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"The Greek government’s willingness to serve as the enforcer of Israeli’s naval blockade of Gaza made it impossible for this journey to happen," organizerson their website.
"Now our folks are beginning the journey home – some will arrive today, some tomorrow and others in the days ahead," the organizers wrote of the ship's 37 passengers and 4 crew.
The '' was stopped by the Hellenic Coast Guard when it tried to leave port without permission on Friday.
Its captain, John Klusmire, was arrested after he refused to return to port, sparking a 2-hour standoff that was only concluded when Greek commandos boardedand forced it to return to a Greek military dock, where it has been impounded.
Klusmire was subsequently charged with attempting to violate the Greek no-sailon Gaza and endangering his passengers before being released on his own recognizance.
Nine otherthe Audacity were arrested for staging a protest without a permit in front of the American embassy in Athens after , but were subsequently released.
The 'Audacity' is not the only ship involved in the this year's 'Freedom Flotilla 2' to have met its Waterloo in Greece. Most of the 10-boat flotilla has found itself impeded by the Hellenic.
The Canadian vessel Tahrir attempted to interfere with the Hellenic Coast Guardcutter that blocked their departure by sending kayakers into its path. The move was to no avail and the captain of the cutter ultimately rammed the Canadian vessel toit back to port.
Four Canadians involved in the incident - including one of the kayakers - remain in Greek custody at this time. | <urn:uuid:8c67e064-04b0-4db7-9d30-a9c9ad9a27f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.israelifrontline.com/2011/07/audacity-of-failure-no-us-boat-for-gaza.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980718 | 341 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Science racked up some big wins in 2012, not least the Higgs boson, Mars Curiosity rover and successfully calling the non-ending of the world due to ancient Maya inscriptions. We look at a busy year.
Archaeologists sure must be feeling grateful that the Maya doomsday didn't arrive on Friday after all. Man, wouldn't they have felt silly if the world had ended?
I guess it is just as well. Archaeologists aren't the only scientists with reasons to be grateful as 2012 comes to a close.
The year has brought a bevy of advances, from a sterling success of a brand-new Mars rover roaming the Red Planet to detection of something that looks a lot like the long-awaited Higgs boson, better known as the "God particle," at CERN's Swiss high-energy physics lab.
The Higgs boson, says Science magazine editor Robert Coontz, is like "the keystone of the arch" in physics, in an interview his magazine released to celebrate its top 10 list of science discoveries this week. Science named the detection, announced on July 4 at CERN, as its top discovery of the year.
"The discovery wasn't so much a surprise, as a relief," Coontz added, since physicists had wagered about $5.5 billion on building a huge particle collider experiment under the Swiss border with France to find the Higgs boson.
(For perspective, that's a bit over half of what banking's JPMorgan Chase,blew on London credit derivative wagers this year.) The particle interacts with others, such as the electrons swarming around atoms, to provide them with their mass in the standard model of particle physics, which explains phenomena such as electromagnetism and radioactivity, but not gravity.
Incidentally, the CERN lab was another thing that some folks had feared would end the world this year, by spawning black holes, but since it shut down already for the year, I guess we all can feel even more doomsday-averted relief on that score, too.
Science went on to celebrate other successes, such as the recovery of DNA from ancient "Denisovans," archaic humans who lived in Asia as recently as 74,000 years ago and seem to have contributed genes to modern people. Another advance was in genetic engineering technologies, with growing use in labs of "TALENs" proteins. DNA has a variety of biological mechanisms built into cells to repair genetic damage, and these TALENs proteins trigger this repair machinery to modify targeted genes. The technology can create cells or animals, such as a pig seen as a model for heart disease, to help out in biomedical research.
Mars, and NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover, also made the list, not so surprisingly. Curiosity has already uncovered evidence of flowing water once rushing over the floor of its crater landing site. The rover has performed flawlessly as it heads toward next year's excavation of clay that may deliver evidence of chemistry friendly to life once residing on the Martian surface. Most important, says NASA's science chief John Grunsfeld, the rover's almost-flawless landing proves that humanity can deliver a 1-ton rolling chemistry lab to another planet, not too shabby for a species that apparently spends a lot of time worrying about botched doomsday prophecies.
We'll see how Curiosity works out next year, which in truth, is how it goes in most scientific endeavors, notes science analyst David Pendlebury of information firm Thomson Reuters. "The flipping of a page on the calendar has little to do with progress in science, I think," Pendlebury says. "There needs to be some reasonable time frame for assessing significant changes or new developments."
Looking at which scientific papers ended up most cited by other scientists from 2012 (which does tend to favor papers published earlier in the year), Pendlebury finds the Higgs boson result at the top of the list, just like Science magazine. But some other results unnoticed by Science, or by its competitor Nature, in its yearly roundup, also rang up big notice among scientists.
Among them, a New England Journal of Medicine study led by Charles Swanton of the London Research Institute that suggested wide variations in genetic mutations found inside tumors across common types of cancer might thwart promising "personalized" approaches to medicine. The genes prompting cancer in one part of a tumor might not be the ones that do this in another part of the same tumor, the study showed. Medicines tuned to the wrong genes might fail to slow cancersas a result. Published in March, the result has already been cited 128 times in Thomson Reuters' "Web of Science" study registry.
Another study that attracted a lot of interest from scientists was on "tandem" plastic solar cells that yielded a world-record 8.6% efficiency in converting sunlight into electricity, reported in the journal Nature Photonics, by UCLA's Yang Yang. Also published in March, the paper has already been cited in 93 other scientific papers. "Papers with these many citations are already standouts, clearly, even though the year isn't over," Pendlebury says.
Not every scientist was a winner this year, as Nature's Richard van Noorden noted this week. "Arguments raged over whether information about a potentially dangerous flu virus should be published, for example, and funders, publishers and researchers discussed how to make raw data — as well as peer-reviewed research — more openly available," he wrote in his journal's year-end wrap-up. "Meanwhile, high-profile cases of dubious or fraudulent results offered a reminder that above all else, findings need to be trustworthy."
This may be the year that science fraud went from being seen as an occasional nuisance to a chronic, festering problem in the scientific enterprise, as Nature editor Colin Macilwain noted in an August editorial. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences is expected to issue a report in 2013 calling for widespread reform of how science is policed for fabrication, falsification or plagiarism. The astonishing case of Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel, seen as making up data in 55 studies and book chapters, according to a Tilburg University report, has rocked the world of experimental psychology, for example.
Finally, funding has been hanging heavy over science, like much else funded by taxpayers, this year. European budget talks collapsed this year on science funding amid the continent's fight over rescuing nations such as Greece and Spain. And U.S. planetary scientists held a bake sale to dramatize cuts to NASA's budgets, even without the looming sequestration cuts contemplated in Washington's "fiscal cliff" fight.
Despite the worries, at least the world didn't end, as some had predicted based on erroneous interpretations of the ancient Maya calendar. And we do have science to look forward to from Mars, and undoubtedly elsewhere in the new year. "You never know what you are going to find; that's what's nice about science," Coontz observed in his commentary on 2012.
Happy holidays, folks, and here's hoping 2013 brings us all more news from the world of science. | <urn:uuid:1112075f-fd7d-4e54-8107-cc40de97118a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/vergano/2012/12/22/science-2012-higgs-maya/1784997/?kjnd=4JMtZMkTAhJ%2FtYw8Z6L4SE3hHuvMOatnbgjq3RpmYfpr9HRRCNQHsclU0t5LDPsy-f76047fc-edde-48c5-9cb9-f8ac9f71e4d8_u%2FJAc3N2arQYhtjmrnA5rqSsr6cQnU1SndloAnS1OzvIbY40arKJ0%2BpbRIq%2BmAV7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963368 | 1,467 | 2.5625 | 3 |
There is a gap in Tom Mulcair's logic about oilsands development that's big enough to run a pipeline through.
Actually, you could likely reroute the pipeline to skirt an environmentally sensitive aquifer or build a rail line to transport record amounts of crude oil by train and still have room to manoeuvre the tricky political terrain that Mulcair is hoping to cross.
The federal NDP leader is in Washington this week proclaiming his opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas just as he opposed the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oilsands to the B.C. coast for exports to Asia.
Ignore that last month he told the Calgary Chamber of Commerce the NDP would be a partner in energy development in Alberta. In Washington, the message is that he's worried about climate change and Canada's energy security.
It's confusing, but Mul-cair seemingly supports oilsands development but not export pipelines.
He acknowledged in a speech Wednesday at the Woodrow Wilson Center "the future of Canada's natural resource sector will be based on our access to global markets." However, a day earlier, in a speech to another business and political audience in Washington, D.C., Mulcair lamented that Canada has "never taken care of our energy security."
Talk about mixed messages.
Despite his misgivings about climate change, Mulcair supports moving bitumen by pipeline to oil refineries in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
He also said oilsands crude could go to export markets from East Coast ports and noted it would fetch better prices rather than the 30-per-cent discount on Canadian oil in the U.S. Midwest.
Mulcair's logic is either diplomatically adept or politically convenient. As a headline in the National Post succinctly put it; "Mulcair likes oilsands except when he doesn't."
The reaction from Alberta Premier Alison Redford, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver - who have all been in the U. S. recently to lobby for Keystone XL - was immediate and uniform. They said Mulcair betrayed Canada's economic interests and, to quote Wall, cut "a swath of destruction for the energy sector."
The stakes are unquestionably high. Discounts on Canadian oil cost the economy $27 billion a year by some estimates and the Keystone debate will remain political fodder until the Obama Administration makes a decision on the much-delayed and once rerouted 830,000-barrel-a-day pipeline.
Mulcair and his supporters in the environmental community contend the leader of Canada's Official Opposition has a duty to counter messages from Big Oil and conservative politicians and express the concerns of millions of Canadians.
"Global warming is a real issue," he said. "We've got to start taking this seriously."
Unfortunately, it can be hard to take Mulcair seriously.
His position seems to be that developing oilsands for exports are bad idea. However, he supports producing enough bitumen to supply refineries in Canada - and exporting some refined products at world prices - to create jobs and increase energy security.
That counters his previous concerns that oilsands development has made the loonie a petro-currency that has undermined the manufacturing sector in Central Canada. He said he expects Canadians will use oil-sands to heat homes and run factories for the next 100 years.
Here's the tricky part. Canada's oil and gas reserves are so vast they couldn't be consumed by 35 million Canadians in any realistic time frame.
Problems will emerge if Canada doesn't export a substantial amount of bitumen because the economies of scale aren't sufficient to justify the cost of oilsands megaprojects merely to supply Canada.
It may seem counter intuitive, but building export pipelines actually secures Canada's energy security by providing the impetus for ongoing development of what Mulcair concedes is "a tremendous blessing" of natural resources in Canada.
Mulcair is correct that oilsands "can be a source of wealth and prosperity for our country for generations to come" but not with his wishy-washy position.
After the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s, Canada implemented interventionist policies that restricted exports and within a decade went from being a net exporter of oil to a net importer. After a return to market-based economics in the 1980s, Canada's oil and gas production more than tripled.
Oilsands development will always be a lightning rod and Mul-cair is correct when he said that "access to global markets will be based not only on demand for resources, but on the world's assessment of how we develop them."
He said principles like polluter pay for environmental damages are deeply ingrained with Canadians, but there are signs public policy is shifting on the ground to better address the need for a social licence to operate.
In last week's budget, the Alberta government added $60 million to the bill for oil and gas producers to pay for regulatory oversight. On Tuesday, the Energy Resources Conservation Board levied a $284 million charge on producers as a damage deposit to ensure abandoned oilfield operations are properly cleaned up. In both cases, industry simply accepted the change.
There's certainly more governments and industry can do for environmental stewardship in the oilsands but these are moves in the right direction.
It was Mulcair, after all, who quoted former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson that working toward environmentally and economically sustainable development must go hand in hand because "we cannot separate our most fundamental interests from our most deeply held beliefs."
Stephen Ewart is a Calgary Herald columnist firstname.lastname@example.org
Working with universities, government and research institutes, other companies and partners, the Tailings EPA is bringing together the shared experience, expertise and financial commitment of oil sands mining companies to find new technologies and solutions to tailings.
Syncrude Canada is using composite tailings technology to more quickly remediate the challenging fluid fine tailings (FFT) material and enable the reclamation of oil sands mining pits while accelerating recycle water release.
Tailings Reduction Operations (TRO™) has significantly reduced the reclamation process from 30 years to just 10 years while eliminating the need for future additional tailings ponds.
The industry continues to develop better technologies and approaches to tailings management in order to reduce the environmental impact.
Keystone XL, planned in part to carry Canadian oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, offers a conduit between responsible, secure suppliers and willing customers, all within North America.
Canadian oil sands exports are supplied to U.S. refineries to fill the void left by declines from other heavy oil supplies.
Canada and the U.S. share the world's largest trading relationship. As a result, Americans benefit economically from increased economic activity in Canada.
The primary purpose of this submission is to provide clarity in regards to Canada's oil sands greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Suncor Energy won the 2013 RCE Social Performance Award. Learn more about the David Thompson Corridor Visitor Services Program. | <urn:uuid:87e383bf-b452-4369-b1b8-3831ac8adbf3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/energy-resources/ewart+mulcair+sending+confusing+messages+about+oilsands/8094479/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944431 | 1,433 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Looking at the data, which contains something new: oscillations; and something unfortunate: bad TDC ID's; and even some ordinary hits.
The TDC ID's are 11-20, rather than 0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,20,22.
One of the TDCs seems to have a 12nsec oscillation. This is visible in the data and on a scope. The rest of the 20 or so seem to have oscillations with harmonics of 85nsec. We've seen these on the scope also, but haven't traced them down yet. One clue is that most of the oscillations appear in pairs of jumpered cells.
The shift from 6 to 3 volts for the pre-amp power has markedly reduced the crosstalk rate.
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GEOENGINEERING is being tested - albeit inadvertently - in the north Pacific. Soot from oil-burning ships is dumping about 1000 tonnes of soluble iron per year across 6 million square kilometres of ocean, new research has revealed.
Fertilising the world's oceans with iron has been controversially proposed as a way of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to curb global warming. Some geoengineers claim releasing iron into the sea will stimulate plankton blooms, which absorb carbon, but ocean processes are complex and difficult to monitor in tests.
"Experiments suggest you change the population of algae, causing a shift from fish-dominated to jellyfish-dominated ecosystems," says Alex Baker of the University of East Anglia, UK. Such concerns led the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to impose a moratorium on geoengineering experiments in 2010.
The annual ship deposition is much larger, if less concentrated, than the iron released in field tests carried out before the moratorium was in place. Yet because ship emissions are not intended to alter ocean chemistry, they do not violate the moratorium, says Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a think tank that consults for the CBD. "If you intentionally drove oil-burning ships back and forth as a geoengineering experiment, that would contravene it."
The new study, by Akinori Ito of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, is the first to quantify how shipping deposits iron in parts of the ocean normally deficient in it. Earlier models had assumed that only 1 to 2 per cent of the iron contained in aerosols, including shipping emissions, is soluble in seawater, so the remaining 98 to 99 percent would sink to the bottom without affecting ocean life. But Ito found that up to 80 per cent of the iron in shipping soot is soluble (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, doi.org/kdj). As this soot rapidly falls to the sea surface, it is likely to be fertilising the oceans.
In the high-latitude north Pacific - a region that is naturally iron-poor and therefore likely to be most affected by human deposits - ship emissions now account for 70 per cent of soluble iron from human activity, with the burning of biomass and coal accounting for the rest. Shipping's share will rise as traffic continues to grow and regulations restrict coal and biomass emissions.
Can we learn anything from this unintentional experiment? Baker thinks not. "The process isn't scientifically useful," he says, because the uncontrolled nature of the iron makes it difficult to draw meaningful comparisons.
The depositions are unlikely to be harmful at current levels, he says, but "given the uncertainties, I just don't know how much these iron emissions would have to increase before there was demonstrable harm to an ecosystem, or benefit in terms of carbon uptake, for that matter".
This article appeared in print under the headline "Ships inadvertently fertilise the oceans"
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It's almost unbelievable how Korea-based sculptor Seung Mo Park gives his mesh wire portraits a human feeling. Park created these giant portraits by cutting layer after layer of mesh wire. The work is called MAYA, which means "illusion" in Sankrit. MAYA is the third phase of a trajectory of conceptual works wherein Park deals with reality, illusion and existence.
Each of Park's works begin with a photograph, which is superimposed over the mesh wires. After setting up the work perfectly, Park slowly cuts away areas of mesh using a subtractive technique. All the mesh wire portraits are several centimetres and build up in layers, which gives them a unique, almost 3D effect. The light that is shining on the portraits from behind makes the steel constructions come alive even more.
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Gallbladder Health Part I: Be Good to Your Gallbladder – It’s There For a Reason
Gallbladder problems including gallbladder attacks are very common reasons for which people seek medical care. The pain and discomfort can unfortunately result in the removal of the little green organ followed by dietary restrictions (often low fat). But of course, all of our organs are there for one reason or another and although we can live without the gallbladder, removing it is simply removing a symptom of a problem, not the actual cause. In this two-part article on the gallbladder I’ll discuss why you have a gallbladder, why you should want to keep it (and keep it healthy), warning signs that your gallbladder isn’t working well, risk factors, and natural treatments and lifestyle changes you can make to improve your gallbladder and overall health; yeah! If I can just save one more gallbladder I’ll be a happy guy.
Gallbladder Physiology: Bile is so Good for You
Let’s take a brief lesson in gallbladder physiology here, and I’ll make it interesting and relevant to your everyday health. The gallbladder is a small organ that sits tucked up underneath the liver in the upper right side of your abdomen. It concentrates and stores bile produced by the liver, and along with the enzyme lipase secreted by the pancreas, it aids in the digestion of fats in the gut. When fats from food enter the digestive tract they stimulate the secretion of a type of hormone called cholecystokinin (CCK) in the upper part of the small intestine – the duodenum. This, along with the stomach’s secretion of hydrochloric acid, signals the gallbladder to release some of its approximately 50mL of bile into the gut to help aid in digestion of those fats. Since by most, it’s viewed as a “storage tank” and nothing more, it’s often seen as only a nuisance when it comes to digestive problems and pain – expendable at the first sight of problems and removable with surgical ease. But there’s so much more to it than just storage.
Bile is a lovely dark green/yellow-brown fluid and contains about 10% bile salts. The bile acids (salts) have a strong relationship to hormonal regulation as they share many of the same synthesis pathways as hormones. This is why people with hormonal problems, especially women with estrogen dominance, are more susceptible to gallbladder problems. The more hormonal stress on the body the lower the bile acids which in turn disrupts normal hormonal metabolism. It’s not a coincidence that many women have their gallbladder removed at the same time they have a hysterectomy.
Speaking of hormones, just a few years ago it was demonstrated that the gallbladder also plays a role in insulin regulation and that β-like cells that produce insulin in the pancreas also occur in the gallbladder. Insulin is also metabolized by the liver and can therefore have an effect on the bile salts – so diets high in refined carbohydrates and those with insulin resistance will also be more likely to have troubles with their gallbladder.
Bile also increases the absorption of fats and especially the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. We all know the push for vitamin D by every doctor and health food store today. Consider that if you have an unhealthy gallbladder then your absorption of vitamin D, as well as the other fat soluble vitamins necessary for good health, will also be impaired. So just because your vitamin D level may be low as revealed by a blood test, doesn’t mean you should go vitamin D supplement-crazy; that’s not necessarily addressing the problem.
Bile and Cholesterol
A small percentage of bile is cholesterol but the majority of bile acid is made from cholesterol; actually about half of the cholesterol our body makes per day is used to make bile acid. These bile acids are recycled from the intestines and back to the liver and gallbladder. However if there are problems with digestion, such as an all-too-common poor diet, then the salts can become “dirty” – the bile becomes thick like a vehicle’s oil that is way past the oil change date.
Eventually this thick, dirty bile can accumulate and form a gallstone, also known as a cholelithiasis. Usually these stones contain some or a significant amount of cholesterol, so it’s often cholesterol that gets blamed for causing the stones when really it’s an issue with oxidative stress, inflammation, and digestive problems caused by other factors, (discussed in a bit). Gallstones in the gallbladder can lead to cholecystitis, which is an inflammatory condition of the gallbladder. The stones leaving the gallbladder can also obstruct the bile ducts which can be life threatening, especially if a stone blocks the pancreatic duct leading to pancreatitis.
Also, low levels of bile salts can be a reason for gallstones; this problem would ultimately fall on a production problem with the liver.
Should You Remove Your Gallbladder – You Don’t Need it Anyway (?)
The surgical removal of the gallbladder is called a cholecystectomy. This is a common procedure that with rare exception, is unnecessary and does not address the problem. Some people who have had their gallbladder removed will see absolutely no change in their symptoms while others may have their symptoms 100% resolved. Others who have had a cholecystectomy may no longer be able to eat high fat foods as their body is unable to handle too much fat digestion at once due to the removal of their bile storage tank. However, the body in its infinite wisdom can often form a new little storage pouch in the area of the common bile duct to store some bile for when it’s needed.
So how do you know if your gallbladder is at the point of becoming a life threatening emergency or you’re simply experiencing gallbladder troubles that perhaps can be dealt with in a non-surgical manner? Well, without giving specific medical advice for every situation, a good rule is to look at the severity of the signs and symptoms. Someone who is having a gallstone attack typically has pain in the upper right side of the abdomen and/or pain in-between the shoulder blades, more often below the right shoulder. It’s uncomfortable and can get to the point of being very painful. Sometimes nausea and vomiting can occur which can last for minutes to hours. Now if the pain and vomiting get worse and worse then you should of course seek medical attention. (Gallbladder attacks and heart attacks can have very similar symptoms – heart attacks don’t always have pain down the left arm only.) Typically gallbladder attacks don’t just come out of nowhere where the person never had any symptoms of a gallbladder problem and now all of a sudden they have a huge stone lodged in their bile duct. So you have to know the symptoms of poor gallbladder function so you can address the issue before it gets too out of hand.
When Your Gallbladder Isn’t Working Too Well – Gall Bladder Problems: Signs & Symptoms
There are many signs and symptoms of a gallbladder that isn’t functioning very well and most people just think they’re common “normal” symptoms so they think nothing more of it. Then, “all of a sudden” they get a major gallbladder attack and are puzzled as to how it could have happened to them. Well, I’m hopefully going to keep you from being surprised!
- Constipation. Yes, a major reason for constipation is a poorly functioning gallbladder. When fat enters the small intestine it has to be metabolized by those bile salts and the lipase from the pancreas; (you learned this already, right?). But if the bile isn’t released efficiently from the gallbladder then the food and its fatty contents must wait longer and longer in the small intestine to be metabolized. So they wait. And wait. And wait. And you get constipated. So don’t necessarily think that you need more fiber, or you need probiotics if you’re constipated – consider your gallbladder.
- Aside from constipation and the referred pain areas discussed (upper right abdomen and right shoulder area), another symptom of an unhappy gallbladder is burping after or while eating a meal – especially one containing fat. Typically this person will also feel “heavy” and even perhaps bloated if they’re having problems digesting a fatty meal because their gallbladder isn’t doing its job. Burping can be from eating too quickly too but burping from a gallbladder problem usually accompanies heaviness.
- Another symptom of a gallbladder issue is peeling of the skin on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet. This is due to an inefficient fat metabolism system as well as metabolism problems with vitamin A (fat soluble). I’ve seen patients present with some pretty wild looking palm and sole peeling that nobody was ever able to understand why. This too, is often a gallbladder problem.
- Finally, and I discuss this in my articles on sleep, the horary time (acupuncture meridian) for the gallbladder is 11pm to 1am. So if you can’t fall asleep until after 1am or if you’re asleep before 11pm but then awaken between 11pm-1am it could very well mean your gallbladder is stressed. Also note that liver is next, from 1-3am, and this is the most common time a person has sleep difficulties for many, many reasons – caffeine, hormones, stress, medications – just to name a few, and all these can also affect the gallbladder too as well as bile production in the liver.
In Part II of Gallbladder Health I’ll discuss how to prevent problems with your gallbladder as well as natural treatments for optimum function of your gallbladder PLUS emergency help to calm down or resolve a gallbladder crisis. | <urn:uuid:02377f21-5022-42c6-888c-f73dc5c1ace2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drgangemi.com/2012/07/gallbladder-health/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956709 | 2,159 | 2.046875 | 2 |
(2003). Imagining the field.
In: Pryke, Michael; Rose, Gillian and Whatmore, Sarah eds.
Using social theory: thinking through research.
UK: Sage Publications.
About the book: Have you ever stopped to wonder about the influences that underpin research? If you are thinking about doing a piece of research, what difference might it make to the question you ask, to your approach to empirical work, analysis and writing of research, if you are influenced by one theoretical approach rather than another?
The chapters in this innovative guide share a common belief that thinking alongside ideas, philosophical persuasions, is an integral part of the research process; it is not an optional extra. It sets out ways to encourage the researcher to think through three key moments of the research process: the production of a research question; fieldwork; and analysis and writing.
As the authors demonstrate, research is not simply `done’: it has to be thought about and thought through. The book’s accessible style makes it suitable for anyone wishing to engage ideas in research in the social sciences and humanities.
Actions (login may be required) | <urn:uuid:5b562d90-5e03-452f-9c76-99cdb25ae764> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oro.open.ac.uk/7337/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905023 | 237 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Very rarely does one sentence have immediate impact on me.
Very rarely does one sentence change the way I interact with my family.
But this one did. It was not from Henry Thoreau or some renowned child psychologist. It was a comment from kids themselves. And if I’ve learned anything on this “Hands Free” journey, it is that children are the true experts when it comes to “grasping what really matters.”
Here are the words that changed it all:
“… College athletes were asked what their parents said that made them feel great, that amplified their joy during and after a ballgame. Their overwhelming response: ‘I love to watch you play.’”
The life-changing sentence came at the beginning of an article entitled, “What Makes a Nightmare Sports Parent and What Makes a Great One.” Although I finished reading the entire piece, my eyes went back and searched for that one particular sentence; the one that said, “I love to watch you play.”
I read it exactly five times. And then I attempted to remember all past verbal interactions I had with my kids at the conclusion of their extracurricular activities.
Upon completion of a swim meet, a music recital, a school musical, or even a Sunday afternoon soccer game, had I ever said, “I like to watch you play”?
I could think of many occasions when I encouraged, guided, complimented, and provided suggestions for improvement. Did that make me a nightmare sports parent? No, but maybe sometimes I said more than was needed.
By nature, I am a wordy person—wordy on phone messages (often getting cut off by that intrusive beep) and wordy in writing (Twitter is not my friend).
And although I have never really thought about, I’m pretty sure I’m wordy in my praise, too. I try not to criticize, but when I go into extensive detail about my child’s performance it could be misinterpreted as not being “good enough.”
Could I really just say “I love to watch you play” and leave it at that? And if I did, would my children stand there cluelessly at the next sporting event or musical performance because I had failed to provide all the “extra details” the time before?
Well, I would soon find out. As luck would have it, my 8 year old had a swim meet the day after I read the article.
Her first event was the 25 yard freestyle. At the sound of the buzzer, my daughter exploded off the blocks and effortlessly streamlined beneath the water for an unimaginable amount of time. Her sturdy arms, acting as propellers, emerged from the water driving her body forward at lightning speed. She hadn’t even made it halfway down the lane when I reached up to wipe away one small tear that formed in the corner of my eye.
Since my oldest daughter began swimming competitively two years ago, I have ALWAYS had this same reaction to her first strokes in the first heat. I cry and turn away so no one sees my blubbering reaction.
I cry not because she’s going to come in first.
I cry not because she’s a future Olympian or scholarship recipient.
I cry because she’s healthy; she’s strong; she’s capable.
And I cry because I love to watch her swim.
Oh my. Those six words …
I love to watch her swim.
I had always FELT that way—tearing up at every meet, but I hadn’t said it in so many words … or should I say, in so few words.
After the meet, my daughter and I stood in the locker room together, just the two of us. I wrapped a warm, dry towel around her shivering shoulders. And then I looked into her eyes and said, “I love to watch you swim. You glide so gracefully; you amaze me. I just love to watch you swim.”
Okay, so it wasn’t quite six words, but it was a huge reduction in what I normally would have said. And there was a reaction—a new reaction to my end of the meet “pep talk.”
My daughter slowly leaned into me, resting her damp head against my chest for several seconds, and expelled a heavy sigh. And in doing so, I swear I could read her mind:
The pressure’s off. She just loves to watch me swim; that is all.
I knew I was onto something.
Several days later, my 5 year old daughter had ukulele practice. It was a big day for her. The colored dots that lined the neck of her instrument since she started playing almost two years ago, were going to be removed. Her instructor believed she was ready to play without the aid of the stickers.
After removing the small blue, yellow, and red circles, her instructor asked her to play the song she has been working on for months, Taylor Swift’s “Ours.”
With no hesitation, my daughter began strumming and singing. I watched as her fingers adeptly found their homes—no need for colorful stickers to guide them.
With a confident smile, my daughter belted out her favorite line, “Don’t you worry your pretty little mind; people throw rocks at things that shine …”
As her small, agile fingers maneuvered the strings with ease, I had to look away. My vision became blurred by the tears that formed. In fact, this emotional reaction happens every time she gets to that line of the song. Every. Single. Time.
I cry not because she has perfect pitch.
I cry not because she is a country music star in the making.
I cry because she is happy; she has a voice; and she is free.
And I cry because I love to watch her play.
I’ll be damned if I hadn’t told her this in so many words … or rather, in so few words.
My child and I exited the room upon the completion of her lesson. As we walked down the empty hallway, I knew what needed to be said.
I bent down, looking straight into the blue eyes sheltered behind pink spectacles and said, “I love to watch you play your ukulele. I love to hear you sing.”
It went against my grain to not elaborate, but I said nothing about the dots, nothing about the notes, and nothing about her pitch. This was a time to simply leave it at that.
My child’s face broke into her most glorious smile—the one that causes her eyes to scrunch up and become little slices of joy. And then she did something I didn’t expect. She threw herself against me, wrapped her arms tightly around my neck, and whispered, “Thank you, Mama.”
And in doing so, I swear I could read her mind:
The pressure’s off. She loves to hear me play; that is all.
Given the overwhelmingly positive reactions of my daughters when presented with the short and sweet “I love to watch you play” remark, I knew I had a new mantra. Not that I would say it like a robot upon command or without reason, but I would say it when I FELT it—when tears come unexpectedly to my eyes or when suddenly I look down and see goosebumps on my arms.
Pretty soon I found myself saying things like:
“I love to watch you read.”
“I love to watch you swing across the monkey bars.”
“I love to watch you gently admire God’s smallest creatures.”
“I love to watch you love your baby cousin.”
I now know how important it is to say it—say it simply—in moments when I feel that heart palpitating kind of love that comes solely from watching another human being who I adore.
Now at this point, I could wrap up this story with a nice, tidy, Kleenex-required ending, but living “Hands Free” means taking it a step further, going outside the comfort zone.
And it struck me that there is one other person to which this new mantra could apply. It hit me when this person, donned with white bandage on his arm from giving blood, was hoisting a large trashbag as we cleaned the art room at a center for residents with autism.
I watched him, my husband, from the corner of the room where I was dusting shelves with my youngest child. Embarrassingly, I had to turn away so no one saw me tear up. In that moment, I reflected on other recent events where I had been going about my business and had to stop to take pause. Moments when I stopped to watch my husband in action simply to admire the loving person, the devoted husband, and caring father he is.
But had I ever told him in so few words?
It was time.
And since writing is much easier for me than speaking, I wrote my observations down. There were no long-winded paragraphs or flowery descriptions, just words of love, plain and simple:
I love watching you help our daughter learn to roller skate.
I love watching you teach her how to throw the football.
I love watching you help your employees in times of need or uncertainty.
I love watching you interact with your brother and sister.
I love watching you read side by side with our daughters.
I love watching you laugh.
I love watching you love our family.
I typed up his note and plan to give it to him when we have a quiet moment together this weekend. I don’t know what his reaction will be, but it doesn’t matter. I feel these things, so I should say these things.
When simply watching someone makes your heart feel as if it could explode right out of your chest, you really should let that person know.
It is as simple and lovely as that.
The next time you feel the need to guide, instruct, or criticize after a ball game, performance, or extracurricular activity, instead consider six simple words: “I love to watch you play.”
Furthermore, if you become emotional simply by watching someone you love in action, consider these six words, “I love to watch you _______.“
In some cases, less is more.
Less can be exactly what they need to hear. No pressure … just love, pure and simple.
* For continued inspiration and tips on how to grasp the moments in life that matter, check out The Hands Free Revolution on Facebook. Your support is greatly appreciated!
The Six Words You Should Say Today by Hands Free Mama, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. | <urn:uuid:ef996e83-c0e9-4dbb-9bc8-38ac22d7dd09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.handsfreemama.com/2012/04/16/six-words-you-should-say-today/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973919 | 2,324 | 1.976563 | 2 |
16.0 Da'i Ali lbn Muhammad al-Sulayhi (b. ca 410-1020 d. 459-1067)
Yemen, like Syria, had come in contact with lsmaili da'wa at a very early point in Islamic history. Already in the time of the Prophet, Hazrat Ali Murtazah was sent on mission work there for not less than three times. The Yemenite Muslims were, therefore, long aware of the lmam of Ahle-Bait, and when in the second half of the 3rd/9th Century the Ismaili da'i Abu ai-Qasim ibn Hawshab, Mansur al-Yemen, arrived there, he found no difficulty in bringing many of them in the fold of Ismaili da'wa. By the last quarter of the same century Yemen had not only become a strong Ismaili centre, but now under the able leadership of ibn Hawshab it was sending da'is to Egypt. Sind, and to the distant lands of North Africa (al-Maghrib). There were signs that even lmam ai-Mahdi was getting ready to appear in Yemen. But. to everybody's surprise, lmam changed his mind'. Yemen, as such. was not to be the Ismaili state then and not for another hundred years, until a great da'i was born in the person of 'Ali al-Sulayhi, who was to bring whole of it under the banner of lmam al-Mustansir biilah.
