly making lakes just became part of my life," he explained.
After the nation of 1.3 million regained its independence peacefully in 1991, it became possible to buy privatised land and homes in exchange for coupons issued for the number of Soviet-era working years in a family.
Tamm gradually expanded his holding to 250 hectares (618 acres), turning fields into 14 lakes which cover 39 hectares in total.
The biggest lake covers 10 hectares and is 400 metres (1,300 feet) long, and has gradually filled with fish.
"People like how Tonu Tamm and his family have put nature at work in Leigo," Sirje Laansoo, a 50-year-old cosmetologist from the capital Tallinn, told AFP.
"Whenever we go there with family, they have a magic feeling, and that's what attracts people to return," she said.
The biggest lake is where he indulges his other passion: classical music.
Tamm built two concert stages and now draws thousands of music lovers to an annual festival which he launched in 1998 -- as well as the likes of star conductors Neeme and Paavo Jarvi, who hail from Estonia and perform for free.
"We make a decent income from farm tourism because people like to have various celebrations or just a quiet vacation here. But the festival, which takes a huge amount of work to organise, generally brings in less money than we invest," Tiiu-Mall Tamm told AFP.
"But we keep on, because the music festival and gratitude of people attending and performing has brought so much meaning to our lives," she added.
Her husband already has his sights on something new.
"I dream of a day when Swan Lake will be danced on the lake, with a stage slightly below water level," he said.
"The key to happiness is creativity," he added. | <urn:uuid:2aec9360-3c6e-48dc-bf01-07e4c65f3bbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ph.news.yahoo.com/estonias-lake-maker-lives-dream-162406417.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984732 | 713 | 2 | 2 |
Author(s): Andrei S. Markovits, Emily Albertson
The typical female sports fan remains very different from her male counterparts. In their insightful and engaging book, Sportista, Andrei S. Markovits and Emily Albertson examine the significant ways many women have become fully conversant with sports—acquiring a knowledge of and passion for them as a way of forging identities that until recently were quite alien to women. Sportista chronicles the relationship that women have developed with sports in the wake of the second wave of feminism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The changes women athletes have achieved have been nothing short of revolutionary. But, as Markovits and Albertson argue, women's identity as sports fans, though also changed in recent decades, remains notably different from that of men. Sportista highlights the impediments to these changes that women have faced and the reality that, even as bona fide fans, they "speak" sports differently from and remain largely unaccepted by men (Temple University Press).
Publisher: Temple University Press
Year of Publication: 2012 | <urn:uuid:3a575a7a-54cc-47a2-97d5-da8dcf17901f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lsa.umich.edu/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=1574c992ec72a310VgnVCM100000c2b1d38dRCRD&vgnextchannel=7e2f40e163ba5310VgnVCM100000c2b1d38dRCRD&vgnextfmt=detail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966732 | 228 | 1.726563 | 2 |
April DeBoer, Jayne Rowse Challenge Michigan Same-Sex Partner Adoption Ban
Two mothers filed a civil rights lawsuit Monday morning designed to protect their three children and many others in Michigan.
Detroit-area lesbian couple April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse have adopted two boys and one girl over the past two years. The three children, who have been raised since just after birth by DeBower and Rowse, would otherwise be in Michigan's foster care system, according to WXYZ.
In his recent State of the State address, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder praised parents who chose to adopt in Michigan, bringing special attention to Lamar and Holly Moreland, heterosexual parents in Canton, Mich., for adopting two of their three children. But because Michigan's Adoption Code prohibits joint adoption by unmarried or same-sex couples, each of DeBower and Rowse's children has only been adopted by one of the two parents.
"Jayne and I love our children as deeply as any other parent loves their kids," Rowse said in a statement. "We just want our children to have the same protections all other children have, so that our kids know they can never be taken from either of us."
Rowse and DeBoer's lawsuit claims that Michigan's Adoption Code violates the right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. According to the Detroit Free Press, the suit says children who have unmarried second parents are denied a wide range of benefits available to children of married couples. Since Rowse and DeBoer are not both legal parents to all of their children, only one of them can make legal and medical decisions for each child. If one partner dies, the other has no legal claim to the children she did not legally adopt.
Michigan is one of five states that bans joint adoption by unmarried parents. In the past seven years, several proposals have been introduced to allow second-parent adoption, but none have been passed. In 2011, two new state proposals, House Bill 4249 and Senate Bill 169, were introduced and are currently sitting in committee.
A spokeswoman for the governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On the federal level, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act -- legislation introduced in the House and Senate last year -- would make it illegal to discriminate in adoption and foster care placement based on the marital status and sexual orientation of parents.
"With this bill they are looking past partisan politics," said Emily Dievendorf, director of policy for Equality Michigan. "It's a really great example to set for the states: 'We can't wait for you to make progress before we take care of our kids.'"
Michigan has had a steady increase of households run by same-sex couples, jumping 41 percent from 2000 to 2010 for a total of 21,782, according to the 2010 census. At the same time, same-sex couple adoption has risen nationally, despite barriers to adoption and rights for children.
Deivendorf said that while similar legislation and lawsuits have not led to change in the past, she is hopeful that research about the positive effects of two-parent families will trigger change.
"We've gone through nearly a decade of fighting to get what all psychologists and social workers and scientists say is the best way to meet children's needs," she said. "This is an opportunity for the state government to wake up and do something about it before it becomes an embarrassment."
Related on HuffPost: | <urn:uuid:76bb9f14-14db-40a9-9e15-edfc878ffdf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/april-deboer-jayne-rowse-same-sex-adoption-ban_n_1223917.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968 | 712 | 1.945313 | 2 |
“Man-Made Global Warming” Smashed in 3 minutes (video) *
Are governments using Global Warming for Global Taxes? They can’t tax the sun but they can tax people who exhale and produce a natural gas, a life giving gas to plants - CO2. How is this gas and NOT the sun heating the ice caps on Mars and the moons of Jupiter? Could governments be hoping their populations will focus on a false CO2 fear (while paying for it) and neglect real environmental issues such as the toxicification of our seas, and natural water supplies? | <urn:uuid:b9bc48cb-392a-4ea8-942a-eb0a801ad911> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiseupjournal.com/?p=45 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909438 | 121 | 1.625 | 2 |
Written by the U.S. Army’s Chief Historian, Dr. Richard Stewart, it appeared in the regular feature “The Chief Historian’s Footnote,” of ARMY HISTORY, the professional quarterly journal of the U.S. Army Historical Program, published by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, in the Fall 2010 issue.
A Historian’s Code (1)
1. I will footnote (or endnote) all my sources (none of this MLA or social science parenthetical business).
2. If I do not reference my sources accurately, I will surely perish in the fires of various real or metaphorical infernal regions and I will completely deserve it. I have been warned.
3. I will respect the hard-won historical gains of those historians in whose steps I walk and will share such knowledge as is mine with all other historians (as they doubtless will cheerfully share it with me).
4. I will not be ashamed to say “I do not know” or to change my narrative of historical events when new sources point to my errors.
5. I will never leave a fallen book behind.
6. I will acknowledge that history is created by people and not by impersonal cosmic forces or “isms.” An “ism” by itself never harmed or helped anyone without human agency.
7. I am not a sociologist, political scientist, international relations-ist, or any other such “ist.” I am a historian and deal in facts, not models.
8. I know I have a special responsibility to the truth and will seek, as fully as I can, to be thorough, objective, careful, and balanced in my judgments, relying on primary source documents whenever possible.
9. Life may be short, but history is forever. I am a servant of forever.
(1) Stewart, Richard, Ph.D., “Historians and a Historian’s Code,” ARMY HISTORY, No. 77 (Fall 2010), p. 46.
45 minutes ago | <urn:uuid:cda1a583-3cf9-465c-ad49-0d278d20dff0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://excelsatnothing.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-just-for-historians.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936022 | 441 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Moments ago, in a press conference announcing the results of the Pentagon’s 10-month review of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, Working Group co-chairs Defense Department General Counsel Jeh C. Johnson and Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, concluded that the risk of repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to overall military effectiveness is low and Gates even urged Congress to act on repeal before the Courts overturn the policy. “Now that we have completed this review, I strongly urge the Senate to pass this legislation and send it to the president for signature before the end of this year,” he said. “It is only a matter of time before the federal courts are drawn once more into the fray, with the very real possibility that this change would be imposed immediately by judicial fiat – by far the most disruptive and damaging scenario I can imagine, and the one most hazardous to military morale, readiness and battlefield performance.”
Johnson added that this resistance to repeal “is driven by misperceptions and stereotypes” and predicted that lifting the ban would not result in a mass coming out of gay troops. “We believe that most would continue to be private and discreet about their personal lives,” he said.
A summary of the results of the survey sent to 400,000 service members as outlined by the two chairmen:
- 70% of Service members said they would be able to “work together to get the job done” with a gay servicemember in their immediate units.
- 69% said they worked in a unit with a co-worker that they believed to be homosexual.
- 92% stated that their unit’s “ability to work together,” with a gay person was “very good, “good” or “neither good nor poor.” (89% for those in Army combat arms units, 84% for those in Marine combat arms units.)
- 74% of spouses of military service-members say repeal of DADT would have no impact on their view of whether their husbands or wives should continue to serve.
- 30% overall (and 40–60% in the Marine Corps and in various combat arms specialties) expressed negative views or concerns about the impact of a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Graph from the report (via JoeMyGod):
Their recommendations for implementation:
- LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION: Implementation of repeal will depend upon strong leadership, a clear message, and proactive education. The report recommends equipping commanders in the field with the education and training tools to educate the force on what is expected of them in a post repeal environment.
- CODE OF CONDUCT: Not necessary to establish an extensive set of new or revised standards of conduct in the event of repeal. The Department of Defense should issue guidance that all standards of conduct apply uniformly, without regard to sexual orientation.
- RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS: An important part of the message associated with any repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be that Service members will not be required to change their personal views and religious beliefs; they must, however, continue to respect and serve with others who hold different views and beliefs.
- BENEFITS TO SAME-SEX PARTNERS: While DOMA prevents same-sex partners form accessing many benefits, there are some benefits that are available to anyone of a Service member’s choosing. Department of Defense and the Services should inform Service members about these types of benefits, if the policy is repealed. Another set of benefits, which are not statutorily prohibited, but do not extend to same-sex partners under current regulation, should be revised and redefined to include same-sex partners. The Working Group does not, however, recommend that the DoD revise their regulations to specifically add same-sex committed relationships to the definition of “dependent,” “family members,” or other similar terms in those regulations, for purposes of extending benefits eligibility.
- REENLISTMENT: Service members who have been previously separated under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell be permitted to apply for reentry into the military.
Significantly, Johnson also argued that historically, surveys about personnel changes “tend to overestimate negative consequences, and underestimate the U.S. military’s ability to adapt and incorporate within its ranks the diversity that is reflective of American society at large.”
Indeed, as I reported back in July, surveys the military conducted about the troops’ attitudes towards black people between 1942 and 1946 showed that an overwhelming majority opposed integrating black servicemembers into the forces and preferred a “separate but equal” approach that would have required the military to construct separate recreation spaces and facilities. One month before Truman’s executive order, a Gallup poll showed that 63% of American adults endorsed the separation of Blacks and Whites in the military; only 26% supported integration. But in 1948, Truman integrated the forces despite these concerns. Here’s to hoping Congress can do the same, this time, with overwhelming support from military leadership and the men and women on the ground.
Read the full report HERE.
,SLDN: “This exhaustive report is overwhelmingly positive and constructive. The Pentagon validated what repeal advocates and social scientists have been saying about open service for over a decade. Still, some initial resistance may come from one or more of the service chiefs – the very leaders who will be charged with implementing this change. Those chiefs will need to salute and lead in bringing about this needed change. Fortunately, the chiefs have already made it clear they will do precisely that if Congress acts. Now, it’s up to the Senate to make repeal happen this year,” said Aubrey Sarvis, Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
,White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the repeal of DADT “was discussed during Obama’s meeting with bipartisan lawmakers Tuesday. Gibbs says Obama believes the ban on gays in the military can be repealed in the lame-duck session of Congress.”
,Sens. Udall (CO), Lieberman, Gillibrand respond: “The Pentagon report makes it unambiguously clear that the risk of repeal on military effectiveness is minimal, that any risks can be addressed by implementing the report’s recommendations, and that a clear majority of active duty servicemen and women have no problem with repeal. The military has spoken and now is the time to repeal this policy that is damaging to our national security. The report is the product of one of the most, if not the most, extensive studies on a military personnel issue that has ever been conducted and its findings demonstrate that we can proceed with repeal of this discriminatory policy in a way that ensures that the U.S. military continues to be the best fighting force in the world. Men and women, regardless of their race, religion, or sexual orientation, who are willing to fight and defend our country should be allowed to do so without fear of discrimination.” | <urn:uuid:69381950-bca3-4808-8a17-542d668265b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/issue/?m=201011&mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951306 | 1,503 | 1.726563 | 2 |
February 05, 2013, 5:23 PM — Much as I think of myself as an honorable person, I admit that I occasionally break the rules when I believe that doing so harms no one and enhances my life. Take jailbreaking--the process of getting complete access to an intentionally hampered device--for example.
Earlier this week, evasi0n, an untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 and 6.1, was released. (This is the first iOS 6 jailbreak that "sticks" after you restart your device. Previous jailbreaks required that you cable your device to your computer to rebreak it each time you restarted the device--thus the "tethered" versus "untethered" designation.) And, once again, I weighed the benefits and risks of jailbreaking my current devices.
A necessary evil
I'm a veteran jailbreaker--stretching back to the days when the term had yet to be coined and you hacked into the original iPhone via the Mac's Terminal application. My friend Ben Long and I broke into the phone for one simple reason: to capture screenshots of the iPhone's interface for a book I was writing. Years later, Ben and I used available tools to jailbreak an iPad so that we could project its entire interface for a Macworld Expo session we were conducting. In each case, a jailbreak was necessary because Apple didn't provide the features required to accomplish these perfectly reasonable tasks."
That said, it would be inaccurate to claim that I stopped at these purely necessary uses. In those earlier days, people developing apps for jailbroken iOS devices had some terrific ideas--enabling you to do things such as tether other devices to the phone for free, block unwanted SMS messages, remotely browse the contents of your device, and perform tasks over a 3G network that were normally restricted to Wi-Fi. Jailbreak apps also provided features such as an endless supply of themes, a single drop-down menu for configuring common settings, and notifications. And although jailbreaking is not the same thing as unlocking, a jailbreak was necessary if you wished to unlock your iPhone (a process that the Librarian of Congress recently determined to be illegal). When I found a feature helpful, I adopted it. | <urn:uuid:ddb21c8d-4baf-4e4a-8376-27e1ffb22d76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/340465/why-i-continue-jailbreak | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959727 | 456 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The website will be pure XSLT, that transforms the server's XML-Answers to HTML.
The server will also provide special xsltpassthrough parameters, making it easyer for the xslt to maintain it's current state.
suggestion by Jan
To find some special timestamp for verification, there are several methods to do so:
After clicking search, you'll get as answer the search result
The search results are all displayed including a link to the timestamp details
The detailed view of a timestamp has a link to the accoring PTB.
Of course the timestamp-details also display the meta-information of the timestamped file again. This looks the same as I already showed in the search result
PTB - Public Timestamp Block
The PTB (Public Timestamp Block) details page contains all information neccessary to verify the Timestamps yourself.
- A link to the hash-values of this block (looks like this)
- A link to all the 'timestamp details pages' of files that were timestamped within this block (looks like this)
- A list of all known publications of the hash values of this specific PTB
- Follow-up blocks, which contain (as described by Endless logfile) the Hash of this PTB as a whole.
- photos is just an idea we can discuss, but for explanation it could be helpful if we provide photos of the magazine's page that containes the hash-values (if they send us one of course only).
- A download link to download this block to self-verify it
How are these blocks connected? Read Timestamping_Introduction#Endless_Logfile .
This here shows what everybody would need to publish. (Of course not exactly this, but always the latest version :)
Of course we could make this a little smaller, and maybe provide different versions. For example we could skip the non-cryptographic hash-values (as all the smaller checksums) for magazines. Those are mostly here for easyer searching and verification. The evidence comes from the big ones :)
PTBs must all be public available for download!
- Its very important that this data won't get lost or corrupted
- For more security everybody should be able to mirror these files, and we should even encourage others to do so
- For verification of timestamps everybody must be able to download these files (of course only single ones, to find the right one above search mechanism gets implemented) | <urn:uuid:0f3b72a0-24ed-4e67-be37-3f15edfbe9a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/osapa-working-group/ptweb-site | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916603 | 521 | 1.648438 | 2 |
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The Nuts and Bolts of Bluetooth Technology
Bluetooth technology is being hailed as the wireless wonder as it effectively facilitates connections and communication between wireless devices such as mobile phones, PDA's (personal digital assistants), handheld computers, as well as wireless enabled laptops or desktop computers. A Bluetooth-enabled wireless device is ideal for short-range wireless communication, being capable of making phone calls, synchronizing data with desktop computers, sending and receiving faxes and even printing documents. But the core use of Bluetooth technology in today's market is focused on cell phones primarily because Bluetooth allows for communication with a hands-free headset, minus any wires that would get in the way.
What Exactly is Bluetooth?In early 1998, a group of computer and telecommunications industry leaders, including Ericsson, Intel, IBM, Nokia and Toshiba began developing a means for connecting a wide range of mobile devices quickly and easily, without cables. Forming a special interest group they announced that they would design a royalty-free, open specification technology, which they called "Bluetooth." Quickly joined by other leaders such as 3COM/Palm, Axis Communication, Compaq, Dell, Lucent, Motorola, Qualcomm and Xirco, the companies began offering products that would take advantage of the standardized wireless means of connection.
Up to Eight Hours of Talk Time Without Recharging!Today, more than 1300 manufacturers from various businesses all over the world have joined the Bluetooth family. The reason? Bluetooth has proven to effectively send data via a secure, low-cost, short-range radio frequency. What's more, by simply using a cordless headset, Bluetooth is fast becoming one of the more popular applications for cellular phones, allowing users to leave a phone in their pockets or handbag while still being able to make and receive calls. Different headsets are compatible with varied Bluetooth enabled phones and users can expect up to eight hours of talk time without a recharge.
Bluetooth and the Automotive Industry!One of the most favorable uses of Bluetooth technology is its introduction in the automotive industry, as it offers a safer way to communicate on the phone without needing the use of hands. In fact, many of the newer cars already offer Bluetooth technology as a factory installed feature, making it possible to utilize a personal cell phone through an in-car system. Automakers offering Bluetooth capabilities include Acura, Audi, BMW, Chrysler 300C, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Saab 9-3, Toyota Prius, Bentley, Cadillac, Dodge, Ferrari, Infiniti, Jaguar Land Rover, Lexus Maybach, Mitsubishi and Nissan.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Bluetooth!Bluetooth's appeal stems from its relatively low price, along with its ease of use. The only additional charge is for a slightly more expensive headset, which ranges in price from about $40.00 to $120.00, depending upon the features included. But the most important advantage of Bluetooth technology is the fact that it rids electronic devices of cables and the inconvenience usually associated with cables. With nothing to learn, no buttons to push along with its high level of compatibility with other devices, Bluetooth will in all likelihood continue to grow in popularity. The only downside to Bluetooth is the data rate and security. Infrared can have data rates up to 4MBps while Bluetooth only offers 1 MBps. And the greater range and radio frequency of Bluetooth make it more open to interception and attack.
Some things to consider when shopping for a new cell phone is that the Bluetooth technology is already built into the price for most devices and the majority of new cell phones are Bluetooth enabled. Although the headset must be paired with the phone prior to its first use, the process is simple and takes less than a minute to activate.
One thing is a certainty. Bluetooth is definitely becoming the wave of the future. | <urn:uuid:82f584f5-db4a-4d3e-aac3-35e64dc539cf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yourwirelesssource.com/shop/resources/bluetooth-technology.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94302 | 783 | 2.765625 | 3 |
|Summary Of Activity in Italy
Uc de Saint Circ (c. 1217 - c. 1253) was born into the lower nobility of Thégra and received a clerical education in Montpellier. Many of his works reflect this education, as he composed both prose vidas and razos and pedantic poetry, cansos, sirventes, and tensos all characterized by scholastic invective. Uc travelled widely among the courts of southern France, Iberia, and Italy, and for a time joined the entourage of the knight Savari de Mauléon in Poitou. While journeying in Lombardy and the March of Treviso, Uc became involved with the da Romano and Malaspina families, as indicated in several of his poems. Around forty-four poems and three associated melodies survive.
Alfred Jeanroy and J.J. Salverda de Grave, Poésies de Uc de Saint-Circ (Toulouse, 1913).
William Burgwinkle. "For love or money: Uc de Saint Circ and the rhetoric of exchange." Romanic Review 84, no. 4 (1993): 347-376.
Miriam Cabré, "Italian and Catalan troubadours," in The Troubadours: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP, 1999,
Elizabeth Wilson Poe. "A Dispassionate Look at the Trobairitz." Tenso 7, no. 2 (1992): 142-164. | <urn:uuid:8ba29d1f-ec50-4d19-9f94-96e4e7771bdb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/medieval_studies/french_of_italy/occitan_lyric_in_ita/uc_de_saint_circ_81715.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9091 | 312 | 2.171875 | 2 |
A movie made from thousands of short videos shot by volunteers on a single day proves that crowd-sourcing isn't all that.
Wow, is Earth a hectic planet or what? The user-generated documentary "Life in a Day" is a trove of YouTube footage shot by volunteers around the globe on July 24, 2010, and sifted into some semblance of shape by veteran director Kevin Macdonald. Macdonald is a formidable moviemaker. His account of a two-man mountain-climbing disaster, "Touching the Void," is genuinely unforgettable. But making sense of a mass of 4,500 hours of crowd-sourced home movies is a job for a magician. Almost inevitably, a film made from these snippets is less than the sum of its parts.
We see tranquil elephants swimming by moonlight, deadly human stampedes, the aurora borealis, a man brushing his hair, major cities bustling, straight-to-the-camera confessions, even a tracking shot of a woman skydiver. And needless to say, house cats.
Macdonald's efforts to forge these mundane and magnificent images into a chain of life produces lots of jangling but little cohesion. One Manhattanite gets his coffee from a street-corner barista; another brews his on a campfire on the snow-capped mountains of Nepal. Duuuude.
"Life in a Day" feels like a 95-minute Flickr photo stream. Pretty pictures, scant continuity, none too edifying.
The film presents itself as a human tapestry of rich and royal hue, but it's a monument to voyeurism and exhibitionism in the Internet age. In the final straight-to-camera segment, a young woman tearfully laments that nothing worth recording happened in her day. If this project hadn't dangled 15 seconds of fame before her, would the need for "something" to happen be so painful? | <urn:uuid:0a8d1fa0-65fa-4f76-b8e3-47a08ab76839> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/movies/128893613.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922885 | 395 | 1.625 | 2 |
Science in Christian Perspective
Letter to the Editor
Response to David Wilcox
Glenn Morton, ASA Member
16075 Longvista Dr.
Dallas, TX 75248
From: PSCF 48 (September 1996): 212.
In regard to David Wilcox's "Adam Where Are You? Changing Paradigms in Paleoanthropology" (PSCF 48:2, June 1996, 88-96), I would like to suggest that more recent data has changed many of the factual statements made in the article.
The article begins with the statement that paleoanthropology is in a state of crisis. The reference supporting this statement discusses the Out-of-Africa view vs. the Multiregional Model of human origins.1 I was unable to find the word "crisis" or a synonym anywhere in the article. The authors certainly do not give any indications that paleoanthropology is in trouble. They simply attack the Multiregional Model.
Wilcox (p. 89) states that Neanderthal had "questionable phonetic ability". This was based on the work of Phillip Lieberman.2 Lieberman claimed that the Neanderthal vocal tract was different from modern human vocal tracts preventing the formation of vowels. Lieberman's work predicted that the Neanderthal hyoid bone when eventually found would be radically different. This was disproved by the 1990 discovery of a complete Neanderthal hyoid bone, the first hominid hyoid (Adam's apple) ever found, which is identical to those in modern humans.3
Wilcox (p. 90) claims that Neanderthal is the ancestor of modern humans and claims that modern humans appeared first. Neither statement is correct. It has been many years since the prevailing belief was that Neanderthal was the direct linear ancestor of anatomically modern humans. Anatomically modern humans first appear in deposits dated 130,000 years B.P.4 and Neanderthals first appear at Erhingsdorf, Germany and the remains are dated to 230,000 years ago.5
Wilcox states (p. 92) that the Mousterian culture arose around 100,000 years ago. The oldest Mousterian culture is dated to 250,000 years ago, very close to the first appearance of Neanderthals.6
The statement is made (p. 91) that there is no evidence of culture among Homo erectus. Among the earliest Homo erectus sites are found chunks of red ochre, a material with no known stone age use except body painting.7 Microscopic examination of the edges of the stone tools of Homo erectus reveals wear patterns consistent with wood working and leather working.8 Body painting and wood and leather working strongly imply a being with a culture.
The author (p. 93) compares the tool making ability of Neanderthals with that of Kanzi the chimp who has been taught to make stone tools. Neanderthals are called imitators but "not creative inventors." This comparison is quite flawed as the teachers of Kanzi note: "Moreover, Kanzi's progress so far as a tool maker suggests to us that early Oldowan hominids may exhibit a much greater cognitive understanding of the principles and mechanics of tool making than modern apes seem to be able to develop."9 Neanderthal tools were much more complex than Oldowan tools which appear in rocks dated 2.4 million years ago.
The claim is made that there is no evidence of art among the Neanderthals (p. 92). Admittedly, the amount of art is small by comparison with the Magdalenian culture, but to say that there is none is wrong. Pendants made of reindeer phalanx and fox canine have been found in deposits dated at 50,000 years B.P.10 Coloring pencils, made from minerals, have been found at many sites. It is not known what these pencils were coloring but they appear to have been artist tools. A fossil nummulite was found at Tata, Hungary, with a cross inscribed on it.11 This came out after the Wilcox paper went to press, but the cover photo on the May 16, 1996 Nature shows a Neanderthal necklace which was either made or traded for by the Neanderthal.12
The anatomically modern people who constituted the Azilian culture (ca. 12,500-9,500) produced art no more spectacular than pebbles with lines, crosses, and dots on them.13 If Neanderthal is to be excluded from humanity for only having simple art, then so should the Azilians.
1C. B. Stringer and P. Andrews, "Genetic and Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Modern Humans," Science 239 (1988): 1263-1268.
2P. Lieberman and E. S. Crelin, "On the Speech of Neanderthal Man," Linguistic Inquiry 2 (1971): 203-222.
3B. Arensburg, et al., "A Reappraisal of the Anatomical Basis for Speech in Middle Palaeolithic Hominids,"American Journal of Physical Anthropology 83 (1990): 137-146.
4Chris Stringer and Clive Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993), 218.
6James R. Shreeve, The Neanderthal Enigma, (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1995), 139.
7D. Bruce Dickson, The Dawn of Belief, (Tuscon: The University of Arizona Press, 1990), 42-44.
8Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 271.
10Victor Barnouw, An Introduction to Anthropology: Physical Anthropology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982), 156.
11Leslie Freeman, "The Development of Human Culture," in Andrew Sherratt ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 85
12J-J Hublin, et al., "A Late Neanderthal Associated with Upper Palaeolithic Artefacts," Nature 381 (May 16, 1996): 224-226.
13Dickson, The Dawn of Belief, 83. | <urn:uuid:e5df70b2-602e-4767-8b2c-98101408bffc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1996/PSCF9-96Morton.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928225 | 1,302 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Flood damage closes portion of Hwy 169 in St. Peterby Tim Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — State officials say part of a key highway through southern Minnesota could be closed for more than a week because of flood damage.
Water running over Highway 169 north of St. Peter saturated out the ground underneath the concrete road surface and washed the northbound lanes completely away.
The washout happened where the highway splits into widely separated north and south bound roadways between St. Peter and LeSeuer. The northbound lanes were submerged for days by the Minnesota River after record September rains.
"That kind of water and that kind of pressure, you don't know what to expect," said Rebecca Arndt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transporation in Mankato. "So we have, now I'm hearing it could be a 200-foot long section of roadway that's literally washed out."
Arndt said the state will expedite a bid and contract for repairing the road, and expects the work itself to take about a week. Traffic is being diverted onto the southbound lanes until the damage is repaired. | <urn:uuid:03d5659f-0f40-42b2-803a-5508c703c9f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/10/05/floods-roads-closed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965288 | 238 | 1.625 | 2 |
In our back-to-school with loyalty series, we’ve covered college and loyalty in a number of ways. First, we took a look at the students themselves, and examined both how they can benefit from joining top-notch loyalty programs, and how loyalty marketers should consider the student demographic a valuable priority group to target. Second, we discussed the universities themselves, and ways in which they could greatly increase the engagement of their student bodies by employing some of the best tactics used by our loyalty programs.
Today, we’re going back to school even further — to kindergarten. And we’re focusing on one of the most important groups of people behind our educational institutions — the teachers.
Teachers are largely responsible for outfitting their classrooms, acquiring the materials for special activities, and making sure they have everything they need to give their students the most positive school experience possible. Below, we have a testimonial from a first-year kindergarten teacher:
I just graduated college and I spent around $300 out of my own pocket to decorate and prepare my classroom. And I probably spent much less than other teachers because I already had a lot of the art supplies and a lot of other things were donated from friends, past teachers or left over in the classroom.
Remember all of those holiday parties you had in elementary school? Treats for the Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas parties all come out of the teacher’s pockets, too. l also buy snacks for my students to get them through the day. And teachers have to purchase any special supplies we might need for a specific activity as well.
A fresh-out-of-college teacher has no money saved up. I’m paying rent and general life expenses, but I also have to factor in supplies, food and activities for 30 kindergarteners. The school gives an allowance to each grade but that has to be split between all of the teachers and it’s barely enough for one teacher for the whole year.
While teachers are often required to get materials from a ‘specialty store,’ there are still a number of ways that loyalty programs could help ease the cost of classroom-stocking.
Pharmaca’s Feel Better Rewards program is perfect to make sure your classroom is first aid-ready and read to cure the bumps, bruises, cuts, and sniffles that sometimes come with playground antics.
Orchard Supply Hardware’s Club Orchard is a great resource for arts and crafts activities, and for great materials to decorate the classroom and make it a friendly, welcoming place.
As for those classroom parties? Nothing is sure to put huge smiles on students’ faces like a big box of Dunkin’ Donuts. By using a Dunkin’ Donuts Card, teachers can earn Dunkin’ Dollars towards future parties, and more sweet treats for their students.
What other loyalty programs can help our elementary school teachers out?
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- Whitepaper: Loyalty: The New Imperative for Consumer Brands | <urn:uuid:974fa955-7ed3-4b1d-9319-a3e45884ede1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.loyaltylab.com/blog/tag/education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960645 | 647 | 1.515625 | 2 |
On Wednesday, we will be launching our new Global Poverty Ambassador initiative in partnership with The-Co-operative here in the UK.
This launch is taking place the London School of Economics with special guests Bill Gates and Hans Rosling and it will be live-streamed at http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/pages/launch
Bill, who is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will share his vision for tackling extreme poverty by discussing his Annual Letter with an audience of students, international development experts, and Global Poverty Ambassadors.
We are thrilled that Bill Gates has chosen the launch of the Global Poverty Ambassadors to deliver his annual letter. His vision and commitment is an inspiration for these Ambassadors who will mobilise their own communities in the fight to end extreme poverty.
Since the beginning of 2010, we have been taking the story of progress fighting extreme poverty to schools, conferences, communities and universities around the UK.
It's an inspiring story and 2012, we will identify, train and mobilise more than 100 Global Poverty Ambassadors to take this story even further across the UK.
These remarkable individuals are leaders in their communities – from universities, schools, businesses, faith group and communities. We’ve been searching high and low across the UK to identify these leaders to be selected as an Ambassador. They are an incredible, passionate and diverse group of people who will be champions in the movement against extreme poverty in 2012; school teachers, faith leaders, students, businesspeople and many more.
They will be trained to tell the story of success and raise awareness of the reality of extreme poverty through delivering a series of 1.4 Billion Reasons presentations and campaigning actions.
We’ve already had more than 200 applications, and the first 75 selected Ambassadors will be seeing Bill Gates and Hans Rosling on Wednesday.
Becoming a Global Poverty Ambassador is a fantastic opportunity for people from all walks of life to get involved in raising awareness for the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty. If you’re in the UK and you would like to become an Ambassador, recommend an Ambassador or book an Ambassador to come and speak at your business, group or school, you can do so here. Applications will be closing on 10 February 2012.
We’re thrilled to have partnered with The Co-operative in making the Global Poverty Ambassador initiative possible, especially during the UN International Year of Co-operatives. We’ve been working with the team at The Co-operative in developing the program, and it’s great to see that they are doing more than ever to help tackle global poverty, through co-operative support, ethical trade, ethical finance and campaigning.
