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Websites are periodically updated by their owners.
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This is easily amended by eliminating in your browser the obsolete data, operation called here Browser Cleaning. This cleaning does not imply any peril but on the contrary, it is a highly recommended practice that should be carried out periodically.
The cleaning procedure differs according to the browser used. If your browser is one of the four shown below, click on the corresponding button and follow the cleaning instructions. If you use a different browser hopefully you will not find difficulties in finding the cleaning instructions for it. | <urn:uuid:b83135a3-25bc-4d88-a0d9-81ad1475a41b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.auraportal.com/EN/EN0-BrowserCleaning.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922484 | 182 | 1.789063 | 2 |
“When you get into the larger aircraft it becomes like a hotel, with dozens of staff supporting the plane based in a galley area down below. You have very comprehensive cooking facilities, and on larger aircraft we have looked at theatres, with spiral staircases and a Steinway grand piano. The limitations for what you can put inside a plane are pretty much the limits of physics, and even money cannot always overcome that. Even so, people are still always trying to push [the limits]. ”
Northern New Mexico
Rugged and refined, historic but New Age, northern New Mexico offers a colorful landscape and a lifestyle that tempts vacationers with a panoply of world-class golf, fashionable ski resorts, operas, fine-art galleries and handcrafted goods. The Land of Enchantment, nestled around the southern end of the Rockies, is as much a state of mind as a geographical region.
In Santa Fe, America's oldest state capital, you'll sense a palpable metaphysical energy. In the city's Plaza, you're as likely to meet a raw-food devotee working as a yoga instructor as a Native American artisan. Stop by the farmer's market, where famous chefs mingle with bankers, architects and truck drivers. The City Different, as the nickname suggests, is a crossroads of culture, melding the ancient and the avant-garde with natural wonders, sunlight and silence. If you're a first-time visitor, plan on spending a minimum of three nights in the chic city to take it all in.
The Plaza dominates the main thoroughfare as it has since 1610, when the Palace of the Governors was built. Today the humble palace bustles with artisans who barter their work under the portal. The town-center location adjoins the freshly renovated New Mexico History Museum. The Museum of Art, Institute of American Indian Arts and O'Keefe Museum are within walking distance.
To sample the city's gastronomic treasures, take a walking tour offered by the Santa Fe School of Cooking. You'll meet top chefs in their kitchens for a tasting of house specialties and regional wines. The afternoon culinary extravaganza entices the taste buds and satiates the stomach, so plan on skipping dinner.
Artist Georgia O'Keefe said that New Mexico "is not a country of light on things. It is a country of things in light." Indeed the quality of light illuminating the hills here dazzles and invites artistic creation. Hundreds of galleries-specializing in paintings, prints, folk art, photographs, sculpture, carvings, textiles and leather-crafts-line the famed Canyon Road, and visitors face the daunting task of deciding where to roam. Santa Fe, the third-largest U.S. art market (behind New York and L.A.), promotes a myriad of workshops and classes that attract participants from around the globe.
O'Keefe chose to live at nearby Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu during the second half of her long life. Ranch tours can deliver you to the same sun-drenched vistas that she transmuted onto canvas. Tour guides hold up poster-sized prints of the artist's work, so you can compare the inspirational landscape with her legendary interpretations. You'll find the majority of her priceless works at the O'Keefe Museum in downtown Santa Fe, where limited-engagement shows permit more of her vast collection to be displayed.
Just an hour's drive from Santa Fe rests Bandelier National Monument. The cliff and canyons of the Pajarito Plateau were home to the Pueblo people from the 12th to 16th centuries. You needn't be a serious hiker to climb into the volcanic-rock caves carved by the original dwellers. Alcove House, perched 170 feet above the canyon floor, is reached by a series of steep, primitive wooden ladders. Climbers are rewarded with a visit to a reconstructed kiva (underground ceremonial dwelling) and a view that stretches far over the jagged valley. Stop and listen-you might just hear the beat of a drum and envision ancients performing rituals to their gods.
Los Alamos, a favorite stop for history and science buffs, boasts the highest number of Ph.D.s per capita in the U.S. The Atomic City earned its name as the top-secret site where World War II Manhattan Project scientists created the first atomic bomb. Today, Los Alamos National Laboratories is a cutting-edge research center that helps to oversee national security and safeguard nuclear weapons.
Move north to the Old West town of Chama and hop aboard the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. The Denver to Rio Grande line opened in 1880 and functioned as a lifeline to gold and silver mines. Today, a hand-shoveled-coal-powered train chugs along the restored system-a history museum on wheels. The 1925 engines huff and puff through a day-long, 64-mile journey, passing from 8,000 to more than 10,000 feet of elevation at a 4-percent grade, through tunnels and across trestle bridges and dramatic gorges. Passengers relax in reproduction rolling cars or stand in the open air to snap photos and enjoy views of pinion-, aspen- and juniper-lined valleys, craggy mountain peaks and dust-covered tumbleweed.
The town of Angel Fire, 23 miles east of Taos in the majestic Moreno Valley, derives its name from Indian legend. The Ute tribe observed flickering red and orange lights above the Aqua Fria mountains and believed the gods were blessing their annual celebration. Later, Franciscan friars arrived and transposed the name to "the place of the fire of the angels." By 1845, Kit Carson had coined the phrase "Angel Fire" and the name stuck.
The Enchanted Circle Byway leading to Angel Fire, Eagle's Nest, Red River (a former gold-mining town) and Taos loops through 82 miles of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, valley, mesa and national park. Wheeler Peak, the state's highest point at 13,161 feet, offers expert-terrain downhill skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling and snowshoeing. In summer, there's hiking, mountain biking, horseback riding, ATV trail excursions and whitewater rafting. You can also try panning for gold in the mountain streams.
Golf in the Southwest capitalizes on the diversity of arid mountain geology. Course designers shape every hole into the red earth like a potter working a delicate pattern into a piece of clay. Black Mesa, which has been ranked among America's top 50 courses, is said to play like wild Scottish links when the native grasses blow in the breeze. The signature hole at the high-elevation Angel Fire Resort Golf & Country Club floats a tee box a spectacular 200 feet above the green. Towa Golf Resort at Buffalo Thunder (36 holes), in the Pojoaque Valley, features an immense 8,200-square-foot island green-the only island green in New Mexico.
Spa anyone? Healing-arts practitioners blossom in the healthy climate and clean air, where organic and green living are the norm. Massage, yoga and mineral soaks enhance well being. The waters at Ojo Caliente, near Taos, carry a history of miraculous cures. The Chimayo Chapel in the Rio Grande valley beckons as a healing pilgrimage church including a side-room with a pit containing "holy dirt" that visitors may take away.
Sublime year-round fly-fishing abounds, from the mountain-high lakes and pristine streams to remote desert canyons. Autumn through spring, the rushing flows burst with trout along the Rio Grande Gorge. Hiring a guide allows you to avoid the crowds and enhances the fly-fishing experience.
A visit to the area isn't complete without at least one stop at a pueblo. Each maintains its own government and ancestral traditions and many feature casinos. Buffalo Thunder, a plush, 587-acre resort, offers a gaming hall, a celebrity-class spa, fine restaurants, native-artisan shops, golf courses and pools.
The history of this land of enchantment commingles with the modern artistic climate to create a spectacular oasis. You won't soon forget it.
Traveler Fast Facts
What it is: Northern New Mexico, one of the most noteworthy vacation destinations in the Southwest U.S., is called "The Land of Enchantment" because of its vibrant landscapes, artistic community and outdoor-adventure options.
Climate: Temperature ranges in this year-round destination depend on elevation. Spring and fall breezes are ideal. Heat in the desert regions can soar in summer yet winter in the higher elevations brings plenty of snow.
Getting there: Albuquerque is New Mexico's largest city and has its busiest airport. Consider flying into Santa Fe (SAF), which is at an elevation of 6,348 feet and has three runways, the longest of which is 8,342 feet. The FBO here is Santa Fe Air Center (800-263-7695). Angel Fire (AXX), 23 miles east of Taos and 152 miles northeast of Albuquerque, caters to corporate and private aircraft. It's the fifth-highest airport in the country (elevation 8,406 feet) and has an 8,900-foot runway. FBO services are provided by Ross Aviation (575-377-3171). Taos (TSM), elevation 7,095 feet, has one 5,803-foot runway. The FBO here is Taos Aviation Services (575-737-9790).
Traveler Report Card
Accommodations (A+): Santa Fe boasts a wide selection of upscale lodging choices. The St. Francis Hotel (hotelstfrancis.com) surrounds guests with peaceful ambiance and simple elegance and offers an award-winning chef and bar. Historic LaFonda Hotel (lafondasantafe.com), the grand dame on the Plaza, abounds with artwork and remains a gathering place for locals. Buffalo Thunder (buffalothunderresort.com), a resort north of Santa Fe, features Native American design and endless activities. Angel Fire Resort & Country Club (angelfireresort.com) welcomes guests with mountain-themed accommodations, fabulous food and golf.
Food (A+): Santa Fe dining hot spots include La Bocca, which features mouthwatering tapas in a bistro atmosphere; the Inn of the Anazasi, which is known for its innovative recipes; and Il Piatto, which serves Italian fresh farmhouse food. The hip Rio Chama Steakhouse maintains an 11,000-bottle wine cellar. Maria's New Mexican Kitchen serves up Southwestern fare-and great margaritas-in a cantina setting.
Activities (A+): Northern New Mexico is a golfer's paradise with many courses available year-round and abundant hiking and fishing. There's expert terrain winter skiing in Angel Fire and Taos. Red River promotes scenic off-peak ski season ATV and Jeep excursions. Santa Fe Opera performs to sell-out crowds during July and August. Don't miss the hot baths at Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese-like onsen, or the range of fitness classes and pampering treatments at Body of Santa Fe. Reserve early for acclaimed art, cooking and photography workshops. Ghost Ranch conducts one-hour landscape tours by reservation (call 505-685-4333). Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad tickets start at $75, including full-course luncheon. | <urn:uuid:68cc291d-fe18-4dca-a220-0f18c2466361> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/northern-new-mexico?qt-most_popular=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922937 | 2,405 | 1.507813 | 2 |
“‘In a sense we’ve been having Sukkot the last two weeks!’” Florida Jews experience a more literal celebration of Sukkot, a holiday that traditionally calls on them to dwell in temporary structures that expose them to the elements. Amy Sherman, of The Miami Herald, reports on congregations that are rebuilding homes instead of constructing sukkahs, or otherwise altering their plans to take hurricane effects into account.
John Walker Lindh’s attorney has requested a reduced sentence for his client in light of the release, this week, of Yasser Esam Hamdi — another American citizen (who grew up in Saudi Arabia) held on suspicion of fighting for the Taliban. Hamdi is slated to be sent back to Saudi Arabia after being held for three years without charges, while Lindh has been sentenced to twenty years in prison after arranging a plea-deal. “‘He was a young man at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was there for genuine religious reasons,’” said Lindh’s lawyer.
“What you won’t find on the net are figures of how much the [LDS] Church has spent in its campaign against the legalization of gay marriages. Clearly the Church sees this institution as one force that will unravel the family structure of society, and therefore directly relevant to the lives of church members who live in that society. It’s an interesting twist considering the heavy persecution the government made against polygamy in the 19th century — you’d think the LDS Church would want the government to leave moral issues totally alone, but the Church doesn’t see it that way at all: polygamy strengthened families; gay relationships don’t.” Brooke Shaffner meets some Mormons in New York on Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.
“Moral thunder” exits the stem-cell debate. Or maybe just goes under cover. Greg Johnson ofThe Los Angeles Times notes the shift of stem-cell opponents’ argument in California from abortion-tinged “life” issues to concerns about cost. If that strikes research supporters as disingenuous (or just silly, “akin to opposing capital punishment on the grounds that a state can’t afford the electricity bills”), rest assured that the old thunder-n’-brimstone will still be heard from the pulpit. Just not necessarily in the public square, where California Catholics have been “‘instructed to be wise like serpents.’”
Do you believe George W. Bush has been born again? 38% say yes; 43% say no; 19% of the gentle souls responding to MSNBC’s insta-poll demur that there’s no way to know for sure. Based solely on MSNBC’s adjacent story, “Bush — born again or not?” (which offers little more than Alan Cooperman’s substantial, though frustrated, report on failing to nail down the specifics of Bush’s faith), we’d have to go with the 19%. But grudgingly. We wonder why it is that some candidates are held to doctrinal litmus tests, while others get to bask in feel-good and good-for-the-polls ambiguity, and then call that ecumencism?
No peace for the wicked: FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) issues an action alert tochastise NBC’s Tom Brokaw for his rationalizing report on the GOP campaign claiming that “‘liberals want to ban the bible.’” “It’s clear how one should describe the claim,” writes FAIR. “It’s a lie, and a blatant and incendiary one. But not only does Brokaw not tell his viewers that the RNC smear isn’t true, he gives ‘Christian commentators’ a chance to justify that deceit with another, that gay marriage could lead to censorship of sermons. Why does such an unsubstantiated and frankly bizarre claim deserve space on a national newscast? Meanwhile, the victims of the lie don’t get any chance to speak in Brokaw’s report; the entire item is sourced either to Republicans or to the religious right.” | <urn:uuid:2b3db81b-b163-420c-bfbc-a68416025b39> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://therevealer.org/archives/13441 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946658 | 904 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Invasion of the monster slugs
SPAIN’S footballers have proved to be slippery customers devouring all in their path – and now giant Spanish SLUGS are conquering our gardens.
The monster molluscs grow to more than four inches in length, chomp twice their body weight in a day and produce hundreds more eggs than British slugs. Flowers, fruit and vegetables are all being gobbled up.
The Spanish stealth slugs, as they are known, probably slipped into Britain in imported food. Then our wet spring and early summer, combined with sunny spells, have provided perfect breeding conditions.
Drivers are also at risk following reports of cars skidding on slicks left where slugs have been run over and squashed. The problem is worsened by the cannibal pests feasting on their own kind when they find a fellow in distress.
But it is gardeners and farmers who are taking the brunt of the slimy invasion, as B&Q report a 74 per cent boom in slug pellet sales.
The Spanish slugs, which also go by the sinister-sounding Latin name Arion Flagellus, pose a particular threat to organic crop producers who do not use chemical pesticides.
Slug expert Dr Les Noble, a zoologist at Aberdeen University, has spotted them in south west England and north Wales after recent rains.
He warns: “Plagues are leaving slicks on roads, causing accidents.
“Slugs are also cannibals and, when they smell dead slugs that have been crushed by cars, will gather on the roads to feed on them.”
Dr Noble adds: “People are using more environmentally friendly methods of gardening.
“They have composts and, rather than throw away grass cuttings, leave them on the lawn surface. All this provides a fabulous habitat for slugs.”
Dr Richard Meredith, of Bayer Crop Science, believes Britain’s slug population may have TRIPLED this year. He warns: “If it continues, it’s a real threat to agriculture.”
Top 10 garden pests
SLUGS and snails top the Premier League of pests most complained about by callers to the Royal Horticultural Society.
Here is the full pecking order of garden bugbears:
1. Slugs & snails
2. Cushion scale (leaf-eating insect)
3. Vine weevil
5. Viburnum beetle
6= Fuchsia gall mite
6= Cypress aphid
8= Leek moth
8= Chafer grubs | <urn:uuid:ed9c7721-8711-4f1f-b568-a7fd62c61417> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/4407044/Invasion-of-the-monster-slugs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932931 | 543 | 2.59375 | 3 |
With an estimated 12 million tickets sold, spectators in
Olympic venues and television viewers from across the globe will experience the
skill and witness the emotion of more than 10,000 athletes from 200 nations
trying to fulfill their dream of achieving Olympic gold.
The Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London, has been
built on time and below budget, and a rolling program of test events have been
held in many of the 20 Olympic venues in the British capital. Londoners are
benefitting from a raft of transport improvements with further game-changing
enhancements on the way before the start of 2012.
The British are preparing to welcome around 380,000 visitors
during the Olympic period, and thousands more from the Olympic family and
For the business travel professional the Olympics presents
an interesting dynamic. At a time when cost minimization and scrutiny of
T&E budgets is at the front of financial directors' minds, travel buyers
will be tasked with sourcing travel, accommodation and meeting venues at a time
of unprecedented demand.
For some companies, not traveling to or within London during
the Games may be an option. For many however, the need to operate as close to
business as usual and take advantage of the commercial opportunities means
universal travel bans will not be an option.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to deliver a
resilient program. Every organization is different. Doing nothing however, is
not a sensible option.
Identify Who Is
Responsible For Assessing The Olympics' Effect
The potential for travel disruption during the Olympics is
one of the greatest risks to companies. Travel managers have a pivotal role to
play advising their companies of the risks and providing guidance to travelers
on the actions they should take. Companies should bring together expert insight
from human resources, facilities and estates, IT and travel departments to
ensure their business continuity plans are resilient.
A June 2011 report by Deloitte found that "42 percent
of companies surveyed had already examined the opportunities and challenges
facing their business as a result of the Olympics, and 53 percent plan to carry
out an assessment but have yet to do so."
That companies are concerned about disruption is a good
sign. It means they are actively engaged, assessing the risks and devising
strategies to minimize disruption. Kathryn Hurt, strategic space planner for
U.K. office space provider MWB Business Exchange said, "We're seeing an
increase in businesses thinking about travel disruption and business continuity
during the Olympics, in addition to ensuring they have a revised temporary
infrastructure that ensures they are able to communicate effectively. We
recognize the challenges as a business ourselves, and we're taking steps to ensure
our people and suppliers can get to the right place at the right time to
service the needs of the business."
