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Education, heath care essential to stemming tideYangon, 01 December 2004 – Today, on World AIDS Day, UNICEF noted the growing threat that HIV/AIDS poses to children and youth in Myanmar and across the globe.
UNICEF also noted that with over 96,000 women in Myanmar currently living with HIV/AIDS, more young children are at risk of contracting the disease following birth.
“This is a worldwide tragedy,” said UNICEF Representative in Myanmar Carroll Long. “Today there are over 2.2 million children throughout the world living with HIV/AIDS, and over half a million children have died from HIV/AIDS this year alone.”
“The East Asia region has seen the fastest increase in the number of girls and women living with HIV/AIDS anywhere in the world since 2002,” she added.
With over 333,000 people in Myanmar infected with HIV/AIDS, children also face a growing risk of being orphaned by the disease.
“While the challenge before us is daunting, progress is being made in some areas,” noted Carroll Long. “Today in Myanmar, students across the country are learning how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and other threats to their wellbeing, and more health services are being extended to those in need.”
“Still, much more remains to be done. We need to join together to fight discrimination against people infected with HIV/AIDS. As long as people fear being shunned by their neighbours, family members and friends, they will be afraid to get tested themselves, to seek out treatment, and to help others in need.”
In Myanmar, UNICEF is working with local community members, health care providers and the Myanmar Red Cross to help young people learn how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. UNICEF also supports HIV/AIDS education in primary and secondary schools throughout Myanmar, and is working with local partners to extend this education to out-of-school children and youth.
UNICEF continues to work with national and local-level health officials to help prevent the mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS, and is working with INGOs and the Myanmar Nurses Association to provide comprehensive home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishes that children have the right to health and health treatment. Myanmar ratified the CRC in 1991.
For further information please contact:
Jason Rush, Communication Officer, UNICEF in Myanmar
Phone: (95 1) 212 086; Fax: (95 1) 212 063 ; Email: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:657c8fc1-656b-40c4-bb78-aad6ca460ddd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unicef.org/myanmar/1447.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965044 | 553 | 3.109375 | 3 |
EU Parliament Elections and EPAs: not just business as usual
The EU-ACP Cotonou Partnership Agreement (hereafter Cotonou) was signed in 2000 for a period of 20 years, with revisions allowed every five years. Such a regular update is needed to keep the Agreement relevant in a rapidly changing international and ACP-EU context. Cotonou is now quickly approaching its second revision, due to take place in 2010. Both the ACP and the EU started preparations in the first half of 2008. The European Commission established an inter-service Task Force, with discussions between EU member states on the European draft negotiating mandate scheduled for the last quarter of 2008. The ACP have also started their own internal reflections on the revision and asked a group of ambassadors to lead this process with the ACP Secretariat.
The October 2008 ACP Heads of State meeting in Accra has also put the revision of Cotonou on the agenda. In advance of the 2010 revision, both the ACP and the EU have to notify each other of the issues for the agenda before the end of February 2009. The formal ACP-EU negotiations on the revision will take place between March 2009 and the beginning of 2010.
This is the reason why the new European Parliament can make the difference. The EU civil society cohalition Partnership for a Change called the EU candidates to make the difference. CSOs believe that the new Cotonou agreement should:
- Foster a more reciprocal and sustained political dialogue (Article 8) and strengthen governance provisions to better respect the spirit of the partnership.
- Better reflect trends towards increased regionalisation and pan-African development. Revision should seek to ensure that the roles ascribed to these new bodies are adjusted to fit those of the existing ACP-EU institutions
- Strengthen national ACP Parliaments to make the Cotonou processes more democratic, boosting their capacity - and the capacity of other key institutions - to help them play an active role in the dialogue, programming, implementation, monitoring, review and control of the Agreement.
- Establish a mechanism to strengthen monitoring, review, and enforcement in Cotonou. The mechanism might take the form of an ombudsman type of service (as in EU institutions) or an independent inspection panel (along the lines of those in the World Bank or the African Development Bank).
- Exploit the opportunities on policy coherence provided by the Agreement which is currently hardly used. It provides for the ACP to “initiate” discussions and “request” consultation on matters of concern to the ACP Group or its member states relating to “the coherence of Community policies and their impact on the implementation of the Agreement.”
- Apply principles of the Paris Agenda in practice (ownership, alignment, etc) and follow-up closely on how financial allocations, particularly in the facilities funded from the intra-ACP envelope, are handled. | <urn:uuid:8d5d27b9-f919-412d-934d-eda39b57744c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.africa-eu.org/In-depth/EU-Parliament-Elections-and-EPAs-not-just-business-as-usual | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933307 | 597 | 1.867188 | 2 |
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Barrier Falls is a waterfall on a tributary of the Doris Creek nestled amongst mountains such as Mount Wallarra (1103m), Mount Pallin (1221m), Mount Colboyd (1011m) and Morong Hill (1203m) in east New South Wales. Barrier Falls is about 110km west of Sydney (show me). Barrier Falls is at an altitude of about 683m above sea level.
We estimate that Barrier Falls is between 150m and 260m high. This estimate is based on analysis of the topographic profile around the waterfall and may not be an accurate figure for the total fall of water seen if viewing the falls.
The nearest populated place is the town of Oberon which is 41km away with a population of around 2,500 (show me a map with Barrier Falls and Oberon).
The nearest sealed road to Barrier Falls is the Edith Road (22.4km away).
Do you know what facilities are available at Barrier Falls? Contribute your knowledge by clicking here.
Are you a keen bird watcher? Have you been bird watching at Barrier Falls? What birds have you seen at Barrier Falls? Contribute your knowledge by clicking here. As a Bonzle sub-project, we're trying to build Australia's most comprehensive bird location atlas. A big thankyou to all that have contributed and continue to contribute sightings.
If you're interested in Waterfalls then you may also be interested in Rivers and Creeks, Springs, Lakes and Dams and Gorges | <urn:uuid:d20f7437-c240-4d09-b8fc-b9fe30369491> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&p=254129&ss=1400&s=butterfly%20gorge&pg=2&wnb=19926261&cmd=sp&c=1&x=150.0649&y=-34.02794&w=40000&mpsec=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930192 | 340 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Click here to download the full lesson with attached handouts. Green Book Travels
The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, known simply as the Green Book was a travel guide that listed lodgings, tailors, beauty parlors, restaurants, gas station and other businesses that welcomed African American clients during the Jim Crow era.
Author, Victor H. Green was a Harlem, New York, postal worker and community leader. The book became so popular that Green created a publishing office in Harlem and hired a staff to keep up with demand. By the 1940’s 15,000 copies were produced annually, which were sold to both the white marketplace and black-owned businesses. In 1947 Green established a Vacation Reservation Service to book reservations at places listed in the book. His travel bureau operated at offices at 200. W. 135th Street in Harlem, New York.
In his introduction, Green wrote: “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal rights and privileges in the United States.”
After passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Green ceased publication.
South Carolina Standards
3-5.6 Summarize the key events and effects of the civil rights movement in South Carolina, including the desegregation of schools (Briggs v. Elliott) and other public facilities and the acceptance of African Americans’ right to vote.
8-7.4 Explain the factors that influenced the economic opportunities of African American South Carolinians during the latter twentieth century, including racial discrimination, the Briggs v. Elliott case, the integration of public facilities and the civil rights movement, agricultural decline, and statewide educational improvement.
- Students will investigate traveling patterns of African Americans during the civil rights era.
- Students will create a travel itinerary through the United States for an African American family using the Green Book as a guide.
- Students will explain the effects of racial discrimination on African Americans as they traveled throughout the United States during the civil rights era.
Time Required Recommended Grade Level
3 class periods Elementary/Middle/High
- Digital images of The Negro Traveler’s Green Book
- Sample Itinerary
- Green Book Google Map
- Map of the United States (attached)
- Elementary Question Guide (attached)
- Crayons, pencils or markers for elementary students
- Organize students into pairs. Arrange one class period for students to work in the computer lab.
- Bookmark the Green Book page for younger students.
- Print copies of the United States map, Itinerary, and Question Guide as needed.
- Begin by displaying the front page of the Green Book from the Digital Collections site.
- Ask students to connect to the image on the front cover by asking the following questions.
- Why do you think this image was created?
- When was it made?
- What questions can you develop to help you learn more about this book?
- Next give students ten minutes to explore the book on their own. As they search they will need to jot down questions they have and note interesting information.
- Ask students: Why was it necessary to have a guide like this for Blacks traveling throughout the United States? Which states seemed to have more accommodating locations for African Americans? Why do you think this was the case?
- Discuss questions above and student generated questions with class.
- Next explain to students that they will need to create an itinerary for a Black family traveling by car from Chicago, Illinois to Biloxi, Mississippi. Students will need to use the Green Book, a blank map of the United States, the itinerary sheet and guidelines included in this lesson, and the Green Book Google Map. (You can substitute your own destination or starting point.)
- Allow one full class period to plan the itinerary. Students will need to keep track of their notes and questions for discussion afterward.
- Have students trade their itineraries with a different group. Each group will critique itineraries for practicality, ask questions and discuss the idea of traveling for African Americans during the civil rights era.
- Groups will collect their own itineraries and use it to draw a route map (using the blank copy of the United States map) that outlines their travels.
- After itineraries have been completed, reconvene to discuss the planning process with students. Ask: What complications did you encounter while planning your trip?
- Explain why doing something simple like traveling to visit a family member during the civil rights era may have been a complex process for most African Americans.
- Check out a copy of the book Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey at your school or local library. Read this book aloud to your students.
- Ask students the following questions: How did the Green Book help Ruth and her family? Allow time for student responses.
- Pass out question sheet and U.S. map to students.
- Assist students in using the Green Book Google Map to locate the places listed in the Green Book.
- Have students write one paragraph that explains why the Green Book was an important book for African Americans during the civil rights era.
Digital Collections Information
This lesson plan is based on images and/or documents derived from the Green Book Collection available from the University of South Carolina’s Digital Collections Library. | <urn:uuid:bf93d5ba-ca49-4aff-9c80-3a003a6a2d64> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://library.sc.edu/blogs/academy/2011/08/30/green-book-travels-3-5-6/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93938 | 1,112 | 3.640625 | 4 |
iPad Kit for Students
Head back to school with total confidence that your iPad is indeed a serious study machine by bringing along the right apps, accessories, and case.
Buying an Apple iPad for school? You're not alone. Plenty of students are ditching their notebooks and binders of printed PDFs for Apple's groundbreaking tablet.
If you recently purchased an iPad and plan to use it for serious schoolwork this year for the first time, you'll want to make sure it's loaded with all the apps you need to get through the semester: apps for taking notes, reading books and PDFs, organizing files, and staying in touch with your friends and family.
In addition to apps, you might also want to pick up an accessory or two, like a cover or carrying case, to protect your device. Remember, the iPad ain't cheap, so don't skimp when it comes to protecting it from scratches, cracks, and other bruises.
While this article points to some great apps you'll want to snag from the App Store, don't neglect the apps that come preinstalled on the iPad as well. Make use of iCloud, for instance, to sync your calendar, contacts, and music between devices, or to just back up your data .
Living the university lifestyle usually means money's tight, so when possible, I recommend the best student-friendly apps that we've tested at PCMag, and when they're paid apps, free alternatives as well.
While many of the suggestions on this list point toward academic essentials, we've also included plenty of extras that we think college students will want for their leisure time, too.
Here's everything you need to kit out your iPad for school. | <urn:uuid:90fa8d79-9d7a-4ef5-a6e5-e94be6ddef09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story/301076/ipad-kit-for-students | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967443 | 349 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Discovery Channel's Mega-engineering discusses a proposal to place a dome over Houston if climate change threats fully materialized. The Houston dome would even be more economical even without addressing climate change but as a more efficient way to keep residents confortable than using air conditioning for cars and buildings. A detailed cost and efficiency analysis might show that such structures and a retrofit of many cities could be economically and environmentally justified.
1. Removes or greatly reduce the need or cost for individual hurricane and weather insurance
2. Shifts the costs for air conditioning and temperature control of buildings
3. Reduces/shifts environmental damage from structures under the dome to the dome
If we rethink and retrofit how we climate control cities, it could turn out to make more sense than climate control for all the buildings inside the city.
For such dome cities all vehicles under the dome should be zero emission and electrically powered.
For farming/agriculture in a climate change scenario where such domed cities are common there should be vertical farming (farming in high rise buildings).
These city dome proposals are an extension of the work of famed architect Buckminister Fuller and of the Eden project in the UK where domes were actually built.
One mile wide Buckminster Fuller proposed dome
The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in the United Kingdom, including the world's largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world.
Sir Robert McAlpine and Alfred McAlpine constructed the Eden Project and MERO designed and built the biomes. The project took 2½ years to construct and opened to the public on 17 March 2001. It is made of steel and thermoplastic
The Rainforest Biome, which is the largest greenhouse in the world, covers 1.559 hectares (3.9 acres) and measures 180 feet (55 m) high, 328 feet (100 m) wide and 656 feet (200 m) long. It is used for tropical plants, such as fruiting banana trees, coffee, rubber and giant bamboo, and is kept at a tropical temperature.
The Mediterranean Biome covers 0.654 hectares (1.6 acres) and measures 115 feet (35 m) high, 213 feet (65 m) wide and 443 feet (135 m) long. It houses familiar warm temperate and arid plants such as olives and grape vines and various sculptures.
The biomes are constructed from a tubular steel space-frame (hex-tri-hex) with mostly hexagonal external cladding panels made from the thermoplastic ETFE. Glass was avoided due to its weight and potential dangers. The cladding panels themselves are created from several layers of thin UV-transparent ETFE film, which are sealed around their perimeter and inflated to create a large cushion.
Eden Project has received £130 million of funding from various sources.
How stuff works describes the construction of the Eden Project
Eden's designers decided not to use these traditional materials in their greenhouses -- they went with glazed ethyl tetra fluoro ethylene (ETFE) foil instead. ETFE foil is a perfect covering for a greenhouse because it is strong, transparent and lightweight. A piece of ETFE weighs less than 1 percent of a piece of glass with the same volume. It is also a better insulator than glass, and it is much more resistant to the weathering effects of sunlight
More technical details:
- The dome can be made of Texlon ETFE which can protect the city from 180 MPH winds, water and fire.
- Houston dome area would be over 21 Million square feet.
- Houston Dome's broadest panels will be 15 feet across. It will take 147,000 panels to cover the city of Houston
Monolithic domes at nextbigfuture.
Bolonkin air supported city dome for missile protection and other uses. | <urn:uuid:73df290d-5fec-4c17-91d9-6410f9dff8f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/06/city-scale-climate-engineering.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93173 | 797 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Santa Maria Sun / News
The following articles were printed from Santa Maria Sun [santamariasun.com] - Volume 13, Issue 22
Keeping it localSee how these small farms are changing the way we support local agriculture
BY KRISTINA SEWELL
The grand white house, originally built in 1927, stands among imposing industrial buildings on Blosser Road. With a scattering of trees and a small vegetable stand in the driveway, the house is a throwback to small-town Santa Maria.
The property belongs to Jerry Mahoney, a third-generation farmer and owner of Blosser Urban Garden TKP Farms. Unlike other farms in the area, Blosser Urban Garden remains a relatively small operation, farming about five acres.
“My family always wanted to have a small organic farm where we can work together,” Mahoney said.
Despite the farm’s diminutive size, Mahoney and his wife Alejandra have been doing big things for the community since they started serving the public via Community Supported Agriculture (CSA).
Community Supported Agriculture is the alternative form of farming and food distribution sweeping the country. After signing up with a CSA farm, members pay a fee to receive a box of fresh vegetables and fruits every week throughout the growing season.
In addition to providing support for local farmers and healthy food for families, CSAs link the producer and the consumer through a mutual interest: consume locally what is produced locally.
According to the Rodale Institute, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit group that supports organic farming research, CSAs have slowly taken root in America over the last 18 years.
Originally a grassroots movement cultivated after World War I, CSAs now total more than 4,000 across the United States. According to Local Harvest, the largest online directory for American CSAs, tens of thousands of people joined a CSA last year alone.
Mahoney and Alejandra first started paying attention to CSAs six or seven years ago. After reading about it in Trade Magazine, consulting fellow farmers, and attending an organic CSA conference, Mahoney decided Blosser Urban Gardens would thrive as a CSA. Blosser Urban Gardens has been a certified CSA for about three years, and certified organic since 1996, using only organic compost and fertilizer.
Growing many of the vegetables on the property surrounding his home, Mahoney nurtures and cultivates 10 to 12 seasonal fruits and vegetables.
“I can plan my growing and how much I grow around the CSA,” Mahoney said.
That means more efficient farming and less food waste. If produce goes unsold, Mahoney puts it back into the earth by tossing it in his compost pile.
Delivery day is Monday, so every Thursday Mahoney figures out how many deliveries he can expect that week and what produce they have enough of. On Friday, a list goes out to customers revealing the week’s produce. Saturday through Monday, Mahoney, his son, and some volunteers prepare the CSA bags for that week by harvesting, washing, and boxing the produce.
A recent bag featured carrots, onions, strawberries, cilantro, kale, cabbage, raspberries, cherry tomatoes, and yellow cabbage.
Mahoney delivers to about 57 customers each week or every other week. He also grows herbs such as cilantro and basil to throw in. Items that aren’t grown at Blosser Urban Garden are bought from other local farms, like D and G Innovative, Bonipak, and Nojoqui Farms.
Having come full circle from big operation to small scale, Mahoney has yet to regret his decision to become a certified CSA farmer. He said that signing up for a CSA requires an adventurous attitude. Every week, he introduces customers to less-known but delicious vegetables such as bok choy, and pole beans.
“We get to educate people in a safe environment where they can learn new things,” Mahoney said. “If you love vegetables, want to eat local, and like the surprise, then signing up for a CSA is a good choice.”
As another part of the educational aspect, the farm has a blog maintained by Alejandra with recipes that include certain vegetables.
For Mahoney, the other upside to running a small CSA operation is that it keeps him in touch with the public.
“It’s like having an extended family or community,” he said.
CSAs reap numerous benefits for both the farmer and consumer: They help support local business, finance farm operations, and allow farmers to get to know the people for whom they grow. According to Local Harvest, consumers are exposed to new vegetables and ways of cooking, organic food, and learning more about how produce is grown.
The idea of a CSA is rather simple, yet its impact has been profound; in some places, the demand exceeds the supply of a CSA farm.
An article in the July 2012 issue of Sunset magazine revealed that some newer variations of CSAs have now grown to include farms selling preserves, coffee, meat, dairy, fruit, and even pasta to members.
Mahoney said he’d eventually like to see Blosser Urban Garden expand its operation to produce more fruit and maybe some preserves. Mahoney realizes that the CSA concept might not appeal to everyone, so he does allow customers to buy produce from his stand or choose their own produce for the week.
“It’s a responsibility. We work hard for our produce,” Mahoney said. ”We take a lot of pride in what we do.”
Staff Writer Kristina Sewell can be contacted at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Nipomo pipeline survives injunction attempt The pursuit of happyness - An immigrant from Mexico, now a successful business owner, talks about raising an Americanized family Cougars & Mustangs The grand scheme of things - State Parks again mulls purchasing the La Grande Tract--but will the county stand for it? Rolling blacktop - SLO Ballerz train to take on Berkeley Revolution Steve Moss lives on Lucia Mar re-funds some cut programs | <urn:uuid:dc09aeee-c718-47ff-a90d-365002b6c28b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.santamariasun.com/news/8610/keeping-it-local/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950784 | 1,278 | 2.0625 | 2 |
GROTON -- A day of MLK Day workshops was held at Lawrence Academy on Monday, Jan. 21, coinciding with the national holiday commemorating the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I have a dream..."
Martin Luther King would be in his 80s now. He was assassinated more than four decades ago. But his image remains strong and his mission lives on. He preached equality, marched with supporters for the cause, famously dreamed of a country that would not be divided by racial strife and protested peacefully to get his message across.
In recent years, the holiday set aside to honor King has become an opportunity to promote human understanding through community service. That spirit framed the local event's theme: "Redefining Social Activism in an Independent School Environment."
Established about five years ago, Lawrence Academy's annual MLK Day event took a different path this year, with workshops facilitated by Lawrence Academy students and alumni of the private prep school.
The kickoff speaker was Taylor Sele, class of 2002.
Workshops went on all day, with some offered twice.
Topics and titles included microagression, cyber bullying, homelessness in Massachusetts and a couple in which actions spoke louder than words: dance and Sidy-African drumming experience.
Two movies were also shown, with repeat screenings before and after lunch. "The Help" was presented by student Janaijah Lloyd and alumni faculty member Kacey
Workshop presenters included Kip Bordeloni, Zaneta Pinkney and Yen Lee -- alumnus whose graduation years ranged from 1996 to 2008 -- and several current LA students.
In a workshop called "MLK Unplugged," Bordeloni, LA class of 1996, spoke of a King as a "militant" man who espoused peaceful means to just ends and eschewed wealth and celebrity. "He was an average guy," he said.
In 1965, King won the Nobel Peace Prize, which came with a hefty chunk of cash, but instead of pocketing his windfall, he "gave away" the money and lived modestly, Bordeloni said.
Bordeloni called him a "cool cat," a "dude" of epic proportions who did not court fame for its own sake but cherished common blessings, who would want it said of him that he was a dad who loved his kids and cared deeply about issues such as equality, civil rights and social decency. Those things were what the famed activist was all about, he said. "But he was more militant than you might think."
King was no saint, Bordeloni continued. Like other iconic figures from history, Abraham Lincoln, for example, he was human and thus flawed, with good and bad in his personal makeup. But King was on a mission, make no mistake. Lincoln has been called "the great emancipator," but in his view, that title should be reassigned, or at least shared. "He was an emancipator," Bordeloni said of King.
But establishing this holiday in King's name was not easy, he said. It took many years. First proposed in 1968, it was reintroduced as a bill in Congress annually.
In 1971, presented with three million signatures calling for the creation of Martin Luther King Day, the Illinois legislature acted in 1973, followed by Massachusetts in 1974. Some states held out, but the bill finally passed at the federal level in 1983, making MLK Day a national holiday.
Seguing to his own experiences and accomplishments as an activist, Bordeloni, whose "day job" is in federal government and who heads a nonprofit called The Assi Group, recalled standing up and speaking out for equal rights and social justice as a Lawrence Academy student. "We made a stand, we did what we thought was righteous," he said.
Back home in Chicago, Bordeloni won an MLK activist award from the state of Illinois, he said. "But accolades mean nothing when people are suffering."
Tapping into the shocked aftermath of a recent school shooting in which 20 children and seven adults were killed, he said there were other tragedies, statistics just as dire but less known. Two years ago, for example, "60 Chicago public school students were shot dead," he said. Although not in a single incident, they, too, were innocent victims of violence, "but who thinks twice about that?"
Using the holiday as a catalyst, he challenged his young, attentive audience to care about issues and take action. "Find your voice, your passion, get into what you want to be active about," he said. "Have a great heart!" he concluded. "That's what Martin Luther King was all about."
Speaking with Trustee Greta Donahue and Assistant Head of School Rob Moore after his presentation, Bordeloni said it was "bittersweet" to be back. Much has changed since he left and his old dorm is gone, he said. "But the school is growing...that's cool."
"Thanks for making it real," Donahue said.
Later, in a library classroom, Zaneta Pinkney, LA class of 2007, cheerfully tackled a similar task, trying to "make it real" by sparking discussion among a mixed-grade, mostly male group of students and a few faculty members.
"This is a workshop ... I want you guys to get involved," she began.
At first greeted by silence, by the end of Pinkney's presentation, at least a dozen people in the room had posed questions and shared their views. It may not have been the lively round table discussion she'd hoped for, but her talk was engaging. She made good points and a lot of sense. Her topic was developing leadership skills while in high school.
Suggested strategies to that end included framing political discussions to avoid confrontation. Don't use "code words" aimed at denouncing the person you are talking to or belittling an opposing point of view. Instead, know your topic, learn about candidates. It's okay to ask where information touted as fact came from, she said. Rumor? Fox News? CNN? And consider whether your own source is reliable or had a skewed slant.
From a less angst-fraught angle, she suggested ways to get along and get involved on campus. For starters, take time early on to introduce yourself to teachers and administrators. Otherwise, when you go to them, say for help with something, they might not have a clue who you are, she said. And you won't know them, either.
More than once, an outreach effort like that had a serendipitous outcome for her.
In one instance, she was asked to interview a new headmaster, the first African-American to hold the post. Despite the generational gap, they found common ground and became friends, she said.
Another instance was even more surprising.
Describing herself as "half German, half African-American," by parentage, some of her ancestors were slaves, Pinkney said. When she extended herself to a teacher, Mr. Johnson, and shared her family history, he did some research and learned that members of his family had once owned members of hers in the days of slavery. "That's so crazy!" she said, conveying bemused amazement rather than resentment. A revelation to both teacher and student, the historic link helped them connect, she said.
Although the endgame is building leadership skills, getting to know other students has benefits in the here and now, she said, even if they don't all become friends. She suggested reaching outside your social comfort zone, from occasionally choosing a different table at lunch to chatting with new people when opportunities come up.
Similar strategies apply to advocating for courses or extra-curricular activities that interest you but the school doesn't offer. She offered practical tips, with helpful input from her audience.
A student named Connor, for example, said the curriculum offers a music theory course but nothing for musicians who want hands-on experience with their chosen instruments and to earn academic credit in the process, as is the case in other artistic areas.
A female student said her passion was horseback riding, but the sport, which involves travel, left no time for anything else outside school.
Pinkney said no matter how much time an activity or interest demands, whether it's music or horseback riding, students can find ways to open other windows of opportunity. Plan a specific time frame -- say, an hour a week -- in which to participate in something else, she said.
As for Connor's dilemma, it might not be resolved overnight, but he could begin by framing a concrete plan of action: approaching the music department, his class advisor or administrators with an idea in hand, and maybe a few fellow musicians in tow.
Inroads made now could create new opportunities later. In the meantime, he could make connections, try to get something going on his own. If not for credit then for personal enrichment and perhaps to benefit future student musicians. Once established, an organized group of on-campus musicians would have a voice, creating opportunities to pursue their passion. It's a start, she said. That's what leaders do.
A 2011 graduate of Boston College now working as a paralegal in Boston, Pinkney plans to go to law school. As a student at LA, she helped form a group aimed at giving minority students a voice, promoting diversity on a campus that she found resistant to change. It was called ABLE, which stood for Association for Black and Latino Enablement. At first eyed suspiciously, ABLE was "controversial," she said, eyed as a bunch of separatists, but she said the group's goal was just the opposite and they made efforts to become part of things by reaching out. Eventually, they were successful.
Today, the next-generation group has broadened its focus and changed its name, in the process zeroing in on what celebrating diversity is all about. The school even hired a diversity coordinator, which was a top item on ABLE's wish list.
Now, it's called Umoja, a Swahili word that means unity. | <urn:uuid:a273c5ed-ebeb-4dd7-ac62-0794febc2c59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nashobapublishing.com/ci_22497566/mlk-day-workshops-aimed-at-redefining-social-activism?source=most_viewed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986221 | 2,095 | 1.914063 | 2 |
By Phillip Martin
Not far off the coast of Malta, the coast guard has intercepted a leaky boat carrying dozens of Africans, and it’s sinking fast. Donning gloves, burly Maltese sailors pull men and women from their flooded dinghy to a hanging ladder.
Thousands of other dark-skinned immigrants have made similar attempts to reach continental Europe through Maltese waters, said Major Wallace Camilleri of Malta’s Maritime Squadron:
“It’s not relevant for me how many do cross over,” he said. “How many do make it. Sometimes I ask myself ‘how many do not make it?’”
These illegal migrants are among the lucky ones. A short time later the coast guard enters the port of Valletta — Malta’s capital – carrying the latest group of accidental tourists to come to this island nation.
“We wanted to reach Italy but they told us you cannot go in Italy,” said Ahmed from Somalia, one of the men among them. “You have to come to Malta.”
And once here, illegal African migrants like Ahmed often languish in detention for up to 18 months. That’s how long it can take to determine their status, and whether they’ll be permitted to go on to continental Europe, sent home or remain here.
Dr. Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici is Malta’s Justice Minister. He said his nation of 400,000 –the smallest of the European Union’s 27 countries — is trying to balance humanitarian obligations while protecting Malta from a tidal wave of economic migrants.
Bonnici said African migrants understand all too well the advantages of reaching continental Europe.
“Those advantages are naturally abused by those who are not entitled to that status,” Bonnici said. “So these persons realize that coming to Malta means that they will be put into these detention centers and they’ll have to wait. And if they are not entitled they will remain in detention for 18 months.”
And Ta’ Kandja is where many of the illegal immigrants find themselves within hours of setting foot in Malta: a detention center surrounded by barbed-wire.
“We are at the solidarity block within the Ta’ Kandja detention center,” Bonnici said. 96 people can be accommodated in each detention center.”
Lt. Brian Gatt, a six-foot seven army officer, supervises this prison. We enter a holding area with dozens of bunk beds. Among the detainees here is Obaswan Osagakenney, who said he was fleeing Muslim-Christian fighting in Central Nigeria:
I ask him: “Would you have come if you knew you were going to be here for 18 months?”
He first looks at the floor and then calmly says: “For me I believe it would be better for me because I was running for my life and if I had a place where my life would be secure for the next 18-months, I think it is better”
But because of its strict immigration rules, the European Union rarely grants humanitarian refugee status to Nigerians. So just what will happen to Osagakenny — and when – is unclear.
The same uncertain fate awaits an asylum seeker from Eritrea, who — in spite of the EU’s view of his country as a major violator of human rights — was surprised to learn that he could be held at Ta’ Kandja for as long as a year and a half.
“Eight months or 18 months? We came to get freedom,” he said. “I surprised if they say 18 months, what can we do. We can’t do anything.”
Maltese officials hope that the country’s strict detention policy will discourage other African migrants from making the hazardous journey from Libya across the Mediterranean.
But critics, like Father Joseph Cassar of Jesuit Refugee Service of Malta, call the policy unfair.
“The conditions in our detention centers really leave much to be desired, and as far as I’m concerned do not meet the minimal standards established by the European Union,” Cassar said. “And we’re talking here about administrative detention, so it’s not the result of a judicial process, but administrative detention for illegal entry into Malta’s territory, which last for as long as the refugee procedure determination takes. In other words, if it takes eight months for your application to be examined and determined than you’re going to be eight months in detention.”
What’s worse, Father Cassar says the policy is racist. He argues that in the 1990s, thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats fled the Balkan Wars and found safe haven In Malta – a benefit that he says is often denied dark-skinned Africans.
“I would say skin color in this particular circumstance has a lot to do with it,” Cassar said. “Because it makes people in a homogenous society, as the Maltese one would be or would have been until quite recently, that makes people more visible. There are many more foreigners living on Malta who come from countries that are not members of the European Union. In other words third country nationals from other European countries. These people would be far less visible because they are of the same racial background.”
For his part, Ta’ Kandja prison superintendent Brian Gatt scoffs at the notion that race has anything to do with Malta’s detention policy. He said the guidelines are needed to send a firm message to illegal migrants that life in Europe is not all its cracked up to be:
“Because in many places in Africa they receive a lot of satellite TV stations which picture Europe as being paved with gold,” Gatt said. “And that is a reason why so many people cross from Africa to Europe. They think that they will make money, become rich, which is not the case. Because in Europe, everyone can see with his own eyes where many of these people end up. Underneath card board boxes on the fringes of cities with nothing to do, begging, etc. etc.”
And Mike Cassar, a supervisor at the Detention facility, and no relation to Father Cassar, says Malta treats all of its detainees well.
“They are safe, and they know they have a person here, a team of people here, who care about them,” Cassar said. “Because if you don’t care about them, you’re no good for this job. We don’t get trouble here. We don’t get trouble here.”
But in 2009, there was trouble. According to Maltese officials, Somali detainees rioted to protest their detention, and it took dozens of police to restore order.
And several months ago, residents of an open center protested a government ban on the use of a loudspeaker system to announce the Muslim call to prayer. Meanwhile, migrants continue to arrive in Malta, in search of new lives and opportunities.
What many of them don’t know is that in many places the doors to entry into Europe are slamming shut. Download MP3 | <urn:uuid:1b2a0e82-f3a7-4e45-9891-0ba62840a701> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theworld.org/2010/12/immigration-libya-to-malta/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958794 | 1,520 | 1.898438 | 2 |
We're not seeing a decline in gasoline demand because of a recession, we're seeing a decline in gasoline demand instead of a recession.
I. The simplistic argument that lower gasoline usage means a contracting economy has been contradicted by the facts for nearly three years. Back in March of last year, in my Weekly Indicators column, I first noted that gasoline consumption had turned negative YoY. The comparisons grew more negative by July, and at the end of October, I noted that in that week gasoline demand was down almost 10%. This YoY decline has continued, and in the last month nearly every Permabear has weighed in, for example Mish, Charles Hugh Smith, cross-posted (of course) at Zero Hedge, and of course the obligatory Doomer at Daily Kos. James Bianco is more nuanced, saying that
it comes as a surprise that these measures of broad-based economic activity (gasoline consumed and miles driven) are falling hard at a time when most economists are in agreement that the economy has been getting better in recent months. If the economy is indeed getting better, it seems to be happening while we are driving less and consuming less gasoline. For the American economy, this is really hard to do....
We would not suggest that these economic indicators trump all others and the economy is actually worsening. But it is disconcerting that these measures of critically economic activities are heading lower in a hurry
Typically these analyses are accompanied by a graph of gasoline deliveries from the E.I.A., such as this one:
The argument is pretty simple: As Smith puts it: "Gasoline deliveries reflect recession and growth. The recent drop in retail gasoline deliveries is signaling a sharp contraction ahead." Since gasoline demand has plummeted, ergo we are entering a sharp recession. QED.
There's just one problem with this simple analysis -- well, actually, two. Do you remember the double-dip recessions of 2010 and 2011? You don't? Probably because, they didn't happen. And yet throughout most of that period, gasoline demand was also down, sometimes strongly so, year over year.
The above graph is very noisy. We can see that in general there has been a decline in gasoline demand over the last 4 years, but not much more than that. Further, you can easily see that gasoline usage is seasonal, rising into summer and then declining into winter. Absent a seasonal adjustment, it has to be measured year over year.To give a better view of what has been happening each month for the last 5 years on a YoY basis, I prepared a simple chart. This chart below is pretty basic, but it compares YoY demand from January 2008 to the present. If YoY demand was higher, that is signified with an h or H, if lower, with an l or L. If gasoline demand was higher/lower than the previous year by less than 200,000 barrels a day, the h or l are in lower case. In those cases where there was more than a 200.000 barrel a day difference, the H or L are in upper case. Finally, I've added added in GDP for each quarter, shown in the ending month of that quarter, to show how well or poorly the two correlated. Here's the chart:
The decline in gasoline usage during the last recession is pretty straightforward, and it shows that the drop-off in gasoline demand intensified as the recession itself did. But here's the thing: notice that YoY demand in gasoline continued negative for 9 of the 12 months after the recession was over. Only in the second half of 2010 through March 2011 was it consistently positive. For the last 11 months, gasoline demand has been almost relentlessly negative again, and strongly so since August. Indeed, gasoline demand has been negative YoY for 22 of the 32 months since the end of the recession in June 2009.
Further, while gasoline demand and GDP correlate well during the 2008-09 recession, the relationship if anything inverts thereafter. The two weakest quarters of 2011 (Q1 and Q2) featured higher relative gasoline demand. Q3 and Q4 of 2011, which showed very negative YoY gasoline demand, were the two strongest quarters. Finally, note that the quarter with the highest GDP in the last 4 years, Q1 of 2010, featured negative YoY gasoline demand in every month.
If a basic chart isn't sophisticated enough for you, here's a graph showing YoY changes in gasoline demand since 2007:
YoY gasoline demand actually first went slightly negative in October 2007, and hit its nadir in the last quarter of 2008 coinciding with a near-10% contraction in annualized GDP. If the same relationship applied now, we should have been in recession for the last year, and we should be seeing nearly a million jobs lost per month now. Does anyone think that's the case?
The simple fact is that the argument that higher / lower gasoline demand = higher / lower economic activity has been demonstrably wrong for nearly 3 years.
II. But if the decline in gasoline demand has behaved differently in the last three years than at the time of the "great recession," what's different? For that, we need to examine not just gasoline sales, but how gasoline sales compare with other retail sales. And we have to go beyond that, to look at how much the consumer is able to spend.
Let's begin with this graph, courtesy of Bill McBride a/k/a Calculated Risk, showing retail sales, and retail sales ex-gasoline, beginning in January 2006:
Notice that the two generally moved in tandem, but then diverged a few months before the beginning of the "great recession." It is not an exaggeration to say that the decline in retail sales ex gasoline was the immediate herald of the recession. In fact, the graph shows that the 2007-08 Oil shock, which featured gasoline prices in excess of $4 a gallon, fully explains half of all the decline in sales during the "great recession." Notice further that there has been no such divergence since, up to and including the present.