Already their work has benefited millions of people across the developing world. The Co-operative believes that together, their members can help ensure lasting change. You can find out more about the work of The Co-operative in celebrating the International Year of Co-operatives 2012 at http://www.co-operative.coop/2012
Wherever you are in the world, I encourage you to watch the live-stream on Wednesday, join the conversation on Twitter with the #billsletter hashtag, and if you’re in the UK, I hope you apply to become one of our Global Poverty Ambassadors. | <urn:uuid:efba81c0-a728-4339-9d9b-c7e98093155c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/blogs/view/529 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939894 | 678 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Sarayaku Indigenous People and Amnesty International Win Film Award
October 2, 2012 | Source: Amnesty International
A groundbreaking documentary about an Ecuadorian Indigenous People's successful international legal battle against their country for allowing foreign oil exploration on their land without their consent has won an award at National Geographic's prestigious All Roads Film Project.
Amnesty International and the Kichwa de Sarayaku Indigenous community filmed and co-produced Children of the Jaguar, about the community's journey from their lands in eastern Ecuador's Amazonian rainforest to seek justice at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in Costa Rica.
The film won "Best Documentary" at the 2012 National Geographic All Roads Film Festival held last weekend in Washington, DC.
"We weren't expecting this award – it came as a surprise. Being chosen from among hundreds of films is a great honour," said Sarayaku filmmaker Eriberto Gualinga, who received the award on behalf of his community in Washington DC.
"Many people have sent their congratulations over the internet and I'll pass these on personally to the Sarayaku community when I return. We'll continue applying to film festivals as a way to have our story reach a wider audience."
In a ruling made public in July of this year, the IACHR came down in favour of the Sarayaku, ending the community's decade-long legal battle after a foreign oil company was allowed to encroach on their traditional lands in the early 2000s without consultation with the Sarayaku.
The Costa Rica-based Court found that the Ecuadorian state violated the community's right to be consulted, as well as their community property rights and their cultural identity. It also found Ecuador responsible for putting the life and physical integrity of the Sarayaku at grave risk, after the oil company placed more than 1,400 kg of high-grade explosives on the Indigenous People's territory.
The Sarayaku are still waiting to hear from the state about its plans to comply with the ruling.
The National Geographic award represents a further validation of the Sarayaku's success and will ensure their story reaches a wider audience around the world.
"These awards, chosen by a distinguished jury, recognize those films that have made the most impact this year, but as in years past, the films that will be screened represent some of the most impressive indigenous filmmakers in the world," said All Roads Film Festival Director Francene Blythe.
Children of the Jaguar will be making the rounds at a number of international film festivals before being released more widely in 2013. | <urn:uuid:36bdc5b4-50ee-450f-90bd-2eccc5f3d449> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amazonwatch.org/news/2012/1002-sarayaku-indigenous-people-and-amnesty-international-win-film-award | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961562 | 528 | 1.96875 | 2 |
I can shot using filters such as UV/CPL/FLD or I can get similar effect using software filters in picassa/photoshop etc. Is there special features that can be achieved with post processing?
Is there any difference? Yes. You will expose after filtration, allowing your sensor to collect the maximum amount of data. By applying a filter in post, you necessarily reduce the amount of data in your image.
Does the difference matter? Your mileage may vary. I used to take a heap of filters with me, but now I only bring a few specialized ones: circular polarizing, star, ND. I find the data loss does not impact the final image quality, so for me, bringing the extra filters is pointless. You might be an image purist, and if so, you'd want to do your filtration on the lens.
I should say, I use a UV filter mostly as plain glass to protect the lens. This debate rages on, but the difference between images shot with and without are (to my eye) negligible. A circular polarizer is much more interesting, as it actually modifies which light arrives at the sensor. Any attempt to emulate this in post processing is just that: emulation. You will always get better effects and control with the actual filter.
For major color corrections like fluorescent, you have to make the call whether letting more light in and controlling the color temperature in camera or post is better than filtering with a pretty high filter-factor piece of glass. Again, just for me, I correct on the camera and don't use the filter; I correct again in RAW conversion for the final tweaks.
I'm not sure what the question regarding special features that can be achieved with post processing means, but once you get into digital manipulation, the only limit is you imagination. So, yes, there are tons of effects that are digital only. | <urn:uuid:c9c08555-09ff-4684-a885-273436d7a9a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/23534/is-there-any-difference-between-using-camera-filter-and-photoshop-like-software | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941182 | 389 | 1.828125 | 2 |
1 billion people are malnourished across the globe
Oct 19, 2009
Poor countries are requiring more foreign food aid than ever before. The current amount needed is five times what these countries presently receive. The long term solution to world hunger is investments in agriculture, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
The number of people who are malnourished rose in 2008 and 2009, after a long decline. The number of malnourished people has recently passed 1 billion, according to the UN.
Otive Igbuzor, the head of international campaigns for ActionAid International said, "We know a child dies every six seconds of malnutrition."
Nine years ago, nations pledged to cut world hunger in half by 2015. Today it doesn’t look like that goal will be reached. The answer lies in investing in agriculture. Agricultural updates are needed in underdeveloped countries through new machinery and teaching of the latest farming practices. In order to feed the projected 2050 world population of 9.1 billion, global food output must increase by 70%.
Technology can account for some of this increase of food output, but the UN is calling for investments in agriculture for underdeveloped countries. Jacques Diouf, director general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said, "In the fight against hunger the focus should be on increasing food production. It's common sense ... that agriculture would be given the priority, but the opposite has happened."
While there is a heavy burden on teaching modern agriculture practices to underdeveloped countries as well as providing up to date machinery, farmland values will increase. As the global population increases, food output will have a very hard time trying to sustain. The result will be a steep increase in the demand of farmland, because farmland is essential for growing food.
Technology has consistently increased crop yields, but to increase yields by 70% by 2050 will be nearly impossible. Not to mention, the American Farmland Trust estimates that farmland is being lost at an alarming rate of 2 acres per minute in the US alone. Meanwhile, the world population is growing at a rate of 154 people per minute according to the Salon Media Group.
Read more about farmland and agriculture at farmlandforecast.colvin-co.com/. | <urn:uuid:545233c9-96ac-4ed1-be0d-754848b36b14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/blog/Farmland_Forecast_148/1_billion_people_are_malnourished_across_the_globe_14138/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94002 | 455 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Print version ISSN 0038-223X
J. S. Afr. Inst. Min. Metall. vol.111 no.7 Johannesburg July 2011
'Give us the tools and we will finish the job', Winston Churchill, 1941
The highest priority in South Africa is job creation, and this also applies to most of Africa. On a time scale that is critical, this can come about only through international investment and assistance. The BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is highly significant, and the key is close interaction between the technical specialists in these countries in proposing new areas of joint activity. In mining and metallurgy the scope is large, and much interaction between professional bodies in identifying and defining suitable ventures must soon be forthcoming.
At the WTO and other trade discussions, I believe it will be universally accepted as a non-negotiable right and responsibility for any government to preserve and expand future employment opportunities. Without a job, a citizen is denied the fundamental right of dignity and many other constitutional privileges. The birthright of a nation to use its raw material resources to ensure acceptable job creation opportunities should be afforded the same constitutional status. The concept of 'free marketing' is secondary to these fundamental rights.
This is in no way meant to preclude the supply of raw materials from the third world to first world countries. What it requires is that fair trade concepts include a quantitative recognition of the added value in job creation. The outcome of fair trade must be that it is not possible for a first world country, by more competitive pricing, to prevent local production of added value products in a third world country from the same raw material. There must be reciprocal agreements in job creation potential.
The concept is best illustrated by an example. If we were to sell rhodium to a major automobile manufacturing nation for exhaust catalysts, then it can be considered that the raw material contains an added value in job opportunities. Since we ourselves can produce such catalysts, it is not unreasonable that the two parties could share in this job potential. And neither party would attempt to inflict price structures that would preferentially deny such a potential. Maybe this reciprocity could be recognized by making technology available or undertaking to purchase an agreed quantity of catalysts for incorporation in the domestic production. This may introduce complexity in the negotiations. But once the principle is accepted that a raw material has an intrinsic job creation potential built in, agreement should be possible. Invariably this can be a 'win /win' situation, if only because as the number of jobs increases in an undeveloped nation, so does its import purchasing power. To put it succinctly, the newly skilled workers in a catalyst factory will probably soon start buying imported motor cars.
The above example indicates the potential of agreements of this nature. For South Africa, there are two areas which I believe will be of interest to BRICS and other internationals at many levelspostgraduate, government, and business. They will also have a large impact on job creation in South Africa. In the space available I can do little more than provide an outline of the scope of these projects, which I hope will catalyse some action.
1. Zero waste mining and metallurgy and employment clusters Enough work has been done to demonstrate that the old image of the industry, of waste dumps and environmental degradation and pollution, is outmoded. The cry for sustainability has put pressure on the industry to avoid toxic waste completely. If one takes the world-wide uproar against the acid mine drainage from the gold mining complexes in South Africa as an example, it is interesting to predict what can be achieved in this regard.
The days of the century-old HDS process using low cost lime to precipitate the toxic metals in a sludge which can be discarded onto a slimes dam are coming to an end. The sludge is not environmentally stable, and the slimes dams are known to leak soluble and toxic material into the rivers and surrounding lands.
There are now processes designed to remove all toxic constituents, producing domestic quality water and recovering the pollutants as saleable products on an economically acceptable basis, although demonstration plants have still to be established. It is now conceptually possible to detoxify contaminated dams and put them to a useful purpose. Good management of effluent solutions to remove all pollutants is now also possible, and the concept of using these effluents profitably is on the agenda. There are now alternative approaches which are now being considered, rather than allowing the waste water to evaporate uselessly.
The establishment of industrial, educational, and other activities is making good progress as a means of job creation and recent news reports from Anglo American indicate remarkable achievements in these areas. However, in terms of manufacturing industries there will have to be some miraculous progress in skills education. The record of the manufacturing industries In South Africa and Africa as a whole is abysmal at 1% of world industries, according to a survey reported in Engineering News.
Fortunately, in agricultural cluster farms where adequate skills are overwhelmingly available and with the very large product markets that exist, a most valuable contribution to sustainability in the mining clusters could be achieved.
There is resurgence in the use of biomass for aviation fuel as an alternative to fossil fuels. Recent news reported the successful use of biofuels from Canolina (the latest plant choice for vegetable oil for biofuel) in Rolls Royce jet engines in an Atlantic crossing. New techniques to convert almost any plant biomass to diesel or alcohol have been announced. The emergence of subsurface hydroponic irrigation (suitable for the use of sterilized sewage effluent) is indicating that small lot agriculture in cluster farming around mines and industries using water from slimes dams could be feasible for producing food and fuel crops. There is little doubt that a detoxified mine effluent could produce enough biodiesel for a mine's internal use and even power generation (both much welcomed in view of the inevitable robotic mechanization in future deep-level mines).
The concept of building hubs of entrepreneurial activities for education, training, and supplying services, equipment, food, and fuels is proving to be most positive. The calculated numbers for biomass production and employment growth in South Africa are so large in terms of jobs and productivity that my impression is that, in terms of sustainability, mining and farming are mutually dependent. However, there is much R&D and collaborative international work to be done (including language classes) in the mining clusters.
The second example, I think appropriate globally is:
2. The complete utilization of waste coal fines In South Africa this would be invaluable in metallurgical centres such as Richards Bay, as well as the coal mining centres. The target would be the production of cell-grade alumina, and aluminium metal itself from co-generated power. Other products would be high grade iron oxides and iron metal powder, silicon carbide cement and elemental sulphur, clean coal, and carbon powder and derivatives. There are billions of tons of coal fines available, and much scope for added value and other activities, including cluster farming for biomass and biofuels production using existing technology. There is readily available water and land from restored open pit mines.
May I suggest that a possible way forward is to convene conferences to put flesh on these two skeletal examples and the many others that must emerge if we are to meet our employment targets.
Written by RE Robinson
Friday, 01 July 2011 02:00 | <urn:uuid:749895c9-bf45-4fac-931b-1ba306200c10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0038-223X2011000700001&lng=en&nrm=iso | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94692 | 1,513 | 1.867188 | 2 |
America Has Too Many Stores
Should anything be done about it?
The carnage in retail hasn't been this bad since an anarchist bombed Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886. In January, Liz Claiborne said it would shutter 54 Sigrid Olsen stores by mid-2008. Ann Taylor announced that 117 of its 921 stores would be closed over the next three years, and Talbots axed the Talbots Mens and Talbots Kids concepts and 22 Talbots stores. (Those muffled screams you hear are Connecticut preppies trying to suppress their rage.) Even Starbucks has scaled back its yearslong saturation-bombing campaign.
Blame that exhausted marathon runner, the American consumer. Fueled by cheap credit instead of PowerGel, she looked great at mile 16, but bonked at mile 23 and is now crawling to the finish line. Retail sales fell in December, putting the cap on a miserable Christmas season. Last week, the government reported that retail sales rose 3.9 percent between January 2007 and January 2008. But account for inflation and sales of gasoline, and retail sales fell in real terms in the past year. Clearly, demand is down.
And supply is up. This decade's building frenzy produced a bumper crop of new retail space—from McStrip malls built near new McMansions to hip new boutiques in the ground floors of hip new Miami condo buildings. But the occupants for new retail space haven't materialized. In the fourth quarter of 2007, the national retail-vacancy rate rose for the 11th straight quarter to 7.5 percent, the highest level since 1996, according to research firm Reis Inc. With new projects coming online—34 million square feet of retail space will be completed in 2008—the rate is expected to climb further to 8 percent. In the parlance of the trade, many chains are simply over-stored.
Developers opening new malls this year clearly timed the economic cycle poorly. And the cultural cycle isn't helping matters any. The extreme consumption of this current gilded age has inspired a backlash. In December, hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio ran full-page advertisements in newspapers urging Americans to eschew Christmas gifts and instead make donations to charity. Maybe he's just run out of things to buy. Or maybe he's surfing the zeitgeist. "There's a glut of stores," says Judith Levine, author of Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. "Our physical, intellectual and emotional and psychological space is filled up with consumption." Levine laments the wholesale transformation of open spaces into enclosed retail environments (like, say, Barnes & Noble superstores, where you can buy Not Buying It). And the incessant bombardment of advertising may be inspiring a backlash that pushes people to consume less. The anti-consumer freegan movement—urbanites who try to get by through recycling, scrounging, and foraging—are taking it to the extreme. These modern Henry David Thoreaus have opted out of the whole rotten capitalist system. Working 60 hours per week and chasing job promotion "for the sake of buying the latest crap off the Sharper Image store shelf is no way to live," says Adam Weissman, spokesman for Freegan.info. (Hey, dude, one might say the same about diving into Dumpsters in search of day-old bread and discarded futons.)
The cultural anti-retail moment will likely pass. Thoreau lasted only 26 months in his cabin by Walden Pond. The elevation of frugality into a virtue seems likely to last about as long as modern recessions do—about eight months. Still, retailers should be worrying about a real long-term threat: the Internet. The 1990s-vintage boast that e-tailers would destroy brick-and-mortar retailers all but disappeared after the NASDAQ went bust in 2001. But e-commerce has quietly been growing at a rate far higher than that of the overall economy. For the last four years, online retail sales have grown at an annual rate of more than 20 percent. In 2007, such sales, excluding travel, rose 21 percent to $175 billion, accounting for 7 percent of total retail sales. "Online retail is growing a heck of a lot faster than the rest of the pie," says Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research. Last year, online sales accounted for 45 percent of computer hardware, software, and peripheral sales; 19 percent of toys and videogames; and 19 percent of baby products. In the coming years, retailers, who are integrating online sales into their business models, simply won't need the same amount of acreage. The upshot: Demand for retail space is likely to grow at a pace far slower than that of the overall economy.
For 2008, Reis projects there will be 159 million square feet vacant—that's 5.7 square miles, or roughly six times the size of Monaco. * But landlords shouldn't lose faith just yet. While vacancy rates are high in some depressed markets—15 percent in Syracuse, N.Y.—there's no imminent danger of America's malls turning into ghost towns. The minute the credit crunch breaks, consumers will surely hit the malls with a vengeance. Americans have always excelled at adaptive reuse. Judith Levine suggests that superannuated Sears and Kmarts could be turned into municipal swimming pools or community buildings. Some empty strip malls could be repurposed into warehouses for online retailers. I'll bet a few rogue freegans are already planning to monetize all the junk their colleagues collect by opening secondhand stores.
Correction, Feb. 19, 2008: Because of a rounding error, the sentence misstated how much retail office space could be vacant, according to an expert's projection. The estimate of 159 million square feet is equivalent to 5.7 square miles, not 5.5 square miles as originally stated. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at email@example.com and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.
Photograph of a shopping mall in Illinois by Tim Boyle/Getty Images. | <urn:uuid:23f94192-09fa-471d-b056-fd0a5008a229> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/02/america_has_too_many_stores.single.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94563 | 1,291 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Today, his collection of artwork, titled “Hard Truths” is on display at the High Museum of Art in Midtown.
“Like many people in the South in his generation, especially black people, he had to stay out of school to work on the farm,” said Susan Crawley, the museum’s curator of folk art.
Although illiterate, Dial’s works are deep and thought provoking, spanning the spectrum of topics from racism to war, both locally and globally.
He was not available for an interview.
“He was always concerned about the history of his race and American history in general,” Crawley said. “He’s just an intelligent and thoughtful guy. He wasn’t reclusive either. He was tuned into what was going on.”
Most of the work in the exhibit is from the last 10 or 12 years, Crawley said, and the public’s response has been extremely positive.
“At the opening [in November], several people left the galleries saying, ‘I’m going to come back and see this several times,’” she said. “It’s the kind of show that will reward repeated viewings. There’s a great deal in that work and it doesn’t all unfold at once. It rewards thoughtful viewing and lots of thinking between viewings.”
Julia Forbes, head of museum interpretation, said Dial is trying to communicate issues of race, equity and war.
“His paintings are very sculptural with all kinds of found objects with layers and layers,” Forbes said. Dial’s materials run the gamut, as he uses everything from baby dolls to broken glass to broom handles to real animal bones.
In “Lost Calves,” Dial used cow skeletons, possibly from his own herd of cows, Forbes said.
“At one point he owned a herd of cows and was very upset when they all died,” she said. “He’s trying to get us to think about what it means to farm and to own cows. … If you look at it from the right angle, you see your reflection in the eyes of the cow [in a mirror], and he’s trying to get us to think about some hard decisions and choices we make in our modern world.”
In one piece, “Mercedes Benz Comes to Alabama,” he exposes the effects a car factory has on a community and other industries, such as fishing. The work includes a steering wheel, other car parts, fishing nets and fish made from machine parts.
“After he finished the work, he covered it in oil and set it on fire,” Forbes said. “So it has this sooty quality to it. … He wanted that to be right here present for us.”
One of his “Hard Truths” pieces, “Looking Out the Windows,” captures the innocent people who were trapped in the World Trader Center, and those who jumped from the twin towers Sept. 11. He uses dolls and a “very pervasive red, white and blue,” to present a powerful message displaying the grief of the families left behind, Forbes said.
Dial currently lives in Bessemer, Ala., and has five children, Crawley said.
“He is a very dignified man,” she said. “He is fairly quiet. He speaks very eloquently through his art.”
o What: “Hard Truths” exhibit
o When: now through March 3
o Where: High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St., Midtown
o Tickets: $19.50 for adults, $16.50 for seniors and $12 forchildren
o Information: www.high.org | <urn:uuid:3767e21f-d5dd-48d7-bec7-0495e9fcf8d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neighbornewspapers.com/view/full_story/21028297/article-Illiterate-artist-expresses--Hard-Truths-?instance=buckhead | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975575 | 812 | 1.945313 | 2 |
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Hundreds of area schoolchildren can now check "running a marathon" off their to-do list.
Approximately 500 students from kindergarten through sixth grade on Thursday ran the last lap of the 26.2 miles they've been logging since January in their PE classes.
The 17 elementary schools in the San Angelo school district, as well as several area private schools, participated in the CATCH in Motion Kids Marathon, said September Summers, health coordinator for the health and wellness department at Shannon Medical Center.
The second annual event, sponsored by SAISD, Shannon and Gandy Ink, aims to decrease the number of overweight children in the Concho Valley.
"In West Texas, one-third of elementary children are overweight or obese," Summers said. "Shannon has made the commitment to help with this crisis and keep kids out of the doctor's office."
Summers developed the idea after a three-year physical education grant ran out two years ago.
After getting approval from the board and support from community members, Summers said she knew the event would be a success.
While the kids lined up in 15-minute intervals to run their final 0.2-mile lap Thursday at San Angelo Stadium, 30 community organizations had booths with activities for the kids and gave information on free or reduced-cost activities to help keep kids active this summer.
"The main motto was physical activity," Summers said.
As children came across the finish line, they were given water bottles and T-shirts, and their names were entered into a drawing for a pair of running shoes, said Lyndy Stone, marketing director for Shannon.
Local donors provided funds for 40 pairs of shoes to be given away.
The kids were not running the laps alone. Area mascots Casey the Colt, the Central and Lake View high school mascots and the H-E-Buddymascot, along with athletes from Angelo State University, were there to help cheer them on.
"On the last lap, everybody ran," Stone said.
Stone's son Brady, 5, participated in this year's event.
She said he told her, "We're running because running is good to make you healthy."
"I felt like he got the message we're trying to convey through the whole program," Stone said. "I'm proud the kids are learning it at such an early age."
With 500 kids participating this year, up from 120 last year, Summers said she is proud of the growth of the program and hopes to see it continue to increase.
"We hope to reach out to other area schools for next year," Summers said.
"It was good the first year, it was huge this year, and we hope to be gigantic next year." | <urn:uuid:33faecd4-4da6-4c8c-b1e2-5ea46d7d3e45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2012/apr/21/san-angelo-kids-get-on-fast-track-to-fitness/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976883 | 565 | 1.648438 | 2 |
‘Out of this World’ is a musical adaptation of Plautus' comedy Amphitryon. The story revolves around the lives of Roman gods Mercury and Jupiter, who are in search of some earthly entertainment. The focus of their attention turns to a young bride, Helen and her husband, Art. Things get interesting when Mercury joins the two on their trip to Athens, intending to put himself between the blushing newlyweds. While the men are busy chasing Helen, Goddess Juno (Jupiter's wife) is playing games of her own. | <urn:uuid:398ce84a-4913-4efb-aaa0-ff4232393be8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stageagent.com/Shows/View/1648/gender_ASC/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954206 | 112 | 1.664063 | 2 |
by Emma Donoghue
Alyson Publications, 1994
Review by Christian Perring, Ph.D. on Nov 30th 2001
This story of seventeen-year-old Maria's first term at university is
a charming coming-of-age tale. Maria (rhyming with pariah) moves from her
home in the Irish countryside to the big city of Dublin. Needing a place
to live, and without much thought, she moves in with Ruth and Jael, two
women several years older than her. Soon she comes to realize that Ruth
and Jael are a couple, and Maria does not know how to react. But she likes
the two of them a great deal, so she stays. They are a welcome contrast
to the first-year-antics of the other people around her, and she often
feels more comfortable with her house-mates than she does with her peers.
Although she has a crush on a boy her own age, she surprises herself by
pushing him away when he shows an interest in her. Soon enough, Maria is
questioning her own sexual preferences.
Although there's a strong lesbian-related theme to this novel, it's
by no means didactic, and author Emma Donoghue takes as much pleasure in
describing life in Dublin, Maria's thoughts about her own family, the troubles
in relationships, and the difficulties of sharing a house with a couple
as she does in the romance. Much of the book is taken up with conversation,
and she does a good job of conveying the Irish patterns of speech and turns
of phrase, as well as the accent. The things that Maria worries about -
romance, money, her studies, the politics of the personal, and her cooking
- sound familiar and real. This is not a wildly ambitious novel, and it
doesn't try to examine the human condition or the state of forbidden love
at the end of the twentieth century; but it does well in providing an entertaining
and touching story.
If I have any reservations about it, it is that it seems a little tame.
Maria has plenty of common sense, but she seems sheltered and naïve
about other parts of life. Of course, not every coming-of-age novel has
to feature teen sex and promiscuity, and since Maria is from a very small
town, it is perfectly fitting that she is not quite ready for city life
when she first arrives. But even taking those factors into account, Maria
lacks depth. But then, that is true of most seventeen-year-olds!
One aspect of Donoghue's writing that works well is her knack of entering
into scenes when they are half-way through, which avoids the predictability
of setting up each scene and having to play it out to its end. It makes
the book all the more readable and engaging. I'll be interested to read
the work she has written since this first novel was published in 1994.
Kudos to Alyson Publications for bringing it back into print.
Author web site
© 2001 Christian Perring. First Serial Rights.
Ph.D., is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College,
Long Island. He is editor of Metapsychology Online Review.
His main research is on philosophical issues in psychiatry.
He is especially interested in exploring how philosophers can
play a greater role in public life. He is available to give talks
on many philosophical or controversial issues in mental health. | <urn:uuid:f6475d63-433c-4d99-9cf9-030a142e198b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seabhs.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=852&cn=55 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968118 | 731 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Exploding the Phone:
The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell
February 28, 2013
Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
This event is free; no tickets are required.
Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome tech entrepreneur PHIL LAPSLEY for a discussion of his book Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell.
Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world’s largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell’s revolutionary “harmonic telegraph,” by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same.
Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of “phone phreaks” who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI.
“A rocking great read about the unknown teenagers and hobbyists who defied AT&T when it was foolish to do so. In Lapsley's magnificent research he has uncovered what amounts to a secret pre-history of the computer and internet revolutions.”—Tim Wu, author of The Master Switch
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As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.
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same day and with | <urn:uuid:3a096a06-6773-4af2-bc01-0fe43df25969> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harvard.com/event/phil_lapsley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91886 | 1,003 | 1.8125 | 2 |
First published by HarperCollinsUS in 1964, this classic children's novel has sold over 4 million copies and was awarded the New York Times ... Show synopsis First published by HarperCollinsUS in 1964, this classic children's novel has sold over 4 million copies and was awarded the New York Times Outstanding Book Award. Sixth-grader Harriet attends school on the New York's Upper East Side along with her two best pals, Sport, the jock, and Janie, the mad scientist. After school every day, she takes her notebook and proceeds through her spy route. Climbing on milk crates and hoisting herself up dumbwaiters, Harriet observes the rich lady who never gets out of bed; the man with twenty-five cats and the Italian family who runs a grocery store. She writes brutally warts-and-all notes on them all. Harriet's downfall is that she also writes down her thoughts about people she actually knows. After a game in the park when her notebook is knocked out of her hands and read by her classmates, Harriet's deepest thoughts are revealed and she is quickly ostracised by all her classmates -- even the boy with the Purple Socks -- who form the Spycatcher's Club to punish her. After her parents find out what's happened, Harriet receives a final, crushing blow. She is no longer allowed to take notes -- her parents, her teacher and even the cook search her every day for a contraband notebook. Harriet's only consolation is the love and the wise advice of her nanny who manages to get her through this difficult period in her life. A classic in the US where it was first published and a major motion film from Paramount, Harriet the Spy is a beloved book throughout the world. | <urn:uuid:d9465870-778a-41b6-b33a-cce8ba0f290c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=2819307&matches=965&qsort=p&cm_sp=1rec-_-RHS-_-p1-0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974953 | 350 | 2.53125 | 3 |
It looks like life is starting to get fair for the inventors of the technology that everyone uses daily around the world. Yes, I'm talking about the inventors of the Wireless LAN. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) patented the technology in the 1990s, and has used that patent to sue companies without a license since 2005.
Back in 2009, CSIRO recovered AUD$205 million (US$212 million) after suing and settling with 14 companies. They have continued to sue and settle with an additional 23 companies in which they have just received another AUD$220 million as payment. "It was important that Australia protect its intellectual property, and that those major companies who are selling billions of devices pay for the technology that they were using," Australian Minister for Science and Research Chris Evans said.
"CSIRO's commercial and legal teams on both sides of the Pacific have worked very hard over the past several years to gain a reasonable return and I would like to pay particular tribute to them for their extraordinary efforts," Nigel Poole, a senior executive at CSIRO, said. But, some credit also goes to the inventors. They had to solve the problem of the radio waves bouncing off of indoor surfaces and creating echos. They did just that and beat many of the major communications companies that were trying to do the same.
Further Reading: Read and find more Business, Financial & Legal news at our Business, Financial & Legal news index page. | <urn:uuid:f40cce07-a5eb-4ba6-954c-a2e6624b3604> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tweaktown.com/news/23322/australian_wifi_inventors_win_us_legal_battle_wins_aud_220m/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981207 | 298 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Fri, Mar 23, 2012
Flight Lasted Six Seconds Over The Arizona Desert
A 45-foot long, 800 pound paper airplane will be hung in the Pima, AZ, Air and Space Museum following a six-second flight over the Arizona desert.
The Associated Press reports that the airplane was carried by a helicopter to an altitude of about 4,000 feet before being released. It leveled out and flew for about six seconds, or about half the duration of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, before nose-diving into the desert near Eloy.
A museum spokesman said the most difficult part of the exercise was getting the airplane to altitude. The desert winds buffeted the plane, and caused some instability in the helicopter to which it was attached by a 200 foot tether.
Television station KPHO reported before the attempt that museum said if it flew, it would be displayed as a piece of aviation history.
ANN/Aero-TV Marketing Department Needs Part or Full Time Personnel Since ANN started, we have enjoyed the amazing support of a group of sponsors who have, by and large, been genero>[...]
"On his last day in the country he gave his life for, Tyler was working on his RV-8 at the EAA hangar. He spoke to (chapter member) Vance Simons, who had become a friend since he i>[...]
Klyde Does 'Drone' On... FMI: www.klydemorris.com>[...]
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Historical Fiction Set Against Invasion Of Kuwait In 1990 In order to succeed in his invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein needed weapons. Weapons lead to questions:>[...] | <urn:uuid:710ffb30-dd51-4d09-93bc-175e7ad8b450> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aero-news.net/AnnTicker.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=58777542-837e-40ce-a796-d3ce3bc7c59c | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945658 | 398 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Liver Cancer Symptoms & Signs
Learn More About Symptoms of Liver Cancer: Chat with Us | Email Us
What Are the Symptoms of Liver Cancer?
Like many types of cancer, liver cancer symptoms often do not appear in the early stages. As a result, liver cancer tends to be diagnosed at a more advanced stage.
Because there are no widely recommended routine screening tests for liver cancer, people with a family history of the disease or other risk factors should talk with their doctor about steps they can take to monitor or reduce their risk. The National Comprehensive Cancer Center (NCCN) recommends alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) blood tests and ultrasounds every 6 to 12 months for people with a high risk of developing liver cancer.
Warning Signs of Liver Cancer
The symptoms of liver cancer may be different for each person and any one of these symptoms may be caused by other, benign conditions.
When present, common liver cancer symptoms may include:
- Weight loss – Not associated with changes in diet.
- Decrease in appetite – Or a feeling of fullness after a small meal.
- Nausea and vomiting – Not associated with other known conditions.
- General weakness and/or fatigue – Persistent, ongoing weakness or fatigue.
- Fever – Unrelated to other conditions.
- Pain – Occurring in the upper abdomen on the right side or near the right shoulder blade.
- Enlarged liver (hepatomegaly) – felt as a mass under the ribs on the right side.
- Enlarged spleen – felt as a mass under the ribs on the left side.
- Abdominal swelling (ascites) – Bloating or swelling in the abdomen can occur as a mass forms.
- Jaundice – yellowing of the skin and eyes. Jaundice occurs when the liver is not functioning properly.
Understanding Liver Cancer Signs & Symptoms
Many of the above mentioned symptoms are similar to other types of benign liver infections or diseases. In the case of liver cancer, the symptoms will continue to evolve and worsen as the disease advances. It is important to see a doctor for an accurate diagnosis if you have any of the above signs of liver cancer.
In rare cases, other disorders may develop as a result of liver cancer, especially in the early stages of the disease. Paraneoplastic syndromes cause symptoms in other parts of the body. Awareness of these symptoms may help with diagnosing liver cancer.
Some paraneoplastic syndromes related to liver cancer include:
- Hypercalcemia - High blood calcium levels
- Hypoglycemia - Low blood sugar levels
- Erythrocytosis - High red blood cell count
- Hypercholesterolemia - High cholesterol levels
- Gynecomastia - Breast enlargement
- Shrinking of testicles in men
NOTE: These symptoms may be attributed to a number of conditions other than cancer. It is important to consult with a medical professional for an accurate diagnosis.
Next Topic: Liver Cancer Diagnosis | <urn:uuid:ebb50259-6b8a-4e0b-8fd5-2692340ba370> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cancercenter.com/liver-cancer/liver-cancer-symptoms.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906273 | 627 | 2.546875 | 3 |
The Latson Case in Virginia: A Danger Signal That We Can’t Ignore
Teresa Champion is an attorney admitted to the bar in Kentucky and Washington State. She has two children; Sydney and James, who has a diagnosis of autism. She is a long time civic and community activist, who works with the Fairfax Autism Network (FAN) and the Virginia Ability Alliance (VAA). Champion is a member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA). Currently, Teresa is volunteering for the Virginia Autism Project (VAP) as the Northern Virginia Regional Director.
The Cry for Help:
I sat in the courtroom and sobbed. I had never met this young man and I had just met his mother in person that morning. Even though we were essentially strangers, I viscerally felt the anxiety and fear of this family. Reginald “Neli” Latson has Asperger’s Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and was on trial for injuring a school resource officer. I too have an 18-year old son with autism.
