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When the temperature dips, nothing warms the heart better than sending your child to school with some hot and comforting lunch. Soups and stews are perfect since in most cases; their flavors improve in time. A sandwich with a warm beverage also fits the bill. Furthermore, packing that lunch can help you control what goes into your child’s diet at school.
However, there are right and wrong ways of packing hot lunch. Having consulted USDA’s Food Safety guidelines, together with a few food publications out there, I have arrived at this summary of 6 easy steps to packing a safe hot lunch.
- You should invest in a few good quality thermal containers for food and beverages. Keep a few sizes around. Always check for leaks. Nothing is more embarrassing than to have soups and stews leaking from the food jar when you are having lunch with your buddies.
- Always pre-heat the containers by pouring boiling water into the jar and let the water sit for a few minutes; my usual time is 5 minutes. Discard the water only right before you are ready to fill up the jar.
- Heat up the food to piping hot before filling up the food jars. While heating up the food, give it a few stirs to ensure even heating.
- After filling up, put the prepared food jars in a thermal carrying bag.
- Not all food jars have serving cups. Therefore, you should also include an unbreakable serving mug with napkins and a spoon in case your child needs to pour the contents out to cool before eating.
- Instruct your child not to open the jar until it is time for lunch. That way the food stays hot and safe – 140F (60C) or above.
So what is a quality thermal food jar? There is no shortage of food jars in the stores. Good Housekeeping has tested 19 of these jars, but many of them failed USDA’s food safety guidelines. Luckily, they found one winner for a beverage holder for bigger kids or adults and one for a food jar for younger kids.
- The Sigg Thermal Bottle Fashion Line (product information) – Sigg specializes in making eco-friendly food containers and has gained quite a colt following. This bottle can safely hold hot or cold beverages for up to 6 hours. That means it can handle cold drink, hot soup, coffee, hot cocoa safely. It is available as flat or ring top, available in Amazon.
- Thermos Funtainer Food Jar Series (product information) – Thermos has been making thermal food jars for quite some time. I am glad to see that this line of containers passes the food safety test. These food jar can hold hot (not cold) food for up to 6 hours. With the wide-mouth design and fun exterior. Your child’s hot lunch can be both fun and safe. They are available in Amazon, and at Target.
From MyHLI kitchen tests, I have found out that there are two more options that passed the USDA’s standards. They are the 17 oz Stanley’s Classic and the Zujirushi Mr. and Ms. Bento Series. Stanley’s Classic, in particular, has superior performance in holding food temperature. Also from the design standpoint, Zujirushi’s Mr.or Ms. Bento is more suitable for moms and dads. You can read more about Mr. and Ms. Bento in Soups and Stews – Make Them and Take Them. The ordering information for both of these food jars is listed in Tools You Can Use – Winter Lunch Containers.
Of course, no hot lunch is complete without some recipes. For a start, you may be interested in trying these soups recipes.
Hot lunch for cold days. It is one of the best ways to enjoy a mid-day meal. With these tips and products information in mind, you can assure that your child will be safely enjoying some nutritious hot food made by you, and seasoned with just a little love.
~Lunch on.Pin It | <urn:uuid:25c5d333-8c92-48a9-a713-085706bdbb69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.myhealthylunchideas.com/?p=1186 | 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 | 0.939753 | 833 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Dr. E. DeWitt Baker
Dr. E. DeWitt Baker, missionary educator and former Huntington College president, passed away Sunday, May 21. We ask that you keep the entire Baker family in your prayers.
A memorial service was held May 24 at College Park Church (1945 College Ave, Huntington, IN). A graveside service was held later in the day at Bankers Cemetery, Hillsdale MI.
HC alumni, friends, and colleagues are invited to send memories of Dr. Baker to John Paff, director of public relations at Huntington College. These will be used to expand this web page and to write a tribute to Dr. Baker for Huntington College Magazine. Email memories to email@example.com.
The family has requested that memorial gifts be made to Huntington College, United Brethren Missions, or Gideons International.
Earl DeWitt Baker was born January 13, 1919, in Hillsdale, Michigan. He attended Huntington College, where he lettered in baseball and earned a degree in chemistry. He met his wife, Evelyn (nee Middaugh), while on tour with the Huntington College choir. They were married in 1942.
Following college, DeWitt taught school for a year, then enlisted in the Navy. During World War II, he served as a pilot in the Atlantic theater, and later, as a test pilot for the PBM Martin Mariner flying boats at Patuxent River, Maryland.
After the war, the Bakers answered the call to full-time service with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. They spent 16 years on the mission field in West Africa, caring and sharing with the people of Sierra Leone. The Bakers headed the United Brethren Mission in Freetown, Sierra Leone. In addition, between 1949 to 1965, they helped organize more than 20 schools, including two secondary schools--Centennial (1955) and Bumpe (1963).
DeWitt completed a master's degree and a doctorate in education at the University of Michigan. In 1965, Dr. Baker returned to Huntington to serve as president of Huntington College. During his 16 years as president, the College experienced significant enrollment growth. Several new facilities were added, including Hardy Hall, the Huntington Union Building (HUB), and the original Merillat Physical Education Center. In addition, Lake Sno-Tip was developed and the 77-acre Thornhill Nature Preserve was acquired. In all, the College's net worth increased nearly 600 percent. Several new academic programs were launched, including undergraduate majors in accounting, medical technology, and recreation management, and a Master of Christian Ministries degree.
Baker Hall, a student residence, is named in his honor.
Dr. Baker's memoirs, "Pilot, Principal, and President," will be published later this summer. (For more information, contact the Alumni Office, 260-359-4097, firstname.lastname@example.org.)
# # # | <urn:uuid:4f7cda47-8c1c-4cb2-9449-9307bdee9437> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huntington.edu/News-Releases/Alumni/In-Memorium--Dr--E--DeWitt-Baker/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966153 | 616 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow: A Debate
Berkeley Arts & Letters and Litquake Present a Moderated Debate:
Two bestselling authors first met in a televised Caltech debate on "the future of God," one an articulate advocate for spirituality, the other a prominent physicist. This remarkable book is the product of that serendipitous encounter and the contentious -- but respectful -- clash of worldviews that grew along with their friendship.
In War of the Worldviews these two great thinkers battle over the cosmos, evolution and life, the human brain, and God, probing the fundamental questions that define the human experience.
How did the universe emerge?
What is the nature of time?
What is life?
Did Darwin go wrong?
What makes us human?
What is the connection between mind and brain?
Is God an illusion?
This extraordinary book will fascinate readers of science and spirituality alike, as well as anyone who has ever asked themselves, What does it mean that I am alive?
DEEPAK CHOPRA is the author of more than fifty books translated into more than thirty-five languagesincluding numerous New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories. Dr. Chopra is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management, and a senior scientist with the Gallup Organization. He is founder and president of the Alliance for a New Humanity. Time magazine heralds Deepak Chopra as one of the top 100 heroes and icons of the century and credits him as "the poetprophet of alternative medicine."
LEONARD MLODINOW is a physicist at Caltech and the bestselling author of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives, Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, and Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life. He also wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He lives in South Pasadena, California.
Alan Jones, dean emeritus at Grace Cathedral and frequent host of The Forum at Grace Cathedral, moderates.
"Bravo! This delightful book is bound to be the Gold Standard by which all other books on science/spirituality will be measured. Bold, refreshing, lucid, and insightful, this thoughtful collection of essays seeks to unveil the mysterious of our very existence. Is there a purpose to the universe? What is our true role in the cosmos? This book dares to ask some of the deepest, most profound questions about our very existence, and comes up with some surprising, even shocking answers." -- Michio Kaku, professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY, author of Physics of the Future, and Physics of the Impossible.
"Ours is a time of unprecedented change and complexity. Never before have so many worldviews, belief systems and ways of engaging reality converged. Such a moment of contact has many consequences. On one hand, there are abundant instances of conflict and intolerance, as people fail to see other points of view. On the other hand, it can lead to the creative emergence of new and more sustainable ways of being together in our otherwise fragmented world. Such is the promise of this thoughtful and provocative book. As Chopra and Mlodinow, two masters in their respective fields, come together to consider the challenges of merging science and spirituality, they offer an essential guidebook for shaping the future of our shared humanity." -- Marilyn Schlitz, President and CEO, Institute of Noetic Sciences
Berkeley Arts & Letters @ First Congregational Church of Berkeley
2345 Channing Way at Dana, Berkeley
7:30 PM (doors open at 6:30)
Tickets $15 (seat), $32-$37 (includes book) in advance. Tickets at the door only if space available.
Book signing follows the program. Additional books will be available for purchase at the event.
First Congregational Church of Berkeley (View)
2345 Channing Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
|Dog Friendly: No|
|Wheelchair Accessible: Yes!| | <urn:uuid:6255ef02-fcc0-4115-8667-b5b33c7554be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/190773 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925365 | 864 | 1.804688 | 2 |
The kids worked relentlessly all day on this structure, even knowing that tonight the tide would come in and it would probably all be washed away by morning. As they were building, creating and working together, I was reminded of a post by zella said purple, "Be That Teacher". There were no rules, no set materials ~ it was all children's choice. There was no telling what they would create left to their own devices.
|No fort would be complete with out a tv!|
They dug most of the day, taking turns with several beach shovels.
Little tableaux of sea glass, shells, rocks and random items were strategically placed throughout.
As the day wore on, the trenches got deeper.
After dinner, we went back out. The tide was getting closer. Eventually, the tide overtook the trenches and began to fill them. Instead of being sad that a full day's work was being washed away right before their eyes, the kids delighted in jumping in to splash around in their own little hand made tide pool.
This has been an awesome day, filled with creativity, ingenuity and teamwork. Little kids and big kids working together toward a common goal~ even if no one really knew what that goal was. This was as much fun for the adults to observe as it was for the kids to build. I can't wait to see what they build, create or dream tomorrow! | <urn:uuid:81ff6b28-5707-4780-be04-e8c504638f82> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://littleilluminations.blogspot.com/2011/07/at-play-at-beach.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990818 | 286 | 2.1875 | 2 |
La Jolla resident reaches out to Project Wildlife for help with fallen baby seagull
• Wildlife Triage Center
887 1/2 Sherman St.
Open daily 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
(Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s)
Drop-off area is open 24/7.
• Hotline (619) 225-WILD
• North County Wildlife Triage Center
County of San Diego, Department of Animal Services
2481 Palomar Airport Road
Open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Search and Rescue
or (619) 921-6044
BY SHELLI DEROBERTIS
When Marcella Katz found herself suddenly parenting a trio of baby seagulls that had fallen from their nest onto the deck at her apartment on the 600 block of Prospect Street in mid-July, she used a Christmas wreath to contain the birds and was successful in saving at least one until help arrived.
One gull immediately escaped the wreath and was killed in traffic while another one disappeared, and the remaining bird had injured its wing, Katz said.
So she relocated the wreath to a grassy knoll on her deck, and fed the lone baby sea bird soft bread and water for nearly a week until she found Project Wildlife, a local organization that takes in and rehabilitates sick, injured and orphaned wildlife in San Diego County.
“When I first arrived, I had my cage and my net and I saw the way the apartment was situated two to three stories above the road,” said Eleni Kounnas, volunteer for Project Wildlife.
She said the bird still had brown feathers, which indicated it was a juvenile gull that still couldn’t fly, but was at the age of testing its wings.
“I knew when I got there I couldn’t immediately pursue him or he would have run away off the deck and onto the road,” Kounnas said. “I realized the seagull had an injured wing, so I captured it with ease and put it in my car.”
When a phone call is made to the Project Wildlife hotline regarding an injured or unfortunate wild animal, Meryl Faulkner is one of about 100 countywide volunteers who take in animals to rehabilitate.
Faulkner’s specialty is treating birds, and since retiring in 2000 from her job as a lab technician, she said she averages an intake of about 500 birds annually.
Only 30 percent survive, she said.
“The bird Eleni brought to me is fine,” Faulkner said. “When he’s large enough to not get picked on, I’ll put him in with the bigger ones.”
She said it might take about 2 months before the junior seagull is released, and added that the goal for all the birds received is to let them go in the same area where they were rescued.
Faulkner said anyone who finds a displaced nest or chicks, should try and put the bird (or nest) back where it came from, or at least somewhere nearby if it’s not in an area near traffic.
She said that birds have no sense of smell and will not reject a chick that has been handled by humans. Typically, gull parents will not leave their nest for a fallen chick.
Katz hopes her experience can help other La Jollans who may encounter a similar situation, by spreading awareness of Project Wildlife and Wildlife Assist.
- You go ‘gold’ girls! Locals earn Scouting’s highest honor
- His beer can board is latest ‘feat’ for surf artist
- ‘Green’ company picks La Jollan’s speakers as eco-friendly designs
- Did somebody say Peanut Butter Patties? Girl Scout Cookie Sales begin on Sunday
- Cabrillo National Park hosts whale welcome festival this weekend
Short URL: http://www.lajollalight.com/?p=92602 | <urn:uuid:0c108a38-e914-47f6-9846-981fbf7adf0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lajollalight.com/2012/07/31/la-jolla-resident-reaches-out-to-project-wildlife-for-help-with-fallen-baby-seagull/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962943 | 858 | 1.734375 | 2 |
May 19, 2013
How to shoot and submit photos.
Photos are welcome, accompanying articles, announcements and obituaries. Digital files are preferred as high-resolution JPEGs, generally 300 dpi. Hard copies may also be dropped off or mailed to the news office and will be returned if a self-addressed, stamped envelope is provided.
Photos must be sharp, clear, well-exposed (not too dark or too light). We prefer color photos, but black-and-white is acceptable. All people in the pictures should be identified with accompanying captions. Please avoid sending pictures of large numbers of people --20 or more -- because these rarely get published. The best pictures are of one to four people, taken close-up.
If you are doing a publicity picture, try to think of something pictorially interesting. Be creative. Don’t take a picture of the pancake breakfast planning committee standing against the wall or sitting around a table; have members doing something, such as flipping pancakes, making decorations, or hanging lights. Often, using an unusual angle can liven up an otherwise ordinary photo. If you need suggestions, call the news staff.
Avoid pictures of people passing checks or signing documents, especially proclamations. Avoid shots of people holding up signs, posters, banners, or trophies. Avoid pictures with loads of people in them — have no more than five people in a photo.
When photographing something, get in as close as possible. Shoot from four or five feet at the most.
For announcements of individual achievements, take his or her portrait. All we need is the head and shoulders.
Some events, such as church fairs, are yearly. Plan ahead; take lots of pictures at this year’s fair so you or your successors will have publicity shots for next year’s advance stories.
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The requested URL /components/com_soyd/tent.php was not found on this server. | <urn:uuid:fdce0118-7a3c-478c-b691-b0bec8cd4885> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.acorn-online.com/joomla15/component/content/article/54-rfd-info/4055-photo-submission-guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937667 | 414 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Undergraduate Degree Programs
USC is a major university providing diverse academic programs. As such it has evolved into a complex organization. The basic underlying principle in its organization is simple: groups of faculty with similar areas of knowledge and interest are grouped together to form departments or schools. These units work together in determining the courses to be offered, requirements for degrees, and the content and rationale underlying their curricula.
In practice, the organization becomes more complex. Certain areas of study are based on broad areas of knowledge which need to draw faculty from several departments. The following list of undergraduate degrees provides a guide to the organization of USC. The index includes all degrees offered, and the school which administers the degree.
The basic undergraduate degrees are the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science. Students may obtain these degrees in a variety of majors that have been formally approved. More specialized degrees, such as a Bachelor of Music, require more undergraduate study devoted to professional training.
Area of Emphasis
An Area of Emphasis is a specific focus within a major. Areas of Emphasis are listed within parentheses following the appropriate majors and do not appear on diplomas but are indicated on transcripts.
A combined program is an organized set of requirements from two academic units in a single undergraduate degree program that combines two majors. Examples are: Linguistics/Psychology and Physics/Computer Science.
Double Major Within the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
A double major consists of two majors, which allow the student to earn the same degree, either a B.A. or B.S. degree, conferred by the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences offers two kinds of majors, “departmental” and “interdepartmental” (see here). A double major may consist of two departmental majors, two interdepartmental majors, or one departmental and one interdepartmental major. All double majors require a minimum of 12 upper division courses. Some upper division courses may count for both majors. For double departmental majors two upper division courses may count toward both majors. For departmental and interdepartmental majors, three upper division courses may count toward both majors. The student receives a single diploma.
Other Double Majors
Double majors may be offered in other schools. The two majors must be offered by different departments but lead to the same degree, such as a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Music. Double majors consisting of two majors in the same department are not permitted. The student receives a single diploma.
Progressive Degree Programs
The progressive degree plan enables an undergraduate student to begin an integrated program of study joining bachelor’s degree and master’s degree programs in the same or different departments. This option is available to outstanding USC undergraduates who have completed 64 units of course work at USC, and often results in a more expeditious completion of the master’s degree than otherwise would be possible.
Students are admitted to the master’s degree at the completion of the sixth semester. Progressive degree students must fulfill all requirements for both the bachelor’s degree and the master’s degree except for the combined total number of units for the degrees. The bachelor’s degree can be awarded first. Further details about progressive degrees can be found here.
Second Bachelor’s Degree
A second bachelor’s degree requires a minimum of 32 units beyond the number required for the first. If the first bachelor’s degree was earned at USC, a minimum of 32 units for the second must be completed at USC. If the first bachelor’s degree was earned at another institution, a minimum of 64 units toward the second must be completed at USC. (See the policy on residence requirements for a second bachelor’s degree, here.)
For some degrees, more than the 32 units beyond the first bachelor’s degree will be required because all requirements for both degrees must be met. The student receives a separate diploma for each degree upon completion.
The first and second bachelor’s degrees may be completed at the same time but there is no requirement that they be.
In addition to the degree programs listed, many academic units offer minor programs. A list of minors appears after the list of undergraduate degrees. The requirements for each minor are listed in the appropriate school section. A separate minor certificate is issued for each minor a student completes. Minors are also recorded on the student’s transcript. See here for more detailed information about minor programs.
The Undergraduate Degree Programs List
All degrees are listed alphabetically by the school which provides the program for the degree objective. All degrees are listed alphabetically in the index at the end of this catalogue. Areas of emphasis do not appear on diplomas but are indicated on transcripts. | <urn:uuid:93e28237-b5c4-461d-bf0a-5f47eef698e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://catalogue.usc.edu/undergraduate/degree-programs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937721 | 995 | 2.203125 | 2 |
(Election to the European Parliament : 10 June 2004)
1. LEGAL BASIS
European Parliamentary Elections Act 2002
European Parliament (Representation) Act 2003
2. ELECTORAL SYSTEM
Proportional representation: using a closed regional list
system for eleven regions: Eastern (7 seats); East Midlands (6 seats); London
(9 seats); North-East England (3 seats); North-West England (9 seats);
South-East England (10 seats); South-West England (7 seats), West Midlands (7
seats); Yorkshire and Humberside (6 seats); Scotland (7 seats); Wales (4
Allocation of seats: for the above regions:
Proportional representation: using the
Single Transferable Vote system (STV) for the three seats in Northern
3. REGISTRATION OF CANDIDATES
Deadline for registration: 13 May,
Deposit: GBP 5000 for each party list for
each region or GBP 5000 for each independent candidate (deposit is lost if less
than 2.5% of votes cast in the region are polled by the party or
Conditions: EU citizens must declare that they are not
seeking election to the European Parliament in any other member state.
Incompatibilities: Those laid down in
the 1976 Act on Elections to the European Parliament, as well as all rules
applying to national general elections. The dual mandate is now not allowed,
except for those MEPs who were members of the Westminster parliament during the
1999-2004 EP legislature (Council Decision 2002/772/EC).
4. POLLING DAY : 10 JUNE 2004
Other elections on the same day:
Greater London Authority, London Mayor, English municipalities.
The count begins: varies.
Final results: varies.
5. VOTING / STANDING FOR ELECTION
Right to vote: All EU citizens aged 18
or over whose names appear on the electoral roll and who are in full possession
of their voting rights in their state of origin are eligible to vote (provided
they do not also vote in the election in their home Member State). In contrast
to national elections, Members of the House of Lords are allowed to vote in EP
elections. UK citizens living abroad and members of the armed forces must make
a declaration of eligibility in order to vote.
Voting is not compulsory.
Voting by post: anyone may register for
a postal vote. In certain constituencies all voting will be by post.
Right to stand for election: All EU
citizens resident in the UK aged 21 or over in full possession of their civic
rights in their country of origin may stand for election.
6. ELECTION CAMPAIGN
Funding: no public funding.
Official campaign starting date:
campaign funding is counted from 11 February.
Opinion polls: Polls may be published
up to polling day. No exit polls to be published before 21h00 BST on 13 | <urn:uuid:12afcc08-c9b7-42b0-887c-c327a8281063> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.europarl.europa.eu/elections2004/ep-election/sites/sl/yourvoice/uk/law.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92048 | 623 | 2.46875 | 2 |
In a blog post called "How I Stopped Eating Food," Rob Rhinehart describes how he created a food substitute that still provides the body with everything it needs to live healthily.
WARNING: This diet is untested and potentially dangerous. It hasn't been studied and Rhinehart is doing his own self-testing without a doctor's help.
At the time he wrote it, he had been subsisting on this stuff, which he named Soylent after the 1973 sci-fi film "Soylent Green," for 30 days. He's now gone two months without eating food in the conventional sense.
So how is this possible? He explained it to Vice:
"[W]e need vitamins and minerals. We need carbs, not bread. Amino acids, not milk. It's still fine to eat these whenever you want, but not everyone can afford them or has the desire to eat them."
Soylent consists of all the essential materials in our food without any of the extra "stuff." The recipe is an interesting read, consisting of varying measurements of carbohydrates, sodium, chloride, zinc, and many other basic food elements. One theory is that by going straight to the source and not having to break down food to extract these essential ingredients, your body saves energy and works more efficiently.
So why would anyone relegate himself to a single food source? Rhinehart explains his own reasoning:
"Not having to worry about food is fantastic. No groceries, dishes, deciding what to eat, no endless conversations weighing the relative merits of gluten-free, keto, paleo, or vegan. Power and water bills are lower. I save hours a day and hundreds of dollars a month. I feel liberated from a crushing amount of repetitive drudgery. Soylent might also be good for people having trouble managing their weight. I find it very easy to lose and gain precise amounts of weight by varying the proportions in my drink."
How does it taste? Rhinehart says, "It tastes very good. I haven't got tired of the taste in six weeks. It's a very 'complete' sensation, more sweet than anything."
The average American spends $604 per month on food. But given that Soylent only costs Rhinehart about $50 per month, he's very excited at the prospect of feeding people in developing countries.
Rhinehart has been running trials with volunteers in the San Francisco Bay area, but interest is so overwhelming that he just announced plans to do a Kickstarter project to get Soylent out to other people around the world interested in trying it. Remember: Rhinehart isn't a doctor or a nutritionist.
We talked to nutritionist Stella Metsovas to get her opinion on his diet experiment. Her opinion: "I see a red flag for a potential eating disorder." | <urn:uuid:a43d23dc-6d06-494e-9542-14815b30a818> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesunion.com/technology/businessinsider/article/How-To-Stop-Eating-Food-For-Good-4366931.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973018 | 585 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Vasovagal Syncope: What is it?
Quite a lot of people (if not almost everyone) experienced an episode of syncope at least once in their lives. It is not surprising because syncope, which stands for a fainting or a loss of consciousness, is rather a common symptom. Generally, a person who has had a fainting fit recover very quickly, and there is no special high risk after the episode of faint has finished.
Nevertheless, some types of syncope can be really dangerous. So it is very important for physicians to determine with total accurateness what kind of this particular case is, whether it poses a hazard to human life and what an adequate treatment is. It is essential to predict the cases that can lead to a sudden death.
The causes of syncope can be grouped into four major categories vasomotor, neurologic, metabolic, and cardiac. Among them only cardiac syncope usually has a fatal outcome.
In our article we will talk about vasovagal syncope (the other name of it is cardioneurogenic syncope) that is the most common cause of syncope. On its part falls about more than 80% of all syncopal episodes. As vasovagal syncope is a normal neurological reflex, yet exaggerated a bit, the majority of people had at least one vasovagal episode of syncope in their lifetimes.
What can provoke vasovagal episodes? Among the most common triggers the specialists outline the following:
- Standing up very quickly;
- Prolonged standing or upright sitting, especially if one stands with legs in a locked position for long periods of time (that is the situation that is taught in the military as well as in marching bands and drill teams);
- Vomiting or nausea;
- Hyperthermia, the condition of having a body temperature greatly above normal;
- Random onsets due to nerve malfunctions;
- Abdominal straining or “bearing down”;
- Swallowing (generally known as swallowing syncope) or coughing (generally known as cough syncope);
- Urination (generally known as micturition syncope) or defecation, having a bowel movement (generally known as defecation syncope);
- Intense laughter;
- Using of definite drugs that affect blood pressure, for example, amphetamine;
- High temperature, either environment or as a result of some work or exercise;
- High altitude;
- Cold water with the temperature less than 50° Fahrenheit or 10° Celsius, or ice that comes in contact with the face;
- Pressing upon certain places on the throat, sinuses, and eyes, also known as vagal reflex stimulation when performed clinically;
- Stress and any sudden onset of extreme emotions;
Some unpleasant or painful situations that can involve the following conditions:
- Watching someone to experience pain
- Watching or experiencing some medical procedures
- Giving a blood donation or watching the procedure someone give it
- Sight of blood
- Giving or receiving a needle immunization.
- Dental and eye examinations
In addition to the mentioned above situations, there are some other situations that are likely to lead to syncope. Among them really serious problems can occur such as the problems with cardiovascular system and so on. So it is quite obvious that the diagnosis is made correctly. If the patient is adequate and remembers the fact of losing the conscience and the reason of vasovagal syncope, a doctor can diagnose just by asking questions and bringing the clear answers into correlation with his or her medical knowledge. So the heart of the diagnosis of vasovagal syncope lies into a clear description by the patient of typical triggers, symptoms, and how much time syncope lasted.
In assistance to physicians there are some diagnostic tests that can improve the diagnostic accuracy of the cases of recurrent vasovagal syncope. They are as follows:
- An echocardiogram
- A tilt table test
- A Holter monitor or event monitor
- Implantation of an insertable loop recorder
- An Electrophysiology study
Treatment for vasovagal syncope is based on avoidance of the causes of the condition and measures that interrupt or prevent the pathophysiologic mechanism described above. Here we need to know what the trigger of syncope is.
As vasovagal syncope leads to a decrease in blood pressure, it is not very favorable to make the entire body relaxed as a way of vasovagal syncope avoidance. A patient is also likely to make his or her legs crossed and tighten leg muscles to keep blood pressure from dropping so drastically before an injection is made.
Three general methods of therapy for vasovagal syncope are generally known. They are educational methods, drugs, and pacemakers. Choosing between three of them, an educational way is by far the best and the most effective.
The person who tends to have periodic vasovagal syncopes should be aware of some facts:
Vasovagal syncope is made by a reflex that causes sudden dilation of the blood vessels in the legs, causing the blood to pool there.
Any condition that leads to dehydration of the organism is likely to make a person more tend to vasovagal syncope.
Your insurer might up your rates, depending on the details of your health insurance policy contract.
The majority of people usually have a brief period of the symptoms that precede and indicate to a soon loss of consciousness. It is a specific warning of the organism which can be used to prevent the episode.
In order to take preventive measures, a person should lie down and raise his or her legs when feeling any precaution syndrome of a soon syncopal episode.
There are particular days or periods of weeks when a person is more prone to having a syncopal episode.
If a person understands these five facts and is able to put them to work, he or she will avoid syncope. If this does not seriously reduce the syncopes, talk to your doctor or contact your health insurance company for information on what they advise you to undertake.
Some patients experience vasovagal syncope with disturbing frequency even if all appropriate precautions are made. These patients should try a drug therapy. If a person wants to find the appropriate drug treatment, it is a matter of trial and error. Nevertheless, some drugs are reported to be quite effective and reduce about 60 - 70% of the episodes. Among these drugs doctors frequently prescribe medicines with beta blockers, serotonin uptake inhibitors, florinef, midodrine and so on. A person need to consulate with his or her physician.
What concerns pacemakers, they are used for patients with the cardioinhibitory form of vasovagal syncope. In these cases implantation of a permanent pacemaker may be not only beneficial but even curative.
This site currently has no advertising. At some point, with the expansion of our resource - we might add some. | <urn:uuid:4f055ca4-9072-4372-87c2-646d6125f0b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vasovagal-syncope.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951345 | 1,452 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Metacognition and the anterior superior temporal gyrus
Manfred Mareck joins Jonah Lehrer for a spot of mental gymnastics as the neuroscience writer attempts to help researchers train their brains to aid the insight discovery process.
After lunch it was food for thought – another keynote address by writer and ‘new thinker’ Jonah Lehrer, who talked about the science of creativity and how we make decisions. He focused specifically on how humans arrive at moments of insight – epiphanies if you will; thoughts and ideas that seemingly come out of nowhere but where we instinctively know that we arrived at the right solution once the idea reaches our conscious awareness.
Neuroscience and brain scans have helped to locate the part of the brain where true insights occur – it’s the anterior superior temporal gyrus if you must know – where otherwise remote and unconnected associations are brought together and linked. We may think that paying more attention to the problem we are trying to solve will help. Instead, said Lehrer we should try and relax, even think of completely different topics. MRI scans show alpha waves as the dominant patterns of brain activity, indicating that a relaxed state of mind and positive mood are important preconditions to generating true insights or ‘a-ha’ moments. Maybe that’s why creative agencies or dotcom companies always seem to have dart boards or ping pong tables in their social areas.
By contrast, much of our problem solving is based on analytical thinking that occurs in our working memory, or frontal cortex, which is why we are aware of the progress (or lack of progress) that we are making.
One way to adjust mental strategies is to practise metacognition: thinking about thinking to solve insight problems. Solutions to these kinds of problems can be found either by an individual or in group brainstorming sessions. When the latter is used it is best to bring together specialists from various disciplines that are only marginally involved with the problem at hand, because when experts are asked to think within their own discipline they are often locked into a pre-conceived intellectual box.
After the mental gymnastics I retreated to a session where three young researchers (Annelies Verhaeghe, InSites Consulting, Belgium; Ganael Bascoul, ESCP Europe, France; and Cristina Paez, Consultor Apoyo, Ecuador) presented their individual projects (on sustainability and issues concerned with ageing). What struck me was not only their professionalism, but their enthusiasm, a genuine identification with their task and real pride in their work. I hope they all go far in their chosen careers.
Sticking with the theme of sustainability was Adam Werbach of Saatchi & Saatchi. His research shows that people consider social and economic issues to be just as important as environmental concerns in the drive for sustainability. Brazilian, Mexican, Chinese, or Indian consumers seem to be more hopeful and think more about sustainability than their counterparts in the developed work, especially in the UK and the USA. But overall few people feel they have enough information to make decisions about sustainability and product labels are found by many to be confusing or untrustworthy.
Companies that ignore consumer sentiment or outright lie to consumers (as some do) do so at their peril as customers feel betrayed by the brand they thought they could trust. Companies need to set themselves aspirational ‘North Star’ goals that create hope for consumers.
There certainly was plenty of talk about ethics, responsibility and sustainability today – it remains to be seen how much of this will eventually lead to real action. | <urn:uuid:ae401ecb-6e42-41a8-8e4c-51528ad739a1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.research-live.com/comment/metacognition-and-the-anterior-superior-temporal-gyrus/4000950.article | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959562 | 727 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Current and emerging understanding about time and space has been dependent upon earlier models of the transmission of light
|BikiCrumbs: Current and em…ission of light|
Students learn to:
1. Outline the features of the aether model for the transmission of light
- The aether was thought to be the medium that light travelled trough.
- The aether filled all space.
In the 2003 HSC Notes from the Examination Centre - Physics, Question 18(a) the examiners comment on the difference between features and properties of the aether.
2. Describe and evaluate the Michelson-Morley attempt to measure the relative velocity of the Earth through the aether
- Michelson and Morley attempted to measure the ether wind, similar to the wind caused when a car travels through still air. The experiment was set up as shown above, with an interference pattern showing up on the inferometer. The experiment was then rotated 90 degrees with the idea being that the aether wind would affect the path of at least one of the light beams causing a different interference pattern to appear. The interference pattern observed was the same. This null result meant that the aether was not acting in this experiment and as such was not necessary for light to propagate.
- Michelson and Morley attempted to measure the relative speed of the earth through the aether, a substance conjectured to be the medium in which light is propagated, that filled all space. Their method involved splitting a beam of light, from a single source into two beams that travelled perpendicular to each other. The two beams were brought together and shown on a screen, creating an interference pattern. If the earth moves relative to the aether, then the speed of one beam will be different from that of the other, just as the speed of a boat going first upstream and then downstream is different from that of a boat travelling across the stream. The difference in speed of the two beams would alter the interference pattern, when the apparatus is rotated through 90degrees. No such alteration was found. This and similar failures to detect the motion of the earth through the aether led later to the development by Einstein of the special theory of relativity, and the subsequent abolishment of the aether theory.
3. Discuss the role of the Michelson-Morley experiment in making determinations about competing theories
The Michelson-Morley experiment made determinations about the aether theory because they provided evidence against it. It was not until Einstein, however, that the null result was explained and the aether model disproven.
4. Outline the nature of inertial frames of reference
It is a non-accelerating frame of reference where Newton’s First Law is obeyed.
5. Discuss the principle of relativity
Galilean relativity states that the same laws of physics apply in stationary frames of reference and frames of reference with a constant velocity.
Newtonian relativity states that in an inertial frame of it is impossible to disinguish between moving at a constant velocity and being stationary.
Einstein’s special relativity had two postulates: -the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference -the speed of light is constant and is independent of the velocity of the source or the observer
6. Describe the significance of Einstein’s assumption of the constancy of the speed of light
This assumption explained the null result of Michelson-Morley and showed that the aether was not necessary. It also suggests that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This assumption also allowed Einstein to propose his theories of time dilation, length contraction and mass dilation.
7. Identify that if c is constant then space and time become relative
In classical physics space is relative to the observer, but time is constant. In the theory of relativity, time becomes relative as well as space. This means that time passes differently for different observers, depending upon their velocity. If a man is sitting in a train travelling at c and looks into a mirror he will see his reflection. If an outside observer looks into the train they will see the light travel twice as far to reach the mirror. If c is constant this means that time slows down inside the train according to the outside observer as c=distance/time.
8. Discuss the concept that length standards are defined in terms of time in contrast to the original metre standard
Up until recently the metre was defined as the distance between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar in Paris. But now the definition of the speed of light as well as the definition of a second have become more accurate than our definition of the metre. So now the metre is defined as the distance travelled by a beam of light in a vacuum in 1/c seconds. As such the speed of light has been set at a given number of metres per second, so as our measurements become more accurate our definition of the metre will be revised, while c will remain constant. This also means that the metre is the same for any frame of reference, meaning that it is unaffected by length contraction and time dilation.
9. Explain qualitatively and quantitatively the consequences of special relativity in relation to:
-the relativity of simultaneity
-the equivalence between mass and energy
-Relativity of simultaneity
The Relativity of Simultaneity
If two flashes of light occur at the same distance from a person, that person will judge these two events to be simultaneous. Another person standing in another position may not judge these events to be simultaneous. Therefore simultaneity is dependent upon the frame of reference.
When a flash of light is emitted from person A, they should see the light hit the two ends at the same time. This is because the speed of light is constant irrelevant of the frame of references motion. However person B will see things differently, he will see the light reach the back of the train before it hits the start of the train, this is because the back of the train has moved closer to the source and the front of the train has moved away from the source.
Equivalence between mass and energy
The rest mass of an object is equal to a certain quantity of energy. In nuclear reactions this mass can be converted into energy, and conversely energy can be converted into mass according to E = mc2. The Laws of Conservation of Mass and Energy are now replaced by the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy in special relativity.
The length of an object at rest is known as its proper length (L0), and this length is contracted (Lv) when the object’s velocity approaches the speed of light. This is expressed by the equation:
The time for an event to occur in the rest from is called to, but observers in different frames of reference will judge this time to be longer (tv). This is expressed by the equation:
As the velocity of an object increases, so does its mass. This mass change is only really noticeable at speeds close to c. The mass varies according to the equation:
m0 = rest mass
mv = relativistic mass
10. Discuss the implications of mass increase, time dilation and length contraction for space travel
Mass increase means that if a particle was accelerated to the speed of light it would have infinite mass, so to accelerate it to this point would require infinite energy, which is an impossibility. Therefore an object cannot be accelerated to the speed of light.
Time dilation means that if someone were to take a journey to a distant star at say 0.8c and the trip seemed to take 17 years on the Earth, the man in the spacecraft would only experience 10 years passing. This means that it is theoretically possible to travel to stars thousands of light years away within a lifetime of an astronaut if a spacecraft can be accelerated close to the speed of light, however, when they returned to earth, they would find that hundreds of years would have passed.
As the spacecraft accelerates to faster and faster speeds the length it has to travel becomes shorter.
1. Perform an investigation and gather first-hand or secondary data to model the Michelson-Morley experiment
This may have reference to a boat analogy where boats travel in different directions but the current of the water will affect their velocity. A swimmer swimming with the current would have trouble returning, whereas a swimmer swimming perpendicular to the current would have trouble on both the way to and back. An observer on a riverbank would thus see that the swimmer swimming perpendicular would have traced an open triangular path.
2. Perform an investigation to help distinguish between inertial and non-inertial frames of reference
This can be determined by allowing a pendulum to hang, and then dropping an object from the pivot of the pendulum, if there is an angle between the two then your frame of reference is non-inertial.
3. Analyse and interpret some of Einstein’s thought experiments involving mirrors and trains and discuss the relationship between thought and relativity
One limitation of thought experiments is that their outcomes often rely upon common sense, and sometimes new areas of science don’t make immediate sense. This was particularly true in Einstein’s case, but his only choice to experiment at near light velocities was thought experiments.
The following is one of Einstein’s most famous thought experiments:
Imagine that you are sitting in a train facing forwards. The train is moving at the speed of light. You hold up a mirror in front of you, at arm’s length. Will you be able to see your reflection in the mirror? There are two possible outcomes:
- No. This answer is in keeping with the aether model because light can only travel at a set speed, but violates the principle of relativity which states that when in inertial frame of reference you cannot conduct any experiment to tell if you are stationary or moving at a constant velocity.
- Yes. Because according to Newtonian relativity, in an inertial frame of reference it is impossible
- since light moves at a constant velocity time must pass differently inside and outside the train
- the aether is superflous
4. Analyse information to discuss the relationship between theory and the evidence supporting it, using Einstein’s predictions based on relativity that were made many years before evidence was available to support it
Any theory, no matter how logical it may seem, cannot stand without experimental evidence. This also holds true in Einstein’s case, where proof for his theory of relativity only came later with particle accelerators and nuclear reactors. Examples of proof include:
- Two extremely accurate atomic clocks were sycronised. One remained on the Earth’s surface while the other was flown around the world in jet aeroplanes. When the second clock returned there was found to be a slight difference in time between the two. This indicates that time dilation has occurred.