Da'i 'Ali al-Sulayhi, like ibn Hawshab, had become lsmaili after having thoroughly studied it. He was born in a learned Sunn family of Yemen, and his father was a qadi of the Shafi'i persuasion. Both father and son came in contact with an lsmaili -da'i called Sulaiman in 'Abd ai-Zawahi., 'Ali soon mastered the doctrine and teachings of the da'wa and accepted lsmailism. So much was the teacher impressed by his young pupils's progress and knowledge, that at the time of his death he appointed him as his successor in the da'wa of Yemen.
Da'i 'Ali had no misgivings about his faith and mission, and was determined to spread it to others. After his initial success in the year 439/1048, he wrote to Imam al-Mustansir in Cairo for the permission to make open proclamation of the Ismaili da'wa. Once granted the permission, he began to conquer the other parts of his native land, and before the end of the year 455/1063 had subjected whole of Yemen to his authority. "None of its plains or of its hills, of its lands or of its waters remained unsubdued. No parallel case can be found of so rapid a conquest, either in the days of ignorance of the days of Islam "
The Yemenite Ismaili da'wa, under the leadership of da'i a-Sulayhi became a very strong Ismaili centre and, for a while, appeared to be more stable than it's headquarter itself. Now in the midst of military and political crisis. This strength and stability of Yemenite da'wa were recognized by the Imam himself when he asked it to look after and bring order into, the Meccan administration. Indeed, at this time, Yemen of da'i 'Ali, was seen in the Ismaili world as the other home for the da'wa that was then being undermined by the autocrats in the very presence and capital of the Imam. -The confidence of the Imam in da'i 'Ali and his da'wa organization were demonstrated yet again, when the Imam decided to transfer a collection of Ismaili books and literature to the distant Yemen and far from the rebellious soldiery and bureaucrats of Cairo.
It is quite clear from the various letters of alMustansir, written at this time to his da'wa in Yemen, that his da'i 'Ali was not only aware of the unhappy state of Cairo but that he even desired to help correct the situation. However, before he got permission to go to Cairo, a new development in Mecca called for the immediate attention of the Yemenite da'i. In the year 459/1067 the ruler of Mecca broke his ties with the Fatimid lmam-caliph of Egypt and entered in relations with the 'Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. This behavior of Mecca was bound to disturb the d'ai who was in no mind to see any further loss of prestige to the da'wa, not at least in the area of his responsibility. Determined to march to Mecca in person, da'i 'Ali ai-; Sulayhi set forth at the head of two thousand horsemen of whom one hundred and sixty were members of his own house. On the way, while resting for the night, they were attacked suddenly by an old enemy tribe and beheaded.
Da'i 'Ali al-Sulayhi lived at the time when the Ismaili da'wa had reached peak of its religious and political glory. This climax of the da'wa was, to a great extent, contribution of. and shared by, the three contemporary giants of the Ismaili history, namely, the great 'Ali ibn Muhammad al-Sulayhi, the renowned ai-Mu'ayyad fi'd-Dins. and the redoubtable Hasan ibn al-Sabbah. The untimely end of the first and the absence of the second, had affected the very nerve center of the Ismaili community and da'wa. Now, Therefore, in 47111078, the third and the last of the living giant was summoned to Cairo and from there, sent toward Alamut in Persia, in search of a new home for the da'wa. Indeed this now search in the remote lands was made necessary largely because of the absence of da'i 'Ali al-Sulayhi and the subsequent loss of hope in the strength of Yemenite da'wa. Still, it was in Yemen and in the house of the da'i al-Sulayhi that the Musta'iian section of the Ismaili da'wa found refuge, just as the Nizari line of the Imams and da'wa had been secured in Hasan's Alamut, when both were made to quite Cairo.
1. This was so because one other da'i, called Ali ibn al-Fadl, who was assisting ibn Hawshab in the da'wa work, began to show signs of independence and rebellion. As such, Imam Mahdi rather looked towards North Africa where another assistant of ibn Hawshab, that is, da'i Abu Abd Allah was successfully winning ground.
2. Ibn Hawshab was a scholar of Twelver Shi'i allegiance, prior to his coming into Ismaili fold.
3. Umarah (d. 569/1174), Tarikh al-Yaman ed. And trans H.C. Kay, London, 1892, text 18, trans 24-25.
4. Ibid. Text 22, trans., 30-31.
5. Da'i al-Mu'ayyad achieved for the Imam what hitherto could not be taken with the whole military and navel might of the Ismailis. He was mainly responsible for the Fatimid victory in Baghdad in the year 451/ 1059.
Dr. Akbar H. Ladak. London, (England). | <urn:uuid:43b00621-9861-4732-b50c-29badab30aba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ismaili.net/heritage/node/8204 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975927 | 1,596 | 2.65625 | 3 |
English is not my native language.
I am curious about the usage of "to my mind".
- Is it a British English phrase?
- Is it used in American English?
- Is it formal/informal?
I've found an interesting article where the author is very surprised by the expression:
I have found that “to my mind” is commonly used in Ukraine ... This is strange to me and everyone else in my cluster
Nevertheless there is "to my mind" in the Cambridge dictionary. | <urn:uuid:c094dfc7-caa3-4d03-a56b-f299c1899eba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/81366/using-to-my-mind?answertab=votes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92992 | 108 | 1.539063 | 2 |
From my friends and fellow fans of Flash Pulp (http://flashpulp.com) comes this fascinating list of ethics for a time that seems long ago. And tho I am supposed to be working on my children’s book, this just seemed like a great time to post a digression because this is what writers do. . . or is it poets
Hobo (ethical) code
An ethical code was created by Tourist Union #63 during its 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis Missouri. This code was voted upon as a concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body; it reads this way:
1. Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.
2. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
3. Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
4. Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
5. When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
6. Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
7. When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
8. Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
9. If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
10. Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
11. When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
12. Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
13. Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
14. Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
15. Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
16 If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it. Whether for or against the accused, your voice counts! | <urn:uuid:5843d416-985b-4fcd-8552-fa5e61146b8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ammiblog.com/2012/04/18/confessions-of-a-transplant-a-true-digression-hobo-code/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935049 | 537 | 1.976563 | 2 |
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Sale 09ROCK Lot 176
John Lennon & Yoko Ono Unreleased Audio Conversation
In this intense, intimate and revealing original cassette recording of a private conversation in 1969 between John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the couple speaks primarily about Yoko's past relationships, her music and art, and their random views on sex, love, promiscuity, and homosexuality. Much of the 45-minute conversation is guided by John, who asks Yoko a series of explicit questions to which she directly responds. John sporadically adds his viewpoints, opinions, and insights, which lead to more questions. Yoko speaks of her relationship with her first husband, classical composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, whom she married in 1956 and divorced in 1962 after having multiple affairs. The influence of avant-garde composer and friend John Cage is discussed, which leads to Yoko's speaking of her frustration with the art world and being told that her ideas were not sufficiently feminine. She also complains that she believed that her mentality was far beyond that of her contemporaries. Of her marriage to Tony Cox in 1963, she relates that it was the last time she had ever been close to being in love with another person. On John's urging, Yoko delves into her feelings on past promiscuity and her insecurity, which prompts John to say that he believes that women are just as tough as men, and that men bear the same weaknesses as women. He adds that he had never met an attractive woman that had sexually aroused him to any great degree. He very candidly quizzes Yoko about the meaning of fidelity in a relationship, and asks her about her sexual abilities. In graphic language, she replies that she is not the type of woman to be very promiscuous. John then asks how long it would take her to get over past love - Yoko seems to not give a direct answer, but states that women sometimes engage in sex because of sentimental or romantic proclivities. She then describes some men as perhaps being scheming, with ulterior motives in mind in order to bed a woman. John in turn rebuts her statement and claims she is contradicting herself. Speaking within the context of an affair after her break-up with Tony Cox, and having no inhibitions about such things at the time, John inquires as to why she will not now have sex, asking if the reason is that she's in love. He asks her what the problem might be. She replies that she is absolutely terrified...This fascinating, intimate 45-minute conversation must be paraphrased for legal reasons, but the content is revealing of the intense relationship between John Lennon and Yoko Ono that continues to this day. Much more exists on the tape, but space limitations do not allow us to include additional description. This recording provides an important insight into the very beginning of one of the most talked-about love stories of the last one hundred years! This original, one-of-a-kind item is offered as a collector's item, with no rights neither given nor implied.
Estimate $ 20,000-30,000
© Alexander Autographs. Images, descriptions and condition reports used on this site are original copyright material and are not to be reproduced without permission. For further information telephone (203) 276-1570 | <urn:uuid:e9bfc2b7-bb22-41d3-898b-20bba0e988de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://auctions.alexautographs.com/asp/fullcatalogue.asp?t=67527&salelot=09ROCK+++176+ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976067 | 681 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Practice Money Problems
3. The Drama Club sold 500 tickets to their fall performance. The adult tickets were $5 each and the student tickets were $3 each. If they took in $2080, how many of each did they sell?
4. Edie has 27 coins in dimes and quarters. If the total value is $3.75 how many of each does she have?5. Venus bought 40 stamps for $12.40. Some of the stamps were 33-cent stamps and some were 23 cent stamps. How many of each did she buy?
6. Sonia has 26 bills in ones and fives. If their total value is $50 how many of each does she have?
7. Mr. Planter wants to mix 20 lb of macadamia nuts that cost $8.10 per pound with pecans that cost $5.40 per pound. How many pounds of pecans should he use if the mixture is to cost $6.48 per pound?
8. Mr. Planter also wants a 40 lb mixture of pecans and walnuts that will sell for $4.80 per pound. If the pecans cost $5.40 per pound and the walnuts cost $4.40 per pound, how many of each should he use?
9. Eddie invested $2400 in two simple interest accounts. The annual rate in one account is 8% and the annual rate in the other is 11%. How much did he invest in each account if the annual interest totaled $240?
10. Fred and Irma invested $12,500 in two simple interest accounts. One account earns annual simple interest of 7% while the other earns 6%. How much was invested at each rate if each account earned the same interest? Round your answer to the nearest dollar.
11.Bubba has two part time jobs. One pays $7.50 per hour and theother pays $9.00 per hour. Last week he earned $427 while working 50 hours. How many hours did he work at each job?
12.Kim had to pay $1200 in labor for some repairs to the house. The carpenter charged $18 an hour and the painter charged $15 per hour. If she paid for 73 hours of work, how much work was done by each? | <urn:uuid:e78870f7-76e0-4a4f-a3c5-5025d2e86b30> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tcc.edu/VML/Mth03/PracMon.htm | 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 | 0.979262 | 477 | 2.734375 | 3 |
This is an animation showing the slowing of the rotation of a black hole. As it slows down, gas builds up just outside the black hole. The animation ends with a close-up of the gas at the edge of the black hole.
Do you have a question, problem or comment about this web site? Please let us know.
External links contain material that we found to be relevant. However they're not maintained by us and the content may have changed. If you find any external links that contain inappropriate material, please let us know! | <urn:uuid:80d73259-bc23-45aa-b9d0-a8b7d0d56970> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/descriptions/blackhole2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934435 | 110 | 2.15625 | 2 |
The Age of Turbulence
Adventures in a New World
By Alan Greenspan
(Penguin Press HC, The, Hardcover, 9781594201318, 544pp.)
Publication Date: September 17, 2007
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001, in his fourteenth year as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan took part in a very quiet collective effort to ensure that America didn't experience an economic meltdown, taking the rest of the world with it. There was good reason to fear the worst: the stock market crash of October 1987, his first major crisis as Federal Reserve Chairman, coming just weeks after he assumed control, had come much closer than is even today generally known to freezing the financial system and triggering a genuine financial panic. But the most remarkable thing that happened to the economy after 9/11 was...nothing. What in an earlier day would have meant a crippling shock to the system was absorbed astonishingly quickly.
After 9/11 Alan Greenspan knew, if he needed any further reinforcement, that we're living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-directing, and fast-changing than it was even 20 years ago. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan's incomparable reckoning with the nature of this new world - how we got here, what we're living through, and what lies over the horizon, for good and for ill-channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy for longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. He begins his account on that September 11th morning, but then leaps back to his childhood, and follows the arc of his remarkable life's journey through to his more than 18-year tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, from 1987 to 2006, during a time of transforming change.
Alan Greenspan shares the story of his life first simply with an eye toward doing justice to the extraordinary amount of history he has experienced and shaped. But his other goal is to draw readers along the same learning curve he followed, so they accrue a grasp of his own understanding of the underlying dynamics that drive world events. In the second half of the book, having brought us to the present and armed us with the conceptual tools to follow him forward, Dr. Greenspan embarks on a magnificent tour de horizon of the global economy. He reveals the universals of economic growth, delves into the specific facts on the ground in each of the major countries and regions of the world, and explains what the trend-lines of globalization are from here. The distillation of a life's worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan's personal and intellectual legacy. | <urn:uuid:c947e1c6-6cd0-45f7-a4b9-47889b501f2c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594201318 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968199 | 598 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Personally, i find this ad and the prospect engaging. One day i might suckle on wenches with a quadruple of udders. And, for the ladies, there might be double dicked men.
Am reminded of this sculpture.
Here's a quote from Encarta:
Left to drown at the edge of the flooding Tiber River, the legendary twins Romulus and Remus were found and raised by a she-wolf. As men, the brothers returned to the spot where they had been abandoned and founded the city of Rome. The Romans celebrated the festival of Parilia, today called the Natalis Romae, or the birth of Rome, on April 21 to commemorate the day the brothers founded the city.
A enticing sculpture. As far as i know, rearing alien species happen in nature. As some village farmers or pet raisers might attest, bitch or doe suckle kittens or puppies or kids or otherwise cubs are sometimes reported with love. A world as one.
But also note the prologue in the story: “Left to drown”. The general term for such act is called murder, which is a recurring theme in animal behavior among carnivores. The motive is often subsistence or power. Fighting for a mating partner comes immediately behind.
Among human animals, a recurring intrigue is the “left to drown” instead of “outright kill”, as we can see in this Remus n Romulus legend. This intriguing behavior is not just legendary but i suppose also reflect some reality. From evolutionary psychology point of view, perhaps not wiping out foe in toto is beneficial to the specie as a whole, because it preserves varieties in seeding. On the other note, such behavior in legends always come back against all odds and bring death to the doer. (In Remus'n'Romulus, their uncle killed their dad to gain power and left the twin to drown. The outcome of not killing outright is the twin not dead; who came back and killed the uncle, built Rome.) This recurring element in human legends perhaps reflect the fact, that the human animals like to think of themselves as different, by hinting a possession of a sophisticated emotion “mercy” not perceived in other brutes. And this is emphasized by the story's ending where mercy is incompatible with the merciless nature, where the survivor always win against odds and come back to mete out vengeance.
In Chinese, a idiom of this theme says: 暫草要除根。暫草不除根，春風吹又生。 (“Weeding must uproot; otherwise, spring brings it on”). A similar saying in English goes like this: “If you strike the king, you had better kill him”.
I'm reminded of this stature:
Stanford University, the name of my pain.
In the early 1990s i applied twice but failed twice. (Stanford U is one of the Ivy League universities, located at Palo Alto, California, which is about 60 kilometers south of San Francisco. Ivy League refers to the following colleges: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, U of Pennsylvania, Yale.) Those well-to-do schoolers, such as those PhD tag wearers churned out yearly by Ivy League schooling institutions, are the names of my pain. I want to ram my head with their heads, and see their heads crushed bloody.
I wonder who or what these two lasses are or represent. There's no caption or inscription around the two rises, nor a name for this main gate as far as i know.
Recently i also learned that a sculptured pillar in a figure of a female is called caryatid. The male counterpart is called Atlas. The sculpture at the prow of ships, often female or bestiary, is called Figurehead.
The etymology of Caryatid is from Latin caryatides and Greek karutides, literally “maidens of Karuai”, referring to the priestesses of Artemis, a village of Laconia in southern Greece with a famous temple to Artemis. (Artemis is a Greek goddess of hunting and wild-animals and fertility. She is the twin sister of Apollo, and is daughter of Zeus and Leto.) 〔☛ A Love of Mythology of the Greeks〕
Quote from Wikipedia Caryatid:
A caryatid (Greek: Καρυάτις, plural: Καρυάτιδες) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means “maidens of Karyai”, an ancient town of Peloponnese. Karyai had a famous temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: “As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants” (Kerenyi 1980 p 149).
Some of the earliest known examples were found in the treasuries of Delphi, dating to about the 6th century BC, but their use as supports in the form of women can be traced back even earlier, to ritual basins, ivory mirror handles from Phoenicia, and draped figures from archaic Greece. The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens.
Although of the same height and build, and similarly attired and coiffed, the six Caryatids are not the same: their faces, stance, draping, and hair are carved separately; the three on the left stand on their right knee, while the three on the right stand on their left knee. Their bulky, intricately arranged hairstyles serve the crucial purpose of providing static support to their necks, which would otherwise be the thinnest and structurally weakest part.
And here comes the WASP:
One of the caryatids was removed by Lord Elgin in order to decorate his Scottish mansion, and was later sold to the British Museum (along with the pedimental and frieze sculpture taken from the Parthenon). Athenian legend had it that at night the remaining five Caryatids could be heard wailing for their lost sister. Elgin attempted to remove a second Caryatid; when technical difficulties arose, he tried to have it sawn to pieces. The statue was smashed, and its fragments were left behind. It was later reconstructed haphazardly with cement and iron rods.
Full article here: Elgin Marbles.
The Erechtheum (Greek: Ἐρέχθειον Erechtheion) is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens in Greece.
Another view: 1139×817. Photos by Adam Carr, 2002. Used with permission.
All the tits and marble reminds me of this porn pic i gathered in late 1990s.
This semi-nude demi-goddess in the photo above is a Korean transgender actress Harisu (河莉秀).
Not until many years later, i learned, this goddess i masturbated to wasn't a she!! | <urn:uuid:6876f416-462c-4a7d-bbd9-0cbe9d1e486d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/20031016_caryatids.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958155 | 1,604 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Although its entrance is guarded by two giant felines, within the Art Institute of Chicago, dogs romp.
They snarl at cats. They herd sheep. They curl up next to their humans or defend them from evil. In works of art, dogs do what they do in life, a reminder of what it is that art imitates and a hint that the finest art can be as accessible and familiar as man's best friend.
"One of the things this painting is about is the stratification of Parisian society then," Jeff Nigro said. "Right in the foreground, that stratification is illustrated by two dogs."
Nigro, a lecturer in the Art Institute's Department of Museum Education, was standing in front of what is perhaps the most widely known work in the building, Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on the Grand Jatte-1884."
At the bottom of the painting, there's a black Labrador-like dog that seems to be the companion of a lounging man wearing a sleeveless shirt, who's definitely not a member of the upper crust. Then, seemingly associated with the definitely upscale woman standing holding a parasol, is a miniature dog of some sort with a pink ribbon around its neck.
"The dogs also illustrate the gulf between men and women," Nigro said. "Only men would own large, hunting-type dogs, and little, lap dogs would almost invariably belong to women." Then he noted, "Times have changed."
In a gallery nearby is Giovanni Moroni's magnificent portrait of Gian Lodovico Madruzzo, member of a prominent family of Trent in Northern Italy, future cardinal and influential figure at the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, the Council of Trent. In the portrait, painted in 1551-1552, what looks to be a member of the setter family sits close to Madruzzo's side.
"In art," Nigro said, "the dog is often used as a symbol of fidelity and loyalty. They're quite common in this type of portraiture. They represent the way the subject of the painting wanted to be looked at by the lower classes."
As he headed off for the next gallery, Nigro talked about the most famous of English portrait artists, Sir Joshua Reynolds.
"Reynolds charged based on how much of the person showed in the painting," he said. "You paid more for a full-length than for a head and shoulders. Elaborate costumes and things like dogs in the work would also be extra."
Should you see one of Reynolds' portraits of the luminaries of the latter half of the 18th Century, and there's a dog in the painting, you know the client ordered the deluxe model.
Nigro stopped in front of a nude by Titian and his students, painted in 1554. It shows the myth of Danae, in which the god Zeus "visits" her in the form of a shower of gold.
"Titian set the standard for the female nude -- soft, round form, slightly fleshy, an elegant pose," Nigro said. "This one is what is sometimes called `naked' in distinction to `nude' in that she is wearing earrings and a bracelet, just enough to emphasize that she doesn't have any clothes on."
Danae's bracelet is nearly identical to the collar of the lap dog curled up next to her. While dogs often represent loyalty, sometimes, especially with lap dogs, they represent lust.
Dogs accompany life from start to finish.
"This is a funereal piece," Nigro said, looking into a case containing a mastiff, which, in life, is a huge guard dog but here, in green-glazed clay, is about the size of a miniature poodle. The figure is Han Dynasty dating from around the 1st or 2nd Century A.D.
"The Chinese believed in two souls," Nigro said. "The dog was to guard the soul that remained in the tomb. He failed, of course, in keeping away tomb robbers, though they would have been after bronze pieces and thought of ceramics as junk."
The animals and servants of an important deceased personage were killed to care for his needs in the beyond. The Chinese soon figured out what well-to-do people have discovered again and again through the centuries -- good help is hard to find. So they stopped killing the servants and guard dogs and turned to artists to provide stand-ins such as this not-at-all fierce-looking pooch.
At roughly the same time the Chinese mastiff was being made, halfway around the world, another funeral dog came into being. This one was a tepescuintle, a Mexican hairless. You'd look at it and say it was a larger, pot-bellied version of a chihuahua.
"Funereal dogs were either to be food or guardians," Nigro said.
Looking at the stubby legs and fattened midsection of this dog, a visitor noted: "It's no guard dog."
"Probably right," Nigro said. | <urn:uuid:171ddcff-de94-480a-a2be-bd3a64d5af94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-04-22/features/9704220168_1_dogs-man-s-best-friend-painting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97945 | 1,070 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The Tesla Model S has garnered almost universally rave reviews by the automotive press and wide criticism from some politicians and some investment pundits. An on-line investment advisor recently uncharitably called the Tesla company “Solyndra on wheels.” So what’s next? While the Model S has been delivered in small numbers (a few hundred) to owners and has been compared to a Mercedes or BMW by the automotive press, Tesla is far from being a money-maker. In a bold move it has been showing preproduction versions and taking orders for an ambitious next model. This is the Tesla X – a large, versatile 7 passenger SUV that will be available with two or all-wheel drive and battery packs up to 85kWh in size. The four wheel drive is accomplished by having two electric motors – one in the back and one in the front. The Model S is extremely fast with just one motor. Tesla has not made any performance claims for speed or range. The Model S has been real world tested by a few automotive journalists who got about 235 miles out of a claimed 265 mile battery pack in a Model S.
The Model X has two interesting features. The motors and battery pack are very low down in the car and smaller than the drive train in a conventional passenger car. That should give the Model X a low center of gravity and good handling. From photos of the Model X it looks like the interior is quite large, another benefit of the drive system used by Tesla. The other interesting feature are fold up rear doors that that rise up over the car’s roof. How practical that will be in tight parking spots and garages is unclear. The only production car with the same sort of doors was a 1950’s hyper-expensive Mercedes sports car called the 300SL. In that case the doors were impractical and a bit of an affectation.
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View Full Version : glSlang parameter binding
12-17-2003, 12:53 AM
I would like to strat a discussion about glSlang constants one more time. ARB_*_program have a very nice object-oriented binding syntax. Why did ARB gave it up in glSlang specification? I couldn't find any features like automatic matrix inverse/etc. computation, and it makes the things a bit more complicated and messy. And I don't want to end up writing gl_modelview all the time - I don't like the name. The GL_MATRIX*_ARB support is also a nice feature which I miss. I thing, the specs should be changed before it's not too late. It would be nice to have gl_state predefined struct in the shading language.
12-17-2003, 09:22 AM
Additional matrix stacks would be really great, yeah! But I think the minumum GL_ATRIX*_ARB stack depth is 1 (and I think many implementation only have a stack depth of 1) so there is no really stack. But this is exactly what I don't want to have. I'd like to have a real stack.
Automatic matrix inverse? Where is that defined in ARB_*_program? Or do you mean transpose?
The gl_modelview isn't that bad. If you don't like it define your own name! :-)
The idea with gl_state is great, yeah!
12-18-2003, 05:12 AM
Inverse: like state.modelview.inverse etc.
The same with NV_*_program, glTrackMatrixNV, you can specify the transform. But with glSlang you must compute all of them manually. As I mentioned already, to get the inverse of projection matrix you must do glGetf + transform on CPU + glUniform*
In ARB_*_program: state.projection.inverse
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Prior to 1974, New Bedford had two distinct police categories: males were "police officers" and females were "police women." At that time, male applicants were ineligible for positions as police officers if they failed to meet a minimum height requirement of five feet six inches. In February 1974 the city abandoned these separate job categories, and thereafter both men and women competed for positions as "police officers." Women applicants were then also required to meet the five feet six-inch height minimum.
Since the minimum height requirement excludes far more women than men from competing for positions as police officers, the requirement has a disparate impact on women. | <urn:uuid:0999664f-4d30-48b8-b46a-fb6e234a0a50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/disparate_treatment?quicktabs_3=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984792 | 124 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.
The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.
Mike Williams, who was in charge of maintaining the rig's electronic systems, was giving evidence to the federal panel in New Orleans that is investigating the cause of the disaster on 20 April, which killed 11 people.
Williams told the hearing today that no alarms went off on the day of the explosion because they had been "inhibited". Sensors monitoring conditions on the rig and in the Macondo oil well beneath it were still working, but the computer had been instructed not to trigger any alarms in case of adverse readings.
Both visual and sound alarms should have gone off in the case of sensors detecting fire or dangerous levels of combustible or toxic gases.
The evidence of deliberate dilution of the rig's safety mechanisms is likely to have wide ramifications for BP and Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling company. It switches the spotlight of blame away from BP and towards the subcontractor which took the decisions. Of the 126 crew on board the rig on 20 April, seven worked for BP and 79 for Transocean.
Williams said he discovered that the physical alarm system had been disabled a full year before the disaster. When he asked why, he said he was told that the view from even the most senior Transocean official on the rig had been that "they did not want people woken up at three o'clock in the morning due to false alarms".
Williams' testimony will raise questions about whether lives could have been saved had the alarms been properly set and the disaster mitigated.
He also revealed that a crucial safety device, designed to shut down the drill shack in the case of dangerous gas levels being detected, had been disabled, or bypassed as it is called.
When he saw that the system had been bypassed, Williams protested to a Transocean supervisor, Mark Hay, who dismissed his concerns. Hay responded: "Damn thing been in bypass for five years. Matter of fact, the entire [Transocean] fleet runs them in bypass."
In a third significant disclosure, Williams also revealed that a computer system used to monitor the drill shack was constantly freezing up, and on one occasion even produced wrong information. The system failed to indicate that a vital valve inside the blowout preventer, the device designed to shut down the well in case of problems, had been damaged.
Pressure is now likely to mount on Transocean to explain the discrepancies.
The New York Times reported earlier this week that a survey of workers carried out by Transocean shortly before the blast suggested key safety practices had not been followed.
Workers said that, while they were aware of unsafe practices on the rig, they were afraid to report mistakes for fear of reprisals.
A BP spokesman said last night: "The investigations continue to demonstrate that a range of things went wrong and that responsibility lies with a whole load of different companies." | <urn:uuid:70107230-d60c-4201-a920-062eaf1db4d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/23/deepwater-horizon-oil-rig-alarms | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980884 | 671 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Plaque Dedication and Ceremonial Tree Planting
at the site of the original Maryland State Tree Nursery
College Park, Wednesday, April 5, 2006
|Pictured (l to r): Kirk P. Rodgers, grandson of
Maryland's first State Forester; John S. Ayton, Maryland's 3rd State
Forest Tree Nursery Manager, Steve Koehn, Maryland State Forester; and
Silas Sines, Jr., son of Maryland's 2nd State Forest Tree Nursery Manager,
G. Silas Sines.
Dedication of the Plaque Honoring the First
State Tree Nursery
College Park, Maryland, April 5, 2006
Remarks by C. Ronald Franks, Secretary
Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources
Good Afternoon. On behalf of Governor Robert L. Ehrlich and the Department of
Natural Resources, I am pleased to be here today to help you celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the legislation authorizing the first State Board of Forestry
here in College Park, and the 150th anniversary of the University of Maryland.
Today is also Arbor Day - a day we celebrate trees and recognize the many
valuable contributions and benefits they provide to society. What better place
to celebrate Arbor Day then here, where Marylandís grand tradition for providing
trees to improve and enhance our public landscapes was born.
This Arbor Day is made a bit more special because by coincidence this Arbor Day
falls on the very day that marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the
1906 Maryland Forest Conservation Act. This pioneering legislation created the
Maryland Forest Service and its sister agency, the Maryland Park Service. It
also spurred many of the centuryís conservation initiatives, introducing
scientific forest management on both Marylandís public and private lands.
The law was so innovative that it quickly moved Maryland to the forefront of the
national forest conservation movement. We were only the third state in the
country to initiate a statewide forest conservation program.
Of course, much of this would not have been possible without the foresight of
Fred W. Besley, Marylandís first State Forester. Besley introduced the art and
science of establishing, growing and replanting healthy trees. Before coming to
Maryland, Fred Besley worked with the U.S. Forest Service under Gifford Pinchot.
Pinchot, the father of American Forestry, hand-picked Besley for the State
Besley brought with him the knowledge and experience he had acquired while
superintendent of a Nebraska tree nursery... and not a moment too soon. When he
accepted the State Forester position, Marylandís forested landscape, like that
of much of the rest of the country, had been decimated. Only 20% of the forest
cover east of the Mississippi river remained as a result of 19th century
exploitive logging and agricultural practices.
So when Fred Besley arrived in 1906, he quickly got to work raising seedlings
that would go a long way toward restoring the ecological health of Marylandís
forests and agricultural landscapes. Eight years later, the State Legislature
passed the Roadside Tree Law. One of the first of its kind, Marylandís law would
later serve as a model imitated across the country. It authorized the state
forestry department to plant and protect trees along Maryland public right of
ways. It also enabled the state forestry division to establish a state tree
That same year, the University of Maryland, known at the time as the Maryland
Agricultural College, donated the tract of land we stand upon today for this
purpose. The applied science of forestry conservation was launched from this
site here at College Park. It's hard to believe now but Route 1 was just a
bucolic country road when the nursery was established.
During his 36-year term as State Forester, Fred Besley established three state
forest tree nurseries, all on the property or near the University of Maryland at
College Park. With each passing year, productivity increased at the tree nursery
from thousands of trees produced annually to millions. Around 1944, the State
expanded operations to the Beltsville Experimental Tree Nursery.
I donít think I need to remind you all the many benefits trees provide. They
produce oxygen that cleans the air. They supply shade that helps cool the
earthís surface temperature and that of our streams and creeks. And just as
importantly, trees planted along stream sides remove nutrients from the soil,
absorb pollutants and reduce sedimentation.
As you probably know, restoring the Chesapeake Bay is the number one
environmental priority of both the Governor and myself. And any hope of
reversing the long-term decline to the Bay cannot be accomplished without a
total commitment on part of all parties involved to repairing our network of
forest buffers. All the work conducted here over the years illustrates one of
our favorite quotes at DNR, ďThe best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The
next best time is now.Ē
Congratulations to all here at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture
and Natural Resources and the Maryland Forest Service on a century of phenomenal
achievements. And thank you for being a tremendous part of our continued
- DNR Secretary C. Ronald Franks
Dedication of the Plaque Honoring the First
State Tree Nursery
College Park, Maryland, April 5, 2006
Remarks by Steve Koehn, State Forester
Greetings: What a day! For a forester, it doesnít get much better than this!
Itís Arbor Day Ė Where we celebrate the values of trees.
Itís Founders day Ė where we are celebrating the founding of Maryland Forest
And what better place to celebrate than here at College Park --the site of
Marylandís first state forest tree nurseryÖ
Your presence here today proves that you understand the importance of forestry
and the value of conserving our natural resources.
Value of the Forest Tree Nursery
Perhaps this quote form Larry Maxim, Savage River State Forester, best captures
the significance of Maryland's State Forest Tree Nursery: "The State Forest tree
nursery symbolizes man's hope for the future. It is a testimony to man's love
for the forest and his desire to establish trees where there are noneÖ The
Forest Tree Nursery epitomizes what forestry is all about - reestablishing and
maintaining the health of the forest."
Deplorable environmental conditions
I would like to add to what Secretary Franks said about the condition of the
forest 100 years ago to illustrate that we have come a long way in restoring the
health of the environment - and the role this Forest Tree Nursery played in it:
Exploitive logging and agricultural practices that occurred in the late 19th
century caused this deplorable environmental situation. It was a large scale
ecological disaster. The nation was alarmed that timber resources were running
out and would soon be depleted.
Perhaps, the passenger pigeon is the poster bird that symbolizes the overall
poor health of the forests back than; there were once billions of passenger
pigeons in the United States. When a flock flew overhead, they darkened the sky
for hours. The last surviving one was named Martha. She died at the Cincinnati
Zoo. The passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914, the same year this tree nursery
at College Park was established. The environment was hurting.
Dual beginnings of Forest Conservation and the
It's important to remember that the beginnings of the American Forestry
Conservation movement coincided with the beginnings of the automobile age. Roads
were being constructed everywhere as more and more people bought cars. Very few
regulations were established to preserve the beauty of the landscape as seen
from the roads.
Kirk Rodgers, Fred W. Besley's grandson, who is present today, said that one of
the earliest and most vigorous efforts his grandfather undertook as a state
forester was to establish a state tree nursery. "He was particularly interested
in forest regeneration. He was ashamed with the way Maryland's roadsides looked.
He made this into a crusade."
G. Silas Sines
Since 1914 to present, only a handful of individuals have served as head
nurseryman of a Maryland State Tree nursery. Three of them are here today. Silas
Sines' son, Silas Sines, Jr. grew up on working at this tree nursery. He
actually ran the tree nursery for a year until his father, who was injured in a
serious accident, returned to work. So, three of the four nurserymen that headed
the tree nursery since 1914 are represented today. (Mr. Koehn introduces John
Ayton and Richard Garrett.)
We take great pride that there have been only ten state foresters over the
years. But I think it even more remarkable that there have been only four head
nurserymen since 1914. This group of men all have one thing in common - they
were extremely dedicated to their work. If time allowed, I could go on about the
great accomplishments of each nurseryman, but since it doesnít let me just
mention one, Silas Sines.