The evidence showed that Neli, in resisting arrest, had severely injured the officer, but only after an interchange that magnified his inability to process verbal input and significantly increased his sense of uncertainty and apprehension. The officer had been alerted to look for an African American teenage male carrying a gun. Neli had been sitting waiting for the library to open. He had no gun. Although initially cooperative when the officer approached him, Neli stopped cooperating when the police officer asked him for his name. He had done nothing wrong. The “rule,” he knew, was that police officers went after people who had done something wrong. Since Neli knew he had not done anything wrong, to his concrete way of thinking, he didn’t need to obey the police officer. So he didn’t comply with the police officer’s request that he identify himself and attempted to leave the scene. It is undisputed that Neli did not possess a gun or any other weapon. Until he encountered the officer, he had committed no crime. The basis for the arrest was a county ordinance that makes it a crime to refuse to identify yourself in response to a request from a law enforcement officer.
Neli was found guilty of charges associated with an assault and the jury recommended a sentence of 10 ½ years. In Virginia, the jury recommends a sentence and the judge imposes the sentence at a later date. In Virginia, there is no parole. He will serve every day of whatever sentence he is given.
Many ASD families who read about this case thought, “that could be my son/daughter.” If the autism community doesn’t do something quickly, similar outcomes could face many more of our young adults.
How do we stop this from happening again? We must educate and train the community at large about autism. How do we help this young man and his family? Try to explain autism to the Judge and ask for treatment not punishment.
Helping the community at large:
During the pre-trial interviews of prospective jury members only one person was aware of Asperger’s Syndrome. He did not make it into the jury box. When Neli was being interviewed at the police station after the tragic event, he was asked if he had any sort of disability. When he said he had Asperger’s, the police officer interviewing him said, “What’s that?” That is too late. Although the injured officer in this case has a disabled son, he didn’t recognize someone with an ASD when he encountered him, nor was he trained to deal with the likely consequences of Neli’s disability.
As this population with an ASD ages and those individuals, like Neli, who didn’t have access to adequate treatment and therapy become adults, we must explain autism to the community at large. Just like we had to do for our children’s teachers, caregivers, and family members when they were younger. We worked for acceptance and training everywhere they went.
We have to be one step ahead of our adults with an ASD in the community. We must talk honestly about the hallmarks of someone with an ASD and also educate our young adults on how to interact with someone in law enforcement. We have to show our disabled adults how to be interviewed and possibly arrested by the police. Statistics show they are seven times more likely to encounter law enforcement than the general population.
The legal system is not equipped to deal with individuals that can’t respond appropriately and/or control their response because of a disability. We have a lot of work to do to educate and train the judicial and legal systems and the community at large.
Helping Neli and his family:
Helping Neli and his family is a more complicated issue. Funding supports in the community so that someone can be supported and live with a disability safely is a long-range goal that can’t be ignored. A more immediate goal is let this 19- year old disabled man (who likes to read Goosebumps books) and his family know that he is treasured and they are cared about. Most importantly – support the attorneys and professionals working to present a sentencing report to the judge that will explain the side of autism that the jury never got a chance to hear and understand. He should be given rehabilitation and treatment not further incarceration. Neli has been in jail since this incident happened in May, 2010 but he has been trapped inside the cell of autism his whole life.
Pay attention to this case and pray.
The Autism Safety Project provides First Responders with information and guidelines for communicating with individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in emergency situations.
Here is a letter submitted to Judge Sharp from Gary Mayerson, the Director of Autism Speaks Federal Appeals Project. | <urn:uuid:a855475f-c2b9-43d7-8cb2-545c1f6f742c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2011/05/27/the-latson-case-in-virginia-a-danger-signal-that-we-can%E2%80%99t-ignore/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=8ef4095fcf | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982452 | 1,210 | 1.65625 | 2 |
BCHS Named 'Blue Star' School
Beach Channel High School was honored as a "Blue Star" school for the second year in a row.
Over 50 students at the high school became financially literate when they took the WISE Financial Literary Exam this past May, and 98 percent of them passed. Out of 139 participating schools, only 45 were awarded "Blue Star" status for excellence in financial literacy. Only ten of those 45 schools, including Beach Channel, received the award for the second year in a row.
Economics teacher Ezra Hershman took part in the celebratory conference this past Election Day, and was proud to receive the honor on behalf of the students and fellow Economics teacher, Christian Horn. "This is what makes teaching worthwhile," Hershman said. "Not everything can be measured in dollars and cents." | <urn:uuid:b069826b-b72c-474f-a5fc-88dfee1363ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rockawave.com/news/2006-11-17/Community/082.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984333 | 170 | 1.695313 | 2 |
It was time to make a change. The living room was becoming a shrine to technology. It was more a place for computing and less a place for living and that was a problem. So how do you make better use of available space, make your technology serve you better, and keep it from overwhelming your human plans for your space?
The challenge was to get the computers out of the living spaces. An additional challenge was to reduce the visual impact of the audio equipment. Space was limited. And the plan was to implement these changes without breaking the bank. The Secret Server Space was the solution. Here's what happened.
The problem was that the computers were taking up too much space. The living room is for people to live in, not for computers to occupy. A computer desk was out of place in the living room.
The component-style audio equiment was too obvious and creating something of a shrine to powder-coated aluminum boxes. The existing shelves were too shallow for the depth of the audio equiment. Adding a purpose-built media shelf would reduce the remaining space for things that are more important than audio amplification. So the goals for the project became:
The breakthrough came from a conversation about hidden rooms, secret doors and sliding bookcases. Everybody loves a good secret door. Everybody except an architect friend of mine who informs me that secret doors and sliding bookcases are
cliché. Bummer. A secret room is called for in this case, so a secret room it shall be.
dead space behind a corner bookcase was used to hold the computers. The extra support for the computers also provided the opportunity to extend the audio equipment beyond the back of the bookcase, without the risk of toppling. The entire assembly, bookcase, computer supports and all, were put on wheels for access to the back of the bookcase.
The parts couldn't be much simpler. A bit of wood. Some fasteners and wheels. An awesome friend with a table saw is highly recommended.
The results are positive. The computers still carry out their tasks. Several tasks were relocated from other computers to a single box. While all of the original functions are still available, two computers have been switched off, saving some energy. The audio equipment is easier to access and doesn't dominate the room the way it did previously. The room has more space for books.
So far, no guest has noticed the secret server space, or asked about all of the computers and audio equipment in the living room, unprompted. So the visual impact of the technology has been reduced.
Obviously, the next step is to motorize the bookcase. And add some blue LEDs.
1 clarification added on 02 March 2013. :-) | <urn:uuid:b83e8ad1-8ceb-4ab8-85a1-d53636923a76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weait.com/secret-server-space | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972977 | 555 | 1.851563 | 2 |
In honor of SOPA-blackout day, here’s my sideways contribution to the confusion.
Is this blog post in potential violation of copyrights or trademarks? I don’t honestly know. The (great!) image below was made by Lee Griggs and Tomás Fernández Serrano at SolidAngle, the company that develops the Arnold renderer, used by (among others) Sony Imageworks for CG effects in their films.
So, let’s see, some issues with this post and image are:
He used Mineways to export the model from a Minecraft world. A texture pack terrain image is applied to the model. So, if you use a texture pack from some copyrighted source (which all of them are, by default; sadly, few declare themselves Creative Commons in any form), are you violating their copyright? What if, like in the image below, you can’t actually make out any details of the textures?
This Minecraft world was built by a lot of people – are their models somehow protected? In what ways? Over on the left there I see Mario and Luigi. These are trademarked figures (or copyrighted?). Are these illegal to build in your own Minecraft world? What about public, shared worlds where others see them? Or is it fine under good faith, since it’s non-commercial? Would selling the print then be illegal? How big does Mario have to be to infringe? Is it the building of them or the photographing of these models that’s illegal? Or is this a “public virtual space” where taking photos is fine? I can make some guesses, but don’t know.
Similarly, if one of the builders used a voxelizer like binvox to build a model from a commercially-sold mesh, would that be OK? At what resolution of voxels does the original mesh and the voxelized version become close enough for a violation to occur? Luckily, the model itself is just a bunch of cubes, and cubes themselves are not something protected by any laws, right? (well, Marchings Cubes were, but that’s a different story.) If I could download their mesh, could I legally use it? Probably not commercially, since it’s the arrangement of the cubes that’s important.
You’re saying to yourself that this is “tempest in a teapot” stuff, with no real likelihood anyone would demand a takedown of fan art. I remember the early years of the commercial internet, where Lucasfilm did just that, endlessly ordering takedowns of unauthorized Star Wars images, models, etc. (I guess they still do?). I even understand it: I’ve heard trademark must be actively defended to retain it. Most interesting of all, there was a United Kingdom Supreme Court ruling last summer involving Lucasfilm: the court ruled that 3D models are covered by “design rights” by default, giving them 3 to 10 year protection, or 25 years if registered. Stormtrooper helmets were judged “utilitarian”, not sculptures, and so are not covered by these rights. Fascinating! But that’s the UK – what if I order a stormtrooper helmet from the UK for delivery to the US? I assume it’s an illegal import.
Finally, am I breaking some law by including this image in my post, using the URL of the original post‘s image? I attribute the authors, but the image is copyright, explicitly shown in the Flickr version. I think I’d invoke Fair Use, since I’m making a point (oh, and that Fair Use link won’t work for a few more hours, with Wikipedia blacked out). Confusing.
With images, textures, and models referencing each other and all sloshing around the web, what copyright, trademark, and all the rest means gets pretty hazy, pretty quick. I’m guessing most of the questions I pose have definitive answers (or maybe not!), but I know I’m part of the vast majority that aren’t sure of those answers. Which is probably mostly fine (except when corporations overstep their bounds), since our culture is much richer for all the reuse that most of us do without any financial gain and without worrying about it.
Update: I just noticed this article on Gamasutra on similar issues (the difference being that the author actually knows what he’s talking about). | <urn:uuid:d3e85d6f-c184-4e3f-9bf6-7c4714cac7dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/tag/minecraft/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943616 | 937 | 1.882813 | 2 |
New findings, published this week in Nature, challenge the long-standing view that a-synuclein, a protein involved in Parkinson's disease, is a single, unfolded protein. Instead, the protein appears helical in shape, and is composed of four synuclein components. The results suggest an extra step in the process of protein clumping, in which the tetramer first falls apart into its individual protein parts before congealing into the fibrils seen in Parkinson's disease.
The results “really fit with what I was already thinking,” said Julia George, a professor at the University of Illinois, and who was not a researcher on this study. Other groups had previously found evidence that a-synuclein could take shape as a helical tetramer, but the new study is the first to suggest that the helical tetramer might be the most predominant form of the protein in cells. It “strengthens the idea that the helical conformation” is indeed the native form, she said.
The researchers blame the discrepancy between their findings and previous work on a-synuclein on detergents. “We realized that people had always used denaturing methods” to probe the structure of the protein, said Dennis Selkoe, the senior author of the paper and a professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The process can break the bonds that knit together a protein's secondary or tertiary structure. “We thought we should try a non-denaturing method,” Selkoe said, but “we didn't know we'd come up with a completely different form.”
When he and his colleagues ran the protein on a non-denaturing gel, which did not include the detergents traditionally used to study the protein, the results suggested that the protein weighed approximately 56 kDa—four times the weight of the 14 kDa a-synuclein monomer scientists had previously isolated.
Selkoe's team conducted several other assays to test whether the gel was telling the truth. Robert Edwards, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said the most convincing was analytical ultracentrifugation, which characterized the way the protein spun through a solution and confirmed the larger molecular weight.
Selkoe's group also found hallmark signals of a protein wound into a helical formation, suggesting the protein was not unfolded as previously believed.
Still, Edwards said, “it's not that this has completely wiped out our previous understanding” of a-synuclein as an unfolded monomer. It could simply be that both forms of the protein exist at some equilibrium in the cell, agreed Joseph Mazzulli, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the research. “I don't know that it's the predominant species,” said Mazzulli, who added that he looks forward to follow up work resolving this question.
But just the realization that the tetramer form of the protein exists in the cell is valuable information towards finally understanding the role of a-synuclein. “The more we know about what synuclein is normally doing, the more we can understand how that is perturbed in Parkinson's disease,” George told The Scientist.
“a-Synuclein occurs physiologically as a helically folded tetramer that resists aggregation,” T. Bartels, et al., Nature, doi:10.1038/nature10324, 2011. | <urn:uuid:454d2dc0-81dc-4233-8a3d-33605ad0cf38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31035/title/New-Shape-of-Parkinson-s-Protein/flagPost/56711/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967303 | 729 | 3.125 | 3 |
Just across the river from Detroit sits a city forgotten. Battered by the fall of the auto industry and struggling to keep its economy running, Windsor, Ontario, has seen some tough times in recent years, and things aren’t likely to improve any time soon. It has the highest unemployment rate in Canada, a plummeting population, and the empty storefronts and foreclosed homes that have come to define this generation’s Great Recession.
Though geographically south, Windsor’s been called the Detroit of the North. For some locals, it’s simply a broken city. But there’s a growing movement that believes Windsor is a city that can be fixed.
A group of artists, activists, and urbanists has come together in Windsor with the straightforward-yet-complex goal of repairing the city. | <urn:uuid:37f3f7d6-2e5c-4eb5-b43c-37e60b06f728> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nate-berg.com/tag/revitalization | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953781 | 168 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Some cool degree in finance images:
Chicago (ILL) River North, Marina city, 1964
Image by Vincent Desjardins
source : wikipédia
Marina City is a mixed-use residential/commercial building complex occupying an entire city block on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. It lies on the north bank of the Chicago River, directly across from Chicago’s Loop district. The complex consists of two corncob-shaped 65-story (including 5-story elevator & physical plant penthouse), 587 foot (179 m) tall residential towers, a saddle-shaped auditorium building, and a mid-rise hotel building all contained on a raised platform cantilevered over defunct railroad tracks adjacent to the river. Beneath the raised platform at river level is a small marina for pleasure craft.
The Marina City complex was designed in 1959 by architect Bertrand Goldberg and completed in 1964 at a cost of million financed to a large extent by the union of building janitors and elevator operators, who sought to reverse the pattern of white flight from the city’s downtown area. When
Source: Forex Finance Blog
Management Innovators: The People and Ideas that Have Shaped Modern Business
Book (Oxford University Press, USA)
You might also like:
Some info about the bill
If it's an emergency, they can't turn her away. That's true for both physical and mental illnesses. She has to be a danger to herself, others, or gravely disabled (unable to care for herself at all) before it's considered an emergency (in CA and most areas).
Getting to the hospital: If an ambulance takes her, there will be a bill. It will be higher if your mom needs some sort of physical ...vernment benefit offices will tell you what your mom qualifies for. If you mom doesn't end up at a hospital, go to your city's Social Security Admin. office and talk to them in person. Also go to your county's health and human services and talk to them about the situation. She'll probably come away w/ health care, income assistance, transportation (if needed), food, anything. Or only some of it.
Self-Employed [ignorant] Carpenter & the I-R-S
My husband has been a carpenter for over 20 years. Left home at 15, lived with friends, finished high school, and after other odd jobs, found his calling in carpentry. He's never been counseled in the laws of finance in business. So now, he's being dragged over the coals by - you guessed it - the I R S. He has NO PAPERWORK! over the years, he never kept it, thinking once taxes done, don't need t...LARS! But to screw a citizen, who has never had this kind of guidance, seems to me the government is taking complete advantage of their ignorance. God, it makes me want to boycott this country, scream out the injustice.. "Please give me the strength to make it through this one - I know we're only given what we can handle, this feels like the big one"
How do you propose these types of laws?
I hear you on stores and getting the mail.
Last summer when I was still living alone and I was really bad (I wouldn't leave my house at all) I had friends who would come and hang out with me and one of them would always bring my mail up for me. It was always a nice surprise not to have to try to convince myself to go get it myself.
And I was at a store yesterday and there were like 5 people standing around looking at the same item...ad to drop out two different semesters without completing my classes, once due to my agoraphobia and finances and the other time due to the pitbull attack...I was bed ridden for almost a month. So I have to buckle down this fall so I can get federal aid again. So long as I'm on probation I can't get any government aid darn it. My counselor told me I was to smart to be on academic probation haha.
You need to develop a conservative
Behavior. You don't need to entertain anyone's crush on you. They need to get the point quick and clear that you are taken, head a house, and raise three children. That is a government seat. You would want an official politician deviating from his or her responsibilities because it would jeopardize the money situation of your state or country, and it might jeopardize the nations upstanding with ...will think you're a trashy nut, and they won't respect you further sinking you into self-depreciation.
Be smart, upright, direct, and clear that communication line between you and other people. Make it clear that you don't represent a tribe of chimpanzees that do each other in groups all day every other day in any way. You represent good America. You won't be respectable until you do that.
In Rebuttal To This Great Debate (1st)
Ladies and gentlemen. Please do not throw yourselves into this serpent tongued LadyRock's rhetoric to fix our great and wonderful State of Michigan. If it were not for our state would there be any badgers? I think not.
Not since Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" back in 1729 Ireland has there been a more cockymany idea to fix a social problem. LadyRock has forgotten a few of the ramifi...A Pageant...that's right the Miss USA Pageant. Beauty across the states is not equal. Has a woman from Michigan ever won this prestigious crown? No. So, we would lose our taxpayers in this glorious state to states like Texas, Illinois, California and New York. These states have won the Miss USA title many times and so, there must be better looking women in these states. It's only logical people.
China Local Government Finances Are Unsustainable, Auditor Says — Businessweek
The finances of China's county-level governments are unstable and unsustainable as the majority of their fiscal income comes from sources other than taxation, the nation's top auditor said.
Putting Dell on the Map: A History of Dell Paperbacks (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture)
Book (Greenwood Press)
Encyclopedia of Retirement and Finance (Two Volumes)
Directory of Research Grants 2006
Greenwood Financial, Inc
We're here to help educate you about the basic concepts of financial management;. | <urn:uuid:d0a23b86-eac2-45d5-9978-d4b3c5981216> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socialwebct.com/CorporateFinance/greenwood-finance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96598 | 1,337 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Publisher Perseus Books
Release Date December 2001
A forty-year effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is breaking down, and the threat that terrorist groups will acquire them is growing. In Fatal Choice, Ambassador Richard Butler argues that we are poised on the verge of a second and much more risk-filled nuclear arms race than the one experienced throughout the Cold War.
“We continue to face a choice with respect to nuclear weapons—either to move safely toward their elimination or to remain their victim,” says Butler. This threat is clearly reflected in nuclear weapons development by India, Pakistan, and North Korea. According to Butler, the Bush administration revived a missile defense system that will not deal with the problem but, in fact, worsen it.
Butler outlines steps that can be taken to create an effective, unitary nuclear arms control policy, including: a major policy statement by President Bush; unilateral actions, such as U.S. ratification of the Conventional Test Ban Treaty; bilateral measures, especially negotiations between the United States and Russia; multilateral actions, most importantly the thirteen steps agreed to at the 2000 Review Conference of the Nonproliferation Treaty; and new mechanisms, such as the establishment of a Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction. | <urn:uuid:ed42feaa-6bd1-48d8-bddf-7d9ed0e299e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfr.org/middle-east/fatal-choice/p4197 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938533 | 254 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Strengths And Weaknesses In Global Consumer Data Protection: Balancing Laws, Awareness And Enforcement
Approximately nine million American adults were identity-fraud victims last year. While the total number of victims has decreased over the last three years, losses per victim have increased to about $6,000. The average resolution time has also grown to about 40 hours.
High profile cases at companies like Ameritrade, Bank of America, Lexis Nexis and Ralph Lauren have justifiably spooked consumers and pressured law makers in the U.S. and around the world to enact privacy legislation which creates uniform rules for data processing.
Here's a bird's eye view of how three regions are attempting to address consumer protection and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their approaches.
Europe: The European Union was the first collective body to enact a uniform law focused on consumer data protection, enacting its Data Protection Directive in 1995 (which went into effect in October 1998). The Directive prohibited the transfer of personal data to non-EU nations that failed to meet the standards for privacy protection. Many have criticized the Directive as being a tough piece of legislation on paper that falls down in enforcement. Some have gone so far to say the Directive accomplished little more than frightening businesses, universities and other countries when it erected a steel door prohibiting data transfers to other countries that lack adequate levels of data protection. In essence, the EU made the statement "meet our standards or don't conduct business with our citizens."
As of the end of last year, only Argentina, Canada, Guernsey, Hungary, and Switzerland's data protection have been declared adequate by the EU. An adequacy declaration presumes that all transborder data flows between these countries and the EU are in compliance with the Directive. The United States was able to obtain a "safe harbor" exemption in 2000 that allows certifying businesses to come through the back door and participate in data transfers. The Safe Harbor provides a compliance framework and a means for U.S. companies to continue business dealings with the EU. Companies must certify to the U.S. Department of Commerce their compliance with the Safe Harbor provisions and adhere to requirements of notice, choice, onward transfer, access, security, data integrity, and enforcement, some of the same provisions found in the Directive. The decision by U.S. organizations to enter the Safe Harbor is entirely voluntary. Organizations that decide to participate in the Safe Harbor must comply with the Safe Harbor's requirements and publicly declare that they do so.
One problem with the Directive is that it is an extraordinarily broad piece of legislation which applies to all data and all organizations holding personal data. Among other provisions, strict requirements are established for notice to customers and the processing, collection, confidentiality, and possession of personal data. An individual's social security number, credit card information, or address and phone number can no longer be unnecessarily stored on a computer. Personal information may be kept only for specified purposes and must be disposed of after the specified purposes cease to exist. If a company breaches any provisions of the Directive it could find itself confronting the data subject face to face in court and paying compensatory damages.
While the Directive has been the framework for a number of countries, enforcement has been less than optimal. Compliance levels are low by data controllers due to the low risk of being caught, and the Directive fails to align with the real world methods of data processing. Also, consumers are not well informed regarding avenues for resolution. EU officials counsel patience and argue that the Directive is an ongoing process and the kinks will be worked out over time.
Latin America: There is both good and bad news coming out of Latin America. Argentina and Chile, for example, were among the first to enact extensive and uniform data privacy laws. However, in some countries that regulate personal data through constitutional provisions and numerous independent regulations, like Brazil and Mexico, legislative bodies proposed uniform data protection bills years ago that have yet to be enacted.
The seriousness with which many Latin American countries have addressed consumer privacy are additional signals of the maturity and emergence of these nations economically. Many of the provisions that are in place may actually exceed those of Europe and the U.S. For example, in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia, constitutional provisions declare the right to a judicial hearing on personal data and many of those same countries address the rights of individuals to access and correct information in the possession of any data controller. No such provisions are yet on the books in the U.S. or Europe.
Like the EU, however, Latin American nations have not performed well in effective compliance and enforcement. Sufficient resources for monitoring business compliance and breaches, prioritization of government and regulatory bodies to enforce laws and, again, to inform consumers of their rights are lacking.
U.S.A.: While the United States shares the goal of enhancing privacy protection for its citizens, it has lagged the EU in promulgating comprehensive legislation to address concerns over loss of privacy. Although the federal government has adopted some legislation, there is still an enormous reliance on self-regulation.
Motivation toward more aggressive self-regulation has recently received a boost thanks to the impact, if not the number, of high-profile enforcement cases in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other regulatory bodies. These cases have given, at the very least, the appearance of a tough enforcement environment.
For example, when data company ChoicePoint disclosed last year that it accidentally sold sensitive personal information on 163,000 to scam artists, it ultimately and recently agreed to pay $15 million to settle FTC charges, the largest penalty ever assessed by the FTC. That was followed by FCC fines levied on AT&T and Alltel for failing to comply with consumer information protection rules. The attendant bad publicity about these companies also had an adverse impact with customers and this was not lost on other companies managing personal data.
However, the complexity of businesses that use data for marketing purposes, from phone companies to mortgage lenders to dating services, makes uniform law difficult and potentially ineffective. Lawmakers have had to take a more ad hoc approach to address specific problems.
For example, the United States Senate and House Judiciary Committees approved bills that would prohibit the unauthorized sale of call detail information and ban the pretexting of phone records (pretexting is the act of obtaining consumers' personal data under false pretenses).
The Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act of 2006 and the Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006 received unanimous support in the committee and may be taken up soon by the full House and Senate. Several other bills protecting phone records are also under consideration.
In addition to efforts at the Federal government level, many states are enacting data privacy laws, and limiting access to social security numbers and other personal information in public records. Many states also require notification to consumers affected by inadvertent disclosures of personal information.
Most likely, resolution of data breaches, however, will come from an industry push as they react to consumer concerns and published surveys that indicate a significant majority of consumers would avoid doing business with companies that fail to properly safeguard their personal information. Businesses are also motivated to address these issues as they typically absorb 93 percent of the cost of all identity theft and fraud cases. For example, Bill Gates recently said that security will get most of Microsoft's development attention going forward. However, most of the products on the market are less promising regarding prevention and more focused on alerting consumers quickly if there is a potential problem and how to deal with theft after the fact.
It may be difficult to find a "one size fits all" solution. Telecommunications, retail, financial services, online marketing and other data-intensive businesses have such complexity and varying standards that enacting uniform data privacy laws in the U.S. does not appear practical.
The best tactic in protecting consumers and balancing laws, enforcement and awareness would appear to be informing citizens of their rights and creating uniform channels to respond to data and identity theft, ideally through state and other localized channels. Currently, residents of 12 states in the United States can freeze their credit lines making it impossible for anyone to apply for credit unless the consumer opts to unfreeze the file. Another good example of informing and mobilizing the public was the establishment of the "Do Not Call" list.
Law enforcement can't catch all the crooks. The courts can't provide a remedy for everyone whose information has been breached. And the legal code is not likely to keep up with changing technology on both the prevention side and the tactics scammers. The best and most efficient remedy is to effectively "deputize" the public and provide them with the understanding and tools to protect themselves.
Luis A. Aguilar is a Partner in the Atlanta office of McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP. His broad-based practice concerns general corporate and business law. He can be reached at (404) 527-8470. Leah D. Jackson is an Associate in the firm's Atlanta office. Her practice is focused on IP and technology. She can be reached at (404) 527-4957. | <urn:uuid:a7c0a42c-ba65-4b79-95b8-2d5dd4468336> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/articles/6739/birds-eye-view-international-consumer-data-protection-laws | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950689 | 1,850 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Research and Development
Provide technical information to dairy farmers and processors
Relevant international and domestic dairy research papers are put into a database for easy access by members of the industry. Eight of the most important journals have been targeted and up to date some 800 papers have been put on the database. A second initiative is to interpret and summarize research results of particular relevance to the industry and which are also put on the website. This is done once a month under the heading "The Research Column".
Assemble researchers in dairy-related issues and industry leaders annually at a summit to discuss views and interpretations of what is important to take the industry forward in terms of sustainability, profitability and competitiveness
The research capacities in the country are documented and annually updated. This is documented in terms of researchers, infrastructure, projects, papers and students participating. A further aim is to work towards collaboration between capacities and eventually development of centres of excellence. At the Milk SA Dairy Research Forum which is annually organized in August research fields and subjects are prioritized, annually reviewed and relevance to industry objectives discussed. The priority list in the present year has now been taken further by dedicated work groups that will develop project protocols for the highest priorities in the particular discipline; this to ensure that the projects with the most likely impact in terms of industry objectives come on the table.
Develop and guide processes and procedures towards establishing a viable structure to promote R & D
Documents for project protocols, contracts, progress reports and supporting documents were developed and an evaluation and guidance structure were put in place.
Liaise and participate in the International Dairy Federation (IDF) programme to support the global green economy initiative
Input has been given to the IDF Greenpaper on the green economy and South African case studies reported for inclusion in the list of the website. | <urn:uuid:7c1fe463-5f0f-41cf-9e10-94600e2c8c56> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.milksa.co.za/objectives/statutory/research-and-development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95268 | 360 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Large numbers of threatened reef fish still traded
Discussions held by governments meeting in Bangkok, Thailand outlined a number of ways to help curb this problem and maintain protection of this threatened fish.
“Regulating the trade throughout Asia aims to protect humphead wrasse from overfishing and encourages sustainable fishing which will ensure a future for this species.” said Dr Colman O Criodain, WWF`s Policy Analyst, International Wildlife Trade.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature highlighted during the meeting that wrasse are being traded online and suggested large numbers are being sold this way but are not reported so many more could be being fished illegally.
Another problem is that young humphead wrasse are being taken from the wild and placed in captivity until they are big enough to sell. If this ranching style was done sustainably it could supply the fish to the Asian market without impacting the wild populations but current methods are unsustainable.
Humphead wrasse was listed on Appendix II of the Convention in 2004 to regulate international trade. It is one of the most valuable fish in the live reef fish trade, and its rarity leads to higher demand and prices of up to UD$250-300/kg in China.
Although centred in Hong Kong, this trade has spread to southern China and other consumer regions, including Singapore. Of particular concern is that rapid economic growth in mainland China may further intensify the demand for humphead wrasse throughout the country. | <urn:uuid:988d1f1b-3787-4942-b286-b85f0242f316> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/blue_planet/news/?207852/Large-numbers-of-threatened-reef-fish-still-traded | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944824 | 297 | 3.234375 | 3 |
USDA Research Agency, Israeli Agricultural Ministry Sign Agreement on Cooperative Research
By Ann Perry
August 10, 2010
Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MOARD) of the State of Israel today signed a formal agreement in Washington, DC, to collaborate on research to meet the world's food and fiber needs and address other high-priority agricultural issues. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency.
Under the five-year agreement, scientists with ARS and MOARD will conduct cooperative research focusing on key bilateral and global agricultural development issues such as climate change, international food security, alternative energy production, precision agriculture, sustainable natural resources management, capacity building and rural development.
Specific areas of interest include animal production, aquaculture, horticulture, food safety and quality, water management and technology, sustainable agriculture, integrated pest management and post-harvest management of agricultural commodities.
"As the world's population continues to grow, there is an urgent need to maximize the efficiency and environmental sustainability of agricultural production around the globe," said ARS Administrator Edward B. Knipling. "This agreement will facilitate partnerships between scientists in the United States and Israel and further our shared efforts in meeting current and future agricultural challenges with the development of innovative management practices and technologies."
Knipling and MOARD Chief Scientist Yuval Eshdat signed the agreement in a ceremony at the Embassy of Israel in Washington. Zvi Herman, minister for agricultural and science affairs at the Embassy of Israel, also attended the signing.
The new agreement will complement existing collaborative research activities supported by the United States-Israel Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD), a program that was created in 1978. To date, BARD-sponsored research has led to new technologies in drip irrigation, pesticides, fish farming, livestock, poultry, disease control and farm equipment. | <urn:uuid:5cf2b999-18b5-4d23-92b7-3f4a4d94bf05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2010/100810.2.htm?pf=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922144 | 394 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Water quality criteria can include general narrative statements that describe good water quality and specific numerical concentrations that are known to protect aquatic life and human health. The criteria are adjusted as needed to reflect changes in law and science. Numerical criteria are for specific physical, chemical (toxics), and radiological characteristics of the waters (e.g. minimum of 4.0 mg/L dissolved oxygen, 2.5 ug/L ammonia, 9.0 ug/L copper). Narrative criteria include general protective statements known as the "free froms." This narrative criteria says that all state waters shall be free from substances attributable to sewage, industrial waste, or other waste in concentrations, amounts, or combinations which contravene established standards or interfere directly or indirectly with designated uses of such water or which are inimical or harmful to human, animal, plant, or aquatic life.
Numeric chlorophyll 'a' criteria exist for man-made reservoirs and natural lakes (special standard "dd"). The Chesapeake Bay and its tidal tributaries have dissolved oxygen, submerged aquatic vegetation, and water clarity criteria. Site specific criteria exist for the tidal Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers (special standard "aa") and for the tidal James River (special standard "bb"). The criteria were developed to protect these waters from the harmful effects of nutrient over-enrichment. Significant increases in algae due to nutrient over-enrichment can harm water quality, food resources and habitats, and decrease the oxygen that fish and other aquatic life need to survive. Additional information regarding nutrient criteria and ongoing nutrient criteria development efforts is located on the Nutrient Criteria Development web page.
These numerical and narrative criteria describe water quality necessary to protect designated uses such as swimming, drinking and the propagation and growth of aquatic life. | <urn:uuid:c8e1a33c-c854-46e1-a1d9-63d1bb27fb72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deq.state.va.us/Programs/Water/WaterQualityInformationTMDLs/WaterQualityStandards/Criteria.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907118 | 367 | 3.34375 | 3 |
GCN LAB REVIEW
A videoconferencing tool that gets it right
Passport hits the sweet spot between large, expensive systems and cheap, inadequate setups
- By John Breeden II
- Mar 31, 2011
Most videoconferencing systems fall into one of two categories, and neither is perfect for an educational or training environment.
First, you have huge conference room setups. They generally offer great picture quality and sound, but they are seldom designed to be portable and can only be moved through an extensive breakdown process. And that doesn’t account for the trouble of actually transporting the fragile components from one location to another. In addition, these setups tend to be very expensive. We looked at one that costs more than $100,000, putting it out of reach for most state and local governments, community colleges and other educational institutions that could use such a product.
PROS: HD-quality videoconferencing; portable; can connect with servers for remote users.
CONS: A little expensive when you consider the extra cost of the video center server.