To better examine this, let me show you a few charts of total retail sales, retail sales of gasoline, and retail sales ex-gasoline, since 2006. The first shows the three categories of retail sales from June 2007 through September 2008. All figures are seasonally adjusted. (bolding denotes peak):
During this time, gasoline sales rose by 1/3 from just under $35 million to $47 million. Retail sales ex-gasoline, however, rose only 1.5%, peaking in September 2007 and then consistently declining. Overall retail sales peaked in November 2007. From September 2007 through July 2008, overall retail sales declined less than 1%, while retail sales ex gasoline fell by about 2.5%. In other words, from a period a few months before the recession until well into it, consumers were curtailing non-gasoline purchases in order to try to keep up with the rising cost of gas (even so, they purchased less than half of what it would actually take to keep up).
The next chart shows early 2009 (bolding indicates recession lows):
The important point here is that once again the turn higher in retail sales ex gasoline heralded the bottom of the recession several months later.
Having established the importance of the relative performance of retail sales ex gasoline, let's look at the same data since gasoline prices again began to rise over $3 a gallon in September 2010:
Note that on a seasonally adjusted basis, purchases of gasoline rise from then until March of last year, and since then have remained quite stable at $44-$45 million in sales per month. In contrast to 2007-08, look at what happened to retail sales ex gasoline. Sales ex gasoline did stall in the first quarter of 2011, coinciding with gas and total retail sales almost identical to those of late 2007. But since May 2011 retail sales ex gasoline have risen from $342 million to $356 million, a 4% increase in 8 months!
In contrast to 2007-08, where consumers cut back on other purchases in order to purchase gasoline, in 2011-12 consumers are reining in purchases of gasoline in order to consume other products! Put another way, the decline in gasoline demand isn't happening because of a recession, it's happening instead of a recession.
III. It appears that gasoline conservation is a top priority of consumers. There is precedent for a permanent change in consumer behavior. Between 1978 and 1982. as "gas prices shot up, and consumers responded by driving less and buying more efficient cars so that by 1982 they consumed 12 percent less gasoline than in 1978." Specifically,
In 1978, U.S. gasoline consumption was about 7.4 million barrels per day. By 1981, ... U.S. gasoline consumption had fallen [to] ... about 6.5 million barrels per day. [It was not until] ... 1993 [that] U.S. gasoline consumption rose above 1978 levels.
This has been recognized as a permanent change in demand due to the adoption of widespread energy efficiencies.
While there is no single action that explains the recent decrease in demand for gasoline, there are any number of statistics evidencing that in 2011, consumers decided to cut back on gas usage in a number of substantial ways. For example:
Ridership on public buses and trains increased 2%[in 2011] — from 7.63 billion rides to 7.76 billion, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
2. Ridership of intercity luxury buses (e.g., MegaBus and BoltBus) is up. Any driver stuck in an Interstate traffic jam has probably looked longingly at passengers lounging in these buses over in the next lane. And commuters have acted:
3. Online retail purchases have risen to 5.5% of total retail sales.
4. Automakers are selling more energy efficient compact, hybrid, and electric vehicles, as shown in this graph:
5. Vehicles themselves are becoming more energy efficient, by the biggest margin in years. In 2006, according to the Department of Transportation, the average fuel efficiency for a new vehicle in 2006 was 30.1 miles per gallon. In 2011 it was 33.8, a more than 10% improvement. Light duty trucks including typical SUVs, averaged 22.5 miles per gallon in 2006. In 2011, that was to 24.5, a 9% improvement.
There’s a smaller proportion of 20-somethings on the road nowadays as well: In recent times, 22% of drivers were under age 30, compared to roughly one-third of the licensed-driver population in 1983.
The shift toward an older average driver has to partly be explained by the general aging of the population. .... But researchers point out that the decrease in young drivers may be attributable to ... the availability of virtual contact through electronic means [which] reduces the need for actual contact among young people,” said Michael Sivak, research professor at the U-M Transportation Research Institute....
Sivak’s research appears to indicate that teenagers think traffic congestion and high fuel costs are the real nightmares, taking up time and money that could otherwise be spent on electronic communication.
7. Multi-vehicle households are making a more strategic allocation of vehicle usage, as the Department of Transportation reported even in 2008. This advice was commonplace by 2011, when for example Nursing Link recommended, "If both spouses drive to work in separate cars, use the more fuel-efficient one for the longest commute." Anecdotally, my daily commute in a large metropolis area causes me to use two of the most traveled expressways in the entire area. Whereas about 5 years ago it seemed that full-size SUVs made up about 1/3 of all vehicles on the expressways, noticeable because they formed an impenetrable visual wall in front of sedan drivers, on most days recently I have seen less than half a dozen full-size SUVs combined on either expressway. Sedans, especially smaller sedans, make up about 85% of all vehicles on the expressways, with pick-up trucks, crossovers and smaller SUVs making up the rest. I have no way of being able to prove the general applicability of this observation, but if it is true, it constitutes a major efficiency in gasoline usage.
8. Trip compression. In response to a return to near $4 a gallon prices last spring, Nielsen reported that "Sixty-seven percent of consumers say they are combining errands and trips as a result of high gas prices."
While no single trend can account for the steep decline in gasoline demand, together these amount to a very powerful consumer reaction.
IV. But the consumer allocation between gasoline and other retail sales isn't the entire explanation. Retail sales in total stalled before the end of 2007, and yet they rose strongly in the second half of 2011. Considering that wages have not kept pace with inflation for over a year, where are consumers getting the money to spend?
The answer is, savings acquired during the "great recession." Remember that by the end of 2006, Americans' saving rate was essentially zero. Personal saving for the entire economy were about $200 billion. As the next graph shows, that all changed during and after the "great recession":
The personal savings rate (red, right scale) went from 2% to 8% at its high. Another $600 billion was added in personal savings (blue, left scale), constituting fuel that could be poured on the economic fire. Note further, however, that over half of that store of saving was depleted in 2011, used to make up for the decline in real wages. Thus, while the decline up until now of gasoline demand does not signal a downturn, a sharp or sustained further spike in price may yet produce an Oil shock contraction. As I already noted from the final chart above, it appears that consumer spending on other items did stall in spring of last year due to that price spike. We missed a recession, but at +0.4% GDP growth, not by much.
So while it's impossible to say how long consumers will continue to be able to fuel general spending by constricting gas purchases, we can say that they are significantly more vulnerable to an oil price shock -- say, of $4.50 a gallon gas by Memorial Day, than they have been in several years. In that regard, note the spike upward in savings in December. That may just be noise, but if it instead marks the beginning of renewed consumer belt-tightening, there might yet be a further decline in gasoline demand, that would indeed mark a recession.
What we can say is, it's not here yet. And the precipitous decline in gasoline demand for the last 11 months does not mean it is necessarily coming at all. | <urn:uuid:4790a65b-1e1a-48a4-8a62-3b4c0c705de8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-decline-in-gasoline-demand-doesnt-mean-a-recession-yet-2012-2?pundits_only=0&get_all_comments=1&no_reply_filter=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965219 | 3,041 | 1.5 | 2 |
Thousands of outraged Muslims have been protesting outside Google’s UK headquarters in London over the posting of the Innocence of Muslims video on Youtube, which Google owns. So far those protests appear to be peaceful, but I wouldn’t bet on how long that will last when they’re expressing authoritarian nonsense like this:
Organiser Masoud Alam said: “Our next protest will be at the offices of Google and YouTube across the world. We are looking to ban this film.
“This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed.
The group’s next action was a march Mr Alam hoped would be “a million strong” would take place in Hyde Park “in the next few weeks”, he said.
“Until it is banned we will keep protesting,” he added…
Barricades were erected in front of Google’s headquarters and a crowd bearing placards with the words “We love our prophet more than our lives” and “Prophet Muhammad is the founder of freedom of speech” had amassed by lunchtime…
One of the speakers, Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui, told The Daily Telegraph: “Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.
“Organisations like Google are key players and have to take responsibility for civility. You can’t just say it doesn’t matter that it’s freedom of speech. It’s anarchy.”
Oh, bullshit. The limits of free speech are not determined by your fragile feelings. | <urn:uuid:057cef19-d032-4107-b28d-101d3d9d187b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/10/18/muslims-protest-google-in-england/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951649 | 368 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Winter 2000 (8.4)
France's Cultural Diplomacy with Azerbaijan
Guinhut, French Ambassador
first became fascinated with Eastern culture decades before his
appointment as French Ambassador to Azerbaijan in August 1996.
His interest led him to become fluent in Arabic and Persian.
Along with English and French, he also speaks some Spanish, Turkish,
and even some Azeri.
Guinhut's appreciation for Azerbaijani culture runs deep and
reveals itself in the array of programs and projects that he
has supported during his tenure as Ambassador. While seeking
to bring Azerbaijanis closer to Western methods of education,
he also believes that the world has much to gain from being exposed
to Azerbaijani culture. Here Guinhut explains the French Embassy's
focus on cultural diplomacy, whether it be through improvements
in French-language instruction in Azerbaijan, training for journalists
or artistic exchanges between Azerbaijan and France.
It's obvious, at least for open-minded foreigners, that there's
a great deal of culture in Azerbaijan. You're not always able
to know where it comes from, or exactly how it works, but there's
lots and lots of it - most likely because we're in one of the
most ancient parts of the world.
When France first established diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan,
we knew from the very beginning that cultural activities would
be fundamental to our presence here. According to General [Charles]
De Gaulle, cultural diplomacy should rank extremely high among
the Foreign Ministry's primary affairs and activities abroad.
Above: Guinhut with world-renowned
cellist Mstislav Rostropovich (pictured here with the French
ambassador, left) who was born in Baku and has been returning
to Azerbaijan annually since 1998 to give Master's classes to
young talented musicians. French Senator Jean Boyer (back to
camera) and French Embassy Press Attache Gulnara Karimova look
De Gaulle used to say, "The life between two countries is
somewhat like that between two individuals. Even if things aren't
going so smoothly in politics or the economy, don't do any damage
or harm to cultural relations. They should remain on the same
level, regardless of what happens." Here at the French Embassy,
we try to be very faithful to this ideology of promoting peace
and good will through cultural relations.
These days at our Embassy, Gerard Neraud, who has a genius for
organization, is our Cultural Counselor. This enables us to be
active in many cultural realms from French-language education
to cultural exchanges, including artistic contacts and cultural
activities in both countries. In fact, since January 1999 - nearly
two years now - we've been organizing some sort of artistic or
cultural event every other week. That's more than a hundred programs.
We place all of these activities in the framework of fair and
balanced cooperation - state to state. We are trying to go deep
inside the reality of things, not to change them - because Azerbaijan
will change itself. Our goal is to share with Azerbaijanis a
few of the things that have worked in our own country.
Azerbaijanis are very gifted at learning languages. You can tell,
because they are extremely good at speaking Russian. The quality
of Russian in this country is extraordinary. Even average people
in Baku speak Russian well, like you would hear in St. Petersburg
Embassy has been sponsoring a cultural event in Azerbaijan every
second week for the past two years. On the occasion of the grand
opening of the personal art exhibition by Faig Gambarov [see
AI 6.4 cover, Winter 98 about Architecture] (right to left) Guinhut,
Gambarov, President of Artist Union Farhad Khalilov, and Italian
Ambassador Alessandro Fallovollita. Khalilov just received the
esteemed medal "Les Arts et Lettres" by the French
Ministry of Culture in December 2000.
As far as the French language is concerned, our goal is to foster
an effective pedagogical system to teach the language properly.
When you ask a student a question like: "What time is it?"
you don't need to have them recite lines from a famous play by
Jean Racine or Pierre Corneille. They don't need to know verses
of poetry to tell what time it is.
That may sound a bit ridiculous, but when I was teaching French
in Egypt, I came across some students who had been learning French
for years, but when I would ask them: "What time is it?"
or "What's your name?" they would respond with verses
of famous poetry because they didn't understand the question.
Literature and poetry, of course, have their place. But first,
students must master a certain number of practical patterns so
that they can carry on basic conversations with other French
speakers. That's what we want to do with Azerbaijanis - give
them the capability to communicate.
Two years ago, we began French programs here in two universities:
the University of Foreign Languages in Baku (previously known
as the Institute of Foreign Languages) and the University of
Nakhchivan. Students who are training to be teachers have now
begun their third year studying French. Afterwards, the best
will be selected to study in Grenoble or Strasbourg [France]
for another year to complete their training. This initial group
of 30 teachers will enter the Azerbaijani teaching system in
Above: The French Embassy
sponsored the perfomance of a mugham group at the Palace of the
Khans in Shaki, Nov 11, 2000.Soloist Samir Shirinov (gaval),
Namig Rezayev (tar), Elton Naghiyev (kamancha) and Maestro Marc
Loopuyt (French Oriental oud / lute).
Every student we send to France signs an agreement promising
to return to teach French here for a certain number of years.
If they don't return to teach, then one of the fundamental aspects
of our system is flawed. We don't budget money for foreign students
to learn French so that they can simply go out into the world
and make money on a private basis. We need some return for our
Of course, we're only at the beginning stages of our contribution
to French instruction in the public teaching system here. On
the French side, the University of Marc Bloch [L'Université
Marc Bloch] in Strasbourg is very involved in this project here
in Azerbaijan. Strasbourg is an important city for international
connections because it is the capital city for the Parliament
of the Council of Europe and the Parliament of the European Union.
This University, named after the distinguished French historian
Marc Bloch, supports the programs in the Azerbaijani universities.
For the past two years, a team of professors from Marc Bloch
has come to Azerbaijan each June to organize final examinations.
This means that, in Azerbaijan, these university exams are organized
completely on a Western standard.
We have posted French instructors in various cities throughout
Azerbaijan-Nakhchivan, Lankaran, Ganja and Shaki as well as two
schools in Baku: the University of Foreign Languages and the
Nasraddin Tusi Pedagogical University. The French program has
been organized in full cooperation and mutual understanding with
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Education.
Not Just English
Right now, Azerbaijan has about 700 French teachers and 70,000
students learning French. For a country with a population of
more than 7 million, that's not too bad.
Above: Evening visit to Zoroastrian
landmark Yanardagh (Burning Mountain) on the outskirts of Baku.
Far right: Guinhut with Kader Belarbi, Star Ballet dancer of
the Opera de Paris, French Embassy Cultural Assistant Azelma
Hasanova, and dancer Celine Talone also from the Opera de Paris.
April 24, 2000.
When Azerbaijan first became independent from the Soviet Union,
Azerbaijani parents were keen to have their children to learn
English. They said: "Forget about French, German, Persian
and Arabic. We want English."
Well, I don't blame them. After being abandoned by a Russian
"Big Brother", they felt that they needed another Protector.
Where was another one? Perhaps, America. Today Azerbaijanis have
a more realistic understanding of the world, but at the beginning,
there was a tendency to only study English.
Of course, English provides access to the West, but it's not
enough. It's not the only language; the world is much more democratic
than that. If you know English and French, or French and German,
or English and German, such a combination provides more choice.
These days, Azerbaijani parents want their children to learn
several foreign languages - not just English. I think that's
the right attitude.
French is the first or second language in at least 50 countries,
so it can be very useful to Azerbaijanis as well. Take education,
for example. At the University of Sciences in Ankara, there is
the possibility to study sciences such as geology or seismology
in French from A to Z. Similarly, instruction at the famous Galatasaray
University in Istanbul and the Marmara University in Istanbul
is all in French and Turkish.
We are encouraging Azerbaijanis to experiment with new teaching
methods - ones that they have helped develop themselves. Up to
this point, we've been using methods that are completely French.
Now we want experienced Azerbaijani teachers to create their
own new methods with help from our specialists. The first new
book should be available by the end of December .
We want the emphasis to be on the spoken, not written, form of
French, just like most other modern language-learning methods
throughout the world. However, this is the first time that an
Azerbaijani method emphasizes the students' ability to speak.
In this new method, the dialogues, which form the core of each
lesson, will coincide with the Azerbaijani culture and mentality.
The grammar examples should not be explicit and didactic at the
beginning. You do teach grammar, but you don't inform the students.
They absorb grammatical principles unconsciously, like Monsieur
Jourdain in Molière, who was speaking in prose without
realizing it. The students learn grammar through real-life situations.
After a while, these patterns become automatic.
In the classroom, direct word-for-word translation is not permitted.
This means that teachers have to be well trained; otherwise they
won't be able to teach without translating themselves.
We're proud at the Embassy to have facilitated the first French-Azeri
dictionary in the new Latin script, which Total Fina Elf helped
to sponsor. Of course, a French-Azeri dictionary already existed
in Cyrillic, but this is the first one in the new official script
of independent Azerbaijan. Now we're waiting for the reverse
volume - Azeri-French - and hope that it will come out in December
I really hope that Azerbaijanis will create an academic center
for translators, especially interpreters. I believe that our
new methods in French could fuel this possibility. Interpreting
is such a wonderful career, as it puts people in contact with
each other and helps them understand one another. It also offers
one of the best-paying salaries in the world.
To become an interpreter, you need to be fluent in at least three
languages; if you added a fourth language, that would be even
better. For the Azeri language, it's nearly impossible to find
interpreters any other place in the world. Nor are there very
many interpreters for the Turkish language. Azerbaijanis who
are gifted in languages could add the Turkish language to their
repertoire without much effort.
Another aspect of our activities at the French Embassy relates
to journalism. There is a genuine press here, and the people
are very interested in magazines and newspapers. As soon as there
are financial opportunities, we see new publications cropping
up like mushrooms after rain. Those that manage to get published
are extremely interesting and extremely free. But the journalists
in Azerbaijan need training.
Of course, we Westerners have this sort of dogma about freedom
of the press. Sometimes we are bound to say, "Well, isn't
it too much?" But not if the press is framed by a good deontology
- a code of ethics or moral behavior that determines the rights
and duties of the journalist. In France, we often refer to it
as the "American classification".
When you speak with a journalist, you have to clarify the status
of your talk in advance: if it's "on the record", "off
the record", "background" or "deep background".
This creates a special relationship between the source and the
journalist. If a source agrees to speak with the journalist,
he knows that the journalist as a professional will honor that
relationship. In turn, the source is obligated to tell the truth.
Two years ago we began asking Azerbaijanis - students, teachers,
young journalists and the Ministry of Information - "What
can be done?" We then decided to organize an Institute of
Permanent Training of Journalism, which we hope will eventually
become a regional institute for young journalists from the North
Caucasus, Iran, Central Asia, Georgia and Armenia.
We're committed to training the press and creating a new generation
of journalists through a new method of journalism - exactly as
we do for teaching French. This official, systematic training
system is being organized by the High School of Journalism [l'ÉSJ]
in Lille, in north France. Beginning in December 2000, we'll
have teachers permanently based in Azerbaijan to train professional
In terms of the arts, Azerbaijanis are very gifted, and at the
Embassy we try to show that we care about their unique traditions.
We look at our exchanges in this field as good opportunities
for us to create relationships. For instance, by having dancers
of the Paris Grand Opera come to Baku, we wanted to give training
to dancers - an exchange experience. It will happen in December
Another success for us was La Fête de la Musique, which
has been held on June 26 for the past two years. We hope that
next year the mayor of Baku will organize this international
festival; of course, we will provide help, along with the Americans,
Russians, English, Germans, Italians and so on.
Recently Jean Boyer, president of the French Senate's Friendship
Group between France and Azerbaijan, arranged to have the National
Philharmonic Orchestra of Azerbaijan as one of the main features
at the Berlioz Festival in August 2000. This Festival was created
by the Senator himself ten years ago. Now it has become a major
music festival, held each summer in the birthplace of Hector
Berlioz (1803-1869) - La-Côte Saint-André, about
45 km from Grenoble.
Farhad Badalbeyli, Azerbaijan's most renowned pianist and the
rector of the Baku Music Academy, was awarded the medal of Les
Arts et Lettres (Arts and Literature) on that occasion. This
is a decoration that we present to very esteemed artists in France
and the world. It was awarded in the name of the Ministry of
Culture and presented by Senator Boyer.
Last July a group of young Azerbaijani mugham singers had enormous
success in west France, performing at the Festival of Young Talents
in Traditional Music. These young ambassadors of Azerbaijani
culture were invited by the former Foreign Minister of France,
who has himself visited Azerbaijan a number of times.
We've also organized joint cultural operations with the Germans
and Americans. For instance, two years ago we worked with the
TUTU Publishing Group to host a delightful exhibition of illustrations
from children's books.
From time to time, we have the opportunity to host art exhibitions
here at the Embassy. From the very beginning, we decided to only
display works by Azerbaijani artists.
There's so much that we would like to do. I wish we could form
a trust group or a syndicate of music-lovers here in Azerbaijan
in order to take a few operas and musical comedies out of the
country. It may be costly and rather difficult to create portable
sets and provide all of the translations, but it's worth a try.
If I fulfill my dreams, I would choose works by Hajibeyov like
"Koroghlu", "Leyli and Majnun", "Arshin
Mal Alan" (The Cloth Peddler, presented in Paris in the
1920s) and "Mashadi Ibad" ("O Olmasin, Bu Olsun,")(If
Not This One, That One). These are tremendous performances and,
without a doubt, could compete with international productions.
I've mentioned a few of the ways that we at the French Embassy
have contributed to the cultural field here. We care about Azerbaijani
culture and want to make it known in our own country. As a representative
of the French government, I'm the one responsible for the use
of our money in this country. I'm quite satisfied. I mean, whenever
two countries are able to reach a level of understanding between
each other, then we have fulfilled our duties. Our goal is to
continue with such efforts and even to increase them - through
culture, of course.
To read Ambassador Guinhut's comprehensive analysis of
the Leyli and Majnun legend, see "The
Man Who Loved Too Much" in AI 6.3, Autumn
(8.4) Winter 2000.
© Azerbaijan International 2000. All rights reserved.
Back to Index
AI 8.4 (Winter 2000)
| Magazine Choice | Topics | <urn:uuid:7ef6b963-1815-4b6a-99cb-e899a0b8e1e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/84_folder/84_articles/84_guinhut.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948236 | 3,877 | 2.125 | 2 |
The Final Years Of Lucas Great King Street - Roger Bater Brief History And Site Numbering In 1872 Joseph Lucas started his Tom Bowling lamp factory in little King Street (a street that no longer exists) a couple of miles north of Birmingham city center. In the 1890's he moved his expanded business to Great King Street (GKS), about a hundred yards away. Joseph was a strict teetotaler and when holidaying in Naples, refused to drink wine, sticking to the dodgy local water. He died of typhoid there in 1902. (Well, if you refuse to drink wine...). Subsequent management of Lucas was initially by members of the Lucas family but they disappeared some time after the Second World War. This is an old site plan from when GKS was still a hive of activity. Larger Site Plan
Joseph Lucas built the first two blocks in 1896 and 1898 and subsequently these were designated blocks A and B. These letters generally denote the order in which each block was erected - but not always. By the late 1920's C to K were up. M block was finished in 1929 and GK block in the 1930's. The ends of M and GK blocks provided the famous frontage to the site when viewed from the upper end of Great King Street). The final phase of buildings in the 1950's included the Proving Laboratory where fleet test vehicles were based.
Why Great King Street Had To Close Roger Bater was Engineering Manager in the last few years at GKS and was part of the team which had the job of deciding what to do with the site. The age of the buildings meant that it was impossible to use modern single-story manufacturing layouts because production was spread over as many as seven floors served by huge old-fashioned elevators. It took over a year to break down and analyze the true operating costs. The plan that emerged (and carried out with great co-operation by everyone) was to move ignition to a new purpose-built factory, mostly using existing production equipment. Many of the wiper lines were sold to a competitor. (Delco, them part of GM). Some of the older wipers went to Service Division (where Roy worked) Some of the military and other products also went to another modern factory which was eventually bought out by the management, who were ex-Lucas employees. Most of the rest of GKS production was closed and the equipment sold off. There were huge numbers of lathes and presses for disposal (GKS had traditionally made turned and pressed parts for most of the Lucas automotive group). It was rather like a very large garage sale. So by 1988, nearly a million square feet were empty and the buildings were ready for demolition. When the demolition guys arrived the supervisor at the outset thought it might take six months to level the place. In the event, the huge strength of the buildings meant that it took much longer.
As well as allocating letters to the buildings, there was a floor numbering system. The basement (even if there wasn't one) was 1, so the ground floor was 2. It was quicker to refer to department by their location rather than their function so, for example , M6 was the filth floor above ground level of M block and housed the ignition distributor production. M7 was the holy of holies - it accommodated the main board members of Lucas group. As well as being a factory site, with its engineering and support facilities, GKS was also the headquarters of Lucas Electrical plus the world-wide headquarters of Lucas Industries which included CAV diesel, Girling braking and Lucas Aerospace companies. On the end of a row of modern dwellings nearby there is a stainless steel emblem of the old Lucas lion, wheel and flambeau trademark. This and the commutative stone are all that remain of a factory that lasted a hundred years and employed up to 7000 people.
Our thanks to Roger Beter for his kind permission to reproduce this article and photos. Compare the third image with the last - they were both taken from the same spot... | <urn:uuid:bbecacd9-adbd-4896-9604-6e03b7218a17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.triple-c.com/LUCAS__Great_King_Street.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987295 | 820 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Two Hawaii youth leaders and advisor to represent U.S. at First Youth Global Meeting in New Delhi, IndiaUniversity of Hawaiʻi
Cancer Research Center of Hawaii
Lynette Lo Tom, (808) 275-3004
Bright Light Marketing Group
The first-ever Global Youth Meeting on Health is being organized by Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth (HRIDAY) and Student Health Action Network (SHAN) and is being sponsored by the World Health Organization, the World Bank and many other internationally recognized health organizations. Thirty-six nations are expected to participate with four youths and one adult representing each country.
At this meeting, Suzuki, Della and Sutton will be responsible for designing and delivering training about youth tobacco control initiatives and projects. They will work on advocacy projects related to different health topics including diet and nutrition, reproductive health, physical activity promotion, and avoidance of addictions as well as environmental protection and conflict resolution. Activities will include debate sessions, discussions with policy makers and drafting advocacy documents, which will be forwarded to relevant national government authorities. At the conclusion of the meeting, youths will decide on one health theme and a plan of action that they will take home to implement at a national level during 2006—2007. To ensure ongoing networking and mentoring after the global meeting, an interactive e-forum and website will be set up specifically for this purpose.
Suzuki, Della, and Sutton were invited to Lucknow, India prior to the Global Youth Meeting on Health to collaborate with local youth and anti-tobacco advocates on a youth advocacy training and several tobacco control youth activism project. This has been arranged through Essential Action Partnerships for Global Tobacco Control in Washington, D.C. Support for their participation was provided by the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation Tobacco Settlement Trust Fund and the University of Hawaiʻi‘s Cancer Research Center of Hawaiʻi.
REAL was started in 2000 with a group of about 15 youths from Hawaiʻi whose mission was to create an empowered, healthy, smoke-free generation of young people; to attack the tobacco industry, not the consumer; to expose the tobacco industry‘s products and its effects; and to educate, protect, and empower the youth generation. REAL was initially directed by former Cancer Research Center researcher Karen Glanz, Ph.D., and more recently by Cancer Center researcher David O‘Riordan, Ph.D. Aside from its early funding from the American Legacy Foundation, majority support for REAL has been provided through the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation by Tobacco Settlement dollars from the State Department of Health and Tobacco Prevention Trust Fund.
Today REAL is comprised of approximately 3,000 youths across the Hawaiian Islands, including Lanaʻi. They are charged with planning, developing and implementing youth-relevant anti-tobacco activities in their own island communities, under the guidance of an adult leader. Since its inception, tobacco rates among youths in Hawaiʻi have significantly declined from approximately 24 percent to less than 13 percent, as reported by Youth Tobacco Survey data.
The Cancer Research Center of Hawaiʻi is one of only 61 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers throughout the United States. As a research unit of the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, it conducts cancer research, educational activities, and community outreach, including the operation of the Hawaiʻi Tumor Registry, the Hawaiʻi Clinical Trials Unit, and the Cancer Information Service of Hawaiʻi. The Center‘s research takes advantage of Hawaiʻi‘s ethnic and cultural diversity, geographic location, and unique environment. Its research programs focus on: the possible causes of cancer and possible reasons for different cancer rates among Hawaiʻi‘s ethnic groups; reducing the incidence and impact of cancer in the Hawaiian population; and discovering new anti-cancer agents from local plants and marine microorganisms. The Center is located at 1236 Lauhala Street in Honolulu. For general information on the Cancer Research Center of Hawaiʻi, please visit its website at www.crch.org.
For more information, visit: http://www.crch.org | <urn:uuid:af8ae7ea-cf11-474c-948f-4feba31a4103> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=1607 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937705 | 857 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Dec 29 2012
Everyone can have a garden, even those apartment residents living in smaller apartments. If you have a balcony, you just need a little imagination and patience, and a bit of a green thumb and you can also have a pocket should boast. The balcony is actually the most sub-space in an apartment and it is valuable for space wannabe gardener. No matter how small your balcony May, is sufficient space to support a number of pot plants. But there should be some order in the way farmers are organized, or the total could end up looking cluttered. It could also suspend a little pots balcony roof and walls, but do not go above and to the balcony look like a tropical jungle.
Bigger balconies can also serve as a seating area – a perfect place to relax after a day’s work. remember to use light as moving furniture around can be a backbreaking task in bad weather. Even if your does not boast a long balcony, there’s nothing to worry. When it comes to gardens, size does not seem to really matter and even the smallest square can support a mini-garden. You can develop everything from tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and oranges, all in pots. While it is a little more difficult than having just a few ferns and flowers. If you’re not ready to work hard so that fruits and vegetables, consider growing your own garden. This is the best option. The herbs can be grown in planters, just need water and sunlight.
If you still feel that the balcony is too small, there is no longer an option. Create the illusion of open space. A clear glass sliding door between the and balcony with soil continuously between the spaces can achieve the appearance of a wider open spaces without costing you a fortune. An increasingly friendly garden on your balcony is not difficult by any means whatsoever. Just a short time. You’ll be proud of you for the work you have created and the beauty that the right outside your apartment – no matter how far you are in place. From the second floor in the fifteenth and beyond – a beautiful garden could be just a few steps from your door.
Tags: apartment, appearance, area, beauty, floor, garden, gardener, herb, place, pot, roof, Small, soil, space, sunlight, Water
No responses yet | <urn:uuid:ea2c46c4-d339-4335-ac58-73ad81e2da60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibspro.net/creating-your-own-garden-in-small-spaces.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949935 | 485 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Curing a common Photoshop addiction
By Derek Doeffinger
November 18, 2008
Curves and Levels are the perhaps the most basic Photoshop adjustments because they address image fundamentals: brightness, contrast, and color.
Marching in the same noisy parade as super saturated colors is eye-popping contrast. With the Levels and Curves function, it’s easy to goose the contrast but the result is like gunning your Porsche down a suburban street—you’re likely to be pulled over or gain a bad rep with the neighbors as a reckless show-off.
Good action shot, lots of details. But do most people leave well enough alone? Noooo...
Overdoing levels = too much lost detail in highlights and shadows.
Being heavy-handed with Curves and Levels can crash your picture. Boosting contrast risks squashing both highlight and shadow details. In case we’re not clear about what contrast is it’s the tonal range of brightness in a picture—from the shadows to the details. It’s usually considered good to have as many tonal steps as possible. And while revealing both a distinct, detail-less black and white gives the picture a nice shine, don’t sacrifice important details.
When you boost overall contrast, you squeeze together the dark tones, the medium tones, and the light tones. In short, you reduce the number of distinct, individual tones. At first glance, especially on a monitor, the picture may seem to jump off the screen. But squeezing together tones is another way of saying you eliminate them and some of the detail they held. Like removing keys from the piano, it lessens the breadth of nuance possible.
Overdo the contrast or brightness adjustments and you can say good-bye to the individual bricks in that sunlit lighthouse and to the subtle gradations in those fair-weather cumulus clouds. Wave so long to the hairs on your black cat; watch the curls on or your girlfriend’s black hair merge into a shapeless mass. Even a blue sky, which seems to be a uniform blue, actually consists of a wide but subtle range of tones as it reaches from the horizon to zenith. But if harshly adjusted it may seem like an artificial spill of blue paint across the top of the picture.
Long considered the vanguard in the art of photography, expert black-and-white photographers prided themselves on achieving the widest range of tones possible from the shadows to the highlights. So should you.
So the next time you open up the Curves or Levels function, take the gentle approach. Add a bit of snap by darkening shadows that hold no worthwhile detail and whitening that white wall but don’t sacrifice the lace on a bride’s dress or the buttons on the groom’s tux. | <urn:uuid:ed3addeb-5a44-46e9-85f3-3d4956d12710> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.adorama.com/alc/0008628/article/100-in-100-Cornering-Curves-and-leveling-Levels | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912315 | 581 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Vegetarians have healthier hearts, according to new research that suggests veggies are up to a third less likely to suffer or die from heart disease.
Liz O’Neill from the Vegetarian Society says: “We already know that vegetarians have lower rates of obesity, diabetes and many cancers but this study clearly shows that being vegetarian is, regardless of other factors, simply better for your heart.”
If you’re inspired to help your heart out and go veggie, we asked experts at the Vegetarian Society what key things new vegetarians need to remember to get the meat out of their meat-free diet.
Su Taylor explains, “A balanced vegetarian diet is one of the easiest ways to follow official healthy eating guidelines, with five portions of fruit and veg a day, plenty of complex carbohydrates and antioxidants as well as lower saturated fat and cholesterol. A balanced vegetarian diet tends to be lower in calories and higher in fibre so can also help maintain a healthy weight.
“Going vegetarian isn’t as daunting or as difficult as you might think.”
[Related: The best veggie cookbooks]
Going veggie – the essentials
“There are many people out there who believe vegetarians have trouble getting protein, iron, B vitamins and other essential nutrients. Thankfully, they’re wrong! Vegetarians don’t find it difficult at all to get the same full range of nutrients as meat-eaters - they just get them from different sources.
“It’s easy to tick all the nutritional boxes when eating a healthy and varied veggie diet."
Protein is essential for the body’s growth and repair. It’s easy to get as almost all foods contain some protein, though both quantity and quality do vary.
Nuts, pulses, beans, chickpeas, eggs, dairy, tofu and most meat substitutes are all high in protein. Eating dishes using these foods combined with rice, grains, pasta or bread, which also contain different kinds of protein, is an easy way to reach your recommended daily intake. One quick and simple combination is beans on toast!
It’s important to maintain a good level of iron in the body as it helps with your energy levels, digestion and nerve function. Fortified breakfast cereals and wholemeal bread, green leafy vegetables, nuts, pulses, grains, dried fruit and tofu are great sources of iron, so try incorporating them into meals or snacks.
[Related: Five surprisingly healthy foods]
To increase the level of iron absorbed by your body by up to three-fold, eat iron-rich foods and foods high in vitamin C at the same time. One of the easiest ways to do this is to drink a glass of fresh orange juice with your food.
B12 is important for healthy blood and growth and also helps to keep the eyes, brain and nervous system functioning normally. Dairy products and eggs are natural sources of vitamin B12, while many margarines, yeast extracts, breakfast cereals, soya milks and yoghurts are useful sources because they are fortified, so have a good look at the label.
Omega 3 essential fatty acids are needed for a healthy nervous system and brain function. They are found in vegetarian foods such as rapeseed oil, flax seeds and walnuts, and are added to some margarines and spreads, but do make sure the products don’t contain fish oils.
Helena Gibson-Moore from the British Nutrition Foundation agrees that meat-free can be a healthy choice.
“A vegetarian diet can be very healthy. However, if you decide to follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, you should eat a wide variety of foods to ensure all your nutritional needs are met, as is the case with everyone.”
She adds that it’s also important to ensure you eat enough selenium, found in fish, cereals and nuts (especially Brazil nuts), and calcium.
[Related: How to have a healthy veggie pregnancy]
“The best foods for calcium are milk, yogurt and cheese. If you need a non-dairy alternative try tofu, green leafy vegetables, calcium-fortified foods such as soya milk, yoghurts and puddings or rice and almond milks, brown and white bread, nuts, sesame seeds and tahini as well as dried fruit.
“Cheese is often a popular choice for people following vegetarian diets, but while it is a good source of protein, calcium and other nutrients, some varieties can be high in saturated fat and salt. If you don't eat milk and dairy products, choose soya, rice or almond milk and products, fortified with calcium instead.” | <urn:uuid:2cc9bc27-6ba4-4af0-9dd1-caf5b1a45e51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/going-vegetarian-safely-diet-nutrition-advice-170959799.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948851 | 982 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Combines study at UW-Bothell with seminars and field trips organized by the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences faculty or the faculties of host institutions in foreign countries. Topics include politics, political economy, public policy, business, and literature, and the arts.
In response to an increasingly globalized world, developing economies like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia are striving to expand their trade and global integration. However, such pursuits are also creating some fascinating and complex challenges for economies, multi-national corporations, local businesses, ecologies and cultures within these developing countries and it behooves students of global business to understand them.
Through a multi-week study tour to Southeast Asia, students have the opportunity to learn about key issues, opportunities and challenges that globalization presents to developing countries. Additionally, students will be able to assess and understand how businesses, NGOs and other organizations are developing and executing new strategies in order to effectively compete in a dynamic and increasingly globalized environment.
Student learning goals
Develop a set of research tools and resources necessary for identifying and analyzing the key opportunities and challenges for businesses and other organizations in an increasingly globalized environment.