- Many muons can be detected at sea level, but the trip from the upper atmosphere to the surface would take longer than the muon’s lifetime at the speed it is travelling. This also suggests that time dilation and length contraction have occurred.
- The fact that energy can be produced from fission reactions verifies energy-mass equivalence.
5. Solve problems and analyse information using:
E = mc2 | <urn:uuid:4f3cb2ff-02e7-42a4-b67e-11397890fc16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boredofstudies.org/wiki/index.php?title=Current_and_emerging_understanding_about_time_and_space_has_been_dependent_upon_earlier_models_of_the_transmission_of_light&redirect=no | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955669 | 2,327 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Time runs short to avert longshoremen’s strike
NEW YORK (AP) – In just a few days, a walkout by thousands of dock workers could bring commerce to a near standstill at every major port from Boston to Houston, potentially delivering a big blow to retailers and manufacturers still struggling to find their footing in a weak economy.
More than 14,000 longshoremen are threating to go on strike Sunday – a wide-ranging work stoppage that would immediately close cargo ports on the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico to container ships.
The 15 ports involved in the labor dispute move more than 100 million tons of goods each year, or about 40 percent of the nation’s containerized cargo traffic. Losing them to a shutdown, even for a few days, could cost the economy billions of dollars.
“If the port shuts down, nothing moves in or out,” said Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation. And when the workers do return, “it’s going to take time to clear out that backlog, and we don’t know how long that it’s going to take.” SOURCE
Once upon a time, MANY years ago, labor unions may have been a necessary thing, jobs paid very little, working conditions were horrible and the bosses were more like slave drivers than management, but those days are ancient history.
I am NOT, nor have I ever been a member of ANY union, and I know the old adage about ‘never say never’, but I NEVER will be a member of a labor union. I believe that unions have long outlived their usefulness and are nothing more than a branch of organized crime that has no compunction with using ANY means, up to and including physical violence and murder, to accomplish their agenda.
Historically, violence and labor unions go hand in hand. Here are a few examples of union violence. SOURCE:
1986 – During protests by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547 against a non-unionized workforce getting a contract, picketers threatened and assaulted workers, spat at them, sabotaged equipment, and shot guns near workers. In 1999, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the union had engaged in “ongoing acts of intimidation, violence, destruction of property”, awarding the plaintiff $212,500 in punitive damages.
1990 – on the first day of The New York Daily News strike, delivery trucks were attacked with stones and sticks, and in some cases burned, with the drivers beaten. Strikers then started threatening newsstands with arson, or stole all copies of the Daily News and burned them in front of the newsstands. James Hoge, publisher of the Daily News, alleged that there had been some 700 serious acts of violence. The New York Police Department claimed knowledge of 229 incidents of violence. Criminal charges under the Hobbs Act were declined, however, citing the aforementioned Enmons case.
1993 – Eddie York was murdered for crossing a United Mine Workers (UMW) picket line at a coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia, on July 22, 1993. Like the 1990 NY Daily News strike, criminal charges under the Hobbs Act were declined, with the FBI and Justice Department citing the Enmons case.
1997 – On August 7, 1997, teamsters Orestes Espinosa, Angel Mielgo, Werner Haechler, Benigno Rojas, and Adrian Paez beat, kicked, and stabbed a UPS worker (Rod Carter) who refused to strike, after Carter received a threatening phone call from the home of Anthony Cannestro, Sr., president of Teamsters Local 769.
2011 – It was reported on September 9, 2011 that members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) frightened security guards, dumped grain, and vandalized property belonging to EGT, LLC, over a labor dispute. No one was hurt, and no one had been arrested at the time the incident was reported. District Judge Ronald Leighton later issued a preliminary injunction against the ILWU citing their reported behavior.
2012 – Union workers protesting right-to-work legislation in Lansing, Michigan destroyed a tent run by Americans for Prosperity. People were inside the tent but managed to escape before the collapse. Additionally, hot dog stand operator Clinton Tarver, a popular vendor around the Capital area who was hired to provide catering for AFP, lost his equipment, condiments, coolers, and food in the collapse. According to Tarver (an African American), union workers, who had incorrectly assumed he was supporting AFP, called Tarver an “Uncle Tom nigger”. A union worker also punched conservative comedian and Fox News contributor Stephen Crowder, resulting in a chipped tooth and a minor cut on the forehead. Another worker threatened to kill Crowder with a gun.
Know this; a huge dockworkers strike WILL be violent and with the United States facing a *fiscal cliff* and massive challenges in the world markets, this potential strike could be the catalyst the Obama regime is looking for in an effort to declare martial law.
A spark is all it will take, ANY excuse will suffice and Obama has strong Union support from the likes of the Teamsters, SEIU and many others.
Labor unions, and their members, embrace Socialism. It’s not just me that believes that either. Read this: Unions: The History of Their Socialist Agenda — Their hand in hand socialist march with the Democrat party in American History.
If you’re still a PRO Union believer at this point I am guessing I am on your LIST of right-wing Conservatives that you would like to take out back and *tune up*.
12/28/2012 – Edit to add @ 11:16:05: Deal struck to delay potential port strike – Houston Chronicle | <urn:uuid:4917ff57-2d64-41b0-8efb-cc81b74ae7ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.texasfred.net/archives/19510 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960782 | 1,214 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Heavy textbooks weighing down teens' backpacks might soon become a thing of the past in Utah.
The State Office of Education has announced that it will develop open textbooks in math, language arts and science which will be available online, for free for junior highs and high schools. Once the textbooks are available, schools and students will be encouraged to use them online for free or print them at a cost of about $5 a book or less for schools, said Sydnee Dickson, teaching and learning director at the state office.
That's a big savings compared to a traditional high school science textbook, which can cost about $80 on average, according to the state office. Also, students would be able to access videos and use interactive features when using the books online.
"Rather than just reading a flat text, kids get to experience learning with multiple media in the book itself," Dickson said.
She said math textbooks could be available as soon as this fall, and other textbooks will likely become available within the next two years. In coming months the state office will invite school districts and charter schools across the state to meetings and trainings about the new, open textbooks.
The decision to create open textbooks for use across the state follows two years of pilot programs led by David Wiley of Brigham Young University's David O. McKay School of Education. The pilots were conducted by the BYU-Public School Partnership in cooperation with the state office and were funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Wiley and other researchers wanted to know whether districts really could save money with open textbooks and what difference, if any, they made to student learning, Wiley said.
Ultimately, they found that the textbooks could be printed and delivered to schools for about $5 or less per book. They also found no difference in student learning with open textbooks compared with traditional ones in classrooms where teachers didn't receive extra training in how to use the open books, he said. But Wiley believes that when teachers do receive training, the open textbooks will improve learning.
Lakeridge Junior High in Orem was one of the schools that participated in the pilot, and teachers who used them were thrilled with the open textbooks, said Rhonda Bromley, Alpine District spokeswoman.
"According to our teachers that have been using them, they don't feel like they would ever want to go back to a regular textbook," Bromley said. "It's interactive with students, where they can go in and edit and add things to it and create things, so it's more collaborative than just a regular textbook."
The Nebo District also participated, and Nedra Call, Nebo curriculum director, said through a district spokesperson that it was "a positive learning experience."
"What the students liked best was the ability to access online resources," Call said.
The findings of Wiley's research will be published in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning in the next few months, he said.
Wiley called the state office's decision to develop open texts for statewide use "absolutely the right thing to do."
"I believe we can find a way to use the money saved by purchasing open textbooks to purchase a device like a tablet or netbook computer for each child, which opens the doors to interactive, personalized digital curriculum," Wiley said in an e-mail to The Tribune.
The books will be developed by professors, experts in the subjects, and master teachers. The math and science textbooks will be based on books originally published by the CK-12 Foundation, a California-based nonprofit, according to the state office. They'll be available to anyone.
Dickson said the open textbooks will be based more on Utah's academic standards than traditional textbooks, which are often produced by publishers to fit the needs of the largest states in the country.
"We have really been at the mercy of California and Texas and other large markets and really haven't had a say in how the textbooks are designed," Dickson said. "Now, really for the first time, they're going to be based on Utah standards and things we value in education." | <urn:uuid:c9f9e5de-017c-4877-b0ce-6554fba410ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53422785-78/textbooks-open-state-learning.html.csp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973425 | 833 | 2.765625 | 3 |
- Back to Events
- Monday, February 25th, 2013 - MAC - The Neurobiology of Political Violence: New Tools to Understand and Deter Violent Actors
Please join us for a lecture by Dr. Pete Hatemi about the biological, physiological and genetic precursors of violence and aggression. Dr. Hatemi is a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Associate Professor of Political Science, Microbiology and Biochemistry at The Pennsylvania State University. He is primarily interested in advancing the study of the neurobiological mechanisms of social and political behaviors and utilizing advanced methods in genetics, physiology, endocrinology, and neurology in order to better understand human decision making and preferences in complex and dynamic political environments. His recent book, co-edited with Rose McDermott, Man is by Nature a Political Animal at the University of Chicago Press, offers a comprehensive volume that includes applications of evolution, genetics, primatology, neuroscience, and physiology, to understand political preferences.
Location: TJ Day 219
Back to Events | <urn:uuid:7c9b653d-7847-4b68-b260-0485c0452be6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linfield.edu/mobile/event-detail.html?eventid=1361465075756 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.906068 | 211 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Deepening Doubts About Fracked Shale Gas Wells' Long Term Prospects
Deepening Doubts About Fracked Shale Gas Wells' Long Term Prospects
This month, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released its bi-annual report on how much natural gas has been produced in the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation which stretches underneath much of Appalachia. Investors were shocked because the production numbers seemed far lower than expected. Watched closely by market and energy analysts, the report sparked a heated debate about the oil and gas industry's excited rhetoric about fracked shale gas as the cure-all to many of America's energy and jobs needs.
But the story quickly got complicated. The report was released despite lacking data from the state’s second largest driller, Chesapeake Energy, and state regulators never flagged the omission. The amount of gas flowing out of Pennsylvania had actually climbed dramatically.
It was a major flaw, and suddenly the searing spotlight of the media honed in on questions about whether regulators were keeping accurate track of how much gas the wells in their state really produce. How could they overlook such a massive error? Can the public be sure that the updated tally gives an accurate picture of how these wells are performing?
If regulators make mistakes in tracking energy production in their state, how reliable is the companion to that report, which tracks the toxic waste produced by these same companies?
Those are all valid questions that need honest answers. But the most important questions raised in the controversy were largely overlooked.
The amount of natural gas produced from all the fracking going on in Pennsylvania matters not just for the state's residents, its land-use regulations, its waste disposal capacity, and its water use limits. Unconventional gas production data from the Marcellus Shale matters for the nation as a whole because national energy policy is being crafted based on certain long-term assumptions about shale drilling and the price of natural gas.
The oil and gas industry has propagated a vision that fracking unleashes vast amounts of gas which then flows relatively steadily for decades. But a growing mountain of evidence suggests that nothing could be further from the truth. Shale gas wells dry up, sometimes long before they have produced enough gas to cover the costs of drilling and fracking them.
In the oldest shale formation, Texas’s Barnett shale, many aging wells have had to be re-fracked multiple times to keep them from running dry. Re-fracking costs millions of dollars and requires millions of gallons of water.
A review last year by The New York Times found that less than ten percent of 9,000 Texas shale wells had recouped their estimated production costs within their first seven years.
This is the dirty little secret that the oil and gas industry rarely will acknowledge. Oil and gas companies don't want to discuss it because high volume slickwater horizontal fracking is so new that there is paltry data to show how wells generally perform over the long run (read: twenty to fifty years).
Over the past year, the total amount of Marcellus gas produced has indeed risen dramatically. But this gas only matters if drillers can pull it out of the ground at a profit. It also only matters if drillers can discern how much money they will have to throw at a well to keep that gas flowing via fracking.
This is why the production data from places like Pennsylvania is so fundamentally important. Not to judge whether more gas is coming out of the Marcellus now -- the current drilling boom means that new wells are constantly drilled across the state, adding an enormous burst of gas each time a well is brought online. But because data about individual wells, tracked over time, can show how quickly each well runs low.
The answer to that question is about far more than whether oil and gas companies can make a profit on the gas or whether investors will lose out. It's ultimately a far higher-stakes issue: whether renewables will not only be far cleaner, but also cheaper than shale gas over the long run. Can today’s low natural gas prices last, or are we on the verge of a gas price spike?
If the accuracy of the production data is questionable, then policymakers in Washington, investors on Wall Street and the public at large will have a tough time getting an accurate picture of how these wells perform over the long run.
Relying on industry rhetoric for answers to these questions is perilous. Consider, for example, Chesapeake Energy, the company behind this summer's confusion over production data.
In 2009, Chesapeake was telling investors that its average Marcellus well would produce 4.2 billion cubic feet of gas equivalent (bcfe) of natural gas over its lifetime. By 2010, it had hiked its estimate to 5.2 bcfe per well.
But according to a new USGS report, the industry-wide average for wells drilled in the interior Marcellus region (the best performing area) in 2011 will actually be 1.2 billion cubic feet – roughly one fifth of the amount that Chesapeake has told investors and the public its wells in the region can produce.
Do these federal estimates mean that Chesapeake was lying to investors? No. Every company’s acreage is different – there are sweet spots in the shale, and every driller leases the land it thinks will be most profitable and productive.
Chesapeake also includes natural gas liquids in its estimates (the "e" in bcfe indicates that they're including liquids like propane and ethane along with methane gas), but USGS does not, which could account for a small portion of the difference. And both the company and its federal regulators at USGS are making projections into the future with limited history to guide them -- after all, the fracking boom is just over a decade old.
But it does show a wide gulf between the numbers that drillers brag about, and the conclusions reached by independent analysts.
Federal regulators have struggled for some time to get the numbers right when it comes to fracking. When the Energy Information Administration first released estimates for the total amount of gas trapped in the Marcellus, their numbers were stunning. But within less than a year, the agency was forced to drop their projections by roughly 80 percent, as more data showed that early guesses were unreliable.
The new USGS report also shows clearly that individual shale gas wells can be fickle. Some wells are monster wells, able to produce jaw-dropping amounts of gas and making the people who leased their land millionaires overnight. But many other wells in the same region produce very little gas.
For example, the USGS report projects that in the Haynesville shale along the Gulf Coast, the best wells can be expected to produce 20 bcf of gas over their lifetimes. But the worst wells drilled in 2011 can only be expected to generate 0.02 bcf – a thousand-fold difference. The average well in the region will produce 2.6 bcf, the USGS says.
Given that some investment analysts expected far more, and some investors have calculated that Haynesville wells need to produce 5.5 bcf to cover the costs of drilling and fracking, this could spell big trouble for drillers – and potentially a big price spike for consumers.
Companies' hyping of shale gas production and profitability has already had consequences. In the past year or so many of the biggest companies have had to drastically writedown their reserves, partly because the cost of extracting the gas is higher than the price drillers can sell it for. Even though it promised investors untold riches from these shale plays, Chesapeake Energy has gone on a selling spree to try to deal with staggering debt.
All this deeply undercuts the industry's rhetoric and the refrain that will most assuredly get mobilized once again during the upcoming presidential debates about there being a 100-year supply of gas (this myth is unpacked and debunked here).
So, what does any of this have to do with the flap between Pennsylvania and Chesapeake Energy about the well performance data?
It goes to show, yet again, that the uncertainty surrounding our current shale gas bet is as broad and deep as the shale itself.
In Pennsylvania, these problems are especially pronounced. Unlike other energy producing states, Pennsylvania does not have a severance tax on the gas produced in the state, meaning it has less incentive to accurately tally the history of each well. It is also unique in that it only reports its data every six months – all other states release figures monthly.
This all makes it especially difficult for independent analysts who might not have access to the statistics used by the USGS to make their own predictions, to see whether the industry’s claims can be corroborated -- or not.
Image Credit: Marcellus Protest | <urn:uuid:94661553-f465-4e8e-b38d-4200cb6d3a5f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://desmogblog.com/2012/09/06/deepening-doubts-about-fracked-wells-long-term-prospects | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962889 | 1,793 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Because of the high maintenance needed to monitor and filter spammers from the RF Cafe Forums, I decided that it would
be best to just archive the pages to make all the good information posted in the past available for review. It is unfortunate
that the scumbags of the world ruin an otherwise useful venue for people wanting to exchanged useful ideas and views.
It seems that the more formal social media like Facebook pretty much dominate this kind of venue anymore anyway, so if
you would like to post something on RF Cafe's
page, please do.
Below are all of the forum threads, including all
the responses to the original posts.
Post subject: Harmonic balance and ADS!
Unread postPosted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 10:27 am
Hi, I am a girl who has 2 questions for you. What is harmonic balance? And is it possible to make ADS to work with Matlab?
Unread postPosted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 3:53 pm
Harmonic Balance is a method to solve non-linear circuits. The circuit is being analyzed according to Kirchoff's law by injecting N tones to it. The currents and voltages are then being calculated for each tone. This method can be implemented for active devices only if they are provided with their Spice model, since this model allows non-linear analysis.
Harmonic Balance lets you find out various parameters as: IP3, P1dB etc.
Regarding ADS and Matlab, as far as I know they can't be working together.
Post subject: ADS, HB and matlab
Unread postPosted: Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:11 am
ADS works with Matlab well in ptolemy simulation environment.
Ptolemy can be a top-level simulation co-simulating with circuit envelope and matlab. Do you want both HB and matlab in the same simulation ?
There are different ways of doing things in ADS. Sometimes, it may also be possible to save the results of one simulation in a file(sink type=file) and then use that file as a source in 2nd simulation. | <urn:uuid:a862fd14-e3e9-4d9e-becf-80bd35aa8119> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rfcafe.com/forums/circuits-components/Harmonic%20balance%20and%20ADS.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928227 | 441 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Following is a short discussion on why you should consider using SE
Linux and how it fundamentally works. Section 2.2 defines terms that
will frequently be used in subsequent sections, so get familiar with
SE Linux offers greater security for your system. Users can be assigned
predefined roles so that they can not access files or processes that
they do not own. There is no "chmod 777" equivalent operation. This
differs from regular Unix permissions in that the user defined roles,
or security contexts they are placed in, have limited access to files
and other resources but in a far more controlled fashion. Take a user's
file on a regular Unix system. If they make
it world writeable then anyone can login and do lots of damage. Under
SE Linux, you can control whether or not the user has the ability to
change the permissions on their .rhosts
and also prevent other people from writing to it even after the owner
has made it world writeable.
A common question is how SE Linux permissions relate to standard
Unix permissions. When you do a certain operation, the Unix permissions
are checked first. If they allow your operation then SE Linux will
check next and allow or deny as appropriate. But if the Unix
permissions don't let you do something, the requested operation stops
there and the SE Linux checks aren't performed.
Another example is if there was an exploitable bug in /usr/bin/passwd
which could run chmod 666 /etc/shadow SE
Linux permissions would still prevent anyone from inappropriately
accessing the file.
Rather than regurgitate what is written in the NSA's FAQ, I'll point
you straight there.
Reading the white papers the NSA has published is a must.
The following terms will appear frequently in this document, and form
core concepts of SE Linux. It is somewhat tricky to define one word
without including the other terms so I realise my definitions include
things that need defining
An identity under SE Linux is not the same as the traditional Unix uid
(user id). They can coexist together on the same system, but are quite
different. identities under SE Linux form part of a security context
which will affect what domains can be entered, i.e. what essentially
can be done. An SE Linux identity and a standard Unix login name may
have the same textual representation (and in most cases they do),
however it is important to understand that they are two different
things. Running the su
command does not change the user
identity under SE Linux.
An unprivileged user with the login name faye runs the id
command (under SE Linux) and sees the security context of the identity
portion of the security context in this case is "faye". Now, if faye
su's to root and runs id, she will see the security context is
still the same, and has not changed to root. However, if identity faye
has been granted access to enter the sysadm_r role and does so (with
the newrole -r command which will be covered later), and runs id
command again, she will now see
the identity remains the same but the role and domain (second and third
fields respectively) have changed. Maintaining the identity in this
manner is useful where user accountability is required. It is also
crucial to system security in that the user identity will determine
what roles and domains can be used.
Every process runs in a domain. A domain directly determines the access a process has. A domain is basically a list of what processes can do, or what actions a process can perform on different types. Think of a domain like a standard Unix uid. Say root has a program and does a chmod 4777
on that program (making it setuid root). Anyone on the system, even the nobody user, can run this program as root thereby creating a security issue. With SE Linux however, if you have a process which triggers a domain transition to a privileged domain, if the role of the process is not authorised to enter a particular domain, then the program can't be run. Some examples of domains are sysadm_t which is the system administration domain, and user_t which is the general unprivileged user domain. init
runs in the init_t domain, and named
runs in the named_t domain.
A type is assigned to an object and determines who gets to access that object. The definition for domain is roughly the same, except a domain applies to process and a type applies to objects such as directories, files, sockets, etc.
A role determines what domains can be used. The domains that a user role can access are predefined in policy configuration files. If a role is not authorised to enter a domain (in the policy database), then it will be denied.
In order to allow a user from the user_t domain (the unprivileged user domain) to execute the passwd command, the following is specified in the relevant config file:
role user_r types user_passwd_t It shows that a user in the user role (user_r) is allowed to enter the user_passwd_t domain i.e. they can run the passwd
A security context has all the attributes that are associated with things like files, directories, processes, TCP sockets and so forth. A security context is made up of the identity, role and domain or type. You can check your own current security context by running id
under SE Linux.
There is a very important distinction which needs to be made here, between a domain and a type, as it tends to cause a little confusion later on if you don't understand it from the start.
Processes have a domain. When you check the security context of a process (for an example, see the explanation of "transition", below), the final field is the domain such as user_passwd_t (if you were running the passwd command).
Objects such as files, directories, sockets etc have types. When you use the ls --context command on a file for instance, the final field is the type, such as user_home_t for a file created in the home directory of a user in the user_r role.
Here's where a little confusion can creep in, and that's whether something is a domain or a type. Consider the /proc filesystem. Every process has a domain, and /proc has directories for each process. Each process has a label, or rather, a security context applied to a file. But in the /proc world, the label contains a type, and not a domain. Even though /proc is representing running processes, the entries under /proc are considered files and therefore have a type instead of a domain.
Running ls --context /proc shows the following listing for the init process (with a process id of 1):
dr-xr-xr-x root root system_u:system_r:init_t 1
The label, or security context, shows that this file has a type of init_t However it also means that the init process is running in the init_t domain. Each file or directory under
/proc that has a process id for a filename will follow this convention, i.e. the type listed for that process in the output of a ls --context
command will also be the domain that process is running in.
Another thing to note is that commands such as chsid (change the security id) and chcon (change context) don't work on /proc as /proc does not support changing of labels.
The security context of a file, for example, can vary depending on the domain that creates it. By default, a new file or directory inherits the same type as its parent directory, however you can have policies set up to do otherwise.
user faye creates a file named test in her home directory. She then runs the command ls --context test and sees
-rw-r--r-- faye faye faye:object_r:user_home_t test
She then creates a file in
/tmp called tmptest and runs the command ls --context /tmp/tmptest
This time, the result is
-rw-r--r-- faye faye faye:object_r:user_tmp_t /tmp/tmptest
In the first example, the security context includes the type "user_home_t" which is the default type for the home directory of an unprivileged user in the user_r role. After running the second ls --context
command, you can see that the type is user_tmp_t which is the default type that is used for files created by a user_t process, in a directory with a tmp_t type.
br>A transition decision, also referred to as a labelling decision, determines which security context will be assigned for a requested operation. There are two main types of transition. Firstly, there is a transition of process domains which is used when you execute a process of a specified type. Secondly, there is a transition of file type used when you create a file under a particular directory.
For the second type of transition (transition of file type), refer to the example give in the "security context" section above. When running the ls --context commands you can see what the file types are labelled as (i.e. user_home_t and user_tmp_t in the above examples). So, here you can see that when the user created a file in /tmp a transition to the user_tmp_t domain occurred and the new file has been labelled as such.
For transition of process domains, consider the following example. Run ssh as a non privileged user, or more specifically, from the user_t domain (remember you can use the id command to check your security context). Then run ps ax --context and note what is listed for ssh. Assuming user faye does this, she sees
as part of the output listing. The ssh process is being run in the user_ssh_t domain because the executable is of type ssh_exec_t and the user_r has been granted access to the user_ssh_t domain.
Policies are a set of rules governing things such as the roles a user has access to; which roles can enter which domains and which domains can access which types. You can edit your policy files according to how you want your system set up. | <urn:uuid:c0c395fc-2024-4f1d-abdd-f290231e7b54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://linuxtopia.org/online_books/getting_started_with_SELinux/SELinux_overview.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917045 | 2,204 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Chop: Admonishing a person for their verbal, physical, or mental error by air-rapping the knife-edge of your hand near the base of their neck, imitating a karate-like strike.
Contact should not accompany the declaration; the act is punishable by the choppee calling “10 for contact” and gaining ten strikes on the chopper.
The velocity to which you chop is proportional to your level of familiarity, and respect, of that person, but is not a hard-fast rule. You would not hard-chop a stranger unfamiliar with either the term or practice, just as you would not light-chop a person you’ve known for years simply because of the existing relationship.
A “gentleman’s chop” is a light strike, appropriate for a dinner party, office, or golf course setting. It lets your acquaintance know that texting that guy from work without telling their husband is a poor life decision.
A “street chop” is a forceful dagger, appropriate for a bar, bachelor party, or pick-up basketball game. It lets your boy know that doing shots of Lemon Drops should not be suggested, ordered, or taken.
A person who believes they have committed a choppable offense can defend themselves against any action by calling “no chop” before any action can be taken against them. In the event of a tie, the defendant should go unchopped, but the ruling would revert to the house rules regarding the matter.
The best credo to remember when engaging in chop warfare is thus: Don’t Chop less you ready to be Chopped.
In a Sentence: “You order the veggie plate at a steak joint… that’s a chop.” | <urn:uuid:0435fb52-661c-4cde-b056-b137ef25bcd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://workaholics.tumblr.com/tagged/Chop | 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 | 0.933735 | 373 | 1.929688 | 2 |
A Commentary, Critical, Practical, and Explanatory on the Old and New Testaments, by Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown at sacred-texts.com
jer 38:1JEREMIAH PREDICTS THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM, FOR WHICH HE IS CAST INTO A DUNGEON, BUT IS TRANSFERRED TO THE PRISON COURT ON THE INTERCESSION OF EBED-MELECH, AND HAS A SECRET INTERVIEW WITH ZEDEKIAH. (Jer. 38:1-28)
Jucal--Jehucal (Jer 37:3).
Pashur-- (Jer 21:1; compare Jer 21:9 with Jer 38:2). The deputation in Jer 21:1, to whom Jeremiah gave this reply, if not identical with the hearers of Jeremiah (Jer 38:1), must have been sent just before the latter "heard" him speaking the same words. Zephaniah is not mentioned here as in Jer 21:1, but is so in Jer 37:3. Jucal is mentioned here and in the previous deputation (Jer 37:3), but not in Jer 21:1. Shephatiah and Gedaliah here do not occur either in Jer 21:1 or Jer 37:3. The identity of his words in both cases is natural, when uttered, at a very short interval, and one of the hearers (Pashur) being present on both occasions.
unto all the people--They had free access to him in the court of the prison (Jer 32:12).
jer 38:2life . . . a prey--He shall escape with his life; though losing all else in a shipwreck, he shall carry off his life as his gain, saved by his going over to the Chaldeans. (See on Jer 21:9).
jer 38:4Had Jeremiah not had a divine commission, he might justly have been accused of treason; but having one, which made the result of the siege certain, he acted humanely as interpreter of God's will under the theocracy, in advising surrender (compare Jer 26:11).
jer 38:5the king is not he--Zedekiah was a weak prince, and now in his straits afraid to oppose his princes. He hides his dislike of their overweening power, which prevented him shielding Jeremiah as he would have wished, under complimentary speeches. "It is not right that the king should deny aught to such faithful and wise statesmen"; the king is not such a one as to deny you your wishes [JEROME].
jer 38:6dungeon--literally, the "cistern." It was not a subterranean prison as that in Jonathan's house (Jer 37:15), but a pit or cistern, which had been full of water, but was emptied of it during the siege, so that only "mire" remained. Such empty cisterns were often used as prisons (Zac 9:11); the depth forbade hope of escape.
Hammelech-- (Jer 36:26). His son followed in the father's steps, a ready tool for evil.
sunk in the mire--Jeremiah herein was a type of Messiah (Psa 69:2, Psa 69:14). "I sink in deep mire," &c.
jer 38:7Ebed-melech--The Hebrew designation given this Ethiopian, meaning "king's servant." Already, even at this early time, God wished to show what good reason there was for calling the Gentiles to salvation. An Ethiopian stranger saves the prophet whom his own countrymen, the Jews, tried to destroy. So the Gentiles believed in Christ whom the Jews crucified, and Ethiopians were among the earliest converts (Act 2:10, Act 2:41; Act 8:27-39). Ebed-melech probably was keeper of the royal harem, and so had private access to the king. The eunuchs over harems in the present day are mostly from Nubia or Abyssinia.
jer 38:8went forth . . . and spake--not privately, but in public; a proof of fearless magnanimity.
jer 38:9die for hunger in the place where he is; for . . . no . . . bread in . . . city--(Compare Jer 37:21). He had heretofore got a piece of bread supplied to him. "Seeing that there is the utmost want of bread in the city, so that even if he were at large, there could no more be regularly supplied to him, much less now in a place where none remember or pity him, so that he is likely to die for hunger." "No more bread," that is, no more left of the public store in the city (Jer 37:21); or, all but no bread left anywhere [MAURER].
jer 38:10with thee--Hebrew, "in thine hand," that is, at "thy disposal" (Sa1 16:2). "From hence," that is, from the gate of Benjamin where the king was sitting (Jer 38:7).
thirty men--not merely to draw up Jeremiah, but to guard Ebed-melech against any opposition on the part of the princes (Jer 38:1-4), in executing the king's command. Ebed-melech was rewarded for his faith, love, and courage, exhibited at a time when he might well fear the wrath of the princes, to which even the king had to yield (Jer 39:16-18).
jer 38:11cast clouts--"torn clothes" [HENDERSON].
rotten rags--"worn-out garments." God can make the meanest things His instruments of goodness to His people (Co1 1:27-29).
under . . . armholes--"under the joints of thine hands," that is, where the fingers join the hand, the clothes being in order that the hands should not be cut by the cords [MAURER].
jer 38:13court of . . . prison--Ebed-melech prudently put him there to be out of the way of his enemies.
jer 38:14third entry--The Hebrews in determining the position of places faced the east, which they termed "that which is in front"; the south was thus called "that which is on the right hand"; the north, "that which is on the left hand"; the west, "that which is behind." So beginning with the east they might term it the first or principal entry; the south the second entry; the north the "third entry" of the outer or inner court [MAURER]. The third gate of the temple facing the palace; for through it the entrance lay from the palace into the temple (Kg1 10:5, Kg1 10:12). It was westward (Ch1 26:16, Ch1 26:18; Ch2 9:11) [GROTIUS]. But in the future temple it is eastward (Eze 46:1-2, Eze 46:8).
jer 38:15wilt thou not hearken unto me--Zedekiah does not answer this last query; the former one he replies to in Jer 38:16. Rather translate, "Thou wilt not hearken to me." Jeremiah judges so from the past conduct of the king. Compare Jer 38:17 with Jer 38:19.
jer 38:16Lord . . . made us this soul-- (Isa 57:16). Implying, "may my life (soul) be forfeited if I deceive thee" [CALVIN].
jer 38:17princes-- (Jer 39:3). He does not say "to the king himself," for he was at Riblah, in Hamath (Jer 39:5; Kg2 25:6). "If thou go forth" (namely, to surrender; Kg2 24:12; Isa 36:16), God foreknows future conditional contingencies, and ordains not only the end, but also the means to the end.
jer 38:19afraid of the Jews--more than of God (Pro 29:25; Joh 9:22; Joh 12:43).
mock me--treat me injuriously (Sa1 31:4).
jer 38:22women--The very evil which Zedekiah wished to escape by disobeying the command to go forth shall befall him in its worst form thereby. Not merely the Jewish deserters shall "mock" him (Jer 38:19), but the very "women" of his own palace and harem, to gratify their new lords, will taunt him. A noble king in sooth, to suffer thyself to be so imposed on!
Thy friends--Hebrew, "men of thy peace" (see Jer 20:10; Psa 41:9, Margin). The king's ministers and the false prophets who misled him.
sunk in . . . mire--proverbial for, Thou art involved by "thy friends'" counsels in inextricable difficulties. The phrase perhaps alludes to Jer 38:6; a just retribution for the treatment of Jeremiah, who literally "sank in the mire."
they are turned . . . back--Having involved thee in the calamity, they themselves shall provide for their own safety by deserting to the Chaldeans (Jer 38:19).
jer 38:23children-- (Jer 39:6; Jer 41:10). "wives . . . children . . . thou"; an ascending climax.
jer 38:24Let no man know--If thou wilt not tell this to the people, I will engage thy safety.
jer 38:25Kings are often such only in title; they are really under the power of their subjects.
jer 38:26presented--literally, "made my supplication to fall"; implying supplication with humble prostration (see on Jer 36:7).
Jonathan's house-- (Jer 37:15), different from Malchiah's dungeon (Jer 38:6). This statement was true, though not the whole truth; the princes had no right to the information; no sanction is given by Scripture here to Jeremiah's representation of this being the cause of his having come to the king. Fear drove him to it. Compare Gen 20:2, Gen 20:12; on the other hand, Sa1 16:2, Sa1 16:5.
left off speaking with--Hebrew, "were silent from him," that is, withdrawing from him they left him quiet (Sa1 7:8, Margin).
jer 38:28he was there when Jerusalem was taken--These words are made the beginning of the thirty-ninth chapter by many; but the accents and sense support English Version.
This chapter consists of two parts: the first describes the capture of Jerusalem, the removal of the people to Babylon, and the fate of Zedekiah, and that of Jeremiah. The second tells of the assurance of safety to Ebed-melech. | <urn:uuid:f0a4c274-9106-4039-a019-3ecfbae75724> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/jfb/jer038.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953585 | 2,379 | 2.1875 | 2 |
In planning for this season’s holiday festivities, it is important to keep your pets in mind. While most of us welcome the sights, sounds and smells of the season, holidays can also be chaotic—especially for dogs. Holiday festivities can disrupt a dog’s routine and present potentially dangerous circumstances. But by following a few common-sense tips, the holidays can be cheery for everyone—including the family dog.
1. Avoid Christmas tree disasters. Christmas trees are a wonderful tradition, but they can lead to problems if you have a curious canine.
- Prevent the tree from tipping. Anchor it to the ceiling or wall.
- Hang non-breakable ornaments near the bottom of the tree.
- Tinsel can be deadly when eaten. It can twist in your dog’s intestines and cause serious problems, so do not put it on your tree.
- Don’t let your dog drink the Christmas tree water. It often contains chemicals to help the tree last longer; these chemical can cause severe indigestion in dogs.
- Pine needles can cause health problems. Regularly sweep up fallen pine needles to avoid a trip to the emergency animal clinic.
2. Mistletoe, poinsettias and amaryllis can be toxic. Be aware of these poisonous holiday plants and keep your pets away from them.
3. Keep snow-globe snow in the globe. Many snow globes contain antifreeze, which is extremely toxic to dogs—so it’s best to keep snow globes and all antifreeze out of the reach of a happy, tail-wagging dog.
4. Holiday sweets are not dog treats. Candy, cookies, cakes, peppermints—and especially chocolate. Keep all sweets away from your dog and in a place where they cannot be reached.
5. Make no bones about it. Cooked turkey and chicken bones are not for dogs as they can easily break, causing choking or bone shards to get stuck in your dog’s gums. Stick with “dog bones” specifically designed for dogs to chew. Ask your local veterinarian for suggestions.
6. A relaxed dog is a good dog. Most dogs are excitable when guests arrive. Exercise your dog prior to the arrival of guests. As a general rule, it’s best not to allow the family dog to greet unfamiliar guest because commotion and unusual circumstances can cause stress for dogs. Allow your canine companion to join the festivities after the initial commotion of arrival has subsided.
7. Keep the liquids flowing! When pets are stressed by unfamiliar circumstances, they typically pant more, so keep fresh water readily available for them to drink.
8. Beware of cold and snowy weather. While it might be convenient to put your dogs outside when guests arrive for holiday festivities, dropping temperatures and snow can be dangerous to pets.
9. Do not give pets as surprise gifts! A cute and cuddly puppy might seem like the perfect gift choice, but many of these holiday presents end up at animal shelters. A dog takes a real commitment of time, and adoptive owners must be ready to participate in training and managing the responsibility of their new family member. If you know someone who’s serious about wanting a dog, consider giving a leash, collar or dog training certificate from Bark Busters, along with a note saying a dog of the recipient’s choice comes with it. This will help ensure the lucky person receives the dog he or she wants to have as part of the family.
10. Add your pet to your gift list. Help your dogs stay occupied and out of the holiday decorations by giving them their own gifts. The Buster Cube™ or a Kong™, are nearly indestructible toys that will distract your dog for long periods of time.
'Tis the season for all things merry—and that includes your furry friends. Following these simple tips will help make the festivities safe and happy for you and your canine companions.
Jeri Wagner is a dog behavioral therapist and trainer with Bark Busters Home Dog Training. Bark Busters’ natural training system leverages the same communications methods—body language and voice control—that dogs follow as part of their instinctive pack mentality. All training takes place right in the home where the problems generally occur. In every market where Bark Busters is established, a majority of veterinarians familiar with the technique recommend the company’s services. For more information, call 1-877-500-BARK (2275) or visit www.BarkBusters.com. | <urn:uuid:da68f695-4191-41da-b8b7-36ed049838b9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://horsham.patch.com/blog_posts/dog-friendly-tips-to-make-this-holiday-season-merry-cf98892e | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926355 | 948 | 2.171875 | 2 |
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Israeli media called Raanan
Alexandrowiczs documentary The Inner Tour subversive and
treacherous according to press notes. Watching
this relatively low-key film, it would seem anything but that, unless giving a human face
to the enemy is considered unpatriotic. Despite
times being what they are with President Bush decrying an Axis of Evil or Ari Fleischer
warning watch what you say, one hopes only the most apprehensive fascist would
construe alternative perspectives as treasonous.
The Inner Tour follows a group of Palestinians about half a dozen adults accompanied by roughly the same number of children from the West Bank on a sightseeing trip of Israel. The filmmakers obviously hoped to get a Palestinian point of view on the land that they want back. The three day tour consists of two days of tourist attractions around Galilee and one day in Tel Aviv. While the film shows the group riding gondola cars, checking out a sea grotto, and visiting an amusement park, clearly Alexandrowicz wants more politically substantive material. A trip to the beach proves uneventful except for the Palestinians eliciting a few stares from wary Israelis. Slowly the tourists open up to Alexandrowicz. One woman talks about how her son, Mahmoud, was renamed Halil, after his father who perished in the conflict. An old man, Abu Muhammad, narrates his participation in the 1948 war in which he lost both his parents as well as his son and daughter. Everyone in the tour however has had a family member who has died from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or knows someone imprisoned by the Israelis.
