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Marilyn LaCourt's novel, "The Prize", has been revised to better suit the requirements and considerations of younger readers. Now educators and other professionals can use "The Prize" Middle School Editon, and it's related Study Guide, with complete confidence that it will be entirely appropriate for a Middle School audience.
Young readers' greatly enjoy reading the Middle School Edition of "The Prize". The novel entertains and holds the young readers interest while providing a basis for discussion of one of life's most important issues, our relationships with other people.
Marilyn LaCourt has written a fascinating retort to the pessimistic vision of human nature set forth in Golding's Lord of the Flies. The Prize makes a compelling and convincing case that the terms of the discussion have been wrong from the start. Selfishness and selflessness aren't mutually exclusivethey can and do co-exist, as the student's in LaCourt imagined experiment demonstrate. Left to ourselves, she asserts, we learn that cooperation is crucial to individual self-interest.
Imagine the powerful conversation in an English class that compares and contrasts Golding with the fully-articulated alternative view of human nature in The Prize! I might wish myself thirteen again just to be a part of it.
Dale McGowan, PhD
Editor/co-author: Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion
Author: Calling Bernadette's Bluff | <urn:uuid:279d04d5-7586-475e-8c9c-4392b377dd8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lacourt-m.com/ | 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 | 0.937779 | 300 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Big Ag, Monsanto take over research universities and turn them into pro-industry propaganda machines
Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Back in the old days before food and agricultural corporations consolidated into the behemoths we know them as today, agricultural institutions of higher learning were dedicated to conducting unbiased research into cutting-edge food production and crop systems that benefited society as a whole. But today, these former "land-grant" universities have largely mutated into pro-industry, propaganda machines funded and controlled by corporate agro-giants like Monsanto that steer research efforts in favor of genetically-modified (GMOs) and chemical-based crop systems.
In a scathing indictment of this sinister, and rapidly growing, form of agricultural fascism, Tom Philpott from Mother Jones dissects a recent Food & Water Watch (FWW) report in which it is openly disclosed that corporate agriculture and the pharmaceutical industry have basically bought out agricultural research education as we know it. Colleges and universities that once received the bulk of their research funding from the federal government now receive it from Monsanto, DuPont, and others, and their research efforts reflect this.
Colleges that began as cultivators of 'open-source' agriculture are now incubators of patented, corporate agriculture
Institutions of higher learning such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UofI) for instance, or Iowa State University (ISU) were originally founded as land-grant colleges, which means the federal government helped fund their building on federal land for the purpose of researching and teaching agriculture, science, and engineering for public benefit. But today, many of these land-grant colleges have essentially been taken over by private interests with little concern for anything other than their own profits.
"The idea of the land grants was to generate agricultural research, funded by the federal government, that benefited society as a whole. And that's pretty much how things went for the first century," writes Philpott. "But then, starting in the 1980s, the federal government started to level off its investment in ag research [...] That's when food and agribusiness companies, which were then in the process of consolidating into the vast global enterprises we know today, began to funnel huge amounts of cash into land grants."
But even the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which used to more closely represent the interests of the people, has become nothing more than a tool for promoting industry interests rather than public interests. So whether the funding comes from the USDA or directly from private industry, it is essentially all now going towards the promotion of GMOs and chemical-crop systems -- little, if any, is used to develop improvements in non-GMO, organic, and sustainable agriculture systems.
Mother Jones commenter Linda Ferris said it best when she wrote, "The 'sell out' by colleges and universities is no surprise for readers who have lived in communities around any one of the systems mentioned in the article [...] This (agricultural schools) is Monsanto's new incubator of technology and propaganda -- a factory of making money on the cheap by controlling these institutions and using their students to do their research and work."
Be sure to read the entire Mother Jones piece for a more comprehensive understanding of how private corporations are brainwashing the next generation of farmers into embracing corporate agricultural systems:
Sources for this article include: | <urn:uuid:9bc68152-9f77-4387-b510-50866930524d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/business/corporate_fraud/news.php?q=1337620889 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964308 | 694 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Notice Number: NOT-AI-07-017
Release Date: December 15, 2006
Receipt Date: April 23, 2007
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), (http://www.niaid.nih.gov)
The Office of Clinical Research Affairs (OCRA) of the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), intends to recompete a requirement for capabilities and facilities to establish and manage a Statistical and Data Coordinating Center (SDCC) to support NIAID sponsored clinical research programs in infectious diseases.
The NIAID, DMID supports extramural research to understand and ultimately prevent and/or treat diseases caused by virtually all infectious agents other than HIV that threaten millions of lives every year. This includes basic and applied research to develop and evaluate therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics which are funded through a variety of research grants and contracts. DMID is also responsible for advancing clinical research and conducting clinical trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of vaccines and therapeutic agents against potential bioterrorist pathogens and new and re-emerging infectious diseases of public health importance, such as avian influenza and SARS.
The primary goal of this seven-year effort is to facilitate the evaluation of new vaccines, other prophylactic strategies, and therapeutic agents for infectious diseases of priority to the Division. Support will be provided for single- and multi-center Phase 1, 2, 3 and 4 clinical trials of vaccines, other biologics, therapeutic agents aimed at bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases that occur in people of all ages at DMID-sponsored Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEUs) and other clinical research centers. The contractor's primary goal will be to coordinate clinical trials with respect to elements of study planning and logistics, training and communications, data collection, management and analysis and related support activities. This will typically involve a multi-center effort and a collaborative relationship with clinical investigators, other supporting contractors and DMID staff.
The support services to be provided by the contractor under this contract include the following: 1) computerized systems for the collection, management, storage, security, reporting and quality control of study data including systems to accommodate on-line subject enrollment and randomization; 2) statistical expertise in study design and analysis of trials; 3) assistance with preparation of study-related materials such as Manuals of Operations, case report forms and/or source documents and tracking logs; 4) development and maintenance of protocol web sites to share information and study materials with study sites and to provide DMID with real-time study information, such as overall and site-specific accrual, demographics, adverse events, queries, and deviations; 5) development and maintenance of an electronic inventory system to identify and track clinical study specimens; 6) providing training to clinical site staff to access the data system, perform remote data entry and enter clinical specimens into the electronic inventory system; 7) assessing capabilities and providing assistance to sites that intend to perform their own data collection, management, security and quality control; and 8) serving as a repository to store data from completed studies.
It is anticipated that up to one cost reimbursement completion type contract will be awarded for a period of seven years, beginning approximately March 3, 2008, with an anticipated total effort of approximately 40.75 FTEs. This RFP will be available electronically on or about December 21, 2006, and may be accessed at http://www.fedbizopps.gov/. Only electronic copies of the RFP will be available. All information required for the submission of an offer will be contained in the RFP. Responses to this RFP will be due approximately April 23, 2007.
This is a 100% SMALL BUSINESS SET-ASIDE, NAICS 541710 with a size standard of 500 employees. Any responsible offeror who meets this size standard may submit a proposal that will be considered by the Government, however, this notice does not commit the Government to the award of a contract. No collect calls will be accepted. No facsimile or e-mail transmissions will be accepted.
Inquiries regarding this notice may be directed to:
Office of Acquisitions, Division of Extramural Activities, NIAID, NIH, DHHS
6700-B Rockledge Drive, Room 3214, MSC 7612
Bethesda, MD 20892-7612 (Express mail: Use Zip Code 20817-7612)
Weekly TOC for this Announcement
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices
Office of Extramural
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20892
Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS)
Note: For help accessing PDF, RTF, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Audio or Video files, see Help Downloading Files. | <urn:uuid:2f01dd56-0d6e-487e-86db-0a70737656f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://grants2.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-AI-07-017.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908567 | 1,036 | 1.632813 | 2 |
1856 Colton Map of New Mexico and Utah
Description: A beautiful 1855 first edition example of Colton's map of territories of New Mexico and Utah. This iconic map is one of the rarest and most desirable of all Colton atlas maps. Like most of Colton's state maps, this map was derived from an earlier wall map of North America produced by Colton and D. Griffing Johnson. The map details the regions between California and Texas and between Oregon and Mexico. Covers territorial New Mexico and Utah including the modern day states of Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona. Colton identifies a number of important emigrant and exploratory routes including Fremont's, Kearney's and the Spanish Trail from New Mexico to Los Angeles. Most of the cartography follows the discoveries and explorations of John Fremont.
Colton notes the three proposed routes for the Pacific Railroad, a subject of considerable pubic and economic interest at the time: The Beswith route runs across the north of the map passing just south of Great Salt Lake. In the middle of the map the Gunnison Route is shown, as well as the site, near Lake Sevier, where Captain Gunnison was killed by the Ute Indians. Across the bottom of the map, the Parke route, which precipitated the Gadsden Purchase, is also noted. Colton identifies Fillmore City as the capital of the Utah Territory and Santa Fe as the capital of New Mexico.
This map also identifies various forts, rivers, mountain passes, fords, and an assortment of additional topographical details. Map is hand colored in pink, green, yellow and blue pastels to define state and territorial boundaries. The map was issued between 1855 and 1863 in some 12 known states identified by Wesley A. Brown in his short article 'J. H. Colton's Territories of New Mexico and Utah'. The present example corresponds to State 2. Surrounded by Colton's typical spiral motif border. Dated and copyrighted to J. H. Colton, 1855. Published from Colton's 172 William Street Office in New York City. Issued as page no. 51 in volume 1 of Colton's 1856 Atlas of the World.
Date: 1856 (dated 1855)
Source: Colton, G. W., Colton's Atlas of the World, illustrating Physical and Political Geography, (J. H. Colton and Company: New York) Vol 1, 1856.
References: Rumsey 0149.056 (1856 edition). Phillips (Atlases) 816. Wheat, C. I., Mapping of the Transmississippi West, 1540 – 1861, 832. Brown, W. A., J. H. Colton's Territories of New Mexico and Utah, State 1.
Cartographer: Joseph Hutchins Colton (July 5, 1800 - July 29, 1893), often publishing as J. H. Colton, was an important American map and atlas publisher active from 1833 to 1893 (though the firm continued to published in 1897). Colton's firm arose from humble beginnings when he moved to New York in 1831 and befriended the established engraver Samuel Stiles. Colton recognized an emerging market in railroad maps and immigrant guides. Not a cartographer or engraver himself, Colton's initial business practice mostly involved purchasing the copyrights of other cartographers, most notably David H. Burr, and reissuing them with updated engraving and border work. His first maps, produced in 1833, were based on earlier Burr maps and depicted New York State and New York City. Between 1833 and 1855 Colton would proceed to publish a large corpus of guidebooks and railroad maps which proved to be very popular. In the early 1850s Colton brought his two sons, George Woolworth Colton (1827 - 1901) and Charles B. Colton (1832 - 1916), into the map business. G. W. Colton, trained as a cartographer and engraver, was particularly inspired by the idea of creating a large and detailed world atlas to compete established European firms for the U.S. market. In 1855 G.W. Colton issued volume one the impressive two volume Colton's Atlas of the World. Volume two followed a year later. Possibly because of the expense of purchasing a two volume atlas set, the sales of the Atlas of the World did not meet Colton's expectations and it was thus that, in 1856, they also issued the Atlas as a single volume. The maps contained in this superb work were all original engravings and most bear an 1855 copyright. All of the maps were surrounded by an attractive spiral motif border that would become a hallmark of Colton's atlas maps well into the 1880s. In 1857 the slightly smaller Colton's General Atlas replaced the Atlas of the World. Most early editions of the General Atlas published from 1857 to 1859 do not have the trademark Colton spiral border, which was removed to allow the maps to fit into a smaller format volume. Their customers must have missed the border because it was reinstated in 1860 and remained in all subsequent publications of the atlas. There were also darker times ahead, in 1857 Colton was commissioned at sum of 25,000 USD by the Government of Bolivia to produce and deliver 2500 copies a large format map of that country. Though Colton completed the contract in good faith, delivering the maps at his own expense, he was never paid by Bolivia, which was at the time in the midst of a national revolution. Colton would spend the remainder of his days fighting with the Bolivian and Peruvian governments over this payment and in the end received over 100,000 USD in compensation. However, at the time, it must have been a disastrous blow. J. H. Colton and Company is listed as one of New York's failed companies in the postal record of 1859. It must have been this event which led Colton into the arms of Alvin Jewett Johnson and Ross C. Browning. The 1859 edition of Colton's Atlas lists Johnson and Browning as the "Successor's to J. H. Colton" suggesting an outright buyout, but given that both companies continued to publish separately, the reality is likely more complex. Whatever the case may have been, this arrangement gave Johnson and Browning access to many of Colton's map plates and gave birth to Johnson's New Illustrated (Steel Plate) Family Atlas. The Johnson's Atlas was published parallel to the Colton atlas well in to the 1880s. The Colton firm itself also published several other atlases including an Atlas of America, the Illustrated Cabinet Atlas, the Octavo Atlas of the Union, and Colton's Quarto Atlas of the World. They also published a large corpus of pocket maps and guides. The last known publications of the Colton firm dated to 1897 and include a map and a view, both issued in association with the Merchant's Association of New York. In 1898 the Colton firm merged with the Ohman Firm and continued to published as Colton, Ohman & Co. until 1901.Click here for a list of rare maps from Joseph Hutchins Colton.
Size: Printed area measures 17 x 14 inches (43.18 x 35.56 centimeters)
Condition: Very good. Blank on verso. Even overall toning.
Code: NewMexicoUtah-colton-1856 (to order by phone call: 646-320-8650) | <urn:uuid:6e54a753-c8af-4eff-844f-814b3fac45ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/NewMexicoUtah-colton-1856 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96144 | 1,551 | 2.734375 | 3 |
10 Year Old Boy Loses Nose in Sudden Dog Bite Attack
A 10-year-old boy in Henderson County, Kentucky, had to have his nose reattached after it was bitten off by a pit bull.
A 10-year-old Kentucky boy suffered major injuries and had to undergo emergency surgery after a pit bull bit off his nose and swallowed it. According to a Jan. 11 report in the Courier Press, the incident occurred on Jan. 9 when the boy was visiting friends and playing with the dog, a pit bull. The report states that the boy sat down on the couch and looked at the dog and the animal lunged at the boy for an unknown reason, bit off his nose and swallowed it.
Animal control officers took the dog to a local office where the nose was surgically removed from the dog's stomach and the reattached to the boy, the report states. He is still hospitalized and receiving treatment for his injuries, the article states. The report also quotes the dog owners as saying that he had owned the dog since it was a puppy and that it has never shown any signs of aggression.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year and one in five of those who are bitten require medical attention. The report also states that in the year 2006, more than 31,000 people underwent reconstructive surgery as a result of being bitten by dogs. Children who are between the ages of 5 and 9 are most susceptible to suffer dog bite injuries that require medical attention, the CDC report states.
"Dog bites involving children can result in major injuries that often require reconstructive surgery," said John Bisnar, founder of the Bisnar | Chase personal injury law firm. "Our firm has represented a number of young dog bite victims and we often see cases where they are serious facial injuries that may need extensive surgery. Sometimes, even several surgeries may not fix the physical scars caused by the bite marks."
"Dog bite injuries, both among children and adults, result in severe physical pain and emotional distress," Bisnar said. "Victims experience nightmares and paranoia, which may require psychological counseling. Many victims also have to deal with the fact that they have been disfigured as a result of the attack."
A CDC study, the only government survey of its kind, has also shown that pit bulls causes about 60 percent of fatal dog attacks over a 21-year period (1979-1998). Having a pit bull in your home can be dangerous, says Bisnar. "We have repeatedly seen that these dogs can go wild without rhyme or reason, even in instances when there was absolutely no provocation. We simply do not know what sets them off. That is why it is critical that pit bull owners are extremely watchful and vigilant."
The California dog bite lawyers of Bisnar | Chase represent >victims of dog bites and many other personal injuries. The firm has been featured on a number of popular media outlets including Newsweek, Fox, NBC, and ABC and is known for its passionate pursuit of results for their clients. Since 1978, Bisnar | Chase has recovered millions of dollars for personal injury victims including dog bite victims. For more information, please call 800-561-4887 or visit http://www.bestattorney.com for a free consultation.
(click on icons for more information) | <urn:uuid:8a66c9ca-0892-4490-aeb4-a192f81685c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bestattorney.com/dog-bite-kentucky.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970802 | 693 | 2.140625 | 2 |
CALGARY - Two families in Calgary were forced to leave their homes temporarily because of carbon monoxide gas.
Calgary fire crews responded to one call on Christmas Eve and a second call on Christmas morning.
While the gas readings in the homes were high, none of the people in the homes were injured.
Investigators say a blocked vent due to ice and some possible design issues contributed to the build up of gas in one of the houses.
Neither of the homes were equipped with carbon monoxide detectors.
Carbon monoxide is a colourless, tasteless and potentially lethal gas. (CHQR-The Canadian Press) | <urn:uuid:c7157a9d-5e33-42a4-8248-adb2b8ce9d70> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.squamishchief.com/article/GB/20121225/CP06/312259947/-1/squamish/calgary-families-forced-from-their-homes-by-potentially-lethal-carbon&template=cpArt | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962403 | 129 | 1.679688 | 2 |
We live in an oil-dependent world, and have got to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process without planning for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most people don't want to think about what happens when the oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive effect. They can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will generate their own fuel, food and housing. They can encourage the development of local currencies, to keep money in the local area. They can unleash a local 'skilling-up', so that people have more control over their lives.
The Transition Handbook is the manual which will guide communities to begin this 'energy descent' journey. The argument that 'small is inevitable' is upbeat and positive, as well as utterly convincing.
Please note, the printed edition of The Transition Handbook is currently out of stock, but it is available as an ebook. The Transition Companion by Rob Hopkins was published in October 2012.
Foreword by Richard Heinberg
Part 1 The Head: understanding peak oil
Part 2 The Heart: positive visions of a post peak oil future
Part 3 The Hands: a manual for developing the transition town model
If your town is not yet a Transition Town, here is guidance for making it one. We have little time, and much to accomplish
Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He has many years' experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and set up the first two-year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, as well as coordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted planning permission.
He is author of The Transition Handbook: from oil dependence to local resilience and The Transition Companion: making your community more resilient in uncertain times, and co-author of Local Food: how to make it happen in your community (all published by Green Books / Transition Books); also Transition in Action: Totnes and District 2030: an Energy Descent Plan (co-author), Woodlands for West Cork! and Energy Descent Pathways.
The Transition Handbook has been published in seven other languages to date, and was voted the fifth most popular book taken on holiday by MPs during the summer of 2008. Rob publishes www.transitionculture.org, which has been voted ‘the fourth best green blog in the UK’. He is the winner of the 2008 Schumacher Award, is an Ashoka Fellow and a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, served as a Soil Association Trustee for three years, and was named by the Independent as one of the UK’s top 100 environmentalists. He is the winner of the 2009 Observer Ethical Award in the Grassroots Campaigner category, and in December 2009 was voted the Energy Saving Trust / Guardian’s ‘Green Community Hero’. He lectures and writes widely on peak oil and Transition, and has recently completed a PhD on Transition and Resilience at Plymouth University.
Central to The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion is the concept of ‘resilience’, which refers to the ability of a community to withstand external shocks and stresses. Rob argues that just cutting carbon emissions is insufficient: we need to rebuild the ability of our communities to provide for their core needs, and doing so will create huge opportunities for local economic regeneration. His books are about hope and optimism, and their untapped potential for engaging people in repairing their communities, their towns and cities, and, ultimately, their planet. The Transition Companion expands on the ideas in the Handbook, combining practical advice on starting and maintaining a Transition initiative with inspiring stories about groups across the world who are putting these ideas into practice.
Rob regularly features as a keynote speaker, and has participated at the following events: Community Land Trust Conference; WWF (talk to the various teams); Sustainable Consumption and Production Conference; Dorset Schools Eco-Summit; Eco-Build Summit; Prince’s Foundation Annual Conference at St James’s Palace; Skype presentation to the Nova Scotia Planning Directors Association (NSPDA) Conference; Skype presentation for the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) conference.
He lives in Devon with his wife and four children. He has particular passions for cob building and walnut trees, and is staggered by the rate at which the Transition concept has spread. | <urn:uuid:3faac840-5540-40fa-b1e9-a7620c951e2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.greenbooks.co.uk/Book/10/211/The-Transition-Handbook.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958248 | 928 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Do you want to uninstall microsoft ms excel but you don't know how to do this? If this is the case then I will tell you the exact method to completely uninstall and remove microsoft ms excel from your computer in 6 easy to perform steps.
However, keep in mind that the uninstall operation might not work. If this is the case then don't worry. I've created a "worse case scenario" plan for you.
- Click Start Menu and then click Control Panel
- Double click Add/ Remove Programs and navigate " microsoft ms excel"
- Click "Remove" to uninstall it
- Click "Uninstall" when the program pops up
- Select the programs you want to uninstall
- Click "Next" and uninstall it
What to Do If You Couldn't Uninstall microsoft ms excel?
If you have uninstalled microsoft ms excel as stated above, but you can still see "microsoft ms excel" folder at C:/Program Files, which means microsoft ms excel isn't completely uninstalled.
What happens a lot is that the uninstall simply fails. Also, microsoft ms excel leaves files in your registry, and they need to be deleted too in order to complete the uninstall.
It's highly recommended to use an uninstaller so you can avoid wasting lots of time or damaging your computer which can cost you a lot of money too.
A great uninstaller that can help you to remove microsoft ms excel in the fastest and easiest way is called Perfect Uninstaller. Perfect Uninstaller will help you uninstall any unwanted programs. How? Well, by uninstalling the program from the core, it doesn't only remove the files on your driver, but also on your registry. In this case, microsoft ms excel will be fully uninstalled and removed from your computer. | <urn:uuid:edb3f191-c4dd-4273-af5f-fb825419834b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.perfectuninstaller.com/tools/microsoft%20ms%20excel.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93105 | 373 | 1.757813 | 2 |
- THE MAGAZINE
SCHOTT North America Inc. recently met with Congressional leaders to discuss the importance of the optics industry to the U.S., and how Congress can support the industry’s critical, high-technology manufacturing and spur job creation. The visits are part of the involvement of SCHOTT, for the second consecutive year, with the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) during the association’s annual Congressional Visits Day activities. Approximately 250 individuals, representing the interests of more than 2 million U.S. scientists and engineers, met with Capitol Hill leaders to raise awareness of and support for science, engineering, and technology at the federal level.
“We look forward to showcasing our latest advancements in materials science and manufacturing technology that provide state-of-the-art, but affordable glass and glass/ceramic solutions for the most challenging defense applications,” said Jim Stein, vice president of Government Relations for SCHOTT. “SCHOTT’s defense solutions are increasing the capabilities and protecting the lives of U.S. servicemen and -women around the world. In this ever-changing fiscal environment, making the right investments in technologies that provide the best long-term value for our men and women in uniform is critical as our nation prepares for the military of the future.”
For additional information, visit www.us.schott.com. | <urn:uuid:4ea459ef-27f3-4906-af15-2c254d136f91> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ceramicindustry.com/articles/92546-schott-joins-spie-society-members-during-annual-congressional-visits-day | 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 | 0.908405 | 289 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Breast Cancer Risk Factors
Wine Color Won't Change Breast Cancer Risk
Despite red wine's healthy reputation, study finds it won't lower cancer odds
MONDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- Although moderate consumption of red wine may offer some benefit for your heart, it won't help decrease the risk of breast cancer in women, new research suggests.
"If you choose to drink at all, choose your drink based upon what tastes good to you, because wine is not associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer, regardless of the type," said study author Polly Newcomb, program head of cancer prevention at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
The findings were published in the March issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
This study comes on the heels of research released last week that found even one drink a day could increase a woman's risk of developing cancer. That study, which was published in the online version of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, reported that for every additional drink consumed per day, there are about 15 extra cases of cancer diagnosed for every 1,000 women under age 75, and that most of those cancers are breast cancer.
However, although alcohol has been found to be a factor that increases breast cancer risk, Whitcomb and her colleagues wondered if the type of alcohol might make a difference. Red wine has been touted as a heart-healthy drink, and the researchers set out to see if wine type made a difference in breast cancer risk.
The researchers enrolled 6,327 women between the ages of 20 and 69 who had been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 7,558 women without cancer to serve as a control group. All of the women were from Wisconsin, Massachusetts (excluding Boston) and New Hampshire.
All of the women were surveyed by telephone about their breast cancer risk factors, including their drinking habits. Women with cancer were surveyed within a year of being diagnosed.
The researchers found that women who drink more than 14 drinks per week had a 24 percent increased risk of breast cancer. However, in this study, wine consumption was not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, though it wasn't associated with any benefit either.
"So many causes of cancer are unknown, but alcohol is a modifiable risk factor for breast cancer," said Newcomb, who suggested that if women choose to drink alcohol at all, they should limit their consumption to no more than one drink per day.
Oncologist Dr. Virginia Kaklamani, from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, agreed. "Drinking a small amount of alcohol is generally not harmful, but more than two drinks a day can become harmful," she said.
And, women who have other risk factors for breast cancer, such as a family history or obesity, should talk with their doctor about how alcohol might affect their risk profile.
To learn more about alcohol and its effect on breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society. | <urn:uuid:5211d768-51b0-4150-9cea-632e2c3fc911> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthline.com/healthday/wine-color-wont-change-breast-cancer-risk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980496 | 602 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Make space at the Science Museum
your holiday destination of choice. From 23 July 31 August, pick up a passport as you enter the museum and follow the new space trail embarking on a voyage of discovery through six of the museums galleries, where you can pick up some amazing facts about space and collect codes in order to grab a special souvenir at the end.
The space trail passes through the Exploring Space gallery, allowing people to marvel at rockets and satellites as well as the full-sized replica of the Apollo 11 Lunar Lander that took astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon in 1969.
Later in the journey, visitors are able to see at close range the original Apollo 10 Command Module the capsule that made the dress rehearsal to the Moon before the Moon landings. The trail later passes through the In Future gallery, where you can play a game about space tourism and decide if you would actually like to spend a holiday in outer space in the future! After taking a look into the future, you can take a look at how weve explored the universe so far in Cosmos & Culture a gallery all about the history of astronomy.
The trail also passes through the Science Museums popular Launchpad gallery, where visitors can have fun discovering the laws of gravity in motion and making sense of the way things work with our hands-on exhibits.
Another destination on the journey is the Science Museums IMAX cinema where you can immerse yourself in the incredible mission to service the Hubble space telescope in the film Hubble 3D, or witness the building of the International Space Station in another film Space Station 3D. For more entertainment, enjoy Legend of Apollo 3D at our Force Field 4D effects theatre - feel the impact of a Saturn V launch, take a ride in a lunar rover over the Moons surface and discover the smell of space.
Find out all the things you never knew about what astronauts do and meet our Yuri Gagarin drama character who will give his entertaining account of what it was like to be the first man in space exactly 50 years ago. | <urn:uuid:578b8f67-6764-435e-81bd-a7ccc1d09f65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/section/lastweek/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=49436&int_modo=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925428 | 419 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Comic Relief backing Tzedek school project
Jude Williams in Ghana during the pilot QualitE programme
Global aid charity Tzedek has received a £350,000 grant from Comic Relief to finance an education project in northern Ghana.
The grant was confirmed during a meeting with Comic Relief representatives last Friday and the money will be released periodically over the next three years.
Approved for funding on the back of a pilot scheme launched last March, the QualitE project will support the efforts of educational leaders to improve literacy and numeracy for 45,000 primary age children in over 400 schools.
“The access rate is good but the pass rate isn’t,” explained Tzedek chief executive Jude Williams.
“More than 60 per cent of children go to these primary schools but only eight per cent pass exams. This suggests the quality of education isn’t good enough.”
Tzedek staff have been planning QualitE for more than two years, focusing on “working with the current education system rather than creating something new.
“We’ve been well received by headteachers and district leaders in the area.
“Studies show that it’s easier to read and write in the mother tongue, then switch to learning in English, so we’re going to work on that. We’re also going to focus on supporting the teachers, as a lot don’t have ongoing training and some are not trained at all,” Ms Williams said.
Tzedek is also looking for Jewish community funding towards the £500,000 venture and will consider volunteering offers.
“This is something bigger than just going out there and sending teachers but we’re always looking to use our volunteers in a smart way,” Ms Williams added. “For example, those with a youth movement background could organise informal seminars and day camps to complement the formal education.
“All of this work is about our ability to help the non-Jewish community. Working against extreme poverty is imperative within Judaism.” | <urn:uuid:36dfd99d-5d06-4074-a8b9-da2d43721c58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thejc.com/community/community-life/98783/comic-relief-backing-tzedek-school-project | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954137 | 433 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Margaret Clark Morgan Integrated Primary Care Clinic
In 2008, Community Support Services launched the Margaret Clark Morgan Integrated Primary Care Clinic in an effort to improve the quality of physical health care received by persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses. Research has demonstrated the need for the integration of physical healthcare and behavioral healthcare as individuals with severe and persistent mental illnesses have a life expectancy nearly 25 years shorter than persons who do not have severe and persistent mental illnesses.
The Primary Care clinic is designated by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) as a Medical Home. The clinic offers persons receiving services from Community Support Services with a place to receive care for disease management and wellness management. On-site laboratory services are also available all agency clients. Additionally, podiatry services are available on-site to address the foot care needs of persons receiving services from the agency.
Margaret Clark Morgan Integrated Care Clinic Current Newsletter | <urn:uuid:ea20abc4-4316-41ea-9d67-cc2287d31fa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cssbh.org/primary-care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947041 | 183 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Toronto is Canada's 6th largest government and needs the flexibility to focus on strategic issues that matter to residents and businesses. The new City of Toronto Act which came into force on January l, 2007 recognizes this need. It introduces new powers to provide tools and options to the new Toronto government to help achieve "made-for-Toronto" policies that support achieving prosperity, opportunity and liveability for all.
The new Act is also part of the Ontario provincial government's overall municipal reform efforts, which recognize cities as strong economic engines. A strong Toronto means a strong province. A strong province means an even stronger country.
Learn more about how you can get involved.
New powers, new opportunities
Parts of the new Act include many rules and regulations the City has always followed. The difference is that there are new, broader powers that allow the Toronto government to the following:
- Pass by-laws that promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of the City, protect the health, safety and well-being of its people and authorize any service the City considers necessary or desirable.
- Delegate powers and service responsibilities to boards and establish City corporations. For instance, the City can establish City boards and change board procedures and powers. It can create corporations, nominate a person to act as a director or officer, and even acquire an interest in a corporation. There is also the opportunity to delegate decisions on local matters, which would strengthen the individual and neighbourhood voices.
- Establish new revenue tools to support City priorities and goals, such as improving our environment. These new revenue tools do not address the City's long-term fiscal imbalance. However, the Act supports the stronger inter-government relations and agreements needed to achieve financial sustainability.
- Exercise major planning powers to shape how Toronto's land is developed. Examples include the authority to control the density and height of development, regulate and reject the demolition of residential rental properties and to have a say on external design features.
- Have a stronger voice when talking to the provincial or federal governments about programs and issues that affect Toronto. For the first time, the City of Toronto can enter into an agreement with a government without having to go to the province for permission.
Clear and Responsible Actions
New powers mean that measures are needed to make sure that the new Toronto government's actions are clear and responsible. These include a Members' Code of Conduct (PDF), Integrity Commissioner, Auditor General, Lobbyist Registry and Ombudsman. At the same time, Council cannot use the new powers in any way that opposes or conflicts with federal or provincial legislation.
The Ombudsman is responsible for addressing concerns about City services and investigating complaints about administrative unfairness. Access the Ombudsman's independent, secure website.
The Toronto government's first use of the new powers is in governance reform, new accountability measures and new council procedures. This is also a chance for the City to look at its current policies, update them and where needed, update and consolidate them. The Act is to be reviewed by the province after two years and every five years after that, with an opportunity to further expand the City's powers. | <urn:uuid:945da2ee-4c99-434f-bc5b-8e0d34b380fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.toronto.ca/governingtoronto/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949904 | 634 | 2.25 | 2 |
Wikipedia is the most well-known use of wiki software.
Wikis are tools for creating documents that reflect a consensus position. The defining feature of wiki software is that anyone who has access to a wiki document has the ability to edit it. The most current version is available to everyone at the same time. Wikis have been around for a while, but they have become more popular as businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies embrace collaborative tools.