Understand the key economic, political, legal, social and cultural institutions, forces and issues that are shaping the global business environment.
Understand globalizationís impact on the people, societies, cultures and environments of developing countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
Understand how local businesses, MNCs and other organizations in Thailand are responding to the opportunities, challenges and impacts of globalization through global strategic planning and execution.
Enjoy a rich cultural experience and develop a high degree of cross-cultural understanding and empathy.
Stimulate curiosity about other cultures, economies and societies in an increasingly globalized world and the many challenges they face.
General method of instruction
Following orientation sessions in Seattle and Bangkok, the group will spend time on a variety of activities that allows them to more thoroughly understand the many dimensions to globalization through the eyes of businesses and other organizations. These activities will include lectures from academics, presentations from local and international business people and participation in discussion groups.
A key component of this aspect of the seminar will be a research project undertaken by each participant in order to further assess and understand some of globalizationís key issues and impacts. For example, some students might want to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS on businesses in Asia while other participants might study a topic such as the role of Corporate Social Responsibility in a global firmís strategy. There will be considerable flexibility as participants can select from among a list of topics that suits their interests while meeting seminar objectives.
Students from all disciplines are welcome to attend.
Class assignments and grading
Projects and general seminar participation | <urn:uuid:3d362435-7dd4-462c-bd53-70030f1eb5c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washington.edu/students/icd/B/bis/480jreinn.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913504 | 544 | 2.328125 | 2 |
It's easy to love MapBox for the way they push geospatial innovation. Last week they introduced MapBox Satellite.
What it is? "We’ve been working hard to bring MapBox users a fast, beautiful satellite and aerial imagery layer that integrates seamlessly with MapBox Streets and custom overlays. We’re happy to announce that it’s available today and included in MapBox Basic plans and above.
We are approaching MapBox Satellite in three main phases. Today marks Phase 1 completion with full world coverage to zoom 12 and full U.S. aerial coverage to zoom 17. Phase 2 will arrive in early 2013 as we deploy full U.S. and Europe coverage to zoom 18, followed by an aggressive Phase 3 rollout schedule for the rest of the world to zoom 17 during the first half of 2013."
Here's a really nice entry named Open Aerial: The Data Behind MapBox Satellite: "MapBox Satellite is powered by raw imagery from multiple sources that is then processed by MapBox using open source tools. All the data you're about to see is free, open, and if you're a U.S. taxpayer, available thanks to you." | <urn:uuid:2b01662d-251a-46fd-9e36-2b6d9e5eea94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.slashgeo.org/2012/12/10/Introducing-MapBox-Satellite-Free-and-Open-Data | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929942 | 241 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Health Care Among Topics on the Campaign Trail
UNDATED (AP) – Health care has grabbed the spotlight in the presidential campaign today.
Mitt Romney said if elected he would retain some popular parts of the new health care law he has pledged to repeal, while President Barack Obama focused attention on the Republican ticket’s stand on Medicare.
Obama was campaigning in Florida, where he pointed to study that found future retirees would pay tens of thousands more for health care under Romney’s plan. The report was rejected quickly by Romney’s campaign.
Obama told about 3,000 supporters in Melbourne that if Romney had his way, Americans would pay more so insurers could make more.
Romney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would replace Obama’s health overhaul with a plan entirely his own, yet would keep some popular provisions. In an interview recorded Friday and Saturday, Romney said he would make sure that people with pre-existing conditions could get coverage. He also said he would allow young adults to keep their coverage under their parents’ health-insurance.
Romney was in Boston, preparing for the upcoming debates. | <urn:uuid:a4d36e4c-e4d2-49fb-9d30-0dfc45f67511> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mix97-3.com/health-care-among-topics-on-the-campaign-trail/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98707 | 238 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The sun sets over Welsh mountains in a December 2008 file photo.
Sunspot group 1024, which finally developed over the 4th of July weekend.
A large flare shoots out from the sun.
After one of the longest sunspot droughts in modern times, solar activity picked up quickly over the weekend.
A new group of sunspots developed, and while not dramatic by historic standards, the spots were the most significant in many months.
"This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years," observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif., said on Spaceweather.com.
Solar activity goes in a roughly 11-year cycle. Sunspots are the visible signs of that activity, and they are the sites from which massive solar storms lift off.
The past two years have marked the lowest low in the cycle since 1913, and for a while scientists were wondering if activity would ever pick back up.
During 2009 so far, the sun has been completely free of spots about 77 percent of the time. NASA researchers last month said quiet jet streams inside the sun were responsible, and that activity would soon return to normal.
The new set of spots, named 1024, is kicking up modest solar flares.
Sunspots are cool regions on the sun where magnetic energy builds up. They serve as a cap on material welling up from below.
Often, that material is released in spectacular light shows called solar flares and discharges of charged particles known as coronal mass ejections.
The ejections can travel as space storms to Earth within a day or so, and major storms can knock out satellites and trip power grids on the surface.
Prior to the low-activity period, astronomers had been predicting that the next peak in solar activity, expected in 2013, might be one of the most active in many decades.
That forecast was recently revised, however, and scientists now expect the next peak to be modest.
All this matters because, as laid out in a report earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences, a major solar storm nowadays could cause up to $2 trillion in initial damages by crippling communications on Earth and fueling chaos among residents and even governments in a scenario that would require four to 10 years for recovery.
Such a storm struck in 1859, knocking out telegraph communications and causing those lines to erupt in flames. The world then was not so dependent on electronic communication systems, however.
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If you have been accused of committing an act of academic dishonesty in violation of the SMC Honor Code and Code of Academic Conduct, be aware that you have a right to due process. An instructor's or another college official's accusation of academic dishonesty will stand, unless you appeal these charges. If you believe you have been wrongfully accused and would like to appeal this accusation, be sure to read our appeal procedures. While we will seek informal resolution, some cases warrant a full, formal hearing of the case. Procedures to request a hearing are found on the SMC Honor Council Hearing Board's website.
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If you have been accused of any of the following but are unsure what it "means," review the items below.
Remember to follow your instructor's specific requirements for the style of source citation appropriate for your course of study. If you have any doubts, always be sure to speak with your instructor (rather than attempting to guess on your own). | <urn:uuid:29bdea9e-d5c7-40fd-bad6-71390d5bd6f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smc.edu/StudentServices/HonorCouncil/Pages/Accused-of-Cheating.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955991 | 206 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Following the recent developments in the international oil market and the petroleum prices for the West Texas (WTI)
crossing $50, Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi, the Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, issued Tuesday a statement, saying "Saudi Arabia seeks to stabilize the market and curb the hike of prices that could be detrimental to the growth of global economy, particularly that of the developing countries."
In this respect, he added "in its bid to make available adequate production capacity as soon as possible, Saudi Arabia will use Abu Sa'fah and Qatif fields, which are now on stream, to raise the Kingdom's production capacity to 11 million barrels per day (bpd) by intensifying well drilling in producing fields. Therefore, the Kingdom's surplus productive capacity will be 1.5 million barrels daily."
He noted that the bulk of the new increment in the Kingdom's production will be in the light Arab oil. (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com ) | <urn:uuid:31b1d534-23aa-4870-92ec-d7bf5dea50be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albawaba.com/print/business/saudi-arabia-raises-oil-output | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917474 | 214 | 1.5625 | 2 |
- Posted May 3, 2012 by
This iReport is part of an assignment:
Eye on the Philippines
This festival is celebrated every 3rd weekend on the month of October. It is also remembered as the Anniversary where the city has been chartered.
Its highlight feature street dancing competition where participants are costumed with colorful dresses and masks, beauty contest among locals, sport event and many more. | <urn:uuid:d877c528-d87e-44a1-87f8-d74a5ead165a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-784955 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930237 | 81 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Comfort in times of sadness
A Christian Science perspective on daily life
"If you want to know what's right in the world," my friend said, "turn off the local news."Skip to next paragraph
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Her point? That sensationalism, ratings wars, and the desire to keep viewers interested often lead to a magnification of the negative. Further, although there's a lot in the world today that needs our prayers, there's also a lot of good. Acts of heroism and kindness and quiet examples of grace that never make headlines.
I try to remind myself of these things when I read the paper. But sometimes – especially with reports of genocide, sectarian clashes, and the like – it's hard not to get swept up in everything that seems wrong.
Recently, I found myself in tears over yet another photograph of an Iraqi woman weeping over a relative who'd been killed in the escalating violence.
Which points to the real issue I've been dealing with in relation to the news: How to help. I wonder: How can I be of comfort? And: How do I know my prayers are doing anything?
When it comes to prayer, my guides are the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy. I've learned from reading both of them that prayer is a powerful force for good, not because it sets about righting the wrongs we see around us, but because it reveals the nature of God and what God is doing for His creation. It shows us that we can acknowledge – and see manifested – the truth promised by Jesus that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt. 10:7).
Prayer reveals that God hasn't forgotten about us, or let His universe descend into chaos. Quite the contrary: God, omnipotent good, constantly loves and cares for us all.
"Prayer cannot change the Science of being," wrote Mrs. Eddy, "but it tends to bring us into harmony with it" (Science and Health, p. 2). And this is where I've tried to start in my prayers for comfort. To come into line with God's view, rather than begging Him to intervene.
After that photograph, though, I was having trouble getting traction. I just wanted to reach out and hug that woman. "God," I prayed, "where's the comfort at a time like this?"
And then I remembered God's comfort for me during a period that seemed lonely and dark.
No, I hadn't lost a relative, but an important and central relationship in my life seemed fraught with problems. Another dear friend had just moved away. And I was working at home for the first time – excited about my new career, but feeling more and more isolated as the days progressed.
I prayed diligently about those feelings. I also prayed to be unselfish – to look for ways to comfort others, rather than focusing on myself. But one day in church I broke down. I felt so sad and alone.
That's when I heard God's message: "Just let Me love you."
This was hugely helpful to me in thinking about comfort for the world because it reminded me that because God loves us infinitely – and is infinite Love itself – we don't have to do anything to feel His embrace. We just feel it. It's natural. No matter how dark a situation seems, divine Love is there, loving us in a way we can understand.
That day in church marked a turning point in my understanding of that fact. And that same day, acquaintances and friends began reaching out in unexpected and wonderful ways. Soon, I felt showered with love. And things in my life that had seemed so troubling began to adjust.
My friend's comment about the local news also reminded me about yielding to divine Love's version of the events around us. And thanks to my own experience, I can say that there's great peace and power in that approach. I'm seeing more and more that, spiritually speaking, we've never for a moment been without comfort. Because divine Love has been with us – with all of us, everywhere – all along. | <urn:uuid:5eeae462-b18b-4252-9d38-12a1663dd65c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1214/p18s01-hfcs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972253 | 854 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Pagan Music Project: Risky Material From the Forbidden Library
Learn how Classical Music harbors subliminal and not-so subliminal Pagan messages.
To Be, or Not to Be...PAGAN MUSIC
Now that I've given a brief synopsis of the Afternoon of a Faun and you've no doubt listened to or watched the video, I'd like to detour for a moment into a discussion about what makes music "Pagan or Not Pagan."
What would make a certain kind of music Pagan or not Pagan? There are two things that can be considered when it comes to subject matter in music: Textual references (such as lyrics, song titles, and instructions within the score) and secondly, the intent of the composer (as expressed through historical research of that composer and his or her colleagues). Of those two things, it is now to determine whether or not the evidence suggests that the intention of the composer could have been to disseminate his or her ideas about Paganism, or to capitalize on a popular trend.
Toward that purpose, it is necessary to discover what it means for something or someone to 'be Pagan.' The following is definition and instruction in the basic philosophy, morals, values, and theories which Pagans in general find themselves traversing on any given subject. For the purpose of this work, 'Pagan' should be construed to mean pre-Abrahamic European Indigenous religion. "Abrahamic" constitutes Christianity, Islam, and Judaism and their influences on various aspects of daily life. European Indigeny is the concept of the original religions of Europe as practiced before Abrahamic traditions were spread. *
This is a topic that I've been struggling with writing about, and I think I've figured out a set of criteria, with the help of the Choir of Asphodel, as to what makes a particular type of music "Pagan". What I am trying to do here is define music from a "Pagan-centric" point of view, mostly as an exercise and a jumping-off point from which to describe just one way to view Pagan music. I define "Pagan" as specifically European Indigeny as it has survived (or been recast, depending on the situation) past the fall of the Roman Empire. Naturally, the viewpoint of this kind of Paganism is not going to be without its lacunae, in which case, surviving folk traditions and historical artifacts can fill in the contextual lapses.
First and foremost, we have music that is 'by Pagans, for Pagans,' meaning, essentially, that pagans who are musicians (or vice versa) have written music for the audience of other Pagans with subject matter that directly includes deities, myths, and daily-life references specific to Pagans. Secondly, we have "Pagan-friendly" music; music on the subject of nature, spirituality, and mysticism that is religiously non-specific yet the lyrics or title or end purpose of the song support ideals that are embraced by Pagans. There is "Non-Pagan" music; music of other religions or traditions that either speaks to that non-pagan tradition, or that simply has nothing to do with Pagan morals, ideals, standpoint, deities, mythos, or daily life. And lastly, there is 'Secular' music; music which speaks to the rhythms and activities of daily life and has no relationship with religious identity whatsoever.
Music that is 'By Pagans, For Pagans" is an obvious category for the above mentioned reasons. The next category, "Pagan-Friendly" music, consists of music that is appreciated and ubiquitously sought after by Pagans for its content while neatly avoiding a "Pagan" public persona. Loreena McKennitt and Jethro Tull are examples of this kind of artist, with Loreena McKennitt writing about Pagan sensibilities and stories in a medieval-celtic oevre, and Jethro Tull, a rock band with a lead flute, crossing the line into direct pagan referencing with their song "Beltane." Neither artist has a distinctly "Pagan" public image, however, through their music they talk directly about things that are Pagan-i.e., Beltane being a Pagan holiday.
"Non-Pagan" music is not too difficult to define, but it can be a thorny one if the right words aren't chosen. This category approaches 'otherness' from a Pagan perspective, and that 'otherness' is most often derived from the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This often presents a catch-22, since a large number of Pagans today were raised in an Abrahamic religion and converted to Paganism at some point in their lives, and associate negativity and bad feelings with said origin religion. Hence, this category covers music from the religions that are considered to oppose Paganism, and would be distinctly concerned with music of the Abrahamic religions. Why not call this section "Abrahamic Religious Music?" Partially because I am working with the concept from a 'Pagan-Centric' standpoint, and partially due to the desire of many Pagans to completely abort the Abrahamic religions of the world in favor of Paganism. A good example of music in this situation would be "What if God Was One of Us?" by Joan Osborne. In this song, we have an excellent theory presented, with lyrics that define the role of God in everyday life and takes that as seriously as it can go. It's a song that many people relate to, but could potentially create tension if played at a Pagan gathering if the words weren't changed to reflect Pagan Gods and Goddesses, and couldn't easily be altered that way.
"Secular" music is music that talks generally of love, life, happiness, going to the movies; in other words, 'Secular' music in this context refers to everyday life without religious referencing. The stumbling block in this category is the occasional "my God" or "Oh God" in the ejaculative. Does the reference to "God" count as an Abrahamic influence and therefore negate the neutrality of the song by indicating belief in divinity, or is it acceptable due to its ubiquitous usage making it nearly neutral in and of itself? This is a question best answered on a case-by-case basis per song and with the artist's compositional intent and other works in mind. "Tribute" by the band Tenacious D is a good example of this: they use "Good God" and "God lovin'" as an ejaculative to express frustration that they could not remember the song that they had played in a competition with "a shiny demon." Can this song be construed to be amongst the Abrahamic religious songs? It doesn't praise God or speak of any of God's stories, words, actions, or attributes, and demons can be found in many cultures across the world that are non-Abrahamic, and the intention of the lyrics clearly expresses that the song is about a song, not about a deity. Clearly, "Tribute" by Tenacious D is in the 'Secular' category, and further shows that in the end, the intention of the composer plays a very important role in determining whether a song is "secular," "Pagan-friendly," or "Non-Pagan."
This all having been said, other religious identities and their music will be only minimally cited. That is because Ethnomusicology has a good handle on that topic for the most part and it isn't part of the definition of European indigeny that I spoke of earlier. Even though music of the world does have an effect on Pagan music and the religions of the world have representations in Pagan practices, there are others who have written about these subjects in more detail than I can possibly go into. Suffice it to say that here I have written what categories Music represents itself in as it is seen from a Pagan perspective. While these categories are nascent at the moment, they will grow and change with time to include more and more information and criteria for assessing, analyzing, and judging Pagan music and will grow to include further standards by which we can do this.
As a final thought, I bring your attention once more to "Prelude a l'apres-midi d'une faune" by Debussy. We know now, after the last two articles, that the Prelude is indeed richly suffused with Pagan imagery and the concept of sex-positivity. Whether or not a Pagan wrote it, it contains qualities that are conducive to Pagan culture today.
As an afterthought, Mallarme was referred to as a Pagan by people in Debussy's circle. Perhaps they both were Pagan. Either way, that will be the next blog.
And will I talk about Afternoon of a Faun forever? No, but it must have its season. Allow me one more post, and I will turn to Opera. Never fear; the Faun will definitely come back around on Beltane!
*It should be noted that this is a topic of some heat within the Pagan community. I will be treating it with as much detachment as possible, as it is my belief that we will not receive respect unless we give it.
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NEW YORK, NY — February 23, 2011 — For the second time in six months, the Open Space Institute has purchased land in Orange County that helps protect a slender “conservation corridor,” while also buffering nearby natural preserves.
OSI, through its land acquisition affiliate, the Open Space Conservancy, announced today the acquisition of two adjacent parcels in the town of Cornwall, both previously owned by the Merrill family, that total 32 acres and abut the southern boundary of the 3,800-acre Black Rock Forest.
The Merrill parcels protect the eastern end of a mile-and-a-half corridor that connects Black Rock Forest and Schunnemunk Forest State Park. OSI began targeting the corridor last year, as it provides roaming ground for wildlife traveling between Black Rock and Schunnemunk. In September 2010, OSI acquired 151 acres of farmland on the western end of the corridor. Press Release.
The properties are ecologically contiguous with the Black Rock Forest, home to native flora and fauna such as bears, bobcats, coyotes and otters, chestnut-oak forests and pitch pines.
“These properties are both part of the Black Rock Forest ecosystem,” said Bill Schuster, executive director of the nonprofit Black Rock Forest Consortium, which promotes research, education and conservation in the Black Rock Forest, “and they contain sensitive streams and wetlands.
“Protecting these properties will preserve the water quality of Woodbury Creek as well as habitat in this important corridor.”
OSI’s acquisition of the properties, which will ultimately be turned over to the Black Rock Forest Consortium for permanent management, also ensures a permanent route for the Highlands Trail, a 125-mile trail that runs from the Hudson River near Bear Mountain through the Highlands of New Jersey and on to the Delaware River.
Traversing Storm King State Park, Black Rock Forest, Schunnemunk Mountain State Park and numerous other public parks, watershed areas and wildlife management areas, the trail had been threatened by increasing development on the western escarpment of the Black Rock Forest Preserve.
This project will keep the Highlands Trail on permanently protected lands.
“These acquisitions, although small in acreage, will have dramatic effects by preserving recreational access in the region for many thousands of people, while protecting habitat for plants and animals. This region of New York is one of the state’s most ecologically diverse, and therefore important to permanently protect,” said OSI CEO Kim Elliman. | <urn:uuid:1d462979-434b-4629-87db-9665298c5f05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osiny.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7854 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930606 | 517 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Your Home Health Center
More of your health care takes place in your home than anywhere else. Having the right tools, medicines, supplies, and information on hand will improve the quality of your self-care.
Self-care tools are the basic equipment of your home health center. Store all your self-care tools and supplies in a central location, such as a large drawer in the bedroom or family room. Use the lists of tools and supplies in this topic as checklists for keeping your home health center stocked. It's a good idea to keep all your family's medical records in one place, such as in your home health center. For information on organizing these records, see the topic Home Medical Records.
Be familiar with the disaster preparation and response plan for your area. Keep the appropriate supplies on hand. For more information on preparedness and recommended supplies, see the topic Terrorism and Other Public Health Threats.
eMedicineHealth Medical Reference from Healthwise
To learn more visit Healthwise.org
Find out what women really need.
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ASK THE GARDENERS. Questions & Answers
Q Our lovely, single, pink peony has stopped blooming. It has been growing in the same spot for about 10 years. The past two springs it has not even set buds. It must be trying to tell me some-thing. B.Q.H.Skip to next paragraph
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Although peonies will grow for many years without need of transplanting, older, crowded beds may benefit from lifting clumps and moving to a well-prepared soil.
If stems and foliage are still sturdy looking, it is probably getting enough sun.
However, sometimes a nearby tree, which was small at the time peonies were planted, may take gardeners by surprise when they find it has grown large enough to cast a shadow a good part of the day. Peonies need at least six hours of direct sun.
Lack of fertilizer could be a problem. It is best to fertilize yearly, preferably in early spring. One pound of 5-10-5 or 4-12-4 analysis per 25 square feet will give enough phosphorus (the middle digit) for bud formation.
If you decide to transplant, spade soil to a depth of about 12 inches and mix in some rotted manure or compost with the soil (about a half-bushel to 10 square feet). Divide clump in half, if you wish.
Plant by hand at a depth that leaves pink buds only about 1 inches below soil level. Planted too deeply, peonies won't bloom. Water gently but thoroughly after planting. If you transplant before leaves die down, cut off beforehand.
Peonies can be planted in fall or early spring. We have a peony bed that has thrived in the same spot for 25 years.
If your plant gets enough sun and is not crowded by other plants, we would leave it in place another year, giving it a feeding in early spring and ample water during dry spells. We bet it will bloom again. | <urn:uuid:b7149766-be5b-4637-a6dc-4a6ac1982200> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0913/hdoc13.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96538 | 415 | 2.3125 | 2 |
(word processor parameters LM=1, RM=70, TM=2, BM=2) Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501 Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 March 30, 1990 ***** Dreamland (aka Area 51-3.ASC) ***** November 14, 1989 ParaNet Information Service (Denver, CO) -- In our continuing coverage of the Riddle of Area 51, here is yet another installment of the KLAS-TV program being aired in Las Vegas, Nevada featuring Bob Lazar, who has 'come out of the closet' so to speak with information regarding government testing of UFOs. ================================================================= Just over this ridge [showing a photo of Area 51], tucked inside the test tubes of a hidden government base, the secrets of the universe may be unfolding. The area is designated S-4, and according to one man who claims to have worked there, S-4 harbors scientific achievements that would astonish our deepest thinkers. It is technology that, if it exists, could change the world, but is allegedly bottled up by military minds. Lazar: "It's not an overall government project. It's not something that Congress appropriates money for. 2 billion is for this; 15 billion for flying saucers; 8 billion for Star Wars. It doesn't go like that. I don't believe that they have any knowledge of it at all." The technology that Bob Lazar says he saw extends far beyond flying saucers. An anti-matter reactor allows the spaceships to produce their own gravitational fields, he says, such a technology, if real, would answer UFO skeptics who argue that aliens could never visit Earth because the distances between worlds are too great, even at the speed of light. Lazar: "Gravity distorts time and space. Just like if you had a water bed and put a bowling ball in the middle. It warps it down like that -- that's exactly what happens to space. Imagining that you were in a spacecraft that could exert a tremendous gravitational field by itself you could sit on any particular place and turn on the gravity generator and actually warp space and time, and fold it. By shutting that off, you'd click back and you'd be a tremendous distance from where you were but time would not have even moved because you essentially shut it off. I mean it is so far fetched, people....it's difficult for people to grasp, and as stubborn as the scientific community is they'll never buy it, but this is, in fact, that's just what happens." Actually, Lazar's explanation is very close to mainstream scientific thought, and can be traced directly to Einstein. The difference is scientists regard it as theory only. There is much that science still doesn't know. Dale Etheridge (Scientist): "There are people who say that our main problem with that is we don't know what gravity is. It's this magical force that acts at a distance. We can describe how it behaves -- that's what the law of gravity is -- it's just a description of how it behaves, but it says nothing about what gravity really is." We'll use Etheridge as our barometer of scientific thought. He says we cannot produce gravity; that there's no such thing as a working anti-matter reactor, and that we have yet to figure out a way to get around the speed of light. He also concedes, though, such things are possible. Etheridge: "Yeah. And really we don't know what's possible as there could be other civilizations out there several hundred years or so -- a thousand years, even a million years ahead of us -- that have found a way to circumvent this. We have no way of knowing for sure." Lazar: "Well, the thing is when you harness gravity, you harness everything. It's the missing piece in physics right now. We really know very little about gravity." At least that's the way it used to be. Lazar says the technology to harness gravity not only exists but is being tested at S-4. And, if such technology is beyond human capabilities, it must have come from someplace else. It's more than conjecture, he says, because he also saw an element that cannot be found on the periodic chart. The element, called 115, can be stored in lead casings much like this one [showing a lead circular container]. Lazar says the government has 500 pounds of it, and it cannot be made on earth. Lazar: "It would be almost impossible; well, it is impossible to synthesize an element that heavy here on Earth." Interviewer: "At least right now." Lazar: "I don't think that you can ever synthesize it. The amount of....you essentially have to assemble it by bombarding it with protons if....atom by atom, it would take an infinite amount of power and an infinite amount of time. The substance has to come from a place where super-heavy elements could have been produced naturally. And what sort of place is that? Lazar: "Next to a much larger sun where there would be greater mass. Maybe a binary star system -- a super-nova -- somewhere where there is just a bigger release of energy to synthesize these things naturally. It has to be a naturally occurring element." 115 is the fuel for the anti-matter reactors, he says. By bombarding 115 anti-matter is produced. A kilo of anti-matter could produce the energy equivalent of 46 ten-megaton hydrogen bombs, and comparing the energy potential of anti-matter to, say, the Hoover Dam would be like comparing planets to grains of sand. 115 could also make one heck of a bomb. Lazar: "We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of megatons off a small piece of it. It sounds incredible, but total conversion of matter to energy would release that amount of power. And it isn't that difficult to take....get the energy out of it. So it's not something you'd ever want to fall anyone's hands." The dangers associated with 115 and anti-matter may be the reason Lazar was hired to work at S-4. There was an accident, he says, back in April 1987. An accident that was passed off as an unannounced nuclear test. Lazar: "Some people got killed. I was told flat out I was one of the people that were to replace these guys." Is this why the government might be keeping the whole matter a secret? Because of the military potential of alien technology? Lazar says he believes the Soviet Union was once part of our research on the flying disks, but that the U.S. kicked the Soviets out after making some sort of discovery. He also believes the program at S-4 is operated with funds allocated to Star Wars research, but says he can't prove it. Some UFO researchers suspect the government is test flying alien craft so that it can one day master the technology and claim it was made in the good old U.S.A., thus obscuring the possibility of alien visitations. Stanton T. Friedman: "I think they have the duty to inform us. At least to the bare bones of what's going on. I don't want technological stuff put out on the table. I mean, I worked on classified projects for 15 years, and I don't think we need another weapon's delivery system. But I think the government does have the responsibility to release information that, indeed, the planet is being visited. Probably it should be done in conjunction with the Soviets." Lazar: "I don't think that it will get to that level. They're not going to have a fleet of them and fly them around and....I don't think you need to do that. If you're looking at them from a weapons point of view, you're looking at an incredibly powerful device. You only need one to operate. You don't ever need to come public with it. You may want to learn more about it should it ever break which is....might be what they're doing. Uh...." Interviewer: "They've got one...." Lazar: "Oh, they've got a few. Yeah." Lazar is the first to admit that his story is tough to swallow. He submitted to polygraph exams that opened up sensitive parts of his personal life, and fully expects to be ridiculed or perhaps punished for his revelations. His desire to explain what really happened at S-4 took us to Layne Keck, a licensed experienced hypnotherapist who quietly and privately tried to help Lazar remember details of the many briefing papers he says he read. Keck: "I have no clue as to what we were getting to, and he started saying that there were pictures of what I thought was desks on the wall. Well as it turned out, it was disks that he was referring to. And, at that moment, I realized we were into something that was pretty heavy." Keck does not exaggerate his claims for hypnosis. He regards it as a useful tool for uncovering some lost memory. He says people are quite capable of lying under hypnosis, but says the technique can be of help in determining truth. What's his opinion of Lazar's truthfulness? Keck: "It tells me that his subconscious mind believes totally all of these things." Lazar has long suspected that his government employers used some sort of mind control technique to prevent him from disclosing too much about S-4. While he says he has vivid conscious memories of the saucers and other technology there were other memories, that even now, remained locked, which is why he sought out Keck in the first place. Keck is convinced that someone really did mess with Lazar's head. Keck: "Also they used primitive fear in threatening those in his environment if he did bring this information forth. Also, it appears that maybe there were some chemicals used." Lazar: "Nah, I'm not going to change anyone's mind. That not my intention. I'm just relaying the experience. The job that I went through. It is a fantastic thing. It's a fantastic story. I can't take people there to show them what was going on, and uh, you know, I don't expect anyone to believe it." What if he is right? What if aliens are here? How would this change our view of the world? Our most fundamental beliefs, which is religion? We'll know more on that tomorrow. ================================================================= Vangard Note This information courteously uploaded to KeelyNet by Lance Oliver. | <urn:uuid:10a21779-9e55-4a6d-8270-a5d2e3734936> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sacred-texts.com/ufo/area51-3.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981376 | 2,179 | 1.8125 | 2 |
For those who are home, and for those who are on the way. For those who support the historic and just return of the land of Israel to its people, forever loyal to their inheritance, and its restoration.
The envy felt by the nations throughout history towards the success of Jews in every field seems to find expression in an incident described in this week's Torah portion.
"Yitzchak sowed in the land and in that year reaped a hundredfold... the man became great and kept becoming greater… and the Philistines envied him." (Bereishet 26:12-14)
The envious Philistines stopped up and filled with earth the wells that Yitzchak's father had dug, and when Yitzchak's servants dug two new wells of fresh water the Philistines claimed the water was theirs. Only when a third well was dug there was finally no resistance.
The success of Jews in our own day in turning a barren land into a thriving state has once again stirred the envy of "Philistines". We must be confident that we will someday reach that third uncontested well and enjoy a peaceful Israel forever. .
I visited Hevron in November 2000 after the outbreak of the Rosh Hashanah War to see what could be done to assist in the face of the growing daily attacks on the community. After returning to work for the community in the summer of 2001, a bond and a love was forged that grows to this day. My wife Melody and I merited to be married at Ma'arat HaMachpela and now host visitors from throughout the world every Shabbat as well as during the week. Our goal, "Time to come Home!" | <urn:uuid:bae0ee62-5300-4bce-8ae0-f8e51c5a1491> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2009/11/philistines-and-palestinians.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979495 | 352 | 1.640625 | 2 |
If you're not wild about sharing your tablet with your kids, there's good news. This year you'll find a lot more tablets made especially for them, and they are far from just kids' play. Consumer Reports checked them out.
"This year we're seeing tablets with real Android operating systems and features like Wi-Fi and expandable memory," said Carol Mangis of Consumer Reports. "These tablets are not just toys."
Consumer Reports evaluated five tablets designed for kids. They cost between $150 and $200. Testers checked lots of features, including display quality. Some screens were hard to view from an angle. One machine measured battery life by tapping the screen to keep it awake until the batteries run down.
Then came the team of experts! Consumer Reports asked a dozen young testers to play games, read books, and create artwork on the tablets.
They answered questions, too, like how easy the tablets are to turn on, and which activities are fun.
"These tablets all come loaded with child-friendly games and learning activities," Mangis said. "And not surprisingly, the kids liked the games the best."
For bookworms, the Meep! Tablet from Oregon Scientific has the clearest display screen. And if you want to limit your child's internet access, parental controls are on all the tablets. The most extensive for younger kids are on the Meep!, the Kurio 7 and the Nabi 2.
"Some tablets have internet filters," explained Mangis, "which means kids can surf only to approved websites. And on some tablets, parents can limit their kid's time online."
And which tablet did the kids like best? The Nabi 2 for 200 dollars. It has a friendly interface, and the longest battery life.
Consumer Reports notes that some "grownup" tablets have parental restrictions, too. You'll find them on tablets including the
Galaxy Nexus, Barnes & Noble Nook, and Amazon Kindle Fire models. | <urn:uuid:7a39f376-b2ca-47ff-b4e7-1530695d2879> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgrz.com/rss/article/191295/37/Consumer-Reports-Best-Tablets-for-Kids | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959533 | 403 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Who would not like to trade places with John Carpenter, the first million dollar winner on the TV show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLnTK8qanw
Winning a game show or a lottery is the dream of a lifetime for many people. The desire for huge amounts of money is a desire most of us have at one time or another.
Ironically, this dream of earthly wealth is a desire for fleeting value. If we received a huge amount of money how long can we enjoy and use this wealth? Only for the length of our lifetime (maybe 50, 60, or 70 years max).
Sadly, there are possessions of much greater, eternal value that we choose to ignore. What is of greater value to us than money? What can we truly “take with us” after we pass away? We will see what this eternal wealth is in today’s study…
Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? (James 2:5)
In the book of James, the apostle writes to Jews who had fled from their homeland due to persecution by the Roman Empire. They were a discouraged, broken and POOR people. In most cases, they departed with nothing more than the clothes on their back. They had lost their home, their livestock, their social standing, their savings, everything. This is the context of James’ message, he desired to encourage those who had lost all this world had to offer. So what can you say to those who had “lost it all”?
First, he reminds them that they are loved by God… “My beloved brethren.” The love of our God is of far greater value than any riches this world has to offer. It is because of God the Father’s love for us that He was willing to send His Son to die. It was because of God the Son’s love for us that He was willing to bear our sin and die on the cross. It is because of God the Spirit’s love that He lives within us, accompanying us and guiding us as we walk through this life. If we only have God’s love, we are very wealthy indeed. (See John 3:16, 1 John 3:16 John 14:23) But the results of His love for us do not stop there. Actually what He does for us cannot begin to be listed, the list would be endless.
In our verse, James gives us two other products of God’s love… being “rich in faith” and “heirs of the kingdom that he hath promised”. Both of these are eternal in nature… they will exist long after we have departed from this earth. (1 Cor 2:9)
The value of faith cannot be underemphasized. It is directed to past, present and future time frames. God-given faith in Christ and His work, is an absolute requirement for God’s forgiveness and our salvation from sin (past). (Please refer to 1 Pet 1:5-9) Once saved, we continue to exercise faith in Him on a daily basis, looking to Him in all our decision making (present). Also it is through faith, that we receive all of His future promises to us (future).
This brings us to the second great product of God’s love to us, the heirship of the kingdom that he has awaiting for us. His kingdom, refers to all that He controls throughout eternity. A heavenly home, living in His presence, rewards for our obedience, and the authority to rule with Him over the new earth are all a part of the life awaiting us.
The results of our heirship go beyond our earthly understanding. In Revelation 21:-22: John gives us a limited glimpse of the greatness of our eternity awaiting us. Beginning with personally walking with God, to living a life where pain, sorrow, and sickness no longer exist, ending with a dwelling place of pure gold, his account of our eternity is clearly beyond our understanding. Our eternity is so great… it cannot be valued, nor understood, with our human reasoning (see 1 Cor 2:9).
THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION:
There is no doubt that God’s love to us, far outweighs the fleeting riches of this world. For the saved, every second we live, every breath we take, is filled with His gracious presence, protection and sealing, giving us peace that we are one of His and heaven bound! This is the “joy unspeakable and full of glory” Peter talks about in 1 Pet 1:8. It is a joy that should constantly exist in our lives no matter what circumstances we are facing. God’s love should motivate the Christian to have a continually thankful joyous heart for all He has done, and will do for us.
For those of us who have not experienced the grace of God in our hearts, there is a void that cannot be filled apart from the love and joy only God gives. Do you have that feeling of emptiness within you? Have you been searching for that certain “something” that will make you feel whole and at peace? Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ can fill that void. By trusting in Him and His work on the cross; by accepting Him as the Lord of your life and committing your life to Him, you will find forgiveness, peace, and eternal love and the fulfillment.
In other words, to become a secret millionaire all we must do is… look to Jesus and live…
And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Heb 9:27-28)
May the Lord bless your study of His Word.
Like God’s Word… may your soul’s salvation and your life’s faithfulness be “Settled in Heaven.” | <urn:uuid:3db5d1f6-f075-44de-a640-b0dc253142b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://settledinheaven.wordpress.com/2010/05/07/the-secret-millionaires/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958019 | 1,287 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The remains of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were exhumed from his grave so international forensic experts can search for additional clues as to the circumstances of his death, Palestinian officials said Tuesday.
The exhumation began before dawn, under the cover of huge sheets of blue tarpaulin draped over Arafat’s mausoleum in his former government compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The official said some of the remains were moved to a nearby mosque, but that the team then encountered technical difficulties. He would not elaborate. The experts decided to return the remains to the grave and take the samples without moving what was left of the body, the official said.
By mid-morning, the grave was reclosed, said Tawfiq Tirawi, a former Palestinian intelligence chief who heads the investigation into Arafat’s death.
The samples were to be handed over to French, Swiss and Russian experts who flew in for the exhumation and would examine them in their home countries, the officials said. Earlier, samples were also taken from Arafat’s bedroom, office and personal belongings, they said.