Everywhere they go, they cannot help but see what they view as Arab land. Zippori, which had been the largest Arab settlement, touches them the most. While passing Ben-Gurion Airport, one Palestinian yells out that it is Lydda, not Ben-Gurion. Liberals who drive past Ronald Reagan National in D.C. probably sympathize. In a Hanita museum, the tourists see an exhibit on the history of the conflict as it was in 1936. The museum knows precisely how many Jews died during one particularly hard fought night but not how many Arabs. Once they are back on the bus, the Palestinians complain about the museums bias.
The documentary is separated into seven chapters, most of them titled after a piece of dialogue in that section. Chapter 3 is I dont want to see, I dont want to see and Chapter 6 is I never imagined I would walk among the Jews. The films presentation is very dry and the pacing is positively septuagenarian. Because the cameraman, Sharon Shark De-Mayo, tries so hard to be unobtrusive, he tends to stay out of his subjects faces. That results in shots from unrevealing angles or from too far away. Alexandrowicz, perhaps in pursuit of profundity, leaves too many ponderous shots of the Palestinians simply walking around.
He does manage to capture some poignant moments in the film. A mother and son, separated by fences and barb wire, communicate by shouting over the Lebanese border, followed by her tossing him a packet of family photographs. In another instance, middle-aged Abu Dahab recollects being in prison and meeting then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. His voice fills with hope that just through such simple dialogue, peace may come. With reverence, Abu visits the site where Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish student in 1995. More hope comes in a dialogue between an old Palestinian woman and a younger one. They have both have lost their husbands, the former through war, the latter through life imprisonment for killing an Israeli soldier. The older woman wants vengeance for her husbands killer. The younger woman wonders whether the mother of the Israeli soldier her husband killed feels that same way about her husband.
The Inner Tour never quite comes together. Its emotionally compelling moments are too few and far between, and the movie does little to contextualize them, leaving it up to the viewer to make many socio-political-historical associations. The film is successful in its main objective, to present a very human Arab perspective, yet even that should be relatively obvious to all but the politically expedient. Unfortunately, they are the least likely ever to see the film.
- George Wu | <urn:uuid:3530b59d-0f94-4d11-b893-f2433b36f117> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://culturevulture.net/archive/Movies/InnerTour.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96769 | 899 | 1.835938 | 2 |
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‘The traditional model of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) hydrodynamics is being increasingly challenged in view of recent scientific evidences. The established model presumes that CSF is primarily produced in the choroid plexuses (CP), then flows from the ventricles to the subarachnoid spaces, and is mainly reabsorbed into arachnoid villi (AV). This model is seemingly based on faulty research and misinterpretations. This literature review presents numerous evidence for a new hypothesis of CSF physiology, namely, CSF is produced and reabsorbed throughout the entire CSF-Interstitial fluid (IF) functional unit. IF and CSF are mainly formed and reabsorbed across the walls of CNS blood capillaries. CP, AV and lymphatics become minor sites for CSF hydrodynamics. The lymphatics may play a more significant role in CSF absorption when CSF-IF pressure increases. The consequences of this complete reformulation of CSF hydrodynamics may influence applications in research, publications, including osteopathic manual treatments.’
Chikly, B., Quaghebeur, J., Reassessing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) hydrodynamics: A literature review presenting a novel hypothesis for CSF physiology, Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.jbmt.2013.02.002
(only the abstract is available here I am afraid)
Wavy millipede legs
I was on holiday in Sicily recently, lazing in the sun, and caught myself watching a millipede. I was fascinated by the waves of activity in the legs as it moved. It struck me a moving millipede is a really good example of rhythms within rhythms, just like the different co-existing tides we describe in cranial work.
I normally try and explain the interaction of cranial rhythms by talking about the waves of the sea going back and forth but gradually moving up (or down) the shore as the tide goes in (or out).
On the millipede we can watch one leg move back and forth, or a group of legs seeming to take part in an undulation along the length of the body, or the whole millipede moving forward. All the movements are there at the same time, all important and all of them perceivable depending on your focus. Nice.
Harmonics and combining sine waves
Above is an image from a website exploring harmonics in music. The top red wave is made up of the three underlying waves below. It is pleasingly similar to CRI (blue), mid tide (purple) and long tide (green).
Below is another link from a website exploring acoustics. There are some good animations of combining two sine waves.
‘The Protoplasm of a Slime Mold’ by William Seifriz
‘The rhythmic forces in protoplasm are even more basic than the flow’
‘The rhythm has continued underneath, so to speak, even though the protoplasm has been asleep, there is still something going on. We must be very close indeed to the question ‘What is Life?’ ‘
‘There is not one rhythm in protoplasm but many rhythms. Protoplasm is a polyrhythmic system.’
The above quotes are from the slime mold dvd. Seifriz talks excitedly about finding out that the rhythm of protoplasmic streaming is not just a single rhythm but is made up of a number of rhythms. Below are the images of the basic wave and the constituent waves from the Seifriz DVD.
First 6 minutes and then to 16 minutes of this video are wonderful – the transcription is good if you only have time to scan.
Click this link for the video and transcription
Some quotes are below. I love the idea of a risky brain that is not hierarchical but is a mix of anarchy and democracy. There is competition between individual neurons – descended from free cells that survived for a billion years on their own – and alliances of neurons. Social interaction and culture provide the drive and rewards for the risk taking brain.
‘because each neuron, far from being a simple logical switch, is a little agent with an agenda, and they are much more autonomous and much more interesting than any switch.’
‘We’re beginning to come to grips with the idea that your brain is not this well-organized hierarchical control system where everything is in order, a very dramatic vision of bureaucracy. In fact, it’s much more like anarchy with some elements of democracy. Sometimes you can achieve stability and mutual aid and a sort of calm united front, and then everything is hunky-dory, but then it’s always possible for things to get out of whack and for one alliance or another to gain control, and then you get obsessions and delusions and so forth.’
‘Realize that every neuron in your brain, every human cell in your body (leaving aside all the symbionts), is a direct descendent of eukaryotic cells that lived and fended for themselves for about a billion years as free-swimming, free-living little agents. They fended for themselves, and they survived.’
‘Maybe a lot of the neurons in our brains are not just capable but, if you like, motivated to be more adventurous, more exploratory or risky in the way they comport themselves, in the way they live their lives. They’re struggling amongst themselves with each other for influence, just for staying alive, and there’s competition going on between individual neurons. As soon as that happens, you have room for cooperation to create alliances, and I suspect that a more free-wheeling, anarchic organization is the secret of our greater capacities of creativity, imagination, thinking outside the box and all that, and the price we pay for it is our susceptibility to obsessions, mental illnesses, delusions and smaller problems.’
‘We got risky brains that are much riskier than the brains of other mammals even, even more risky than the brains of chimpanzees, and that this could be partly a matter of a few simple mutations in control genes that release some of the innate competitive talent that is still there in the genomes of the individual neurons. But I don’t think that genetics is the level to explain this. You need culture to explain it.’
See also http://cranialintelligence.com/2012/03/21/great-pain-video-understanding-pain-in-less-than-5-minutes/
I have just discovered the site http://saveyourself.ca It looks like it has loads of good stuff on and is the source for this video.
‘Recent reports have emerged suggesting that multiple sclerosis (MS) may be due to abnormal venous outflow from the central nervous system, termed chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI).’
Lazzaro M.A. et al (2011)
This is a very exciting article on the how venous outflow could be implicated in MS. The diagram above shows the sites the researchers have identified as being restricted.
There is a long tradition in cranial work of supporting drainage from the head by working at the thoracic outlet (or inlet, depending on what term you prefer, both are used for the same area). The first craniosacral therapist I ever saw would always start at the thoracic outlet, maybe he was on to something.
In the thoracic outlet hold the hands are above and below the base of the neck – upper hand spread over the suprasternal notch, first rib and clavicles, the lower hand underneath the the cervical thoracic junction. I like to try and feel the shape of the hole made by the first rib and orient to the health of all the tubes moving through the region (dural tube, oesophagus, trachea, carotid sheaths). Pulsing arteries softening, spreading of the fascia sheets, easing of the movement of C7 and a shift in the first rib and clavicles all speak of change in this region.
The image above includes drainage routes via ‘spinal column drainage route’, ‘pterygoid plexus’ and ‘vertebral vein’ that are fairly new to me – nice bits of anatomy to appreciate.
Another route for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to leave the skull you can consider is shown below. A significant amount of CSF drains as lymphatic outflow from the cranial cavity via the ethmoid (and to a lesser degree perineural spaces of cranial and spinal nerves) and is collected by the lymphatic vessels of the head and neck (Pollay 2010).
This research helped me appreciate the dynamics of the ethmoid and cervical lymphatics as important in fluid draining from the skull. Pollay also indicates that poor outflow of CSF is not good for the health of the nervous system.
‘The lymphatic system has been shown to develop earlier than that of the arachnoid villi and therefore appear to be a dominant CSF outflow route in the late fetal and early neonatal period. There is convincing evidence that the arachnoid villi system loses it efficiency with age, which can influence the total turnover rate of the CSF with possible neurodegenerative consequences.’
See also this post for more on the venous outflow in cranial work
Lazzaro M.A. et al (2011) Endovascular therapy for chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency in multiple sclerosis. Front. Neur., 14 July 2011 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2011.00044
Pollay, M. (2010) The function and structure of the cerebrospinal fluid outflow system. Cerebrospinal Fluid Res. 2010; 7: 9. Published online 2010 June 21. Accessed 2/10/12 via http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2904716
Do not like to think how it was made, but it is very beautiful and strangely moving.
From article in The Lancet 2007 titled ‘Brain of a white-collar worker’
A 44 year old man presented to the doctor with a weakness in his leg. ‘His neurological development and medical history were otherwise normal. He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant.’ On CT scan they found an incredible brain that is mostly ventricles.
Wild, how does that work?
Below is a link to a really interesting article on how representation of the body affects the experience of pain. The is very affirming of the importance of working with dissociation to improve health.
In this study the results show the pain is reduced more if people self touch rather than them being touched. I wonder/hope that the combination of body awareness work we do in biodynamic craniosacral therapy, plus the skilful nature of biodynamic touch, would trigger the experience of ‘coherent whole’ that seems to affect pain.
“We showed that levels of acute pain depend not just on the signals sent to the brain, but also on how the brain integrates these signals into a coherent representation of the body as a whole.
Self-touch provides strong evidence to the brain about the correlation of sensory information coming from different parts of the body.
This helps to give us the experience of our body as a coherent whole.” | <urn:uuid:ce4ca3b7-143b-43de-9674-7642ebfc9342> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cranialintelligence.com/author/stevehaines66/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935932 | 2,470 | 2.125 | 2 |
Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr has warned that arming rebel fighters in Syria would lead to a civil war, his ministry said on Wednesday.
Arming the ill-equipped rebels, mainly Syrian army defectors, would "lead to an escalation in the military conflict and spark a civil war in Syria", Amr said, according to a statement issued by his ministry.
Some Arab countries, such as Qatar and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia, have spoken in favor of arming the rebels.
The opposition Syrian National Council has said it wants to organize arms deliveries to the rebels and announced a "military bureau" to coordinate and serve as a conduit for weapons from abroad.
But the United States last month warned that Sunni militant group al-Qaida was seeking to gain advantage of the revolt against President Bashar Assad, who hails from Syria's minority Alawite community, a branch of Shiite Islam.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that applying political pressure to Assad to leave office and to cease the military crackdown on dissent was a better option than sending in weapons.
"Now is not the time to further militarize the situation in Syria," he said.
Similar concerns were raised initially in the West when the Libyan conflict against Moammar Gadhafi erupted last year, but several countries, including Arab nations, later supplied arms to the rebels there backed by air support from NATO.
But U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that the situation in Syria is far more complex than it was in Libya.
In Libya, the United States "had the full cooperation of the region, Arab states, and we knew that we could execute very effectively in a relatively short period of time. This is a much more complicated situation," Obama said.
The United Nations says more than 7,500 people have been killed since anti-regime protests which gave way to an armed revolt erupted in Syria in mid-March 2011.
|Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved.||http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/32540| | <urn:uuid:cd15aa9d-29ac-4912-b595-e4b2175315aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naharnet.com/stories/32540-egypt-denounces-arming-syrian-rebels-says-it-will-lead-to-civil-war/print | 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 | 0.975668 | 420 | 1.65625 | 2 |
IUDs almost halve risk of cervical cancer: study
A new, smaller type of intrauterine contraceptive device called CS-300 is shown in this handout photo, date unknown. The IUD already has been approved in Europe. (AP File Photo/Ho)
LONDON (Reuters) - Contrary to popular belief, intrauterine contraceptive devices might actually protect women against developing cervical cancer even though they don't stop the infection that commonly leads to the disease, according to the results of an international study.
While IUDs, also known as coils, are unlikely to be recommended as way of preventing cervical cancer -- the second most common form of cancer in women worldwide -- the research should reassure women and their doctors that using them carries no added risk of the disease.
Spanish researchers who studied 20,000 women found that those with a history of using IUDs were no less likely than women who don't to contract the human papillomavirus (HPV) that causes cervical cancer, but they had only around half the risk of developing the cancer itself.
The scientists think possible explanations for the protective effect of IUDs could be that the process of inserting or removing them destroys pre-cancerous cells, or that it causes some kind of inflammation that prompts a long-lasting immune response and prevents the HPV from progressing.
"It was a little unexpected," Xavier Castellsague of the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona said in a telephone interview. "The data (available) before we did this study were very inconsistent, so we didn't expect to find such a strong association with this protective effect."
Cancer of the cervix is the second most common cancer in women across the world, with about 500,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Virtually all cervical cancer cases are linked to genital infection with HPV, which is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract.
Drugmakers Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have vaccines that protect against HPV and many wealthy and some developing countries have started nationwide immunization programs for girls to prevent more cases of cervical cancer.
An IUD is a plastic and copper or hormone-containing contraceptive device that is placed in the uterus to prevent sperm from joining with an egg.
Previous studies have shown that using coils can protect women against another type of cancer called endometrial cancer, but until now it was not clear whether they could also have an effect on the risk of cervical cancer.
Castellsague's team, whose study was published in the Lancet Oncology journal on Tuesday, analyzed data from 10 case-control studies of cervical cancer done in eight countries and 16 HPV prevalence surveys in women from four continents. The findings were adjusted for the number of sexual partners and other confounding factors.
The results show that coil use did not affect the risk of HPV infection, but was linked to a markedly lower risk of cervix cancer for both major types of the disease -- reducing the likelihood of developing squamous-cell carcinoma by 44 percent and adenocarcinoma or adenosquamous carcinoma by 54 percent.
The length of time that women used an IUD did not significantly alter the risk, the researchers said. They found the risk was reduced by nearly half in the first year of use and the protective effect remained significant even after 10 years.
"IUDs are not inert devices," Castellsague said. "Our speculation is that they act as a foreign body and stimulate inflammatory changes that prevent the HPV infection from persisting and progressing to more advanced stages."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/nvPJeC Lancet Oncology, online September 13, 2011. | <urn:uuid:9608ec22-e98d-4369-bba5-3b4c66c9d2c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ivpressonline.com/health/sns-rt-us-cervical-cancertre78c4e0-20110913,0,6064936.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964243 | 762 | 2.9375 | 3 |
types of offense by sex and race are noted. The chapter ends with a discussion of forecasting juvenile crime rates.
Chapter 3 examines factors related to the development of antisocial behavior and delinquency. Several other recent reports (Loeber et al., 1998; Rutter et al., 1998) have extensively reviewed the research on many of these factors, particularly as they relate to the development of serious, violent offending. In this report we have attempted to supplement these other reports rather than duplicate their literature reviews. In addition, this report does not confine its discussion to serious, violent offending.
Chapters 4 and 5 cover responses to the problem of youth crime. Chapter 4 focuses on preventive interventions aimed at individuals, peer groups, and families, interventions delivered in schools, and community-based interventions. Chapter 5 describes the juvenile justice system process in the United States and discusses treatment and intervention programs delivered through the juvenile justice system.
Chapter 6 examines the issue of racial disparity in the juvenile justice system, discussing explanations that have been put forth to explain that disparity and the research support for those explanations.
The panel's conclusions and recommendations for research and policy can be found at the end of each chapter. | <urn:uuid:b859cc15-eeb4-44fc-b049-047112774bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9747&page=24 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942188 | 240 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Area entrepreneurs get a 'Jump Start'
Posted: Monday, September 8, 2008 11:15 am
The Messenger 09.08.08
The Small Business Development Center at Dyersburg State Community College and the Dyersburg-Dyer County Chamber of Commerce have announced that 18 entrepreneurs have graduated from the Jump Start entrepreneurial training course.
The course was the first of its kind ever offered in the region.
Graduating ceremonies were held at the Lannom Center in Dyersburg.
For the past six weeks, the 18 budding entrepreneurs participated in the 36-hour training course designed to help them build their business plans. Dr. Jamie Frakes, director of the Small Business Development Center at Dyersburg State, was the training facilitator for the class.
“The participants received some intense training in the classroom and were required to complete outside homework in addition to their in-class activity,” Frakes said.
Instructional materials for the course came from the Kauffman Foundation’s Fast-Trac program. Fast-Trac is grounded in the business planning process. Participants learned the importance of business planning, marketing plan preparation and establishing key assumptions for managing their business enterprises.
The course was offered through a partnership between Dyersburg State Community College, the Dyersburg-Dyer County Chamber of Commerce and the Southeast Innovation Center at Southeast Missouri State University.
Participants who complete a business plan and submit it to the Southeast Innovation Center by Sept. 3 will be able to compete for seed capital for their business ventures through a Delta Regional Authority grant. The most viable business plans could receive an award up to $3,500 that could be used in the start-up or expansion of their small business.
The Dyersburg-Dyer County Chamber of Commerce provided support for the program by hosting the course at the Lannom Center for Business Development.
“I think the Jump Start program is the best program we’ve ever offered small businesses. I am pleased with the number of graduates that completed the program. This is something I want us to continue offering to the business community,” said Alan Hester, president and CEO of the Dyersburg-Dyer County Chamber of Commerce.
Dyersburg State Community College provided support for the Jump Start program through its support of the Small Business Development Center. Community colleges play an important role in entrepreneurship, business and economic development through supporting programs like Jump Start.
Jump Start class graduates include Laura Mann, Krystal Higdon, George Moody, Debra Mitchell, Sharon McElrath, Joyce Smith, Bentley Quertermous, William Warren, Kathi Clements, Cynthia Carwhile, Chelsea Greer, Vince Haymon, Joe Robinson, Chasity Doss, Laura Davis, Ron Coffman, Michelle Coffman and Veronica Johnson.
For more information about the Jump Start program, contact Frakes at (731) 286-3201.
Dyersburg State Community College, Dyersburg-Dyer County Chamber of Commerce, entrepreneurs, Jump Start entrepreneurial training course, Small Business Development Center | <urn:uuid:e581372d-b531-419f-95ad-4d46b40c00eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ucmessenger.com/news.php?viewStory=16232 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933105 | 634 | 1.53125 | 2 |
There are many lessons to be learned from the current international financial crisis. Foremost among these may be that policy makers wrestling with a range of global economic challenges need a full complement of tools to do their jobs successfully: notably the powers to tax and spend.
The fact that the European Union, as a body, lacks these basic policy instruments has complicated international efforts to ease the downturn. The absence of a common European fiscal policy hobbled recent global economic stimulus efforts, and it could undermine initiatives to build a firewall against future financial contagion.
Most important, the E.U.'s shortcomings call into question a united Europe's competence at a time when the world needs the Continent to act forcefully and as one. The Obama administration is open to working with its European allies on a range of issues. But to be partners, Europeans have to be able to deliver results.
Since 1957, a united Europe has spoken with one voice on trade policy. A majority of E.U. members have had a common currency and monetary policy since 1999. But two-legged stools cannot stand. Europe needs a fiscal policy so it can coordinate taxes and spending.
The trans-Atlantic spat over economic stimulus spending in the run-up to the April G-20 summit highlights the problem. The E.U. had no money to spend to fuel recovery. Pump-priming by European national governments often fell far short of the International Monetary Fund's recommendation to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product.
This lack of cohesion is also likely to hinder proposed E.U. efforts at joint financial regulation. Some member states are already resisting the European Commission's plan for a European Systematic Risk Council to assess the stability of the banking system. Opponents argue that national taxpayers will ultimately be responsible for bailing out failing financial institutions, so national regulators alone should be accountable for their oversight. It is a compelling argument as long as the European Union lacks a pot of money of its own to cover such emergencies. Why would Washington take Brussels seriously as an interlocutor on financial regulatory issues as long as there is no centralized capacity to assess risk and then impose regulation?
Moreover, the lack of collective fiscal tools threatens to undermine the single European market that makes Europe an attractive partner for the United States. Germany's recent decision to bail out Opel at the expense of jobs in Belgium was a one-country solution in a multicountry association that could distort competition.
If automobile subsidies are necessary in these perilous times, then they should be done with common European funds, under a uniform set of rules, and in a way that does not discriminate against individual national companies. Without such capacity, Europe risks becoming a less attractive market for future American investment.
Europe's ambition to play a larger role on the world stage is now hamstrung by the shortcomings in Brussels. The Obama administration is open to new ideas from Europe. But the E.U.'s lack of fiscal policy tools is likely to circumscribe trans-Atlantic cooperation at a time when the American-European alliance, and the world, need that partnership more than ever.
Europeans acknowledge their failings but say that domestic political opposition and assertions of national sovereignty make a common policy on taxing and spending a nonstarter. This is a 19th-century rationalization that Europe's allies can ill afford in the 21st century.
As the Obama administration ratchets up its dialogue with Europe, it is time for a frank discussion about how such European nationalism harms mutual efforts to cope with shared policy challenges. Europe will undoubtedly counter that it faces problems created by American federalism. To be fair, insurance, professional services, and much of the public procurement in the U.S. are still regulated by the 50 states, a decentralized system that is not always in tune with a global economy.
Consequently, any trans-Atlantic exchange won't be an easy conversation. But meaningful ones never are. What better time to start such a discussion than at the beginning of a new American administration, with a new European Commission and a new European Parliament about to take office and the European Union likely to have new powers soon thanks to its first constitution?
So let the dialogues begin. And nothing, no matter how politically sensitive, should be off the table. That is one lesson the economic crisis should have taught us.
This article appears in the June 13, 2009, edition of National Journal. | <urn:uuid:7b942bab-d88b-4f4c-9540-40c0185cd462> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/economic-interests/europe-must-jointly-tax-and-spend-20090613 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948879 | 891 | 2.390625 | 2 |
A new report emphasizes that farm subsidies should be a two-way street.
Money for nothing
Imagine if someone were to invest in your business in return for a promise you’ll follow certain standards. Then imagine that the person giving you the money never bothered to check whether you held up your end of the deal.
A stunning new report issued by the Environmental Working Group documents that this is exactly what’s happening with federal farm subsidy programs. Billions of dollars are paid to farmers who are supposed to comply with conservation requirements to reduce erosion, but the government has been incredibly lax on checking whether conservation plans have been adopted for the most highly erodible acres farmed, and Congress has loosened compliance in general. Worse, lawmakers and some large farm interests are conspiring to eliminate conservation compliance from what has rapidly become the biggest commodity program of all. Meanwhile, conservation programs are going to be cut in a new farm bill.
A lot of farmers – something like 62 percent across the country – don’t accept federal subsidies of any sort. Of those who do, 10 percent collect almost 75 percent of the subsidies. Surveys over several decades show that most farmers believe conservation compliance should be part of the deal if you accept payments. It’s what EWG calls a compact between taxpayers and farmers. As Craig Cox says in the report’s preface, “America’s farmers need a safety net, but so do our rich soil and clean water.”
With more pressure than ever on farmers to produce products for food, fuel and other uses as worldwide population burgeons, the need to protect those resources is greater than ever.
The compact EWG refers to began in 1985, when the farm bill required conservation plans for highly erodible acres in return for subsidies. If conservation plans weren’t put in place, farmers were ineligible for future subsidies. As longtime conservation expert Max Schnepf documents in the report, the results were remarkable: an estimated 40 percent reduction in soil erosion on highly erodible acres in 1992-97.
But then things started coming apart. In 1996, Congress exempted federal crop insurance — in which the federal government generously subsidizes farmers who buy insurance for crop losses — from conservation compliance. It also loosened standards and timeframes for compliance. Further, as Schnepf notes, federal agencies failed to check to see whether plans were in place on a majority of those acres. The report points the finger at the Farm Service Agency for that failure, although it doesn’t exempt other agencies that are supposed to provide assistance, such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Now lobbyists and lawmakers are working on plans to make federal crop insurance the largest subsidy program of all, while making sure it isn’t attached to conservation compliance.
Hold on, says EWP. The group says now, more than ever, the conservation compact needs to be updated, strengthened and re-energized. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask with billions of dollars pouring out in subsidies at a time when farm income is at an all-time high.
With a new farm bill in the works, Schnepf puts it this way: “Taxpayers struck a bargain in 1985, supported by farmers. That ought to be reaffirmed in the next farm bill.”
How about Wisconsin, where farmers received $6.3 billion in subsidies in 1995-2010? A map of the highly erodible acres in Wisconsin shows most are concentrated in the southwest and northeast, areas where erosion carries soil, nutrients and chemicals into streams and other waterways before dumping into the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. Interested readers might want to check out Wisconsin farm subsidies on the EWG website. It documents the types of subsidies and where they’re going. And a short column doesn’t do justice to Schepf’s important report. That can be found on the Environmental Working Group website, too.
February 28, 2012
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Bill Berry is a FightingBob.com contributing editor who lives in Stevens Point and writes columns for the Capital Times and other publications. | <urn:uuid:e8ba755c-05dc-45e1-b68d-b3ad84b90770> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fightingbob.com/article.cfm?articleID=1440 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942693 | 859 | 2.625 | 3 |
The Greenland Creek property consists of 247 claims (15,000 acres) located 30km north of Kimberley, in southeastern British Columbia. Initial drilling on the property was carried out in 1996 by the Eagle Plains/Miner River joint-venture (now merged), and consisted of 5 drillholes totalling approximately 1800' (550m). Drilling completed in early November of 1997 consisted of 7 shallow holes comprising a total of 2000' (600m). All 7 holes encountered base-metal mineralization and alteration assemblages associated with sedex deposits. Numerous thin stratabound sulphide bands were intersected, some of which display continuity over 60m, and are open down-dip and along strike.
This property is currently optioned to Mineral Metals Group (MMG) which is part of the Minmetals Resources Limited group of companies (HKEx: 1208); MMG is the third largest zinc producer in the world and operates a portfolio of world-class base metal mining operations, development projects and exploration projects. Operating mines include the Century mine in Queensland, Australia's largest open pit zinc mine; the Golden Grove underground mine in Western Australia and the Rosebery underground mine in Tasmania, both of which produce zinc, copper, lead and precious metals; and the Sepon gold and copper operations in Lao. Development projects include the Dugald River zinc, lead and silver deposit in north western Queensland. In Canada, MMG is focussed on development of the Izok Lake polymetallic deposit in Nunavut, as well as systematic exploration in the area of the High Lake and Izok Lake projects. Target commodities include copper, zinc-lead and nickel.
Updated December 19, 2011
Greenland Creek - Project Details [PDF]
Greenland Creek Geology Map [PDF]
Dec19, 2011 - Airborne Geophysical Summary
Sep 9, 2011 - Major Geophysics Commence
Aug 4, 2011 - MMG options Findlay and Dode
Mar 8, 2011 - MMG signs LOI to option Findlay
Aug 23, 2007 - Drilling Commences
Sept 7, 2000 - Drilling Programs Completed
Jun 28, 2000 - Drilling Commences
Nov 19, 1999 - Exploration Program Completed
Jul 22, 1999 - Kennecott Begins Exploration
Feb 2, 1999 - Option Agreement Executed
Jan 12, 1999 - Findlay Drilling Yeilds Results | <urn:uuid:094328a2-e391-418a-97c9-e8f67a9106e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eagleplains.ca/projects/bc/greenlandcreek/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90304 | 490 | 1.8125 | 2 |
New Zealand recorded its biggest-ever net loss of migrants to Australia in 2011, underlining the appeal of life across the Tasman, where wages are higher, jobs more plentiful and living standards are superior.
A net outflow of 36,900 migrants was recorded last year, according to Statistics New Zealand. The net result was made up of 51,100 departures for Australia and 14,200 arrivals from Australia. Most of the migrants in both directions were New Zealanders.
The overall net loss of migrants in 2011 was 1,900, the largest since a net 4,400 left in the 12 months ended August 31, 2001. The net loss in 2011 was made up of 84,200 permanent and long-term arrivals and 86,000 departures.
In the month of December there was a net outflow of 1,000 migrants, compared to a net inflow of 300 in the same month of 2010.
Departures of kiwis to Australia made up the biggest contribution. There was a net gain of 900 migrants from the UK last month, slowing from a net 1,200 in the same month a year earlier.
The government has been tracking permanent and long-term migration since April 1921 and reached its highest annual net loss in the 12 months ended July 1979, when the outflow was 43,600.
Short-term visitors to New Zealand rose 5 per cent to a record 364,200 in December typically the busiest month of the year because of Christmas, the New Year and summer holidays.
Visitors from Australia rose 10,200, with 7,800 of that made up of arrivals of Australia-based New Zealanders. Visitors from China rose by 4,200, from Singapore were up 1,700, from Malaysia up 1,200 and from the UK declined 1,400.
Annual visitor arrivals rose 3 per cent to 2.601 million, the first time the number has surpassed 2.6 million. The Rugby World Cup was cited among reasons for the increase.
Some 6 per cent more kiwis headed off on short-term overseas trips in December, for a total of 218,900, the second-highest ever recorded for a month after July 2011, when there were 231,600 trips. | <urn:uuid:c1e40f0f-937c-4903-bd23-f1ecfe4e9ab6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nzherald.co.nz/tourism-leisure-industries/news/article.cfm?c_id=95&objectid=10783162 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967537 | 454 | 2.265625 | 2 |
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Chicken soup may be good for the soul, but is it worth its salt in fending off seasonal lurgies such as cold and flu?
Ah-ah-ah-you-betchoo. How? Studies show a bowl of chicken broth can thin mucous secretions, as well as imparting a helpful dose of carbohydrate to offset flu-fuelled lethargy.
Bestie dropping around with a pot? Ask her to throw in extra veg to get your vitamins up, and request a medium salt count to help regulate your body’s fluid levels. | <urn:uuid:982947a2-7461-4df0-938d-e771d3b46e2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.womenshealthandfitness.com.au/health-beauty/health-advice/458-flu-fighters-chicken-soup | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91292 | 138 | 1.664063 | 2 |
This spring has been cool and wet, leading to slow emergence of leaves on many shade trees. This combination of favorable weather conditions and slow leaf maturity created ideal conditions for development of anthracnose disease on several common shade trees.
In short, the term anthracnose refers to a symptom that causes dark blotching and often leaf distortion. Defoliation (leaf drop) often occurs during severe infections. The disease often is not fatal, and a new flush of foliar growth immediately follows. Causal fungi may also infect twigs and branches, which develop into cankers and girdle stems.
Anthracnose diseases are not caused by the same fungi. In fact, causal pathogens are quite host specific, meaning that the anthracnose pathogen on dogwood will not infect ash, etc. Symptom appearance and severity differ with each host and with climatic conditions.
The fungal pathogens that cause anthracnose diseases have similar life cycles. Spore production occurs in spring during periods of rain; without rain, sporulation (spore production) is reduced and spore dissemination (spread) is not possible. Anthracnose fungi sporulate in spring as deciduous tree leaves emerge. Mature leaves are resistant to infection, but slow emergence in spring exposes tender leaves to fungal spores for an extended period of time.
Ash anthracnose. Common symptoms include brown blotches (Fig1) along leaf edges. Leaf drop often results, and then new leaves soon emerge. Causal fungus, Discula umbrinella.
Dogwood anthracnose. Leaf spots, leaf blight, and lower branch dieback may occur. The disease is most commonly observed on trees growing in shaded locations. This disease can lead to severe cankering, tree decline, and ultimately tree death. Causal fungus, Discula destructiva.
Maple anthracnose. Symptoms begin as leaf spots (Fig 2) and may progress into shoot blight and shoot cankers. Leaf spots with brown, somewhat angular symptoms may be confused with tar spot (spots are round and black). Symptom development and susceptibility vary with tree species, but lesions often follow veins. Causal fungi, Discula sp. and Kabatiella apocrypta.
Oak anthracnose. Not commonly observed in Kentucky. Irregular brown spots develop on leaf tips and along veins. Causal fungus, Apiognomonia quercina.
Sycamore anthracnose. Young, expanding leaves develop irregular dark, necrotic blotching centered along leaf veins or edges. These dark blotches may turn tan-colored as the diseased areas of the leaves dry out. Blighting of twigs or shoots may follow. Trees produce new foliage rather quickly, but affected branches may remain crooked (lateral shoots became dominant when terminals were killed). Also affects London plane tree. Causal fungus, Apiognomonia veneta.
For most trees, with the exception of dogwood, anthracnose disease is not lethal. However, repeated defoliation can be stressful to trees. Additionally, persistent rains and disease spread can lead to infection of twigs and branches. Good cultural practices are important to reduce disease:
- Anthracnose is favored by a moist environment. Select a planting site with a sunny eastern exposure to promote rapid foliage drying early in the day.
- Rake and destroy fallen leaves, as they can be a source of inoculum (fungal spores). Do not compost.
- Remove dead twigs and branches, as fungi can overwinter in dead wood.
- Reduce plant stress when possible.
- Avoid wounding, such as bumping with mowing equipment and making jagged pruning cuts. The dogwood anthracnose pathogen can enter trees through wounds to branches or trunks.
- Maintain mulch 2-3 inches thick over the root zone and beyond the drip line (not against the trunk) to help maintain soil moisture and to protect trees from lawnmower injury.
- Protect trees from drought. Water at least once a week during hot dry months using soakers or drip irrigation. Avoid overhead sprinklers; wet foliage favors sporulation and infection.
- Do not transplant dogwood trees from the wild, as they may be infected with anthracnose fungi. Purchase healthy trees from a reputable nursery.
- Diagnose and treat insect and disease problems as soon as possible.
- Plant disease resistant dogwoods such as C. florida 'Appalachian Spring' or oriental dogwoods (Cornus kousa) for high risk sites, such as those with heavy shade and nearby diseased trees.
- Fungicides are often not recommended. They can be costly and it is difficult to effectively cover large trees. Commercial nurseries, on the other hand, should protect trees with fungicides. Dogwood that are threatened by anthracnose may benefit from early spring fungicide applications.
For more specifics on these anthracnose diseases, see
Dogwood Anthracnose http://www.ca.uky.edu/agcollege/plantpathology/ext_files/PPFShtml/PPFS-OR-W-6.pdf
Anthracnose Diseases of Shade Trees http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/ppa/ppa17/ppa17.pdf | <urn:uuid:c7aa0bda-094b-427d-b99f-84e103fb067e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nicolewarduk.blogspot.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934409 | 1,119 | 3.4375 | 3 |
In time for Valentine’s Day, the Archive of American Television opens its vault to find out what our interviewees had to say about some of TV’s classic relationships:
Writer Sam Denoff on “That Girl” – Here were these two people who were in love, which made the show work. People remember more about Donald and Ann Marie than all the things that she got into, which is the secret of all the great shows. “All in the Family,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Honeymooners,” “I Love Lucy” were all love stories….
I don’t think any episode mentioned, “Shall we do it?” It wasn’t if they did or didn’t — it wasn’t important.
There was a responsibility to each other that made for the comedy. “I want to do something, but will he or she be mad?” That’s why marriage works, because it’s a comedy.
Actress Jean Stapleton on “All in the Family” — On the surface, Archie was that incredible, ignorant bigot — but Edith saw more than that. Edith was in love with this man. We had some tender moments that were dramatized, perhaps more off-camera…The whole substance of their marriage is something that was probably very sweet.
Actress Tyne Daly on keeping it real with Mary Beth Lacey’s husband on “Cagney & Lacey” — We weren’t beautiful, and we weren’t invested in being beautiful…. It was an idealized marriage, but it was a blue-collar marriage. They weren’t the folks on The Hill, they were the folks on the couch. And they conflicted nicely. They fought fair.
Producer Aaron Spelling on “Starsky and Hutch”– We said many times, it was the first heterosexual [all-male] love affair on television. Paul Michael Glaser’s character loved hamburgers, all that jazz, and David Soul liked French food. They disagreed about everything, but they were really terrific together. It was their relationship more than the cases. It had lots of humor in it. It wasn’t just car chases.
Actress Isabel Sanford on the love between “The Jeffersons” — Louise kept George in tow. That’s how it lasted that long. George really loved Louise. He was hotheaded, but he listened to her. Whether he thought he had the last word or not, she had the last word. That’s how that marriage lasted as long as it did. Nobody would put up with George like Louise!
Actress Suzanne Pleshette on the mature love of “The Bob Newhart Show”– Bob and Emily Hartley were a unique couple, something that had never been on television. First, we were a married couple who loved each other. We did not denigrate each other. We were partners; we were equals. We were smart and both working. There were no children to teach us lessons. Howard, our next-door neighbor, was our child, in effect.
We were obviously sexual. I’m very demonstrative, [and] Bob hates that [but] he was obliged to endure it, and that became something wonderful about our relationship.
Creator Phil Rosenthal on why “Everybody Loves Raymond,” including Debra — People say Debra’s so mean to him. But we always felt [that] she’s justified, she has every right to yell at him. She’s doing it all, and she doesn’t get a break.
When we analyze it, what does keep a couple together? I think what… keeps us with that other person more than anything, is not the physical; it’s the common sense of humor. It’s that you laugh at what I say and I laugh at what you do and we both find the same things funny….
I feel like it’s never really mentioned, but Debra loves Ray because he’s fun…. Comedy’s conflict — but every once in a while, he makes her laugh. And you get it. | <urn:uuid:021daee1-d8a9-462f-9115-7f3028bacb52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emmytvlegends.org/blog/?tag=everybody-loves-raymond | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987351 | 909 | 1.5625 | 2 |
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The Power of Solitude: Why You Should Spend More Time Alone
Posted By Mark Sisson On March 24, 2011 @ 9:42 am In Personal Improvement,Stress | 132 Comments
I consider myself a pretty social person, but I’ll admit I need my “cave” time – those periodic hours away from everyone and most everything. After a long and compact business trip, a joint vacation with extended family or friends, the ruckus of the holidays, or a week of house guests, I hit my threshold – beyond which I slip into an irritable, irascible version of myself. Usually my wife catches it before I do and gently reminds me to retreat for a time until I’m fit for society again. After a brief self-imposed seclusion (usually a day of hiking ), I’m as good as new. In short, a bit of regular solitude keeps me civilized.