VSAS (the enterprise version of AthenaBridge) is a tool that works very well with wikis, because it helps the participants identify the common ground and the points of disagreement before they start to write the consensus document using a wiki.
How Wikis and VSAS are Different: Two Scenarios
VSAS helps organize many ideas in the form of a conversation map; related ideas are displayed near each other. VSAS is different from wikis, because none of the ideas that people publish can be edited by anyone else.
To illustrate why this is important, we’ll create an example scenario where three people are editing a wiki. Person #1 writes the first draft. Person #2 edits the first draft. Person #3 comes along and edits what Person #2 wrote. This situation will work fine as long as each person that comes along is making improvements to the document. If Person #2 makes the document worse, then Person #3 will not be able to see Person #1′s original contribution unless they know to look for it.
If we imagine the same three people using VSAS to accomplish the same task, we will notice some distinct advantages. Person #1 writes the first draft just like before. Next, Person #2 comments on the draft. When Person #3 comes along, she will see both the first draft and Person #2′s comments and will be able to comment on both– not just the most recent version of a wiki.
As additional people come along, they will be able to see the first draft and all the comments. If they were using a wiki, they would only see the most recent version of the document, and they would have to sift through all the previous versions of the document to see the comments of other participants.
Integrating Both Tools into One Workflow
After all the thoughts are captured in a conversation map, then it is time to summarize them in a consensus document like a wiki. In fact, it might be very useful to create to consensus documents– one on the pro side and one on the con side. Because VSAS measures the credibility of each participant, it is possible to grant access to the wiki documents to just the most credible particpants on each side.
Using VSAS in addition to wikis has several significant advantages:
- Diversity of ideas improves the quality of ideas: With just a wiki, previous versions all idea are not readily available. Wikis have an additional assumption that every edit is an improvement. VSAS does not rely on that assumption and instead records and displays each idea.
- Less work for the document’s creator: When participants comment on each other’s ideas, they will synthesize all the comments for you, so that you as the document creator are not left with the monumental task of integrating everyone’s contradicting feedback.
- Less work for the colleagues who are providing feedback: If their ideas are already present as someone else’s feedback, then they can indicate their support of those ideas rather than having to create them on their own.
- Reduces the risk of groupthink: VSAS can allow anonymous feedback if necessary, to ensure an honest conversation that is not disrupted by office politics. | <urn:uuid:0e55207e-18e3-449c-a441-b1530596fa1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://athenabridge.wordpress.com/tag/education/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936789 | 750 | 3.140625 | 3 |
In 1875, a powerful Vaishnava acharya,
Srila Prabhupada – His Early years
September 1st, 1896, Abhay caran de was born to Gour mohan de and Rajani in Calcutta. In 1916, he graduated from Scottish Churches College and in 1922, he was introduced to his future spiritual master,
Srila Prabhupada – Missionary zeal
When Srila Prabhupada left
He established 108 Krishna temples on six continents, installed the deity of Krishna in each center and trained his disciples in the process of deity worship. Thirty-two new temples (almost three a month) were opened in a single year, between 1970 and 1971. Prabhupada also circled the globe fourteen times, visiting twenty-four countries, preaching, inspiring his followers and making countless public appearances before multitudes of people. He skillfully managed his international society simply through letters and personal meetings, virtually without the use of a telephone.
Srila Prabhupada – His contributions
Srila Prabhupada wrote approximately seventy books on the science of Krishna consciousness, sleeping only a few hours per day. Dozens of prominent scholars and educators from leading universities praised his work. The Encyclopedia Britannica proclaimed that his voluminous translations from the original Sanskrit and his lucid commentaries "have astounded literary and academic communities worldwide." This feat is even more astonishing considering the translations and commentaries were in English, which was a second language to the author.
We shall learn more about his efforts in the module, “Srila Prabhupada’s books.”
More details will be covered in the module, “Srila Prabhupada – A Visionary.”
As for the future of this movement, Bhaktivinoda Thakur predicted in his book, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu: His Life and Precepts, on page 62, "The principle of | <urn:uuid:c4908c7f-42ad-4424-b06e-164c20fa8a45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://folknet.in/SS2008/html/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89&Itemid=332 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966298 | 420 | 2.625 | 3 |
Two big thoughts for today. First, that the Philadelphia Orchestra bankruptcy opens a new era of classical music distress. And second, that we should treat this as a time of opportunity, a time to foster the rebirth of classical music. Which means that we should devote ourselves to classical music with more passion than ever.
The Philadelphia Orchestra bankruptcy is a huge, huge event. I told my Juilliard students yesterday that it’s the biggest thing that’s happened, related to the future of classical music, since I began teaching my course on that subject in 1997. I’ve been talking for years (as have others) about gathering clouds, signs of trouble, signs that the classical music mainstream can’t survive too much longer, without big changes.
But when a major player in a huge and supposedly well-funded industry drops below some basic financial baseline, that means the industry is in trouble. And this is the case here. I was amused — or is it grimly amused — to read a statement from a musicians’ union representative, saying that other orchestras hadn’t gone bankrupt, because they (in contrast to Philly) had good management, and weren’t in financial trouble. (You’ll have to follow the link to the second page of the Philadelphia news story to find the statement.)
But that’s not true. The outlook for major orchestras isn’t good at all, and behind the scenes, many people are seriously worried. Philly is just the beginning. Along with Detroit (which almost died), Baltimore (which a few years ago spent one-third of endowment to get out of debt), Syracuse (which may have died), Honolulu (which died), and, as announced yesterday, the New Mexico Symphony (which dissolved itself).
(Note that the link takes you to a Google search for the New Mexico news story. The Albuquerque Journal, where the story appeared, hides behind a paywall. But you can get through it, as you can with the paywall at the New York Times, by linking to the story from a Google search.)
The tide is rolling out. This doesn’t mean that orchestras can’t save themselves. But they’re going to have to shrink, or change — and change a lot.
Coming: what the problems are. | <urn:uuid:f91e9904-bd8a-47c1-919e-a1d3c1d99ea1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2011/04/tipping_point.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957058 | 482 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Published in Women's Health Weekly, January 12th, 1998
The new technique, called FASIAR (follicle aspiration, sperm injection, and assisted rupture) combines aspects of two other techniques: intrauterine insemination (IUI) and gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT). In IUI, sperm is injected into the uterine cavity close to the egg. GIFT differs in that the egg and sperm are mixed together in the laboratory and then transferred directly into the fallopian tube. GIFT has a higher success rate than IUI...
Want to see the full article?
Welcome to NewsRx!
Learn more about a six-week, no-risk free trial of Women's Health Weekly
NewsRx also is available at LexisNexis, Gale, ProQuest, Factiva, Dialog, Thomson Reuters, NewsEdge, and Dow Jones. | <urn:uuid:52b12afd-1a98-4472-8139-dd985dffb257> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newsrx.com/newsletters/Womens-Health-Weekly/1998-01-12/1998011233318WW.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914215 | 185 | 2.15625 | 2 |
W. A. CARPENTER, a merchant tailor on the corner of Jefferson and Jackson streets, and one of the prominent young citizens of Franklin, Ind., is a native of Johnson County, Ind., where he was born February 5, 1860. He was partly reared on a farm in Franklin (now Needham) Township, and was educated in the public schools of Franklin. Upon leaving school he learned the tailor's trade, in Franklin, and for about seven years he worked at the same in the above place. February 1, 1887, he opened up an establishment for himself, and now owns one of the leading tailoring houses in Franklin. He does all kinds of first-class work, and carries a large and select stock of suitings. He learned cutting in Indianapolis, and is able to guarantee his work. He has met, and is meeting, with success, and has a large and growing trade. He united in marriage on November 25, 1885, to Emma Swaim, who was born in Hensley Township, Johnson County, Ind., December 19, 1868, and is the daughter of William and Matilda Swaim. To this union one son, Earl, was born on April 25, 1886. Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he is a member of Sam Oyler Lodge, No. 12, K. of P. The parents of our subject are James and Hannah (Ware) Carpenter. The father was born in Kentucky, and when a boy came with his parents to Johnson County, Ind. He removed to Boone County, Ind., in about 1870, where he now resides on a farm. The mother was born in Johnson County, Ind. To the parents two boys, have been born, our subject, and Charles, a younger brother.
Transcribed by Cheryl Zufall Parker
Banta, D.D. History of Johnson County, Indiana. Chicago, IL: Brant & Fuller, 1888. | <urn:uuid:50da9d6b-7572-4be5-9d87-13e26b475c42> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~injohnso/biosketch/franklin/carpenterwa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986456 | 405 | 1.664063 | 2 |
FARMINGTON — San Juan College's video production students capped off three summer research projects with an interdepartmental project aimed at promoting community college level research and engaging students with real world experience.
The video project showcases biology students' research on hantavirus, the goji berry and compounds found in broccoli.
"We're the story tellers," said Luke Renner, assistant professor of digital media, arts and design.
His video production class spent fall semester producing video, animation and photo illustrations for the project.
"For me, this is an eye-opener for what can be accomplished," Renner said. "It can lead to collaboration outside the classroom. I'm amazed at what they've put together. It's applicable to careers. We've made a marketable product."
Renner's students were assisted by students from a 3D design and animation class to create a 3D animation of a lung and students from the digital image editing class to create animated graphics.
"It's been great for the students," Renner said.
Biology department professors hope that the video project will spur more interest in undergraduate research at the college.
"It is unique that we have so much research at a community college," said Veronica Evans, associate professor of biology at the college.
Evans' students performed research on the hantavirus, goji berry and the sulforaphane compound found in broccoli and other vegetables.
Conducting research early
"We have a number of students in the biology program that are interested in transferring that want to get their feet wet in research," said Don Hyder, associate professor of biology. "I think one of the advantages is that students, by the time they get done with research, they have a much higher confidence level for a four year college or a masters program."
San Juan College's
"There's not a very large number of community colleges that engage in undergraduate research," he said. "We also have a number of very well qualified faculty."
The three research projects were conducted through a partnership with Ft. Lewis College in Durango and New Mexico State University, Hyder said.
"It allows me the opportunity to have a number of students involved," he said. "We're trying to involve students across departments. These projects lead to results outside the classroom." | <urn:uuid:3e5ee28e-077e-4b3b-b591-456136453f9f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.daily-times.com/ci_22159724 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972843 | 479 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Walter Edgar, noted South Carolina historian, will speak at
Coastal Carolina University on Monday, April 9 at 3 p.m. in Wall
Building 309. The event is free and open to the public.
Edgar's talk, sponsored by the Waccamaw Center for Cultural and
Historical Studies, is titled "The Patriot: Hollywood and History."
"Walter Edgar is a great South Carolinian - a splendid historian,
a stimulating lecturer, and a dedicated and public-spirited citizen,"
said Charles Joyner, director of the Waccamaw Center.
Edgar, who serves as the Claude Neuffer Professor of Southern
Studies at the University of South Carolina, is the author of the South
Carolina: A History. He is also the host of "Walter Edgar's Journal"
which airs every Friday afternoon on South Carolina Educational Radio
Edgar is the author or editor of 14 books on South Carolina and
the American South. He founded and served as the first director of
USC's acclaimed Public History Program.
For more information, contact Coastal's Office of Marketing
Communications at 349-2015. | <urn:uuid:8cbaf96a-088e-4dd8-8a0b-5c08ec0d9ddd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coastal.edu/newsarticles/story.php?id=210 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919774 | 240 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Everywhere you turn these days there is someone talking about Android. And while we all talk about it on a constant basis, and snatch up phone after phone that runs on it, what do you know about it? Do you know what it’s based on? How many versions there have been? XCubeLabs came up with this handy infographic that charts the history of the popular operating system, showing you all of its important milestones. | <urn:uuid:94adb9e1-b168-4b7f-8154-e52c0a0085f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.technobuffalo.com/2011/07/27/the-history-of-android-infographic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951333 | 89 | 1.859375 | 2 |
What Did The Central Banks Do?
Originally published on Wed November 30, 2011 5:49 pm
GUY RAZ, HOST:
Now, if you've been following events in the eurozone over the past few months with equal parts anxiety and confusion, you're not alone. To help put today's news into a broader debt crisis context, we're joined by Felix Salmon. He blogs about finance for Reuters.com. Felix, welcome.
FELIX SALMON: Thanks, Guy.
RAZ: In your blog today, you call this coordinated action by the central banks, and I'm quoting you, "a holiday greeting card to the financial markets." Why?
SALMON: Because the banks in Europe weren't lending to each other, we had what was known as a European liquidity crisis. And if you know much about crises, liquidity crises are the worst crises you can possibly have. And so now, the ECB, which people were worried wasn't going to be lending into this liquidity crisis and wasn't trying to do anything about it, looks like it's woken up and is doing something about it. And plan, as they always say, beats no plan.
So we have a plan. We have - we hope it's going to work and it's certainly better than nothing.
RAZ: Okay. But as we just heard from Jim Zarroli, today's move has very little bearing on the enormous debt burdens in Greece, Italy and across the eurozone. Is this like trying to hold your car together with Scotch tape?
SALMON: Not really, no. There are two different issues is the problem. I mean, they're related, but they're definitely separate. This is a bit like putting gas in your gas tank while your car is falling apart. Your car is still falling apart, but at least it can keep on going for the time being.
RAZ: So what does it actually mean for the eurozone?
SALMON: Well, it means that we won't have failing banks. It means the banks will be able to borrow money when they need to and roll over their debts and save from seizing up and going bust and bringing the entire global economy to its knees. So that's an advantage. Obviously, it doesn't decrease the amount of debt that Italy has or Greece has or - it doesn't deleverage anyone, so it's not helping on the solvency front, but it's not meant to. It's just a liquidity facility. It's meant to pump money into the eurozone, which is short of cash right now.
RAZ: Why now? What is it about now that is crucial?
SALMON: Why now? Because the bloodstream of Europe, the money which was flowing around from bank to bank to bank had more or less seized up. Banks in Europe were not lending to each other. And if banks can't roll over their debts, then there's no financial system anymore and we have a major global crisis, which makes the first one look like nothing. So, as I say, liquidity crises are very, very devastating when they happen. They can happen very quickly. And they're relatively easy to head off.
All you need to do is basically what the central banks did today and you can push them off indefinitely, pretty much. So they're easy to treat, but if left untreated, they can be fatal in no time.
RAZ: So what can we expect these central banks to do a month from now, six months from now or a year from now?
SALMON: So the idea is that now that the central banks are lending freely, the individual commercial banks will start lending to each other again. And, of course, once they start lending to each other, the central banks don't need to do this anymore and they can quietly step back and say, oh, well, we saved the day and now we can go back and not bother with this kind of thing anymore. But if the commercial banks don't start lending to each other again, then this kind of program is going to have to continue to exist more or less indefinitely.
RAZ: Indefinitely until the financial crisis is over?
RAZ: Well, how will ordinary consumers feel the effects of this, Felix?
SALMON: They won't. Ideally, they won't feel anything at all because their bank used to borrow from a different bank and now it borrows from the central bank and there's no real difference to them. This is a very much a sort of international financial plumbing thing that's going on here. It's not something which affects you or me.
RAZ: So why does it have such a big impact on the markets?
SALMON: Because without international financial plumbing, there are no markets. Without banks being able to move money around, the whole concept of markets ceases to have a lot of meaning and everything just grinds to a chaotic and rather devastating halt.
RAZ: But at the end of the day, the European debt crisis is still there, it's still the debt crisis and Europe can still go off the rails.
SALMON: Absolutely. This is doing nothing to solve the debt crisis. This is not about the debt crisis. This is about the liquidity crisis, which is a different crisis. So we've managed to solve one crisis, but the other big crisis is still there.
RAZ: I guess we should stay tuned.
SALMON: There's more than one crisis out there right now.
RAZ: Felix, thank you so much.
SALMON: Thank you.
RAZ: That's Felix Salmon, he blogs about finance for Reuters; explaining today's action by six central banks to improve access to U.S. dollars abroad. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | <urn:uuid:951a8de4-1adc-4531-bb6a-b8d70414d110> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kacu.org/post/what-did-central-banks-do | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973067 | 1,203 | 2.15625 | 2 |
One of the most remarkable transformations in Cardiff Bay has been that of The Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square, from commercial hub to arts and entertainment centre. Its imposing facade speaks of the days when Cardiff was growing fast to become the greatest coal-exporting port in the world - its wealth built on the Black Gold dug from the earth by the miners of the Rhondda and the neighbouring valleys.
The Coal Exchange was built between 1883 and 1886 to the designs of James, Seward and Thomas. It was here that Cardiff's leading businessmen-owners of shipping firms, coal mines and of allied businesses met to fix their deals, some with far distant countries. Cardiff, which half a century before had been a market town of 10,000 people with a small coastal trade, had become a commercial centre of importance on the world's stage.
Did You Know the first recorded million-pound business deal was struck in The Coal Exchange?
The millionaires have long since turned to dust but The Coal Exchange remains in all its architectural glory. Paired Corinthian columns, an oak balcony, and rich wood paneling adorn the trading hall, which was magnificently reconstructed by Edwin Seward in 1911. The Coal Exchange is now a family-led business. The wide experience and professionalism of the staff lies behind a refreshingly friendly and informal approach, launched from a platform of enthusiasm and a genuine desire to please. Frequent endorsements and the extremely high incident of repeat bookings are testament to our ability to deliver in a personalised, involved manner without sacrificing service levels to a high quality threshold. | <urn:uuid:2037f565-0522-467e-a0e6-8849ac437f81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coalexchange.co.uk/history.htm | 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 | 0.963733 | 320 | 1.976563 | 2 |
A feature article, “Solving the Higher Ed Equation,” in the March issue of Business NH, includes David Caruso, president of Antioch University New England (AUNE), in a roundtable discussion with ten other higher-education leaders in New Hampshire.
The article points out that colleges and universities have a nearly $5 billion impact on the state of New Hampshire. For one thing, college graduates earn about $1 million more during their careers than those with only a high-school diploma.
But there are obstacles to getting a degree. Debt loads can be burdensome: Students in New Hampshire community colleges paid the highest average tuition in the country for the 2008-09 school year. Students in the University System of New Hampshire paid the fifth-highest average tuition of all state schools.
Higher-education institutions strive to provide sufficient financial aid to students who need it. But they face financial hurdles themselves, including inadequate state support, taxes and ever-growing health care costs, which have helped drive up tuition over the last twenty years, Caruso said in the article.
Caruso noted that about fifty percent of college students nationwide are adults juggling school with families, jobs or mortgages. To offer them the flexibility they require, schools are providing more diverse ways to earn degrees, including part-time and online options such as AUNE’s new green MBA online program.
Read more about the discussion on how New Hampshire colleges and universities are adapting to change and challenges. | <urn:uuid:eca9949f-2319-4329-986d-f6b28b2ce319> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.antiochne.edu/aunenews/president-caruso-joins-education-leaders-for-business-nh-roundtable-discussion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955277 | 303 | 2.234375 | 2 |
Is Indonesia a haven for terrorists?
Yes. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim county, is a vast archipelago with porous maritime borders, a weak central government, separatist movements, corrupt officials, a floundering economy, and a loosely regulated financial system—all characteristics which make it fertile ground for terrorist groups. While Indonesia is known as a secular, tolerant society that practices a moderate form of Islam, radical Islamists have gained momentum. U.S. officials and terrorism experts worry about al-Qaeda using Indonesia as a base for a Southeast Asian front in its campaign against “infidels,” Jews, and the United States. Indonesia resisted international pressure to crack down on local militants suspected of al-Qaeda ties until a devastating October 2002 attack on a Bali nightclub—and the simultaneous bombing of a U.S. consular office on the island—which killed more than 200 people, most of them foreign tourists. To its credit, since October 2002 the Indonesian government has cooperated with U.S. and Australian officials in their attempts to disrupt terrorist networks in Southeast Asia.
What sort of country is Indonesia?
A sprawling chain of about 17,000 islands off the southeastern coast of Asia . Established as a constitutional republic in 1945, the former Dutch colony has faced economic and political crises in recent years as it inches toward a society based on the rule of law. Suharto, the corrupt dictator who controlled Indonesia for more than 30 years, resigned in 1998, and Indonesia ’s military came under pressure to reduce its prominent role in domestic politics. Separatist movements and interreligious violence are prevalent in much of the country, which has the world’s fourth-largest population.
Is there an al-Qaeda presence in Indonesia?
It seems increasingly likely, especially after the October 2002 Bali bombing. Experts say other terrorist attacks within Indonesia—including a December 2000 church-bombing campaign, the August 2001 bombing of a Jakarta shopping mall by a Malaysian national, the August 2003 bombing outside the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta, and the October 2005 suicide bombings in Bali—may also be connected with international terrorism. Since the September 11 attacks, U.S. and Asian officials have warned that bin Laden’s organization was maneuvering to establish itself in Indonesiaand perhaps reconstitute its infrastructure there.
In August 2002, the United States briefly shut down its embassy in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, on warnings of an attack plot by militants with al-Qaeda ties. The United States temporarily withdrew all nonessential personnel from the country following the Bali attack.
Are Islamist groups in Indonesia linked to al-Qaeda?
Seemingly, but experts say it’s unclear how closely they cooperate. Chief among the Indonesian groups that trouble U.S.and Asian officials is Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the group thought to be behind the 2002 Bali bombings, which seeks an Islamist state incorporating Indonesia, Malaysia, and the southern Philippines. The group’s leader, the radical Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, was arrested shortly after the Bali bombings—he was found guilty in 2005 and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Jemaah Islamiyah has been linked to terrorist plots by an alleged al-Qaeda operative recently captured in Indonesia and turned over to the CIA. One of Bashir’s disciples, who goes by the name Hambali, has been linked with a bombing plot against Western embassies in nearby Singapore and with an individual who reportedly hosted two of the September 11 hijackers.
U.S. officials also worry about Laskar Jihad, a violent group aiming to eliminate Christians from the Moluccas and Sulawesi Island and establish an Islamist state. After the October 2002 Balibombing, Laskar Jihad announced it had disbanded. Its leader, Jaffar Umar Thalib, says he met Osama bin Laden while fighting in the Islamist brigades opposed to the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but says he’s rejected al-Qaeda’s offers of funding. Some experts say that Laskar Jihad’s contacts with al-Qaeda are more extensive than Thalib admits, but no hard evidence has been found linking the two groups.
Does Indonesia say it has an al-Qaeda presence?
Yes, although it insisted for years that it didn’t. The October 2002 Bali bombing prompted Indonesia’s defense minister to say he was “sure that al-Qaeda is here.” But Indonesia initially rebuffed U.S. requests to investigate a September 2002 grenade explosion near a building belonging to the U.S. embassy in Jakarta, saying that the blast resulted from a local business dispute. Earlier, Indonesia’s chief of military intelligence said foreign terrorists were training in a camp on Sulawesi Island, but he withdrew his report after criticism from domestic Islamic groups.
How has the Indonesian government handled its terrorist threat since the 2002 Bali bombings?
While several incidents—including the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004—have hinderedIndonesia’s success in combating the country’s terrorist threat, the U.S. says Indonesia is continuing its counterterrorism efforts. According to the State Department’s 2004 Country Reports on Terrorism, Indonesian officials arrested dozens of terrorist suspects including JI leaders, former instructors at JI training camps, financiers of attacks, and members of splinter terrorist networks. Since the bombings, prosecutors and courts have convicted more than 100 members of JI or affiliated groups on terrorism charges. | <urn:uuid:10c2b7ac-d311-4a96-a30b-16b25da349ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cfr.org/indonesia/terrorism-havens-indonesia/p9361 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954565 | 1,145 | 2.15625 | 2 |
You might have read that Catholics who participate in events connected with the upcoming Year of Faith can receive a special plenary indulgence. I must admit the idea of appointed clerics having the authority to grant indulgences carries a bad taste. I cannot help but connect the whole notion of indulgences with old theologies and with the funding of the building of St. Peter’s basilica. The sales of indulgences were an abusive and lucrative practice at the time and led to an uprising, headed by Martin Luther of Germany, resulting in the Reformation and a split in the church.But they have continued as part of the Catholic tradition – though there has been little emphasis on indulgences in recent decades. This, like many other aspects of our traditional faith, is getting more attention. Notably, Pope Benedict XVI this week authorized the granting of a plenary indulgence – officially the remission of the temporal punishment a person is due for sins that have been forgiven – for the performing of certain pious acts related to the Year of Faith, which begins this month.I thought it would be instructive to list the necessary requirements for penitents who wish to gain a plenary indulgence: Penitents can gain one:
- Each time they attend at least three sermons during the Holy Missions, or at least three lessons on the Acts of the Council or the articles of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in church or any other suitable location.
- Each time they visit, in the course of a pilgrimage, a papal basilica, a Christian catacomb, a cathedral church or a holy site designated by the local ordinary for the Year of Faith (for example, minor basilicas and shrines dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Apostles or patron saints), and there participate in a sacred celebration, or at least remain for a congruous period of time in prayer and pious meditation, concluding with the recitation of the Our Father, the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form, and invocations to the Blessed Virgin Mary and, depending on the circumstances, to the Holy Apostles and patron saints.
- Each time that, on the days designated by the local ordinary for the Year of Faith, in any sacred place, they participate in a solemn celebration of the Eucharist or the Liturgy of the Hours, adding thereto the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form.
- On any day they chose, during the Year of Faith, if they make a pious visit to the baptistery, or other place in which they received the Sacrament of Baptism, and there renew their baptismal promises in any legitimate form.
An additional note: Faithful who, due to illness or other legitimate cause, are unable to leave their place of adobe, may still obtain a Plenary Indulgence "if, united in spirit and thought with other faithful, and especially at the times when the words of the Supreme Pontiff and diocesan bishops are transmitted by television or radio, they recite ... the Our Father, the Profession of Faith in any legitimate form, and other prayers that concord with the objectives of the Year of Faith, offering up the suffering and discomfort of their lives".
Now you know. | <urn:uuid:39b614d7-4f33-49fb-8092-ab63a953a075> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/how-year-faith-plenary-indulgences | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945621 | 656 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Now that the Republican primaries are almost over, we must steel ourselves against an onslaught of political propaganda. Much of what will be said is outside my purview, but given that pundits remind us that it is once again about the “economy stupid,” maybe I can briefly add something to the discussion.
It begins with ridiculous proclamations, such as $2 gasoline. How?
Well, I’ll tell you how price controls on gas. The last time we tried that, during the Nixon administration, the policy precipitated gas shortages of Soviet proportions. That is ridiculous.
But all this talk panders to a broad constituency. It concentrates fear and anger on a single easy-to-understand issue that is out of policymakers’ control. However, the state of the economy, and even less so, gas prices, has little to do with who is president.
What makes all this hyperbole, finger-pointing, intransigence and obfuscation worse is the continued seriousness of the current economic situation.
In the United States, monthly foreclosures have been more than 200,000 for what seems an eternity – finally dipping below 200,000 in March. And the Case-Shiller housing index rose a whopping 0.15 percent in February.
Unemployment remains high, underemployment is epidemic, and 43 percent of the unemployed is long-term. The long-term unemployed have gone more than 27 weeks without a job 80 percent above the average for the 2000s. Economic growth remains anemic, to put an optimistic spin on things.
News headlines declare concerns about a recession in Spain, Greece and Italy. But Spain and Greece already are in a depression with unemployment rates higher than 20 percent, and if you’re younger than 25, you have a 50 percent chance of being unemployed.
The euro is in jeopardy of becoming a historical footnote, an interesting thought experiment that briefly united a contentious continent. How many of you remember the Austro-Hungarian single currency? Yeah, I thought so.
So we are left with nebulous statements such as: “I know how to get the economy moving again.” I question how Mitt Romney, who likes to brag about his experience in the private sector at the private-equity firm Bain Capital, has taught himself to manage an entire economy. Though, I could ask the same of President Barack Obama as well.
Sure, there are little things around the periphery that could help: silly regulations, perceptions of red tape gone wild. But no one wants to tackle the big things: tax and entitlement reform. That’s too costly politically.
A few years ago, right after the inauguration of Obama, I cautioned readers that this recession was unlike any most of us has ever seen. Because it would be long, slow and painful, I hoped Americans would be patient, but remained skeptical they would. And so it is.
The economy needs a serious talk, serious ideas and serious reforms. And I’m not hearing it from either side of the aisle. And we should be outraged.
email@example.com Robert “Tino” Sonora is an associate professor of economics at Fort Lewis College and the director of the Office of Business and Economic Research at Fort Lewis College. | <urn:uuid:afad0682-bdb9-4d63-a32a-8ad0587f6f40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20120425/COLUMNISTS36/704259959/0/news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952008 | 686 | 1.523438 | 2 |
On page 24 I read this re. the pre-famine Irish peasants:
"Dancing was the universal diversion, and Lord George Hill, who owned property in Donegal, has left an account of removing a cabin with dancing and fiddling. 'The custom on such occasions is for the person who has the work to be done to hire a fiddler, upon which engagement all the neighbours joyously assemble and carry in an incredibly short time the stones and timber upon their backs to the new site; men, women and children alternately dancing and working while daylight lasts, at the termination of which they adjourn to some dwelling where they finish the night, often prolonging the dance to dawn of day.'"
Dancing has been an important part of island social life since the very first Irish, English, and Scottish settlers arrived on Ocracoke. Over the last half century rock & roll dancing has mostly supplanted traditional Ocracoke Island square dancing (a type of "big circle" dance).
|Traditional Ocracoke Square Dance, 2012|
But the old style dance, which was once popular throughout coastal Carolina, still survives only on Ocracoke. Ocracoke Alive, local non-profit cultural, artistic, educational, and environmental organization, will be sponsoring several dances in upcoming months. Look for more information soon.
Our latest Ocracoke Newsletter is the story of windmills on Ocracoke. You can read it here: http://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news012113.htm. | <urn:uuid:11fc24f5-45fc-48be-a10b-db4b7b601d86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://villagecraftsmen.blogspot.jp/2013/02/irish-dance.html?showComment=1360583864657 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933482 | 319 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Informal Agriculture Council Discusses Climate Change and Agriculture
EU Agriculture Ministers met from 13 - 15 September for an Informal Agriculture Council in Växjö, Sweden. Talks were hosted by the Swedish Minister for Agriculture Eskil Erlandsson, and focused on the theme of agriculture and climate change. Member States emphasised the need for an increase in support for research and development and additional funding for incentive payments within rural development programmes for tackling climate change. Although no legislative proposals were put on the table, further debates on these issues were seen as critical in the run up to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
Earlier discussions had centered around the continuing ‘dairy crisis’ in response to which the Commission has subsequently published a new package of short and long term measures. In addition, the Swedish Presidency, under pressure from some Member States, has just announced an additional informal meeting of Agriculture Ministers on 5 October.
Climate Spotlight Turns to Agriculture
On the final day of the informal Agriculture Council, Ministers turned their attention to the future role of EU agriculture in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Recognition of agriculture’s potential to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was made at the Council, with discussions leading to general support for the need for increased research and development, as well as voluntary style incentive measures, such as those within Rural Development Programmes (RDPs), to promote the delivery of climate friendly farming.
Debates were guided by the Swedish Presidency’s pre-Council paper on climate change and agriculture, building on an earlier report entitled ‘The challenge for European agricultural and rural areas’ published in April alongside the Commission’s White Paper on adaptation (COM(2009)147), in addition to a July working document on agriculture and climate change mitigation. The three day talks were hosted by the Swedish Minister for Agriculture Eskil Erlandsson, whilst his colleague Carl-Johan Lindén, who chairs Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA), stated in the run up to the meeting ‘that the issue of how the CAP should be structured to combat climate change will become central in the next few years’.
Agriculture as ‘Part of the Solution’
With the Swedish Presidency placing a priority on climate change issues, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel was keen to stress that agriculture is ‘part of the solution as well as the problem’, recalling that a 20 per cent reduction in GHG emissions has already been achieved since 1990 (largely attributed to declines in the numbers of EU livestock, particularly in the beef and dairy sectors).
A 20 per cent reduction in GHG emissions has already been achieved since 1990...
However, pressure remains on EU agriculture to produce more food while simultaneously reducing GHG emissions. As such, Member States agreed that research and development, focusing particularly on the development of innovative solutions, should play a vital role in helping to meet these future challenges. Particular areas flagged as a focus for future research and development by Member States included the production of biomass in both the forestry and farming sectors, and an exploration of the carbon storage potential of soils, especially carbon rich soils such as grasslands.