From 1929 to 1974, about 45 years, Sines oversaw and guided the growth of state
tree nursery operations at College Park. Over time, the self-sufficient work
habits of Sines became legend. The employees he supervised respected and looked
up him. He was not above working in the field right along side his staff. Sines
was sought out by professional nurserymen and foresters for his insight,
knowledge and know-how about growing and transplanting trees and overall tree
nursery operations. They were amazed at Sines creative innovations, made even
more remarkable as Sines had very little formal education. They traveled long
distances to study his practices and photograph the tools and equipment he
designed such as his root-pruner, tree planter, and pine cone seed extractor.
Probably Sines greatest career achievement is that he pioneered methods for
economically growing and replanting large numbers of healthy trees. Because of
Sines, The Maryland State Forest Tree Nursery had a reputation among nurserymen
in the eastern United States for growing the best tree seedlings at the cheapest
price. Henry C. Buckingham, the third state forester, once told a group of
nurserymen that of all the trees grown at tree nurseries in the eastern United
States, Maryland's trees stood out like a "fly in buttermilk."
In 1950, the College Park State tree nursery was relocated to Harmans, Maryland
where it operated from 1950 to about 1995. Due to the construction of Route 100,
the Nursery was again relocated in 1996 to its present site near Preston,
Caroline County on the eastern Shore. It was named the John S. Ayton Forest Tree
Nursery, for the person most instrumental in its establishment.
Maryland Forestry Boards
I like to thank Steve Dorsey and the Prince Georgeís Forestry Board for
providing the White Oak to plant. The Maryland Forestry Boards have contributed
significantly to forestry in Maryland.
Established in 1943, The Maryland Forestry Boards were the first forestry
organization of their kind east of Mississippi River to promote sound forestry
practices on private property.
I also like to thank Dr. Kangas, and Kimberly Monahan, Dr. Kangasís assistant,
for all their hard work that made this memorable program possible today.
The Maryland Forest Serviceís adopted Centennial Slogan, is ďCelebrating Our
Past, Creating Our Future.Ē The University of Maryland has been an integral part
of the legacy of Maryland Forest Service and has contributed greatly to forest
conservation. We celebrate our shared past together. With the agreement* being
signed today, we look forward to continuing our long and productive
relationship, together creating a future in forest conservation that will be
celebrated 100 years from now during the Maryland Forest Service's
- Steve Koehn, Maryland State Forester
* The agreement referred to was a Letter of Intent between
the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the University of Maryland
College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, which reads as follows:
Letter of Intent
The University of Maryland, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources-Forest Service has a long
standing relationship. This relationship began 100 years ago with the
establishment of the first state tree nursery and continues today with
financial support for a shared position focusing on forest landowner
Both the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Department
of Natural Resources want to expand their relationship into the future.
It is the intent of this future relationship to include adjunct faculty
opportunities for DNR employees, internship opportunities for College of
Agriculture & Natural Resource students at DNR, and enhanced research and
A detailed document will be developed to formalize this relationship by a
team of representatives from both organizations.
|Signed on April 5, 2006
Dr. Cheng-i Wei
Dean, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources
Director, Maryland Cooperative Extension
C. Ronald Franks
Secretary, Maryland Department of Natural Resources
Since 1914, there have been only four
Maryland State Forest Tree Nursery Managers
Mr. Klein - Little is known of the State's first tree nursery manager.
State Forester Fred W. Besley referred to him only as Mr. Klein.
Silas Sines - A native of Garrett County
who oversaw and guided the growth and operations of the state forest tree
nursery from 1929-1974 - almost 45 years.
John S. Ayton - A former nursery supervisor at the Buckingham State
Forest Tree Nursery, John was instrumental in the design and construction, from
buildings to grounds and operations, of the present-day nursery which bears his
name. John began his career with DNRís Forest Service in 1961 and retired
in 1996, one year after the John S. Ayton State Forest Tree Nursery was
Richard Garrett - Mr. Garrett became the John S. Ayton State Tree Nursery Manager in
1996. Richard has been with the DNR Forest Service since 1984.
Read More About ...
Tree Nursery Science in Maryland
Visit DNR's Online State Tree Nursery
Historic Photo Gallery | <urn:uuid:c8783905-a7b9-4312-8cd7-a4eb5c784429> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dnr.state.md.us/centennial/TreeNursery_CentennialEvent.asp | 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 | 0.946547 | 3,013 | 1.90625 | 2 |
With childhood obesity on the rise, schools and organizations are looking for more nutritional options for kids in the lunchroom.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 12.5 million American children ages 2 to 17 are obese, a number that has almost tripled since 1980. Obese children account for 17 percent of all children in that age range. The main factors in this disturbing trend are pretty obvious – less exercise and poor nutritional choices for many kids.
While schools can’t change how kids eat at home, they can make a difference by offering healthier choices in the cafeteria. Some schools, like those in Greeley, Colorado, are going back to the basics when preparing lunches. Instead of prepackaged menu items (think frozen pizzas squares and chicken nuggets), the cooks will be making 75 percent of cafeteria offerings from scratch, with hopes of having that number at 100 percent by the end of the school year.
“We’re teaching kids how to eat again,” Elida Martinez, a kitchen worker in the Greeley school district, said in a recent New York Times article.
First Lady Michelle Obama has also made children’s nutrition a priority. Her Let’s Move! initiative aims to add salad bars to schools across the country. With a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables in a salad bar, the hope is that more children will make healthier nutritional decisions.
What do you think of your school’s lunchroom offerings? How could they be improved? | <urn:uuid:9a267315-1635-4bdf-8fd0-c4d74340310d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.schoolsin.com/you-are-what-you-eat-improving-school-cafeterias/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948093 | 310 | 3.328125 | 3 |
How to fill a gap between basement ceiling and brick wall
I live in a house built in 1880s in London that has a basement. Sometimes in the basement, some friends and I will have a chat and smoke a cigar.
Recently the next door neighbour said she could smell the cigar smoke!
I checked along the wall and there is a 1/2 gap between the basement ceiling and brick wall. The smoke must be going up there, and somehow into her living room (through the brick??!, and why not into my living room?)
I've tried putting expanding foam, but she said she could still smell it.
Have thought of nailing in some wood over the gap and sealing it.
Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance! | <urn:uuid:79c245b3-e84e-416b-a4fb-38951136b4fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.diychatroom.com/f19/how-fill-gap-between-basement-ceiling-brick-wall-35686/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978099 | 153 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Last week, Justice John Paul Stevens announced his resignation from the Supreme Court after 34 years. Almost immediately, the media fired up the great calliope of political journalism. Reporters breathlessly debated who President Obama would nominate. How would it shake up the Court? How would the Republicans respond? Which political faction would benefit?
The feverish excitement isn’t just the product of a sudden, national fascination with Constitutional law. New judges are news because they become a profound, lifelong influence on America’s legal landscape. They’re news because they are political — whether or not that is their intention.
This was not the original idea. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had both hoped that every branch of the government would operate without the maneuvering and deal-making of political factions. It was clear by the 1800s that this was unrealistic in Congress and the White House.
The Supreme Court avoided politics a little longer — probably because it was so insignificant. It had no budget, no building, and no significant work until Chief Justice John Marshall wrote his Marbury v Madison decision. The Court, Marshall said, was the foremost interpreter of the Constitution. If it thought a law was unconstitutional, it could overturn it, despite the vote of the House and Senate and the President’s signature.
This was unexpected political power, and Presidents quickly realized how they could use it to their advantage. By appointing a judge with similar opinions, the President could ensure his policies were pursued in the high court for the lifetime of the judge.
The nomination process has basically expanded the playing field for Washington’s endless political wrestling match. In many cases, appointing a Supreme Court justice is the continuation of politics by other means.
Like all political wisdom, though, this is at least 20% wrong. Throughout history, Presidents have chosen fair-minded, independent judges who offered wisdom, insight, and a keen insight into the Constitution. But they have also nominated judges who were political ciphers and ideological sock puppets.
Sometimes, though, Supreme Court justices can move off in an unexpected direction. Justice Felix Frankfurter, appointed by liberal President Roosevelt, became the court’s most prominent conservative voice. President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953, confident that Warren would exert a steady, conservative influence on the Court. Instead, Warren moved to the left, siding mostly with liberal opinion, and causing Eisenhower to refer to Warren’s nomination as “the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.”
Sometimes judges act like politicians, and sometimes they act like fair-minded, objective jurists. The uncertainty makes politically focused Americans extremely anxious.
For example Merlo J. Pusey, in a 1963 Post article, saw signs of domestic turmoil gathering like thunderheads over the court. The reasons — for him, at least — were clear.
“During its last session the court handed down two of the most bitterly controversial opinions in its long history — one against a prayer in the public schools and the other for reapportionment of gerrymandered legislatures. Both these cases are new landmarks in the law. Yet, like others before them, they represent no more than battles in the long war within the court itself—the war between the ‘activists’ and the ‘traditionalists.’
“This struggle has already deeply affected the political climate of the United Slates and the rights that all men and women cherish.”
Interestingly, the author thought the reapportionment decision would have a greater impact on the country. The “school prayer” decision, though, would remain a politically hot issue for decades.
“The case was brought by Steven I. Engel and other parents of children [who] objected to a nondenominational prayer recommended for use in the schools by the State Board of Regents, the highest educational authority in New York, and officially adopted by the local board. The prayer consisted of only 22 words drawn largely from state constitutions:
“‘Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.’
“The prayer was repeated at the beginning of each school day, along with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Those who did not wish to participate could remain silent or be excused from the room or come late in order to miss the prayer. All the judges agreed that there was no compulsion on any pupil to join in the prayer, but that did not save it in the eyes of the court.”
The court had shown its power in the 1950s, particularly in Brown v Board of Education, which struck down the practice of operating racially divided schools that were “separate but equal.” Now, it seemed, the Court was expelling God from school.
But real trouble was ahead, according to Pusey. Justice Frankfurter had retired and the court was now dominated by “activists” and “free-speech absolutists.” Pusey dreaded the prospect of the First Amendment running rampant through the streets.
“If the absolutist doctrine in its more extreme forms should be established as the law of the land, the consequences would be almost revolutionary.”
The statement is far less scary once you see all the qualifiers: if there is a concept of absolutist doctrine, if it might exist in “its most extreme forms,” and if it is made the law of the land, the results would be revolutionary, almost.
“It would mean, for example, that the Government could no longer enforce the Smith Act, under which numerous Communists have been convicted of teaching and advocating the overthrow of government by force and violence.
“It would also sharply curtail the investigative powers of Congress. If the doctrine were literally applied in its extreme forms, the general maintenance of public order would be severely handicapped because irresponsible people would presumably be free to indulge in perjury, obscenity, misrepresentation, false advertising and even solicitation of crime and subversion.”
It’s reporting like this that make the nominating process such a spectacle. Any and every fear can be entertained.
Overall, the article is suprisingly thoughtful and balanced. Pusey gives a thoughtful assessment of Hugo Black, but he keeps returning to his theoretical revolution, which was as fearful as it was imaginative.
If the court of 2010 is in the same awful straits as Pusey saw in 1963, we would all spend our worrying resources on another, more realistic problem. | <urn:uuid:57f0f8fc-899b-4ec5-a56c-4cece8174e4b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2010/04/17/archives/post-perspective/inevitable-politics-high-court.html/comment-page-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972367 | 1,365 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Posted by ESC on November 15, 2003
In Reply to: Bent or Bad Penny posted by Wally Robertson on November 15, 2003
: I came across a refgerence to a bad penny in a book (The Bone Pedlar, Sylvian Hamilton). The context is a discussion between a father visiting his daughter in her convent in 1210:
: "I prayed for you all the time. I told Our Lady all about you. I bent a penny to her for you. .... It didn't work. You caught a cold. ..... Do you think it might have been a bad penny?"
: I've heard the term, "Queer as a bent penny", and never known its derivation.
: Can anyone give me some informed background on this?
: Thanks in advance. Wal
I'd never heard the "bent penny" phrase either. But I like it.
"BAD PENNY -- The phrase usually is heard in this country (U.S.) as 'A bad penny always turns up,' meaning that a no-good person can be counted upon to come back again and again. The expression was originally English and the unit of currency referred to was the shilling. Sir Walter Scott, in one of his early nineteenth-century novels, whereto: 'Bring back Darsie? Little doubt of that. The bad shilling is sure enough to come back again.'" From "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977, 1988). | <urn:uuid:5b4be4bd-c6ab-48ac-a00a-64f4f0f5646b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/26/messages/212.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976208 | 317 | 2.25 | 2 |
Locust swarm in Egypt
A locust swarm estimated at 30 million in Egypt has put Israel on high alert ahead of the Passover celebration.
The Ministry of Agriculture in Israel has activated a hotline for their citizens to report any locust sightings. It is hoped early reports will aid in avoiding or controlling a major outbreak.
As early as November of 2012 pockets of locust were seen in Egypt and Sudan. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began working with these two governments to control this outbreak. When many small pockets of locusts are detected, it can be hard to successfully control enough of these infestations before they mature with wings and begin to gather into a swarm. | <urn:uuid:cda37523-d7fe-4735-9a2d-daf9a1a3c70b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maconch.com/article/20130304/blogs/130309644/0/Game%20Stories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965621 | 140 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Arginine and vasodilation
For example, arginine is the rate-limiting amino acid in the synthesis of nitric oxide (NO), a gaseous substance that causes blood vessels to dilate. It’s well known that increasing the bioavailability of NO improves vasodilation and blood pressure, but emerging evidence suggests exercise efficiency and performance may benefit as well.
In one study, healthy men performed two separate exercise cycle tests one hour after consuming either 6 grams of arginine or a placebo. Arginine supplementation reduced the amount of oxygen required to perform exercise (i.e. increased exercise efficiency). This means that individuals accomplished the same exercise load but with less energy expended. Arginine supplementation also increased time to exhaustion by 26% during high intensity cycling.
Arginine and growth hormone
Other work has shown that arginine supplementation may increase growth hormone (GH). When arginine is infused directly into a vein, GH levels increase dramatically. In fact, arginine infusion is used clinically as a diagnostic test when GH deficiency is suspected. The dose of oral arginine needed to increase GH levels appears to be at least 5 grams, with larger responses shown with 9 grams.
Arginine and muscle gains
In a different study, a combination formula consisting of 7 grams of arginine, 1.5 grams of HMB, 7 grams of glutamine and 3 grams of taurine resulted in striking improvements in body composition. Compared to a control group who received a placebo, healthy young men who took these supplements during 12 weeks of heavy resistance training showed a 10-pound greater increase in lean body mass. | <urn:uuid:2f65397c-8b86-41df-8906-d41a065708d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nutritionexpress.com/article+index/protein/amino+acids/showarticle.aspx?articleid=1679 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93728 | 338 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Disaster at Xichang
An eyewitness speaks publicly for the first time about history’s worst launch accident.
- By Anatoly Zak
- Air & Space magazine, February 2013
Courtesy of Bruce Campbell
(Page 3 of 5)
After flying for 22 seconds in the direction of the hotel and residential complex, the 426-ton vehicle crashed into a hillside, most of its propellant still on board. The overstressed payload section with the satellite inside had broken off and plunged to the ground moments earlier.
The diary continues: “It arced toward the earth and I thought I knew what was coming, but the instant of horror that is burned into memory was not anticipated. A tremendous light turned 3 a.m. into noon. Every tree on the hillside was clear as a knife edge, and the sky reflected a weird glow, a color I can not describe…. Many things happened at once. I heard the biggest explosion of my life, I turned and started to run. I saw a friend’s face contorted in Oh shit! I heard a smaller and then a larger boom, I left the ground, I was on the ground, scrambling, wondering why I was down there…. I heard glass breaking and shit was flying everywhere.”
Those on top of the building descended a ladder to the lower roof, and from there scrambled into the building, as the violent shock wave rioted over the facility. A large glass-enclosed entrance shattered into thousands of fragments.
After the blast wave passed, the survivors’ next fear was poisonous fumes produced by the rocket’s toxic fuel and oxidizer. According to Campbell, “We all went into the fueling facility [as the most secure part of the building], had the Chinese shut down all the air conditioning in case the fumes came our way, and set up detectors [for toxic substances], gas masks, and protective equipment for all our [American] people.”
Fortunately, the detectors showed no signs of poison; the wind was blowing the gases away from the building. Phone lines in the battered facility remained operational, and the engineers quickly established contact with their colleagues at the mission control center, perched on the mountain slope some three miles downrange from the site, and with the United States. Back home, stunned engineers, and soon TV viewers around the world, watched footage of the rocket starting to veer off course even before it cleared the tower. To a trained eye, the images also revealed that the rocket’s nozzles were swiveling wildly in an effort to correct the trajectory.
One of the people standing on the roof of the satellite processing building captured the accident on video, even though he was thrown off his feet by the blast wave (the video can still be seen on YouTube). The footage confirms that the rocket crashed just across the road from the hotel for the foreigners. The impact site was right next to the gate of the center, where the large crowd had gathered to watch. Chinese officials claimed that all villagers had been evacuated before the launch, but those claims have been disputed.
The shaken Americans were told that a bus would soon arrive to transport them back to Xichang, but it was repeatedly delayed, and didn’t arrive until well into the afternoon. In the first few hours after the explosion, the stranded engineers were not anxious to leave their relatively secure quarters and go down the valley past the impact epicenter. But suspecting that Chinese authorities were delaying the bus departure to clean up the crash site, Campbell and one of his colleagues could not resist the urge to investigate.
They took vapor detectors, got on their bicycles, and, taking advantage of the road going down into the valley, raced past the armed Chinese guard, who they’d been told had only one bullet in his rifle. | <urn:uuid:88a1c62f-df09-4950-b52b-079f5b29c2bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Disaster-at-Xichang-187496561.html?c=y&page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977328 | 783 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Rovers Send Surprises
25 Jun 2004
(Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Dwayne Brown (202) 358-1726
News Release: 2004-161
June 25, 2004
Mars Rover Surprises Continue; Spirit, Too, Finds Hematite
On challenging slopes that NASA's Mars rovers began exploring this month, both Spirit and Opportunity have found new surprises for the folks back home.
Spirit rolled up to a knobby rock just past where the "Columbia Hills" start to rise from the surrounding plain. It touched the rock with a mineral-identifying instrument at the tip of its robotic arm and detected hematite. Hematite identified from orbit was NASA's key reason for choosing Opportunity's landing site halfway around Mars from these hills within Gusev Crater.
Opportunity, continuing its descent into "Endurance Crater," has found unexpected similarities between lower layers of rock it is examining for the first time and an overlying layer at "Eagle Crater" where, months ago, the rover discovered evidence that water once soaked the area.
"It's gratifying how well these machines keep performing, considering they've now nearly doubled their original three-month missions on Mars," said Chris Voorhees, rover mechanical systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. By the end of next week, Spirit will have worked on Mars for half a year. It has driven more than three times the design requirement of one kilometer (0.6 mile). The only symptom of wear or aging on either rover so far is increased friction in one wheel on Spirit. The rover team at JPL is beginning to consider good sites for the solar-powered robots to spend the period of martian winter when reduced daily sunshine cuts power supply to a minimum. In the nearer term, though, team members are eager to follow through on the new scientific findings.
Spirit's hematite finding is in a rock dubbed "Pot of Gold," about the size of a softball. "This rock has a shape as if somebody took a potato and stuck toothpicks in it, then put jelly beans on the ends of the toothpicks," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. "How it got this crazy shape is anyone's guess. I haven't even heard a good theory yet."
Dr. Doug Ming, a rover science-team member from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, said, "There's apparently some type of weathering, a removal of material, but we're still trying to determine whether it's by chemical or mechanical processes."
Further study of Pot of Gold could also help scientists assess what the hematite in it tells about past environmental conditions. "Hematite can form in a few different ways. Most of them require water, but it can also result from a dry, thermal oxidation process," Ming said. "It was hematite identified from orbit that made Meridiani Planum a compelling place to send Opportunity. There, we've learned that the hematite is indeed part of a water story. At Gusev we're just at the starting stage."
After examining Pot of Gold with the microscopic imager and two spectrometers on Spirit's arm, the rover backed away from the rock to re-approach at a better angle for using its rock abrasion tool to expose the rock's interior. In the rough and slippery terrain, that maneuver took several days. The Other nearby rocks may also be inspected before Spirit resumes longer drives exploring the Columbia Hills area. Also, engineers are planning an attempt to redistribute lubricant in Spirit's balky right front wheel before the rover leaves its current vicinity.
Team members presented both rovers' status at a press conference at JPL today. Opportunity has driven far enough into the stadium-sized Endurance Crater to put it within arm's reach of three layers of rock beneath a sulfate-rich layer. That area is similar to what Opportunity first examined in the shallower "Eagle Crater," where it landed in January. "We're trying to systematically characterize the stratigraphy of the crater as we drive down, analyzing each unit chemically and mineralogically with all the instruments available," said Nicholas Tosca, a science-team affiliate from the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The first two newly accessed layers resemble the upper layer in having sulfate salts and spherical concretions; both are signs of formation of the rocks under wet conditions.
Squyres said, "I had thought we might see just basalt below the top salty layer, but instead it's salty as far as we've been able to see so far. Every time we see more sulfates as we work down this stack, it adds to the amount of water that was necessary to make this happen."
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Images and additional information about the project are available from JPL at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University, at http://athena.cornell.edu . | <urn:uuid:d3c99fe5-d632-4360-84b7-179584bd1bb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=8840 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930636 | 1,181 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Each month, there will be a new Theme we will write about. If you like the topic join in! Pictures are always great too!
Once you write your blog post, email me a link to it at EnjoyLifeUnschooling@gmail.com
Submissions should be emailed by midnight of the due date.
I will include all blogposts that fit our criteria, the theme is used and the post written by unschoolers from an unschooling perspective. All posts should be current, within the last 3 months. And link to up-dated blogs.
The posts will be organized with links and a description under each Theme. Everyone will have access to all the blogs that participated and it will be archived for future viewing.
If you have any input about the blog carnival, feel free to leave a note. Happy blogging everyone.
November Carnival Theme-Celebrating Life Events
This month’s theme is Celebrating Life Events. I have been thinking about the holidays that are upcoming, both public and our personal ones, and thinking about how celebrating has changed for me since I was a child. My perspective shifts change the way I think, live and be. That includes celebrating.
- How has celebrating changed in your house?
- How do you celebrate, and why?
- How do I make Christmas (insert holiday) special without the deprivation before hand?
- What about relatives?
- Celebrating Birth days and other anniversaries
- Adding or stopping certain holidays
- Feeling abundant in a daily celebration of life
How do YOU celebrate?
This months blog submissions due 21 November.
If you are not a blogger… consider submitting photographs?View Previous Themes
Blog carnival archive
- “Why Do You Do What You Do?” – October 2010 Blog Carnival October 18, 2010
- “Unschooling Plus” – September 2010 Blog Carnival September 4, 2010
- Picking up the pieces – August 2010 Blog Carnival August 2, 2010
- Night Life — July 2010 Blog Carnival July 1, 2010 | <urn:uuid:af42ce0a-d3d5-4ac7-a855-8e9f98d67fa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://enjoylifeunschooling.com/blog-carnival/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916538 | 425 | 1.5 | 2 |
When launching The Hanging Wood recently, I answered a few questions about the thorny topic of libel and fiction. Of course, given that (for instance) I have written a book featuring a library influenced by a real life model, it’s something that occupies my thoughts. And even if I were not a lawyer, I think it’s a very good idea not to be cavalier about the law of libel. Because one of its nasty features is that it is possible to libel someone unintentionally.
The risks are perhaps greater in crime fiction than in other types of book. After all, almost by definition, a crime novel will include a number of dodgy characters. Even the innocent among the suspects are likely to be flawed characters. Having said that, I do think that in practice, writers need to get things into perspective and not be too paranoiac. Taking sensible precautions by not using names or descriptions that you know to be mirrored in real life is advisable. But it’s simply impossible to eliminate all potential resemblances and coincidences.
One tactic I use might seem contrary to the idea of precise research. You might call my method ‘related research’. In The Hanging Wood, for instance, which features a caravan park, I talked to someone who owns such a park – but based in Wales, not the Lake District. And St Herbert’s Library is also based on a Welsh, rather than Cumbrian model. There is plenty of action on a farm, but the farm I visited to research the book was in Lancashire, not Lakeland. I talked to a veteran police officer to get the police procedure (more or less!) right, but he’s someone who works in Lincolnshire, not in the same area as Hannah Scarlett and her team. The historian who helps me is a retired Oxford don, not someone who has ever moved away to live the dream, as Daniel Kind did. The idea, in short, is to capture the elements that will create an impression of realism without turning the book into a pseudo-documentary.
I really would hate anyone to think that I’d depicted them, or their company, negatively in a novel. For me, fiction is in part about escaping from real life, not about using it to take pot shots at people (much though most of us writers may joke about so doing). I did take a very different approach with Dancing for the Hangman, which is the story of Dr Crippen’s life. But not only is poor old Crippen long in his grave, so are all the other characters. Just as well, really. | <urn:uuid:e1ab7eb0-e9f9-4c44-bb56-98397431bfc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2011/08/libel-and-fiction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972913 | 543 | 1.5625 | 2 |
How many days in 1 seconds?
The answer is 1.15740740741E-5.
We assume you are converting between day and second.
You can view more details on each measurement unit:
days or seconds
The SI base unit for time is the second.
1 days is equal to 86400 second.
Note that rounding errors may occur, so always check the results.
Use this page to learn how to convert between days and seconds.
Type in your own numbers in the form to convert the units!
You may also want to find out how many days are between two dates on the calendar. Use the date calculator to get your age in days or measure the duration of an event.
A continous period of 24 hours which, unless the context otherwise requires, runs from midnight to midnight.
The second (symbol s) is a unit for time, and one of seven SI base units. It is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at zero kelvins.
ConvertUnits.com provides an online conversion calculator for all types of measurement units. You can find metric conversion tables for SI units, as well as English units, currency, and other data. Type in unit symbols, abbreviations, or full names for units of length, area, mass, pressure, and other types. Examples include mm, inch, 100 kg, US fluid ounce, 6'3", 10 stone 4, cubic cm, metres squared, grams, moles, feet per second, and many more!
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A Swiss manufacturer of aerospace, automotive, and medical parts has developed a novel compression molding process that delivers net-shape thermoplastic composites with strength per unit weight reportedly competitive with those of machined steel, aluminum, and titanium. Icotec AG says its Composite Flow Molding (CFM) process puts up to 62% by volume of carbon fiber into a thermoplastic, yielding high-strength and abrasion-resistant screws, bolts, inserts, studs, anchor nuts, and other fasteners. CFM composites are also being used to make medical implants and small (up to 0.5-in.-long) structural bearings and other parts. The favored matrix polymer is PEEK, supplied by Victrex PLC in the U.K. and in the U.S.
CFM composites offer specific strength (i.e., per unit weight) exceeding those of competing metals, says Bettina Hale, Icotec market manager. The absolute strength values of 62% carbon-reinforced PEEK are equally impressive: Flexural strength is about seven times higher than those of aluminum and 30% glass-reinforced nylon 6 or PEEK.
The CFM process begins with a pultruded PEEK/carbon fiber rod made by Faigle Kunststofftechnik in Weissensberg, Germany. This rod supplier employs a proprietary method of incorporating high levels of carbon-fiber tow into PEEK with virtually no damage to the integrity of the reinforcements.
Icotec then cuts the PEEK rod into a blank whose volume is precisely equal to the volume of the final part. The blank is transferred by robot to a heating chamber where the PEEK melts and wets-out the continuous fibers, minimizing voids. The blank is then transferred to a compression mold cavity where it is pressed at precise speed, temperature, and pressure to form a part with a predictable fiber orientation to enhance part strength.
The illustrated cross-section of a CFM screw shows fiber in the helical (thread) sections oriented in ways that increase thread twist strength or torsional resistance, allowing screws to resist breakage even when fastening metal parts. Orientation at the screw core, however, is unidirectional, which enhances overall screw strength. In the intermediate regions, fiber is oriented in a way said to anchor the torque-resistant screw threads securely to the stabilized core.
Victrex USA technical-service manager Rich Liebfried says the PEEK matrix adds more dimensions to CFM part performance. “PEEK wets out fiber fully and processes well in this compression molding process.” PEEK also enhances the chemical and thermal resistance of parts, offering a continuous-use temperature of 500 F. Low outgassing makes PEEK suitable for corrosion-resistant fasteners in aerospace applications.
In marine applications like rig fittings, the vibration-resistance of CFM fasteners has considerable appeal. The company also recently developed a line of internally lubricated plastic fasteners for dynamic applications in which parts are subjected to high levels of vibration. In those uses, metal fasteners often lose their preload tension and are inclined to loosen and fail.
Icotec is working to broaden the capability of CFM processing with additional resins such as nylon 6 and PBT. The process also permits fibers other than carbon to be used, notably ceramic, glass, and tantalum. Glass is favored in applications calling for high thermal or electrical insulation. Carbon fiber offers higher strength but can block accurate reading of x-ray or MRI images when used in bone implants. Icotec’s response is a radio-translucent tantalum-reinforced formulation. | <urn:uuid:79fe2cb3-a295-487b-ae22-65336d43cb8b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ptonline.com/articles/new-twist-in-thermoplastic-composites-makes-high-strength-net-shape-fasteners | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918241 | 763 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Along Pennsylvania Avenue looking toward the U.S. Capitol in Washington. / Tim Sloan, AFP/Getty Images
A payroll tax increase of 2 percentage points has hit workers who have received their first paychecks of the year, and has many determining how they will cut back in 2013.
The tax increase came when Congress decided not to renew a temporary payroll tax reduction as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations at the end of December. The rate returned to 6.2% as a result.
While the increase won't likely have a significant impact overall on the economy, it could change buying habits and where people choose to shop, especially for lower-income households, economist Joel Naroff says.
"The people at the lowest incomes are going to be the most stretched, the least able to take it out of savings and sustain their spending pattern," says Naroff, president and chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa.
Nearly a third of store managers say shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the payroll tax increase, according to a survey by retail industry research firm Merchant Forecast of 52 store managers in malls across the country. The survey was conducted the second weekend of the month and store managers based responses on foot traffic and sales figures, among other things.
That could be a good thing for discount retailers as more consumers look to them for savings. Dan Hess, CEO of Merchant Forecast, suspects off-price stores such as Ross and T.J. Maxx will gain customers as people "trade down" to less expensive stores and brands.
And Naroff predicts major retailers such as Walmart and Target that also offer grocery items could see an increase in those purchases as consumers seek discounts or switch to generic over brand-name products.
Sharon Morgan is one such shopper. The 73-year-old part-time pastoral assistant says she'll likely start shopping more at discounters such as Costco instead of neighborhood markets.
"The tax increase will greatly affect how and where we spend our money," says Morgan, who lives in Oak Harbor, Wash.
Others say the tax increase won't affect their spending choices, and Naroff agrees that the increase won't make a huge difference for most middle- to upper-income families.
Still, "anytime you take dollars out of the economy you have to anticipate there will be some drag," says Phil Noftsinger, president of CBIZ Payroll, a company that manages payroll processing. "I think it's going to come as a pretty big surprise (as workers collect paychecks)."
Copyright 2013 USATODAY.com
Read the original story: Payroll tax increase may nick consumer spending | <urn:uuid:6bec3a4f-f8c4-4331-b80e-05c5972dfdb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pnj.com/usatoday/article/1823649?odyssey=mod_sectionstories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970987 | 543 | 1.726563 | 2 |
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Special Instructions 2005A
Instructions for Completion of Phase II/OT Science Programs: Semester 2005A
This page provides instructions for completing Phase II Science Programs for all Gemini North and Gemini South instruments. It includes submission details and procedural changes. Please read this page carefully!
Note: Beginning with this semester the Phase II deadlines are hard deadlines for queue programs (see details below). Programs that have not completed their Phase II definitions by the deadlines will be dropped from the queue.
Distribution of Phase II Skeletons
All observations must be defined using the Observing Tool (OT) software. Gemini staff have translates approved Phase I proposals into the Phase II format for loading into the OT. In this process, the observations and other details entered in Phase I are used to construct a ("skeleton") framework of your Science Program.
Instructions on skeleton retrieval have been sent to PIs on December 9. As in previous semesters, the Phase II skeletons are downloaded/uploaded directly from/to the Gemini telescope databases to enable more efficient and rapid processing. See more information on using the Observing Database.
A new release of the OT ("grillo") is available to support Semester 2005A Phase II preparation (as well as on-going 2004A and 2004B programs); do not use the previous "cherry" public release. There are OT installation instructions available. If you are unfamiliar with the OT, there is an OT tutorial that provides a useful introduction. In addition, each instrument also has several web pages that provide guidance on observing strategies and how to describe these in the OT.
Relaxation of Observing Condition Constraints and Other Observation Changes
For semester 2005A the queue was constructed by filling the expected observing conditions (and overfilling the poorer than average conditions) but limited to the total available queue time (i.e. the total science time less scheduled classical nights and estimated Band 1 rollover programs). Hence there is no queue Band 4, unlike previous semesters. Band 3 programs, which now occupy the lowest third to half of the queue, are unlikely to be executed, and very unlikely to be completed, if they request conditions that are better than average (especially in cloud cover and image quality).
Starting in 2005A we encourage PIs of Band 3 programs, in particular, to think carefully about relaxing the observation constraints within the context of their overall time allocation and approved science goals (e.g. by observing fewer targets). One useful analogy is to consider "how would I attempt this program if it were classically scheduled and the conditions were sub-optimal?".
If during detailed definition you find that the approved observations need to be modified, please follow the change request procedure.
The National Gemini Offices are responsible for Phase II support for the "established" facility and visiting instruments as mandated by the Gemini Board. Phase II support for the other instruments remains with the Gemini Observatory staff. In outline, the Phase II process for the established instruments is as follows:
- PIs interact with NGO support staff to complete Phase II using the OT for all observations with NIRI, including Altair, Phoenix, both GMOSs (including MOS mask design), T-ReCS, GNIRS and Michelle.
- All Phase II Science Programs are checked by NGO staff prior to being forwarded to the Gemini Contact Scientist. (Note that Gemini CSs will return any Phase II programs that are received directly from PIs, with instructions to contact their NGO).