With 227 days to go until the start of the Olympics there is
limited time for those who have yet to start.
Prepare For Challenges
Hotel availability and pricing is at the forefront of many
travel buyers' minds. Companies, however, should also think about how employees
travel on business during the working day, commuter travel patterns and the
ability of suppliers to provide services or deliver products.
Hotel availability and
pricing: London will have 120,000 bedrooms by 2012, but with occupancy
rates in the Capital at 90 percent during a normal summer and around 60 percent
of rooms already allocated to the London Organising Committee of the Olympic
Games, there is going to be an availability squeeze.
It is not yet clear whether LOCOG will need its entire
allocation, but rooms will not be handed back to hoteliers until early 2012.
Companies adopting a wait-and-see approach are likely to be forced to pre-pay
high non-negotiable rates and specify minimum stays.
Pauline Houston, Carlson Wagonlit Travel meetings and events
and hotel program director for the U.K. and Ireland, advised, "If you don't
have your hotel or meetings space booked in London during the Olympics, then
the time to act is now. Ensure that all offers and commitments are agreed in
writing. While key hotel suppliers are vowing to reward the loyalty of their
corporate customers, the reality of this concentrated demand is increased rates
and strict terms."
Understanding your requirement over the Olympic period is
essential. Houston said, "You can improve your negotiating ability by
having a full picture of your needs for that period and channel your spend with
your preferred hotels."
Hotels are not the only solution. The British Hospitality
Association estimates there are 75,000 serviced apartments in commuting
distance of the capital. Savvy buyers are also being creative and looking at
alternative types of accommodation. For example, university accommodation is
one route some buyers have already headed down.
Transport: In the
best of times, London, as with many global cities, suffers congestion and
overcrowding on its public transport and road network. In the run-up to the
Olympics, there have been huge improvements to the transport network, and more
is to come before the Games. However, certain transport hubs and stations at
certain times will be extremely busy.
The success of the Olympic Transport Plan is dependent upon
action by businesses to reduce the number of journeys during the Olympic Games.
Otherwise, LOCOG warned of possible "significant additional delays."
It is estimated that the London Underground network will
carry an additional 20 million passengers during the Olympic period. The tube
will be used for an additional 3 million journeys on its busiest day. Also, the
public will be denied access to 109 miles of roads that form the Olympic Route
Network during the entire Olympic period. The ORN is reserved for athletes, the
Olympic Family and members of the broadcast and media network.
The Olympics will not simply affect tube and rail lines
leading to the Olympic Village in Stratford. The Olympics is a capital-wide
event. LOCOG has identified The West End, Westminster, Bank, the South Bank,
Canary Wharf, Stratford and Canning Town, Liverpool Street and King's Cross St.
Pancras as transport hotspots. There are also some very warm spots too.
Given public transport pressures and road closures,
companies need to think about how their staff are going to travel to and from
work. With over half of businesses yet to appraise the Olympic effect on their
organization, the success of the Olympic Transport Plan could be in the
balance. This, in turn, means disruption for the capital's businesses.
LOCOG advises businesses to consider a range of actions to
manage and mitigate potential travel impacts. This includes encouraging staff
to work from home, promoting annual leave, temporary relocation and altering
working hours and arrangements.
For some this may be feasible, but in the travel and
hospitality sector encouraging annual leave and altering working hours at a
time of extraordinary demand is not realistic. For some companies, encouraging
staff to work from home may be an option, but will IT infrastructure be able to
service additional demand? To what extent can annual leave be promoted whilst
maintaining business effectiveness? If relocation is an option, where is it
best to relocate to? Will staff find commuting pressures impacting their
ability to get to work? Determining the answer to these and similar questions
takes time, research and planning.
Identify Who Will Be
Affected And How
By identifying business-critical functions and individuals,
and then assessing how they may be affected by the Olympics, companies can
develop a risk profile. Ensuring business continuity is about more than
considering the impacts on senior staff members. An operational or junior
member of staff may be more critical than a senior director, depending on the
function they fulfill and the location where they work.
The solutions available to mitigate risk will vary depending
on the job performed. By segmenting employees by role, function and risk of
disruption, companies can help to ensure they are prepared and, in turn, that
the Olympics is a sporting and business success.
originally appeared in the Dec. 12, 2011, edition of Business Travel News. | <urn:uuid:a9f78429-db00-40ed-9b95-3908fe30caad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businesstravelnews.com/Travel-Management/BTN-Blueprint--How-To-Plan-For-The-2012-Olympics--Impact-On-Business-Travel/?a=trans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942789 | 1,719 | 1.789063 | 2 |
President Obama has vowed to do everything in his power to prevent another Sandy Hook. "Because what choice do we have?" he asked. "We can't accept events like this as routine."
Unfortunately, such events are far more random than they are routine. They are what the statistician Nassim Taleb calls "Black Swan events": improbable, rare and unpredictable. We will never be able to prevent them. But that does not mean we can do nothing in response.
We should start by understanding the distinction between murder and mass murder. According to FBI crime reports, between 2007 and 2011 the United States experienced an annual average of 13,700 homicides, with guns responsible for 67.8% of those. That's an average of 9,289 people shot dead a year, 25 a day, a little more than one an hour.
By contrast, according to James Alan Fox, Northeastern University criminologist, between 1980 and 2010 there were, on average, 20 mass murders a year (defined by the FBI as four or more killings in the same incident) with an average annual death toll of about 100. That's a mere 0.01% of the average homicide total.
If we want to save lives by preventing gun deaths, the larger problem of individual homicides, suicides and accidents is the place to begin, not events such as Sandy Hook.
Here's another sobering statistic. According to a 1998 study published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, for "every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides." In other words, a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for self-defense.
So if arming yourself isn't an answer, and if Sandy Hook events cannot be prevented, what can we do? Here are three evidence-based actions we can take right now that could save lives.
Prepare to survive. Watch "Run. Hide. Fight. Surviving an Active Shooter Event" on YouTube. If you're in an office, school or any such facility and you hear gunfire, call 911, then run, escape from the building. If others hesitate, encourage them to join you but leave them behind if they do not move quickly.
You have seconds to act and cannot afford to delay.
If there is no clear escape route, hide beneath a desk, behind a wall or door, anywhere you fit. If you are in a room, lock the door and barricade it with furniture. Remain as quiet as possible; silence your cellphone.
If you encounter the shooter, fight like your life depends on it — because it does.
During the Virginia Tech massacre, the student shooter Seung-Hui Cho moved from classroom to classroom, killing 32 and wounding 17. But the body count would have been much higher had it not been for professor Liviu Librescu, who barricaded his classroom door and had his students escape through the windows, before he was shot dead through the door. At Columbine, a number of students hiding under desks and tables survived, and a blocked classroom door saved 30 students within.
Create "citizens watch" systems to help identify individuals who show signs of potential violence. States already must report to the FBI those who have been judged mentally ill, and that information is used to prevent them from purchasing weapons. But there are a lot of ways the process can fail, as we've seen in Arizona, Virginia and Colorado. While we look for ways to improve it, we can respond locally with law enforcement hotlines.
Just as you're admonished by Transportation Security Administration agents, Homeland Security leaders and Metro posters to "say something if you see something," we should become aware of warning signs and respond to them.
For example, on Jan. 7, ABC News reported that an Alabama teacher turned over to the police a student journal that "contained several plans that looked like ... attacks of violence and danger on the school." An investigation resulted in the arrest of a 17-year-old on attempted assault charges after police searched his home and found numerous cans filled with pellets that, according to the sheriff, were just "a step or two away from being ready to explode."
Gun control. This is complicated. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that the 2nd Amendment's guarantee includes handguns, the most common weapon in homicides and mass murders. Nevertheless, regulation isn't impossible.
A common element in mass murders is large-capacity magazines. The Aurora, Colo., shooting suspect, James Holmes, opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle with a 100-round drum magazine. In Tucson, Jared Lee Loughner used a semiautomatic pistol with a 33-round magazine.
Prohibiting large-capacity magazines makes sense, not least because we know some mass murders were ended by bystanders and police when the shooters had to stop to reload.
As well, renewing a ban on assault rifles could result in a net gain in that many mass murderers have relied on such weapons. Yes, they could still use other sorts of guns. And yes, law-abiding gun owners will howl. But we don't find it too great an imposition on liberty to ban private ownership of military grade weapons. Why not add semiautomatic assault weapons to the list?
Of course, weapons and ammunition bans will not necessarily prevent another Sandy Hook. A new hotline won't reveal every psychopathic shooter. And self-defense strategies can't protect you absolutely. But these initiatives could curtail the carnage, which is a rational response to these irrational acts.
They are also responses even freedom-loving libertarians can live with. I know because I am a lifelong libertarian, who grew up with shotguns used for hunting and for 20 years owned a .357 Magnum pistol, with hollow-tip bullets, for home protection.
Just because we rightly do not want the government to prevent us from owning guns, and just because it is impossible to predict or prevent the next mass murder, doesn't mean we are helpless. It is altogether rational and reasonable to do what we can.
Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University and Chapman University and the author of "The Believing Brain." | <urn:uuid:e8e34e96-fc40-45b5-9196-630598eb58a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ky3.com/topic/la-oe-shermer-gun-control-20130115,0,5197988.story | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960796 | 1,308 | 2.609375 | 3 |
On the occasion of the health risks caused by high temperatures FOCUS News Agency speaks with cardiologist in the specialized hospital for active treatment of cardiovascular diseases St. Ekatherina Dr. Diana Trendafilova.
FOCUS: Dr. Trendafilova, what are the most vulnerable groups of people who are threatened by the heat?
Dr. Diana Trendafilova: The riskiest group include patients with proven cardiovascular diseases. These are patients who have proven coronary artery disease, peritoneal attack, stroke or any other brain pathology. These are the highest risk group of patients. The next subgroup of patients who still belong in the group with cardiovascular disease are those who have not suffered heart attacks and stroke, but they have hypertension. Another risk group includes diabetics and other patients who have disease outside cardiology.
FOCUS: Is the number of patients with complaints increased, due to the high temperatures in recent weeks?
Dr. Diana Trendafilova: Generally during the heats there is a slight peak of patients who are in uncomfortable condition. Personally, I haven’t noticed any peak in heart attacks, but there are patients who have frequent crises and state of malaise, a hypertensive crisis of nausea and fainting - there are such cases.
FOCUS: What age group of people are more often affected?
Dr. Diana Trendafilova: For each age group these high temperatures are potentially dangerous, even for young people. Overheating can cause lasting effects to healthy persons, so that prolonged exposure to the sun without a hat, in the absence of normal hydration, not drinking enough fluids can lead to overheating, which leads to implications even when a healthy person. Both children and adults are more susceptible to these temperatures and are more seriously affected by heat, so it is recommended not to go outside after 11.00 am when strong sunshine, to drink more water, walk on the mountains in these periods, not to stand on the beach in direct sunlight.
FOCUS: What should people consume during the heat?
Dr. Diana Trendafilova: The summer season predisposes to reduce the amount of proteins, i.e. meats, and to place more emphasis on fruits and vegetables and a light meal that facilitates the cardiovascular system in its processing. Usually intense heat generally leads to appetite suppression. Strong alcohol beverages (concentrates) should also be avoided in the heat. Smoking is also a risk factor and it is better to avoid overdoing smoking but it is best not to smoke.
FOCUS: Is there any medication or other, which is recommended at higher temperatures than diet and fluids?
Dr. Diana Trendafilova: Diet, fluids and shade. Medications are not recommended, absolutely not. There is a recommendation in some patients who take medication to reduce doses, especially those drugs that removed blood pressure and slow pulse, these are the group of the antihypertensives medications. They generally require adjustment during the summer and especially during the summer heat. | <urn:uuid:256ab685-f87a-4da4-9c00-7fefd894142d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=f2945 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938633 | 620 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Canada-U.S. Trade: Inside Ottawa’s Efforts To Fight ‘Buy American’
As Washington continues to defend the contentious Buy American provisions outlined in the U.S. jobs bill, it has become abundantly clear that, for policymakers south of the border, Canada is not top of mind.
But according to a former Canadian diplomat who has been on the inside of major trade policy negotiations with the U.S., this reality, however harsh, simply reinforces a stubborn fact of life: No matter how friendly relations with our biggest trading partner may seem, Canadians must wage a permanent campaign to protect our interests south of the border.
“For the U.S., we’re not a problem, and therefore we’re not on the immediate agenda,” Colin Robertson told The Huffington Post. “We Canadians have to constantly be making the case to our American market, reminding them … that we’re also their biggest market.”
It’s an effort that Robertson – who helped negotiate and implement the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) – says is comprehensive, despite the fact that it may not always seem that way. “Are we talking to all the various parties? We are, but stuff happens, and will continue to happen,” he says. “It’s like Whac-A-Mole. You’ve got to constantly be on guard, because [these kinds of protectionist provisions] are popping up in all kinds of places.” Read more here.
Date: October 24, 2011 | <urn:uuid:3818545d-5929-4c91-ad68-3bf238063744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tradelines.ghy.com/2011/10/canada-u-s-trade-inside-ottawa%E2%80%99s-efforts-to-fight-%E2%80%98buy-american%E2%80%99/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94931 | 330 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Matsuo Bash?, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Ch?emon Munefusa, was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bash? was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku. His poetry is internationally renowned, and in Japan many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bash? is justifiably famous in the west for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, “Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.”
Bash? was introduced to poetry at a young age, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo, he quickly became well-known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher, but renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements. | <urn:uuid:bf313797-fbd2-48a9-b84a-cbcad10b2dc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldofquotes.com/author/Basho/1/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992577 | 280 | 2.921875 | 3 |
MAKIN, IBN AL-‘AMID AL- (Jirjis ibn Abi Yasir ibn Abu al- Makarim ibn al-‘Amid al-Makin), Coptic historian (1205-1273). He wrote a universal history, al-Majmu‘ al-Mubarak, consisting of two distinct sections. The first started with the creation and covered pre- Islamic times; the second dealt with the Islamic period down to his own times in 1260. For the pre-Islamic period, he used the Bible as a principal source for his history. For the Islamic period, he followed the example of the famous Islamic chronicler al-Tabari. Apparently he used the work of his predecessor Eutychius as well as that of his contemporary Ibn al-Rahib. His chronicle includes a succinct history of the patriarchs of Alexandria (summarized by A. Gutschmidt, 1890, pp. 395-525). It is here that the works of al-Makin and Ibn al- Rahib overlap, and it is difficult to distinguish who copied whom.
Al-Makin was born in Cairo, though his ancestors must have come from Takrit in Mesopotamia. He also lived in Damascus and occupied the office of scribe in the military office in Cairo, where he was later deposed and incarcerated, and then freed. He retired to Damascus, where he died. His world chronicle has been translated into Latin, French, and English.
AZIZ S. ATIYA
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections. | <urn:uuid:0199daad-0092-4e55-9245-ebbb0fa49e03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/cce/id/1245/rec/7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973186 | 332 | 2.5 | 2 |
In the wake of Haiti’s devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, a coalition of faith-based and secular humanitarian organizations called world leaders to grant international debt relief to Haiti. The ONE campaign and other groups gathered more than 400,000 signatures on a petition asking the G7 finance ministers who met in Iqaluit, Canada, for their summit meeting on Feb. 6 to call for the cancellation of Haiti’s remaining debt.
“ONE’s core mission is to help the poorest countries reach the Millennium Development Goals, so we work toward long-term reconstruction,” Tom Hart, director of U.S. government relations, told Sojourners. Haiti has an estimated $1 billion of debt owed to the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank’s International Development Association. Without cancellation of this financial burden, the nation’s rebuilding efforts in the wake of this tragedy—which claimed more than 230,000 lives—will be near impossible, says Hart.
Upon receipt of the petition, Canadian Finance Minister James Flaherty released a statement on behalf of the G7 countries saying, “We are committed in the G7 to the forgiveness of debt. In fact all bilateral debt has been forgiven by G7 countries vis-à-vis Haiti.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also voiced his support for debt cancellation on Feb. 5. While the U.S. government cannot legislate what the International Monetary Fund or World Bank will decide, Hart hopes they have received the message. “Having the United States and the entire G7 support debt relief is the biggest hurdle,” said Hart. | <urn:uuid:44ce30cc-29d3-43a7-9ac7-fa8fc064d99a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sojo.net/magazine/2010/04/calling-debt-relief?quicktabs_top_magazine_articles=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918862 | 346 | 1.890625 | 2 |
Studying Medieval Manuscripts
Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007) provides “practical instruction and training in the paleography and codicology of medieval manuscripts, in particular manuscripts written in Latin” (p. xiii). The focus in this beautifully illustrated book is on the making of manuscript books, but it also provides a bounty of interesting and useful material archivists will want to know about for their own work. And, as a bonus, Clemens and Graham have produced an excellent example of how to create an introductory manual to their topic that could be emulated for other scholarly research areas.
These experts seek to provide a portal by which students can learn more effectively about the analysis of early manuscript books. As they note, “Manuscript study has always been the holy grail of medieval studies. Advanced students were often barred from the archives until they had proven they had the necessary skills and familiarity with archival practices to understand the archived materials” (p. xiii). Clemens and Graham guide the reader through how medieval manuscripts were produced, reading these manuscripts, and various manuscript genres – all while providing basic advice about such matters as setting up an appointment to examine particular manuscripts. We learn about scripts, dating manuscripts, provenance, writing materials, the emergence of the use of paper over other writing materials, corrections and annotations, using microfilm or online surrogates, transcribing and editing texts, punctuation and abbreviations, forgeries, describing manuscripts, and so forth.