Ease of use: A+
Remote tents can morph into war rooms with this rugged display system
The second type of conferencing tool is more common. These systems are generally tiny and cheap devices that are easy to use but of dubious quality. Many laptop manufacturers even include videoconferencing software with their computers these days. The software makes use of an embedded camera that comes standard on many laptop monitors. However, the cameras are generally 3- or 4-megapixel models, which are more suitable for capturing still photos than motion. Any movement on the screen breaks up an image, sometimes badly. And the sound with most of those devices is subpar, at best. They can generally adequately pick up one person in front of the device but not a roomful of participants.
The Passport from LifeSize Communications, a division of Logitech, attempts to find a happy medium between those two extremes. In doing so, they’ve hit the sweet spot where many educational environments need a product such as this to land.
The Passport has three main devices that assemble easily. The first is the camera, which has a small 4.5-inch tube. It mounts on top of a circular base station and plugs in to a half-circle, 9-inch-by-6-inch base that connects the Passport with other computers inside a classroom, or remote users anywhere in the world.
It took about five minutes to get the Passport up and running, including the time spent configuring its software.
The first thing most people will notice is its video quality. You can attach the Passport to a monitor using an HDMI cable to see how great everything looks locally. The camera records at 720 pixels in high definition. No amount of movement could blur the image in our tests. It was just like watching a TV with an HD signal. And the Passport was adept at adjusting to different lighting conditions. In typical office lighting, people didn’t take on the green tint on screen as we’ve seen with other videoconferencing systems' cameras. And when we quickly switched to halogen lighting, the Passport didn’t skip a beat.
The audio quality of the Passport matches the video, which was another surprise. The microphones are omni-directional and can pick up someone talking at normal volume 15 feet from the tiny base station. The microphones are actually embedded in the camera tube and out of the way.
Of course, good hardware is only half the equation. You also need good software. The Passport uses the Advanced Audio Coding lossy compression drivers found in most high-end hardware devices such as the Apple iPhone and Sony PlayStation 3. When that software combines with advanced hardware, you can hear a pin drop in a quiet room, and you certainly won’t have any trouble listening to a speaker, or several people, in a conference or a lecture.
A large remote control steers the Passport. With one push of a button, you can begin recording, and then you use the other button to control aspects of the presentation. For example, you can connect a laptop to the base station and run a PowerPoint slide show. Another button on the Passport remote lets you switch from a live feed to images on the laptop.
The Passport is the base model for LifeSize’s teleconferencing system. Higher-end models allow for more inputs or add motorization to the base station so that you can remotely control the camera. Some even have 1080-pixel resolution. The model we tested would be perfect for most educational environments and sells for $2,500. However, if you want to really get the most out of the device, you need to buy a LifeSize Video Center, which is a server that stores presentations for viewing later, among other useful features. The downside is you will need to pay an additional $30,000 to get that hardware. That’s a lot to swallow for a device that costs $2,500.
When I asked the people at LifeSize about this, they said: “Video streaming and recording is made possible by LifeSize Video Center when connected to a LifeSize Passport or 220 series endpoint. On its own, without LifeSize Video Center, Passport is a high-definition videoconferencing endpoint — it's not meant to be a capture device. There may be third-party solutions out there that you could cobble together that could work, (for example, an HDMI capture card on a PC that records from the TV output on the Passport) but for the simplest, highest-quality experience, our recommended solution is LifeSize Video Center.”
I guess the final arbitrator of the value of the Video Center will be potential buyers. As for the Passport itself, it is one of the best high-quality videoconferencing tools we have seen, and it would be a huge boon in any educational setting. In fact, it’s almost as good as being there.
LifeSize Communications, www.lifesize.com | <urn:uuid:3fad797a-2231-483b-b95f-fa1d64a23d07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gcn.com/Articles/2011/04/04/Review-of-the-Lifesize-Passport.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9458 | 1,271 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Mcintosh Family History
Mcintosh Surname History
This page is the home for a detailed history of the Mcintosh last name, Mcintosh etymology, and records of people with the Mcintosh name. Mcintosh family history has a complex evolution whose details can be pieced together by Mcintosh family researchers. The Mcintosh family is an old family line that has migrated all across the world over the centuries, and as the Mcintosh family has spread, it has evolved making its history challenging to uncover.
No content has been submitted here about Mcintosh. The following is speculative information about Mcintosh. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The evolution of Mcintosh starts with it's early ancestors. Even in the early generations of a name there are variations in that single name simply because surnames were infrequently written down at that stage in history.
It was common for a family name to change as it enters a new country or language. As families, tribes, and clans emigrated between countries, the Mcintosh name may have changed with them. Mcintosh families have travelled around the world all throughout history.
Mcintosh country of origin
No content has been submitted about the Mcintosh country of origin. The following is speculative information about Mcintosh. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The nationality of Mcintosh is often difficult to determine in cases which country boundaries change over time, making the original nationality indeterminate. The original ethnicity of Mcintosh may be difficult to determine as result of whether the name came about naturally and independently in various locales; for example, in the case of names that are based on professions, which can crop up in multiple countries independently (such as the surname "Dean" which may have been adopted by members of the clergy).
Meaning of the last name Mcintosh
No content has been submitted about the meaning of Mcintosh. The following is speculative information about Mcintosh. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
The meaning of Mcintosh come may come from a trade, such as the name "Brewster" which refers to a female brewer. Some of these profession-based family names may be a profession in some other language. Because of this it is good to research the nationality of a name, and the languages used by its family members. Many western names like Mcintosh originate from religious texts like the Bhagavadgītā, the Quran, the Bible, and so on. In many cases these names relate to a religious sentiment such as "From the ash tree".
- Nancy McIntosh Macintosh 1790 - 1865
- Alexander Mcintosh 1805 - ?
- Catherine Mcintosh 1809 - 1880
- William Mcintosh 2nd Son At Borlum Branch, 2nd Son at Borlum Branch 1576 - ?
- Margaret Lindley Mcintosh 1789 - ?
- James McIntosh Mcintosh 1780 - 1835
- Evelyn Mcintosh
- Margaret McIntosh Ward
- Nellie Mcintosh 1802 - 1866
- Catherine Kate McIntosh Cousins
- Col. Daniel Mcintosh, Sr.
- John Go-ta-qua-s-gi Mcintosh
- G. McIntosh Foster
- Elizabeth Jane Ward Mcintosh
- Chillicothe Mcintosh
- Reginald McIntosh Cleveland 1886 - ?
- James Mcintosh
- Elizabeth Colver Mcintosh 1808 - 1829
- Alexander Mcintosh
Mcintosh Family Tree
Famous people named Mcintosh
No famous people named Mcintosh have been submitted. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
Nationality and Ethnicity of Mcintosh
No content has been submitted about the ethnicity of Mcintosh. The following is speculative information about Mcintosh. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
We do not have a record of the primary ethnicity of the name Mcintosh. Many surnames travel around the world throughout the ages, making their original nationality and ethnicity difficult to trace.
More about the name Mcintosh
Fun facts about the Mcintosh family
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Mcintosh spelling variations
No content has been submitted about alternate spellings of Mcintosh. The following is speculative information about Mcintosh. You can submit your information by clicking Edit.
In the past, when few people knew how to write, names such as Mcintosh were transcribed based on how they sounded when people's names were written in official records. This could have led to misspellings of Mcintosh. Understanding misspellings and spelling variations of the Mcintosh family name are important to understanding the history of the name. Names like Mcintosh vary in spelling and pronunciation as they travel across communities, family unions, and eras across time. | <urn:uuid:e629c7d2-677c-4be7-8aca-e7b27ba6e4da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ancientfaces.com/surname/mcintosh-family-history/10053 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941317 | 980 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The UK government has been giving secret support at the very highest levels to Canada's campaign against European penalties on its highly polluting tar sands fuel, the Guardian can reveal.
At the same time, the UK government was being lobbied by Shell and BP, which both have major tar sands projects in Alberta, and opened a new consulate in the province to "support British commercial interests."
At least 15 high-level meetings and frequent communications have taken place since September, with David Cameron discussing the issue with his counterpart Stephen Harper during his visit to Canada, and stating privately that the UK wanted "to work with Canada on finding a way forward," according to documents released under freedom of information laws.
Charles Hendry, the energy minister, later told the Canadian high commissioner: "We would value continued discussion with you on how we can progress discussions in Brussels," with Hendry's official asking the Canadians if they had "any suggestions as to what we might do, given the politics in Brussels."
Canada's vast tar sands—also known as oil sands—are the second largest reserve of carbon in the world after Saudi Arabia, although the energy needed to extract oil from the ground means the process results in far more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling, as well as causing the destruction of forests and air and water pollution.
NASA scientist James Hansen says if the oil sands were exploited as projected it would be "game over for the climate".
The European proposal is to designate transport fuel from tar sands as resulting in 22 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than that from conventional fuels. This would make suppliers, who have to reduce the emissions from their fuels by 10 percent by 2020, very reluctant to include it in their fuel mix. It would also set an unwelcome precedent for Canada by officially labeling fuel from tar sands as dirtier.
The UK and Canada's shared opposition to the European plan puts the UK in a minority among EU countries and will be deeply embarrassing as a new round of global negotiations on tackling climate change begins in Durban, South Africa on Monday. Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, claimed on Thursday that the UK was showing "leadership" in the UN negotiations, while Canada's prime minister has blocked climate laws. The revelations are also the latest blow to Cameron's claim to be the "greenest government ever."
The vote to approve the European fuel quality regulations takes place on Friday. In advance of that, William Hague, the foreign secretary, has also given support to Canada, sending an "immediate action" cable in September to the UK's embassies there asking "to communicate our position and seek Canadian views on what might be acceptable."
However, the Department for Transport, in which the Liberal Democrat minister Norman Baker has responsibility for tar sands issues, has released only two presentations made to it by Shell, both heavily redacted. The DfT rejected requests to release at least six other relevant documents on the grounds of commercial confidentiality and adverse effect on international relations, as did the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), where Shell also met ministers.
BP has lobbied ministers, too. Its vice president in Europe, Peter Mather, has been, in his own words, "bending the ear" of Baker. Mather also sent a letter in which he wrote: "The regulatory burden would be considerable at a time when the industry is already creaking under the weight of a heavy regulatory regime."
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said: "The scale of oil industry lobbying exposed in these documents is quite extraordinary. It's especially worrying that Baker held a secret meeting with Shell about this key European vote on tar sands. But worse still, he's now covering up what was discussed."
Colin Baines, toxic fuels campaign manager at the Co-operative, the UK mutual business group which targets tar sands as part of its climate change campaigning, said: "It is very disappointing that the UK government is supporting Canada's efforts and we hope it has a rethink and puts tackling climate change ahead of Canada's trade interests when it comes to vote on the European commission's commonsense proposal."
The documents were obtained by the Co-operative under environmental information regulations, a type of freedom of information law. They include letters to and from ministers, diplomatic correspondence and notes of meetings.
Baker said: "The government is staying true to its aspiration to be the greenest ever by seeking to secure the best deal it can for the environment from the discussions ongoing in the EU about the fuel quality directive. | <urn:uuid:419c494d-393c-4720-9248-d96cf078ff22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20111128/uk-canada-tar-sands-oil-sands-european-union-dirty-fuel-label-bp-shell-climate-change-durban | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973702 | 918 | 2.46875 | 2 |
Percy Wenrich was born in Joplin, Missouri on January 23, 1887. His mother taught him the organ and piano as a young boy and at the age of 21, Wenrich enrolled in the Chicago Music College. His first published songs were while still in college, Ashy Africa and Just Because Im From Missouri. After graduation, Wenrich worked in a Milwaukee store as a music demonstrator and staff writer for music publishing companies and then moved to New York where he wrote songs on Tin Pan Alley.
With his wife, Dolly Connolly, Wenrich routed in vaudeville for over 15 years, writing songs and collaborating with talented composers and lyricists throughout the country. He often worked with Harry Tobias as well as Alfred Bryan, Joe McCarthy, Stanley Murphy, Edward Madden, Jack Mahoney, Howard Johnson and Ray Peck.
In addition to the songs Wenrich wrote for his vaudeville act, he also produced three successful Broadway scores: Crinoline Girl, The Right Girl and Castles in the Air. He was also a charter member of the performing rights society ASCAP.
Highlights from the Wenrich catalog include Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet, Silver Bell, She Took Mothers Advice, Red Rose Rag, When You Wore a Tulip I Wore a Big Red Rose, Sweet Cider Time When You Were Mine, Where Do We Go From Here, Boys?, A Rainbow from the USA, Land of Romance and Lantern of Love. He also produced two of the greatest and most enduring ballads of his era, Moonlight Bay and Sail Along, Silvry Moon.
Percy Wenrich died on March 17, 1952 in New York City. | <urn:uuid:46d3311d-30ca-46af-8036-b8ed85009f42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://songwritershalloffame.org/index.php/exhibits/bio/C247 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972448 | 347 | 2.03125 | 2 |
People throughout Michiana are took time to honor veterans Sunday and even those not yet old enough to join the military themselves are doing their part.
Members of the Clay High School Junior ROTC honor guard performed the Tomb of the Unknown Solider walk starting at sunrise.
Until 8 p.m. Sunday night, it will hold the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the top and bottom of the hour.
Students hope to honor not only surviving veterans but also servicemen and women who never made it home.
“Today means to honor the people who have fought for our nation and the freedom it gives,” said Cadet Colonel Adam Jurek, Senior at Clay High School. “It’s my way of giving back by honoring them in what way I can before I do as they did, join the military.”
High schoolers stopped in front of the monument at the Military Honors Park, Every time they changed the guard. | <urn:uuid:c9794cb0-1f45-417f-841e-048f12853fb6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wndu.com/news/headlines/Clay_High_School_holds_Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Soldier_ceremony.html?site=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964595 | 197 | 1.546875 | 2 |
|1.||Tool On Deck|
"Tool On Deck" is an urban phrase used when you want to let people know you have gun. The word "tool" refers to the gun and the word "deck" refers to having your gun at the ready. The phrase was originated in the south in places like Miami & New Orleans. Was made popular by rapper Lil' Wayne on the song "9mm" on David Banners album "The Greatest Story Ever Told".
What? You wanna start some shit? TOOL ON DECK!
Don't worry, if they start something I got my "tool on deck". | <urn:uuid:0972b7fb-7497-4774-a7aa-638ff598ca08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tool%20on%20deck | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941944 | 129 | 1.539063 | 2 |
A local prosecutor's effort to train law enforcement officers on new laws and court decisions relevant to them got a boost this year thanks to officials with several state agencies. Henry County Commonwealth's Attorney Bob Bushnell has held training on new state laws that affect law enforcement officers annually since he became commonwealth's attorney in 1990, he said. A few years ago, the state Department of Criminal Justice Services approved allowing officers who take the training to receive in-service credits toward their annual training requirements, Bushnell said. Offering the credits boosted attendance because it gave officers an incentive to take part, he said. The training, generally held in early July, always includes information about new laws passed that year by the General Assembly. Such laws typically go into effect July 1. | <urn:uuid:22d6cd10-0adb-406c-a5c9-17a5d58e6004> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.apainc.org/(S(yt5irov0q4jx33blqddczwvs)X(1))/default.aspx?act=Newsletter.aspx&category=Current+News&newsletterid=1655&menugroup=Home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97754 | 152 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Parkland is ready to build a new high school. South Whitehall Township commissioners approved the project Wednesday, nearly two years after it was unveiled.
The school district had expected to begin construction in March and, under an energetic plan, would have opened the grades 9-12 building in 1998.
Delays, caused by long waits for state permits and conditions set by the township, have pushed back the expected opening of the $77 million high school to September 1999.
The school board will decide Tuesday when to break ground. Construction of the school, which is designed to hold 3,000 students, probably will begin in late September, said Assistant Superintendent Lee Kreidler.
It wasn't until this week that the state Department of Environmental Protection issued a permit allowing the district to build a sewage treatment plant on the 120-acre site.
Earlier in the summer, after months of negotiations, the state Department of Transportation approved the plan.
The district had protested PennDOT's initial request to improve about a dozen intersections near the school site on Cedar Crest Boulevard at Ritter and Orefield roads. PennDOT agreed to limit the improvements to two intersections bordering the school and the intersection of Cedar Crest Boulevard and Walbert Avenue.
The township Planning Commission attached 17 conditions to the plan when it recommended it for approval to the commissioners in February. The biggest obstacles were the outstanding permits, the school district's agreement to extend a township water line, and a waiver from a township requirement that the water system provide 2,000 gallons per minute for firefighting.
The last issue was resolved in the spring when the commissioners said they would accept the 1,300-gallon-per-minute water flow that the district's insurance carrier deemed adequate.
The school board awarded building contracts last month. It initiated the project in 1995 as a way to ease overcrowding at Parkland High School and to handle sharp enrollment increases that were projected to continue for 10 years.
When the new school is opened to an estimated 2,700 students, the current high school on Route 309 will be converted to a sixth- to eighth-grade middle school and Troxell Junior High School will close.
The district issued $35 million in bonds in 1996, mostly to fund the first phase of the project. It expects to borrow $41 million more next year. Taxes went up 1.6 mills in 1996 and 1.9 mills this year, mostly to cover the new debt. | <urn:uuid:0b5d2f65-2d69-4d84-b570-b4553a45c6f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.mcall.com/1997-08-22/news/3158564_1_school-site-school-board-school-district | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966505 | 496 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Part 2: Finca El Jaguar
In 2009, during our brief stopover in Managua, Nicaragua, my husband and I met Georges and Liliana Duriaux-Chavarría, the owners of El Jaguar, a fantastic cloud forest reserve and coffee farm near Jinotega in the north-central highlands of Nicaragua. We were immediately taken by both their charm and their dedication to bird conservation. There was no question we would visit them on our next trip to Nicaragua.
El Jaguar consists of about 240 acres, of which 80% is protected cloud forest reserve. This is beautiful old-growth forest with towering trees and thick multi-story growth.
Around 50 acres is coffee (in the foreground above, forest beyond). The coffee areas are broken up into plots separated or connected by forest or natural habitat patches. The coffee itself is grown among banana and other trees, but is not considered heavily shaded. This is because at an elevation of 4300 feet, the farm is covered by misty clouds part of nearly every day. The clouds provide the "shade" and the coffee would suffer from not enough light and a variety of fungal diseases if there were lots of trees planted with the coffee. So while El Jaguar does not qualify for Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification, they are Rainforest Alliance certified.
Over 270 bird species have been recorded at El Jaguar (we saw about 80 in our few days there). More than 50 are Neotropical migrants (those that primarily breed in the U.S. and Canada and winter in the tropics). This includes an amazing 27 species of "our" warblers -- Golden-winged Warbler, the endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler, and the Cerulean Warbler among them. Due to this rich bird life, El Jaguar was designated as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International in 2006.
Two winter bird banding stations are run by Georges and Lili at El Jaguar, one in the primary forest, one in the coffee area. Since 2009, El Jaguar has also collaborated with the Golden-winged Warbler Working Group to do regional surveys for this declining North American-breeding warbler. A similar project, the International Wood Thrush Conservation Alliance, is now being launched to benefit the Wood Thrush, and El Jaguar participated in the first workshop.
Wood Thrushes are one of the most common North American-breeding migrants found wintering at El Jaguar. Here is one captured in the nets at the coffee banding station. As part of the working group project, a unique combination of color bands is put on each Wood Thrush so that individuals can be identified without having to recapture them.
This species has declined an estimated 50% over its broad breeding range since the late 1970s. It is evident to us, having traveled in the Neotropics, that Wood Thrushes require mature forests in the winter. The remarkable forests at El Jaguar by far had the most Wood Thrushes we've seen in our travels. The banding program at El Jaguar (and Finca Esperanza Verde) has shown that individual Wood Thrushes return to the same places each winter. Further studies with new technology indicate that there is strong connectivity between particular nesting regions and specific wintering regions. Since RRBO has a history of working with Wood Thrushes, we are anxious to get involved in this conservation effort seeking to understand the linkages with breeding and wintering areas, and factors important to their survival. (Your donations provide the support to help us in these initiatives!)
If all that work isn't enough, in 2010, Georges and Lili received a Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act grant, through the US Fish and Wildlife Service and matched by the American Bird Conservancy. This grant will assist El Jaguar in reforesting neighboring farms and help community coffee farmers work towards certifying their coffee with Rainforest Alliance. The photo above shows the native tree nursery that is part of this project. Within the next few years, El Jaguar will have raised and distributed over 20,000 trees!
Of course, we always like seeing the tropical resident birds. Georges and Lili are now starting a program where they will band throughout the year in order to gather the same type of important survivorship data on resident species.
As always, I like seeing the tropical cousins of the thrushes that I study here at RRBO. Here is an Orange-billed Nightingale-thrush (Catharus aurantiirostris) getting measured.
Quail-doves are notoriously hard to see. This White-faced Quail-dove (Geotrygon albifacies) was captured in the forest nets. Due to the efforts of Georges and Lili, and their son Jean-Yves, to educate the surrounding community, elusive forest birds that are typically scarce because they are hunted are much more common and relatively easy to see at El Jaguar. On the short trail behind our cabin, we saw Violaceous and White-faced Quail-doves (Geotrygon albifacies), and had drop-dead looks at a strolling Little Tinamou (Crypturellus soui) and Highland Guans (Penelopina nigra).
In fact, the guans actually come to feed with the chickens! So do a few Gray-necked Wood-rails (Aramides cajanea).
We didn't do as much hands-on banding at El Jaguar as at Finca Esperanza Verde. They use a different protocol at El Jaguar, and while I am familiar with all the extra measurements they take, the young Nicaraguans who help Georges and Lili could process birds way faster.
Hopefully, I came in handy interpreting the banding and conservation projects to this group that came for a visit.
In trying to make ourselves useful, we also spent time working on putting together a dragonfly list for the property.
We only brought one net, so Darrin did all the catch-and-release. I just posed with the net, but did a lot of ID work.
We were able to find and identify over a dozen species, including this very gorgeous Rhionaeschna jalapensis.
We also photographed and identified over two dozen butterfly species, many of which were new for the El Jaguar list.
We took perhaps eight photos of clearwinged butterflies, which turned out to represent seven different species and several families! This is Greta morgane oto.
We are still working on compiling our lists for Georges and Lili (and then could use a vacation from our vacation). It was a productive trip, and if anybody is interested in the logistics of travel to Nicaragua or El Jaguar, feel free to drop me a line. Here are a few links that may be of interest as well:
- The El Jaguar web site
- My more coffee-centric post at Coffee & Conservation, with more photos!
- An interview with Georges via Rainforest Alliance
- A review of El Jaguar coffee from a couple of years ago at Coffee & Conservation (the new crop will be available this spring at Whole Foods as part of one of their blends; I'll keep everyone posted)
Thank you Georges, Lili, and Jean-Yves! | <urn:uuid:ad40eba9-27e7-4422-8921-624673de02c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://net-results.blogspot.com/2011/03/more-shade-coffee-birds-and-banding_23.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956524 | 1,513 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Unfortunately Our Stay Arrive Guaranteed Does not cover this particular species. It is a very delicate shipper!!
The Fathead or Sunburst Anthiaslives either solitarily or in a small haremic group, mainly under overhangs or in caves. Another plus relative to its close relations is this species aquarium hardiness. Given some easy provisions, this can be a gorgeous addition to most any peaceful reef system.
The placement of this species with the Hawkfishes centered on its morphology (structure), very much more like the cirrhitids than Anthiines externally, with a high and deep head and long pectoral fins. The species observed behavior would have likewise not placed it with the Fancy Basses... more sedentary, non-schooling.
For Fathead Anthias fish, should still be sizeable to accommodate plenty of cover, caves for their selection, especially should one be getting more than one male. A hundred gallons is about right, with lots of live rock, and preferably subdued lighting, or at least a shadier region out of the typical "noon sun in the tropics" conditions most hobbyists supply. Remember, Fathead Anthias are collected in scuba depth waters, in cave-like settings.
If keeping more than one Fathead, it is ideal to have a mated pair. A male often exhibits territorial behavior when housed with other males.
Maximum Size: The Fathead Anthias grows up to 4 inches.
General Size Specifications: Males to about five inches overall, females to three in the wild. More like half these dimensions in captivity.
Minimum Tank Size Suggested: The Ventralis Anthias prefers a tank of over 50 gallons
Water Conditions: Needs to be high and consistent. Live rock, macro-algae and if you can an accessory sump/refugium with ongoing crustacean co-culture will keep your zooplanktivorous livestock in good health and activity.
Habitat: Fathead Anthias are found near Western Pacific; southern Japan, Taiwan, south to New Caledonia, the Great Barrier Reef/Australia, over to Fiji and Micronesia (Palau). Typically in fifty plus foot depths near coral reefs under rocks, in caves.
Feeding and Diet: The Fatheads eating habits have been mentioned. They consume crustaceans, worms, larval fishes by "wait and attack" methods. A refugium, live rock, that will supply "surprise" feedings is of distinct advantage in their nutritional upkeep. Barring this, frequent small feedings of small or finely divided meaty food items (a few times per day) will keep your Sunburst Anthias full and alert.
Diseases, Prevention/Treatment Like most Anthias, Fathead are either healthy or surely gone to all the way gone by the time you "catch" them succumbing to the usual reef fish diseases. Do use a small flashlight to examine Fathead daily. Infectious and parasitic disease are of course best warded off by prevention: good maintenance procedures, regular testing, and nutritional "boosting" with a vitamin and iodide solution added to their food and water about once a week.
As you might assume, for such small fishes, this species is sensitive to copper and harsh dye/medicine concentrations. Take care to keep levels of these at "just therapeutic" should you find yourself using them with this fish.
Breeding: Fathead Anthias species all share the trait of being hermaphroditic. If a dominant male perishes, the largest female of the group will often morph to take its place. | <urn:uuid:878109b3-5a2c-4f41-8144-987f68090552> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.freshmarine.com/fathead-anthias.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924744 | 750 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Cassandra was the ancient Greek prophetess who was cursed to always prophesy the truth, but never be believed. Because, like Sybil (similar to the Roman oracle the Sibyl) ‘Cassandra’ is a fairly common name still, it’s a perfect option for writers wanting a suitably symbolic name for a prophetically-inclined character, so it’s used fairly often. Sometimes it’s used just because it’s associated with prophecy, but other times, Cassandra’s particular problem is more relevant. In The X-Files, for example, Cassandra is the name of a woman who claims to be an alien abductee and, of course, only Mulder believes her. This occurred in Season 5, though, and then she reappeared in Season 6 with a different story and… I have to confess I was already totally lost by the arc plot by the beginning of Season 3. I love the individual episodes of The X-Files, and great stand-alone episodes continued to appear right up to the end, but even the weird summing up in the series finale couldn’t clear up what on earth was going on with the arc plot.
Anyway, the most touching use of Cassandra’s problem has to be this seventh season episode of Buffy. Like so many other series, Buffy fell prey to the tendency to try to be ‘darker’ by, basically, being more depressing in the later series (I remember The West Wing doing a similar storyline to one of its greatest ever episodes, Season 2’s ‘Shibboleth’, in Season 5’s ‘Han’, but altering the outcome to make it really depressing). Season 7 had its lighter moments, and a lot of rather dull but not overtly depressing stuff about potential Slayers, but it also included a couple of really ‘dark’ – for which read ‘depressing’ – episodes. Oddly enough, though, they were also two of the season’s best.
In ‘Help’, Buffy encounters a schoolgirl who is completely convinced that she is going to die. Buffy is determined to prevent this and most of the episode centres around the gang’s attempts to stop her being sacrificed by a bunch of unpleasant guys much as Cordelia and Buffy nearly were in Season 2’s lighter ‘Reptile Boy’. They are successful, but at the end of the episode, the girl dies anyway, of congenital heart failure. It’s a rather more effective reminder of the point hammered home with the subtlety of an ice pick (I was going to say sledgehammer, but that’s such a cliché) in Season 5’s arc plot centred around Buffy’s mother’s cancer – there are some things, and some deaths, even the Slayer can’t prevent.
Buffy might have realised that her efforts were going to be in vain if she’d known her Greek mythology because the girl’s name is Cassie – clearly, short for Cassandra. Cassie insists throughout the episode that she is going to die and there is nothing anyone can do about it, but not a single person believes her, because they are all convinced they can save her. Unlike Greek mythology (in which, in some versions, Troy burns partly because no one will listen to Cassandra), their insistence on refusing to believe her does do some good, because they catch and stop the bad guys, who could have gone on to hurt someone else after Cassie, someone less doomed. However, the essential point that Cassie is tragically aware of her own doom, completely unable to prevent it and also completely unable to get anyone to take her seriously is terribly poignant and terribly sad, and comes right out of the mythical Cassandra’s curse. Knowing the future is bad enough, but not being taken seriously when you know the future is even worse.
Cassie’s form turns up again when the First Evil visits Willow (and possibly other members of the Scooby Gang) in ‘Conversations with Dead People', but since that isn’t really Cassie (and was supposed to be Tara originally) it’s not really relevant to her particular story. Her main episode remains a rather nice and effective stand-alone story in which the mythological trope is used to maximum tear-jerking effect and, despite being really depressing, the episode really works as a commentary on helplessness and frustration.
(And the picture at the top of the page doesn't really have anything to do with this episode, it's just awesome).
All Buffy/Angel reviews | <urn:uuid:e0688445-2ecf-451a-abaa-6e8ef2fa4f33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://popclassicsjg.blogspot.com/2011/12/buffy-vampire-slayer-help.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972192 | 969 | 1.671875 | 2 |
|Term Paper Title
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Shakespeare’s Macbeth is set in medieval Scotland, and has been produced by many different directors in the 20th century. Roman Polanski directed the 1971 production of Macbeth. It is interpreted to be a blood-thirsty vicious 70s thriller, and accrues that “Good always Prevails”. However the 1996 production by Jeremy Freeston is expressed as a more subtle and delicate production that suggests readings such as “Evil is the wrong way to build Social Status”. Both the productions included similar and different techniques used to construct these readings. Like the different uses of Verbal expressions, Non-verbal expressions, Script and Relationships. These techniques are used by the producers to construct different readings/interpretations in order to change people’s interpretations of the films due to their background and history. Act 1 Scene 7 is set at Macbeth’s castle, where Macbeth himself is considering killing King Duncan, who would be the guest for the evening…! The technical aspects of the film are also important, like Tone of voice, Costume, Setting, Lighting, Shot Construction, Camera Angles, Gestures, Delivery of Script, Editing of Script, and contribute greatly to the way the scene is interpreted.
In Polanski’s production, MacBeth is constructed as a dual-minded blood-thirsty killer that once “Draws first blood, will draw again”. He is constructed like this so that the movie can set out to be the bloody thriller that it is. During the film, his use of verbal and non-verbal communication seems realistically absent during the scene. This may have been to psyche himself up for the homicide that he was about to commit. The script is altered several times in this production, and pieces of material have been excluded from the film. This may have been because if the entire script was read, word for word, it would create the wrong interpretations that Polanski was trying to create.
The Technical Aspect of this film was imperative to the interpretation and readings that stemmed from these underlying focuses. To a large extent, the tone of voice of the characters is a very important factor to these constructions. Macbeth seemed very submissive, frightened and Unconfident in his tone of voice, and this may have been to construct him as a very submissive person. However, Lady Macbeth on the other hand was very confident, speaking out to Macbeth to go through with the plan, but in no way aggressive towards Macbeth. She stated if he did not kill Duncan, then he would not be a real “Man”. This may have been for Gender construction and domination in the film. At the same time, Lighting and Shot Construction are just important. Half-way through the scene, a window gushes open, and a loud “BANG” of lightning sound, and lighting effect the room, putting out all candles. Out of this, it is interpreted that “Evil” is arising, and something “Bad” is going to occur. This seems to be a common stereotyped viewpoint of lightning, thunder and most commonly “Darkness” that they are “Evil tokens”! An effect of silencing the King and all others during Macbeth’s Soliloquies is to provide an invisible barrier between Macbeth and everyone else. But it could be interpreted that silencing of the King could have a direct correlation to the ultimate silencing of him forever, which is ‘Death’. Camera techniques took shots of the castle being struck by lighting, which again ties in with common stereotypes.
Read entire document | <urn:uuid:0041e4a2-4710-41b6-b357-7ada08c48b0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.digitaltermpapers.com/b78.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966959 | 781 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Semantic technology at the London Olympics
The BBC is using dynamic semantic publishing technologies to bring the Olympics to the world.
The Summer Olympics and Paralympics
The eyes of the world are on London. The city is hosting the Summer Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games until September 2012. (http://www.london2012.com).
Those who can't attend in person will follow the Games through the media. Although many will rely on their local TV stations and websites to track how their national athletes are doing, the UK's own BBC expects to have a huge presence during the Games. Knowing that its Olympic website will be inundated with Olympics-minded visitors, the BBC enlisted the help of fluid Operations to handle its content.
Dynamic semantic publishing
At the Semantic Technologies & Business 2012 conference, held in San Francisco, June 3-7, Jem Rayfield, Lead Technical Analyst, BBC Future Media, and Peter Haase, Lead Architect, fluid Operations, explained how they were using dynamic semantic publishing to enable the BBC to cover the Games in a visually interesting manner in almost real time.
As Rayfield put it, the BBC's challenge is "Far too many web pages for far too few journalists." The site has one page for each athlete, country, discipline, venue, and team. Keep in mind the 2012 Olympics includes 304 events, held in many different locations throughout the UK and 36 sports, both individual and teams. That adds up to at least 15,000 pages. Additionally the BBC is offering 27 live streams from individual sporting events. Page views are expected to be in the millions.