- Gemini Contact Scientist checks Phase II Science Programs; if there is any problem the Science Program will be returned to the NGO support staff. The NGO staff will then iterate further with the PI.
- Only when the Gemini Contact Scientist agrees that the Science Program is ready will it be activated in the queue for execution. The PI will be notified that their program is in the active queue and that the Gemini CS is now the primary contact point.
For the other instruments (Acquisition Camera) the Gemini Contact scientist is the first point of contact for programs PIs.
If you wish to change the primary contact for this program, e.g. to a co-I, please e-mail both Sybil Adams (email@example.com) and Simon Chan (firstname.lastname@example.org) with a copy to the relevant Gemini Associate Director (email@example.com for Gemini North, firstname.lastname@example.org for Gemini South) and a copy to your National Gemini office.
To help us in tracking and resolving user problems, questions and suggestions, and thereby improving the software and web pages, please use the Gemini HelpDesk. This allows us to ensure that no queries are missed and help us improve the software and documentation. A streamlined interface is available for Phase II queries, keyed to your Gemini Program ID (e.g. GS-2005A-Q-12). As with the regular HelpDesk interface, your query will be directed to the specific NGO or Gemini support staff. Support assignments do change occasionally and you can verify the contact names from the "interactive snapshot" of the Observing Database, accessed from the contents list on the schedules web page. (The NGO and Gemini support staff email addresses are listed on the support staff web page).
Deadlines and Mechanism for Return of Completed Science Programs
The mechanism for submitting your completed Phase II Science Program is similar to skeleton retrieval (see the Observing Database information for more details) and is the same for all instruments (although submission of MOS mask definition files, and finding charts, is currently handled separately, outside of the Observing Tool, via direct email to your Gemini Contact Scientist).
Dates for submission of completed Phase II information are (all 6pm local time):
|Phase II deadlines for all instruments|
|12 January||Early submission, recommended for any programs and especially advantageous for observations that can be executed early in the semester|
|10 February||Mandatory deadline for all queue programs|
|various||Deadlines for GMOS mask design and MOS updates (several dates, synchronized with lunar phase)|
These deadlines apply to all queue programs including templates for Quick Response / ToO observations. (In addition there are periodic deadlines during the semester for GMOS mask design and corresponding MOS observation updates only).
PIs of all classical programs must also submit Phase II observation definitions. The deadline for these is two weeks prior to the instrument block in which the classical nights are scheduled. (See the 2005A classical schedule and 2005A instrument schedule).
Programs that have not completed their Phase II definitions by the deadlines noted above will be dropped from the queue. In exceptional cases an exemption may be requested by emailing the relevant Gemini Associate Director (email@example.com for Gemini North, firstname.lastname@example.org for Gemini South)
In some cases GMOS PIs may be contacted directly and asked to submit their Phase II early to provide sufficient observations for pre-imaging and MOS spectroscopy at the very start of the semester. All MOS pre-imaging observation descriptions must be submitted by the regular deadlines (see table above).
OT and Other Late-Breaking Changes for 2005A
The principal changes to the OT software are listed on the OT Hot News page. There are also several new policy changes. Here we summarise how they affect Phase II observation definition and point the user to further details.
The ALTAIR component now has a button by which the PI specifies whether the cassegrain rotator rotates to compensate for field rotation, as is normal practice, or is fixed, as requested for some AO observations.
GMOS North and South
No policy changes for 2005A: PIs must specify all science and baseline calibration observations with the exception of (spectro)photometric standards, bias and flatfield images. See the list of GMOS baseline calibrations for details of the calibrations required.
The flatfield lamp and diffuser inside GCAL were changed earlier in 2004B for GMOS North and South. All GMOS calibrations using GCAL should use the visible diffuser.
PIs must now define and include in their Phase II programs all baseline calibrations (flats, arcs, telluric standards) and acquisition observations. The list of baseline calibrations is available and examples are given on the GNIRS OT help page. An example acquisition observation is given on the same page.
Note also the new offset acquisition (including "blind acquisition") procedure described below.
Spectroscopic programs must include two spectroscopic standard stars, one for before and one for after the observation (see updated Michelle baseline calibrations for more details).
A basic acquisition sequence must be included in all spectroscopic observations. This usually consists of a short Si-5 image taken in normal chop mode. An example is shown the OT library for Michelle (library available as an XML file for import into OT).
There are several changes to the calibration policies (also described on the NIRI calibration page). For each imaging program that is observed, flats will normally be obtained at the end of the night. If the PI requires that the flats be obtained closer in time to the actual science observations, they must request this in a note inserted in the Phase II Science Program. The only standard darks that will be taken each night are short exposure darks to check for bad pixels. If the PI desires darks frames other than the above, they must include them along with a note in the Phase II Science Program. Any such darks will be observed at the end of the night.
Flat and arc exposure times have recently been adjusted. PIs should use calibration observations from the latest update of the OT library for NIRI (library available as an XML file for import into OT).
New instructions for classical observers at Gemini South, as well as for classical Phoenix observers in particular, will shortly be available.
No policy changes for 2005A: PIs must specify acquisition details (as part of sequence or as a separate observation), astrometric and PSF standards if required, as described on the T-ReCS pages.
Updated T-ReCS sensitivities and plots are available.
Offset Acquisitions (Including "Blind Acquisition")
Previously, acquisitions involving an offset from another target were specified by the PI as (delta RA, delta dec) in arcsec in a text note. From this semester, the reference target position must be defined as a User Target in the OT target component, giving the full (RA, dec) coordinates. See the updated telescope acquisition procedures for more details.
The new OT release supports specification of non-sidereal targets in several of the common systems (JPL Horizons, AsA and MPC). See the updated OT target component editor page for more details.
Calibration Time Accounting
There is no change to calibration time accounting policies; baseline calibrations, as described on the instrument pages, continue to be charged to the partner country and not to the individual science program. However, to assist PIs in defining their observations and optimizing their use of allocated time, a new calibration checkbox in the OT observation component toggles whether or not that observation is included in the total time summation. PIs should set baseline calibration observations in this way. (This feature is not, yet, available for calibrations included as part of a science observation sequence).
Classical Time Accounting
At its November 2004 meeting, the Gemini Board endorsed a recommendation from the Gemini Science Committee that classical time be charged at 75% of the rate of queue time e.g. a nominal 10hr classical night would be charged as 7.5hr to the partner countries involved.
Notification of Data Taken
On the OT observation component there is a now a "Notify PI" checkbox. When checked it will (shortly) send a brief email to the PI whenever data are taken for the program (at the moment it doesn't do anything!).
Status of Submitted Programs and Observations
The 2005A queue summary and "interactive database snapshot" pages show the current execution status of all queue programs and indicates when data have been taken. (For the next level of detail, click on the "execution status" link under each program to see the status of each observation or on the execution log links in the contents list to see which observations were executed each night).
Last update December 8, 2004; Phil Puxley | <urn:uuid:e1d10c96-ccea-46fe-b2fb-99fe98f9983d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gemini.edu/index.php?q=node/11072 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902937 | 2,606 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Files can be added, committed and removed from git repositories using one or more of the following commands:
Adding a file named "testFile.xml" to the index.
Testing to view differences between the index and HEAD
produces something like the following:
This has not been added to the repository yet but remains in the index. Committing the file to the local repository involves promoting changes from the index to the repository, a suitable command could be something like:
Assuming no other files have been created and added to the index, running "git diff -- cached" after performing the commit should result in nothing being returned from the command invocation. The index and HEAD are now synchronised.
The local repository contains the new file, if you're using GitHub you may want to push the new file to the remote repository, this can be done with a command such as the following:
Additionally, if you're using GitHub as a remote repository, you can remove files from that repository by using a commands such as the following:
Removal from index, local repository, remote repository and the local file system:
Removal from the index, local repository, remote repository but not the local file system: | <urn:uuid:f4438d9e-f7cd-4cd2-98b4-c198417e605a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://techiquest.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927344 | 244 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The following publications are available in hardcopy format, FREE of charge! If interested in obtaining copies email Ashley Barnett at firstname.lastname@example.org with the subject of : Publication Request.
- The Youth Law T.E.A.M. of Indiana presents: PLAY (Present Laws Affecting Youth) in Bounds. The publication is written in a question and answer format to help Indiana youth learn and understand what the law is in the areas most important to youth. The answers are summaries of Indiana and federal law, state, and federal case law, and/or common law. At the end of the each chapter the publication includes a sources section to better explain the Indiana Code, Indiana Administrative Code, United States Code, and Code of Federal Regulations. This particular publication also has a complimentary Teacher’s Curriculum that can be used to facilitate groups. The Youth Law T.E.A.M. will go on-site to provide training for interested individuals to encourage dialogue sessions between adults and adolescents.
- A Guide for Parents to the Juvenile Justice System in Indiana, “Your Child and Juvenile Court.” This publication is designed to “provide parents, custodians, and legal guardians legally accurate and easily understandable information on the complexities of the juvenile justice system in Indiana.”
- Education Rights: The law and skills YOU need to know to be an Education Advocate Curriculum included in the text is to “assist foster parents, CASA’s, biological parents, guardians, custodians, juvenile detention center personnel and other child-serving professionals in advocating for a student’s education in the state of Indiana.” Training includes a manual incorporating advocacy, general education, special education, discipline and students age 18-21 addressing federal and state laws regarding education law. Also included in the manual is a list of resources for both students and adults.
- Indiana Compliance with the JJDP Act The handbook contains an overview of the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act rules and regulations. This information is pertinent to all facilities (i.e. juvenile detention centers, residential center, county jails, and police stations) which hold kids. The easy to read handbook solidifies how youth can be held and provides comprehensive material regarding protocol. The second section of the handbook includes a “How To” section to encourage web-based reporting on the QUEST system. By having all facilities report in one manner, Indiana will be able to have more accurate and concrete data illustrating what is going on statewide. | <urn:uuid:95910f04-3298-438a-a5bc-9efa24b45b5d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://in.gov/cji/2618.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916211 | 525 | 2.234375 | 2 |
A tanker loaded with sulphuric acid has capsized on the Rhine in Germany and rescuers are trying to find two missing crew members.
It was not know why the ship capsized near St Goarshausen. The other two crew members were rescued.
The ship was carrying 2,400 tons of sulphuric acid. Initial measurements carried out downstream from the scene showed no abnormalities and there were no indications that the load was leaking, said shipping officials.
Authorities closed the river to shipping. They were working to secure the tanker.
The German-owned ship was on its way from Ludwigshafen in south-western Germany to Antwerp, Belgium.
The accident happened on a picturesque stretch of the Rhine near the famed Loreley cliff. | <urn:uuid:1a9a3e5c-fb2a-43fa-a337-56592e44ab2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/acid-tanker-capsizes-on-river-rhine-28581588.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988766 | 158 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Today General Electric unveiled five award winners in its $200 million open innovation challenge, which focused on finding smart solutions to powering our grid. The competition, which was launched in July, is part of General Electric’s Ecomagination initiative to accelerate development of the next-gen power grid and global energy transformation through open collaboration. The five winners of the challenge will each receive $100,000 for their ideas, which will lead to a “smarter, cleaner, more efficient electric grid.” Read on for a look at each of the finalists!
The winners were picked by an independent panel of judges including challenge advisor and Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, GE executives, and leading academics and technologists. The winners were picked for their visions, which address the critical issues of water supply, frozen wind farm blades, wind turbine cost, and the security and reliability of the smart grid. The five winners are:
Capstone Metering: Intelligent Water Meters – Carrollton, Texas
Capstone Metering applies remote communications technology to the century-old water meter. The company’s IntelliH2O is self-powered and delivers real-time water system management, which helps conserve water and eliminates the need for manual meter-readings
ElectricRoute: Secure Communications Network, Salem and Hollis, New Hampshire
Recognizing the substation’s importance in the electric grid, ElectricRoute (founded by the father of our very own Kevin Dalias!) created a communications gateway point for transmission and distribution systems. Its cyber-secure communications network infrastructure eliminates duplicate sensors and thousands of copper lines running inside the substation.
GridON: Controlling Power Quality in Electric Grids, Givatayim, Israel
GridON has created a fault-current-limiter to protect the electric grid from disruptions and power outages, increasing the grid’s reliability and enabling load growth and generation expansion from alternative energy sources. This technology was developed in collaboration with Bar-Ilan University and Ricor Ltd.
Lead photo © Mirko Tobias Schaefer | <urn:uuid:5ddf6377-67a2-4ede-891f-61155479f4d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inhabitat.com/ges-ecomagination-challenge-unveils-5-winning-energy-solutions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940725 | 422 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Talk of hybrid automobiles, green building design and construction and energy conservation is all the rage as fuel costs continue to soar. But, amazingly, federal officials actually recognized more than a decade ago the benefits of energy efficiency when it comes to saving money.
Congress in 1995 expanded a small pilot program of the Federal Housing Administration nationwide, bringing Energy Efficient Mortgages to a wider audience. The FHA, which is not a lending agency but insures mortgages, insured more than 26,000 Energy Efficient Mortgages in 2003, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The backbone of the EEM program is the idea that a reduction in a homeowner's utility costs by enacting changes that maximize energy efficiency allows a homeowner to pay a higher mortgage to cover the costs of the energy improvements as well as the mortgage itself.
The FHA offers insurance for these specialized mortgages for a homeowner to buy or refinance a home and incorporate the cost of energy-efficient improvements. As the homeowner, you don't have to qualify for the extra funds and no down payment is required.
EEMs offer homeowners who otherwise might not be able to afford it a chance to revamp their homes, save costs by adopting energy-efficient practices and help cut down on pollution. Yet, they're still relatively foreign to most homeowners.
"Although EEMs have been available in some states since 1980, they have been little understood or marketed," according to HUD. "With EEMs, borrowers do not need to get a separate, costly loan for energy improvements when buying an existing home."
Here's an overview of the requirements homeowners need to be considered eligible for an Energy Efficient Mortgage:
The borrower is eligible for maximum FHA-backed loan, using standard underwriting procedures. The borrower must make a 3-percent cash investment in the property based on the sales price. Closing costs are not included in the 3- percent calculation but may be used to satisfy the requirement. Any upfront mortgage insurance premium can be financed as part of the mortgage.There are three basic types of EEMs, so determining which one is best suited for your needs may require the help of an expert. Along with the FHA-backed loans for energy efficiency, the Veterans Administration also backs EEMs for qualified military personnel, reservists and veterans.
Eligible properties are one- to four-unit current and new construction.
The cost of the energy-efficient improvements that may be eligible for financing into the mortgage is the greater of 5 percent of the property's value (not to exceed $8,000), or $4,000.
To be eligible for inclusion in this mortgage, the energy-efficient improvements must be cost effective, meaning that the total cost of the improvements is less than the total present value of the energy saved over the useful life of the energy improvement.
The cost of the energy improvements and estimate of the energy savings must be determined by a home energy rating report conducted by a home energy rating system or energy consultant. The cost of the energy rating may be financed as part of the cost-effective energy package.
The energy improvements are installed after the loan closes.
The maximum mortgage amount for a single-family unit depends on its location and it is adjusted annually.
The mortgages are becoming more known and more popular as homeowners continue to look for meaningful ways to address rising fuel and energy costs. Take some time to evaluate your budget and whether the long-term cost savings associated with energy efficiency is something that's right for you and your family.
Use our FHA Guide to find answers to all questions related to FHA loan. | <urn:uuid:db785782-3b90-4c0b-b3c0-b6959f7df9e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mortgageloanplace.com/lending-guide/fha-loans/energy-efficient-mortgages-explained | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948261 | 745 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Echoing the practice of county residents decades ago, McHenry County Historical Society volunteers manned an early 20th Century cider press at the society`s 14th annual apple cider festival last weekend in Union.
Visitors watched as the red and yellow apple varieties disappeared through iron rollers to become pulp. Juice from the pulp, which was caught and pressed in a slatted wooden basket, ran freely to the tilted shelf that held the basket and poured into the pots set out to collect it. The cider was then strained and given away as free samples or funneled into jugs and sold for $3 per gallon.
The press stood next to an 1847 log cabin, originally situated between Crystal Lake and Huntley, according to Nancy Fike, the society`s museum administrator. Also on display were a number of antique tractors, including a red Farmall from the early 1940s and one from 1928. The museum and the 1895 West Harmony one-room school were also open to visitors, though the draw this weekend was apples.
Apples for the event were donated by orchards and individuals, according to Fike. ``We do (the pressing) because it is a good example of pioneer activity that was always done in this area,`` she said.
The society had about 18 bushels to press, said Al Kramka of Woodstock, who was organizing the activity and planned to compost the pulp after the cider was extracted.
Cider sales were as brisk as the chilly weather, as Janet Kingsley of Alden took names of buyers.
Kevin Kugelman, 5, of Crystal Lake ran newly filled jugs from the press outdoors to Kingsley`s table inside the museum.
Why was he doing this job?
``Mark just let me,`` he said.
Kevin`s brother, Mark, 8 1/2, was pouring cider into the jugs, as he explained, ``for fun.`` | <urn:uuid:e1f9b379-a41b-4686-a2b7-e3d1ec26f3ec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-10-13/features/9104020378_1_cider-pulp-apple | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979132 | 398 | 1.945313 | 2 |
So, what is your story? Who has been cruel to you? Perhaps bitterly cruel. What injustice have you suffered? How have you been mistreated? Perhaps miserably so. Who has cheated you? Abused you? Mistreated you? Lied to you? Lied about you? Maybe it was last week. Maybe it was a lifetime ago.
As you remember your suffered injustice, how does it affect the way you view your future? Or, let me put it another way: What are you waiting for? Are you waiting to get even? A chance for payback? An opportunity to exact your revenge? If so, you have no future.
You may get even, you may achieve payback, you may gain your revenge, but you will stay forever chained to the injustice done to you. You are in danger of forming your identity around your injustice in such a way that it forever shapes your future. Even if you get even, you will still drag that ball and chain with you.
In looking for an opportunity to be cruel to the person who was cruel to you, you will become a cruel person. And in becoming a cruel person, your cruelty will, in all likelihood, not be limited to the person or persons who have treated you cruelly. In seeking the opportunity to repay cruelty with cruelty, cruelty will become your identity, your lifestyle and your character. Tragically, you will do the very thing you hate: You will inflict cruel injustice upon others.
Worse yet, you will become the very thing you hate. This is how evil perpetuates itself. This is how evil moves from host to host until the whole world lies in the power of the evil one (see 1 John 5:19). Evil is only defeated when someone absorbs the blow and forgives, thus ending the cycle of evil.
Absorbing the blow without retaliation by exercising the option to forgive is not weakness or acquiescence with injustice; it is taking up your cross and following Jesus. It is following Jesus to Calvary, and there ending evil through the triumph of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not weakness; it is the power of God—the power of God to overcome evil by depriving evil of a host for retaliation.
Again, it needs to be restated. You don’t have to forget the past. Forgiveness is not amnesia. You don’t have to say your weren’t wronged. Forgiveness is found in truth and not a lie. You can remember the wrong. It can be named and shamed as sin. You don’t have to abandon the hope of justice. Justice is a passion of the Lord. “For the Lord loves justice, and does not forsake His saints” (Ps. 37:28, NKJV).
Because you believe in God’s passion for justice, you can leave justice in the hands of God. The call to forgiveness is not to forget the past. The call to forgiveness is not a form of self-deception. The call to forgiveness is not an abandonment of justice. The call to forgiveness is the call to stop the cycle of revenge. The call to forgiveness is the call to abandon the devil’s game. The call to forgiveness is the call to no longer collaborate with death.
The attitude Christians are to adopt in heeding Jesus’ call to a life of radical forgiveness is not to follow death and all his friends—friends like revenge, retribution and retaliation. The friends of death are a vicious lot—inflicting paybacks, getting even, settling the score. The friends of death are the things that bring the most misery to our world—things like bitterness, hatred and war.
Through adopting the call of Jesus to radical forgiveness, we find a way out of the cycle of recycled revenge. We find a way out of a futile life that is nothing more than a battle from beginning to end.
This is the Jesus way. And we need to see that the Jesus way is far more than “how to go heaven when you die.” When Jesus said He was the way, the truth, and the life (see John 14:6), He wasn’t just saying He was the way to salvation in a postmortem afterlife, rather He was claiming that His way of living is the true way that leads to life. The Jesus way is always the way of forgiveness.
Seventy times seven! This is the way that ends the endless battle, that breaks the cycle of recycled revenge, and that refuses to follow death and all his friends. This is the way that gives the future a hope. The future you look for, the future you long for, the future that would free you from the unending repetition of the painful past, lies in your capacity to move beyond the past through the liberating practice of faith-based forgiveness. It is forgiveness that creates the future you want to live in.
Adapted from Unconditional? The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness by Brian Zahnd, copyright 2010, published by Charisma House. In a world where the ugliness of rage and retaliation are driving the story line, this book offers the beauty, reconciliation and total restoration of forgiveness the way Jesus taught us to live it. Following His example will transform your life. To order a copy click on this link.
PRAYER POWER WEEK OF 2/28/2011
This week allow God to work His grace in you by praying for and blessing those who have hurt and abused you. Pray for those victimized by the earthquake in New Zealand as well as other catastrophes. Continue to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the protection of Christians in the Middle East and a harvest of souls. Ask Him to send laborers into those harvest fields and to use the turmoil in the Middle East to accomplish His purposes. Continue to pray for our nation and its leaders. John 14:6; Ps.37:28 | <urn:uuid:b1d09135-2d34-485d-9e93-b375c1fc19df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.charismamag.com/blogs/power-up/12879-what-is-your-story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953429 | 1,222 | 1.765625 | 2 |
On April 18, Standard & Poor's, a credit rating agency that rates national government debt, downgraded the U.S. credit rating outlook from stable to negative, which means that the United States, unless meaningful government reforms take place now, could lose its "AAA" rating status. Another major credit rating agency, Moody's, issued the same warning.
Between 1992 and 2000, the U.S. debt increased by less than $200 billion a year. Between 2001 and 2008, during the Bush administration, the debt increased by $500 billion a year. But between 2008 and 2010, during the Obama administration, the debt has increased by $1.5 trillion a year!
Our national debt currently stands at $14.66 trillion. And that does not include the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac obligations, our unfunded obligations and other guaranteed obligations.
In 2008, during the presidential election debates, then Sen. Obama, after voting for a $700 billion rescue package for troubled banks, was asked how he would adjust his budget to accommodate this increase in spending. He promised us he would cut spending during his first two years as president.
Right after his election, President Obama did exactly the opposite. He signed a trillion-dollar stimulus bill, as he and his economic advisors believed that government spending would stimulate the economy. Since then, he has increased the national debt by more than $1 trillion dollars each year.
What's the result? The economy is growing sluggishly at 1.8 percent a year. The unemployment rate exceeds 9 percent. People are without jobs, facing higher gasoline and food prices, with lower wages and a housing crisis.
Our economy is driven by the private sector. Our job growth and economic stimulus must come from the private sector, not from government spending.
In the private sector, when a company is in financial trouble we do five things to fix it: (1) fire the management; (2) sell the assets that are not critical; (3) cut the expenses; (4) increase the income; and (5) renegotiate the debt.
And the outrage is that if we do not increase the debt ceiling now, the United States will default on interest payments to its creditors. But the interest payments account for only 6 percent of the total budget.
Instead, Obama, as he had promised, should cut discretionary spending immediately, which is about 39 percent of the total budget.
Consider this. After the Wall Street Reform Act was passed last year, 12 regulators (as if one or two were not enough) are scrambling to come up with new regulations, and of course they don't agree on what those should be. Do we really need all these regulators?
Downsize the government now. Privatize non-critical government assets. Implement spending cuts. Without these measures we will lose our "AAA" credit status, damaging the value of the U.S. dollar, and the private sector will continue to struggle, hurting economic and job growth.
Dr. Chandra Mishra is a professor of entrepreneurship at Florida Atlantic University. Email him at email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:b291c31a-e791-441b-89e6-378a19932802> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-06-09/news/fl-cmcol-obama-deficit-plan-mishra-0620110609_1_credit-rating-government-spending-national-debt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972076 | 639 | 2.421875 | 2 |
David McNew/Getty Images
Voters go to the polls for Super Tuesday primaries in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights on February 5, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. An opinion survey indicates that Latino voters prefer the Democratic presidential ticket over the Republican candidates by a 3-to-1 margin this year, but it also indicates that many of poll respondents may sit out this November's election.
Latino voters say they like President Obama better than Mitt Romney by a three-to-one margin. That number has remained stable throughout the election cycle. It demonstrates a larger preference than four years ago when Latino voters picked Barack Obama over John McCain by more than two to one.
But a new survey raises the question: will Latinos turn out to vote?
One in four registered Latino voters in California told the Pew Hispanic Center they may sit out this election, despite efforts by Democrats and Republicans to snag more Latino support. Both parties are investing in Spanish-language media and sending Latino surrogates onto the campaign trail.
Mark Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said Latinos "are not quite paying as much attention to the election or are not as certain they're going to vote as the general public."
Among all registered voters, nine of 10 say they’re “absolutely certain” they’ll vote this November.
But saying that doesn’t make it so. In the presidential election four years ago, somebody stayed home: about eight of 10 California voters cast ballots.
Lopez says surveys rely on self-reporting. "It could be that folks are not necessarily telling us the truth," he said. "They’re telling us what is socially desirable."
California has the largest Latino voting population in the country. One in four Latino voters in the United States lives in California.
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
The number of eligible Latino voters has grown dramatically since 2008, but registration and turnout remain challenges.
There are a record number of Latinos eligible to vote in this year's election, according to a new report. But how many will actually make it to the polls remains the bigger question.
There are now close to 24 million Latinos in the United States who are eligible to vote, according to the report from the Pew Hispanic Center, upwards of four million more than there were in 2008. Pew researchers came up with the number after crunching census data.
But Latino turnout has traditionally been unimpressive, and there's a chance these potential voters could continue to fall behind in voter participation. Even in 2008, some 50 percent of eligible Latino voters cast ballots, compared with two-thirds of black voters and white voters.
In addition, eligibility to vote doesn't equal registration. In spite of a growing Latino U.S. population — with the bulk of the growth now coming from native-born Latinos, not immigrants — the number of Latinos who said they are registered to vote went down between 2008 and 2010, according to Pew. | <urn:uuid:c526a73b-1044-4c8c-9283-56caad46a09f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scpr.org/blogs/politics/tagged/pew-hispanic-center_1 | 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 | 0.956297 | 609 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Amid disheartening news from across the Arab world, one of the few pleasant surprises has been the reinvigorated Arab League. Since the outbreak of revolution last year, the league has conferred legitimacy on the NATO-led campaign to oust Muammar al-Qaddafi, helped coax Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh out of power, and assisted Europe and the United States in applying pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign. At a time when Egypt, mired in domestic strife, no longer plays a leadership role in the neighborhood, the Arab League has demonstrated that a pan-Arab coalition can serve a useful function.
But the region's defining challenge for years to come -- how to build the foundation for democracy over the fault lines of tribe, sect, ethnicity, and ideology -- requires a different form of transnational leadership. The Arab League remains largely an assembly of autocrats who exploit the divisions within their societies to cling to power. Even the fledgling democracies among its member states have begun to use the same old cynical tactics with their populations. Egypt's post-Mubarak junta is prosecuting foreign and local NGO workers on bogus conspiracy charges, and Arab heads of state have been silent. Despite having assisted the international community in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, the League has not discussed the future of these states' political development. Nor will it: Arab leaders won't press for democratic reforms in other countries that they are unwilling to take on themselves.
While the league should continue to serve as a policy platform for Arab heads of state, the region also needs a transnational body that speaks for the aspirations of civil society activists and reformists -- and the tens of millions of people who stand to benefit from efforts to fight corruption, stem extremism, provide electoral transparency, and build institutions to serve women and the working class. Call it a "League of Arab Societies." This organization should draw inspiration from the region's most successful transnational institution in recent memory: The Muslim World League (MWL), an umbrella organization headquartered in Saudi Arabia that drew together the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi clerics, and jihadists to fight secular dictatorships.
Founded in 1962 and still active today, the MWL advanced the pan-Islamist ideal of a region organized by a framework of Islamic law. The venture represents an impressive marriage of pragmatism and idealism. The MWL's constituent groups used friendly Saudi terrain to plan and coordinate their activism, endowing mosques with funding and ideological literature and pumping resources into a network of charitable organizations. They fostered an agile political strategy: Where Arab leaders sought an ally in the struggle against communists and socialists, the MWL was there to help. When the United States sought an ally in its struggle against the Soviets, the MWL brought together the infamous team of Islamist groups that fought and flourished in Afghanistan.
It may seem strange to recommend that a liberally oriented "League of Arab Societies" model itself after an organization that nurtured Islamist groups -- including jihadists who violently turned on their backers and the West. But Islamist parties committed to nonviolent activism are now poised to shape the future of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and perhaps Syria and Yemen. These parties, which often share an agenda consonant with the MWL's founding principles, also owe a debt of gratitude to that group. This may not be good news from a liberal point of view -- but it is a validation of the Islamists' transnational model. | <urn:uuid:8d0b7ba1-4ced-4762-917f-7f50324443e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/23/the_league_of_arab_societies?hidecomments=yes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946363 | 695 | 2.109375 | 2 |
French Riviera Articles & Reviews
French Riviera's Architectural Movement
In the twenties and thirties, the French Riviera was a hotbed of Modernist architectural innovation. MICHAEL Z. WISE visits the seaside retreats built by and for some of the movement's founding figures.
By Michael Z. Wise
The French Riviera is not a place generally known for its low-key style. Driving between Nice and Menton last October, I passed or was passed by Bentley convertibles, scarlet Ferraris, and outsized yachts. I rode by opulent estates secluded behind high walls and showy condominium towers looming above the beautiful landscape.
So I was somewhat surprised when I arrived at the town of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin to visit a seaside retreat designed by Le Corbusier: the architect had drawn up a one-room bungalow for himself and his wife and encased the small structure in pine planks that give it the look of a log cabin. Its modesty belies the many grandiose schemes Le Corbusier created elsewhere, including the colossal Unité d'Habitation apartment block in Marseilles and a complex of government buildings in Chandigarh, capital of Punjab, in India.
It took me about an hour and a half to get there from Nice, taking the Grande Corniche with its winding turns that overlook the Mediterranean and the principality of Monaco. On an earlier trip to the Côte d'Azur, I had visited some of the area's art museums, like the Fondation Maeght in St.-Paul-de-Vence and the Musée Matisse and the Musée Marc Chagall in Nice. This time, I wanted to see the less-heralded sites that made the Riviera a focus of Modernist architectural experimentation. One of these, the Villa Noailles in Hyères, is newly restored and open to the public. Another—created by architect and furniture designer Eileen Gray—is due to be refurbished shortly and turned into a museum and study center, right next to Le Corbusier's already restored vacation home.
Gray and le Corbusierhad a tortured relationship. She moved to the Riviera ï¬rst, in 1926, well before her tubular chrome tables, lacquered screens, and innovative chairs were collected for display in leading museums as classics of 20th-century furniture design. Gray scouted out a piece of seafront property to build on and found a rugged, stunning spot just below the railway tracks running along the Bay of Monaco.
She created a radical two-story villa, known by the cryptic name of E.1027, that I found standing forlornly beside the bay, where it was completed in 1929 by Gray and her then lover, the Romanian architect and editor Jean Badovici. Gray saw E.1027 as a research project for modern living and a prototype for building other houses in the same spirit. E.1027 has a nautical feel: Gray hung a life preserver from the main balcony, which has a balustrade lined by stretched canvas, as on the deck of a ship.
Shipwreck better describes what I saw. Rusting steel structural supports jut out from crumbling concrete beams, and large clumps of masonry fall to the ground with increasing frequency. Disagreement over funding, among other things, has delayed the start of the restoration project. In the summer of 2004, the villa's perilous state forced the town of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin to discontinue public tours of the site. Work on the building, to be overseen by the French Ministry of Culture, is set to begin by early next year, with the villa reopening when work is completed, two years later. Le Corbusier's nearby bungalow remains accessible, and from there or the nearby public beach visitors can view E.1027 from the outside.
I was shown around by Renaud Barrès, an architect who was then working for the city of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, supervising the two properties. Barrès explained how Gray's innovative furniture designs were an integral part of the structure. There are still many built-in pieces, ingeniously crafted cabinets and closets, and even a specially designed place to stack vinyl records in an orderly fashion similar to a CD rack. Gray, who died in 1976, made a breakfast table for the house and covered it with cork to mute the sound of dishes and cutlery so that early risers would not wake other occupants. Tables and chairs that she created for E.1027 are coveted icons of modern design, still in production today.
Gray had read Le Corbusier's writings and was greatly inï¬uenced by them and by his architecture. He in turn admired E.1027. The two met through Badovici. By the late thirties, when Gray and Badovici had grown apart, Le Corbusier stayed at the house, writing afterward to Gray, "I would be delighted to relate how much those few days spent in your house have made me appreciate the rare spirit that dictates all of its organization, both inside and outside, and has given the modern furniture and equipment a form that is so digniï¬ed, so charming, and full of wit."
Between 1937 and 1939, at Badovici's invitation, Le Corbusier painted seven vivid murals in various rooms of the house. Although she no longer lived there, having built another home several miles away near Menton, Gray was enraged, since she regarded the murals as violating the spirit of her design. The precise nature of Le Corbusier's relationship with Gray remains ambiguous,and it is uncertain whether he created the murals out of esteem or envy for her accomplishment.
Whatever happened, Le Corbusier fell in love with the place and built his own retreat a stone's throw away on a terrace just above E.1027, with an equally spectacular view of the Mediterranean and surrounded by the same bougainvillea, cypress, and palm trees. The architect, who was born in Switzerland as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret but called himself Le Corbusier, built the rustic cabanon (cottage) in 1952 and occupied it until his death 13 years later.
Le Corbusier used the bungalow three times a year—every summer, as well as at Easter and Christmas. He got the idea of building the tiny living quarters (less than 175 square feet in size) after traveling in a small cabin aboard an ocean liner. "A little cell on a human scale where all activity was provided for," was how he described it. "My cabin in Cap-Martin is even smaller than my luxury [ship] cabin," he once said. He noted that visitors were shocked at seeing the toilet right in the room, but added, "It is after all one of the most beautiful industrially manufactured objects."