Last week The Boston Globe ran a piece called “The Power of Lonely: What We Do Better without Other People Around .” The article mentioned a number of recent studies that underscore the need to go it alone once in a while. Solo time, the article explains, is apparently good for the brain as well as the spirit. New research suggests that we remember information better when we go it alone. Even as subjects sat back to back unable to see one another, the mere suggestion that the other person was performing the same task was enough to diminish recall. The researchers explain that we’re inherently “distracted” and “’multitasking’” in the presence of others – attuned to their responses as well as the task at hand.
Sociologists from New York University and University and Virginia have offered the same conclusion . Their research, detailed in the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, showed that students who studied solo had better recall and got better grades than students who did their studying with a group.
The Globe article also cited collaborative research by Christopher Long and the National Forest Service examining the nature and potential benefit of solitude. In contrast to our society’s stigmatization of seclusion, Long’s survey showed that subjects more often than not had a positive view of their alone time. Later, unmentioned research by Long also found an interesting, gender-based pattern in how people seek their solitude. Women in the study showed an inclination toward finding solitude at home, while men sought alone time outdoors.
Research related to adolescents’ experience of solitude offers confirmation that solitude makes an essential contribution to development and mental health. Although the teenagers in the study didn’t describe alone time as a positive experience, the majority reported feeling better afterward. Furthermore, the study showed that “kids who spent between 25 and 45 percent of their nonclass time alone tended to have more positive emotions over the course of the weeklong study than their more socially active peers, were more successful in school and were less likely to self-report depression.”
Clearly, social wellness is an integral part of overall health. Studies have demonstrated the supportive effects of close friendships and frequent social contact. We evolved to throw our lot in with others because, frankly, we had a better chance of making it than if we didn’t. The physiological advantages remain today in the way of better immune function, disease survival, motor skill and cognitive preservation, and increased longevity. As with anything, however, social well-being is about balance more than absolutes.
Hunter gatherers’ lifestyle undoubtedly supported the chance for solitude in both daily tasks and leisure time . Living in small bands on large stretches of land offered a chance to get away that many of us in large cities likely crave. With traditions like vision quests, many tribal societies sanctified the power and necessity of solitude. Time away from the tribe is seen as a test of self-sufficiency as well as a time of growth. The individual returns to the group stronger, wiser – with more to offer the group as a result of the seclusion.
Our modern culture couldn’t be more different. These days we’re also impelled by the technological imperative to stay connected . People take laptops on vacation, their smart phones to bed with them. With the constant access to virtual if not actual socialization, experts wonder if we’ve forgotten how to be completely alone, wholly cut off for a time. Can we truly submerge ourselves in solitude when we’re fighting the urge to check email or Facebook “one more time”?
We use alone time to process our relationships and recalibrate our sense of self. Solitude confirms that we’re more than the sum of our reactions to other people and encounters. In solitude, we return to center. I have a friend who for the last twenty years has gone on a solo camping trip for 10 days in the wilderness. The extended seclusion and physical challenge of living off the land gives her chance to clear away the brush of her life, so to speak. She explains, “I have the chance to listen to my own thoughts during those days. I use the time to reflect on the past year – what’s it’s meant for me – and to simply just be.” Solitude reminds us of what is essential to our identities. It inspires deeper deliberation and allows for the perception of more subtle sentiment. It gives us the chance to take inventory and hear the messages that fill our day. In doing so, we can hone in on what is vital to our well-being and what we will take with us to return to the world.
How do you seek out solitude for yourself? What do those hours mean for you? Share your thoughts, and thanks for reading.
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Primal Blueprint 101: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/
hiking: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/getting-back-to-nature/
The Power of Lonely: What We Do Better without Other People Around: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/03/06/the_power_of_lonely/
offered the same conclusion: http://www.bucknell.edu/x67495.xml
Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226028550/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=marsdaiapp07-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0226028550
survey: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5914.00204/abstract
research: http://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/12656
reported: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1131927
social wellness: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-busy-people-social-naturalistic-wellness/
physiological advantages: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/social-wellness-health-research/
leisure time: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/hunter-gatherer-leisure-time/
stay connected: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/mired-in-media/
Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals: http://primalblueprint.com/products/Primal-Blueprint-Quick-%26-Easy-Meals.html
Copyright © 2009 Mark's Daily Apple. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:6cd9170b-ea18-4e83-ad27-0447e77ec54e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marksdailyapple.com/solitude-health/print/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923236 | 1,724 | 1.554688 | 2 |
"For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come, it will not tarry." (Habakkuk 2:3)
What is meant by ‘but at the end it shall speak and not lie?’— R. Samuel b. Nahmani said in the name of R. Jonathan: Blasted be the bones of those who calculate the end. For they would say, since the predetermined time has arrived, and yet he has not come, he will never come. (Babylonian Talmud: Sanhedrin 97)
Rab said: All the predestined dates [for redemption] have passed, and the matter [now] depends only on repentance and good deeds. But Samuel maintained: it is sufficient for a mourner to keep his [period of] mourning. This matter is disputed by Tannaim: R. Eliezer said: if Israel repents, they will be redeemed; if not, they will not be redeemed. R. Joshua said to him, if they do not repent, will they not be redeemed! But the Holy One, blessed be He, will set up a king over them, whose decrees shall be as cruel as Haman’s, whereby Israel shall engage in repentance, and he will thus bring them back to the right path. Another [Baraitha] taught: R. Eliezer said: if Israel repents, they will be redeemed, as it is written, Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. R. Joshua said to him, But is it not written, ye have sold yourselves for naught; and ye shall be redeemed without money? Ye have sold yourselves for naught, for idolatry; and ye shall be redeemed without money — without repentance and good deeds. R. Eliezer retorted to R. Joshua, But is it not written, Return unto me, and I will return unto you? R. Joshua rejoined — But is it not written, For I am master over you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion? R. Eliezer replied, But it is written, in returning and rest shall ye be saved. R. Joshua replied, But is it not written, Thus saith the Lord, The Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth (see Yeshayahu 53), to him whom the nations abhorreth, to a servant of rulers, Kings shall see and arise, princes also shall worship? R. Eliezer countered, But is it not written, if thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the Lord, return unto me? R. Joshua answered, But it is elsewhere written, And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times and a half’ and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. (Dan 7:25 Dan 12:7) At this R. Eliezer remained silent.
Sanhedrin 97b records two things:
א That the predestined dates for Mashiach’s coming have already passed. (See Sefer Daniel 9)
ב That we should not "calculate" the end, specifically to do with his coming. This is to state in the first point that without a doubt, God has fulfilled the Word He spoke to the prophets concerning Mashiach’s coming. Our difficulty is with the warning (point 2) not to ascertain the time of His coming since it would cause us to despair that He will not come at all. But there is a problem with this because if the predestined time has passed there can only be two options, either God did not keep His word (God forbid), or we missed the Mashiach. In the latter case our despair would not be that Mashiach "will not come at all", but that we missed his revelation.
An essential point to do with the Mashiach’s revelation is Teshuva / Repentance.
It is impossible to properly anticipate and prepare for the Mashiach’s return unless there is an "about-face"; that we turn our hearts back to HaShem, confessing our sin before Him. According to the Rabbis repentance and redemption go hand in hand. In Sanhedrin 97b R. Eliezer and R. Joshua dialogue on repentance to ascertain whether repentance originates from above or below. As their dialogue heightens with each Rabbi answering verse for verse, R. Joshua settles the debate with a scripture reference to do with the date of Mashiach’s coming. Moreover, the conclusion leaves off that repentance comes from above, from HaShem. It also serves to show us that both repentance and redemption originate from God. What are the implications of R. Joshua’s answer if the question to do with the origin of repentance can be answered with scripture to do with Mashiach’s date of coming? It means that the same proof with which we prove that repentance is from above also must apply to the scriptures of predestined dates of Mashiach’s arrival – that they should be interpreted as they are stated. In other words, the origin of Teshuva is proved with the surety of a prescribed date for Messianic redemption. It is another sign that redemption and repentance are closely associated since one is proof for the other. According to R. Joshua repentance is made certain on the certainty of the dates of prediction in the Hebrew Scriptures. Therefore if the dates are certain, and repentance certain, Mashiach has already come for the Jewish people according to the predestined dates in scripture referred to by Rab in Sanhedrin 97b.
Since we have proven that Mashiach has already come, what’s left is to admit that it is we who did not recognize Mashiach when he came- not that God had not sent him at the prescribed time. But R. Eliezer could not be considered entirely wrong who tried to prove that repentance comes from below, since his scripture references are also words that HaShem has spoken. I.e. “Return unto me, and I will return unto you “. Indeed, knowing that Mashiach already came may be a stepping stone towards repenting. It is true that Teshuva originates from God but it comes down to us – where we have to deal with it. Once we are faced with having to repent we must agree with HaShem or else we are rejecting Him.
Consider the words of Maran Yeshua HaMashiach:
Yochanan: 5:24 “Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
Yochanan 7:16 “Yeshua therefore answered them; "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.”
12:44-45 “Yeshua cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. He who sees me sees Him who sent me.”
Yochanan 14:24 “He who doesn’t love me doesn’t keep my words. The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.”
Since we know that Yemot HaMashiach (days of Mashiach) has already started (close to 2000 years ago according to rabbinical calculations), then the logical question that we can ask is: How can we have Yemot HaMashiach without Mashiach? To sum up what we’ve been saying; two Rabbis’ argue about whether repentance is originated from above or below. The argument is settled when R. Joshua states that repentance must be from above, citing that redemption (the Mashiach) comes after a fixed time.
Therefore, the fixed time must stand or repentance doesn’t originate from God. I.e. God doesn’t initiate anyone to repent. This is false which means that the prescribed dates for Mashiach’s coming stand. Hence, the Mashiach has already come and we have only to repent and believe in Him.
Yochanan 6:40 “This is the will of the one who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in him, should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."
For Further Iyun: HaShem’s 7,000 year redemptive plan teaches and reveals how individuals progress from spiritual darkness to spiritual life and rest. These times go from lawlessness to order, from Adam to Mashiach. These times are divided in 4 parts: 2000 – Tohu = desolation (no Torah) 2000 – Torah = Instruction (Days of Torah) 2000 – Yemot Mashiach = Days of the Messiah 1000 – Athid Lavo – The future = Mashiach’s Kingdom Olam Haba – The world to come – Eternity. These as well are divided in 3 parts: Olam Hazeh = The present world / age, Athid Lavo = world to come (Mashiach’s Kingdom), Olam Haba = The world to come (Eternity) Time is going forward to the past. That which was is that which shall be (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The world to come is seen as being like the Garden of Eden. Time is going forward in a circle.
Tags: appointed time, babylonian talmud, bible, bones, Defining Messianic Judaism, eliezer, good deeds, haman, holy temple, idolatry, Israel, Jewish space, jonathan, joshua, kingdom, Leadership, mdash, Messianic, Messianic Jewish, Messianic Judaism, money, mourner, nature of God, naught, nbsp, rab, Redemption, remnant of israel, repentance, sanhedrin, son of man, Torah, Yeshua, zion
More Related Articles: | <urn:uuid:c46ea7ca-c20b-4859-bbd4-b627b9ba400f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bethaderech.com/prophet-daniel-and-mashiach/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95358 | 2,213 | 2.4375 | 2 |
GUNNISON — For many, the concept of Colorado salmon fishing remains an enigma. We're 1,000 miles from the Pacific, after all, sitting well over a mile above sea level at the places where our particular version of landlocked sockeye salmon called kokanee thrive.
Yet, with nearly 50 years of residency under their gills, kokanee have established populations in more than 25 locations across Colorado and ought to be on every angler's hit list when it comes to spirited sport fishing.
There are closer places to find salmon fishing from the Front Range, including Lake Granby, Williams Fork Reservoir, Wolford Mountain Reservoir and Green Mountain Reservoir (and the surrounding rivers), but the epicenter of the kokanee community, hands down, has been Blue Mesa Reservoir on the upper Gunnison River since fish stocking began there in 1965.
As the state's largest kokanee fishery, Blue Mesa accounts for 60 percent of the overall egg production statewide. At one point, more than 1 million kokanee lived in the reservoir, now curtailed to about 280,000 due to predation by voracious lake trout introduced to the impoundment.
Developing the salmon fishery at Blue Mesa remains a priority for wildlife officials, however, bolstered by a record egg take last fall of 11 million eggs from salmon swimming the 20 miles upstream to Roaring Judy Hatchery on a bank of the East River. Biologists have increased the number of kokanee fry released into the reservoir by about 500,000 in each of the past three years, placing some 3.1 million fingerlings this year into the East River and another 300,000 directly into Blue Mesa.
Such news bodes well for the 80 percent of fishermen who visit the reservoir in pursuit of keeper kokanee (the limit is 10 fish in still water), rainbow and brown trout. Even the minority of lake trout fishermen benefit from the abundant food supply.
But because of the innate mapping imprint wired into all salmon, it's Gunnison and East River fishermen who may make the most of the stocking program, as 4-year-old fish migrate upstream every fall to their birthplace. Thousands upon thousands of salmon traveling upriver translate to the best sort of shoulder soreness a catch-and-release freshwater fisherman can fathom.
"You know when you hook one, that's for sure," said Spencer Hemker, a guide with the Gunnison River Fly Shop in Gunnison (970-641-2930). "Catching them early in the spawning run is especially fun. They're still fresh, and if they're in the river at that point, they've probably never been hooked. So they fight really hard."
Aside from the pods of fish stacked up alongside the hatchery, locating migrating salmon can be a fisherman's biggest challenge. Often they'll pass for reddish-colored rocks sitting beneath shallow riffles, only recognizable as fish when they move against the current or randomly breech the surface.
The same can hold true even after the fish are hooked, remaining parked like a snagged stone on the river bottom until the realization of the hook set leads to the buzz of line peeling off a reel.
Debate rages over lure preference and whether the fish fixated on spawning will even attempt to eat, but it's difficult to argue against a bright-colored egg pattern alongside a heavily weighted nymph. Hook sets should be aggressive in order to penetrate a thick, toothy jawbone, and drags set tight.
Some reason that females are caught more often in the mouth as they are duped into moving a spilled egg back to the nest. A corresponding theory holds that males are often snagged by the tail as they attempt to fertilize a fisherman's fake egg.
"They do weird things," Hemker said of the peculiar fish that lure in obsessed anglers every fall. And that is quite all right.
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993, firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:c7dabcd3-1ebb-4a46-aa00-e1cdf8ab8d80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/willoughby/ci_21787698/scott-willoughby-kokanee-salmon-plentiful-colorado-worth-effort | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944063 | 834 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Supporting Struggling Students with Rigorous Instruction
Presenter Robyn R. Jackson's course teaches educators specific strategies for supporting struggling students without lowering standards. Beginning with an explanation of why students typically struggle in school, the course explores acceleration strategies designed to actually prevent problems with progressive intervention strategies that directly address common issues and how to quickly get students back on track plus remediation techniques to target specific areas and prepare students for summative assessments. The course covers four stages of rigorous learning: acquisition, application, assimilation, and adaptation. Teachers will learn how to support students through each stage, learn specific instructional and support strategies for increasing students' capacity to engage in rigorous learning experiences, explore ways to increase the rigor of their own courses, and assessment strategies that extend students' rigorous learning throughout the unit. Finally, participants will develop a proactive intervention plan that supports students' rigorous learning before the lesson, during learning, and through the summative assessment.
After completing this course, educators will know:
- How to identify material students are struggling with and how to apply a variety of intervention strategies to help them.
- The difference between rigorous and un-rigorous instruction and assessment strategies.
- How to apply rigorous instruction and assessment strategies to their lessons and units.
Student Learning Outcomes:
After completing this course, educators will apply the following skills:
- Anticipate students’ struggles and develop proactive plans to preclude those struggles.
- Identify struggling students and apply a variety of intervention and remediation strategies to help them.
- Employ rigorous instruction and assessment strategies through all stages: acquisition, application, assimilation, and adaptation. | <urn:uuid:cb6e0f23-6317-47e2-8f93-02aa6126337f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ndsu.edu/dce/courses/info/7006 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91078 | 334 | 3.53125 | 4 |
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Just days before fleeing Tunisia, the embattled leader went on national television to promise 300,000 new jobs over two years.
Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak did much the same Saturday as riots gripped Cairo and other cities: offering more economic opportunities in a country where half the people live on less than $2 a day.
The pledges-under-siege have something else in common: an acknowledgment that the unprecedented anger on Arab streets is at its core a long-brewing rage against decades of economic imbalances that have rewarded the political elite and left many others on the margins.
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- What you need to know about the crisis in Egypt
With startling speed — less than two months since the first protests in Tunisia — underscored the wobbly condition of the systems used by some Arab regimes to hold power since the 1980s or earlier. The once formidable mix of economic cronyism and hard-line policing — which authorities sometime claim was needed to fight Islamic hard-liners or possible Israeli spies — now appears under serious strain from societies pushing back against the old matrix.
Mubarak and other Arab leaders have only to look to Cairo's streets: a population of 18 million with about half under 30 years old and no longer content to have a modest civil servant job as their top aspiration.
One protester in Cairo waved a hand-drawn copy of his university diploma amid clouds of tear gas and shouted what may best sum up the complexities of the domino-style unrest in a single word: Jobs.
"They are taking us lightly and they don't feel our frustration," said another protester, homemaker Sadat Abdel Salam. "This is an uprising of the people and we will not shut up again."
The narrative of economic injustice has surrounded the protests from the beginning.
"The regimes and the leaders are the ones under fire, but it's really about despair over the future," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "The faces of this include the young man with a university degree who cannot find work or the mother who has trouble feeding her family."
Tunisia's mutiny that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was touched off by a struggling 26-year-old university graduate who lit himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit and vegetable cart in December. Apparent copycat self-immolations quickly spread to Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere.
In Yemen, the poorest nation on the Arabian peninsula, sporadic riots have forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh into quick economic concessions, including slashing income taxes in half and ordering price controls on food and basic goods.
On Friday in Jordan, thousands of marchers clogged streets to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai and call for measures to control rising prices and unemployment. Many chanted: "Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians."
King Abdullah II also has tried to dampen the fury by promising reforms, and the prime minister announced a $550 million package of new subsidies for fuel and staple products like rice, sugar, livestock and liquefied gas used for heating and cooking.
What feeds the flames is common across much of the Arab world: young populations, a growing middle class seeking more opportunities and access to websites and international cable channels, such as Al-Jazeera, which have eroded the state's hold on the media.
There are no clear signs on whether more protests could erupt.
Syria's authoritarian regime remains in firm control and has taken gradual steps to open up the economy. Rulers in the wealthy Gulf states have the luxuries of relatively small populations that often receive generous state benefits and other largesse. Kuwait's emir, for example, pledged this month 1,000 dinars ($3,559) and free food coupons for each citizen to mark several anniversaries, including the 1991 U.S.-led invasion that drove out Saddam Hussein's army.
But there have been stirrings of discontent in North Africa. Earlier this month, security forces in Algeria clashed with opposition activists staging a rally apparently inspired by neighboring Tunisia. In Mauritania, a businessman died after setting himself ablaze in a protest against the government.
A state-backed newspaper in Abu Dhabi, The National, ran interviews from four men from across the Middle East describing their trouble finding work. One 33-year-old Syrian, who has an English literature degree from Damascus University, complained he cannot find a teaching job or afford to get married.
"I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play 'Waiting for Godot,' which I studied during my degree," Khaled Kapoun was quoted as saying. "I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along."
Even high Arab officials have expressed unusual candor following Tunisia's upheaval.
Earlier this month, the head of the Arab League warned that the "Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment and general recession."
"The Tunisian revolution is not far from us," Amr Moussa said in his opening address to the 20 Arab leaders and other representatives of Arab League members gathered in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "The Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration."
Moussa, who is Egyptian, called for an Arab "renaissance" aimed at creating jobs and addressing shortcomings in society.
But at the Global Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, some experts said an education overhaul is needed in the region to shift from emphasis on state jobs to more dynamic private sector demands.
"Many people have degrees but they do not have the skill set," Masood Ahmed, director of the Middle East and Asia department of the International Monetary Fund, said earlier this week.
"The scarce resource is talent," agreed Omar Alghanim, a prominent Gulf businessman. The employment pool available in the region "is not at all what's needed in the global economy."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:122a07c7-d76a-4219-929a-ff867ff15ce9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbcnews.com/id/41338881/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/41533270 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95485 | 1,314 | 1.945313 | 2 |
Bangui — Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has described the Central African Republic (CAR) as being in a state of "chronic medical emergency" and is calling on donor governments and development agencies to provide additional funding and take urgent action.
The NGO sounded the alarm in a 13 December report, Central African Republic: A Silent Crisis based on a countrywide survey conducted over the past 18 months.
According to the report, CAR has one of the high mortality rates in the world, in some areas three times over the emergency threshold of one death per 10,000 inhabitants per day. The country also has the second lowest life expectancy in the world, at 48 years. This situation is mainly attributed to conflict, displacement and an absence of basic healthcare provision.
"The health system has been eroded by years of political and military instability and has massive structural problems... Access to basic healthcare is extremely limited and all these factors contribute to high mortality rates," says Olivier Aubry, head of the MSF mission in CAR.
Malaria is the country's leading health problem and primary cause of death, with every inhabitant infected at least once a year. MSF has a shortage of essential drugs, while the state's failure to adhere to a policy of providing free malaria treatment to all children under five is a major contributing factor to the disease's mortality rate. The NGO recommends a widespread distribution of treated nets.
About 11,000 people die every year from HIV/AIDS; the prevalence rate is 5.9 percent in the 15-49 age group. A total of 15,000 patients are receiving antiretroviral drugs out of approximately 45,000 people and 14,000 children needing urgent assistance, according to the National Committee for the fight against AIDS (CNLS).
In 2011, MSF was providing treatment to just fewer than 1,000 HIV patients. The report said fewer than 20 percent of the 19,000 people thought to have tuberculosis, the latent form of which is often activated by HIV infection, were receiving treatment and that this prevalence rate was "certainly an under-estimate given the lack of diagnostic facilities in most of the country". National programmes to deal with HIV and tuberculosis are ineffective, mainly due to shortage of drugs and funds from the government and international organizations.
"We are aiming towards the Millennium Development Goals and recognize the need to make more effort to achieve these goals, which implies the need for more financial resources and a coordinated aid effort," said Modeste Hoza, director of communications at the Ministry of Health.
"In developing countries it is difficult to mobilize resources and take urgent action, which is why we are asking for support from external partners. In principle, 15 percent of the budget should be dedicated to health, but in reality only 9 percent is. When it comes to disbursements, what is disbursed is not what is allocated," he said.
"This report has positives and negatives to it. Negative, because when we ring the alarm, we give the impression that nothing is being done. Positive, because we can get attention, take action and move forward," he added.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ] | <urn:uuid:7a19801c-7941-4f25-8131-34bf687f61af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allafrica.com/stories/201112141201.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965668 | 654 | 2.125 | 2 |
Jun 8, 2011
After more than a week of intense public pressure, following the horrific evidence provided by Animals Australia and RSPCA Australia that aired on Four Corners, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a suspension of all live cattle exports to Indonesia.
However, this is not a permanent ban. Minister for Agriculture, Senator Joe Ludwig has stated that he will be working with the live export industry with the aim of resuming the trade within six months.
WSPA has rejected this band-aid solution.
Jessica Borg, Campaign Manager at WSPA said: “There is simply no such thing as a humane live export trade. We’re appalled by the Minister’s continued support for this cruel industry; one which Australians do not want.”
The investigation which aired last Monday on Four Corners is sadly, just one example of the cruelty inherent in the Australian live animal export trade. After almost twenty years and millions of Australian dollars, no significant improvement to animal welfare has been made. And yet Minister Ludwig is relying on the industry itself again to make a difference in over 120 Indonesian abattoirs in just six months.
Jessica added: “Instead of wasting Australian tax payers’ money trying to improve the inherently cruel live export trade, Ludwig should be focussing on our local, higher value and more humane chilled meat trade.”
Whether it is cattle shipped to Indonesia or sheep shipped to the Middle East, the only way to fully protect our animals is to process them here within Australia.
WSPA and thousands of our supporters from around the world are calling on the Australian Government to take meaningful action by announcing an end date for live animal exports to all countries.
With continued pressure, we can make a real difference for our Australian animals. | <urn:uuid:49f80dca-43a4-4c07-b62d-ba91f23a90e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wspa.org.au/latestnews/2011/WSPA_rejects_temporary_suspension_of_live_cattle_exports.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937666 | 364 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) Arizona chapter is sponsoring a conference in Tucson on September 20 and 21, so save the dates now and register online for the Saturday all day event (click here). Friday night talk will be free, but it costs $35 for the Saturday workshops/conference.
Friday, Sept. 20
Unisource Building Conference Room
88 East Broadway in Tucson.
Eric Klinenberg, an inspiring, nationally known speaker (author of the critically acclaimed book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago) will hold a public talk.
(Free and open to the public)
Saturday, Sept. 21
7:30 AM until 4:30 PM
Tucson Convention Center
The Purpose of this Conference:
This conference is being organized by the Arizona Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility with the support of a coalition of co-sponsoring community and national organizations as well as local leaders. The purpose is to build new and fortify existing cross-cultural, community, and governmental partnerships to educate and engage community action to address the anticipated public health impacts of climate change in the Southwest.
Why It’s Very Important:
Extreme weather events in the Southwestern U.S. and adjacent Borderlands are on the rise and with them, higher incidences of health-related impacts such as heat stress, newly emerging infectious diseases, asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Moreover, as the “hottest, driest part of the United States,” our region is already experiencing longer and more intense heat waves and (the threat of wide scale power blackouts), a “dramatic spike” in forest fires, severe dust storms, and changes in the amount and timing of rainfall and seasonal snowmelt that threatens water resources and food security. While these events are alarming, communities in the Southwest are preparing for these risks and other impacts outlined in the new National Climate Assessment through planning and prevention strategies aimed at reducing our vulnerability to extreme weather and local climate impacts.
Who Should Attend:
Community and neighborhood leaders, formal and informal educators, citizen activists, government and non-profit agency personnel;
Climate scientists, and health professionals in the Southwestern U.S. Northern Mexico, and First Nations who have an interest in community based action for preparedness to develop more resilient neighborhoods, towns, cities, borders regions, and tribal lands;
National leaders and members of PSR, environmental groups, and policy making agency representatives.
The Conference Experience: see detailed agenda online (click here).
1. Actively address the issue of the public health challenges in the face of climate change in the Southwest through the offering of distinguished speakers and facilitated stakeholder workshops designed to encourage and develop new leaders (and to support and re-energize existing leaders) in building innovative community organizing strategies for climate change adaptation.
2. Sustain the work of these community leaders into the future by providing networking opportunities, resources (see deliverables below), and mentoring.
3. Offer a replicable model for engaging communities in climate adaptation throughout the nation
To provide a public forum for facilitated stakeholder input into the development of six strategic plans for building resilience into these areas of climate risk vulnerability:
Assuring Local and Regional Food Security,Availability, and Safety
Integrating Health Care, Emergency Medical Response and Disaster Preparedness
Promoting Mental Well-being and and Spiritual Health
Educating Our Children and Schools for New Environmental Problem Solving
Building Resilience in Our Cultural Diversity with Cross Cultural and Cross Border Cooperation
Organizing to Strengthen and Support Our Most Vulnerable Community Members
A summary report of the conference that includes an evaluation of how well we met our objectives based on a survey of stakeholder responses on knowledge, attitudes, and overall satisfaction with the conference
Distribution of this report to all attendees via a follow up email and link a to a web resource
A resource manual in a downloadable PDF format
Follow-up 3-hour facilitated workshop with senior government personnel to support the integration of the resource manual and stakeholder input into planning and preparedness for climate change in Tucson and Pima County.
I heard Dr. Barbara Warren, MPH one of the organizers of this conference speak at Drinking Liberally a few weeks ago, and she talked about those six working groups above on 1) preparedness/emergencies 2) mental health & well-being 3) food & water security 4) education of children 5) vulnerable populations 6) cross-cultural concerns & the border w/ Mexico. Contact Dr. Warren is you are interested in serving on any of these groups at email@example.com. I honestly think that we in this Southwest desert need to learn to raise our air conditioning temperature control knob and not “refrigerate” ourselves so much during May to September, as well as plan for wise water use for a growing population.
Register early and save these dates of September 20 and 21 for this “Ready or Hot?” conference. | <urn:uuid:53a60ed2-b907-42b2-be14-4030d3cd1dc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tucsoncitizen.com/community/tag/tucson-convention-center/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925842 | 1,025 | 2 | 2 |
When we think about bookbinding, the first thing we think about is often books. But handmade boxes are a wonderful treasure in their own right. One of our favorite structures, the Clamshell Box, has been used historically to preserve or present documents or photographs. Here at HSS we’ve created clamshells for a variety of purposes. Have a look:
The same box, two different looks and purposes. The first functions as the library box for descriptions of Archery Summit’s finest wines. The second is our own travel-size portfolio.
A personal project, this clamshell box is the home for a sonata written by Molly’s grandfather.
Some variations on the clamshell box. The first shows a box fitted with an internal drawer and an album that fits above. The second is, well, just a really BIG version made to hold a selection of prints for amazing photographer Toni Greaves.
Our friend, photographer Lincoln Barbour, asked us to make a case for his wooden-covered portfolio (created by another company.) A clamshell box designed to coordinate (that includes an attached postcard pocket) works perfectly. | <urn:uuid:8e107e31-eaf9-428c-a346-09e8e5109572> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hsspdx.com/what-about-boxes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950735 | 241 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Who is Estonian Nature Tours?
Estonian Nature Tours (ENT) is a ground tour organiser specialized in Birdwatching and Botanical Tours. Our individual and specialised approach to tourism was developed over a number of years of organising local travel services in Matsalu National Park, before broadening our operations in the spring of 2003 to include visits to a wide variety of nature reserves throughout Estonia. Our mission is to introduce the natural heritage preserved by moderate human activity, to encourage ecological thinking and awareness of nature and to improve local tourist services. Also, ENT has been a
pioneer in developing nature and bird tourism all over Estonia. In the autumn of 2007, we introduced our new offering, “Estonia in Early Spring”, which has proved very popular among our clients. In spring 2008, our oldest tour, „Estonia in Spring“, was accredited with the brand EHE (Quality System Pure and Interesting Estonia). In autumn of 2008 we came out with tours for individual tourists.
ENT supports the yearly Young Conservationist Award through independent NGO Estonian Fund for Nature and also Matsalu Nature Film Festival.
Rarities and records.
Autumn 2008 has been unbelievably long and warm and offered a lot of surprises. In August, 12 Dotterel were in the middle of Estonia and also Terek Sandpiper and Pallid Harrier in the west.
On 26th and 27th September, from Virtsu port, an incredible assembly of Common Cranes (more than 30 000 birds in all) set off for their wintering grounds. Last weeks top sightings have included Desert Whetear, Rose-coloured Starling and Great Grey Owl. Also the number of migrating Barnacle Geese has been bigger then usually. Click here and see the video...
Photo: Valeri Štšerbatõh
On 4-5th October, during the European-wide Birdwatch, Chaffinches (350 000), Barnacle Geese (60 000) and Lapwings (10 000) were the most observed species. Also rarities such as Great Skua, Common Stonechat and Mediterranean Gull were seen. The most interesting highlight was an Alpine Swift which was the first record for Estonia. About 300 birdwatchers took part in the Birdwatch in Estonia.
There were even more surprises involving migrating birds. A very popular Great Spotted Eagle in Estonia named Tõnn, and rung by Estonian ornithologists this year, made the desicion to move to the west not Middle East (or Africa) as usual. After a short stop in Germany (it has been observed there twice before) Tõnn continued his westside story and is resting at the moment in North-east France.
Click here and read more about this popular project...
Winter and Early Spring in Estonia 2008/2009
Year 2009 will be a very good owl year in Estonia because of the high number of rodents. The best time to visit our country for search in owls, woodpeckers and other wintering specialities is March and April. Steller´s Eider is easily observed at their wintering grounds in Estonia from the beginning of January. Why not put together your group and book the most wanted tour now! Group leader can get a 40%. discount .
Photo: Marika Mann
Read also interesting bird observations in Estonia:
Sõrve bird station diary
Tartu Bird Club
Estonian breeding bird atlas
New! Wild photography opportunities in Estonia.
White-tailed Eagle photography in Western Estonia.
Group size: max 4
Period: December – February
Estonian Nature Tours proudly presents the White-tailed Eagle feeding site in Western Estonia established in year 2007. There is a photography hide next to a feeding place giving the opportunity to get very close shots on the Eagles. In Winter 2007/2008 there were at least 20 different White-tailed Eagles visiting the place and during the best days 5-7 individuals landed at the feeding site.
Sometimes single Golden Eagles and Buzzards also appear. The hide is designed for a maximum of two photographers. The best period for White-tailed Eagle photography is in December-January,
but February is also good.
Click here and see the web camera...
Photo: Mati Kose
There are many opportunities for different trips focusing on the wintering birds, observing and photographing with a group size that is more than two people. Despite the short daylight hours such forest species as Black Woodpecker, Nutcracker, Crested Tit, Hazel Grouse, Ural Owl and with very good luck Hawk Owl will be encountered, plus good numbers of arctic waterbirds like Goosander, Long-tailed Duck and Goldeneye in Cape Põõsaspea. And of course the first flocks of Steller’s Eiders at their wintering grounds in Saaremaa island. Read more…
Photo: Jari Peltomäki
Beaver photography in South-Estonia.
Group size: max 3
Period: April – August
We will be delighted to present you a totally new opportunity in Estonia from the year 2009 – the Beaver safaries lead by top specialist of semi-aquatic mammals in Estonia, Remek Meel. „In my further career, whether working at science and monitoring, photographing or filming or lecturing on wildlife and setting out study programmes, all my work has been related to semi-aquatic mammals. These animals are very interesting because of their need for two different environments. Therefore, they are more sensitive than mammals living only in water or mammals living only on land. The beaver is a mammal that greatly changes its surrounding environment through its vital functions, thus creating suitable habitats for many other species. I think we should be pleased to have such a strong population of beavers in Estonia. There is nothing better than spending an evening with beavers and focusing on the world of this mysterious mammal which lives half of its time in water and the other half on land. This is real therapy!“, Remek said.
There are many other opportunities for different trips in this area in Spring focusing on the birds and mammals, observing and photographing with a group size that is more than three people. Such forest bird species as Black and Three-toed Woodpecker, Hazel Grouse, Black Grouse and Ural Owl will be encountered, plus good numbers of mammals such as Wild Boar, Fox and Roe Deer. There are hides designed specifically for the photography of lekking Black Grous and feeding Wild Boar. Read more...
Click here and see the videos...
Photo: Sven Zacek
Photo: Remek Meel
New! Tour packages for individual travellers.
Many of passengers have a particular speciality, be it ornithology, botany, zoology or photography, and are keen to expand their knowledge and experience into new countries by themselves. We are happy to present a new opportunity for individuals to visit Western Estonia with our help.
We have the expertise to discuss your requirements and arrange suitable accommodation and a rental car for your itinerary.
Pickup of rental car is available on arrival at Tallinn (or Riga) Airport Hertz office. In the vehicle there is a general information and map of Estonia, rules of protected species and areas, brochures of Western Estonia nature reserves and directions how to find overnight places confirmed and paid for beforehand. Rental car return will be specified at the time of pickup. We can also provide expert advice from a local birdguide on searching for rare species, and this is available on request. Read more...
Leading European bird magazines visited Estonia
In April and May 2008, European journalists from leading bird magazines visited Estonia. During the FAM-trip, they observed birds in Lääne, Pärnu, Viljandi and Tartu counties, and met with representatives of the Estonian Ornithological Society and the State Nature Conservation Centre. Representatives of the following magazines participated in the trip: Birding World, Birdwatch (UK), Fugle i Felten (Denmark), Der Falke, Vögel, NABU (Germany), Var Fagervärld (Sweden) and Dutch Birding (the Netherlands). The purpose of press trips is to introduce Estonia’s well-preserved nature and attractive bird watching areas. This is extremely important in order to disprove a prevalent prejudice about our service and the state of our road network. In addition, conscientious image design, aided by top journalists, helps to avoid mass tourism and disturbance of our vulnerable species.
The FAM-trip was financed by EU through the programme of Promoting Estonia as a Tourism Destination and organised by Estonian Nature Tours. Well-known Estonian ornithologists, Mati Kose and Margus Ellermaa, guided the trips.
The articles of bird destination possibilities in Estonia will be published in Birdwatch magazine (January 2009), in Fugle i Felten magazine (April 2009) and also in Vögel (June 2009).
Estonian Nature Tours in the Birdfair 2008
On 15-17th of August Estonian Nature Tours participated in British Birdfair for the first time as an exhibitor. Interest in bird trips to Estonia was very high. During those three days at least three hundred visitors asked for more detailed information about Estonia. Visitors were especially intrested in individual tourist packages which is our new product.
Also many tour operators from abroad showed an interest in selling birdwatching and wildlife tours to Estonia through our company and expert guides.
Beside Estonian Nature Tours exhibition stand, Tarvo Valker – chairman of Läänemaa Bird Club made presentation about birdwatching in Estonia in the autumn. He concentrated on arctic waterfowl migration, International Crane Assembly and rarities. Over 100 people attended the presentation.
The interest was very high
Photo: Tarvo Valker
Sustainable and Birdwatching tourism development in Estonia
Estonia is a particularly exciting birdwatching destination because of it’s well-preserved wildlife habitats as well as its perfect location and climate. Our landscapes include habitats for rare birds of prey and our seacoasts for millions of migratory birds.
What are the possibilities for birdwatching and nature tourism in Estonia- as viewed from outside? Is it only a vision or an already functioning reality? Can the image of Estonia be “Green and sustainable”? Is nature tourism hindering or supporting the objectives of nature conservation? What kind of co-operation and networking have to be developed today in order to prevent threats tomorrow? What kind of development activities have to be planned on a national level?
These were the questions asked and partly answered during the successful seminar that took place in Matsalu National Park, 27th of November 2007. The main presenters were the famous tour leader Gerald Broddelez from Belgium and Ulla Matturi from Finland and the seminar was organized by Estonian Nature Tours.
On 8th of September, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves made a two-day visit to the Lääne county, where he met with local government leaders, nature researchers and protectors, local tourism entrepreneurs, and village life and enterprise developers.
At the Matsalu National Park and in conversations with owners of tourist farms, Ilves said that the strength of Lääne county as a tourism region is its unspoiled nature, as well as the birdwatching opportunities and nature tourism more generally.
The Head of State praised Estonian Nature Tours, who promote nature tourism by bringing birdwatchers from Europe to Estonia and thereby introducing Estonia as an extremely interesting country for nature tourism.