Voluntary Framework to Prevail
Pillar Two measures were commended by several Member States as a means to promote climate and eco-friendly farming, with examples of incentive based measures working well to address climate change being cited by Sweden, Poland and the UK. Talks then turned to the desirability of an increase in funding attributed to Pillar Two, with Swedish Farm Minister Eskil Erlandsson going so far as to say that there is no reason why it should not outweigh Pillar One in the future, although concerns were raised by some Member States over the provision of further resources to Pillar Two. Mariann Fischer Boel highlighted that an additional €4.2 billion will already become available from January 2010 for use within Rural Development Programmes on the ‘new challenges’ as a result of the CAP Health Check, although no indication of what proportion of this funding will be dedicated to climate change was given.
The subject of introducing binding measures to ensure the farming sector’s contribution to climate change mitigation was notably treated with caution, however there were calls for agriculture to be included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), thus requiring obligatory limits on farm emissions.
There were calls for agriculture to be included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
Fischer Boel reacted by suggesting that an ETS should be considered as a viable option for agriculture in the future, but also expressed concern over the regulatory burden it may place on the farming sector. Some Member States took the opportunity to showcase national measures illustrating other possible regulatory approaches. For example, Sweden, Slovenia and Finland stressed the role of forests in providing carbon sinks while Portugal highlighted their forthcoming national water tax as an option the EU might want to consider.
Links to Copenhagen
In the run up to the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, the issue of agriculture and its role in helping to combat climate change was considered an inevitable feature of the discussions.
Mariann Fischer Boel confirmed that no legislative proposals are planned ahead of the Copenhagen conference.
While Mariann Fischer Boel confirmed that no legislative proposals are planned ahead of the Copenhagen conference, the message that agriculture will have to play its part in meeting the climate change challenge was the key outcome of the Informal Agriculture Council. Farmers will be expected to pull their weight with regards to climate change in the future, facilitated in the short term by the opportunities presented by additional funding made available for the ‘new challenge’ of climate change through increased rates of compulsory modulation as a result of the 2008 CAP Health Check.
However, it was made clear that action at the EU level needed to take place within a much broader response at the international level. Member States agreed that the climate change challenge is one that needs to be addressed by all, but continued to voice caution on the need to avoid decreasing the EU’s competitiveness on the international stage through the imposition of increased regulation.
- Press release IP/09/1333 (17/09/09) ‘Milk: Commission proposes further measures to help dairy sector in short, medium and long term’
- Press release (13/09/09) ‘Meet the chair: climate important issue for the future of agriculture’
- Agra Europe
29 Sep 2009
The Institute for European Environmental Policy coordinates CAP2020. It is an independent not for profit institute which undertakes research in a number of policy areas including agriculture and rural development. | <urn:uuid:91bdd7f4-7257-4075-bab9-532d72ddf70a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cap2020.ieep.eu/2009/9/29/informal-agriculture-council-discusses-climate-change-and-agriculture?s=2&selected=archive&y=2009&m=9 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961866 | 1,346 | 2.453125 | 2 |
TROY (WKZO) -- Cars come in a rainbow of colors for consumers around the world, but white is the leading choice. Newly-released annual automotive color popularity and trend data reveals white is the favorite car color for a second year in a row.
Around the globe, white is closely followed by silver, then black, gray and red. However, in North America, white is followed by black, silver and gray tie at 16-percent each.
The rankings were announced by PPG at its annual Automotive Color Trend Show in Troy. PPG supplies paint to a number of automakers such as Ford, General Motors and BMW. | <urn:uuid:1e1ebd19-6831-489b-95b2-4f0e37f6c18c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtvbam.com/news/articles/2012/oct/11/white-most-popular-car-color/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965114 | 132 | 1.5 | 2 |
Tyler ISD failed to meet the federal government's Adequate Yearly Progress standards for the third straight year. But district officials say the plan is to stay the course and continue emphasizing the state curriculum standards and increasing the academic rigor.
Last year, 13 campuses and the district missed AYP.
Statewide, 71 percent of Texas' more than 1,200 school districts missed AYP. That's up from 49 percent last year.
Some 48 percent of the state's more than 8,500 campuses missed the federal standard — up from 26 percent last year.
The decline in AYP performance comes as the federal standards continue to increase. According to No Child Left Behind, the law that set into motion the Adequate Yearly Progress system, by 2014, 100 percent of all students in a district and its campuses must pass the reading/English language arts and the math standardized tests in order to meet AYP.
In order to get there, Texas has been incrementally raising the percentage of passers needed to “meet AYP” each year.
As a whole TISD's passing percentages were strong, district officials said. Some 85 percent of all TISD students met standard for reading/English language arts and 80 percent of all students met it in math.
However those percentages, along with performance in several other subcategories, did not meet this year's mark. So the district and many of its campuses missed AYP.
“We're never happy when we don't meet the standards, and we're going to work to increase our progress toward that,” Dr. Karen Raney, TISD's director of assessment and accountability, said. “But, it is becoming an increasingly difficult target.”
HOW IT WORKs
These are reading/English language arts, math and either the graduation rate or attendance rate depending on the grade level.
Within the reading/ELA and math indicators, there are two components: student performance (the percentage of students who met standard) and student participation (the percentage of students who took the test).
The details go even deeper with the federal government and state measuring performance in multiple student groups such as African-American, Hispanic, white, economically disadvantaged and special education, to name a few.
Provided these groups meet certain numbers, they are counted. A district or campus can be measured in as few as two categories or as many as 35 for AYP purposes. Missing in just one category even if it meets all others can cause a campus or district to miss AYP.
AYP considers standardized test performance for third- through eighth-graders and 10th-graders only. This year that meant two testing systems, the new State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, for third- through eighth-graders, and the old testing system, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS, for 10th-graders.
HOW TISD PERFORMED
The district failed to meet standard in 12 of 14 categories when it came to student performance in both subject areas.
Some 87 percent of test takers in reading/English language arts and 83 percent in math had to pass for the district to meet AYP.
TISD failed to meet this standard among all its students as well as among the following student groups: African-American, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, special education and limited English proficient (those students whose primary language is something other than English and who struggle to perform class work in English).
TISD's passing percentages met 80 percent or above in reading/ELA for all student groups except special education, which was 65 percent.
In math, passing percentages stood at 69 percent or higher in all student groups except special education, which was 60 percent.
Stakes were high for John Tyler this year. After missing federal standards in math for several years, a poor performance in that same category could have sent the school into Stage 5 of School Improvement requirements.
However, the campus met federal AYP standards in math, but missed them in reading/English language arts because of two of nine categories considered in that subject area. It remains in Stage 4.
At Robert E. Lee High School, student performance in two of five categories in reading/English language arts caused the school to miss AYP.
Boulter Middle School moves into Stage 3 of School Improvement requirements after failing to meet federal standards in math and reading student performance. The middle school met math standards last year, but missed them the previous three years.
At the middle school level, only Moore MST Magnet School met standard. And Birdwell and Owens were the only elementary schools to meet standard.
TISD as a whole and eight schools in the district are in Stage 1 of School Improvement requirements for missing federal standards in the same area for two or more consecutive years.
These campuses are Austin, Clarkston, Dixie, Griffin, Jones, Orr and Peete elementary schools and Dogan Middle School. Only schools that receive certain federal funds are subject to the school improvement requirements.
LOCAL AND STATE RESPONSE
She said it's been difficult if not impossible for school districts to compare this year's standardized test performance with last year primarily because the state transitioned to a new testing system this year.
However, she said, knowing that the new STAAR testing system is more difficult than the old and the district as a whole posted 85 percent and 80 percent passing percentages in reading/English language arts and math respectively is good news.
“We shifted up with the rigor of the test …,” she said. “I frankly think that's a great jumping off spot.”
However, those stats reflect only performance in the all student category and not individual subgroups, which were lower in some cases and higher in others.
Dr. Raney said student performance has been improving among TISD's African-American, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students so the district is closing the achievement gap. And she is hopeful that the state's accountability system will be more reflective of the district's performance.
Dr. Raney said the district has raw score data and will use that as it determines where individual students struggled and how to address their academic needs.
“We've done a really good job over the last few years making the changes that we need to make to get there and this is not the system that I want us to be measured by,” she said, adding that when the new state accountability system is complete, that will give the district credit for the progress it is making.
Texas Education Agency spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said the state and local results deserve a closer look.
“The numbers can be disheartening when you first look at them, but really parents need to think about all the other information and programs and data that goes along with their school and school district,” Ms. Culbertson said by phone. “This is just one indicator and certainly they need to look beyond that to judge the quality of their schools.” | <urn:uuid:a4fe00c1-01d2-462a-a04b-22512654101e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20120809/NEWS08/120809745/-1/BUSINESS0504 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964629 | 1,461 | 2.3125 | 2 |
As Thailand faces its worst flooding in more than 50 years, a local company is distributing floating toilets free of charge to government offices.
The unit is 2.5 metres wde and 3.5 metres long. It is made of plastic and “smart board”, a smooth-surface asbestos-free cement board, to make it durable and lightweight. The waste is treated with micro-organisms before discharge.
SCG staff have teamed up with students from the King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok to produce 10 sets of toilets per day at a cost of 60,000 baht (US$ 1,940) each and distribute them to government offices in provinces and tambon administrations for free.
After the floods recede, the toilets can be used by the public.
SCG has also distributed 50,000 “paper toilets” for one-time use.
Source: Nareerat Wiriyapong, Bangkok Post, 02 Nov 2011 | <urn:uuid:bc2fc11a-d07c-4c64-b9cf-62de583a243e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/thailand-floating-toilets-for-flood-hit-areas/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941958 | 204 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Songcraft: Rhythmically Inspired Songwriting
From its earliest uses as a primitive means of communication, to the party-down rave-ups of the modern dance club, it seems rhythm is as instinctual and natural to human beings as the pounding of arguably the world’s first beat box; our hearts.
Harnessing that innate power of rhythm/beat as catalyst for inspiration can be very useful to us as writers (and a lot of fun, too). Here are a few ideas for using rhythm as a tool to help get your songwriting groove on:
• As band rehearsal winds down for the evening, ask your drummer if he/she can hang a bit longer. Have him lay down a beat, any pattern of his choosing. Without thinking too much about it, let your instrument of choice follow rhythm’s lead and play whatever the beat inspires your hands to play. Do that for half an hour and you might just walk away with the bones of a song you probably never would have written strumming a guitar at home alone.
• If you own a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), fire it up and search within your recording software for its stock, virtual drum machine. Most DAW programs such as Pro Tools and the like include a virtual instrument (VI) that offers the capability of sequencing single-hit drum samples or prerecorded drum loops via MIDI. Using your particular drum VI, set up a simple, repeating pattern that strikes your fancy (if you’re unsure how to do this there are plenty of tutorials on the web), grab your instrument and play along; play anything. Again, as mentioned earlier, don’t think too much about it, let the rhythm and your hands lead you toward a new and unexpected song idea.
Beat challenged and stuck for a drum pattern to program? Pull up a song in iTunes that features one of your all-time favorite grooves. Try to recreate the basic pattern of said groove with your drum VI, then play your own chord changes over top to render a jam that’s totally unique to you.
• If you’re feeling adventurous, scan eBay or Craigslist for an affordable, vintage drum machine. Tons were mass manufactured in the '80s and onward so they’re usually easy to find. Given the technological limitations of many early models, a lot of these machines have their own wonderfully quirky sounds and personalities. Pick one up if you dare, plug it in and see what kind of inspiration its cheesy muse may provide.
Hope you find these tips of help and hope they encourage you to try your hand at rhythmically inspired songwriting.
Go ahead, give the drummer some.
Mark Bacino is a singer/songwriter based in New York City. When not crafting his own melodic brand of retro-pop, Mark can be found producing fellow artists or composing for television/advertising via his Queens English Recording Co. Mark also is the founder of intro.verse.chorus, a website for songwriters dedicated to the exploration of that wonderfully elusive activity known as songwriting. Visit Mark on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
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By Doc Rogers
Background: The detail leader is responsible for having advance work (reconnaissance) carried out. He assigns an advance man to gather all pertinent information of the threats and obtain information of the environment in which the client will visit. For the new advance man this may seem like a daunting task. Advance work in general, is technical and highly specialized service. The following recommendations will assist you in accomplishing your first advance work duties with few difficulties, however timely planning is necessary.
Objectives: Your objective as the advance man is to gain foreknowledge, acquired by going to each location in advance to evaluate, analyze and obtain all available information related to the client’s visit to reduce vulnerabilities and improve logistics so the executive protection team members can successfully accomplish their mission. You are to reduce to a minimum all uncertainties and setup security measures regarding the client’s visit at each location he or she will physically visit. The security measures you setup as the advance man are both active and passive, designed to insure the safeguarding of the client and to prevent needless delays, confusion, etc.
Action: While on advance work duties you do not have time to dillydally. Advance work involves rapid assessment and analysis of current information and prompt delivery of the the advance work you have produced to the detail leader. The advance man must obtain many sources of mission appropriate information in five categories:
Arrivals: Evaluate for security and comfort of movement for the client at entry airports, hotels, venues and safe havens.
Departures: Evaluate for security and ease of movement for the client at exit airports, hotels, venues and safe havens.
Venues: Evaluate for safety and security, movement for rapid evacuation if necessary and client comfort.
Routes: Evaluate for quickest safest and most favorable client vehicular movements; to include secondary routes, travel estimates in time and miles. Learn the status of all routes and avoid those frequently used by criminals. You should include a route map as a source of information for the detail leader for pinpointing all vital locations.
Safe Havens: Evaluate and setup rally points in case of incident or medical emergency. The safe havens must have favorable safety conditions, excellent communication systems, available 24/7 and with positively identified friendly personnel preferably armed and provide good fortification. Embassies, hospitals, police stations, military facilities and other suitable areas must be carefully evaluated.
Advance Report Neatness and clarity are essentials to a good advance report. Your advance report should be arranged in a systematic manner. For convenience its best to sort, group, and list the subjects in chronological order that the executive protection team will carry out their duties; 1) Entry airport, 2) Route to executive hotel, 3) Hotel to first venue, second venue, etc. and 4) Route from hotel to exit airport. In the back of your advance report you should include a section under the heading “contingency plans” where you list all the safe havens. You should explain the general courses of action for each rally point and safe haven to be utilized.
Recent Threats You should include a section under the heading “recent and present significant activities” which details the threats, safety circumstances or concerns in the operational area. These should be known facts with no guesswork involved. I also like to include a heading “general situation” which provides information on the normal day-to-day activities in the area written for each proceeding 24 hours while on the advance.
Advance Report Package The advance report can either be spiral bound or placed in a loose leaf notebook; you should provide one advance report for the detail leader and each member of the executive protection team. Prior to submitting the advance report it should be continuously revised and kept up to date in the light of new information gained.
Photographs Be sure to include photos in conjunction with maps of the various areas you assessed on your advance. Photos provide reliable and recent information to the detail leader and the executive protection team on what to expect at each locale.
Goals Your primary duty as the advance man is to provide intelligence to the detail leader concerning the movement of the client. To keep accurate information on the any threats and provide alternative courses of action on how to avoid them so the client will experience a safe and comfortable visit to the operational area in question. Detail leaders depend on their advance man to gain detailed information of the operational area so they can make sound and timely decisions to effectively protect the client upon arrival, during the visit and on departure.
Conclusion Advance work or reconnaissance is the primary means of obtaining information vital to the protection of the client prior to his or her visit to an operational area. Now you have the knowledge to provide superior information necessary for detail leaders and the executive protection teams to make sound decisions. These basic principles of advance work apply to all types of assignments. The foresight you gain from your advance duties will overcome difficulties for the detail leader, executive protection team and most importantly the client. Keep safe and God speed. | <urn:uuid:bde46e5c-6ce7-4a1c-ac77-4234fefcddf7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bodyguardcareers.com/2012/07/25/your-first-advance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941073 | 1,022 | 1.53125 | 2 |
NetWellness is a global, community service providing quality, unbiased health information from our partner university faculty. NetWellness is commercial-free and does not accept advertising.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Crowns, Bridges, Dentures, Implants
Calcification on A Crown
I have a crown approximately 6 years old and my dentist said I had calcification where the crown meets the gum. What does this mean and what if anything should be done.
Calcification refers to a build-up of tartar (calculus) around the crown at the gumline. A professional cleaning (prophylaxis) will remove it. However, your dentist could have also meant De-calcification. This is the beginning stage of a cavity (dental caries) and may require the crown be repaired (if possible) or replaced.
A new carious lesion (cavity) is the most common cause of crown replacement in the United States. This is due to the fact that the area near the gumline, where the crown meets the tooth, is now the only area susceptible to decay and also the most commonly missed area when toothbrushing.
Julie A Holloway, DDS, MS, FACP
Associate Professor of Restorative and Prosthetic Dentistry
College of Dentistry
The Ohio State University | <urn:uuid:da714844-03a2-4a20-adb6-68d72f40b115> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/43458.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946365 | 279 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Energy - Europe
Any private or public organisation established in the European Union can respond to a call for proposals with projects designed to help deliver on the EU’s energy and climate change objectives. Normally running for two to three years, projects need to involve at least three partners from three countries.
Projects should have a signifi cant impact on the market and could include: knowledge transfer from one part of the European Union to another on how to do something or how to improve processes; helping the different decision making organisations understand each other better; building confidence and understanding in the market, which is essential to the sector’s growth.
The expectation is that chosen projects will act as catalysts, triggering spin-offs. It is important that what is done well can be transferred to other countries. Projects with high visibility, making technologies as widely available as possible and creating the right market conditions for their use will interest the IEE, as will those which identify where the market is failing and address those failures.
Call for proposals 2012
7th Framework Programme FP7
Energy – Energy efficiency and savings
The vast potential for final and primary energy consumption savings and improvements in energy efficiency need to be harnessed through the research into, optimisation, validation and demonstration of new concepts, optimisation of proved and new concepts and technologies for buildings, transport, services, and industry. Large-scale actions may be supported by innovative R&D addressing specific components or technologies.
A key aim is the optimisation of the local community energy system, balancing a significant reduction in energy demand with the most affordable and sustainable supply solution, including the use of new fuels in dedicated fleets.
Call for proposals 2011
Will your city be Europe’s Green Capital?
Does your city deserve European-wide recognition for its hard work in meeting the environmental challenges our society is facing? Should your city be considered a leading destination for green tourism and green industry in Europe?
Applying for the 2014 edition of the European Green Capital could help your city gain the green reputation it deserves. Participating in the competition is a unique opportunity for your city to become an example at a European level and an ambassador for a better and greener world – just look at Hamburg, European Green Capital 2011. And what’s more, being awarded the Green Capital title can not only bring great advantages to your city’s image but also help boost its economy and attract tourists.
Applications for the next edition of the award will close on 14 October 2011. Make sure your city is Europe’s Green Capital 2014!
Smart Cities and Communities Initiative of the European Commission launched
On 21 June 2011 the official launch of the Smart Cities and Communities (SCC) initiative took place in Brussels. The European Commission presented the programme for the energy efficient cities of tomorrow that is financed by the 7th European Framework Programme. Within the next years, the initiative will fund projects addressing integrated sustainable energy technologies in urban areas.
The first call for proposals has already opened: until 1 December 2011 innovative model projects in selected European cities can submit their proposals and apply for funding for a total amount of 75 million Euros (for further information please see above under “Open Calls for proposals”. Fields open for funding are the integrative management of urban energy flows, including transport, water and waste solutions. Further calls under the initiative will address buildings, heating and cooling systems, networks and energy supply technologies.
On 20th July new Calls for Proposals on Energy topics under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) of the EU have been published:
FP7-ENERGY-2012-1: a general call focusing on research with a long-term horizon – deadline 25th October 2011 (two stage proposal submission for Collaborative Projects, deadline for first stage 25th October, one stage proposal submission for CSA-CA/CSA-SA Proposals)
FP7-ENERGY-2012-2: a general call focusing on research with a short-term horizon and on demonstration – deadline 08th March 2012
FP7-ENERGY-SMARTCITIES-2012: a call in the framework of the SET-Plan Smart Cities and Communities Initiative – deadline 1st December 2011 (more information at http://webcast.ec.europa.eu/eutv/portal/archive.html?viewConference=12591)
FP7-2012-NMP-ENV-ENERGY-ICT-EeB: a cross-thematic call on Energy-efficient Buildings in the context of the EU Recovery Plan – deadline 1st December 2011 | <urn:uuid:002a4f51-de9e-4628-bb6c-49167a2fb051> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.europeangreencities.com/EC_6%20th_call/ec6thcall.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91779 | 943 | 2.046875 | 2 |
With Chief Justice William Rehnquist's resignation seemingly imminent, George W. Bush's first chance to reshape the Supreme Court looks to be at hand. Bush's record of nominations to federal appeals courts is clear; if at all possible, he will seek to appoint an uncompromising conservative to the Supreme Court. This shouldn't be all that surprising, given that, as a presidential candidate, Bush held out Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as his judicial models.
Although Rehnquist is a reliable conservative vote, his replacement will be of some significance. “This court has had more 5-4 decisions on key issues than any in recent memory,” says Richard Lazarus, a Georgetown University law professor. “One change in the Court's makeup … is likely to tip the balance.” But, as Susan Jacoby recently wrote in the Prospect, Rehnquist's conservatism is of a different cloth than some potential replacements -- he is “a legal conservative, not a religious fundamentalist.” Rehnquist shares President Bush's interest in interpreting the Constitution to change the underlying structure and power of the federal government, but he has not beared down on hot-button social issues as many potential nominees might.
So whom is Bush likely to appoint?
Two names heard frequently are those of 60-year-old J. Harvie Wilkinson III and his slightly more doctrinaire (and 10 years younger) colleague J. Michael Luttig. They have played an important role in making the Fourth Circuit the most socially conservative appeals court in the land and are often depicted as subtle competitors for a potential nomination. Between the two, Luttig generally is viewed as more outspoken on ideological issues, while Wilkinson is seen as more restrained. The general opinion is that Wilkinson, a former chief of the Fourth Circuit, would be more likely to be appointed first, particularly if the appointment is directly to the chief's slot. But if Bush feels that the Republicans' 55-member Senate majority is enough, or if Majority Leader Bill Frist greenlights the so-called “nuclear option” to eliminate the minority filibuster, Luttig's relative youth -- not to mention his experience helping to shepherd the nominations of Clarence Thomas and David Souter during the first Bush administration -- might earn him the call.
Although Alberto Gonzales once seemed to be the optimal first candidate, he is obviously out of the running for the moment. But if Bush is looking to be the president who appointed the first Latino justice, he has a more conservative choice to achieve that goal: 57-year-old Fifth Circuit Judge Emilio Garza. Garza, a gregarious former Marine captain, was a finalist for the seat that went to Clarence Thomas. Like many prospective nominees, Garza has a long paper trail -- including a number of judicial opinions that Democrats could cite as evidence that he would overturn Roe v. Wade; he might create a tough confirmation fight.
Another leading ultra-conservative candidate is Judge Samuel Alito of the Third Circuit, known by some as “Scalito” for his similarity to Scalia in temperament and ideology. A former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney, Alito, 54, has strong ties to the administration, including to a number of former clerks who have worked for Bush.
A newer addition to the Republican short list is John Roberts, 50, recently confirmed as a judge on the D.C. Circuit, a frequent stepping stone to the Supreme Court. Not only was Roberts confirmed two years ago by a Senate with more Democrats than this one, but also he has close ties to the Bush administration. Although it is still early to make any judgment on his rulings, some critics have highlighted several dissenting opinions they say suggest that he is too conservative to sit on the High Court. Many think Roberts will be kept in the bullpen to gain some seasoning but could be a potential nominee in the second or third year of a second Bush term.
Few observers identify many women on Bush's short list. One name often heard but just as quickly discounted is Judge Edith Jones -- an outspoken right-winger from the Fifth Circuit with strong Republican Party ties; she lost out to Souter in 1990. Jones, 56, is seen by many as old news and would probably pose a serious confirmation battle. In contrast, some think Janice Rogers Brown is a possibility, despite the filibuster that has kept her off the D.C. Circuit. Born the daughter of a sharecropper, she became the first African American woman on the California Supreme Court. Though as conservative and outspoken as Jones, she has the advantage of having “a great personal story, that has already encountered the Democratic response,” says Thomas Goldstein, an attorney who argues before the Court and keeps a regular tab of cases on its docket.
A number of other well-known and bright conservative judges, including Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit and Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit, are unlikely appointees in light of their libertarian bent and occasional departures from social conservative doctrine. Indeed, it seems likely -- given the sharp and close divide in today's political world, in which one or two votes on the Court could made a significant difference in constitutional interpretation for years to come -- that the heavily ideological Bush administration will do everything it can to ensure that its nominees are clearly and consistently conservative. At the very least, it will seek to avoid a repeat of what it views as the catastrophic Republican appointment of Souter, who lacked a conservative “paper trail” and, subsequently, addressed cases with an open mind once he got the Court.
One way to ensure conservative fealty is to appoint a politician with a proven voting record on issues of importance to the White House. However, the Senate, which in the past has been a source of Supreme Court justices, currently lacks a Republican of that stature and background. Orrin Hatch, who for years has been talked about as a Republican nominee, is now, at nearly 71 years of age, too old. Several other conservative firebrand senators who also sit on the Judiciary Committee, including Jon Kyl from Arizona and Jeff Sessions from Alabama, would appear to lack the intellectual gravitas (or at least one would hope the standards are high enough to make it so). And while many members of the right wing would love to see former senator and Attorney General John Ashcroft nominated, even this confrontational administration realizes the liability of such an action.
At the heart of the administration's decision will be the kind of political battle it wants to wage. With the president's party now in control of 55 Senate seats, Democratic opposition is more of a threat to the public relations side of any confirmation battle than to the nomination itself -- especially for a replacement of a conservative, like Rehnquist. It's unclear “whether the Democrats will be willing to try and block Supreme Court nominees,” says Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. “They wouldn't do it for Clarence Thomas, even though they had the votes. These kinds of fights cost a lot of political capital, without being worth much in terms of political benefits.”
In contrast, the Bush administration has shown enormous willingness to fight for a candidate without concession. In introducing his first judicial nominees, Bush claimed to want a “return of civility and dignity to the confirmation process.” But he has done precisely the opposite.
As Lazarus notes, “This group in the Bush White House doesn't compromise. They just go for it.”
Correction: This article originally stated that Janice Rogers Brown had been nominated to the Ninth Circuit; she was in fact nominated to the D.C. Circuit.
Alexander Wohl, a former U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Fellow and Supreme Court correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, is an Adjunct Professor at American University, in the Department of Justice, Law and Society.
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(If there's one thing we know about comment trolls, it's that they're lazy) | <urn:uuid:31bde3e0-908f-4697-859c-90994e78177c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://prospect.org/article/replicating-rehnquist | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969137 | 1,645 | 1.664063 | 2 |
The Earn a Degree - Graduate Early initiative herein established is known and may be cited as "West Virginia EDGE". This program is part of the programs of study and seamless curriculum initiative that focuses on aligning curriculum between education levels. Specifically, West Virginia EDGE is established to connect public schools with higher education for the following purposes:
(a) To prepare public high school students for success in the workplace or postsecondary education; and
(b) To provide the opportunity for these students to earn community and technical college credit free-of-charge for the duplicated secondary and postsecondary courses identified during the curriculum alignment process.
In order to serve the citizens of the state by promoting a higher college-going rate, reducing the time and cost for students to obtain college credentials and expanding opportunities for economic development, the West Virginia EDGE initiative shall meet the following goals:
(1) Create incentives for more students to continue their education beyond high school by providing all students with information about and access to courses that will prepare them to meet college-level standards;
(2) Expand successful concurrent enrollment programs that include all students, not just those who are designated as college bound. The goal here is to prepare all students for both work and postsecondary education with the same rigorous curriculum;
(3) Align junior and senior year secondary courses with community and technical college certificate and associate degree programs. This alignment provides access to early entrance college courses which offer all students the opportunity to establish a college transcript while still in high school;
(4) Increase the number of students attending public community and technical colleges by participating in a collaborative partnership between the public schools and the state community and technical colleges; and
(5) Establish programs of study pathways in combination with early entrance college courses which together allow a student to obtain an associate degree one year after high school graduation or to receive an associate degree along with the high school diploma.
(a) West Virginia EDGE is administered by the Assistant State Superintendent of the Division of Technical, Adult and Institutional Education who serves as State Tech-Prep Coordinator. The community and technical college/career and technical education consortia planning districts created by section four, article three-c, chapter eighteen-b of this code serve as regional consortia to implement the program.
(b) The duties of State Tech-Prep Coordinator include, but are not limited to, the following:
(1) Developing a collaborative agreement with the facilitating state community and technical college or colleges in each consortium district and with the Council for Community and Technical College Education to meet the goals and objectives of this article.
(2) Meeting the record-keeping requirements of section nine, article eight, chapter five of this code:
(A) By developing or adapting an existing comprehensive relational data base and data analysis system for student tracking to assure that consistent, reliable data relevant to the goals of the program are available; and
(B) By tracking and evaluating EDGE outcomes across all eight consortia districts and by creating a standardized reporting procedure for collecting consistent EDGE data at the state level;
(3) Assuring that coordinators in the district consortia prepare and retain reliable supporting source documents necessary to validate the data included with the state electronic database;
(4) Providing documentation to substantiate program outcomes, including, but not limited to, the number of students who enroll in the program, specific courses taken, student course and final exam grades, the number who earn EDGE credits and, of these, the number who apply the credits in pursuit of degrees or certifications at state community and technical colleges; and
(5) Collecting data relevant to the goals and objectives established for this initiative, analyzing the data, and preparing a report for the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability by December 1, 2012, and annually thereafter. The specific focus of the report is the analysis of data on program outcomes to demonstrate to what degree the initiative has met the goals and objectives of this article.
The State Board and the West Virginia Council for Community and Technical College Education, created in section three, article two-b, chapter eighteen-b of this code, shall promulgate a joint legislative rule in accordance with article three-b, chapter twenty-nine-a of this code, for the administration of West Virginia EDGE. This rule shall incorporate strategies designed to achieve the overall goals of the program, methods of operation, and step-by-step procedures for achieving the objectives outlined in section two and for implementing the reporting and accountability measures set forth in section three of this article.
The Legislature recognizes the importance of the West Virginia Edge Program and will endeavor to provide sufficient funds to meet program goals and objectives. However, funding is subject to appropriation by the Legislature and nothing in this article requires any specific level of appropriation. Note: WV Code updated with legislation passed through the 2012 1st Special Session | <urn:uuid:901f2997-56e9-40a3-8b0b-3ba06b40daf5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legis.state.wv.us/WVCODE/ChapterEntire.cfm?chap=18&art=13 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937473 | 996 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Green Jobs in Hydrology
Nothing is more essential to a healthy, sustainable environment and community than water. As such, anyone considering a green career transition should consider hydrology. Hydrology is the study of water, which is both one of the most abundant resources on earth (covering 71 percent of its surface) and one of the scarcest (in the form of drinking water). An eco-conscious job search will reveal many different opportunities in hydrology—as many possibilities in a career as there are uses for water itself.
In addition to providing all living organisms, including humans, with life, water is a dissolving agent, a heat transfer fluid, a way to put out fires, a chemical, a location for recreation, a key component of industrial manufacturing, and a source of power. Water also plays a key role in linking ecosystems across the planet; moving food, organisms, and waste from one ecosystem to the next.
The science of hydrology assesses the quantity and quality of water by studying the movement of water, the quality of water, and how water is distributed over time and space throughout the Earth. The study includes the biological, chemical, and physical properties of water and how these properties interact with the environment and living organisms during the water cycle. Subspecialties include hydrography, hydrogeology, glaciology, limnology, surface hydrology, hydrometeorology, ecohydrology, and hydroinformatics.
What's happening now in the hydrology field
According to the Web site of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the EPA protects “over 3 million miles of rivers and streams; over 40 million acres of lakes, over 87,000 square miles of estuaries; 95,000 miles of coastal waters; and marine waters.”
The EPA’s recent Strategic Plan contains several key goals regarding water. Primarily, the Clean and Safe Water Goal strives to keep drinking water safe, protect human health, support economic growth, and promote recreational activity by restoring water systems and aquatic ecosystems.