The architect put his mark on the simple space by painting the ï¬oor a bright yellow, with rectangular panels of white, red, and green on the ceiling. He painted colorful murals on the plywood walls, and, perhaps inspired by what Gray had done at E.1027, designed built-in furniture, including a butcher-block table of walnut, storage compartments, and a bed. Mirrors span the inside of the folding shutters to bring in light from outside and reï¬ect the spectacular Mediterranean vistas. Le Corbusier's bungalow stands almost as a rebuke to the glittering new construction that nowadays lines much of the adjacent coast. "It sends the message that when you build on a magniï¬cent site you need only a little cabin, not a grand dwelling with air-conditioning," Barrès told me.
I saw very much the opposite in nearby Cap-Ferrat: the exterior of a more contemporary beacon of Modernism, the newly built seaside retreat of British architect Norman Foster. In presenting his design to local landmark authorities for construction approval about ï¬ve years ago, Foster said it was inspired by Gray's villa. I could see that both houses share nautical motifs. But the scale and form of his towering multilevel plate-glass façade is far more imposing. The architect of megaprojects like the new Reichstag dome in Berlin and the Swiss Re ofï¬ce tower in London opted for nothing like Le Corbusier's bungalow
Passing through Nice, I drove west for some three hours, until I reached the town of Hyères, where the Viscount and Viscountess de Noailles, celebrated patrons of modern art, built what started out as a small house but soon grew into a 42-room avant-garde château. The place rapidly became an important meeting place where gala balls were held for Surrealists and others. The Villa Noailles has been undergoing extensive renovations over the past decade, and its garden and much of its interior are now accessible to visitors.
The de Noailles were a trendsetting aristocratic couple of grand lineage—the viscountess was descended from the Marquis de Sade. Marcel Proust partly based his character the Duchess of Guermantes in Remembrance of Things Past on her grandmother. Salvador Dalí, Balthus, Man Ray, and Cecil Beaton all made portraits of her.
The couple's villa in Hyères, some 50 miles east of Marseilles, served as their winter refuge in the years before the Riviera became a popular summertime destination. The 15 bedrooms in the rambling house—each with its own private bath—saw scores of illustrious guests, including Luis Buñuel, Jean Cocteau, André Gide, Igor Stravinsky, Alberto Giacometti, and Francis Poulenc.
The de Noailles had originally asked Le Corbusier to design the house, but he proved to be too difï¬cult to work with, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe declined to take the job. "I will go to this house to have the sun," Charles de Noailles wrote in 1923 to the French Modernist architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, who ultimately won the commission with a design underscoring de Noailles's wish for a villa that would be "interesting to inhabit." Until then, Mallet-Stevens had worked primarily on ï¬lm sets, and the completed villa became the setting for Man Ray's 1929 Surrealist ï¬lmLes Mystères du Château du Dé.
The crisp, boxy contours of the villa's concrete façade are now being repainted their original battleship gray. Nothing could contrast more severely with the quaint ocher tileÂroofed houses of Hyères's nearby Old Town. Built on a steeply inclined hill atop the ruins of a medieval abbey, the villa resembles a beached ocean liner with its prow-like triangular terraced garden. This landscape was described as a Cubist composition by its creator, Gabriel Guevrekian, and is laid out like a multilevel chessboard.
Although the couple separated after World War II, Marie-Laure de Noailles continued to inhabit the house. After her death, in 1970, the structure was occupied by squatters until it was bought by the city of Hyères and declared a French national monument. The refurbished villa now has a busy schedule of art and design exhibitions, and is a key stop on the international fashion circuit, during the annual spring Festival International des Arts de la Mode, which draws designers like John Galliano, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Helmut Lang, and Viktor & Rolf. The link between the villa and the fashion world accords with the viscountess's own interests: a style icon during her lifetime, she was a client of Elsa Schiaparelli and befriended other couturiers, among them Coco Chanel and Christian Dior.
After visiting these three great Modernist houses, I drove to Marseilles to spend the night in another acclaimed architectural landmark, Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation apartment block, which has a budget hotel on its third and fourth ï¬oors. The overnight accommodations, planned by Le Corbusier as part of his nine-story "vertical village," are certainly adequate, but have the feel of a dreary college dorm or a pre-1989 Slovak hostelry.
As I left the next day, I realized that the innovative housing project was completed the same year that Le Corbusier built his bungalow—1952. Starting my journey at that unassuming hideaway and ending it at his mammoth apartment complex, I had traveled not only the length of the Côte d'Azur, but also a good way along the spectrum of 20th-century architectural achievement.
MICHAEL Z. WISE is a T+L contributing editor. | <urn:uuid:29787d24-5834-411f-ac25-9fcf5a4f0bb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.luxurylink.com/fivestar/french-riviera/articles/158-french-rivieras-architectural-movement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966644 | 2,733 | 2.5 | 2 |
MaryAnn Sackman still remembers the moment she first entered Hazeldean Manor, an eight-bedroom house in Sands Point, Long Island, that she has made a home for her family since 1995.
A Historical Sands Point Manor
"They knew they had a live one when we walked in the door," she says of the sellers. Despite the house needing some attention, she says, she was taken by its "grandeur look" and together with her husband, Warren Sackman, put in an offer that day. They purchased the home for $800,000. It is now on the market for $4,499,999, listed with Polly (Hui Wen) Chang of Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
The home is believed to have been built in 1905 as the summer home of James Lees Laidlaw, a stockbroker, and Harriet Wright Burton Laidlaw, a prominent suffragist and philanthropist whose speeches and writings are part of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.
The documents that officially incorporated the village of Sands Point were signed in the home, according to Colleen O'Neill, a staff member at the Village Hall.
The home covering about 9,000 square feet sits on three acres of land, and a portion of the property is dense with trees. The home is a five-minute walk from the beach. Ms. Sackman, 59 years old, works in risk management. She has two stepchildren and two children with Mr. Sackman, 50, an insurance program manager.
The family spent a year cleaning up the home, landscaping the grounds and renovating. They updated the plumbing and electrical wiring and installed a new red-slate roof. They also repaired much of the home's woodwork, such as the pocket doors.
In the process, they retained some original details, including the herringbone floor and chimney with coal stove in the kitchen—Ms. Sackman's favorite part of the house. Later, they added a three-car garage, a family room off the kitchen and a pool. Last year they restored the facade of the house. The home's eight bedrooms each have a bathroom, and there are also two half-baths.
The wall to the original butler's pantry was taken down to open up the kitchen space, which has four dishwashers, two wall ovens and a Viking stove.
"The way it's laid out, it's a great place for us as a family to spend quality time," Ms. Sackman says.
They chose "traditional" décor for the home, she says, adding, "We're a very traditional family." Christmas morning in the home was a special time for Wesley Sackman, 24. He recalls the family coming to the living room area, making a fire and turning on Christmas music.
"We'd sit there, open presents and make a whole morning of it. That's probably my favorite memory on any given year," he says.
In time, the Sackmans plan to move to a family ranch in Colorado, but they hope to keep a smaller home in Port Washington. Hazeldean Manor was listed in 2007 with Douglas Elliman for $6.9 million before being taken off the market in 2010.
Ms. Sackman recalls that even before she learned of the home's history and architectural details, she was taken by the space.
"All we saw was this big old stucco home," she says. "It just looked like it had a lot of charm."
A version of this article appeared February 20, 2013, on page A20 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Buying a Home on First Sight. | <urn:uuid:19011b53-1c32-47a9-b068-c96264aa81be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324162304578306284025791500.html?mod=WSJ_NY_MIDDLETopStories | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976958 | 768 | 1.625 | 2 |
Owning and operating equipment might be one of the most enjoyable parts of farming. However, it’s an area where many producers have room to improve in terms of efficiency.
We are efficient at quickly planting and harvesting large acreages, but because we are fast does not mean we are efficient. Timeliness is only one measure of efficiency; cost and quality must also be considered.
Factories view equipment as a necessary cost to manufacture high-quality products. They focus on cost control, which can most quickly be impacted by use. If a machine costs $100,000 and operates 50% of the time, their cost has the potential to improve by 50%.
The goal is to produce as much as possible with a given machine, thereby lowering the cost of production. Pride of ownership, convenience, style and tax write-offs are not part of the ownership equation for most manufacturing companies. Farmers sometimes rationalize a piece of equipment that may not improve efficiency. What percentage of the time do your machines operate (in-season)? Can you keep equipment moving? How much more could your equipment do operating 22 to 24 hours a day? These are questions to consider. You might significantly lower per-acre equipment cost by reviewing performance and asking some basic questions.
Quality is also key for optimizing efficiency. New equipment isn’t necessarily the solution for quality; however, quality equipment is the solution to maximize efficiency. Minimizing downtime in-season for a piece of equipment pays huge dividends. In the off-season, allocate time for repairs, adjustments and calibrations. A zero tolerance for downtime will help you prioritize repairs and replacements.
Efficiency has also been improved by innovations such as Real-Time Kinematic (RTK or auto-steer) technology, new lighting systems, cab comfort, performance monitors and other tools that measure performance.
Most farmers have embraced these technological improvements. Many have spent between $20 and $50 an acre for machinery information systems. Are we using these invested dollars to their full capacity? If we have better lights, are we running through the night? Does every operator fully understand his technology systems in order to get the best information, maps and accuracy? If we have gaps in this area, we’re leaving money on the table.
Labor management is the final key to equipment efficiency. For example, if you’re operating a 24-row planter less than 24 hours a day and take on more acres, you have two choices: trade to a larger planter or run the current machine more hours. Provided you have quality people, planning and equipment, you’ll be able to reduce equipment costs by spreading the same machine across more acres.
Below is an online tool to help you calculate equipment and labor costs for your operation.
Chris Barron is director of operations and president of Carson and Barron Farms Inc. in Rowley, Iowa. He is also a farm business consultant and the author of the AgWeb.com blog "Ask a Margins Expert." To submit questions and comments, e-mail Chris at email@example.com.
- February 2013 | <urn:uuid:28d69481-849b-4bf0-865e-ed3d9ad58017> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/farmjournal/article/measure_equipment_efficiency/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962149 | 639 | 1.90625 | 2 |
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
April 7, 2008
Source: Noticias On Line
Argentina: UFO Flies Over El Chocon
A young man who was making a domestic video recording with his cellphone captured the presence of a strange flying objects in the skies of Neuquen.
Jorge Villarreal became aware of the unusual find once he returned to his home in Neuquen after having spent a few days with his girlfriend. Upon reviewing the videos created with his cellphone, he realized that he had captured the flight of a UFO over the El Chocon area.
The images show Jorge’s girlfriend and then the lakeside landscape at a place known as “El Faro”, near a campsite. A small moving point can be seen almost imperceptibly from a given angle. When the image is paused and advanced frame by frame, a sort of saucer-shaped object with a dark base and a light colored rear section can be clearly seen.
Villarreal reported to the studios of Radio y Televisión del Neuquén (RTN) to make the news known. Technicians at the TV station’s editing room analyzed each of the frames of the film and attested that the mysterious object indeed appeared in the images. They believed that photographic trickery with a cellphone such as Jorge’s was virtually impossible.
“As the skies were clear, it’s possible to see the black disk very clearly,” said the youth during an interview with RTN.
Jorge stated that this was the first time he had experienced such a situation.
”The fact is that I couldn’t believe it. We went over the video many times with friends and co-woerkers,” he said, still stunned by the discovery.
Villarreal says that the most noteworthy detail is that while he was making the recording in which the UFO appears, both he and his girlfriend began feeling intense headaches and an unexplained tiredness. “We had slept well and didn’t have any reason to feel so tired,” he added. They ascribed it at the time to the long hike they’d taken around the lake, but when they discovered the flying object in the recording, they thought that their condition could perhaps be related to the presence of the UFO.
Jorge will surely never forget his experience. The proof that he was very near a flying saucer, a UFO or whatever it was, is still inside his cellphone. Wherever he goes, he has no objection to showing the video and explaining what it all meant to him on that unusual Sunday as he observed the majestic landscape under the skies of Neuquen.
(WITH INFORMATION FROM DIARIAMENTENEUQUEN.COM.AR)
(Translation (c) 2008, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)
UFOINFO would like to thank Scott Corrales Inexplicata Blog for granting permission to use this article.
UFOINFO Note: Please visit the Inexplicata Blog for a large selection of articles that are not posted on the UFOINFO site. Scott does an excellent job keeping us up to date with translated articles. | <urn:uuid:e78f5a70-8d4c-42b5-9541-a7dfe4b383a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ufoinfo.com/sightings/argentina/080000b.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968679 | 684 | 1.796875 | 2 |
On 9 May 2007, the Bush White House issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 / Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20. The joint directive "establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies."
In a related move, on 8 October 2001, President Bush released an Executive Order Establishing Office of Homeland Security that amended Executive Order 12656 (November 1988).
This current Bush executive order supersedes the Clinton-era COOP executive order, Presidential Decision Directive 67 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), which was issued on 21 October 1998.
It also demonstrates a marked departure from prior nuclear concerns, according to the Washington Post:
The order makes explicit that the focus of federal worst-case planning involves a covert nuclear attack against the nation's capital, in contrast with Cold War assumptions that a long-range strike would be preceded by a notice of minutes or hours as missiles were fueled and launched.
The only public document relating to that executive order is a Federal Preparedness Circular (FPC-65) that provides guidance to Federal Executive Branch departments and agencies as they develop contingency plans for the continuity of operations (COOP). It is similar to the 2004 FEMA directive.
Clinton's declaration replaced the first Bush Administration's NSD 69 "Enduring Constitutional Government" of 02 June 1992, which in turn replaced NSD 37 "Enduring Constitutional Government" of 18 April 1990 and NSDD 55 "Enduring National Leadership" of 14 September 1982, according to the FAS.
In addition, 18 Executive Order 12656 (Section 202, 18 November 1988) required that "[t]he head of each Federal department and agency shall ensure the continuity of essential functions in any national security emergency by providing for: succession to office and emergency delegation of authority in accordance with applicable law; safekeeping of essential resources, facilities, and records; and establishment of emergency operating capabilities." It revoked Executive Order 10421 of 31 December 1952.
Reagan charged the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with coordinating and implementing these plans.
In addition, Reagan established the National Communications System (NCS), via Executive ORder 12472 (1984), "in order to provide for the consolidation of assignment and responsibility for improved execution of national security and emergency preparedness telecommunications functions."
President Carter established FEMA via Executive Order 12148 on 20 July 1979. [On 1 March 2003, FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security's Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate.]
The National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Truman, merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy, created the Department of the Air Force, established the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Also in 1947, the Presidential Succession Act established a line of succession if the Vice President dies or cannot serve. (The law picks up where the Constitution leaves off.)
First, the speaker of the House of Representatives would become President. Next: the president pro tempore of the Senate followed by members of the Cabinet, in the order in which their posts were created. | <urn:uuid:eb199fbb-2731-489d-8dbe-c4c0209cc44b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/a/coop_cogp_2.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939116 | 647 | 2.59375 | 3 |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government paid scientists to figure out how the deadly bird flu virus might mutate to become a bigger threat to people -- and two labs succeeded in creating new strains that are easier to spread.
Federal officials recently took the unprecedented step of asking those scientists not to publicize all the details of how they did it.
The worry: That this research with lots of potential to help the public might also be hijacked by would-be bioterrorists. The labs found that it appears easier than scientists had thought for the so-called H5N1 bird flu to evolve in a way that lets it spread easily between at least some mammals.
"It wasn't an easy decision," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health, which funded the original research.
The scary-sounding viruses are locked in high-security labs as researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin-Madison prepare to publish their findings in leading scientific journals. That's the way scientists share their work so that their colleagues can build on it, perhaps creating better ways to monitor bird flu in the wild, for example.
But biosecurity advisers to the government recommended that the journals Science and Nature publish only the general discoveries, not the full blueprint for these man-made strains. Tuesday, the government announced that it agreed and made the request.
In statements, the two research teams say they're making some changes, if reluctantly. The journals are mulling what to do, and the government didn't say precisely what should be left out.
But Science editor-in-chief Dr. Bruce Alberts said his journal pushed the U.S. government to set up a system where certain international researchers will be able to get the full genetic recipe for these lab-bred strains -- especially those in bird flu-prone countries like China and Indonesia.
"This is a sort of watershed moment," said Alberts, noting it's believed to be the first time this kind of secrecy has been sought from legitimate public health research.
He doesn't want to publish an abbreviated version of the findings unless he can direct scientists how to get the full, if confidential, details.
"It's very important to get this information out to all the people around the world who are living with this virus and are working on it," Alberts said.
NIH's Fauci said the system should be working very soon, so that international public health officials, scientists and drug companies with "a legitimate need to know can have access to that information."
Nature's editor-in-chief, Dr. Philip Campbell, also called the recommendations unprecedented.
"It is essential for public health that the full details of any scientific analysis of flu viruses be available to researchers, he said in a statement. The journal is discussing how "appropriate access to the scientific methods and data could be enabled."
H5N1 has caused outbreaks in wild birds and poultry in a number of countries around the world. But it only occasionally infects people who have close contact with infected poultry, particularly in parts of Southeast Asia. It's known to have sickened nearly 600 people over the past decade. But it's highly deadly, killing about 60 percent of the time.
The concern is that one day, bird flu might begin spreading easily between people and cause a pandemic. The NIH wanted to know what genetic changes it should monitor for, as a warning.
In surprise findings, the two teams of researchers separately re-engineered bird flu to create strains that can spread easily between ferrets. That animal mimics how humans respond to influenza.
That doesn't necessarily mean the new lab-bred flu strains could infect people, Fauci cautioned.
Still, the viruses are being kept under special conditions along with other so-called "select agents" for security and to guard against a lab accident, as researchers try to learn more about just how risky the H5N1 that circulates in the wild really could become.
"There is clearly a public health threat that has been lingering and smoldering with regard to H5N1 for several years," said Fauci, who adds that a naturally occurring flu pandemic is much more likely than any man-made one.
"Nature is the worst bioterrorist. We know that through history," he said.
More information on the two research projects isn't being released until the journals decide what to publish.
But in a statement last month, Dutch lead researcher Dr. Ron Fouchier said his discovery showed what mutations to watch for so "we can then stop the outbreak before it is too late."
Tuesday, Erasmus Medical Center said researchers were complying with the U.S. request to change their scientific report. But, "academic and press freedom will be at stake as a result of the recommendation. This has never happened before," the statement said.
The University of Wisconsin said virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka's team likewise would comply.
"While recognizing the potential for misuse of scientific discovery, the research described by UW-Madison researchers is essential for public health, global influenza surveillance activities and the development of vaccines and drugs to counter any potential pandemic," said a university statement.
An independent biosecurity expert called the announcement a good middle-ground but said scientists should think twice about re-engineering influenza given the potential global consequences of an accident. The two labs involved are highly regarded, but more and more labs around the world can try similar work, noted Dr. D.A. Henderson of the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
"Influenza is certainly a unique beast in its capability to spread," said Henderson, who played a key role in the eradication of a different killer, smallpox. "The question is how can we assure experiments like this really aren't done in ways that the organism is apt to escape." | <urn:uuid:e5425686-a0cc-4f05-99b6-0448678bdedc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crescent-news.com/local%20health/2011/12/31/details-of-lab-made-bird-flu-won-t-be-revealed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966859 | 1,233 | 2.578125 | 3 |
CEDAW – is leading a coalition effort to engage in outreach and education about the U.S. ratification of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). It is a landmark international agreement that affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world. CEDAW is a practical blueprint for each country to achieve progress for women and girls.
Council on Women and Girls, The White House – the purpose of the Council is "to ensure that each of the agencies in which they're charged takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support" and that the true purpose of our government is "to ensure that in America, all things are still possible for all people," President Barack Obama, Washington, DC.
Every Woman Counts Coalition – a campaign to engage women in the political process as voters and future candidates. As a centerpiece of the initiative, Lifetime Television has formed the first-ever Every Woman Counts Coalition of women's media and advocacy groups, in partnership with Hearst Magazines, Redbook, Seventeen, Marie Claire and leading national nonprofit organizations representing more than 10 million women.
Feminist Majority Foundation – is a cutting edge organization dedicated to women's equality, reproductive health, and non-violence. In all spheres, FMF utilizes research and action to empower women economically, socially, and politically. Our organization believes that feminists – both women and men, girls and boys – are the majority, but this majority must be empowered, Arlington, VA.
Gender, Women and Health – is charged with helping the World Health Organization’s various programs and departments undertake the challenge of integrating gender considerations into their work. It is also responsible for researching and disseminating information on neglected topics directly pertaining to women's health, such as gender-based violence against women, Geneva, CH.
Foundation for Women – has been creating opportunities for women and girls for 30 years. We know that when we invest in women and girls, helping them develop their voices and skills, everyone benefits – men, boys, families, and communities. As the country’s first national, multi-issue women’s fund, the Ms. Foundation directs resources of all kinds to cutting-edge projects that nurture girls’ leadership skills, protect the health and safety of women, and provide low-income women with the tools to lift themselves and their families out of poverty, New York, NY. 2011 Annual Report.
National Organization for Women – is the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States, New York, NY.
National Partnership for Women & Families – we believe that actions speak louder than words, and for nearly four decades we have fought for every major policy advance that has helped women and families. Today, we promote fairness in the workplace, reproductive health and rights, access to quality affordable health care, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family. Founded in 1971 as the Women's Legal Defense Fund, the National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)3 organization, Washington, DC.
National Women's History Project – an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to recognize and celebrate the diverse and historic accomplishments of women by providing information and educational materials and programs, Santa Rosa, CA.
Status of Women in the States – is part of an ongoing research project conducted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research to establish baseline measures of the status of women in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The effort is part of a larger IWPR Economic Policy Education Program, funded by the Ford Foundation, intended to improve the ability of advocates and policymakers at the state level to address women’s economic issues. The data used in each report come from a variety of sources, primarily government agencies, although other organizations also provided data where relevant, Washington, DC.
Vital Voices – is a global partnership to support women's progress in building democracies, strong economies and peace. Our work focuses on three critical areas: expanding women's roles in politics and civil society; increasing women's successful entrepreneurship; and fighting trafficking in women and girls and other human rights abuses. Our mission is to identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities, Washington, DC.
Women Deliver – a global advocacy organization bringing together voices from around the world to call for action against maternal death, New York, NY.
Women's History Month (March) – the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society, Washington, DC.
Inc. – champions the interests of women throughout the country on the most significant social, economic, and health issues across the public policy spectrum. WPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose sole focus is to help ensure that the most informed decisions on key women's issues are made by policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. Audiences include elected officials, regulators, women's groups, labor groups, academia, the business community, the media, and the general public, Washington, DC.
Women’s Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union – focuses on assisting and empowering poor women, women of color, and immigrant women, who historically have been deeply victimized by gender bias and continue to face pervasive barriers to equality today. Through litigation, community outreach, advocacy, and public education, the Women’s Rights Project pushes for change and systemic reform of those institutions that perpetuate discrimination against women, New York, NY.
Womens Rights, TrustLaw – a global hub for free legal assistance and news and information on good governance and women's rights, London, UK.
WomenWatch – United
Nations – information and resources on gender equality and empowerment of women. | <urn:uuid:2be40b94-6f93-49ab-8a13-61808de77464> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncdsv.org/ncd_linkswomensissues.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943029 | 1,241 | 2.21875 | 2 |
Women may be happy about the strides they’ve made in corporate America, but they’re hardly satisfied.
“The corporate landscape is changing for the best, but the numbers remain stagnant,” says Charlotte Laurent-Ottomane, president of ION , a consortium of 14 regional organizations advancing women in business.
“It’s true women are increasingly becoming fixtures in corporate America, in higher-ranking positions,” says Sheryl Skaggs, a sociology professor at the University of Texas-Dallas.
“It’s fantastic, but to say it's enough is missing the boat,” adds Skaggs, who landed a National Science Foundation grant this year to study so-called “glass ceiling” issues that continue to stifle gender equality in the workplace.
The progress of working women through the ranks to the tops of companies is stalled, says Deborah Soon, a senior vice president at the Catalyst Foundation, a nonprofit group that researches gender-equality issues.
As evidence, Soon cited Catalyst research findings :Page 1 of 5 | Next Page | <urn:uuid:fa9e5434-1d05-4f23-8921-4370427f8004> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.cnbc.com/special_reports/15/content/44687999/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907238 | 228 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Disregarding the concerns of many in his party and many of the citizens who elected him, Idaho Governor Butch Otter (photo) is headed back to China to continue courting the world’s largest communist regime and second largest economy.
The Republican Governor’s junket scheduled for April 14-21 comes on the heels of a resolution passed by the Idaho Republican Party casting doubt on the true purpose behind Otter’s cozying up to the Chinese government.
Schmoozing with communists is nothing new for Governor Otter. In June 2010, he attended meetings in Beijing and Shanghai, extolling the economic virtues of his state and enticing the wealthy Chinese businessmen (agents of the government that owns the majority of those businesses) to invest in his state. He assured his comrades that Idaho stood ready to give them carte blanche to import men and money to the state.
The Governor made the Chinese government an offer it couldn’t refuse. A coalition of representatives of the Department of Commerce and influential Idaho businessmen allowed the Chinese to invest $500,000 in a gold mine and another $500,000 in a resort. The payoff? Green cards for the Chinese officials and their families.
Flush from the success of this transaction, 120 Chinese millionaires pooled their money and placed $60 million in an escrow account to be used to create jobs for their families (along with the highly valued immigration documents). As soon as the jobs and green cards are ready, the Chinese will release the money and head to Idaho.
Click here to read the entire article.
Photo of Butch Otter: AP Images | <urn:uuid:99fa18c9-a094-4997-ac6f-15169bf36542> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jbs.org/action-tools/idaho-governor-goes-back-to-china-selling-groceries-or-green-cards | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959155 | 334 | 1.570313 | 2 |
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Made of, covered with, or resembling froth; foamy.
- adj. Playfully frivolous in character or content: a frothy French farce.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Full of or accompanied with foam or froth; consisting of froth or light bubbles; spumous; foamy.
- Vain; light; unsubstantial; given to empty declamation; wordy: as, a frothy harangue; a frothy speaker.
- adj. Foamy or churned to the point of becoming infused with bubbles.
- adj. figuratively lightweight; lacking depth or substance
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Full of foam or froth, or consisting of froth or light bubbles; spumous; foamy.
- adj. Not firm or solid; soft; unstable.
- adj. Of the nature of froth; light; empty; unsubstantial.
- adj. marked by high spirits or excitement
- adj. emitting or filled with bubbles as from carbonation or fermentation
“I believe you are referring to Santorum, which is also defined as a frothy mix of some sort.”
“Reports in the state of this condition - called frothy bloat - range geographically, roughly from Grayson County to eastern Kentucky to Cincinnati, said Jeff Lehmkuhler, an extension beef cattle specialist for the University of Kentucky.”
“Also, if your surname is slang for a 'frothy' anal sex byproduct, best you steer clear of phrases like "Conservative stool.”
“She wrote two other novels as well as a "frothy" late memoir, Life Itself!”
“I'm not saying you are "frothy" but a lot of the froth on this issue presumes that Obama would pull a Cheney and jump to step 3 first.”
“I think the point of the story is that the price/rent ratio has been a bit high in some of the more "frothy" areas.”
“I do very much like writing in coffee shops, surrounded by people and with some kind of frothy coffee drink at my side.”
“Female critics -- the genre's most frequent, and thus its loudest -- are understandably afraid of having their entire sex tarred with the same "frothy" brush as their chick-lit writing counterparts.”
“This may not be the kind of frothy endorsement most presidential contenders covet.”
“His "frothy" comments about the housing pockets that could spell trouble really won't hold up because this is not 1805.”
These user-created lists contain the word ‘frothy’.
What a -Y does to an otherwise common, dull word
A list created for TRM, because there are certain words that we just kind of hate.
Words that make me feel cozy
My big word list.
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
All the words I've come across whose definitions I did not know then.
Looking for tweets for frothy. | <urn:uuid:7d32e52e-d2a2-447a-a068-53237f861e97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wordnik.com/words/frothy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907424 | 690 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Spring Break Is Here: Can I get my unemployement insurance check?
Did you know that school bus drivers and cafeteria workers file unemployment claims whenever schools take a vacation break?
Unemployment insurance is supposed to help those unfortunate workers who lose their jobs as the result of an economic contraction or their own company’s need to regroup. But those who work for the public schools, institutions that only seldom need to retrench and that hardly ever close their doors, have nonetheless found a way to convenient way to collect unemployment benefits.
As those who have followed the school battles in Wisconsin and Indiana know well, school employees enjoy generously funded health-care benefits and handsome defined benefit pension plans that are driving many state and local governments to the edge of bankruptcy. Now, add still another give-away to the public employees of the nation’s schools—unemployment benefits for those weeks when kids are given their spring break.
I learned all this simply because the number of people seeking unemployment benefits went up last week, which may signal that the U. S. economy is at risk of falling back into another recession.
But, says the Wall Street Journal’s “Marketwatch” (April 19), we can’t be sure these numbers tell us much about the direction of the economy. “The weekly claims data is often hard to decipher in April because of the Easter holiday and spring break,” it reports, “when many school workers such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers are eligible to receive temporary benefits.”
I leave it to you, dear readers, to tell me just how bus drivers and cafeteria workers pull off this scam. I had always thought the wages and salaries paid to public employees take into account school vacation times as well as the days they are on the job. I thought the unemployed had to prove they had been fired from their job to get those marvelous (to coin a phrase) unemployment benefits. How did bus drivers get access to those unemployment funds during holiday week? Does this also happen in late December? How about summer time? Who else gets them?
I’ve also heard the rumor that teachers are delighted when they get the spring pink slip in those years when the state legislature has yet to vote state aid for the schools the following fall. Everyone knows that the legislature will eventually pony up the dollars, but school districts hand out pink slips to teachers anyhow, telling them they are fired, at least for now, because no one knows when the state dollars will flow.
Although sob stories about frightened teachers appear in the local paper, the truth, I’ve been told, is that the slip gives them the right to collect unemployment benefits even if they use the money to take a European tour prior to returning to school in the fall.
That’s the rumor I once heard. Tell me it’s not so. Tell me the wages and salaries and benefits that school employees officially receive are all that they get.
- Paul E. Peterson
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In the meantime check the site regularly for new articles, blog postings, and reader comments | <urn:uuid:75b8e86f-4e5b-4456-b410-4709fd91a139> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://educationnext.org/spring-break-is-here-can-i-get-my-unemployement-insurance-check/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964976 | 648 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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After buying La Querencia, Gamarci set to learning all he could about his corner of Patagonia. He had heard the legends. Throughout its history, Patagonia has had the odd quality of pitching the mind toward the fanciful — an effect “something like the moon, but more powerful,” observed Bruce Chatwin, author of the 1977 travel classic In Patagonia. Early reports of Patagonia inspired Shakespeare (The Tempest), Swift (Gulliver’s Travels), and Coleridge (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner). Ferdinand Magellan wrote of a race of giants he encountered there in 1520. Early maps tell of blue unicorns that romped through a red landscape, and of gargantuan birds of prey that glided over the scrub — with elephants in their claws, by at least one account. Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, a.k.a. the Sundance Kid, were often sighted in central Patagonia, running a sheep farm. And of course there was the lost city of gold, by some accounts populated by shipwrecked Europeans, that set explorers’ hearts aflutter for nearly three centuries.
Improbably, Gamarci came to learn that many Patagonian myths have a firm foundation in reality. Magellan encountered the Tehuelche Indian tribe, whose males, at six feet and more, stood roughly ten inches taller than their Spanish counterparts. (Magellan managed to capture one “giant,” who died of scurvy in the Pacific.) The blue unicorn may have been the huemul, a rare (two-horned) deer spied in profile at a time of day when Patagonian light and shadow played persuasive magic tricks. The enormous birds were likely Andean condors, whose wings can span fourteen feet. The story of Butch and Sundance is unambiguously true: They fled to Patagonia when the Pinkerton National Detective Agency flushed them out of the American West, and they raised sheep before reverting to their field of expertise.
The lost city of gold? Explorers claimed to have found the place, called “the Enchanted City of the Caesars,” as early as 1528 and wrote about it with startling specificity: The vast city sat above a beautiful lake, in the protective foothills of a volcano; one reached it via drawbridge; the roofs were made of gold and silver, and the men wore tricorner hats, blue coats and yellow capes. In 1707 an explorer named Rojas noted (in a letter to the Spanish king) the city’s “many mines of gold and silver,” as well as its orange and palm trees, which do not grow in Patagonia. Only in the 1790s did churches and governments tire of costly expeditions in search of the lost city and consign it, reluctantly, to the realm of myth.
“Obviously, I believe the Enchanted City of the Caesars was a figment of somebody’s imagination,” Gamarci says with a glimmer of amusement in his eye. “On the other hand, about two or three years ago, a Chilean professor from the town of Punta Arenas, in Tierra del Fuego, came to the conclusion that the city should have been in one of two locations. And one of those locations is where my land is.”
Perhaps the most intriguing historical point of entry to Gamarci’s Patagonia is Charles Darwin. In 1831 the young naturalist got passage aboard Captain Robert FitzRoy’s H.M.S. Beagle, which was leaving England to chart the southern waters. In the spring of 1834 the Beagle dropped anchor at the mouth of the Santa Cruz River, which bisects southern Patagonia and flows into the Atlantic. A party of twenty-five hauled three whaleboats upriver, deep into the Patagonian interior, a brutal two-week journey through storm-lashed terrain. “Completely terra incognita,” Darwin wrote of this land. By May 4 the snow-covered Andes came into view, but rations were running low and still there was no sign of the Santa Cruz’s source. FitzRoy decided to head back downriver. Before he did so, however, Darwin gave names to two smallish, toothlike mountains visible in the distance: Castle Hill and Hobbler Hill. Today they are Gamarci’s.