The ostensible detection earlier this year of a lethal radioactive substance on clothing said to be Arafat’s sparked a new investigation into his 2004 death.
Public reaction in the West Bank was mixed.
Nidaa Younes, a Palestinian government employee, said it was unnecessary to dig up the remains. “Our religion forbids exhuming graves. It is not nice at all to do this, even if religion permits it in some cases,” she said, adding that she believes Israel was responsible for Arafat’s death.
Ramallah resident Tony Abdo said he supports the exhumation, expecting it to prove that Arafat did not die a natural death.
Arafat died in November 2004 in a French military hospital, a month after suddenly falling ill. Palestinian officials claim he was poisoned by Israel, but have not presented evidence. Israel has denied the allegations.
Arafta’s widow, Suha, said on Thursday that the exhumation of her husband’s body was painful but necessary.
“It is very painful. It is a shock, and it is not easy for myself or my daughter,” Arafat told AFP. “But if you must know the truth, it is necessary for our people, for the families of the martyrs of Gaza,” she said in apparent reference to the Palestinians who were killed by Israeli airstrikes during the IDF’s Operation Pillar of Defense.
“We must do it to turn the page on the great secrecy surrounding his death,” Suha added. “If there was a crime, it must be solved.”
Then the Palestinian Authority president, Arafat was reported by his doctors in Ramallah to be suffering from flu in late October 2004, and was treated by a team of Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Tunisian doctors for what were then described as symptoms of “anorexia, nausea and nasal congestion.” His condition deteriorated, and he was helicoptered to Jordan and then taken by French government jet to France and admitted to Percy Military Training Hospital in the Paris suburb of Clamart.
In July, al-Jazeera claimed that tests carried out by the Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne had found traces of polonium on Arafat’s belongings in quantities much higher than could occur naturally. A spokesman for the institute, however, said “conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not.”
A leading French doctor who teaches at Percy recently told The Times of Israel that, based on Arafat’s medical report, there is “absolutely no way” the Palestinian leader was poisoned.
Dr. Roland Masse, a member of the prestigious Académie de Médecine, said the symptoms of polonium poisoning would have been “impossible to miss,” noting that Percy had tested Arafat for radiation poisoning, and revealed that the hospital specializes in the related field of radiation detection. “A lethal level of polonium simply cannot go unnoticed,” he clarified.
Masse elaborated: “When in contact with high levels of polonium, the body suffers from acute radiation, which translates into a state of anemia and a severe decrease in white blood cells. And yet Arafat did not present any of those symptoms. What did decrease was his platelets, not his white blood cells.”
While his widow insisted that the procedure was in no way “degrading,” the former PLO leader’s nephew Nasser al-Qidwa told AFP he found the whole process disturbing and akin to a “desecration.”
“No good can come out of this at all,” Qidwa said in an interview. “It does no good to the Palestinians.”
Qidwa argued that most Palestinians already believed that Arafat had been poisoned and did not require any further proof. | <urn:uuid:6401fade-a2a8-432a-a8c1-063bd3fcb6f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesofisrael.com/arafats-body-exhumed-bone-samples-to-be-tested-for-radiation-poisoning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98081 | 1,066 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Green plants are the best!
Green plants in the work place help to decrease stress and promote creativity. Farmers have realized this for a long time and that is why they like to grow their green crops. There is nothing like standing in a green hay (alfalfa) field and taking in the smell and the color. It is a great way to start the day and take in the great outdoors. It has been shown that plans in the work place can help a person to stay focused and to absorb the distracting noises. | <urn:uuid:3ea7c832-7bd1-414f-b324-2101873ad6d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nutritiouswisconsinmilk.com/2011/09/green-plants-are-best.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968264 | 112 | 1.929688 | 2 |
- Lemon Verbena Fact Sheet
- Lemon Verbena Recipes
- Favorite Herbal Authors
- LVL's Favorite Poems
- List of Perennial Herbs
- A List of Annual Herbs
- A List of Tender Perennials
- A List of Edible Flowers and Ten Rules for Eating Them
- A Partial List of Nonedible or Poisonous Flowers
- Links to Guest Posts for The Herb Companion Magazine and Mother Earth Living Magazine
Thursday, July 16, 2009
It's Travel Thursday--Edible Flowers in Giverny!
One of my favorite edible flowers is the nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus). These are outside a little restaurant in the quaint village of Giverny where Claude Monet lived and painted. I always thought Giverny was the name of his home. We took the train from Paris and it was a really pleasant ride. Monet's garden reminds me of ours in a very small way. Lots of herbs mixed with annuals and perennials. This is a famous view of more nasturtiums at Claude Monet's home. Wish ours were even starting to blossom. They aren't! It is finally hot and humid, but only for one day! Well, hope you are having great weather wherever you may be! | <urn:uuid:6c7c6bc4-7b12-4d1b-882a-7520a8af8941> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com/2009/07/its-travel-thursday-edible-flowers-in.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956335 | 271 | 1.648438 | 2 |
October 4, 2012 | 562 views
Districts find common ground in science
While English and math skills are often at the forefront of educational planning, it’s science that is receiving some extra attention in Valley Stream.
This year, new changes are being unveiled in sixth-grade classes in Valley Stream’s three elementary districts. The purpose is to have students familiar with the same science skills and terms by the time they come together as seventh graders in the Central High School District.
The changes were brought about by the Interdistrict Curriculum Council, a team of administrators from Valley Stream’s four school districts. The group, which was re-established last year, made science program improvements its first charge.
The council is led by Dr. Lisa Conte, curriculum director for District 24, and Dr. Thomas Troisi, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in the high school district. Troisi said that there was a consensus among officials from the four districts that in order to better prepare students for accelerated science courses in high school, more work had to be done at the elementary level.
“We felt that what was missing were some more authentic, scientific experiences in the sixth grade,” Troisi said.
Over the summer, sixth-grade teachers worked along with high school district science teachers to address the elementary school curriculum. Conte said the teachers designed lab activities that could be performed in sixth-grade classes across Valley Stream.
When students conduct these hands-on experiments, they will follow the same scientific process used in junior high and high school science classes. They will also have to create lab reports and learn vocabulary words to prepare them for seventh grade and beyond.
Conte and Troisi explained that while the sixth-grade science curriculum in the three elementary districts has always been similar, now students will be doing the same work, regardless of if they are in District 13, 24 or 30. “It’s not that we’ve changed what they’re teaching there,” Troisi said. “We changed how they’re teaching it.” | <urn:uuid:8615ef17-0d1a-4cc6-95ed-af2e753222c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.liherald.com/valleystream/stories/Districts-find-common-ground-in-science,43601 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973375 | 435 | 2.96875 | 3 |
January 8, 1821 – January 2, 1904
Perhaps no Confederate officer is surrounded by more controversy than James Longstreet. Called “Old Pete” and “My Old War Horse” by Gen. Robert E. Lee, Longstreet was Lee’s trusted advisor and friend. But, after the war, Longstreet became the target of many “Lost Cause” attacks. His letters to the New Orleans Times, his support of the Republican Party, and his memoirs served to alienate many Southerners.
Longstreet was born in South Carolina, but spent much of his childhood at the home of his uncle, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet in Augusta, Georgia. “Uncle Gus” may have been influential in Longstreet’s early life as a fervent proponent of states’ rights. Longstreet went on to attend West Point, where he graduated fifty-fourth out of sixty-two cadets in the class of 1842. At the academy Longstreet befriended a young man from Ohio, Ulysses S. Grant, and after graduation both officers would be assigned to the 4th U.S. Infantry.
Like many future Civil War generals, Longstreet’s first real war experience came during the Mexican War. From 1846 to 1848 Longstreet rendered distinguished service in some of that war's most important battles including Vera Cruz, Churubusco, and Chapultapec, where he was wounded. Recognized for his bravery, Longstreet would also serve alongside his long-time friend and future subordinate George Pickett. Following the close of the conflict, he continued his army career, participating in the Indian Wars and rising to the rank of major by 1858.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Longstreet, then serving in New Mexico Territory, resigned his commission after nearly twenty years of service. He was very quickly appointed Brigadier General under P.G.T. Beauregard and reported for duty in July of 1861. Following his first action at Blackburn's Ford, Longstreet received praise for his coolness under fire and the manner in which he inspired his men. Longstreet and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were both promoted to Major General under Joseph E. Johnston in October 1861. Following his promotion Longstreet commanded a division of six brigades–the nucleus of what would eventually become the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.
In January of 1862 he was dealt a devastating blow when three of his children died in rapid succession from scarlet fever. In spite of this terrible news, Longstreet performed admirably during the Peninsula Campaign, often serving as the rearguard for Johnston's retreating army. At the Battle of Williamsburg in May 1862, General Johnston reported that he was “a mere spectator, for General Longstreet’s clear head and brave heart left me no apology for interference.” However, during the May 31 – June 1, 1862 Battle of Seven Pines, Longstreet bungled his orders and mismanaged the battle itself. General Johnston was seriously wounded and command eventually devolved on Robert E. Lee, then serving as senior military advisor to President Jefferson Davis. Longstreet quickly won General Lee’s trust with his performance at the battles of Glendale and, the following day, Malvern Hill. In a campaign that foiled the Union attempt to seize Richmond, Lee wrote that “Longstreet was the staff in my right hand.” That August, at Second Manassas, Longstreet’s wing of 28,000 men counterattacked the Union forces in what the National Park Service calls “the largest, simultaneous mass assault of the war. The Union left flank was crushed and the army driven back to Bull Run.” Longstreet was also noticed for his excellent performance the following month at Antietam, and his extraordinary coolness under fire continued to be a trademark.
When Jackson's Corps was assimilated into the Army of Northern Virginia, Longstreet was promoted to Lieutenant General and his corps was officially designated as the First Corps. During the incredibly bloody battle of Fredericksburg that December, Longstreet took advantage of the terrain to create an almost impenetrable defense along Marye’s Heights. From the heights above he used his artillery so effectively that no Union soldiers came closer than 30 yards to the infamous stone wall. From February to April 1863, Longstreet led two of his divisions to Southeast Virginia for the collecting of food and forage, and was therefore not present at the battle of Chancellorsville that May.
Longstreet did, however, rejoin Lee's Army for the second invasion of the North and the subsequent battle of Gettysburg. An outspoken proponent of western concentration, Longstreet was skeptical about the wisdom of the invasion. A further dispute between Longstreet and his commanding general over the nature of the campaign would only grow during the battle and its aftermath. While the corps commander was under the impression the army was to wage a defensive battle whenever possible, Lee, emboldened by his recent victory at Chancellorsville, insisted on attacking the numerically superior Army of the Potomac. Longstreet's Corps arrived on the field on July 2, 1863, one day after fighting had begun. After the Virginian denied him permission to flank the Federal army, two division's of the First Corps launched an attack on the Union left wing late in the afternoon of July 2. Despite initial success in breaking the Federal lines, Longstreet's men were denied victory, and casualties were high. Nevertheless, Lee was determined to exploit what he believed to be a weakness in the Union center and planned an assault for the following day. Longstreet, whose troops would spearhead the forlorn hope, voiced his strenuous objections to the plan, but was rebuffed. On July 3, in perhaps the war's most famous episode, troops from Longstreet's corps under Maj. General George Pickett charged across open fields to assault the Union center only to be repulsed, again at a great loss. For the remainder of his life, Longstreet would continually assert his opposition to Lee's command decisions at Gettysburg, much to the disdain of his fellow officers. This opposition, combined with allegations that he deliberately delayed the execution of Lee's orders, did much to tarnish Longstreet's reputation.
That autumn, Longstreet was sent west to the aid of the beleaguered Braxton Bragg. His troops arrived on September 20, just in time to rout a significant portion of the Union line at Chickamauga. Only the staunch resistance of George H. Thomas saved the Union army. The stubborn Gen. Bragg, however, was less than warm in his reception of Gen. Longstreet and his staff, especially when several of Longstreet's generals wished to have Bragg removed from command. President Davis would not remove Bragg, and Longstreet’s reputation was damaged. After a difficult winter–and an abortive attempt at independent command in East Tennessee–Longstreet and his men were happy to return to the Army of Northern Virginia in April 1864.
At the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, Longstreet and his men performed well, finding a hidden route from which they could attack Union forces, catching them in a deadly crossfire. On May 6th, in an incident very similar to Stonewall Jackson’s mortal wounding the year before, Longstreet was fired on by his own men. A minié bullet passed through Longstreet’s neck and shoulder, permanently paralyzing the general's right arm. Though he survived, he did not return to his corps until October, by which time the Confederate army was dead-locked in defending the besieged city of Petersburg. Longstreet was assigned to protect Richmond and the vital railroads that supplied the city.
On April 2, 1865, Union forces broke the Confederate line at Petersburg. When A. P. Hill was killed, Longstreet took command of his Third Corps. On April 9, 1865, however, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Longstreet and Lee parted ways on April 12, 1865. Longstreet moved to New Orleans, and the two men never saw each other again.
In 1867, the New Orleans Times asked several leading citizens to comment on the newly passed Reconstruction Acts. Unwisely, Longstreet suggested that Southerners support the Republicans. He was praised in the North, but vilified in the South. In June 1868, he received his pardon – by act of Congress – with help from General Grant. He supported Grant for president, and when elected, Grant nominated Longstreet to be the Surveyor of Customs for the Port of New Orleans. For this last betrayal of the South he was labeled a “scalawag.”
Many of Longstreet’s actions after the war were controversial: his letters to the New Orleans Times, his support of the Republican Party, his acceptance of political appointments, and the fact that he commanded African-Americans (part of the New Orleans Metropolitan Police Force). Worst of all, he had dared to criticize Robert E. Lee’s leadership. Very quickly he became the target of “Lost Cause” attacks by Jubal Early, William Pendleton, Rev. J William Jones, and others. Longstreet spent the rest of his life attempting to restore his reputation. In 1889 he was dealt another huge blow. His home, Parkhill, burned to the ground in April. Then his wife, Louise, died in December.
Despite the many attacks by former officers in the Confederate Army, many men fondly remembered their days fighting under Longstreet. In 1890 the Washington Artillery—famous for their performance at Fredericksburg—insisted that Longstreet participate at the unveiling of Lee’s statue in Richmond and in 1892 at the 3rd annual United Confederate Veterans meeting former soldiers flocked to him. He spoke at the dedication of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park in 1895 and attended the 1902 centennial celebration at West Point.
Longstreet published his 800-page memoirs, From Manassas to Appomattox, in December 1895. In September 1897 he married 34-year-old Helen Dortch; although his family was not pleased with the marriage, Helen defended Longstreet’s name until she died in 1962. James Longstreet died on January 2, 1904, just days short of his 83rd birthday. He was buried at Alta Vista Cemetery in Gainesville, GA. | <urn:uuid:0ddeea7a-2b0d-4f3b-b2a7-93a69e8bafa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/james-longstreet.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983606 | 2,169 | 3 | 3 |
XV. PARTNERSHIP [COOPERATION] WITH THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL SECTOR
The Working Group reviewed the Chair's draft of Chapter XV, focusing primarily on the objectives and actions sections. There was disagreement on how to proceed with the reading of the draft text. The EU called for an informal discussion of the revised text. China agreed and requested that the revised amendments be attributed to their sponsors. The Chair opted against both suggestions in light of time limitations and the logistical difficulties associated with both the EU and Chinese proposals.
A. Local, National and International Non-Governmental Organizations: Disagreement arose with regard to the word "cooperation" in the title of the chapter. The EU affirmed the importance of partnership and cooperation between governments and NGOs and asked that the matter be resolved by the Chair since it is a theme that reappears throughout the text. China and Brazil highlighted the need for a concise text and called for the deletion of [cooperation] from the title. Iran also requested clarification about the nature of cooperation that is anticipated between NGOs and governments and supra-governmental bodies. In 15.7 (objective), further disagreement arose on the nature of relationships between NGOs and governments. Brazil emphasized that the design, implementation and evaluation of population activities fall within the sovereign jurisdiction of each country. He added that NGO activities should be carried out within the policy framework of national governments. This position was echoed by the EU who called for deletion of "on a consultative basis". In 15.8 (mechanisms to facilitate NGO activities and their official status), Brazil asked for a more simplified text. Supported by Venezuela, Indonesia and Iran, Brazil also called for the deletion of the reference to the official status of NGOs in national and international development processes. The EU supported the Philippines' proposal to integrate NGOs at all levels of decision making, but asked to replace reference to "official status" with the "key role" of NGOs in the national and international development process. The Dominican Republic questioned how NGOs could work in full partnership with governments in population and development processes without official status. Morocco and Liberia objected to the political independence of NGOs. Sweden disagreed. The EU suggested placing clear emphasis on their autonomy rather than on their independence. Morocco agreed.
In 15.8.bis (the role of women's organizations), Brazil requested consolidation of that paragraph with 15.8. or its transfer to the chapter on gender equity. Bolivia, the US and Paraguay insisted that the paragraph be retained in this chapter, since gender issues are critical to all chapters. Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal and Canada endorsed the importance of the paragraph but called for a more action-oriented focus. The Philippines requested the inclusion of family planning under the broader umbrella of "sexual and reproductive health." The Holy See requested brackets around the Philippines' suggestion. In 15.9 (financial and technical support for NGO participation), Brazil, supported by Turkey and Iran, suggested a simplified version. The US, supported by Tanzania, Nigeria and the Philippines, agreed with the simplified version, but highlighted the importance of accountability. Morocco questioned the reality of NGO independence where they actually have a financial partnership relationship with governments and intergovernmental organizations.
In 15.10 (enabling environment), Benin emphasized that governments and intergovernmental organizations should not be considered on the same footing. Nigeria said that mechanisms should be established to encourage regional dialogue and consultation. Brazil suggested that governments, intergovernmental organizations and international financial institutions, including donors, should assure that NGOs and their networks are able to maintain their autonomy and strengthen their capacity through regular dialogue and consultation and appropriate training and outreach activities and thus play a greater partnership role at all levels. Brazil stressed the importance of clear and readable wording to guide actions over the next 10 years.
In 15.11 (strengthening of NGO interaction with their constituencies), Brazil noted the confusion between communities and the notion of local community groups as referred to by Bangladesh and others. Jamaica, supported by Indonesia, suggested the addition of community groups and Morocco suggested language to ensure transparency of NGO activities. Vanuatu, supported by the US, suggested the addition of another paragraph regarding NGO participation on government delegations to regional and inter-regional negotiating fora on population and sustainable development issues.
B. The Private Sector: In 15.14 (objectives), the Holy See had considerable difficulties with both objectives, citing opposition to the reference to reproductive health and family planning in the absence of specific definitions. He also noted concerns regarding the ability of the private sector to promote reproductive health and family planning commodities. After lengthy discussion, delegates agreed on the following language: "(a) to enhance the cooperation and collaboration between governments, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector to identify new areas of cooperation; and (b) to promote efficient production and distribution of high quality, low cost reproductive health and family planning commodities, which are accessible and affordable". Delegates agreed to add a new sub-paragraph (c) that would either contain language from the original sub-paragraph (b) regarding the study of the possibility of producing contraceptives within each region of the world, or that would incorporate language from a proposal by the Holy See referring to the efficient production and distribution of commodities pertinent to population and development with information regarding the related risks, deficiencies and side effects.
[Return to start of article] | <urn:uuid:abb1ce0e-c243-4794-aab6-f4d08fe03995> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iisd.ca/vol06/0622001e.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944176 | 1,077 | 1.757813 | 2 |
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Voting record (from PublicWhip)
How Lord Northbourne voted on key issues since 2001:
- Voted against more EU integration. votes
- Voted a mixture of for and against greater autonomy for schools. votes
- Voted strongly for laws to stop climate change. votes
- Voted moderately against introducing ID cards. votes
- Voted moderately against equal gay rights. votes
- Has never voted on allowing ministers to intervene in inquests. votes
- Voted moderately against the hunting ban. votes
- Has never voted on a stricter asylum system. votes
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More on their full record
- Written Answers — House of Lords: Education: Personal, Social and Health and Economic Education (21 May 2013)
“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of Ofsted’s recent research project Not Yet Good Enough: Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education in Schools, published in May 2013; and in particular of its statistical relevance to all schools in the primary, secondary, and special categories.”
- Queen’s Speech — Debate (4th Day) (14 May 2013)
“My Lords, as my contribution is relatively brief, perhaps I may take half a minute to say how much I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who, alas, is not in his place at the moment, on the importance of early years—the first two years of a child’s life—and the influence that that can have on the whole of the rest of the child’s life. It will also become apparent...”
- Written Answers — House of Lords: Schools: National Curriculum (24 Jan 2013)
“To ask Her Majesty's Government when they plan to publish their proposals for the new curriculum of all subjects to be introduced from September 2014; whether this curriculum includes the new curriculum for personal social and health education (PSHE); and, if not, when the PSHE syllabus will be published.”
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- Has spoken in 12 debates in the last year — above average amongst Lords.
- Has received answers to 3 written questions in the last year — above average amongst Lords.
- Has voted in 14.41% of votes in this House with this affiliation — below average amongst Lords. (From Public Whip)
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- 9 people are tracking this peer — email me updates on Lord Northbourne’s activity.
- Has used three-word alliterative phrases (e.g. "she sells seashells") 218 times in debates — well above average amongst Lords. (Why is this here?) | <urn:uuid:06da6913-1150-43c2-9f2c-26b118777ca8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theyworkforyou.com/peer/lord_northbourne | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936508 | 729 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Archive/File: imt/tgmwc/tgmwc-19/tgmwc-19-187.09 Last-Modified: 2000/10/19 That report shows that under Schacht's guidance 180,000 industrial plants had been surveyed as to usefulness for war purposes. Economic plans for the production of 200 basic materials had been worked out. A system for the letting of war contracts had been revised, allocations of coal, motor fuel and power had been determined, RM. 248,000,000 had been spent on storage facilities alone, evacuation plans for skilled workers and war materials and military zones had been worked out; 80,000,000 war-time ration cards had already been printed and distributed to local areas and a card index on the skill of some 20,000,000 workers had been prepared. The most detailed and thorough preparations which that report sets out were not made without the knowledge of every member of the Government, and no more graphic illustration of the common purpose and awareness of the aim which permeated all departments of the State is to be found than the second meeting of the Reich Defence Council itself, held on 25th June, 1939, under the presidency of the defendant Goering, the head of the Four-Year Plan. The defendants Frick, Funk, Keitel and Raeder were present and Hess and Ribbentrop were represented. The methodical detail in the plans which were being worked out; the preparations in respect of manpower, involving the use of concentration camp workers and the unfortunate slaves of the Protectorate, are eloquent testimonies to the size of the struggle upon which these men knew that Germany was about to embark. The major share in rearmament must be attributed to the defendants Goering, Schacht, Raeder, Keitel and Jodl, but the others, too, each in his sphere, played their parts: Rosenberg, Schirach and Streicher in education, Donitz in the preparation of the U-boat fleet, Neurath and Ribbentrop in the field of foreign affairs. Funk and Fritzsche were reorganizing propaganda and news systems until the former succeeded Schacht and became Minister of Economics and in September, 1938, General Plenipotentiary for Economics. As Plenipotentiary Funk was charged with ensuring the economic conditions for the production of the armament industry, according to the requirements of the High Command. Frick as Plenipotentiary for the Reich administration, with Funk and Keitel, formed the three-man college planning the necessary steps and decrees in case of war. It is unnecessary, in assessing this work of rearmament, to do more by way of summary than to quote the words of Hitler himself in the memorandum which Jodl described as written during two nights of work by the Fuehrer personally and which he sent to the defendants Raeder, Goering, and Keitel. In that memorandum of 9th October, 1939, Hitler finally disposes of the evidence of these, defendants that Germany was never adequately prepared for war. "The military application of our people's strength has been carried through to such an extent that, within a short time at any rate, it cannot be markedly improved upon by any manner of effort." And again: "The warlike equipment of the German people is at present larger in quantity and better in quality, for a great number of German divisions, than in the year 1914. The weapons themselves, taking a substantial cross-section, are more modern than is the case with any other country in the world at this time. They have just proved their supreme war-worthiness in a victorious campaign. In the case of the armaments of other countries this has yet to be demonstrated. In some arms Germany today possesses clear indisputable superiority of weapons." [Page 419] And then, speaking of the ammunition available after the conclusion of the Polish campaign: "There is no evidence available to show that any country in the world disposes of a better total ammunition stock than the German Reich . The Air Force at present is numerically the strongest in the world .... The AA artillery is not equalled by any country in the world." That, then, was the practical result of six years of intensive rearmament carried out at the expense and with the knowledge of the whole of the German people. Meanwhile the youth of Germany was educated and drilled in semi-military formations for war and then, on reaching the age for conscription, was called up for more intensive training. This was going on throughout the Reich, together with the enormous work of economic preparation. Is it to be believed that any one of these men did not guess - did not, indeed, know - the purpose of this terrific effort? If, indeed, any of them was in doubt, the successful actions in which, to use the words of one of Neurath's witnesses, "the Nazis were able to reap cheap laurels without war through the successfully practised tactics of bluff and sudden surprise," must have opened their eyes. The first step was the Rhineland, and the technique became the model for each subsequent move. On 21st May, 1935, Hitler gave a solemn assurance that the stipulations of Versailles and Locarno were being observed. Yet three weeks earlier, on the very day of the conclusion of the Franco- Soviet pact, later to become the official excuse for the reoccupation of the Rhineland and the defence for it before this Tribunal, the first directive had been issued to the Service Chiefs. The defendant Jodl, having perhaps noted the significance of the date, has sought to persuade the Tribunal that his first admission, that "Operation Schulung" referred to the reoccupation of the Rhineland, was wrong, and that it applied to some military excursion in the Tyrol. Yet on 26th June he himself was addressing the Working Committee of the Reich Defence Council on the plans for reoccupation and revealing that weapons, equipment, insignia and field grey uniforms were being stored in the zone under conditions of the greatest secrecy. Can anyone who reads his words doubt that this process had been going on at least for seven weeks? Any representative of the innumerable departments who attended that meeting and heard Jodl's remarks on 26th June, 1935, or who subsequently read the minutes, knew what to expect. On 2nd March the final orders were given and passed to the Navy four days later. The defendants Keitel, Jodl, Raeder, Frick, Schacht and Goering were all involved in the necessary executive action and, when his U-boats complied with the instruction of the 6th March, the defendant Donitz as well. From the beginning, at every stage you see the common plan worked out - and worked out as it could only be if each of those men played his allotted part. First the period of apparent quiet, during which treaties are concluded, assurances given and protestations of friendship made, while beneath the surface the Auslandsorfamt under Hess and Rosenberg begins to undermine and disrupt. The victim is deceived by open promises and weakened by underhand methods. Next, the decision to attack is taken and military preparations are hastened. If the victim shows signs of suspicion, the assurances of friendship are redoubled. Meanwhile, the finishing touches are put to the work accomplished by the Fifth Column. Then, when all is prepared, what Hitler called "the propagandist cause for starting the war" is chosen, frontier incidents are faked, abuse and threats take the place of fair words, and everything is done to terrify the victim into submission. Finally, the blow is struck without warning. The plan varies in detail from case to case, but, essentially, it is the same, the perfect example repeated again and again, of treachery, intimidation and murder. [Page 420] The next step was Austria. First, the Nazis arranged the murder of Dollfuss in 1934. After the evidence in the case of the defendant Neurath, there can be little doubt as to his assassination being plotted in Berlin and arranged by Habicht and Hitler some six weeks before. The failure of that putsch made it necessary to temporise, and accordingly in May, 1935, Hitler gave a complete assurance to Austria. At the same time the defendant Papen was sent to undermine the Austrian Government. With the occupation of the Rhineland, Austria was next on the programme but Hitler was still not yet ready, hence the solemn agreement of July, 1936. By the autumn of 1937 Papen's reports showed progress and accordingly the plot was divulged at the Hoszbach meeting. A slight delay was necessary for the removal of the refractory Army leaders, but in February, 1938, Papen having completed his plotting with Seyss-Inquart, Schuschnigg was lured to Berchtesgaden and bullied by Hitler, Ribbentrop and Keitel. Shortly afterwards the final scene took place, Goring playing his part in Berlin. The defendants Goering, Hess, Keitel, Jodl, Raeder, Frick, Schacht, Papen and Neurath were all aware of this Austrian plot, Neurath and Papen from the very beginning of it. With the exception of Goering, each one of them has attempted to put forward a defence of ignorance which cannot be regarded as other than ludicrous in the light of the documents. Not one of them has suggested that he protested, each one of them remained in office thereafter. Already the plan for Czechoslovakia was ready; it had been discussed at the Hoszbach meeting in November, 1937; within three weeks of the Munich Agreement the directive to prepare the march-in had been given and on the 15th March, 1939, President Hacha having been duly bullied by Hitler, Ribbentrop, Goering, and Keitel, Prague was occupied and the Protectorate established by Frick and Neurath. You will remember the astonishing admission of Goering, that although he certainly threatened to bomb Prague he never really intended to do it. Ribbentrop also seems to have considered that in diplomacy any lie is permissible. The stage was now set for Poland. As Jodl explained: "The solution of the Czech conflict and the annexation of Czechoslovakia rounded off the territory of Greater Germany so that it was possible to consider the Polish problem on a basis of more or less favourable strategic premises." And now the time had come when, to use Hitler's words: "Germany must reckon with its two hateful enemies, England and France." And accordingly followed the policy laid down by Ribbentrop in January, 1938, "the formation in great secrecy but with wholehearted tenacity of a coalition against England ". In the case of Poland, however, the German Foreign Office had already advised Ribbentrop as long ago as a month before Munich in the following terms: "It is unavoidable that the German departure from the problems of victories in the south-east and their transfer to the east and north-east must make the Poles sit up. The fact is that, after the liquidation of the Czech question, it will be generally assumed that Poland will be the next in turn. But the later this assumption sinks in in international politics as a firm factor the better. In this sense, however, it is important for the time being to carry on German policy under the well-known and proved slogans of, the right to autonomy and racial unity. Anything else might be interpreted as pure imperialism on our part, and create resistance to our plan by the Entente at an earlier date and more energetically than our forces could stand up to." In this case, therefore, the usual assurances were reiterated and again and again Hitler and Ribbentrop made the most explicit statements. Meanwhile the usual steps were taken, and following the meeting of 23rd May, 1939, which Raeder [Page 421] described as an academic lecture on war, the final military economic and political preparations for war against Poland were taken, and in due time war was commenced; and you get that cynical quotation that you have heard so often, and which ought to be remembered for all time: "The victor shall not be asked later on whether we were telling the truth or not. In starting and making a war, not the right is what matters, but victory." These were Hitler's words, but those men echoed and implemented them at every stage. That was the doctrine underlying Nazi policy. Step by step the conspirators had reached the crucial stage and had launched Germany upon an attempt to dominate Europe and involve the world in untold horror. Not one of these men had turned against the regime. Not one of them except Schacht - to whose vital contribution to the creation of the Nazi monster I shall return later - had resigned, and even he continued to lend his name to the Nazi Government. Would this be a convenient place to adjourn? THE PRESIDENT: Yes, we will adjourn now. (A recess was taken.) SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: If it please the Tribunal: Holland having been overrun, the course of the war soon showed that Germany's military aims and the interests of her strategy would be improved by further aggression. I do not propose to take time now by tracing again the various steps. As Hitler said at the meeting in November, 1939: "... Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is meaningless. No one will question that when we have won we shall not bring about a breach of neutrality as in 1914." Norway and Denmark were invaded. No kind of excuse, then or now, has been put forward for the occupation of Denmark, but a strenuous attempt has been made in the course of this trial to suggest that Norway was invaded only because the Germans believed that the Allies were about to take a similar step. Even if it were true, it would be no answer, but the German documents completely dispose of the suggestion that it was for such a reason that the Germans violated Norwegian neutrality. Hitler, Goering, and Raeder had agreed as early as November, 1934, and I quote: "No war could be carried on if the Navy was not able to safeguard the ore imports from Scandinavia." Accordingly, as the European struggle drew near, a non- aggression pact was made with Denmark on 31st May, 1939, following the usual assurance to both Norway and Denmark which had already been given a month earlier. At the outbreak of the war a further assurance was made to Norway, followed by another on 6th October. On 6th September, four days after his assurance, Hitler was discussing with Raeder the Scandinavian problem and his political intentions in regard to the Nordic States, expressed in Admiral Assmann's diary as "a north Germanic community with limited sovereignty in close dependence on Germany". On 9th October, three days after his most recent assurance, in his memorandum for the information of Raeder, Goering, and Keitel, Hitler was writing of the great danger of the Allies blocking the exits for U-boats between Norway and the Shetlands and of the consequent importance of "the creation of U-boat strongpoints outside these constricted home bases". Where outside the constricted home bases if not in Norway? It is significant that the very next day Donitz submitted a report on the comparative advantages of the different Norwegian bases, having discussed the matter with Raeder some six days before. The strategic advantages were apparent to all these men, and the hollowness of the defence that the invasion of Norway was decided upon because it was believed that the Allies were going to [Page 422] invade is completely exposed when you consider the statement in Hitler's memorandum preceding the passage I have just quoted, that: "Provided no completely unforeseen factors appear, their neutrality in the future is also to be assured. The continuation of German trade with these countries appears possible even in a war of long duration." Hitler saw no threat from the Allies at that time. Rosenberg and Goering's deputy, Koerner, had been in touch with Quisling and Hagelin as early as June and it is clear from Rosenberg's subsequent report that Hitler had been kept fully informed. In December the time for planning had arrived and the decision to prepare for invasion was accordingly taken at a meeting between Hitler and Raeder. It was not long before Keitel and Jodl issued the necessary directives and in due course, as necessary, Goering, Donitz and Ribbentrop were involved. On 9th October, as I have already said, Hitler was confident that there would be no danger to the Nordic States from the Allies. All the alleged intelligence reports contain no information which comes within miles of justifying an anticipatory invasion based - you might think it is laughable - on the doctrine of self-preservation. It is true that in February, 1940, Raeder pointed out to him that if England did occupy Norway the whole Swedish supply of ore to Germany would be endangered, but on 26th March he advised that the Russo-Finnish conflict having ceased, the danger of an Allied landing was no longer considered serious. None the less he went on to suggest that the German invasion, for which all the directives had been issued, should take place at the next new moon, on 7th April. It is interesting to note that Raeder's own war diary signed by himself and his Chief of Staff Operations records a similar' opinion four days earlier. If further evidence were needed to show that the actual step was taken regardless of any risk of interference from the West, it is to be found in telegrams from the German Ministers at both Oslo and Stockholm and from the German Military Attache at Stockholm, advising the German Government that, far from being worried over invasion by the British, the Scandinavian Governments were apprehensive that it was the Germans who intended to invade.
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January 26, 2010
animals, cats, children | Tags: ankle-biter, cat, naughty kitty, pets, Schnüpel, terror cat, video |
January 8, 2010
animals, current news interest, environmental concerns, international, science | Tags: Bob Barker, Dalai Lama, Sea Shepherd, The Price is Right, whales |
I have been a member of Sea Shepherd, the conservation organization that protects whales from senseless murder, for a couple of years now, and when I heard that their whale protection vessel was horribly damaged by a Japanese whaling boat I was horrified and sent in a donation. It was smaller than I would have liked it to be. I’d like to be able to end whaling forever. Quite clearly that is Bob Barker’s vision as well.
Previously, I had occasionally seen “The Price is Right”, a TV game show that Bob Barker hosted for an astounding 35 years, from 1972 until 2005. He was a genial host and a very professional gentleman. I must confess I never knew that he has been a such a staunch animal advocate. He has gifted Sea Shepherd with $5 million dollars and has had a whale protection vehicle named after him.
Some demented individuals say that the heroes at Sea Shepherd are “terrorists” and I guess that that is the word of the decade for those who wish to tarnish reputations by throwing it around so much as to make it meaningless. The real criminals are those who brutally murder the Earth’s grandest creatures, the gentle whales. For the record, the Dalai Lama supports Sea Shepherd. Need I say more?
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© All texts are the propriety of Health and Happiness Magazine. Contact us if you want a permission for reproduction. Offenders | <urn:uuid:f59b04e7-a36f-4ce2-8d4d-b037e15c2610> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthhappinessmag.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932315 | 481 | 1.617188 | 2 |
PLZ HELP!!!! communication
So I may not be correct, but I would say that the answer is False. I say that it is false because it is not an effective form of Communication. Selective listeningis when a person hears another but selects to not hear what is being said by choice or desire to hear some other m...
A good website is called Animla and plants cells and shows pictures and is very informative. It will not let me type in the web address, but it is called animals and plants. it is a site from Purchon so add the 3 w's and the . com then slash biology slash cells. That is m...
The Roman alphabet, religion, mythology, and latin alphabet were borrowed from the greeks.
YEAH THANK YOU
8 / (4 / (-28)) = -56 I don't understand why? what are the steps to solving this problem?
Three naturally occurring allotropes of carbon are known to exist: amorphous, graphite and diamond.
Can someone show me the structural formula (lewis diagram) for ethene??? Please
Determine the concentration of a dioxin solution whose percent absorbance is 0.40% This is the resulting: Absorbance Dioxin 0.64 5.5 0.76 6.3 1.0 8.0 But why can't I figure out the concentration whose percentage is .40%?