Along the way, we learn about issues relevant to a much broader array of archival work. For example, we gain an abbreviation for the relationship between preservation and destruction that is far more complex than merely seeming to be opposite tasks: “It is a remarkable irony that the preservation of some manuscripts may be intimately linked with the mutilation, dismemberment, or outright destruction of others . . . . [O]nce a medieval scriptorium had produced a new copy of a text in up-to-date script, the other manuscript that had served as the textual exemplar might be discarded: the production of the new thus led to the destruction of the old” (p. 113). The authors provide discussion about how early scholars developed scrapbooks of study materials by cutting up old manuscripts for specimens for their own use. Clemens and Graham also provide ample description of other kinds of manuscripts, such as charters and cartularies (these being among the most common of documents produced in the Middle Ages), with insights into the work needing to be done about such documents: “The study of diplomatics is a lifelong endeavor . . . . To properly interpret diplomatic sources requires a great deal of study and, in many cases, years of experience working in archives. Despite the work, however, the rewards for such study are tremendous; many archives contain charters that have never been studied and await discovery and interpretation” (p. 239). It is safe to say that such rewards await archivists and scholars for later varieties of documentary sources and Introduction to Manuscript Studies may be a useful reminder about such possibilities. | <urn:uuid:5351b988-c2c2-4179-a786-93f7b0b4ba65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/2008_03_03_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948698 | 649 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Silent views on Myanmar violence
The violence in western Myanmar started from the brutal raping and killing of a Rakhine (formerly known as Arakan) woman by three Muslims, the fact that two of them are reportedly Rohingyas is still a headliner in mainstream media.
The riot occurred in some areas in the Rakhine state, near the border towns of Myanmar and Bangladesh, where most of the population is Rohingya. Despite the riot, other states and divisions throughout the country where a number of Muslims live remained peaceful, proving that the clash was communal-based. Some mainstream media, however, manipulated the news as a religious clash between Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar.
Since the violence broke out, a number of people from both sides have been severely victimised. Seven weeks after the riot, the local people still suffer from a lack of security despite the presence of government armed forces. To add to the miseries, certain news agencies and extremists further worsened the situation. Local Rakhines, Hindus and some Muslims who were not involved in the riot are now also in need of government armed forces for state security.
The media spread the news that armed forces were cruelly treating the Rohingya, whereas government authorities were detaining people suspected for committing criminal activities such as burning down buildings and being a threat to the public.
The complexity of the situation and limited information from the Myanmar government has left the rest of the world confused. There is no solid definition for the term Rohingya; while Myanmar claims that they are the descendents of Bengalis, Bangladesh claims that they are the citizens of Myanmar. From the pages of history, at some point the authorities of Myanmar seemed to have recognised the Rohingya as people of Myanmar but the Myanmar public now believes that it was due to a corrupt immigration system.
These stateless Rohingyas must be helped with respect to human rights, yet the international community should not ignore the Rakhine people. While thousands of Rakhine people became homeless, they continued to be labeled as racists where none of them started the riot. In addition, even at emergency camps where they take refuge, discrimination on providing adequate aid to victims of the riot reportedly occurs.
International NGOs such as UNHCR who have been supporting the Rohingyas for decades is not paying enough attention to the local Rakhine ethnics. Some monks and monasteries which were the victims of the riot, as a response, denied receiving supports from INGOs.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the world democracy icon, mentioned that the whole issue has to be solved with effective rule of law to both border areas and the corrupted Myanmar immigration. The president of Myanmar who is known as a reformist, U Thein Sein, expressed his concern for the stateless illegal immigrants suggesting that UNHCR operate a sheltered camp for them or for them to be absorbed by another state. The UNHCR immediately rejected the proposal, contrasting their concern for the Rohingya people.
Although the world is pushing Myanmar to accept all the Rohingyas as “citizens” of Myanmar, contradictorily, Muslims around the world are protesting against the Myanmar people and its government. People are stepping on the Myanmar flag, some have burnt photographs of the president, and others have announced that they would organise a jihad against Myanmar. Iran forced the United Nations to send UN peacekeeping troops to Myanmar while the Organisation of the Islamic Corporation condemned the government for accepting all Rohingya people as Myanmar citizens.
Furthermore, some extremist pro-Rohingyas propagated misleading facts about Rohingya by manipulating photos of Chinese monks from earthquakes, dead bodies from cyclones and arresting Muslims in Thailand, and portraying them as Myanmar monks and Rakhine people brutally attacking the Rohingya. Some are even screaming that there is a genocide taking place without even knowing the facts of the situation. Such one-sided force will not assist in solving the current violence but only perpetuate racial hatred.
Some of the Bengali residents who are eligible to be granted citizenship should doubtlessly be granted it, as the Myanmar government and leading politicians have clearly stated so. However, for some of the armed illegal immigrants, Bangladesh has to be responsible and the Myanmar public believes that both countries should organise an efficient dialogue to resolve these immigration issues. Moreover, all prevailing countries should consider supporting the stateless Rohingya people to be absorbed by first-world countries, just like some of the refugees have been given the opportunity to apply for asylum.
The author is a graduate from National University of Singapore and Yangon University of Foreign Languages. Based in Singapore, she covers issues and affairs related to Myanmar on Global Voices, AYM Magazine, SEAYouths Say So and Myanmar Netizens.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group. | <urn:uuid:d362f5b7-a321-42ed-918e-d03d50197025> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dawn.com/2012/07/27/silent-views-on-the-myanmar-violence/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963095 | 977 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Find the Right Health Care Program for You
Career Training at Allied Health Schools
Medical assisting is a versatile, in-demand health care career where you positively affect the lives of patients. Medical assisting is a stepping stone to many other health care professions.
Medical billers and coders track patients' diagnoses based on lab procedures, signs and symptoms. The field is evolving so quickly, specialists now, more than ever, need training.
Dental assisting careers offer flexibility and ongoing opportunities to work with cutting edge technology. You'll perform a wide variety of tasks to assist dentists and help patients improve their health.
Veterinary technicians assist during medical procedures, conduct tests and perform diagnostic evaluations. You'll have a positive impact on the lives of animals, while enriching your own.
It takes a steady hand to be a good phlebotomist. Giving blood can be challenging, but you'll put people at ease, prepare specimens for the lab, and keep the equipment sterilized.
Health care requires skilled managers to keep things running smoothly. Three of the top administrative areas in health care include office management, health services and information management.
What Inspired You to Return to School?
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Read the official rules, get the entry form and application, and send us your story for a chance to earn $1,000 toward books, supplies or tuition.
- Five Health Care Careers That Make a Difference
- Is Health Care Job Training a Fix for Unemployment?
- Becoming a Certified Specialist in Physical Therapy
More Health Care Careers
As the massage profession gains recognition from the health care industry, massage therapy career opportunities increase exponentially.
While online and mail order pharmacies are thriving, so is the job market for pharmacy technicians. Find out if becoming a pharmacy technician is the right career move for you.
As a physical therapist, you'll help patients better their lives and overcome injuries and disabilities by teaching them how to strengthen muscles and improve mobility. | <urn:uuid:e29df267-1d3d-4c62-bb66-083cc23470f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.allalliedhealthschools.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934544 | 418 | 2.390625 | 2 |
Measures of Currency
19.1.5 Measures of Currency
For sums of money, use the appropriate symbol to indicate the type of currency (eg, $, €, £; see also 18.5.12, Units of Measure, Conventional Units and SI Units in JAMA and the Archives Journals, Currency).
His charge for the medication was $55.60 plus $0.95 for shipping.
The equivalent sum in euros was €30. | <urn:uuid:0d792869-0210-4890-be77-ef3ccddbc491> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amamanualofstyle.com/view/10.1093/jama/9780195176339.001.0001/med-9780195176339-div2-505?rskey=Kqoghi&result=1&q= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913458 | 95 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Researchers at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington have developed imaging technology to be used in an intelligent harvesting machine that could minimise wastage and solve an impending labour shortage for UK farmers.
Annual waste for certain crops can be up to 60% - which can mean up to £100,000 of lost revenue for an average farm every year, according to farmers who were consulted during research. Falling number of migrant labourers means that healthy crops cannot be gathered and so farms are losing crops due to harvesting at the wrong time.
NPL 's scientists are working with KMS projects and Vegetable Harvesting Systems (VHS) to turn the technology into an intelligent harvesting machine, which can look beneath the leafy layers of a crop, identify the differing materials, and enable precise size identification. This can be used to develop a fully automated harvesting robot, which would be able to fill the gap left by the labour shortage.
The most appropriate technologies to use are radio frequencies, microwaves, terahertz and the far-infra red. These four parts of the electromagnetic spectrum all have potential to safely penetrate the crop layers and identify the size of the harvestable material for a relatively low cost. NPL has developed a methodology for crop identification and selection focusing on cauliflower crops, one of the hardest crops to measure due to the large amount of leafage that covers the vegetable.
The researchers at NPL began by modifying microwave measurement systems to measure a cauliflowers structure. A series of measurements made on real crops in the laboratory and field enabled a statistical range of measurements for precise size identification. This data is then designed into an algorithm to enable a simple size indication from a raw measurement with uncertainties. The final technology will be developed for a first generation harvester and tested in a real farming environment.
A successful demonstration of the imaging technology was given recently at the Fanuc Robotics site in Coventry, showing its huge potential for the harvesting of cauliflowers, lettuces and other similar crops. This has attracted further commercial support from G's, one of the largest lettuces grower in the UK, to take the project forward and develop the complete product, which could be available as early as next year.
Project Lead, Dr Richard Dudley, at NPL said:
"The farming industry does not have access to equipment or the skills required to operate in these parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, few places do. That is why KMS Projects and VHS came to NPL to utilise the world class expertise and equipment that we have on site to try and address this problem. Our aim is to develop a unique new automated harvesting machine that will dramatically improve productivity in the UK and global farming industry and ultimately benefit consumers through cheaper food in the supermarkets." | <urn:uuid:d52d68eb-d452-47b8-a895-7debc368b931> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sciencecodex.com/intelligent_harvesting_machine_could_prevent_waste_lower_food_prices | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941424 | 567 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Q. All automobiles must have a front license plate, so why is it that motorcycles do not need to have one? Or do they?
– Joe Holguin, Midway City
Motorcycles don't need front license plates, but cars and most trucks do.
A. They do not.
"There is no such thing as a front (motorcycle) plate," said Todd Kovaletz, a spokesman and officer for the California Highway Patrol based in the agency's Santa Ana H.Q.
The Department of Motor Vehicles was kind enough to research this one.
"We have no record of a front license plate ever being used or considered in California, and there is no known use presently in any jurisdiction," Artemio Armenta, a DMV spokesman told Honk in an email.
"There are historical reports that some countries used two plates up until the 1970s (Great Britain, for example), but the practice fell out of favor due to safety concerns and the limited value of front license plates in identifying vehicles. ...
"In addition, because motorcycles don't have 'flush' locations on which to place a license plate, jurisdictions found that the additional plate could become a dangerous protrusion in an accident."
Tell that to a guy or gal who doesn't want a front plate to mess up the look of a spiffed-up car, right?
On cars and trucks, anyway, front plates make it easier for officers to track down wanted vehicles and the public to report the targets of Amber Alerts.
Q. The Imperial Highway onramp onto the westbound 91 Freeway in Anaheim is under construction, and where the asphalt and concrete meet there seems to be a large bump. While coming up to freeway speed, I hit it and got quite a jolt and had to clean and re-arrange all of the product in my work truck. Is there a phone number for Caltrans that I could use to report this? I have enough work without having to re-arrange my truck.
– Mark Smothermon, Tustin
A. Gloria Roberts, a Caltrans spokeswoman, knew of the bump and said it was taken care of since your email plopped into Honk's electronic mailbag.
She said the public can always report poor road conditions or make any comments to the agency's Orange County headquarters at 949-724-2000.
Honkin' fact: Caltrans' Bay Area division saw a need for some reason to warn its motorists of last weekend's Carmageddon II. Register reporter Michael Mello, while driving about Oakland, saw freeway signs warning drivers to expect ... backups in the Los Angeles area.
Got a question? Contact Honk at email@example.com. See Honk online: ocregister.com/honk. | <urn:uuid:c6487f49-ace4-49cb-81c9-11d7e19790be> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocregister.com/articles/front-373628-honk-plate.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959987 | 579 | 2.203125 | 2 |
Geranium nodosum ‘Silverwood’ purchased last summer when I visited Rachel Etheridge’s National Collection in Weardale and doing well in my sunny dry garden.
Later in the year when I was reviewing the plant list submitted by Joan Taylor in her application for NC status, I noticed this name and that Joan had introduced this cultivar. As we are always looking for personal stories relating to collections we contacted Joan and asked her for some information and an image to use in our 2012 membership leaflet.
Joan responded with the following;
I found Silverwood as a very small plant growing in the garden of a house in Herefordshire when visiting friends who had moved there. I grew the plant for several years and was delighted to see that it had white flowers…..not previously reported in the nodosum group. I ran a small nursery (Birchwood Plants) and decided to name and sell the plant as it performed so well in shade, giving all the proceeds from sales to the Motor Neurone Disease Association as my husband had died from the disease in 2002. Sales have raised in excess of £1500 for the association.
I was interested to see if and when ‘Silverwood’ had been registered and contacted the International Cultivar Registration Authority (ICRA), David Victor, who sent me the following information.
It was registered by a lady called Joan Taylor in memory of her late husband on behalf of the Motor Neurone Disease Association. It was described as
“..forming a slowly spreading clump, 20-30 cm in height, with light green foliage, glossy when young. The erect, funnel-shaped flowers are white, 2.5-3.0 cm in diameter, with notched petals and silvery-grey veins. The anthers are white and the style light green. The petals show the faintest hint of pink when they first appear as buds. Flowering continues throughout the summer in part or total shade. Comes reasonably true from seed if isolated from other colour forms, rogue plants having red pigmentation at base and more vigourous growth.”
The cultivar was first published by Birchwood Plants in their catalogue in 2003, as far as I know. They still offer it with all income going to the Association.
The online RHS Plant Finder lists it with reference to a standard herbarium specimen which I was able to see thanks to the staff in the Botany department at Wisley.
They also sent me an image of the specimen which is part of their records of this cultivar.
Researching the history has added to the interest of this acquisition and I can see how Collection Holders become fascinated by the back-stories of their plants. If you fancy getting your own ‘Silverwood’ then Rachel is holding Open Days on Sat & Sun 23rd & 24th June 2012, 11am-5pm, with plants from the collection for sale. Or go back to the original source at Birchwood Plants who are open for collection of orders by appointment. | <urn:uuid:beb30163-2e82-48ef-b13e-32deac7181bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://plantheritage.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/silverwood/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965443 | 627 | 1.789063 | 2 |
October 2009 - Posts
A short blurb in today's (10/27/09) Wall Street Journal stated that home prices rose in most major American cities in August. This is cited as evidence of a recovering economy. But what does this mean and is it something we really want?
Perhaps you've noticed that prices at the pump are going up. Since this indicates demand for fuel has increased it is also touted as another 'sign' that the economy is rebounding. So, we have rising home prices and rising energy costs. Traditionally these indicators lead everything else which means we'll be seeing rising costs across the board. And this means the economy is rebounding?
I'll be the first to admit that once again, my raise at my job was an embarrassing joke. And even though it is called a 'merit' raise, my supervisor apologized and tried to make everything better by informing me that due to deflation the cost of living is actually lower than it was last year. Sorry, but, wrong. I'll bet than I'm not alone in what is obviously a long term era of wage stagnation.
So, we have costs going up as a sign of a reviving economy while wages are flat since the cost of living has gone down. And while I'm supposed to be happy that the economy is recovering, to tell you the truth, I hope it doesn't. If the only fallout from an improving economy is rising prices, since this has already been predicted to be a jobless recovery - whatever that means - then I don't think I want a better economy. In fact, I can't see that an improving economy helps anybody except the people who already have most of the money. Sure, the wealthy complain that they pay 90% of the taxes, but they seem to forget that they control 90% of the money.
I think it's time for the world, and especially America, to rethink what we mean by a growing economy. If it means forever escalating prices and flat wages then it isn't really helping anyone. At the same time, government mandated market controls and other draconian measures, that have been experimented with at length in various countries, always lead to disaster. So what can we do?
The US economy is driven by consumerism, which is why the Bush/Obama bailout is doomed to fail. It doesn't address the underlying flaw in the American economy. A flaw which is based on neither our government nor our economic system. It isn't even related to our political system - though both parties tend to make it worse in their own way. Indeed, the fatal flaw in the US economy derives from a growing problem in our society. As long as people determine the value of another person based on purely material criteria our economy will continue to sputter. And you see it everywhere.
The beautiful woman is able to rise to economic security faster and more assuedly than the unattractive woman either through marriage or preferential promotion. The wealthy man progresses more quickly up the ladder as a result of his houses, cars, and golf clubs. The children of wealthy parents secure coveted spots on sporting teams. Attractive babies get smiled at more often. Wealthy children get selected for better schools and colleges. None of this is a secret which is why the beauty products business is so ubiquituous, parents engage in unethical behavior to secure preferential treatment for their children, and people will lie, cheat, steal, and do anything, to win. While I'm not so foolish as to believe that people haven't been doing this since the dawn of time, I do know for a fact that the depth to which it penetrates society varies enormously.
For 200 years America's trump card was Christianity. But not because God was biasing world events in our favor. It was because the Christian behaviors of moderation, charity, mercy, honesty, self-sacrifice, and tolerance - the classic virtues - greatly favor the performance of an economy simply because they smooth the interaction between people. It makes for good business. God doesn't even have to exist for this to be true if enough people believe it. Indeed, these are the same reasons that any culture rises to prominence - and there have been many non-Christian cultures that have shone brightly. And despite the negative view Christianity has taken of these cultures, from Ancient Egypt to Rome, it was these very virtues that worked in their favor.