Had FitzRoy’s party pressed on for one or two more days, Darwin would have discovered the stunning Lago Argentino. (He thought the area immediately ahead was a vast, empty flatland, and christened it “Disappointment Plains.”) From Lago Argentino, Darwin probably would have made a truly earth-shattering find. “The river would have forced him in a northerly direction,” Gamarci says, “and he would have come across huge bones of dinosaurs — and the theory of evolution could have come much earlier.”
Millions of years ago Patagonia was forested with massive trees; but the tectonic violence that gave birth to the Andes buried the entire cone of South America in layers of volcanic ash, locking the forests and their inhabitants, the dinosaurs, in a remarkable state of preservation. It was a friend of Gamarci’s, Coleman Burke, a commercial real estate magnate and serious amateur bone hunter, who found the largest femur known to man just north of Gamarci’s place. Gamarci helped, lending trucks, horses and gauchos, as well as his own gently spirited presence to the bone diggers’ cause; he and Burke have since become close friends. “Jorge is one of those extraordinary, quiet individuals who have been able to realize dreams and keep a low profile at the same time,” Burke says. “He’s always thinking.” (Gamarci and Burke were present at the Explorers Club’s centennial celebration, at the Waldorf Astoria in 2004, when paleontologist Ken Lacovara formally presented the find. Sir Edmund Hillary and Buzz Aldrin were among those who gave it the biggest ovation of the night.)
Burke came to Lago Argentino in 1995, to retrace Darwin and FitzRoy’s journey down the Santa Cruz River. (The wild winds and swift currents make this a dangerous ride. As far as Burke knows, he and his five companions were the first to make the complete journey from lake to ocean.) Near Argentino, Burke did some scouting around and noticed “dinosaur-bearing soils” underfoot. He said, “Come on, guys, we’ve got to go find some dinosaurs.”
The sport-minded companions replied, “Burkey, we’ll go down the river with you, but no way we’re gonna look for dinosaurs.” So Burke made a quick trek, climbed a promontory, and saw cragged badlands spread out before him. “For sure there are dinosaurs here,” he told himself, knowing he would return.
The region has since become a bone hunter’s paradise. In 2001 a Burke excavation uncovered a new dinosaur species (Orkoraptor burkei), the southernmost carnivore yet discovered. The land continued to yield secrets. In January 2004, Burke found the now-famous femur, belonging to a plant-eating dinosaur about eighty feet tall, most of it neck, the better to forage in treetops. The sixteen-year-old son of a bone worker spotted the nub of the femur poking out of the ground, and then the crew started to dig — and kept digging. “The whole camp came alive,” Burke recalls. “We brought out champagne and danced around it like a bunch of school girls.” He adds, “If I can find a dinosaur, anyone can find one. So if Darwin hadn’t run out of food, surely he would have found them. That would have been something! It wasn’t until fifteen years later that Sir Richard Owen first called these things dinosaurs.”
'Burke’s home base in Patagonia is La Querencia, which, he remains convinced, is itself a rich boneyard. “Jorge would see us go off on these trips, and he would see us come back with all these bones and bone sightings,” Burke says. “And sometimes he’d come along himself. I think he really got religion.”
This is true. Gamarci has formed the Evolution Foundation, with firm plans for a fossil museum on the eastern edge of his farm. The museum will be directed by world-renowned paleontologist Fernando Novas, who discovered in Patagonia remains (including a thirteen-inch claw) of the world’s largest known raptor.
Even from the remote vantage point of La Querencia, the world has rapidly become a much smaller place. In 1993 oil interests looked covetously upon Gamarci’s land, seeking drilling rights, but Gamarci repelled them. Since 1989 the main town of the Lago Argentino region, El Calafate — on the other side of the lake — has grown from 1,600 to 30,000 inhabitants, and its expanded airport brings thousands of tourists annually to Los Glaciers National Park. (One benefit: Gamarci can eat dinner in Greenwich one day and have lunch on La Querencia the next.) But as this incredible corner of the planet loses its anonymity, it must be looked after with great care. “I have the responsibility not only to preserve a piece of land,” Gamarci says, “but also to preserve the fauna and flora of the past, the present, and the future.” | <urn:uuid:e26a03a9-95e7-49b5-b4b2-3bb8b73b8848> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenwichmag.com/g/May-2009/Paradise-Found/index.php?cparticle=3&siarticle=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965861 | 2,105 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Earthquake Hits Carroll County
Earthquake's epicenter near Carroll/Frederick line.
An earthquake centered just outside of Westminster hit Maryland at about 5:50 a.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The epicenter of the 2.1 magnitude quake was three miles from Linganore; 11 miles from Westminster; and 13 miles from Eldersburg.
On July 16, a 3.4 magnitude earthquake struck Maryland about 10 miles northwest of Rockville, according to the USGS.
In August of last year, Carroll County residents felt the effects of an earthquake centered in Virginia.
The 5.8 magnitude earthquake was the largest recorded in Virginia since 1897, according to the USGS.
For more up-to-date news about Westminster and Carroll County, sign up for the Westminster Patch newsletter. | <urn:uuid:a84e63f5-5dbc-4ae1-8904-48c5e7320e08> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bethesda-chevychase.patch.com/articles/earthquake-hits-carroll-county | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933452 | 178 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Refine my search
"Saute" (saw-tay) is a cooking method to cook quickly over high heat in a small amount of fat (oil, butter, etc.).
You can use a skillet or a special saute pan, but make sure it is big enough to allow food to sear, breathe, and give off liquid during the process. Proper browning requires the quick evaporation of moisture, particularly water. Be sure to preheat it -- you need high heat when sauteing to cook ingredients quickly. Otherwise, the moisture will come out of whatever you are cooking and it will not brown.
Ads keep BigOven free. Remove ads anywhere you log in with BigOven Pro | <urn:uuid:c041497c-a860-4ed1-accb-6d9b9afce919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bigoven.com/recipes/saute/title | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907748 | 147 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Finance & Operations
Today’s finance and operations market is the world’s most volatile and rapidly changing market. In light of the economic crunch, it’s clear that when times are tough, businesses are going back to basics. Whether it’s acquiring funding or growing business credit, becoming cash flow positive, expense and revenue forecasting or the emergence of financial compliance, there are a number of market dynamics having a tremendous impact on buyers and vendors alike. In the face of this constant change, Ziff Davis B2B helps thousands of real business buyers make better decisions every day. We also help buyers assess financial services and software vendors who can solve their specific business problems. From Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, to accounting software, to Business Intelligence, Ziff Davis B2B covers the finance and operations tools you care about.
- Consolidation, process efficiency and automation are driving the adoption of integrated and online finance and accounting software.
- Companies especially SMB and growing businesses are looking for banking and financing services.
- ERP is no longer accessible to just large corporations; SMBs now have more options for accounting software.
- And much more
Interested in learning more about this market? Contact Us
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Supply Chain Management (SCM & MRP)
- Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)
- Business Intelligence | <urn:uuid:98dfcd34-75e4-450c-8656-cb3c5c62dbdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://b2b.ziffdavis.com/pages/finance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909787 | 283 | 1.5 | 2 |
See more from In Focus Martin Sheen
In the 21st century, people are finding new ways to interact with others that are unprecedented in their immediacy and involvement.
Social media is just one area that In Focus with Martin Sheen is watching to see how our culture changes as web users become more and more interconnected. Public television audiences can see how the world is changing through the show’s reporting.
Websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube are giving people the ability to share just about anything they want about their lives with the touch of a button.
As smartphones become more popular people now have the option of sharing their lives as they happen. Users can snap a photo and share it or even let all of their friends know where they’re shopping.
Advertisers are noticing too. More and more businesses understand how to most effectively reach not only more customers but the right ones through social media. Customers also have the opportunity to follow businesses through social media to find out about promotions and new products.
In Focus Martin Sheen PBS is an observer of how our culture has changed through social media. People can not only connect with one another, they can also connect with the TV show to see more stories of how our world is evolving. Also, the TV program can be contacted through the website www.infocusptv.com. | <urn:uuid:c8273940-937f-4d58-9681-ec11aed6ef66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://infocusmartinsheenpbs.biz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966362 | 274 | 1.953125 | 2 |
FFSC - Day 2 Session 3
Aug 01, 2012
The first session in the afternoon was a panel discussion of three professors from the University of Illinois on using cash versus accrual income.
There is a myth that cash versus accrual "averages out over time". With surgery of about 1,000 farms from 2001 to 2006, they found:
1. Cash versus accrual was about 50% different in each year and about the same percentage difference for a three and five year totals sit this study indicated it does not average out.
2. Crop inventory changes and differences in depreciation was usually the largest difference.
3. Current ratios have increased from an average of about 2 to 3. Debt to asset ratios have dropped from about 30% to less than 20%. Debt levels have gone up but values have gone up faster. Returns on assets have jumped around due to the volatility of crop and land prices.
4. Income per acre has increased from an average of about $100 to over $300 in 2011. | <urn:uuid:2f401b28-2cc1-4709-9871-72a94efee50b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.agweb.com/blog/The_Farm_CPA_243/ffsc_-_day_2_session_3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957186 | 211 | 2.34375 | 2 |
Personal income growsPublished 11:54pm Wednesday, April 4, 2012
LANSING — Personal income in Michigan last year grew at the strongest rate in more than a decade, providing another substantial indicator of Michigan’s rebounding economy, Gov. Rick Snyder said.
The state’s personal income growth rate is the strongest since 2000, according to 2011 figures released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Michigan’s improvement also is the best among the Great Lakes states.
“Michigan’s reinvention continues to gain momentum,” Snyder said. “We have taken aggressive steps to get Michigan’s fiscal house in order and to put families back to work. Strong personal income growth is critical to continuing our effort to boost Michigan›s economy.”
Michigan’s personal income increased 5.2 percent in 2011, which exceeded the U.S. personal income growth rate of 5.1 percent. Total personal income is income received by individuals from all sources, including salaries and wages, interest and dividends. | <urn:uuid:7fa340db-a5e4-4f8f-818b-5c13a5ec3d84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://leaderpub.com/2012/04/04/personal-income-grows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932366 | 222 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Ankara, is a province that includes the best recipes of all cuisines via benefiting its geographic location of being located on the heart of Anatolia. You may find the world cuisines’ elite recipes all around in Ankara, too. But of course Ankara has also its own specific tastes.
If you want to discover the local tastes of Ankara, we especially advise you to drive through Beypazari. And do not forget to taste Ankara pan fry, höşmerim (local traditional dessert) and Beypazarı stuffed vegetables while you are there.
Ankara Pan Fry is a recipe where rice, meat, tomato, paprika and butter turns into an incredible taste and it is a recipe mostly preferred in private celebrations by the local citizens of Ankara. Höşmerim is also one of the local, traditional tastes that you need to experience in Ankara. This dessert, is made in Ankara different from the Höşmerim of Balıkesir without cheese. Apart from the unique tastes specific to region as Bazlama (flatbread), rice with lentil, Ankara sesame ring (simit), entekke börek (tuck), we advise you to taste the delicious Döner (pressed lamb roasted on a large vertical spit) in Old City inside the Castle made in coal fire. | <urn:uuid:79f0c107-e870-4f60-8681-fc837fbffb24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rixos.com/en/ankara/food | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928469 | 275 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Modern technology to address the needs of women is being introduced in lower-income setting at a quickening pace. Our Innovation Index shows that technology can be adapted to low-resource settings to improve the quality of women’s lives. Curiously, modern technology and innovation has been slower to reach the far corners of the globe when it comes to a ubiquitous female phenomenon: menstruation.
This blog post explores the state of sanitary technology and considers whether or not modern sanitary products are appropriate in context.
In general,reusable cloth is the norm. If washed and dried correctly, cloth is no less hygienic than disposable sanitary pads. However, according to the School for Social Entrepreneurs in Australia, cultural norms often promote unhygienic practices such as leaving cloths to dry in a damp corner of the house, which can breed bacteria and put women at risk for genital tract infections (1). In addition, the cloth that is used is often made from rough material, resulting in rashes and sores.
In an attempt to address the hygienic concerns surrounding traditional sanitary practices as well as in an effort to promote increased school attendance among girls, there has been a push to introduce modern, disposable sanitary technologies in the lower-resource settings. The most significant example of this is Procter and Gamble’s Always brand 2007 campaign. This campaign, however, represents the dangers of introducing a seemingly benevolent technology without first considering issues of context and sustainability. Disposable pads can create a waste problem in communities without landfill or incineration capacity (each year, globally, more than 10 billion pads and tampons are tossed into landfills and sewage systems). This can be counterproductive because open landfills create health hazards, and open incineration of products containing plastics can create toxic air. Additionally, disposable pads are not sustainable.
Given the problems associated with the introduction of disposable sanitary technology, does modern, reusable sanitary technology hold promise for developing areas? The menstrual cup, a silicon bell-shaped cup, can be inserted into the vagina to collect menstrual blood. These cups can be washed with soap and water and reused for up to a decade, producing drastically less waste than modern disposable sanitary products.
In contrast to campaigns for disposable sanitary products, there has been a much more intentional consideration of context in terms of how appropriate menstrual cups really are in low-resource areas. This is can be credited in large part to major menstrual cup manufacturing companies. DivaCup and Mooncup are the major brands of menstrual cup, and both manufacturers have been active in considering the applicability of menstrual cups to low-resource setting. For instance, the DivaCup website notes that religious and social mores in some areas may prohibit the use of internal feminine hygiene protection. In addition, DivaCup stresses that proper use of the cup requires mild soap and potable water—a luxury that many communities lack—and that improper use of the cup among women in low-resource areas could increase the incidence of gynecological infection.
Finally, DivaCup notes that the use of menstrual cups requires instruction. If women are not able to read and understand the instruction guide, the introduction of menstrual cups would require instruction and counsel from local health workers. The winter 2005/2006 Mooncup newsletter raises important questions: “how do we determine whether the same unsanitary conditions that create infections from the use of cloths will not also mean that maintaining the hygiene of a Mooncup is unrealistic? Even if water is available for boiling, how do we ensure that the correct methods of use and cleaning are communicated to these women in the first place?” This reflects a consideration of context and potentially adverse consequences of modern sanitation technology that is largely absent from the dialogue surrounding modern disposable sanitary products.
While cultural taboos, water sanitation issues, and language barriers certainly create obstacles for the uptake of menstrual cups throughout the developing world, studies are currently investigating the feasibility and potential impact of menstrual cups in low-resources areas. A randomized controlled trial in Nepal by Oster and Thornton using the Mooncup brand of menstrual cups showed fast adoption rates, significant time-saving benefits of the menstrual cups (22 minutes saved on laundry per period day!), and widespread satisfaction with the cups; in fact, most girls in the study expressed a (hypothetical) willingness to pay for menstrual cups. In this study of 198 girls, peer effects were seen in successful usage of the cup.
The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) is currently conducting a menstrual cup pilot study among girls in the Korogocho slums of Nairobi. The study will investigate both acceptability of the cups and whether or not the cup introduces infections.
We will continue to follow the story of these technologies, their adoption and the efficacy of competing technologies. And what about the question, if you had a dollar to spend on adolescent girls, where would it be best spent-- contraception? sanitary pads? education? oxytoxics to prevent hemorrhage?
Thanks to Elizabeth Adler for research and writing.
Photo by Krishna Ghimire. | <urn:uuid:78b728db-9f99-4b90-b352-31d3280d51a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://maternova.net/es/blog/sanitary-technology-do-modern-methods-better-serve-women | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927289 | 1,048 | 3.34375 | 3 |
The language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, was a Victorian-era means of communication in which various flowers and floral arrangements were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken. This language was most commonly communicated through tussie-mussies (small flower bouquets), an art which has a following today.
The nuances of the language are now mostly forgotten, but red roses still imply passionate, romantic love and pink roses a lesser affection; white roses suggest virtue and chastity and yellow roses still stand for friendship or devotion. Also commonly known meanings are sunflowers, which can indicate either haughtiness or adoration.
Inevitably there are geographic variances. | <urn:uuid:8f8b8eec-3f78-4f94-9e06-ad58daeb83f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Language_of_flowers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956767 | 148 | 3.328125 | 3 |
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is supporting legislation that will force the Federal Communications Commission to “promote diversity” on the airwaves – a move many see as a stealth effort to regulate conservative-dominated talk radio without bringing back the controversial Fairness Doctrine.
Pelosi, D-Calif., has thrown her support to an amendment in a Senate bill that directs the FCC to explicitly “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest,” according to CNS News.
The amendment has become known as the Durbin amendment, after its sponsor, Senate Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
“Certainly, I support Mr. Durbin in most things,” Pelosi told CNS News. “Diversity in media ownership is very, very, important.”
The amendment is clearly an attempt to revive the Fairness Doctrine – an unpopular FCC regulation removed in 1987 that forced broadcasters to grant equal airtime to opposing political viewpoints, Republican Rep. Mike Pence told CNS News.
“Its clear to me that Democrats, having failed in their frontal assault on talk radio in America through the Fairness Doctrine, are now shifting strategy to a form of regulation that is essentially the Fairness Doctrine by stealth,” Pence, R-Ind., a former radio broadcaster, told CNS.
Minutes after the passage of the Durbin amendment last Thursday a separate amendment that would ban the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine, which was proposed by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was also attached to the same D.C. voting rights bill and passed by a vote of 87-11.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he thinks Republicans may be able to muster the votes to stop it when it gets to his chamber.
“I think as we get into the appropriations process you will see us continue our effort to make sure the Fairness Doctrine is not put back into place,” Boehner told CNS News at his weekly press conference on Thursday. “And I do believe the votes are in the Congress to make sure that happens.”
The primary text of the Durbin amendment reads:
SEC.9 FCC Authorities. (a) Clarification of General Powers. – Title III of the Communications Act of 1934 is amended by inserting after section 303 (47 U.S.C. 303) the following new section:
SEC.303B. Clarification of General Powers. (a) Certain Affirmative Actions Required – The Commission shall take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership and to ensure that broadcast station licenses are used in the public interest. …
The language is virtually identical to a policy position that has been long developed by Democrats and has been recently taken up by the Obama administration over calls by some to revive the Fairness Doctrine. The White House now aims to “encourage diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, promote the development of new media outlets for expression of diverse viewpoints, and clarify the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum.”
That philosophy is part of a position established earlier at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank headed by former Obama transition leader John Podesta. The center published a report calling for a new “localism” and “ownership diversity” regulations to balance conservative talk radio with so-called “progressive” talk radio.
The report, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” concludes with the following recommendations:
“[A]ny effort to encourage more responsive and balanced radio programming will first require steps to increase localism and diversify radio station ownership to better meet local and community needs. We suggest three ways to accomplish this:Restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations. Ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. Require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.”
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:7e32da75-ccc5-4e78-bb0a-a157e4cd031b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/pelosi-durbin-amendment/2009/03/08/id/328667 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956888 | 847 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Could a coalition of democracies help the United States address some of its more daunting global challenges? In a new CFR working paper, Like-Minded and Capable Democracies: A New Framework for Advancing a Liberal World Order Ash Jain argues that the answer is yes. The title may be cumbersome, but Jain’s inclusion of “like-minded” and “capable” is critical. Democratic solidarity is possible only if the United States judiciously includes democracies that truly share U.S. preferences and have tangible resources to leverage for collective action. Failure to think soberly about these two criteria has doomed previous proposals to harness democracy to U.S. strategy.
Jain is hardly the first analyst to invoke democracy as a potential foundation for world order. In 1795, Immanuel Kant argued in Perpetual Peace that a world dominated by liberal republics would be inherently peaceful—given shared political values, common commercial interests, and (not least) the pacific inclinations of citizens and accountable leaders. More than a century later, prominent U.S. politicians attributed the outbreak of World War I to the warlike proclivities of the authoritarian Central Powers. Teddy Roosevelt declared that the time had come “to consider a great world agreement among the world’s civilized military powers to back righteousness by force”—and there is no doubt he meant the world’s Western democracies. Similarly, President Woodrow Wilson believed that prospects for postwar security would be greatest if the members of the League of Nations—or at least the vast majority—were democratic states. Subsequent research has tended to confirm that relations among democracies–at least wealthy, consolidated democracies—are disproportionately peaceful.
Following the Cold War, the ideological triumph of liberalism over totalitarianism appeared to raise the promise of an ever-expanding liberal “zone of peace.” The Clinton administration adopted this vision explicitly in 1994, releasing a National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement. It envisioned a gradual and inexorable expansion of market democracies. To hasten this process, the administration pursued inititiatves such as NATO enlargement, the Partnership for Peace, and a new “Community of Democracies” (CD).
Over the past decade, both Democrats and Republicans have advocated creation of what they variously term an “alliance,” “league,” or “concert” of democracies. In 2006, the Princeton Project on U.S. National Security, a center-left effort co-chaired by Anne-Marie Slaughter and G. John Ikenberry, advocated a new Concert of Democracies to “harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.” In 2008, the GOP standard-bearer, Senator John McCain, called for a for a “new global compact” uniting the world’s democracies. As conservative intellectual and McCain adviser Robert Kagan explained, such a “League of Democracies” would include the world’s “other great democracies,” including India, Brazil, Japan and Australia, to shore up its legitimacy.
Alas, the dream that world order can rest on a club of democracies is flawed on several grounds, as critics from Thomas Carothers to Charles Kupchan have noted. First, as the invasion of Iraq in 2003 demonstrated, similar domestic political orientations hardly guarantee common foreign policy alignments, even among established U.S. allies. Second, this problem is even more pointed when it comes to emerging power democracies like Brazil, India, South Africa, and Turkey, which have repeatedly departed from U.S. preferences at the UN Security Council in recent years, particularly on issues of sovereignty, intervention, and human rights. Third, contemporary foreign policy challenges like financial instability, climate change, and nuclear proliferation are simply too complex and too global to be addressed in a narrow club of democracies, without input of major non-democracies, not least China. Fourth, defining “democracy” is difficult, and failure to establish strict criteria can be disastrous. In the CD, for example, expansive membership rules have permitted authoritarian foxes to run rampant in the henhouse. Finally, a concert or league of democracies could not replace the United Nations—with its standing capacity, universal membership, and legally binding Charter.
But Jain’s paper is careful to avoid the weaknesses of past proposals.
To begin with, the paper has limited—and realistic—ambitions. Jain does not advocate replacing the United Nations or other existing multilateral frameworks. He knows that there’s no substitute for the UNSC, the G20, or the World Bank. But there may be certain issues where solidarity among advanced democracies can help the United States and its close allies arrive at common positions and—where needed—even act independently (as NATO did in Kosovo in 1999).
Jain wisely adopts an incremental approach. Rather than trying to construct an entirely new institution, he suggests expanding a preexisting diplomatic dialogue begun during the Bush administration among policy planning directors from the United States and its G7 partners (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom), plus Australia and South Korea. To these nine, Jain would add the European Union, creating what he calls a “Democratic Ten”— or D10—designed to “promote strategic cooperation on global political and security issues and advance the norms and values of a liberal international order.” Once elevated to the ministerial (secretary of state) level, this forum would provide the world’s established democracies with a dedicated institutional vehicle to coordinate policies and respond to crises in a manner that advances shared interests and values.
More fundamentally, Jain insists that the membership and the agenda of the new grouping be limited. To be effective, the new grouping must be restricted to mature, capable democracies, and exclude countries that could act as spoilers or remain attached to post-colonial mindsets that hinder cooperation. At the same time, new members could easily be added as capabilities and preferences of rising democracies evolve.
The agenda of the group, likewise, should be limited to political issues of highest import to Western nations, and which have tended to divide them from China, Russia, and other authoritarian powers. These include the promotion of human rights, the protection of civilians from mass atrocities, the sanctioning of outlier states pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and resistance to the establishment of great power spheres of influence.
The biggest danger this scheme must avoid, as Jain acknowledges, is in reinforcing a “West versus the Rest” dynamic, leading to polarization and, conceivably, the consolidation of Cold War style ideological blocs. He is confident the United States can avoid this, however, by treating the D10 as just one multilateral vehicle among others. | <urn:uuid:bbd169ea-26fa-4d26-8da9-e8b3d73fe6be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2013/01/07/time-for-a-coalition-of-capable-like-minded-democracies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933555 | 1,417 | 2.328125 | 2 |
Look in your rear-view mirror and you might be startled to see an Imperial biker on your tail. Of course, it could just be the “Breathe Air” bike helmet designed by 22-year-old Brunel University industrial design and technology student Luke Pannell. Lancashire Evening Post reports:
The helmet was created to filter out particles which irritate hay fever and asthma sufferers. It covers the cyclist’s nose and mouth with a shield behind which the filtered air circulates. Used air is expelled via a plastic tube when the cyclist exhales.
Tags: Science & Tech | <urn:uuid:8c7ad586-7338-496d-9f38-0eb35bf4ed86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2007/07/10/star-wars-inspired-helmet-helps-cyclists/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93103 | 127 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The Psychologist has an engrossing article on the psychology behind the ’7 Deadly Sins’ and how they relate to modern life.
The piece is full of fascinating and counter-intuitive snapshots from the science of social emotions. For example:
Whereas the success and status of others can provoke envy, pride is what we feel when the success and status are our own. Pride, like envy is a human universal, and is another of the sins considered by psychology to be an emotion. Darwin categorised it alongside states such as vanity and suspicion as a ‘complex emotion’. He also anticipated contemporary research showing that the expression of pride – head held high, arms raised – is recognised universally across cultures and by children as young as four.
In 2008 Jessica Tracy at the University of British Columbia and David Matsumoto at San Francisco State University studied congenitally blind Olympic judo competitors and found that they too showed pride in this way, even though they can’t ever have seen a pride display by anyone else.
The BPS Research Digest blog will also be running a ‘sin week’ in the coming week so keep your eye’s peeled for more bad behaviour.
Link to The Psychologist on the deadly sins.
Full disclosure: I am an unpaid associate editor and columnist for The Psychologist although apart from the occasional lie I live entirely free of sin. | <urn:uuid:c6accdbb-ce7b-44a2-8bd3-a97108d46726> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mindhacks.com/2011/02/05/the-psychology-of-the-7-deadly-sins/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942875 | 285 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Review: Demography and Democracy
[Himani Bannerji. Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2011.]
Himani Bannerji’s latest collection, Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology, builds a rich picture of the themes listed in the subtitle by passing through a broad range of other topics – early 20th century Indian novels, individual and social development, religion, and the discipline of sociology, just to name a few. (For reviews of earlier books by her, see here and here.) Bannerji, until recently a Professor of Sociology at York University in Toronto, Ontario, writes with a passionate commitment to marxism, anti-racism, and feminism, and applies a distinctive social ontology and epistemology derived from the work of feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith and from Bannerji’s own adaptation of Marx’s ideas. For me, it is this open, grounded, and expansive epistemology that means that even when particular passages edge towards the polemic or the schematic, the core ideas remain solid, relevant, and useful, often far beyond the presenting situations for which she develops them.
One central message of the book is that the meaning, shape, and impact of nationalism depends on the social relations which constitute the nation in question. Along with the important distinction between colonial and anti-colonial nationalisms, she also divides the latter among bourgeois liberal, bourgeois illiberal, and national liberation forms. She is clear that, contrary to Western stereotypes, the liberal/illiberal division does not map onto some kind of West/East divide but rather both kinds of regimes are found in both areas of the world. Nor does it correspond to a modern-and-colonial versus anti-modern-and-anti-colonial divide, as both sorts of postcolonial states are entirely modern and are integrated into the world system. She argues, moreover, that all colonial nationalisms (that is, imperialisms) and all anti-colonial nationalisms that refuse to break with capitalist relations of property depend on and indeed are organized in important ways around the domination of women – which is not to say that there are no important political differences among them, just that none can ever be sufficient to meet the needs of women.
The first essay of the collection explores the rise to power of the hindu right in India in light of Antonio Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony and cultural struggle. This essay feels like a good instance of what seems to be a deliberate choice to centre non-Western contexts in producing ideas meant to be much more broadly applicable, in an inversion of the usual practice of North American and European intellectuals. In this instance, her analysis of the rise of right-wing religious and cultural politics in South Asia are very relevant to cultural struggle ongoing, in different ways, in both the United States and Canada. Similarly, her exploration of struggle in India and Israel/Palestine over demographics and reproduction as a central element of cultural nationalism, including the corresponding violence against women, offers powerful tools for thinking about aspects of racialized demographic struggle in Canadian history – Bonita Lawrence’s analysis in ‘Real’ Indians and Others of systematic demographic attacks on indigenous nations and people through the Indian Act and other measures springs to mind.
It is her challenges to other feminists and to the non-marxist postcolonial scholars of the Subaltern Studies school that are the most polemic parts of the book. In the former instance, her focus is feminist authors and activists engaged in international work who have settled for or always been committed to coalitional politics across difference (and borders) that are focused on mutually agreeable remedial projects but not fundamental social transformation. While she emphatically agrees that “women of both the first and third world have not achieved their full citizenships,” she goes on to conclude, “If they are to be fully entitled social and political beings their struggles against proprieties of patriarchy must rest on struggles against all relations of property, relations that extend from ownership of women – their reproductive and labouring bodies – to all the social relations that form class, capital, and imperialism” (126). With the Subaltern Studies group, it is the polarization between marxist and non-marxist (often Foucauldian) postcolonial scholars into which her work fits. She traces the intellectual evolution of that school and focuses particularly on the work of Partha Chatterjee to demonstrate that “by separating culture from economy and society and constructing and entrenching a unifying cultural essence, and postulating a national community upon that, it erases existing social relations and ideologies of difference, most importantly those of class-caste and patriarchy” (171). While I find Bannerji’s arguments convincing in both cases, my impression – perhaps misinformed – is that particularly for the latter there might be more room for exchange and mutual insight between Foucauldian and marxist postcolonial scholars than either side sometimes allows, in ways that would be in no danger of compromising feminist and revolutionary commitments such as Bannerji’s. It would be particularly interesting to see a marxist with the analysis of knowledge production that Bannerji holds engaging in some of that finer-grained sifting.
The most important, and very uncharacteristic, moment of lack of nuance in the book is around the ways in which Bannerji develops her typology of anti-colonial nationalisms. Her arguments regarding the liberal and illiberal bourgeois variants are keen and insightful, and they both inform and emerge from her analyses of South Asia, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere. Yet she presents no instances of grounded analysis of her favoured option, the national liberation flavour of anti-colonial nationalism. While I am inclined to agree with her that neither women’s liberation nor liberation from capital can come about without the other, the lack of grounded analysis of examples makes her insistence that this path contains the answer less convincing than it could be for people not already inclined towards anti-capiatlism, particularly given the limitations in overcoming both capital and gender oppression in all examples of national liberation struggles that the world has yet seen. It also avoids the need to address very sticky questions about whether the state form, however revolutionary its seizure, can ever be meaningfully repurposed from its current integral role in organizing oppressive social relations. To be fair, it feels like the two essays towards the end of the book which make use of her analysis of the novels and political writing of Rabindranath Tagore (a Bengali novelist, poet, and intellectual active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) begin to edge towards such questions, with her exploration of his simultaneous opposition to both colonialism and nationalism. Though his analysis is clearly liberal, she just as clearly wants to find ways to add its best elements to the more grounded marxist approach that she sees as necessary for liberation.
Those who are studying questions of gender and nationalism, or who are engaged in working against right-wing cultural nationalisms wherever they occur, will benefit from the ideas that Bannerji presents in this book.
[Scott Neigh is a parent, activist, and writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. This post originally appeared on his personal blog, as have many other book reviews. Scott has two books of Canadian history entered through the words of activists coming out in Fall 2012 from Fernwood Press.] | <urn:uuid:b67ee459-3225-440a-9343-a3d7786b4741> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://canadiandimension.com/blog/4835/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950974 | 1,523 | 1.5 | 2 |
The Genius of Wilhelm Busch: Comedy of Frustration
edited and translated by Walter Arndt
University of California Press, 253 pp., $35.00
All translators of dead writers are pushers. Introducing his translations of the German comic poet/illustrator Wilhelm Busch, Walter Arndt gropes around for comparisons to sell his product: Daumier, Gogol, Dickens, Ogden Nash, Thurber, Al Capp, Dostoevski, Goncharov, Lewis Carroll, and Morgenstern are all tried out for one aspect or another. A pity Arndt didn’t think of W.C. Fields: his cuddly, avuncular exterior belies a sophisticated, savage, and cynical heart as he stumbles grimly through a world littered with banana skins: it is Busch’s world, and Fields comes pretty close to his persona.
Wilhelm Busch (1832-1908) was the father of the strip cartoon. It was after seeing Max und Moritz, his cautionary tale of two mischievous boys, that William Randolph Hearst commissioned Rudolph Dirks’s Katzenjammer Kids; and all cartoon animals, from Felix the Cat through Donald Duck to Dogmatix, surely carry genes from Fipps the monkey and Plisch and Plum, the mongrel puppies. Busch never resorted to Wham! and Boing! in balloons, but he put noise between hard covers. Open one of his books and a fearful din pours out: crockery smashes, furniture splinters, bodies thud from ladders or splash into ponds, canes whiz through the air, babies bawl, hens squawk, and the whole hullaballoo is punctuated by yells of Schadenfreude from evil-looking peasants in clogs and stocking caps.
Everything is in motion. Busch had an extraordinary gift for drawing movement. Even static occupations like sleeping or savoring or sitting become dynamic: you hear the breathing, feel the tongue nestle against the palate, the body digging into the upholstery. Inanimate objects are like coiled springs: jars crouch balefully on shelves, waiting to fall on people’s heads; bushes bristle with aggressive prickles ready to puncture the human behind. Busch is credited with pinpointing die Tücke des Objekts, the spite of inanimate things—of which the banana skin is only the commonest symbol.
Arndt calls Busch’s narratives in verse and drawing “picture tales.” Busch called them Bilderbogen—picture sheets—the German word for pennyplain, two-pence, colored sheets of prints sold for children. These and their deluxe version, the famous French Images d’Epinal, were among the ancestors of Busch’s creations. They had many others: ballad reciters at fairs (Brecht parodied their manner with Mack the Knife) accompanied their performance by pointing to scrolls of consecutive pictures; there was Hogarth, and the Swiss Rodolphe Toeppfer, who saw himself as Hogarth’s heir in book format; and Struwweipeter made his appearance when Busch was thirteen. All these told continuous illustrated stories: but their pictures were tableaux vivants to Busch’s theatrical performances (he called his work a “paper theater”); or slides to his movies. His drawings do not illustrate the text any more than the text captions the drawings: the two are in dialogue, the one commenting on the other, most often ironically: the words will be demure, for instance, or deadpan, while the drawing is suggestive or full of catastrophe.