By 2011, the EPA expects to increase the number of people who have access to safe drinking water through community water systems. In addition, it has plans to rehabilitate and restore rivers, lakes, and streams in watershed areas, coastal areas, and wetlands to protect water quality and improve recreational locations. The EPA is also committed to reducing the toxic nature of fish and shellfish that have been a risk for public health recently.
The Healthy Communities and Ecosystems Goal targets the following estuaries for restoration and rehabilitation: the Mexico Border area, the Gulf of Mexico, the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, the Pacific Island Territories, Long Island Sound, the Puget Sound Basin, and the Columbia River Basin.
To achieve these goals, the EPA plans to implement national programs and partnerships with states to strengthen water standards and reduce pollution. Furthermore, the EPA is committed to creating sustainable and efficient water practices and strengthening the water infrastructure. Through a variety of practices such as water quality trading and watershed permitting, the goal is to use a watershed approach to restore polluted waterways.
Future trends in hydrology
In June 2009, President Obama put forth a presidential memorandum to create an interagency task force to develop a national ocean policy to protect the ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems. Part of the task force’s mission is fitting proposals for offshore energy projects into a cohesive marine spatial plan. Right now these oceanic ecosystems are protected by 140 laws and 20 different agencies that often produce conflicting goals and plans.
Global warming is expected to change the hydraulic cycle, adding more variability to the system. Environmentally sensitive regions may receive too much water, in the form of more frequent and intense storms and flooding, or too little water by way of drought conditions. Understanding the dynamics of these changes is of critical importance for accurate forecasts, proper planning, and adequate policies by the government and private companies.
Freshwater needs will increase due to population growth. Creating adequate supplies of fresh water is a challenge that scientists and engineers are working on. Recycling waste water and creating fresh water through desalinization systems are two strategies. Without consistent ways to produce potable (drinkable) water, conflict may erupt in areas with limited water supplies.
Sample jobs in hydrology
Consider the following jobs if a career in hydrology is calling your name
Hydrologists conduct research with the help of field technicians, research technicians, biologists, foresters, ecologists, and geographers
Some professionals trained in hydrology teach in higher education
A variety of engineers plan, analyze, design, construct, and operate projects that control, use, and manage water resources. Job functions include hydraulic engineer, structural engineer, water resources engineer, civil engineer, hydrology engineer, consultant, and engineering hydrologist | <urn:uuid:5e4ed5e6-a7c8-4983-8f0c-8d81a056b3ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/green-jobs-in-hydrology.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938163 | 982 | 3.453125 | 3 |
It's a sign of how much the terms of political debate has changed that David Cameron's Glasgow speech has been so well-received. For it was, while wrapped up in soft-focus language, startlingly old-fashioned. Cameron's answer to "the broken society" was a wholesale remoralisation.
After nods in the direction of fixing the economy - which will certainly need fixing after another two years of Gordon Brown - and the NHS, the Tory leader talked in almost messianic terms:
our mission is to repair our broken society - to heal the wounds of poverty, crime, social disorder and deprivation that are steadily making this country a grim and joyless place to live for far too many people.
There was, he thought "a thread" that linked together such disparate things as knife crime, unemployment and ill-health: "a society that is in danger of losing its sense of personal responsibility, social responsibility, common decency and, yes, even public morality." To fix it will require "radical social reform" and taking on vested interests. And also tougher sentences. The hug-a-hoodie days would seem to be over.
Then he moved on to morality. "We as a society", he said (by which he meant "we as politicians") have been "far too sensitive" about "appearing judgemental":
Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more.
It's time, Cameron seemed to be saying, to "reassert core values". It's time to "get back to basics", as John Major put it in 1993. He might as well have gone the whole hog and spoken warmly of the Victorians, who were never shy about calling a spade a spade and then hitting a youthful miscreant over the head with it. And while our Dave talks a great deal about "society", his sentiments echo Mrs Thatcher's notorious and deliberately misunderstood remarks about there being "no such thing as society". Major was laughed at and Thatcher pilloried; Cameron, by contrast, has been widely praised. Something seems to be happening. The political mood has changed.
Cameron on Monday said things that a few years ago would have had the liberal media crying "lurch to the right". Indeed, he said some things that would have had him thrown out of his own shadow cabinet if he had said them a few years ago.
There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth anymore about what is good and bad, right and wrong. That is why children are growing up without boundaries, thinking they can do as they please, and why no adult will intervene to stop them - including, often, their parents. If we are going to get any where near solving some of these problems, that has to stop.
There are, I would suggest, two explanations for the lack outrage from, for example, the BBC. One is that the wind is with him. Everything Gordon Brown says - even something as innocuous as pointing out that people shouldn't waste so much food - is ridiculed and dismissed. Whereas even David Cameron's mistakes tend to be overlooked and forgotten. But he has also caught a genuine change of mood. People really are fed up with the no-blame society, the sentimental thinking that frowns on competitive sports in school and seeks to excuse wrongdoing in sociological gobbledegook. The call to personal responsibility chimes with what many people have always thought, but until recently was banned from much public discourse.
But personal responsibility isn't just about holding people accountable for their mistakes. It's also about the state standing back and allowing people to make mistakes in the first place. It's a two-way street. It's not the job of government to define or police personal morality, any more than it should be the job of government to protect people from the consequences of their bad choices. A government that intends to make people suffer for their stupidity, as Cameron's putative administration would seem to want to do, is in no moral position to preach.
One thing about the speech in particular struck me as rather odd. And that was the example he used to illustrate his new judgementalism. Obesity.
We talk about people being "at risk of obesity" instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.
Largely true, of course. Genetic factors may determine what sort of metabolism you have, but within those limits your weight is a function of diet and exercise. If you are morbidly obese, it is likely that you eat too much and engage in insufficient physical activity. If your lifestyle is that of a fat slob, your body will reflect that; and it ain't no-one's fault but your own. And this will have consequences - for your health, your social life, your susceptibility to heart attacks and diabetes. So far, so unexceptional.
But if fat people are to blame for being fat, they're equally entitled to be fat if that is what they want to be. Just as they should be entitled to smoke, or binge-drink, or (I would add) drive without a seat-belt. If they die early as a result, well, that's bad news for them and their families. But if they pay their taxes and obey the law they should be allowed to enjoy their vices in peace, without finger-wagging lectures from nanny state.
At this point, some may object to the costs that overweight chain-smoking binge-drinkers impose on the NHS. There are grounds, I think, for not giving unrepentent alcoholics new livers when there are more "deserving" patients available. But I wouldn't want to make healthcare dependent on meeting lifestyle targets. Smokers might cost the taxpayer more in the short-term, but their premature deaths will save on pensions, which may well be more important in the long term as the population inexorably ages. The same goes for fatties.
In his choice of this example, Cameron seems almost to be attributing moral as well as physiological value to weight. Being fat is not a form of moral degeneracy. It is possible to be overweight and yet lead a good, decent life. Time was, indeed, when it was not only normal to be overweight, but a source of self-esteem, even approbation. Large people were seen as jolly, like Father Christmas, or charitable, or warm-hearted. They were those who embraced life, and their fellow human beings; generosity of girth reflected generosity of disposition. To be thin, on the other hand, was to be mean. Scrooge was emaciated, "the cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek," while the most cheerful of his tormentors, the Ghost of Christmas Present, was "a jolly giant, glorious to see" who sat enthroned among "turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch." He must have had terrible cholesterol.
"Let me have men around me that are fat," commented Julius Caesar, at least according to Shakespeare. Cassius, by contrast, has "a lean and hungry look," he "thinks too much". "I wish he were fatter", concludes the soon to be assassinated dictator. "Men like him are never able to enjoy life". Dracula was pretty thin, too, and his sinister nature is first revealed by his refusal to join Jonathan Harker for supper.
By placing obesity alongside alcoholism or drug abuse, and all three in the same sentence as poverty and social exclusion, Cameron seems to be going beyond the usual discourse about body-size, in which obesity is seen as pre-eminently a health problem. He would appear to be taking an observation more familiar from the US, that obesity is a class issue (you can never be too rich or too thin, as Wallis Simpson put it, ahead of the curve by at least 50 years) and giving it causal status. The connection between alcoholism and drug-taking and social dysfunction is indeed causative. Both ruin lives. Does obesity likewise cause poverty? Are fat people to blame, not merely for their shape but for anything else that might go wrong in their lives? More importantly, where does Cameron's fatophobia leave Nicholas Soames? | <urn:uuid:4fc84315-578f-4cf9-b30c-2b8c78b19f76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://heresycorner.blogspot.com/2008/07/hug-foodie.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979529 | 1,855 | 1.859375 | 2 |
Top 12 Game Shows of All Time15
By Caryn K. Hayes
Watching game shows was a great family past time when I was growing up. While recently surfing through classic cable channels, I realized it still is.
The best game shows usually manage to stand the test of time while evolving and continuing to challenge contestants and viewers in a relevant way. There’s nothing like a good game show to brush up on your intelligence, skill, and cunning or to reinforce just how much information you failed to retain from grade school. Many game shows come and go, but here’s a list of benchmark shows that stand the test of time.
Originally premiering in 1964, Jeopardy! is a quiz show where contestants are given an answer and are asked to formulate the question. Art Fleming hosted the show for the first twelve years it on the air until it was cancelled. Alex Trebek was brought in as the quizmaster in 1984 when the show returned to television and has become the face of the show. What sets Jeopardy apart from other game shows is the fact that contestants have to be very smart to win very little money.
2. The Price is Right
The first incarnation of The Price is Right, where contestants bid on the cost of products, was hosted by Bill Cullen from 1956 to 1965. The show was revived in 1972 with new host, Bob Barker who stayed until his retirement in 2007; Drew Carey succeeded him. The Price is Right is the longest consecutively-running game show in the history of television. Contestants are chosen from a live audience and are often picked for being eccentric and/or enthusiastic. Shopaholics are encouraged to apply.
British import Survivor premiered in the United States in 2000. The series maroons a group of strangers in an isolated area where they must find their own food, water, and construct their own shelter. Hosted by Jeff Probst, the game splits the contestants into “tribes” as they compete in challenges for rewards and immunity from ejection from the game. As we learned in the very first season: it’s just a game on an island full of rats and snakes. Watch nature take its course.
READ: 13 TV & Film Characters That Would Make MacGyver Proud – #12 The Cast of Survivor
4. Family Feud
Two families compete in this quiz show originally hosted by Richard Dawson (1976-1985). The families answer survey questions based on the most popular answers. After 1985, the series saw a number of cancellations, revivals, and host changes, including Ray Combs, Richard Karn, and current host, Steve Harvey. You can usually tell how smart or dumb each family member is by how far down the line they are positioned.
5. Wheel of Fortune
Hosted by Chuck Woolery, Pat Sajak, and others at various times during its long history, Wheel of Fortune is a game where contestants solve word puzzles. Like the game Hangman, players suggest letters after spinning a large carnival wheel where prizes and penalties are selected. Greedy contestants should be wary of the bankrupts hidden in the wheel. Five years ago, my sister lost $12,000 that I’m no longer bitter about.
A bit of Wheel of Fortune trivia: the hostess position, currently held by Vanna White, wasn’t created until after the pilot, as a mechanical board was originally intended to reveal the letters.
6. Who Wants to be a Millionaire
Created in the United Kingdom, Who Wants to be a Millionaire began in the US in 1999. It ran for three years in primetime and was hosted by Regis Philbin. In 2002, the quiz show became syndicated and Meredith Vieira took over hosting. Contestants are asked multiple-choice questions with increasing levels of difficulty with each level set at a specified amount of money. The game includes opportunities for contestants to use lifesavers such as the ability to phone a friend or poll the audience. Smart players will have an Internet savvy friend at the ready and not their grandmother who can never remember how to log in.
Originally hosted by Dick Clark, Pyramid premiered in 1973 as “The $10,000 Pyramid.” Later, the name of the show changed based on the top prize awarded. The series ran from 1973 until 1988 in both a daytime timeslot and in syndication for five years. The game pits two teams, made up of a celebrity and a non-celebrity, against each other as they play the word association game.
8. Match Game
Premiering in 1962, Match Game ran at various times, on various networks, and like many game shows of its time, it had a few hosts, most notably Gene Rayburn. The game format consisted of two players who were asked questions. Their answers would be matched to the answers of six celebrities. The questions were often filled with double entendres and bawdy humor.
9. Let’s Make a Deal
First hosted by Monty Hall, Let’s Make a Deal started in 1963 and ran sporadically every decade since. Wayne Brady currently hosts the show, which was revived again in 2009. The game show calls audience members from the stands, offers them a prize, and then offers them an opportunity to trade. The contestants don’t know what they are being offered until after they agree or disagree to the deal. Participants often dress in costume to attract attention in order to play. Hopefully, the lingering humiliation of dressing as the Little Bo Peep on national television is worth it, and they don’t get a zonk.
10. Newlywed Game
Bob Eubanks hosted The Newlywed Game when it debuted in 1966, and at 28, he was the youngest person to ever host a game show. The game puts newly married couples against each other to see which of the couples know each other better. Sherri Sheppard is the latest host of the series, which still continues to run in syndication. The best aspect of this series is learning intimate things you never wanted to know about strangers.
11. Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Based on the game played on Howard Stern’s radio show, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader premiered in 2007 as a special in primetime and was then developed into a series. Hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, the format pits adults against grade school students and quizzes them on grade school subjects. Losing contestants are “drop outs” and “quitters” while winners can proudly proclaim that they are smarter than fifth graders. Fifth graders really aren’t as smart as this show wants you to believe. Give those kids five years and they’ll forget everything they learned when they were eleven too.
12. Hollywood Squares
Quizmaster Peter Marshall was the first host for the program from its premiere in 1966 until 1981. A hybrid comedy and game show, Hollywood Squares offered both quizzes and jokes with its format. Contestants would play a game of tic-tac-toe with a grid of potential X’s and O’s occupied by celebrities, usually comedians. Contestants would ask a question, and the grid members would provide an answer – sometimes a bluff if they didn’t know. The contestants were left to judge if the answers were correct or not. While the celebrities received a lot more prep than any game show should give, the results were hilarious.
Caryn K. Hayes is an L.A. based writer-producer-director-production coordinator-quality control agent-bartender hailing from New Orleans. She has produced, written, directed, and coordinated numerous web series, documentary and corporate videos, short films and commercials. In 2007, Caryn wrote “The Ridge,” a spec teen drama, which won the 2007 TV Pilot Award from the Organization of Black Screenwriters, and in 2009 she repeated her win with the adult dramedy, “Dirty Thirties.” Caryn created “The World of Cory & Sid,” a comedic web series, which was nominated for Best Television or Web Series in 2009 by the Urban Mediamakers Film Festival. In between her various freelance gigs, she produces sketch comedy with BrevityTV.com, and is currently in post-production with “Breaking Point,” a soap opera web series. Engaging and fun, Caryn can also mix over 250 drinks and is comfortable with high volume. | <urn:uuid:dd18eaee-06fc-4dfc-821b-ad84fc831e04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.koldcast.tv/2011/koldcast-news/top-12-game-shows-of-all-time/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971864 | 1,760 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Americans are outraged over a scheme to add artificial sweeteners – including one chemical with purported links to abnormal brain function and weight gain – to flavored milks served to school children.
As WND reported, milk industry heavyweights, including the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Milk Producers Federation, have asked the federal government for permission to include artificial sweeteners such as aspartame in milk products for schools, without alerting parents and children.
Now the Weston A. Price Foundation, a nonprofit nutrition education organization, and other groups are urging consumers to file comments in protest of the milk industry’s petition to the Food & Drug Administration.
According to the sweeteners’ makers, “Aspartame is one of the most thoroughly studied food ingredients ever, with more than 200 scientific studies supporting its safety.”
However, the Weston A. Price Foundation warns, “Numerous scientific studies point to toxic effects of aspartame, including cancer, digestive issues and memory impairment.”
The foundation also noted, “Researchers and holistic health advocates have warned about the toxicity of artificial sweeteners for many years:
- “Thousands of adverse reactions to aspartame have been reported to the FDA, mostly concerned with abnormal brain function, brain tumors, epilepsy and Parkinson’s.
- “Children’s brains are four times more are more susceptible to damage from excitotoxins like aspartame than those of adults and react with ADD ADHD type symptoms, impaired learning, depression and nausea.
- “People who are sensitive to aspartame can have life-threatening reactions to it.”
The Weston A. Price Foundation cited a 2012 scientific study published in the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, titled “Studies on the effects of aspartame on memory and oxidative stress in brain of mice,” which found impaired memory performance and increased brain oxidative stress by repeated aspartame administration.
Also, the group noted that the International Journal of Genomics published a study, “In Vivo Cytogenetic Studies on Aspartame,” where scientists observed significant chromosomal aberrations in the bone marrow cells of mice following exposure to aspartame. Because of the genotoxicity they found, scientists advised caution when using aspartame in food and beverages as a sweetener.
According to another Swiss study with mice and rats, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in December 2010, aspartame exposure was found to be especially harmful for pre-term fetus, rats of both genders and male mice. Scientists found aspartame to be a carcinogenic agent in multiple sites (liver and lung) in mice and rats and that its effects are increased when exposure starts from prenatal life.
Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician who has been heavily criticized by some mainstream medical experts, has plenty to say about aspartame’s purported health effects. Dr. Mehmet Oz, America’s most widely known cardiothoracic surgeon, introduced Mercola on a 2011 “Dr. Oz” show as “the most controversial guest I’ve ever had on my show, a pioneer of holistic treatments and a lightning rod for debate … the man your doctor doesn’t want you to listen to.”
Mercola – who is known for challenging traditional medicine, placing heavy emphasis on healthy eating and exercise rather than relying on what he calls “toxic medications” – called aspartame “by far the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods.”
“Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA,” Mercola’s website states. “Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.”
Mercola calls the dairy industry’s demands to add artificial sweeteners to milk “a move that could endanger your health for decades to come, and disproportionally harm underprivileged children who rely on school lunches for the bulk of their nutrition.”
He said the proposed change is the industry’s effort at:
- “Fooling your kids into drinking otherwise unpopular fat free or low fat milk, and
- “Allowing the national school breakfast and lunch programs to ‘look good’ by successfully reducing overall calories of the meals while simultaneously helping the dairy industry protect profits”
“How can anyone believe a fat free, hormone-laced pasteurized milk-like product from cows raised on genetically engineered corn, flavored with artificial flavors, colors and chemical sweeteners might actually do a growing body good?” Mercola asked. “The nutritional illiteracy within these agencies is staggering, yet they’re responsible for making decisions that affect over 30 million school children across the U.S. on a daily basis.”
While some critics, including the Weston A. Price Foundation, have reported that artificial sweeteners have been linked to increased cancer rates, “Dr. Oz” guest and medical correspondent for the health care website Healthination.com Dr. Keri Peterson stated, “There is absolutely no evidence that these sweeteners cause cancer in humans.”
She noted that the FDA lifted artificial sweeteners from its list of cancer-causing chemicals in 2000. The National Cancer Institute states, “There is no clear evidence that the artificial sweeteners available commercially in the United States are associated with cancer risk in humans.”
The FDA originally sought to ban the artificial sweetener saccharin in the 1970s because rats ingesting the chemical developed bladder cancer. But the federal agency withdrew the proposal to ban the substance in 1991, claiming no conclusive spike in cancers could be observed in humans. A 2007 study at an Italian cancer research institute found that rats ingesting aspartame suffered from higher rates of leukemia and lymphomas. However, some researchers claim findings have been too weak to pinpoint aspartame as a cause of cancers.
Peterson also claimed the sweeteners do not cause neurological damage. However, she warned, the sweeteners can cause weight gain because they trick the brain into consuming larger quantities of food to satisfy a normal sugar craving.
Critics often point to the questionable process by which aspartame came to be approved by the FDA. A 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, made up of three independent scientists, warned that the chemical “might induce brain tumors.”
However, on Jan. 21, 1981, following President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, the new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull Jr., tasked a five-person commission with reviewing the board’s decision. When it appeared the panel would uphold the aspartame ban until further studies could be performed, Hull appointed a sixth person to the commission, deadlocking the vote.
Then Hull – who would later work for the public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle, the companies that made aspartame – personally broke the deadlock in favor of allowing the chemical on the market.
The following 1996 CBS “60 Minutes” segment from the late-Mike Wallace investigated reports of brain tumors and flaws in the FDA approval process:
If the FDA approves the dairy industry’s current plan, the “milk” label would remain on the front of packages of the chemically altered products – but with no mention of reduced calories or added artificial sweeteners. (The artificial sweeteners would still be listed in small print on the back of the container.)
Greg Miller of the National Dairy Council insisted the dairy industry is not “trying to be sneaky.” He told NPR, “Kids don’t like the term ‘low-calorie.’ It’s a turnoff.”
The dairy industry’s petition to the FDA also asks for permission to put hidden artificial sweeteners in many other dairy products, including nonfat dried milk (always added to reduced-fat milks), yogurt, cream, half-and-half, sour cream, eggnog and whipping cream.
“The integrity of our food supply is poised for another blow,” said Sally Fallon Morell, president and founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation. “By asking the FDA to alter the definition of ‘milk’ to include chemical sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose without full disclosure will only lead to further distrust among consumers. This is a bad idea for consumers and not a smart idea for the industry either.”
Concerned individuals may also sign the consumer petition urging the FDA to reject efforts to infuse milk and other dairy products with artificial sweeteners. | <urn:uuid:053722a3-9b16-423a-b399-fff4c54e5ccc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/americans-fight-back-against-poisoned-milk/?cat_orig=education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939812 | 1,903 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Members of MERLOT are part of a variety of communities that are vital to its success. Community members help grow the MERLOT collection by contributing materials and adding assignments and comments. Additionally, they introduce others in the discipline to MERLOT by presenting at conferences, authoring articles about MERLOT, and encouraging others to use and contribute to MERLOT.
Academic Discipline Communities
MERLOT focuses its efforts in a number of specific Academic Disciplinary Communities. These are subsets of the MERLOT collection that are administered by Editorial Boards. Users can find peer reviewed materials in each of these academic communities. The links below go to the individual discipline portals where you can find discipline-specific information about Teaching, People, Learning Materials, Beyond MERLOT, and Showcase:
Academic Support Services Communities
MERLOT also has Editorial Boards that cross all disciplines.
Users can find peer reviewed materials in each of these communities. The links below go to the individual portals where you can find information about Teaching, People, Learning Materials, Beyond MERLOT, and Showcase: This includes the following two disciplines:
WorkForce Development Discipline Communities
The MERLOT Leadership Community recognizes that there is a significant and growing need for many institutions of higher education to develop and deliver high quality academic programs that serve regional and national workforce development demands. Workforce development programs that cover such areas as computer operations and electronics, trades, allied health, protective services, automotive, and hospitality are increasingly important for community colleges and extended education programs to fulfill their missions and receive state funding.
MERLOT has committed to:
- Build discipline-specific workforce development communities of content providers, collection managers, and content users through the MERLOT-managed collaboration of its higher education partners, institutional/non-profit organizational partners, and corporate partners.
- Leverage its technologies and existing collection to provide an online community environment to support and sustain the workforce development community’s digital library and support services.
MERLOT plans to develop Workforce Development
Communities in the following areas:
MERLOT has a number of developing communities called Taskforces. A Taskforce is a community that wants to become an Editorial Board. Their responsibilities are to establish a Taxonomy for the discipline and then to contribute Learning Materials, Member Comments, and Assignments. Once that is accomplished, the Taskforce Members receive the MERLOT Peer Reviewer training and become an official Editorial Board. Current Task Forces include:
- Professional Coaching
- Virtual Environments
Institutional Teaching Commons for MERLOT Partners
In collaboration with the MERLOT Project Directors and Editors, MERLOT has developed a service to enable MERLOT Partners to easily, effectively, and inexpensively customize and sustain the infusion of MERLOT services into their institution. MERLOT’s Institutional Teaching Commons services is a partner-only benefit and will enable the MERLOT Project Directors to bring greater value back to their own institutions and become more successful stewards of MERLOT services. The MERLOT partner has the major responsibility of inviting and supporting the appropriate people to develop and sustain the work and services of the Teaching Commons. Faculty leadership is critical for the success of these Teaching Commons.
With the MERLOT Teaching Commons, a Learning Center Commons for tutors and staff to learn about MERLOT and share strategies for using MERLOT to support development of student skills can be created. MERLOT can also be a bridge between faculty and students. The MERLOT Teaching Commons will enable intercampus collaboration that will result in more cost effective delivery of campus academic programs. The MERLOT Teaching Commons will provide a cost-effective means to provide faculty a discipline-based, institutionally contextualized professional development program for new faculty. Many times, faculty members do not have colleagues in similar content areas and the Teaching Commons provides the opportunities for isolated faculty to connect with colleagues with common interests.
Examples of Institutional Teaching Commons are:
For more information about using the Teaching Commons service, email email@example.com
For more information on any of the communities listed here, please contact Cathy Swift | <urn:uuid:ddc767b1-afab-45d2-aed0-2a313b597610> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://about.merlot.org/disciplinecommunities.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924351 | 847 | 1.59375 | 2 |
If you like to see usable item made from wood, let me show you what I can do with some of Mother Natures' woods and my lathe. I will try to show you a wide variety of woods from around the world. I start with a piece of wood like the one below and turn it into something we can use and admire. This piece is Maple acquired from Chilliwack Hardwoods several years ago and it was very wet. It took several years to dry and stabilize before I could use it.
I was able to use this piece which you can see has a few defects in it and produce this Nut Cracker bowl
Can you believe this is the same piece of wood?
Here is my latest creation, a Coffee Mill with a ceramic mechanism.
Date Last Modified: | <urn:uuid:391a75b2-51cc-47dd-b940-b65ed8057643> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rocky-roost-woodturnings.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982959 | 161 | 1.523438 | 2 |
you're using a 2560 board and you're loading the code from the mission planner?
when you say, the sensors you mean accelerometer and gyro? I guess you're looking in the mission planner's flight data screen and the artificial horizon isn't moving?
exactly......randy, I´m using 2560 loading from mission planner and artificial horizon isn´t moving .....
The arduplane and the arducopter code is nearly exactly the same so that's very strange. You definitely loaded arduplane on your skyfun plane?
Could you try connecting your APM to your computer using the usb port. Start the APMissionPlanner, then click to the terminal window and post what you see here?
let try to post that out, anyways that is what I have been doing conecting the apm usb por to my pc running the latest version of apm mission planner, and what I have, is all the info. gps, mode, compass
but no artificial horizon moving, reloaded code 2 or 3 times same results, this two board were working great on my sky fun last week...
Can you please go into terminal window and enter "setup", "reset", "Y" to erase your eeprom?
If that doesn't work can you try loading the arduplane code again to see if it still works?
hi, randy I already did that twice with the same result, it look like microcontroller problem...
even im facing the same problem!
please help me out!
jeepers...you must have found this year old thread through google or something. Which version of the software are you running? 2.9.1? which board? APM2.5+?
i have posted a thread regarding my problem but i didnt get reply.fortunately i found this thread and posted about my problem.my board is 1280 and im using 2.6version arducopter code.please help me out.which code do u suggest to try?
Sorry, but we don't provide support for the 1280 board anymore. The ArduCopter 2.6 firmware is also quite old.
sir but how should i solve my problem?
which code supports my 1280 board?
please help me out!
You could use ArduPlane. That still fits on the 1280 i think. For Arducopter you're out of luck. You could upgrade the bottom cpu board to a 2560.
Personally though I think you should bite the bullet and buy an APM2.5+ or wait a month and buy a PX4 when all the information and software is ready for that board. | <urn:uuid:b3ab935b-0095-489a-bd66-9e8d09045565> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diydrones.com/group/arducopterusergroup/forum/topics/apm-1-quadcoter-no-sensor?commentId=705844%3AComment%3A773292&xg_source=activity&groupId=705844%3AGroup%3A394475 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932907 | 548 | 1.679688 | 2 |
MacroPhone Voice Mail and Fax for ISDN 4.14
MacroPhone is a network based application which lets you centralize ISDN based tasks like caller id display, telephone answering machine with voice mal, fax (send and receive), call forwarding or call notification (via email or SMS).
All ISDN processing happens on your server\'s ISDN hardware (CAPI based ISDN board or TA). The client computers (user workstations) do not require ISDN hardware, but redirect their requests to the server instead.
Snippets give TextExpander real power in email, documents and more view it
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In this episode, we'll be looking at setting up a Bluetooth accessory, we'll offer a few power-saving tips and we'll take a quick look at how copy and paste works on the Samsung Galaxy SII 4G. view it | <urn:uuid:b00f972d-1ea2-450e-9db1-addd77b7f5a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tucows.com/preview/609265/MacroPhone-Voice-Mail-And-Fax-For-ISDN | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908793 | 238 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Battery E, West Virginia Light Artillery
The Upshur Battery
Battery E was organized by Capt. Alexander C. Moore, at Buckannan, West Virginia, in August, 1862; who was commissioned captain of the battery September 23, 1862. Captain Moore was one of West Virginia’s loyal sons who was among the first in the State to illustrate his loyalty to the government by the most practical methods then known; his early enlistment in the army, from the earlest moment of the Secession agitation in the South, Captain Moore was in line, defending the Constitution of the nation in eloquent pleadings upon the rostrum in the cities and towns throughout the counties of Harrison, Taylor, Lewis, Upshur, etc., and then recruits were called for, he enlisted company G, for the 3d West Virginia Infantry. Having commanded this company for one year in its active operations in the State, Captain Moore was well prepared to take charge of this new field of usefulness as an officer of Artillery. He had little trouble, and spent little time in recruiting his company E, among his neighbors and friends who knew him best at Buckhannan and adjoining counties. And even before he had instilled the first lessons of the Artillery school into his company, and before they had been mustered into service he was called upon to defend the town against the advance of the Confederate Gerneral Jenkins. Immediately upon the completion of the enlistment of his company, he was ordered to Clarksburg, and in turn to New Creek and Romney. At the latter place, the battery became, in 1863, a part of Campbell’s Fourth Brigade, First Division, Eighth Army Corps, serving with this brigade in the South Branch Valley, at Romney, Moorefield and vicinity, and with General Kelley in his campaign in the summer of 1863, to Cherry Run, Williamsport and Hedgesville on Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg, returning with the brigade to the South Branch Valley, serving in that locality until the summer of 1864.
Upon General Hunter’s return from Lynchburg, the battery was ordered to join the Army of West Virginia, and accompanied it to the Shenandoah Valley, taking part in the engagements with the enemy at Snicker’s Ferry, Cedar Creek, Kernstown, Bunker Hill and Berryville. At this time the battery was attached to the Artillery Brigade of the Army of West Virginia; was then in the fall of 1864, ordered to Maryland Heights, where it remained until January 1865, when the battery was ordered to the Artillery Camp at Camp Berry near Washington, D.C., and remained there until the close of the war.
While at Maryland Heights, Battery B was consolidated with Battery E, by order of the War Department, the consolidated battery remaining Battery E, under the command of Captain Moore. Lieut. B. H. H. Atkinson and 55 men was the transfer from B. to E. While at Camp Berry, D.C., President Lincoln was assassinated, and a detail from the battery of Lieut. Samuel A. Rapp and 30 men constituted a portion of the escort as the “Guard of Honor” accompanying the remains of Mr. Lincoln form the White House to the Capitol. At the close of the war, President Johnson conferred upon Captain Moore the rank of brevet major “for faithful and meritorious services during the war.”
Battery E was a good battery, composed of the intelligent, patriotic young men from the counties of Upshur, Harrison and Randolph. Officers and enlisted men were proud of each other, and there was no jealousy or bickering from the beginning to the end. Major Moore was a distinguished attorney at law when the war came, and his legal ability was occasionally during the war brought into service as the judge advocate of important courts-martial.
The battery was mustered out of the service, June 28, 1865.
[Source: Loyal West Virginia 1861-1865, by Theodore Lang]
Organized at Buckhannon, W. Va., September 18, 1862. Attached to Railroad District, District of West Virginia, Dept. of Ohio, to January, 1863. Romney, W. Va., 8th Army Corps, Middle Department, to March, 1863. 4th Brigade, 1st Division, 8th Army Corps, to June, 1863. Campbell’s Brigade, Dept. of West Virginia, to December, 1863. 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, Army of West Virginia, to April. 1864. Kelly’s Command, Reserve Division, West Virginia, to July, 1864. Artillery Brigade, West Virginia, July, 1864. Artillery, 1st Cavalry Division, West Virginia, to October, 1864. District of Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., to January, 1865. Camp Barry and Defences of Washington, D.C., to June, 1865.