The Nature Tourism Seminar, organised by Estonian Nature Tours and financed through by local NGO Terra Maritima, took place on 3th October in Matsalu. The main presenter was famous Finnish nature photographer and Finnature owner Jari Peltomäki. He talked about photo tourism in Finland and gave a lot of examples of how it might be developed in Estonia. "Wild Photography is a very popular occupation in all over the world. Estonia has much more bird species than in Finland and you also have a good position because of the high number of wild animals such as Brown Bears, Wolves and Lynxes. So, you have very good potential to develop nature-photo tourism in the area in the future," said Peltomäki. Jari was very excited about the possibility of Estonia as an Autumn bird destination and spent several days enjoying the Matsalu area.
Photo: Tarvo Valker
On 17-21th November, refresher courses for nature and bird guides took place in Estonia. Courses were organised by Enterprise Estonia. It is the first course run at so high a level and there was competition amongst participants for places. Lectures were in English and Estonian Nature Tours invited our friend Gerald Broddelez from Belgium to lecture. Over the last 17 years he has travelled the globe in search of birds and animals, visiting over 100 countries on all continents, many of them several times. As a cameraman and script writer he has also worked for Belgian television and produced several natural history films. Gerald has lead Birdwatching tours to Estonia through Naturetrek and Estonian Nature Tours from 2004.
Altogether 17 people participated in the training courses which included theorethical lectures about preparation of nature trips, communication with the group and using different kinds of equipment. Nature guide training ended with a practical excursion in the field lead by participants. | <urn:uuid:6ced41a9-5e43-4a8a-8c16-4bf639135627> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.naturetours.ee/uudiskiri/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946895 | 2,802 | 1.742188 | 2 |
My Child's Development
What are your child's language and math skills?
How is your child developing socially?
Answer these questions and more through the Savvy Quiz--designed by a team of experts in the field of early childhood education--to receive a detailed report of your child that gives insight into how he or she is developing.
Based on your child's unique development, we will provide a customized Learning Guide to the very best educational books, toys and activities to spark your little one's imagination.
The Savvy Quiz contains questions relating to children between the ages of 2-6 years old.
There's a reason that kitchens everywhere are adorned with artwork made by preschool children rather than by their parents.
Early language development, experts tell us, is the cornerstone of nearly every aspect of future development, not to mention success in school.
Babies like to put every item within reach into their tiny mouths, just to see how they taste and feel. Toddlers enjoy ripping and breaking things, just to see how they are made.
What is the surest way to a young child's heart? Singing, of course. Add a few dance moves or a musical instrument, and you're in, for sure.
All those hours of fun your child spends playing with shape sorters, puzzles and blocks, putting pennies into his piggy bank, and helping you make cupcakes - guess what?
What's the most essential thing our preschoolers need to learn before walking into their first day of Kindergarten? Well...how to walk into Kindergarten.
From the moment they start waving their little arms, rolling over, and sitting up, our babies are working away on their motor skills.
Remember when our babies didn't know the difference between night and day, and the only place they clamored to go was to mommy or daddy's arms? | <urn:uuid:687bbe2c-b99d-4e6a-97ea-b8e598bbfe60> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.savvysource.com/savvy/quiz.do?pageHeader=children&methodToCall=populateChildRatingDetails | 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 | 0.968082 | 384 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Israel is launching a campaign to adapt the international laws on warfare to a new reality where organisations purposely operate from civilian areas.
They are hoping that the American and British governments, which face similar circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan, can be persuaded to join.
The effort comes in response to the UN Human Rights Council report released last week, which accuses the IDF of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead at the beginning of 2009.
The government officially rejected the investigation, branding it “biased and imbalanced”, but there have been voices within the government saying that it is not so easy to disregard a report authored by one of the world’s leading authorities on the laws of war, Justice Richard Goldstone.
One of the main problems identified by Israeli legal experts is the difficulty in applying the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention on safeguarding of civilians during warfare, drawn up in 1949, to today’s “assymetrical” wars.
“We believe that Israel scrupulously followed the international laws of war during Operation Cast Lead,” said a senior officer in IDF’s attorney general department. “But it would clearly make our operational planning more simple and help us to defend these things afterwards if the laws were updated.
“It needs to become more relevant to a situation where the enemy constantly uses civilians cynically, both as obstacles in the face of our forces and as a potential propaganda tool when non-involved people are killed, as unavoidably happens.”
The Fourth Geneva Convention was convened in the aftermath of the Second World War and addressed a situation in which two sovereign states are at war with each other. The realities of a modern army, confronting a guerilla movement operating from within the civilian population, and using it as a shield, are very different.
Israel hopes that the US and Britain, which are confronting similar circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan, will join in an international effort to launch a reappraisal of these laws.
Minister Yitzhak Herzog has proposed that former Supreme Court President Professor Aharon Barak, currently lecturing at Yale, should lead this initiative, due to his international prestige.
“The world has changed and, with it, international law must change,” says constitutional law expert Dr Aviad Hacohen of the Hebrew University.
“The structure of the law is not static but a dynamic being and every change in the reality of war has to bring about also a change in the laws of war.
“That doesn’t mean that the universal values of ethics and justice change, just that we have to adapt them to a new reality.” | <urn:uuid:b373d4c8-79f5-42f3-bf2b-b9484d462ad4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thejc.com/print/20365 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965026 | 549 | 1.992188 | 2 |
How to tame your sweet tooth
Focus on the benefits of cutting sugar from your diet
It can be difficult at times to maintain your resolve to cut back on sugar. However, try to focus on the benefits you are gaining to help stay motivated. Not only can sugar pile on the pounds and lead to tooth decay, researchers at the University of California Los Angeles found that sugar could alter our ability to learn and remember information, while studies have found that sugar is as damaging and to your body as alcohol and cigarettes. Furthermore, high blood sugar levels can cause a process called glycation which damages the collagen in the skin, leading to saggy skin and wrinkles. | <urn:uuid:29e2ed62-a4d9-4a23-b301-1fa9bc8a6fd3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifestyle.xin.msn.com/en/health/wellbeing/photoviewer.aspx?cp-documentid=250946681&page=4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96681 | 132 | 2.421875 | 2 |
You might wonder…who would argue with Reverend G? But for caregivers who deal with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, arguments sometimes happen. I’ve seen this in my own family.
With her paranoia, Mom often makes up the most elaborate stories. “Someone came into my house and stole my checkbook. Then she took it to the bank, forged my signature and stole all my money.”
This story was of course, ludicrous, but it did not help to say, “No, Mom. That didn’t happen.” She was convinced the story was real and so we argued back and forth about the phantom forger, “Yes, she did,” and “No, she didn’t.”
I’ve learned that instead of arguing, I should ask questions. “Now, Mom, how do you think this person broke into the house? No doorknobs have been broken. No windows are shattered. And how did this person possibly forge your signature when hers is so drastically different?”
By asking questions, Mom is then forced to consider answers rather than arguments. Mom no longer has the ability to reason, so after a few questions she forgets all about the story – until she brings it up again. Then we start all over with more questions.
It takes a bit of practice and perseverance to ask questions instead of arguing. But arguments do nothing to solve the problem and only bring more frustration to both parties. Instead, open-ended questions help everyone settle down and realize that this particular story is not true.
And who of us wants to debate when there’s so little time to just love? It’s so much better to acknowledge that our loved ones have a legitimate concern, treat them with respect and just ask questions.
The Golden Rule of Alzheimer’s is: Treat your loved ones the way you want to be treated in fifty years. | <urn:uuid:98ed794f-24d5-4ee9-a266-4de0db417879> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rjthesman.net/2012/07/28/tip-2-for-caregivers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966769 | 406 | 2.28125 | 2 |
Tentatively planning a grand opening in March, the newly renovated West Point Community Living Center will be a showplace.
A new transitional care unit and therapy gym will be open for those needing rehabilitative therapy.
It is centered on the design to help people return to work or home after debilitating falls and illnesses. It will be available to those in any age group who need some assistance and therapy before returning home.
The 2000 plus square foot addition of therapy gym space will contain strengthening equipment such as a treadmill, weight machines and recumbent bikes.
Transitional Care is an important part of any skilled nursing facility.
Its name “transition” is based on people who go the hospital and are trying to transition back home or to an assisted living facility. Skilled nursing facilities create plans of care along with physicians and other health professionals to help people return home or to work after suffering strokes, heart attacks, knee replacements or other illness or injuries.
Patients admitted to the Transitional Care Unit will receive occupational and physical therapy as needed. The transitional care unit will have all private suites. Occupational therapy is intended to rehabilitate patients so they can return home or back to work.
Physical therapy is designed to increase joint, muscle strength, balance and other physical needs. An occupational therapy area that will include a bistro and bathroom area to retrain people for daily home life after suffering a stroke, heart attack or other illness or injury. The bistro is to help people retrain themselves to be able to cook and clean up afterwards. Especially after a stroke, people need to re-learn many things to help them with day-to-day living.
The bathroom area will help with those who need training such as getting in and out of a bath tub safely. There are many things that never cross the mind of someone who has never had these difficulties. The therapy helps those individuals become independent again when possible and return home or to work.
Construction began in November and is expected to be complete by March, baring inclement weather. | <urn:uuid:7e0a5d23-5f42-4a96-9038-5d17eb5622a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailytimesleader.com/print/8245?quicktabs_2=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958924 | 419 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Editor’s note: This story is related to another story on Wetern’s research in MSA from the point of view of a research students and her work with another MSA patient. You may read the story here.
When Frank Cervone’s doctors told him they thought he had Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and wouldn’t live through Christmas 2011, he replied, “Well, then I better get busy telling people about it and affecting a change!” And that is exactly what he’s done.
Cervone posts on the blog hollywoodrepublican.net and recounted his diagnosis of the disease there…”You know you’re about to have a bad day when the doctor asks if you can wait a few minutes until they see their last patient because they need to talk to you. Your mind is racing to every disease you’ve ever heard of and trying to remember the symptoms to see if they fit what you feel. Then the door opens and the doctor walks in.
“There must be a class in medical school titled: ‘How to Tell a Patient They are Going to Die.’
It goes like this. Pull your stool up real close, lean forward, and speak in four word sentences.
“It’s Multiple System Atrophy.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Frank, you have MSA.”
“There is no treatment.”
Long pause…. “There is no cure.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Wait!! Back up. What did you say? Multiple System Atrophy? MSA? What the hell is MSA? Dying? From something I’ve never even heard of? Dying? I’m 48 years old! There must be a mistake.”
“I am so sorry.”
Cervone suffers from a primarily autonomic version of the disease, which causes the slow and paralyzing shutdown of the body’s major autonomic systems like breathing, organ functions, brain functions and more. He searched far and wide for partners in his quest to learn more about possible treatments and developments in active research, and chose WMU when a personal response from Professor Charles Ide of the Department of Biological Sciences at WMU explained his team’s newest findings. Ide is Gwen Frostic professor of biological sciences and director of the Great Lakes Environmental and Molecular Sciences Center.
Once Cervone heard of Ide’s work, he chose WMU as the recipient of funds raised by a 5-mile run in Dayton, Ohio to benefit MSA research.
“It all started with the smell of meatballs,” recounts Cervone on the impetus for the run. “We were campaigning door-to-door when I smelled a fabulous smell…(Cervone (R) was Councilman for the City of Fairborn, Ohio), and I had to find out where it was coming from. We headed straight for that house, I can tell you, and once there, we met a lady who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew a run organizer, who might be interested in helping organize a run for MSA.”
Enter Doug Brandt of the Dayton Barefoot Runners. Brandt heard of Cervone’s plight and volunteered to hold the race in March. Thus began the annual MSA Run/Walk. Cervone humbly explains, “Our gift of $3,350 from the run to the University was made possible by over 200 participants. It’s not a lot of money, but maybe it’s enough to fund a graduate student or a trip to a professional conference on MSA research.”
Cervone who worked at one time as a landscaper, discussed with Ide his exposure to pesticides as a potential cause of MSA.
Ide and his team have shown that changes at the molecular and cellular level in MSA brain cells are equivalent to those caused by exposure to certain pesticides. “We’ve been able to take cells from MSA or control tissues, remove the ‘messenger’ RNA (Ribonucleic acid) which turns into proteins, and show that RNAs and proteins that make energy and get rid of misfolded proteins are way down in MSA cells, like in pesticide treated cells. Conversely, mRNAs and proteins that turn on an immune response are way up in MSA, including those that are sometimes involved in autoimmune diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis,” said Ide.
While Cervone’s visit to WMU with Brandt, wife Susan, and daughter Angelina boosted everyone’s spirits—Cervone appeared hale and hearty to the casual viewer—Susan pointed out the toll daily activities and travel take on her husband’s life. “Today he looks and sounds and acts great,” she said. “Once we get home, it’s very likely he’ll be in a coma-like state for anywhere from a few days to a week. The disease takes that much out of him.”
Research on MSA is moving along steadily, and there are definitely high points with each new discovery…hopefully some of those discoveries will be made by WMU and will benefit Cervone and those sufferers of MSA who come after him. | <urn:uuid:ca9adabd-3185-4c1d-b16f-867bfba08348> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wmich.edu/cas/alumni/wordpress/tag/msa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965715 | 1,144 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Today is Blog Action Day. It happens every year on Oct. 15, it’s an event that unites bloggers worldwide, to spread the word about a particular issue. This year’s it’s about Climate Change.
Climate Change is part of Global Warming and it’s defiantly effecting our environment. They are many ways you can do your part and help change our environment. Just some of them are:
- Bike or Walk to work
- Use Green Products
- Use CFLs
- Use Energy Star products
- buy a fuel-efficient car
- know your carbon foot print & try to reduce it
- eat more organic & local grown veggies & fruits
The list goes on what you can do to help with the environment, I do everything I can like recycling, telecommuting, composting, saving rain water to use to water the plants, use cfls, have a fuel-efficient car, eat only organic & locally grown veggies, using, Energy Star products, shutdown my computer or other appliances when they are not in use, keeping the heat turn down or not using heating/AC at all. (don’t mind wearing a hoodie around the house or keeping the windows open in the spring, fall or winter). etc.
You don’t have to do everything I do or mentioned here, but if everyone just did a little something like using CFL light bulbs, carpool or even recycle, it would help out in a big way. | <urn:uuid:d9b807d9-7fa1-46ca-87b9-96046686543b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.purplestars.com/2009/10/blog-action-day-2009-climate-change/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919557 | 311 | 2.578125 | 3 |
More readers are going online to get their news, but advertising money is not migrating at the same speed – a problem for Lebanon, where many news outlets compete to make a profit while staying true to their mission. At the offices of Alt City in Hamra Saturday, around 30 members of Beirut’s online news community met to discuss ways to make their businesses profitable.
“We’re doing great work, but why aren’t we making money?” asked David Munir Nabti, co-founder of Alt City as well as the youth-oriented magazine Hibr. Hibr moved entirely online due to rising costs but still didn’t manage to earn sufficient funds in ad revenue to sustain itself.
Reasons for Lebanon’s low rate of online advertising range from low Internet penetration combined with a slow connection to relatively underdeveloped business models for advertising throughout the region.
The Middle East and North Africa are home to 70 million Internet users – a number expected to more than double in the next five years, presenting more opportunities than ever before for advertisers to reach consumers via the Web.
Meanwhile, amid the global recession and shift away from print media, advertising budgets have decreased. Real advertising expenditures in Lebanon slipped to $174 million in 2011, declining 3.3 percent from $180 million in 2010, according to a report in ArabAd magazine.
While those in the media industry expect that advertising online will eventually become the norm, they are eager to find solutions to sustain their businesses until that day comes.
Although online media in the Middle East still doesn’t attract the advertising that its print counterparts do, some of the top news outlets in the West have been able to successfully earn revenue from increased online ad budgets, including iPad magazine subscriptions, said Omar Christidis, founder of the regional digital hub for entrepreneurs ArabNet.
But others point out that these oft-cited success stories mainly pertain to the largest publications and Internet platforms such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo. And whereas major publications such as the New York Times are able to attract online subscribers, much smaller media outlets say a paywall would be unrealistic and would cost them readership as they continue to build their brands.
Another important issue faced by small online publications looking to increase ad revenue is trying to maintain their ethical standards.
Dima Saber, who co-founded Hibr in 2009, told participants at Saturday’s meeting that refusing to have advertisements for products such as alcohol or cigarettes, which they felt didn’t fit with their socially conscious message, had hurt their economic sustainability. Other participants agreed, saying they didn’t want to sacrifice their integrity for profit.
Nina Curley, editor-in-chief of the regional technology website Wamda, suggested publications solicit sponsorship for events only after deciding on the themes so as to avoid a conflict of interest. She also suggested that online media outlets could write paid intelligence reports that complement the free content they already provide.
Micheline Tobia, editor of Mashallah news, which focuses on arts and culture in the region and has an all-volunteer staff, says she is hoping that an upcoming book compiled by the site’s contributors will generate some revenue.
For now, Lebanon’s media will continue to build their online presence despite minor financial returns, expecting that the future of their profits is online – even if today’s numbers say otherwise. | <urn:uuid:ac3a1de7-3a6c-4891-987b-7d80bb85ed0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albawaba.com/print/business/lebanon-media-revenue-444327 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957861 | 700 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Are you considering the use of plastic bags for your library books? Here are ideas and resources.
Over the past years many books have been ruined by juice boxes, markers, glue sticks, etc., when school library books are placed in backpacks. I've also spent many hours cleaning candy and cracker crumbs out of book jackets.
I began to think about having our kindergarten through second grade students use a book bag to carry their library books in. This would be a plastic bag that stays in their backpack. When students put their book in their pack, it goes right into the book bag. When they remove their book, the bag stays in the backpack. Students will know that the bag is like a 'raincoat for their books.'
When considering this idea, I turned to the collective wisdom of LM_NET, the listserv of school library media specialists around the world. In response to my questions I received many good ideas.
Some schools use cloth bags that they sell to students at the beginning of the year. Students are required to bring their bag to the library for book exchange. No bag -- No book. I was surprised at the number of schools around the world that have this policy.
Others purchase bags from companies such as Demco. They like the reading themes printed on the bags. These bags are then labeled with students' names, class, and library day. Some librarians warned against bags with strings and recommended die cut handles. One librarian stated that her school cannot use the draw cord bags due to safety issues.
I have researched other options and may purchase merchandise bags from a company such as ULINE. These bags are available in bright colors, large sizes, at an economical price of $34 for 500 bags. At this price it would not be a large problem to replace a lost or torn bag.
Don't over look parents. I plan to send out a letter describing the purpose of the bag. With a little effort they can protect school resources and prevent accidents that will require paying for a library book.
Have you used book bags in your library? Do you have tips you would like to share? Share them in our Library Sciences Forum. | <urn:uuid:aabfa1e5-5d75-46c8-a526-f54214dc0f03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art21245.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974258 | 443 | 2.078125 | 2 |
While it is early in the harvest season, one local delectable fruit to enjoy right now is the strawberry. Whether they are grown in home garden, freshly picked, bought at the local farm or purchased the old fashioned way at the grocery store, at this time of year they are delicious, juicy and a versatile ingredient in the kitchen.
Pick Your Own
For those looking for freshly harvested and enjoy the experience of picking strawberries directly off their vines, there are a few quality farms that offer pick your own strawberries and provide a fun event the entire family can enjoy. Just to name a few: Ward's Berry Farm, in Sharon, Verrill Farm, in Concord and Brookdale Fruit Farm, in Hollis, New Hampshire.
The Home Garden
Strawberries are fun to grow at home as they offer colorful foliage, flowers and a tasty reward. Early green foliage gives way to white flowers which become the red fruit, and eventually the leaves turn a deep red to purple in the fall giving a striking display. They are a perennial crop, in the sense that they come back year after year, but they also spread via runners, and many growers will cultivate the plants growing from the runners as the younger plants are often more productive.
In a home strawberry patch, you can expect it to give many years of production in one location, as long as it stays healthy and disease free. Strawberries require full sun and relatively frequent watering, especially prior to fruit production. During harvest season. Water sparingly as rain and moisture will cause berries to rot prior to ripening. Strawberries like a light fertilization in early spring and again in early fall, to promote plant and root growth.
Strawberries tend to survive winter best when mulched with hay or row cover.
Home gardeners also can enjoy strawberries as a container-grown crop, making it an ideal option for porches, patios and yards with limited open land. Strawberry pots are recognizable as having a hole in the top for several plants, and four or more holes around the sides for more plants. This allows for even more vegetation while promoting light penetration and air movement. Strawberry containers are also a great way to involve children or the elderly in a gardening project as it is an easy and quick crop to watch and maintain.
At the Market
When choosing berries at the market, they should be firm and still have green leaves and stems. Be aware that berries purchased on rainy or extremely hot days will have a shorter shelf life in the refrigerator, so be prepared to use them quickly. Also if possible, buy berries picked fresh the day of use as the flavor will still have the heat of the day on it which is better than a berry that has been chilled in the fridge. For later use, keep them uncovered in the fridge for a day or two.
There are so many shortcake varieties, however many residents in this area of the country prefer a biscuit, while others like an angel food or even lemon pound cake base.
Wash, chop and put berries on top, serve with freshly whipped cream, maybe with a dash of whiskey in it.
For Berries Romanov, it is best to follow an official recipe, but the ingredients more or less include berries, cream and black pepper. It is definitely worth a try; very different and tasty.
Berries are delicious when served with a balsamic glaze either as dessert or go perfect on salads with creamier cheeses like goat or feta.
Information for this column was contributed by Volante Farms, 292 Forest St., Needham, 781-444-2351, www.volantefarms.wordpress.com | <urn:uuid:cf705b4d-9d06-4de8-9139-7bbfbee6922c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://medfield.patch.com/articles/strawberries-to-pick-or-not-to-pick-it-doesnt-really-matter-just-enjoy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957703 | 745 | 1.898438 | 2 |
I can't even begin to describe how cute my cats are, so I took pictures.
To the left you will see Elmo playing with his new furry black mouse. After sitting there posing for a few minutes, he began to attack his furry friend.
This picture can be seen below:
Notice how intently he stares at the mouse while he clobbers it with his dagger like claws.
My second kitty is Lucy. She is so beautiful but somehow not that photogenic. Her pictures don't come out looking as pretty as she looks.
Here she is sitting in Matt's favorite chair. I think it may become the "Lucy Chair"...
Anyway, the kitties are adjusting well to the move. It has been only one day since they arrived, but they are claiming their own space (even as I speak).
I can't even begin to describe how cute my cats are, so I took pictures.
Question - In the movie theater, why do people clap after a movie? What's up with that phenomenon? I mean, clapping generally is used when people want to express their appreciation for someone or something such as a play, or speaker, etc.
Dictonary.com defines applause as, "Approval expressed especially by the clapping of hands". So are these people basically standing up and announcing their approval for the movie? A movie is basically an inanimate object - it can't hear that people in the movie theater are clapping in appreciation for it, so why do it? Is it because people want to announce their approval for the movie so everyone in the theater can know? I mean why does anyone else care if other people in the movie enjoyed it? Why do we care what Joe Moviegoer in the 4th row thought of the movie? Does it change your view of a movie if people start to clap?
A) People clap because they are bursting with "good feelings" after the movie ends - Ok so if this theory were true, wouldn't the same people clap at home after a good movie? I highly doubt these applauders are standing up in their living room clapping after watching a five star flick. Surely there are other times when people burst with "good feelings" - Do these people clap after a good meal in a restaurant? After a torrid afternoon of hot sex? After drinking that delicious coffee first thing on a Sunday morning after some rediculously good sex but before reading the paper?
B) People clap because they want everyone else arond them to know that they enjoyed the film so much that they are bursting with "good feelings". Ahh now this one may make a smidge more sense. The first clapper - he's the guy that starts it all - I mean once he starts, the rest of the people in category A or C also join in and start their clapping. Makes me wonder if this clap initiator guy is intentionally clapping or it is just an automatic response to the silence that fills the theater after a good movie. Is this guy the one that must always be first? Does he crave attention? Does it give him some secret satisfaction to know that HE started the clapping that everyone joined in on? Does he look around during the applause and think with a smirk of pure satisfaction, I started all this ?
C) Clapping is a way to unite the audience - When the whole theater breaks out into clapping after the flick - it sends the message that everyone enjoyed the movie and if you didn't enjoy it, there just might be something wrong with you. This is sort of like a weird form of peer pressure - Say you really didn't care for the movie and everyone around you is clapping away like crazed monkeys - maybe you'd eventually join in. Maybe you'd leave the theater wondering what it was that you missed in the movie. Maybe you'd even go see it again - or tell someone that you really liked it, when you really didn't. Maybe you'd just leave feeling insecure and shitty - or maybe - just maybe you'd leave wondering wtf is up with all that clapping.
Little Miss Sunshine is about a highly disfunctional family that travels by VW bus from New Mexico to California so that their daughter Olive can compete in the "Little Miss Sunshine" beauty pagent. Olive's dream is to become a beauty queen and the opening scene shows her watching a beauty pagent and imitating the winner. Her grandfather has been helping her to reherse her talent routine and she practices daily. They can't afford to fly to California, and due to circumstances, they all must go together in the VW bus to California.
The father, Richard (played by Greg Kinnear) is the inventor of a "9 Step Program" on being a "winner" and his opinions on avoiding loserdom are quite funny. He is suave, tanned, and styled out like a typical "motivational speaker".
Dwayne (the brother) doesn't speak (by choice) and reads philosophy. He hates everyone. He hasn't spoken in 9 months. He wants to be a pilot, and his mother bribes him to go on the trip by promising to allow him to go to flight school.
Sheryl, the mother, is a divorcee - Olive and Dwayne are not Richards children. She appears to be the glue that holds everyone together.
The Grandpa is hysterical. He has many vices all of which add a lot of humor to the picture. He is Olive's "coach" for her beauty pageant.
Sheryl's brother Frank (Steve Carell) is there as well - after a failed suicide attempt he must live with Sheryl and her family, and can't be left alone, so he's also along for the ride.
Okay, so mix all these people up with their problems, and the movie is an abolute trip. Many things happen along the way that could be construed as negative - but overall, the movie, to me, had a positive vibe. You see, Olive is not a beauty queen. She is a plain girl, with a bit of a belly and big bucked teeth. In reality she has no chance in a beauty pagent - but her family, with all of their problems never tells Olive that she can't do it.
In reality most families under stress (to put it lightly...) would simply skip the 800-mile, 2-day treck that they can't really afford, and simply tell their child, "Sorry honey, you really dont have a chance at winning and we can't afford it, so you don't get to be in the beauty pageant".
Not this family. They stand beind Olive in persuing her dream (win or lose) with confidence, and to me, that was very uplifting and positive.
Overall I thought Little Miss Sunshine was supremely funny and very well made.
Five green palm trees.
Ok so I kind of came to a realization the other day - I'm a walking contradiction (at least in a fashion sense...) !
I mean I was out and about this weekend, and I began to look around at everyone - they all were dressed in what I would call a "style". Preppy, country-club, couture, ghetto fabulous, granola, grundge, grandma, etc - they all "fit in" to a certain style classification. You could look at these people, and kind of get what/who they are based on what they were wearing.
So I looked at myself and here's what I saw:
- Big black Baby Phat sunglasses (Ghetto fabulous)
- Coach purse (Designer, trendy)
- Distressed brown Leather flat thong sandals (Hippie chic)
- Brown khaki capri "dockers style" pants (Preppy)
- Cream colored silk tank top with green cotton crochet vneck sweater (?? meets granola?)
So my question is - Do you have to "fit in" to a certain style classification to be considered stylish?
I began to think more and more about it and my first instinct was to say, "Well my style is a blend of other styles". But the more I thought of it, was I taking the easy way out? I mean can a persons sense of personal style simply be a mish-mash of pieces from other styles?
This all kind of coincided, timing wise, with cleaning out my closets. I had previously decided to sell all my "nice" clothes that I didn't wear to a consignment shop. I thought about the clothing I was getting rid if - there were over 150 pieces in all - it all didnt fit into a style either! I mean I'm getting rid of everything from suede to satin to Ralph Lauren to items from Hot Topic.
So I guess what I need to figure out is - Do I have my own style? Does it even matter? I mean do your clothes define who you are? Looking around at people, I tend to think sometimes people DO fit in with their style and other times, I think they may be pretending (or striving?) to be something they're not.
I certainly don't want to fit into that last category - I don't want to try to be something I'm not. So maybe my hodge podge style is me.. Who knows.
Apparently Rehab makes you famous. It's not only fun, it's the IN thing to do, thanks to my favorite actor (note the dripping sarcasm here) Mel Gibson.
Now I hear Robin Williams has "found himself drinking again" after a whopping 20 years of sobriety! (not sure how you just happen to find yourself drinking again. Did he just happen wake up with a face full of bar snacks and an empty bottle of cheap vodka and say, "holy crap! I guess I'm drinking again!" ?)
Hmmm... is he perhaps jumping on the Mel Gibson trainwreck or is it just plain old coincidence?
* Robin William's last hit movie? Um.....assuming we don't count voice parts in cartoon movies, I'd say his last great movie was maybe 'The Birdcage' - waaaaay back in in 1996 or possibly 'Good Will Hunting' in 1997...* Up and coming movies? SIX!!
Mrs. Doubtfire 2 (2007) (in production) .... Daniel Hillard
The Krazees (2006) (announced)
License to Wed (2007) (filming) .... Father Frank
Man of the Year (2006) (post-production) .... Tom Dobbs
Night at the Museum (2006) (post-production) .... Theodore Roosevelt
August Rush (2006) (post-production) .... Wizard
Happy Feet (2006) (completed) (voice) .... Ramone
Does rehab make you [more] famous? I guess we'll see ... oh, and will Lindsay Lohan be next? Stay tuned. . .
OK so I really loved Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. So when I saw the trailer for Talladega Nights a few months back, I laughed outloud and fully expected something of the same caliber.
When the movie finally opened, I went to see it with high expectations. I kind of couldn't wait to sit there and laugh for a while.
Well I can say the movie fell short, in my opinion. The jokes just weren't "funny enough" - they lacked that extra bit of something that induces the "laugh out loud" laughter. Don't get me wrong, there were some funny parts to the movie, but they were mostly the scenes from the trailer. Speaking of the trailer, the movie didn't even include all the parts (I'm sure they'll be on the DVD though...)
Anyway, I really liked the concept but I think the whole thing could have just been, well, funnier. I mean seriously - is "Baby Jesus" really such a funny joke that it needed to be referenced throughout the movie?
My very own copyrighted highly subjective rating system for movies.
(Five green palm trees FGPT) - This is the higest rating a movie can get. You should definitely drop whatever it is that you're doing and go see this movie. Your life will not be complete until you have witnessed the beauty and awesomeness that is this movie.
(Four blue palm trees FBPT) - This is a great movie but there was something about it that stopped it from achieving the five green palm trees (FGPT) rating. This something, however does not detract from the movie substantially, and therefore you should also consider going to see this movie immediately, if not in the very near future.
(Three purple palm trees TPPT).
This movie is good, but not great. It is a movie that is worth seeing, but you may want to go only when there's nothing else fun to do, or when you unexpectedly find an extra $20 in your pants pocket. Movies with the TPPT rating are excellent for renting and watching on your own TV.
(Two orange palm trees TOPT). This movie borderline sucks but there is something about it keeping it barely afloat. Maybe there's this one great scene that makes it so good, or there's one character that saves the movie, or even a memorable funny line or two that will be repeated over and over again (think Napolean Dynamite) for months. After seeing a TOPT movie, you may wish for your money back, or pray that the time wasted on the movie would be returned to you. Think carefully before venturing out to see a TOPT movie.
(One brown palm tree OBPT). Do not waste your time on this movie. You will hate yourself for ever thinking you might find a modicum of something slightly good about this movie. This movie will make you regret not staying home and scraping the two week old dog poop from the many grooves in the bottom of sneakers with a toothpick. It's the worst of the worst. A pointless movie that fails to even be pointless enough. Don't waste your time or your money.
Point: Why do we care what Mel Gibson thinks about Jews? Furthermore, why should the Jews care what Mel Gibson thinks, either?
I mean why do we give celebrites so much power/authority? They are just beautiful people that make movies - they are not people that should be leading the thoughts and ideals of this country, religious or otherwise!
I read the following quote online today, "His apology prompted one rabbi to invite Gibson to speak at his temple on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Other Jewish leaders say the healing process will take some time."
Healing time? Are you kidding??
He was piss drunk (an admitted alcoholic) and said some anti-Jewish statements to the arresting officer. Healing time? For who?
Again I just don't get why the Jewish community needs to HEAL when an actor/director babbles something to an officer during a drunk driving arrest. It becomes all about his drunken comments and subsequent "heartfelt apology" for his anti-Jewish comments - and then it becomes about the "healing" of the Jewish community. Again - is there something I don't quite understand here??
People, lets not forget that we have freedom of speech in this country. He's allowed to have his opinions whether or not they're politically correct (or even true). The fact that he has sobered up and said they are not his real opinons should just make the whole thing moot. But no. The Jewish community needs time to heal, call the press.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not writing this because I'm a Mel Gibson fan. I'm just sick and tired of reading front page news stories about his dumbass comments and his lame apology. Mostly, I'm just outraged that someone drunk out of their gourd said some stupid comment to a cop gets to be classified as NEWS, and for DAYS on end. I'm tired of it all. | <urn:uuid:5fd0d4d2-bd57-452e-b3fc-6e310dabe4d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://finzup.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97522 | 3,309 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Doctors Want Obama to Stop Eating Burgers at Photo Ops
Is President Obama sending the wrong message whenever he eats unhealthful food on camera, such as a hamburger or hot dog? Washington, DC-based organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) says yes, and it's raising awareness about the issue. From USA Today:
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based group, plans to file a petition Thursday calling for "an executive order banning staged official photo ops that depict the president, the first family, the vice president, and members of the president's cabinet with unhealthful foods including processed meats that can cause cancer and obesity."
Since taking office, President Obama has posed for the cameras in staged events eating hot dogs at a basketball game with British Prime Minister David Cameron; serving sausages with Mr. Cameron; taking a motorcade with the vice president to Ray's Hell Burger in Virginia; eating cheeseburgers with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev; and stopping at a D.C. burger restaurant with a reporter, among other similar instances, with healthful foods largely neglected.
His predecessors, including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan have also posed with unhealthful foods at official photo-ops.
The Petition for Executive Action argues that White House food-oriented photo ops receive massive publicity, akin to product placement in movies, and drown out the government's health messages, such as the USDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans, contributing to ignorance about health and nutrition. President Obama gave the Five Guys Burger and Fries chain a publicity boost when he stopped at one of its Washington outlets in 2009 with NBC news anchor Brian Williams.
Widely publicized photographs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt eating a hot dog are credited with pushing a generally unpopular product into national prominence. Now Americans consume 7 billion hot dogs between Memorial Day and Labor Day each year.
On their Facebook page PCRM is asking for photos of President Obama or former US presidents eating fast food.
About the author: Robyn Lee is the editor of A Hamburger Today and takes many of the photos for Serious Eats. She'll also doodle cute stuff when necessary. Read more from Robyn at her personal food blog, The Girl Who Ate Everything. | <urn:uuid:6c8ae48d-dff6-44f7-beca-f3604af3b272> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2012/05/doctors-want-obama-to-stop-eating-burgers-at-photo-ops.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939353 | 466 | 1.75 | 2 |
Founded by John Hendricks for Discovery Communications in 1985, The Discovery Channel provides science, historic and world knowledge programs in a documentary style. The channel reaches over 170 countries and 431 million households world wide and is broadcast in 33 different languages.
The channels most popular programs include Mythbusters
, Dirty Jobs
, Deadliest Catch
and the annual Shark Week
marathon, featuring facts and video inside the world of the shark. Some of their original series have recently been moved to sister station TLC, including American Chopper
. The foreign Discovery Channel contain both their own versions of the original US series along with shows unique to their own lands.
The Discovery Channel also sponsors a team for the Tour de France bike race, which had featured the great cyclist Lance Armstrong. | <urn:uuid:14e2fecb-ea59-4f7e-aab5-b8521a7e8861> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tvrage.com/networks/US/DSC | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948237 | 156 | 1.953125 | 2 |
Parks & Trails
The City of Brantford prides itself on the quality parks and trails it provides season after season for residents and visitors to enjoy. Some parks provide a peaceful, relaxing setting where you can enjoy passive recreational activities, while others are venues for sports and active pursuits. The City's gorgeous private and public gardens have been recognized with several titles in the Communities in Bloom competition.
The City offers nearly 70 kilometres of natural trails that are perfect for running, cycling or hiking. With constant upgrades and additions, there's always somewhere new to explore along the way.
REMINDER TO ALL PARK AND TRAIL USERS:
Under Bylaw 102 - 2004 the operation of motorized vehicles and equipment on trails and in city parks is not allowed.
- this includes ATV's, motorcycles, motorized trail bikes, snowmobiles, motorized scooters, e-bikes, etc.
- motorized wheelchairs and scooters used by persons with disabilities are allowed on city trails.
- pedestrians and cyclists use our trails and children play in our parks, please help to keep them safe.
Thank you for your attention and cooperation regarding this matter.
Stoop & Scoop - It's the Law!
People play in parks and walk on our trails; they sometimes leave garbage behind.
Dogs play in parks and walk on our trails; they can leave something a little different behind.
The City's goal is to eliminate all "presents" left behind in Brantford's parks and trails, whether it's ourselves or our fine, furry friends who are creating the mess.
We need your help!
If you're enjoying a day in the park with Fido or taking your dog for a walk on the trails , the City of Brantford implores you to remember two key factors of bylaw #102-2004:
1. Please keep your furry family member on a leash, unless you're in a designated leash-free park.
2. Please pick up any little "leave-behinds" your dog may drop. The old 'Stoop and Scoop'!
Following this City of Brantford bylaw will ensure that we can all enjoy our beautiful parks and gardens harmoniously.
Thank you for your cooperation - by working together, we can keep our city clean!
Public Notice: Armouries Gore Park
The City of Brantford, Parks and Recreation Department are re- developing Armouries Gore Park (corner of Brant Avenue and Dalhousie St) to accommodate a new structure to recognize distinguished citizens from the Brantford-Brant area. Please note that traffic and pedestrians may be inconvenienced at times during construction. Road closures are not scheduled but construction equipment will access the park site off Dalhousie Street.
Trail section closed due to construction:
The dead end section of Canal Trail at Drummond Street is closed due to sewer construction. There is an estimated completion date of February 2013 (weather permitting), at which time the trail will be reopened.
How Can We Help You?
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Clicking on any of the documents below will open a new browser window. | <urn:uuid:04e91739-5665-4d8c-bca3-2cd97a601559> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.brantford.ca/residents/leisurerecreation/parkstrails/Pages/default.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930745 | 686 | 1.609375 | 2 |
[Answers in Genesis recently posted a critique of this article. I have responded here.] I have explored extensively the varied positions within Christianity about the origins and diversity of life. I come from a background in which I was a young earth creationist for quite some time, but my research has caused me to reject this position in favor of another. Those reading this article, please understand I do not wish to denigrate or devalue those who are young earth creationists (hereafter YEC and YECs). I appreciate that many who are YEC are doing their work in the field because they feel it is closest to the Biblical position and that they often believe science supports their view. That said, I cannot agree. In the following, I present a theological argument against the YEC position.