Arndt deplores The New York Review … | <urn:uuid:d4d53970-2c65-4731-b90c-c209164663c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1982/apr/01/a-funny-meister/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939124 | 797 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Some of the world’s most elegant and refined cuisine has its genesis in very humble circumstances. Today, Spanish tapas are widely regarded as sophisticated and exotic, but they didn’t start off that way. In fact, Spanish tapas are an excellent embodiment of the axiom that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. The words “tapa” (singular) or “tapas” (plural) are derived from the Spanish word “tapar,” which means “to cover.” In Spanish, a tapa is also the literal term for a “lid.” How the word “tapas” became the term used to describe a popular epicurean craze is an interesting tale.
It’s well established that in Spain, it’s traditional for many people to take an afternoon respite from the rigors of their daily lives and jobs to visit the local tavern or inn for snacks and refreshment. In Old Spain, snacks and refreshment are inseparable, a tradition dating back to the Castilian king Alfonso the Wise who decreed that no wine was to be served in any inn throughout Castile unless accompanied by something to eat. This precaution was to counteract the adverse effects of alcohol on an empty stomach.
Observing that glasses of wine or sherry served to patrons attracted fruit flies, bartenders began covering the top of the glass with a piece of bread to prevent the pesky insects from doing the breaststroke in the wine. In time, each tavern concocted its own signature toppings for the bread. For the most part, the covers or “tapas” were relatively simple–ham or anchovies, for example, but eventually, those simple glass covers evolved into such creative and sophisticated dishes that what is essentially Spanish bar food now rivals any of the world’s most renowned cuisines.
In modern day Spain, tapas are not only a gastronomic custom, they are a social or communal event. Taverns are clustered in close proximity to one another, making it easy for patrons to hop from bar to bar sampling the specialty of the house at each. In America, tapas have become popular as a meal option–eating a number of appetizer-sized plates to constitute an entire meal. As in Spain, American tapas restaurants and bars attract groups who, by sharing dishes, can sample a wide variety of foods for a relative pittance.
The concept of tapas made its way to the United States several decades ago to some (mostly local) acclaim. In some American cities, an announcement of the launch of a new tapas bar was often mistaken as yet another “topless bar” opening up. Ultimately it took the culinary and marketing genius of Jose Andres to launch the country’s first widely heralded and highly successful tapas restaurant, Jaleo in Washington, D.C. Since Jaleo’s opening in 1993, tapas bars and restaurants have taken off throughout the fruited plain.
In the Land of Enchantment, Santa Fe, which has long embraced its Spanish heritage, has long been home to two restaurants which offer tapas–the venerable El Farol and relative newcomer (fifteen years) El Meson. That dynamic duo became a terrific triumvirate in 2006 with the launch of La Boca. The Duke City’s first notable entry into the tapas arena was probably Gecko’s Bar & Tapas under the auspices of chef Jay Wulf. Since then a number of restaurants have offered, sometimes rather loosely, an interpretation of tapas.
July, 2009 saw the introduction of Cosmo Tapas, fittingly making its home in what many consider to be the Duke City’s cultural and social hub, the Nob Hill District. Situated in the venue that previously housed the Martini Grille, Cosmo Tapas is, as its name implies, a cosmopolitan and hip urban experience–ironically with a storefront facing the historical mother road, Route 66. Its launch was greeted excitedly by critics and diners alike, many hailing it as a much needed change of pace for the city. When she told me about her first visit to Cosmo shortly after it opened, Melissa Watrin gushed, “you have GOT to go to Cosmo Tapas. The best meal I’ve had in a really long time.” Despite her effusive praise, it would be a while before my inaugural visit.
Look overhead as you enter and you’ll espy one of the most unique “chandeliers” you’ll ever see. Instead of crystalline composition, the chandelier is crafted from silverware–spoons, forks and knives dangling above you. The dining room’s walls are festooned with still-life, near photo-quality paintings depicting decanters of oil and vinegar and other restaurant necessities. Undulating mesh fabric drapes from the ceiling. Linen tablecloth drapes over each table with folded napkins nattily in place. The best seat in the house on a cold winter day is the table nearest the fireplace and with a view of Central Avenue.
Add the term “family-friendly” to the restaurant’s family owned and family operated modus vivendi. That’s family-friendly both from the sense that diners of all ages will all feel welcome at the restaurant and that the family which owns the restaurant is as friendly as any restaurateurs in the Duke City. As Melissa told me they would, both Guillermo Loubriel and his wife-partner Cecilia Kido visited our table to ensure our dining experience was as good as it could be. Their son Leo was even more attentive, personally delivering every item we ordered.
When they conceived the idea of Cosmo Tapas, Guillermo and Cecilia determined to showcase a menu which would reflect their veritable melting pot of cultures and not necessarily subscribe to a true Spanish tapas template. Guillermo is Puerto Rican while Cecilia, a native Chilean is half-Japanese and part Spanish and French. The menu, a magnificent mishmash of culturally diverse dishes, succeeds wildly. Moreover, the shared dining experience succeeds wildly. Diners have embraced the concept of ordering a number of dishes and sharing them.
The tapas menu actually begins with three Spanish sampler platters–a Spanish cheese platter, a Spanish charcuterie plate and a Jamon Iberico plate. The latter is one of those every-once-or-twice-in-a-lifetime indulgences to which you should treat yourself just because you’re worth it. Jamon Iberico, often considered the gold standard of gourmet ham, is to ham what Kobe beef is to steak. The pigs from which Jamon Iberico is culled are a very exclusive breed, ergo the pampering they receive. The highest quality Jamon Iberico comes from pigs whose diet is limited to acorns once their slaughtering time approaches. Hams from the slaughtered pigs are cured for anywhere from twelve months to 48 months. The word “platter” may be a bit of a misnomer because the portion size you receive is only about two-ounces, but the memorable melt-in-your-mouth quality of the ham makes this a worthwhile indulgence.
It would be hard to consider the Spanish Charcuterie Plate a “consolation prize because it’s quite excellent, but oh that Jamon Iberico. If you can’t order the Jamon Iberico, the Charcuterie Plate is a very good alternative. Charcuterie is a French term which refers to the products made and sold in a delicatessen-style shop, also called a charcuterie. The operative word here is “made” as in butchering, cutting, salting, curing, slicing, storing and preparing such meat products such as bacon, sausage, ham, pates, and more. Cosmos Tapas’ charcuterie plate features spicy chorizo, Serrano ham, lomo embuchado, olives, pickled onions and baguettes.
The thinly cut Serrano ham is wonderfully marbled dry-cured ham with a salty flavor. It’s fairly standard in American tapas bars, but is always welcome for its fine flavor. The spicy chorizo, made from coarsely chopped pork and pork fat, is also a fairly common tapas menu offering. The chorizo is seasoned with smoked and piquant Spanish paprika and salt. The lomo embuchado, sometimes considered the “prince of dry cured sausages in Spain,” inherits the flavors of sea salt, smoked paprika and garlic from its 90-day curing process. One of the biggest surprises in the Charcuterie Plate actually has nothing to do with meats. It’s the pickled onions which are brined in a solution that includes jalapeños, imbuing them with a pleasantly piquant taste.
A couple of decades ago, Cecilia Kido owned and operated the long defunct Empanadas House which offered some thirty types of empanadas. Considered the national dish of Chile, empanadas are a natural fit for the Cosmo Tapas menu where at least three are available. If the baked beef empanada packed with beef, onions, hard-boiled eggs, raisins and olives is any indication, empanadas are an absolute must-have. The melange of flavors makes for a very exciting treat which challenges you to discern the individual components. The crust enveloping the ingredients is light and flaky, but formidable enough to keep them all in. This empanada is served with pebre, a Chilean “salsa” with a piquant, refreshing bite.
Melissa’s favorite tapa, one she described as a beautiful dish with vibrant flavors, is the “Choke,” grilled marinated artichoke with goat cheese and orange zest. The artichokes are splayed out in an almost floral arrangement with a dewy goat cheese sheen on each petal and the redolence of orange zest. The Choke is grilled to an absolute perfection and can be consumed in its entirety as you might a piece of nigiri sushi or by the petal if you’re able to show such restraint. In either case, this is a superb tapa, one of several offerings on the Vegetable Tapas section of the menu.
The most popular tapa on the menu is stuffed dates, a tiny plate brimming with six Medjool dates stuffed with feta cheese and wrapped in applewood smoked bacon. It’s akin to indulging in sweet, savory and smoky meat and cheese candy. Each bite rewards you with taste explosions that are best tempered with a palate cleanser (such as taking a bite from another tapa before resuming with the next stuffed date.
Another very popular tapa is the Lollipop Lamb chops, four succulent and meaty chops atop a bed of sauteed spinach with a garlic aioli and an olive-feta tapenade. At medium-rare, the lamb chops are tender and juicy, wholly capable of excelling on their own. The tapenade and aioli elevate the chops to a higher level, imparting complementary flavors which bring out the best qualities of the chops.
From the seafood tapas section of the menu, one sure to be a favorite is the Peruvian-style Ceviche, fresh barrimundi marinated in citrus juice with onion, cilantro and a housemade jalapeño vinaigrette. The ceviche is unlike the ceviche served in Mexican restaurants throughout New Mexico in that it does not contain a single chopped tomato. The jalapeño vinaigrette enlivens the barrimundi and complements the citrus with a pleasant piquancy. Served in a concave glass over ice, this ceviche is comparable to that served in great Peruvian restaurants.
Dessert tapas are a specialty of the house. Seven of them are available including churros, the threaded fried dough pastry sometimes referred to as a Spanish doughnut. The churros are stuffed with an assortment of sweet goodness: hazelnut chocolate, dulce de leche or berries. You can mix and match the four churros per order. The dulce de leche is especially good for my sweet tooth. You might appreciate another flavor even more.
In the Tasting NM section of its January, 2012 collectors’ edition celebrating New Mexico’s centennial, New Mexico Magazine showcased quince, a fruit high in pectin with a strong “perfume.” My friend, the scintillating author Cheryl Alters Jamison, provided a wonderful recipe for quince butter. Her recipe in mind inspired me to order a dessert tapa called Membrillo and Manchego Cheese, imported quince paste with fresh Manchego cheese. The Manchego proved a perfect foil for the ultra-sweet quince paste made even better with a leaf of basil.
The menu at Cosmo Tapas even includes an “Entrees” section listing six full-sized dinners, one of which is Spanish paella (made-to-order with chicken, tiger prawns, clams, mussels, scallops, calamari, crawfish, Spanish chorizo, vegetables and Valenciana saffron rice). It’s easy to imagine a tapa or two for an appetizer followed by paella or another of the entree items.
One of the reasons it took me so long to visit Cosmo Tapas is because every critic and publication in town reviewed it within weeks of its opening. Acclaim was pretty much universal. Now that Cosmo Tapas has been open for almost two and a half years, the time was right for me to visit and see for myself whether or not the acclaim was justified. If anything, some of the high praise may be understated. Tapas is at or near the top of Spanish restaurants I’ve visited. Best of all, each visit will be a new adventure thanks to the wide variety of tapas offered.
4200 Central Avenue, S.E.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
LATEST VISIT: 23 December 2011
# OF VISITS: 1
COST: $$$ – $$$$
BEST BET: Spanish Charcuterie Plate, Baked Beef Empanada, Grilled Choke, Stuffed Dates, Lollipop Lamb Chops, Ceviche, Membrillo & Manchego Cheese, Churros | <urn:uuid:c6d6fa28-020a-4a84-8059-676f10a97f7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nmgastronome.com/blog/?cat=524 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943383 | 3,095 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Williamsville board let constituents down
As a retired teacher who has attended many Board of Education meetings, I attended the Sept. 11 Williamsville board meeting with certain expectations. First and foremost, I expected board members to listen to the public with open minds. After all, this was the first meeting in which the legislative body, a.k.a. the Board of Education, would hear input from its constituents concerning a controversial issue. I expected that board members would listen in the event that the public had insights that might affect their thinking on this matter.
Unfortunately, those expectations were not met. Before listening with open minds, the board met in executive session and circled the wagons. Before listening with open minds, the president issued a statement indicating the board's unanimous support for the decision that had been made by the superintendent. As a result, members' minds were closed, not open as they should have been, when they permitted the public to speak. Therefore, the public comment session was nothing but an exercise in futility.
In essence, public comment fell upon deaf ears. Board members should be ashamed. By their actions, they exhibited a blatant disregard for the input of their constituents. The citizens of Williamsville should be outraged that their elected officials did not afford them the opportunity to be heard prior to making their decision. | <urn:uuid:89201a99-dbea-481b-bd96-689ae0f76b69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.buffnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120915/OPINION/120919425/1074 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98087 | 267 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
This tutorial is about how to Write with Water inside After Effects without any using for the 3d party plug-ins. So if the Summer heat gets to you, just go inside for a while and watch this tutorial to cool down. Don’t forget your sunscreen and enjoy Writing with Water!
Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in March 2010.
File size 106MB | <urn:uuid:162b630c-028c-459d-8fb9-35453d178880> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/vfx/create-a-beach-themed-water-writing-look/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932608 | 104 | 1.539063 | 2 |
BALTIMORE (AP) - Four more people have died heat-related deaths in Maryland, bringing the total number of heat-related deaths in recent days to eight.
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported the number Thursday. Three of the newly-reported heat-related deaths occurred in Baltimore City. Two of them were men over the age of 65. The third was a man between the ages of 45 and 64.
The fourth heat-related death happened in Montgomery County and was reported to be a man over the age of 65.
The report did not say when the men died or describe the circumstances of their death.
The state health department reported the first heat-related deaths of the year this week. A total of 34 people died last year in Maryland of heat-related causes. | <urn:uuid:41655811-a662-4739-af40-938b4ec7a8fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wfls.com/Four-More-Die-From-Heat-in-Maryland/12543829?archive=1&pid=250813 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987602 | 165 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Composed by: Al Stillman, Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl
Recorded by Elvis January 12 1957
When we remember Elvis, we often recall his wild side, shooting televisions, his addiction to pain-killers, womanising. Yet the King of Rock’n’Roll, fallen as we all are, had another side to him. Elvis was, in fact, a deeply spiritual man whose faith was central to his life. He certainly struggled to live a moral life, but his intentions were clear to all his friends. Every day he would strive to become closer to God. "He was a deeply spiritual man;" claims Ray Walker of The Jordanaires, the legendary quartet that sang with Elvis for many years, "he was more spiritual than anyone around him." | <urn:uuid:47035d0f-9b04-4b18-a501-2881ffd93ec6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heavens-gates.com/elvispresley/ibelieve/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990916 | 164 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Litle Improvement after Thirty Years
I really dislike being the bearer of bad tidings, but this article from "Cancer" is important. Especially during Pink October, we are all brainwashed/pinkwashed with positive statements and the overall impression that breast cancer is almost a thing of the past. How I wish that were true! It certainly is true that many/most women who are appropriately treated at the time of diagnosis do fine. It is also true that many women are initially diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. In my group this week for women with advanced breast cancer, this was an important topic since more than half of the participants are in this situation. That is, they were going along with their lives, taking reasonable or very good care of themselves, having annual mammograms and other recommended health care...and then, Bang: a diagnosis of Stage IV breast cancer.
The "good" news (and I am using that term rather cynically because obviously there is nothing good about this) for them is that their bodies are innocent of chemotherapy, so they likely will have good responses to many drugs. Those of us who are initially treated with adjuvant chemotherapy and then go on to someday develop metastatic breast cancer are the subject of this study.
There indeed are many new effective treatments and a lot of hope about future targeted treatments. What we do need to remember, however, is that breast cancer can be a deadly disease, and we must keep the pressure on funders (meaning mostly the US Government) to continue to support research. Are you aware that our politically deadlocked Congress has allowed something called "sequestering" to automatically bring big cuts to all federal spending in early 2013? Unless they can get their act together and vote otherwise, all federal budgets will be slashed, including cancer research. Think about it.
Survival in Patients With Metastatic Recurrent Breast Cancer After Adjuvant Chemotherapy
Little Evidence of Improvement Over the Past 30 Years
Amye J. Tevaarwerk, MD1; Robert J. Gray, PhD2; Bryan P. Schneider, MD3; Mary Lou Smith, JD, MBA4; Lynne I.Wagner, PhD5; John H. Fetting, MD6; Nancy Davidson, MD7; Lori J. Goldstein, MD8; Kathy D. Miller, MD3; and Joseph A. Sparano, MD9
BACKGROUND: Population-based studies have shown improved survival for patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer over time, presumably because of the availability of new and more effective therapies. The objective of the current study was to determine whether survival improved for patients who developed distant recurrence of breast cancer after receiving adjuvant therapy.
METHODS: Adjuvant chemotherapy trials coordinated by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group that accrued patients between 1978 and 2002 were reviewed.
Survival after distant disease recurrence was estimated for progressive time periods, and adjusted for baseline covariates in a Cox proportional hazards model.
RESULTS: Of the 13,785 patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy in 11 trials, 3447 (25%) developed distant disease recurrence; the median survival after recurrence was 20 months (95% confidence interval, 19 months-21 months). Factors associated with inferior survival included a shorter distant recurrence-free interval (DRFI), estrogen receptor-negative and progesterone receptor-negative disease, the number of positive axillary lymph nodes present at the time of diagnosis, and black race (P <.0001 for all). When the time period of recurrence was added to the model, it was not found to be significantly associated with survival for the general population with disease recurrence. Survival improved over time only in those patients with hormone receptor-negative disease with a DRFI ! 3 years, both among the 5 most recent and the entire trial data sets (P ¼.01 and P ¼.05, respectively).
CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to reports from population-
based studies, no general improvement in survival was observed over the last 30 years for patients who developed distant disease recurrence after adjuvant chemotherapy after adjusting for DRFI. Improved survival for patients with hormone receptor-negative disease with a short DRFI suggests a benefit from trastuzumab. Cancer 2012;000:000-000. VC 2012 American Cancer Society. | <urn:uuid:4d4fab0e-3fdc-4eb5-be90-5a9bb230732c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bidmc.org/YourHealth/BIDMCInteractive/Blogs/LivingwithBreastCancer/2012/October/Litle%20Improvement%20after%20Thirty%20Years | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948634 | 885 | 1.734375 | 2 |
To link to this article, copy this persistent link:
(Apr 17, 2009) Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende of the Netherlands outlined his government's plan to "invest heavily in the Netherlands' future" in a statement made to the Dutch House of Representatives on March 25, 2009. (Press Release, Government of the Netherlands, Balkenende Presents Measures to Tackle Crisis (Mar. 26, 2009), available at http://www.government.nl/News/Press_releases_and_news_items/2009/March/B
alkenende_presents_measures_to_tackle_crisis.) The government has proposed a new stimulus package of €6 billion (about US$7.9 billion) (equivalent to about 1% of gross domestic product) for 2009 and 2010, to be spent over six years, and drawn up measures to restore public finances and implement needed reforms. Dutch provinces and municipalities are to have an additional €1.5 billion to invest. The spending plan, the government contends, will boost consumption and the economy by €50 billion in the short term. In November 2008, the government had launched an €6 billion stimulus plan for companies and pumped €13.75 billion into the financial system, in addition to purchasing the Dutch operations of Fortis Bank for €16.8 billion. (Id.; Dutch PM Unveils Six-Bln-Euro Stimulus Plan, EUBUSINESS, Mar. 25, 2009, available at http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1237995122.54/.)
Four key aspects of the plan are as follows.
- In the area of work and economic activity, the plan seeks to "ensure that as many people as possible keep their jobs," Balkenende stated, with part-time unemployment benefits to help achieve this aim. Retraining programs will be made available to assist those whose job loss is unavoidable to find new employment quickly. Top priority will be given by the government to preventing youth unemployment.
- To achieve a "clean and innovative economy," the stimulus plan includes investment in sustainability, energy security, renewable energy, and innovation. Among the proposals are schemes for scrapping old cars and for insulating homes.
- In the area of infrastructure and construction, the government will present spending plans for road and waterway maintenance and for improvement of school and hospital buildings or the construction of new ones. The Prime Minister stated that the government will also accelerate procedures to enable businesses and private individuals to undertake construction projects more quickly.
- The stimulus package also seeks to promote company liquidity. By abolishing the flight tax, for example, the government will seek to raise the liquidity of companies connected with Schiphol Airport. (Press Release, supra.)
Balkenende conceded that "all the measures for restoring the economy in the short term are very costly." (Id.) The stimulus package is in addition to the €80 billion already spent to restore confidence in the country's banking sector since September 2008; even though leaving the 2009 and 2010 spending plans in place will cost the additional €50 billion, he stated, "[t]hese decisions are necessary and defensible given the economic situation." (Press Release, supra; ROUNDUP: Dutch Announce Six-Billion-Euro Economic Stimulus Plan, SILVERSCORPIO, Mar. 25, 2009, available at http://silverscorpio.com/roundup-dutch-announce-6-billion-euro-economic-
stimulus-plan/.) To restore public finances, starting in 2011 the government plans to reduce the deficit by at least 0.5% of GDP a year, a commitment to be stipulated in an act of Parliament.
Finally, Balkenende addressed the need for reforms in the fields of health care, education, and pensions for the next four decades. The state pension age will be raised to 67 from 65, an effort will be made to control healthcare costs, and those who own a home worth €1 million (about US$1.3 million) or more will have to pay more tax on it. "The reforms are necessary and fair," Balkenende stated, "[b]ut we realise that they will have far-reaching effects. That is why they will be introduced gradually, beginning in 2011." (Press Release, supra; SILVERSCORPIO, supra.)
It has been pointed out in the press that there are no "substantial" reforms in the stimulus plan to regulate the financial sector, nor does the plan include any measures to improve supervisory functions of the central bank (De Nederlandsche Bank) or the Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the country's financial watchdog). The two institutions reportedly "have come under strong criticism in recent months from experts and the public alike for allegedly failing to prevent the problems in the financial sector." (SILVERSCORPIO, supra.)
- Author: Wendy Zeldin More by this author
- Topic: Government finance More on this topic
- Jurisdiction: Netherlands More about this jurisdiction
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Last updated: 04/17/2009 | <urn:uuid:b8a8be96-42e4-4ca0-bd53-9e0041928f80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp0_l205401227_text | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921245 | 1,161 | 2.03125 | 2 |
A bill to make Tasmania the first jurisdiction to legalise same-sex marriage appears headed for defeat in the state parliament's upper house, the Legislative Council.
Key undeclared MLCs in the 15-member chamber are coming out against the legislation ahead of a vote later today.
Among them are independent Hobart MLC Adriana Taylor, who said its constitutionality was unclear and that she was not persuaded by the decision of other countries to approve gay marriage.
"Because others are doing it is not a good enough reason for me," Ms Taylor said.
Another MLC, Liberal Vanessa Goodwin, said she had legal and constitutional concerns, although she did not oppose the bill on moral or religious grounds.
Legal objections are also expected to weigh heavily with a third undeclared MLC yet to speak — Jim Wilkinson.
Support for the change came from Devonport independent Mike Gaffney, who said he was unconcerned by the prospect of any constitutional challenge.
"Gays, when finding a partner, just want to ask the question: 'Will you marry me?' not 'Will you sign a deed of relationship?' "
Premier Lara Giddings made a last-ditch bid to urge the reform using Twitter. "Social norms change," she tweeted. "Once interracial marriages were condemned. Single mothers had babies forcibly adopted. People thought they were right.
"Today our Legislative Council have an opportunity to move our state forward and not be on the wrong side of history." | <urn:uuid:a2259cf0-bf96-4335-9b67-a210a13c4d0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.standard.net.au/story/362710/tasmanian-gay-marriage-bill-set-for-defeat/?cs=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979615 | 307 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Read more on "What is debt?"
averages for debt ratios
debt in the cost of capital is the debt used to fund the operations
and investments of the firm. Using this rationale, it should include
all interest bearing debt, short term as well as long term. Non-interest
bearing liabilities such as accounts payable, supplier credit and
accrued items should be incorporated into working capital and should
not be counted as debt.
To the extent that firms fund their operations
with off-balance sheet debt, you should try to incorporate these
borrowings as well into debt. While this may be difficult to do
when firms are deceitful, you can, at the minimum, bring the present
value of operating lease commitments into your debt.
One final comment, Analysts are often
tempted to include more items in debt, assuming that this is the
conservative thing to do. In reality, defining debt much more broadly
will increase the debt ratio and reduce the cost of capital. This,
in turn, will increase value and not decrease it. | <urn:uuid:7c1b418d-9c2d-4000-9437-ea63a42069a8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/valquestions/a12.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952164 | 223 | 2.734375 | 3 |
View alphabetical lists of all artists currently featured on the site.
Select the initial of the artist's name that you are looking for. Scroll down the list until you find the name, and select it for more information about the artist and his or her work.
Artists are organised by their most commonly-used names. This is usually but not always their surname e.g. Leonardo da Vinci is under L, Van Gogh is under V and Raphael is under R.
John Ballantyne (Scottish, 1815 - 1897)
Born in Kelso in the Scottish Borders, Ballantyne trained at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh under William Allan and Thomas Duncan, before studying in London, Paris and Rome. When he returned to Edinburgh in 1839, he established himself as a portrait and history painter. In 1848 he was appointed Headmaster of the Trustees' Academy. Ballantyne moved to London in 1863. He is best known for his seventeen canvases showing contemporary artists at work in their studios, painted in the early 1860s. Other paintings from this series are in the National Portrait Gallery, London and Aberdeen City Art Gallery. | <urn:uuid:82c1b347-5324-4bfc-be93-8e911698641c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/B/19855/artist_name/John%20Ballantyne | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969434 | 238 | 2.046875 | 2 |
A while ago I wondered how long MySpace could hang on to its visitors. The demographics of those visitors aren’t particularly clear – it may be that a larger proportion of MySpace visitors are adults who really should get out more – but we know at least that many are kids, and as I wrote then, kids are notoriously fickle. This is not a news flash, or at least, by now it shouldn’t be.
Now WaPo suggests that some teens are so over MySpace:
Teen Web sensation MySpace became so big so fast, News Corp. spent $580 million last year to buy it. Then Google Inc. struck a $900 million deal, primarily to advertise with it. But now Jackie Birnbaum and her fellow English classmates at Falls Church High School say they’re over MySpace.
“I think it’s definitely going down — a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into Facebook now,” said Birnbaum, a junior who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.
and in a perhaps more compelling comment:
From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she’s gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day — decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends’ pages — to deleting the whole thing.
“I’ve grown out of it,” Kim said. “I thought it was kind of pointless.”
From the mouths of babes. (Adult MySpace fans, take note). This is good news for the Facebooks of the world; for the next big thing – for a while, anyway (and hopefully – for the sellers anyway – until the liquidity event). One classroom does not a trend make, of course, and one should be wary about drawing any conclusions, but still – isn’t this exactly the kind of behaviour we expect from kids? It also occurs to me that the recent hubbub over MySpace’s demographics – research, questioned at the time, suggested an older demographic than one might have supposed – might have been an early indication that young visitors to the site are starting to get their kicks elsewhere.
If this is in fact what’s happening, it should not come as a surprise – we learned all of these lessons in Web 1.0, when the adjective of the day was “stickiness”. And of course, we should have expected this kind of teen mob behaviour even then – the sudden wild popularity of a trend, followed soon after by its disappearance into oblivion, is one of Web 1.0′s lingering memories, to the chagrin of many. I haven’t heard the word “stickiness” for years now – maybe it merits a return to the Web 2.0 vocabulary. For the life of me, I can’t think of a single site in that class – feel free to chime in if I’m missing the obvious – that is still around from Web 1.0, or that even survived more than 2 or 3 years (even 1 year?) after the high-water mark of Web 1.0.
But in the modern mythology of Web 2.0, News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace for $580 million last year is still being touted by many as an exemplar of genius, and as a financial benchmark for the next big deal (and the bar will no doubt remain at least there until that next big deal – Google and YouTube, perhaps – ratchets it upward). Perhaps that will turn out to be the sane way to look at it; perhaps MySpace will be successful, and its acquisition will be seen as an act of genius. Or perhaps it should already be seen that way; Google’s $900 million deal with News Corp. over MySpace was seen by many as validation of the acquisition.
But of course that $900 million (which is only a “guaranteed minimum”) is “based on Fox achieving certain traffic and other commitments” and the money isn’t in the bank yet – it’s “expected to be made over the period beginning in the first quarter of 2007 and ending in the second quarter of 2010″. And as this WaPo piece suggests, it’s still early days – if kids are becoming less interested in MySpace, I have to think the demographic they leave behind – 35-55 year old shut-ins – will be much less appealing to Google and to advertisers.
Update: Cynthia Brumfield looks at the issue and asks whether hot web sites are like TV shows. The point she’s making seems to be two-fold. First, even temporary hot-ness can be profitable; in TV for example, it can produce scads of ad revenue (though not necessarily initially for the producer). (Obviously, ditto in fashion, and in just about everything else that is subject to mass market taste and preference). So, to paraphrase, be assured that even if MySpace is a passing fad there is still money to be made. I suspect that you won’t find too many people who would disagree with that, but for myself the issue is how much money, and at what price it ought to be bought and sold when BigWhatever gets interested. And I suspect that valuations – from Skype through to YouTube, and inevitably onto Facebook – have been and will be predicated on a vision of the audience being much more durable than it may well turn out to be (But on the bright side, at least no one has to worry about predicting and discounting far in the future cash flows.)
Second, like TV producers do, the trick for the News Corps of the world “is figuring out where they go from here. They can’t just sit back and expect to rake in the dough, hoping that their hit sites stay hot. They have to move forward and leverage their hits to create the next big thing.” That’s an interesting idea, although I suspect that the process of ‘innovating’ (if that’s what it is) from a “Cheers” to a “Frasier” is considerably easier than innovating from a Web 1.0 hit to a 2.0 hit, or from a Web 2.0 hit to a 2.1 hit. After all, the notion of taking a popular actor (to use the Kelsey Grammar example) or story line (to use the Dick Wolf example), from one hit show to create another seems pretty darned obvious (very TV 1.0), and is more akin to merely knowing that if people dig peach-scented shampoo, they might also dig apple-scented shampoo. It’s not that hard to do if you already know how to make shampoo. And with the exception of a few serial entrepreneurs (who often move serially through quite unrelated ventures) I can’t think of one successful effort by anyone to parlay one hit web phenom into another – at least not on a notable scale. I may be wrong here, but if I’m not, I think it’s because the second kind of innovation (the web) is much harder than the first (related TV shows), and also because fundamentally the web audience – or at least this web audience – is just not portable in that way. For example, when Flickr breathes its last breath, where will its successor come from – the bowels of Yahoo!, or the basement of a 20-something who has very creatively – perhaps even Darwinianly from among the 50 other people who have also been trying to improve upon Flickr since it was released – happened upon ‘the next great thing’? As my friend Mathew notes, at least with social networking sites, success is very difficult to manufacture.
And of course, that’s presumably why the News Corps of the world don’t generally innovate or even create on the web – they buy others who do. | <urn:uuid:403a10de-dc20-4cb6-a7f2-add2509f78a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.robhyndman.com/2006/10/29/more-questions-about-myspaces-prospects/ | 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 | 0.965453 | 1,700 | 1.703125 | 2 |
This is a short document that outlines the various elements and variables that should be considered when planning your Riak cluster. Your use case and environment variables will obviously be specific to what you're building, but this document should set you on the right path to planning and launching the suitable Riak cluster.
RAM should be viewed as the most important resource when sizing your Riak cluster. Aside from helping you keep more data closer to your users, memory will also be required when running complex MapReduce queries, and caching data to provide low latency request times.
Bitcask and Memory Requirements
Your choice of local storage backend for Riak directly impacts your RAM needs. Though Riak has pluggable backend storage, it ships with Bitcask by default, and this is the recommended production backend. Why? Because it's purpose built for:
- low latency request times
- high throughput
- the ability to handle data sets much larger than RAM w/o degradation
Bitcask's one major requirement, however, is that it must keep the entire “keydir” in memory. The “keydir” is a hash table that maps each concatenated bucket+key name in a Bitcask (“a Bitcask” is the name for each file contained within each Bitcask backend ) to a fixed-size structure giving the file, offset, and size of the most recently written entry for that bucket+key on disk.
When you calculate that your RAM needs will exceed your hardware resources, (In other words, if you can't afford the RAM to enable you to use Bitcask.), we recommend you use LevelDB.
Check out Bitcask Capacity Planning for more details on designing a bitcask backed cluster.
If RAM requirements for Bitcask are prohibitive, Basho recommends use of the LevelDB backend. While LevelDB doesn't require a large amount of RAM to operate, supplying it with the maximum amount of memory available will lead to higher performance.
Now that you have an idea of how much RAM you'll need, it's time to think about disk space. Disk space needs are much easier to calculate and essentially boil down to this simple equation:
For example with:
- 50,000,000 objects
- an average object size of two kilobytes (2,048 bytes)
- the default n_val of 3
then you would need just over approximately 286 GBs of disk space in the entire cluster to accommodate your data.
(Here at Basho, we believe that databases should be durable out of the box. When we built Riak, we did so in a way that you could write to disk while keeping response times below your users' expectations. So this calculation assumes you'll be keeping the entire data set on disk.)
Many of the considerations taken when configuring a machine to serve a database can be applied to configuring a node for Riak as well. Mounting disks with noatime and having separate disks for your OS and Riak data lead to much better performance. See System Planning for more information.
Read/write ratios, as well as the the distribution of key access, should influence the configuration and design of your cluster. If your use case is write heavy you will need less RAM for caching, in addition if only a certain portion of keys is accessed regularly, such as a pareto distribution, you won't need as much RAM available to cache those keys' values.
Number of Nodes
The number of nodes (i.e. physical servers) in your Riak Cluster depends
on the number of times data is Replicated across the cluster.
To ensure that the cluster is always available to respond to read and write requests, Basho recommends a “sane default” of N=3 replicas. This requirement can be met with a three or four node cluster (as implemented in The Riak Fast Track). However, for production deployments we recommend using no fewer than 5 nodes, as node failures in smaller clusters can compromise the fault-tolerance of the system. Additionally, in clusters smaller than 5 nodes, a high percentage of the nodes (75-100% of them) will need to respond to each request, putting undue load on the cluster that may degrade performance. For more details on this recommendation, see this blog post.