Determine the concentration of a dioxin solution whose percent absorbance is 0.40%
The volume of acetic acid in a sample of 500mL of vinegar is determined to be 1mL. What is the v/v percentage of the vinegar?
For Further Reading | <urn:uuid:4f2b7829-27cb-40d7-95ae-041373b2a81c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jiskha.com/members/profile/posts.cgi?name=Stacey&page=13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92802 | 353 | 2.3125 | 2 |
What Happened in Basra
The Maliki-Sadr showdown.
On March 24, 2008, Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) under Lieutenant General Mohan al-Fireji launched a series of attacks against illegal Shia militias and criminal elements in the city of Basra.
The attack appears to have resulted from an impulsive order by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who had gone down to Basra to see the preparations for a more deliberate operation then being planned. The militias, which included elements of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM) nominally under the control of Moktada al-Sadr as well as the Special Groups--secret cells organized by the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps--were well dug-in and fought back.
Iraqi forces in Basra, supported by American advisers and air support, pressed the attack and sent reinforcements. Special Groups and elements of JAM attacked the ISF throughout Shia Iraq in what appears to have been an attempt to ignite widespread fighting in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriya, and Diwaniya. Iraqi forces repulsed these attacks with very little assistance in the area between Baghdad and Basra, and coalition forces worked closely with the ISF to contain the violence in Baghdad.
On March 30, Sadr ordered his fighters to stand down, following a meeting between Iraqi officials and the commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani. Sadr's order, accompanied by a set of demands--which Maliki has denied agreeing to--led to a significant reduction in the resistance of JAM members, but has not halted ISF operations in Baghdad and Basra.
These are the facts of the case established so far. There has been much speculation about what happened in Basra itself: about possible deals between Maliki and Sadr, about the benefits Sadr or Maliki might have received from this encounter, and about Maliki's motivations. Because British forces, nominally responsible for the area in which Basra is located, have abandoned the city, there were few coalition forces present and very few Westerners at all. Most of the details of the operation publicized in the American press come from Iraqi stringers, the usual anonymous Iraqi officials, and, it seems, some Sadrist media outlets. In all previous operations where U.S. forces were present, we have learned that such information is of limited value. We simply do not yet know how well the ISF acquitted itself in the actual fighting, what if any areas were cleared, who was resisting, and so on.
Domestic critics of the war have so-far focused on a forensic dissection of what American commanders knew about Maliki's plans and when. Many have also hastened to argue that the flaws in the operation demonstrate the incompetence of the ISF. Those enthralled with prosecutorial inquisitions can amuse themselves by trying to figure out when Maliki told General David Petraeus he was going to attack, but what difference does it make? The operation was clearly imperfectly planned and was launched before the necessary conditions had been set. Failures of coordination did not prevent coalition forces from providing necessary air support--the most important reasons for Maliki to coordinate with Petraeus--even if it did require scrambling to meet an unexpected situation. Failure to set conditions properly led to a flawed operation, but reinforcements were flowing in when Sadr backed down, and it is hard to say how things would have proceeded if he had decided to fight.
It is too soon to judge the effects of this operation, particularly since those effects will depend heavily on what comes next. The following things, however, are already clear:
Maliki finally did what Congress and the administration have been pressing him to do for almost two years: attack the illegal Shia militias and criminal gangs with the intention of disarming them and establishing the rule of law. It is worth remembering that this undertaking was one of the congressionally mandated benchmarks.
The ISF mobilized more than 30,000 troops for the fight, including thousands drawn from outside of Basra. While it did use some coalition transport, it also employed its own aircraft for the movement, which went relatively smoothly. Again we might recall that a key benchmark in 2007 was the deployment of three Iraqi army brigades (perhaps 9,000 soldiers) to support the Baghdad Security Plan. The ISF just deployed more than three times that number on short notice to fight without coalition ground forces in support.
Iranian military intervention in Iraq should now be manifest to everyone. The commander of the Quds Force was himself involved in the cessation of fighting, and he did not "broker" the deal as a neutral mediator since his forces were among the belligerents.
The ability of the Sadrists and Iranian-controlled Special Groups to plunge Iraq into chaos has been exaggerated. To the extent that they have just tried to do that, they failed completely. In 2004, Sadr threw Baghdad and Karbala into full-scale combat that lasted for weeks and required the deployment of thousands of American soldiers to reestablish control. The most recent showing was a pale shadow of 2004.
Some are arguing that recent events demonstrate the power of the Special Groups. They have certainly been engaged in an offensive against ISF and coalition forces for the past several months--to which the ISF has vigorously responded. When it came to uprisings in the Shia heartland, the ISF prevailed handily. Special Groups and JAM will no doubt reconstitute and try again, and they may do better next time--it would be a grave mistake to underestimate them--but the recent operation has shown only their limitations.
Sadr was in Iran during the entire operation, gave his statements from Qom, made no attempt to return to Iraq to lead his fighters as he had as recently as last year, and appeared both weak and under Iran's thumb. Sadrist news outlets argue that he has benefited from this, but other Iraqi media disagree, and the case is hard to make if you're not on the Sadrist payroll.
Reports suggest that the ISF seized and is holding the port of Basra. If so, this would actually be quite a significant gain, since the port was in the hands of criminal gangs and its revenues had been flowing into militia coffers.
Maliki has finally reached out to Shia tribes and accepted the establishment of Sons of Iraq groups--the auxiliary police forces providing security in many Sunni areas--in Shia areas. These would be similar to the awakening movements in Sunni areas and open the possibility of expanding the range of Shia politics and drawing larger numbers of Shia into active participation in the establishment and maintenance of their own security.
The most important fact about the recent operations has escaped most observers, however. The government of Iraq, that group of "Persian ex-pats" as many Iraqis and some Americans call them, went to war against the illegal Shia militias which are thoroughly infiltrated, supported, advised, trained, and led by Iran and its agents. When it ran into trouble, the government called for American support and then began to engage with its own local tribesmen, who eagerly volunteered to support the fight against the foreigners.
Iraq has already demonstrated that it is by far the most serious and determined ally the United States has in the war against al Qaeda by deploying more forces and taking more casualties in that struggle than any other state. After several years in which Americans feared that the Shia government would attempt to triangulate between Iran and the United States without taking sides, the Iraqi leadership has made its choice clear. It chose America. What will we choose?
Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Iraq: The Way Ahead," the Iraq Planning Group's phase IV report. Kimberly Kagan is the president of the Institute for the Study of War. Her reports and analysis of the Iraq war are available at www.understandingwar.org. | <urn:uuid:743da6bc-ea6a-48cd-a237-60b96cc435d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/951jhivj.asp?nopager=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977992 | 1,638 | 1.734375 | 2 |
MANAGEMENT OF INSECT PESTS OF TEMPERATE TREE FRUIT CROPS
Location: Fruit and Vegetable Insect Research
Title: Odorants of the Flowers of Butterfly Bush, Buddleia davidii as Possible Attractants of Pest Species of Moths
| Guedot, Christelle |
| Smithhisler, Connie - USDA-ARS, RETIRED |
Submitted to: Florida Entomologist
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: July 8, 2008
Publication Date: December 10, 2008
Citation: Guedot, C.N., Landolt, P.J., Smithhisler, C. 2008. Odorants of the Flowers of Butterfly Bush, Buddleia davidii as Possible Attractants of Pest Species of Moths. Florida Entomologist 91(4):576-582.
Interpretive Summary: New methods and approaches are needed to control noctuid moths that are pests of vegetable crops. Chemical attractants are used in traps to determining the presence and abundance of an insect pest and can also be used in association with a pesticide to attract and then kill pests, thereby reducing reproduction and populations. Researchers at the USDA-ARS laboratory in Wapato, Washington are seeking novel moth feeding attractants from flowers. They determined that several pest moths, such as the alfalfa looper and cabbage looper, are regular visitors at flowers of butterfly bush, Buddelia sp. The odor of butterfly bush flowers was characterized, with all major components identified. Two of these compounds elicit responses in antennae of alfalfa looper moths, and four elicit responses in cabbage looper moths. This information provides a set of 4 compounds that may be attractive to looper moths that are pests of numerous vegetable and forage crops.
Flowers of the butterfly bush, Buddleia davidii Franch., are visited by butterflies and moths, as well as other insects. Moths captured in traps over flowers were 21 species of Geometridae, Noctuidae, Pyralidae, and Tortricidae. The most abundant moths trapped at these flowers were the cabbage looper, Trichoplusia ni (Hubner), and the alfalfa looper, Autographa californica (Speyer). Additional pest species of moths in traps at butterfly bush flowers were the true armyworm, Pseudaletia unipuncta (Hawarth), and the corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Boddie). For all fur of these moth species, both males and females were captured in traps placed over butterfly bush flowers. Additionally, butterflies, bees, wasps, flies, and other insects were also captured. Analysis of volatile compounds collected from air over clusters of butterfly bush flowers yielded the consistent presence of nine chemicals: benzaldehyde, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, hexyl acetate, 4-oxoisophorone, E,E-'-farnesene, cinnamaldehyde, 1,4-cyclohexadione, '-cyclocitral, and 1,3,3-trimethyl-7oxabicyclo [4,1,0]-heptan-2,5-dione. Emitted amounts of these floral odorants were 57 nanograms per hour per floret or 21 micrograms per hour per flower cluster (raceme). Four of those floral chemicals, benzaldehyde, 4-oxoisophorone, 1,4-cyclohexadione, and E,E-'-farnesene, triggered antennal responses in cabbage looper moths, while benzaldehyde and 4-oxoisophorone also stimulated antennal responses in alfalfa looper moths. Some of these may be attractants or co-attractants for moths or other insects. | <urn:uuid:50e53859-bbc7-416c-bb14-e969157d9d6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_115=214265 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902267 | 822 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Please Consider Supporting
Orlando Copwatch Goals
1) Reduce police violence by directly observing the police on the street, documenting incidents and keeping police accountable. We maintain principles of non-violence while asserting the rights of the detained person. We provide support to victims whenever possible. We also seek to educate the public about their rights, police conduct in the community and issues related to the role of police in our society.
2) Empower and unite the community to resist police abuse.
3) Encourage people to solve problems WITHOUT police intervention. We want to explore alternatives to calling the police.
4) Most importantly, we encourage people to exercise their right to observe the police and to advocate for one another.
Tag Archives: police brutality
Will Orlando Police Department’s Chief Paul Rooney follow suit amid reports and video evidence of his officers beating Luis Fernando Cabeza? Certainly Officer Frederick A Dantes needs to be fired! BY SARAH SACHELI, POSTMEDIA NEWS WINDSOR, Ont. — Embattled Windsor … Continue reading
Fight the DISCRIMINATION of LUIS FERNANDO CABEZA involving POLICE BRUTALITY This video contains footage of Luis Fernando Cabeza who was arrested December 30th, 2011 by the Orlando Police Department of Orange County. Cabeza endured multiple baton blows to his legs … Continue reading
Word on the street was that the protester has a fractured skull and 4-5 teeth knocked out.
BY TREVOR KAPP AND ROCCO PARASCANDOLA DAILY NEWS WRITERS Wednesday, July 13, 2011 A Bronx teen said two cops roughed him up when he mouthed off after one of them stepped in a pile of dog doo. Officers Joseph Murphy, … Continue reading
What was a peaceful demonstration was quickly escalated by DC’s police resulting in a brutal take down maneuver on an elderly woman. This is the same town who’s police also body slammed Television Host and former US Marine Adam Kokesh … Continue reading
Protesters picket after police say takedown that broke man’s neck was ‘within department guidelines’
When Orlando police decided not to discipline an officer who used a takedown maneuver to subdue an 84-year-old man during a confrontation in September, Orlando Copwatch founder John Kurtz said his reaction was simple: “Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable to break … Continue reading | <urn:uuid:84722b1c-3852-4012-b626-4967fe6c3cc8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://orlandocopwatch.com/tag/police-brutality-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932785 | 502 | 1.820313 | 2 |
The way I remember this is something I learned back in grade school. Remember your neighbor ROY G BIV? Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. Deer see the best in the back part of this spectrum. They actually see blue, indigo, and violet very, very, well. As far as the first part...red, orange, yeller, and gree...Not so much. That's why I don't get so bent out of shape by wearing blaze orange. Lots of hunters try to minimize the amount of orange that they wear, thinking that the deer will see this bright color and run away. This is wrong. They don't see it at all hardly, and if you have colors that match, it'll blend into the environment for the most part.
Great first question, and welcome to the forum! | <urn:uuid:8c8a1615-8960-4075-a176-81c6c4592559> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=3902 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962367 | 174 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Assumptions about URIs
I have some assumptions about the web I'd like to test here; below is a list. Relations (basic) - There is a subspace, addresses. - There is a subspace of addresses, URI. - There is a subspace of URI, URN, that are names. - There is a subspace of URI, URL, that are locations; but without any formal specification Principles - A resource is an entity. - A representation is an entity. - A URI may identify resources that are also representations. - A subspace is about a lesser set of entities than its superspace. - A space is about a set of resources, for example "tel:" is about phone numbers and "http:" is about hypertexts. - URIs are data; the URI space is a data structure, a lexical space; a URI is an instance of the data structure. - A space is an informal social contract that makes the author in particular and users in general aware about the intended semanrtics; it is the informal complement of a deferred type. - A resource is an informal social contract that makes the author in particular and users in general aware about the intended semantics; it is the informal complement of a final type; final because addresses are not spaces. - A address may itself be a space, e.g. "urn:isbn". So - Either a system must respect these intentions or it must disregard the resource concept; either it sees URIs as spaces and datastructures or it sees them as strings that are suitable as (global) keys in maps like the DNS but their exact nature is irrelevant to the system and it only needs them as keys. ? Oppinions - Camp A wants to see URIs as strings that have the meaning of whatever the author wants them to have. They do not approve that URLs are locations and use them to identify anything. - Camp B wants to see URIs as data and data structures and see URI spaces as having informal semantics that should be respected by systems; that's why they want to use URN because with URN you can define name spaces that have your intended semantics. - Camp C doesn't care about either or doesn't see the difference. - Camp D (?) has a more nuanced view than either of these. Perhaps the central question would be: - "Does the URI 'http://www.w3.org' identify an organisation called W3C or a location on the Web?" _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
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Subscribe in XML format | <urn:uuid:93fc22c0-018e-4dba-b1b1-978904195d5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stylusstudio.com/xmldev/200203/post80090.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930038 | 599 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Many divers’ wristwatches include chronographs, but few of them can be operated at great depths underwater due to the risk of water entering the case when the chronograph pushpieces are activated. Breitling has hit upon a solution to this problem in its Superocean Chronograph M2000, which, as its name implies, has a chronograph that is operable at a depth of 2,000 meters underwater.
The watch is the first to feature a patented magnetic push-piece system, in which the chronograph controls are operated via the metal of the case. Along with the screw-locked crown and the 4-mm-thick sapphire crystal, these pushers enable the wearer to use the watch at the extreme depth of 2,000 meters (or 6,600 feet) without the risk of water seeping in.
The movement is Breitling’s Caliber 73, which has been chronometer-certified by the Swiss Official Chronometer Testing Institute (COSC). It is a self-winding, “thermocompensated SuperQuartz” movement, equipped with a 1/10-second chronograph, with 60-minute and 12-hour counters and a split-seconds hand for split times, as well as a date indication.
The stainless-steel case is 46 mm in diameter and has a unidirectional, ratcheted, rotating bezel. The curved sapphire crystal is glareproofed on both surfaces. The dial is in Breitling’s “Volcano black,” with silver-rimmed subdials highlighted in red (as shown), blue, green, or black. Options for the strap or bracelet include Barenia leather, “Superocean” leather, perforated “Ocean Racer” rubber,” “Diver Pro” rubber with raised central ridge, and Breitling’s “Professional” steel bracelet. The price for the model shown here is $4,485. (Click on watch photos to see larger images.)
Receive all the news, features and reviews from WatchTime for free! Sign up to our free weekly newsletter and get all the news delivered to your inbox. | <urn:uuid:f2af57f0-1ee5-4854-b31e-47b6c74d9fa2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.watchtime.com/wristwatch-industry-news/watch-to-watch/breitling-superocean-chronograph-m2000/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929049 | 466 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Expert to Expert: Inside Concurrent Basic (CB)
- Posted: Feb 25, 2009 at 3:09 PM
- 43,134 Views
- 11 Comments
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"Concurrent Basic extends Visual Basic with stylish asynchronous concurrency constructs derived from the join calculus. Our design advances earlier MSRC
work on Polyphonic C#, Comega and the Joins Library. Unlike its C# based predecessors, CB adopts a simple event-like syntax familiar to VB programmers, allows one to declare generic concurrency abstractions and provides more natural support for inheritance.
CB also offers open extensibility based on custom attributes."
OK. Sounds great. There are new keywords, Asynchronous and Synchronous. Conceptually, these are easy enough to understand. How do they work, exactly? What's the thinking behind the current design? Why was VB.NET chosen as the language to extend? Wouldn't
any CLI language suffice? Who thought this up, anyway? What's the thinking behind the thinking?
Enter C9 celebrity host Erik Meijer, who leads yet another great conversation with fellow software experts Claudio Russo (MSR Researcher and co-creator of Concurrent Basic) and Lucian Wischik (software developer and current VB.NET Czar).
Obviously, we've been focusing a lot of attention of Concurrency and Parallelism over the past few years. We talk about the library versus language approach quite a bit. In this case, concurrency constructs have been baked into the language to form a different variant of VB, CB (Concurrent Basic). CB is a research project and therefore a research language. It has no ship vehicle and is not available for trial at this point. Microsoft makes no committment to shipping VB with these concurrency constructs built in. CB is a research language. CB is being shown in action at this year's MSR TechFest. Be sure to check out Laura's coverage of TechFest 2009. | <urn:uuid:0c70bccc-3f14-434c-b3d9-fffd2d974b2d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Claudio-Russo-and-Lucian-Wischik-Inside-Concurrent-Basic?format=html5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933241 | 465 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Published January 19, 2012 – Samantha Gluck, MedCity News
The U.S. health care industry has evolved and changed rapidly over the past several decades. This evolution took place in response to a number of environmental influences including, technological advances, demographic shifts, and economic and political changes.
Many Private Practices Suffer Under HITECH.
These changes have resulted in the emergence of a number of challenges both for physicians and those seeking health care services. The fall out from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will continue to reveal itself bit by bit over a course of the next few years. The health care reform act, broken into [supposedly] easy-to-manage stages, includes considerable changes to Medicare reimbursement policy for both physicians and hospitals.
Independent physicians with private practices will have considerable difficulty meeting the benchmarks and metrics set forth in the act. Well before the Obama administration’s health reform came on the horizon, physicians reported that many factors, including regulatory burdens and Medicare reimbursement changes, have nearly crushed their practices in many instances.
As the pieces of the health reform act begin to fall into place, the expenditures required to keep up with the various requirements will likely add another layer of stress to private sector physicians running independent practices. The new health care act will then bring physicians to an inevitable crossroads – a choice toward which they were headed anyway before reform began. A majority will either move to an intimate, boutique practice model or forego traditional practices altogether, opting for the abundant resources offered by larger entities in exchange for their independence.
It’s not as bleak as it seems at first glance for modern physicians.
Rapid Change Begs a Rapid and Effective Response
Countless startups, offering EMS, EHR, and adjunct high technology solutions to overextended doctors and newly emerging practice models, have formed all over theU.S.entrepreneurial landscape. From iPad and iPhone apps designed to assist with diagnostic procedures to more sophisticated apps created to help ensure physicians receive the maximum allowable reimbursements for CPT code allowables and everything in between ’ there’s an app for that.
Epocrates jumped to the forefront, offering one of the first Rx and mobile clinical suites to doctors who hoped to get in on the technological revolution occurring in health care from the get-go. Now they’ve come out with a robust EHR solution. Other companies have designed clinical diagnostic tools for nurses, drug reference databases complete with drug interactions, side effects, and other critical data.
Fresh, Innovative First Aid for the Policy Weary Physician
CodeToolz comes to the aid of anxious, overextended physicians working to come into compliance with the new policy. They’ve designed an application to assist physicians in comparing the difference between their current rates and the maximum allowable reimbursement for any CPT code. The AMA reports that health insurers paid doctors the correct, and justified, payment rate only about 67 % of the time. That’s not just a one-off mistake; that’s either theft or incompetence. Physician, protect thyself.
This simple to use, sleek new tool even allows docs to verify that reimbursement amounts match contracted rates. For those wonks, you know who you are, that love to analyze everything in and out of their practice environment, the program will thoroughly analyze any proposed changes in contract payment terms, leaving the guesswork out of this complex aspect of reimbursement.
The company, headed up by Dana R. Bellefountaine, Jr., has garnered considerable media buzz lately, with a featured write-up in the Orlando Medical News with follow-up features scheduled in various health care media publications, such as Modern Health Care Magazine, and others throughout 2012.
Says Bellefountaine about the company’s dedication to stand in the gap for doctors, ’Early on in my career, I aligned myself and my team with the physician and the unique aspects of running a successful practice. During that time, I gained critical expertise and an intimate knowledge of the idiosyncrasies and challenges faced by these professionals — acting dually — both as healers and as the end game for the business aspects of their practices.’
Truly, someone must stand up for the physician and healer – the giant who is fast becoming a 12-year old, frightened David in the wake of health care reform. But, David had that sling shot. Now, physicians have theirs.
CPT® codes and descriptions are copyright 2010 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. CPT® is a registered trademark of the American Medical Association (AMA). | <urn:uuid:29e715ab-7aa6-49d0-a7fb-f6e8e1651a6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.codetoolz.com/wordpress/2012/new-tool-to-help-physicians-get-maximum-reimbursement/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944846 | 944 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Independent review of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' studies can help prevent the construction of more ecologically destructive and fiscally wasteful water projects, according to testimony delivered
by American Rivers to the House of Representatives. The House Subcommittee
on Water Resources and Environment examined the use of peer review to ensure scientifically and economically sound decision-making at the Corps and other federal agencies.
"Independent review, just one of many needed reforms, is necessary to break the agency's disturbing pattern of flawed economic and environmental analysis," said Melissa Samet, senior director of water resources at American Rivers. "Too often, Corps projects have turned out to be economic underachievers that cause ecological damages far beyond what was projected."
"The evidence is overwhelming. The demand is mounting. Congress must act to enforce legitimate and meaningful Corps of Engineers reforms, including requiring independent review of costly or controversial Corps projects," Samet said. | <urn:uuid:9ccb1891-6cfa-4e3f-8613-05956d1546b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marinelink.com/news/article/american-rivers-calls-for-review-of-corps-studies/305546.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946263 | 184 | 2.546875 | 3 |
What would Facebook look like without photos of drunken nights out and tales of misbehaving cats? It might look a lot like the internal social network at the offices of Nikon Instruments Inc.
The tone is decidedly businesslike, as employees exchange messages about customer orders, new products, and closing deals.
And the general rule is that "if you don't want your company president to see it, don't post it," said John Bivona, a customer relations manager at Nikon Instruments, which makes microscopes.
As social networks increasingly dominate communications in private lives, businesses of all sizes -- from tiny start-ups to midsize companies such as Nikon to behemoths such as Dell Inc. -- are adopting them for the workplace.
Although it is difficult to quantify how many companies use internal social networks, a number of corporate software companies have sensed the opportunity and offer various systems, some free to existing customers, others that charge a fee per user.
It's one more instance of how consumer technology trends, such as use of tablet computers, are crossing into office life. Because of Facebook, most people are comfortable with the idea of "following" their colleagues.
But in the business world, the connections are between colleagues, not personal friends or family, and the communications are meant to be about work matters such as team projects, production flaws, and other routine business issues.
At Nikon, for example, which has about 500 employees in offices throughout the United States, Canada, and Brazil, a code of conduct for using the service leaves little room for the idle chit-chat that is pervasive on Facebook.
Still, it can be tricky to transport the mores and practices of social networking into the office.
For instance, some workers prefer to be "lurkers" who read posts rather than write them. Others are just not interested.
At Symantec Corp., a computer security company, a few employees initially disliked the idea of an internal social network but nevertheless used it to air their complaints.
Another issue is how to protect corporate secrets. Generally, the systems are set up so that companies can determine who sees particular files and who belongs to specific groups on the network.
Yet some problems still arise over where the information is ultimately stored. Some social network providers use their own servers. But that may conflict with the rules of some potential clients that prohibit storing company information outside their firewall, said Susan Landry, an analyst with technology research firm Gartner Inc.
Companies that provide social networks respond to the concerns by emphasizing their rigorous security. Still, some offer networks that allow customers to keep their data on their own servers.
And employees may post private information more widely than they should.
"It's sometimes a disaster," Ms. Landry said. "It sometimes gets shut down by security or compliance."
At the same time, even though companies make clear in etiquette guides how to use the networks, missteps occur.
For example, at Symantec, a worker posted his cat's photo in his profile instead of his own. A well-meaning worker at Nikon alerted everyone to apple pie in the kitchen; never mind that colleagues in other offices were not interested.
One of the biggest providers of corporate social networks is Salesforce.com, an online business software company based in San Francisco. It said 80,000 companies use its corporate social network, Chatter, up from around 10,000 when it was introduced a year ago.
Yammer, a start-up and also based in San Francisco, said its service is used by more than 100,000 companies, up from around 80,000 a year ago.
Salesforce and Yammer both offer free versions of their social networks to companies.
Salesforce charges $15 per user a month for its premium network -- existing software customers pay nothing extra, however -- and Yammer's costs $5 per user a month. At Symantec, more than a third of the 18,500 employees are able to use Chatter. More employees, and potentially some of the company's partners, will be added to the network later this summer.
But not everyone who can use a network does so. Chatter's analytic system, which can identify the most influential users, shows that only around 40 percent of the sales team is active on the service, said Tacy Parker, global sales force manager at Symantec.
Keeping posts relevant is important to the success of social networking within companies, managers of the networks agree.
For many employes, one of the benefits of social networks is a decline in email use. Instead of sending out mass mailings, workers post messages or collaborate on presentations within the service.
"Before, we got on conference calls and hoped the information would be passed around," said Scott Lake, director of VIP marketing at Las Vegas-based casino colossus Caesars Entertainment, which uses the Chatter system. "Now, we have a lot fewer calls and meetings." | <urn:uuid:6205fd5b-8d8f-42d7-8b7c-d18c6671a6c3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toledoblade.com/Technology/2011/07/03/Corporations-adopt-internal-social-networks-to-spread-news.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957513 | 1,016 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Never trust a cheerleader. Or an athlete. While we’re at it, parents can’t always be counted on to do the right thing when a game or season is on the line.
No matter what the sport, when it comes to dealing with concussions, honesty is the best policy, but injured athletes don’t always tell the truth. Not when victory is hanging in the balance or there’s a big game creeping up on the schedule. Athletes will say, and do, whatever it takes to keep on playing, even if that means putting themselves at risk for greater injury.
Mark Lovell has been on the frontlines of the concussion battle for more than 25 years. His message to athletes, coaches and parents is very simple: when in doubt, sit them out. It could be the difference between life and death.
“If you think the athlete has suffered a concussion, they probably have,” said Lovell, the founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine Concussion Program.
“Athletes often deny symptoms, so you can’t believe them because they will say whatever they think you want to hear to get back on the ice.”
Or the basketball court, practice field or cheering from the sidelines.
Signs and Symptoms of Concussions
• Appears dazed or stunned
• Headache or ‘pressure’ in head
Disease Control Concussion Web site
Over his career of working with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Lovell has stared down NFL linemen and linebackers when delivering the bad news that they would not return to the field of play until their concussion symptoms had cleared up. But even those towering hulks of testosterone could barely match the ferocity of a hockey mom who has been told her son would not be allowed to return to the ice until his symptoms have cleared up.
“Sometimes their parents are the hardest to deal with because they don’t understand the seriousness of the injury,” said Lovell, whose work in the field of concussions earned him the 2010 USA Hockey Excellence in Safety Award.
“I have definitely had some situations that can be categorized as being a little uncomfortable.”
While it may seem rash to pull a star player from a big game because he or she may have suffered a concussion, think of the alternative. A second blow to the head can be serious, since repeated concussions can cause cumulative damage, and the severity of the trauma increases with each incident.
It’s not that any parent wants to put a son or daughter in danger, Lovell said. It’s just that they may not understand the long-term health issues far outweigh the short-term disappointment of missing a game, a week or even a season.
Education is the key. That’s why the medical and hockey communities came together in mid-October at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for a two-day summit on concussions in ice hockey. The program covered topics ranging from the short and long-term effects of head trauma on the brain to concussion prevention techniques to reducing aggressive behavior in youth hockey.
In the end, the group created a series of action plans in the hope of curtailing the risk of concussions while raising awareness of the severity of the problem.
“Now that the summit is over, the real work begins,” said Dr. Michael Stuart, USA Hockey’s chief medical officer and one of the organizers of the summit. “We need to take this message to all the groups within hockey because each of us is a stakeholder in the safety of our game.”
The number of reported concussions is on the rise, particularly in youth sports. But according to Lovell and other neurologists who are on the front lines, it’s not because there are more concussions but rather the methods of diagnosing and responding to the early warning signs have dramatically improved over the years. No longer do coaches chuckle when they talk about their players “having their bell rung” or “seeing stars” after a big hit.
As important as reversing those trends has been, it’s equally important to follow established return-to-play guidelines, which start with coaches recognizing the signs and symptoms and keeping players off the ice until they are eventually cleared to play by a physician.
The course of treatment depends on the patient’s age, concussion history, symptoms, signs and type of sport. It is recommended that all concussed athletes be cleared for return to play only after consulting with a physician.
And each case is different. One player may be cleared to play in a week while another is forced to deal with symptoms throughout the season or even longer.
“One of the fundamental principles that we all need to understand is that concussion management and return-to-play guidelines are individualized. There is no cookbook approach,” said Stuart, who has two sons currently playing pro hockey.
“What I tell players, parents and coaches is that return to play after a concussion varies from one week to never. That’s because a symptomatic athlete can never return to play.”
That can be a tough pill to swallow for an athlete in the prime of his or her life. But missing the rest of a game or the rest of the season is a small price to pay compared to the long-term effects of a second concussion.
For doctors who have spent their lives dealing with concussions, the time has come to change the mindset that standing on the sidelines is somehow a sign of weakness, or that players are somehow letting their teammates and coaches down as they convalesce.
“I am happy to say,” said Robert Cantu, an expert in the field of brain trauma at Boston University, “that we will never return to the day when a child is knocked out of a game and is brought back in and is cheered for his toughness.” | <urn:uuid:2c4bcfbf-272a-4f3f-a316-b704af2d493a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://usahockeymagazine.com/article/2010-12/when-doubt-sit-out | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967739 | 1,241 | 1.773438 | 2 |
A young Arab-American high school student who meandered is way into and around Baghdad for a high school journalism project will return home this weekend.
Using allowance from his parents, Farris Hassan of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, snuck out of his house to fly to the Middle East. He was inspired by a concept he learned about in one of his classes: immersion journalism. It means that journalists who live more like their subjects can write with more insight.
His first flirtation with immersion, according to the article, was when he “hung out at a local mosque” in Florida, before taking his trip. The teen “spent an entire night until 6 a.m. talking politics with a group of Muslim men.” I laughed when it quoted his teacher as saying this was “dangerous and irresponsible” — he discussed politics with Muslims, my gosh!
He wandered around Baghdad trying to get his story. Because he speaks no Arabic, he used a phrasebook to order food. Naturally, he drew crowds whenever he tried speaking. His alarmed parents had the embassy and military on the lookout for him. He walked in to an AP office, shocking the staff so badly, one editor quipped, “I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in.”
All the reports about this seemed to stress how dangerous is was for him to go to Iraq, with all the hostage-taking going on. They cite the danger being from the insurgents. Hassan’s parents, however, are Iraqi. He looks like an Iraqi. If he’s just walking around, I’d say at least as much of the danger comes from the Occupation forces — which has still killed more Iraqis than the insurgents have. The media misses this obvious point.
What bothers me most about the way this story is covered is that it makes Iraq seem like a cesspool of alien hostility — and, this innocent and idealistic kid was lucky to survive a venture there. I mean come one, most people are just going to be curious about him when he can’t speak Arabic, but go on with their daily worries. Yet, the media make it seem like he is alive by some miracle, because Iraq is just full of savages.
His essay to his teachers, which he sent in before reaching Iraq, said:
There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction.
Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice’s call for help. Unfortunately altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will.
This is very well-written, but mere repetition of Bush’s empty arguments — much like the work of Fouad Ajami. Hassan is only 16 years old, so I’m not sure what Ajami’s excuse is. | <urn:uuid:a604cd1a-1dc6-45a8-9d21-1e2acc5241c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kabobfest.com/2005/12/actually-applied-what-he-learned-in-class.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978773 | 637 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Ramblage and recreation
Today while exploring Douglas Head, an rocky headland just south of Douglas, I came across a sign that explained that the area was developed for ramblage and recreation, and other things, in the 1870s. The word ramblage attracted my attention as I hadn’t seen it before. Maybe it’s an old version of rambling. Have you heard it before?
There are quite a few words describe the action of moving along on foot, including walk, ramble, amble, hike, ambulate, march, wander, shuffle, perambulate, plod, run, saunter, stride, stroll, trudge and tramp. I’ve read that in some languages, such as Spanish and French, verbs of motion don’t usually indicate the manner of motion. Is this true of other languages? | <urn:uuid:ae5d7560-32ef-48b0-9786-38a27d6b9aaa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=1182 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948214 | 181 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Was my sports bet legal?February 15, 2011: 5:00 AM ET
From March Madness to online poker -- what's legal and what's not in the complex (and lucrative) world of sports betting.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
This month, Fortune delves into the story behind Ted Forstmann's controversial sports betting history in the story "Ted Forstmann's bad bet." The facts have by now been well documented: last fall, prompted by a lawsuit, Forstmann—who heads IMG, one of the biggest talent agencies in the world—acknowledged he had placed bets on NCAA college basketball, pro football, and tennis matches involving IMG clients (though Forstmann appears to have stopped betting on college sports before entering that business). The legality of his wagers has not officially been questioned and most chatter has instead focused on the ethics of his gambling and on whether he violated any rules of the various sports' governing bodies. (So far, it appears he did not.)
But a worthwhile question Fortune readers may have, especially as March Madness season fast approaches, is what a typical person—one that doesn't have a hand in the business—is permitted to do in terms of sports betting.
The answer, it turns out, is far from simple. The reason: laws about gaming, or legalized betting (as opposed to "gambling" which is usually unlawful) are murky, vary state to state, and are hotly debated.
According to Chuck Humphrey, a Colorado attorney specializing in gambling law, the basic gist of the law boils down to a distinction few people know or make: the laws are different for the person making the bet, or the bettor, and the person taking the bet, i.e. the bookmaker or, in more informal situations, the person running a pool. "The common mistake is to assume the laws are the same for both parties," Humphrey says. The making of bets, he says, is legal (or at least isn't prosecuted) in most states, including California and New York. The taking of a bet, however, is illegal in almost all states.
That's the case with federal law, too. "There is no federal law that makes it a crime to make a bet," says Professor I. Nelson Rose, gaming law expert and author of an internationally syndicated column called Gambling and the Law. "Even if it's with an illegal bookie, the bettor is not violating a law."
But with a few exceptions, anti-gambling laws have traditionally been state issues, not a matter of major concern to federal lawmakers.
About half of the 50 states do have ancient laws on the books that criminalize the making of bets. However, the government only gets involved if it's serious—say, in the case of a large-scale betting ring, or organized crime. In terms of "social betting" —like a low-stakes poker game—Rose says authorities look the other way. "Federal laws have generally switched from prohibition to grudging permission," he says.
Above board betting
A small number of states do have laws enabling the taking of bets, or bookmaking. Most of them make room to permit "calcuttas," or betting auctions most often used with March Madness pools. Humphrey says that March Madness pools are usually not prosecuted because they typically do not involve anyone making money other than the bettors. (In other words, the person running a pool typically does not take a cut.)
Where is bookmaking legal? Each of the following states allows for some sort of bet-taking, though what is permissible is highly specific, so this doesn't mean you can legally begin a new career as a bookie: Alaska; Delaware; Mississippi; Montana; Nevada; New Mexico; North Dakota; Oregon; Washington; and Wyoming. In addition, Connecticut, Florida, Nevada, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island all allow the taking of bets on jai alai, a popular sport for gamblers. Of course, in Vegas casinos, all betting is legal.
Unsurprisingly, Anthony Cabot, a well-known international gaming attorney based in Las Vegas, says the issue of sports gambling continues to confuse almost all non-experts. "States are divided on this," he points out, which makes establishing an overall, unified set of laws complicated.
What about online betting? Thanks to the 2006 Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), the online operator of a betting site is committing a crime by accepting money from U.S. residents to fund their accounts. As for those using the sites, Humphrey says, "enforcement actions against individuals are just about non-existent." In 2010, notably, New Jersey became the first state to legalize some forms of online gambling (Washington, on the other hand, recently made it a felony to bet on the Internet).
Some politicians are starting to lobby for looser laws, pointing to the potential economic help that regulated gambling could bring. Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank (D) has been the leading proponent of the charge, and in 2007, U.S. Representative Jim McDermott (D), Washington, cited an estimate that the U.S. could get revenues of anywhere from $3 to $15 billion if it legalized Internet gambling.