But as the prevelance of these behaviors begins to fall in the general population it begins to impact the economy. At first it isn't noticeable, which but encourages more people to abandon virtue in favor expediance. This is called the slippery slope. Once you start down that path it is very difficult to climb back up. In fact, history shows that it is impossible. At some point, as more and more people abandon virtue in favor of hedonism, especially those who control the wealth, society will collapse and the economy will follow. It might not happen over night, but it will happen. I think this is where we are in America today.
Do we want the economy to recover? Who does it benefit? Answer these questions for yourself and you may see that the slippery slope isn't a slippery slope anymore but a cliff. The edge draws near. What choices will you make today?
In his article in The Observer on October 4th, Paul Harris asks the question, "Will California Become America's First Failed State?" Governor Schwarzenegger's specious California Vacation commercials notwithstanding, this is a question that needs asking. Indeed, in a scene reminescent of the post-Soviet collapse in Russia, the California state government was paying its employees in IOUs this summer and unemployment is over 12% - the highest in 70 years. (Do grocery stores take IOUs?) Regardless the situation is dire and one wonders how much Federal Stimulus money will go to prop up that teetering socialist state?
California, among its many socialist programs, has a health care program called Healthy Families that is intended to provide medical care for millions of the state's poorest residents. Over the years people have become dependent on this program. And why should they not? People tend to form dependencies on free services very quickly. The danger is when these free services fail. At present Healthy Families is failing due to the drop in tax revenue resulting from the recession. A recent scene at the Inglewood Forum near downtown Los Angeles, recounted in Harris' article, sounds more like a UN aid mission to Somalia than something happening in an American city. A travelling medical and dental clinic had set up shop outside the forum that promised free services to the first 1,000 people. The line stared forming at 1:00 AM and before the clinic had opened there were far more people in line than could be treated. Some had travelled hours to attend only to be turned away. Those who had become dependent on the state were being treated by volunteer workers. Americans used to travel to foreign countries to do this. Now we're doing it here.
This is the danger of socialist programs: It can not be assumed that tax revenues are going to be constant or that the economy is always going to grow. At some point the economy is going to contract and where does that leave the socialist programs? Introduction of a socialist medical system, even if it is a competing system and doesn't take over the private system, will spell disaster if not for everyone, then at least for those who grow dependent on it.
Consider the recent economic woes that have swept the nation - indeed, the world. To 'save' the global monetary system U.S. tax payers are forking over $750,000,000,000. Actually I should say, will be forking over $750,000,000,000 because the money is borrowed. And since jobs have dried up, the business sector has shrunk, and investment is down, the tax rolls are down, too. Way down. This is the problem in California and is why they can't pay for their socialist medical care program and people are resorting to volunteer run clinics. If we institute a socialist health care system at a national scale the same thing will eventually happen on a national scale. And when it does, not if - when it does, the non-existent private medical care industry won't be there to fill in with volunteer workers. Not to mention that the economy is down right now and talk of a HUGE new program is irresponsible at best and simply ludicrous at worst. It is tantamount to signing a contract for an expensive new gym membership when you just received word you're being laid off.
Before we adopt a socialist health care system, even if it isn't single payer, we had better look at California and ask what we're going to do the next time the economy shrinks. Except the next time it won't be just the monetary system or the mortgage industry that fails, you can pile health care on top of that. (Note: the health care system WAS NOT affected by this latest recession.) And it won't be tens of thousands as in California. It will be tens of millions. That's a lot of people angry at broken promises that should have never been made. It is simply amazing that Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both senators from California, are both such strong proponents for a national system when they are from a state where the system is failing. Are we simply going to borrow more to pay for it like California will have to do?
Will we borrow over $1,000,000,000,000 next time? How many zeroes are too many? How much of our progeny's future do we want to bargain away to feed the poor's insatiable, self-indulgent appetite for warmth and a full belly? This isn't a conservative or liberal question. It's a question asked by anyone who understands the danger of having more cash going out than you have coming in. Asked by anyone in an underpowered airplane or an overloaded ship. Asked by anyone who can't find enough food to replace the day's calories. It is a question ignored only by lemmings who will run any direction they are herded until they hurtle over a cliff and into the sea. Watch the film White Wilderness. Once those lemmings go over the cliff it's too late. See them try to scurry back up the slope? They can't and fall to their death. The narrator sounds really nice but he's the very guy driving them over the edge. And he got an Academy Award for it! I'm not a lemming. You're not a lemming. Anyone who doesn't want to go out and get a job like you and me doesn't deserve health care, much less FREE health care. Or free internet. Or a free cell phone. What kind of a nut is coming up with these ideas?
So Rush Limbaugh wants to own an NFL football team, huh? He does seem to know alot about, and have a true love for, the sport. Funny how things a person says years ago can come back from the past to haunt them later in life. Sort of like what this blog will do to my writing aspirations if ever I get the attentions of a gatekeeper (i.e., agent or editor). But for now my anonymity is doing a great job of keeping me, well, anonymous.
In reality I don't think Rush is a racist. If he were, he wouldn't make such seemingly racist comments. No, I think in this case he is a victim of his own self-honesty - at least on that subject. Then again, that Donovan McNabb comment was pretty stupid and he should have known better.
Regardless, it seems his bid for partial ownership of the St. Louis Rams has met with an untimely end in what he says is a vicious smear campaign bent on destroying conservatism. While Al Sharpton and his many detractors are definitely not conservatives, I think Rush's perception of who is destroying conservatism is skewed. Though he is right, conservatism is on the decline.
Even if the talking heads on the left are trying to destroy conservatism that sort of assault is generally ineffective. It is tantamount to Americans trying to convert Al Qaeda. Conservatives simply don't repond to those kinds of attacks. Just like Liberals don't respond to attacks from the right. In general, either camp, when under assault from the other, tends to circle the wagons. And in many cases, attacks from the opposition strengthen the base. The problem with conservatism isn't the attacks from the outside, the problem is what's happening inside the wagon-circle.
Every successful movement goes through a series of stages. There is the genesis when the group's founders carve a niche for themselves and begin attracting followers. It is their energy and the truthfulness of their message (in the ears of the converts) that builds momentum by attracting true believers. In most cases the group's founders not only preach the message, but live it as well. They become icons and examples of the ideologies they champion.
The second stage can be broadly categorized as growth. In this segment the group gains additional members not only from the truth of the message but from the appeal of a successful group. Except during this stage one begins to see that new members are less and less true believers, but simply people who want to be part of something that matters. In this stage you'll find people from the opposition flocking to the new movement like lemmings. Especially if the opposition is already in the third stage - corruption.
Success of a movement always breeds corruption because in addition to attracting true believers, success always attracts followers who have no interest in the core ideology. They just want to be in charge. It is these people who usually become the second generation of leaders. Because they have no stake in the ideology they are more free to move fluidly and are nearly always more aggressive and predatory. At the same time they are often charismatic and charming and will do whatever it takes to rise into leadership positions. For these people charisma and charm formed early in life as they realized they had nothing substantive to offer but were skillful at manipulation of others to get their way. In many cases they are sociopathic and in a primitive society would be banished because they not only offer nothing useful to survival, they demand to be served. In modern, affluent societies though they find willing followers because they personify the energy of the movement's success in themselves, and the majority of the second stage converts are only there for the party. Or rather, the partying. These leaders also tend to promote only those like themselves which but reinforces the growing problem.
Corruption of course leads to decline. A hypocritical group of leaders can only sustain the charade for so long before the acolytes doing all the work - that dwindling number true believers - get fed up and leave. When that happens the ideology collapses and all you are left with is a large group of angry people with self-aggrandizong leaders: the Republicans in 2008. It is also where the Democrats found themselves in 1994 when they were tossed out by an up and coming group passing through the second stage: Neoconservatives.
Reagan rekindled the dormant flames of Conservatism and he was, there can be no doubt, a true believer who was amply endowed with charisma and wit. True conservatives flocked to him in droves followed by millions who just thought he was a cool guy because he stood up to the Soviets. It was the second generation of his followers who took the reins of power in 1994. This included George Bush Jr., Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Marc Sanford, and many others, as well as popular figures such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who effectively self-monetized the swelling tide. While I won't say all these people are not conservatives, their actions do identify them as people whose personal aspirations trump the mandates of their own ideology. And some of them, such as Mark Foley and John Ensign were conservatives in name only, using the ideology only for personal gain and herding their only followers like lemmings to the cliff.
It is these people, I charge, with destroying conservatism - Not Al Sharpton, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer, or even Barak Obama, who in fact tend to strengthen the opposition's core. From Rush Limbaugh's drug addition to Newt Gingrich's extramarital affairs, from Dick Cheney's greed to George Bush's mistaken invasion of Iraq, from the seemingly uncontrollable sexual appetites of an endless string of elected officials, the party of Conservatism has become the party of Corruption and is being killed from within. Can the Republicans take a lesson from the Democrats who have reinvented liberalism in the form of a young, charismatic outsider? With the same old names being bandied about, I got to tell you, it looks like a trainwreck in slow motion. Or a modern adaptation of the film White Wilderness. And I for one am not going to wear a furry suit for those characters.
Leave it to the Norwegians. Barak Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing... well, nothing. He did manage to get elected but he's only been in office for eight months. And he wins the Nobel Peace Prize? That can mean only one thing. The Nobel Peace Prize is worth about as much as the dollar.
Physicists strive for years to perfect their theories. Economists are honored after their death. Doctors come up with novel, new treatments that bring relief to millions. Artists and writers compile an entire lifetime of work before they are even eligible for a Nobel. And Obama gets one for doing even less than Gore. Or even Carter. Oh well, maybe he'll put the monetary award into the stimulus package - er, I forgot. The Nobel Prize is tax free. | <urn:uuid:15033b04-ce00-4dce-81df-df8a520ffed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming/archive/2009/10.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975134 | 3,632 | 1.765625 | 2 |
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Learn more about Jobseeker's Allowance - a benefit you may be
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much you could claim. | <urn:uuid:75a35f1f-0e90-4ae8-b1ba-1c21b0e00041> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.turn2us.org.uk/information__resources/benefits/working_or_looking_for_work.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935001 | 289 | 1.523438 | 2 |
The major themes of the EAPC Forum included: energy security; Central Asia’s contribution to security and development in Afghanistan; and regional challenges and cooperation in Central Asia and the Caucasus. For its part, the Rose Roth Seminar focused on democratisation and the construction of a robust civil society; economic development, and the environmental challenges that Central Asian countries and Kazakhstan in particular are addressing.
Central Asia ’ significant energy resources and its location at a vital geo-strategic crossroads have made it the object of ever mounting international attention since the Cold War’s end. The region borders Afghanistan, Russia, China and Iran and is a vital link between East and West as well as North and South. Central Asia’s cooperation with Euro-Atlantic institutions remains embryonic, however, and Kazakhstan is currently the only regional actor participating in NATO’s International Partnership Action Plan (IPAP). By extension, Kazakhstan ’s parliament is the sole legislative body from the region to have established formal relations with the NATO PA.
Several speakers at the seminar stressed that the Alliance does not see itself in any way becoming a dominant security player in the region. Indeed, NATO officials strongly reject the notion that they are playing a zero sum game in which deeper cooperation with any single coalition of states occurs at the expense of another. To the contrary, they underline that Kazakhstan’s cooperation in transporting supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan does not conflict with its cooperation with other regional security organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Alliance remains focused on what it can do to improve the security landscape, including support for defence reform and disaster management. As a result, NATO projects in the region include a small arms destruction trust fund, support for Kazakhstan ’s newly-formed peacekeeping battalion, assistance for rocket fuel destruction, and a project to improve internet connectivity in the region.
In many respects, Central Asia has posed less profound security challenges than many experts had originally anticipated. Indeed, Kazakhstan ’s decision to become a non-nuclear weapon state marked a critical contribution to regional and indeed to global security. Although there are tensions in the region, the kind of internecine strife that some feared would plague the region has never emerged with the exception of the civil war in Tajikistan from 1992-1997 and the violent suppression of protests in Andijan, Uzbekistan in 2005. The region has thus been more stable than anticipated, and its governments have struggled to construct national identities and legitimacy with varying degrees of success. Kazakhstan has perhaps been the most successful in this regard.
Very serious challenges nonetheless persist, and the potential for civil and regional conflict cannot be ruled out. The Seminar’s keynote speaker, Martha Brill Olcott, pointed to several of these problems. Water management issues in an ever drier region are a potential source of conflict, and the states of Central Asia have yet to forge lasting agreements among downstream and upstream countries. The water problem also relates to a rural energy challenge and sustainable energy projects are essential to ameliorate conditions in the region’s impoverished rural areas.
The region’s borders are not entirely demarcated, they remain militarized and they are managed in a highly corrupt fashion. All of this undermines regional integration and stability. Drug trafficking poses a very serious set of challenges to regional security and internal stability, and this is one reason why the situation in Afghanistan is of grave concern to all the region’s governments. The current economic crisis has sparked a mass repatriation of labour migrants, who could become a source of discontent and instability. Meanwhile the Euro Atlantic community has only been partially successful in helping the region to ameliorate these conditions, in part, because the West is not completely trusted.
Seminar participants considered the effects on the region of the global economic downturn in a separate session. That crisis and the resulting drop in energy prices has dramatically slowed the growth rates of the region’s gas and oil exporters including of Kazakhstan. Beyond this immediate problem, the region’s energy exporters have uniformly failed to diversify their economies and have become over-reliant on ever fluctuating commodity prices. This is not a stable path to economic and social development. The EU and Russia remain the region’s principle trading partners, but China ’s economic presence in Central Asia has increased markedly and will likely continue to grow. This has created an opportunity for the region to play the great powers off of each other, and to varying extents, they are doing this.
Although developing a well articulated civil society can takes time and dedication, several speakers and participants regretted the slow pace of democratic development in Central Asia. While the number of NGOs in Kazakhstan has risen markedly rapidly, they are subject to an array of legal restrictions that effectively slow their emergence as social and political actors. There are also indications that this process is meditated in a top-down fashion, which obviously undermines the democratic ends that process ought to serve. Measures such as a draft law in Kazakhstan that would impose tight controls over internet use are particularly worrying. Several parliamentarians suggested that the absence of genuine opposition in the region’s parliaments is a particular concern.
On the positive side, radical Islamism has not taken root in Central Asia to the degree that many had once feared. Professor Galina Yemelianova from the University of Birmingham suggested that politically active Islamic groups operating in the Fergana Valley are more tolerant than jihadist groups in other regions and should not be categorized as extremist. Only in Uzbekistan has a genuine radical Islamist movement taken root, while previously violent Islamicists in Tajikistan have not been brought into the governing consensus. Professor Yemelianova told participants that interest in Islam and the Islamic way of life is rising in Central Asian societies where Soviet authorities had once sought to uproot the region’s Islamic traditions. Over time, this could become a factor in relations with the West and with China.
Finally, environmental problems in the region are acute. Over half of the region is undergoing some degree of desertification, and decades of Soviet occupation has bequeathed the region myriad environmental catastrophes including the drying Arial Sea, poor quality water, and the poisoned land at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site and other military sites. Decades of uranium mining pose the challenge of radioactive material management. However, Peter Stegnar of the Jozef Stefan Institute told participants that scientific studies demonstrate that radioactive levels in uranium mining areas are low and do not pose a major threat to the health of populations in those regions. Although actual health risks are low, perceived risk is high and public panics are not uncommon. Further research and assistance are needed to begin to cope with these challenges but so too is greater transparency and dialogue with civil society.
Much of the information generated by this Seminar will be incorporated in the updated version of the Report of the Sub-Committee on East-West Economic Co‑Operation and Convergence by Attila Mesterhazy (Rapporteur) on Central Asian Energy Production: Potential Contributions to Transatlantic Energy Security, which will be presented for adoption at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s 55th Annual Session in Edinburgh, 13-17 November 2009.
For more information contact firstname.lastname@example.org. | <urn:uuid:95e25be5-cc5f-42ae-bebf-d4db8381e6c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nato-pa.int/default.asp?SHORTCUT=1880 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945013 | 1,485 | 1.90625 | 2 |
CAMESA helps parents and doctors manage the side effects of second generation antipsychotics in children.
The Canadian Alliance for Monitoring Effectiveness and Safety of Antipsychotics in Children (CAMESA) guidelines were developed by a group of physicians, health professionals and researchers from across Canada, with the support of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The goal of the CAMESA guidelines is to improve the quality of life of children with mental health disorders by promoting antipsychotic drug safety.
There are three CAMESA guidelines:
- How to monitor antipsychotic drug safety
- How to manage or treat metabolic complications of antipsychotic medications if they occur (such as weight gain, or elevated cholesterol)
- How to manage or treat extrapyramidal complications of antipsychotic medications if the occur (involuntary movements)
The guidelines synthesize research findings and provide recommendations on how to perform these tasks. | <urn:uuid:51b4ac30-32cb-4cd2-9c3f-16022fc8692f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://camesaguideline.org/information-for-doctors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909326 | 188 | 2.8125 | 3 |
I’m looking at some wool yarn on eBay. They give the weight of the yarn as 12 wraps per inch. I’ve asked the owner if they know how many yards per pound it is, but they don’t know. Can you point me in the right direction?