Linked data and triples
To handle the workflow, BBC journalists are using fluidOp's Information Workbench. The architecture of the Workbench relies on storing data as triples and using Linked Data to facilitate authoring and publishing. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) provides much of the background information, but as the Games progress, the system will be populated event by event. Quality checks are in place, starting with journalists viewing instance data. (Instance data describes specific data points, such as an Olympic athlete.) They can accept or reject the data. A subeditor then edits the instance data and a media manager both edits instance data and approves or rejects the previously edited instance data. The data architect/librarian, after editing both instance data and ontology data, publishes the content. The BBC is using an open ontology, which Ontotext helped develop - and which anyone can view here.
Rayfield is excited about using semantic technology to support data creation, maintenance, authoring, and publishing. The dynamic nature of the Information Workbench complements the fast moving nature of the Games. It also accommodates visual representations of the games, from an interactive map to graph views of results and standings. He's particularly excited that dynamic semantic publishing "will allow a handful of journalists to populate thousands of pages."
Marydee Ojala edits ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals and is a frequent speaker at international conferences such as Internet Librarian International.
Picture courtesy of spcbrass via Flickr. | <urn:uuid:9b5848a8-b605-49c9-8e3e-7f3abcde0ab1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Semantic-technology-at-the-London-Olympics-84073.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917697 | 640 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Tunisia achieved independency from France in 1956, and a one-party state was established by the president Habib Bourgiba. In 1987 Bourgiba was removed from power and replaced by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
After a shorter period of massive popular uprisings president Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 2011 after 23 years of ruling the country, and the successful Tunisian revolution sparked a wave of protests and regime changes in the Middle East.
The first election after Ben Ali’s fall took place on October 23 2011, appointing members to a Constituent Assemblyassigned to rewrite Tunisia’s constitution. The Islamic party Ennahda won 41 percent of the total vote.
0-14 years (women)
15-64 years (women)
65 years and over
|Life expectancy at birth (women)||77,17|
|Total literacy rate||78%|
|Total literacy rate among females||78%|
|School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education) for women||15 years|
|Female enrolment at higher education*||59,5%|
*Higher education is the degree after achieving the high-school diploma
Click on link to view source
By Nadia Zaabi & Rikke Hostrup Haugbølle | <urn:uuid:f81ba846-b4d7-43f6-9671-dfdb6a2d67a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.womendialogue.org/country/tunisia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923261 | 274 | 2.0625 | 2 |
So there’s a new startup in town, The Calyx Institute, which is raising money to create a privacy-protecting ISP and phone company. I think that’s cool, and have kicked in a little cash, and I wanted to offer up some perspective on the market for privacy, having tried to do this before.
From 1999 until 2002, I was Director of Technology and Most Evil Genius at Zero-Knowledge Systems, a Montreal-based startup devoted to delivering privacy-enhanced internet services. Zero-Knowledge raised approximately $71 million dollars to deliver internet privacy, and then had to pivot its business model (before pivoting was trendy). Because management pivoted and found value in what we had built, it didn’t deliver on the privacy dream, but the company did make good money for shareholders.
It’s my hope that Calyx can deliver more privacy to more people over a longer time, and make money for shareholders as it does so. To do that, they’ll need to move from the excitement accompanying their announcements to delivering products in the market. So let me turn to:
The market for privacy
There’s a lot of excitement. Nearly a thousand people have donated cash. They’ve put together a nice advisory board. That’s because people care about privacy. A lot of folks claim that there’s no market for privacy (pointing to things like Zero-Knowledge), but I believe that they’re wrong. There is a market, and it’s hard to tap into.
One of the key reasons it’s hard to tap into the market is because privacy means different things to different people. It means so many things that there’s a good book on “Understanding Privacy.” (My review.) So, does privacy mean the same thing to consumers as it will to Calyx? Resisting demands from 193 national intelligence services is great, but what about protecting me from advertisers? The disjointed things people mean by privacy make it challenging to ensure that you line up with people’s concerns.
Another issue is that privacy is rarely a thing sold in and of itself. Privacy is an aspect of some service, either by providing a privacy-protecting version of the service, or privacy protection against the service. A privacy-protecting ISP has to offer me ISP service equivalent to what I get today, or some bundle that makes sense for me. For example, I pay extra because Speakeasy didn’t demand my SSN, and had technically competent people answering the support phones. They’re less awesome since Megapath bought them, but they’re not Comcast, and they’re not running for most infuriating company in the country. Tor is an example of privacy protection against your ISP. You have to get the whole bundle right, which is likely going to be harder than getting the bundle right without privacy. Of course, sometimes it’s easier. By billing my credit card, Speakeasy doesn’t need to collect my SSN, doesn’t need to protect it, and doesn’t need to pay for a credit check. (They do have to pay a monthly cut to the credit card company, but Comcast probably also pays that for most of their customers.)
That said, consumers do care about privacy, and do spend money on it when they can understand the threat and defense. It requires entrepreneurs and hackers willing to experiment. and eventually someone’s going to make a boatload of money doing so.
For more in-depth comments on this, see my home page, especially the end of 2002 and the start of 2003.
With that, let me turn to some questions about…
What Calyx is doing
Let me start with two quotes, which is the sum of my knowledge:
This project’s goal is to raise funds for my nonprofit organization, Calyx Institute, which will launch a privacy-focused Internet Service Provider and mobile phone service using end-to-end encryption technology.
Through other partnerships, we are poised to offer Internet service in 70 markets in the US using wireless spectrum which we will bundle with end-to-end encrypted Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology in order to keep the customer’s data as private as possible. The next products on the roadmap include hosted email and cloud storage/sync systems that utilize public key cryptography so that only the user possesses the key required to decrypt their email or files. This means that the provider (Calyx) will not be able to read your email or files even if it wanted to. And if Calyx can’t read it, it can’t be targeted by unconstitutional surveillance tactics. (Both quotes from “The Calyx Institute fundraising page“)
So running a privacy-preserving ISP is great. And again, I want what I have to say to be heard in the context that I’ve given them money to help them get going.
My first questions are around the ISP part of the business. Is this an ISP in the form of “I can buy a DSL line from them?” (or otherwise, get internet service directly?) If it’s a partnership, how are we protected from the partner? Encryption is all well and good, but if I don’t have cover traffic, then my use or non-use of the service gives out information. Someone at the entry node (say the partner) who choses to collaborate with someone who can watch the exit node (say the NSA, or the FSB/KGB) can figure things out over time. This issue is fundamental to all low-latency internet-based privacy systems, including the Freedom Network that Zero-Knowledge operated, Tor, etc. The fix is approximately sufficient and continuous cover traffic that exceeds the bandwidth in use.
The second comment, which derives from that is “if Calyx can’t read it, it can’t be targeted by … surveillance tactics.” That is simply untrue. An observer which can see more can apply more clever analysis. I’m willing to forgive this as an aspirational statement today, but it’s important for privacy providers to ensure that they don’t over-promise.
My next question is why New York? Because the founder is there? The NYPD has done some bad things in the civil liberties camp, including for example surveillance of mosques without cause, kettling and rounding up protesters and bystanders without cause during the 2004 Republican Convention. Does New York have the most favorable laws in the US for this sort of thing?
When we get to the phone company idea, I’m in favor of the idea, but operating a nation-wide mobile phone service is expensive. If you don’t do so yourself, you can operate a “Mobile Virtual Network Operator.” But if Calyx does so, then the network operator from whom it leases bandwidth can see IMEI numbers and otherwise fingerprint phones. There are some interesting challenges here, and we need to know more to understand what Calyx can deliver.
There is a market for privacy, and there is a market for private internet services. Calyx has an opportunity to tap into such a market, but it’s tricky and complicated to do so successfully. There are a lot of hard questions to be addressed along the way. However, it’s important to remember that privacy is an important and cherished value for excellent reasons. Calyx is unlikely to be either perfect, or as bad as the main players in today’s market. So they deserve your support, your attention, and perhaps even your money. Why not go donate? | <urn:uuid:86c1242a-e7a3-4faf-9275-f7d6ef4a5943> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2012/04 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947272 | 1,607 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Margaret Floyd answered:There has been ample evidence that the nutritional value of produce grown organically is greater than its conventionally grown counterparts. Let me share some of the other reasons why I believe it's important to eat organic:
Find out more about this book: Eat Naked: Unprocessed, Unpolluted, and Undressed Eating for a Healthier, S...There has been ample evidence that the nutritional value of produce grown organically is greater than its conventionally grown counterparts. Let me share some of the other reasons why I believe it's important to eat organic: For the soil.... More
- For the soil. The quality of our soil is slowly deteriorating. In traditional farming, before the advent of chemical fertilizers and herbicides, farmers used crop rotation to ensure sustainably rich soil. Different crops pull different nutrients from the soil, and some crops replenish the soil's nutrient stores. Conventional, industrial farming techniques favor monocrops (the practice of growing the same crop on the same land year after year) and pursue high yields. These factors require aggressive pesticide and fertilizer use that ultimately depletes rather than replenishes the soil. On the other hand, organic farming builds up organic matter in the soil. This process improves overall soil quality, which improves the quality of the food grown, and ultimately benefits the farmers and the environment.
- For our health. For all the debate about whether pesticides affect the nutritional value of a food, there is little doubt that they negatively affect our health when consumed. After all, the whole purpose of pesticides is to kill. The Environmental Protection Agency lists 175 chemical pesticides that are confirmed, likely, or probable carcinogens or have "suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential." Interestingly, all research on the health effects of pesticides has been done on each chemical in isolation.
- For the health of our farmers. If pesticides are harmful in the trace amounts found in the produce when it gets to our kitchen, it's nothing compared to the effects on the health of the farmers and laborers who are working with these substances on a daily basis. Pesticide use has been shown to damage the health of the farmers growing produce, and perhaps even more tragically, the health of their children.
- For the environment. On conventional farms, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers wash away in the rain, polluting nearby streams and rivers and harming local wildlife. Organic farming doesn't have this problem with runoff, and it doesn't rely on petroleum-based fertilizers. This means it reduces our reliance on fossil fuels. Interestingly, recent research has shown that organic farming practices actually sequester carbon dioxide, making it a component of climate-change mitigation.
Organic foods have not been shown to be healthier or more nutritious than conventionally grown/raised foods.
Studies have shown that organic farming can help the environment by reducing pesticide use, energy use, greenhouse emissions, and by increasing biodiversity in fields.
However, keep in mind, that not ALL organic foods are locally grown. If the organic food that you purchased had to travel from Turkey and Mexico in order for you to eat “organic”, the food miles that it travels may negate some of the environmental benefits described above.Organic foods have not been shown to be healthier or more nutritious than conventionally grown/raised foods. Studies have shown that organic farming can help the environment by reducing pesticide use, energy use, greenhouse emissions, and by... More | <urn:uuid:2c91f45a-3df7-49db-bb8e-481a3b248d1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharecare.com/question/what-reasons-eat-organic-food | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942788 | 697 | 2.859375 | 3 |
A New Bed Bug Volunteering Project
In Kreta Ayer, Singapore a new volunteering program has been created – the Stop Pests Project. This projected two-month program, beginning on September 11, 2011, aims to help clean 150 bed bug infested houses on Block 51 – a main rental block in Kreta Ayer.
‘Stop Pests Project’ targets 150 bed bug infested homes
Many elderly and poor individuals, living in this area, are unable to afford getting rid of bed bugs in their houses and so they live alongside the blood-sucking critters. This Stop Pests Project has already racked up corporate investors and has taken public donations to help cover the estimated cost of $250,000.
The Stop Pest Project has employed an Origin Exterminators’ beagle to help locate the bed bugs within the many houses. This use of dogs to find bed bugs is a new practice that has been growing both within the United States and out. Once the bed bugs have been located, over 100 volunteers have begun packing up houses for extermination.
This two-month project is only a test run of what could be a huge campaign to help clean the city of infestations and perhaps prevent bed bugs in the future. In addition to increasing the number of houses targeted by this volunteer program, head of the Stop Pest Project, Dr. Neo hopes to eventually have enough funding to replace the infested furniture and bed bug ridden mattresses.
Read more about protecting your mattresses from infestations at http://lnk.nu/bedbug.com/1s15.aspx | <urn:uuid:c917eeee-5051-4c8f-87ab-4fde6078ba6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bedbugcom.wordpress.com/tag/pest-control/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93873 | 331 | 2.125 | 2 |
I was in Moab this past weekend, surrounded by redrock palisades and seeing, just to the southeast, the looming La Sal Mountains. The week before, I'd been farther south in Utah, home to some of the loveliest national forests in the country.
So it was with great joy that I learned Monday the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a plea from Wyoming and a Colorado mining group to reverse earlier rulings upholding the federal "roadless rule" that protects about 58 million acres across the Western United States.
In Utah, that means Ashley, Caribou-Targhee, Dixie, Sawtooth, Manti-La Sal and Uinta-Wasatch-Cache national forests are protected from road building, mining, drilling and most logging.
And while the likes of state Rep. Mike Noel are probably tearing their hair out, the decision preserves those forests for deer, elk, mountain lions, beavers, bears and the water that sustains them. The same can be said for those of us who hunt, fish, hike or just marvel at the beauty of mile after mile of pristine land.
In Utah, "multiple use" is political rhetoric for bulldozers, drilling rigs and ATVs everywhere. An associated theory is that the state must not forgo the ability to extract ever-growing amounts of oil, gas, coal and, eventually, tar sands. If it's bad for big business, such thinking goes, it's bad for Utah.
But under the roadless rule, there can be limited timber harvesting, some livestock grazing and even OHV riding. Some oil and gas development would be allowed as long as it didn't require new roads.
Of course, the high court's decision could give a moral boost to the lawmakers who somehow believe that Utah has the right to claim nearly all federal lands within its borders. It's patently untrue, given Utah's Enabling Act, which required residents to "forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries."
Still, the land grabbers remain willing to spend millions on a lost cause. That's more than a shame; it's an insult to the intelligence of Utahns who understand and honor the relationship between state and federal forces trying to protect what we and tourists love about the state.
Besides, the feds have opened up thousands of acres of eastern Utah to drilling. The state allowed a coal company to dig an open pit coal mine on private land in southern Utah, and the company wants to expand into Bureau of Land Management land near Bryce Canyon National Park.
This does nothing for Panguitch, where businesses catering to tourists have closed amid the ceaseless rumbling of huge coal trucks on the two-lane Highway 89 through town.
In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court has done Utah and other states a huge favor. By protecting roadless areas in national forests, it's protecting what makes this state the stunningly beautiful place it is and must remain.
Peg McEntee is a news columnist. Reach her at firstname.lastname@example.org, facebook.com/pegmcentee and Twitter: @pegmcentee. | <urn:uuid:991e7db7-ba77-48e5-8841-f44216dc620d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/55003901-90/utah-mcentee-state-roadless.html.csp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958644 | 658 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Closing Cost FAQ’s
Closing Costs In addition to the down payment, you’ll also have to pay closing costs – Closing costs are miscellaneous fees charged by those involved with the home sale, including your lender, title company, surveyor, local government office, etc. These costs are significant, especially after you’ve already had to come up with a lot of cash for the down payment. Take a look at our Closing Costs FAQ’s to learn more about these costs.
- What are Closing Costs?
- Now that you have secured a mortgage loan and completed the necessary appraisal and inspections, it’s time to sign the documents and pay the closing costs that will make the house your legal property. How much will closing cost you? Typical closing costs run from 3 to 5 percent of your loan amount. In all likelihood, you have already paid some of these fees to pull credit reports, apply for the loan or, as earnest money, a prepaid portion of your down payment. All other unpaid fees and deposits come due at closing.
It is essential at closing to compare your settlement costs to the good faith estimate provided to you by your lender shortly after your loan was approved. Let it be your guide to flag unfamiliar entries or excessive charges. Also, be certain that the fees you have paid are reflected as credits, not debits, on your settlement documents. Otherwise, you could inadvertently pay them twice. There are four categories of closing costs:
- Lender fees: Lender fees help lenders cover their internal costs for originating a loan. These fees enable the lender to cover its expenses related to loan originator compensation, processing the loan, underwriting the loan, and preparing the documents for the loan. There are other costs that the lender incurs in completing a loan for a borrower. Lenders may also include administration or coordination fees to cover these additional costs.
- Third-party costs: Third-party costs are expenses paid to unrelated third parties include charges for attorneys, title search and insurance, homeowner’s or hazard insurance, flood certification, appraisal, termite and other inspections. Generally speaking, lenders have little control over fees set by third-party providers.
- Escrow and interest costs: These costs include advance payments into an escrow account to cover homeowner’s insurance, real estate taxes, loan interest and private mortgage insurance, if any. Escrow accounts also may hold interim interest, or the daily rate of mortgage interest you pay from closing through the end of that month.
- Government fees: Buying a home is not only a big investment, it is also a matter of public record. The property information and the loan information are required to be filed at the county courthouse or other local government recording office. These fees cover government fees including transfer taxes, deed recording, and state and local mortgage taxes.
- What are typical Lender Fees?
- Lender fees help lenders cover their internal costs for originating a loan. These fees enable the lender to cover its expenses related to loan originator compensation, processing the loan, underwriting the loan, and preparing the documents for the loan. There are other costs that the lender incurs in completing a loan for a borrower. Lenders may also include administration or coordination fees to cover these additional costs. Lender Fees can be broken into one or five categories:
- Application / Administration Fee: The application fee is charged by lenders to cover overhead and administrative costs associated with loan origination.
- Origination Fee: This is the main fee that a lender charges to make money on a loan. The origination fee is stated in “percentage of the loan amount”. For example, if you are refinancing $200,000 and the origination fee is 1.0%, the total origination fee would be $2,000 for your loan.
- Processing Fee: Mortgage lenders charge a processing fee to cover the cost of processing the loan. Processing a loan is the process of preparing a loan file for underwriting. In order to prepare a loan for underwriting, a processor will gather all of the required income and asset documentation, review the documents for accuracy and completeness, verify employment of the borrower, and verify the reported bank deposits.
- Underwriting Fee: Lenders charge an underwriting fee to cover the expense of underwriting, closing, and funding a loan. Underwriting a file requires a careful examination and review of a loan file. Underwriters are responsible for ensuring that the loan meets the requirements as set by investors and government sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This fee also covers other costs associated with Funding and Closing the loan.
- Loan Points: Discount or loan points are fees paid to a mortgage lender at closing in order to lower your mortgage rate. Each discount point generally costs 1.0% of the total loan amount and depending on the term of the loan, each point lowers your mortgage rate by one-eighth to one one-quarter of your interest rate. Although this fee is included in Lender Fees, the borrowers determine whether they want to purchase any discount points for the borrower’s own benefit.
- Flood Determination Fee / Certification: If your home is in a special flood hazard area where flood insurance is mandated, lenders cannot offer you a mortgage loan unless you buy flood insurance. Regardless, your lender may charge a fee to find out whether the home is in a flood hazard area. Flood insurance protects the lender if flooding damages or destroys your home.
- What are typical Third Party Costs?
- Third-party costs are expenses paid to unrelated third parties include charges for attorneys, title search and insurance, homeowner’s or hazard insurance, flood certification, appraisal, termite and other inspections. Generally speaking, lenders have little control over fees set by third-party providers. Some of the primary Third Party Costs include the following:
- Lender’s title insurance: Lender’s title insurance is protection against loss arising from problems connected to the title to your property. Mortgage lenders will always require title insurance and fees will vary depending upon the size of the loan, the property location, and the title company used by the lender.
- Homeowner’s Insurance: Sometimes called Hazard Insurance, this is the insurance you pay to cover possible damages to your home and other items. If you buy a home, you will normally pay the first year’s insurance when you close the transaction. If you are buying a condominium, your Homeowners’ Association Fees normally cover this insurance.
- Appraisal Fee: The appraisal is required to determine the fair market value of the home. A home appraisal is always required by a lender before loan approval is given, to ensure that the mortgage loan amount is not more than the value of the home and property. The lender also wants to be certain the pre-qualified the Loan-to-Value ratio remains intact.
- Settlement / Closing Fee: A fee must be paid to a settlement agent, typically a title company, that will prepare documents, calculate figures, and oversee proper execution of closing documents.
- Home Inspection Fee: When homes are sold an inspection is often recommended and in some cases the contract may even be contingent upon an acceptable inspection report. This fee covers the cost of an inspector to check the dwelling for any structural problems or issues related to termites, structural, or any other potential problems with a home.
- Survey Fee: Lenders and title insurers often require a surveyor to conduct a survey of your property to define the property size and boundaries and to see if any part of the building or other improvements are “encroaching” on a neighbor’s yard — or the other way around. They are also looking to see if there are any setback violations or other material matters that are considered problematic.
- Attorney Fee: Both the homebuyer and the seller might have their own legal representation to prepare and record legal documents. Frequently, however, where an attorney is acting as a settlement agent, there may only be one involved in the closing. In some states, including Texas, an attorney is required to review all purchase and refinance transactions prior to closing.
- What are typical Escrow and Interest Costs?
- Lenders typically require that you set aside money in an escrow account to pay for property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, and flood insurance (if applicable). Lenders use escrow funds to ensure that these items/expenses are paid on time and to protect their interest in your home. With an escrow account, money is held by the lender or its agent, which then pays the taxes and insurance bills when they are due. At settlement, you may need to provide funds for this account, depending on when payments will be due. For example, if you buy your home in August and property taxes are due the following January, you will need to deposit funds into your escrow account at settlement so that you can cover tax payments when they are due in January.
- Homeowner’s Insurance: Sometimes called Hazard Insurance, this is the insurance you pay to cover possible damages to your home and other related items. Lenders require that all homes with a mortgage be covered by a Homeowner’s Insurance policy.
- Property Taxes: Most jurisdictions assess taxes on real property, which are usually payable at a specified date annually. Since all but a tiny fraction of real estate transactions close on a date other than this one specified annual date, most transactions must include an adjustment to assure that both the seller and the buyer end up paying their share of the annual property tax, proportionate to the percentage of the year that each has ownership of the property.
- Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI): If your down payment is less than 20% of the value of the house, the lender will usually require mortgage insurance. The insurance policy covers the lender’s losses if you do not make the loan payments. Typically, you will pay a PMI premium monthly along with each month’s mortgage payment. Your PMI can be canceled at your request, in writing, when you reach 20% equity in your home (based on your original purchase price) if your mortgage payments are current and you have a good payment history. By federal law your PMI payments will automatically stop when you acquire 22% equity in your home (based on the original appraised value of the house) as long as your mortgage payments are current.
- What are typical Government Fees?
- Buying a home is not only a significant investment, it is also a matter of public record. The property information and the loan information are required to be filed at the county courthouse or other local government recording office. Some common fees associated with the public record include the following:
Recording Fees: This is a fee paid to a local governmental entity to record the mortgage or deed of trust, and title documents, in an official registry. The fee is whatever the entity charges. While it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it is not negotiable anywhere.
Transfer Taxes, Document or Transaction Stamps: These are government charges based on the amount of the mortgage and, often, also on the purchase price. Depending on your location, there could be a city, county or state tax involved, or some combination. | <urn:uuid:c906a832-3920-46bb-8deb-47fd0ae6784c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanhfm.com/educational-center/closing-cost-faqs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953768 | 2,319 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Fed up with waiting, President Barack Obama announced Saturday he would bypass a vacationing Senate and name 15 people to key administration jobs, wielding for the first time the blunt political tool known as the recess appointment.
The move immediately deepened the divide between the Democratic president and Republicans in the Senate following a long, bruising fight over health care. Obama revealed his decision by blistering Republicans, accusing them of holding up nominees for months solely to try to score a political advantage on him.
"I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government," Obama said in a statement.
The 15 appointees to boards and agencies include the contentious choice of union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans had blocked his nomination on grounds he would bring a radical pro-union agenda to the job, and they called on Obama not to appoint Becker over the recess.
Obama went ahead anyway, while also choosing a second member for the labor board so that four of its five slots will be filled. The board, which referees labor-management disputes, has had a majority of its seats vacant for more than two years, slowing its work and raising questions about the legality of its rulings.
Overall, Obama's appointments will take place throughout the week, allowing people to make the transition to their new jobs, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. The news of Becker's appointment drew the bulk of the ire from Republicans.
"Once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress," said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's foe in the 2008 presidential election. "This is clear payback by the administration to organized labor."
Both Republican and Democratic presidents have made recess appointments, which circumvents the Senate's authority to confirm nominees, when they could not overcome delays. President George W. Bush made more than 170 such appointments in his two-term presidency. President Bill Clinton made nearly 140.
Obama had been on record as warning of recess appointments if the Senate didn't act. He followed through at the end of a week in which his political standing was significantly bolstered by the party-line passage of a historic health care bill, a student loan overhaul and a hard-fought nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
The White House dropped the news in a press release on a quiet Saturday, with Obama at Camp David and lawmakers home in their districts.
The recess appointments mean the 15 people could serve in their jobs through the end of 2011, when the next Senate finishes its term. A recess appointment ends at the completion of the next Senate session or when a person is nominated and confirmed to the job, whichever comes first.
Obama filled two posts at the Treasury Department: Jeffrey Goldstein as under secretary for domestic finance and Michael Mundaca as assistant secretary for tax policy. He singled them out: "At a time of economic emergency, two top appointees to the Department of Treasury have been held up for nearly six months."
On Becker, Republicans have held up his confirmation for months, saying they fear he would circumvent Congress to make labor laws more union-friendly.
Democrats had failed to overcome Republican delaying tactics on Becker's nomination, and all 41 GOP senators wrote to Obama on Thursday urging him not to appoint Becker over the break — to no avail. Becker is a top lawyer at the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO.
Labor unions were especially keen on getting Becker installed on the board that is responsible for certifying union elections and addressing unfair labor practices. Under a Democratic majority, the labor board could decide cases or make new rules that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. The board could allow speeded-up union elections that give employers less time to counter organizing drives.
The other pro-union lawyer Obama named to the board, Mark Pearce, has not faced opposition from Republicans.
The White House says its appointees have been awaiting a vote for an average of seven months.
Obama named three people to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which has also been operating without a quorum.
The Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid, welcomed Obama's move. "Regrettably, Senate Republicans have dedicated themselves to a failed strategy to cripple President Obama's economic initiatives by stalling key administration nominees at every turn," said Reid, the majority leader from Nevada.
Obama and Democratic leaders say he faces more obstruction, in terms of the number of pending nominees and the length of their delay in getting a vote, than Bush did. The hyper-partisan atmosphere in Washington began long before Obama's presidency but remains as entrenched as ever, if not worse, during his term.
Already in a struggle with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over a financial overhaul, Obama now has another one over Becker. "The business community should be on red alert for radical changes that could significantly impair the ability of America's job creators to compete," the chamber said in a statement.
In February, Democrats fell far short of the 60 votes they needed to push through Becker's nomination. Two Democrats joined Republicans to halt Becker.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that Obama's move is "another episode of choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition."
Associated Press writer Sam Hananel contributed to this story
On the Net:
Bush recess appointments: http://tinyurl.com/y8rlart
Recess appointments FAQ: http://tinyurl.com/c8s4vy
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:3753c032-9f22-4a12-9f94-2e9f95fee125> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/barack-Obama-Recess-Appointments/2010/03/27/id/354024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970048 | 1,138 | 1.726563 | 2 |
ONE THING IS FOR SURE: Life is UncertainBy Dr. David Belk
Life is uncertain. Excuse my gift for the obvious. It is. One minute things are good. They next minute they’re not. In an instant, the circumstances in your life can change. Your spouse no longer wants to be married. Your kids won’t be coming home. The doctor’s report isn’t good. Your boss calls in you and gives you the bad news. Your financial portfolio has taken a turn for the worse…again.
So you wonder. About yourself. About your circumstances. And even about God. You wonder if things will ever be the same again. And you ask, “What do I do now?
This little book is about dealing with uncertainty in our life. During uncertainty, we struggle to know what to do. In the following pages, we’ll answer the question: what do you do when you don’t know what to do? Every once in a while you won’t know what to do. Sometimes it’s real clear what you need to do. Sometimes it’s not. In fact, let me just give you a little heads-up: most of the time, it will not be clear.
So when life is uncertain we do the only thing we know to do: we ask God. We try to hear his voice. But the problem with talking to God during uncertainty is that it’s very hard to hear from him. Unfortunately, God doesn’t text-message. He doesn’t email. He doesn’t IM (that’s Instant Messaging for you non-computer folks). He doesn’t I-chat. God, a lot of times in our uncertainty, is just silent. And it’s very easy to confuse his silence with his absence.
It’s easy to look at other people’s lives and circumstances, where God seems to be really, really, really active, and then to look into your own and say, "I don’t see Him doing anything." Maybe you asked that special someone for a date and she said, “No.” Then your friend called her and she said, “Yes.” And he didn’t even pray! He just called her, right? Makes you wonder, "God, what’s up with that?"
Maybe at work, things seem to be going good for everyone else, but you. Your co-workers who don’t even believe in God get the raises and the promotions. You ask God about it, there’s silence.
Or maybe someone you love is sick and as a Christian, you have prayed for God to bring healing. As it stands now, nothing has happened. God doesn’t seem interested. And yet, your friend, who doesn’t even believe in God, shares the news that her loved one is doing much better.
Maybe you’re thinking back to times in your life where God seemed so real and so alive. Then you look at your current circumstances and you say, "God, where are you?" You wonder, "God was even really you back then? Because at the time it seemed it was you, and now I don’t feel anything. I don’t see anything. Now I’m beginning to doubt. I’m beginning to second-guess my history with you.”
There’re going to be times in your life, and this is just part of being a Christian, where God’s going to be silent. The strange thing is it’s in times of uncertainty that we feel we need to hear from him the most. But we don’t. And that leaves us wondering, what do I do now?
If it hasn’t happened already, there will come a time in your life when you face uncertainty. Usually, your first response will be to talk to God, and he’ll seem so far away. He’s just silent, and you’re going think he’s absent. He’s not interested in helping you with your uncertainty, so it seems. I’d like to share with you what to do when that happens.
In the next few chapters I am going to give you four key words or four things to do when you face uncertainty. Each one comes from Scripture and if you’ll do these four things, then when life is uncertain, you’ll have the confidence of knowing that God is always active even in your uncertainty.
That’s for sure.
(All posts are moderated so your comments may not appear immediately.)
Dr. David Belk serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Friendswood, Texas.
He received a Master of Divinity with Biblical Languages and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Underneath Islam’s Veil (Total Recall Publishing).
He and his wife, Meredith and have three children, Micah, Caleb and Meagan. They have made their home in League City, Texas. | <urn:uuid:db18cf5d-baec-4ad1-b919-1cd9e67bbd12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ebooster.co.uk/spip.php?article52 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963022 | 1,091 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Washington, DC -
09/10/2009 - Today, victims of foodborne illness, their families, concerned parents of young children and members of the Make Our Food Safe coalition hand-delivered lunch bags that detail potential hazards in common lunch items to every member of the United States Senate in Washington, D.C., as well as several in-state Senate offices. Representing the 76 million Americans who are needlessly sickened each year from contaminated food, the concerned citizens and other coalition members are taking a stand to let Congress know Americans demand improved oversight of the food supply.
A landmark food safety bill passed the House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support this summer and now it’s up to the Senate to act.
“No one in America should have to worry if the food they eat and feed their families will make them sick,” said Donna Rosenbaum, executive director of S.T.O.P.-Safe Tables Our Priority and member of the Make Our Food Safe coalition. “Without immediate reform, outbreaks from contaminated FDA-regulated foods are sure to continue. When it comes to comprehensive food safety oversight, American consumers need reform now.”
The lunch bags contain critical information for senators about the risks American families face in eating everyday items such as lettuce, cheese, tomatoes and crackers. Each year, 325,000 Americans are unnecessarily sickened and hospitalized from consuming contaminated food and of those people 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the FDA has no authority to mandate that food companies recall their products, even if tests have shown food to be contaminated with hazards like Salmonella. Continued outbreaks of food contamination over the last several years — from spinach to peppers to peanuts and pistachios — have demonstrated that the current food safety system in the U.S. is broken and in need of serious reform.
In addition to the victims and other food safety advocates who came to Capitol Hill, concerned citizens in Ohio, New Hampshire and North Carolina participated in similar local efforts, delivering the lunch bags to the offices of Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), George Voinovich (R-OH), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Kay Hagan (D-NC) and Richard Burr (R-NC).
Supporters like Randy Napier of Medina, Ohio, who lost his mother, Nellie, in January of this year to Salmonella infection caused by contaminated peanut butter. The Napier family, joined by other advocates from the Cleveland area, spent the morning delivering lunch bags to senate district offices.
“The FDA needs the authority to recall contaminated food and food companies need to know that if they do something wrong, there are serious consequences,” Randy Napier noted.
An interactive version of the lunch bag given to senators is available for viewing at www.makeourfoodsafe.org/sandwich. | <urn:uuid:f67a51cc-f03b-4f93-be3c-d091276fe1c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=54995 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95207 | 589 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Specular gloss is the perception by an observer of the mirror-like appearance of a surface. The measurement of specular gloss consists of comparing the luminous reflectance from a test sample to that from a calibrated gloss standard, under the same experimental conditions. Therefore, gloss is a dimensionless and psychophysical quantity whose accurate determination depends on the characteristics of the measuring instrument and on the gloss standard.