SERVICE.—Ordered to Clarksburg, W. Va., thence to New Creek and Romney. Railroad guard duty at Romney, Clarksburg, New Creek, Moorefield and Petersburg till January, 1864. Action near Moorefield April 6, 1863. Near Burlington and at Purgitsville and Going’s Ford April 6-7. Moved to Cumberland, Md., January 4-5, 1864, and duty in South Branch Valley till July. Action at Snicker’s Ferry July 17-18. Stephenson’s Depot July 20. Near Berryville July 22. Battle of Kernstown-Winchester July 23-24. Bunker Hill July 25. At Harper’s Ferry and with Reserve Division till January, 1865. Action at New Creek November 28, 1864. Ordered to Washington, D.C., January, 1865, and duty at Camp Barry, Defences of Washington, till June. Mustered out June 28, 1865.
[Source: Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, by Frederick Dyer]
The 1st West Virginia Light Artillery regiment lost 33 men, killed and died of wounds; 131 men, died of disease, accident or in prison; total deaths, 164 men. (all 8 batteries)
[Source: Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865, by William F. Fox]
The Upshur Battery web site, by Michael Phillips | <urn:uuid:975afcdb-7e9b-41c8-b2f6-0c606d25e6ea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wvcivilwar.com/union-regiments/battery-e-west-virginia-light-artillery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969607 | 1,310 | 2.453125 | 2 |
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"Earth, Sky, Water, Fire: Stories of the Americas," Afro-Native Storytelling by Elizabeth James
Come to the Museum of Natural History to hear stories from the Afro-Native tradition by storyteller Elizabeth James, who enjoys sharing tales of her ancestors from this land with the world. Elizabeth James is honored to be an Afro-Native third generation storyteller, following in the tradition of her grandmother and mother. She works inthe Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan.
This storytelling event is offered in celebration of the Indivisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas Smithsonian travelling exhibit at the U-M Duderstadt Gallery, 2281 Bonisteel Ave., Ann Arbor, from January 9 though 31. The exhibit looks at the intersection of American Indian and African American people and cultures. | <urn:uuid:97c6cff5-28fb-4028-aa1e-1f7450fabc22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lsa.umich.edu/vgn-ext-templating/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=92b25523dd60c310VgnVCM100000c2b1d38dRCRD&vgnextchannel=f1ce0209038f2310VgnVCM100000c2b1d38dRCRD&vgnextfmt=detail | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920248 | 185 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Backyard Biodiversity May Stem Allergies
A man blows his nose.
A decline in the variety of life — including the plants and animals that live around us, as well as the microbes on our bodies — may play a role in the rapid rise in allergies and asthma, indicates new research.
The study focused on a predisposition for allergies among 118 Finnish teenagers, finding links between a healthy immune system (the body's system for fighting disease), growing up in more natural environments and the presence of certain skin bacteria.
The results support the idea that declining biodiversity might be contributing to the rapid rise in allergies, asthma, and other inflammatory diseases, which include autoimmune disorders and some types of cancers in the developed world, said Ilkka Hanski, a research professor at the University of Helsinki.
This idea — that the diversity of living things, including microbes, in an environment contributes to the development of normal immune system function in children — is called the biodiversity hypothesis. It builds upon the hygiene hypothesis, a theory that suggests exposure to certain microbes early in life helps train our immune systems not to respond to harmless foreign substances like pollen.
The hygiene hypothesis attributes an increase in allergies to a lack of childhood exposure to microbes. Essentially, we have become too clean for our own good, it says. [Infographic: Germs Are Everywhere!]
The more scientists learn about the tiny things that share our bodies — living in our guts, on our skin and elsewhere — the more questions arise about these microbes' role in our health.
In this study, researchers examined the microbes living on the skin sample of 14 to 18 year olds living in eastern Finland nearly all of whom had lived in the same homes throughout their childhoods. They classified the environment within a 1.9-mile (3-kilometer) radius around the homes in which the teens had grown up, noting if it was, for example, forested, agricultural or built up, and surveyed the plants living in the yard, a proxy for boidiversity around the homes.
They also analyzed blood samples from the teenagers for levels of an antibody, immunoglobin E. High levels are a sign of allergies, which occur when someone's immune system is overly sensitive to harmless substances, such as pollen. (Allergies trigger inflammation, which is part of the immune system's response to injury or invasion.) [Take the Allergy Poll]
The Finnish team found a web of connections among these three factors.
The skin of teenagers more prone to allergies had lower diversity of bacteria known as gammaproteobacteria than their healthy counterparts. (Gammaproteobacteria include the well-known gut microbe and some-time pathogen E. coli. They are not common skin bacteria, but frequently show up in soil and on plant surfaces.)
In fact, a particular group of gammaproteobacteria, in the genus Acinetobacter, appeared to be linked to higher levels of anti-inflammatory molecules among the healthy teens. Anti-inflammatory molecules help to quell allergic responses.
Environment also mattered. Teens living in more natural areas, as opposed to built-up ones, were less likely to have allergies and had more abundant gammaproteobacteria on their skin. A yard containing a diverse mix of uncommon, native flowering plants also appeared linked with healthy immune function. [5 Ways Climate May Affect Your Health]
These results raise plenty of questions, since it's still not clear why these relationships exist. For instance, it's not clear how gammaproteobacteria are connected to immune function. Likewise, exposure to a greater diversity of pollen from flowering plants may help children avoid allergies or, perhaps, the secret lies in the diversity of the microbes on the plants.
Writing in a study published online today (May 7) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers suggest microbes in the natural environment influence those living on our skin, which, in turn influence our health.
"The hypothesis here is if you have generally more diverse environments, you have more diverse microbe communities, perhaps including more of the microbes that are particularly beneficial to us," Hanski said.
MORE FROM LiveScience.com | <urn:uuid:fa5dda3a-a9a7-4ab0-af16-955ceb743ddc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.livescience.com/20139-microbes-diversity-allergies.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94573 | 858 | 3.125 | 3 |
Project Profile: Des Moines Public Schools
Part 1: School District Strives for Energy Star Ratings
School District Strives for Energy Star Ratings
By Chris Matt, Managing Editor - Print & E-Media - January 2011 - Energy Efficiency
Managers in commercial and institutional facilities use the phrase triple bottom line to describe an initiative's impact on building occupants, the environment, and an organization's finances.
For Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools, students, energy efficiency, and utility cost savings are top of mind for managers before, during, and after every building renovation and system upgrade they undertake. And the school district is not short on projects.
Of the 52 schools in the district — the largest in the state — 38 have undergone renovations and upgrades that led to an Energy Star rating by earning a score of at least 75 on a 0-100 scale. The rating means those 38 schools perform better in terms of energy efficiency than 75 percent of similar buildings nationwide.
"School administrators are more interested in the front entrance than boilers and heat pumps," says Bill Good, the district's COO and a key champion of its energy-conservation program. "That's where the superintendent supports me in that regard. We really approach this that we are looking at basic renovations because we have to start impacting our bottom line and operational costs. When it comes to a lot of (aesthetically driven projects) and a lot of building expansions, that really has been pushed to the backburner right now until we get these basic upgrades taken care of." | <urn:uuid:7b28bc71-bf88-480a-a9dd-60d477bc3021> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.facilitiesnet.com/buildingautomation/article/School-District-Strives-for-Energy-Star-Ratings--12190 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951639 | 312 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Young Thais are drawn by the big city lifestyle
Carving pumpkins, dressing up as the undead, purposefully scaring ourselves silly – Halloween is already a holiday with plenty of odd rituals. But for those seeking something stranger, there is no shortage of weird events to help ring in all Hallows Eve.
From shooting out zombies to smashing pumpkins with construction equipment, here are a few extreme versions of more traditional frights.
Instead of: Dressing like zombies
Try: Killing zombies with paintballs
Zombie pub crawls and parades, like those in Chicago, Brisbane and Dublin, have become practically passé. So why join them when you can beat them? Skip the heavy makeup and take on zombies head to head at the Zombie Apocalypse in Atlanta, Georgia. The two-part attraction includes immersion into a zombie onslaught across a 35-acre truck stop and a specialized arena where participants can take up paintball arms against the undead.
Instead of: Watching horror movies in the basement
Try: Watching horror movies with 1,100 people in costume
While celebrities and indie-types frequent other film festivals, ghouls and vampires are the norm at the Heavy Hitting B-Grade Horrorfest at the Fairmont Chateau in Whistler, British Columbia. Celebrating its 10th anniversary on 30 October, the festival is the longest-running and largest horror film festival in Western Canada. Filmmakers premier short scary films (all under 10 minutes) for the chance to win the Silver Skull Trophy.
Instead of: Smashing pumpkins
Try: Smashing pumpkins with construction equipment
People at Play is no ordinary Florida amusement park. Instead of rides, visitors work real-life construction equipment like bulldozers and excavators through obstacle courses. Those who sign up for the October “Punkin’ Chunkin’” package also get to destroy a dozen pumpkins with the supersize equipment.
Instead of: Visiting a haunted house
Try: Getting scared by train or ship
In Vancouver, the normally innocent Stanley Park train has been transformed for the season into the “Circus of Disaster”, showcasing escaped animals, creepy clowns and skeleton acrobats. The one-mile train ride lasts about 15 minutes, but elsewhere in the park, survivors can check out the face painting and pumpkin carving in the park.
Off the coast of Newport Beach, California, the 1930s insane asylum-themed Ghost Ship is the world’s only haunted attraction that sails in open ocean. It had its premiere voyage on 14 October and sails for a scary 75 minutes every Friday and Saturday through the end of the month. | <urn:uuid:8a9b0fc7-80fc-406b-ba87-09aa29681be7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20111025-worldwide-weird-halloween-to-the-extreme | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909705 | 543 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Those whose work and lifestyle necessitate frequent travel may be unable to participate in a local parish community year round. Yet they and their families have the same needs for religious formation, preparation for the reception of the sacraments, opportunities to deepen their relationship with Christ and a need to be welcomed by Catholic parishes when they are in local communities.
Therefore, the Catholic Church's concern for people on the move expresses itself primarily in a ministry of pastoral accompaniment. Diocesan priests, men and women religious, and lay leaders are involved in national, diocesan and parish efforts to provide pastoral outreach to people on the move. They are linked to the Office for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees through national Catholic organizations devoted to providing for the pastoral needs to people on the move wherever they work and travel in the United States.
People on the Move ministries include:
- Airport and airline workers and travelers in conjunction with the National Catholic Conference of Airport Chaplains (NCCAC).
- Port and ship chaplains, seafarers and fishers, all who work on water or in ports and those who travel by water, maritime students, and families of the People of the Sea, in conjunction with Apostleship of the Sea USA (AOSUSA).
- Circus and Carnival Workers in conjunction with Circus and Traveling Show Ministries and the International Forum of Christian Organizations for the Pastoral Care of Circus and Carnival Workers.
- Gypsies and Irish Travelers in conjunction with the International Catholic Committee for Gypsies (CCIT).
- Migrant Farm Workers in conjunction with the Catholic Migrant Farmworker Network (CMFN).
- Race Car drivers in conjunction with Championship Auto Racing Team Ministries.
- Tourism - National Parks, Tourist Centers, pilgrimage groups, and workers in the Tourist industry.
- Truckers, highway travelers and workers at truck stops, bus stations and rest stops in conjunction with the National Diaconate Office. | <urn:uuid:b4112ca1-469b-4760-a435-5bfa17301e37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nccbuscc.org/pcmrt/onmove/overview.shtml | 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 | 0.918163 | 401 | 1.835938 | 2 |
The government will hit the debt limit — the maximum amount that it can borrow — “no later than May 16,” the letter said; after that, “extraordinary measures” can create roughly eight weeks of wiggle room.
“The longer Congress fails to act, the more we risk that investors here and around the world will lose confidence in our ability to meet our commitments and obligations,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner wrote in the letter, sent to leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate.
The dates in the letter represent the most precise estimate the administration has offered for hitting the debt ceiling. Congress sets a maximum amount that the government can borrow, which currently stands at $14.29 trillion.
Policymakers and independent experts have warned of catastrophic consequences if Congress fails to act. The ability of the United States government to repay its debts is the perhaps the single most important bedrock of certainty underlying global finance.
But some Republicans in Congress have balked, suggesting that it should be done only in conjunction with a long-term plan to reduce the deficit.
Mr. Geithner closed the letter on a dry note. “I hope this information is helpful as you plan the legislative schedule for the coming weeks,” he wrote. | <urn:uuid:9b5c97a3-9d86-416f-a723-0812316503f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/u-s-government-will-exhaust-ability-to-borrow-in-july/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956294 | 266 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Linus Torvalds receives the Millennium Technology Prize
Technology Academy Finland has today declared two prominent innovators, Linus Torvalds and Dr Shinya Yamanaka, laureates of the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize, the prominent award for technological innovation. The laureates, who will follow in the footsteps of past victors such as World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, will be celebrated at a ceremony in Helsinki, Finland, on Wednesday 13 June 2012, when the winner of the Grand Prize will be announced. The prize pool exceeds EUR 1 Million.
Torvalds is awarded in recognition of his creation of a new open source operating system kernel that has led to the widely used Linux operating system. The free availability of Linux on the Web swiftly caused a chain reaction leading to further development and fine-tuning worth the equivalent of thousands or tens of thousands of man years. Today millions computers, smartphones, digital video recorders and other electronic appliances run on Linux. Linus Torvald’s achievements have had a great impact on shared software development, networking and the openness of the web, making it accessible for millions, if not billions.
Torvalds initiated the development of Linux while studying and working at the Department of Computer Science of University of Helsinki in 1988-1996. He received an honorary doctorate of University of Helsinki in 2000, and became and honorary alumnus of the Faculty of Science in 2011.
Picture: Beraldo Leal | <urn:uuid:75e7be7f-3a32-4262-83b5-43f40a4c968f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/en/news/71669 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920824 | 302 | 2 | 2 |
Prepping a Rabbit for Surgery
Dr. Laurie Hess and the staff of the Veterinary Center for Birds & Exotics, an AAHA-accredited referral practice in Bedford Hills, NY, prepare Pebbles, the rabbit, for a dental surgery. They place a tube in his airway so that they can breathe for Pebbles and monitor his anesthesia. Viewers are able to see the cardiac monitor that the staff uses for exotic pets, as Dr. Hess explains how to read what is on the screen.
Note: All content provided on HealthyPet.com, is meant for educational purposes only on health care and medical issues that may affect pets and should never be used to replace professional veterinary care from a licensed veterinarian. This site and its services do not constitute the practice of any veterinary medical health care advice, diagnosis or treatment. | <urn:uuid:8e3df766-b785-4c63-985d-ad9c54f66363> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthypet.com/PetCare/ExoticCareArticle.aspx?title=Prepping_a_Rabbit_for_Surgery | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946508 | 167 | 2.4375 | 2 |
I *love* watching the House of Commons on C-SPAN; it’s a great reminder of how utterly shameful and lacking the public dialog in the United States is by comparison. The idea that the chief elected officials gather as a collective, unable to dodge criticism and tough questions through carefully-staged press conferences or “townhalls” loaded with confederates is very appealing to me as someone in public relations. Read more…
Hey kid – would you put down those Foot Locker boxes and have a bit of a chin waggle for a minute?
Martin Luther King once said “a riot is the language of the unheard.” What’s burning up London right now is an unheard population, and while I can sympathize with the sentiment, the violence isn’t something that can be condoned and it’s utterly and completely daft. Here’s why:
- London is one of the most surveilled cities in the world (just behind Chicago). There are over 500,000 cameras throughout the city quietly recording with unblinking eyes.
- Facial recognition technology has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, and it’s so commonplace we all have access to it in Facebook. The pool of photos is growing all the time, both on social networking sites and off in private databases. Even if you’re wearing a mask or covering your face, it doesn’t matter because police will be able to match your clothing from other video footage when your face was uncovered.
- You can’t count on your friends because all it takes is an errant tweet or Facebook post to incriminate you. Police are already watching for incriminating evidence of activities in process and arresting tweeting looters.
- Your technology can narc on you. Given how prevalent mobile phones are in the UK and how flimsy the security is, it should be relatively easy for police to use scanners to identify all mobile devices within range of a certain area where the riots are taking place. That would help kick-start any investigations or facial recognition searches. Not only that, but if the companies that produce all the electronics that have been nicked in the past few days have added any sort of security to them, connecting to the Internet could identify a looter (or someone who received stolen property).
- London Police can crowdsource the investigation with ease. [Update: ...and they already are] Back in 1997, a bunch of people in a neighborhood near Michigan State University rioted after MSU lost to Duke in the NCAA finals, burning couches, stealing and destroying property. Even back then, there were plenty of people shooting video and taking pictures which the local police took and looped on a cable-access TV channel with a message inviting the community to tip them off if they recognized anyone in the photos. That was 15 years ago – just think of how much easier it will be to crowdsource identification with Facebook ads or mobile apps.
- The evidence will stay around “forever.” That means Law Enforcement can take its time with the investigation – as it does so, the technologies and pattern-recognition algorithms will continue to improve. I’m also pretty sure England doesn’t have a statute of limitations – so prosecutions could happen even years after these fires have been extinguished.
In the meantime, mind the gap! (Sorry, couldn’t resist).
[Update: This just appeared on Mashable and is obviously highly-relevant recommended reading - "NYPD Creates Unit To Track Criminals Via Social Media"]
"...and you shall have no pie."As my parents tell it, when I was an infant my first word wasn't a word - it was an entire sentence. Very little has changed.
- The Less Than Definitive Guide to Grading Student Blogs
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- Update - Burger King's Twitter Account Hacked; Finally Suspended 1 1/2 Hours Later
- The Presidential Race may be Close but Google is Winning Election Reporting | <urn:uuid:701c4063-12a0-4181-9fdf-b35a5c7e4634> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://devriesblog.com/tag/london-riots/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943188 | 849 | 1.984375 | 2 |
Zimbabwe uses laws and beatings by security forces to suppress human rights activists in the southern African nation ahead of elections planned for next year, the Associated Press reported on Monday quoting a report.
As published by our top partner Radio VoP
The report by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders comes as President Robert Mugabe is pushing for constitutional amendments that will allow for elections to end his Zanu-PF party's uneasy coalition government with the nation's main opposition party. That has some worried that Zimbabwe could experience the same repression and violence seen in its 2008 election, in which at least 163 people were killed and some 5,000 were tortured or beaten.
"These stories paint a very, very gloomy picture about the situation of human rights defenders in Zimbabwe," said Thomas Sibusiso Masuku, a former high court judge in Swaziland who contributed to the report.
The report highlights the struggles of several activists in Zimbabwe, mostly targeted by security forces and allegedly arrested for flimsy causes. One activist was detained for weeks and questioned about her work after police took her into custody saying her car was allegedly near the scene of a killing, according to the report. Another activist who was investigating abuses around Zimbabwe's diamond region was repeatedly harassed, it said.
Read the full story here. | <urn:uuid:231a7bdd-8dc0-4d9f-a114-92cf476d40b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/zimbabwe-targets-human-rights-activists | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00067-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985452 | 262 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Oil is what most of us think of as a strategic resource, yet in the long run it is soil which is the more important. Even so, people’s eyes tend to glaze over when talk turns to soil conservation, maybe because it’s so much easier to see the immediate relevance of rising gas prices and climate change in these days of peak oil. So while public attitudes on climate change have shifted dramatically over the past few years, a crisis in global agriculture remains hidden: we are, and have long been, using up the supply of topsoil we rely on to grow our food.
Those of us living in modern cities can easily forget that without fertile soil we could not survive. Yet modern agricultural techniques are eroding the very soil on which food production depends. This ongoing soil loss means we face the problem of feeding a growing population from a shrinking land base. This should be troubling because even a casual reading of history shows that, under the right circumstances, climatic extremes, political turmoil or resource abuse can bring down a society. And in the century ahead we face all three, as shifting climate patterns and depleted oil supplies coincide with progressive loss of farmland.
We have, in effect, been ‘mining’ soil for much of human history. Indeed, the decline in fertility and loss of agricultural lands through wind and water erosion is a problem as old as agriculture itself. Civilizations from Babylon to Easter Island have proven only as durable as the fertility of their land. The Roman Empire left Eastern Mediterranean agriculture in a state from which it has yet to recover. But the problem of soil loss is not just ancient history. Exacerbated by modern industrial farming, global agricultural soil loss of about a millimetre per year outpaces soil formation by at least tenfold.
Over the past century, the effects of long-term soil erosion were masked by bringing new land under cultivation and by developing fertilizers, pesticides and crop varieties to compensate for declining soil productivity. However, such ‘agrotech’ fixes become progressively more difficult to maintain because crop yields decline exponentially as soil thins. While fertilizers can temporarily offset the effects of soil erosion, the long-term productivity of the land cannot be maintained in the face of the reduced organic matter and thinning of soil that characterize industrial agriculture. Replacing soil fertility with chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered crops can boost productivity in the short run, but a world stripped of its soil cannot, in the end, feed itself.
Feeding a doubled human population without further increasing crop yields would require doubling the area presently under cultivation. Such vast tracts of land could only be found in tropical forests and subtropical grasslands – like the Amazon and the Sahel. Experience shows that farming such marginal lands produces an initial return, but the land quickly becomes degraded and has to be abandoned – if the population has somewhere to go. With the land best suited for agriculture already under cultivation, expansion into marginal areas is not a long-term strategy.
Small and soil friendly
In contrast to the amount of arable land, which has varied widely through time and across civilizations, the amount of land needed to feed a person has systematically declined. Hunting and gathering societies used from 20 to 100 hectares per person; our current use of 1.5 billion hectares of cultivated land to feed roughly 6 billion people equates to about 0.25 hectares of cropland per person. And by 2050 the amount of available cropland is projected to drop to less than 0.1 hectare per person. So, simply keeping up will require major increases in crop yields.
Before 1950, increases in global food production came by either enlarging the area under cultivation or improved husbandry. Since 1950 most of the increase has come from mechanization and intensified use of chemical fertilizers. The ‘green revolution’ doubled food production and averted a food crisis through increased use of chemical fertilizers, massive investments in irrigation infrastructure in developing nations and the introduction of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice capable of producing two or three harvests a year. Subsequently, however, growth in crop yields has slowed and achieving further substantial increases through conventional means seems unlikely – since crops don’t take up half the nitrogen in the fertilizers farmers apply today, adding even more won’t help.
Perhaps genetic engineering could substantially increase crop yields – but only at the risk of releasing super-competitive species into agricultural and natural environments, with unknowable consequences. So far, the promise of greatly increased crop yields from genetic engineering remains unfulfilled. And it could prove catastrophic, should genetically modified genes that convey sterility cross to non-proprietary crops. Does it even make sense to design crops that can’t reproduce?
So how do we move to sustainable agriculture and still feed the world? The answer lies in better adapting what we do to where we do it. To do this we need to restructure agricultural subsidies to favour small-scale organic farms, encourage soil-friendly farming methods such as no-tilling (see below) for larger industrial farms, and develop urban agriculture.
Among soil scientists, concern over the world’s fast-depleting soil is almost universal
Public dialogue and media portrayals of organic farming tend to the simplistic, pitting those who consider modern industrial farming unsustainable against those who argue that organic methods are unethical when hunger plagues so many people. Representatives of agribusiness like to question the relevance of organic agriculture in feeding a 10-billion-person planet and instead promote agrochemicals and genetically modified crops as keys to food security. Yet many studies over the past decades have shown that crop yields under organic methods are comparable to those achieved through conventional methods. Indeed, some of the highest crop yields come from small-scale, labour-intensive organic farms.
Many currently profitable industrial farming methods would become uneconomic if their true costs were incorporated into market pricing. Direct financial subsidies and failure to include the costs of depleting soil fertility encourage practices that degrade the land. In the US, for example, the top 10 per cent of agricultural producers now receive 66 per cent of the more than $10 billion handed out in annual subsidies, and they use it to support large farms growing single crops, particularly wheat, corn and cotton. We need to curb the $300 billion in global agricultural subsidies – more than six times the world’s annual development assistance budget – that encourage unsustainable industrial farming. Shifting public support to make organic agriculture more competitive is part of the answer.
No-till agriculture also warrants greater public support, as it can effectively maintain crop yields and slow down soil loss, even on large, mechanized farms. Instead of using a plough to turn the soil and open the ground, no-till farmers push seeds into the ground through the organic matter left over from prior crops, minimizing direct disturbance of the soil. Although adoption of no-till methods is often accompanied by increased herbicide use, crop residue left at the ground surface acts as mulch, helping to retain moisture and retard erosion by as much as 90 per cent. With no-till practices currently being used on less than 10 per cent of global cropland, there is tremendous potential to expand them, and to research how to couple them better with organic methods.
Industrial agriculture will never provide a way out of hunger for the third of humanity that lives on less than two dollars a day. More innovative thinking is necessary, and on a global scale. If we are to feed those too poor to buy food, the naïve idea that all we need to do is produce cheap food must go. While food was still cheap there were still far too many hungry people on the planet. A different approach – one that might actually work – would be to promote the prosperity of small farms in the Global South so that subsistence farmers can feed themselves, generate an income and become stewards of the land. To do this they need access to enough land to grow a marketable surplus, and an agricultural support system that builds on indigenous agricultural knowledge and provides appropriate tools.
Finally, as oil and the cost of shipping food around the world become more expensive, it will become increasingly attractive to take food production to the people – into the cities. With 800 million people already involved, urban farming is not restricted to developing countries; by the late 1990s two-thirds of Moscow’s families were engaged in urban agriculture. City agriculturalist Will Allen has been pioneering urban farming in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a way to provide healthy, affordable diets to low-income urban populations. He has come to realize that urban farms not only deliver fresh produce to city dwellers at a lower cost of transportation, but that they typically use far less water, fertilizer and oil, and can reduce urban waste disposal problems and costs.
Among soil scientists, concern over the world’s fast-depleting soil is almost universal. Unfortunately, saving dirt just isn’t a very sexy issue. However, time grows short and industrial agriculture is proving an expensive and increasingly risky dead end. We are left with a fundamental challenge: how do we merge traditional agricultural knowledge with modern understanding of soil ecology to promote and sustain intensive agriculture? Herein lies our real hope for feeding a hungry world.
This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7 | <urn:uuid:3c9a12d6-4682-4307-8a0b-2d40cbb1ea6d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newint.org/features/2008/12/01/soil-depletion/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948598 | 1,911 | 3.328125 | 3 |
McCreesh always manages to come up with imaginative recreations of music from before the time of Bach, and this CD, with its fanciful subtitle "a Requiem for Biber," is no exception. (There's no evidence that Biber was writing the Requiem recorded here for himself, however, as some fancifully claim Mozart to have done, at the end of his life.)
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber died three centuries ago, in 1704. (He was born in a town in Bohemia in 1644, so he lived approximately two generations before Johann Sebastian Bach.) Like Mozart, he became closely associated with musical life in Salzburg through appointments for that city's archbishop. The major works on this CD are Biber's Missa ex B à 6 (six-part Mass in B) and his Requiem in F con terza minore (Requiem in F minor). As limited information has been passed down to us concerning how these works were performed, McCreesh has opted for great contrast between the two. The Mass is given an intimate treatment (in his booklet note, McCreesh writes of the "almost bucolic" organ continuo). In this performance, there is one voice to a part, with the exception of the two soprano parts, which are doubled. Apart from the organ, the only other instrument is a bass violin. Furthermore, McCreesh inserts music by other composers in between the movements of Biber's Mass. For example, violin sonatas by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer serve as the Gradual and "Deo gratias," and Orlando di Lasso's beautiful "Ave verum corpus" is used for the Communion.
In contrast, McCreesh performs the Requiem in such a manner as to inspire – forgive me – "shock and awe." a 5-voice ensemble of vocalists is contrasted with a ripieno group of twice as many voices. The instrumental ensemble consists of seven string instruments, three sackbuts, and two organs (as with the voices, solo and ripieno). At times the cumulative sonorities are almost overwhelming. In his instrumental music, Biber was renowned for his use of scordatura, or alternate string tunings. These usually apply to violins, but here, McCreesh has experimented with retuning the violas as well, claiming that the resulting sonorities are much more satisfying and better balanced. In contrast to the Mass, the Requiem is performed without interruption as a nearly half-hour "wall of sound," if you will. The disc closes with di Lasso's moving Media vita in morte sumus (In the midst of life we are in death), a fitting close to this program. McCreesh's performance seems determined to add Biber's Requiem to the other great works in that genre, including, yes, Mozart's. At times, McCreesh's forces seem almost in danger of running away with the music. It is a pleasure, though, to hear this music played in so ballsy a fashion. McCreesh's scholarship is not in doubt, yet the performance bears no traces of dryness or unwonted caution.
The recording was made in the Tonbridge School Chapel in Kent – apparently a rather noisy venue. (Is that an air conditioner I hear in the background, or simply the breathing of the two organs?) Apart from that, the sound is fine. And what about this CD's playing time? How is that for getting your money's worth?
Copyright © 2005, Raymond Tuttle | <urn:uuid:06497ee8-a74c-4e67-bb73-13394ada4018> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.classical.net/~music/recs/reviews/a/arc74714a.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969164 | 742 | 1.898438 | 2 |
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== Subversion ==
== Subversion ==
== Plans ==
== Plans ==
Revision as of 06:56, 29 June 2007
Icebreaker is a playlist authoring/scheduling system for Icecast. It uses a database to store playlists and scheduling data. Icebreaker's main objective is to be easy to use, so that writing playlists by hand can be avoided. Icebreaker is being designed to use a web-based interface through TurboGears. Icebreaker is _NOT_ a web-based streamer or a client.
My plans are as follows:
- Written in Python.
- Metadata in database.
- Playlists stored in database.
- Playlist scheduling.
- Backend/frontend design, possibly multible frontends.
- No web server needed, interface comes from TurboGears.
- Minimal configuration, after all thats why I started the project.
- SQLObject will be used to work with any database.
User Wanted Features
I run a Icecast stream for the use of myself and my friends, and while making playlists for it, I was very overcome by the enormity of the task. I have a modest Vorbis collection by some standards, 2500 tracks. I pity anyone that has ever tried to make playlists for a large streaming site with who knows how many tracks. What's more, I can't be bothered to switch playlists out all the time. So the natural progression seemed to be a simple drag-and-drop interface to create and schedule playlists.
I plan to use a separate backend from the web interface, so that a X-based frontend could be added eventually, or support could be added in an existing media application. SQLObject will be used to provide support for multiple databases with one set of code. I will try to minimize configuration to media path, and database connections, and password for the interface.
I have some code written, a script that populates a database, and a script that will be called by Ices and Icecast that provides the next track to play. I wish to include searching/adding media to a playlist based on metadata, as the populate.py script parses Ogg tags and adds them to the database.
The frontend will be based off of TurboGears (http://www.turbogears.org) and could be packaged as a python egg, separately or included with the source for the backend. In the event that no playlist is scheduled, there will be a random playlist that will be automatically generated. Future plans are to integrate with Google Calendar, to display to any users which playlists will be scheduled. Another of my plans is to research integration with Icecast, to add support for controlling it. I've been thinking about this project and planning it since December, and I am extremely excited.
The main focus of this project is ease, and I will facilitate use in these ways:
1. Simple Interface, very self-explanatory.
2. Minimal configuration. No web server needed, no PHP, extremely easy to get up and running. (Possibly) a few Python Libraries to install. One short configuration file. However, Ices will need to be configured to accept input from a script.
3. Database agnostic. If no database server is installed, SQLite will work perfectly in it's stead.
My goals in this project are not overly ambitious, and will contribute greatly to media enthusiasts like myself. I have set up a project page on Google Code (http://code.google.com/p/icebreaker/). I have not released any code because the code is not usable by anyone other than myself for the initial development. Soon I will add the code I have completed to the project page after adding database support to the Ices-callable script. I realize this description is very short in comparison to the 7500 character limit, but a few details are currently "up in the air". Namely, how I will handle scheduling and whether or not I will daemonize the backend. I have several ideas on how to handle the internals, but it's too early to tell how it will work. Very soon I plan on doing a few flowcharts to illustrate the architecture of the project, and the various ways it may manifest.