One of the theological arguments YECs use against other Christian positions (such as Intelligent Design or Theistic Evolutionism) is that it would imply death before the fall. I tried to track down an explicit syllogistic form of this argument and couldn’t find any in the literature with which I am familiar, however the argument is everywhere presented. For example, Ken Ham writes in The New Answers Book 1:
The book of Genesis teaches that death is the result of Adam’s sin… and that all of God’s creation was ‘very good’ upon its completion… But if we compromise the history of Genesis by adding millions of years, we must believe that death and disease were part of the world before Adam sinned… How could a God of love allow such horrible processes as disease, suffering, and death for millions of years as part of his ‘very good’ creation? (36)
Elsewhere, we can find statements like this: “The Bible tells us very clearly that there was no death before sin from many passages. In fact, there are no Bible verses indicating there was death prior to sin.”
Now it is not my point in this post to cite every disagreement I have with such arguments (there are a great deal of them), but rather to show that the implications of an argument like this are absurd. One immediate problem with the argument is that it begs the question in the opening sentence by smuggling in a hidden premise. Namely, the notion that all death is the result of sin, as opposed to the death of mankind or a kind of spiritual death. Further, note the conflation of the terms in the second quote–just because there are no Bible verses which show there was death before sin, it does not follow that the Bible teaches that there was no death before sin. But those parts aside, I wish to show that this argument from YECs actually works against their position.
Suppose we lay out the argument:
- Death is the result of sin.
- If YEC is false, then things died before sin.
- Therefore, if YEC is false, God is unjust.
Now I know this is not the full argument. There are many premises I have left unstated, but it seems that is the gist of the passage cited from Ham. Why do I find this problematic? Well, it seems that the logic is that if death happened because of sin, then animals would not have died before the fall. But if that is the case, then why do animals die after the fall? The post on Answers in Genesis hints that it is because animals are cursed due to the serpent’s deception of Adam and Eve (cited below). One is still forced to wonder why all animals are cursed because a serpent–Satan–deceived Adam and Eve. Thus we are led to the following argument:
- If animals did not die before the fall, then their death must be the result of sin.
- Animals are incapable of sinning. (They have no culpability.)
- Therefore, their death would have to be the result of morally culpable agents’ sins.
But this argument, it seems, shows that YEC is morally impermissible. For on YEC, animals died because of Adam’s sin. The animals themselves didn’t do anything. One day, they were happily living potentially infinitely long lives, eating plants, and doing their animal things. The next day, Adam sinned, and so God decides to start killing them all, putting countdowns on their lifespans. But why? Because Adam sinned, not because they themselves sinned. Thus, animals, through no culpability of their own, suffered the punishment of death for Adam’s sin. This seems to be morally impossible.
Now it seems the YEC position could be modified to get around this argument, but it would have to drop the argument against the other positions that death could not have happened before the fall. The modification would essentially have to hold that animals were part of the natural world which lived and died. Or, the YEC position could charge that animals were moral agents, but that would seem absurd. Finally, the YEC position could hold that, somehow, the serpent’s culpability transferred to all other animals, but that would seem extremely difficult as well, particularly because the serpent is Satan.
The argument, therefore, has been that animals are not morally culpable because they are not moral agents. Because that is the case, if they died due to sin, it was through not fault of their own. This would make God seem unjust if He caused animal death due to Adam’s fall. I’ve noted that YECs can avoid this injustice, but only by dropping the argument that Ham and others use against other positions.
There have been some interesting reactions to this article, and some of them are confusing my argument. What I’d like to note is this post is written from a perspective inside of YEC. In other words, I’m using the presuppositions of YEC against itself. What I’m not doing is personally saying that the death of animals is a morally impermissible state of affairs. What I am doing is saying that, on YEC, they assert it is morally impermissible, and so they have to accept the consequences of that argument.
Finally, I’d like to note that even if readers are unconvinced by this argument, they still must contend with other theological problems with YEC. For example, the notion that YEC makes God a deceiver. For this and other reasons I am no longer a YEC.
But what of the argument itself from YEC? What of the argument that there cannot be death before the fall? I urge readers to check out the following post over at geocreationism: Death before the fall — an old-Earth Biblical perspective. See also Luke Nix’s phenomenal post on the topic, “Cartoons, Animal Death, and Theology.”
Image Credit- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:R%C3%B8d_r%C3%A6v_(Vulpes_vulpes).jpg image by Malene
Answers in Genesis, “Biblically, Could Death Have Existed Before Sin?” - http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/03/02/satan-the-fall-good-evil-could-death-exist-before-sin
Ken Ham, The New Answers Book 1 (Green Forest, Arizona: Answers in Genesis, Master Books, 2006).
The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from citations, which are the property of their respective owners) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy. | <urn:uuid:6e516fc6-4e03-4bde-ab17-2ce7f66f4914> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jwwartick.com/2012/03/12/against-yec-theology/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961185 | 1,745 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Summary and Current Status
On March 11, 2001, security forces detained Sudanese medical doctor Nageeb Nagmeldin el Toum for allegedly providing political information to foreign contacts. Dr. Nageeb is the director of the Amal Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Physical and Mental Trauma. At the time of his arrest, security forces confiscated the Center's computers, patient files, and other confidential documents. They reportedly returned the next day and confiscated medical equipment, a generator, and office furniture, without having a warrant.
Dr. Nageeb was released from Kober prison in Khartoum on March 29, 2001, two and a half weeks after his arrest. The Center's belongings that had been confiscated were reportedly returned on June 26. Since his release, however, Dr. Nageeb has been subjected to ongoing harassment by the government, including being interrogated by security forces in October 2001 and warned that he and the rest of the Center's staff were being closely monitored.
On October 10, 2001, security forces summoned Dr. Nageeb to their headquarters and interrogated him about the Amal Center. They warned him that they would be closely monitoring the Amal Center's activities for the next couple of months.
In early December 2001, the CHR received a note by e-mail from Dr. Nageeb thanking the committee's members and correspondents for their concern about his detention and efforts to continue his work at the Amal Center. He wrote that he has formed a new team of medical doctors at the Center and that, despite ongoing government harassment, they are able to continue to provide treatment to victims of torture.
Dr. Nageeb is a Sudanese medical doctor and director of the Amal Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Physical and Mental Trauma. Security forces arrested Dr. Nageeb at the Amal Center on March 11, 2001, and confiscated the Center's computers, patient files, and confidential documents. In addition, the security forces arrested two of Dr. Nageeb's colleagues from the Center, Fatih Abdel Rahman and Zienab Omer Ahmed. Both Mr. Abdel and Mrs. Omer were released after several hours of interrogation.
Dr. Nageeb is a prominent human rights defender and former secretary of the banned Sudanese Doctor's Union. He is also the representative in Khartoum of the Sudanese Victims of Torture Group, an international network of human rights NGOs. He has been detained by security forces a number of times since 1989 for his human rights work. Prior to his March 11 arrest, he reportedly was held incommunicado and tortured, as a result of which his health is believed to be poor. In November 2000, Dr. Nageeb and others opened the Amal Center to provide free medical treatment and counseling for victims of human rights abuses. It is reportedly the first center of its kind in Sudan.
Dr. Nageeb reportedly was initially detained at the security force offices in Khartoum and was transferred the following day to Kober prison. Sudanese officials reportedly alleged that he had given political information to foreign contacts. He was also interrogated about training courses that the Amal Center provided to students and doctors. Dr. Nageeb's detention may have also been used as a means to prevent him from attending a meeting with the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan, Mr. Gerhard Baum. Their meeting was scheduled for March 13, two days after his arrest.
On March 29, 2001, Dr. Nageeb was released from Kober prison. Formal charges were never brought against him. He subsequently confirmed that he had not been subject to ill-treatment during his imprisonment. However, he reportedly was required to sign a declaration stating that his arrest was linked to technical problems at the Amal Center and that he would "not do anything against the law." The Center's files, computers, and other documents that had been confiscated reportedly were returned on June 26.
As part of what appears to be a general crackdown by the Sudanese government on civil society groups, Dr. Nageeb was summoned to security headquarters on October 10, 2001, and interrogated about the Amal Center's activities. He was warned that he and the other members of the Center's staff were being closely monitored. | <urn:uuid:5ca82455-4cfc-4b68-bc4c-0c4ce7f3e8ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www7.nationalacademies.org/humanrights/Cases/CHR_068458.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989072 | 879 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Hon. William M. Byrne, Jr. Chair
The Honorable William Matthew Byrne, Jr., a pillar of the Los Angeles legal community for six decades, built a legacy of justice in his lifetime. In addition to his work as chief judge of the Central District, Judge Byrne taught and fostered the Byrne Trial Advocacy Team at Loyola and lectured in countries with developing legal systems. His extensive work to improve legal education prompted Loyola to honor him with a chair in his name after his passing in 2006 at age 75.
Judge Byrne—known simply as Matt to his friends and family—was born in East Los Angeles in 1930. He attended Loyola High School and University of Southern California, from which he earned a BS in 1953 and a JD in 1956. His father, William Matthew Byrne, Sr., also served as chief judge of the Central District and taught at Loyola. The Byrne Trial Advocacy Team is named in both men’s honor.
Judge Byrne’s commitment to the courtroom began in the US Air Force, in which he served as a judge advocate from 1956-1958. He was later a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. He then went into private practice as a partner with Dryden, Harrington, Horgan & Swartz. In 1967, President Johnson appointed Byrne US attorney for Los Angeles. By 1969, his office was first in the country for criminal prosecutions with a 96 percent success rate.
President Nixon named Judge Byrne head of the Commission on Campus Unrest, which issued a report analyzing the Vietnam-era student protests. Shortly thereafter, in 1971, Nixon appointed Byrne to US District Court. At age 40, Byrne was the youngest judge ever named to the federal bench. Serving in that capacity for over 30 years, he presided over a number of high-profile cases including the 1973 Pentagon Papers trial, which was connected to the Watergate scandal. He later became chief judge.
Judge Byrne lectured throughout South America and the former Soviet Union to bring a Western perspective of justice to regions with developing legal systems. He also served on the boards of the Jules Stein Eye Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Norton Simon Museum, the Performing Arts Council of the Music Center and the Los Angeles Zoo Association.
M – Th: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
F: 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Burns Building 204
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015 | <urn:uuid:17a36f63-dee9-4ac4-b5e1-c0fff665bfc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lls.edu/resources/alumni/makeagift/honwilliammbyrnejrchair/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975507 | 510 | 2.015625 | 2 |
Harford County, Maryland
The Beginning of the First Tudor Hall Web Site
Written by El Penski and dedicated to Ella Mahoney, Dorothy and Howard Fox, and their hard labor and dreams for Tudor Hall, the home of the "first family" of the American Theater
Tudor Hall, 2006
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TUDOR HALL
C. Milton Wright wrote1 that in "1797 Dr. J. Hall owned the tracts of 'Edwards Lott', 'United Lott', and 'Mathews Neighbor Resurveyed' containing 159 acres. This was the Booth farm called 'Tudor Hall.'" In 1824, Junius Brutus Booth, the elder, (1796-1852) leased the land for 1000 years for $733.20 from the Hall family. 2 First, Junius bought a log house from John C. Brown, father of Elizabeth Brown Rogers, and moved the house to the property near a spring. Junius had Tudor Hall built nearby in 1847 by James Gifford3 who also built Ford's Theatre where Lincoln was shot on April 14, 1865 and where, on June 9, 1893, 22 War Department employees were killed and 68 others injured when it collapsed due to renovations in the basement. James J. Wollon, Jr, Mrs. Mahoney's great-grandson, has shown that Tudor Hall matches a design published for a Gothic Revival cottage designed by an architect named William H. Ranlett in "The Architect" Volume I, 1847.4
Junius Brutus Booth, the elder, died in 1852. Before Lincoln's assassination in 1865, the Booths had rented Tudor Hall to the Patrick Henry King family from Washington, D.C. Mrs. Junius Brutus Booth, the elder, (Mary Booth) transferred the property to Samuel A. S. Kyle in 1878 for $3,500.5 Samuel Kyle married Ella Harward in 1879. The log house was moved or destroyed. The exact fate of the log house remains uncertain despite the important and great efforts of Dinah Faber to track it down. (Publication of the results of her research has been delayed. )
After Samuel Kyle died in 1893, Ella remarried and became Ella V. Mahoney in 1897. According to the 1952 Harford County Directory and other records, Ella opened the house to visitors in 1928 after she and a daughter, Grace Kyle, assembled many relics and made the house a museum. She died on September 7, 1948 after 70 years in Tudor Hall.
According to Harford County records, when Mrs. Mahoney died, she left Tudor Hall to Grace H. Kyle and Anna K. Cooley, her daughters. They sold it in 1949 to John E. Clark, a local lawyer. He kept it open to the public. In 1954 Richard and Betty Worthington bought the property. They were the owners of The Aegis, a Bel Air newspaper. It is commonly claimed that the Worthingtons sold off most of the land, except for 8.33 acres and closed Tudor Hall to the public.6 In 1961 it was purchased by a rubber company executive who died and whose widow, Miriam Yates, is said to have moved to Mexico. Tudor Hall was closed to the public during this period.
Howard L. and Dorothy Fox purchased the house ($175,000) as a pleasant country place to live in June of 1968. They claimed they did not know its historical significance until a bus load of tourists pulled into their front yard.7 They made extensive efforts to reopen it to the public. Also they tried to preserve and restore the house and the history associated with it. Thus, Tudor Hall played multiple roles as a home, museum, inn, bed & breakfast, and occasional ballroom and theater. In 1973, Tudor Hall was included in the National Register of Historic Places with a historical boundary of 136.5 acres to maintain the rural surroundings and distant views since Tudor Hall had been a farm during the Booth period. In 1982, the State of Maryland reduced the protective boundaries to the 8.33 acres. Mr. and Mrs. Fox and historical experts opposed this action, but the State ignored their pleas.
In 1984, PATHWAYS 8 announced on its front page of its first edition that "Tudor Hall" was "Preserved" by the Preservation Association for Tudor Hall (PATH). PATH obtained a 99 year lease with an option to buy Tudor Hall in 1986, but events did not continue as well as anticipated. Court actions initiated by neighbors limited funding raising at Tudor Hall. PATH failed to pay its rent and lost its title to Tudor Hall in 1997. In 2000, PATH stopped functioning and later forfeited its charter. The elderly Foxes, with their many health problems, were forced to replace PATH by trying to set up Tudor Hall, Inc., a task that was never completed. The couple died in early 1999, sooner than they expected, from cancer without wills.
In 1999, Robert and Elizabeth Baker out bid Harford County to buy the house for $415,000. The Bakers closed Tudor Hall to the public. On August 11, 2006, at a ceremony at Tudor Hall, Harford County Executive David Craig and the Bakers completed the transferring of ownership of Tudor Hall to Harford County. The County paid $810,000.9 Present at the ceremony were people who had been members of PATH and the Edwin Booth Theatre (about 1976-1996): Mary Cogley, Ann C. Phillips, Jill Redding, Frederick Redding, Fred Ruthke, Andy Schmidt, and Kristen Thomson.
The Historical Society of Harford County, Inc. had several representatives: Maryanna Skowronski (Administrator), Dinah Faber (writer and historian with an interest in the Booth family), Henry Peden (professional genealogist and Head of the Research Library), Elwin Penski (Webmaster), Eric Richardson (professional actor and Tudor Hall advocate), James T. Wollon (restoration and preservation architect and great-grandson of Ella V. Mahoney who lived at Tudor Hall for 70 years).
Also, attending were: Tom Rimrodt (Assistant Secretary, Planning Services, Maryland Department of Planning), Laura Keene (actress Tamara Johnson, star of In Haste, Laura Keene), Joseph Jefferson (actor Steven Lampredi), Aimee O'Neill (real estate representative of the Bakers), Aaron Tomarchio (County Executive's Chief of Staff), Pamela DiMauro (County Executive's Secretary), Richard Carr (Chief of Facilities and Operations), Robert S. McCord (County Attorney), Robert Mercado (County Historic Preservation Planner), Deborah L. Henderson (County Director of Procurement), Mary Gail Hare (reporter for the Baltimore Sun) and a few others.2
Signing the Transfer of Tudor Hall to Harford County
left to right at the table: Robert Baker, Elizabeth Baker, David Craig, Pamela DiMauro
left to right standing: Tom Rimrodt, Maryanna Skowronski, Laura Keene
Photographed by Dinah Faber, August 11, 2006
The Check Made Them Smile
Photographed by Dinah Faber, August 11, 2006
On February 8, 2007, the Harford County Board of Estimates approved a contract to lease Tudor Hall for office space to The Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, Inc. for a nominal fee._____________________ | <urn:uuid:fec16454-8a72-4d06-88c2-b01ae7c29860> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://harfordhistory.org/th.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962003 | 1,564 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Title of work: My
Own True Name by Pat Mora
In the poems of My Own True Name, Mora explores what it means to be bicultural -- both the richness of it as manifested in family, food, rituals, and celebrations, and the pain of being seen as neither one thing nor the other. "For a variety of complex reasons, anthologized American literature does not reflect the ethnic diversity of the United States," explains Mora. "I write in part because Hispanic perspectives need to be part of our literary heritage; I want to be part of the validation process." In one of her best-known poems, "Legal Alien," Mora explores what it means to be "hyphenated":
sliding back and forthMy Own True Name is a work aimed specifically at adolescents. It includes poems from earlier collections alongside new poems, each included because it seemed to Mora to speak to young people, particularly young writers. Mora stresses that we are all writers, and all struggling to become better writers, whether we are published adult poets, teenage students, teachers, principals, or anyone else. She hopes that poems -- hers and those of others -- will help students connect literature with their lives, and feel safe and confident enough to write their own. As she says about the students in classes where she has read her work and encouraged theirs: "I want them to feel that they could bring any part of themselves, their language, their sadness, whatever kind of family they come from, and it's going to be honored. It's going to be treated with tremendous respect."
Says scholar Nicolás Kanellos: "Pat Mora is a writer who has united many different populations, but of course the most important ones are young people and older people. And she has particularly spoken to young people of high school age through her diction, through the themes she touches upon, and through her insistence on the idea that young people have a culture and that they have an ability to see the world and be able to capture it. So she wants to go one step further and encourage them to write."
Scholar Juan Bruce-Novoa writes that many of the poems from My Own True Name "feature the theme of English language acquisition as a painful experience of conflict and suffering for native Spanish speakers." Indeed, in "Learning English: Chorus in Many Voices," Mora writes: "people still laugh at me / when words stumble out / I want to disappear." But Bruce-Novoa also points out that "[Mora's] perspective characterizes the experience as one of gain and loss, emphasizing the latter as the loss of cultural authenticity, while the value of the gain is left in doubt." He also notes the "touch of ambivalence" in many of the poems: "The characters are attracted to English-based culture, producing a desire whose satisfaction they seek." Mora explores this kind of internal conflict in her poem "Elena," about an immigrant parent who cannot understand the words of her Americanized, English-speaking children. Yet in "Immigrants," she also explores the keen desire of immigrants to have "American" children and "wrap their babies in the American flag / feed them mashed hot dogs and apple pie / name them Bill and Daisy."
Bruce-Novoa cautions teachers teaching the poems of Pat Mora that "the ethnic background of the students will greatly determine the nature of class discussions." First-generation immigrants may relate to her themes in profound ways, while others may see themes remote from their own lives. While he warns that talking about these issues can bring up controversial questions about the place of immigrants and foreign languages in American culture, Bruce-Novoa suggests that teachers "guide the discussion toward the universal quality of the experience of acculturation the poems express." He also recommends placing Mora in the context of certain other Latino writers when teaching her works. These might include Bernice Zamora, Lorna Dee Cervantes, and Judith Ortiz Cofer. Teachers could also include works like Tomás Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Richard Rodriquez's Hunger of Memory, and Linda Chavez's Out of the Barrio.
One of my hopes is that the literature makes us all more compassionate. I say a lot that --and I believe it -- literature helps us cross borders and build community. I believe that. And it is when we hear many different kinds of voices that that happens. It wasn't until I was an adult who began to write that I realized that the most exciting thing to write was about being of Mexican descent and coming from the desert. So, I want them to feel that they could bring any part of themselves, their language, their sadness, whatever family they come from, and that it's going to be honored, and it's going to be treated with tremendous respect.
Pat Mora is a writer that has united many different populations, but of course, the most important ones are young people and older people. My Own True Name is a book that takes a selection of works from all of her books and provides new poems that she thinks particularly speak to young people. And she has particularly spoken to young people of high school age through her diction, through the themes that she touches upon, and through her insistence in the idea that young people have a culture and that they have an ability to see the world and be able to capture it. She wants to go one step further and encourage them to write. Particularly in My Own True Name, she addresses this.
Q & A with Pat Mora
When did you become interested in writing?
When I was in middle school my family would get LIFE magazine, and on the back page there was always an essay, and I think the author's name was Shana Alexander. And I would always think, wouldn't that be great, just to be able to write about anything you wanted and give your opinion? And so that's really what led to the book of essays, and Nepantla: Essays from the Land in the Middle. Nepantla is a Nahuatl word, so that means it's from one of the indigenous languages in Mexico. And it means the land in the middle. I had been doing a lot of speaking when I was a university administrator. And I would spend a lot of time preparing these presentations, and I thought, Well, what if I tried to put them down so that people who are interested in working more effectively with Latino students, and hopefully with all students, maybe they would find these of use? And so that's how the book evolved.
How did My Own True Name evolve?
The book My Own True Name evolved in an interesting way, thanks to a comment by a librarian in California who was aware that I had written poetry for adults and some poetry for children, but her question was, Why wasn't I doing something for teens? And so that's really how it evolved. And it was difficult to select the poems. Sometimes I would say to teachers: What is it that you think your students enjoy most from [my books] Chants, Borders, and Communion? And then I had the opportunity to create some poems thinking specifically about teens.
I had written before about indirect address to a young writer and in "A Letter to Gabriella," which is part of Nepantla: Essays from the Land In the Middle. But I think that in the address, at the beginning of My Own True Name, I let myself be a bit more playful, and I had a very good time with it. I had also spent more time with young people as writers, and so I felt that I had maybe a better sense of what their issues were: their often deep reluctance to see themselves as writers and the huge challenge which we have, as educators, to create a psychically safe place. That's what I want, a classroom that is so psychologically safe that I can bring you all of me. And there are very subtle ways in which we tell students what we'd rather that they not bring, by the examples that we read. So when I was going through school I was a very good student in English. I never wrote much about being Mexican, being Mexican American. It wasn't until I was an adult who began to write that I realized that the most exciting thing I had to write about was about being of Mexican descent and coming from the desert. So I want them to feel that they could bring any part of themselves -- their language, their sadness, whatever kind of family they come from -- and that it's going to be honored. It's going to be treated with tremendous respect. And that doesn't mean that students are not going to be invited and encouraged to improve their work, but that respect comes first. And it is my personal feeling that one of the best ways for that to evolve is for teachers to spend time connecting with themselves. We do not do that enough. Because teachers are so busy. We have so many tasks for them to do. Where is the space for them to think about their own cultural selves? What is it they bring to the classroom? But these are also comments that teachers have made to me, when I say to them, "Tell me where you come from and how that affects what you do in the classroom." It is when I think about myself and I sort of honor myself and my voice, and I'm curious about myself and my background, that I can be curious about you.
How do you feel about poetry?
Well, I'm interested in three genres and probably always have been. When I look back at sort of notes that I would scribble to myself, when I was a young mother, I would say, This might make an interesting poem. This might make an interesting essay. This might make an interesting children's book.... I love poetry and always did. I mean, I loved all of the old rhyming poems, and I think that was the initial hook for me. And my hope always is that teachers will be teaching poetry more and all kinds of poetry and that they themselves will be delighting in it, because, of course, students pick up what we love and they sense our excitement. In my travels, because I have the good fortune to visit different kinds of schools, I encounter some teachers who are absolutely wild about poetry, and I have seen some incredible examples of teachers who transform their students, so that all of them stand up and read their poems and define themselves as poets. On the other hand, I meet a lot of teachers who in private conversation say to me that they are very reluctant to teach poetry, and when I have pursued that, they often mention very negative memories about memorizing poems they didn't really like, feeling uncomfortable when their own English teacher would say, "What does the poem mean?" and hoping that she wasn't going to call on them. The sense that they feel they don't write poetry, and so how could they teach it? And it was that reluctance that really got me intrigued with putting together a very brief document for my Web site on poetry power. And [there are] two..things I'm trying to suggest. One is that writing poetry improves your writing because with poetry, every word matters. And if you bring that kind of attention to your prose, you are going to find, Gee, my sentences are kind of flabby. Because after you've worked in poetry for a bit, you just feel that, you know? It tightens your writing. I also think it's important to realize that poetry can be used in all kinds of classes, not only in literature classes. So working with your colleagues in history, or whatever, can be a way to help students realize that literature also crosses. It also crosses these curricular borders. And it helps students understand connections. When I talk about these incredibly dynamic teachers that I have the pleasure of encountering, some of them manage -- and I've seen it happen with even first graders -- to help these students see themselves as poets. And I think that is a kind of intense faith that a teacher gives a student or a class, you know? You are poets, we're all poets, and what does that mean? And I think it means that we value language, it means that we live attentively, it means that we play with language. It means that we read poetry, you know? It means that we read poetry.
You write a lot about the landscape.
I'm personally fascinated by landscape. So, for example, I might see a mountain and immediately start asking people Well, do you know what kind of stone that is? Do you know -- what are the names of these trees? And I'm always saying to students, "You want to learn the names"; which, of course, then we move right into the whole idea of, How do I do that? Well, writing and reading are intensely connected. The best way to improve themselves as writers is to read and read and read and read, and to cultivate a desire for that quiet time. I always tell them, it's one of my favorite times of the day, when it's finally my time, you know. In elementary school, students always talk about book joy. You know, that book joy is a particular kind of privilege and pleasure, when you can be alone with a book, and you are happy, you know? I always try to stress that idea of attentiveness and the attentiveness can apply to attentiveness to the world around me, you know? I want to notice the sky. I want to notice the landscape. I want to notice the people. I want to notice the sound. I tell students I am very nosy and a great embarrassment to my children, because I eavesdrop on conversations everywhere. But that's a good characteristic for a writer. You want to be nosy, you want to be curious, but that means you have to be listening, listening. And that is a challenge sometimes for young people. They are very involved with their own lives, we know that, and it is an inward time, you know. They are figuring out what their identity is, hence My Own True Name. I mean, they are struggling with that. So it's very hard for them to come out of themselves at times and listen to others -- which is not to say that young people are not incredibly compassionate, because I think they are. But we must remind them of their value and create the right space for them to listen. Make it seem natural and comfortable. And I think, of course, that teachers create that climate, you know. I speak to teachers, I tell them, because I believe they are powerful people. And what frightens me is that they may not realize just how powerful they are, that they can open a student up or close a student down and sometimes close a student down for life, with a look, with a remark, you know. It's like parenting. It can be terrifying how much of an effect we can have on a young person's life. And, as a writer, what I'm after is your heart, you know? That's what I want. And we live in a society that asks you to value your mind and not to see emotional knowledge as valuable. And what I want young people to realize is that their emotions are not something to be ashamed of, nor to discard, but something to integrate as part of their, yes, intellectual life. But so much of our society asks us to split that.
Information about key references
English Language Amendment
This proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution would make English the official language of the United States. Proponents of the amendment want to ensure that English retains dominance in American society. English Plus is an organization dedicated to promoting bilingualism and combating repressive English-only legislation.
An arroyo is a dry riverbed. Arroyos are featured in Pat Mora's poetry as part of the natural, often magical, desert landscape. Teacher Alfredo Lujan took his students to an arroyo to write.
Acculturation refers to a gradual process of cultural change and adaptation that occurs when groups with different cultural norms come into contact with one another. When one culture dominates in a certain environment, however, the process of acculturation for the subordinate group can be unpleasant and even oppressive. But it is also true that the reverse is happening, that the dominant or "official" culture is absorbing elements of the subordinate culture, although this tends to happen subversively or implicitly.
Suggestions for applying other theories to My Own True Name
Pat Mora's poetry is explored using a reader-response approach in the Session 1 video. However, students can experience Mora's work in a variety of ways.
For example, they can take their initial responses to the poetry and use them to formulate a scientific inquiry into desert life. They can explore geography, conservation, and environmentalism and bring their new knowledge back into the reading of Mora's poetry.
A cultural studies exploration of Mora's poetry in My Own True Name might find students investigating language differences among old and new immigrants to the United States. Students can take polls, research census data, read newspaper articles, and construct meaning about the current climate of immigration and language diversity in this country.
The cultural studies activity can lead to a critical pedagogical study whereby students explore patterns in U.S. immigration law. As critical pedagogy requires an activist effort on the part of the class, students can design a variety of ways to assist and befriend immigrant communities through tutoring or creating information booklets describing services, rights and responsibilities for immigrants new to this country.
© Annenberg Foundation 2013. All rights reserved. Legal Policy. | <urn:uuid:1668cbb9-f19e-40df-bb30-1df2d2505c40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.learner.org/workshops/hslit/session1/aw/work1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980902 | 3,626 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Becoming a Human Resources Manager in 5 Steps
Are you a people person with good organizational skills? How would you like to have a corporate job helping employees with training, compensation and job-related issues? Working as a human resources manager offers you the opportunity to define performance goals and assist your company with staffing needs. Read on to learn how you can become a human resources manager in five steps. Schools offering Human Resource Management degrees can also be found in these popular choices.
What Is a Human Resources Manager?
Human resources managers typically perform duties like managing recruiting programs, hiring employees and developing policies and procedures. As a human resources manager, you might specialize in particular areas, such as employee benefits, training or labor relations. Some responsibilities you could have include staying up-to-date on labor changes in government regulations, creating programs to improve safety in the workplace and negotiating contracts with labor unions.
Step 1: Earn a Bachelor's Degree
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated that a bachelor's degree is the most common academic standard required to work as a human resources manager (www.bls.gov). Undergraduate study offers you an opportunity to learn about various business practices and begin focusing on human resources processes and procedures. In addition to taking general education and business courses, you could also participate in an internship to gain experience in the field. Relevant majors can include business, finance, psychology and human resources management.
Step 2: Work as an Intern
Even if you don't have the opportunity to intern through a college program, many large companies offer internships for students and recent graduates. As a human resources (HR) intern, you'll need good interpersonal skills to communicate with employees and management, and you might need to handle sensitive information. Some job duties you could perform include maintaining employee records systems, participating in recruiting events and assisting with new employee orientations. According to a 2007 survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 96% of HR undergraduates stated that working as an intern provided essential preparation for entry-level HR jobs (www.shrm.org).
Step 3: Obtain an Entry-Level Position
According to SHRM, at least a year of experience is necessary for you to obtain an entry-level job in human resources. However, you can usually use the experience you gain through an internship, volunteer program or other related work. Sometimes, corporate recruiters visit college campuses to find new talent, or you might apply for a job as a human resources assistant.
Step 4: Consider a Master's Degree
To advance to a human resources management position, experience and additional training could be essential. In such positions as labor or industrial relations, the BLS reported that graduate education might be necessary. You can earn a master's degree in a broad discipline, such as organizational leadership, or a more specific area, such as labor and employment negotiation. Specialty programs, such as personnel administration, are usually offered at the master's level. Graduate courses can teach you techniques in project management, strategic planning, contract negotiation, arbitration and mediation.
Step 5: Get Certified
Obtaining voluntary certification can demonstrate to employers your competency in the field and commitment professional standards. Common credentials you could obtain include the Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) designations offered by the HR Certification Institute (www.hrci.org). Registering for the PHR certification exam requires you earn a bachelor's degree and have a minimum of two years' experience, though if you have a master's degree, you can qualify with only one year of experience. For the SPHR certification exam, you'll need at least 4-5 years' experience, depending on your degree level.
To continue researching, browse degree options below for course curriculum, prerequisites and financial aid information. Or, learn more about the subject by reading the related articles below: | <urn:uuid:fd107aa1-e2c5-49dd-9b90-29bb56ab0f63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://degreedirectory.org/articles/Human_Resources_Management_5_Steps_to_Becoming_a_Human_Resources_Manager.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947559 | 798 | 2.171875 | 2 |
A view of the Mat-Su Valley
The Mat Valley Coalition is a coalition of concerned property owners working to protect the quality of life in the Matanuska Valley. They are committed to protecting their community and the economic future of the Matanuska Valley from the permanent negative impacts of coal mining.
Usibelli Coal’s proposed Wishbone Hill coal strip mine is located approximately 5 miles west of Sutton, Alaska and 10 miles north east of Palmer, Alaska. Wishbone Hill is surrounded by residential communities in Alaska’s fertile Matanuska Valley.
Usibelli is planning an open-pit mining operation within ¼ mile of established homes. According to the Mat-Su Borough, there are 128 families within less than a mile on the down-wind side of the proposed site. Studies show that property values drop drastically near open put strip mines.
Usibelli plans to sell all of the coal to overseas buyers, leaving the Mat Su Valley with decreased property values and the permanent impacts of open pit coal mining while China, India, and Korea use Alaska’s coal to power their economies.
For more information, visit the websites of these local groups working to protect the Mat Su Valley from the permanent impacts of coal mining. | <urn:uuid:82247db5-d1fa-47f9-ab2a-578e3f805011> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alaskacoal.org/wishbone-hill/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915639 | 253 | 2.5 | 2 |
There are many known toxins lurking in the average home. A few of these common toxins are formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, and benzene. These substances can be found in many common household items and are off-gassed into the air over time. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to remove these air toxins.
Image courtesy of [Toa55] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The following is a guide to which plants need to be planted in which season. More specific planting times depend in what particular climate you will be planting. To find out your climate zone and specific planting dates visit the 2012 USDA Zone Hardiness Map. | <urn:uuid:0dde015e-08fc-4926-9a04-04145912e332> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dailymom.com/category/nest/garden/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948806 | 133 | 2.375 | 2 |
Future hype: the myths of technology change
About time this change thang was given a kicking...
Book review Do you believe that the rate of technological growth is accelerating exponentially and that the human race is approaching a singularity that will transform it fundamentally?
This idea, championed by techno utopian writers like Vernor Vinge (The Coming Technological Singularity), James Gleick (Faster), and Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity is Near), has become quite fashionable lately.
If so, Bob Seidensticker has a message for you: "Everything you thought you knew about technology change is wrong."
Of course, it's not really that bad - he just wants to get your attention. But Future Hype does a good job of challenging, and partially rebutting, some of the wilder ideas in circulation. The book is divided into two parts. The first rebuts popular misconceptions about technology change, focusing on nine familiar "myths", while the second roams further afield to reassess the nature of cultural change and the factors that control it.
Seidensticker reminds us that plenty of life-changing inventions were made in the past. Borrowing from Monty Python's Life of Brian, he asks: "All right, all right. But apart from the printing press, electricity, the telephone, and the foundations of medicine, agriculture, transportation, civil engineering, and communication, what has technology from the past ever done for us?"
Not only don't we get excited about technology invented before we were born, he points out: we barely even notice it. It's the cool leading-edge stuff that gets all the attention. A related idea is encapsulation - the process by which technology is progressively hidden from its users - which Seidensticker considers inevitable and usually beneficial.
Yet, older technology is often better. Magnetically-recorded digital data is illegible within a decade or two; but text printed on acid-free paper lasts for centuries, while ancient inscriptions on stone and ceramics have lasted for millennia. With proper maintenance, the Golden Gate Bridge is expected to last for 250 years - while Chartres Cathedral is still in fine shape 800 years after it was built [mind you, all we see today, 800 years on, are the cathedrals that didn't fall down - possibly lots did - Ed].
Seidensticker applies Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to analyse the real human value of various types of technology. Live in the woods for a week with no technology at all, he suggests, and see if it's your laptop that you miss most (although there are always exceptions to the rule - see this and subsequent strips).
Apart from the main argument, this book is stuffed with interesting facts, figures, ideas, and points of view. My copy wound up bristling with place-markers. Seidensticker treats us to some splendid quotations. My favourite is a remark by Bjarne Stroustrup: "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."
For some reason, possibly to avoid the taint of academia, Seidensticker gives "chapter notes" instead of end notes. This means that, instead of having a convenient symbol to tell you that there is a note or reference awaiting your attention at the end of the book, you have to guess. It is really not an improvement.
Seidensticker admits to a slight US bias, for example, he says that most houses today are built from wood; and quotes (with approval) a Xerox executive who predicted: "We'll have paperless offices about the same time we have paperless bathrooms."
There is the occasional outright howler, such as Mary Shelley's 1916 novel Frankenstein (actually 1818).
The author's thinking sometimes seems to be coloured by his days at Microsoft. For example: "We were told that nuclear bombs would be used to excavate harbors, space travel would be practical, desalinized sea water would irrigate deserts, the Network Computer would replace PCs, and electricity would be sent without loss over cryogenic power lines."
Can you spot the piece of insider trivia mixed in with the big chunky technical advances? He is also rather hard on the internet, quoting Esther Dyson ("Most of the content on the internet is total rubbish"), and asking if it is "the plastic of the 21st century".
There is a supplementary website for this book. Along with quite a lot of, er, hype about the author and his book, it includes a page of "links to interesting things" - mostly books, and mostly without URLs.
Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change
Verdict: Future Hype is a good read, well written and argued, and loaded with interesting facts and figures - a worthy successor to Steven Schnaars' classic Megamistakes. Recommended, whether or not you agree with its core thesis.
Author: Seidensticker, Bob
List Price: £14.99
Reg price: £13.87
Buy this book at Cash 'n' Carrion - UK edition now available! ® | <urn:uuid:c1e3fb73-d6e0-48ea-8bd4-483f582a619f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/07/future_hype_seidensticker/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952602 | 1,077 | 2.125 | 2 |
Nuance to bring Siri-like commands to cars
Nuance, the company behind the technology used in Siri, has announced that it is making a Siri-like natural language command platform for vehicles.
Dragon Drive can be installed in cars to allow drivers to send text messages, get directions, play music, check traffic information and more, just by using voice commands.
Nuance’s Dragon Drive technology will eliminate the need to specifically explain exactly what task the driver is looking to perform. Instead, it will work like Apple’s Siri technology, listening to natural speech and figuring out what the driver is asking intelligently. Drivers will simply need to press a button on the steering wheel to activate Dragon Drive’s voice-recognition technology.
Vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile Mike Thompson says that the technology is a hybrid system; as such, Dragon Drive can use onboard software to process some of the commands spoken by the driver, making them easier to analyze, rather than relying entirely on online services as Siri does.
Dragon Drive will learn the driver’s voice patterns, and can filter out car noises such as windshield wipers. The technology will also be available to any mobile phone user, as it can use a mobile phone’s internet connection or the vehicle’s own SIM card.
The aim of the technology is to enable safe driving, allowing users to keep both hands on the wheel and eyes on the road, and therefore eliminating distractions. However, a recent report suggests that one in five young drivers play Angry Birds or Draw Something on the road, a distraction that Dragon Drive doesn’t address.