Several documentary standards describe the proper measurement conditions to determine specular gloss for specific surfaces. The International Organization for Standards ISO 2813 and the American Society for Testing Materials ASTM D523 describe the measurement procedure for specular gloss of nonmetallic samples, including the spectral and geometrical conditions of measurement. The spectral flux distribution of the illuminator is CIE standard illuminant C and the spectral responsivity of the receiver is the CIE spectral luminous efficiency function. There are also three standard geometries, corresponding to illumination angles of 20°, 60°, and 85°, each with specifications on the angular extent of the rays within the influx and efflux.
The NIST reference goniophotometer was originally developed at NIST in the 1970’s. In 1999, the goniophotometer was updated, automated, and characterized to ensure proper operation and to verify agreement with the ISO and ASTM standards for specular gloss of nonmetallic samples. This instrument is a monoplane gonio-instrument with a fixed illuminator and a rotating sample table and receiver arm. The illuminator supplies the influx onto the sample. It consists of a light source, a set of condenser lenses, a source aperture, a collimating lens, a depolarizer, a color filter, and an iris. The light source is a quartz-tungsten-halogen incandescent lamp rated at 100 W. A constant dc current of 6.3 A runs through the lamp from a computer-controlled power supply. This current was chosen so that the spectral flux distribution from the lamp approximates CIE standard illuminant A. A scrambler is used to provide unpolarized light, and a color filter BG-34, 2.7 mm thick, converts the spectral flux distribution to CIE standard illuminant C.
The goniometer positions the sample and receiver for bi-directional luminous reflectance or transmittance measurements. It consists of two computer-controlled rotation stages. The sample stage has a diameter of 48 cm and the sample holder can accommodate rectangular samples with dimensions up to 10 cm high by 20 cm wide by 25 mm thick. The receiver is attached to a rotation stage whose axis of rotation is collinear with the rotation stage for the sample and collects and measures the efflux from the sample. It consists of an iris, a focusing lens, a receiver aperture, an averaging sphere, and a detector. The receiver aperture is located at the entrance port of the averaging sphere, and is the field stop of the receiver. The averaging sphere has a diameter of 30.5 cm and is packed with pressed polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). A photopic detector is located at the detector port of the averaging sphere and consists of a silicon photodiode and a filter that in combination approximates the spectral luminous efficiency function Vλ. The detector is temperature controlled with a thermoelectric heater and has an integral current-to-voltage amplifier. The voltage output from the detector is measured by a 6 ½ digit voltmeter and sent to a computer.
The accuracy of specular gloss measurements depends not only on the properties of the instrument but also to a considerable extent on the primary gloss standard. A new primary gloss standard using BaK50 barium crown glass has been developed at NIST. It possesses high chemical and mechanical durability and an index of refraction at the sodium D line of nD = 1.5677. Different calibration procedures are detailed, and the new standard is compared with other primary standards. The new gloss standard and the NIST reference goniophotometer provide an accurate calibration facility for specular gloss. The NIST Calibration Services Program offers Service ID Number 38090S, Special Test of Specular Gloss. | <urn:uuid:568d82e7-f4ce-48f5-bcb3-2c675931decc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nist.gov/pml/div685/grp03/color_glossmeter.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90595 | 862 | 3.3125 | 3 |
Very First Guitar: Buyer’s Guide
You’re ready to get your child their first guitar, but how do you know if you’re choosing the right one?
As a professional guitar instructor, I’ve taught many many kids to play the guitar. Some have started as young as 4, while other beginners have been in the tweens and teens range.
Parents and teachers can have lots of questions about how to make the right choice when buying a child’s first guitar. This guide was designed to help.
Watch the 5-video tutorial: Your Child’s First Guitar: What You Should Know
Read the Report: How to Choose Your Child’s First Guitar
For Specific Product Recommendations, read on!
CHOOSE THE RIGHT GUITAR FOR YOUR CHILD:
When buying a first guitar for a beginning player, you want to get the best quality guitar you can for the most affordable price.
You may find cheaper options out there, but the beginner risks facing a lot of frustration and discouragement if their guitar isn’t basically functional. You buy a car made by a car manufacturer; buy a guitar that is made by a guitar-making company.
The instruments recommended on this page are low-price offerings made by reputable instrument manufacturers.
For the YOUNGEST PLAYERS (ages 3-6), we recommend either a ukulele (only four strings), or a half-size real guitar (not a toy guitar).
Here are Lisa’s picks for the small-fry set:
LITTLE GUITARS (1/2 size):
For MEDIUM SIZE KIDS (ages 7 -12), we recommend a 3/4 size guitar. 3/4 size guitars can also make excellent travel guitars for full-size folks.
Here are Lisa’s picks for kids between the ages of 7 and 12:
MEDIUM SIZED GUITARS (3/4 size):
EXTRA SPECIAL 3/4 size GUITARS
A little more money, a lot more quality. These are also best for adults wanting a travel/practice guitar.
Note: if Baby Taylors are out of stock at Amazon.com (because they are SO popular!), you may have better luck finding them here, through Musician’s Friend.
For BIG KIDS & GROWN UPS (ages 12 – 100), we recommend a full-size guitar.
Still, while officially “full-sized”, there is considerable size-variety available in acoustic guitars. For more petite folks (like Lisa, at 5’1″), the Yamaha Fs720s shown below is a better fit. Beginners will face less frustration if their guitar is not too big for them.
Here are Lisa’s picks for beginning players between the ages of 12 and 100:
FULL SIZE GUITARS: | <urn:uuid:9a7c432c-58df-4e22-9d59-cf548179f244> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gettingstartedwithguitar.net/gift-guide/veryfirstguitarrecommendations | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908611 | 608 | 1.929688 | 2 |
Melleuish, Gregory and Buck, A R., 2008, Democracy, political rhetoric and the conservative response to manhood suffrage in colonial New South Wales, Journal of Australian Colonial History, 10(1), 145-160.
The year 1860 was an election year in New South Wales (NSW). The issue of the day was the land question; that is to say, the question of access to the public domain. And the stakes were high. 'The real meaning of the present election', argued the Sydney Morning Herald in December 1860, 'is democracy in its fullest import, with all its results for good and evil'. | <urn:uuid:033a29f9-5a64-45b8-839b-43f8a4169be9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ro.uow.edu.au/era/2065/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919782 | 127 | 2.40625 | 2 |
The inclined filter is used to filter liquids by means of filter cloth (geotextiles). The device is a hydrostatic inclined filter, where all parts in contact with media are made of stainless steel.
The filtration is done by a self-sealing filter fleece, which is matched to the particular application. The filter fleece is transported and coiled by a gear motor. A float switch controls the fleece transport and the filter cake is stripped off into a dirt tank.
The wastewater is fed into the filter from above, and gets evenly distributed over the entire fleece width through a cascade box. The filter fleece is fed into the water chamber from the bottom. The filtration is performed on an inclined plane, whereas the actual filtration happens in the lower part of the fleece, and a post-dewatering of the filter cake takes place in the upper part.
The gear motor is switched on once a certain water level is exceeded. The filter fleece together with the filter cake is then pulled upward, the cake is stripped off and the fleece is taken up by a take up spool. At the same time, new fleece is drawn into the chamber at the bottom end of the fleece. Due to the now lower flow resistance, the water level decreases and the motor stops.
The inclined filters can be used, for example, for continuous treatment of cooling lubricants or for degreasing baths. Further fields of application are the filtration of wash waters, fish ponds, wastewater (e.g. after precipitation/flocculation) as well as other process waters.
Other applications are wastewaters which are difficult to treat, as they tend to cake or clog the fleece, as for example wastewater with paint residues or landfill leachates.
Further examples and applications can be found in our references:
Advantages of the inclined filter:
- filter fleece supply from bottom -> the fleece is loaded with sediment first
- flotation tailing is extracted together with the sediment at the discharge side -> optimal use of fleece
- filter cake is removed from the fleece -> requirements of the cycle economy-law are fulfilled by the separate disposal of fleece and mud.
- the filter fleece lies flat on the inclined filter ->optimal use of the entire filter width
- lateral sealing of fleece -> no leakage of unfiltered medium into the clean water tank
- reusability of the filter fleece when used in grinding processes -> low operating costs
- filter made of stainless steel -> long life
- low maintenance, few parts subject to wear and tear
- inclined plane -> well drained filter cake
Inclined filter type A (throughput> 100 l/min.)
|SF 500||1.100 mm||700 mm||535 mm|
|SF 1000||1.100 mm||1.200 mm||635 mm|
|SF 1000 L||2.100 mm||1.200 mm||635 mm|
Inclined filter type B / short (throughput< 100 l/min.)
|SF 145 ECO||700 mm||350 mm||340 mm|
|SF 250 ECO
||700 mm||450 mm||340 mm|
|SF 500 ECO
||700 mm||710 mm||340 mm| | <urn:uuid:71193cfb-b219-4de8-8d25-6a2a64acdc1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.leiblein.com/filtration/inclined-filter.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918389 | 686 | 2.859375 | 3 |
The project went a step further at the city council’s April 9 meeting. The council unanimously agreed to remove the four remaining trees that exist along the street.
“Roots from the trees in certain areas of the sidewalk have been becoming hazardous over time, and we want to do what we can to make the sidewalks as safe as they can be,” said city manager Dan Wright.
On Monday, April 2, the city’s public works department began working on the problem areas of the sidewalks along Nashville Street.
“We are very proud of the look of our main street and, with that in mind, have been anxiously waiting for several years for the Georgia Department of Transportation to begin work that will add many improvements to that area,” said Mike Cagle, city public works director. “Unfortunately, while waiting on those anticipated improvements ex-pected in 2013, it was brought to our attention that the condition of the sidewalks in the area of our trees had unsafe and posed potential hazards to pedestrians.”
Two of the trees were successfully removed recently, with the sidewalk refinished in front of the old Ringgold Price Drugs.
“As city employees dug, we found some roots three times the size of an arm raising the ground level, and thus pushing up numerous sections of the sidewalk,” Cagle said. “So we removed the trees in order to prep the area to make repairs.”
The ginkgo trees that were removed will be replaced with smaller trees that will not pose a similar problem, ac-cording to city parks and recreation director Stephen Middlebrooks.
“We will be replacing the trees removed with European hornbeam trees that are 8 to 12 feet tall,” he said. “The hornbeam will have a yellow-brown fall color, and will add to the leaf canopy while having less impact on the safety of our residents through damaging city sidewalks. The city of Dalton uses hornbeam in many of its sidewalk loca-tions.”
Following the recent effort to get the project started, concerned citizens and business owners showed up at City Hall April 9 to make sure the project wouldn’t stop with the removal of just two trees.
“You’ve taken out a couple of the trees already, but we want to know if you’re going to remove the rest of them right there in front of us,” said Patrick Henry, owner of Caffeine Addicts. “My wife Jan has fallen on that sidewalk because of the damage these trees have caused. She’s skinned both knees, both hands. … Lets not quit in the middle of the game. Finish the job.”
The council concurred with Henry’s opinion, and the city will now remove the remaining trees along the strip in front of Caffeine Addicts, as well as ginkgo trees located near Ringgold Wedding Chapel.
“Nobody hates to cut down a tree more than I do, but this is something that has to be done for the sake of safety, our citizens, and our business owners,” said councilman Terry Crawford. | <urn:uuid:0533b1c7-9dbf-45d9-b2a1-068bb3e3062c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://walkermessenger.com/view/full_story/18197545/article-Ringgold-making-sidewalk-improvements--focusing-on-safety?instance=news_special_coverage_right_column | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969485 | 654 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Published: August 10, 2009
CLEMSON - Clemson chemistry assistant professor Rhett Smith will receive $598,000 in a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to study a new class of materials that conduct electrical currents and can be used in thin, lightweight and flexible plastic electronic devices.
“Some of the most exciting applications that are targeted are ultrathin, flexible displays like television and computer screens or displays in hand-held electronics,” said Smith. “Another exciting application that could have an even bigger impact on society is thin-film solar cells to harvest energy from the sun as a renewable, potentially cheaper alternative to petroleum and coal-based energy resources.”
Smith’s research aims to reveal fundamental insight into how molecular-level organization of the material creates the plastic and dictates how it performs and how material combinations interact and conduct electrical currents.
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the missions of their organizations. Smith’s goal is to include a service-learning program, outreach and the development of polymer-science courses to increase awareness and participation in physical sciences. He also wants to mimic graduate-school research at the undergraduate level.
Smith received a bachelor's degree in 2000 from the University of Toledo and his Ph.D. in 2004 from Case Western Reserve University. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining Clemson in 2006. His research focus includes the synthesis and applications of organic and inorganic materials for plastic electronic technologies. | <urn:uuid:f91fab76-5086-4793-9c32-6f3f5b71eb34> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clemson.edu/media-relations/article.php?article_id=2125 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945735 | 341 | 2.125 | 2 |
Popular Diabetes Drugs May Raise Pancreatic Cancer Risk, Study Suggests
But more studies are needed to see if this preliminary finding is accurate, researchers say
By Steven Reinberg
THURSDAY, Sept. 22 (HealthDay News) -- People with type 2 diabetes taking the drugs Januvia or Byetta might have an increased risk of developing pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer, a preliminary study suggests.
The study also found that Byetta (exenatide) may raise the risk of thyroid cancer.
Although the links aren't conclusive, they merit further investigation, the researchers noted.
"We have raised concern that there may be a link, but we haven't confirmed it," said lead researcher Dr. Peter Butler, director of the Larry L. Hillblom Islet Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. "We need to do more work to figure out whether this is real or not."
Both drugs help control blood sugar levels by encouraging production of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1).
Januvia (sitagliptin) and Byetta, an injectable drug, are a new way of treating type 2 diabetes, and they potentially have advantages over older medications, Butler said. But, because these drugs are new, they're "the ones we know least about," he said. "When new drugs come out, the long-term side effects of these drugs are not well understood."
For the study, recently published in the journal Gastroenterology, Butler's team used 2004-2009 information in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's database on adverse events, which are reported by doctors whose patients use these drugs.
When compared to other treatments, the researchers found a sixfold increase of reported cases of pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas) linked to patients taking Januvia or Byetta; a 2.9-fold increase in reported cases of pancreatic cancer among those taking Byetta and a 2.7-fold increase of reported pancreatic cancers among Januvia users.
In addition, they also noted an increase in reported cases of thyroid cancer with Byetta.
This latest study builds on earlier research, published in a 2009 issue of Diabetes, which found an increase in pancreatitis in rats whose GLP-1 levels were raised, the researchers said.
Butler is quick to point out that these increases in pancreatic cancer risk, while statistically significant, are not specifically related to patients, but rather to an increase in doctors reporting these cases to the FDA.
"It is important to avoid alarmism and have people stop medicines that they may be benefitting from when the risk is not yet defined," he stressed.
"If the drug and you are working well together, I wouldn't say there is any reason to stop the drug, based on the evidence we have right now," he said. "But if you have any concern you should talk to your doctor about it."
Being overweight is an important risk for both pancreatic cancer and type 2 diabetes, Butler noted. So the first advice to overweight patients with type 2 diabetes is to lose weight. "By doing that, you reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer," he said.
In addition, the first medication used to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics is metformin, which by itself may reduce the risk for pancreatic cancer, Butler said. Metformin is an older drug with a well-known safety profile, he noted.
Dr. Mary Ann Banerji, director of the Diabetes Treatment Center at SUNY Health Science Center Brooklyn in New York City, said that "this is not perfect data."
However, Banerji does not prescribe these drugs for patients who have had a history of pancreatitis or a family history of thyroid cancer. There are alternatives such as metformin and insulin, as well as Avandia and Actos, she said, but studies have turned up an increased risk for heart attack and heart failure in the last two drugs. The FDA has removed Avandia from pharmacy shelves, and the agency issued a warning last summer that there is a possible increased risk of bladder cancer in patients who take Actos for more than a year.
The concerns about Januvia and Byetta "should not be blown out of proportion," Banerji said. "You prescribe them on an individual basis, because, in the end, all of medicine is individual," she said. "We should use these drugs judiciously along with metformin."
Industry representatives, insisting that no studies involving these drugs have found an increased risk of pancreatitis or pancreatic cancer, stand by their products. The database used for the study contains information on doctor-reported cases and does not reflect cause-and-effect, they said.
Dr. Barry Goldstein, vice president and therapeutic area head for diabetes and endocrinology at Merck Research Laboratories, which makes Januvia, said that "there has been no association shown between Januvia and pancreatitis."
"We have full confidence in Januvia, which is used by millions of patients around the world," he said.
Anne Erickson, a spokeswoman for Amylin Pharmaceuticals, makers of Byetta, said that "the conclusions of the study are in contrast to other nonclinical, clinical and adequately conducted post-marketing epidemiological studies."
Epidemiological studies have not established a significantly increased risk of pancreatitis associated with Byetta, she said. "To date, the available data do not demonstrate that exenatide increases the overall risk of cancer in humans."
Another expert, Dr. Ronald Goldberg, professor of medicine, biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said the findings merit consideration. "I don't think the study is definitive, but it raises a flag and is clearly something we need to pay attention to going forward."
There is "more benefit than risk with these drugs, based on our current knowledge," he said.
For more information on diabetes, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.SOURCES: Peter Butler, M.D., director, Larry L. Hillblom Islet Research Center, University of California, Los Angeles; Ronald Goldberg, M.D., professor of medicine, biochemistry and molecular biology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Fla.; Mary Ann Banerji, M.D., professor of medicine, director, Diabetes Treatment Center, SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, N.Y.; Barry Goldstein, M.D., Ph.D., Vice President and Therapeutic Area Head, Diabetes and Endocrinology, Merck Research Laboratories; Anne Erickson, spokeswoman, Amylin Pharmaceuticals; July 2011, Gastroenterology Related Articles
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Copyright © 2011 HealthDay. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:3d1e4c5c-e08a-4c62-8c2b-bd7c4cb3efa6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sharp.com/news/health/newsArticle.cfm?articleID=30557&channelID=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944678 | 1,506 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Something unusal happened yesterday in my weekly department macroeconomics seminar at James Madison University. Someone had us discuss a paper that changed the minds of pretty much everybody in the room who did not already agree with the paper, which includes a highly diverse group ranging from Austrian, Old Monetarist, New Classical, New Keynesian, Old Keynesian, Post Keynesian, and some generally eclectic pragmatists. The paper is from the Fed Bd of Govs in 2010, by Seth Carpenter and Selva Demiralp, still unpublished as near as I can tell, and is entitled, "Money, Reserves, and the Transmission of Monetary Policy: Does the Money Multiplier Exist?" Their answer is not only "no," which I at least have thought was true since 2007 or so, but that the answer has been "no" probably since the mid-1980s and certainly since the mid-1990s. It is available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2010/201041/201041pap.pdf .
The story can be seen pretty much in figures and charts in the back. Prior to 1984, there was a clear correlation between reserves, loans, and M2. After then, while loans and M2 continued to go along in a pretty close lockstep, reserves simply have flopped around all over the place. This seems to have coincided with various things: a definite move to targeting interest rates and apparently following a Taylor rule (although not more recently on the latter), the change in Regulation Q, globalization, a broadening of sources of funds for banks, and particularly more interbank lending and lessening of reliance on reserves and the Fed's reserve base. Apparently up to the mid-90s, small umdercapitalized banks still were tied to reserves in their lending, but after then that broke down too, with their appearing to be a shift to relying more on large deposits, mostly from other banks and also the shadow banking system.
That Fed control over the money supply has become a phantom has been quite clear since the Minsky moment in 2008, with the Fed massively expanding its balance sheet without much resulting increase in measured money supply. This of course has made a hash of all the people ranting about the Fed "printing money," which presumably will lead to hyperinflation any minute (eeek!). But the deeper story that some of us were unaware of is that apparently this disjuncture happened a long time ago. Even so, one of our number pointed out that official Fed literature and even many Fed employees still sell the reserve base story tied to a money multiplier to the public, just as one continues to find it in the textbooks, But apparently most of them know better, and the money multiplier became a myth a long time ago. | <urn:uuid:a184420d-8e23-4183-888d-466f90938f5e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://econospeak.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/the-myth-of-money-multiplier.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977684 | 574 | 1.789063 | 2 |
OLED TV is a new display technology that gives effective and clearer view of videos. OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diodes, the only difference between OLED and LED is the O for Organic, as OLED is made up of organic material that forms a thin film of layer, which emits light.
OLED uses the same technology as LED with an extra filming of several organic layers placed between two lucid electrodes. When electric charge is focused on these layers, a bright light is produced. With this technology, we can control the color and light patterns, as it allows addressing each pixel separately giving a desired picture quality. Placing an organic film and processing it, is called Electrophosphorescence. This process is used by creatures in the sea for getting a clear view of their targets. The display does not require backlighting and can run on 2 to 10 volts of current. You can view angle of 170 degrees with flexible displays.
You can produce OLED in two ways. First is the passive matrix, which allows you to select rows and columns for energizing thereby allowing the pixel at the intersection to emit light. Second option is design OLEDs that have active matrix mode. Individual LED is brought out at the display edge and respective individual transistor along with TFT technology is used. TFT stands for Thin Film Transistor. As you can switch on or off each LED independently, it creates quick response time and good control over contrast and luminance levels.
OLED technology is ideal for using with HDTV. OLED TV is brighter, as it uses active matrix mode and reacts faster against changes, so it is preferable in displaying full motion video. It is lightweight and assures durability. As it does not require backlight, power consumption is low. As the display is thin and use of polymer makes OLED flexible, no rigid substance is required for making OLED screen flexible to be rolled like a paper. As OLED produces its own light, the off axis view problem, which is common in LCD is eliminated. Once the light production initiates, display process becomes easier.
It has an impressive contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. It allows a clear view of dark scenes by converting pixels into black hues. OLED is able to produce display with intense brightness using micro-cavity technique that can reproduce up to 105% color space of NTSC. This gives a livelier impression of images. It provides high resolution of 960 x 540 even for smaller models. As it is made up of organic material, it is user friendly.
While OLED TV is expanding in a global arena, it lacks certain features such as:
OLED TVs can be as thin as any wallpaper that can be an attractive feature. It will be an exciting experience to buy OLED TVs within affordable range, which will soon be a reality. OLED technology can also be used in other applications to reap its various benefits. | <urn:uuid:477554ba-6f55-4830-90bd-57302b07335a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bestbrandtobuy.com/oled-tv/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942511 | 584 | 2.484375 | 2 |
22nd August 2011
Link reblogged from It's Okay To Be Smart with 31 notes
It’s “money where your mouth is” time for people who support climate science, want green job creation, and who don’t want to double-down on dirty energy when we could invest the same money in clean power sources for future generations.
” … full exploitation of Canada’s carbon-intensive tar sands could put up to 400 gigatons of new carbon pollution into the atmosphere. That’s enough to constitute “game over” status for efforts to prevent runaway climate change, according to America’s top climate scientist, James Hansen of NASA.”
Washing tar sands will do nothing to change the fact that there is hardly any crude oil left in the world. Washing sand has become one of the viable options in trying to keep this addiction going. The process itself is very wasteful, using thousands of gallons of fresh water, and a hell of a lot of fuel to run heavy machinery. We are spending energy to get much less energy. This can’t continue. Peak oil is past.
15th December 2010
Inspiration on the roadside. Stuart, IA puts name on a wind turbine instead of a water tower. | <urn:uuid:eaa80fdb-09f5-48dd-a3a4-67ad62da4b00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nealcrosby.tumblr.com/tagged/energy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929807 | 265 | 2.046875 | 2 |
JEWISH GAY AGNOSTIC HERO MADE A SAINT
Beginning June 6, San Francisco’s Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History will feature an exhibit on Harvey Milk, the deceased gay San Francisco supervisor. Milk was killed 25 years ago and was the first openly gay elected official in a major American city. This is the inaugural exhibit of the Museum of GLBT History.
Included in the exhibit is a portrait of Milk by Robert Lentz called “Saint Harvey.” It pictures Milk with a halo behind his head holding a lit candle. Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the portrait:
“It is a tribute, however backhanded, to Roman Catholicism that gay activists in San Francisco would choose to honor their slain Jewish, homosexual, agnostic martyr by cribbing from Catholic iconography. Bereft of sacred imagery in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities, it was only logical to turn to Catholicism for help. Hopefully, those involved in this tribute will now look more closely at what Catholicism has to offer in other areas as well.” | <urn:uuid:b3ea6d5a-2a0e-47b0-baa8-08a0786ea2b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholicleague.org/jewish-gay-agnostic-hero-made-a-saint-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967231 | 230 | 2.71875 | 3 |
While a lot of students know that it is a good idea to be going to the gym every now and then, they might be doing more harm than good. Maybe you are an avid runner, but have poor running technique. Or maybe you love to lift heavy, but have trouble keeping your knees out on squats. Whatever it is, I encourage you to take these flaws seriously, as they could lead to a potential injury. Even if you consistently go to the gym, you may actually be impairing your health and its time to change.
Whether its a squat, pushup, or any other critically important movement, many people fall short in range of motion. Full range of motion of the joints is incredibly important for injury prevention, and improving your strength. Squatting above parallel, doing pushups above parallel, and general lack of range of motion in exercise is an almost guarantee for injury according to the journal of physical therapy. That is why we suggest doing a grok squat, or an ass to grass squat where you are getting a full range of motion throughout your joints.
2.Bench, Bench, Bench
We get it, frat bro’s like to bench. We like to bench press also! It’s just not the absolute end all be all of strength. If anything, bench press should be an exercise that helps you with other benchmark lifts like an overhead press. There are plenty of better ways to get good looking triceps and chest muscles. Instead, do a pushup or a superman pushup where you are explosive in the chest and triceps muscles, but also using a lot of abdominal and back muscles. Limit your benching to once a week.
3. Reps vs. Weight
It’s nice to do thousands and thousands of crunches if you want to get a six pack, but it probably won’t happen. When it comes down to it, doing less reps at a higher intensity will ultimately lead to a more toned and stronger body. So don’t sit there and crunch until your neck breaks off, go lift some heavy ass weights! (with proper technique of course)
4. Skipping Leg Day
The ladies sure do love a big chest, don’t they? Maybe so, but I guarantee your squat is much, much more important and functional than a bench press. Your legs are your base, and without a solid base, you are going to be stumbling over your feet as you walk from class to class. Plus you will look like this guy:
5. Isolation Movements vs. Compound Movements
Bicep curls and tricep extensions and calf raises are all awesome movements if you want to win a body building competition. They are also quite useful for strengthening certain lifts. But don’t get me wrong, these single jointed lifts are all supplementary for the real goal in your exercise regime: to be the strongest, best looking, best feeling you that you can be. Doing compound movements like clean & jerks, deadlifts, squats, etc. should make up the bulk of your time spent in the gym. Remember, the point of exercising is not to bulk up so that you appear strong, its to truly be strong so that you can do some really amazing things like hike, jump, climb, swim, bike, pick up heavy objects, and maybe do one of these every once in a while.
If you are unsure of what you should be doing in the gym, check out THIS POST. | <urn:uuid:74e14aae-67e6-4d77-9dce-0ecd9b4bb654> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cavemancollege.com/2013/01/17/top-5-student-exercise-flaws/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95531 | 720 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Welcome to Teaching and E-learning!
Teaching and E-learning is a blog written by teachers for teachers. Weekly posts will include: technology updates, recommended reading, online tutorials and top tips for teachers.
Teaching and E-learning is aimed at all teachers, providing ongoing ideas and support for introducing, implementing and embedding e-learning into the secondary classroom.
Please feel free to join the conversation - we welcome your ideas, suggestions and feedback!
Director of e-learning
Epsom Girls Grammar School | <urn:uuid:df731130-b1cf-4d1e-8bb0-2a77c2eec11a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.teachingandelearning.com/2010/10/welcome-to-teaching-and-e-learning.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92317 | 115 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series about the people and events that have shaped the 200-year history of New Albany. Read all installments by clicking on the bicentennial link under the “seasonal content” header at newsandtribune.com
Every town needs a benevolent benefactor, a patron who gives their time, money and even inspiration to those who are in need. In late 19th century New Albany, William S. Culbertson was one such man.
For many local residents, Culbertson is now known only as a name on a huge yellow mansion. But there’s much more to the man than just his ornate house. During Victorian times, the entrepreneur transformed himself from a small-town merchant to one of the wealthiest men in all of Indiana and demonstrated that anyone can obtain the American dream.
“This is really the perfect example of how someone could come down river and establish themselves,” said Culbertson Mansion Program Director Jessica Stavros. “He came by himself, a 21-year-old-man, and established himself as the richest man in the state in 60 years.”
Born Feb. 4, 1814, in New Market, Pa., Culbertson was only 10 years old when his father died. In 1835, he decided to make the pilgrimage westward and traveled to Louisville with $10 in his pocket to obtain a job in a dry goods store. When he arrived, the opening had already been filled, but the owner suggested he check out a similar type store in New Albany owned by Gen. A. S. Burnett. Here he was hired.
By 1840, Culbertson had established his own dry goods store on this side of the river. As a wholesaler, he regularly traveled the country looking to buy textiles and fabrics in bulk. According to the Culbertson Mansion State Historic Site booklet, his business was soon known as one of the largest stores of its kind in the Midwest.
In addition to his dry goods profession, Culbertson decided to follow other pursuits. Not only was he president of the First National Bank in New Albany, he also invested in a myriad of industries.
“I think Mr. Culbertson had his hand in everything,” Stavros said. “He had his hand in the banks, the utilities, the railroads, down to what people wore. He was also a major investor in making the K & I Bridge happen, a Victorian entrepreneur by every sense of the word.”
Culbertson was more than just a businessman. Like many, he also was a husband and a father. Around the same time he was establishing his dry goods business, he married his first wife, Eliza Vance Culbertson of Corydon. They had a total of eight children. After 25 years of marriage, Eliza died of typhoid pneumonia, never having lived in the grand mansion Culbertson is best known for today.
Two years later Culbertson married Cornelia Warner Eggleston, a widow who had already lost two children by her previous husband at an early age. As a wedding present, Culbertson gave her the 20,000 square foot yellow mansion. In the following years, she birthed him a son who died in infancy and a daughter. In 1880, Cornelia died of cholera.
During this time, Culbertson contributed extensively to charitable projects throughout New Albany. Daily he passed out meal tickets at the bank to people who craved a good meal.
“He was kind of the first philanthropist here,” Stavros said. “I think the legacy of William Culbertson really lives in the idea of giving back to your community. That is what he did. He took extra money to build brick-and-mortar buildings to house and feed people.”
Culbertson's marriage to Cornelia also influenced his charitable endeavors. After the Civil War, he built and maintained the Culbertson’s Old Ladies Home, an institution that helped women who, due to financial difficulty, couldn’t care for themselves. Stavros said Culbertson even personally did their grocery shopping and left a sizable endowment to the organization after his death. Likewise, he built the Cornelia Memorial Orphan’s Home in 1882 to house and to educate local children in need.
“I think that he took a personal event or experience that he had in his life and then turned around and used his money to help those people who had been affected by it because he understood,” Stavros said.
Four years following Cornelia’s death, Culbertson married his last wife, Rebecca Keith Spears Young. They had no children. For their honeymoon, he took Rebecca on a six-month honeymoon throughout Europe and the Holy Land. During this trip, he mailed letters back to the local newspaper detailing his overseas’ experiences. But unlike many of his social stature, he tended to notice the conditions of the working man rather than the aristocrats.
“So much of what he writes about is what the servants wear, how the working man’s house looks on the side of the road, how people look in their jobs,” Stavros said. “As high class as he was, he didn’t take the time to notice what other high class people were noticing. He was looking down the classes, which was odd for Victorians. I just think that’s really telling of his character.”
On June 25, 1892, Culbertson died of heart failure after a two week illness. He had continued to keep a daily work schedule up until he turned 78 years old. At the time of his death, he had amassed a fortune worth $3.5 million.
Gone but not forgotten, Culbertson’s life and legacy will be celebrated by his namesake mansion next year at the bicentennial of his birth.
“William Culbertson could be anyone living down the street right now. He’s the epitome of the American dream,” Stavros said. “If you work hard enough you can be anything. You can rise to great wealth and success.” | <urn:uuid:bc5cbed6-5c97-4653-9f53-ea0a2e8c14e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsandtribune.com/local/x2056605923/NEW-ALBANY-BICENTENNIAL-William-S-Culbertson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988004 | 1,330 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Giving surplus food a purpose.
Over 35,000 people fed daily.
Fuelled by the belief that ‘no good food should be wasted’, FareShare was established in the United Kingdom in 1994 and its model has since been replicated internationally. Originally operating as an initiative run by Crisis – a charity battling homelessness – the project was spun-off as an independent organization in 2004. Simultaneously tackling waste and hunger, FareShare repurposes surplus goods from the food and beverage industry and provides them to non-profit organizations working with disadvantaged local communities.
FareShare has a national network of over 700 charities receiving food, enabling these grassroots organizations to redistribute funds toward other programme costs. Moving beyond providing only nutritional wellbeing, their ‘Eat Well, Live Well’ programme also acts as a means for clients to gain employability training and certifications. The organization is using its position within the food industry to provide training modules for National Vocation Qualifications in warehousing, distribution, and storage. Complementing these efforts as part of its mission to relieve food poverty, a further initiative – the ‘Eat Well Road Show’ – provides training for FareShare community members regarding basic food hygiene, nutritional advice and practical cooking skills.