I plan on having this application feature complete about 75% through the summer, as I am already greatly obsessed with it and am only abstaining from the project to focus on my schoolwork. I have the entire summer to work on this project if it is accepted and will spend at least 30 hours a week on it. Almost everything I code is media-oriented. I usually write converter scripts in python or bash to manipulate files. I am most comfortable in Python and I have done a little work in C. I also took a course in VB.net and hated every minute of it. I dont think of myself as a programmer, but I greatly enjoy making things and enjoying the outcome of my labor.
Though I wont contribute specifically to any one of your projects in code, I feel that my project will enhance other xiph projects. | <urn:uuid:5b235296-9c6e-4620-9e70-4c1cb5c85aeb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php?title=Icebreaker&diff=7060&oldid=7059 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936618 | 1,072 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Knudson, a Fox Chase Cancer Center Distinguished Scientist and senior advisor to the president, is honored for his groundbreaking development of the "two-hit" model, which subsequently launched the discovery and study of tumor suppressor genes. This pioneering, statistically based model explained both the hereditary and sporadic forms of retinoblastoma, and was followed by similar models for neuroblastoma and Wilms' tumor. The fact that the model was first proposed almost 15 years before molecular technologies were able to experimentally test and confirm it speaks not only to the novel aspects of this research, but also to the visionary nature of the work.
"Dr. Knudson's two-hit theory has served as an illuminating paradigm, guiding the investigations of countless tumor geneticists and molecular biologists," said Margaret Foti, Ph.D., M.D. (h.c.), chief executive officer of the AACR. "His fundamental contributions have profoundly influenced the course of cancer research. We are honored to recognize his exemplary contributions to the field of cancer research and genetics."
The AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research was established and first presented in 2004 to acknowledge an individual who has made significant, fundamental contributions to cancer research, either through a single scientific discovery or a body of work. Those contributions, whether they have been in research, leadership, or mentorship, must have had a lasting impact on the cancer field and must have demonstrated a lifetime commitment to progress against cancer. The award joins the Landon Prizes, Pezcoller Foundation Award and numerous other scientific honors conferred annually by the AACR to recognize world-class accomplishments in basic research,
Contact: Yarissa Ortiz
American Association for Cancer Research | <urn:uuid:305a3048-0d59-46ff-9dc3-971f784b1b3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-3/Alfred-G--Knudson-Jr---receives-American-Association-for-Cancer-Research-Lifetime-Acheivement-Award-12304-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960499 | 345 | 2.046875 | 2 |
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Refrigeration is a relatively recent process to keep foods edible longer. Before electricity, people would store blocks of ice and go to all sorts of efforts to keep foods from spoiling. Here are just a few more interesting links about foods that stay safe to ingest for almost unbelievable amounts of time.
- A specialized microwave could zap bread and sterilize it, so the bread could last at least 60 days without growing mold. However, it might take consumers a bit longer to get used to the idea that bread lasts that long.... [url]
- A 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck was discovered along with food and wine still stored and preserved in jars. Most of the jars are still sealed, so these items are still recognizable as food -- although no one will likely eat these leftovers. [url]
- There's a pretty good reason why alcohol is a critical component of eggnog... it kills bacteria. NB: The alcohol takes a few weeks to kill off the bacteria, so be patient when making a fresh batch before drinking it. [url] | <urn:uuid:84d77aee-3f8f-49e8-acc8-ba17e229ea1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=spoiling | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967494 | 232 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Umatilla County Health Department officials announced today that a case of H1N1 influenza, or swine, flu virus has been confirmed in the eastern part of Umatilla County.
The ill adolescent is in critical condition in a Washington state hospital (not Walla Walla), said Genni Lehnert, administrator.
The youth tested positive for the H1N1 and is also being treated for other medical conditions. While the child is enrolled in the public school system, he or she was too ill to begin classes at the start of the school year, said Sherena Clements, emergency preparedness coordinator for Umatilla County.
"I am very concerned about this adolescent and want to encourage others to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves for both seasonal and H1N1 influenza," Lehnert said. "We just want folks to be aware that both are circulating."
No other members of the child's family has been diagnosed with flu at this time, she said, adding that her department will be facilitating H1N1 shot clinics as soon as a vaccine is available.
"The public will be well informed when the dates and locations have been determined. In addition to the H1N1 vaccine, the public is urged to get a seasonal flu shot now."
The swine flu is targeting young people and those that get particularly ill have underlying health conditions, Lehnert pointed out. "That can include diabetes, asthma and heart conditions. That will complicate things for kids with H1N1."
To help avoid flu:
The Umatilla County Health Department will present a vaccination clinic at the Milton-Freewater Community Building on Sept. 25, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., for seasonal influenza, $30, and childhood vaccinations. People should bring insurance cards for billing purposes. | <urn:uuid:f15e3cf8-c2d1-4d92-8b26-485284f0d44f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://union-bulletin.com/news/2009/sep/04/health-officials-confirm-h1n1-flu-in-umatilla/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965726 | 377 | 1.90625 | 2 |
INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS AND NATIONAL INTERESTS
53. For the purposes of the conduct of any international telecommunication service by a public telecommunication licensee, and subject to this Act, the licensee may enter into direct communication, arrangement and agreement with the lawfully constituted telecommunication authority of any country or with any duly authorised international agency or organisation concerned with telecommunication matters for the purpose of providing facilities, fixing rates, arranging terms of payment or accounting, for operational, engineering or administrative purposes or for any other purpose necessary for the proper fulfilment of its functions.
54. Nothing in section 53 shall be deemed to abrogate the right of the Government at any time to determine its relations with any country or with any international agency or organisation and a public telecommunication licensee shall so discharge its responsibilities and conduct its business as to comply with and fulfil all international agreements, conventions or undertakings relating to telecommunication to which Singapore is a party.
55. A public telecommunication licensee shall be fully responsible for meeting all financial obligations arising from the operation of any international telecommunication service and shall settle accounts with other telecommunication authorities.
56. Where the Government considers it necessary that any telecommunication service of an exceptional nature should be provided, and where a public telecommunication licensee considers it uneconomic to provide the service without contribution from the Government, the Government may make such contribution towards the capital outlay necessary to provide any such service as may be estimated by the licensee and agreed to by the Government.
57. The Minister may direct a public telecommunication licensee to undertake and provide such telecommunication services and facilities as may be necessary for aeronautical, maritime, meteorological, governmental, defence or other purposes and upon being so directed, the licensee shall so provide the services or facilities, and shall be entitled to fair and proper payment therefor.
—(1) The Minister may, after consultation with the Authority or any public telecommunication licensee, give to the Authority or licensee, as the case may be, such directions as the Minister thinks fit as to the exercise by the Authority or that licensee of its functions under this Act.
(2) Without prejudice to subsection (1), if it appears to the Minister to be requisite or expedient to do so —
on the occurrence of any public emergency, in the public interest or in the interests of public security, national defence, or relations with the government of another country; or
in order —
to discharge or facilitate the discharge of an obligation binding on the Government by virtue of its being a member of an international organisation or a party to an international agreement;
to attain or facilitate the attainment of any other object the attainment of which is in the opinion of the Minister requisite or expedient in view of the Government being a member of an international organisation or a party to an international agreement; or
to enable the Government to become a member of an international organisation or a party to an international agreement,
the Minister may, after consultation with the Authority or any public telecommunication licensee, give such directions to the Authority or that licensee as are necessary in the circumstances of the case.
(3) Any direction given under subsection (1) or (2) may include —
provisions for the prohibition or regulation of such use of telecommunications in all cases or of such cases as may be considered necessary;
provisions for the taking of, the control of or the usage for official purposes of, all or any such telecommunication system and equipment; and
provisions for the stopping, delaying and censoring of messages and the carrying out of any other purposes which the Minister thinks necessary.
(4) Nothing in any direction given under subsection (3) shall apply to the use of any telecommunications for the purpose of making or answering signals of distress.
(5) The Authority and any public telecommunication licensee shall give effect to any direction given to it under subsection (1) or (2) notwithstanding any other duty imposed on the Authority or the licensee by or under this Act.
(6) The Authority and any public telecommunication licensee shall not disclose any direction given to that person under subsection (1) or (2) if the Minister notifies that person that the Minister is of the opinion that the disclosure of the directions is against the public interest.
(7) The Minister may —
pay compensation for any damage caused to a public telecommunication licensee by reason of its compliance with the directions of the Minister under subsection (3)(b); or
make grants to public telecommunication licensees for defraying or contributing towards any losses which they may sustain by reason of their compliance with the directions of the Minister under any other provisions of this section.
(8) Any sums required by the Minister for paying compensation or making grants under subsection (7) shall be paid out of the Consolidated Fund.
(9) If any doubt arises as to the existence of a public emergency or as to whether any act done under this section was in the public interest or in the interests of public security, national defence or relations with the government of another country, a certificate signed by the Minister shall be conclusive evidence of the matters stated therein. | <urn:uuid:d80b0f12-5cfb-42c8-a821-15d3ed48dd1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/aol/search/display/view.w3p;ident=1f75d402-c205-4908-8856-8428ba0eac91;orderBy=date-rev,loadTime;page=0;query=Id%3A%220e64137c-e8d6-40b9-90f4-ab1667500ca8%22%20Status%3Apublished;rec=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918284 | 1,048 | 1.617188 | 2 |
My mom was concerned about stories she had heard about the “bird flu” making its way from the American West, with patients clogging hospitals, etc. She had heard it had come as far as Kansas. Huh? So I looked it up. Here ya go, Mom.
California Flu: NOT the “Bird Flu”, But Still Needs Your Attention By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Reports are coming from California describing clogged emergency rooms and doctors’ offices ascribed to a sudden surge in influenza cases, a localized flu insurgency, as it were. This “California Flu” epidemic should be noted in the context of the yearly flu onslaughts we see each year, and there are some caveats we need to keep in mind, this year particularly:
*This has nothing to do with the “bird flu” pandemic we have been hearing about, over and over again of late. That epidemic is thus far almost exclusively confined to birds in southern Asia. There have been about 130 human cases, and some sick birds have been found in eastern Europe. This human flu now invading California and contiguous states is part of the annual flu season and is not a harbinger of pandemics yet to come.
Recommendation: Get flu shot, wash your hands, and wash surfaces with hot water and soap (doorknobs, telephones, anything that is regularly touched). When you cough or sneeze in public (better to stay home!), do so into the crook of your elbow, not into the air or onto your hands. Drink plenty of liquids, stay warm. | <urn:uuid:9661f3d2-75a1-457a-8e20-50d5b767d6fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.virushead.net/vhrandom/2005/12/29/california-flu-is-not-bird-flu | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96892 | 332 | 2.09375 | 2 |
Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. , Hardbound: 264 pp. $27.95
I missed author Michael Lewis during his recent book tour stop in Seattle. He has lately received national recognition as author of the book that turned into the film, The Blind Side. After receiving his new book, The Big Short, it took me just a few pages to see how it quickly rose to the top of bestseller lists.
I was immediately immersed in this gripping story. The Big Short quickly dives behind-the-scenes of the mortgage-backed securities and real estate industry meltdown. Through a rich character-driven narrative, Lewis deftly weaves together how the nation’s top financial institutions profited from deception and delusion in the subprime home equity market. Lewis also delivers how those high-risk, low ethic actions have unraveled the financial stability of not just America’s lower-middle-class, but entire national economies. The outrage, intrigue, and dark humor of this peek inside the predatory operations and attitude of our nation’s key financial institutions make this a compelling must-read for anyone who wants to understand more about how these money-making behemoths function, and malfunction, to the detriment of the rest of us.
Get this book. I will definitely also be picking up more of Lewis’ work, including Liar’s Poker, a narrative about the excess and hubris of Wall Street during the end of our last century.
How to Pitch Better: The Question Pitch
2 days ago | <urn:uuid:4ef3ba66-120f-41e2-81eb-953ab2320228> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tracycorley.com/2010/05/big-short-exposes-deception-and.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945173 | 328 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Tag Archive for ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions’
A growing number of chief financial officers are increasingly involved in environmental and social initiatives that not long ago were totally divorced from their company’s income statements or balance sheets. At The Walt Disney Company, CFO Jay Rasulo says combining corporate citizenship with financial oversight “allows us to integrate our work in citizenship with the other financial strengths of the company. And if I’m successful in doing that, I believe I’ll actually create even more value for our shareholders.”
Package delivery companies like FedEx and UPS have come a long way in a relatively short time regarding sustainability,optimizing their choices of modes and otherwise streamlining energy use.
There are many ways to green up any business, large or small—and an added benefit might just be saving money. Just like individuals, businesses can measure their carbon footprints to get a sense of where they are starting from and to get some initial ideas of areas to focus on to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Given increased environmental awareness, high gas prices and a continually slumping economy, it’s no wonder that more fuel efficient cars are all the rage these days.
Given the lack of federal action to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., several East Coast states joined together in 2008 to form the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), committing to a market-based system to cap carbon pollution and lower energy bills while creating more green jobs.
The best hope to date was 2009’s American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that called for the implementation of a “cap-and-trade” system to limit carbon dioxide emissions. That bill failed to pass, and most experts say it’s inconceivable to think the next Congress – or President Obama – would even contemplate strong climate or clean energy legislation.
China passed the U.S. as the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitter back in 2006 and today produces some 17 percent of the world’s total carbon dioxide output. Although the Chinese insist environmental trouble is part of the cost of developing a world superpower, China has started to take action.
Meatless Monday—the modern version of it, at least—was born in 2003 with the goal of reducing meat consumption by 15 percent in the U.S. and beyond. The rationale? Livestock production accounts for one-fifth of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and is also a major factor in global forest and habitat loss, freshwater depletion, pollution and human health problems.
EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: I know that local food has health and environmental benefits, but my local grocer only carries a few items. Is there a push for bigger supermarkets to carry locally produced food? — Maria Fine, Somerville, MA By eating locally sourced foods, we strengthen the bond [...]
GE’s 2009 corporate citizenship report – “Renewing Responsibilities” – sets forth a vision of addressing global concerns with confidence, integrating sustainability into the company’s core business strategy. “Our goals,” GE says, “are to make money, make it ethically and make a difference.” | <urn:uuid:b1b6cb93-146c-4fad-818c-f562fd9cea6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://business-ethics.com/tag/greenhouse-gas-emissions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935638 | 665 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Ever have to recreate a document from an Acrobat PDF? You can find out most everything about the text by using the Object Inspector, except the leading. Well, here's a cheesy way to figure it out. Open the PDF in Illustrator (you just need one page). Release any and all clipping masks. Draw a guide at the baseline of the first line of text, and one on the line below. Now, Option-drag the first line to make a copy, and position it exactly next to the original first line at baseline. Then put a return anywhere in the copied line. Now adjust leading of the copied lines, so that the second line of copy rests on the baseline of the second line of the original. Now you know your leading.
Or you could buy expensive software to find the leading. Your choice.
From Greg Ledger | <urn:uuid:5e445af1-b077-4b5c-ab9a-47203b790e95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tidbits.com/tipbits/172 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903531 | 173 | 1.882813 | 2 |
Tough Times and Eight Ways to Deal with Them
Posted Tue, 12/29/2009 - 15:55
Many public libraries—in Colorado, the United States, and even worldwide—are facing significant financial troubles. We are part of a larger economic system, and this is a dip in the cycle. Such dips are inevitable over the course of one’s career.
The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of some strategies for reining in expenditures without compromising the long-term integrity of our institutions. Making cuts isn’t unusual. Businesses do it. Homeowners do it. In libraries, I believe there are eight basic approaches. Not all of them are good ones.
- Make across-the-board cuts. Just make every department in a large organization absorb a uniform percentage of reductions. Such an exercise may well help root out frivolous expenses, or discover more cost-effective alternatives. The problem is, some items-like utilities or insurance-aren’t discretionary. Some library programs and practices are more essential to our mission than others.
This is the “nickel-and-dime” approach. It is easy, but not strategic. It is the path most taken, and one that most often leads to general decline.
- Reduce the number (or cost) of library staff. For every public library, this is the key cost, ranging from at least 51% upwards to 80% of the annual budget. To reduce costs without losing people, some libraries freeze salaries and shift a higher percentage of the cost of benefits to the employee. When that isn’t enough, libraries seek to reduce head count. The continuum from gentle to drastic looks like this: Buy people out, freeze hiring and wait for attrition, reduce hours, force days off (furlough), or lay people off.
Most institutions move by stages along this continuum. But this isn’t necessarily strategic, either. The people who leave aren’t always the ones you want to leave, and may be the ones doing the jobs you consider most vital. The good news: Recent jumps in technology (RFID, self-check, automated materials handling) may allow us to provide better service with fewer staff. The not-so-good news: That technology has a cost, too, and capital money may be hard to come by in a crisis.
- Gut the materials budget. In an effort to save jobs, many libraries look to their second-largest category of spending to balance the budget: the acquisitions budget. I have concluded that this strategy is among the most dangerous. It’s easy to lose collection relevance. It’s very, very hard to get it back again. On the other hand, this might be the time to look at some benchmarks of use: How many times should an item have to be checked out to be retained? Maybe we need to buy more copies of fewer titles.
- Reduce the number of library facilities. Buildings drive most library expenditures: staff, materials, IT, and maintenance. But be prepared: Closing a library will stir up strong emotions in almost any community. That might mean the birth of political will to raise necessary funds. It may also expose a common dilemma: People tend to demand services that they are unwilling to pay for. If that’s the case, we need to say so, or commit slow suicide by our silence.
In general, the argument for closure must be buttressed by a clear presentation of the financial facts, as well as other service standards (cost of circulation per item, distance between locations, staffing costs per use, etc.). This strategy—reducing the number of buildings—may well allow the library as a whole to continue to provide a high level of service, but at fewer locations.
- Reduce the hours of library operations. The fewer hours a library is open, the less it costs to run it. Most libraries have a predictable bell curve of use. A 20% reduction in hours might preserve 95% of the use-or all of it, if library users simply shift their schedules. Note that this really only saves money if it is also accompanied by a reduction in work force.
- Raise fines and fees. Inevitably, helpful members of the public suggest that all our financial problems are easily solved. All we have to do is charge for services we now provide for “free”: Boost our fines, charge for meeting rooms, rent out internet use, assess a fee for reserves, or even charge for library cards or checkouts.
In my experience, however, most of these don’t generate a lot of money. What they do is reduce use. But some hike in these transaction fees may make sense anyhow, both for public relations effect (“You told us to raise our fees, and we did”) and to deliberately refocus efforts from one area to another.
- Seek private funding, whether in dollars, in-kind services, or volunteer labor. On the one hand, the more layoffs there are, the larger is the pool of potential volunteers. On the other hand, there’s less private money available. But the message of donations to a public institution whose use goes up but funding does not may well resonate with a community that now depends on the library more heavily.
- Stop doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing anyhow. Now is the time to shake the organization out of its complacency. In all of our organizations, we’re doing something that isn’t best practice, doesn’t meet basic benchmarks of service, and costs a lot and serves few. This is the time to use the perfectly graspable explanation of “tight times” to demonstrate courageous management.
The importance of tone
There seem to be two basic philosophies about cuts: Make them invisible, or make them clear. I belong to the second camp.
When conscientious librarians try to absorb budget cuts without any fuss or disruption, they provide a disservice to their community. They hide the real costs of operation and suggest that there is no consequence for inadequate funding. Most people have no idea how libraries are funded, or what is necessary to keep them open. Public institutions should present as clear a case as possible about what they do, and what it takes to do it well. That’s what transparency is about.
So making budget reductions clear means this: Mount a public campaign to say just where the money comes from, and how much. Let people know that you track the success of your programs, and you won’t support those that aren’t used. There is a sprinkling of good Return on Investment studies out there now. Libraries consistently return to their communities between $4 and $8 for every tax dollar received, a statistic that is particularly impressive in today’s business environment, provided anybody hears us talk about it.
When you need to make cuts, tell people why, in simple and direct language. Say what you might cut. Invite the public to weigh in, but keep the costs of your services on the table. If something is saved, then what is supposed to take its place to ensure the sustainability of the institution? And when you decide what is going to be cut, give that a lot of publicity, too. Say when it’s going to happen, and when it happens, remind them why.
Setting the stage for the future
Today’s crisis will pass. At that time, libraries will return to the larger crisis: the plain fact that most citizens have no idea what libraries cost, that—as OCLC’s 2008 report “From Awareness to Funding” shows us—there is no relationship between use and support, that the actual expenditures on libraries are a fraction of the costs for many other services that have far less significance on our lives and communities, and that fewer libraries are making it to the ballot, or winning when they do.
A financial downturn has predictable results: Libraries all across the country are seeing an upsurge in use as people borrow what they cannot buy, attend programs that don’t require an outlay of cash, retool for a new career, hunt for new jobs, or simply hang out in a friendly place.
This gives us an opportunity not only to demonstrate our value to the public, but to be emboldened to talk about it, to point out our long history of remarkably cost-effective service delivery, and the vital significance of our institution to the infrastructure of our shared lives.
We are there for our communities when they most need us, and if that becomes part of our message, maybe we can help them learn to be there for us, too.
James LaRue is director of Douglas County Libraries in Castle Rock, Colorado. | <urn:uuid:ad42a0cc-0f9d-46a0-beac-95c65d58dd1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/12292009/tough-times-and-eight-ways-deal-them | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943799 | 1,812 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Help Us Establish Scholarships
An education at Tunxis Community College works for a lifetime. The scholarships that are provided to Tunxis students change lives, build futures and create hope and opportunity for years to come.
Today, more than ever before, the struggles of everyday life prevent students from experiencing the benefits of higher education. Survival has become the norm for many students – the stress of paying for rent, transportation, groceries while battling a poor economy and sky rocketing expenses is simply overwhelming. Fifty percent of TCC students require financial assistance to attend college. For a student to attend Tunxis full-time, one year’s tuition, fees, books and other expenses amount to about $4,500. A two year degree will total close to $9,000.
Thanks to generous individuals, companies and foundations, hundreds of scholarships are given to Tunxis students every year that may not have otherwise been able to afford a quality education.
The Tunxis Foundation offers a series of scholarships to Tunxis students annually. The scholarship drive typically begins in early December with a deadline in mid to late February. All applicants are notified by letter in April of the results of their applications.
For more information, contact Financial Aid Services at 860.255.3510, or email to
Scholarships donated to the Foundation on an annual basis also may be created. The minimum donation to create a scholarship is $500 per year, or $250 per semester. This would be a separate fund that the Foundation manages.
The cost of a fund where the scholarship award has specific eligibility requirements and where the entire fund is to be paid out within one year would be $1,000.
The cost of a fund where the scholarship award has specific eligibility requirements and where the entire fund is to be paid out over more than one year would be $10,000. | <urn:uuid:c7a55cde-ab9e-4be3-95ba-586d53d564d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tunxisfoundation.org/foundation-scholarships/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954969 | 383 | 1.609375 | 2 |
There are different fields of science that are in existence in today's world and that are being studied by different scientists. There have been so many developments that have taken place on basis of types studies and analysis. One such field of science is psychology that deals with human behavior and thinking. There are different types of psychology that one can find in human beings.
Posted in Uncategorized | <urn:uuid:cb39bf10-27a2-4c14-8960-98a59084a3ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://branchesofpsychology.com/page-2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980077 | 76 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Many of the Wimmera CMA region’s 440 native fauna species have been placed under severe stress as a result of major landscape changes since European settlement.
Examples of rare, threatened or endangered species in the Wimmera include:
Striped Legless Lizard
Blue Smoky Mouse
These species are part of the character of the Wimmera and it is important to look after the environment that they live within to prevent their further decline. What is the Wimmera CMA doing in relation to protecting and managing Native Fauna?
For most threatened species, the body of knowledge to guide conservation is limited. Because of this and the limited resources available for management, Wimmera CMA takes a broader focus in that most effort is directed at protecting and improving the overall health of the environment and the native vegetation or habitat that these species live within.
However, Wimmera CMA does provide support for a number of projects throughout the Wimmera that are aimed at improving the viability of particular threatened fauna species. A number of these projects extend into other CMA regions and interstate and involve other organisations such as the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment and the South Australian South-East Natural Resource Management Board.
Some of the native animals Wimmera CMA provides support for include:
Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo, Heath mouse, Triped Legless Lizard, and Golden Sun Moth. | <urn:uuid:5b27765b-7355-4c99-a083-74cfb40df3d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wcma.vic.gov.au/index.php/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=81 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914316 | 294 | 3.375 | 3 |
Perspectives: Diana Campbell, Lead researcher for More Than WindBy: Suzanne Rent
In each issue, Earth Resources interviews a leader in Atlantic Canadaís energy industry. For this issue, we spoke with Diana Campbell, who researched and authored More than Wind: Evaluating Renewable Energy Opportunities for First Nations in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
How did you come to research and write this report?
Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nations Chiefs (APC) had approached me in 2009 and they were doing this Atlantic Atlantic Aboriginal Economic Development Integrated Research Program (AAEDIRP). I really felt that we needed to start thinking about renewable energy in our communities and that there wasnít enough information. The project took me eights months to do. The reception was overwhelming.
Then as the months progressed, after I would do presentations, people would come back to me and say, ďEver since you did your presentation, I am noticing all these things.Ē If you can get people to think about it, they will start to pay attention. I looked at what could be feasible for our communities beyond wind, because it seems like we are running into a lot of problems with wind when it gets to the environmental assessment or the community participation phase. I think if people had more access to education and you had the community involved right from the beginning, you might not run into some of these issues.
A lot of our communities, unfortunately, and the Department of Indian Affairs, are never thinking proactively. Itís always reactively, but they have to change that because our populations are growing.
Did you meet any communities that were really innovative?
You have to be innovative. What I also try to get people to understand is that it takes a long time. Millbrook, they were just recently approved for six megawatts, so obviously that was in development for quite some time. Thatís really proactive. Membertou has put in an application for six megawatts. They also have this partnership with GrupoGuascor. They are looking more at business development. So thatís really proactive, but thatís been in the works for a long time. There is a group in the Gaspe, they have got involved with all the wind development in the Gaspe Peninsula, which is huge. They got all the wind developers to agree to do partnerships with them, and they are doing a lot of education and training. Thatís really progressive.
Donít you think thatís positive that these groups have been thinking ahead now for a number of years? They seem to be the early adopters.
I guess the part of it I find interesting is how thatís not communicated. You find out that Millbrook got six megawatts. But we didnít hear about that before. I wonder, as I do this research, why the communities donít share their information more. And itís not just communities; itís industry. They are really private about what they are doing. I wonder if they are protecting their business development or whatís the reason. Membertou seems to be more forthcoming with their information.
Do you think there is a way to solve that? Create a network where that information can be shared?
One of my recommendations in More than Wind is that we need to have these energy forums, to bring our communities in with industry, government and education. You need to go Atlantic wide at the minimum. If you were just to focus on Nova Scotia, there are only 13 communities. If you went Atlantic wide, youíd get 36 communities. It just had more impact, more bang for the buck. I think youíd get more interest from industry if you do that.
Do you think this is a good way to solve not only the energy issue, but as you mentioned, the education issue, and itís an economic issues?
Itís getting people to think of it that way, though. Getting a community to understand if you save money in energy costs, it means you keep that money. Youíll get comments that the challenge is that people are on social assistance and not paying their own energy bills. If youíre not even seeing your electricity bill, you have no concept of what itís costing. How do you get people aware? You do it through education or some kind of incentive program, contests, profiling people who save the most energy. Think about how those savings over 20 years might pay for a renewable energy project. Think about the payback period.
How do you think First Nations might set an example to other small communities that might want to develop their own energy projects?
I donít think thereís a difference between small rural communities and First Nations communities. They are all the same. The municipalities might be more ahead in their thinking because they have more opportunities to work with incentives. Some of these small communities think ĎHow can we get organized? What can we do.í One of the things communities really have to think about are community-owned projects. Itís an investment in the long term. But then communities think they are too poor. But individual community members may have money and maybe they are interested in investing.
Is there a fear of change that holds communities back?
I donít think itís that. Itís that the leadership in the communities is so caught up in just that day-to-day demand. One of the things you see about the success of Millbrook and Membertou, is that they are thinking ahead. They built relationships with banks. They formed partnerships. And theyíve got strategic plans and community plans. If you have a community focused on day-to-day survival, you donít have time. Thereís only so much that one person can do and thereís so much need for people to advise the community.
If you had a final message to get out to First Nations, industry and even students, what would you say to them?
For students, demand to be more involved in industry venues and these different kinds of industry forums. Not just renewable energy. There is so much going on an itís probably that weíre not organized enough with the education officers to say we should be pushing for these kinds of opportunities for the kids to connect.
If industry was looking for a way to get stronger partnerships or opportunity to work with First Nations, support energy forums or conferences. I am sure they would.
For First Nations, just keep demanding information because the information is so critical. For someone to take information that is all over the place and compile it into one document has been so helpful, so support thatís what required. Whenever I present I always get a favourable reaction. People always say to me, ďThis is exactly what we need.Ē | <urn:uuid:2e10dd38-9201-4656-8f66-5bcda6906f52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocean-resources.com/articles.asp?articleid=699 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978068 | 1,380 | 2.328125 | 2 |
||Our department is responsible for analyses of "Food for Special Dietary
Uses" collected for examination of its food components and analyses
required to proceed with approval of its labeling under the Health Promotion
Law, investigation on the concepts of food labeling, and research on nutritional
and physiological evaluation of food components in foods with health claims.
Futrthermore, information on foods that addresses the increased health
consciousness among people are collected, and impact of labeling of these
food on one's health are investigated, so as to eliminate anxiety surrounding
health foods among consumers. In addition, we attempt to search food components
effective to reduce risk of lifestyle-related diseases.
- Section of Food Component Analysis
This section undertakes analyses of "Food for Special Dietary Uses"
collected for examination, those required to proceed with approval of its
labeling, those of foods with nutritional labeling using GC and HPLC, so
as to confirm that the nutrients and foods components are included as labeled.
- Section of Food and Nutrition Labeling
This section undertakes basic research to evaluate physiological function
of specific nutrient in foods and its labeling. In particular, we work
on nutritional and physiological research, focusing on micronutrients (e.g.
vitamin A, vitamin D), so as to explore possible new application for health
promotion of people.
- Section of Food Function
This section works on research on effectiveness and safety of functional
foods. In particular, our focus is on health effects assessment of the
components of health foods and also on combited effects of foods with certain | <urn:uuid:5ccd8311-b44b-40dd-acee-50b884f1673b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www0.nih.go.jp/eiken/english/research/program_function.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932528 | 330 | 2.40625 | 2 |
A problem of perception
IT was the worst massacre in Quetta in over a decade and even in such a city, stalked by death and haunted by terror, it marks a new standard.
This past Muharram, while the mourning rites of the month were commemorated on city streets, bombers struck five times, killing around 50 people and injuring hundreds. The days after were hardly peaceful, two and three killed every day or so, a deadly bombing in Mastung killing several pilgrims on December 30 — everything led up to January 10, when five more bomb blasts left over a hundred dead, mainly of the Hazara community, their burials delayed by stunned mourners with no recourse.
It is this question of recourse that is the difficult one. In the days since the Quetta massacre, a robust dose of analysis has emerged. The failed state, the largely apathetic population, the military and the frightened followers of other groups have all been apportioned doses of blame. These are the local coordinates of the problem: how the rhetoric of sectarianism managed to penetrate a country and divide into death and silence.
But carnage and killing have never just been a local issue; the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the annihilation of other similarly situated minorities in other parts of the world has, at least in numerous if not all cases, the attention of the world. In turn, international attention has galvanised local actors, made leaders shameful and produced some small succour for the suffering.
In the case of the killings of Shia Muslims in Pakistan, which according to news reports number over 600 in 2012 alone, the lack of international attention points to the issue of framing the deaths as a sectarian versus a human rights issue.
Within Pakistan, the targeted killings of Shia people are largely framed within the public sphere as an issue of anti-extremism. According to this framing, the killing is wrong based on loosely identified principles of national unity, constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and a vague but repeatedly avowed history of religious tolerance based on a peaceful interpretation of Islam.
All of this goes up against a vitriolic and violent set of religious edicts propagated in a variety of religious seminaries and mosques that have penetrated Pakistan’s side streets, slum alleys and snazzy suburbs alike. Within the Shia community, the efforts to stop the killings are framed within a religeo-theological framework, with the intent of mobilising Shia from all around Pakistan to defend those such as the Hazara that are directly facing the onslaught of violence.