Dragon Drive is expected to be available for vehicles in summer 2012.
Manufacturers such as Ford, BMW, Daimler, and GM are already using general Nuance technology for their voice systems, but Nuance hasn’t revealed how many car makers have opted to use Dragon Drive. | <urn:uuid:de9e17df-0dd6-4cd9-804b-6912789cd6fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macworld.com/article/1166967/nuance_to_bring_siri_like_commands_to_cars.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939167 | 398 | 2.09375 | 2 |
December 14, 1999
Initiative Would Standardize Training for Employed Health Care Workers
A coalition of labor unions, Baltimore hospitals and state and local government agencies has been awarded nearly $1 million by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to develop a program of portable, transferable training for health care workers. Details of the grant will be presented at a press briefing on Dec. 17 at 9 a.m. in rooms 2134 and 2140 of The Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center located on North Caroline Street.
Called the Baltimore Regional Healthcare Training Partnership, the program is designed to ensure that current health care workers receive the training and education necessary for promotion and job retention. By developing a training system and skill standards that all coalition partners recognize, program participants are expected to find it much easier to transfer from one institution to another.
The partnership, a program of Community Services of Central Maryland/AFL-CIO, includes The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Sinai Hospital, Maryland General Hospital, the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, the Service Employees International Union District 1199E-DC, -- the largest healthcare union in Maryland-- the City of Baltimore's Office of Employment Development, and the Maryland State Department of Labor Licensing and Regulation.
Starting in February, the partnership will begin training workers currently employed in the participating hospitals in four occupations: patient care technician, medical billing, unit secretary, and surgical technician. The training will be recognized by all four institutions. The partnership already has begun an external diploma program (for those without high school diplomas), academic tutoring, and basic computer classes to improve the computer literacy of health care employees.
Employment in health care continues to grow in the Baltimore region, with one of five private-sector workers in Baltimore City employed in the industry. Yet many currently employed workers are at risk for becoming unemployed or joining the ranks of those on public assistance because of rapid changes in the health care environment, according to Robert Moore, president of the Service Employees International Union, District 1199E-DC. "Managed care and the reengineering of hospital jobs mean that many workers face unexpected challenges," he says. "The skills that were once perfectly adequate for the old jobs are insufficient for the new ones. Furthermore, many jobs have moved from inpatient acute care hospitals to outpatient clinics or long-term care facilities. Making a transition can be difficult for workers without high school diplomas or with low literacy skills." Moore notes that even workers with higher level skills can still be at risk for unemployment if those skills are not recognized by different health care institutions due to a lack of standardized, certifiable training.
The partnership demonstrates the value of labor and management working together for common goals, says Moore. "Labor and management each bring a commitment to quality care to this partnership. Together we can work for better educated workers, more satisfying jobs at fair wages, and better health care for the community, he says."
In time, says Moore, the partnership hopes to expand to additional hospitals and health care institutions in the city.
Baltimore Regional Healthcare Training Partnership: Laura Chenven, 410-332-1199, ext. 102
District 1199E-DC, SEIU: Michele Thompson, 410-332-1199, ext. 111
Johns Hopkins Medicine: Gary M. Stephenson, 410-955-5384 | <urn:uuid:e327cbf0-c595-410c-b090-a6228a80083f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://esgweb1.nts.jhu.edu/press/1999/DEC99/991214.HTM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939336 | 681 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Infectious arthritis (septic arthritis) is caused by a bacterial,
viral, or fungal infection inside a joint. The infection may be caused by an
illness or may spread from an infection in a wound near a joint.
The large joints, such as the hips, knees, shoulders, and elbows,
are most often affected. Infectious arthritis usually affects one joint, but it
can affect many joints. Symptoms may include:
Severe pain with the slightest joint motion or
pressure on the joint.
Fever and chills.
weakness and headache.
Painful, red, swollen, and stiff
Red streaks near the joint.
Immediate treatment with antibiotics and, possibly, surgical
drainage of the affected joint can prevent the spread of the infection, the
destruction of the joint, and even death.
William H. Blahd, Jr., MD, FACEP - Emergency Medicine & David Messenger, MD
How this information was developed to help you make better health decisions. | <urn:uuid:95a8bda5-24cb-4a83-ab3e-08e24c4515dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uwhealth.org/health/topic/definition/infectious-arthritis/sti150808.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912081 | 214 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Space shuttle Enterprise moves to new home
Former astronaut Tom Jones weighs in
- Duration 5:12
- Date Jun 6, 2012
Former astronaut Tom Jones weighs in
Also in this playlist...
This transcript is automatically generated
-- happening right now the Space Shuttle Enterprise is arriving at its final destination the intrepid sea air and space museum.
And New York City.
Marking a new chapter in the shuttle's history and want to talk a little bit more about this -- Tom Jones a former NASA shuttle astronaut -- -- Fox News contributor and time -- amazing shots and hasty.
The enterprise head -- intrepid to get lifted out there on the on the decade.
A little bit more about enterprise -- we know it never.
Actually entered outer outer space why is it right -- session important shuttle.
Janet was the first space shuttle to be put together was built on Palmdale California.
And I got this here when I was an air force -- back in 1976 innings later took flight in 77.
On five flights dropped from the 747 to prove.
But the space shuttle orbiter could actually land precisely.
On a runway coming back from space and those are very crucial test flights with astronaut pairs aboard got two astronauts on each of those flights.
So with that enterprise it would be unlikely that.
We would have shuttles -- -- first race at this time.
Well have been out tremendously difficult test flight to launch a shuttle not knowing whether can actually make it back for -- when it would have been entirely too risky so.
Enterprise pave the way for the successful later flights of Columbia and her sister ships.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Are they gonna be able to crawl around inside it what can they do so we're not going to be able to go inside the shuttle time but we're gonna be able to go out pretty close around it.
At guy at anyway didn't the intrepid museum and feature -- -- -- -- we look for if we get close to space shuttle worsen the important things that that we should it.
Well from the outside -- you'll get -- -- that crew entry hatch where crews climbed in on the launch pad and came out after.
Landing in fact one of the funny stories about enterprises that when.
-- a fortune came back from one of those 747 test -- the attic crawl out of the hatch.
And hop sixty feet in the air -- a cherry picker crane to get out of enterprise that was the scariest moment he said.
On the flight you'll also be able to see the payload bay doors the mock up engines at the tail and also the crucial fuel in less.
And -- -- -- near the belly and rear of the orbiter that's where the big external tank would have been attached for real life so you'll see all the systems that the real shuttles had.
Just tested on the enterprise.
Sixty -- can you imagine John and I just -- into.
After that that that's a scary it is I don't like imagine that it is so much.
Bigger than people imagine you can basically Tom if I'm right you can basically put us a bus in in the cargo bay.
Of of the space shuttle right.
That's correct it's sixty feet long fifteen feet wide and can carry about 50000 pounds of cargo including things like.
The Hubble telescope so.
You know this is the size of a DC nine airliner and people will be very impressed when it's on the deck of the intrepid at the scale of enterprise I didn't realize until I was looking at some of history of this craft that you know you you hear that it's sort of a test orbiter and you think it's built of plywood or something like that.
It's basically a real shuttle they had all the -- in and so for -- they were even considering.
Sending it into space after the challenger disaster but they decided to build -- -- and -- instead.
Right enterprise was built very regularly with that -- construction because it didn't really understand the loads going to and from space yet.
And so after other challenger was lost NASA considered it upgrading its us based capability but they felt that a lighter.
-- -- shuttle turned out to be endeavor would be a better bet for that.
It just strikes -- all time that last week -- believe we're talking about SpaceX the new private ventured to get.
And well I've rocket into space and -- -- shuttle but it was really more rocket to the international space at station up there and as as you see.
And the space program embolden and think about what's ahead is wow.
This curious how you kind of see these -- news items together.
It's good news that last week SpaceX and its dragon capsule were successful in -- -- to the station.
As the shuttles go to museums and now we can see perhaps a glimmer.
-- -- NASA can reopen supply line to the space station and then eventually in about five years fly astronauts and I would sure like to see that process.
Accelerated and have these commercial ships in service sooner than five years from now.
How many are master not the decent but it isn't -- -- and check out the shadow of.
Well I live very close by here in the -- airport and the -- of our policy center of the national air and space museum were enterprise was on display for nine years.
And I love going to show my friends that shuttle prototype.
Now the discoveries there and I'm certainly gonna make a pilgrimage quickly up to New York to see enterprise and its new mom and -- curious if they if -- never gets old I'm guessing you probably destined.
And no -- -- that was my companion in space and bringing me back to earth and the shuttles are really special to me.
-- appreciated your insights as always be easing up personal special it is TO.
I thank you very much -- have all this streaming by the way on foxnews.com.
C continue to watch the process which is quite an endeavor.
And obviously the -- -- -- -- a lot and in her lifetime more than thirty years of service.
I seeking catch that at foxnews.com we'll have more coverage here on Fox News coming up. | <urn:uuid:7a422337-d21a-4109-b4c7-6664f55379cd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://video.foxnews.com/v/1677068572001/space-shuttle-enterprise-moves-to-new-home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950124 | 1,321 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The Harvard College Library provides reserves support for many FAS courses. Services includes processing requests from faculty, and identifying, locating, photocopying, and sometimes purchasing or borrowing materials. The libraries also assist in making some reserves available online by either digitizing print materials or linking to electronic resources. The following HCL libraries participate in the reserves program: Cabot, Fine Arts, Harvard-Yenching, Lamont, Loeb Music, and Tozzer.
- Reserves Tool
- Submission Deadlines
- Request Material Not Owned at the Supporting Library
- Reserves in Digital Format
- Participating Libraries and Reserves Staff Contact Information
The Reserves Tool, as part of Course iSites, is available through the FAS Instructional Computing Group. The tool maintains reserves lists from previous semesters and allows you to submit requests directly to the library that supports your course. Students can use their course Web site to access reserves lists with links to the HOLLIS records or with direct links to library digital resources. Instructors and students are able to see the current status of course readings as they are being processed by the libraries. See the Reserves Tool Quick Reference Guide for Faculty and Course Staff for basic information about submitting reserves requests. For more information about the Reserves Tool and other tool in Course iSites, visit the FAS Instructional Computing Group Web site.
Reserves staff in each of the Participating Libraries are available to work with you throughout the reserves process.
Although reserves requests will be accepted throughout the semester, turning in your lists well in advance of the semester ensures that reserves materials will be ready at the beginning of the semester.
Reserves requests can be submitted via the Reserves Tool following the schedule below:
- Fall semester — beginning July 24
- Spring semester — November 15
- Summer semester — April 15
If the library does not own a title that has been requested for reserves, we will attempt to borrow it from another Harvard library or purchase it. Purchasing decisions are made by the heads of each collection and are based on a number of factors, such as whether the work falls within the scope of the collection, how many copies exist at Harvard, cost, etc.
Cabot, Harvard-Yenching, and Tozzer libraries currently are equipped to digitize reserves materials for the courses they support. Because of copyright restrictions and associated fees, the libraries decide what to digitize on a title by title basis. Harvard College Library cannot provide digitization services for materials for Core classes.
Some libraries that support reserves have digitized copies of materials created in prior semester, even though they do not currently provide digitization services. Inquire about the availability of digitized materials at your supporting library.
Only text-based materials like a journal article, a book chapter, or a portion of a collection or anthology, such as a poem, are suitable for digitizing. Entire books cannot be digitized; please specify the chapter to be scanned when submitting the reserves request. Scanned items are available to students in PDF format.
Harvard College Library requests permission to digitize readings and to make them accessible to students. Occasionally, a copyright owner will deny our request to digitize or will charge a prohibitive fee. In these cases, the reading will be taken off electronic reserve and you will be notified. If a permission request for a reading has been denied in a previous semester, we will initiate a request for permission but cannot place the reading on electronic reserve until permission is granted.
As classes begin, e-reserves are accessible to everyone with a Harvard ID and University PIN. (To obtain a University PIN go to http://www.pin.harvard.edu.) After Study Card Day, access is limited to students registered for the course. Faculty with digitized course reserves receive a password so that they can access the materials for that course. The course password can also be distributed to cross-registered students who do not have Harvard IDs and PINs.
Cabot Science Library offers both digitization of materials and linking for selected courses. It supports reserves required readings for all undergraduate science courses and graduate courses in the Mathematics, Statistics, and Earth and Planetary Sciences departments. Optional reserves readings will be considered for purchase and addition to the general Cabot collection. For assistance with Cabot reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact Reserves Supervisor Lidia Berger via e-mail or at 617-484-7469.
Fine Arts Library supports reserves for undergraduate and graduate courses in the Department of History of Art and Architecture with the exception of Core Curriculum courses. Additional support for undergraduate and graduate courses in the departments/faculties of Classics, African and African American Studies, and Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning may be provided, if requested. For assistance with Fine Arts Library reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact the reserves staff via e-mail.
Harvard-Yenching Library offers both digitization of materials and linking for selected courses. It supports reserves for all East Asia-related courses offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It has primary responsibility for language and graduate courses in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. For assistance with Harvard-Yenching Library reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact reserves staff via e-mail.
Lamont Library supports reserves readings for most undergraduate courses offered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Lamont Library does not support courses offered outside the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, regardless of undergraduate enrollment. The library supports most graduate courses in the following departments: Celtic, Classics, Comparative Literature, English, Germanic Languages and Literatures, History, History of Science, Philosophy, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Slavic Languages and Literatures.Lamont does not support the following graduate courses:
Anthropology 200-399 (Tozzer Library), East Asian Languages and Civilizations 200-399 (Harvard-Yenching Library), History of Art and Architecture 200-399 (Fine Arts Library)Lamont does not support the following undergraduate courses:
Anthropology tutorials (Tozzer Library only), East Asian Languages and Civilizations language courses (Harvard-Yenching Library only), Extension School courses (Grossman Library only), History of Art and Architecture 10-199 (Fine Arts Library), Sciences 10-199 (Cabot Library)
For assistance with Lamont reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact Lamont Library at 617-495-2452 or via e-mail.
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library supports reserves required readings for all Harvard Music Department courses, with the exception of Core courses. We can make exceptions when a non-Music Department course needs materials primarily from Music Library collections, as well as provide additional multiple copies of materials for Core music courses when needed (as requested by Morse/Lamont).
For assistance with Loeb Music Library reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact the Public Services desk in the Loeb Music Library at 617-495-2794 or via e-mail.
Tozzer Library offers linking to course readings in Harvard's e-resources for all courses it supports. It supports reserves required readings for all courses taught by the faculty of the Anthropology Department. In addition Tozzer also supports congruent courses, such as in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, sometimes taught by faculty other than those in Anthropology.
For assistance with Tozzer reserves requests, faculty or TAs should contact Tozzer via e-mail.
Reserves materials in hard copy are held in a number of libraries, depending upon the subject. Your instructor will let you know which library has your reading materials. Policies around use of reserves materials vary among libraries, so be sure to inquire when you check out a hard copy. Information about reserve readings is also available in the Courses section of my.harvard. Opening an individual course listing will bring up reserves information, if there is any, with links provided to readings that are available in electronic format.
Reserves materials in electronic format can be accessed at the start of the semester by any student with a Harvard ID and PIN. After Study Card Day, access is limited to students registered for the course. Students who are enrolled in a course but who do not have a Harvard ID and University PIN can use the course password, available from the instructor, for access to scanned readings. Please note that these passwords do not allow access to the electronic resources on the Harvard Libraries site that are licensed by Harvard University. Access to those resources is available at the computers within the libraries at Harvard. | <urn:uuid:caa598b5-1055-4188-82a3-cb5889f80dda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hcl.harvard.edu/info/reserves/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921847 | 1,775 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Gates Salutes NORAD’s 50 Years as Guardian of Skies
By Gerry J. Gilmore
American Forces Press Service
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., May 13, 2008 Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates saluted North American Aerospace Defense Command’s role as the guardian of North American skies at the organization’s 50th anniversary observance here last night. Video
NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian military organization, was established May 12, 1958, to defend North America from air and space threats.
“Both of our nations are dedicated to protecting North Americans from air attacks, and this institution remains a vital part of the defense of the continent,” Gates said during his address at NORAD’s Golden Jubilee Ball at the Broadmoor resort.
Canada has long been a valued friend of the United States, Gates said, noting he shared the podium with Canadian Minister of National Defense Peter Gordon MacKay.
Gates thanked Canada for its partnership in the war on terror. Some 3,000 Canadian troops are serving in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. “I also thank you for your ongoing commitment to NORAD,” Gates told MacKay.
The then-Soviet Union’s launch of its Sputnik satellite in 1957 “accelerated the space race and raised the specter of attack on our homeland by intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Gates recalled. The United States and Canada set up an extensive radar network to protect North American air space, Gates said, and NORAD operations began on Sept. 12, 1957, eight months before the command’s formal establishment.
NORAD’s mission is no less important today, Gates observed, especially with the advent of transnational terrorism. Operation Noble Eagle airspace-protection missions have been flown over the homeland since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said. Noble Eagle supplies a ready alert force, air patrols, and surveillance to the United States and Canada, Gates said. Its pilots have flown 45,000 sorties since the terror attacks, he noted.
NORAD always is on guard for enemy threats emanating from the skies or space, Gates said. In 2006, NORAD added maritime surveillance to its mission list.
Starting even before its formal establishment, NORAD has tracked Santa Claus each year as he flies around the world in his reindeer-drawn sleigh bringing Christmas gifts and cheer to children worldwide, Gates said.
“Looking back at all the years, and all the Christmases spent tracking Santa, we take for granted the advances that have been made --– like satellites in space and the ability to communicate across the globe in an instant,” Gates observed.
NORAD has steadfastly performed its important missions with creativity and innovation for the past half-century, Gates said.
“It is, in the final analysis, still one of our first and last defenses of that which we cherish most: our loved ones, our liberties, our countries,” Gates said.
“To all the men and women who have dedicated their lives to defending this continent, I thank you,” the secretary said. “As we look back on all that has been accomplished, let us also look forward to new challenges and new triumphs.”
MacKay echoed Gates’ feelings about NORAD.
“Looking back over five decades, we can be proud of everything that NORAD has accomplished and everything NORAD stands for,” MacKay said. In the future, he said, NORAD “must continue to adapt, innovate and cooperate, because our mutual security depends upon it.”
NORAD and U.S. Northern Command are based at Peterson Air Force Bbase here and are commanded by U.S. Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., whose deputy at NORAD is a Canadian flag officer, Lt. Gen. Charlie Bouchard. Established on Oct. 1, 2002, U.S. Northern Command conducts homeland defense and civil support missions.
U.S. and Canadian military officials at NORAD are now “fusing together their mutual interests, their great planning capabilities” to improve the organization so it can successfully confront future challenges, Renuart said.
“So, we’ll continue to guard what you all value most: our families, our friends and our communities,” Renuart promised.
“That really is the legacy of NORAD,” he said. | <urn:uuid:794999d9-0fec-4409-99b7-5115d73a63e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=49853 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936495 | 936 | 1.914063 | 2 |
SecDef Gates thinks the time for force on force ground campaigns may be over:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and that the chances of carrying out a change of government in that fashion again were slim.
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.
That reality, he said, meant that the Army would have to reshape its budget, since potential conflicts in places like Asia or the Persian Gulf were more likely to be fought with air and sea power, rather than with conventional ground forces.
“As the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations,” Mr. Gates warned.
Don’t know about you, but if feels like we’ve been down this road before. Mr. Gates’ predecessor notably regretted having to “go to war with the army you have,” rather than the one he wished he had. To me that means having a ground combat element capable of the full-spectrum of military missions, from humanitarian assistance, to training foreign indigenous forces to combined arms mechanized maneuver.
This is not to say that you’d ever seriously contemplate another nation-building mission as we’ve attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we ought to retain a nation-breaking power, and when it comes to enemy ground formations that cannot be done with air and naval power alone – someone has to hold the hill and plant the flag, even if only to haul it back down again once the enemy’s will to fight is broken.
To me the secretary’s speech sounds like we’re tailoring our missions to our budget, which is not in itself an irrational thing to do. But we might as well be honest about it, and admit that we’re voluntarily curtailing our ability to project power in traditional ways in favor of I’m not exactly sure what. | <urn:uuid:becfd344-9e21-4ca6-899c-7bb8784993cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neptunuslex.com/2011/02/26/muddy-boots/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95795 | 493 | 1.59375 | 2 |
| ||During 2008-2010 (average) in San Jose, late preterm birth rates were highest for black infants (7.7%), followed by Hispanics (7.2%), whites (7.0%) and Asians (7.0%). |
| ||Late preterm babies have higher rates of adverse birth outcomes than term infants. Late preterm babies are at higher risk for breathing problems, feeding difficulties, jaundice, difficulties regulating body temperature and death compared to term babies. |
National Center for Health Statistics, final natality data.
Retrieved May 24, 2013, from www.marchofdimes.com/peristats. | <urn:uuid:a88924bf-1811-431e-8742-0466b5ff46b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marchofdimes.com/peristats/ViewSubtopic.aspx?dv=ls®=0668000&top=3&stop=353&lev=1&slev=5&obj=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927636 | 134 | 2.21875 | 2 |
It's All Greek to Me
by Charlotte Higgins
Why is ancient Greece important? Because, quite simply, if we want to understand the modern Western world, we need to look back to the Greeks. Consider the way we think about ethics, about the nature of beauty and truth, about our place in the universe, about our mortality. All this we have learned from the ancient Greeks. They molded the basic... | <urn:uuid:1e1cd7d8-2435-4a15-b0ef-1ffcd574a553> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harpercollins.com/author/index.aspx?authorID=33749 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930563 | 83 | 2.109375 | 2 |
A wise man sat in an audience and cracked a joke.
Everyone laughed like crazy.
After a moment, He cracked the same joke again.
This time, less people laughed.
He cracked the same joke again and again.
When there was no laughter in the crowd, he smiled and said:
“You can’t laugh at the same joke again and again, so why do you keep crying at the same thing over and over again?” | <urn:uuid:8aa536db-8ece-467a-892b-a86e22b6181f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spiffyandproud.tumblr.com/ | 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 | 0.910084 | 97 | 1.757813 | 2 |
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
President Obama welcomed India's Prime Minister Singh to the White House this morning. He stressed the importance of the U.S.'s relationship with India, mentioning briefly climate change and only alluding to its regional significance as it relates to Pakistan in particular.
Pakistan and India are main rivals, clashing often over the disputed Kashmir region. India also wants more done by the Pakistanis to hold accountable those responsible for the deadly Mumbai bombings.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL VIDEO. Here's a short preview: | <urn:uuid:0398ee0d-fe21-44c2-be90-d54e76f324b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2009/11/24/4435100-obama-on-us-india-relationship?pc=25&sp=25 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929219 | 112 | 1.59375 | 2 |
A Family Drama in Three Acts
By Henrik Ibsen
A New Translation by Lanford Wilson
Directed by Joe Falocco
November 15 - 18, 2007
This famous play by the father of modern drama is a pinnacle in the annals of dramatic composition. Oswald Alving returns for the dedication of the orphanage to his father's memory and has a flirtation with the maid who, it turns out, is his father's illegitimate daughter.
The orphanage burns down, the maid runs off in disgust when she learns the truth about her parentage, and Mrs. Alving is left alone to care for her hopelessly insane son who has fallen prey to the social disease that killed his father.
The role of Mrs. Alving, considered one of the greatest in the modern repertoire, has been played by Liv Ullman, Eva Le Galliene, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Alla Nazimova and Eleonora Duse.
Setting: This play takes place in Mrs. Alving's home in 1881.
Scenery & Lighting Design
Lanford Wilson's translation of GHOSTS by Henirk Ibsen was commissioned and produced by Arizona Theatre Company, Tucson/Pheonix, Arizona, David Ira Goldstein, Artistic Director; Jessica L. Andrews, Managing Director. Originally produced in New York City by Classic Stage Company on November 1, 2002 | <urn:uuid:914d6449-7951-4185-90ac-a9a85cbe70ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rockford.edu/general/custom.asp?page=PastGhosts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945334 | 291 | 1.5 | 2 |
It is with great pride we present to you Velvetpark's annual Top 25 Queer Women of 2012. As with past years our criteria is to honor female-identified or non-gender-binary persons who have made a significant contribution to lesbian/dyke/trans/queer visibility in the areas of arts, culture and activism, or who made a critical impact on our social equality for the year 2012.
Again we reiterate there have been so many unsung s/heroes who contribute significantly to our communities year after year; we have kept to our criteria of not duplicating anyone who has been honored in the past, as well as anyone who has already attained celebrity (mainstream) status.
So without further ado, here are the Top 25 Queer Women of 2012.
“The Undocumented”—Tania Unzueta, Immigrant Rights Activist
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was a critical piece of legislation passed by the Obama administration this year, and Tania Alheli Unzueta, co-founder of the Immigrant Youth Justice League, was a prominent queer undocumented figure advocating its passage. In the summer of 2012 Unzueta worked as the media coordinator with the No Paper No Fear Ride for Justice supported by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network and other organizations, working with riders as they prepped for interviews and acts of civil disobedience across the southern U.S. demanding: a stop to the collaboration between police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement; a stop to deportations; the Obama Administration defend the rights of undocumented immigrants. Unzueta was instrumental in the planning and implementation of these actions, making sure to highlight the variety of voices and stories of the undocumented communities the Undocubus came in contact with as well as those of the people on the bus. Unzueta is now back in Chicago and is the lead coordinator for Organized Communities Against Deportations, an anti-deportations initiative of the Immigrant Youth Justice League. She is also the writer of "How I stopped believing in CIR and learned to love ‘piecemeal’ legislation."
“Gender Technologist”— Del LaGrace Volcano, Visual Artist, Cultural Producer
Del LaGrace has been deconstructing and reconstructing gender identity through his/her photography for over 35 years. Del began his/her career studying at the Art Institute of San Francisco, since then s/he has spent the last 30 years living abroad where his/her works have received major attention at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland; Centre for Contemporary Art in Bourges, France; the Ludwig Museum, Koln, Germany; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK. This fall Del’s works were given a welcomed homecoming at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art with a major mid-career retrospective. While it's a tremendous milestone to see queer artists such as Dawn Kasper and K8 Hardy in major American museum shows, we have only to look at the works of Del LaGrace Volcano for helping to break that ground. The exhibition was nothing short of a thrilling glimpse into the explosive creativity of this mid-career genius, which we can be sure still has many things to come.
“The Sisterhood”—Janet Mock, Writer, Editor, Activist
Ever since People Magazine's online editor Janet Mock wrote a touching coming-out trans story published at The Huffington Post last December, she has emerged as a preeminent leader within the trans community and a vocal advocate of the trans women of color community in particular. As the founder of #GirlsLikeUs, a Twitter advocacy campaign to give voice to transwomen across the world against transphobia, Mock frequently contributes to a number of online and print media, as well as guest lectures at universities across the United States. Slated to appear in the documentary The LGBTQQA List by famed photographer and director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in June 2013, Mock was “named The Grio’s 100 most influential people, Sundance Channel‘s Top 10 LGBT voices, and GBM News’ 15 Most Powerful LGBT Figures in 2012.” With a particular focus on queer youth, Mock’s focus is on re-visioning our queer future. Through her reiterative call to question traditional notions of “womanhood,” the Honolulu-born Mock is, in our eyes, an ideal feminist and a leader in the effort to create new sisterhoods.
“Solidarity”—Jasbir Puar, Scholar, Activist
Among the many virtues defining the work of scholar, activist and writer Jasbir K. Puar, patience is not one of them: and this is what makes her presence in the world so significant. Her first book, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times, was published in 2005 and is not only still being bought and talked about in queer and feminist circles, but also still revealing concepts and critical praxes that seem to have been planted there for use in the world-to-come. The term “pinkwashing” has received a lot of attention this year and owes a lot to Puar’s theoretical groundwork: both in TA as well as in a series of contested Op-Eds written for The Guardian that argue that the presence of gay rights in Israel distracts from and subsequently becomes complicit in the media campaign in the west that ignores or permits the arbitrary and paranoid violence sanctioned by that state. In every instance Puar’s work is valuable because of its stubborn and uncanny ability to resist the critical and political temptations of sentimentality and injury that, unfortunately, mark a lot of queer theory and practice in the United States today. Uniquely capable of presenting the complexities of our contemporary political moments as well as stubborn in her confrontations with given and overdetermined logics, Jasbir Puar shows time and time again that she’s got something much better than patience: she’s got nerve.
“The Good One”—Tig Notaro, Comedian | <urn:uuid:80ad7b54-55d6-46f3-a915-e660692f8cea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://velvetparkmedia.com/blogs/velvetparks-official-top-25-significant-queer-women-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958093 | 1,268 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Remedial Action Plans (RAPs)
- AOC Area of Concern
- BUI Beneficial Use Impairment
- CMP/EISChemical Management Plan or Environmental Impact Statement
- GLNPO Great Lakes National Program Office
- PAC Public Advisory Council
- RAP Remedial Action Plan
In an effort to clean up the most polluted areas in the Great Lakes, the United States and Canada, in Annex 2 of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, committed to cooperate with State and Provincial Governments to ensure that Remedial Action Plans (RAPs) are developed and implemented for all designated Areas of Concern (AoCs) in the Great Lakes basin. Forty-three AoCs have been identified: 26 located entirely within the United States; 12 located wholly within Canada; and five that are shared by both countries. RAPs are being developed for each of these AoCs to address impairments to any one of 14 beneficial uses (e.g., restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption, dredging activities, or drinking water consumption) associated with these areas.
RAPs are developed and implemented through an ecosystem based, multi-media approach for assessing and remediating impaired uses. The RAP process is a model of grassroots environmental democracy, stressing empowerment of the affected public within AoCs. States approach RAPs in differing ways. Some have a "hands-on" style of involvement in the process while others delegate much of the decision-making to local groups or agencies within the AoC. These approaches are complemented by Federal technical and financial support and where necessary, the application of federal statutes and authorities. The eight Great Lakes States and the Province of Ontario have the lead in preparing and implementing the RAPs, which is complemented by vital input and expertise of other Federal agencies (USEPA RAP Liaisons) and organizations as well as local governments, industrial and environmental groups and individual citizens.
A RAP is developed in three stages: Stage I identifies and assesses use impairments, and identifies the sources of the stresses from all media in the AoC; Stage II identifies proposed remedial actions and their method of implementation; and Stage III documents evidence that uses have been restored. It is important to note that, in practice, these stages often overlap, and that the RAPs often become iterative documents, representing the current state of knowledge, planning and remedial activity in the AoC.
Successful RAPs are community driven, with active Federal, State and local involvement. The affected community, which is closest to and most directly affected by the resource, in concert with other stakeholders, is empowered to create a future vision for the AoC, a vision generated by the group that will be directly affected by the decisions made. It is important to note that solutions for problems in AoCs and other local, geographically focused efforts do not fall into the "one size fits all" category. Each of these areas will have a unique blend of circumstances and solutions based upon the complexities of the issues that must be addressed.
The success of the RAPs will ultimately be measured by the degree to which all beneficial uses in the AoC are restored and protected. On a smaller scale, progress is celebrated with the completion of each of the individual implementation projects. Through the ongoing monitoring and assessment projects, progress is measured in many ways; through reductions in toxic or bioaccumulative chemicals in the sediments or in the water column, restoration of critical habitat, source reductions through individual, municipal and industrial pollution prevention efforts, implementation of agricultural best management practices, and either voluntary or enforced point source controls. There have been 24 sediment remediation projects undertaken in 14 different Areas of Concern. Review the status of sediment management projects. | <urn:uuid:c1111b07-f3e4-401f-b043-dc95ee1ec94e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.epa.gov/grtlakes/aoc/rap.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945896 | 764 | 2.203125 | 2 |
By FPA member Scott Hughes, CFP®, MBA
Last Updated: May 16, 2011
Did you know that many public employees are starting to retire much earlier than society’s traditional age of 65? In recent years, this is becoming more common and that’s the good news! After all, who wouldn’t like to enjoy their “golden years” as early as possible?
Keep in mind that the retirement years for public employees can span a longer time period than their working careers did. These added years of retirement can present pre-retirees with a more complex set of decisions and risks to consider than a conventional retirement would.
Warren Buffet, one of our country’s wealthiest men, once said, “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” Do you know how to retire at a younger age than traditionally expected without risking the financial assets you’ve saved for your retirement? For many people, the answer is “no” — as retirement tends to be a first-time experience.
As with any new experience, doing something for the very first time, like retirement, can sometimes lead to innocent mistakes. Your first inclination might be to only make provisions for the dreams and goals you would like to fulfill once you retire. However, two things you must first do in preparation for all of the changes that will come with retirement are a careful evaluation of your financial assets and an assessment of all the risks that may lie ahead.
Whether you go this alone or work with a financial planner, carefully review of all of your financial assets (Social Security benefits, employer-sponsored retirement plan(s), pension(s), investments and savings).
Then take a reasonable assessment of the risks involved with an earlier retirement. These include:
- Longevity Risk: Have you considered what your natural life expectancy might be? Make sure that you overestimate how long you are going to live. It could be a real problem if you live to the age of 90, but when you determined your financial plan in retirement, you only planned to live to 80. No, you can’t take it with you, but you should make sure your money outlives you!
- Investment Risk: Are you emotionally prepared for the swings in the markets once you are retired? Have you considered that your retirement accounts may need to be invested in a diverse portfolio? Have a financial plan that relates to your investment strategy and consider the benefits of asset allocation and diversification. Remember, this is a retirement account that may need to last 30 to 40 years. You need to determine if you will need your retirement accounts to provide both income and growth. This is typical for most retirees. In many cases, this is a significant strategy change from when you were building your portfolio during the working years. The time may have come to transition from building the retirement account to using the account.
- Inflation Risk: How much did your first car or home cost? How much does that car or home cost today? How much will your utilities cost in the future? Will gas and food cost more and more each year? Unfortunately, the one constant in most retirees’ lives is that many normal expenses increase regularly. Be prepared to see your income needs increase regularly. Make sure your retirement income plan accounts for inflation. Typically, three percent is the minimum expectation, but many financial planners use a four percent inflation rate when making projections.
- Unplanned Expenses Risk: Have you ever had to pay a lot for something you never planned for? Perhaps an automobile broke down or a roof had to be repaired. Just because you’ve retired doesn’t mean these normal but unplanned life events cease to happen. Make sure to have a cash reservoir or emergency reserve account set aside for unplanned expenses.
- Distribution Risk: How much should you take from your savings each year to ensure it lasts your lifetime? Are you going to give yourself a raise each year from the portfolio in order to keep up with inflation? What happens to your withdrawal if the portfolio does not perform up to your expectations? Significant research has come to light on sustainable withdrawal rates in retirement. Be sure to investigate the implications of your distribution rate. Is it going to be three, four, five percent or more?
- Medical and Long-Term Care Risks: Are you able to carry your current health insurance into retirement? Do you have long-term care insurance for needs not covered by health insurance and Medicare? Is your spouse also covered on these plans? Many retirees find that more than 20 percent of their budget goes towards health care costs. Recent studies have warned that retired couples should be prepared to see their total cost at more than $250,000. This is a staggering number and one that many believe will increase faster than inflation. Make sure your retirement income plan includes an annual budget for these costs as well as a savings reserve for any years you might experience a spike in costs. Strongly consider purchasing long-term care insurance before you retire.
- Survivor Risk: Have you adequately prepared for the income needs of your spouse or loved ones if something were to happen to you? Are there enough assets? Do you have life insurance or survivorship benefits built into your pension? One of the greatest mistakes you can make is to not provide a continuation of your pension benefits to your spouse if something were to happen to you. Typically, pension plans provide an option for you to take a lesser benefit now to ensure that your spouse would also receive a lifetime of income if something were to happen to you. It can be tempting to take the maximum amount and hope for the best, but investigate these alternatives extensively before making a final election. If you decide not to take these survivor options, calculate the amount of capital your spouse would need if something were to happen to you. If you do not have adequate assets, seriously consider purchasing life insurance.
- Institutional Default Risk: Have you heard that Social Security is facing financial burdens? Have you had any fears about the safety of your pension? These are issues largely out of your control. The fact of the matter is that Social Security should be there in some meaningful form and public pension plans boast a far better track record than the often heard about failed private pension plans. However, keep up with the issues and regularly read the publications your plan provides you. If you are concerned, make sure to have a backup plan or savings set aside.
- Pension Option Risk: Are you burdened with the multitude of pension elections that you must make but cannot change once elected? If your pension offers several different pay-out options or allows for a lump sum distribution, sometimes called DROP (Deferred Retirement Option Program) or PLOP (Partial Lump Sum Option), make sure to carefully evaluate your alternatives. Project your needs in retirement and match the pension income option that matches that need and accounts for all of the factors that drive your retirement income plan.
All of these risks are very real and need to be factored into any decisions you make about your retirement assets when planning for your retirement. Mr. Buffet had it right that risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing. But there are plenty of options available to help you determine the best course of action when it comes to your retirement assets. If you need help, a professional financial planner can assist you in navigating through these risks and help you to accomplish your life goals through the proper allocation of your financial assets.
Remember, a small mistake on a small amount of money is a small problem. That same small mistake on a large amount of money is a BIG problem, so take some time to carefully prepare and review your plan. Most importantly, congratulations on a great career and enjoy your retirement!
FPA member Scott Hughes, CFP®, MBA, is a Financial Planning Advisor and President of Hughes Financial Services, LLC, in Herndon, Va. Hughes Financial Services, LLC, is a branch office of and Securities offered through WFG Investments, Inc. (WFG). Member FINRA/SIPC. Scott Hughes is a Registered Representative of WFG. | <urn:uuid:6fcc30e4-e7a9-4524-aa5d-178d5a0da8e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fpanet.org/ToolsResources/ArticlesBooksChecklists/Articles/Retirement/AnEarlierRetirementforPublicEmployees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96805 | 1,657 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Port of Gothenburg in short
The Port of Gothenburg is the largest port in Scandinavia, with over 11,000 visits by ships each year. Almost 30 per cent of Swedish foreign trade passes through the port. The Port of Gothenburg can offer a very wide range of routes, with traffic to over 130 destinations throughout the world. There are, for example, direct routes to the USA, India, Central America, Asia and Australia. | <urn:uuid:9a484619-c68e-465e-a974-e77aa3672ebc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://portofgothenburg.com/About-the-port/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911325 | 92 | 2 | 2 |
One of the primary goals of the Mystery Writers of America from its inception was "to advance the esteem and literary recognition of the genre." To this end, the Edgar Allan Poe Award was created. Named for the MWA's "patron saint," who is considered by many to have fathered the detective genre, the award was to become the Oscar of mystery writing, honoring the very best the genre had to offer each year. The idea was to give authors who most likely could not dream of winning the prestigious Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award something toward which they could strive and set the bar for all future writers in the field. By further "dignifying the mystery writer," as 1978 MWA Grandmaster Dorothy B. Hughes once put it, the entire genre of mystery literature is enhanced, new authors will be inspired to produce their best work, and ultimately "anything that enhances the author and his work means more money in his pocket." Materialist sentiments, to be sure, but making mystery writing into more of a viable career path than a hobby to be pursued if there is time after working a regular 9-5 job is what allows more and more truly great detective stories to reach the public.