The takeaway, then, is that for most readers, your occasional bets at the racetrack, keno games in bars, and participation in March Madness pools won't be bringing the feds to your door anytime soon.
Those running the pools, however, are technically breaking the law. But it likely won't set off alarms with law enforcement. Especially considering that, as one source shared with us, there are basketball tournament betting pools going on even at some District Attorney's offices. And of course they're de rigueur around newsrooms too: one source told Fortune that a newspaper reporter once interviewed him for a story about the illegality of sports pools, only to have the story killed at the eleventh hour. The reason? His editor was organizing his own pool.
More on sports betting: | <urn:uuid:babaa055-4952-4565-a6f6-03e1b34ce588> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/15/was-my-sports-bet-legal/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966044 | 1,247 | 1.5 | 2 |
The modern visitor to Devon, travelling west into the region, is greeted by a panorama of the high ground and rocky outcrops of Dartmoor. In a county renowned for its 'rolling hills', Dartmoor's high moors, topped by granite tors, preside over the massive folds of its peripheral valleys, incised by the fast-moving moorland rivers and streams as they flow towards the hinterland. Dartmoor was designated as one of England's first National Parks in 1951. It is this natural beauty and tranquil, rural landscape that initially attracts visitors, but a fuller appreciation of this landscape is enhanced by knowledge of its cultural past. Dartmoor is southern England's largest upland tract, often promoted as 'England's last wilderness'. Nevertheless it is a maintained landscape. Its management began with traditional forms of hill farming and woodland management in the Neolithic, and continues to the present day. The Field Archaeology of Dartmoor describes and narrates Dartmoor's landscape history from 4000 BC to the present, analysing and summarising archaeological and historical studies from the 19th century onwards. A brief section describes Dartmoor's geological shape. Then its prehistoric settlement, Romano-British organisation, medieval character and early tin industry are described in turn. Next, Dartmoor's 19th- and 20th-century industrial landscape and heritage (tin, copper, silver-lead and China clay), and how they co-existed with traditional forms of upland farming, are described. Subsidiary industries (peat, gunpowder mills, ice works and tramways) and the moor's use for military training bring the narrative up to the present. A concluding summary assesses Dartmoor's history and ponders its future. | <urn:uuid:c29be1e5-8014-48ef-8be1-04c13b5f00ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amazon.co.uk/Field-Archaeology-Dartmoor-Phil-Newman/dp/1848020333 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957121 | 360 | 3.75 | 4 |
Montenegro borders Albania in the South and Croatia to the North in the Southern Adriatic Sea on the 42nd Latitude. It is a very beautiful location with very little industry. Montenegro has much to offer to the Tourist. Quiet bays, picturesque villages, canyons, lakes, mountains and abundant wildlife. The proud Country has red sandy beaches, clear rivers and restless waters.
Montenegro has an affinity with the old times, the country is very ecologically protected. There are numerous pieces of Architecture of interest from various periods throughout the countries turbulent History. Kotor is a very historical city which is located within the Gulf of Kotor, an extensive and spectacular area comprising of three basins, dwarfed by the steep mountains rising to almost 1,000 metres.
The Country has a population of 2/3 rds of a Million inhabitants. There are over 200 miles of glorious beaches. There are 2 principal Airports in Montenegro; Podgorica and Tivat, though clients wishing to Charter can also be collected from the nearby Dubrovnik in Croatia. | <urn:uuid:d102bf16-8b00-43d6-8600-b7533bf7aabb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.interyachtcharter.com/montenegro.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955411 | 223 | 1.90625 | 2 |
February 23 – Latest Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris Update
On February 23, Oregon Office of Emergency Management, along with other state agencies received an update on the Japanese Tsunami Marine Debris issue. Following is the most current information NOAA has on this potential issue. As updates are made available we will post them to our website.
It is estimated that during the Earthquake and tsunami that occurred last year in Japan, approximately 25 million tons of debris was generated. This does not mean that 25 million tons of debris ended up in the sea. The quantity and composition of the debris in the sea is unknown. It is highly unlikely that there are any human remains or anything that is radioactive.
Much of the debris has dispersed over a very wide area or sunk to the bottom of the sea and is no longer detectable by satellite. Debris travel is not an exact science but experts agree that it is going every which way with the wind and the tides and is not in large concentrations.
Sightings of debris at sea have consistently gone down in number with a high of approximately 100 sightings in July, 2011 down to 0 sightings in December, 2011. Recovered debris has not been radioactive. Japanese debris has washed up on our shores for years and it is too early for some of the recent debris found on land to be from this particular event.
For more information from NOAA please go to: http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/japanfaqs.html#FAQs
If you find items on the beach and wish to report them, please email email@example.com | <urn:uuid:528adde3-55b5-4ccd-b127-e9098a5cdc7e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oem-oregon.blogspot.jp/2012_02_24_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967377 | 328 | 2.78125 | 3 |
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The deliberate planting of trees, hedges or shrubs to provide fields or gardens with protection from strong winds.
Plants able to withstand cold conditions, without protection.
A small leaf that provides protection for a bud.
A ring or whorl of sepals, which may be coloured and petal-like or green. Helps to protect the flower in bud.
A covering (traditionally bell-shaped) for the protection of plants from cold temperatures, frost, birds and pests.
Overlapping, as in the scales of fish or roof tiles. Many tree buds have imbricate scales to protect them.
An undeveloped or embryonic shoot, normally occurring in the axil or at the stem tip, and protected by scale leaves. Once formed, may remain unexpanded for some time or shoot immediately.
A frame covered in glass or plastic used to protect outdoor plants and seedlings. The transparent sides admit sunlight and trap warmth that would otherwise escape at night.
An underground storage organ comprising a short, swollen portion of stem protected by a layer of skin known as a tunic. Corms are planted like bulbs.
A fruit with a stone, which protects its seed and a fleshy layer within an outer skin, eg, peach, apricot. | <urn:uuid:6848fd37-9917-405f-8882-3008c2f0304a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardenersworld.com/search/articles/protecting/date/more-than-12-months/category/glossary/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913494 | 272 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Bangkok braces as flood barrier breached
People carry their dogs through a flooded and evacuated neighbourhood near Navanakorn industrial estate in Pathum Thani province, suburb of Bangkok, October 18, 2011.
(Damir Sagolj: Reuters)
- Photo: Children swim in front of a mosque surrounded by floodwater in Bangkok on October 18, 2011. (ABC: Zoe Daniel)
- Photo: Thai residents prepare sandbags used to hold back floodwaters in Pathum Thani province, suburban Bangkok on October 17, 2011. The flood threat to Thailand's capital appeared to have eased on October 17 but officials warned the crisis was not over as military and civilian authorities battled the worst inundations in decades. (AFP: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)
- Photo: Two people paddle a raft through a flooded street in Bangkok on October 18, 2011. (ABC: Zoe Daniels)
- Photo: Residents of Bangkok wade through floodwater on October 18, 2011. (ABC: Zoe Daniel)
- Photo: People crowd onto the back of a truck as it drives through a flooded Bangkok street on October 18, 2011. (ABC: Zoe Daniels)
- Photo: A Buddhist monk walks through floodwater on a street at a temple in Ayutthaya province in Thailand on October 7, 2011. (Reuters: Sukree Sukplang)
- Photo: A man and child hitch a ride on the back of a truck through flooded streets in Ayutthaya province on October 13, 2011, after monsoon rain caused floods across Thailand. (Reuters: Sukree Sukplang)
- Photo: A man paddles his boat at a flooded temple at Wat Chaiwatthanaram, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Ayutthaya province, nearly 80 km north of Bangkok, on October 4, 2011. (Reuters: Chaiwat Subprasom )
- Photo: A food vendor gives change to a customer along a flooded street in the town of Sena, Ayutthaya province September 13, 2011. Weeks of heavy monsoon rains and a tropical storm in Thailand have caused widespread floods and mudslides, killing at least 84 people since late July, including a French tourist. (Reuters: Sukree Sukplang)
- Photo: People make their way through a flooded street in the town of Sena, Ayutthaya province September 13, 2011. Weeks of heavy monsoon rains and a tropical storm in Thailand have caused widespread floods and mudslides, killing at least 84 people since late July, including a French tourist. (Reuters: Damir Sagoli)
- Photo: A Thai employee of a riverside restaurant sits idle on a stool as water from the Chao Phraya river floods low-lying areas of downtown Bangkok on October 4, 2011. Thailand's worst monsoon floods in decades have killed 224 people and affected three quarters of the country, including part of the ancient city of Ayutthaya, officials said. (AFP: Christophe Archambault)
- Photo: A Buddha statue stands above floodwater in Ayutthaya on September 13, 2011. Rising waters have left over 70 people dead and affected the homes and livelihoods of 4.3 million people, officials said. (AFP: Nicolas Asfouri)
- Photo: An elephant stands on an island at a flooded elephant farm near the Chao Phraya river in Ayutthaya on September 14, 2011. So far the rising waters nationwide have left over 70 people dead and affected the homes and livelihoods of 4.3 million people, officials said. (AFP: Nicolas Asfouri)
- Photo: A vendor sells her wares in her flooded shop in Ayutthaya province September 30, 2011. Thailand's Department of Prevention and Mitigation said on Friday 188 people had been killed in Thailand's massive floods. Twenty three provinces of Thailand are currently flooded. (Reuters: Sukree Sukplang)
Bangkok residents have been warned to prepare for flooding after a breach in a barrier protecting the city.
Bangkok's governor, Sukhumbhand Paribatra, warned people living in seven districts in the outer-north and east to move their belongings to higher ground and study the city's evacuation plan.
He also warned them to unplug electrical appliances.
It is expected that people should have 24 hours to prepare.
The new warnings follow declarations by the national government on the weekend that Bangkok should be safe, which has now created some political division between the Democrat governor and the Pheu Thai government.
Prime minister Yingluck Shinwatra, reportedly teary-eyed, has told reporters that politics must be shelved in favour of morale and cooperation.
"Today I will frankly tell you the truth. I have left no stone unturned in this crisis but I cannot solve it alone. I need cooperation from all sides," Ms Yingluck said on Wednesday.
"Let's set aside politics. We must work to restore people's morale."
Ms Yingluck, a political novice who has been in office for barely two months, has been criticised for a lack of clear information on the disaster, which has killed more than 300 people around the country.
She also faces a dilemma over whether to block the floods to protect Bangkok, the country's economic and political heartland, or release more water upriver to ease the burden on hard-hit central areas.
The opposition Democrats are calling on the government to declare emergency rule, as they themselves did when in power to deal with political unrest in the capital last year, leaving dozens dead in a military crackdown.
"The situation is getting worse and seems to be out of control because people have panicked and destroyed dykes, so if government imposes emergency law it would help control people," Democrat spokesman Sakoltee Pattiyakul said.
The laws would give the authorities the power to forcibly evacuate people or ban them from certain roads or other places.
Three months of heavy monsoon rains have damaged the homes and livelihoods of millions of people, mostly in northern and central Thailand, and have forced tens of thousands to seek refuge in shelters.
Currently about one third of Thailand's provinces are affected by the floods, which are several metres deep in places.
An adviser to the country's National Disaster Warning Centre, Admiral Kohlak Charoenruk, says the floods should be allowed to flow through Bangkok.
"If government keeps blocking water it will cause epidemic diseases and a humanitarian disaster. The government needs to release water into the sea as soon as possible," he said. | <urn:uuid:cf328a4e-9f0e-4ffa-8ff0-af70fcd1f21c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-19/bangkok-braces-as-flood-barrier-breached/3580206 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958303 | 1,349 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Charging for online content is an old idea that's gotten new legs with such pugilistic advocates
as Rupert Murdoch on its side. The News Corp. chairman said last week that was erecting a paywall around his properties, even preventing Google from surfacing content in search results. Now Peter Kafka of All Things Digital looks at several conflicting surveys estimating the number of U.S. consumers who currently purchase online content. The ambiguity of the numbers raises the question, "Who's Going to Pay for Online Content?" As he elaborates:
The new conventional wisdom is that sooner or later, consumers are going to have to start paying for some of the stuff they’re currently getting for free on the Web.
But will they actually pay up?
My gut says that people love consuming news, but only in the broadest sense – Obama doesn’t really Twitter! What was Belichick thinking? — and that sort of stuff, which appeals to a very large audience, will always be free, and you’ll get it from Google (GOOG) or something like Yahoo (YHOO). Which leaves you with a small audience willing to pay for everything else.
Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments.
You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. | <urn:uuid:23fedbea-704f-41ba-9da8-7672c3785629> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2009/11/who-s-going-to-pay-for-online-content/20598/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953151 | 268 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Photograph mystery is solved by DNRFollowing a recent article on Wisconsin cougars, Steve Gilbertson, a good friend of mine from Chippewa Falls, sent me a trail cam photo of what looked to be that of a cougar taken close to his home.
Following a recent article on Wisconsin cougars, Steve Gilbertson, a good friend of mine from Chippewa Falls, sent me a trail cam photo of what looked to be that of a cougar taken close to his home.
A follow up discussion with some local neighbors and a review from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources proved that what looked like a cougar was in reality a coyote with a bad case of mange making its tail appear “cougar like.” “Pointy ears” on the animal also led to its true identity.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a guided water tour of Oakridge Waterfowl Production Area which is located just east of Star Prairie. The trip was organized by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Friends of the St. Croix Wetland Management District (FSCWMD) to highlight habitat work and invasive species removal on this unique wetland.
This 304-acre WPA was the location of the recent Scouting conservation weekends and is highlighted in the Auto Tour Guide recently put out by the FSCWMD. The outing was led by Tom Kerr, manager of the St. Croix Wetland Management District, and USF&WS Biologist Chris Trosen.
Utilizing a canoe, kayak and my 12-foot rowboat, we were able to circumvent the lake in about two hours taking in the sights and sounds of the abundant wildlife. Karrie Jackelen, district staff representative to Congressman Ron Kind, and St. Croix County resident Jim Rubenzer rounded out the group.
As we started the tour, a bald eagle in the large nest across the road was seen caring for a recently hatched eaglet. A small flock of yellow headed blackbirds flew into a stand of cattails and hundreds of coots in several flocks scampered and paddled their way in search of nourishment to continue their spring migration north.
Mallards, ringnecks, northern shovelers, wood ducks, blue and greenwing teal joined the numerous Canada geese and several pair of trumpeter swans as they cruised this shallow body of crystal clear water. Numerous painted turtles were seen along with an occasional perch and northern swimming under our boats.
Several times during our outing, an eagle would dive bomb the coots, causing them to scurry away in a noisy splashing frenzy. None of the attacked appeared successful from our vantage point.
A mayfly hatch was taking place as the three tailed insects floated on the water waiting for their wings to dry or hovered a few feet over the water after accomplishing their transformation from nymph to fly. We were also lucky enough to observe a pair of eagles doing their ritualistic courting flight as they flew in tight formation high overhead.
Throughout our paddle around the lake, upland and wetland habitat improvement work was highly visible in the oak savannah restoration blending into prairie grass and managed woodland. Invasive species removal performed by the scouts over the last two years stood in stark contrast to areas yet to be worked on. Habitat management is a work in progress that needs to be maintained to obtain the desired results.
The time flew by all too quickly and the weather was ideal making for a great time being had by all.
By Tom Kerr
The Fish and Wildlife Service recently completed a controlled burn on the Houghdahl South Waterfowl Production Area (WPA), located in southern Polk County. The WPA is 59 acres in size and was purchased with federal duck stamp dollars. Federal duck stamps are purchased by duck hunters and others interested in conservation.
The controlled burn on the WPA was a follow-up treatment for the restoration project that started about three years ago. The goal of the project is to restore the WPA to a mix of prairie, wetland and oak savanna, representing the vegetation historically found in this area.
The project started with the removal of trees on the WPA in early 2010. Many of these were invasive species (Siberian elm, honeysuckle and buckthorn) and some native species (box elder and cottonwood) that can quickly take over a grassland.
We applied herbicides on the WPA to limit the regrowth of cut trees and brush. A cover crop was also planted to provide fuel for future burns.
This cover crop carried the fire during the last burn, adding another layer of control for the re-sprouting trees and shrubs. Seeds from some of these invasive species, such as buckthorn, can lay dormant in the soil for five years before re-sprouting, hence the need for multiple treatments during the early phases of restoration.
In the next few years, we will be planting the WPA to a mixture of prairie grasses and forbs. These plant native species, adapted to local growing conditions, will provide better cover and food for wildlife.
If you would like to stay informed about the controlled burns on area WPAs, check us out on Facebook by searching for St. Croix Wetland Management District. For more information on the St. Croix Wetland Management District, check out our website at www.fws.gov/mid west/stcroix/.
Warden Paul’s Corner
The hook-and-line game fish season opens May 5 on inland waters for walleye, sauger and northern pike statewide. The largemouth and smallmouth bass southern zone opens May 5, while the northern bass zone opens for catch and release only from May 5 through June 15.
Musky season opens May 5 in the southern zone and May 26 in the northern zone. Check the Fishing Regulations for special regulations listed by county, for regulations on the Great Lakes and boundary waters, and for tributary streams to Green Bay and Lake Michigan.
The St. Croix River opener is on April 28 for walleye and on May 26 for bass and musky.
Wisconsin residents and nonresidents 16 years old or older need a fishing license to fish in any waters of the state. Residents born before Jan. 1, 1927, do not need a license, nor do people who exhibit proof they are in active service with the U.S. armed forces and are a resident on furlough or leave.
Anglers are reminded to follow rules that help prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species by completely draining the water from boats, livewells and motors in addition to removing all vegetation from boats motors and trailers. Bass Lake in St Croix County now has zebra mussels.
For all the trout anglers, the opening day for the catch and keep season is May 5 at 5 a.m. Trout anglers need to remember that while on the water, bank or shore you may only possess the number and size of fish allowed for that portion of water. You may fish more than one water in a day, but may not possess more than the daily bag and size limits for the water you are on.
The total number of fish you may have at home or a camp from all waters fished is 10 trout, of which only five can be a combined of browns or rainbows, except for streams that run into the Great Lakes. Refer to the trout regulations for specific regulations on each stream.
The boating season is near along with the fishing season. Boating on lakes and rivers in Wisconsin has become a very popular past time. Each year thousands of boaters venture out to Wisconsin waters to enjoy the sport.
With the increase in use it is very important that you, as a boat operator understand the laws of boating. Awareness of these laws could steer you and other boaters from a “close call.” Please consult the Wisconsin Boating Regulations before boating this season.
Here are few boating reminders for the upcoming summer season:
* All personal watercrafts (PWC) must operate at a slow no wake speed within 200 feet of any shore on a lake.
* All PWCs must operate at slow no wake speeds anytime the PWC is within 100 feet of any other boat or a PWC on any water body.
* Operators and all passengers on PWCs must wear their life jackets at all times.
* All boats must operate at slow no wake speed anytime they are within 100 feet of a dock, raft, pier, buoy restricted area or shoreline.
* While towing a water-skier, tuber, etc., the boat must have a competent observer to watch the skier (a mirror is not legal in Wisconsin).
* All PWC’s pulling a water-skier must be capable of carrying three individuals.
* All boats must have a wearable life jacket of the proper size and type for each individual on board the boat.
* All boats 16 feet and over must have a throwable floatation device (seat cushion or ring buoy).
* All boats equipped with motors must be registered, even electric trolling motors.
* Boats on the right have the right of way on the water.
* Enjoy the water, don’t drink and drive.
For any questions call Warden Paul Sickman at 715-684-2914, ext. 120. Have a safe and fun boating season. | <urn:uuid:85bddf98-e354-4f16-9dce-7da61159ab65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newrichmond-news.com/event/article/id/36001/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963001 | 1,975 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The African lion - Assuring its conservation in West and Central Africa
27 October 2005 | News story
African lion. Photo by Sue MainkaIUCN - The World Conservation Union, Gland, Switzerland (27.10.2005) - The conservation status of the African lion, for many the very symbol of the continent’s wildlife, is giving cause for serious concern. It was classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species in 2004 due to a continuing decline in population, with current numbers estimated at 23,000-39,000. In West Africa, lions number fewer than 1,500 and meet the criteria for regionally Endangered.
The SSC Cat Specialist Group worked with IUCN Regional Offices and a number of partners, including the Wildlife Conservation Society, to bring together biologists, Range State government managers, and other stakeholders in a series of regional lion conservation workshops. The first of these workshops was held in Douala, Cameroon, on 2-7 October 2005.
Seventeen participants in the first part of the West and Central African Lion Conservation Workshop focused on describing the current distribution and status of lion populations in the two sub-regions. They developed a new, updated lion range map, and identified priority populations for conservation (“Lion Conservation Units,” or LCUs). These LCU’s were assessed for threats, and participants identified uncontrolled hunting of the lion’s wild prey base as the major one in 75% of the 20 LCUs. This clearly shows that maintaining the abundance of large ungulate populations is a key component of lion conservation.
There were thirty-five participants in the second part of the West and Central Africa Lion Workshop, a group which included high level representatives from most range state governments. Their task was to develop regional conservation strategies. Participants set themselves the goal of “ensuring the conservation and sustainable management of the lion in West and Central Africa”. A number of actions were recommended to achieve the objectives in each sub-region. These actions include measures to reduce lion-human conflict, control trade in bushmeat, build government capacity to manage lion populations, and conserve lion habitat.
The West and Central African Lion Conservation Strategies will be published in January 2006. Meeting documents are available at www.felidae.org/DOUALA/lion.htm.
The East and Southern Africa Lion Conservation Workshop will take place in Johannesburg on 8-13 January 2006 and will lead to an overall continental strategy for African lion conservation.
Project of the month (October 2005):
Census and Monitoring of the Zakouma Lion Population, Chad
For more information contact:
Kristin Nowell, IUCN SSC Cat Specialist Group, email: email@example.com | <urn:uuid:fc56530a-5997-40bd-b0b7-66610fde9bae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cms.iucn.org/fr/nouvelles_homepage/nouvelles_par_date/annees_precedentes_news/2005_news_fr/?3489/The-African-lion---Assuring-its-conservation-in-West-and-Central-Africa | 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 | 0.920021 | 574 | 2.90625 | 3 |
It seems to me that the goals of Education Reform are primarily to bring the increases in productivity (and cost reductions) seen in other industries to the education industry. The greatest obstacle to the effort to cut the cost of education is teacher salaries. The cost of education cannot be cut until the cost of teaching is cut. The Education Reform movement seeks paths to cutting the cost of teaching.
While technology has allowed for amazing radical increases in productivity in nearly every other industry, teaching is still, for the most part, done exactly as it was done in pre-industrial times: face-to-face with a personal relationship between a professional teacher and a limited number of students. For there to be any improvement in productivity (and reduction in cost), this model must be broken.
Education Reform is pursuing four paths to increase productivity (and thereby reduce costs).
1. The de-professionalization of teaching. Teachers are professionals. They are expected to work with minimal supervision and direction. They are expected to use their expertise, judgement, and talent to respond improvisationally to student needs. In the Education Reform model, however, teachers are expected to deliver standardized lessons prepared centrally. They can make some small prescribed variations within a prescribed range. The best model for this is how professional bankers have been replaced by non-professionals, sitting in cube farms, wearing headsets, and completing loan application forms by working through a script on a computer screen. The script includes what to say if the customer says this or if the customer says that. Based on this model it isn't hard to imagine non-professionals in front of a classroom delivering a scripted lesson with scripted responses to expected student questions.
A trained and experienced professional teacher wouldn't be needed for this task. I bet it could be done by any college graduate with a five-week crash course and plenty of mentoring and support. Of course, all of that mentoring and support would really make for a long work day, so this would be a job for a young person and they would burn out after just a couple years. Education Reform's support for Teach for America has some very clear purpose. It's a pilot program for how they want to see all teacher training done.
This doesn't actually increase productivity, but it does reduce costs. A novice teacher is paid significantly less than an experienced one. Moreover, there would be no need to offer higher salaries for experienced teachers. All of the teachers - regardless of experience - would be paid the new teacher salaries. Without the promise of a career with a growing salary, no one would enter teaching as a career. It would just be a job that people took for a year or two between college and their real career. Or is could be a temp job for older workers between jobs.
2. Online Education. It is a short hop from non-professionals delivering scripted lessons to lessons on video-on-demand. I suspect they will sell the clear benefit: individualized instruction. Students get exactly the lessons they need exactly when they need them. The students take a pre-test, then the appropriate curriculum is provided with a quiz at the end of each section. Fail the quiz and the curriculum is queued up again. Pass the quiz and move on to the next section. There could even be greater depth and challenge available (click here to learn more about the causes of the War of 1812).
This would represent a HUGE step forward in productivity. With video-on-demand or other forms of recorded instruction, the ratio of students to teachers can explode from 150:1 to nearly infinite. Think of it. Every single student in the state of Washington could have the same Algebra teacher. With Common Core Standards, every single student in the whole country could have the same Algebra teacher. Every other Algebra teacher could be fired. Even the one giving the lesson could be fired after that first year. That's a strong argument for Common Core Standards, isn't it?
Students could, of course, get additional support through a call center or through online chat. The "teachers" they connect with that way aren't professionals either. They will just work through a script just like any other call center worker. There will need to be a professional teacher or two somewhere in the building for those calls that cannot be resolved by the call center staff working off the script, but no more than a handful to take care of thousands and thousands of students.
3. Investment. It's going to cost a lot of money to make these steps forward in productivity in education. There are hardware costs. There will have to be work station computers that allow each student to access the online instruction. There will have to servers to store and deliver the instruction. There will have to be phone lines and call centers. Even more investment will be needed in content and software. All of the lessons will have to be written and performed. All of the variations too - every content path that could result from the student clicking on the "I don't get it" button or the "Tell me more" button. Don't worry. There are lots of corporations who are ready to provide the hardware, the software, and the content - for a slice of that sweet, sweet government pie.
4. Centralization. All of the lessons are stored on a central server. All of the variations, too. All of the support questions go to call center. All of the results from the pre-tests, quizes, and final assessments go to the central server also. Everything is controlled from the center and all of the data is collected by the center. The center has all of the authority and all of the expertise. There is no one to question the central authority - temp workers do not challenge the corporation.
The End of Education
Imagine the future of teaching if we follow the Education Reform path. Students enter the school building and sit at their desks. There can be dozens of desks in a single room. The students don headphones and start their lessons. There is a proctor in the room, mostly to keep order but also to provide minor tech support. The students access their individualized instruction modules and grind away for 90 minutes at their video-on-demand lessons. Then they all work on some project together for an hour or so (we still need those "21st Century skills"). The proctors facilitate and organize the group project exercises, but the students are expected to work things out for themselves and not rely on the proctor for support. The results of the projects are all virtual and are transmitted to the central site. Then it is back to video instruction for 90 minutes, then lunch, then a final 90-minute video instruction period and that's the end of the day. A half-hour of P.E. could be stuck in there somewhere. At any moment of the day students in a single room could be working on reading, writing, math, science, world languages, or social studies. They could all be working at a variety of grade levels.
Some classes, of course, would have to be actual hands-on instruction. I'm thinking of the Career and Technical Education courses, the science labs (probably - at least until the technology improves), the arts (music, fine art, dance, etc.), and perhaps a couple others. Not many.
I know that you're thinking that surely there is some need for the traditional style of instruction. There needs to be some open discussion of big ideas among the students and lead by the teacher. Nope. The virtual teacher can cover that ground. If students need to be brought together, it can be done virtually in an online chat room. They don't have to be in the same room - they don't have to be in the same school. With State Standards they don't have to be in the same District and with Common Core Standards they don't even have to be in the same state.
There is, of course, a need for students to have some adult in the school who is interested in them as people, follows up on their academic progress, and has a relationship with them. I know that the proctor shares space with them for much of the day and is sure to have a relationship with the students in the room, but the proctor isn't a professional expected to perform professional services. So let's add relationship managers to the school staffs - one for every 96 students. If each student meets with their relationship manager for a half-hour, then the manager can meet with twelve students a day. That means that the manager can meet with each student every 8 days - twice a month. That's a pretty close relationship, wouldn't you say? Garfield High School would need about 20 relationship managers.
With the lowered cost of this style of instruction there's no reason that school could not be year-round.
Since so much of the work is done online, it would be easy for students to work from home on days when they are sick or to work from home to make up missed assignments.
What would a school like this cost to run? After the fixed costs of the technology, I think it would be the same or less than schools now cost. The proctors would earn about $30,000 and the relationship managers would earn about $60,000 - and that's for year-round school. The call center staff would earn as much as call center staff in any other business, about $25,000. It's very possible that this sort of instruction would be just as effective as schools are now.
Do I have it wrong? Have I misread the goals of Education Reform? I honestly think this is the Education Reform dream come true. While we might find it sedentary, sterile and isolating, it does sound like it could be effective. And steps are taken to mitigate those downsides: daily P.E., daily group project time, and the twice-monthly meeting with the relationship manager. | <urn:uuid:218d7175-b3d1-4723-9772-30a3667b6f58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/2011/04/future-education-reform-version.html?showComment=1303926158510 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97333 | 2,022 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Sunday , April 1, 2012, 9:00am to 10:00am
Dinosaur Egg Hunt
Our Dinosaur Egg Hunt is an educational egghunt for the spring holidays that only the dino lovers can fully appreciate. Kids will get to meet some dino relatives upclose, enjoy a snack, make a dino craft and then get to hunt for their own dinosaur eggs! All registrants then get to enter the dinosaur exhibit and experience the real thing!.
This event is full of activities for the whole family.
Only children "hunting" eggs need to register at the child price. Adults (12 and older) price covers refreshments and entrance to dino exhibit. All paid registrants receive admission to the dinosaur exhibits.
On the next page after you click "Register," please enter the names of all CHILDREN you wish to register for this program.
Please put YOUR contact information in the "email" & "phone" fields. | <urn:uuid:155cdc7d-bbd8-4a68-a0ad-c419a7d458d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.doubleknot.com/Registration/CalendarDetail.asp?orgkey=1044&activitykey=1119782 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924868 | 196 | 1.59375 | 2 |
06-11-2008, 09:23 AM #1
- Join Date
- Nov 2007
- Rep Power
Sony developing back-illuminated sensor
Take everything you know about digital camera sensors and turn it around. That's what Sony is doing in developing a new 5 megapixel CMOS imager.
The back-illuminated sensor from the company known more in digicam circles for their CCD development reverses the traditional design, gathering light from the back side of its silicon substrate rather than the front side. In doing so, Sony is claiming the new sensor will have double the light-gathering ability – that is, the sensitivity – compared to current sensor technology while maintaining low noise levels.
Back-side sensor illumination is nothing new (OmniVision recently unveiled an 8 megapixel sensor using similar technology), but it presents some design challenges. As Sony states in their own press release:
"...compared to conventional front-illuminated structures, back-illuminated structures commonly causes problems such as noise, dark current, defective pixels and color mixture that lead to image degradation and also cause a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio."
Changes to the photo diode and on-chip lens structures aim to overcome these issues, however, providing an ultra-sensitive sensor that produces clean images.
According to Sony, the new technology (which also allows for 60 fps video capture rates) should see applications in both the company's camcorders and its digital still cameras.
PhotographyBlog.com has the complete press release and more details.
Users Browsing this Thread
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests) | <urn:uuid:8c28896b-9a14-4a49-abc1-20c550f3d0ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.digitalcamerareview.com/digital-camera-news/7005-sony-developing-back-illuminated-sensor.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917734 | 349 | 1.765625 | 2 |
A patent from German car maker Audi could ensure that no one ever gets trapped inside the trunk of a car ever again.
Children can get trapped inside a trunk while playing, while movie gangsters often lock their enemies inside them. A latch inside a trunk can over-ride the external locking system and release it from within, but this can be dangerous if the vehicle is moving.
Audi's solution is a solenoid latch controlled by the car's speedometer. At 5 kilometres per hour or less the solenoid is inactive and lets anyone inside the trunk open it. As soon as the speedometer goes above this speed, however, the solenoid shoots a bolt to stop the cover from opening more than a few centimetres. This is enough for a trapped person to get some air, and see where they are, but not enough for them to jump out and risk injury. When the car slows down again, the solenoid releases and so does the lock.
The Sopranos will not be happy?
Read the full smart trunk patent application | <urn:uuid:7516ac71-3559-4c47-b82b-96d0f3bcf7aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/blog/invention/2007/01/smart-trunk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950761 | 217 | 2.015625 | 2 |
A City Education: Bridging the Gap Between Communities and Schools
In our A City Education series, two City Year corps members share their experiences working as tutors and mentors in schools in hopes of closing the achievement gap and ending the dropout crisis.
For our most recent City Year New York community meeting—a gathering of all 254 corps members in the city—I was asked to share what motivated me to join City Year. I told my peers I joined because I thrive in a community environment where a shared goal and vision become a catalyst for action. One of the principles that City Year corps members look to for guidance and perspective is Ubuntu, a shortened version of a Zulu proverb that means, "I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours."
But I admit that when I first started serving at P.S. 50, a kindergarten through eighth grade school in East Harlem, I worried about how well an external organization like City Year would be able to really integrate into the school community. In the three months I've served at P.S. 50, I've learned that it’s possible to effectively connect students, parents, and community resources to ensure students excel.
My school is one of more than 20 Children’s Aid Society community schools in New York City. Through partnerships with local organizations like City Year, each CAS school works to be a community hub that provides academic, health, and family services. Families look to CAS to provide resources—clothes, school necessities, and groceries—and teachers at P.S. 50 reach out to CAS for classroom supplies. CAS even runs an on-site medical office so students can get physicals without having to leave school, which helps students avoid absences.
Through the CAS after-school program, I help fifth grade students on their homework, run enrichment activities, and facilitate service learning programs. This has enabled me to build relationships with students who I may not otherwise see during the day. City Year corps members are also able to partner with the CAS staff on events like our Fall Field Day, school dances, and our upcoming Thanksgiving parent engagement event. Now I understand why studies of community schools have found increased reading and math test scores, improved school attendance and improved behavior in students.
Though the model is new, support for community schools is growing. In 2009, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan expressed his support, saying, "Where schools truly become the centers of the community, great things happen." Just last month, the New York Immigration Coalition plan, an effort to engage immigrant parents whose children attend New York City public schools, highlighted the importance of involving the entire family in a child’s education. The New York Times' coverage of this announcement explored the trend of schools using public and private collaboration to benefit families.
Serving with City Year in a community school, I am reminded every day of Ubuntu as I experience firsthand a model that illustrates the importance of connecting our humanity to those inside the school and in the community. I have no doubt that helping students succeed requires a community effort, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results of our shared vision and collective action.
Photo courtesy of City Year | <urn:uuid:5f99dab6-adff-4ab0-a681-4f1448ba4352> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.good.is/posts/a-city-education-bridging-the-gap-between-communities-and-schools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961009 | 646 | 1.78125 | 2 |
A few years ago, a family friend from France visited us for a few days, and in an effort to expose him to American culture, we took him to a baseball game. Expectations were high as we drove to New York to attend a highly contentious game between the Yankees and Red Sox, but after a few innings, our friend was nodding off. I quizzed him, “Isn’t this awesome?” He simply responded, “I am bored.”
How could he be bored? The game was the height of excitement, a storied rivalry, the electricity of a sellout crowd, and the stadium a rush of sounds, smells, and sights. On further review, my friend’s boredom makes sense. He did not know the rules of the game, the cheers and chants, the players, or the history of the teams. The unfolding game, which many Americans would enjoy and pay good money to attend, was meaningless for him.
For most people, their experiences at Mass are like a French person at a baseball game. They do not know the symbols, the text or the movements. Due to their lack of knowledge, much of the Mass is meaningless, and therefore, it is boring. Unlike baseball, Mass nevertheless does have intrinsic value, and even without knowledge, a person could experience a profound feeling of mystery and awe.
Furthermore, some liturgists have added numerous aspects of American culture, including popular music, dance and other elements, in order to allure people back to church. This method may be good in bringing people back to Mass, but it is only a first step. It also might be dangerous as amid the new trappings of the liturgy the true meaning of the Eucharist is harder to discern. Returning to the initial analogy, my friend might have enjoyed the baseball game more while indulging in foie gras and a glass of Chardonnay with eurodance blaring over the speakers, but a baseball purest would be horrified. The only way to appreciate something one does not understand is to immerse one’s self in its culture.
Recently at a meeting of a Catholic men’s group, the speaker began by asking the attendees why they attend church on Sunday. People discussed receiving the Eucharist and the graces that accompanied this gift. Many individuals suggested that going to Church was like attending a communal meal that unites the members of the parish. Undoubtedly, one receives many blessing by attending Mass, including forgiveness of sins, unity of the community and receiving Jesus in Communion.
Another essential aspect of the Mass is the sacrificial dimension. Catholics believe during Mass the priest offers the sacrifice of Jesus dying on Calvary to the Father in atonement for our sins. After watching the movie, The Passion of the Christ, I wondered how life changing it must have been to witness in person the final events of Jesus’ life, yet I am bored at Mass, forgetting the same sacrifice is unfolding in front of me.