The problem is that they have failed, as a whole, to create enough of an imperative for the non-Shia Pakistani — who may or may not ascribe to the virulent ideology — to do anything to stop the violence or even vociferously condemn it with mass mobilisation or action, barring the recent mass protests over the weekend.
In the international realm, the problem does not belong to Pakistan alone. The categorisation of Shia-Sunni violence resulting from a theological schism hundreds of years ago is something that appears more inaccessible to human rights activists as compared to other human rights conflicts, be they between two religious groups, a dictatorial government against an unarmed population or small tribes fighting international corporations. The origins of the Shia-Sunni schism, the details of the theological interpretations, the groups and subgroups, all represent vexing complexities that can’t easily be reduced to the black and white moral dimensions that underpin human rights advocacy.
Another reason, perhaps, is the long-standing scepticism among secular human rights activists of meddling in intra-theological debates. Since the centrality of human rights discourse is based on the core dignity of the individual human, how then to deal with the theological complications of right and wrong that are based primarily on religious belief?
A third conundrum stems from the detritus of ‘Islamophobia’ littered all over the world in the aftermath of a long decade of war. Through this lens, the internal problems of Muslims should be the prerogative of Muslims themselves. This goes up against simple bad timing; in the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan the dominant thrust of human rights advocacy is focusing on the withdrawal of foreign forces from Muslim countries. Given this, advocating international action against Muslims seems like a project too meddlesome, messy and close to asking for precisely the sort of intervention that has turned out so terribly.
In post-invasion Iraq, it was the Sunni-Shia schism that exposed the ghastly mistakes of the American nation-building project and marked various projects of awakenings and revivals that again perpetuated human rights abuses. The cumulative effect on human rights advocacy groups has been to leave them less likely to prioritise anti-Shia violence as a human rights issue worthy of the world’s attention.
The consequence of all this is, of course, most tragic for the Shia community in Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan. With local actors, political or military, largely untouched by the violence unleashed on groups such as the Hazara or even Shia Muslims at large, there is little motivation to act — with even untouched Shias perhaps understating their identity on the basis of self-interest and fear.
When you add to this the absence of apolitical advocacy on anti-Shia violence that is locally relevant to the ordinary Pakistani, the result is a hopelessness that seems insurmountable despite the alarming escalation in violence. The final nail in the coffins of the Shia who have died is the curse of poor timing and complex dynamics which have prevented the framing of anti-Shia violence on the international level as a human rights issue, leaving it to languish as an internal problem between Muslims and affecting Muslims but unlikely to ever be solved by Muslims.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. | <urn:uuid:8ca8de57-e1c5-42d9-9a1b-ca13a5991e3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dawn.com/2013/01/16/a-problem-of-perception/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=58b9d80e03 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953367 | 1,193 | 2.078125 | 2 |
With a vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of nonmember state status for “Palestine” on Thursday.
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has pointed out that the UNGA does not actually have the ability to recognize states, which is a power vested only in the UN Security Council, which rejected the PLO’s effort for upgrade last year.
So regardless of the UNGA vote, Palestine will still not be a state.
In fact, “The UN General Assembly does not have the power or the authority to establish states. Any such General Assembly resolution upgrading the Palestinian delegation would be no different from any other non-binding, recommendatory resolution of the General Assembly, and would have no legally binding status.”
Of course it does give them something. It will allow the Palestinian delegation to sit in the General Assembly hall, between Panama and Pakistan.
The following countries voted against the nonmember status change:
- Czech Republic
- Marshall Islands
- United States
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You must log in to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:77aa2ea6-af15-4fde-ab97-b7cfcd745bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/un-general-assembly-votes-in-favor-of-palestine/2012/11/30/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941888 | 282 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Mon February 11, 2013
Pope's Resignation Redefines Papacy, Spurs Talk Of 'Global South' Successor
Originally published on Mon February 11, 2013 5:58 pm
A worldwide Catholic conversation that many church-watchers say effectively stopped when Benedict XVI was elected pope eight years ago has been rekindled by his announced plan to resign at month's end.
Celibacy. Women's roles. Same-sex marriage. Clergy sexual abuse revelations.
And, perhaps most significantly, the spectacular growth of the church in the more religiously conservative "global south" — Latin America, Africa and Asia — while its fortunes continue to decline in the increasingly secular West.
"It's the Catholic Church's 'Obama moment,' if you will," says David Gibson, who has covered the Vatican since the 1980s and is author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World.
The historically Europe-centered church is shifting to one of the Southern Hemisphere, says Gibson, an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, whose work has appeared in publications ranging from Fortune to the Religion News Service. "By choosing a brown pope, as it were, they would send a real message, a remarkable statement to the wider church."
That the end of the current pope's reign would come with predictions of the possibility of dramatic change is not surprising to papal historians like Roger Collins, author of Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy.
"Benedict XVI was clearly a transitional choice by a conclave of cardinals that did not know in what new direction it ought to go," says Collins, an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh.
'Moment For A Transition'
The German pope, born Joseph Ratzinger, was in many ways seen as providing an extension of sorts to Pope John Paul II's rule. Ratzinger was, after all, Collins notes, his Polish predecessor's executive, "or 'enforcer.' "
"Choosing him postponed making more radical choices, or even a divisive election between opposing forces in the College of Cardinals," Collins says. "This coming conclave will be a very important one, in that the decisions postponed in 2005 will now have to be made."
And it presents the church a historic opportunity to appoint a different kind of pope, says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one who might not be a European and who might represent a demographic that's a "growth area for the church."
More than 28 percent of the world's 1.19 billion Catholics now reside in South America; and more than 15 percent live in Africa. Asians still represent just under 11 percent of worldwide Catholics but are the church's second-fastest-growing demographic, trailing only Africa.
By contrast, just over 7 percent of Catholics call North America home, while nearly 24 percent of Catholics live in Europe, though their percentage is falling.
Pope Benedict XVI may well have recognized, says Green, that this could be an "opportune moment for a transition," a transition that he stands to have "some kind of influence over," although the current pope will not participate in deliberations on his successor.
"This moment presents a really interesting dynamic of increasing ethnic diversity and theological disputes in the Catholic Church," he says. "Many Christians, including Catholics, from the global south are very conservative, but when it comes to economic issues, they are much more progressive, much more liberal."
"I wouldn't know how it's going to resolve itself," he says.
The church also faced competition in Latin America from Pentecostal churches, and in Africa from the Muslim faith.
Change, or Status Quo?
The prospect, if not promise, of change and more open discussions with a new pope is one welcomed by Catholics like Dennis Coday, editor of the National Catholic Reporter.
"The next pope needs to address these issues, which aren't just American issues," says Coday, adding that under Benedict XVI, "all discussion has been shut down."
"We're saying that it cannot be a closed discussion anymore — and it's not just our paper saying that," he said.
He notes that priests have been removed from the ministry because they support the ordination of women, and some women have been excommunicated for the same, he said.
The pope has clashed with Catholic nuns he accused of straying from the church's teachings; and American bishops have become aggressively involved in political efforts to block the legalization of same-sex marriage.
There have been some signals, Coday says, that a handful of church leaders, including the conservative Christoph Schonborn of Austria, have already begun seeking routes to deal with dissent short of confrontation and removal of priests who publicly question church teaching.
In 2012, Schonborn, for example, did not remove dissident priests who vocally supported a priests' "Call to Disobedience" on issues including the church positions on homosexuality and female priests. The priests, however, were barred from serving as heads of local deaneries.
And that may be a model going forward; maintain conservatism, work on style.
A Non-European Pope?
No one expects the church, or the new pope, to change position on dogma, to ordain women as priests, for example, Gibson says.
But cultivating a conversation, and looking to focus on an issue like social justice that unites Catholics, and resonates particularly in countries of the global south, and being more open to the participation of lay men and women in certain forms of ministry could temper criticism the church has faced on cultural issues in the U.S. and Europe.
"This is also a stylistic question," says Gibson. "People send powerful messages without changing policies."
Green, of Pew, says that the magnitude of the world's demographic change is so large that it can't be ignored by any religion.
"All religious institutions have to change with the world," he says. "How do they maintain their traditions and still adapt? It's tough."
Catholics, and their new pope, will struggle with a divided reality. Social issues including same-sex marriage, as well as the ordination of women, are important to church members in the Western World. And, just to note, the U.S. and Germany are the top two donors to the Vatican, and supply the majority of funding for the Holy See, Green says.
But in the church's growth areas, in South America, Asia and Africa, Catholics are more conservative on those cultural issues, although church-watchers say they face a severe priest shortage that suggests they are more open to a lifting of celibacy rules for priests.
Benedict XIV's Legacy
Though seen largely as a conservative enforcer of the status quo, the outgoing pope, in resigning while of sound mind and body, leaves an enormous legacy.
It will be Joseph Ratzinger, historians say, who will be viewed as the person who changed forever the role, and the mystery, of pope.
"His abdication is a game changer," says Collins, of the University of Edinburgh.
Says Eamon Duffy, author of Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes, in emailed comments: "Benedict has liberated his successors to think of their election as a fixed term appointment, and he has liberated the Cardinal electors, with the realization that the Church is not necessarily stuck with their choice 'til death do us part."
"It is a major step," Duffy said, "to reintegrating the papacy into a working ecclesiology, in which a pope's competence is something which even loyal Catholics are entitled to discuss."
A game changer, a real legacy, a redefinition of the papacy, Green says, noting that when Pope John Paul II was asked if he should resign he responded that Christ himself did not come down from the cross.
"This pope has opened the door for future popes to see this as an office, rather than a cult," he says. "And given that Joseph Ratzinger has done it, it's difficult for his conservative fans to dispute it." | <urn:uuid:4a7f68f9-5a91-4a19-af5e-18d8df94748f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://upr.org/post/popes-resignation-redefines-papacy-spurs-talk-global-south-successor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973012 | 1,688 | 2.015625 | 2 |
In theory, the continuing care retirement community, or C.C.R.C., makes great sense: build different types of senior housing on a single campus, or even in a single building, so that as residents need more care, they can transfer within the facility — from independent living apartments to assisted living units to a nursing home — instead of being uprooted from familiar surroundings. More than a half-million older Americans find this an attractive idea and have moved into such a retirement community.
Yet ever since reporting a few years ago in an assisted living facility in Bethesda, Md., and hearing about a resident who pushed the wrong elevator button and then screamed in horror when the doors opened onto the nursing home floor, I have wondered how these transitions work in practice.
Tetyana Shippee, a research associate at the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University, chose an unorthodox way to learn more. Ms. Shippee, then 21, moved into a C.C.R.C. in a Midwestern town and, for two years, observed, ate with, got to know and interviewed its residents.
Ms. Shippee’s findings, recently published in The Gerontologist, show how elusive the aging-in-place ideal remains, even in a facility expressly set up to foster it.
People liked their independent living apartments just fine, Ms. Shippee discovered, but were often reluctant to move to assisted living when their health and mobility declined. “There was a certain level of stigma involved,” she said. It was not that the assisted living units and nursing home, with their separate dining room, were particularly far away; they were just a seven-minute walk from the independent living apartments. “Mostly,” she explained, “there are social boundaries.”
In Ms. Shippee’s facility, where introductory tours often bypassed the assisted living/nursing wing altogether, the health and vigor required for independent living had become an important source of status. To leave an independent living apartment meant not only losing one’s home and social network, but also a part of one’s identity. Friendships often did not survive the move; visits became more like duties or favors than part of reciprocal relationships. Small wonder, then, that Ms. Shippee observed anger, stress and a keen sense of loss when residents were faced with moving.
It is possibly different in other facilities. At least, said Steve Maag of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, a C.C.R.C. allows for the possibility of continuing social connections, so much harder to maintain across geographic distances. Mr. Maag pointed out, too, that C.C.R.C.’s were adapting to these unexpected social wrinkles, adding home care programs to accommodate residents who did not want to move.
But wasn’t the ability to move within the facility — with the assurance that as one needed more help one could remain socially connected — the whole point of selecting a continuing care community?
The prospect of an involuntary move led Sally Herriot, who cherished her cozy independent-living apartment in Palo Alto, Calif., to make a federal case of the issue — literally. Mrs. Herriot already employed private aides and had agreed to increase their hours, but in 2006, when C.C.R.C. administrators told her she would have to move into assisted living anyway, she filed suit in federal court and charged that forcing her to move was a violation of the Fair Housing Act. “It amounted to a loss of control, a lack of privacy and dignity,” her son Robert Herriot said.
A judge sympathized but ruled that state law permitted the C.C.R.C. to make such decisions. Mrs. Herriot, represented by AARP lawyers and by Relman & Dane, a civil rights firm in Washington, has appealed the verdict; meanwhile, Mrs. Herriot, 91 and very frail, remains in her apartment with her helpers.
Could C.C.R.C.’s improve the situation by promoting more interaction, with less physical and social separatism, among residents who require different levels of care?
“Independent living residents don’t like that,” Ms. Shippee pointed out. “They view themselves as healthy and active. If you try to integrate them with people in wheelchairs who have problems, they will object.”
In the dining room, she added, “they want to feel like they’re in a nice restaurant, conversing with friends; they don’t want to be faced with those in declining health.”
Mr. Herriot has heard of residents who have gone so far as to conceal their health problems, fearing that they will be the next ones moved.
So much for theory. Most C.C.R.C. residents who are told to move will comply, but having to leave a home is disruptive and distressing, it seems, whether you are moving 7 minutes or 70 miles away.
Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.” | <urn:uuid:66e48d20-1f33-4e5b-86a4-a55a894157c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/limited-mobility-of-another-sort/?apage=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973671 | 1,088 | 1.625 | 2 |
I have always found hardware specs pretty fascinating, so if you are like me, you will be very interested in this blog post. Based on some questions that developers have asked regarding differences between the BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha A and Dev Alpha B hardware and other questions about getting SIM cards, we wanted to put a post together to help clarify some of the hardware details.
As we mentioned before, these are prototype devices and not final BlackBerry 10 phones. They are exclusively for our BlackBerry developers so they can get their applications ready for launch. In fact, as of October 10th, the BlackBerry App World™ storefront is open for submissions for the launch device. Now, let’s see the hardware specs on these devices:
A fair bit of the details are the same, but there are obviously some differences that are important for developers. Moving from the OMAP 4460 to the OMAP 4470 has an impact on performance, in particular for graphics with the new SGX544 graphics chip. The next most important differences are in radio connectivity. Both devices have Quad Band HSPA/UMTS, but the 4 bands supported are slightly different. If you plan on getting a microSIM card for your Dev Alpha, check which bands are required for your carrier. For example, the Dev Alpha B is limited to EDGE on T-Mobile USA, while the Dev Alph A can get HSPA. Also, the Dev Alpha B has expanded Wi-Fi capabilities, with 5GHz frequency support for 802.11a\n.
There are some APIs that use connections to BlackBerry Infrastructure, such as BBM™ and Push. These APIs should work over Wi-Fi® without setting up any special ports, and you will be able to see the BlackBerry symbol in the homescreen titlebar, which indicates connectivity to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.
Should you decide to get a microSIM for your Dev Alpha, you do not need to have “BlackBerry Data” turned on for the account. Connectivity will work with regular Internet access alone. There may be some carriers where data connectivity doesn’t work, but Wi-Fi will work for you in that case. Please note that this is the case just for the Dev Alpha device and not BlackBerry 10 launch devices, which will need to have BlackBerry data on the wireless plan.
I hope that answers many of your questions and gets you even more interested in doing some development for BlackBerry 10. If you have further questions, post a comment below or in the forums, or tweet to us @BlackBerryDev. Remember, these Dev Alpha devices are not final BlackBerry 10 hardware; they are your opportunity to build BlackBerry 10 applications before the devices launch. Developers who get their applications in before the deadline will earn an upgrade to a special BlackBerry 10 device. | <urn:uuid:6d1429a0-ff2d-4fec-a500-d43cd1ebe2bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/10/blackberry-10-dev-alpha-a-b-specs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930829 | 563 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The M1 Carbine was developed to provide better protection to service troops than standard issue pistols, when caught under surprise attack during envelopment movements by enemy forces.
The Carbine filled a need for a weapon heavier than a pistol, but lighter than a rifle for issue to company-grade officers and NCOs. The Carbine proved to be such an effective light weight weapon that it was also carried for protection by heavy and light weapons teams. All models used a .30 cal. Carbine cartridge in 15-round and 30-round magazines.
- M1 could be fired only as a semi-automatic.
- M1A1 was also a semi-automatic, but featured a folding metal buttstock, an excellent light weight weapon for use by paratroops.
- M2 was selectible for either semi- or fully-automatic fire.
- M3 had a specially modified grooved receiver for mounting an infrared 4X "Snooper Scope" sniperscope.
Information on this page courtesy of U.S. Army TACOM-Rock Island.
Copyright 2009, by Acepilots.com. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:25aab106-d0e5-4de1-b70b-656a7a796a63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://acepilots.com/ww2/m1-carbine.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946243 | 237 | 2.421875 | 2 |
Fastest Land Animals in the World - So far, we know the cheetah is also known as the most efficient predators on the planet. Only the chase and pounce on prey, only when the prey is within range. This animal is quite smart with its ability to detect the weakest animals. He dropped the victim not to pounce like a lion or tiger. But the small touches in the hind legs of victims who are running hard. when the victim fell, the cheetah then pounced victim’s neck and then subsequently gripped until loss of blood. But do you know the cheetah is also the fastest land animal in the World? Here are the list of top 5 Fastest Land Animals in the World, its very intereting to know.
Fastest Land Animals in the World:
#1. Cheetah 70 mph (113 km per hour)
This animal is universally known for its exceptional speed is capable of speeds ranging between 110 and 120 km / h, by far the highest ever among land animals. However, the animal is able to maintain such prodigious speed only for short distances, since it is not very durable.
In addition to the speed, the cheetah is phenomenal even in the first step: it can reach 100 km / h from standstill in about three seconds, a time for even the most enviable supercar. The record is clocked speed of 115.2 km / h, recorded on a sample that had traveled 640 meters in 20 seconds
#2. Pronghorn Antelope 61mph (98 km per hour)
The pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) is the only surviving species of the family Antilocapridae. It is the world’s fastest land animal after the cheetah: it can reach and exceed, if launched, the 100 kilometers per hour, and is exceeded only by the cat over short distances. Despite its name, it is not an antelope but a close relative of the sheep. The horns are composed of a woolly substance that grows around a bone base, the outer part is repaid annually.
#3. Wildebeest 50 mph (80 km per hour)
They can run up to 80 km / h to avoid predators. Already in defending the young, as instinct, the mother wildebeest, in anger, is capable of facing cheetahs, hyenas and even lions with their horns and kicking.
#4. Lion 50 mph (80 km per hour)
Despite the heavy weight, the lion is an animal, exceptionally agile can climb trees, swim, jump into the void, rushing with great speed (when it is launched, reaches 75 km / h on flat ground and covers one hundred feet in four seconds) stand out, and incredible leaps, up to twelve feet in length and three in height.
#5. Thomson’s Gazelle 50 mph (80 km per hour)
Thomson’s gazelles are often preyed upon by big cats and hyenas, also, in some areas, they appear to be the preferred prey of cheetahs. The cheetah, in particular, is indeed faster than the Thomson’s gazelle, but the latter appears to have increased resistance in the race and is also able to change direction more quickly. The presence of numerous predators means that, on average, about half of the fawns will die before reaching adulthood. These are the list of top 5 Fastest Land Animals in the World, its very intereting to know.
Categories : Animal Facts, Fastest Land Animals in the World, Top 5 Fastest Land Animals | <urn:uuid:bad5aaad-3e7c-4560-86ac-57deea179c9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://uniqueinterestingfacts.com/fastest-land-animals-in-the-world | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942558 | 756 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Why does the Doctor celebrate Christmas?
Why not Hanukkah, or kwanza or some Gallifreyan holiday?
Canon answer if possible, not just: the BBC celebrates it, thats why.
I don't think the Doctor celebrates Christmas exclusively, though granted, his appearances in film do seem centered around the Christmas holiday. The Doctor celebrates celebrations. His is a life of challenge and strife and with the TARDIS he does not have to deal with the dreariness of Mondays or Tuesdays, he can have every day belong to any particular festivity he wants.
The Doctor spends a lot of time at parties because they bring out the very best (and sometimes) the very worst in people. But both of those things are what the Doctor is interested in, not the holiday in and of itself. The Doctor's interests lie in people, no matter what their shape, form, religion or celebration. Think of how often we see the Doctor attending parties even when he doesn't have a gift. In "The End of the World", he offers "air from his lungs" as his gift for the celebration. No one bats an eye. You try that at Christmas...
We see the Doctor taking River Song to a variety of parties and festivals during their "dates" while she was in prison. I can see the Doctor at a bar or bat mitzvah, just as easily, and I suspect weddings are his favorite events, but other festive events are likely to be equally satisfying.
There have been Gallifreyan holidays he has celebrated in the written Doctor Who stories such as the Feast of Omega, celebrating one of the very first Time Lords. (PROSE: Happy Endings)
The Doctor himself does not celebrate Christmas. The focus on Christmas in post-Time-War Doctor's life is a result of several factors: | <urn:uuid:4b3bd071-9bb3-4ffc-82e0-ba63cf147e35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/28469/why-does-the-doctor-celebrate-christmas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974545 | 379 | 2.375 | 2 |
There is some confusion around the role that ISPs play regarding interactive or online gambling services. This is mainly as a result of a press release issued by the Gauteng Gambling Board (GGB) in which it claimed that it would pursue ISPs acting unlawfully to facilitate the provision of illegal interactive gambling services.
The press release came in the wake of the the decision of the North Gauteng High Court in the matter of Casino Enterprises (Pty) Limited (Swaziland) v Gauteng Gambling Board and Others (“the Piggs Peak judgment”) handed down on 20 August 2010, and notes the following expressed therein:
- The Piggs Peak judgment confirms that persons, entities or organisations, including ISPs, that facilitate the provision of on-line gambling are acting unlawfully.
- That ISPs that are aware that the content traversing their networks was illegal and they continued to allow this activity may be deemed to be involved in an illegal activity.
A review of the Piggs Peak judgment does not, however, reveal any basis for these statements (and it should be noted that the judgement itself has been taken in appeal).
There are two potential areas of overlap between the services provided by Internet access providers and the mandate of the Goverment in the form of the National and Provincial Gambling Boards to prevent and prosecute illegal gambling where it occurs in South Africa:
- Where an ISP provides services to users of an illegal interactive gambling service: here the ISP is not permitted to invade the privacy of its customers unless specifically authorised to do so nor is it permitted to monitor and/or intercept the electronic communications of its clients other than where explicitly permitted to do so under Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act of 2002. Further an ISP is not obliged to monitor traffic on its network as provided for in section 78 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002; and
- Where an ISP provides services to the provider of an illegal interactive gambling service and is aware of the illegal nature of the service then it may be seen to be facilitating or acting as an accessory to the provision of illegal interactive gambling services. | <urn:uuid:4d55293e-72df-4db5-8ef3-3b16597f5400> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ellipsis.co.za/isp-issues/online-gambling/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952924 | 434 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Four consecutive cards, such as 5-6-7-8, which allows for the player to complete a Straight by receiving a card on either end of his/her current Hand (in this case, either a 4 or a 9 is needed to complete the Straight).
a draw that could be completed on either end of the straight
Four consecutive cards to make a straight on the high end or low end.
holding a straight draw which can be made with 1 of 2 ranks eg holding 34 with 56 on board so that a 2 or a 7 will make the straight
This is a situation that arises when you have 4 cards to making a Straight and those four cards consecutively run. This means that the chances of making your Straight are fairly high in that you can draw a card to either side (high or low) of the run you hold.
A hand containing four consecutive ranks needing another card to make a straight. For example, a hand of 4-5-6-7 needs either a 3 or 8 to make a straight.
A straight draw with four consecutive cards that can be completed on either end. An example is 6/7/8/9, since a five or a 10 will make a straight.
A straight draw of four consecutive cards that can be completed at either end. Ie., a 4567 straight draw could be completed with a 3 or 8.
A straight that lacks one card but can be completed at either end. I.e. a hand of 9/10/J/Q can be completed either with an 8 or a King.
A four carded sequence that can be turned into a straight by cards of two different values. For instance, if you have 5-6 as your starting hand and the flop comes 4-7-J then either a 3 (3-4-5-6-7) or an 8 (4-5-6-7-8) will give you a straight.
Four consecutive cards requiring one at either end to make a straight
Four consecutive cards, such as 5-6-7-8, which allows the player to complete his straight with a card on either end (in this case, a 4 or a 9 would complete the straight). Compare this with an Inside Overcards: Cards that are higher than shown on the board. For example, in Hold 'em, if the flop came 4-6-9, and your hand was K-Q, you would be said to hold two overcards; there is a good chance that someone currently holds a Four, Six, or Nine, giving them a pair, but if the Turn or River brings a King or a Queen, your paired overcard might win the hand for you.
When a player needs either of two cards in order to make a straight, such as an 7-8-9-10.
Four cards in a row that the next card on either side of it will complete a straight for the player such as, 3,4,5,6, with this hand either a 2 or a 7 will complete the straight. Always be careful when you make the low end of the straight as this is also called the "Dumb" end.
Seeking one of two card values to make a straight. For instance, a player holding 9-8 with a board of 2-7-6 can make a straight with either a ten (6-7-8-9-T) or with a five (5-6-7-8-9). This is also known as an up-and-down straight draw.
Four sequential cards, where two different ranks of cards will complete the straight. Eg. Hole Cards: 9T Board Cards: 782 - Either a J or a 6 will complete the straight.
When a player needs has four cards in a row, and needs to hit a card at either side in order to make a straight. Also known as an up-and-down straight draw. | <urn:uuid:1f44a5bb-4d8f-4c78-8788-f717d0fa25ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metaglossary.com/meanings/1703295/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9638 | 815 | 2.375 | 2 |
Let’s say you are a proud African-American, you know of leaders including Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah and my namesake Jomo Kenyatta. So let’s have a pop quiz. How many leaders of present day African nations do you know? What do you know of how this person came to power? Was it through election, military coup or other violent means? What is the status of HIV and AIDS? For instance, what about the percentage of people between 16 and 60 who are living with HIV or AIDS? Is it on the increase or decrease? What is happening in terms of violence? We know that America is a very violent nation but is that also true of Gabon, Angola, Zimbabwe or Egypt?
Do you know that there are serious people who get paid to know these things and will swear that the presence of fewer than 500 terrorists in Mali poses an imminent threat to the United States and therefore we must intervene? Most people couldn’t find Mali on a map and yet it is the latest pawn in game of international politics.
How many African nations have American bases on their soil? If you are a free and independent nation, why is some foreign power using you as a launching pad for an enemy you don’t know and could care less about?
Africa is a vast and varied continent facing many difficult challenges. As we watch the Olympics, we can see the uneven bars and the balance beams and we ask ourselves, where are the African swimmers? We can marvel at the beauty and strength of Gabby Douglass yet also wish that there was a sister from Algeria on the podium with her.
Africa is not a museum to be worshiped and studied for its past glory. We can salute Lucy, the first ancestor, but we need to pay attention to her descendants in the Congo. I am speaking as one who once admired Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who has long outlived his usefulness as an African freedom fighter. It is time for a new generation of Africans to arise and they need the help of those of us in the Diaspora. Let us light the way for our brown brothers and sisters.
006/365: Looking to the Light (Photo credit: malik ml williams)
Tongues Untied (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I just finished watching Black Is…Black Ain’t a journey into Black identity by black filmmaker Marlon Riggs who died in 1994 as it was being completed. I loved Marlon as I would my brother and indeed he was born in 1957 when I was already 6 years old. I learned so much from Marlon through his movies about Blackness and inclusiveness it is impossible to imagine what I would have done without him. I recommend his movies Color Adjustment and Tongues Untied.
The movie is relentlessly honest in examining memory, sexism, homophobia, religion, masculinity and running fiercely. It asks questions we have asked of ourselves: are you black enough, what makes us black and can you be black in the suburbs while it forces you to confront the reality of Marlon’s death. His was a world of T-cells, losing weight, running aimless and naked through a forest and being interviewed while being confined to a hospital bed.
Marlon speaks of communion through the words of bell hooks, a noted African-American feminist author. This communion is not to flatten out our difference, but rather reclaims and celebrates those who were cast out because they did not fit an earlier vision of blackness. Bayard Rustin, a leading organizer of the March on Washington with Dr. King, was cast out because he was a gay male. The movie included several interviews with Black gays and lesbians in addition to commentaries about some of the hyper-masculinity in popular culture. The purpose was to make us conscious of our need to communicate with one another.
Blackness is not about having sex with as many women as possible, it is not about rejecting same-sex couples or excluding people because they have different beliefs about religion or even reject religion altogether. To me, Blackness is about the Louisiana gumbo that serves as a metaphor throughout the movie. It is about love, self-respect and continuing to strive for our personal goals in the light of how our values reflect upon our community.
I close with a line from the movie: If we must die on the frontlines, don’t let loneliness kill us. Rest in peace, Marlon, the dream continues.
Posted in AIDS, Black cinema, change process, remembrance, role models
Tagged AIDS, Black Ain't, Black gays and lesbians, Black history, Black is, Docmentary Filmmaking, Marlon Riggs | <urn:uuid:a423132e-4883-41af-91fe-e196883c2ba2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kenyatta2009.wordpress.com/category/aids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969949 | 970 | 2 | 2 |
While President Barack Obama cruised to victory on Tuesday (Nov. 6), winning or leading in every battleground state and besting Mitt Romney in the popular vote, the odds didn’t seem to be in the president’s favor when campaigning began, says Tulane political scientist Celeste Lay.
U.S. President Barack Obama walks on stage with first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia to deliver his victory speech on election night in Chicago. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“The narrative at the beginning was that this was a very beatable president,” says Lay
, an assistant professor of political science. “The variables were all against Obama. Attitudes about the economy, voters’ opinions about whether the country is on the right-track, had all been in Romney’s favor.”
Given those factors, Lay considers the Obama campaign “very successful” and one that will be “studied for years to come.” She says that campaign rallied a similar coalition of voters that led to Obama’s election in 2008 — the young, single women and racial minorities.
Lay says she was not surprised by Obama’s reelection because the polls in the battleground states were showing the president with a lead over the last month. However, she says her expectation of a second Obama term based on that polling data certainly was not shared universally.
“I think there were a lot of surprised conservatives,” Lay says. “I think a lot of people bought into this narrative that all these media pollsters are liberal and biased, and all the polls are wrong due to that bias.”
While the Electoral College votes show a fairly lopsided victory, Lay cautions against buying into any assertion that this is an indication of a mandate for the Obama administration.
“The polls indicate that people are frustrated about the gridlock,” Lay says. “So if there’s a mandate for anything, maybe it’s that Americans want more compromising and not an extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing policy trajectory. Exit polls show Americans evenly divided about many issues, including the appropriate role of government. People seem to want moderate, middle-of-the-road compromise from both sides.” | <urn:uuid:a6a0f3e9-f7bb-469e-a322-eb958610a799> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/110812_celeste_lay_on_election.cfm?RenderForPrint=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974107 | 478 | 1.664063 | 2 |
We host an Author’s Tea once a month. Teachers select two students in their classroom to come to the cafeteria and share something special that they have written with adult listeners. The whole purpose is for students to see themselves as authors and true writers! Writing is such a critical part of the learning process, and as a campus, we celebrate the writing that we do in the building. We invite district personnel to come and assist us with the adult listening piece. This is great because it allows many who are not on campuses routinely a good reason to come to the campus and be with students. We set the cafeteria up with 12 tables with 8 students each. We preset the table with a muffin and apple juice. We also give each student a certificate for attending. This is done when they come down and the adult listener just writes their name on the certificate. The whole thing takes about 20 minutes and the students love it and feel honored by having others listen to their writing. The hope is that every student will get a chance to share at an Author’s Tea. | <urn:uuid:492fdc60-015b-4a8c-97c5-7db1b5fb23d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laketravis.txed.net/Page/12959 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96962 | 216 | 1.898438 | 2 |
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- State Farm wants you to be alert this year so your Christmas is not ruined by a fire.
According to the insurance company, the possibility of a house catching on fire is higher during the winter months than any other time of year.
Some of that risk is increased because of holiday decorations including overloading outlets, leaving candles unattended, and having a dry Christmas tree.