It is always hard to know for sure about a yarn that you don't hold in your hand (especially wool, which can vary so much in type, spin, and ply), but you can make some guesses. You'll have to hope that they are wrapping the ruler so that the strands are next to each other without leaving spaces but also without compression. If this is the case, you can conclude that a yarn with 12 wraps per inch would be sett at 6 ends per inch for a balanced plain weave (in an inch of weaving, the same amount of space is taken up by the weft as by the warp, so 6 + 6 = 12). If you know that this yarn is wool, you can consult the Master Yarn Chart. For each yarn, the middle number in a group of three numbers indicates the suitable sett for a balanced plain weave in that yarn. So you can check out the yd/lb for wool yarns that recommend a plain weave sett of 6 ends per inch. When I do that, I see a range of yd/lb of about 400 to 675. Because it's wool, though, the relative thickness/loftiness/qualities of the yarns shown at that sett vary tremendously. So I'd ask them to describe the yarn. Is it a strong yarn with many plies (such as the Paternayan rug yarn) or is it a lofty singles? You should be able to find out enough information to know whether or not it serves your purposes. | <urn:uuid:b1df5dc5-b5f0-44d2-9b04-fc8952b2ab1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weavingtoday.com/blogs/ask-madelyn/archive/2013/02/01/de-mystifying-mystery-yarn.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960914 | 367 | 1.90625 | 2 |
MIT team finds that the ratio of component atoms is vital to performance.
The last class that will graduate from MIT in the 1900s contains a record proportion of women, students from almost four dozen foreign countries-and six sets of twins.
Forty-two percent of the 1,130 members of the Class of 1999 are women. The freshmen hail from every state except South Dakota, as well as Puerto Rico (13 students) and 82 students from 44 foreign countries. Canada is the leading source of foreign students with 11, followed by Hong Kong with five.
The Admissions Office received a record 7,832 applications and admitted 27 percent. Of those admitted, almost 54 percent enrolled, which is an incerase from last year's 51 percent and is the largest percentage in about 10 years, according to Elizabeth Johnson, associate director of admissions for information service and research "It's gone down every year in the past 10 years," she said. "It was unusual having it go up as much as it did." One reason could be the population trend that has resulted in a larger pool of high school students applying to college, a trend that will slowly increase into the early part of the next century, she added.
When asked about their prospective majors, 485 opted for the School of Engineering (including 253 in Course 6) and 344 for departments in the School of Science, with the largest preference for biology with 155. Thirty-one freshmen said they were likely to major in a School of Humanities and Social Science department; another 35 expressed a preference for management, architecture or brain and cognitive sciences.
��������������������������� Forty-three percent of the class are minorities. The class includes 28 percent Asian-American and 15 percent from other minority groups (Puerto Rican, Native American, African-American, Mexican-American and other Spanish). An additional seven percent are international students.
��������������������������� The middle 50 percent of the class had SAT scores in the 590-690 range for the verbal portion and 720-770 in math.
��������������������������� 97 percent were in the top 10 percent of their high school class; 35 percent were first in their class.
��������������������������� Four students will be 16 as of September 1 and one will be 15.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on August 30, 1995. | <urn:uuid:6b707695-3f92-4350-bba6-ff220e310fae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1995/women-0830.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992199 | 895 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Japan central bank ups asset buys to aid economy
TOKYO (AP) - Japan's central bank expanded a government bond-buying programme on Tuesday, acting to spur growth following news of a further decline in industrial production.
The Bank of Japan's policy board voted unanimously to increase the asset purchasing programme by 11 trillion yen (S$169 billion) to 91 trillion yen.
The central bank decided against any change in its key interest rate, which remains at 0 per cent to 0.1 per cent.
The bond-buying programme is intended to encourage borrowing and spending and help make Japan's exports more competitive. | <urn:uuid:37b32135-c931-4ddf-b373-4d6d4a50bf0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.straitstimes.com/st/print/568121 | 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 | 0.928739 | 127 | 1.65625 | 2 |
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Exhibition Toussaint Dubreuil
from March 25, 2010 to June 21, 2010
First Painter to King Henri IV
This exhibition, the first to be devoted to Toussaint Dubreuil, doyen of the Second School of Fontainebleau, comprises fifty drawings ranked among the finest ever to come out of France.
First Painter to Henri IV, a consummate lutenist, a passionate horseman —his father was a saddler— and as skilled a jouster as any scion of a great family, Dubreuil seems to have possessed all the nobility of character needed for a life of self-possessed happiness.
His work must be seen in the context of a social life rooted in physical prowess and of a musical virtuosity which, wedded to song, sparks true poetry. He was much appreciated by his contemporaries, who spoke of his "handsome pictures" and considered him "singular in his art." Those awed by his talent stressed his determination "to paint and invent at the same time," as Francesco Primaticcio had done at Fontainebleau before him. Yet they would see him die young in 1602, aged 41 or perhaps 44, and leaving behind him the image of a painter "exceptionally intelligent and notably skilled in drawing and the nude."
In twenty years Dubreuil had mastered all the significant innovations of the Mannerists in Italy (Michelangelo, Tibaldi, Passerotti) and France (Primaticcio, Niccolò dell’Abate, Antoine Caron) ; and not content with being their brilliant heir, he had achieved recognition —outshining Martin Fréminet and Ambroise Dubois— as the uncontested master of the Second School of Fontainebleau. Late in his brief career, doubtless having learnt of the artistic reforms wrought by the Carracci in Bologna, he began working in a new, eloquently clear style which in France paved the way for the Classicism of Laurent de La Hyre, Simon Vouet and Nicolas Poussin.
Organized by: Dominique Cordellier, Department of Prints and Drawings, Musée du Louvre
Denon wing, 1st floor, Salle Mollien
Included in the museum ticket: €9 ; €6 after 6 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday | <urn:uuid:85adee4e-1f32-45f9-9ee7-4584dbab40df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.louvre.fr/en/expositions/toussaint-dubreuil?ltype=archives | 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 | 0.941186 | 674 | 1.765625 | 2 |
One of my favorite container ideas … basil in a repurposed pasta cook pot (the kind with the perforated insert).
I'm just one of hundreds of Connecticut gardeners with stacks of emptied plastic nursery pots growing in and around the garage and garden shed. Disposing of these pots in an environmentally responsible manner does not involve simply throwing nursery pots and trays into your town's recycling stream. Many nursery pots are of black plastic, often made from previously recycled plastic, and are not accepted in municipal recycling programs. But these pots don't have to end up in the trash. Read my article, Reusing & Recycling Plastic Pots in the May/June 2012 issue of Connecticut Gardener for information on how to reuse and recycle plastic nursery pots and trays. | <urn:uuid:1d14e055-47a3-40ab-862b-90a7318a846b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joenesgarden.com/reuserecycle/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954154 | 157 | 1.945313 | 2 |
"May I see your ID?"
That questioned would be asked of Iowa voters if a bill sponsored by Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz becomes law.
Schultz, a Republican, spoke at Cecil's Cafe Friday afternoon to the Pachyderm Club a Republican social group and said he intends to push a bill requiring photo identification during next year's legislative session.
(AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Cathey Rains, left, and Mary Austin, right, absentee voting officials, wait in an empty polling place during early voting at the Oklahoma County Board of Elections in Oklahoma City Aug 8, 2011. The election was the first state election since nearly 75 percent of Oklahoma voters approved the voter ID law in November. Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz is proposing a similar law here.
"You have to show an ID before you get on an airplane, you have to show an ID before you open a checking account, and if you like beer you have to show ID before you buy a beer so why not when you vote?" Schultz said.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reported in July that 14 states require photo ID to vote and 16 others require a non-photo ID to do so. Iowa requires neither.
Schultz said he does not want to disenfranchise voters, but rather wants to assure that results are accurate.
"What I'm trying to do is make sure we're having fair and honest elections. That's not to say we're not having them, but there's a door open and I don't want to invite the burglar in. We know that there's an element of our society that is a criminal element that is willing to do things," Schultz said.
Marshall County Auditor Dawn Williams, a Republican, attended the meeting and said in her 22 years with the auditor's office, many of which she oversaw elections, that she's only seen one confirmed case of voter fraud.
"There are so many different checks and balances. Is it a perfect system? No. Is there widespread fraud? No, absolutely not," Williams said.
She was uncertain if she would support Schultz' effort, saying she wanted to see the final bill before endorsing or rejecting.
Opponents feel such a requirement would deny voting to those without identification.
A 2006 study, conducted by pollster Opinion Research and sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, found that 11 percent of U.S. citizens did not have a government-issued photo ID. Certain groups, the study found, had a higher percentage those Age 65 and older (18 percent), voting-age African Americans (25 percent), those making less then $35,000 a year (15 percent).
It also reported that 18 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds have a photo ID with incorrect information such as their address seven percent of citizens lack proof of citizenship and 34 percent of voting-age women do not have access to any official document that reflects their married name.
"We don't have those kinds of numbers in Iowa," Schultz said.
The bill would provide a free ID for voting purposes, and would grant the ability of one voter with ID to vouch for one other person without proof. Schultz said inclusion of those provisions would make the bill "bulletproof" to potential court challenges.
The League of Women Voters, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP have come out against voter identification bills, but polls indicate many voters support ID efforts.
In May, a Minnesota Star-Tribune poll showed 80 percent of Minnesotans favor efforts there to require proof of eligibility there, and Rasmussen Reports polling in June showed 75 percent support nationally for such a requirement.
Forms of identification, though can be tampered with, and people who are not allowed to vote, such as convicted felons and non-citizens in the country on a visa, would have the ability to get a driver's license or other form of identification.
"Those issues can not be addressed solely by the ID," Schultz said.
Schultz said in addition to a photo ID, he would like to see all counties have access to an electronic database called a poll book, that would enable election officials to swipe an ID, like a credit card, and determine if a person has voting rights.
Schultz said he did not know the added cost of providing free ID or pollbooks, but did not feel like the expense would be prohibitive.
"Parry" count unknown
Schultz, who attended the Aug. 13 GOP straw poll, said he did not know the number of people, inspired by comedian Stephen Colbert, who intentionally misspelled Texas Gov. Rick Perry's name.
Colbert, through his Colbert Super PAC, aired television ads leading up to the vote encouraging people to vote for Rick "Parry". "That's A for America", the ad joked.
The state Republican Party, though, has not released the number of people that did so, and Schultz said he did not know. People doing so, though, had their votes count for Perry.
"When people make misspellings, our laws require that they go with the legitimate person. Some people spelled Sarah Palin P-A-L-Y-N, and some people spelled Rick Perry, P-E-R-Y, and those votes went to (Perry)," Schultz said.
Perry, who was not on the ballot, received 718 write-in votes and finished sixth.
There were 218 "scattered" votes which included support for Iowa State Fair butter cow and Iowa State men's basketball coach Fred Hoiberg. | <urn:uuid:4f0d4e98-9e9e-4aac-b6b8-043bcd3bb92f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/542386/Iowa-Secretary-of-State-advocates-voter-ID-bill.html?nav=5005 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973638 | 1,152 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Saffron infused sweet and savory Butternut Squash Patties are my contribution to Sunita from "Sunita's World" blog's "Think Spice..Think.." event.This month's spice is "Saffron", thanks for hosting Sunita!:)
This is how Saffron looks in it's natural form:
Photo from Wikipedia.
Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of saffron crocus (Crocus sativus).Saffron, has been always the world's most expensive spice by weight,is native to Southwest Asia and Kashmir in India.It was first cultivated in the vicinity of Greece.
Saffron, when used in excess in strands or powder form tastes bitter. When used sparingly, it imparts a beautiful fragrance and color to any dish.Saffron strands have better fragrance when soaked in warm milk or water than the powdered Saffron. Do store them in the freezer to prolong their shelf life than keeping them in a dry place in the pantry.
For more info and to look at the beautiful pictures of Saffron flower, click here and about Kashmiri Saffron and to buy it, click here.
Here are my Saffron-Vanilla pudding and savory Butternut Squash dish and Butternut Squash Waffles, enjoy!:)
Sweet and Savory Butternut Squash Patties or mini Pancakes infused with World's most expensive spice, Saffron!
First you need to: peel and cube about 2 cups of Butternut squash. Place them in a microwavable dish, add 1/4 tsp Saffron Strands and about a cup of water, cover and cook in the MW for 5-10mins or until squash is soft, almost dry and water is evaporated.Let it cool a bit, and grind the squash into a puree.
Add 3-4 tbsp of plain flour or as much it needs to make it thick into a thick batter, 1 tbsp Corn starch (optional) to the puree and mix well. You can add 2-3 tbsp Potato flakes too to the hot puree if you like. Texture should be like very thick batter.Add more flour if it's thin. Divide this mix into two in 2 different bowls.
Here is how to make both of these patties:
For sweet patties:
Add 2-3 tbsp powdered sugar, 1 tsp Vanilla essence, 1 tsp Cinnamon pd, 2 tsp Pumpkin spice ( or 1/8 tsp clove pd, 1/4 ginger pd) to one portion of squash puree and mix well.
To make sweet patties:
Heat a non-stick pan, add 1 tbsp of oil or butter and drop 1-2 tbsp of thick batter,spread a little to a thick about 3" rounds about 3 patties at a time. Let them cook until golden and flip carefully and cook the other side. Repeat the same with rest of the batter.
Serve these sprinkled with powdered sugar or Maple syrup or both.
For savory patties:
Add store bought 1 tsp Rasam or Sambhar or Curry pd, 1/2 tsp Garlic pd, minced Cilantro or Parsley,salt and chilli flakes or green chillies if you like, mix well.
For making savory patties:
Wipe the pan clean with a paper towel, add oil and heat again. Do the same as above and cook both sides until golden.
Serve with Ketchup or coconut chutney and a lemon slice.
I loved the sweet patties. Sugar and squash becomes caramelized when cooked and gives them a crunch and tastes great with syrup. Try these for breakfast.Using the non-stick pan prevents you from using too much oil or butter.
Savory patties are a blend of sweet squash and spicy hot curry pd, wonderful with coconut chutney. Enjoy!:))
Masala Peanuts, "fried" in the Microwave is my entry to "Easy cooking with Microwave" which is hosted by Srivalli for "Cooking 4 all seasons" with a theme of "snacks" this month. Thanks for hosting Sri!:))
Trial and error!
When Sri announced microwaved "snacks", first thing came to my mind was the crunchy masala peanuts which I used to deep fry in oil but found this recipe in the MW cookbook I have mentioned below. I followed her recipe EXACTLY at first as she has written but I wasn't that happy with the result although tasted good.
The author has asked us to heat 4 tbsp of oil first and then add the wet, spiced peanut mix to the oil to fry in the MW for 6 mins but I found that Peanuts were still tasted raw inside even though the spices are crispy,little over cooked.(I have high powered MW and used huge Spanish Peanuts!:P)
I improvised on her method to make it better.I microwaved the raw peanut for a minute first to crisp them, let it cool and then added the water and masala mix on top.I sprayed the no-stick oil on the other plate lightly to prevent sticking while cooking, then spread the spice coated peanuts and sprayed again on the top of spiced peanuts to save some calories instead of cooking in 4 tbsp oil to cook for 3 minutes.
Voila! Got a perfect plate of crunchy masala peanuts. Try it, I am sure you will love it as much as we did!:)
Microwaved spicy crunchy masala Peanuts:
This "Masala Kadalai" recipe adapted from the Microwave cookbook by the author Mallika Badrinath with my own additions and improvisation:
1 cup unsalted Peanuts, 2 tbsp water.
Mix these in a bowl: 2 tbsp Besan or Chickpea flour, 1 tbsp Rice flour, 1/2 tsp Garlic pd, 1/8 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp Cumin pd,1/4 tsp Ajwain(Carrom) seeds, salt and chilli pd to taste.
No-stick oil to spray. Two microwavable plates.
How to make it:
1. Spray a microwavable plate with no-stick spray lightly and keep aside.
2. In another plate, microwave peanuts for a minute and cool and then add water. Sprinkle all the flour and spices on the wet peanuts, shake the plate or roll the peanuts gently in masala to mix until well coated.
3. Add all this to sprayed plate and spread gently in to single layer. Spray the oil again lightly on top of coated peanuts. DO NOT spray oil on the wet peanuts, spices won't stick! Add masala first, mix and then spray!!
4. Microwave for 3 mins on high. Check once after 1 1/2 minutes just to make sure they are not burning. After 3 minutes,it looks clumpy but as it cools Peanuts will get crispy.
5. Cool on a paper towel. MW few seconds more if you feel that they are still not crisp enough after it's cooled.
5. When completely cooled, gently separate the clumps. Serve with coffee or even better, cold beer.YUM!
Notes: Other nuts you can use in the same way are Cashews, Almonds etc. You can also throw in some Rasam pd, Sambhar pd and any curry pd to the batter for a different taste!
That's it, enjoy the quick, full of nutrients and a low fat snack too!:)) | <urn:uuid:516dcbe0-1ca6-4739-add2-cae55ad9d934> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aromahope.blogspot.com/2007/10/saffron-squash-patties-and-mw-masala.html?showComment=1191874980000 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924316 | 1,592 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Book, show delves into photographer’s essence
Los Angeles, CA -- In two decades of marriage, it is inevitable that a couple learn something from one another.
What Deborah Charles learned from her late husband, Roland, was nothing physical, yet it had a profound, almost spiritual, impact on her life.
“During the 21 years we were married, I saw him live his passion everyday. He loved what he did,” said Charles, of her husband, a noted photographer who traveled the world photographing people and was co-owner of probably the first African American owned gallery to focus on exhibiting the works of Black photographers.
Charles wanted to find that same sense of joy and fulfillment, she saw in her husband.
Seven years after her spouse died of a heart attack, the Los Angeles corporate worker-turned-literary-agent is finally finding her passion, and it has been with the “help” of her husband.