How can one better participate in this mystery? I often thought that I needed to sing louder (I apologize to every person that has ever sat in front of me), say the responses without any errors, or make the sign of the cross with exact precision to better partake in the liturgy, but if Mass is a sacrifice, my participation is connected to my offerings beyond any activities that I might perform during the Mass. We could offer specific sacrifices, such as fasting before mass for an hour or giving a material possession away or accepting a particular suffering. In short, we are called to offer our lives to Jesus, who gave everything, including His life, for us, and thus unite our small contribution to His perfect and infinite sacrifice.
Initially, our men’s group expected to receive numerous spiritual benefits by going to Mass, and it is right to desire these graces. Our relationship with God, however, cannot be one sided. As I learned more about the Mass as a sacrifice, it became apparent that we needed to give as well as receive at Mass.
Our culture is centered on activities that excite us and entertain us. Going to a movie or concert, we walk away from these events judging them by what we got out of them. Mass is a cultural oddity, a baseball game in France. For once a week, it is not about us. The concept of attending an event to make an offering is strange. The whole concept of sacrifice is peculiar to many people today. Since the fundamental concepts behind the Eucharist are foreign to most people, we often sit in the pews bored, wondering when the entertainment is going to begin, not realizing we are not fulfilling our role.
June 08, 2012 03:38
By Dr. H. P. Bianchi | <urn:uuid:9beba1f3-e987-4987-9079-3d59bc1f982e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.catholicreview.org/blogs/fertile-soil/tag/catholic-symbolism | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977292 | 980 | 2.125 | 2 |
When most people envision an auto repair shop, grease and loud noises are typically the first thoughts to come to mind. However, on October 31, the last day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, workers at the four Alan Day Volkswagen showroom locations around London, England, were a vision in pink, The Guardian reports.
Aside from visually showing their support, the auto body shop also raised money for breast cancer research by selling cupcakes and signed copies of former UK X-Factor star, Stacy Solomon's newly released autobiography. According to the source, the company aimed to raise £4,000.
"The pink day is something we have been involved in for three years now as we know this cancer has affected many of our staff and customers," Paul Tanner, the managing director of the business told the publication. "From across all our four sites we’ve had a great response. Many customers have come down and some have even donated £20 for a cupcake instead of the £1.50 we had asked for, because they know what a great cause this day is for."
Showing support and raising breast cancer awareness
for the over 200,000 women predicted to get breast cancer this year, according to BreastCancer.org, can help them beat the disease. | <urn:uuid:34575841-8fa2-4906-840b-eacdbe16ef48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebreastcancersite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/bcs/article/Mechanics-go-pink-for-the-cause877 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9742 | 258 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Special Report on
Term financial definition of term
Term financial definition of term - Trends
Latest Trending Story:
a framework which characterizes market trends as a predictable price response of the market at levels of price support and price resistance, varying over time. The terms bull market and bear market describe upward and downward market trends, respectively, and can be used to describe either the market as a whole or specific sectors and securities. 3 A secular market trend is a long-term trend that lasts 5 to 25 years and consists of a series of sequential primary trends. A secular bear market consists of smaller bull markets and larger bear markets; a secular bull market consists of larger bull markets and smaller bear markets. ...
What is your definition of financial success? For many of us it means different things. And for most people, it is a vague definition with out a set number or desired result. Most people declare that they want to be “rich” or have enough money so that they don’t have to work. Well, what is that number? What is rich to you? What steps have you outlined to reach this goal? Your definition of financial success should be a personal definition, not some generic definition that someone created in general. But, if you cannot think of one on your own, a generic definition ... Read More
SURVEY RESULTS FOR
TERM FINANCIAL DEFINITION OF TERM
Dr. Josef Ackermann: on the meaning of the term entrepreneur before and after ...
Usury: A financial definition | <urn:uuid:142c7849-6f9d-4a33-b0d8-6f48db92760e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://deeperweb.com/business-research/finance/term-financial-definition-of-term-research-trends-surveys.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936916 | 316 | 2.25 | 2 |
- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation - http://blog.heritage.org -
Family Fact of the Week for Hurricane Sandy: Religion Promotes Volunteering, Charitable Giving
Posted By Rachel Sheffield On November 1, 2012 @ 9:53 am In Family and Religion | 1 Comment
Hurricane Sandy dealt widespread destruction to multiple cities across the East Coast this week. The storm—cited as the largest in generations—took numerous lives and left in its wake heart-rending scenes of demolished homes and flooded city streets.
In the aftermath of the devastation, many faith-based and community organizations have wasted no time in extending assistance to those affected by Sandy’s wrath, as happens time and again when disasters strike. (continues below chart)
The connection between religion and volunteering/charitable giving is not simply anecdotal; it’s supported by research.
For example, individuals who frequently attend church services are, on average, more likely to volunteer and engage in community projects than those who attend infrequently. Those who place greater importance on religious beliefs are also more likely to volunteer . Individuals who say religious beliefs don’t matter as long as one is a good person are more than one-third less likely to volunteer compared to their peers who say religious beliefs are important (32 percent versus 51 percent).
Religious participation is also connected with a greater likelihood of performing individual acts of compassion , such as helping the homeless, giving blood, or displaying civility and honesty.
Charitable giving is also connected to religious commitment. Those with high levels of religious commitment report higher levels of overall charitable donations . Their charitable giving extends beyond the church doors, such that frequent church attendees are more likely to give to non-religious causes than those who rarely attend. Informal giving , such as assisting a homeless person, is also more likely among those who attend religious services more regularly.
The connection between religious participation and volunteering spans the age groups. High school seniors who frequently attend religious services, for instance, are more likely to volunteer on a weekly basis compared to their peers who attend less frequently. And adolescents who participate in religious activities are more likely to value volunteerism and engage in local community service. Their involvement as youth is positively connected with their civic participation in their young adult years.
Additionally, senior citizens who place a greater importance on religion are more likely to volunteer. Among a sample of adults age 70 and over, those who said that religion is important to them were 60 percent more likely to volunteer than their peers who did not say religion was important.
The United States is a charitable nation, and this is no doubt linked to the religiosity of its citizens. A country’s religious attendance is linked to rates of volunteer activity . Citizens in secular countries are less likely to volunteer than those who live in more religious countries.
Hurricane Sandy is a vivid reminder of the importance of communities coming together to assist one another. The volunteer assistance and charitable contributions of individuals and organizations plays a vital role in addressing human need, both in times of widespread loss and in times of individual tragedy. As individuals give of their time, means, and hearts to lift others, they provide invaluable relief to their fellow citizens.
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org
URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/11/01/family-fact-of-the-week-for-hurricane-sandy-religion-promotes-volunteering-charitable-giving/
URLs in this post:
Hurricane Sandy: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/30/morning-bell-sandy-slams-east-coast/
Image: http://familyfacts.org/charts/712/religious-individuals-are-more-likely-to-volunteer
engage in community projects: http://www.familyfacts.org/briefs/19/for-the-common-good-how-religion-encourages-civic-engagement
volunteer: http://www.familyfacts.org/briefs/41/religiosity-and-charity-volunteering
Copyright © 2011 The Heritage Foundation. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:51ff6fe3-55fd-4179-b5b9-dbf284cce6a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.heritage.org/2012/11/01/family-fact-of-the-week-for-hurricane-sandy-religion-promotes-volunteering-charitable-giving/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944745 | 900 | 2.21875 | 2 |
A Brief Overview of the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States
..One First Street, NE, Washington, DC 20543
Chief Justice of the United States
||JOHN G. ROBERTS, JR.
JOHN PAUL STEVENS
ANTHONY M. KENNEDY
DAVID H. SOUTER
RUTH BADER GINSBURG
STEPHEN G. BREYER
SAMUEL A. ALITO, JR.
SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR
The Supreme Court consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and such number of Associate Justices as may be fixed by Congress. The number of Associate Justices is currently fixed at eight (28 U. S. C. §1). Power to nominate the Justices is vested in the President of the United States, and appointments are made with the advice and consent of the Senate. Article III, §1, of the Constitution further provides that “[t]he Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.”
Counselor to the Chief Justice
Reporter of Decisions
Director of Data Systems
Public Information Officer
||JEFFREY P. MINEAR
WILLIAM K. SUTER
JUDITH A. GASKELL
FRANK D. WAGNER
CATHERINE E. FITTS
KATHLEEN L. ARBERG
Court Officers assist the Court in the performance of its functions. They include theCounselor to the Chief Justice, the Clerk, the Reporter of Decisions, the Librarian, the Marshal, the Court Counsel, the Curator, the Director of Data Systems, and the PublicInformation Officer. The Counselor to the Chief Justice is appointed by the Chief Justice. The Clerk, Reporter of Decisions, Librarian, and Marshal are appointed by the Court. All other Court Officers are appointed by the Chief Justice in consultation with the Court.
Constitutional Origin. Article III, §1, of the Constitution provides that “[t]he judi-cial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferiorCourts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” The Supreme Courtof the United States was created in accordance with this provision and by authority of the Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789 (1 Stat. 73). It was organized on February 2, 1790.
Jurisdiction. According to the Constitution (Art. III, §2):
“The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under thisConstitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Minis-ters and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Contro-versies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State;—between Citizens of dif-ferent States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants ofdifferent States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizensor Subjects.
“In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls, and those inwhich a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Con-gress shall make.”
Appellate jurisdiction has been conferred upon the Supreme Court by various statutes,under the authority given Congress by the Constitution. The basic statute effective at this time in conferring and controlling jurisdiction of the Supreme Court may be found in 28 U. S. C. §1251 et seq., and various special statutes.
Rulemaking Power. Congress has from time to time conferred upon the Supreme Court power to prescribe rules of procedure to be followed by the lower courts of the UnitedStates. See 28 U. S. C. §2071 et seq.
The Building. The Supreme Court is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. It is closed Saturdays, Sundays, and the federal legal holi- days listed in 5 U. S. C. §6103. Unless the Court or the Chief Justice orders otherwise, the Clerk’s Office is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, except on those holidays. The Library is open to members of the Bar of the Court, attorneys for the various federal departments and agencies, and Members of Congress.
The Term. The Term of the Court begins, by law, on the first Monday in Octoberand lasts until the first Monday in October of the next year. Approximately 10,000 peti-tions are filed with the Court in the course of a Term. In addition, some 1,200 applications of various kinds are filed each year that can be acted upon by a single Justice. | <urn:uuid:23b4520a-416a-43fb-bf80-3c1b057a781a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lacp.org/2009-Articles-Main/042709-fromtheSupremeCourt.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933833 | 1,122 | 3.28125 | 3 |
A hole in the ground in the garden courtyard of a building on Hypolita Street is telling more of St. Augustine’s story.
“Even in a small pit you can learn a lot about St. Augustine,” City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt said Wednesday of the dig that began eight days ago.
Volunteer Janet Jordan was kneeling in the more than four feet deep hole, using a spade to scoop the dirt into buckets that Halbirt then screened for findings, picking out shell and animal fragments and both Native American and Spanish pottery shards.
None of the items predates 1650, and that backs up the hypothesis that Hypolita Street was probably the northern boundary of St. Augustine in 1650.
While digging the 5-by-6-foot pit, Halbirt found evidence of an impermanent wood structure after uncovering a builder’s trench with the stains of four wooden posts visible in the soil.
Based on ceramic evidence, the builder’s trench dates to sometime between the late 1600s and early 1700s, Halbirt said, and that, combined with findings from other digs in the area, backs up his theory.
“When you compare these findings with what we’ve found on other investigations … you get a fuller picture. You have to look at the results from various projects, and you look for the pattern. … (In archaeology) the patterns really are your interpretation,” Halbirt said.
According to one map, the wooden structure was on property that included a house of stone belonging to Agustina Rexidor.
The house would have been 400 to 500 feet from a wooden fort that was the city’s defense before the building of the more solid Castillo de San Marcos. The area between the house and fort would have been open, the field of fire soldiers needed to protect the fort in case of attack.
It’s the first time archaeologists have been able to dig on the Hypolita Street property, which was once owned by the late Jack Hunter, author of “The Blue Max.” The structure was built in 1987, before the city’s archaeology code was in place. These days construction in the area would require an archaeological survey.
The building is being renovated for lease to Casa Maya, a restaurant housed across the street and looking to enlarge. The new site will have space for 50 inside and possibly an additional 40 outside, said John Valdes of John Valdes & Associates Inc., who is doing the renovation.
A grease trap was needed for the restaurant, and that tripped the city’s archaeology review requirement. Because the trap will be 5 by 8 feet and 7 feet deep, only that portion of the property requires the review.
“Even just digging out a grease trap for a new restaurant, you find stuff,” Halbirt said. “When you dig, you always expect the unexpected here in St. Augustine.”
A construction job on Spanish Street by Valdes several years ago led to Halbirt finding the remains of a stable and a two-room house that was burned down during the 1740 raid by Gen. James Oglethorpe. In one room a cannon ball was discovered, and in the other, a partial metal pot along with the bones of a chicken, apparently left when the unexpected raid began.
This dig hasn’t uncovered anything that startling, but even so the future grease trap site is brimming with history.
In addition to the builder’s trench dating from the late 1600s, one wall of a brick cistern has been discovered. Halbirt dates that to between 1860 and 1890, when St. Augustine began a public water system. About a foot down in the soil is a layer of burn deposits that probably date to 1914, when the area was ravaged by fire. | <urn:uuid:8f9b8cc8-2cef-494a-872d-ec095d5c6bfd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2012-05-09/dig-blue-max-authors-home-hints-citys-original-northern-border | 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 | 0.957238 | 808 | 2.484375 | 2 |
If UCLA researchers are correct, a new supercharger could transform both the way we power our electronics and recycle their old sources of energy. Bringing together the quick-charging qualities of a capacitor and the energy-holding capacities of a battery, graphene supercapacitors could replace the often toxic batteries we currently use to power our electronics.
Batteries and capacitors are relatively similar devices, functionally speaking. Standard batteries consist of two chemicals that react with each other, separated by a barrier, and have a circuit between them; capacitors are composed of two oppositely charged metal plates, separated by an insulator, with a circuit between them. When electrons flow through the circuits of batteries and capacitors alike they provide electricity. Although capacitors can be charged very quickly, they don’t hold nearly as much energy as batteries.
Graphene supercapacitors would solve the energy holding problem of capacitors. Graphene conducts electricity better than any other common substance, and the one-atom thick material has more going for it than capacity: it’s also thinner, lighter, and can be turned into cheaper energy-holding devices than batteries. Because it’s carbon-based, it’s also biodegradable. Considering the care we need to take when disposing of batteries that are often made of toxic metals, how much would it rock to be able to compost our disposable charge holders instead?
Extremely flexible and stronger than steel, graphene has been notoriously difficult to work with, as the Focus Forward video describes. The researchers who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their work with graphene created the substance by carefully peeling graphite with scotch tape--not a method that’s easy or quick to replicate. However, researchers at UCLA claim they have found a better method to craft the substance in a delightfully MacGyver-like way: by using a consumer-grade DVD drive. After pouring graphite oxide onto CDs, popping the CDs into the drive and using the drive’s laser to beam light on the material, the graphite oxide deoxygenates and becomes graphene. Miles ahead of scotch tape, this DVD drive method produces the essentially two-dimensional material easily and quickly. Imagine what could be done with a machine designed to create sheets of graphene on a larger scale.
Graphene supercapacitors have immense potential to revolutionize the efficiency and environmental-friendliness of our electronics. Especially after listening to the researchers discuss graphene’s potential, it’s difficult not to be excited for the future of this technology. Graphene supercapacitors could charge electronic devices, but further research will determine just how much these supercapacitors can charge (are electric car charging stations really a possibility?), and if and when they'll be available for consumers. In any case, here’s hoping the technology can take off.
via: Boing Boing
written by 2ndGreenRevolution Blog, February 22, 2013
written by Gary Hemmings, February 22, 2013
|< Prev||Next >| | <urn:uuid:d999e9d3-95cd-4b54-b888-3f146aded8af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ecogeek.org/power-storage/3847 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950346 | 635 | 4.1875 | 4 |
There are two main reasons for ending animal testing:
It is cruel - Most safety tests conducted on animals are done without anaesthetics or analgesia, and toxic substances can cause immense suffering over long periods of time. Even where regulations require minimum standards of housing and husbandry, these cannot eliminate the fear and distress laboratory animals experience on a daily basis.
It is ineffective – The biochemistry, physiology, size and lifespan of animals vary according to species (and even breeds) and affect the toxicity of test substances. Substances safe for mice or rats may not be safe for humans and vice versa. Some chemicals, approved as safe following animal tests, have been damaging to humans and have had to be withdrawn.
21st CENTURY TOXICOLOGY
21st -Century Toxicology is a new approach to safety testing which is exciting regulators, toxicologists, campaigners and companies around the world. It has become possible because of advances in biology, genetics, computer science and robotics. 21st-Century Toxicology focusses on human ‘toxicity pathways’, the sequences of molecular changes within the body’s cells that follow exposure to a toxic chemical. As these molecular pathways are elucidated for different groups of chemicals and different toxic effects, computer technology will help identify the key steps that can then be used to design non-animal safety tests.
Many of these new tests will be done robotically, providing more cost-effective chemical assessment and helping to clear the backlog of untested substances. They offer better relevance to humans (rather than using mice, rats and rabbits), and will explain the underlying causes of toxicity. Unlike animal methods, the new tests will help predict human variability and differential effects on embryos, children and adults. And as the superior scientific basis of the new approach is recognised, outdated animal tests will be replaced. The Lush Prize Black Box offers, in any one year, the full £250,000 Lush Prize fund for a key breakthrough in human toxicity pathways research. For more information on 21st-Century Toxicology see: | <urn:uuid:ad3627e8-fe4b-4389-989d-010d751d6f81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lushprize.org/awards/ending-animal-testing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925397 | 421 | 3.265625 | 3 |
| Eucalyptus |
| Eucalyptus globulus|
| Uses: Medicinal/Aromatic/Industrial
|| Duration: Perennial (hardy in zones 9-10) |
| When to Sow: Anytime
|| Ease of Germination: Moderate |
Famous "gum" tree of Australia, and source of eucalyptus oil used in medicine and perfumery. Also called "bluegum" from the blue tone of the leaves when the tree is young. It is one of the tallest trees in the world, growing up to 90 m (300ft). But despite its large size outdoors, it is easy to maintain at a manageable size indoors with occasional pruning. The oil distilled from the leaves is a powerful antiseptic, especially in the respiratory tract, killing pathogenic bacteria and reducing mucus secretion and congestion. Cough drops and sore throat lozenges made with eucalyptus oil are popular and very effective. When plants are grown indoors oil vapours released by the leaves help to deodorize the air. In Australia, the flowers provide the main source of nectar and pollen for the honey bee industry, and the leaves are one of the preferred foods of the koala bear. A favourite tall tale in Australia is the “drop bear” – an invention of campers in the dry season when gum trees tend to drop entire branches, often hitting campers underneath. According to the tale as told by the unfortunate victims, man-eating koalas leap out of the trees and drop onto people’s heads. | <urn:uuid:9b3576a5-3abf-42f0-8fac-39a28300f26c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.richters.com/Web_store/web_store.cgi?product=X2360&show=&prodclass=F005&cart_id=4846737.29639 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935865 | 335 | 2.484375 | 2 |
Following is a guest post by Nicole at Thrifty Decorating ~ enjoy!!
I am completely embarrassed to say that despite the fact that I’ve been a science teacher and homeschooled my kids…
….I’ve NEVER made Oobleck until recently!
Wow…what have I been missing!
This is a super easy experiment and you probably already have all the ingredients on hand right now!
You want to mix the cornstarch and water until you get a mixture that is not a
paste and not watery. It will be about 3/4 cup of cornstarch to 1/2 cup of
water. You do not need to be exact.
What is so amazing is that this is a Non-Newtonian fluid…..when compressed
it turns into a solid. When the pressure is released, it turns right back into a liquid!
I must warn you though…it will get messy!
Nicole is a homeschooling mom of 3 who shares crafts, DIY projects and her homeschooling adventures at her blog Thrifty Decorating. You can also follow her on Facebook where she daily posts creative ideas, household tips, and additional homeschooling links or follow her Pinterest boards to get some creative inspiration! | <urn:uuid:1160cad7-2368-48b9-b8b3-5fee883ff2e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefrugalgirls.com/2012/06/oobleck-recipe.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945468 | 260 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Do you ever have a song, an idea, a storyline, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music—it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, etc. This becomes my “now’”song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.
With August 15th just a couple of days away, desh bhakti of different types is in the air. Excited plans for an extended weekend vacation thanks to Independence Day and Id holiday in the bus; plastic and paper tricolour flags at traffic signals, shop windows dressed up in white, green and saffron; a sudden rise in the popularity of “desh bhakti geet” on TV and the radio… yes, its that time of the year. Even my customised YouTube page had Independence Day recommendations for me. One of them was D.K. Pattammal (1919-2009) singing the Jana Gana Mana:
D.K. Pattammal (DKP) would have been 28 when India attained Independence on in 1947. I wonder what it must have meant to her as a young, trailblazing musician. For someone who was well-known for her renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyar’s nationalist songs, did she see the songs coming to life with India’s freedom
Maybe she did, for the joy and pride in singing the national anthem is so evident in the video that it would take a cynic or a real pessimist to not be moved by her expressions. For a change, I love the video more that the actual rendition of the song itself and it’s all because of DKP.
Happy Independence Day | <urn:uuid:da4a09d0-b401-44c8-b1e9-b4726bcc92c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thatandthisinmumbai.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/d-k-pattammal-jana-gana-mana-indian-national-anthem/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954267 | 385 | 1.546875 | 2 |
5 Ways to Save Money on Art Supplies
As an artist you know that finding the right tools for your trade is important. From paper, to pencils, to paint, there is usually something you need to replenish your supply. But a trip to the art supply store can be expensive; especially if you allow yourself to get carried away with impulse buys. Consumer-saving sites like CouponCravings.com and these following five tips will help you save money as you stock up on what you need.
1. Don’t waste your good paper: You will need to have a supply of high quality paper for your final projects. Don’t allow yourself to use this paper for just anything. About.com recently published an article, Drawing on a Budget, that suggests that drawing exercises, experiments, and practice studies can all be done on cheap office paper. That way you won’t feel you’ve wasted your best materials on something less than your best work.
2. Make sure you really need it: Art supply stores are well stocked with every imaginable tool you could use. However, most of what’s there you won’t actually need. Don’t get carried away purchasing things you think you might have a use for. If you’re not sure, chances are it will only collect dust. Stick to the necessities.
3. Take care of your existing supplies: It may seem like an obvious statement, but artists can be hard on their tools. Some things, like paper, have to be replaced regularly. Others, according to FineArtTips.com, like paintbrushes, can be well cared for. If they are good quality brushes to begin with, they will last you a long time.
4. Check out garage sales: You won’t be able to stock up on paper this way. But you may be surprised at the deals you can find on frames, quality pastels, and pencils. You’ll have to be patient, because you won’t find what you’re looking for at every garage, moving, or estate sale. If you keep your eyes open, though, you may come across a real gem.
5. Sign up for mailing lists: Online art suppliers and physical art retailers often have mailing lists. Suite101.com’s article, How to Save Money on Art Supplies, explains that these lists will send out sale announcements and coupons to your email inbox. You can coordinate your next trip to coincide with a big sale, or use coupons for specific items you need.
Creating art is not always a cheap endeavor. The tools needed to create that masterpiece can really add up. If you’re careful with what you have, and plan ahead for what you need you can find ways to cut the costs.
- “How to Save Money on Art Supplies”, Suite101.com | <urn:uuid:bffeb87c-93d3-48f4-9e82-3e23422b0e72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mrsayalaskinderfun.blogspot.com/2012/07/5-ways-to-save-money-on-art-supplies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935989 | 600 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Medicine wheel of the senses
An artistic, sensual, spiritual park
In the medicine wheel of the senses, a lot of spaces are awaiting to be discovered.
They invite to:
Open your senses for this journey.
Open to the quality and power of each of these spaces.
Experiment the thousand and one possibilities of the objects, with the curiosity and playfulness of a child, but also with respect and care.
Feel what they offer for you to see, hear, smell, feel, and discover their secrets with open senses.
Each side of every different space explain its spirit and its possibilities. They build all together a wheel, in which their archetypical properties are fulfilled. It is called the medicine wheel, and it corresponds to the primitive philosophy of different peoples, who understands it as a reflection of the entire existence. It is at the same time a believe system and a spiritual power place, as well as a tool for personal reflection, either for oneself or for communities.
The garden of the senses, with all of its artistic and experiential objects, offers the archetypical qualities of the medicine wheel as a sensual experience. We can find the way to the most basic aspects of existence and of ourselves through our ears, eyes, smell and touch.
Feelings, mind, body and spirit are addressed.
A contact to the inner child, to the adult, to the masculine, as well as to the feminine part may be deepened.
The potential of flowing and of fantasy, the lightness and clarity, the introspection and devotion, the creativity and action, as well as other parts of ourselves get closer. | <urn:uuid:5e7d1e7e-0945-4c15-abc8-1281703e8bf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sensaciones.de/en/creation/medicine-wheel-senses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958608 | 339 | 1.640625 | 2 |
There may have been a transfer of sovereignty in Iraq last week, but on the ground things look much the same: most Iraqis without reliable utility service and no-bid contractors scooping up billions of Iraq's oil money without producing any measurable improvements. Here, Center for Corporate Policy Director Charlie Cray traces the connections between the Bush administration and corporate interests and explains how no-bid contracts are undermining democracy in Iraq—and at home.
Charlie Cray is the director of the Center for Corporate Policy and a collaborator on Halliburton Watch. His book, The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy, (co-authored with Lee Drutman) will be published by Berrett-Koehler in November.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq may be entering a new phase with the nominal transference of sovereignty, but reports issued from and about Iraq in recent days suggest that the promised reconstruction is far from done. And while many well-connected cronies rush home to reinforce their friends’ re-election efforts, it’s not clear that those left behind will ever finish the job—a circumstance that is bound to aggravate existing tensions in the country.
According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and The New York Times , more than a year after the first infamous no-bid contracts were given out Halliburton and Bechtel, only a fraction of the projected construction projects have been carried out. Supplies of electricity and water are no better for most Iraqis, and in some cases utilities are much worse than they were before the invasion in the spring of 2003.
A report put out by Christian Aid last week suggests that the mess left behind by the CPA may be much worse than the well-known abuses associated with the reconstruction money allocated by Congress. The UK-based group—which has closely monitored the CPA’s handling of Iraq’s oil-related revenues—reports that CPA officials left the country after spending nearly $20 billion out of the Development Fund of Iraq (derived from oil revenues) with virtually no accountability or transparency.
“For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq, it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq’s money,” said Helen Collinson, a policy analyst with Christian Aid.
The CPA’s hasty exit strategy will remind some observers of the stampede of greedy executives who cashed out their options a few years ago before leaving others to deal with the mess they left behind. In the run up to the handover, Christian Aid reports, CPA officials spent nearly $2 billion of the “Iraqi people’s” money. The transitional government will be in place just two weeks before an initial KPMG audit of the CPA’s handling of the development fund is due.
Meanwhile, although U.S.-funded reconstruction work will continue, festering resentments over unfulfilled promises of a Marshall Plan-scale reconstruction and refurbishment of the country’s infrastructure will likely continue to fuel support for the resistance. The resistance itself all but guarantees that a significant portion of the money earmarked for reconstruction will have to be spent on private security protection for reconstruction personnel (GAO estimates the current fraction is 18 percent), while the projects themselves will be prime targets for sabotage.
It’s also unclear if the private military firms providing the security could be held accountable in the event of human-rights violations or whether the contractors themselves can be held to account for shoddy work. A new contract to coordinate contractor security was awarded in May to the British firm Aegis, whose founder Tom Spicer’s resumé includes a history of arms smuggling in countries like Sierra Leone. As the result of a parting gift to the contractors, CPA chief Paul Bremer signed a final order on June 28 which guarantees that U.S. contractors will be exempted from prosecution by the country's new interim government for anything that happens while they are performing official duties.
Despite the transference of sovereignty, the CPA’s other various orders (including those that open up certain state-owned businesses to foreign investors, which critics say violate international norms restricting an occupying power’s right to restructure the occupied country’s economy) will also remain in effect during the coming transition.
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 U.S. troops will be forced to stay and occupy the country through the hot summer and for the foreseeable future, while many of the Bush administration’s war-profiteering cronies will be coming home—as reinforcements for the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. In fact, a few are Bush/Cheney “Pioneers” and “Rangers.” (They could just as well have called them “rocketeers” for taking fundraising to new levels, but someone must have noticed how close to “racketeer” that sounded).
To name a few of the war profiteers wired into the Bush/Cheney patronage system:
In 2003, a few of Bush’s closest political allies created New Bridge Strategies to help corporations “evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war.” New Bridge shares its Washington, DC offices with Barbour, Griffith & Rogers—the high-powered Republican lobbying firm founded by Haley Barbour, former head of the Republican National Committee and current governor of Mississippi. The firm’s CEO is Joe Allbaugh, the Bush/Cheney 2000 national campaign manager (and subsequent head of FEMA), and others involved include Ed Rogers (a top aide to Bush Sr.) and Lanny Griffith (who held several top advisory positions under Bush Sr., and is a 2004 Pioneer). Allbaugh recently registered as a lobbyist with Lockheed Martin. Looks like he finally figured out where the big money is.
Top GOP strategist Charlie Black’s clients have included Fluor, which received a big public works contract in Iraq to reconstruct the country’s water and electricity. Black is chairman of BKSH, an affiliate of global public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, and a big backer of Ahmed Chalabi before the war. In June, the London-based Telegraph reported that an arrest warrant was issued by the Iraqi police for Francis Brooke, a BKSH consultant who attempted to block a recent raid on Chalabi’s Iraqi headquarters, after Chalabi was accused of passing American secrets to Iran.
In the administration’s drive to create a beacon for democracy for the entire Middle East, another outstanding example of “do as we say and not as we do” has been the way the contract to develop a “competitive private sector” in Iraq has been handled. In this instance, the U.S. Agency for International Development allowed BearingPoint to help write the specifications for the $240 million contract, which in effect knocked its competitors out of the running, according to AID’s own inspector general. BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) and its employees have given more than $117,000 to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns. In 2003, an $80 million BearingPoint contract in Florida was withdrawn after critics complained about the company’s close ties to Gov. Jeb Bush.
Former Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., runs a lobbying firm that has represented well-placed Iraqi families seeking to form business alliances with U.S. and foreign companies wishing to do business in Iraq. Livingston has also gained some notoriety in Washington for lobbying against provisions that would ban tax-dodging companies that have incorporated offshore from being eligible for federal contracts. Recently he was part of an effort that succeeded in convincing Congress to drop an attempt to block the Department of Homeland Security’s from giving Bermuda-based Accenture a $10 billion contract for, of all things, “border control.” (U.S. taxpayers who don’t have any offshore accounts might not be happy to learn that Accenture also has a contract to help the IRS upgrade its website.)
In 2003 Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer issued a decree that Iraq’s 200 state-owned companies would be privatized and that foreign owners would be allowed to expatriate 100 percent of the profits. This looting of Iraq’s state-owned businesses—disguised as “private-sector development” was stalled by worker protests and skepticism among wary investors concerned about the strength of the insurgency. Thomas Foley—a former Citigroup banker assigned by the CPA to oversee the privatization process, returned to Greenwich, Conn. in early 2004, where he is the state co-chair for the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign.
Three weeks after construction and engineering firm Washington Group was awarded a contract to rebuild water projects in Iraq, 31 company employees gave $27,750 to Bush. By the end of April 2004, CEO Stephen Hanks had become a Bush campaign “Pioneer” (by raising more than $100,000). Washington Group spokesman Jack Hermann was unconcerned about any appearance of impropriety. "You either participate in the system or you don't," Hermann told a Bloomberg reporter. "People can draw ulterior motives. We understand the baggage that comes with that."
The kingpin of corporate cronies, of course, is Vice President Cheney’s old firm, Halliburton. Recent revelations that a political appointee working under Douglas Feith made the decision to override objections from career Pentagon contract experts to award Halliburton a key oil-related contract which provided the company an inside track for no-bid billion-dollar contracts has given partisan critics plenty of ammunition to criticize the administration’s bending of contract rules to benefit their friends. The fact that Cheney’s chief of staff was notified of the decision contradicts the vice president’s claim that he has had no involvement in the decision and, along with his televised assertion that he has no “ongoing financial interest” in the company (while continuing to receive more than $150,000 in deferred compensation payments) has made his connection to the king of corporate cronies a significant potential liability for the administration’s credibility and the upcoming election.
“The entire Halliburton affair represents the worst in government contracts with private companies: influence peddling, kickbacks, overcharging and no-bid deals," charged Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. in a March 2004 Associated Press article. But the vice president’s old firm is by no means the only war profiteer that has close ties to top administration officials. In fact, just as the U.S. media failed to objectively cover the war after being em-bedded with the troops, they have mostly failed to map out how thoroughly inbedded this network of contractors is with the Bush family, friends and campaign cronies.
For example, last year, the Financial Times reported that Neil Bush has been involved in the Iraq contract gravy train through his association with John Howland and Jamal Daniel of New Bridge Strategies. The president's brother wrote letters to push businesses established by Howland and Daniel, including Crest Investment Corporation, which in turn employs Bush as co-chairman. The FinancialTimes reported that Bush receives the equivalent of $60,000 a year from Crest for working an average of three or four hours a week. The failure of the U.S. media to report this story is amazing. Imagine if the story involved Roger Clinton.
The blame also falls on Congress for not passing many proposed amendments to the Iraq appropriations that would have brought a higher standard of oversight and accountability to the contracts. As Sen. Dorgan and other members have suggested, the outsourcing of the oversight process itself is another way that the Bush administration has insulated the contractors from any real level of accountability.
In January 2004, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a bipartisan committee to “investigate the awarding and carrying out of contracts” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Leach’s proposal is modeled after Harry Truman’s World War II committee—which saved taxpayers billions by rooting out corruption. It’s worth noting that Truman’s commission was created by a Congress controlled by the same party as the president.
Just as it was then, oversight should not be considered partisan,” Leach asserted. “It should be viewed solely in the context of protecting and preserving public resources and bolstering people’s confidence in their government.”
Of course, Leach’s bill was quietly quashed by Republican leaders who clearly understood that any investigation of Halliburton would be political suicide during an election year. | <urn:uuid:51cc8167-de19-41e4-a141-1a0eaea978df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tompaine.com/articles/no_bid_and_no_problem.php | 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 | 0.960438 | 2,652 | 1.609375 | 2 |
The San Antonio Express editorializes, “Swift action needed on NAFTA trucking deal,” emphasizing the economic costs of delays, that is, Mexico’s continued imposition of tariffs on U.S. manufactured goods and agricultural exports.
During its brief existence, the test program put to rest environmental and safety concerns about authorized Mexican trucks. Mexican truckers in the program actually had a better safety record than their American counterparts.
Mexico has agreed to drop half the tariffs when a test program is finalized. The remaining tariffs would be eliminated when trucks begin to roll.
Removing the tariffs will benefit U.S. exporters. Implementing the trucking provision will benefit U.S. consumers and holds the promise of making San Antonio a transportation hub for cross-border trade.
End this self destructive trade war. After 16 years, it’s time for the United States to live up to its NAFTA commitment.
Bill Graves, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, recently issued a statement lauding the agreement.
The American Trucking Associations welcomes the progress that the United States and Mexico are making to resolve their ongoing dispute over cross-border trucking. This proposal requires Mexican carriers to follow all the same rules and regulations that their American counterparts are subject to and takes steps to monitor Mexican trucks to ensure that those rules are being followed.
ATA expressed concerns to DOT about the U.S. government’s earlier proposal to pay for and provide electronic onboard recorders to Mexican trucks participating in a proposed pilot program. DOT has changed this specific requirement to allow for GPS systems to also be used for tracking purposes to ensure compliance with U.S. cabotage and hours of service regulations. We believe this is a sound change by the administration.
This announcement is good news for the U.S. businesses that have been hurt by Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs, including the trucking industry, and we look forward to the U.S. finally living up to its commitments under the North American Free Trade Agreement. | <urn:uuid:e8ad2393-44a6-45ea-9e16-1ff4e308f900> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/04/put-u-s-mexican-cross-border-trucking-program-in-place/20129 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94877 | 418 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Higher Education News
World & Nation
- Job prospects for the Class of 2009, as might be expected, don’t look good. Employers plan to increase the number of new graduates they hire by just 1.3 percent this coming year, according to a September survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. That’s the lowest projected increase since 2002.
“Historically, anything 6 percent or below represents not a good year for college recruiting,” said Edwin W. Koc, the association’s director of strategic and foundation research.
Text-message alert systems, such as those set up on many campuses since the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy, may not work as expected in the event of large-scale emergencies, according to a new report.
“Characterizing the Limitations of Third-Party EAS Over Cellular Text Messaging Services,” a study by Patrick G. Traynor, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, concludes that cellular networks are incapable of meeting the 10-minute alert goal that has been established by the federal Emergency Alert System charter.
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upholds tighter federal restrictions on Cuba-based study programs. The lawsuit, Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, et. al. v United States Department of the Treasury, et.al, challenged new regulations imposed in 2004.