In 2011, the organization’s food redistribution contributed more than 8.6 million meals to individuals in need. Moving forward, FareShare hopes to triple its impact – redistributing 20,000 tonnes of food per year.
(Photo © Antonio Olmos Observer) | <urn:uuid:961b4132-9fa4-484a-a3e4-692a1840ef94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theglobaljournal.net/article/view/481/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94797 | 310 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Imagine working hard enough to win a gold medal at the Olympics, and returning to the U.S. where Uncle Sam wants a piece of it.
Senator Marco Rubio wants to change that with the Olympic Tax Elimination Act.
Current tax law requires Olympians who win medals to pay taxes on them and on honorary cash payments they receive.
They get 25-thousand dollars for Gold, 15-thousand for Silver and 10-thousand for Bronze.
If approved, the bill would ban taxes on Olympic medals and prize money. It would apply to awards received after December 31, 2011 | <urn:uuid:6b3b4253-b924-42d4-a915-3fa1d9e9ebfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kdbc.com/print/node/18628 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975579 | 121 | 1.6875 | 2 |
By Niscala Dasi
In “The Cry for Myth”, Rollo May makes a powerful case for the need of myth in every society, and that societies and cultures can be seen as byproducts of their collective myths. In this essential service to society, it doesn’t matter at all if the myth is fiction or fact, for either way the myth acts on the collective subconscious of the society, which moulds its identity, values and attitudes around the myth. Even modern society has myths which have molded the character of its people- the courage and confidence of the first settlers as they pressed on westwards into unknown territory can now be seen in the many risk-taking adventures that Americans are famous (and more recently, infamous) for…
In the area of personal relationships, myth also plays a vital role, which may explain the stark contrast between how societies deal with, for example, romantic love- the differences can be traced back to different myths…
Romeo and the Riff-Raff
In western society our ideal romantic couple, the couple which we feel most fully embody ideal love, was portrayed with force and style by Shakespeare in “Romeo and Juliette”. In that story, the lovers break all social taboos, all requirements of society…forsaking the desires of their parents, they love only for the sake of love.
On the other hand, in India it is not Romeo the rebellious romantic youth, but Sri Ramachandra, the obedient and loving son who is the hero of the story. Ramachandra’s example has molded Indian society, and thus, it can be seen that even with the influx of western influence into the subcontinent, still nearly all marriages are arranged by the parents, with the child’s consent, and divorce is a rarity. This astonishing phenomenon makes clear the superexcellent holding power of myths.
In the Ramayana, Sri Ramachandra risks all for filial obedience, whereas in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo risks all for the opposite- filial rebellion. Thus, it is no wonder that in Indian society the importance of the desires of the parents, even in regard to career but most definitely in regard to marriage, are foremost, and all the talk in India that this is “old-fashioned” and “outdated” has had little effect, and will continue to have little effect, because their myths are still strongly internalized.
In the West, rebellion is the norm for teenagers, it is even seen as healthy- part of growing up, yet is it? When they rebel against loving parents who only wish to guide them for their own good, the effect is that they become lost and fall prey to their own whims, often ending up as victims of the drug trade. The tendency towards rebellion is further facilitated by the psychoanalytical discovery that most psychological problems can be traced back to the parents’ behavior- this reinforces the Romeo myth, but also may have been born out of it as well, in terms of the original hypothesis- though I am not sure if Freud ever read Shakespeare, or if there was a German equivalent, but certainly the extreme popularity and ready acceptance of his theory reflects our internalization of the Romeo myth of heroic rebellion against domineering parental authority.
Of course, the real issue is which myth is good for us, and in this respect the Ramayana appears to win the race- Indian arranged marriages stay together, with the effect that children don’t have to be traumatized by the break up of their parents. Are they happy together- we may wonder? Would they be happier if they were to marry through choice?
First consideration is whether happiness is more important than duty, and if doing one’s duty can lead to happiness- certainly the Gita is based on this premise. Here we have another myth- with the hero being Arjuna. He was speculating on his future happiness, what we in the West would romantically call “having a dream” but when he forsook the dream for duty, he experienced great joy, which is something that Oprah fans would have been astonished by- we must follow our dreams!
There is joy in duty- it is experienced by the mother who sacrifices her comfort, sleep, time and energy for her child. Contrary to Freuds theory, the children coming from Indian families do not appear to suffer from following the parents’ desires- they appear to be generally well-balanced, successful and driven. And drugs appear to be less of a problem in India, despite the widespread corruption of its police force (taking bribes is normal).
It may be argued that in many cases, where there is marital conflict, it is better for the child if the parents split, and that social pressure to stay together may result in psychological harm to the children. Still it is far better if there is no conflict, or if conflicts remain contained, and the parents stay together. Divorce has not made marital conflicts any less common, and this is logical. If one knows that one is expected to stay with this person, “come hell or high water”, then naturally one will work on the relationship, work through the difficulties, reach compromises… If one knows that by signing a paper, it can all be over, what is the point in being so tolerant of the other? One who knows that his whole life will be spent with this person, will try to make the situation pleasant- for one cannot live in constant conflict. And this pleasant situation is enjoyed by the children, and gives them security.
Working on conflict, learning to see things from the other’s perspective, surrendering time which would otherwise be spent making money in order to uphold family commitments, all contribute to a quality of life that is nurturing and full of higher value. In the frantic search for happiness we must not forget that it may be found not only in new places (relationships), like the early settlers pressing on westwards, but within ourselves and between the selves that we know. It may be found in places that we least expect it, like in honoring the desires of a wise and caring person, as Arjuna and Rama did. But in order to have faith in that, we must work on dismantling the Romeo myth inside us, which is reinforced by at least half of what Hollywood produces, with the result of blind cynicism of authority figures, and blind faith in one’s own desires- characteristics of “rugged individualism” that can so quickly degenerate into selfishness and thus rupture family bonds. The myths of India, in contrast, have led to a relatively healthy stable family structure. Internalizing such myths, and having such heroes as Arjuna and Ramachandra as our role models, we may be able to replace the heady, whimsical and blindly rebellious role model of Romeo that has led our society down the path of ruination, at least for a large portion of our youth, our future hope….
Clearing Things up a Bit
In writing this, I do not mean to suggest that in every case parents should be obeyed, that arranged marriages are better, or that Indian society as a whole is better than western society. Modern Indian society is a corruption of varnashrama by the so-called brahmanas, but it was only the caste or varna part that they corrupted- for the sake of self-aggrandizement…the ashrama part, including the grhastha-ashrama, has remained relatively uncontaminated over the millennia. Thus, we see a mixture of good and bad in India- very functional families, in a society where many children of lower castes have to rummage through trash for food- unheard of in the West.
Such exploitation of the lower castes is NOT part of any Indian myth, but is the concoction of power-mongers. Still much can be gained from separating gold from mud, particularly much can be gained from the Indian conception of ashrama- which is an arrangement for pursuing duty and spiritual elevation, not for facilitating the overwhelming whimsical, lustful attractions we call “falling in love” which we just as whimsically fall out of. Meanwhile Indian society can learn from our better conception of varna- which is less about inequality (at least in relation to humans), and thus closer to genuine varna …Varnashrama means that all, from washerman to king, are essentially equal, being parts and parcels of God Who dwells in all. Our bill of rights upholds this equality, for humans at least, and thus we have shelters, education and welfare for the underprivileged.
Obedience and duty is served by the Ramayana myth, whereas service to one’s own desires is served by the Romeo myth. Thus vedic traditions can turn our families into ashramas- peaceful places for spiritual evolution, rather than feverish places for pursuing personal desires and attractions. The lessons of the Gita in God-conscious vision can expand our western sense of equality to include animals, the unborn and the environment. Thus the vedic traditions can contribute to social harmony that is the outcome of following varna, and the spiritual elevation that is the outcome of ashrama.
In writing about myth in this context, I do not mean to suggest that the Ramayana or the Bhagavad-gita are not factual, historical texts. I use the word “myth” in the context that the above-mentioned author uses it, which has nothing to do with whether it is fact or fiction, but everything to do with how it molds our collective thinking, attitudes and behavior. A myth is not any less powerful from being fiction, neither is it more powerful from being fact- actually the opposite may be true, because facts engage the conscious and analytic part of our brain, whereas fiction, being more dreamlike, may effect more the subconscious, which has more to do with identity. But whether the stories are facts or fiction is irrelevant for us, as this is the domain of scholars. We are only interested in consciousness, and how to transform it into the Godly type- therefore we do not have to waste time to research how historical our myths are- for to do so detracts us from the purpose and power of their effects on consciousness. Meditating on the myth, our consciousness is transformed, our attitude to life, changed. Through the myth, the role model hero lives in- and through- us all. | <urn:uuid:a6ff3772-7c3b-43ce-a48a-f48fc8aa462c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dandavats.com/?p=8139 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957913 | 2,241 | 2.6875 | 3 |
|By PR Newswire||
|January 24, 2013 12:02 AM EST||
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers from IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology revealed today an antimicrobial hydrogel that can break through diseased biofilms and completely eradicate drug-resistant bacteria upon contact. The synthetic hydrogel, which forms spontaneously when heated to body temperature, is the first-ever to be biodegradable, biocompatible and non-toxic, making it an ideal tool to combat serious health hazards facing hospital workers, visitors and patients.
Traditionally used for disinfecting various surfaces, antimicrobials can be found in traditional household items like alcohol and bleach. However, moving from countertops to treating drug resistant skin infections or infectious diseases in the body are proving to be more challenging as conventional antibiotics become less effective and many household surface disinfectants are not suitable for biological applications.
IBM Research and its collaborators developed a remoldable synthetic antimicrobial hydrogel, comprised of more than 90% water, which, if commercialized, is ideal for applications like creams or injectable therapeutics for wound healing, implant and catheter coatings, skin infections or even orifice barriers.
Able to colonize on almost any tissue or surface, microbial biofilms - which are adhesive groupings of diseased cells present in 80% of all infections - persist at various sites in the human body, especially in association with medical equipment and devices. They contribute significantly to hospital-acquired infections, which are among the top five leading causes of death in the United States and account for up to $11 billion in healthcare spending each year.
Despite advanced sterilization and aseptic techniques, infections associated with medical devices have not been eradicated. This is due, in part, to the development of drug-resistant bacteria. According to the CDC, antibiotic drug resistance in the U.S. costs an estimated $20 billion a year in healthcare costs as well as 8 million additional days spent in the hospital.
Through the precise tailoring of polymers, researchers designed macromolecules, a molecular structure containing a large number of atoms, which combine water solubility, positive charge, and biodegradability characteristics. When mixed with water and heated to body temperature the polymers self-assemble, swelling into a synthetic gel that is easy to manipulate. This highly desirable capability stems from self-associative interactions that create a "molecular zipper" effect. Analogous to how zipper teeth link together, the short segments on the new polymers also interlock, thickening the water-based solution into re-moldable and compliant hydrogels. Since they exhibit many of the characteristics of water-soluble polymers without being freely dissolved, such materials can remain in place under physiological conditions while still demonstrating antimicrobial activity.
"This is a fundamentally different approach to fighting drug-resistant biofilms. When compared to capabilities of modern-day antibiotics and hydrogels, this new technology carries immense potential," said James Hedrick, Advanced Organic Materials Scientist, IBM Research, "This new technology is appearing at a crucial time as traditional chemical and biological techniques for dealing with drug-resistant bacteria and infectious diseases are increasingly problematic."
When applied to contaminated surfaces, the hydrogel's positive charge attracts all negatively charged microbial membranes, like powerful gravitation into a blackhole. However, unlike most antibiotics and hydrogels, which target the internal machinery of bacteria to prevent replication, this hydrogel kills bacteria by membrane disruption, precluding the emergence of any resistance.
"We were driven to develop a more effective therapy against superbugs due to the lethal threat of infection by these rapidly mutating microbes and the lack of novel antimicrobial drugs to fight them. Using the inexpensive and versatile polymer materials that we have developed jointly with IBM, we can now launch a nimble, multi-pronged attack on drug-resistant biofilms which would help to improve medical and health outcomes," said Dr Yi-Yan Yang, Group Leader, Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore.
The IBM nanomedicine polymer program - which started in IBM's Research labs only four years ago with the mission to improve human health – stems from decades of materials development traditionally used for semiconductor technologies. This advance will expand the scope of IBM and IBN's collaborative program, allowing scientists to simultaneously pursue multiple methods for creating materials to improve medicine and drug discovery. An industry and institute collaboration of this scale brings together the minds and resources of several leading scientific institutions to address the complex challenges in making practical nanomedicine solutions a reality.
This research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal, Angewandte Chemie.
For additional information, including high-resolution images and videos explaining the discovery, visit http://ibmhydrogels.tumblr.com/.
SOURCE IBM Corporation | <urn:uuid:87bac01c-8898-4ea3-8270-3d994d3f512e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sys-con.com/node/2524019 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922133 | 1,024 | 2.625 | 3 |
|+ home > features > giftpeople > Ben Salmon|
by Robert Ellsberg
This month we give thanks for the dedication to peace embodied by Ben Salmon, the only Roman Catholic conscientious objector during World War I to declare, on the basis of his faith, that there is no such thing as a “just war.” For his unwavering courage, he was rewarded with federal imprisonment and scorn. Hometown acquaintances referred to him as “the slacker” and priests dubbed him a “heretic,” not comprehending his radical adherence to Jesus' teaching of love for our enemies. But ridicule, solitary confinement, and even getting dragged off to an insane asylum only intensified Salmon's resolve to oppose militaristic idolatry by placing faith in God's justice and mercy alone. – Patricia Carlson
“If Christians would have the same faith in their God that non-Christians have in a mere materialistic idea, ‘Thy Kingdom come' would shortly be a reality in this world of sorrow and travail.”
In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson led America into the Great War in Europe. For many who had voted for Wilson precisely on the basis of his promise to keep America out of the war, this came as a surprise. Nevertheless, most citizens accepted the president's vow “to make the world safe for democracy,” and so rallied to the cause with patriotic fervor. Most, but not all. There were Socialists and other radicals who claimed that this was not a “war to end all wars,” but a capitalist war. There were isolationists, who believed that if foreigners wanted to kill each other was no concern of Americans. And then there were pacifists, who believed that all killing, whatever the cause, was to be opposed. Ben Salmon was one of the pacifists, one of several hundred who refused even to accept noncombatant status in the military, and so endured brutal imprisonment. But in one important respect Salmon was different from the others – different from virtually every other man in America. He based his pacifism on his Roman Catholic faith.
Salmon was born to a working-class Catholic family in Denver in 1889. Growing up in an era of bitter labor struggles in Colorado, he quickly acquired a keen commitment to social justice. As a young man he became known in Denver as something of a rebel, active in union organizing and other agitation. But despite his radical social views, he remained a devout Catholic who often attended Mass and who took pride in his membership in the Knights of Columbus. In 1917 he married his longtime sweetheart. By this point, however, the war had been declared, and Salmon received notification to report for military service.
Salmon applied for recognition as a conscientious objector (C.O.) on the basis of his religious convictions. The government made provision for conscientious objectors belonging to the historic “peace churches” like the Quakers or Mennonites. But Roman Catholics, whose church supposedly disavowed pacifism in favor of the traditional “just war theory,” were not recognized as candidates for C.O. status. In any case even recognized C.O.s were required to accept “noncombatant status,” an option that Salmon definitely rejected. He believed that any cooperation with the military system would represent a violation of his conscience, a compromise with Satan. And so he was arrested in January 1918.
Salmon was given a military court martial and sentenced to death, a sentence subsequently reduced to twenty-five years in prison. He was incarcerated at Leavenworth and a series of federal penitentiaries, much of his time spent in solitary confinement as a punishment for his refusal to perform prison labor. For six months he was kept in a windowless, vermin-infested cell above the prison sewer. In that hot and fetid air he was allowed no visitors or mail and fed nothing but bread and water. Within months of his imprisonment the war in Europe ended. And still his confinement continued. Finally after two years in prison Salmon announced that he would no longer cooperate with the system and began an indefinite hunger strike. After several weeks, the authorities forced milk down his throat. They kept this up for months, while meantime he grew steadily weaker. Claiming his fast was a symptom of mental illness, the authorities transferred Salmon to St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. Finally, when it was clear that they could not indefinitely keep him alive on a diet of milk, they released him from prison in 1920.
Salmon was one of hundreds of resisters imprisoned during the war. But he was one of only four Catholics. Of these, he was alone in attributing his resistance to his Catholic faith. It was a solitary stand that evoked nothing but incomprehension if not the contempt of his fellow citizens. His hometown newspaper called him “the slacker, the pacifist, the man with a yellow streak down his spine as broad as a country highway,…who loves the German flag more than the Stars and Stripes.” When he began his hunger strike the headline read, “Slacker starves himself in cell: Denver's ‘yellowist draft dodger' plans to cheat justice.” He fared little better among his fellow Catholics. Prison chaplains tried to convince him that he was setting himself up in opposition to the pope, that his duty as a Christian was to defend his country, to obey the law, and to support his family. Some priests refused to offer him the sacraments, accusing him of heresy for his uncompromising pacifism.
Although his pacifism contradicted the wisdom of most Catholic moral theologians, Salmon was able to mount a spirited defense of his witness and beliefs. Armed with nothing but the Bible and the Catholic Encyclopedia, and weakened by his hunger strike, Salmon managed to write a two-hundred-page manuscript critiquing the church's just war teaching and justifying his commitment to nonviolence. Under any circumstances it was a remarkable achievement for a man with no formal education beyond the eighth grade. Nevertheless, in this work Salmon was the first American Catholic to mount a systematic critique of just war teaching.
Salmon argued that in the modern era it was no longer sensible to imagine a war that could satisfy all the criteria of the just war. In any case, this tradition was impossible to square with the clear teaching of Jesus with regard to the love of enemies. “The justice of man cannot dethrone the justice of God,” he wrote. “There is no such animal as a ‘just war.'” In enduring imprisonment, Salmon identified with the early Christian martyrs who offered the witness of their lives to oppose the idolatry of the Roman empire. The name of the new idolatry was militarism.
Upon his release, Salmon led a relatively quiet life with his family. Nevertheless, his prison ordeal had permanently affected his health, contributing to his early death at the age of forty-three on February 15, 1932. He remained a devout Catholic to the end of his life. Of his three children, one became a priest and another a Maryknoll Sister.
Sincere thanks to Robert Ellsberg
for permission to use this chapter from his book All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses From Our Time. "Since soon after it came out; I have used this book for daily spiritual reading and still find it inspiring." Br. David
Torin R.T. Finney, Unsung Hero of the Great War (New York: Paulist, 1989). | <urn:uuid:4ec5bfa4-5ee1-478c-8949-94ea412e33bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gratefulness.org/giftpeople/salmon.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984402 | 1,570 | 2.734375 | 3 |
This course is designed to teach students to develop and test server-side web applications based on the Java 2 platform, Enterprise Edition (JEE) component model using the IBM WebSphere software platform of products and tools. Students will develop and test Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSPs) for the control and flow of e-business applications using RAD as the development environment. IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) is the newest generation of Java application development environments built on the Eclipse open platform (www.eclipse.org). It has many new features that the traditional IDEs do not provide, including the role-based development models and the plug-in based flexibility of developing and adding new functionality to the environment.
Java programmers who build server-side web applications and are interested in leveraging RAD to streamline their development cycle.
Students should understand essential concepts of Object-Oriented Programming and be able to write simple Java programs with assistance.
After completing this course, the student will be able to use RAD as an integrated development environment, build Servlets according to the current Servlet 2.4 specification and build JSPs according to the current JSP 2.0 specification. In addition, students will become experienced in using the WebSphere Test Environment and gain knowledge of the deployment issues related to web applications.
Recommended Follow-On Course
Copyright © 2013 Euler Solutions, Inc. Minneapolis, MN | <urn:uuid:9867d965-f8ae-495a-9ad5-de27a839978a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.euler.com/publiccourses/ibm/servlets_JSP_development_wRAD6.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903526 | 287 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Briefings and Reports
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This section contains information about different aspects of war and peace, and will help your campaigning. It will be constantly added to and updated. The more we can share our knowledge and educate each other, the easier it will be to inform and educate others about the possibility of eradicating war.
Publications, books, videos and DVDs – below you will find short reviews of titles we think will be of interest to you, and help in your campaigning against war. We welcome short reviews which can be sent to us using the Contact Us button, but we cannot undertake to post everything we are sent.
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Learn how to build a raised bed by following Monty and Chris's step-by-step video demonstration, with information on the benefits of for those with heavy soil or poor drainage.all-year-roundMore garden DIY projectsMore on building raised beds
Following my recent blog Top 10 plants for a dream garden, I’m expanding the wishlist to include fruit and veg. I think it’s good to have a goal, no matter how distant it may seem.I like to think that if I have a decent-sized garden, with room for a
Learn how to hoe your vegetable patch effectively with advice and a practical demonstration from Monty Don. Find out about tool sharpening and how frequently to hoe your plot. all year roundMore advice on common garden tasksWeeding by hand
Soil typesYour soil type - sandy, loam or clay - determines which plant species you can grow. Knowing your soil type enables to you to choose the plants best suited to your garden. Soil type is identified the presence of clay, sand and silt
buy scaffolding planks from a builders' merchant or a timber yard.More garden DIY projectsBuild a raised bed from concreteVideo advice on making a raised bedMake a slate planterMake willow plant supportsMake a bird boxCreate a bat boxHow to fit
The boot scraper is a handy tool to keep by the back door as the weather gets worse and gardens get muddier. It only takes a couple of hours to make and costs next to nothing.ChiselHammerSawLarge logThick slate tileWood glueall year roundtwo hours
of ponds in the wider countryside. So, gardeners can do their bit by creating their own wildlife pond, which will also look great and provide a year-round focal point.Make a start by marking out the position on the ground. Use a garden hose for an informal
will have turned into fine, dark leaf mould. Use it as a seed-sowing medium or mixed with equal parts of fine garden compost, loam and sharp sand for potting.Before you build your leaf heap, choose a position that's out of sight but easy to get at. It should
to its proper place in the greenhouse.More on greenhouse gardeningAdvice on gardening under glass.How to fit an automatic greenhouse vent opener.Learn how to sow seeds indoors.Browse our collection of tender plants.
Carol Klein demonstrates how to add mulch to beds and borders to enrich the soil and ensure healthy plants.spring and autumnCarolMore ways to improve soilImproving soil with green manure.How to feed plants.Improving your soil.Making a soil sieve. | <urn:uuid:47069ca4-67af-4b49-8c46-c1e59ce0cbdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardenersworld.com/search/articles/keywords/veg-garden/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908464 | 560 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Published in Cancer Weekly, April 6th, 2004
This patent is the parent to a series of applications that significantly broaden Artemis Medical's proprietary position in the breast biopsy marking arena. The patent contains 10 claims. Artemis has had two patents issued year-to-date, bringing the company's total number of issued patents to 13 in the United States.
This new patent relates to methods for marking a biopsy site using a swellable, bioresorbable body having a radiopaque marker carried by the resorbable body. The patent...
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Learn more about a six-week, no-risk free trial of Cancer Weekly
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By AARON O. PATRICK and SARAH MCBRIDE
One of Hollywood's biggest foes is about to be called on the carpet. After years of steering Web surfers to free entertainment, the organizers of a massive directory of pirated movies, music and software in Sweden could finally face serious legal repercussions.
Based on evidence collected in a 2006 raid on the offices of The Pirate Bay, Swedish prosecutors say that by the end of January they expect to charge the individuals who operate the file-sharing service with conspiracy to breach copyrights.
While Sweden might seem to be an unlikely harbor for pirates of any kind, weak copyright laws, lax enforcement, high broadband penetration and general antipathy toward the entertainment industry have made it a file-sharing free-for-all. Last year, 43% of the people participating in a survey by Sweden's biggest phone company said they planned to download music during the year. A pro-piracy political party has more members than the Greens.
The prosecutors' move comes after years of complaints from Hollywood executives and U.S. government officials. U.S. Embassy officials have described Sweden as home to the "worst Internet piracy in the world," and the Motion Picture Association of America has been fighting to shutter Pirate Bay's site for years.
Sweden, which enjoys some of the world's fastest Internet speeds, strengthened its laws in 2005 to make online theft of movies a crime. But its efforts to crack down have had little success so far. In 2006, shortly after Swedish Justice Department representatives visiting Washington received a stern lecture from U.S. officials about the alleged damage being caused by Pirate Bay, Swedish police raided the site's offices and shut it down.
Although the site was back up within days, the raid inspired hundreds of pro-piracy citizens to take to the streets in protest and led to allegations that the U.S. was interfering in Swedish affairs. Pirate Bay won cult status among file sharers globally, and many Swedes continue to revere its founders as plucky upstarts who dared to take on Hollywood.
Underscoring Sweden's pro-piracy attitude, seven parliamentarians from the ruling conservative party called in a newspaper opinion article last month for the decriminalization of file sharing. "It has become a big part of people's lives," Karl Sigfrid, one of the politicians, said in an interview. "I believe it is impossible to really stop this."
There's no doubt millions of people across the world turn to Pirate Bay whenever they want a free movie, game or piece of software. Its reach is so vast that the family of Ron Goldman has filed suit against the site, claiming in court documents to have lost at least $150,000 because of Pirate Bay. The Goldman family is supposed to receive the proceeds from O.J. Simpson's book "If I Did It," but the text is available free using the directory at ThePirateBay.org.
The trial will probably grapple with complex technical issues. One question is the legality of BitTorrent, a computer program that breaks up large files like movies into small pieces so they can be transferred quickly over the Internet.
Although The Pirate Bay maintains an index of BitTorrent files, the files themselves are stored on the computers of other people around the world. Because the copyright files aren't stored on Pirate Bay computers, the site says it isn't breaking the law. Police, prosecutors and entertainment-industry lawyers say the distinction is bogus. The MPAA estimates The Pirate Bay's Web site generates $60,000 a month in advertising revenue. Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde says he isn't sure about exact revenue numbers, but he maintains that Pirate Bay has never made a profit, in part because of the high cost of maintaining servers around the world.
For all the resources the entertainment industry, the U.S. and Sweden have put into the case, the outcome is far from certain. Even if Sweden wins convictions and jail time, the site won't be shut down immediately. Separate legal action would be required to accomplish that, and it might be beyond the reach of Swedish authorities because Pirate Bay says its computer servers have been moved to other countries. "The suspects hide their information all around the world, and I am pretty sure even if they are convicted that wouldn't stop the service," says Swedish prosecutor Hakan Roswall.
The Pirate Bay's operators say they are expecting the charges and will prepare their defense with the aid of government-funded lawyers for a trial later this year. "We're not worried," says Fredrik Neij, a Pirate Bay co-founder. "We think the law is on our side." The movie industry, which in Europe typically focuses on public-relations campaigns to sway public opinion rather than the lawsuits it uses in the U.S., is hoping that details will emerge to turn the tide against file sharers in Sweden.
That is a tall order given the site's local popularity. For example, the heir to the Wasabröd fortune -- a popular cracker-like snack in Sweden -- has supported the group in the past, allowing a phone company he owned to provide the site with bandwidth and server space in its early days.
The public delights in the group's attitude toward anybody who sends it cease-and-desist letters, which are often published on the Web site along with Pirate Bay's cheeky replies. Some 157,000 movies, songs and other files can be found on the site, according to the MPAA, and 1.5 million people visit it a day, Mr. Neij says. The most popular movie on the site: Will Smith's "I Am Legend."
Rather than operate underground, The Pirate Bay's operators court publicity. Last year, they gained control of an Internet domain name used by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, a music trade group that is essentially the international version of the Recording Industry Association of America. The site, www.ifpi.com, was redubbed the International Federation of Pirate Interests. The London-based IFPI got the domain name back last month.
The Pirate Bay's operators say they have been followed in recent weeks by camera-toting private detectives in foreign-registered cars. In September, they filed a police complaint claiming that MediaDefender, a U.S. counterpiracy company, had been hired by several Hollywood studios and music companies to hack into their site and shut it down.
MediaDefender, which itself was hacked by a shadowy group last year, denies the accusation. "We're a reputable public company," says Chief Executive Randy Saaf. "We're not going to be doing hacking. That's silly."
While the entertainment industry hopes a guilty verdict will deter other Swedes from file sharing, it acknowledges that making more entertainment available for legal download would help.
"New services are being explored," says Geraldine Moloney, a spokeswoman in Europe for the MPAA. "The industry is committed to offering film fans as much choice as possible." | <urn:uuid:105b2711-f9d1-424d-89d7-8a6acbf1fb7a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120001282486582581.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963962 | 1,436 | 1.6875 | 2 |
How should US perceive possible North Korea missile tests?
Debate over nation's possible nuke testing
- Duration 5:27
- Date Feb 4, 2013
Debate over nation's possible nuke testing
Also in this playlist...
This transcript is automatically generated
By the United States and South Korea are kicking off some naval drills in a show of force the exercises are coming in -- new concerns that North Korea.
Is preparing to conduct another nuclear weapons tests in direct violation.
Of the United Nations that despite this the New York Times is reporting that some US intelligence officials.
Want to go ahead with the test what -- North Korea did this go ahead and do it thinking it will give us all a better sense.
-- whether North Korea is really getting closer to a weapon.
Beckett the -- and the US mainland joining us now grand Chang author nuclear showdown North Korea takes on the world.
And David Albright is with -- -- president of the institute for science -- -- national security.
And a former weapons inspector in -- starting with you just took us a recent look at North Korea.
And there are there weapons sites if you will what you think every American needs to know.
About what North Korea is doing with nuclear weapons today.
I think -- the most important saying this is worrisome that they they appear to be trying to.
To build a greater nuclear weapons capability and and we have to worry it's still.
Detonated and our nuclear explosion underground -- demonstrates.
That there are.
Better at making nuclear weapons more deliverable weapons we also have to worry that at some point to -- deploy -- overly deploy nuclear weapons.
As a signed they would view is to turn their neighbors but most neighbors would feel -- -- those weapons are direct threat to them.
So that were in -- -- very bad point right now where there the whole situation could escalate and and be much harder to roll back or limit North Korea's advancements on nuclear weapons.
And -- a quick follow up question treated because your Foreman was our former weapons inspector as well what do you think about this report that.
That apparently the intelligence I say it -- group is split.
As to whether or not they'd like to see the test -- our intelligence officials because they'd like -- just see where North Korea is acts.
With their program do you think that's why it's.
Thought well certainly I I think I'm in the can't it would like to know a lot more about what's erupt to when I've gone there.
I mean I have endless questions on the technical level and usually the north Koreans have to stop me before long before it used up my questions so.
It's natural but our political leadership has made it very clear.
They've warned North Korea not to test that it would be seen as provocative.
And they've committed.
The leadership is committed that they will increase sanctions on North Korea if it does to us.
And Gordon hasn't he stated that there is there's room to do if north -- and the doing mess.
What do you think is the right move for the United States to follow up on it.
I think the one thing we should do is stop subcontracting our security to the Chinese and the United Nations.
You know even if this was the right thing to do a few years ago.
Right now we're at a time as David says where the north Koreans will be able to weaponized their uranium and plutonium.
And we don't have that much time maybe five years so we've got to make sure that the north Koreans are disarmed.
Because they make very threatening statements against the United States and we know that they're not a status quo power which means that they have used violence to upset situations that they found to be unacceptable.
When they have nuclear weapons -- have much more ability to do that.
Does it the big picture I could David -- well -- worried about this technology about whether or not they have the warhead on the long range missile that can bring in nuclear.
Bomb if you will to the United States why would they do that -- -- would be their motivation to engage us in that way.
From their point of view they wanted to tourists say they feel threatened bias and they want to keep us from from him his sense threatening them.
There's also -- part of this is that they they depend on these weapons it's and it's a point of of strong national pride and and and that's one of things it makes it harder.
For them to stop is that they they benefit domestically from when they also.
Tend to use him in leverage in trying to negotiate our concessions from current state so they they found the weapons for use useful politically.
And economically and and not and it makes this a very difficult problem I would add I don't think they can put a warhead on a long range missile I think they've got a ways to go.
But I think -- our assessments that I -- we've heard this from other governments.
I think you have to give him credit that they can put a warhead on one of their shorter range from armed missiles like that no dawn.
And they haven't done it.
Are in an overt -- so I just think they are not Racine ahead.
They're moving ahead and I still think there's opportunities.
To try to either engage with -- it may involve after being putting pressure on him.
-- engagement until limits.
-- their their future growth in their nuclear weapons arsenal.
Betancourt and as you point out we're not the only ones watching North Korea.
Iran is also closely watching why is Iran watching an annual what do -- -- -- aware concerns beyond just North Korea -- and where they stand with their nuclear program.
You know Iran as watching and they've had observers on site in North Korea for the two prior particular test 20062009.
Because the north Koreans have been selling the Iranians ballistic missiles and nuclear technology.
That -- -- reactor that the Israelis destroyed in September 2007.
Paid for by the Iranians and certainly was North Korean technology so we see these joint missile and dead new programs between Iran and North Korea.
Very -- -- David -- great to have you both today thank you for your expertise.