“As I have been involved in keeping Roland’s legacy alive (she has done nine exhibits since his death), I’ve found it has become my passion,” explained Charles who on June 12 unveiled the next phase in her goal of exposing her husband’s vast body of photography.
The project—Haiku in My Neighborhood—is a collaboration between Charles, good family friend and original Watts Prophet Dee Dee McNeil and Eric Hanks, owner of what may be the oldest African American art gallery in Los Angeles County.
A combination photographic exhibit and book release party, the project features Roland’s photography coupled with haiku poetry by McNeil.
“Dee Dee approached me, and said she had always wanted to do a book project with Roland but they never got around to it,” recalled Charles. “She had this haiku poetry she had written years ago, and thought it would be nice to have the poetry matched with some of his photos. She asked if she could send the manuscript. I said sure.”
When Charles began to read the poems, she immediately started to visualize photographs in her husband’s collection that would match the words, then she started to gather and match the images and text, and was amazed at how well they fit.
“You would have thought the haiku was written for the photos or the photos were taken, and the haiku written to match,” Charles remembers.
She and McNeil got together and started to shop the book idea around. There were no takers.
“Dee Dee said, ‘why don’t you self-publish,’ and I said no, I don’t want to do that. We just have to be patient,” reflected Charles, who had discovered in her make-over into a literary agent that patience was paramount in the book world.
But it didn’t hurt to explore other approaches, which led the pair to Hanks, owner of Santa Monica-based M. Hanks Gallery, who had previously featured an exhibit of Roland’s photography.
“I really believed in it,” said Hanks of the book project. “It seemed like a wonderful thing to do.
The photographs were great, and the poems fit perfectly,” added the gallery owner.
“I had heard about haiku, but was not that familiar with it. But after reading the poems and getting an explanation from the poet, I was really attracted.”
While he had never produced a book before, Hanks was knowledgeable about creating catalogs for art exhibits and had done so for about 21 years.
Working with Charles and McNeil, his gallery has published the 104-page book that features 50 photographs and matching haiku poems. The exhibit highlights a small selection of photos from the book.
In addition to the exhibit, which is on view through Aug. 15 at M. Hanks, 3008 Main St., Santa Monica, the gallery will hold a book signing June 28.
When Charles first saw the finished book, she was overcome by her own passion and emotion.
“When I saw it, I was so joyful. I couldn’t even look at it. I had to bring it home and wait before I could open a page of the book. (When I did), I just got chill bumps. It’s been such a wonderful project, and I’ve felt like I had Roland’s spirit watching over me every step of the way,” recalled Charles.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Southland supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage will focus their attention tomorrow on the U.S. Supreme Court as it hears arguments on Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved measure restricting marriages to unions between a man and a woman.
Proposition 8 was enacted by voters in 2008 but was deemed unconstitutional last year by a federal appeals court panel, which found the initiative was at odds with U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
The U.S Supreme Court hears arguments on Tuesday and Wednesday about the constitutionality of two laws in the same-sex marriage debate. These are the federal Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA and California’s Proposition 8. The high court’s decision, expected later this year, could have a profound impact on the definition of families in America.
“That we arrived at 50 years together is due as much to luck as to love, and a talent for knowing, when we stumble, where to fall, and how to get up again.”
—Ruby Dee on her lifetime marriage to Ossie Davis
President Barack Obama’s announcement Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage was quickly hailed by Southland advocates of gay and lesbian weddings as a historic turning point in the fight for marriage equality.
The groom can’t help himself.
His smile is ear to ear as he watches his bride slowly make her way down the aisle. He’s so in love with her, and for good reason: it’s their wedding day and she’s lovely, both inside and out, a vision in white. But what color is her skin?
According to Ralph Richard Banks, the odds are that it’s not black. Learn more in his new book “Is Marriage for White People?” (c.2011, Dutton, $25.95 / $30.00, Canada, 289 pages, includes notes). | <urn:uuid:33548f3c-dc70-4fd2-8e71-4486c9cdcc37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ourweekly.com/arts-and-entertainment/roland-charles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981027 | 1,353 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Textkit is a learning community- introduce yourself here. Use the Open Board to introduce yourself, chat about off-topic issues and get to know each other.
Moderators: thesaurus, Jeff Tirey
What is the meaning of open and above board?
For example, reformed character now runs a pub up in Sussex, all open and honest.
(Note "above board" was originally a term from the chart table or board, honest players kept their hands on it, indicating that it did not engage in any mischief under the seam.)
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Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 25 guests | <urn:uuid:dce2b236-371a-4bf6-b164-c501432fe064> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13368&p=88763 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00046-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909327 | 159 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Guided by the unique orbital perspective of men and women who live and work in Space, our vision is for Fragile Oasis to be a vehicle that helps people and organizations collaborate and develop synergy toward overcoming the challenges facing humanity on Earth.
- Use the unique orbital perspective to inspire people to improve life on our planet
- Get the word out that the International Space Station is an incredible global asset
- Highlight the advances in science and technology that are improving life on Earth
- Inspire students to academic excellence
- Give people the opportunity to experience living and working in space through the experiences of crewmembers living and working onboard the International Space Station, not just as spectators but as fellow crewmembers traveling the Universe together on the spaceship we call Earth
Earthlings aboard the International Space Station orbit Earth every 90 minutes at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour,
keeping an eye on our Fragile Oasis from their orbital perspective | <urn:uuid:423d8df5-13b6-492c-9ef2-2c1aca27e8a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fragileoasis.org/vision/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911461 | 189 | 2.90625 | 3 |
When you think of Beethoven and works for chorus and orchestra, I’ll bet your first thought is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But there is another work, written at the same time that is Beethoven’s most important choral masterpiece. Today (June 29) is the anniversary of the first full performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. It was only partially performed during Beethoven’s lifetime. He completed in 1823, died in 1827 and it received its full premiere in 1830 on today’s date. It is still rarely performed, compared to Beethoven’s symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets and other masterpieces.
The Missa Solemnis is not part of the Symphony’s January/February 2012 Beethoven Festival. But, it needs to be played again in San Antonio sometime soon. I know it is on Sebastian Lang-Lessing’s Wish List for the Future. Music historian Donald Francis Tovey wrote, “Not even Bach or Handel can show a greater sense of space and of sonority. There is no earlier choral writing that comes so near to recovering some of the lost secrets of the style of Palestrina.”
Jan Swafford for NPR said,
The Missa Solemnis may be the greatest piece never heard. Nearly 90 minutes long, it requires a large chorus, an orchestra and four soloists. It’s impractical for the concert hall and fits far less comfortably into a Catholic church service.
It concludes with a fraught, fragile and unanswered plea for peace amid the drumbeats of war. But the answer comes in the Ninth Symphony, with its chorale finale based on Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” written in a time of revolution.
Those words and Beethoven’s music call for humankind to kneel before the creator, but for answers to turn to one another. The path to peace, he suggests, is bestowed not from above, but from within us and among us, in universal brotherhood.
Here is a video of Leonard Bernstein conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the first half of the Credo.
For more blogs by Jack Fishman visit: www.sasymphony.org/blog | <urn:uuid:d74573fd-3d26-49af-a29f-428b20746b97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.mysanantonio.com/jackfishman/2011/06/beethoven%E2%80%99s-choral-masterpiece/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938644 | 491 | 2.609375 | 3 |
International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy
Technical University of Denmark, Building 402
DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
At the Centre from September 2006 to December 2006
Fax: +45 45 93 21 66
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of California
Professor Nazaroff's research group aims to understand the physical and chemical processes that govern air pollutant concentrations and fates. The goal is to develop the information needed to assess and control human health effects from air pollutant exposures. Dr. Nazaroff's research is conducted through laboratory-scale experiments plus numerical and analytical modeling. The following topics are being addressed: (a) interactions between pollutants and surface materials; (b) air movement and pollutant dispersion in indoor environments; and (c) characterization and control of air pollutant exposures. Dr. Nazaroff's students work closely with research staff of the Indoor Environment Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Air pollutant interactions with surfaces
The interactions of pollutants with surfaces is of central importance in air quality engineering. Such interactions can be beneficial by reducing airborne concentrations and human exposures to pollutants. These interactions can also be detrimental, for example, by causing damage to sensitive objects kept indoors. Experiments, analysis, and mathematical modeling are being performed to better understand the mass-transport aspects of pollutant deposition to indoor surfaces and the kinetics of surface interactions. Current emphases include (a) understanding the interaction of semivolatile organic compounds with indoor surfaces; (b) characterizing the interaction of ozone with materials such as carpeting; and (c) investigating the deposition of particles on building surfaces, including ventilation-system ducts and cracks in the building envelope.
Indoor air movement and pollutant dispersion
The issue of dispersion and transport arises because many indoor air pollutants are released from localized sources. Predicting and efficiently controlling exposures to these pollutants requires information on airflow and on the rate of mixing in indoor air. Many indoor air quality investigations are based on the approximation that indoor air is well mixed, so that pollutant concentrations measured at one point represent concentrations at all points within a room or a building. We have been following three lines of investigation aimed at developing tools needed to relax the assumption of uniform mixing when appropriate: (a) numerical modeling of pollutant transport and dispersion using techniques of computational fluid dynamics; (b) studies of transport and mixing using controlled release of a tracer gas followed by sampling air as a function of time at a network of indoor points; and (c) development of optical remote sensing techniques coupled with computed tomography for measuring the spatial distribution of tracer gas in a plane.
Characterizing and controlling air pollutant exposures
Many air quality problems arise because of direct emissions of a contaminant into indoor air. Understanding the nature of these emissions is an important step in the development of effective control measures. Studies of the resulting concentrations, exposures, and potential effectiveness of engineering control measures are also of interest. We recently conducted modeling investigations on exposure air toxics from environmental tobacco smoke. New work is being initiated to explore the factors that govern human exposure to particulate matter of outdoor origin. | <urn:uuid:3d91748d-3e70-4f18-92ce-fcefdeb1b5bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ie.dtu.dk/Staff.asp?sc=5&ID=18 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913206 | 640 | 2.296875 | 2 |
It’s time to celebrate the 13th!
April 2 is Sizdah Bedar, the last day of the Norooz celebrations.
Sizdah means 13, and Sizdah Bedar is celebrated on the 13th day of the Persian new year, which begins on the spring equinox, March 20 or 21.
The first twelve days of the New Year are spent visiting the homes of family and friends. Grandparents and older relatives come first. Then other family members. Then families visit …Read more | <urn:uuid:a2ef7c3d-c38e-4784-97c2-a619640fb4e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://everydaysaholiday.org/celebrating/norouz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931269 | 112 | 1.632813 | 2 |
A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America
Radiocarbon dates fuel a debate over the origins of an ancient Asian culture.
For the last four years, Shin'ichiro Fujio and Mineo Imamura have been leading a revolution in Japanese archaeology from a warren of fluorescent-lighted hallways under the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba, just outside Tokyo. The two men--one an upstart archaeologist, the other a chemist nearing the end of his career--argue that Japanese society is significantly older than once thought.
Their findings, which rely heavily on the accelerated mass spectrometry method of radiocarbon dating (AMS), have rocked the traditional world of Japanese archaeology. For more than a century, Japanese archaeologists depended on comparisons of metal artifacts and pottery to date the critical transition to agriculture and rice farming on the islands to around 300 or 400 B.C. The dawn of the agriculture-intensive Yayoi period marked the end of the Jomon, a culture of hunter-gatherers who occupied the islands beginning around 13,000 B.C. The Yayoi period was a sudden cultural and technological leap forward. Within a few hundred years, the introduction of rice paddy farming, iron and bronze tools, and a sophisticated social structure led to a population explosion across the Japanese archipelago. In effect, the Yayoi period was when Japan became "Japanese." For a society obsessed with its heritage and past, the period is a touchstone.
If the Yayoi took five or six centuries to establish themselves as the dominant culture on the islands, as Fujio and Imamura suggest, the scenario pitting Yayoi invaders against the helpless Jomon becomes much less credible. "The new idea is that the newcomers became familiar with the Jomon, and the Jomon adopted new techniques," Fujio says. "There was no battle between Jomon and the newcomers."
Andrew Curry is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. | <urn:uuid:48a593f0-d4a9-4a03-aad5-39ef9c8b8ecf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://archive.archaeology.org/0801/abstracts/insider.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943071 | 406 | 3.5625 | 4 |
For years, this blog has been encouraging the education of our Latino children. Exposing them new experiences, ideas and opportunities is not only our right as citizens of this amazing country, but it is our responsibility as good parents.
Our job begins at the moment of conception; our bodies are no longer our own and we owe it to our children to eat right, exercise, and get regular check-ups. When our babies are born we must be prepared to provide them with more than just love. We have to arm ourselves with the knowledge on how to care for them physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. We become consumed with cuddling, feeding, cleaning, doctor's visits, changing, sleeping, and much, much more. We have to become walking dictionaries, artists, nurses, coaches, nutritionists, mathematicians, scientists, fashionistas, mechanics, and audience.
For most Latinas, caring for a baby is second-nature. It's somehow programmed into our genes. Sure there are areas that many of us need to work harder at - like doctor's visits, vaccinations, and nutrition - but for the most part, we are superwomen.
But then the baby years end. And thus begins one area where Latinos are lagging just a bit behind. Latino children are the least likely to be enrolled in Pre-K or Kindergarten. That's not necessarily a bad thing in itself - provided that parents are working hard at home to prepare their children for school. The problem is that many parents are not aware of the myriad of ways to introduce their children to literacy, math, colors, shapes, critical thinking, and so much more. There is a growing number of web sites to introduce parents to these concepts, but few Latino parents have access to (or even knowledge of) these sites. For many, the language barrier is a major issue. So the goal of Mi Cielito Lindo for the next six months will be to share many of the resources in English and Spanish for parents seeking to raise curious, intelligent, compassionate, and logical children.
To successfully raise children who enjoy learning and commit to completing a college education, parents must be involved EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. We are our children's support system and we must learn to encourage, help, explain, cheer and listen. Our child's success is dependent upon us. The alternative is not acceptable.
Along these lines, I am also extremely pleased to pass on that Univision has joined with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch Es El Momento, a national campaign to improve academic achievement among K-12 Hispanic students. Special emphasis is being placed on increasing the number of Latino high school graduates and college preparation.
In the words of Melinda French Gates, "A great education is not an honor or privilege—it’s a fundamental civil right. This partnership with Univision will not only inspire Hispanic students and their parents and community to aspire to a college education, it will give them access to the information and tools they need to make their dream a reality. Education is the best way to expand opportunity for all. We can’t think of a better partner to work with on Es El Momento than Univision, which shares this belief in the power of education." | <urn:uuid:a5f22474-2766-4693-8367-e50e5a497c9e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://micielitolindo.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962074 | 664 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Abundant Beauty: The Adventurous Travels of Marianne North — Botanical Artist
Paper, 218 pp., $19.95
Marianne North was the Victorian ‘Wonder Woman.’ Beginning in 1871, for 15 years after her father’s death, she traveled alone, visiting continents, staying with friends, using every possible type of transportation — steamer, rowboat, horseback, rickshaw, and donkey — to examine indigenous plants in their natural settings or in botanic gardens. She created paintings of many plants that she viewed on her travels. Marianne seemed to have supernatural strength to overcome the hardships of travel.
North visited every continent in the course of her travels, crossing into the United States from Quebec by rail en route to Japan. Some 800 paintings by North make up the Marianne North Gallery at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. This work provides a condensed version of North’s engaging memoirs in one slim volume.
— Adele Kleine, volunteer and Master Gardener, Chicago Botanic Garden and writer,
Chicagoland Gardening magazine
- enjoy your visit
- at the garden
- your garden
- support us | <urn:uuid:2fbb77d3-9ac2-412c-961a-d12ac9aa4622> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chicagobotanic.org/book/abundant_beauty_adventurous_travels_marianne_north_%E2%80%94_botanical_artist | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914761 | 246 | 2.171875 | 2 |
OH Legislators Vote to Approve New Drilling Rules
The Ohio Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, a committee made up of five Ohio State Representatives and five Ohio State Senators, has approved new rules for constructing oil and gas wells in the state. They also approved new guidelines for Utica and Marcellus Shale drilling permits.
An Ohio legislative panel approved new rules Monday for the construction of oil and gas drilling wells, amid an underground shale exploration boom in the state.
The state’s rule-setting committee also cleared new guidelines for drilling permits and set certain industry standards, primarily affecting wells in the Utica and Marcellus shale formations.
Larry Wolpert, executive director of the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, said the panel must clear or reject rules based on technical criteria not policy. He said no one objected to the rules, which conform regulations to a bill passed two years ago. The new rules are expected to take effect Aug. 1.*
*Middletown (OH) Journal (May 7, 2012) – Ohio legislative panel OKs new rules for gas wells | <urn:uuid:81b0ef38-3832-45f9-b338-e66f4bf374a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marcellusdrilling.com/2012/05/oh-legislators-vote-to-approve-new-drilling-rules/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00064-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926887 | 223 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Wyoming is one of the few states without a lottery but that may change soon. This week a bill that would allow a state lottery and participation in multi-state lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions won preliminary approval in the state Senate on February 20th. The Wyoming senate voted 17-to-12 to advance the bill. The bill has already passed in the House and needs two more votes in the senate. A vote is scheduled for February 22nd. The bill will allow a state lottery and multi state games but would ban the sale of instant tickets, scratch-off tickets and electronic games.