The 2004 restrictions required study programs involving travel to Cuba to meet three criteria: the program must last at least 10 weeks; participating students must be enrolled at the academic institution sponsoring the program; and faculty who teach in such a program must be “full-time permanent employees regularly employed in a teaching capacity at the institution.” The court said that the regulations don’t restrict what professors can teach about Cuba, and that “professors remain free to teach in Cuba so long as they and their institutional employers establish programs in accordance with the regulations.”
Faculty & Staff
- The majority of professors surveyed for a new book, About Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities, by three faculty members at George Mason University, said they keep their own politics out of the classroom. The 2007 study of professors at 169 research universities, found 95 percent of professors believe they encourage competing views. Sixty-one percent said politics rarely comes up, and only 28 percent said they let students know how they feel about political issues in general.
On the other hand, three-quarters of the political science students surveyed in another study correctly identified their professors’ political leanings. The student study, “I Think My Professor Is a Democrat: Considering Whether Students Recognize and React to Faculty Politics,” reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, found a slight political shift toward the Democratic side, but the shift was among students whose professors were Republicans as well as among those who were Democrats.
- The National Governors Association has sent a letter asking the Secretary of Education to waive a new federal requirement that states maintain their spending on higher education, “given the current national and state economic crises.”
The governors noted that 27 states are already facing a combined budget shortfall of more than $26 billion, a figure that is expected to grow.
- Nearly four out of five students who undergo remediation in college graduated from high school with grade-point averages of 3.0 or higher, according to Strong American Schools, a group that advocates making public-school education more rigorous.
More than half the students the group studied said they worked hard in high school and nearly always completed their assignments. Nearly six in 10 said their high-school classes were easy, and nearly half said they wished their high school classes had been harder. | <urn:uuid:7feb6649-12b8-4da5-aa85-1b0de4790995> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nea.org/home/34137.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966293 | 775 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Learn to Keep Bees in NYC
If you live in New York City or the surrounding environs, and have been curious about what it takes to produce your own honey, the New York City Beekeepers Association
is offering a class for novice beekeepers during the month of February. It's three hours on Sundays and costs $100. You'll learn how to set up your hive, where to get bees, where to put your hive, and how to troubleshoot problems. Beekeeping isn't as difficult or scary as you might think, and besides producing honey and beeswax, it's a helpful companion project to gardening (pollination and all that). Check out our story on rebel New York City beekeepers
(technically it's illegal, but the DIYers are all over it).
Image Credit: Galen Krumel | <urn:uuid:8663fdf2-be40-458d-9378-d61d0e0a6f09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chow.com/food-news/37739/learn-to-keep-bees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947381 | 171 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has regulatory responsibilities for charities in Canada through its enforcement of the charity-related provisions of the Income Tax Act. As such, every registered charity in Canada has to work with CRA.
In addition to its enforcement responsibilities, CRA helps to educate charities about their regulatory responsibilities. It also works to encourage and promote voluntary compliance without resorting to penalties and other sanctions.
Many charities contact CRA only when they file their annual registered charity information returns (T3010) and when they notify CRA of any relevant changes in the charity’s operations or structure. Some charities also deal with CRA to obtain forms and guides, to ask and receive answers to specific questions, and to respond to any requests, including audits, made by CRA.
Many charities will also be in contact with provincial or territorial government authorities from time to time (see Requirements of Other Legislation). Contacting provincial or other authorities is not covered here.
- information available from CRA directly
- about this website
- other resources financially supported by CRA
- contact information for the CRA Helpline
- matters that should be communicated in writing
- CRA service issues
- CRA's right to examine
- use of computer systems
- donor information
- CRA and voluntary compliance
- correction of errors or omissions
- discuss with CRA without identifying yourself | <urn:uuid:27d75333-79f2-418c-a870-54da12fc9b24> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://charitytax.imaginecanada.ca/topics/working-cra/how-work-cra | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939545 | 272 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Parents do so much to protect their children, but with the invent of over 80,000 FDA approved chemicals to use in food. Some are grown on mediums of Bt GMO corn. That corn has been genetically engineered to contain organisms that manufacture pesticides and don’t die no matter how much Round Up Ready pesticide is applied to the GMO plant.
Monsanto has been able to achieve a 100% infection rate. According to the article, “Another Study Finds GMO Compounds in 100% of Pregnant Women and Fetuses,” by Elizabeth Renter (http://naturalsociety.com/
So, not only do all women likely have some of these GMO toxins in them, but they are passing it on to their children.
What is a toxic limit of the pesticides and artificial flavor and colors they will be consuming you might ask. Well unfortunately pesticide manufacturers only test for toxic levels in a 175 pound male. Children eat more food per body weight and therefore are exposed to a heavier toxic load. The best solution is to find ways to completely remove pesticides and GMOs from food, and use more drought tolerant organic farming methods.
Many people think the government has labs that do safety testing for all GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, and the thousands of other artificial chemicals and flavors submitted to the FDA (Federal Drug Administration)
These artificial, chemical ingredients, some made using GMOs such as aspartame, are designed to help manufacturers increase profit margins by substituting cheaper chemicals for real food and plant ingredients. Chemicals used in foods don’t spoil as quickly so shelf life is extended. Shelf life is everything in the food business.
As long as the research seems to demonstrate safety, the FDA has no reason to not approve.
Trouble is the research for safety on these new chemicals is done at the inventor/manufacturer labs, without third party testing. There is no money to pay for this kind of research. Most all the time the funding source is the manufacturer, and if you are a scientist and your research results are unfavorable to your funder, chances are your money will be cut and you will be out of a job. The system is not designed to protect the consumer and supports just the opposite, and punishing the scientist.
The studies usually involve small groups and stop after three months.
The first two-year study that just came out of France in August 2012, should have everyone wondering if all previous GMO research fell short with only the three month time period. Reuters published on September 19, 2012 that, “French study finds tumours in rats fed GM. Their research found that rats fed a lifetime diet of Monsanto's genetically modified corn or exposed to its top-selling weedkiller Roundup suffered tumours and multiple organ damage,”
Organic and Non GMO farmers are being punished with extra fees for not accepting and using GMO seed.
Passing California Proposition #37 will not cost consumers hundreds of dollars and hurt farmers. It hurts the GMO seed maker by cutting into their billion dollar a year business. They don’t want consumers asking questions. Don’t stop asking why we are being force feed GMOs when people are asking to have it labeled so they can avoid them.
Instead of trying to analyze all of the information out there, just tune in today, November 1st at 4:00 pm PST to let Dave Murphy, Director Food Democracy Now break it down for you so you can cut through all of the TV ad hype on Smart Health Talk TODAY, KCAARadio.com/ | <urn:uuid:68a78bc0-984e-4633-aab8-0e10cfc03be3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prlog.org/12014266-still-confused-about-labeling-gmo-foods-and-ca-prop-37-dave-murphy-food-democracy-now-explains.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950649 | 727 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The training somewhat a mason can certainly be got from the vocational college when it comes to technical school. Plus runners that would love to give full attention to carrying out field, they’re able get on the job training just like a electrician apprentice. An occupational to get a mason can become completed in a short time time, by receiving skills getting an electrician apprentice program too as the proper training courses. Apprenticeship programs can be.
The people that get practicing for electrician education to have apprenticeship program will get training that may but let them perform both construction and maintenance work. The following are some things you must have got to become an electrical contractor. First a healthy school diploma or G.E.D., next you must pass a test to enroll in an apprenticeship program, soon after which have good skills in English and math.
An electrical contractor apprentice can finish a education program within 4 years time. Could possibly happen putting up hours of classroom studies and mitts on training by a job every single year. The electricians program course include listed here subjects you need to know. They could be soldering, safety and first-aid practices, fire security alarms, electrical code requirements, blueprint reading, diagrams of electrical systems, conduit fabrication and communications. An official electrician education is not needed, but employers realize it’s that can then be a unique thing to get whilst you obtain a job. Will also help advance your employment becoming electrician if you suffer from skills.
Many young electrician candidates can come up for being electricians apprentice subsequent senior high school to consume enough experience to obtain an online business of their own. As well as to choose the training you need to serve as a mason. That has a electricians license is the reason why you can have a thorough idea electrical theory.
Determine to get started with a electrician career merely visiting a school to analyze and train in becoming a electrician. The employment for electricians next a few years is expected to rise. A demand for skilled electricians boosts caused by continuing development of the economy, telecommunications, computers and other reasons that has to use electrical work. The employment of maintenance electricians will rise faster then construction electricians. Earnings from the electrician usually will depend on experience, an individual a license, and capability. Training to grow an electrician may lead to a profession for just a general electrician, contractor, supervisor, independent company, commercial electrician, construction superintendent, project manager, industrial electrician, and maintenance electrician. There are a lot colleges as and electrician.
Industrial electricians can decide to do business with machines too large equipment. A maintenance electrician can be employed in factories, hospitals properly as other places that need repair, replacing and in addition the maintaining of electrical systems. A maintenance electrician properly using inspecting equipment, performing on gadgets, and replacing items like circuit breakers and switches. A billboard electrician happens to be involving mending and maintenance in factories and office buildings. An over-all electrician is normally found being employed in residential homes, rewiring homes, replacing fuse boxes, and fixing problems lighting.
|A respected mitsubishi dlp dmd chip replacement site that can provide what you’ll need.|
|When searching for hp color laserjet cp1215‘s on the internet, make sure you save as much money as is possible.| | <urn:uuid:a0f333ce-a88b-4581-ac85-29614a7c4f72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://global-network.info/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95604 | 698 | 2.3125 | 2 |
The previous example compared getting similar data from a Visual FoxPro database container loaded and ready for presentation with the same task in Eiffel. The next step is to take the prepared data and present it to the user. The caution for both FoxPro and for Eiffel is this -- In production code you most likely won't do things this way.
The heart and soul of Visual FoxPro is a decent database engine coupled with a capable attempt at an Object Oriented language. Any FoxPro engineer will quickly point out this marriage as a key strength of FoxPro. It has been a tremendous selling point that I have used personally with clients again and again over the last twenty years.
I have been working with FoxPro in nearly all its forms since May of 1991, starting with FoxPro for DOS 1. Thankfully, I was able to graduate to each new version as they were released. A resemblance of Object Oriented software engineering appeared in VFP 3.0 in the mid-1990s. I was immediately stumped by it.
I have been both a W-2 employee and a free-lance contract software engineer. My contracting days lasted about 10 years (more or less). During that time, I began to see a reality happening for me repeatedly.
I am pleased to announce a new Eiffel tool that is able to convert (or wrap) Objective-C frameworks to Eiffel.
I've been working on this during my master thesis at Eiffel Software and, although not completely ready for development in the software industry (there are still several manual settings/details that might be improved), we're going to release a public beta soon.
From time to time, I will do my best to keep this blog and it associated community up-to-speed on the development of the Jinny Logistical Order Fulfillment Technologies (JLOFT) project. The JLOFT system has been conceived as an end-to-end general business application. The application is being designed to manage a specific wholesale order fulfillment system (e.g. | <urn:uuid:7771bdf6-ee98-47a3-8143-507dee1c7cce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eiffelroom.com/room/blogs?page=6 | 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 | 0.97109 | 421 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Taking a Stand
Working in media policy and seeing the devastating impacts of bad media policy on local communities and on our media itself, I’ve often wondered why more journalists are not outraged. When it comes to the most vital media policy debates of our time where are the voices of journalists?
This is slowly shifting. While discussing media policy and the role of journalists as advocates for the future of journalism, a friend of mine said to me, “We cannot be objective about our right to exist.” This week the faculty at the Columbia University Journalism School took that sentiment to heart, writing a letter to President Obama and Attorney General Holder in defense of Wikileaks First Amendment rights.
“But while we hold varying opinions of Wikileaks’ methods and decisions, we all believe that in publishing diplomatic cables Wikileaks is engaging in journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment. Any prosecution of Wikileaks’ staff for receiving, possessing or publishing classified materials will set a dangerous precedent for reporters in any publication or medium, potentially chilling investigative journalism and other First Amendment-protected activity.
As a historical matter, government overreaction to publication of leaked material in the press has always been more damaging to American democracy than the leaks themselves.
The U.S. and the First Amendment continue to set a world standard for freedom of the press, encouraging journalists in many nations to take significant risks on behalf of transparency. Prosecution in the Wikileaks case would greatly damage American standing in free-press debates worldwide and would dishearten those journalists looking to this nation for inspiration.”
The letter comes just days after Steve Yelvington wrote “Five sad reasons American press isn’t outraged” in which he quotes a friend who asks, “Why isn’t the American press screaming at the top of its lungs about this. How can we let the Joe Lieberman’s of the world lead this discussion. If the press doesn’t take a stand here we are doomed. There will be no reason to have a “press” in this country.” HIs post distilled the heart of the issue better than I can, and some of what he says has implications for the larger question of the role of journalists and public policy in shaping the future of journalism.
It is vital for journalists to be take tough stands on complex policy issues like this that strike at the fundamental question of what journalism is, and what it will be. | <urn:uuid:1be47b75-037b-4c99-b78c-46b74e0e1414> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stearns.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/taking-a-stand/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932665 | 496 | 1.679688 | 2 |
When a company refuses to allow other companies to produce patented technology, the consumer invariably loses. The company that holds the patent can charge exorbitant prices because there is no direct competition. When the patent expires, other companies are free to manufacture the technology and prices fall. Companies should therefore allow other manufacturers to license patented technology.
The argument above presupposes which of the following?
a. Companies cannot find legal ways to produce technology similar to patented technology.
b. Companies have an obligation to act in the best interest of the consumer.
c. Too many patents are granted to companies that are unwilling to share them.
d. The consumer can tell the difference between patented technology and inferior imitations.
e. Consumers care more about price than about quality.
Will provide the OA after some explanations. | <urn:uuid:eb6600bd-9cff-4cdc-9672-3778ab35d074> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gmatclub.com/forum/when-a-company-refuses-to-allow-other-companies-to-produce-145057.html?fl=similar | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931126 | 165 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Patients who have sustained clinically significant traumatic brain injury (TBI) often complain of sleep disturbances. Immediately following TBI, difficulty in falling asleep and frequent awakenings are commonly reported, whereas after several years excessive somnolence is more typical.1 However, despite the ubiquity of sleep abnormalities following TBI, objective documentation is lacking for the occurrence of persisting severe insomnia specifically associated with brain injury.2 The present case report describes a patient who, as a result of cerebral concussion, developed an enduring inability to sleep that has been virtually intractable to behavioral and pharmacological therapies.
In 1991, at the age of 35, the patient was dragged from his car and repeatedly beaten about the right side of the head with a blunt object. Although his recollection of the details of the attack is not clear, he believes that he may have momentarily lost consciousness. He was able, however, to drive his car from the scene of the assault. Prior to his injury the patient was employed as a paralegal and his medical history was unremarkable. Premorbid intellectual functioning was estimated with the National Adult Reading Test, which indicated a Verbal IQ of 103 (58th percentile) and Full Scale IQ of 106 (61st percentile). The patient indicated that before being injured, he experienced no sleep disturbance and usually slept 6 to 8 hours per night.
Difficulties in sleeping began immediately after the injury, in association with severe memory and concentration problems. The patient reported that he typically goes to bed between 10:30 p.m. and 12:00 midnight and takes up to 4 hours to fall asleep. When he does sleep he experiences a variable number of awakenings, only occasionally due to extraneous noise, and once awake he has extreme difficulty falling asleep again. According to his sleep log the patient averages about 15 hours' total sleep per week. He does not snore and does not awaken with a choking sensation or with gasping. Although the patient occasionally exhibits hypnic jerks while in bed, his symptoms are not consistent with restless legs syndrome. It should be noted that the patient's reduced sleep time is not due to a decreased need to sleep. He described feeling exceptionally tired, and to even a casual observer he appeared extremely fatigued.
Ambulatory 24-hour electroencephalograms with conventional electrode montages, performed 1 and 4 years after the injury, were described as normal; no epileptiform activity was noted. An all-night polysomnogram with 12 additional EEG recording channels was performed 18 months after the injury and had results consistent with the patient's descriptions of his sleeping problems. Sleep latency was 283 minutes; total sleep time was 62 minutes, with stage 1 sleep 10.3 minutes and stage 2 sleep 51.7 minutes. There was a complete absence of slow-wave and REM sleep. The patient awakened spontaneously without apparent cause and did not fall asleep again during the monitoring period.
An MRI examination of the brain was unremarkable except for the presence of a left posterior parietovenous angioma. However, 4 years after the injury a positron emission tomography scan using [18F]deoxyglucose, performed at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, revealed abnormally increased metabolic activity in the posterior cingulate gyrus as well as in several small regions of the left prefrontal cortex. Abnormally decreased metabolism was observed in the medial temporal lobe bilaterally, right visual cortex, left caudate, left putamen, and anterior dorsal aspect of the thalamus. Increases and decreases were evaluated with respect to other areas of the brain.
In addition to his complaints of sleeping difficulties, the patient described feeling somewhat sad and has also noted increasing difficulty with concentration and memory. Evaluation with the Beck Depression Inventory 4 years postinjury confirmed moderate to severe depression.
Neuropsychological assessment was performed to obtain objective evaluation of the patient's cognitive difficulties. Memory functioning was assessed with Wechsler Memory Scale—Revised subtests (Logical Memory I and II, Verbal Paired Associates I and II, Digit Span) and the Cambridge Automated Neuropsychological Test Assessment Battery (CANTAB)3 computerized tests of visual pattern recognition, spatial recognition, delayed matching to sample, and visuospatial short-term memory capacity. The norms used for each of the tests were those provided by the test developers.
The patient's memory functioning, even under conditions of low load (i.e., wherein what is to be remembered is very simple and recall is immediate), was moderately to severely impaired. Under conditions of high load, the patient's memory functioning was profoundly impaired. The one exception was the very simple Forward Digit Span test, wherein a sequence of numbers must be repeated in the order in which they were heard; the patient scored at the 50th percentile for men of his age. The more difficult task of hearing a sequence of numbers and repeating them in the reverse order from which they were presented (Backward Digit Span) was only in the 9th percentile. His ability to immediately recall a short paragraph was in the 18th percentile; if he had to wait about 30 minutes before being asked to recall the story, his performance deteriorated to the 6th percentile.
Performance on a simple visual pattern recognition test was moderately subpar (approximately 8th percentile). However, on the relatively demanding delayed matching-to-sample test, in which complex visual patterns have to be identified after delays varying from 0 seconds up to 12 seconds, the patient's difficulties were severe (<1st percentile). Similarly, when he was asked to recall the spatial location of test stimuli, his performance was at chance levels (i.e., similar to what would result from pure guessing: <1st percentile). Taken together, all of these findings represent a major impairment of working memory with a relatively rapid loss of new information.
In addition to memory deficits, standard testing4 demonstrated psychomotor slowing, microsmia, and severe impairment (≤1st percentile) of attention and executive functioning. In addition, neurological examination indicated slowing of repetitive movements, rigidity upon passive manipulation, reduced right arm swing during walking, and postural instability, consonant with the indications of basal ganglia dysfunction shown on PET.
As noted previously, the patient had significant depression, a state often associated with memory disorders. Moreover, as noted by Alexander et al., "severe depression is commonly accompanied by psychomotor slowing, impaired attention, decreased cognitive flexibility and poor retrieval memory."5 However, the neuropsychological deficits we observed were apparently present immediately after the patient's head injury, whereas depression developed only later.
Although the patient disclaimed lingering fears from the assault, the initial psychiatric consultation and treatment mistakenly focused on a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with associated anxiety and insomnia. Symptoms corresponding to diagnostic criteria for PTSD (e.g., reexperiencing of the trauma, attenuated responsiveness or involvement with the external world) were not present. The patient was repeatedly reassured that with therapy his symptoms would disappear, and fluoxetine was initiated with doses up to 40 mg per day. Augmentation of drug treatment with concurrent administration of either doxepin (50 mg twice a day) or trazodone (150 mg per day) met with failure, as did bedtime administration of either amitriptyline (50 mg) or pentobarbital (3 grains). The patient was placed in individual and group therapy but found no relief from his symptoms. Changes in behavior based on recommendations from sleep disorder specialists to improve "sleep hygiene" were also ineffective.
Follow-up psychiatric evaluation diagnosed TBI, and attempts were made to ameliorate symptoms with pharmacotherapy. Over the past several years the patient has cooperated with therapeutic attempts involving the use of many drugs both individually and in combination. Unfortunately, there is no consensus of medical opinion offering guidance in the treatment of insomnia of this type, and therefore a trial-and-error approach using reasoned judgment is necessary. Although hypnotics were tried for obvious reasons, other medications were chosen in light of specific symptoms such as anxiety (buspirone). The PET findings of basal ganglia disorder suggested the possible use of drugs with action in this area. Although results actually confirmed the validity of this approach, other considerations were countervailing, as explained below. For various periods over several years, the following were administered: desipramine (25—300 mg), desipramine plus T3, pemoline (18.75—37.5 mg), divalproex (250—500 mg), carbamazepine (200 mg), buspirone (5—20 mg), zolpidem (10 mg), chloral hydrate (2 gm), haloperidol (2—4 mg), thioridazine (25—200 mg), risperidone (2—12 mg), risperidone plus ergoloid mesylate (1 mg), risperidone plus haloperidol and diphenhydramine, primidone (250 mg) plus risperidone and diphenhydramine, carisoprodol (1,400 mg) plus risperidone, diazepam (10 mg) plus temazepam (7.5—15 mg), melatonin, and carisoprodol plus diazepam and temazepam.
At the time of the current neuropsychological testing the patient was receiving diazepam (Valium), carisoprodol (Soma), and diphenhydramine (Benadryl). Most relevant are diphenydramine and diazepam, since these can produce drowsiness and thereby impair attention and slow information processing. However, the entire range of the patient's difficulties cannot be explained by his drug regimen.
Efficacy of treatment was based on patient report via a sleep log. Drug dosages were titrated upward over a period of 6 to 8 weeks unless adverse reactions (e.g., nightmares with pemoline, nausea and vomiting with carbamazepine) caused termination sooner. Risperidone in the above-noted combinations ameliorated symptoms such that sleep for up to 33 hours per week was claimed. At times the patient would sleep 3 hours consecutively. More commonly, the patient slept approximately 20 hours per week with the combination of risperidone, haloperidol, and diphenhydramine. Unfortunately, growing concerns about the risk of permanent motor side effects (e.g., tardive dyskinesia), compounded by the emergence of extrapyramidal motor signs in association with the PET findings of basal ganglia disruption mentioned above, prompted termination of neuroleptic administration.
The sleep disturbance described in this patient differs from insomnia associated with delayed sleep phase syndrome, a disorder frequently caused by TBI. In the latter disorder, insomnia is caused by a delay in the preinjury sleep-wake pattern so that the patient's circadian rhythm conflicts with the activities of daily living.6 Delayed sleep syndrome, unlike the present case, is not associated with loss of slow wave and REM sleep7 and is ameliorated by various drug treatments such as melatonin.8
The neuronal mechanisms of this patient's difficulties are problematic. Certainly, his neuropsychological deficits may be secondary to unremitting sleep deprivation.9 In addition, many of the abnormalities of cerebral metabolism described in the PET scan are also seen after sleep deprivation.10 However, a similar clinical picture, including loss of slow wave and absence of normal REM, has been described in patients with a familial disease characterized by degeneration of the anterior and dorsomedial thalamus. The present case, wherein PET abnormalities were found in the same area, accords with the possibility that traumatic injury of this zone may also produce persisting loss of normal sleep patterns.11 Unfortunately, the presence of abnormalities in other areas precludes a definitive conclusion. | <urn:uuid:714c296a-842f-4bf9-8002-34fc6ca5ee94> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=100516 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00072-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961735 | 2,448 | 1.992188 | 2 |
Palm imposter :Popular sago palm is not a palm at all
Dinosaurs probably snacked on the relatives of the cycads that you have in our yard today. Yes, cycads are those unique plants that resemble palm trees. The cycad family dominated the landscape during the Mesozoic era more than 150 million years ago. We are probably most familiar with the cycad called the sago palm.
The sago is a very symmetrical plant that supports a crown of shiny, dark green leaves. The trunk is thick and shaggy. They grow very slowly but some can eventually reach 10-12 feet in height.
Sago palms are the common local name of the tropical plant. But they are not really a palm tree at all. These cycads are native to China and Japan. They are popular for landscape use. Their unique architectural shape makes them showstoppers.
Sago palms have been described as humankind’s oldest food plant. The pith of the palm is crushed for food. It was a common staple food for natives in Asia before the introduction of rice. Sago starch is still used for making noodles, and flour for bread and cake.
Sagos are a wonderful plant for both indoor and outdoor use. They look great in the shrub border or as an accent on an expanse of lawn. Place them near the patio, in entryways or in rock and sand gardens. Sagos mix well with border grasses like liriope.
Sagos in the landscape will grow more quickly than those in containers. They are very easy to grow. Give them a location with full sun or partial shade. As with most plants, good drainage is important. Fertilize on a regular basis during the growing season of March through September. Master gardeners suggest that if you are trying to really increase the size of the sago plant, use a palm fertilizer four times a year.
Southern sago palms can be loosely divided into three species. The king sago palm will tolerate colder temperatures, surviving short periods of below 32 degrees.
They should reach 5 feet in height. The queen sago is for south Floridians unless you are willing to protect it when the temperature dips below 55 degrees. The prince sago is also cold hardy and a faster grower the king sago.
Not only unique and tropical feeling, the sago palms are legendary. They have not only outlived dinosaurs, but also will survive our humid, hot Texas climate and give you a spot of green all year long. Next week let’s check out how to grow new sago palms from the “sago pups.” This is almost the best time of the year to create new baby sagos.
Joette is an avid gardener and prides herself on staying up-to-date on the latest gardening activities and tips. To share your gardening news with Joette, call (409) 832-1400 or fax her at (409) 832-6222. Her e-mail is joreger [at] msn [dot] com. | <urn:uuid:bf02add2-2f22-466f-87c0-8342f2d92dc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theexaminer.com/features/home-and-garden/palm-imposter-popular-sago-palm-not-palm-all?quicktabs_1=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949356 | 646 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The Tibetan divination system called "Mo" has been relied upon for centuries to give insight into the future turns of events, undertakings, and relationships. It is a clear and simple method involving two rolls of a die to reveal one of the thirty-six possible outcomes described in the text. This Mo, which obtains its power from Manjushri, was developed by the great master Jamgön Mipham from sacred texts expounded by the Buddha.
"This English translation of a Tibetan divination manual opens a new portal into the realm of Tibetan studies."—Tsepak Rigzin, Research and Translation Officer at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
"Mo's approach is refreshingly different from the other oracle systems around. . . . Mo's results seemed highly relevant, nourishing, inspiring, and best of all, authoritative."—Yoga Journal | <urn:uuid:4ec9fd0c-6246-409b-9d9d-0aa4cf9a65e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shambhala.com/authors/g-n/jamgon-mipham/mo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933757 | 178 | 2.203125 | 2 |
|FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE|
Stay Busy this Summer with Melissa & Doug’s “Virtual” Camp
Camp Sunny Patch begins Monday June 4, Online
May 30, 2012 – Wilton, CT – To kids, the start of summer means freedom and fun! But to parents, planning summer days can be daunting. How can we give kids the adventure they crave within safe boundaries? How can we challenge them to learn all season long? How can we find time to plan a summer’s-worth of answers to “What will we do today?”
Melissa & Doug, makers of classic toys and proud ambassadors of creative play, are thrilled to announce Camp Sunny Patch—a week-by-week activity guide to a summer full of active, imaginative play. Hosted at blog.MelissaAndDoug.com, Camp Sunny Patch casts a team of star Blog Ambassadors as “camp counselors.” The counselors host themed “camp sessions” in categories such as water play, arts & crafts, scavenger hunts and other camp favorites, through free printable play guides.
How it works: Families can print and post monthly calendars, available exclusively on the Melissa & Doug blog and to email subscribers, for a taste of what each month will hold. Then each week you download a session guide to delve into greater detail of the activity ideas, games, crafts and much more. The blog even features printable camp badges! In addition, optional camp-themed surprises will be available throughout the summer on Facebook and Twitter.
Melissa & Doug recognizes that parents are looking for affordable activities for their children. Creating Camp Sunny Patch was a way to create tremendous value for parents by offering low-cost, creative activities for kids for the entire summer. Creative Play should be available for everyone. The weekly activities from Camp Sunny Patch are a great way to get started.
FROM OUR CAMP COUNSELORS: | <urn:uuid:f6f5c0ad-6f3a-4a25-8a20-cdd17127295a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.melissaanddoug.com/2012/05/31/press-release-camp-sunny-patch/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=8b2dcf09a6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904294 | 401 | 1.5 | 2 |
You are the ones who make or break a newspaper. You tell us whether we are faltering or doing our job well. You are the ones who make us feel special. DNA handpicks five such readers who have been doing so since our newspaper took wings. Here’s what they have to say about us:
It helps us draw a clear picture
Gauri Kadam, clinical psychologist
The clinical psychologist said that reading DNA has become a part of her system. “It has become kind of a daily routine for me and even for my 20-year-old son,” she said.
In fact, Kadam did try to switch over to another newspaper, but found herself coming back to DNA for a variety of reasons. “First of all, the daily coverage of local news is really excellent. We get the correct picture of the things happening around us. Even world news is covered well and we stay updated on global events. I like the fact that the paper not only focuses on breaking news, but also gives us detailed perspective on routine incidents that help us draw a clear picture,” she said.
Kadam, who likes the printing quality, said that unlike other papers, DNA’s reports are concise yet detailed.
“What I particularly like about this newspaper is its aggression, especially when taking up certain issues. Also, this newspaper is unbiased and it is reflected in its reports. That is rare to see these days with most dailies picking sides,” said Kadam.
While she likes to read all the sections, two of them that offer her a break after hard-hitting news are DNA After Hrs and DNA Education.
“I don’t have a particular favourite section as all have different piece of news. However, I love to read the Bollywood section in the After Hrs. It’s a pleasure read after hard hitting news in the main section. They have interesting articles on film and TV actors, book reviews and events which are interesting and informative at the same time,” she said.
While Kadam does like DNA Education, she said that the scope of this section should be expanded for student community. “I expect this section to have more articles and trends on various professional courses which students use. Besides reporting on events in education, it should include more information to help students make guided decisions,” she said.
All in all, Kadam said that DNA for her is a colourful newspaper and is presentable with good mixture of various news. “The paper for the last five years has given me what I expected from it. Though I tried changing it, I came back to it. Now, reading this newspaper is part of my DNA,” she said.
I feel connected to my city
Gurdeep Singh, business man
Short yet effective — is what 51-year-old Gurdeep Singh loves about DNA’s style of writing.
“I think over the last five years, I have gradually developed a liking for this newspaper. I think this newspaper reflects the aspirations and emotions of its readers like no other daily. Also, the news reports are short, convey maximum information in minimum words and I don’t ever get bored as the reports are not long,” said Singh.
The transport business owner from Bhawani Peth’s Timber market area feels what makes DNA different from others is the way local issues are reported. “I feel connected to my city and feel this newspaper cares about what is happening in my locality. This is where one can raise their concerns. It is truly a community centric newspaper,” said Singh.
Ask him about his favourite section in the newspaper and he promptly replied, “I like the auto section, insurance and reviews of auto business. I like the way it is presented with in-depth information. I also subscribe to other newspapers but the coverage in DNA is unparalleled.”
Singh also applauded DNA for its design. “I think the newspaper is very easy on the eye. Attractive layouts and colourful pictures are interspersed with news and the presentation has remained attractive for the last 5 years. I wish DNA all the very best and success for years to come,” he said.
DNA’s writing is very simple
Chetan Shah, business in imitation jewellery
“I am a loyal reader of this newspaper for last five years as I like its local coverage of news,” says Chetan.
The reason he subscribes to DNA is its simple writing. “I wished to have an English newspaper as I wanted my daughters to read daily to help improve their language skills as well as brush up on general knowledge. I tried other existing newspapers but found that either they have very difficult language or their local coverage isn’t good. Hence, I switched to DNA and found it to be a very engaging newspaper. Also, it was colourful and attractive,” said Shah.
Not just him, but his wife Jagruti and daughters Devanshi and Dhwani are addicted to the newspaper.
He said that past experience have made him a little sceptical about trying other newspapers. He realised over a period of time that DNA not just gave correct news, but also analysed it. “Most other newspapers focus too much on negative news. But, in this newspaper, I see a right balance,” said Shah. To further his claim, he gave example of the India Positive series of reports carried by DNA.
Another section he likes is the share market column. “Since I am a businessman, it helps me get an insight into the share market and stock prices,” he said.
He added that the price of the paper too is affordable compared to other newspapers.
“The two main reasons I read this newspaper is its uncompromising attitude towards quality of news and lucid language. The language helps many who are first time readers of English newspaper,” said Shah.
You don’t feel like missing important news
Narayan Sharma, working professional
The 59-year-old Aundh resident prefers DNA for is concise reports and excellent news coverage.
“The reason why DNA is doing so well as compared to other newspapers is its style of writing and news presentation. It has short and detailed news with just necessary details unlike long articles in other papers. These days, no one has the time to go through the entire paper. With DNA, you can read the news faster and get the entire synopsis of a particular story without the feeling of missing important details,” he said.
While the attractive initial offer price prompted him to subscribe to the newspaper, he said that over the last 5 years, it has become not just a part of his daily routine, but of his family as well.
“I think DNA has excellent hold on local as well as national and state news. It covers civic issues very well and I feel it is good to read news of problems of grassroots level faced by citizens. The stories have good pictures too which helps in understanding the larger picture,” said Sharma.
Every Monday, Sharma looks forward to read DNA Money. “My son, who is now in the US, used to like DNA’s sport pages. He said that it had one of the best coverages of both international and local sport,” he said.
“This newspaper makes me feel it is connected with the city. I wish all the very best and success to the entire team of DNA in the years to come,” said Sharma.
For me, DNA is no. 1
Sachin Kulkarni, software professional
Sachin Kulkarni (35) prefers DNA as his daily dose of news simply for its unbiased coverage.
“Initially, I started subscribing to DNA when I was presented a good inaugural offer. But gradually, I found that this was the paper which I always wanted. I expect a newspaper to give us unbiased news, analysis and opinion. I found all these ingredients in DNA. So, I have been reading it for the last five years,” said Kulkarni.
According to him, the social coverage of the newspaper too is very good. “I remember DNA being the first colourful newspaper of the city. It is presentable with right font size and good mixture of various hues. The paper has lived up to its name and for me, it is the no. 1 newspaper.”
In fact, not just him, but his parents too read the newspaper and love it.
The software professional said that most other newspapers often offer a lopsided perspective on news but it was not the case with DNA. “It has always given due weightage to news keeping aside political parties or persons in power. If the news is positive, the coverage too is optimistic and vice-versa. This was the thing about DNA which impressed me when I saw it initially,” he said.
One of his favourite supplements is DNA Money. “The kind of coverage given to the market and business is very detailed. It has superseded all other pink papers. However, Money was incorporated into the main newspaper later. Though we miss the supplement, but the coverage is still unbeatable,” he said.
“I also like the Speak Up page as through that, we get to know the real movers and shakers of the city. Generally, we see news makers and opinion changers on television but our local experts are introduced to us through Speak Up. It’s interesting to read their opinions and views,” he said.
“I like the simple style of writing stories. It is very reader friendly. Yet, they don’t compromise on quality of news, it is very in-depth,” he added. | <urn:uuid:9d19ba9b-97ef-4494-a412-b04b256da35b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dnaindia.com/speakup/1789498/report-yes-you-matter-the-most-to-us | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982328 | 2,044 | 1.578125 | 2 |
If you need a respite from your busy life, consider transforming your bathroom into a personal refuge. Follow this simple path to create an authentic, Zen-inspired design.
When creating a Zen bathroom, the floor plan should flow effortlessly, blending from one area to the next. Simple design is a difficult thing to do well, and Zen relies a lot on architecture rather than decorative elements. So if you're building or renovating, consider hiring an architect or interior designer to manage the project. They can draw up floor plans, offer suggestions for materials and work directly with contractors to ensure that you achieve the look you want.
You may even want to work with a feng shui consultant. Feng shui is the Chinese art of placement that focuses on creating a positive flow of energy in the house. Whether you choose to hire a consultant or go it alone, here are some tips from designers and architects on how to think about space.
You should place the bathtub by a window so you can experience nature while soaking. The bathroom should interact with adjacent rooms so that the view looking in and out of the bathroom is appealing and serene.
The toilet area should not be seen from the doorway. Consider placing a beautiful piece of artwork within viewing distance of the toilet; let that art be the focal point from the doorway.
"You want to feel the adjacent space even though you may not always see it," said architect Michael Morris of Morris Sato Studio in New York City. "There should be something present beyond the wall or screen, a borrowed landscape from another room that suggests a deeper space or surface."
The bathroom should have distinct areas but not feel divided, said Dallas-based designer Alan Hilsabeck Jr. of Alan Hilsabeck Jr. Interior Design.
He suggests simplicity, clean lines, fluidity and functionality. Partitions, such as shoji screens, allow you to divide the room or leave it open as you choose. | <urn:uuid:5883be2d-2a91-4619-8083-19e70c6f1918> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goerie.com/article/20121208/REWEB02/312089988/Create-a-Zen-bathroom | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944101 | 397 | 1.703125 | 2 |