Thank you thank you. | <urn:uuid:7b480069-f166-4daf-969f-43482a45c7f3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://video.foxnews.com/v/2142153168001/how-should-us-perceive-possible-north-korea-missile-tests/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fvideo+%28Internal+-+Video+-+Latest%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970831 | 1,297 | 1.5 | 2 |
Week of March 25
I have always felt that the works of the famous British New Testament scholar, F. F. Bruce, are unnecessarily dry. In reading his memoirs, In retrospect, I discovered one of the reasons why. He said, "I do not care to speak much-especially in public-about the
things that mean most to me."1 When you eliminate what means most to you from your writing and speaking, they will be dry. For myself, I would say just the opposite: "I do not care to speak much-especially in public-about the things that don't mean most to me."
This raises a question that is larger than the relative transparency of our souls. It raises the question about the way in which deep emotions can be expressed in public. What is the place of spontaneity and form in venting the passions of one's heart? This is more of a
problem for me than for Bruce. That's one reason I moved from teaching in college to preaching in the church. I assume passion has a big place in the life of a preacher. So maybe my ruminations on how Jeremiah handles emotions in the Book of Lamentations will fit your soul too.
I will make two observations about "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" and then draw out some implications for the use of spontaneity and form in the expression of "what means most to us."
First, Lamentations is a deeply emotional book. Jeremiah writes about what means most to him, and he writes in agony. He feels all the upheaval of Jerusalem in ruins. There is weeping (1:2), desolation (1:4), mockery (1:7), groaning (1:8), hunger (1:11), grief (2:11), and the horrid loss of compassion as mothers boil their own children to eat them (2:20; 4:10). If there ever was intensity and fervor in the expression of passion from the heart, this is it.
The second observation, then, comes as a surprise: This seems to be the most formally crafted book in the Old Testament. Of the five chapters, chapters 1, 2, and 4 are each divided into twenty-two stanzas (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), and each stanza begins with a different letter of the alphabet. They are three acrostics.
Chapter 3 is even more tightly structured. Again there are twenty-two stanzas, but now each stanza has exactly three lines. The three lines in each stanza begin with the same letter, and each of the twenty-two stanzas begins with a different letter in alphabetical order.
This is the only chapter that is not an acrostic. But it still has twenty-two lines in conformity with the acrostic pattern of chapters 1-4. Now what do these two observations imply? First, they imply that genuine, heartfelt expression of our deepest emotions does not require spontaneity. Just think of all the mental work involved in finding all the right words to construct four alphabetical acrostics!
What constraint, what limitation, what submission to form! Yet what passion and power and heart! There is no necessary contradiction between form and fire.
Chapter 3 of Lamentations is the most personal and most intense. Here first-person references abound: "Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!" (3:19). Here the peak of hope is reached: "Great is your faithfulness!" (3:23). But here the author submits himself to the narrowest form in all the book.
After reading Lamentations, we can no longer believe that unpondered prayers are more powerful or real or passionate or heartfelt or genuine or alive than prayers that are thoughtfully and earnestly (and painfully?) poured out through a carefully crafted form. The danger of formalism is real. Prayers and sermons that are read from a manuscript are usually stiff and unnatural and artificial.
But the danger of spontaneity is also great. If the heart is without passion, it will produce lifeless, jargon-laden spontaneity. And if the heart is aflame, no form will quench it.
But not only is spontaneity no necessary advantage and form no necessary hindrance to deep, personal expression of feeling, but even more, formed affection often strikes deeper. Deeper into reality and deeper into the hearer. Formed grief, while not heaving to and fro with uncontrollable sobs, has a peculiar profundity.
Imagine a man's response when he first hears that his wife and children have been taken captive by the enemy and slaughtered. He throws himself to the ground, cries out in torment, rips his clothes, and rubs his head in ashes, until his energy ebbs into a pitiable "No, no, no." Here is utter spontaneity, utterly real emotion, no studied design, no conscious constraints.
But picture this man a week later, when the services are over and the friends have departed, and he is alone with the weight of his loss. The excruciating pain of the first blast is gone, and now there is the throb and ache of an amputated soul. What does he do to express this deep and settling grief? Between the periodic heaving sobs he reaches for a form and begins to make his lamentation.
Studied, crafted, pondered, full of power. When the time comes, he will read or recite this lamentation. But no one will say of this formed grief: "It is canned." On the contrary, it will strike deeper than the sobs. It will show more of what he has brought up from the depths.
Emotions are like a river flowing out of one's heart. Form is like the riverbanks. Without them the river runs shallow and dissipates on the plain. But banks make the river run deep. Why else have humans for centuries reached for poetry when we have deep affections to express? The creation of a form happens because someone feels a passion. How ironic, then, that we often fault form when the real evil is a dry spring.
Years ago I wrote a poem called "The Innkeeper," about the pain that the innkeeper may have experienced when Herod's soldiers came to kill the baby boys and started the slaughter at the innkeeper's place-"the price for housing the Messiah here." In the introduction I pondered why poets struggle to let deep emotion flow through narrow forms of art.
Why this struggle? Why does the poet bind his heart with such a severe discipline of form? Why strain to give shape to suffering? Because Reality has contours. God is who He is, not what we wish or try to make Him be. His Son, Jesus Christ, is the great granite Fact. His hard sacrifice makes it evident that our spontaneity needs Calvarylike discipline. Perhaps the innkeeper paid dearly for housing the Son of God. Should it not be costly to penetrate and portray this pain?2
Many pastors are not known for expressing deep emotions. This seems to me especially true in relation to the profoundest theological realities. This is not good, because we ought to experience the deepest emotions about the deepest things. And we ought to speak often, and publicly, about what means most to us, in a way that shows its value.
Brothers, we must let the river run deep. This is a plea for passion in the pulpit, passion in prayer, passion in conversation. It is not a plea for thin, whipped-up emotionalism. ("Let's all stand up and smile!") It is a plea for deep feelings in worthy forms from Godbesotted
hearts and minds.
1. F. F. Bruce, In Retrospect: Remembrance of Things Past (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1980), 304.
2. John Piper, The Innkeeper (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998)
Used by permission of Broadman & Holman Publishers. Excerpted from "Brothers We Are Not Professionals," copyright 2002 by John Piper. | <urn:uuid:abb5db95-deb6-412f-b6ed-99e70b2c820a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianity.com/devotionals/desiring-god-john-piper/desiring-god-week-of-3-or-26.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954467 | 1,690 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Mitt Romney's complaint that lots of people pay no federal income tax has become a familiar conservative lament over the past few years. But how did this become such a staple of tea party conservatism? Here's a case study that gives us a clue.
The main target of Republican ire on the zero-tax front isn't the elderly or the temporarily unemployed. It's poor people. And one of the reasons that so many poor people pay no income tax is the Earned Income Tax Credit, which can reduce your tax bill to zero or less. To qualify, though, you need a minimum income (i.e., you need to have a job), which makes the EITC an incentive to work—and this is why it's an anti-poverty program that Republicans used to support. Reihan Salam tries to figure out why they don't anymore:
A more parsimonious explanation is that cohort replacement and a lack of a sense of history is doing all of the work: many of today's Republicans are unacquainted with the case for the EITC and the child tax credit and the exclusion of Social Security benefits, or they fail to connect these initiatives to the narrowing of the tax base. This isn't a sinister plot.
Maybe. But let's do a quick history review first. Back in the '60s there was a groundswell of support for a negative income tax, a concept that held some appeal as a simple mechanism that could replace the complex alphabet soup of existing New Deal and Great Society anti-poverty programs. But Mr. Great Society himself, Lyndon Johnson, objected to it because it doled out money even if you weren't working. (FDR probably would have opposed it for the same reason.) Republicans agreed that it undermined incentives to work, and the NIT died.
However, after several years of political haggling, Sen. Russell Long (D-La.) won passage of the EITC in 1975. Because it was available only to those with earned income, it provided a positive incentive to work and enjoyed bipartisan support. It was made permanent in 1978, again with bipartisan support.
But then things changed. EITC was expanded in 1986 with support from Ronald Reagan but with far less support from congressional Republicans, most of whom fought the expansion. Another expansion in 1990 enjoyed even less Republican support, and in 1993, when Bill Clinton included a further expansion of EITC in his budget bill, it passed with no Republican votes at all. It was at this point that the EITC became associated exclusively with Democrats, and after the Gingrich revolution of 1994 the EITC became a frequent target of attacks from the GOP. House Republicans pushed for major cuts, and Clinton eventually managed to buy them off only by setting up a special $100 million IRS fraud unit targeted specifically at the working poor.
Roughly speaking, then, Republican support for the EITC has steadily declined since the mid-'80s, and the majority of the party has been actively opposed to it since the mid-'90s. So I don't think you can really blame the current antipathy toward EITC on the historical ignorance of modern Republicans. This all started 30 years ago, when Republicans were still keenly aware of both the program's origins and its conservative policy underpinnings. They just decided they didn't like the idea of giving money to poor people anymore. Now they've gone even further, and Mitt Romney's echo of his wealthy donors' disdain for the nontaxpaying poor is merely the next step along a logical path. Here's the path:
1975-1985: Support for work-oriented anti-poverty programs like the EITC
1985-1995: Mixed emotions toward EITC
1995-2005: Opposed to EITC
2005-present: Not just opposed to EITC, but actively in favor of making the poor start paying income taxes
The EITC hasn't been a bipartisan program for a long time, and its current sorry state within the GOP isn't just due to youngsters who have forgotten their party's past. As the EITC's history demonstrates, for the past several decades the core of the Republican Party has simply become steadily more hostile toward the working poor. They're no longer fellow citizens who deserve some help as long as they're willing to work, they're parasites who are mooching off the sweat of the productive classes. You can decide for yourself if this is sinister or not. | <urn:uuid:7b5b3f2c-72f7-467b-a8f2-ef63f585dded> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/rss/authors/142?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975273 | 917 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Not only has the epidemic changed, but so has how we communicate with each other. I remember what an impact the fax machine had on how we shared information about the epidemic. Thirty years ago I remember reading about gay-related immune deficiency (GRID) in the newspaper. I talked about it with my friends and colleagues….my social network.
But information didn’t move like it does today. It wasn’t as dynamic, as social as it is today. That was before the internet, before blogs, way before Facebook and Twitter. So while it was a shared experience, it was isolated to our immediate social networks. Today our social networks reach far beyond where we could even imagine 30 years ago. In 140 characters, our tweets can reach 100,000 people. We can create videos, send text messages, produce podcasts…so many forms of media are available to us.
I think that’s pretty powerful.
If you’ve followed this blog or AIDS.gov, you probably know that we believe in the power of new media in response to HIV. And the reason is that I truly believe in the power of new media to make a difference. I believe that we have an obligation, as consumers, as providers, as community members, to understand how to use these tools. They help us collaborate, create, communicate and listen. If these tools existed 30 years ago, we may have had a very different experience. I encourage you to learn, or continue to learn, about the power of new media.
Finally, I leave you with some summer reading – related links around 30 years of AIDS:
- White House Statement on 30 Years of AIDS
- Statement by Secretary Clinton on the 30th anniversary of HIV/AIDS
- White House Video Chat - “Open for Questions – 30 Years of AIDS”
- The State & Future of HIV/AIDS Webinar podcast, transcript, and slides
- 30 Years of HIV/AIDS – A Personal Journey – Lecture by Dr. Anthony Fauci
- 30 Years of HIV/AIDS – Kathleen Sebelius’ piece on the Huffington Post
And don’t miss these videos: | <urn:uuid:3ab3134d-b535-4069-81ef-31cb713560b7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.aids.gov/2011/07/looking-back-at-30-years-of-aids.html?wpmp_switcher=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949485 | 445 | 2.328125 | 2 |
PA System Set Up
There are a number of things to consider when setting up a PA sound system, some should be fairly obvious, like making sure that the speakers are aimed into the audience and away from walls and ceilings. I say should, because a lot of people do not seem think of this! By adhering to a basic guide, most systems will sound good and be well useable in a wide range of situations. These basics are covered here...
Limit The Frequency Response
PA frequency response should be limited from between 30-50Hz 24dB/oct at the low end, and 15kHz @ 24dB/oct at the top. The bottom end limit can often be set at 60hz or even higher without being noticeable, especially if response is given a slight boost in response before roll off. Certainly do not set below 30Hz.
Like our homes, the lowest frequencies we can hear is determined by the size of the room. A large indoor venue may comfortably handle the very deep frequencies down to 20Hz as can an outdoor venue. Smaller venues will not offer a real capability of the lowest frequencies anyway and it is also important to remember that deep bass travels the easiest. This is often the most important factor in planning for minimum sound spill from the venue.
Rarely is there any worthwhile input at these frequencies and is only audible according to theory. In practice there is little need to have a system response below 40Hz and by limiting it will actually help to produce a clearer and louder sound.
Restricting the bottom-end like this removes much of the low end noise that takes up large amounts of amp power. All of the other signals ‘ride’ on the longer lower frequency waves. The main signal can easily be driven into compression or clipping by inaudible low frequencies stealing the headroom, often in a non-musically related way.
At the high end there is no need for a response above 15kHz. If you are uncertain of this, tune into a good FM radio broadcast, these have a steep analog filter cutting severely above 15kHz, (actually a notch centred at 19kHz). See if you can really notice anything lacking here!
Filtering the top-end removes a lot of spurious
rubbish due to radio frequencies (RF) and other interference that can
get into the system via instrument pick-ups and other on-stage
equipment beyond the control of the PA and sound crew. It may seem
surprising but there are times when this can bring a significant
increase in clarity.
Mono The Deep Bass.
Turntables are renowned for their subsonics and warped records produce a prodigious amount of near DC waves (watch those hi-fi cones wobble when you play vinyl through them). Fortunately much of this is out of phase, and when combined into mono cancels out.
Bass is the most power hungry area of the spectrum
and deep bass is not really directional, only the harmonics are.
Running the bass in mono means that the load is always equally shared
by both channels, and this is important not only for amp and speaker
power considerations, but also the bass sound distribution in the
This is a sticky subject over which there appears to be a lot of controversy.
Many rigs feature a third octave graphic equaliser (30-32 bands). More often or not this is because it is fashionable.
In hi-fi circles graphic equalisers are regarded as something people use to make their new hi-fi sound as crap as their old one! With rather to many PA systems it seems that it is a device for making your PA system sound like a really loud version of that crap stereo you listen to at home... Its other main use is to compensate for the fact that the sound system hasn’t been set up properly.
Even when used properly it is often to apply a gentle room correction that could more easily done with a simple two or three band tone control. It can be useful for limiting the response extremes as described above. This is much better done with proper 24dB/oct filters.
A properly set up system should not really need any EQ apart from maybe minor adjustments at the extremes for room compensation. Unless you have well trained hearing and really know what you are doing they are graphic EQ's best avoided on a front of house (FOH) PA sytem.
If you really need sophisticated EQ this is best done with one of the modern processors available. These usually come with a measuring microphone and a computerised adjustments that make life easy. As they feature crossovers and limiters as well they can be a very useful asset.
Graphic EQ is best employed on the monitor mix as an aid to feedback prevention. Here they can be very useful.
One thing I find so odd with many PA systems, especially small to medium sized rigs (and some of the larger rigs as well), is the lack of thought given to the actual sound distribution from the speakers in relation to the audience and the room.
First of all, any speakers producing midrange and top-end should really be above audience head height. This one simple aspect ensures that most people will be able to hear the music clearly. Not doing so means that all of the sound is thrown at the people at the front who absorb and block the sound to those behind. It doesn’t take much common sense to figure this but it often seems to be done!
These speakers should then be angled inward and if possible, slightly downward so that they point into the audience not straight at the back wall or over peoples heads. There are less reflections from ceilings and walls to muddle the sound and more of the speaker energy ends up going where intended. All speaker systems in fact, big and small, should angle in toward the audience for best effect.
It is surprising how large an audience can be covered with even small speakers this way.
In most small to medium sized venues the bass end can comfortably lie closer to the ground and can, in-fact, utilise the ground effect of increasing the depth and volume of the bass.
This suggests the use of low crossover points and the bass speakers considered more in the manner of sub bass. 150Hz – 250Hz is a good area to cross-over. This of course, makes it easy to mono the bass end around the same point that the sound directivity is becoming mono anyway.
Unless you are using ‘one box’ solutions you will need to separate the speaker frequency bands with a crossover
One box full range speakers usually use passive crossovers unless they have built in amps, (self powered). Multi-cabinet systems will normally use an active crossover system feeding separate power amps for each bands although passive filtering is common with small bullet tweeters at 5kHz and up.
Active crossover filters are commonly available for two, three and four way set-ups, with some units configurable for any of these. These generally have crossover slopes of 24dB per octave. Some cheap units may offer slopes of 12 or 18dB per octave, but they cannot be recommended. 24dB types are cheap enough to buy (or make) and as well as a steep slope, they have the advantage that the frequency bands are in phase at the crossover points, an important factor in a coherant sound (see Speaker Phase)
First of all, it cannot be stressed too highly toward setting up the bass-end to cover just the bass up to around 200Hz. Mono the incoming signals and that’s sorted. If you have extra sub bass as well, simply drive them as appropriate (often 80Hz downward) from the mono feed. Any phase differences arising from speaker alignment is less noticeable at this frequency due to the wavelength.
An ideal would be to have a single midrange speaker that has a smooth response from 200Hz up to about 5kHz. This is the most important area of the audio range, where the information and auditory clues are, where our hearing is most sensitive, . From 5kHz up then being covered by the treble horns (tweeters). Whilst this is not impossible to achieve, having good dispersion around 5kHz is not always easy, and the range has to be split.
800Hz-1.5kHz is a common area in the mid to crossover, but needs care to ensure an even frequency response, peaks or phase problems here sound unpleasant, a small dip in the response here is tolerable though. There are upper-mid horns which have responses down to below 1kHz and need tweeters above 8-10kHz. Some larger treble horns have responses down toward 1 or 2kHz although most of them really need some augmentation at the very top end. This is the province of the ‘bullet’ and slot tweeters.
The mid horn lower crossover frequency depends partly on horn cut off point, the one octave rule (see below) and the top end response of the speaker in the range below. Just either side of 1kHz is a common point. Remember that apart from constant directivity horns the directivity of a speaker narrows as the frequency rises. Running bass or mid range speakers up toward the top end of their range
Tweeter manufacturers will always provide recommended crossover details with their products (some like the Celestion HF series of bullets are available with their own built in filters). These are generally the best points used, unless this is lower than required. Never ever try and feed them signals below their working range, you will kill them very quickly.
The One Octave Rule
When choosing the lowest crossover point for most horns, use at least an octave above the actual horn -3dB cut off point. This avoids the famous ‘honky’ horn sound that dominates a badly set up horn loaded system.
On the subject of horns it should be noted that
constant directivity horns only maintain their wide directivity up the
frequency range, is at the expense of a falling frequency response. A
corresponding boost is required to maintain a level frequency response.
Setting crossover levels
The output levels on the crossover should not be treated as tone controls... They should be set to equalise the sound output between the different ranges, so that the response is level between them.
If they are not set properly, there will be an un-natural jump at the crossover point, which cannot be compensated for with EQ on the mixing desk or whatever, (I have often seen an odd 'jump' on the 3rd/oct graphic EQ that is often to be found feeding the main PA, this clearly to compensate for a mis-adjusted crossover!).
Correct speaker phase is where the sound waves from the speakers are vibrating in the same direction at any one frequency, that is, all cones moving outward at the same time and all moving inward at the same time.
All speakers within a given band need to be in phase with each other and with adjacent bands at the crossover point. Ideally all of the speakers will have been wired properly, and so will all of the cables and connectors. The amps and outboard equipment should all be of matching phase. Ideally though, is not always what happens the real world.
There are test devices available that help with setting up phase within a speaker stack and these can be very useful on larger rigs. They feed a narrow triangular pulse (called a witches hat due to it’s shape), into the system. A microphone picks this up and usually either an oscilloscope or a special piece of test gear indicates the phase.
Without such equipment phasing can generally be done by ear:
Out of phase bass speakers are noticeable in particular due to a lack of bass at the centre line between them. When out of phase most of the bass cancels out. One out of phase bass speaker in the same stack is like turning two off them off!
One good way to check, is to place two bass speakers closely facing each other, feed them with a bass sound and swap the phase on one of them, the difference is immediately obvious.
The rest of the range is not quite so straight forward but it is still important to get it right. When mid-range and treble speakers are out of phase all sorts of other problems arise.
If the left/right mid/tops are out of phase it can give super wide stereo effect with a low centre image when fed with a stereo source. This plays havoc on the ears sound localisation and with mono sounds there is a confusion as to where exactly it is coming from..., not good.
Mid/tops in the same stack and out of phase produces all sorts of cancellation effects dependant on the listening angle. Consider the famous phaser and flanger effect units but without the sweeping up and down, it’s not so immediately obvious (because it is not sweeping), but has a distinct quality.
Phasing between adjacent frequency bands often causes confusion, sometimes switching the phase on the crossover doesn’t produce such obvious results, especially if you have to run round to the amp rack behind the speakers and then out to the front to listen as is often the case. The main effect on music is a disjointedness between the affected bands. Between the bass and mids for instance the bass will sound separated and doesn’t ‘gel’.
The other symptom can be the near or even complete loss of certain musical notes when they hit on or near the crossover frequency.
To determine phase in upper ranges (mid to tops) a wide band signal is required. A suitable piece of music will often suffice, something fairly busy and full. A alternative and perhaps preferable is what is known as ‘Pink Noise’. If you mixing desk cannot supply this then there are test CD’s with pink noise, various signal generators which provide pink and white noise and many synthesisers have a noise source that can be used.
Don’t have the volume too loud, put one ear fairly close to the front of the speakers and move your ear between one speaker and the other. The sound should evenly shift from one to the other. Obviously if you are comparing two frequency ranges, the lower range will be dominant in one and the higher in the other, so listen to the sound around the crossover point.
If the whole sound seems to jump from one to another around a particular point between the two speakers then they are not in phase. Two adjacent speakers in the same range can be checked in the same way.
Sometimes inverting the phase between two ranges still lacks gradual change and still jumps. This happens for two reasons mainly (presuming the crossover frequencies are set within the speakers operating band that is...). One is that the crossover is less than 24db/oct, in which case proper phase alignment is not possible, or the speakers need time aligning. In this case there is often one setting that is a little smoother than the other, if nothing else choose that setting.
If the crossover has time aligning delays then adjust these until you have a smooth transition, if that doesn’t work the swap phase and do it again. Minor time align adjustments can sometimes be done by simply moving the upper speaker backwards or forwards in relation to the one below, again using your ear to determine the most smooth transition.
It can be a good idea when setting up a system for
testing purposes to deliberately switch some speakers out of phase and
become aware of the effects. There are often times when a cable is
swapped or hastily repaired, or a switch is accidentally operated and a
speaker ends up out of phase. This invariably happens at an inopportune
moment and somethin with the system sounds weird but not obvious.
Having heard the out-of-phase effects previously makes it much easier
Limiting and Compression
The limiter serves two main functions, one to protect the amps and speakers from over loads and the other when there is a requirement to limit the sound volume in the venue.
The main limiter is set to a fast action and hard limits, that is, cuts off any level lincrease above a certain limit, squashes the peak there and then, the signal bumps into an impassable ceiling. Setting this to over-limit, that is, actually turn the level down, or giving it a long release time, is a very good way of detering over-zeolous DJ's and sound engineers...
The secondary limiter can be set at a lower threshold and the parameters eased off a bit. The effect is more that of hard compression above the threshold. This acts both as general venue limiting but also with a little care can be used to boost apparant sound levels and add some punchiness. Do not overdo this though, anything other than a small enhancement can squash the life out of the music and have the opposite effect. The purpose here is similar to adding loudness compression to a studio recording when mastering.
A Most Valuable Tip
The single most useful thing you can do to get a good sound is to know what a good sound is...
Get a decent home stereo, something that can warrant the label ‘hi-fi’ not the usual tacky cheap set of boxes that shout at you over a thumping boomy bass.
Maybe consider a pair of low cost studio monitors, fantastic deals are available on these nowadays. If you love music (if you don’t then why are you reading this?), you will do yourself a favour that you will never regret!
If you have a personal reference of what a good sound is, your ears will tell you the rest. | <urn:uuid:e3b4a26b-4273-41f7-9701-c6abaa1a8c48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mikfielding.com/PA_System_Set_Up.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948272 | 3,612 | 1.90625 | 2 |
The use of “Islamo-fascism” to describe the doctrines and objectives of radical Islam has been attacked by media outlets, organizations and individuals who believe that such language is actually an example of “Islamophobia.” In October 2007, for instance, The Nation magazine quoted Barnard College religion professor Elizabeth Castelli, who called "Islamo-fascism" a "made-up term" designed to "close off debate, impose a particular position and set of arguments, and invite the harassment of individuals who hold alternative positions."
That same month, a Daily Kos post stated: "Of course, while there may be Islamic radicals that promote theocracy, 'Islamic Fascism' is a misnomer. In fact, the only case I know of in the world right now where that [sic] a religious group can truly be claimed to be promoting fascism is the American religious right's forming bedfellows with the corporate fascists if the corprotists [sic] will let them have their own far-right 'Christian' theocracy."
This section of DiscoverTheNetworks takes the position that "Islamo-fascism" is both a valid term and a legitimate topic for intellectual discussion. In the post-9/11 era, the West has been forced to confront the undeniably widespread existence of a radical Islamic movement that seeks to expand its dominion over all the nations, and ultimately to establish on a worldwide scale a caliphate governed by strict adherence to Islamic law. The means by which this brand of Islam aims to achieve its expansionist goals is jihad, or holy war, a longstanding Muslim tradition rooted in violence and the subjugation or murder of nonbelievers.
The term “Islamo-fascism” made its first entry into the English language in September 1990, when the Scottish historian Malise Ruthven, writing in Britain’s Independent newspaper, described how traditional Arab dictatorships used religious appeals in order to maintain their iron grip on political power.
More recently, Christopher Hitchens has pointed out numerous parallels between Islamo-fascism and the brand of fascism that was introduced to the world by the likes of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis:
"Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. … Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia … Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual 'deviance'—and to its counterparts, the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures."
A basic tenet of German fascism was the notion of a master race and its superiority to all others. The Islamo-fascist variant of this is what Hitchens calls the concept of “the ‘pure’ and the ‘exclusive’ over the unclean and the kufar or profane.”
The historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson buttresses Hitchens’ observations:
"'Islamic fascism' [is] the perfect nomenclature for the agenda of radical Islam, for a variety of historical and scholarly reasons.... First, the general idea of 'fascism'—the creation of a centralized authoritarian state to enforce blanket obedience to a reactionary, all-encompassing ideology—fits well the aims of contemporary Islamism that openly demands implementation of sharia law and the return to a Pan-Islamic and theocratic caliphate. In addition, Islamists, as is true of all fascists, privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, pristine past, in which the devout were once uncorrupted by modernism.... Because fascism is born out of insecurity and the sense of failure, hatred for Jews is de rigueur. To read al Qaeda’s texts is to reenter the world of Mein Kampf.... Envy and false grievance, as in the past with Italian, German, or Japanese whining, are always imprinted deeply within the fascist mind.... Second, fascism thrives best in a once proud, recently humbled, but now ascendant, people. They are ripe to be deluded into thinking contemporary setbacks were caused by others and are soon to be erased through ever more zealotry."
The RESOURCES column located on the right side of this page contains links to articles, essays, books, and videos that explore such topics as:
the definition of Islamo-Fascism
the activities and agendas of organizations that embrace the jihadist goals of Islamo-fascism, including the implementation of Sharia (Islamic Law) in the U.S. and other non-Muslim countries; the establishment of Islam as the supreme faith worldwide; the reestablishment of an Islamic caliphate; and the destruction of Israel;
the Nazi roots and connections of jihadists;
the homicidal intentions of Islamo-fascists, as told in their own words;
- the nature of "apologist" organizations that, while they do not necessarily share goals of the Islamist/jihadist groups, nonetheless lend considerable support; and
the three "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" campaigns conducted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center on college campuses nationwide in 2007 and 2008. | <urn:uuid:bb02fa2f-9b56-4c83-957e-b2a37f1783fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=183&type=issue | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940432 | 1,161 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Segr's first book -- "A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe" (Viking, 2002) -- moves from the blazing hearts of faraway stars to physicists' drive toward absolute zero, from global warming to heat-sensitive proteins in the human body.
"Segr combines a historical perspective and a broad command of modern science to provide a lucid and novel synthesis of the concept of temperature," said science writer John Harte, author of "Consider a Spherical Cow" and "The Green Fuse."
Of all the fundamental measures of our universe, Segr identifies temperature as the newcomer. First measured in the 17th century, millennia after time and distance were first quantified, temperature is, in Segr's view, an appropriate yardstick for measuring the progress of humanity.
"If I were to employ temperature as my record for a narrative of civilization," Segr writes, "I would cite the ever-hotter fires humans made as they moved ... from the Stone Age's first fires to charcoal and then to the bellows that produced bronze and iron. Going further, I would reach the steam engine, the nineteenth century's great Bessemer furnaces that made steel, and finally the Nuclear Age. ... For the past 200 years, I could use as a marker the ever-lower temperatures achieved in laboratories as, one by one, all known species of gas were liquefied. As the millennium came to an end, the low-temperature scale reached billionths of a degree above absolute zero."
Ever wonder what's so special about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or why we consider room temperature to be around 70 degrees? Segr explains that people feel most comforta
Contact: Steve Bradt
University of Pennsylvania | <urn:uuid:8e5fd4a8-c177-4838-86dd-b1c742483c12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-2/A-thermodynamic-history-traces-temperatures-effect-on-Universe--Earth-and-humans-6944-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935655 | 369 | 3.328125 | 3 |
A German publisher has come under fire for removing what it described as "politically incorrect" language from a classic children's book.
Die Kleine Hexe (The Little Witch) by Otfried Preußler is about a rebellious, 127-year-old witch, an age that is "not at all old for a witch", who has a year to learn to be a good witch. First published in 1957, it is a perennial bestseller in Germany, but a "modernised" new edition from publisher Thienemann removes terms from the story which it says are "obsolete and no longer politically correct", including the word "Neger", which translates as "negro". Other changes include the removal of the verb "wichsen", which used to mean "to polish" but which is now linked to male masturbation, according to Der Spiegel.
The word "Neger", seen as politically incorrect in Germany today, is used during a section of the story when the witch and her raven Abraxas see a group of children in fancy dress for a carnival. "The two little Negro boys didn't come from the circus," writes the award-winning translator Anthea Bell in an English edition. "No more did the Turks and Indians. The Chinese women, the cannibal, the Eskimo girl, the desert sheikh and the Hottentot chief were not part of the show either. No – it was carnival time in the village. The children had a half-holiday from school because of the carnival, and they were romping about the village square in fancy dress."
Thienemann said it made the changes with the consent of the Preußler family, but the publisher has nonetheless been attacked in the German press. "Anyone who believes art should be changed in retrospect because it contradicts the prevailing morality would have been pleased in 2001 when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan," ran an editorial in Die Welt.
Bell also objected to the changes. "Er … this chapter is full of kids in fancy dress, not just a couple blacked up as negroes, but also in costume as Turks, Eskimos, and Indians. What is happening to the children masquerading as Turks, I ask myself? Germany has a large population of ethnic Turkish people, some distinguished writers among them. If there is a racist problem it often involves disgraceful anti-Turkish violence. The authorities come down on that kind of thing very hard indeed."
She described the changes as "a case of breaking a butterfly upon a wheel" and said it was "a shame, with Preussler coming up to his 90th birthday".
Thienemann has also been the recipient of a number of aggressive letters, it said, as accusations of censorship fly. "The lowest form of response is people saying, 'Who are you? You were not born here. You come here and want to change our society'. Then there are people who say I'm inserting race into a text that never had those intentions. But terminology is never neutral. It shows the structure of dominance. It's not about intentions. That was my first letter to the publisher, that this is racist. This is where racism starts," Mekonnen Mesghena told Der Spiegel. Mesghena, who emigrated to Germany from Eritrea as a child, is head of migration and diversity at a Berlin think tank, and wrote a letter to Thienemann about Die Kleine Hexe, prompting the changes. "And if I didn't have the confidence before that parents would take the responsibility to properly explain these terms to their children, I have far less confidence now."
In a statement, the publisher said that "nobody ever accused Preußler of racism … The words were neutral in the time when he used them, but they are not today".
Thienemann said that it would never make a change to a text "lightly", but updates can be necessary over time if texts are not to become incomprehensible to children, pointing to the Brothers Grimm fairytale Little Red Riding Hood, where the word "Dirne", which used to mean "girl", now translates as "prostitute" so has been replaced with "Mädchen".
Preußler's books, said Thienemann, are often read by children on their own, and "as far as possible, text for children should not be misunderstood. Language affects the consciousness and where a discriminatory term can be avoided, we think it is reasonable to omit it."
In 2011, an American publisher replaced the word "nigger" in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn with the word "slave", and in 2010 a Dutch publisher renamed Joseph Conrad's novella The Nigger of Narcissus as The N-word of the Narcissus to avoid offending "modern sensibilities".
• This article was amended on 21 January 2013. In the original we used the German word wischen instead of wichsen. This has been corrected. | <urn:uuid:8f1fdbfa-f666-4ae3-8115-602983a869fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/18/german-publisher-bowdlerising-childrens-classic?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971492 | 1,032 | 2.21875 | 2 |