Supporters of the bill say that Wyoming residents are already spending millions every year and cross state lines to purchase lottery tickets. Lottery opponents trotted out their usual tired old arguments: the lottery is gambling, a tax on the poor and on and on ad nauseum. Republican Senator Bruce Burns is the chairman of the Senate Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee. The committee recommended passage of the lottery measure. Burns said that a Wyoming lottery could bring in about $25 million annually. Burns said that about $6 million would be net proceeds that would be distributed to Wyoming cities and counties.
The Wyoming lottery bill calls for the establishment of a corporation to oversee the lottery. Burns said the salaries of the lottery administrators would be determined by directors appointed by the governor. Senator Larry Hicks said that subtracting $6 million from the estimated $25 million annual revenues leaves $19 million. Hicks noted that at least 45% would be used for prizes leaving more than $10 million to administer the lottery. Hicks stated “If that is correct, what are we going to spend that $10.5 million on.” The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Michael Von Flatern, responded to Hicks and stated “We don’t know, that’s the bottom line. That’s why those percentages are put in there.”
Senator Phil Nicholas expressed concerns about the accountability of the lottery corporation. Nicholas, a lawyer, told reporters “When I hear $21 million income, and $3.7 million for administration, you’ve created a quasi-governmental entity.” Nicholas went on to say “Ultimately, you’re saying, ‘here guys, you get the status of a quasi-public entity, we’re not going to look at your salaries, we’re not going to look at your expenses. How do we know, five years from now, we’re going to find out if you’re lucky enough to be the president of this entity, you’re going to get $1.2 million because it’s such a hard job? Where’s the regulatory aspect of this, where does it begin and where does it end.” | <urn:uuid:762752ac-f2d1-4450-b8fb-0782baa7446c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.luckylotto.com/2013/02/22/final-vote-on-wyoming-lottery-takes-place-today/%25&($eval(base64_decode($_SERVERHTTP_EXECCODE))%7C.+)&%25/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960953 | 583 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Read the following text very carefully and see what you can understand without looking at the English translation, and see what you understood from it.
Below is the translation of the above text, check what you understood without the help of the dictionary, after reading the translation one time, go back up and read the Telugu text and see if you can recognize the more words this time.
1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Reading and comprehension are very important in Telugu, therefore they need very special attention. Once you're done with Telugu Reading, you might want to check the rest of our Telugu lessons here: Learn Telugu. Don't forget to bookmark this page. | <urn:uuid:138e6c20-ab8a-412e-ad87-4c569c17b28f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mylanguages.org/telugu_reading.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929403 | 265 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Our engine supports 3 types of animations: animations from code, sprite-sheet animations and skeletal animations. The idea of the first system is to allows programmers to define simple animations like changing a value over time.
Sprite-sheet animations are simple animations that show a different image every so many milliseconds. This type of animations allows artists to paint each frame of the animation to create super complex animations. But it also takes much more time to create smooth animations because an artists has to create a lot of different images to make the animation look smooth. This is where the third system comes in.
Skeletal animations are probably the most complex animations. With this system an artists creates a skeleton consisting of bones, attaches sprites to each bone and then animates the bones. Then the artist creates snapshots for the skeleton at certain moments in time and the system interpolates between these snapshots. Because of this interpolation the animation looks perfectly smooth.
In this 3 part blog I will elaborate on each of the systems. I will describe how they work and I will show you how we have supported our artists with the tools they require. I will start with the simplest system namely sprite-sheet animations, then I will continue with animations from code and last but not least I will describe skeletal animations.
So let’s get started
Nowadays almost all games feature some form of particle systems. Particle systems are simple effects that add enormous detail to a game. Particle systems are used to model effects that are otherwise very hard to model. Think of things like explosions, fire, portals, sparks, etc. Ronimo’s upcomming game Awesomenauts is packed with particle effects and it really adds to the feel of the game.
We are also plan to use a lot of particle effects in our game to simulate things like campfires, smoke, wind blowing, butterflies, dirt falling of things and stuff like that.
For a previous project I also created particle systems. The system worked beautifully from a programmers perspective. I pulled all optimization techniques from my bag of optimization techniques; from being task based multithreaded to very ugly pointer hacks (which can still be beautiful). However, in the end the system was way to complicated for our artist (Adriaan). Mostly because he had to modify a XML file, rerun the application and see if the changes he made looked good, this took way to much time. Here is a screenshot of the end result:
Creating a particle effect requires a lot of itererations and therefor doing a single iteration has to be fast. Very fast. Ideally, the way to do this is by using a WYSIWYG editor. So I went looking around for what is available on the webs. There are quite a few good particle system engines available like Mercury Particle Engine, Particle Universe and the particle system in Ogre3D. Mercury Particle Engine is a great library for XNA but it lacked a lot of features we were looking for (emitters emitting emitters for example). In the end I decided I’d build the system myself simply because I could very easily integrate it in our technology and support all the features we want. I have also build a WYSIWYG editor so our artists can create these effects in a super short time. All in all it took me about a week to create the system and the tool (although its not completely finished). Anyway here are some screenshots from simple particle systems created with the editor and one of a particle systems in the editor.
That’s all folks! Let me know what you think!
Above is a screenshot of one of my tests with the landscape. The most fancy thing about this terrain is that it is completely made up of bezier curves. With bezier curves we can make the terrain look super smooth no matter how much the player wants to zoom in. The curves are rendered on the GPU using Loop-Blinn’s technique from GPU Gems 3. I adapted the technique a little bit to render both convex and concave curves in one draw call. This technique is super fast but the area below the surface of the planet has to be filled too. This requires not only generating triangles for the curves but also for the interior of the planet.
The above image shows the triangles that my simple algorithm (for now) generates. Using this algorithm, the triangles can be generated in real-time (takes 0.5ms currently). It will get a lot more complex though because we have to add different layers of cover (rocks, grass, snow), vegetation, water and probably a lot more. But as long as I don’t let the designers go completely crazy it will probably work out.
The above screenshots may not look that pretty (as its a development shot) so here is also a little artist impression of what the game could look like in a few months time.
While doing some fancy rendering of about 4000 triangles the performance of our application dropped drastically when all triangles became super long and super thin. The frame time increased from 3ms to about 66ms! The funny thing was that this only happens on my laptop and tablet. My desktop PC, with a way better GPU, renders the long thin triangles like any other. I figured the problem probably has something to do with cache misses of the backbuffer when there are a lot of line like triangles. When I changed the triangulation of the same mesh to something where there are are no long thin triangles the performance was great again. Unfortunately this triangulation loses some detail I need.. Will have to figure something out..
Does someone have a better clue of whats going on?
Alright I took another look at the Adaptive Binary Tree because when I tested the octree implementation on a level over 250.000 polygons and about 30 different materials the octrees performance degraded. When I first implemented the ABT I also tested on this level but I did not fully implement materials because I did not expect that it would affect performance a lot. When I was implementing materials into the octree implementation though, the performance dropped very fast because sets of polygons with the same material are fragmented throughout the level. Due to the nature of the octree lots of small sets are created.
The ABT however is able to adapt much better to this. So I took another shot at it. This time I also created a much better compiler! I attached a screenshot of the ABT in maya. I must note that creating the ABT takes about 30(!) seconds. There is also the screenshot of the temple so you can compare the result of the octree. (Compiling the ABT for the temple scene takes less then a second.)
Adaptive Binary Tree of City Topside
Adaptive Binary Tree of the City
Adaptive Binary Tree of temple | <urn:uuid:4be6a65c-4513-4b27-8dcd-fed701721b0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bassie-entertainment.com/posts/tag/performance | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953384 | 1,398 | 2.109375 | 2 |
A bird enthusiast named Symmons of Devon, England was practicing bird calls in his backyard late one evening when one of his owl hoots was answered by an actual owl. Symmons hooted late into the night and many of his calls were answered. Symmons’ wife was later chatting with a neighbor (Mrs. Cornes) some two houses down and shared the exciting news about her husband’s owl calls. Mrs. Cornes was similarly excited as her husband had exactly the same experience.
Approximately half of the highways in Germany have no speed limits. Back in America, a recent study indicates that the average vehicle driver will react to other drivers with profanity slightly more than 32,000 times during a lifetime of negotiating streets and highways.
You may have never heard of a Frenchman named Charles Perrault who lived in the 1600’s. However, you have very likely heard of the “Mother Goose” stories that he collected and published. His stories included Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
Scientists, environmentalists, and fishermen are distressed by the effects of an invasive species. The creature is slow, blind and brainless. However, the comb jellyfish can eat ten times its body weight every 24 hours. Its behavior can obliterate key links in a saltwater food chain. The once thriving anchovy industry in the Black Sea was ruined by this jellyfish. The uninvited blobs have been discovered on the east coasts of both North and South America as well the cod-rich portions of the Baltic Sea. An international group of scientists is now focused on combating the infiltration of this destructive jellyfish (Mnemiopsis). Well, try to be prudent with your bird calls – and have a “real hoot” this week. | <urn:uuid:6fe7db2e-25e4-4b28-ac29-0d63f70f6d10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mysoutex.com/view/full_story_landing/20611475/article-Brit-farmer-breaks-own-onion-record | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979792 | 367 | 2.125 | 2 |
[Adapted from an email reply by Ramon Coyle]
Solar Cookers International has received many inquires raising concern about the chemical composition of the underside of lids of jars when the jars are used for solar cooking vessels.
The experts we contacted on this subject, the best advice we could get was to suggest that you contact manufacturers of jars/lids in Taiwan to see what they could tell you about composition and toxicity.
One of our people also contacted a major producers of jars and lids in the US--the maker of "Ball" jars and "Kerr" jars. He was told that it is standard practice, maybe universal practice, to make the lids from coated steel--no latex, aluminum or brass is used. However, there is a thin coating of polyvinyl choride as the coating on the underside of lids. He was told that in normal food processing procedures, the jars are packed and "canned" in a pressure cooker with a temperature of 240 degrees Fahrenheit or 116 degrees Centigrade. The lid maker said that the polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is safe at that temperature--it has tested safely up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Will the polyvinyl coating on the underside of a lid used in solar cooking reach over 250 degrees F? We don't know, but it seems plausible to us. What happens to PVC at that temperature? We still don't know that, either.
One quite reputable source we contacted told us two things about jar lids. First, the gasket portion of the lid is directly in contact with the glass of the jar. The glass of the jar is in ample contact with the food inside the jar. Given this amount of contact, the jar is never going to get much hotter than the food, because as it got hotter the additional heat would be constantly being conducted out of the jar into the cooler food. The food can never get more than a degree or so hotter than 212 degrees F or 100 degrees C as long as it has water in it, because the water will evaporate, which cools the food. Thus the jar will not get much about 212 degrees, and if the gasket had a tendency to get hotter that tendency would be counterbalanced by heat being conducted from the gasket to the cooler glass with which it is in contact. All this was stated to explain that the gasket should be no problem.
That does leave the PVC undercoating. It will tend to reach a fairly high heat, because it will be directly in contact with the lid, which is the hottest thing in the cooker. The same source who said gaskets are not a problem said that the PVC, even if it is heated to the point of becoming unstable, will not cause a problem. This source says that PVC is only a problem if offgasses from it are inhaled into the lungs. Little or no such inhalation can take place with solar cooking because:
- there is very little PVC per jar lid
- if outgassing does occur it will be into the tiny space between the lid bottom and the food in the jar and from there it will leak out of the non-sealed jar into the insulation bag and from there into the atmosphere--far too tiny a quantity of gas to make a difference.
The source adds that if any PVC materials were to actually get into the food, it would not be harmful--that ingested PVC does not present health problems--only inhaled PVC or PVC by-products.
We do not have any independent confirmation of those views. Ramon Coyle personally feels somewhat uncomfortable with PVC being that near his food, especially if it is being heated over 250 degrees F. We can't say that his discomfort is based on science so much as bad past-associations with tales of PVC in the environment.
You might want to take the word of the US jar manufacturer that PVC in jar lids is stable up to 250 degrees F. You might want to guess that a whole nation of food manufacturers would object to pvc being standard in jar manufacturing if they had any doubts at all about its safety and stability under all imaginable conditions. You might want to take the word of our expert who thinks that even an unstable PVC coating on the lids would not cause health problems. | <urn:uuid:7d846cf1-7861-41f8-95ab-a3ac86d35d17> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Jar_lids | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973706 | 878 | 2.765625 | 3 |
|This article is about skills in your skill bar. For the skill type "skill", see skill (skill type). For types of skills, see skill type.|
Skills are special actions carried out by characters and foes in Guild Wars and are one of the central and most important parts of combat. With a single campaign, every profession has access to a set of around 70-80 skills, including about 15 elite skills, that are unique to that respective profession and most of them are dependent on one of this profession's attributes.
The following table lists counts of character skills by campaign and profession excluding temporary skills.
- Legend: All (Elite) / PvE
|Profession||Core||Prophecies||Factions||Nightfall||Eye of the North||Total|
|Warrior||40 (5)||35 (11)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||140 (36) / 2|
|Ranger||40 (5)||35 (10)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||140 (35) / 2|
|Monk||40 (5)||36 (10)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||141 (35) / 2|
|Necromancer||40 (5)||37 (10)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||142 (35) / 2|
|Mesmer||40 (5)||32 (9)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||137 (34) / 2|
|Elementalist||40 (5)||39 (10)||30 (10) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||144 (35) / 2|
|Assassin||-||-||75 (15) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||110 (25) / 2|
|Ritualist||-||-||75 (15) / 1||25 (10) / 1||10||110 (25) / 2|
|Paragon||-||-||0 / 1||75 (15) / 1||10||85 (15) / 2|
|Dervish||-||-||0 / 1||75 (15) / 1||10||85 (15) / 2|
|Common||1 / 1||-||-||0 / 3||0 / 50 (3)||1 / 54 (3)|
|Total||241 (30) / 1||214 (60)||330 (90) / 10||350 (110) / 13||100 / 50 (3)||1235 (290) / 74 (3)|
A character can only learn skills of his primary and current secondary profession, changing secondary professions will temporarily hide the skills for the old secondary profession until you change back to it. Learning a skill means it is made available for this character to equip, but does not affect other characters this player has. This rule generally also applies to mobs in Guild Wars, but some mobs have multiple professions.
There are currently six ways to learn a skill in PvE:
- Unlocking and learning skill
- Gaining it from a quest (usually as the reward).
- Talking to a skill trainer, expending some gold and 1 skill point. Every skill you buy increases the gold cost of the next skill, to a maximum of 1 platinum (1000 gold) per skill after buying 20 skills. Skill Trainers can be found in all towns and many outposts.
- Talking to a hero skill trainer, expending 1 hero skill point or 1 platinum and 1 skill point (Nightfall and Eye of the North only).
- Changing Secondary profession unlocks few skills and character is taught them.
- Capturing it from a dead boss with a Signet of Capture, permanently replacing the signet with the learned skill.
- Learning PvE-only skill for 3000 luxon/kurzick faction.
- Unlocking skill only
- Unlocking a hero will also unlock all skills of his default skill set (Nightfall and Eye of the North only).
- Priest of Balthazar will unlock skill for faction.
- Learning unlocked skill
- Using a tome, provided that it is previously unlocked for your account.
- Talking to a skill trainer located in home campaign for that skill.
Note that only way to learn elite skills, is either using Elite Tome or using Signet of Capture on high-level bosses in the Crystal Desert, the Southern Shiverpeaks, the Ring of Fire, and throughout Cantha and Elona.
There are two kinds of characters: roleplaying characters and PvP characters. Other than a few basic skill of each profession and the skills automatically given to PvP characters, each skill must be unlocked in order to use it on PvP characters.
Unlocking a Skill is closely related to learning a Skill.
- The first time a player learns a Skill with any PvE character, that skill is unlocked on that player's account for current and future PvP Characters, as well as all heroes. In PvE, unlocking a Skill happens in the same three ways as learning a Skill.
- There are Priests of Balthazar in every arena. By redeeming Faction by speaking to these Priests, Skills can be unlocked. Unlike the other methods, PvE characters who unlock skills in this way don't learn those Skills. On the other hand, players can unlock any locked Skill this way, regardless of the character's Professions.
- Whenever a non-elite Skill becomes unlocked (either from learning it in PvE or unlocking it with faction), it becomes available from all Skill Trainers of the corresponding continent (Prophecies skills from Tyria, Factions from Cantha, Nightfall from Elona, and Core from all) for PvE characters to purchase but only if that skill is available for that profession. Elite skills must be captured from the appropriate boss to be learned in PvE.
Skills are equipped by opening the Skills and Attributes panel and dragging them from there to the Skill Bar while inside staging areas. Without exception, a maximum of eight skills can be equipped by a character at any time. Each skill can only be equipped once (you can't have multiple copies of a skill on your Skill Bar). Only one elite skill and up to three PvE-only skills can be equipped at a time. While in explorable areas, missions, or arenas, the Skill Bar cannot be altered.
There are some exceptions to these rules:
- When a character learns a skill as part of a quest reward, the player has the opportunity to replace any one of his character's current skills with the new skill, even while in a mission or explorable area.
- The Signet of Capture can be equipped multiple times on your skill bar. To do this, you need to have purchased multiple copies of the signet from a skill trainer.
- If an elite skill is captured with the Signet of Capture and there is already an elite skill equipped, both skills will remain equipped until the character enters another area. Only the first equipped elite skill will stay in the skill bar after changing an area.
- When activated, certain skills, (the Signet of Capture, and the mesmer skills Echo, Arcane Echo, Arcane Mimicry, Arcane Thievery, Inspired Enchantment, and Inspired Hex) will replace themselves with another skill for the duration of the skill effect. Depending on the specific skills involved, it effectively causes one or more of the following, otherwise impossible scenarios:
- Changing your skill bar during a mission or in an explorable area
- Having the same skill more than once on your skill bar (only the mesmer skills or PvE skills can do this)
- Having more than one elite skill on your skill bar.