State Farm officials say the best way to keep your home safe is to be aware.
"One-third of home fires are caused during the holiday months like December, January, and February. That's a good indication that there are a lot of distractions and we really have to be mindful of being really careful," said State Farm Spokeswoman Holly Anderson.
State Farm officials added that another holiday hazard is lighting up a fire in a fireplace without having it inspected or cleaned from the year before. | <urn:uuid:5c79437b-5563-488d-b861-821a0601d8c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cinewsnow.com/news/local/Holiday-fire-safety-184768781.html?vid=a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97551 | 184 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Students Spend Summer Doing Medical Research
Three Westlake High students do internships with Cleveland Clinic
Now here's a unique "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" story.
Three Westlake High School students spent theirs at the Cleveland Clinic doing research and writing reports that had them working alongside caregivers, physician-researchers and medical students. About 170 students from around the area got to participate.
Junior Deepak Kumar was in a radiology internship. His project was to research and create a single multidisciplinary database for patients with primary liver tumors from the three district liver tumor databases: Interventional Radiology, Liver Transplant and Hepatology/Mayo Clinic Database. The goal of the database is to compare outcomes among different treatments for primary liver tumor patients.
Junior Katelyn Routhier was in the nursing internship. She studied the impact of the addition of a vaccine patrol team to Fairview Hospital’s adult inpatients during a particular week on the number of pneumococcal vaccines administered. Her research showed that not all nurses were able to navigate the internal system to determine whether a patient needed the vaccination, and that vaccines done elsewhere are often not documented because nurses are unable to spend the time to get the patient’s vaccination history.
Senior Wan Kwok participated in the science internship program at the Cleveland Clinic Spine Research Laboratory at Lutheran Hospital. She researched the effects of decompressive surgical procedures on the upper thoracic spine --T4-T5 -- to determine if stabilization using surgical hardware is necessary following decompressive procedures.
Their program was part of the Cleveland Clinic Office of Civic Education Initiatives Summer Internship Program. | <urn:uuid:343ca768-5beb-4fac-9446-8af40eaf78c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westlake.patch.com/articles/students-spend-summer-doing-medical-research | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929931 | 340 | 2.125 | 2 |
For years, scientists and medical professionals have been searching for the holy grail that is personalized medicine. Here, at the American Biotechnologist, we too have been enamored by the concept and have written many articles in its support, (see for example Genomes, Phenomes and Personalized Medicine and Andrew Hessel is a Seer…Personalized Medicine is Very Near). Yet, although many personalized medicine crusaders have gone to war, few battles have been won.
In an unfortunate turn of events, a recent publication out of Harvard University has found that a person’s genetic profile is a very poor predictor of disease and of little use in clinical practice. The study looked at genetic variations associated with breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis and found that knowledge of these variations only resulted in a 1-3% increase in risk prediction sensitivity. Hardly anything to get excited about.
Does this mean the end to personalized medicine? Of course not! However, it does mean that readers should be skeptical when hearing stories about the great predictive powers of genomic information and need to make sure to keep their scientific glasses on in order to avoid getting swept up by the excitement.
For more information see Knowing genetic makeup may not significantly improve disease risk prediction.
Aschard, H., Chen, J., Cornelis, M., Chibnik, L., Karlson, E., & Kraft, P. (2012). Inclusion of Gene-Gene and Gene-Environment Interactions Unlikely to Dramatically Improve Risk Prediction for Complex Diseases The American Journal of Human Genetics DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2012.04.017 | <urn:uuid:681e5e55-8ab4-40e2-8418-b71f5b4681ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanbiotechnologist.com/blog/empty-personalized-medicine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924102 | 339 | 2.4375 | 2 |
[ OP-ED COLUMN ]
Tragedies Will Continue Until We Act
Published: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 at 3:11 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 at 3:11 a.m.
Once again (and far too often) our nation is faced with a horrendous tragedy involving multiple deaths and a young male shooter with a troubled background. Some say there is no way to predict or prevent these tragedies. Who is the next Adam Lanza? We don't know. But what we do know is that devastating incidents such as the Sandy Hook shootings will continue at an alarming rate unless we do something.
There have been 70 school shootings since 1994 and there have been many more in other settings. Mass murder is becoming commonplace in the U.S., and Americans are becoming somewhat desensitized to its occurrence.
Although not entirely preventable, there are several steps that the nation and Florida could take to begin seriously addressing the problem, and begin preventing or reducing the number of tragedies that Americans face every day. Until we say "enough" and take action, we're heading in the wrong direction.
The following responses to these tragedies should be explored:
Provide for the wide-scale implementation of Mental Health First Aid programs. Mental Health First Aid is a groundbreaking public education program that helps the public identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance-use disorders.
Establish school-based mental health screening programs to improve the identification of children with mental disorders or emotional issues, and encourage their referral for treatment.
Establish a process for school officials, students and the public to report to appropriate school, mental health and law-enforcement authorities an individual involved in an incident that appears to be connected with mental illness, and represents a risk to the individual or others.
Expand security systems used by schools and security personnel stationed there.
Improve access to and substantially expand community-based mental health programs for children, adolescents and young adults with serious mental illness or emotional disturbances. Only one-third of those in need receive treatment.
Track whether individuals referred for treatment follow through.
Fully implement the mandatory outpatient-treatment program authorized in Florida Statute 394.4655, with appropriate levels of resources to ensure meaningful use by the courts.
Track individuals in treatment to determine compliance with mental health treatment plans. For noncompliant, at-risk individuals, make referrals to the involuntary outpatient placement treatment programs in their communities.
Ensure 100 percent criminal and mental health background screenings at all points of sale of guns in Florida.
It's not too early to have a purposeful dialogue and take positive steps in the 2013 Florida legislative session.
[ Bob Sharpe is the CEO and president of the Florida Council for Community Mental Health, Tallahassee. Phone: 850-224-6048. Email: BobSharpe@fccmh.org. ]
All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged. | <urn:uuid:71da1ad6-fef4-4211-b8c2-759c6484b5a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theledger.com/article/20130116/COLUMNISTS03/130119520/-1/news300?Title=Tragedies-Will-Continue-Until-We-Act | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936464 | 618 | 2.40625 | 2 |
Others recognized included officers from Congo Brazzaville, Kenya, Tanzania (posthumously) and Zambia. Countries including Congo Brazzaville, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Lusaka Agreement on Cooperative Enforcement operations Directed at Illegal Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora (LATF) set and observe the day.
The colorful awards gala held at the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Field Training School, Manyani in Voi, Taita Taveta County in Coastal province, was attended by representatives of regional governments including Uganda Wildlife Authority Chief Executive Dr. Andrew Seguya, and numerous Non Governmental organizations.
Uganda was represented by the minister for Tourism, Wildlife and Heritage Professor Ephraim Kamuntu who stood in for the President, Lusaka Agreement Governing Council Hon. Ezekiel Mayige who is also the Tanzanian minister for Natural Resources and Tourism. Kamuntu said Uganda is very serious at fighting wildlife crime, no wonder one of the recognized heroes came from Uganda.
At the same function, Kenya President Kibaki set ablaze 4.9 tons of raw and worked ivory.”Through burning of this ivory, we are sending a clear message to poachers and illegal traders in wildlife about our collective resolve to fight this crime in our region and beyond,” declared the Kenyan leader. | <urn:uuid:41b632f3-4939-4045-92ed-a4d7ce0b321d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ugandawildlife.org/news-a-updates-2/uwa-news/item/19-uwa-official-wins-prestigious-award | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934548 | 291 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Working backwards is a good strategy to use when you're told
how a situation ends up, and you're supposed to figure out
how it began. For example:
Q: Jim bought a bunch of grapes. He ate one half of the grapes. Then
his friend Gary ate one fourth of the remianing grapes. There were 6
grapes left. How many grapes were in the bunch to begin with?
A: Jim ends up with 6 grapes:
Just before that, Gary ate 1/4 of the number he had. If we divide the
6 grapes into pairs,
oo oo oo
we see that if we add another pair, then Gary ate two:
oo oo oo oo
\/__________ Gary ate these
Can you take the next step?
Here's an example of a problem that can be worked either forwards
(using algebra) or backwards (using arithmetic). It's interesting
to note which solution turns out to be simpler!
Q: Alice, Bonita, and Carmen have just finished playing three rounds
of a game. In each round there was only one loser. Alice lost the
first round. Bonita lost the second. Carmen lost the third. After
each round the loser was required to double the chips of each of
the other by giving away some of her own chips. After three rounds
each of the girls had 8 chips. How many chips did they have at the
A1: Let's say Alice, Bonita, and Carmen start out with A, B, and C chips
respectively. Now we can follow through the game and see what they
end up with.
First round: Alice loses, and gives Bonita and Carmen B and C chips
respectively, in order to double what each of them has by giving them
as much as they already have:
Alice: A - B - C
Bonita: B + B = 2B
Carmen: C + C = 2C
Second round: Bonita loses, and gives Alice (A - B - C) chips and
Carmen 2C chips:
Alice: (A - B - C) + (A - B - C) = 2A - 2B - 2C
Bonita: 2B - (A - B - C) - 2C = -A + 3B - C
Carmen: 2C + 2C = 4C
Now do the same with the third round, and you'll have three equations.
Since you know the resulting expressions are all equal to 8, solve
those equations, and you'll know what they started with.
A2: You know what happens at each step, and you know how things ended up.
So let's just work backwards. At the end:
A has 8
B has 8
C has 8
Before the third round, when A and B were doubled and C lost what A
and B gained:
A had 8 / 2 = 4
B had 8 / 2 = 4
C had 8 + 4 + 4 = 16
Before the second round, when A and C were doubled and B lost what A
and C gained:
A had 4 / 2 = 2
C had 16 / 2 = 8
B had 4 + 2 + 8 = 14
Go back one more round and you're done! | <urn:uuid:2ea3aa89-a00a-4f27-89a7-9d57ba37bf22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mathforum.org/dr.math/vmt/unstuck/backwards.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968302 | 703 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Vapor Recovery - Bulk Terminals
This page last reviewed January 12, 2012
Posted December 12, 2011
- You can now check the status of your certfication application, please click the certification status link in the Program Links.
The definition of a bulk terminal is; "a primary distribution facility for the loading of cargo tanks that deliver gasoline to bulk plants, service stations and other distribution points; and
where delivery to the facility storage tanks is by other than by cargo tank."
To provide further clarification, a bulk terminal receives fuel by pipeline, railcar or marine barge and may have either fixed or floating roof aboveground storage tanks.
The ARB is currently revising the executive order for bulk terminals.
For further information or questions please contact Basharat Iqbal by email or by phone at (918) 322-7582. Additionally, you may contact Angus MacPherson by email or by phone at (916) 445-4686.
The ARB has contacted local air pollution control districts or air quality management districts to gather information about active bulk terminals. This information will be used to update the executive order. | <urn:uuid:c223059a-3fae-4b0d-851f-1cef86a111f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arb.ca.gov/vapor/bterminals/bterminals.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.905612 | 234 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Week 1: February 26, 2012, 1st Sunday in Lent
"The Last Supper"
Lent is a time of change. It's a time to examine our lives and be honest about the ways we need to change. Are we living our lives for God? Rev. Dr. Ray McGee examines the Last Supper, also known as communion. He reminds us that God's love and forgiveness is open to everyone. Jesus died for all.
Week 2: March 4, 2012
"The Pain of It All"
The pain of crucifixion was a terrible pain, but Rev. Dr. Ray McGee examines the emotional pain Jesus experienced in the last 24 hours before his death. Peter denied knowing Jesus 3 times the night Jesus was arrested. The next time they met, after Jesus' resurrection, Jesus asked Peter, "Peter, do you love me?" God could ask each of us the same. Do you love God? Are we afraid to tell others that we know him? We too, like Peter, deny God with our actions. Pastor Ray encourages us to stop denying God and with courage and strength live lives that demonstrate that we know our Savior.
Week 3: March 11, 2012
"Condemned from Within"
Why are people afraid? Often as believers, we are scared to take the next step towards where God is leading us. Don't miss the opportunity to change and move forward. If we resist the way God is leading us, we condemn ourselves from within with our thoughts and our hearts.
Week 4: March 18, 2012
"The Choices We Make"
One decision can radically change a life. Rev. Dr. Ray McGee invites us to consult God in the decisions of our lives.
Week 5: March 25, 2012
"Disdain for the King"
Week 6: April 1, 2012, Palm Sunday
"Let Him Enter" | <urn:uuid:eeecf72d-6e72-46f0-b256-0230a45cfc03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metroumc.org/lenten-sermon-series-2012 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00047-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960936 | 386 | 1.796875 | 2 |
According to the National Hydrometeorology Department of the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, currently, water richness holds 80-220% of decade norm in Guba-Khachmaz region rivers of Major Caucasus, 80-160% in Minor Caucasus rivers, 40-200% in Lankaran-Astara region rivers, while 50% in the rivers of Nakhichevan AR.
On January 21, no change of water level has been observed in Giragkesemen settlement of Kura river. Currently water consumption holds 132 m³/sec in the settlement, i.e 84% of decade norm (in 2012, 136 m³/sec, i.e 87% of decade norm).
On January 18, there was not any change of water level in Ayrichay settlement of Qanikh river. At present, water consumption holds 60 m³/sec, i.e 90% of decade norm. (in 2012, 66 m³/sec, i.e 99% of decade norm).
In this regard, from January 18, 6cm increase of water level has been issued in Surra settlement of Kura river, 8cm in Shirvan, 9cm in Banka, 16cm in Salyan along with 10 cm decrease in Novruzlu settlement of Aras river.
Stable water richness is observed notwithstanding the level rise. At present, water level holds 456cm (on January 21, 2012, 541cm) in Surra settlement, 335cm (on January 21, 2012, 424cm ) in Shirvan, 286cm (on January 21, 2012, 395cm) in Salyan, 252cm (on January 21, 2012, 301cm) in Banka, while 188 cm (on January 21, 2012, 288cm) in Novruzlu settlement of Aras river. | <urn:uuid:22bf735b-1a04-443c-96ab-50b1af7ed505> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.today.az/news/society/117958.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934875 | 384 | 2.453125 | 2 |
Relay for Life raises awareness and funds
The annual Relay for Life at Northern Arizona University kicked off on April 21 with attendance by more than 1,200 people and ultimately raising over $63,000. From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the following morning, the event dominated the Walkup Skydome and drew participants from throughout the state.
Relay for Life, as described by executive director Caitlyn Thede, is a 12-hour event sponsored by the American Cancer Society in order to draw awareness to the constant presence of cancer, research and the need for a cure.
“It’s an overnight event fundraiser for the American Cancer Society,” Thede said. “Basically, the idea is that cancer never sleeps so neither will we.”
According to Thede, this year’s monetary goal was $58,000. Not only did the event surpass this figure, but it also raised more than the past two years, both which accumulated more than $56,000. NAU relay teams also succeeded in raising more money than ASU and UA.
“We increased our fund raising amount by a lot, we increased our team number by a lot, we increased our participant number by a lot,” Thede said. “On participant satisfaction, we are still actually surveying people about it, but it sounded like everyone was pretty happy with it. We’ve been making some improvements from the past few years.”
The success of the event was reflected both in the amount fundraised and the reaction of participants. The committee surveys random attendees of the event and, according to Thede, the results have been positive.
“Everyone seemed very happy; everyone we talked with,” Thede said. “Every single team that was there. Nobody had a bad thing to say, so it seemed like it went pretty well.”
Mandy Montgomery, freshman secondary education mathematics major, volunteered with this years Relay for Life committee. Overall, Montgomery also felt that the experience was positive.
“This is actually the first Relay for Life I’ve ever attended,” Montgomery said. “They’ve definitely exceeded my expectations far more than I ever could have imagined.”
Many Relay participants have a very personal and emotional stake in the event. The Luminaria ceremony, which involved the lighting of candles and glow sticks in remembrance of those who have died of cancer in addition to supporting those whose struggle is ongoing, gave participants the opportunity to display how cancer has impacted their lives. Hundreds of participants circled around the track to show support for those affected including parents, siblings, extended family and friends.
Montgomery, who was involved with a Relay team in addition to holding a position on the committee, described her own personal connection to the issue of cancer awareness before the Luminaria began.
“I have had a few grandparents pass away because of cancer,” Montgomery said. “Right now my sister is alive because of the development that they (American Cancer Society) have had with cancer. I really don’t think that she would be here if it weren’t for things like this that were going on.”
Rachel Booth, sophomore international hospitality major and Sechrist Hall’s Relay team leader, described her personal connection to the event.
“Recently my grandmother, Karen Morrison, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” Booth said. “So I just want to help people who are just like her not only with health, but also with money too. I wasn’t doing it just for my grandma, I was also doing it for people like her.”
Booth went on to describe the emotion of the event, particularly the Survivor Walk, which celebrates those who have been successful in their struggle with cancer.
“The Survivor Walk was awesome to see because people have the courage to show that they went through a rough time and made it through,” Booth said.
Relay participants said they were very happy with the way the event turned out, including Montgomery, who “cannot wait to become more involved” in the next Relay “throughout the rest of her college experience.”
Booth enthusiastically voiced her satisfaction with the relay, as well.
“It was awesome to see diverse people coming together and raising money for one cause.” Booth said.The Relay participants are very happy with the way the event turned out, including Montgomery, who “can’t wait to be more involved” in the next Relay. Booth enthusiastically voiced her satisfaction with the relay, as well.
“It was awesome to see diverse people coming together and raising money for one cause.” Booth said. | <urn:uuid:99e441a6-18c0-4402-87d1-3a15543a2409> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://northernarizonanews.com/blog/2012/04/24/relay-for-life-raises-awareness-and-funds/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980216 | 997 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Alan Goodman is professor of biological anthropology at Hampshire College and co-editor of Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science Beyond the Cultural Divide and Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology. He is president-elect of the American Anthropological Association.
The billion or so of the world's people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.—Armand Leroi, The New York Times 3/14/05
Instead of obsessing about race, we could try to build a race-blind society. Instead of feeding the fires of neuroticism, we could start teaching people to forget about race, to move on. But to do that, first we must sideline the entire race relations industry - whose only function, it seems, is to make us all deeply anxious about 'race' - a concept they simultaneously believe has no objective reality.—Sean Thomas, Sunday Telegraph (London) 3/13/05
While Armand Leroi’s (2005) editorial in The New York Times proposes that race is everywhere as a shorthand for genetic variation, Sean Thomas’ (2005) essay in the Sunday Telegraph, published just a few hours earlier, advocates for forgetting about race, “to move on.”1 Leroi’s concept "with no great precision" harks back to a 19th century understanding of race as all-explaining and biologically based. Conversely, Thomas asserts that race has “no objective reality.” The problem is not so much that Leroi and Thomas have nearly diametrically opposed views on race. The problem is that they are both wrong.
In this essay, I propose that debates about race often ride upon two questions: “Is race a useful categorization to describe human biological variation?” and “Is race a useful categorization for tracking sociopolitical injustices?” Contra Leroi, I argue that race is no longer the right way to describe biological variation. Contra Thomas, I argue that race is not a mere social construct, but as a lived experience has devastatingly real effects.
As in the case of Leroi, many scientists in the US would probably answer the first question in the affirmative. In doing so, they conflate the idea of race with the reality of human geographic variation. Since Lewontin (1972), it has been clear that race fails to explain the vast majority of human genetic diversity. Moreover, processes such as evolution and cultural history better explain what is statistically left over to race. Armand Leroi’s conceptual error, one of racialization of diversity, has the potential to do harm, especially when coupled with a strong belief in the power of genetics. Moreover, with better explanations available, it is unnecessary to hammer away at questions regarding genetic diversity using the same blunt and dull instrument of race.
Thomas (2005) does not directly disagree with Leroi (2005) because he is presumably focused on the social reality of race, the second question. In suggesting that we ought to forget about race, Thomas makes two entirely different errors. First, he treats race as a biosocial unity that cannot be broken apart. Thus, if race is not real biologically, it must not be real at all. Second, he ignores the real consequences of racialization and racism.
Leroi’s Error: Conflating Race and Biodiversity
Although the word is somewhat unfashionable, and may even be considered politically incorrect, race is a good short word…—Teresa Overfield, Biological Variation in Health and Illness, 1995:1.
Nearly every Western natural historian/physician/scientist once took for granted that the idea of race was the same as human biological variation. The idea that humans were divisible into racial types, a European folk idea, was assumed to be scientifically right, and very few scientists or nonscientists questioned the assumption. Through constant use, the idea of race was fixed and reified as human diversity.
In the middle of the 20th century, a few scientists realized that race was not the same as human biological variation. In Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, Montagu (1942) considered race to be a myth because race was a typological rather than an evolutionary concept. Human variation was unstable and races could not be reliably defined. Two decades later, Brace (1964) proposed a nonracial approach to human variation that emphasized continuous or clinal variation and Livingstone (1962) wrote that there are no races, only clines. Ehrich and Holm (1964) clearly pointed out that traits tended to be nonconcordant. Thus, for example, skin color would not predict other “deeper” human characteristics. Race was only skin deep.
Until the 1970s, one could be excused from thinking race both categorized and explained human biological variation because there was not very much data to think beyond the existing, powerful and thoroughly reified racial worldview (Smedley, 1999). Since Lewontin (1972), however, an accumulation of data on human genetic variation has made it easier to think beyond race. Nonetheless, as a tribute to the power of the idea of race, many such as Leroi and Overfield still believe that race is a useful way to characterize human variation. In a nursing textbook Overfield writes on the very first page “race is a good short word.” Reliability and validity, upon which race scores very poorly, are critical criteria for a scientific concept. Conversely, I am fairly certain that word length is not.
True Believers and De Facto Believers
There is a spectrum of views among contemporary scientists like Leroi who still assert race is a useful classification for human biological variation. On one end stand scientific “true believers” who treat races as natural entities. The primary difference between this position and racial typologists of the early 19th century is that 21st century scientists assert that evolution, rather than god, created “races.” These racial “true believers” include evolutionary anthropologists Vince Sarich (Sarich and Miele, 2004) and psychologist J. P. Rushton (1995), now the president of the Pioneer Fund. Rushton is infamous for promoting the idea that races evolved either brains (meaning big heads), or brawn (meaning large muscles, and sex organs).
On the other end of the spectrum are the “de facto believers,” an otherwise respectable group of scientists that encompasses Leroi. What separates this group from the true believers is that they understand races as statistical approximations rather than natural types, asserting race as a de facto stand-in for the messy patterns of human biological variation. Sally Satel (2002), for example, the author of a prior New York Times piece titled “I am a Racially Profiling Doctor,” concurs that humans do not vary much genetically and race is a crude approximation of this human variation. She goes on to say that race might not be necessary in a near future of individualized genetic analysis. According to the “de facto believers” of race, we are merely passing through an awkward adolescent phase in which we still need to racialize human variation. While they grasp some of the limits of race, they neither grasp the potential harm nor the lack of necessity to racialize human variation.
Is race a reasonably useful shorthand for human biological variation? A first test of this question would examine whether race statistically explains or correlates with a significant portion of human genetic variation. A second test considers whether the idea of race explains the process by which variation comes about.
Test 1: Is Human Variation Racial?
In a classic article published in 1972 Richard Lewontin estimated the proportion of human variation that could be statistically explained by races. If the relative degree of variation among races is great compared to the variation within a single race, then one might suggest that subspecies/races are statistically real. On the other hand, if the relative degree of variation among races is small compared to the variation within a race, then races are less statistically real.
Lewontin took data on blood group polymorphisms (those that have two or more alleles in high frequency such as blood types A, B, AB and 0) and tested how much variation was explained at three levels: within local groups, within a race but among local groups, and among races. He found that on average 85.4% of variation was explained at the local level and only 6.3% among races. Since Lewontin, a series of papers using larger and larger data sets have replicated his results (see review of Brown and Armelagos, 2001) demonstrating once again that “race” does not statistically explain much. Humans fail the test for biological races (Templeton, 1998).
It may seem surprising that a species with such a wide geographic range would display so little variation among races or continental groups. However, the apportionment of variation makes sense when one considers the history of our species and in particular its youth, steady mobility, and constant openness to ideas and other peoples.
Test 2: Explaining Human Variation
Statistically explaining “a little bit” about something may actually end up doing more harm than good if one begins to forget the "lack of precision" of the concept. This is the first problem when one substitutes race for human variation: one tends to forget about the 94% of variation that race fails to statistically explain. The test I now put to race-as-genetics is not statistically, but conceptually. Is race merely a poor correlate of human genetic variation or does it help to explain the underlying processes by which variation comes about? Consider the following.
Racial definitions and boundaries change over time and place. Thus, race is an inherently unstable and unreliable concept. That is fine for local realities but not so for a scientific concept. The importance of this point is that a bio-racial generalization that appears true at one time and place is not necessarily as true in another time and place. We just don’t know. One of the first lessons of science is to not base a generalization on a shifting concept, which is exactly what race is.
The idea of race can only divide human diversity into a small number of divisions. That is the limit. This might have been all that one could do before the advent of parametric statistics, multivariable analyses, and computers. But, now we can do so much more.
Because race is used in medicine and other fields as a way to categorize both genetics and lived experience, what passes as the result of genetic difference may actually be due to interactions or some aspect of lived experience. Using race tends to conflate genetics and lived experience (Goodman, 2001).
I am pessimistic about how the subtle reuses of race in genetics will eventually merge with virulent racists. This does not mean that I want to hide anything about human variation. Rather, it means that we need to study human variation precisely.
I advocate for de-racializing biological variation simply because there is always a more precise and meaningful way to characterize and explain those myriad variations.
Location, Location, Location
In the real estate industry there is a general rule that three things primarily determine housing prices: location, location and location. A similar refrain applies in the case of human genetic variation. Geographic location is the best single explanation for human genetic variation. There is no more powerful piece of information for predicting the genetic makeup of either an individual or a group than knowing from where on the map they originate. Furthermore, the degree of genetic variation between any two human groups is almost entirely explained by the geographic distance between them: Genetic and geographic distances are almost perfectly correlated (Templeton, 1998).
Although highly correlated with genetic variation, geographic location, however, is not in itself an explanation for genetic variation. Complex questions about human variation come down to specifics about our early evolution and migration out of Africa, subsequent movements of migrating populations, adaptive struggles, and stochastic events. To begin to put together these puzzle pieces, requires multiple lines of evidence and inquiry. Human diversity is the end result of two complex, interrelated and fascinating processes: evolution and history.
For example, one might ask, “Why do some individuals have sickle cell trait? Is it because of their race?” The answer to this question is clearly “no.” Race is a poor explanation for the distribution of sickle cell trait, which occurs in high frequencies only in particular regions of Africa while also occurring in high frequencies in parts of Asia and Europe. Rather, sickle cell trait can be understood as a fascinating history involving agricultural intensification, clearing of lands, breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and so on (Livingstone, 1958).
Sickle cell is but one example of how evolution and cultural history explain not only the distribution of particular traits, but how particular traits come about. This is one specific example of the profoundly biocultural processes of evolution and history. I want to propose that if we think race is an explanation or even if we use it as a statistical proxy, we are less likely to conceptually understand how variation arises and is distributed.
Thomas’s Error: The Color Blind Bind
Americans and much of the world’s population have been conditioned to think of race as a fuzzy jumble of behavior, culture, and biology: a deep and primordial mix of a bit of culture and a lot of nature. Thus, to say that race is not real in one way (as a shorthand for human biological variation) and is real in another way (as a way to group and track lived experience) is indeed confusing. Isn’t race simply real or not? If Leroi is wrong, isn’t Thomas right?
The idea that race is a social construct derives in part from natural scientists like Lewontin who maintain that race is a myth, or more precisely that the concept does not capture human diversity. It also derives in part from a misunderstanding of the notion of historical or social construction. Even though race was invented and made to seem real by social humans, and even though race makes little sense on the genetic level, this does not mean that it is not real in other ways. Thomas makes the mistake of thinking that because race is a social construct, race cannot have real effects. To the contrary, processes of racing, racializing, and practicing racism have enormous and powerful consequence for human wealth and health.
Race Is and Race Isn’t
There are different potential paths to racial justice. Some of my colleagues on the left have taken the path of seeing race as both genetically and socio-politically real (see Mosley, 1997 for example). This strategy involves trying to erase the negative biological association of the concept while providing equal opportunity. This message, that race is real, has the advantage of simplicity, but it may not work in the long run.
My own position is basically the same as that of the American Anthropological Association (http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm) and is only slightly more complex. This position reaffirms the salience of race as lived experience while calling for a new vocabulary and concepts to study human biological variation. Like Mosley’s position, this position is grounded in a commitment to social justice. In contrast to Mosley’s position, it is scientifically correct.
In summary, there is no good scientific reason beyond word length, convenience, and maintenance of the status quo (laziness in short), to continue to racialize human variation. Moreover, doing so may cause harm. In this way, using “race” as shorthand for biological variation is a form of ideological iatrogenesis. Real human suffering may result from poor conceptualization of human variation. Yet, race is real as lived experience.
It is time, at least, to ask the right question. This question is not whether race is real, but in what ways do we make it a reality?
Brace, C. L. (1964). “A Nonracial Approach Towards the Understanding of Human Diversity.” In A. Montagu (Ed.) The Concept of Race. Collier Books, London, pp. 103-152.
Brown, R. and Armelagos, G. J. (2001). “Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review.” Evolutionary Anthropology 10: 34-40.
Ehrlich, P. R. and Holm, R.W. (1964). “A Biological View of Race.” In A. Montagu (Ed.) The Concept of Race. Collier Books, London, pp. 153-179.
Leroi, A. M. (2005) “A family tree in every gene.” The New York Times, March 14.
Lewontin, R. C. (1972). “The Apportionment of Human Diversity.” Evolutionary Biology 6: 381-398.
Livingstone, F. (1958). “Anthropological implications of sickle cell gene distribution in west Africa.” American Anthropologist 30: 533-562.
Livingstone, F. (1962). “On the nonexistence of human races.” Current Anthropology 3: 279-281.
Montagu, M. F. A. (1942). Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. Columbia University Press, New York.
Mosley, A. (1997). “Are Racial Categories Racist?” Research in African Literatures. 28.4: 101-111.
Overfield, T. (1995). Biological Variation in Health and Illness: Race, Age and Sex Differences, 2nd edition. CRC Press, New York.
Rushton, J. P. (1995). Race, Evolution and Behavior. Transaction, New Brunswick, N.J.
Sarich, V. and Miele, F. (2004). Race: The Reality of Human Differences. Westview Press, Boulder, Co.
Satel, S. (2002). “I Am a Racially Profiling Doctor.” The New York Times. May 5.
Smedley, A. (1999). Race in North America: origin and evolution of a world view, 2nd edition. Westview Press, Boulder, Co.
Templeton, A. (1998). “Human races: A genetic and evolutionary perspective.” American Anthropologist 1998; 100: 632-650.
1 The quotes above were culled from essays that appeared hours apart in major newspapers. The conflict in views and the frequency of articles on race is not unusual. Newspaper articles on race are literally published every day: Since 1996, in about 9.25 years, The New York Times published 15,976 items yielding a hit on the search term “race.” Many of these, to be sure, are about election, sports, and other types of “races” rather than about races as are here intended. Yet, the term racism, which would eliminate many articles of interest, yielded 5033 items, an average of over 1 (1.35) per day. | <urn:uuid:6e4415a2-0625-4ff9-9e02-d045b28281af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936481 | 4,062 | 2.359375 | 2 |
A friend recently sent me the following joke:
During a visit to a mental asylum, a visitor asked the director how to determine whether or not a patient should be institutionalised. “Well,” said the director, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient, and ask him to empty the bathtub.” “
Oh, I see,” said the visitor. “A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup.”
“No,” said the director, “a normal person would pull out the plug. Do you want the bed near the window?”
What I love about the joke — apart from the fact that it’s actually clean and therefore suitable to repeat in the presence of clients — is how neatly it illustrates an all too common problem: sometimes, when we are presented with several options, they may blind us to other choices — including the simplest and most sensible one.
When you’re looking for solutions or preparing to negotiate, are good ideas going down the drain? | <urn:uuid:70e9978c-5c96-4e99-8371-f6729049c526> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mediationchannel.com/2008/09/24/a-negotiator-walks-into-a-bar-a-joke-holds-a-lesson-on-problem-solving/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954225 | 243 | 1.9375 | 2 |