The first Edgar Award winners were presented with leatherbound editions of Poe's writings, produced specially for the occasion by Viking Press The following year, the winners received a special limited edition printing of Art of the Mystery Story, by Howard Haycraft. The bust of Poe now given was designed by Peter Williams, and made its first appearance at the third Edgar Awards banquet. Nominees are all honored with a scroll.
The first Edgars were only given in four categories, Best First Novel, Best Motion Picture, Best Radio Drama, and Outstanding Mystery Criticism. The committee originally did not feel qualified to select a single best novel written in the year, and feared that selecting one might cause other established authors to leave the organization. They changed their minds in 1953, and presented Charlotte Jay the first Best Novel Award for her book Beat Not the Bones. Over the years, the Edgars have evolved further to meet the changing needs of the genre. In 1952, a category was added for Best Crime-Mystery Television Show, and until recently, outstanding work in the theater was awarded Special Edgars (created to reward work outside of any of the established categories). Best Play is now a permanent category of its own, although in some years, there are no nominations. Special Edgars have been given for everything from the original creation of the Edgar Award bust to the macabre cartoons of Charles Addams to the creators of such memorable characters as Dick Tracy.
It was Clayton Rawson, writer, editor, and one of the founding fathers of the MWA, who first came up with the idea of having a banquet to honor the award winners. In the beginning, the group attracted audiences with skits written and produced by notable members of the MWA, including authors William Roos, Hal Mansur, Clayton Rawson, and even a Sherlock Holmes parody by John Dickson Carr. They soon realized, however, that the gala event didn't need the skits to continue to be successful. Illustrated invitations and banquet program covers have been contributed by the likes of Charles Addams and Edward Gorey, and numerous celebrities have attended, from Bela Lugosi, to Eleanor Roosevelt, to, oddly enough, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The 1956 dinner even included a private premiere of a new television series called The Mystery Writers Theater, the source material for which all came from the MWA. The event has grown from a single night of awards and entertainment to encompass several days of activities, often called "Edgars Week," including workshops and panel discussions with the people at the top of the mystery field.
Mystery Writers of America. The Mystery Writers of America Web Site. <http://www.mysterywriters.org/> (December 17, 2002)
Updated January 31, 2003: Added year links | <urn:uuid:b0bf6f7c-129b-45a5-a488-4f4f7b54a52b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://everything2.com/title/Edgar+Allan+Poe+Award | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97515 | 806 | 1.960938 | 2 |
When I read something about JVM, it tells me that the namespace of JVM can identify a class loaded in the JVM, only the full name of the class is not useful! When or on which circumstance a class will be loaded in the jvm(I mean the same jvm) twice and more? Is this way a useful way?
If you simply try to load the same class multiple times with reflection, then subsequent times will just return the already loaded class. This is a common situation, and there is nothing special about it.
It is possible to load the same class with different class loaders. In general, this is not necessary, and it can be very confusing. Because two instances of the same class loaded by different class loaders are not equal, | <urn:uuid:1b0038f7-518b-40a4-929d-dba5202b2e20> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/8109860/java-when-a-class-need-to-be-loaded-in-a-jvm-twice-and-more | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902001 | 158 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Patients who undergo treatment for blocked leg arteries suffer fewer complications and require fewer repeat procedures when they quit smoking and take an aspirin and statins ahead of time, according to new research funded by BCBSM. But few patients make the changes, and doctors often don’t prescribe the basic medical therapy, the quality improvement initiative found.
The study, led by the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, looked at 1,357 patients identified in Blue Cross’ Cardiovascular Consortium, Vascular Interventions Collaborative database, a collaboration with 41 Michigan hospitals. The results were published online ahead of print in Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, a publication of the American Heart Association, and reported in HealthCanal.com.
The collaborative looked at ways to decrease complications and improve medical therapy for patients with peripheral arterial disease, a blockage of the arteries outside of the heart most often marked by leg pain or cramping. PAD is often treated with angioplasty.
At admission, 46.7 of patients were on aspirin, a statin and did not smoke; at discharge 71 percent were on both drugs and either did not smoke or still smoked but had smoking cessation counseling.
“The modest improvement in statin prescription before patients were discharged signifies a missed opportunity to provide a life-saving intervention for PAD patients,” says lead study author P. Michael Grossman, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center.
Users of both aspirin and statins had a lower incidence of peripheral events such as repeat (peripheral vascular interventions), limb salvage surgery and amputation – 7 percent compared to 15.8 percent.
The Cardiovascular Consortium, Vascular Interventions Collaborative is one of 12 Collaborative Quality Initiatives that BCBSM sponsors for Michigan hospitals as a way to improve clinical quality and patient safety while lowering costs. You can read more about our CQI programs at ValuePartnerships.com. | <urn:uuid:02f6d9b5-cacd-4fe8-b551-b92f122417ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mibluesperspectives.com/2013/01/07/simple-remedies-could-improve-treatment-of-blocked-arteries-quality-improvement-study-finds/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94458 | 404 | 2.0625 | 2 |
Home » What's New
Resources updated between Monday, January 19, 2009 and Sunday, January 25, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Day 3 of the UN Durban II planning committee meeting, January 21st, saw Iran once again take the floor more often than other single state. "The UN is giving a regime headed by a notorious racist a platform to manufacture anti-racist credentials," said Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN. "The only question now is whether President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are going to lend legitimacy to this travesty by joining these racists at the table," she added.
Here is an example of Iran's lecture on equality to the assembled Durban II crowd purporting to be meeting for the purpose of combating racism: "The crux of matter that in countries a different group of people - because of color, ethnicity, background - are treated in a discriminatory manner as they go to seek a job, or education or housing. As soon as their ethnical identity, color of skin is known to the employer, educator, supplier of housing, they are treated in a different manner. These double standards should be avoided."
And here is another gem from the Iranian "human rights" expert as he recommends wording for the Durban II "outcome document": "I would like to kindly draw the attention of the house to the fact that here we are working on a conference on racism and racial discrimination... I have my variation - at dictation speed - then if it sounds acceptable...: 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity of rights therefore any doctrine based on superiority of one over another is categorically and strongly rejected.'"
One more Iranian nugget of inspiration courtesy Durban II: "We like to see spirit of compromise... talking about the formulation of providing maximizing redress to victims through inter alia securing access to justice...Make sure justice is served...because justice delayed is justice denied from our point of view."
The speaker, a representative of a country whose president advocates genocide, was clearly wallowing in the UN-provided opportunity to pretend to care about racism. Despite the travesty, not one state made any mention of the lecturer's anti-racism credentials. Those credentials? As described in the most recent annual State Department report on Iran: "The government's poor human rights record worsened...The government severely limited citizens' right to change their government... Security forces committed acts of politically motivated abductions; torture and severe officially-sanctioned punishments, including death by stoning; amputation; flogging; and excessive use of force against and imprisonment of demonstrators...The government severely restricted civil liberties, including freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, movement, and privacy. The government placed severe restrictions on freedom of religion...Violence and legal and societal discrimination against women, ethnic and religious minorities, and homosexuals; trafficking in persons; and incitement to anti-Semitism remained problems." (U.S. State Dept. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Iran, March 11, 2008)
But at the UN, Iran is a human rights authority figure - a Vice-President of the Durban II Executive Planning Committee (or Bureau). The game plan is as obvious, as it is obscene. Here is what the Nigerian delegate had to say about the Iranian contribution: "... one thing about the delegate of Iran is that he is always right in conceptualization and in location...This is the right way to go." "Iran has always this powerful way of conveying and analyzing. Each time you come forth. Iran has a very powerful line of logic and it is becoming difficult to disagree with Iran really."
In the midst of this back and forth, Iran, the EU and the Chair,Yuri Boychenko (Russia), have encouraged out-of-sight consultations in smaller groups. In one exchange, over a provision on "new emerging forms of racism," the European Union said it didn't want to "neglect old and persistent forms of racism." (Translation: they didn't want more allegations of "Islamophobia.") While Iran said old forms had "already been covered." (Translation: they don't want to condemn antisemitism.) Iran then volunteered: "we can work with them to come up with compromise language." And the Chair encouraged a meeting. The product of EU-Iranian consultations on the meaning of racism is sure to be enlightening.
This is exactly the swamp that would quickly surround President Obama should he make the mistake of attending.
By the end of the third day, only 25% of the Durban outcome document had been discussed. Only 8% of the document was agreed to and adopted. Every day at least one hour is lost as delegates meander into the meeting room in no particular rush to get things going. According to the Chair, at least four hours of valuable time have been squandered this week. The Chair's arrival an hour and a half late on the first day contributed to the obvious effort to leave as much undiscussed by the end of the week as possible.
Although this week-long session is allegedly devoted to moving the Durban process forward, in reality the strategy of delay suits the rights-abusing states perfectly. The longer the process can be deemed "in progress" or "still being decided" or "under negotiation" the longer the pressure is on European countries to stay involved due to the lack of a finalized document that clearly crosses red lines.
All participants are hoping that if they keep enough of a lid on the real Durban II agenda, President Obama will be convinced of the harmlessness of U.S. participation.
As the working group crept through the 37-page draft, any paragraph that caused discord (usually between the EU on one hand and Iran, Syria and the African Group on the other), was put on hold. Meanwhile the Chair increased the backroom wheeling and dealing by appointing "facilitators" to work out disagreements behind-the-scenes and report back to the Committee by the end of the week. Senegal, a major figure in the Organization of the Islamic Conference, was appointed one of two facilitators.
Informally, delegates agree that Iran is hijacking the entire meeting, offering "input" on racism that even its allies at times have trouble swallowing. Day 3 marked the second day in a row that Iran took the floor more often than any other single state. Overall, members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference dominated the proceedings, in particular Pakistan and Nigeria, in addition to Iran.
The Palestinian delegate made one intervention expressing an interest in moving the sections in the draft alleging Israel is racist from the "reviewing progress" section to the take-action section.
Here are other memorable moments from Day 3 of what the UN considers to be progress in the effort to combat racism:
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Durban II planning committee, now meeting in Geneva, today took up the Holocaust sections of the "draft outcome document." In final form it is scheduled for adoption at the April Conference. Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN, commented: "The Durban II platform was the perfect opportunity for Iran and Syria to deny the facts of the Holocaust. Providing a forum to spew antisemitism is apparently the UN's idea of combating racism."
Today's events ought to signal an end to the U.S. State Department discussion about whether it is in the best interests of the United States to attend Durban II. "If Secretary of State Clinton agrees to go to Durban II, or engage in a political dialogue over the draft outcome document," says Professor Bayefsky, "she will legitimize an avenue for spreading hate - not tolerance."
The draft under discussion affirmed "...that the Holocaust...resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with numerous members of other minorities..." Syria objected and called for the words to be removed on the following grounds: "I don't think we should get into a kind of statistical debate. As far as I know that there is no agreement on the consensus on the percentage of those who perished in the Holocaust. Maybe there is some kind of consensus on the figures on the percentage, but we are not quite sure. Maybe those who perished half of the jewish people, maybe less than half, maybe third, maybe less..."
Then the European Union suggested the addition of a new paragraph: "Recalls and urges states to implement UN General Assembly Resolutions 60/7 and 61/255 which observe that remembrance of the Holocaust is critical to prevent further acts of genocide; condemned without reservation any denial of the Holocaust; and urge all member states to reject denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or in part, or in any activities."
Iran objected: "There is a notion inside this paragraph where there is talk about condemning without reservation any denial of holocaust. This entails with it implicit restriction on elaboration and review, or critical examination and review and study of holocaust - which is a very clear example of a violation of freedom of expression...a fundamental principle right for a democratic society....We suggest the deletion of this paragraph."
Neither of the paragraphs could be agreed upon since the Durban II process is to work by consensus.
At the Durban I Conference a minimalist reference to the Holocaust was agreed upon in exchange for condemnation of Israel as racist. Today it emerged that the same "trade-off" is in the offing for Durban II.
The Planning Committee also took up the latest draft sections alleging Israel is racist - the only such country-specific allegation in a document purportedly having global application. They include:
Iran and Syria dominated the second day of the planning meeting for Durban II which is now taking place in Geneva. On day 2 of the week-long session, January 20th, Iran took the floor more often than any other single state. Iran's attempt to dominate Durban II planning, " says Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN, "is not surprising. They are a Vice-chair of the Durban Preparatory Committee and have long understood Durban II as the playing field of Islamic and Arab states." Both countries are actively shaping the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference, hailed by its supporters as an important international effort to address racism. "Today's meeting, dominated by these two rights-abhorring, terrorism-supporting countries, resulted in a circus that is a slap in the face to anyone serious about human rights and racism" said Bayefsky.
By the end of day two the meeting had completed 9 out of 37 pages. The strategy of all those states who seek to bolster support for Durban II - particularly Arab and Islamic states and various African states such as South Africa - is to bury the real agenda under a mountain of UN verbiage and avoid getting to any issue of real importance. European governments admit (albeit behind-the-scenes) that the goal is to make it harder for them to walk out, since superficially there does not appear to be anything objectionable. What they're not saying is that efforts to keep a short-term lid on the Durban II hate-mongering until the conference itself, suits them just fine. The EU then avoids any pressure back home and the diplomats life is made a lot easier.
As a consequence of Iran and Syria's participation (with the help of Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, and Egypt in particular) the following ensued on day 2:
January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
This is opening day of the next Durban II planning meeting and the disinformation campaign is in full swing. The obfuscation starts with the title: Intersessional open-ended intergovernmental working group to continue and finalize the process of negotiations on and drafting of the outcome document.
"What we do know, despite the UN-eze," says Anne Bayefsky, Editor of EYEontheUN, "is that Durban II is widely perceived to be a serious threat to the successful international protection of human rights."
"Extremists, both governmental and non-governmental, are continuing to push the substance to the limits, while weak European states are unable or unwilling to push back. The overall strategy is to keep the Durban II plan under wraps as much as possible, until just days away from the April conference itself, so that it will be too late for many democratic states to pull out," Professor Bayefsky pointed out. "They are being entrapped like spiders in a web, under the charade of combating racism."
"One thing is certain," said Bayefsky, "this is no place for the United States."
The first thing diplomats did on opening day was agree that the draft document before them would formally become "the basis for further negotiations as the final document for the review conference."
Diplomats then deliberately worked at a snail's pace, making their way through two dozen paragraphs of the 250 paragraph document. Particularly active in these "anti-racism" discussions was Iran, whose President is a leading advocate of genocide against the Jewish people. Iran lectured: "This whole conference is to identify sources, root causes, perpetrators of racism and defend and compensate and help the victims. This should continually be borne in our mind."
Iran also objected to European efforts to limit the creation of new international norms at Durban II. Iran said "We don't want to prejudge the high possibility of new forms of ideas, and doctrines based on supremacy of one race over others, or other contemporary form of racism. Then we find ourselves in lack of legislative international norms to address them properly. So let us adopt an open-minded approach to this." Everybody watching knew this was part of an attempt by Islamic states to focus on Islamophobia, insert allegations that counter-terrorism activities are racist, and invent limits on freedom of expression, but the public conversation was conducted in vague generalities, for and against new standards.
In addition, there was an obvious effort by Islamic states to gang up on Denmark. Algeria responded to a Danish suggestion that a provision was not relevant with: "It's that very comment that is not relevant."
Cuba made the stakes at Durban II even plainer, when it claimed – erroneously – that the "document we adopt at the Durban Review Conference will be a legal document." When European Union countries sought to stress existing standards and the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Cuba responded "We understand the EU doesn't want to accept other norms in the area of racism." Whereupon, European countries retreated.
Here is what we also know:
1) The UN reissued the current draft of the "outcome document" with a January 12, 2009 date. This has now formally become the basis of negotiations. The draft on the table has the following glaring, objectionable provisions (exact quotes below):
**************Provisions in the January 12, 2009 draft of the Durban II "outcome document":
January 19, 2009
Obama and U.N.: R-e-f-o-r-m Article | <urn:uuid:6d86f021-4ce9-4d42-acc7-aa288c2f2048> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humanrightsvoices.org/site/new/?d=1/19/2009&w=185 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960519 | 3,104 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Page:Our Common Land (and other short essays).djvu/110
A WORD ON GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
Again, we have got our population into a state of semi-pauperism, from which individuals and societies cannot raise them merely by abstaining from gifts by guardians or withdrawing out-relief. We have accustomed them to trust to external help, and only by most patient individual care shall we raise them. Neither can we persuade donors, unaccustomed to study the future results of their acts, to
and out of frequently. Mere intercourse between rich and poor, if we can secure it without corrupting gifts, would civilise the poor more than anything. See, then, that you do not put your lives so far from those great companies of the poor which stretch for acres in the south and east of London, that you fail to hear each other speak. See that you do not count your work among them by tangible result, but believe that healthy human intercourse with them will be helpful to you and them. Seek to visit and help in parishes in which this is recognised as an end in itself. | <urn:uuid:4a2bea9b-57bd-465b-9f0d-7aa5cb425ab6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Our_Common_Land_(and_other_short_essays).djvu/110 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968634 | 233 | 1.773438 | 2 |
We believe that all education must lead to the development of a mature and personal relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Emphasis is placed on instruction in the classroom, a common prayer life, participation in Mass, the sacraments and community service.Parents are always welcome to attend liturgical celebrations.
The program includes, but is not limited to the following:
- At 8:00 am each school day, there is a school wide prayer and pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag.
- Each class begins with a prayer.
- School Masses are held monthly. All students are required to attend and participate in school Masses.
- The Sacrament of Reconciliation is held school-wide at least twice per year.
- During the school year, various programs including class Masses, Stations of the Cross, Respect Life Presentations and special guest speakers from the community supplement the Religion Program. | <urn:uuid:899126b5-4e85-49e4-8118-6c13ad6ff7f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stvfschool.org/index.php/academics-/liturgies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954027 | 188 | 1.734375 | 2 |
England must unite to solve deepening divides
July 24, 2012
I was at a ‘think tank’ dinner last week on the ‘Westminster bubble’. It was in Soho! Nevertheless, a good meal and conversation was had. Inevitably we got onto the north/south divide. Many around the table felt it was getting worse. I agree. However, it is being surpassed by something much worse.
For 80 years, the ‘regional question’ was inadequately tackled. From 1999 to their abolition in 2012, the regional development agencies tinkered with the economic output gap between the regions, but it was never enough to check the extent to which the successful post-industrial areas got richer, whilst the old industrial areas got poorer. The failure to tackle this national systemic economic issue then, has now been coupled to national economic recession and cuts to the welfare state. This has spawned deeper local social and economic divisions. We may well look back on the north/south divide as a walk in the park, compared to what we have now. The social and economic landscape of England has moved on, to something much worse.
The north/south divide argument is a convenient shorthand for many who wish for a fairer and socially just England. However, while it describes a general feature of our economy and it does has some cultural meaning, I think is being overtaken by a new national shared reality.
We now have growing divides across all our regions, cities and towns. We have two speed economies, dual cities, haves and have-nots, the employed and unemployed, the well paid and the low paid, the elites and the excluded. There is no simple geography to this. England is a land of many and deepening divisions –inequality has no compass points. You could now argue it is more London and the rest? But even that doesn’t ring wholly true. London is riven with just as many divides, as the haves gentrify, colonise and drive the have-nots increasingly outward or squeeze them into social housing pockets. | <urn:uuid:ed4dd138-ecc7-465c-9c94-5b15efa158a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newstartmag.co.uk/your-blogs/england-needs-to-come-together-to-solve-the-deepening-divides/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97768 | 426 | 1.679688 | 2 |
There aren't many things more pleasurable than climbing into bed after a long distance flight.
The murmuring passengers, crying children and engine noise are gone. There are no over zealous flight attendants or intermittent updates from the captain. The cramped cabin is now a distant memory and you are in horizontal heaven.
Sadly this peaceful picture isn't a reality for everyone. If you're a business traveler, the bumpy arrival of the aircraft often merely signals the start of a working day.
It's therefore important to get as much rest as possible while airborne. However, being able to get some decent sleep on a plane is a privilege of the lucky few.
"We all know it's incredibly challenging to get the rest you need. We're not designed to sleep while sitting," explained Sammy Margo, sleep expert at the Physiotherapy and Pilates Practice in London.
"It depends on whether it's short or long haul or whether you're in economy or business. But there are some things you can do to prepare yourself," she added.
Here is the experts' five step guide to helping business travelers achieve some elusive shut eye.
1) Take control:
Passengers are powerless when it comes to controlling the noise and temperature of a plane. But there are a few ways of creating a more comfortable environment that could enable a better sleeping standard.
"Wear suitable clothes. Too many people dress inappropriately for a flight," said Margo. "If you're too warm and you can't get cool, you're not going to be able to get any rest." | <urn:uuid:0c77e15d-042f-4157-8ca2-6127e277cae9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wpbf.com/news/money/Five-ways-to-get-to-sleep-at-35-000-feet/-/8788684/17093818/-/11oqc3cz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961969 | 321 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Power inverters are great devices that can really make a lot of applications easy and quiet for the RVer. A lot of time when an Rver wants to run his or her microwave when drycamping, they need to power up their generator. This is both noisy and requires fuel. Once an RVer installs a power inverter in their unit, they can just go ahead and run that microwave off their RV's batteries. Outside Supply carries a full line of power inverters and accessories to get the job done right with strong reliable equipment.
A power inverter is a device that converters DC power to AC power, or in simple terms, Battery Power to Household Electricity. A good clean power inverter will allow you to run a variety of electronics ranging from laptops, TVs, Microwaves, Coffee Pots and more off your batteries. | <urn:uuid:c3809690-4f13-46f7-9d2d-9adcdeb0663a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.outsidesupply.com/power-inverter-troubleshooting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946889 | 171 | 1.929688 | 2 |
PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Although statin therapy has been shown to reduce substantially the risk for cardiovascular disease in multiple patient subgroups, there is wide inter-individual variation in statin efficacy, in terms of both plasma lipoprotein response and clinical outcome. RECENT FINDINGS: A number of studies have reported that polymorphisms in genes affecting statin pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics are associated with measures of statin efficacy, but the magnitude of variation in statin response that could be explained by these associations is small. Genome-wide association studies may yield a more comprehensive set of markers for predicting statin efficacy and muscle toxicity. For the results of these analyses to have clinical value, however, there remains a need to replicate findings in multiple populations, to connect effects on LDL and other biomarkers with clinical outcomes, and to determine whether the associations apply to each individual statin. SUMMARY: Satisfying these requirements for clinical applicability will be challenging, but discovery of specific genotypes that influence statin efficacy and characterization of their functional effects in cellular or animal model systems may enhance our understanding of determinants of cardiovascular disease risk. They may also allow us to identify pathways that may be targeted to yield effective prevention and treatment. | <urn:uuid:0d9e5675-42b5-4bee-a0fe-af0d395cc185> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rgd.mcw.edu/rgdweb/report/reference/main.html?id=5129935 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931996 | 250 | 1.914063 | 2 |
From: 175 years of UK Telecommunications, 24 September 2012, Savoy Place, London, UK
24 September 2012 Communications channel
To celebrate the 175th anniversary, the IET History of Technology TPN delivers presentations on selected landmarks and developments in UK telecommunications from those first steps in 1837 to the present.
2012 marks the 175th anniversary of the granting of the UK patent to Cooke and Wheatstone for the first commercially practical electric telegraph. In the same year (1837) Morse and Vail working in America filed a caveat with the US Patent Office in preparation for patenting their system. These were the first steps in the era of electrical telecommunications. There followed the development of the telephone, radio, sound and television broadcasting, advanced communications networks, satellites, personal mobile communications and today's Internet; developments which have had a profound impact on society and the way we live.
Worthy of note is that 2012 is also the centenary of the opening of Britain's first automatic telephone exchange in Epsom and the 50th anniversary of the launch of TELSTAR, the communications satellite which captured the world's imagination. In addition 75 years ago Alec Reeves was developing his ideas for pulse code modulation (PCM) which he patented the following year. An idea before it's time PCM is today a foundation of the modern digital world.
Event sponsors: Institute of Telecommunications Professionals and BT
Leader, Goonhilly Conservation Project | <urn:uuid:b8d12f3c-5ff0-4dd9-ab02-81f494885436> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tv.theiet.org/technology/communications/14910.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928698 | 290 | 2.5 | 2 |
Because life insurance may seem like a difficult topic at first, it must be broken down so that anyone can understand and take advantage of it when the time is right. Buying life insurance is an important decision in any person’s life, and comparing term life and whole life insurance will greatly affect you in the long run.
Think of term life vs whole life in the same way as leasing and buying a car. Both have their benefits, but one is more permanent than the other. Leasing a car means paying for it for a set amount of years. Once the lease is up, the contract is over and the person can walk away.
With term life insurance, the premiums are lower than permanent life insurance; however, there is no cash value. This type of insurance is designed for people who are interested in a death benefit, such as a parent who wants the insurance to pay for the child’s college bills in case the parent suffers an untimely event.
Permanent life insurance has more appeal to some people because it has a death benefit with a cash value that is tax-deferred. Some policyholders borrow from the cash value to pay for college; this cash value can also be converted into a retirement fund.
Planning ahead is the best thing anyone can do before purchasing term and permanent life insurance. Because of the savings component of permanent insurance, it may cost more at the beginning than term life; however, the premiums stay fixed for the entire life of the life insurance policy. Term insurance is cheaper at first, but the premiums increase as the person gets older. | <urn:uuid:c030a4cb-c095-46e3-979c-65ae6347360d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifeinsurancerates.com/term-life-vs-whole-life.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961933 | 324 | 2.1875 | 2 |
or, “Infinitive-Splitters Anonymous”
“Hi. I’m Mrs. Chili, and I’m an Infinitive-Splitter.”
I’ve been reading through a bunch of the things that I’ve written over the past year or so. I pulled a couple of my college papers from a file I found in the attic while searching for a particular sweater (the Great Clothes Switch of 2006 will happen later this weekend, but I wanted the sweater NOW, dammit!). I’ve been re-reading blog entries and comments, and I’ve made a discovery. I split infinitives. Not only do I split infinitives, but I do it all the time:
“…I was relieved to finally see that….”
“…I hope to never have to do that again…”
“…and when it came time to truly step up to the plate….”
“…she has to constantly be in the spotlight…”
I can’t help myself; I love the emphasis that split infinitives convey.
I just hope none of my students calls me on it…
So! I received essays from most of my Foundations of English class.
Wow. We’ve got some work to do.
I was pleased to see that, while some people need a lot more help than others, most of the class made many of the same kinds of mistakes, which makes my job a whole lot easier. Well, not easier, per se, but certainly more focused. I know I don’t have to worry too much about end punctuation – no one ended a declarative sentence with a question mark – but I DO know that we need to work on pronouns, commas, subject/verb agreement and practice in naming the self last. I was surprised to find, too, that we need to spend some time talking about the difference between common and proper nouns.
The book we’re using (or, rather, the book that came with the course – I’m not sure how much we’ll actually be able to USE it) comes with a computer component that seems to me to hold wonderful potential. I was on the phone with the rep from McGraw-Hill for the better part of an hour and a half the other night, and we went over many of the features that I can use with the students during our hour-long computer lab allowance. The site (I’d link it, but you can’t get past the home page without a password and group number, and you only get the number if you agree to do grammar work for me, so think VERY carefully before you ask me for it!) contains a wealth of mini-lessons and assessment tests that essentially use the repeated drill method of grammar instruction (which, after Schoolhouse Rock, seems to be one of the better pedagogical choices). Now that I know which students need which lessons, I can customize the lessons for each kid – Student A has no idea how to use pronouns, so she gets all the pronoun/antecedent lessons put in her locker; while Student B made no pronoun errors, but can’t seem to figure out when to capitalize a proper noun, so she gets all the common/proper noun lessons put into her locker. The students do the work, take the assessments, and all the results are then reported to MY locker so I know what each student has or hasn’t done. It’s a cool system, and I really wish that we had more class time to use it to its full potential.
**now I’m going to Amazon.com to add this book to my wishlist… | <urn:uuid:1b679777-b2c6-4e6a-b10a-78c468f46e1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://teacherseducation.wordpress.com/2006/10/06/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960075 | 789 | 1.648438 | 2 |
KF-16 Korea Fighter Program [KFP]
In December 1989, the Ministry of National Defense selected the McDonnell Douglas FA-18 to be the second United States designed fighter aircraft to be coproduced in South Korea. Samsung's aerospace division was awarded a contract to manufacture the airframe and engine; Lucky-Goldstar became the subcontractor for the aircraft's avionics. McDonnell Douglas agreed to deliver twelve FA-18s to the South Korean air force in 1993 and to assist Samsung with the later assembly of 108 aircraft in South Korea. As of 1990, the entire FA-18 program was under review because of increased costs.
The Korea Fighter Program [KFP] originally called for the purchase of 12 F-16s from Lockheed Martin, while Samsung was to assemble 36 and produce the last batch of 72 jets under a license agreement with the US company. In order to produce the fighters locally, a joint venture called Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) was formed between Korea's three leading aircraft makers - Samsung Aerospace, Daewoo Heavy Industries, and Hyundai Space and Aircraft. The locally produced fighter was dubbed the KF-16.
KAI, designated as prime contractor in 1986, was awarded contract from government in November 1991. Until the last KF-16 delivery, KAI successfully produced and delivered the KF-16 in time to Republic of Korea Air force. Thus, KAI finally achieved the goal of this program: the landmark strengthening of ROKAF combat readiness and domestic aerospace industries development. To implement this program, construction of Sacheon plant, 40 thousand production equipment, 18 thousand planing were done. And over 640 engineers were trained overseas and vast volume of technical data amounting to 430 thousand items were acquired. These production preparation and activities served as precious momentum for drastic national aircraft industry development.
Controversy flared when KFP program was originally winding down in early 1999. Proposals to produce up to 40 additional KF-16s were controversial because some in Korea's airforce -- reportedly including most of the pilots -- opposed the idea. The government decided to allocate a separate budget of $640 million to produce 20 more KF-16 fighters. When KAI delivered the last KF16 to the military in April 2000, the KFP had run for eight years and cost one trillion won.
In an effort to maintain momentum of national industry development as well as to futher reinforce ROKAF capability, KFP-II program for additional prodution of KF-16 was launched in July 2000, of which completion is slated in August 2004. The KFP led Korean aerospace industry to almost same level of advanced overseas countries and laid down the ground for starting of T-50 full scale development
|Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list| | <urn:uuid:a3da9e31-a710-47b6-9726-0475c86a1d1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/rok/kf-16.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955565 | 565 | 2.875 | 3 |
NEW CASTLE —
In the American culture, French fries and ketchup may be considered by some people to be two servings of vegetables.
I remember hearing a report that said a committee was trying to get pizza with sauce to be counted as a vegetable in the schools for lunch. That report noted that it would take about a half-cup of tomato sauce on each piece of pizza for the consideration to be nutritionally compliant.
So why do so many people in our culture consider certain foods vegetables that are not vegetables? Another classic is corn. I’ve heard people say that they don’t eat a lot of vegetables, but they do like corn.
Corn is a grain — but I remember growing up as a kid and having corn served at the table along with the mashed potatoes, as if it were a vegetable.
And, by the way, are potatoes really a vegetable? Yes, they are, but because they are so starchy, they should not be considered your vegetable serving, so get another vegetable on the plate. Legumes, peas, and winter squash are also considered a carb/starch and should not be counted as vegetable serving.
I point this out because now that I recognize the importance of whole foods in my own diet, I tend to stay away from pizza, French fries, mashed potatoes. While I still enjoy these choices once in a while, I eat more zucchini, green beans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots and especially more greens.
Go for more greens and you can get the following benefits.
•Best for beta-carotene and other carotenoids: Arugula, beet greens, dandelion greens, kale, mustard greens, spinach, turnip greens. A four-ounce serving of any of these supplies enough beta-carotene to meet the RDA for vitamin A.
•Best for vitamin C: Arugula, kale, mustard greens turnip greens. A four-ounce serving of any of these supplies enough vitamin C to meet the RDA.
•Best for calcium: Arugula, dandelion greens turnip greens. Four ounces of any of these supplies at least a much calcium as a half cup of milk.
•Best for iron: Beet greens, dandelion greens, kale, spinach, Swiss chard.
•Best for fiber: Kale mustard greens, spinach, turnip greens.
Don’t forget curly endive, collards, escarole, and watercress. They may not be tops in any particular nutrients, but they have plenty to offer.
Does the thought of eating more greens seem unattractive to you? Maybe naming them something interesting will make them more fun.
A Cornell University study showed that when you named vegetables with more attractive names, children were more inclined to eat them.
The study showed “Carrots were eaten up to 66 percent, when these were labeled as ‘X-ray vision carrots’ as compared to 32 percent when unnamed and 35 percent when called ‘Food of the Day’.”
Other popular vegetables among kids are “Silly Dilly Green Beans” and “Power Punch Broccoli.” I used to tell my kids that broccoli was dinosaur food because is looks like tiny trees.
So I’ve given the recipe for this week a special, more “attractive” name, hoping it will entice you to put some greens on your plate!
Braised Kooky Kale
with Goofy Garlic
You can cook any sturdy greens this way, although some take longer than others.
Fresh spinach, for example, wilts in just a minute or two. If you can find them fresh in your market, you can substitute mustard, collard, turnip or beet greens, or chard.
- 3 bunches of fresh kale (3 to 4 pounds)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce (preferably low sodium)
- 6 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Wash greens well. Remove and discard tough ribs and stems. Slice leaves into half-inch-wide ribbons.
Bring 1 1/2 cups water and soy sauce to a boil in a large pot over moderate heat. Add garlic and simmer, uncovered, for 1 minute; do not let garlic brown. Add greens, toss to coat with seasonings, cover, and cook until greens are wilted and tender, about 5 minutes. If too much liquid remains in the pan, uncover and simmer until juices are reduced and concentrated.
Tip: To wash any leafy greens, such as kale or spinach, fill a sink with cold water. Add the greens, switch them several times, then lift them out to a sieve or colander, leaving dirty water behind. Repeat with fresh water if necessary. | <urn:uuid:1e77f41c-1d34-4e22-b83c-ed059fc34ef9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ncnewsonline.com/brothers/x766449646/Lori-Brothers-Kids-won-t-eat-their-veggies-Try-calling-the-dish-something-silly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95024 | 997 | 2.796875 | 3 |
As a part of the Office of Human Rights, The Fair Housing Program has developed a far-reaching program of outreach and monitoring activities.
Educational activities include training for landlords, real estate professionals, property managers, lenders, and other housing professionals, as well as information to and training for the general public. A 10th grade fair housing curriculum has been developed and incorporated into all 10th grade social studies classrooms in each of the 23 Montgomery County high schools. A simular set of lessons is being developed for the elementary school curriculum. Each spring, a fair housing Poster Contest is conducted in selected elementary school classrooms throughout the County.
The Office of Human Rights has developed a comprehensive program of testing for discrimination in the rental or sale of housing, home mortgage financing and compliance with architectural guidelines. Enforcement actions are taken as warranted by the Office of Human Rights' Compliance Section.
As part of determining the level of discrimination in the County, the Office of Human Rights periodically conducts studies. Studies include, for example, an evaluation of the practices of mortgage lenders in the County, and the frequency and patterns of FHA foreclosures.
If you feel you have been a victim of housing discrimination and would like to file a complaint, visit the Compliance Section of this web site, or call 240/777-8450 or TTY 240/777-8480. To obtain information on fair housing or to arrange for training for your business, group, or organization, call 240/777-8450. Informational brochures are also available below.
• Your Guide to Fair Housing
• Fair Housing: Lending Procedures and Practices
• Fair Housing for Persons with Disabilities
• Fair Housing: Source of Income, Familial Status, Occupancy, Standards
Montgomery County Office of Human Rights
21 Maryland Avenue, Suite 330 · Rockville, Maryland 20850
Telephone: 240.777.8450 · Fax: 240.777.8460 · TTY: 240.777.8480 | <urn:uuid:49bc12c4-dbe2-4f34-8b0c-2964e3c583db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://montgomerycountymd.gov/humanrights/divisions/fairhousing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931847 | 405 | 2.53125 | 3 |
To avoid the "fiscal cliff," Republicans have recently offered more compromises on tax rates and the debt limit. They are asking for entitlement reform in return, but Democrats seem unwilling to budge on the spending side of the Treasury's ledger.
Speaker of the House John Boehner met with President Barack Obama and offered to increase the tax rate on taxable income above $1 million and to increase the debt limit enough that it would not need another increase for one year. According to unnamed sources in the White House, the offer was rejected, but they acknowledged it was a significant step in their direction on behalf of the speaker.
The private meeting between Boehner and Obama was on Friday and news of what was discussed continued to leak over the weekend. They met again on Monday, beginning at 11:30 a.m.
During the presidential election, Obama and other Democrats frequently complained that Republicans want to protect tax cuts for "millionaires and billionaires." When Republicans offered to increase tax rates just on millionaires, though, the White House said it would not raise enough revenue. Instead, Obama wants tax rates to go up for the top two tax brackets, or those making more than $250,000 per year.
Both sides have moved closer on the revenue side. Boehner initially offered $800 billion in new revenue and is now up to $1 trillion in new revenue. Obama initially wanted $1.4 trillion in new revenue and will now accept $1.2 trillion in new revenue.
On the spending side, though, the two sides still appear far apart. In return for his concessions, Boehner wants entitlement reform. The two ideas being discussed are raising the retirement age and slowing the automatic increases in benefits.
Currently, Social Security and Medicare benefits are indexed to wages, not inflation. Money can be saved, therefore, by increasing benefits at a slower rate. Boehner offered to index benefits to a chained consumer price index, which would still rise faster than inflation, but lower than wages. The change would save about $200 billion over a decade. The White House reportedly rejected that idea as well.
Democrats have not shown a willingness, at least publicly, to go along with entitlement reform. While Democrats have often argued for a "balanced approach," meaning both spending cuts and revenue increases, they remain unbalanced by not agreeing to entitlement reform, complained the editors of The Washington Post, a left-leaning newspaper.
"Since the election last month, a few modest proposals have been floated to slow the growth in entitlement spending. None of these would fix the problem, but they would at least acknowledge that a problem exists. One by one, the ostensible advocates of balance have shot them down, portraying each in turn as a mortal threat to the poor or the aged," wrote The Washington Post editorial board Thursday.
The editors went on to acknowledge that the nation's "underlying fiscal problem," is entitlements, namely Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the health-care exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare."
"But there's no way to fix America's problem without doing something on entitlements," they concluded. "If the Democrats -- and Mr. Obama, in particular -- don't get more seriously into that discussion, they have no standing to complain about the Republicans' lack of balance." | <urn:uuid:0d3cd7e5-70b0-4f84-8076-9147a8704f3b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://global.christianpost.com/news/fiscal-cliff-gop-willing-to-compromise-on-tax-rates-dems-stubborn-on-entitlement-reform-86801/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969353 | 668 | 1.59375 | 2 |