Ring Size/Number of Partitions
Ring size is the number of partitions that make up your Riak Cluster. This is a number that is configured before you cluster is started, and is set in your app.config file under the ring_creation_size parameter.
The default number of partitions in a Riak cluster is 64. This works for smaller clusters, but if you plan to grow your cluster past 5 nodes it is recommended you consider a larger ring size. Ring sizes must be a power of 2. The minimum number of partitions recommended per node is 10, and you can determine the number of partitions that will be allocated per node by dividing the number of partitions by the number of nodes. At the moment, the ring size you choose will be the same for the life of the cluster, so taking growth into consideration is extremely important.
For most moderate-sized Riak clusters (8-16 nodes) 128, 256, and 512 partitions are excellent options that will allow you to incrementally grow (or shrink) your cluster. If you're unsure about the best number of partitions to use, consult the Riak Mailing List for some suggestions.
Riak is built to run in a clustered environment and while it will compensate for network partitions they cause increased load on the system. In addition, running in a virtualized environment that lacks low latency IO access can drastically decrease performance. Before putting your Riak cluster in production is recommended you gain a full understanding of your environment's behavior so you know how your cluster performs under load for an extended period of time. Doing so will help you size your cluster for future growth and lead to optimal performance.
Basho recommends using Basho Bench for benchmarking the performance of your cluster.
Riak uses Erlang's built in distribution capabilities to provide reliable access to data. A Riak cluster can be deployed in many different network topologies, but it is recommended to have as little latency between nodes as possible. High latency leads to sub-optimal performance. It is not recommended to deploy a single Riak cluster across two data centers. If you need this capability Basho offers an inter-datacenter replication option that is built to keep multiple Riak clusters in sync across several geographically diverse deployments.
In general the biggest bottleneck for Riak will be the amount of IO available to it, especially in the case of write-heavy work loads. Riak functions much like any other database and the design of your disk access should take this into account. Because Riak is clustered and your data is stored on multiple physical nodes, you can consider forgoing a tradition RAID setup for redundancy and focus on providing the least latency possible using SATA Drives or SSDs, for example. | <urn:uuid:7f3b803f-0e84-4c70-84f0-b467abf8bb06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://docs.basho.com/riak/1.2.1/references/appendices/Cluster-Capacity-Planning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913132 | 1,449 | 1.515625 | 2 |
(Houston) – A prescription drug take-back event will be held later this month in Houston.
People will be able to drop off unused or unwanted prescription medications Saturday, September 29 from 10 AM to 2 PM at the Houston Walmart. Officials with the Houston Police Department say no signatures are required and no questions are asked – simply drop the pharmaceuticals in the collection boxes and drive off. The drugs dropped off will be taken to a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) facility in Illinois for incineration.
Since the inception of these Drug Take-Back events during October 2010, nationwide collections have totaled nearly 500 tons (almost one million pounds) of pharmaceuticals.
The Drug Take-Back event is sponsored by the Houston Police Department, the Big Piney River Stream Team Watershed Association, and the Missouri Rural Water Association.
According to Houston Police Chief Jim McNiell, the event has three purposes: to help the public get rid of unwanted prescription medications; to remove the potential of drugs getting in the hands of children or thieves; and to remove the drugs from rivers and waterways, helping cut back on pollution.
National research indicates that 46 million Americans consume water contaminated with prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Missouri was one of 24 states where water samples from underground aquifers were tested and found to contain pharmaceuticals.
Research as yet is inconclusive regarding the health effects to humans that these pharmaceuticals in our drinking water supplies will have. Some scientists fear that these drugs could be the reason for high occurrences of infertility, early puberty, and breast cancer in the U.S. population, among other medical issues. Other scientists fear the creation of a “super” drug-resistant strain of bacteria. Fish and other aquatic life have been born blind and deaf, and some have extra appendages or altered reproductive organs due to tainted water.
Officials with the Big Piney River Stream Team Watershed Association urge people to not pollute waters by flushing unwanted medication down toilets.
Besides the Houston Walmart location, other Drug Take-Back event locations for September 29 in Southern Missouri include Reynolds County Sheriff’s Office at Centerville, Howell County Sheriff’s Office at West Plains, and the Doniphan Police Department. | <urn:uuid:92090bcd-d62c-49c3-8c39-61aa23b7be23> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ozarkareanetwork.com/localnews/?p=6949 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942023 | 454 | 1.804688 | 2 |
This map shows the intricately detailed topography of Eastern Fresno County. Elevation is represented by color and relief shading to give the map a 3-dimensional look. The extent of this map divides Fresno County along the eastern edge of the City of Fresno. The Western Fresno County map has overlap to include the entire city.
Map Dimensions: 36" x 36"
Map Scale: 1:150,000 (1" = about 2 miles) | <urn:uuid:ac01cec9-4607-469b-820c-a7e032a40946> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.terravistamaps.com/home/node/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9125 | 90 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email email@example.com
From: Philip Guenther (guenthergmail.com)
Date: Thu Aug 05 2010 - 21:40:09 CDT
On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Matthew Szudzik
> On Thu, Aug 05, 2010 at 11:33:23AM -0700, Philip Guenther wrote:
>> experience by using LC_ALL=C. Oops, never mind, OpenBSD hasn't
>> actually implemented "plain ASCII only" for years.
> The fact that OpenBSD doesn't implement "plain ASCII only" doesn't mean
> that it shouldn't. ;)
Uh huh, because supporting the needs of developers and users is wrong.
> And by the way, the Turing quote is from the paper in which he first
> proposed the idea of a mechanical computer. He argued that it is
> sufficient for a computer to have a finite character set where each
> character can be distinguished at a glance.
You're saying that a side-comment in the original Turing machine
thought experiment is an argument against character sets with similar | <urn:uuid:12f2bb5c-1196-42db-8b91-85aa50c7821c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/openbsd/2010-08/0234.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92168 | 266 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Reports & Studies
Webinars and Events
The Environmental Assistance Center (EAC) was created in 2011 to help DENR regulated entities find answers to their permitting and compliance questions. The EAC also offers free and confidential environmental sustainability assistance, including water and energy efficiency, recycling and composting, and education on how to prevent waste and pollution.
The Environmental Stewardship Initiative assists industries, businesses, institutions and government agencies in reducing environmental impacts and recognizes those that maintain a strong commitment to sustainability. Free training, technical assistance and networking are available to members.
To go the ESI home page click here.
DEAO's unique WRP partnership engages volunteer engineers and scientists to help your organization cut energy use, reduce waste, conserve water and save money.
Recycling conserves resources, prevents pollution and creates jobs, strengthening North Carolina's economy. Please do your part to recycle at home, at work and on-the-go! | <urn:uuid:6a5553d5-6624-41b8-b30b-f5d29c3cb47c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/deao/home | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921717 | 193 | 1.929688 | 2 |
A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time.
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are pulled apart or come together. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by "divergent tectonic plates" pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by "convergent tectonic plates" coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust (called "non-hotspot intraplate volcanism"), such as in the African Rift Valley, the Wells Gray-Clearwater Volcanic Field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America and the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes.
Volcanoes can be caused by "mantle plumes". These so-called "hotspots" , for example at Hawaii, can occur far from plate boundaries. Hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons. | <urn:uuid:d710acfe-fcbc-44be-bb72-c07388626190> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://amazing-nature.blogspot.com/2008/06/when-volcano-gets-angry.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922678 | 283 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Mon Jan 28, 2013, 01:05 PM
Taverner (51,882 posts)
Another way to save the Democratic Party: Join the Democratic Socialists!
Last edited Mon Jan 28, 2013, 01:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (2)
Yes, the Democratic party does have a socialist faction. It isn't recognized by the party itself, but that's not necessary.
The Democratic Socialists of America is a Democratic party group, produces a magazine called "Democratic LEFT" and works within the party to push Socialist initiatives.
Many other socialist organizations (SPUSA, Socialist Alliance, etc) do not recognize the DSA as truly socialist, but then again, I doubt they recognize each other.
The DSA is part of the Socialist International, which binds many socialist parties worldwide (UK Labour Party, Socialist Party of France, etc.)
The DSA is for a social democracy, or democratic socialism - whatever you want to call it.
We're trying to build the left back in the Democratic Party! | <urn:uuid:84991dcd-38a1-4f12-b2e5-640bae46833a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.conservativeunderground.com/forum505/showthread.php?54539-Another-way-to-save-the-Democratic-Party-Join-the-Democratic-Socialists!&mode=hybrid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900674 | 215 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Head of government Nuri al-Maliki
Death penalty retentionist
Population 30.7 million
Life expectancy 67.8 years
Under-5 mortality (m/f) 43/38 per 1,000
Adult literacy 74.1 per cent
Government forces and armed political groups continued to commit gross human rights abuses, although the overall level of violence was lower than in previous years. Thousands of civilians were killed or seriously injured in suicide and other bomb attacks by armed political groups. The government and the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) continued to hold thousands of uncharged detainees on security grounds, some after several years, but released thousands of others. Torture and other illtreatment of detainees by Iraqi forces, including prison guards, remained rife and were carried out with impunity. At least 1,100 prisoners were reported to be under sentence of death, many following unfair trials. The government disclosed no information about executions, but at least 120 were reported and it appeared that some were carried out in secret. At least 1.5 million people were still internally displaced within Iraq and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were refugees abroad. New human rights violations were reported in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region where conditions generally were much better than in the rest of Iraq.
The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the governments of Iraq and the USA took effect in January, leading US troops to withdraw from Iraqi towns by 30 June and start releasing or handing over detainees to Iraqi custody. The USA also transferred control of Baghdad's Green Zone to the Iraqi government.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's State of Law Coalition won control of 10 out of 14 governorates, including Baghdad, in provincial elections held in late January in all areas except Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces.
The Council of Representatives (parliament) was beset by divisions, agreeing a new election law only in November. Parliamentary elections were scheduled for March 2010.
Despite the country's oil wealth, millions of Iraqis faced deepening poverty amid high unemployment and widespread government corruption. A senior government official told the UN in October that 5.6 million Iraqis were living below the poverty line, said to be a 35 per cent increase compared with the period before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Abuses by armed groups
Armed political groups committed gross human rights abuses, including kidnapping, torture and murder. Suicide bombings and other attacks targeted public places, apparently aiming to inflict civilian casualties. Many attacks were mounted by al-Qa'ida in Iraq and by Sunni armed groups. Shi'a militia also committed abuses, including kidnapping, torture and murder. The victims included members of ethnic and religious minorities, journalists, women, gay men and other civilians.
- At least 25 boys and men were killed in the first quarter of the year in Baghdad, apparently because they were or were perceived to be gay, after religious leaders in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'a district of al-Sadr City urged their followers to eradicate homosexuality. The perpetrators were believed to be armed Shi'a militia or members of the victims' own families or tribes. Many of the victims were kidnapped and tortured before they were murdered. Some had their bodies mutilated.
- On 12 July, five Christian churches in Baghdad were bombed, killing four civilians and injuring at least 21 others.
- On 13 August, at least 20 people were killed in a double suicide bombing in the town of Sinjar, a stronghold of followers of the Yazidi religion.
- On 25 October, two suicide bombings killed at least 155 people in central Baghdad and injured more than 700. A truck bomb was detonated near the Ministries of Justice and Municipalities; minutes later a car bomb exploded outside the Baghdad Governorate building.
On 1 January, the MNF was holding over 15,000 mostly uncharged detainees at Camp Cropper and other prisons. This total was reduced to 6,466 by early December in accordance with the SOFA, which required that the MNF either release detainees or transfer them to Iraqi custody. Some 7,499 detainees were released after a committee comprising representatives of several Iraqi ministries reviewed their cases and they had been interrogated by security officials. At least 1,441 others, including some foreign nationals, were issued with arrest warrants or detention orders by Iraqi judicial authorities and transferred to Iraqi detention.
In September, the large MNF-run Camp Bucca prison near Um Qasr in southern Iraq was closed. Its inmates were released, transferred to Iraqi custody or moved to the two remaining MNF prisons – Camp Cropper, where most of the detained former high ranking Ba'ath party members remained held; and Camp Taji, north of Baghdad.
- On 8 April, a court in Baghdad's al-Karkh district ruled that there was insufficient evidence against Kadhum Ridha al-Sarraj and ordered his release. However, he was not freed by the MNF until 7 October. He had been arrested on 15 September 2008 at Erbil international airport, handed to the MNF and detained without charge at Camp Cropper, apparently because his medical research led him to be suspected of bombmaking.
At least 391 people were sentenced to death, bringing the total under sentence of death to at least 1,100, including at least 900 people who had exhausted all legal remedies. At least 120 executions were carried out but the true figure may have been higher as the authorities disclosed little information on executions and some were reported to have been carried out secretly.
Most death sentences were imposed after unfair trials for involvement in armed attacks, murder and other violent acts. Defendants commonly complained that "confessions" accepted as evidence against them had been obtained under torture when they were interrogated while held incommunicado in pretrial detention, and that they could not choose their own defence lawyers. In some cases, these "confessions" were broadcast on television.
- On 10 June, 18 men and one woman were hanged at al-Kadhimiya prison, Baghdad. The executions were not officially announced.
Trials of former officials
The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT) continued its prosecution of former senior officials and associates of former President Saddam Hussain, executed on 30 December 2006 for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other offences. The court, whose independence and impartiality have been tainted by political interference, imposed several death sentences. In late October, more than 50 members of parliament called for the SICT to be detached from the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister and placed under the sole authority of the Supreme Judicial Council. They also called for the SICT's jurisdiction to be extended to cover crimes committed by civilian and military officials after 1 May 2003.
- Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan and Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hassan, both half-brothers of former President Saddam Hussain and respectively once Interior Minister and Head of Intelligence, were sentenced to death on 11 March for crimes against humanity. Former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq 'Aziz was sentenced to 15 years in prison, as was 'Ali Hassan al- Majid, who had already been sentenced to death in three other cases. The four were among eight people tried in connection with the killing in 1992 of 42 Baghdad merchants who had been accused of racketeering when the country was subject to UN imposed economic sanctions. Three other accused received prison sentences ranging from six years to life; one man was acquitted.
Human rights violations by Iraqi security forces
Iraqi security forces committed gross human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, torture and other ill-treatment, and arbitrary detentions, and did so largely with impunity. Detainees were held in heavily overcrowded prisons and detention centres, where they were abused by interrogators and prison guards. Torture methods reported included beatings with cables and hosepipes, suspension by the limbs for long periods, the application of electric shocks to the genitals and other sensitive areas, breaking of limbs, removal of toenails with pliers, and piercing the body with drills. Some detainees were alleged to have been raped.
- In June, a human rights body affiliated to al-Diwaniya Governorate in southern Iraq accused the security forces of torturing detainees to extract "confessions". Interior Ministry investigators subsequently reported that 10 out of the 170 prisoners at al-Diwaniya prison had bruising that could have been caused by torture or other ill-treatment. Video film apparently taken by a prison guard showed a prisoner lying with his hands tied behind his back, being whipped by guards and subjected to electric shocks until he lost consciousness. One guard is heard to say, "He is done."
Human rights violations by US forces
US forces committed serious human rights violations, including unlawful killings of civilians. US military tribunals examined several court cases involving soldiers accused of crimes committed in Iraq in previous years.
- On 1 January, US troops shot and critically wounded Hadil 'Emad, an editor for the TV station Biladi, when she was near a checkpoint in Karrada, Baghdad. The US military said that US troops shot a woman who "acted suspiciously and failed to respond to warnings."
- On 16 September, US troops patrolling central Falluja shot dead Ahmed Latif, said to be mentally ill, apparently after he insulted and threw a shoe at them. The US authorities said he was shot because US troops suspected a grenade attack.
- On 21 May, Steven Dale Green, a former US soldier, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in the USA for the rape and killing in Iraq of Abeer al-Janabi, a 14-year-old girl, and the murders of her mother, father and six-year-old sister in March 2006. Three other former soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment in the same case.
Violence against women
Women continued to face high levels of discrimination and violence. Some were attacked in the street by armed men or received death threats from men who accused them of not adhering to strict Islamic moral codes. In May, inmates of the women's prison in al-Kadhimiya told members of the parliament's human rights committee that they had been raped in the prison or while detained elsewhere. The government provided little protection against societal and family violence.
- Safa 'Abd al-Amir al-Khafaji, the head teacher of a girls' school in Baghdad's al-Ghadir district, was shot and seriously wounded by unidentified gunmen on 12 November 2009, soon after she announced that she would contest the elections as a candidate for the Iraqi Communist Party.
Refugees and internally displaced people
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and other countries, and up to 1.5 million others were internally displaced inside Iraq, although around 200,000 were reported to have returned to their homes in 2009, many because they perceived that the security situation had improved. However, they faced great challenges: many found that their homes had been destroyed or taken over by other people and had difficulty obtaining adequate food, water and energy supplies.
Following months of rising tension, Iraqi security forces forcibly entered and took control of Camp Ashraf in Diyala Governorate on 28 and 29 July. The camp, which houses some 3,400 members or supporters of the People's Mojahedeen Organization of Iran, an Iranian opposition group, had been under US military control since 2003 prior to the SOFA. Video footage showed Iraqi security forces deliberately driving military vehicles into crowds of protesting camp residents. The security forces also used live ammunition, apparently killing at least nine camp residents, and detained 36 others who they tortured. The 36 were taken to al-Khalis police station in Diyala, where they mounted a hunger strike, and were then moved to Baghdad despite repeated judicial orders for their release. They were freed and allowed to return to Camp Ashraf in October after an international campaign. However, the government was reported to be insisting that the camp residents move to another location in southern Iraq, despite fears that they would be less safe there, and to have set 15 December as the date by which they should move or be relocated by force. By the end of the year, camp residents had still not moved.
Presidential and parliamentary elections for the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) were held on 25 July. Masoud Barzani was re-elected as KRG President. The Kurdistan List, which includes the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), retained an overall majority in the Kurdistan parliament. The main opposition Change List won 25 of the 111 seats.
In April, KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told visiting Amnesty International delegates that he had personally instructed the Asayish, the security police, and other law enforcement bodies to comply with human rights safeguards recommended by the organization and was taking steps to make the Asayish fully accountable. He detailed measures being taken to combat so-called honour crimes and other violence against women. Despite this and the continuing improvement in human rights in the KRG, cases of arbitrary arrest and detention were reported, as were allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, notably by the Parastin and Zanyari, respectively the security arms of the KDP and the PUK. Activists in the Change List Movement and independent journalists were subject to threats, intimidation and, in some cases, violence for criticizing the KRG or senior officials.
At least nine detainees arrested previously continued to be held without charge or trial.
- Walid Yunis Ahmed, a member of the Turkoman minority arrested in February 2000, spent his ninth year in detention without trial. He is reported to have been tortured after arrest, and in 2009 was held in solitary confinement in prison in Erbil.
Despite the introduction of a more liberal press law in 2008, journalists working for the independent media were harassed with what appeared to be politically motivated criminal lawsuits. Some were physically assaulted by men in plain clothes believed to be connected to the Parastin and Zanyari.
- In late October, Nabaz Goran, editor of the independent Jihan magazine, was attacked by three unidentified men outside the newspaper office in Erbil.
Violence against women
High levels of violence against women continued to be reported, including cases of women being killed by their relatives.
- In October, the body of Jian Ali Abdel Qader was discovered next to her family house in the village of Qadafari, Sulaimaniya. She had previously reported being subjected to family violence and sought refuge in a shelter in Sulaimaniya in July. However, she had returned to the family home after assurances for her safety had been given. Relatives, including her father, were detained in connection with her murder.
Amnesty International visit/reports
Amnesty International delegates visited the Kurdistan region of Iraq in April/May.Trapped by violence: Women in Iraq (4 March 2009)
Hope and fear: Human rights in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (14 April 2009)
A thousand people face the death penalty in Iraq (1 September 2009)
Iraq: Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review (1 September 2009) | <urn:uuid:6717ad63-d150-4a95-b09a-9f39894879db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/annual-report-iraq-2010?page=show | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985048 | 3,110 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Quiz: Which are true?
A. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
B. Americans have less free time every year.
C. Americans are being left with inferior service jobs because manufacturing jobs are being shipped overseas.
If you answered "false" to all three, you are correct.
So reports a delightfully cheery new book, "Myths of Rich and Poor: Why We're Better Off Than We Think," by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, vice president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank and a business reporter for the Dallas Morning News, respectively.
If you thought the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer, say the authors, here's why: the gap between the richest fifth of Americans and the poorest fifth has widened over 20 years. What the pessimists don't add, however, is that most people in the poorest fifth don't stay there. Only 5% in the poorest fifth in 1975 were still there in 1991, while 30% of the poorest Americans in 1975 were among the richest Americans by 1991. Nor did progress take 16 years: nearly a quarter of the people in the poorest fifth in 1975 moved to a higher income bracket in just a single year.
Of persons in the second-poorest fifth in 1975, by 1991 70% had moved to a higher bracket and 25% had made it all the way to the richest fifth.
In other words, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer only if the poor stay poor. 95% of them don't.
If you thought Americans are working harder now, say the authors, think again. An average American's annual work hours fell almost in half over the past 125 years, from 3,070 hours to 1,570 hours. In 1996, we averaged 30.2 hours of work a week, down from 33.5 in 1973, 35.3 in 1960 and 36.6 in 1950.
Thanks in part to labor-saving devices and a tendency to eat in restaurants more often than we once did, we even have it easier now once we get home. In 1950, we averaged 4 hours and 12 minutes a day on housework, but today we spend 3 hours and 30 minutes.
One reason we may think we are working harder is that Americans apparently value leisure more. In 1986, 33% of Americans considered leisure important, but by 1997 57% did.
We're also working harder at leisure. Over the past 25 years, American spending on leisure has climbed from 5% of consumer spending to 8%. Participation in golf, softball, bowling and other participatory sports is up, as is attendance at pro sports games. Per capita attendance at symphonies and operas doubled from 1970-94, while Americans tripled the frequency of their pleasure trips from one in 1970 to three in 1995. And while Americans watch an average of 3,300 hours of television a year (compared to 2,153 in 1970), the number of books sold in America hit an all-time record of 2.3 billion in 1997.
Cox and Alm also take on the allegation that Americans are becoming a nation of hamburger-flippers. Not so, they say. Although the fast food industry has grown swiftly in recent decades, employing 9,723 Americans in 1948 and almost 3 million by 1997, only 30% of America's fast food workers are aged 20 or older. For most, working in fast food is an introduction to work or a part-time job during school, not a lifetime employment. McDonalds alone is estimated to have provided the first job for 20% of the U.S. workforce.
Citing the 1997 Economic Report of the President, the authors say 70% of the new jobs created from 1993-96 paid better-than-average wages. Many of these are service jobs but, they say, America's demand for services is a result of prosperity and technological advancement, not a national decline. Furthermore, service jobs aren't necessarily inferior to manufacturing jobs. Although manufacturing jobs paid an average of 20% more than service jobs in 1980, today the gap stands at 1%. If retail jobs (many of which are part time) are excluded, service jobs are actually an average of 5% more lucrative than manufacturing jobs.
In a year so far characterized by stories about impeachment, bombings
and Y2K, Cox and Alm have provided a much-needed public service. With these
figures and many others on the trade deficit (not as big a problem as you
might think), the wages of women and minorities (growing in relation to
men and non-Hispanic whites), America's technological competitiveness (unmatched
by any nation), our standard of living (skyrocketing) and much more, they've
not only delivered a fascinating collection of well-documented information
about how much Americans have to be grateful for, but they've provided a
happy, if temporary, respite from news stories about scandal and tragedy.
Amy Ridenour is president of The National Center for Public Policy Research. Comments may be sent to [email protected] | <urn:uuid:3a1f0868-c74c-4961-ad2e-39587a39a84b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://Project21@nationalcenter.org/NPA238.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957992 | 1,042 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Karma's recent post along with his excellent photos of the new road markings in West Hartford got me wasting a perfectly good Monday evening scouring the intrawebz looking for some information on that pattern that I remember seeing sometime before. Rather than bury the results of my research in the comments section of his post, I thought this information would better serve the community as a separate post.
I've never seen such a thing actually implemented in person until they appeared in West Hartford, but the new markings aren't just a result of someone in the WH government smoking crack. They're called "Sharrows" (which I'm guessing is the result of some fan of mashing words together got when they looked at "shared" and "arrows") and they have become implemented in just the manner that we've seen in West Hartford in an increasing number of bike savvy cities: San Francisco, Portland, and Boulder, for example.
The brief history is that this particular design and use was started in Denver in the mid-90s. Generally, they were ignored elsewhere, until a 2004 study released by the city of San Francisco recommended sharrows be implemented to mark shared-use roads. Caltrans (the CA state DOT) adopted the markings that same year and use has expanded. In 2007, the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices unanimously voted to endorse the marking in federal manuals of traffic control devices.
The two main purposes of these markings are: 1) to alert motorized traffic that the road is to be shared and 2) to correctly position cyclists outside of the "door zone" of parked cars. This also serves to correct the bad habit of bikes traveling on the wrong side of the road, as well as encourage not-so-experienced cyclists that it's OK to take the lane. We'd probably see fewer a-hole drivers screaming at us to get out of the road, too. It's important to point out that in general, they aren't preferred to a dedicated bike lane, but rather recommended in areas where the streets are too narrow or dangerous to have such a lane.
The only problems I see with the markings in West Hartford is the previous designation of the side stripes as being a "bike lane," and the absolute lack of communication about these markings. We've all seen how cars are often in that side lane, and we've complained about it a lot on this blog. I think someone somewhere made a mistake at calling those things on the sides of Boulevard "bike lanes" and it was decided to make these routes "shared roads," and the sharrows were eventually laid down. The sharrows are even defined in the West Hartford Master Bike Plan. (see page 19). However, the fact remains that there has been NO COMMUNICATION by the town or state government about these markings and how to use them. When some of the most experienced cyclists I know in the region seem confused by these markings, you would think that some form of public announcement, or press release, or some mention in the newspaper would be in order. At the MINIMUM, a mention on the town's website. Nothing. When SF implemented them, they put PSA signs on city buses as part of their educational campaign.
There's some great reading on the sharrow movement, and I'll throw a list of links down in order of usefulness:
- Christian Science Monitor 2005 article (interviews advocates and critics)
- Bike Pittsburgh Shared Lane Markings FAQ (brief & informative)
- Bike Commute Tips Blog
- SF's 2004 Shared Lane Markings Study (very interesting) - .pdf
- SF-MTA presentation on Sharrows (Sept. 2008) - .pdf
- Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams (mmmm, beer)
- Proposal for shared markings in Ithaca, NY (my college town! ITH represent!) | <urn:uuid:ecdaae0a-87c9-4629-b8c7-b6ffc4b13752> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beatbikeblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/sharrows-explained.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972273 | 787 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Note: I've written this instructible in the first person, because it is far from an authoritative set of instructions, but merely an account of how we went about building a trebuchet, compiled to help others create their own.
Step 1: Theory
The trebuchet consists of a base and a swinging arm. On one end of the arm (the much longer end, to gain mechanical advantage) is a sling in which the projectile to be fired is loaded. On the other end is a heavy counterweight.
The sling is a very clever edition to the trebuchet. It acts as an extention to the arm, without the added bulk of extra timber. When ready to fire, the sling is attached at both ends to the arm, but as the arm swings around, one end of the sling detaches (when it detaches is adjustable, to account for differently weighted missiles) and opens out to allow the projectile to be thrown free.
Most of the "Insensible" is made of recycled wood, with a steel crossbar (the axle for the arm), and concrete counterweight - 120kg. | <urn:uuid:a3387835-8a01-428c-b629-9510879a5951> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Insensible-a-counterweight-trebuchet/CIEGVAEH1YOISY5 | 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 | 0.964371 | 232 | 3.328125 | 3 |
Oct. 21, 2008 Children who are diagnosed with cancer could benefit from better diagnosis and treatment in the future, thanks to a new research project involving clinicians and scientists at The University of Nottingham.
Experts at the University are part of the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group which has just secured £2.5 million pounds from Cancer Research UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. They will use the money over the next five years to develop and test new ways of scanning childhood tumours in depth to give doctors a more detailed diagnosis. It will also give them a better indication of how to treat the tumour and whether it will respond to new drugs.
The grant is part of a nationwide investment of £50m to establish four large cancer imaging centres and five cancer imaging research programmes. The cancer imaging initiative will help the development and introduction of the latest imaging technologies to help advances in basic and clinical cancer research.
Cancer is the most common cause of death from disease in children with most cases involving solid tumours. Around 1,500 children are diagnosed every year in the UK. At present conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the usual technique for scanning of patients but it provides limited, mainly anatomical, information. This research project will look at how more accurate ways of analysing tumours, using Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and Diffusion/Perfusion MRI of tumour tissue, can be better and more widely used by doctors treating children with cancer. Diffusion MRI measures the molecular mobility of water in tissue, while perfusion MRI measures the rate at which blood is delivered to tissue. It gives a much clearer picture of the nature and composition of the tumour in a non-invasive way. Treatment can then be more accurately tailored.
The Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group, funded by Cancer Research UK, runs clinical trials for paediatric cancer at specialist centres across the UK. It has formed a Functional Imaging Group to develop the use of the techniques in treating children with brain tumours. This significant new grant means the group’s research can be extended to examine other Magnetic Resonance methods and their use on tumours in the rest of the body. The information will be disseminated and evaluated through the group’s established clinical trials network in the UK. This will make sure as many children as possible benefit from the latest MRI technology.
Professor of Paediatric Neuro-Oncology, Richard Grundy, from Nottingham University Medical School, said: “We all delighted that we have won this grant. Fortunately cancer in children is relatively uncommon compared to adults, reinforcing the need to develop and test the role of new techniques or treatments as a collaborative effort. This important grant from Cancer Research UK and the EPSRC allows us to investigate advanced Magnetic Resonance imaging to improve our understanding and treatment of childhood cancer. This funding and recognition of NUH should also help our aspirations locally to develop an imaging centre dedicated for children as part of the new Nottingham Children’s Hospital development.”
Professor Herbie Newell, Director of Translational Research at Cancer Research UK, said: “Imaging is an invaluable tool in the fight against cancer. Being able to see what’s happening inside cells is vitally important in understanding how treatments are currently working and the best ways to improve them.”
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Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead. | <urn:uuid:6706aa68-fa04-425c-9999-2201f249a7b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081017082017.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931017 | 736 | 3 | 3 |
The Cape Breton Miners’ Museum in Glace Bay pays tribute to the contribution of the region’s coal miner and coal mining industry in the advance of civilization. The museum features an exhibit area on the geological development of Cape Breton’s coal field. The Miners’ Village which is located next to the museum allows you to step back in time and visit a company store and a home from the period 1850–1900.
Take an underground guided tour of the Ocean Deeps Colliery, a coal mine beneath the museum. If you are visiting during the summer months, enjoy a “Men of the Deeps” concert (call 1 week in advance).
Dine at our quaint and beautiful Miners’ Village Restaurant where you will be served with Cape Breton hospitality! After touring our museum visit our gift shop where you will find local Cape Breton-made arts and crafts.
Facilities / Services
- Bus tours
- Gift shop
- Wheelchair accessible
- Limited accessibility
Date details/Hours of operation
Jun 1–Oct 26 daily (incl holidays) 10am–6pm (Tues to 7pm); O/S Mon–Fri 9am–4pm, closed holidays.
Details: Admission charged; group & family rates. | <urn:uuid:da8c2160-42b6-4563-bfc2-ec082a47c0cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.novascotia.com/en/home/thingstoseeanddo/listingdetails.print.aspx/cape-breton-miners'-museum/1423?%3Fnsatt=bW9kZT0zJmtleT0mY2F0PWhpc3RvcmljLG11c2V1bXMmcmVnPUNhcGUgQnJldG9uJmNvbW09Jm1vbj0md2M9MCZwaWM9MCZyc3Q9MCZidD0wJmZyPTAmc29ydD1OYW1lJmRpcj0wJnBnPTEmcHM9MjAmc2NwPTMyOTc_ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901562 | 266 | 1.773438 | 2 |
So, archaea are apparently the topic of the week. While I wrote here about the pathogenic potential of some species of these organisms, a new essay in Nature and a new review in Science focus more on their evolution (and the evolution of the other two domains of life) than any health application.
In the essay mentioned, Norman Pace discusses the eukaryote/prokaryote dichotomy. Currently the archaea are classified as prokaryotes since they, like bacteria, lack a true nucleus. However, molecular sequence analysis has shown that the archaea and eukaryotes are actually more closely related to each other than either group is to bacteria (see figure, from Pace’s Nature essay). As such, nomenclature that places the bacteria and archaea together into a group is misleading.
(Continued at Aetiology) | <urn:uuid:6850a01b-8473-45c2-9d09-38299775caef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/05/getting-it-wron.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934069 | 177 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Family: Trochilidae, Hummingbirds view all from this family
Description ADULT MALE Has mainly metallic green plumage with blue throat and clearly demarcated white undertail coverts. Bill is long, mainly red, but dark-tipped. ADULT FEMALE Has greenish upperparts and dull gray underparts; note the grayish supercilium behind the eye. JUVENILE Similar to adult female. Male acquires adult characters in winter.
Dimensions Length: 3 1/4-4" (8-10 cm)
Habitat Mainly Mexican species that is a summer visitor (mainly Apr-Aug) to arid woodland in southeast Arizona; occasionally winters too.
Observation Tips Best looked for at garden feeding stations within its range. Learn the call to improve your chances of observation.
Range California, Plains, Southwest, Texas
Voice Call is a chattering chtt-chtt-chtt.
Discussion Colorful hummingbird, males of which are particularly stunning. Sometimes detected in dense foliage by hearing its chattering calls. Forked tail is often obvious in perched birds. Sexes are dissimilar. | <urn:uuid:8a2d75d8-fc9e-4fc7-8bf7-48f8c6e13e96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?shapeID=966&curGroupID=1&lgfromWhere=&viewType=&curPageNum=8 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926882 | 240 | 2.625 | 3 |