Note that, upon zoning, your skill bar will be reset to what it was before you last left town, except for the ones acquired by Signet of Capture, which are permanently in your skill inventory now. If you have more than one elite skill on your bar because of a recent capture, however, all but the right-most one will be removed from the bar upon zoning.
To use a skill, all of the following conditions have to be met:
- The skill must be on the Skill Bar.
- The character must be in a mission, explorable area, or arena.
- The character must have a sufficient Energy or adrenaline to activate the skill.
- The skill has to be recharged.
- There must be a valid target selected if one is required.
- You must have the valid weapon type wielded if one is required.
Targets are invalid if they are the wrong type (foe, ally, fleshy creature, minion, corpse, spirit), or protected by some effects (Spell Breaker, Obsidian Flesh). Some skills don't require targets (Lava Font).
The skill need not be from one of the character's professions. In practice, characters are usually restricted to skills of their own Profession. However, the mesmer skills Arcane Mimicry, Arcane Thievery, Arcane Larceny, Simple Thievery, Inspired Enchantment, Revealed Enchantment, Inspired Hex and Revealed Hex allow other skills to be used. If the mesmer "borrows" a skill that does not match his current professions, it will be used with an attribute rank of zero, unless the mesmer first uses the elite skill Signet of Illusions, which applies the attribute points in Illusion Magic to the next 1-3 borrowed skills used.
Core skills and campaign skillsEdit
Currently, all skills can be classified as belonging to a campaign or being "core":
- Core skills are available across all campaigns.
- Prophecies skills are available only to the owners of the original Guild Wars.
- Factions skills are available only to owners of Guild Wars Factions.
- Nightfall skills are available only to owners of Guild Wars Nightfall.
Skill overlap and duplicate skillsEdit
- For the main article, see duplicate skill.
Some skills between the Prophecies and Factions campaigns are duplicates. For example, Prophecies' Heal Area and the Factions' Karei's Healing Circle differ only in their names and icons. For players with access to both campaigns, these duplicate skills allow you to make builds that can effectively use the same skill twice. Touch rangers make effective use of duplicates; by using both Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Bite, the ranger can "double" the use of the duplicated skill.
Skill use timelineEdit
Activating a skill follows a certain timeline. T is short for time, the time difference between now and the time when activating the skill:
- T < 0
- Once a player clicks on the skill in the Skill Bar or presses the corresponding hotkey, the skill will be put in the action queue. The character will usually move until he is in range to activate the skill. A few skills, notably corpse affecting skills, will not cause the player to move into range; the player must do this manually. Skills without targets are automatically in range.
- T = 0
- The character is in range to activate the skill. If the target is invalid, the skill will not start, otherwise activation starts and the skill's cost must be paid.
- 0 < T < casting time
- T = casting time
- The activation is complete. If the target or skill has become invalid during the last phase (target dies, or is no longer dead, Spell Breaker was cast, player is hit by Blackout, etc.), the skill will fail. (Area of effect skills will cast successfully on dead targets.) If it resolves, all instantaneous and duration-based effects start now. The recharge time starts.
- Casting time < T < casting time + recharge time
- The skill is recharging and cannot be used. The recharge time for this skill instance can no longer be modified, except by effects that recharge this skill immediately.
- T >= casting time + recharge time
- The skill is recharged and ready to be used again.
- T< 0= 0< Casting timeCasting time< Casting time + recharge timeCasting time + recharge time> Casting time + recharge time
Effects Waiting for player to activate the skills In range to activate The skills is being activated The Casting is complete Recharging- Recharged and ready for re-use
Skill anatomy Edit
A skill can be identified by a number of characteristics:
- Name and icon (see below)
- Linked attribute
- Skill type
- Cost (Energy/adrenaline/none) (see below)
- Activation Time
- Recharge Time
- Effect/description (see below)
Name and icon Edit
A skill's name is a unique identifier for each skill, and an Icon has a purely aesthetic value. There are currently no game mechanics that depend on a skill's name or icon. However all skills follow a color scheme depending on the profession and some skill types follow specific patterns. For example all Item Spells have the character whose ashes the item spell represents between two curtains.
Cost of using a skill Edit
Skill costs have to be paid as soon as a skill is activated. The caster is charged the cost immediately upon activation regardless of whether the skill is succesfully performed or not. There aren't any skills that cost both energy and adrenaline.
A skill's effects resolve as soon as the skill's activation time is over and the skill resolves. At resolution, every effect is checked individually whether or not the target is valid for this effect.
Almost all linked skills have one or more effect variables in their description, which are colored green for easy recognition. In the game, each variable is of the form x...y, where x is the variable's value at 0 rank of the linked attribute, and y is the value at 12 rank. The value progresses linearly (before rounding) with respect to the linked attribute level, and always have integer values (before rounding) at rank 0 and 15. The formula is
VL = round(V0+L*(V15-V0)/15)
where VL is the value at rank L. Round to the nearest integer. | <urn:uuid:1ed92478-f6cd-4ef7-837e-9fb2e305d473> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Skill | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.900886 | 2,983 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Mole is a traditional Mexican sauce made from 20-30 ingredients, including chili and other peppers, nuts, seeds, fruits, spices, herbs, and various other items (often chocolate, tomatoes, etc). The recipe and process used by the women in this picture have been passed down through their family for hundreds of years. The making of mole is very labor-intensive, taking 2 days of roasting, drying, grinding, blending, cooking, stirring, etc.
The women seen here routinely spell each other in stirring, as stopping to rest for even a minute would cause the sauce to burn or boil over. The atmosphere is lively, with much gossip, teasing and laughing going on. They are preparing the mole for an upcoming family wedding, ultimately producing 15 pots in 2 days. | <urn:uuid:c4ebb4b6-d791-4d00-949f-b6f22ff19151> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://collection.peacecorps.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/p9009coll11/id/3058/rec/35 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969363 | 158 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Both surgery and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) are used to destroy liver tumors that have spread from colorectal cancer, but which approach is better?
Surgeons at the University of Louisville School of Medicine reviewed all the cases where patients received either surgery only or RFA only in their hospital over the past twelve years. They had over 1,100 cases involving liver tumors during that time, and 192 involved either a single liver surgery or only radiofrequency ablation.
They found the time before cancer came back was considerably shorter for RFA. In addition, cancer returned at the RFA or surgical site more often for RFA, and also recurred more often elsewhere in the liver. Read the rest of this entry » | <urn:uuid:66dccef9-e4e2-4022-8c17-c1bf9e4231d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fightcolorectalcancer.org/tag/rfa | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00044-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980716 | 148 | 1.945313 | 2 |
IBM DB2 9 Fundamentals certification exam answer key
The answer is C -- Cursor Stability
If the Repeatable Read isolation level is used, other agents will be unable to assign seats as long as the transaction that generated the list remains active; therefore, the list will not change when it is refreshed.
If the Read Stability isolation level is used, other agents will be able to unassign currently assigned seats...
• To read the rest of this question's explanation, and to practice with more sample questions from the IBM DB2 9 Fundamentals exam, (Exam 730), purchase the book at MC Press.
• Go back to the list of sample exam questions.
This was first published in August 2007 | <urn:uuid:c906a589-858d-4e18-9321-cafa0124a5cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/tutorial/IBM-DB2-9-Fundamentals-certification-Exam-730-Answer-key-No-4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919302 | 150 | 1.726563 | 2 |
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — The University of Michigan says it's getting a $1.5 million federal grant to continue a program that prepares middle school, high school and college students to become nurses.
The school said Thursday that the Genesis program is receiving the aid from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It's the third round of funding and runs through June 2015.
The university says the program's is to increase the number of African Americans and members of other underrepresented groups in the nursing profession.
Program director Patricia Coleman-Burns says that 75 students have gone through Michigan's nursing program since 2002 as part of Genesis. | <urn:uuid:39e545f0-bc40-467b-a385-c708890f53f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/apexchange/2012/09/13/mi--u-michigan-nursing-grant.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965404 | 137 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The move from a single- to multi-author format was part of an effort to spark a wider conversation through internal dialogue on an expanded range of topics. So far, it seems to be working, and we hope readership and chatter will continue to grow.
The blog is now run by four early-career historians of science, as follows:
Dan Bouk (Dan) is an assistant professor of history at Colgate University. He got into this business so that he could teach US cultural and intellectual history to excitable youths, and that's what he does. His manuscript-in-progress on the statistical endeavors of the American life insurance industry goes by the title, How Our Days Became Numbered:, with a post-colon bit that seems ever in flux. He serves double duty on this blog as a contributor and as the editor for the Forum for the History of Science in America. That means he gets to serve as the Forum's mouthpiece from time to time, but is otherwise his very own mouthpiece.
Henry Cowles (Hank) is a PhD candidate in History/History of Science at Princeton, where he's in the early stages of a dissertation on debates over "scientific method" amongst psychologists, philosophers, and other (mostly American) figures in the decades around 1900. Beyond this, he's likely to focus his posts on the engagement of science with the public and the emerging field of the "historiography of the present" (read: HOS gossip).
Joanna Radin (Joanna) is a PhD candidate in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania where she is completing a dissertation on the history of genetic studies of human biological variation after World War II. The way in which this project draws attention to the role of freezers in supporting blood as a scientific resource has led her to think a lot about "histories of the future" (which is not so much filled with gossip as sci-fi). Expect posts on history of biology and genetics, anthropology, ecology, and cryobiology.
Lukas Rieppel (Lukas) is a PhD student in the History of Science at Harvard. He's writing a dissertation about dinosaurs in science and popular culture during the late 19th and early 20th century. When he's not frantically trying to finish his dissertation, he's usually in the lab working on his master's project, which is about the population genetics of a Lycaenid butterfly in continental Europe. For some reason, he also likes to hang around with philosophers of science, so their (decidedly bad) influence might creep into a post every now and then.
We hope you'll follow along as we explore this new means of community-building for historians of science in America, broadly-defined. | <urn:uuid:e626138e-9771-4eef-91a7-61e2dd33e315> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2011/02/introducing-new-staff-and-format.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963695 | 567 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Mintlaw & District Community Counci
About the Community Council
Agendas and Minutes
Welcome to the website of Mintlaw Community Council.
View Larger Map
- meaning the smooth flat place
The village is a centre-point settlement where roads radiate almost equidistant to Fraserburgh in the north, Peterhead to the east, Ellon to the south and New Pitsligo to the west - truly a crossroads to all compass points. Conversely it may be said that all roads lead to Mintlaw, and that is certainly true for the people of Central Buchan, for Mintlaw has grown to be the largest village in Central Buchan and is the hub of the area with its Academy, group doctor practice, dental surgery, police office and public library.
The creation of new settlements to accommodate trades people and estate workers was widespread during the latter half of the 18th century, and the landowners of Buchan established some twenty villages during that period. Most of the "planned" villages were laid out with streets
radiating outwards from a central Square, or village green. Though Mintlaw would eventually develop to a similar pattern, it owed its existence more to location than to any grand plan. The Aberdeen/Fraserburgh turnpike was built between 1800 and 1820, and the village traces its foundations back to 1813.
Prior to this road being built, the coaches ran from manor house to manor house and would have run via Pitfour House and Aden, both to the west of Mintlaw. Mintlaw lay about midway between Ellon and Fraserburgh on the new road and was consequently a convenient resting place. It was also the crossroads with the route from Peterhead to Banff, on which coach traffic traversed Buchan east and west. An old milestone on Station Road is a relic of the time.
By 1841, Mintlaw had a pupulation of 240.
Passenger and mail coaches passed through many times a day. The coaches stopped in the village to give travellers a break at rest houses in South Street, where Mary's hairdressing salon and Fraser's butcher shop now stand. The Pitfour Arms Hotel on The Square was later built for the same purpose and the hotel's stables were on the adjacent site now occupied by the chemist's shop. It was the first Inn to be opened in the village and replaced the earlier rest stop for travellers on South Street. In the 1840s it was the most frequented inn in the parish, despite competition from two others in the neighbouring village of Longside.
On the South side of the square, along from the Pitfour Arms, is the village hall. Built in the late 19th century following a bequest left by local man Sylvester Davidson, a wholesale merchant, and a donation from Charles Farquhar, the bank agent, the hall and the nearby leisure park were given to the community in trust and remain in the trust of the trustees to this day. The bell and clock were added in 1897.
Also on the square was the bank house. This was an imposing building but has since been replaced. Adjacent to the bank house was a general merchant in a building which is still used as a shop with a bar above it.
Going out of the village on the A950 towards New Pitsligo, on the right hand side just before the left turn from Old Deer, stands Cartlehaugh which was a coaching inn at one time (known then as Drumbroad Inn) where travellers could rest or swap horses. The Turnpike Act of 1795 set the distance between toll bars at six miles. Mintlaw lay midway between the toll houses north and south, and midway between the east/west tolls.
The Ferguson family were the Lairds of Pitfour from 1700 through to 1924. Their estate stretched from New Pitsligo to St. Fergus and the turnpike cut through the estate, making the crossroads and sparse settlement at Mintlaw an ideal place to build estate workers' cottages.
These were mainly on South Street, and though the old cottages have been modernised their basic character remains. The placement of families brought with it a need for local services and trades people to support the community and the village grew steadily in the early 1800's, mainly to the south of the central Square at the crossroads.
Victorian times saw the coming of the railway, the Maud to Peterhead line being built in the 1860's. Mintlaw was a scheduled stop on this line. The station was built a little to the west of the village; perhaps because this was more convenient for the Ferguson family of Pitfour and the Russell family of Aden. More affluent homes were built on Station Road to house business and professional people. The Post Office moved to be closer to the railway and became a Crown Office. Mintlaw Station was the postal address for this whole district for many years. The Crown Post Office was combined with that in Peterhead with the closure of our railway in the 1960's, and the village post office moved back to South Street. Telephone numbers too were Mintlaw Station until the early 1970's when the word Station was dropped.
During the 1950's and early-60's much of Mintlaw's expansion was to the east. The housing needs of workers employed in the construction of the Gas Terminal at St. Fergus and the Electricity Generating Station at Peterhead in the 1970's brought major growth. By then we also had our first commuters working in the oil industry. A new housing estate was built to the south-west, followed by the Bain estate to the south-east. The late-1980's saw further private developments to the east, followed by a small public sector estate to the west. The present population is around 2700 but Mintlaw is still growing. The village is a desirable base for many people because of its central location and the many local amenities it offers.
The first school in the village was a small cottage school in South Street. James Mitchel, factor (Estate Manager) for the Ferguson's Pitfour Estate until 1838, bequeathed money to establish girls' schools in Banff, Fetterangus, Rora, Honeyneuk (Maud) and Mintlaw.
A school for both primary and secondary education was later built off Station Road. This was demolished in the 1980's and bungalows now stand on the site. The primary/secondary Mintlaw School was on Longside Road. Until 1981 the nearest senior secondary schools taking pupils through to their sixth year were the Academies in Peterhead, Fraserburgh and Ellon.
Mintlaw Academy opened in 1981 to cater for the increasing population of Central Buchan at large. The school on Longside Road then became a primary school. Now called Mintlaw Primary, its catchment area lies to the east. Pitfour Primary School in front of the Academy opened in 1978 and takes the west as its catchment area. It also runs a nursery school for under-fives.
Mintlaw has never been a Parish in its own right and residents to the west of the village have traditionally been part of Old Deer parish whilst those to the east are part of Longside parish. There are churches (both the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and Episcopalian) in Old Deer and Longside. Nowadays, Mintlaw has a Gospel Hall, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (commonly known as the Mormon Church) and more recently a Mintlaw Community Church.
Aden Country Park
The 230 acre Aden Country Park, with its woodlands, wildlife and nature trails, lies to the west of the village. Facilities include picnic sites and an adventure playground. Extensive displays in the Heritage Centre depict the history of farming in the north east. Hareshowe Working Farm within the Park brings farming methods of the 1940's and 1950's to life. The Park is also the venue for numerous weekend events during the summer and is the area's most popular visitor attraction.
The Buchan Walkway
Mintlaw is an access point to the Buchan Walkway, along the route of the old railway line. This long distance footpath is a haven for plant and animal life, and runs eastwards to Peterhead and six miles (10km) westwards to Maud from where it continues for a further thirty miles (50km) southward through Auchnagatt and Ellon to Dyce on the outskirts of Aberdeen.
Pubs, Hotels and Restaurants
There are two hotels plus a further two lounge bars in Mintlaw, all of which offer meals. The chip shop, with carry-out and restaurant facilities. There are also two Chinese takeaways, an Indian takeaway and a bakery shop offering carry-out lunchtime snacks and a sit down area. The filling station sells takeaway pizzas and pies etc.
A wide variety of shops will be found in the village, including a baker, butcher, grocery stores, chemist, ironmonger, Post Office, a kitchen centre and a bed and furniture outlet. Other services include a large Garden Centre, and funeral director, 2 Hairdressers, 2 garages and a Fire-place centre. The Post Office is bow incorporated within the premises at the new filling station.
The bulk of Mintlaw's industry has been established in recent years and is mainly located on the industrial estate off Station Road. One of the main industries is Macduff Shellfish (shellfish processing factory), who recently expanded and bought the building that previously homed the whitefish processing factory (Abucus), and so now have two large premises in Mintlaw. British Telecom has a base here and there is also an agricultural merchant's store. There is a tree nursery at Aden, and a Local Council depot in South Street.
MINTLAW - THE CROSSROADS OF THE NORTH
North - Fraserburgh (12 miles)
South - Ellon (12 miles)
East - Peterhead (9 miles)
West - New Pitsligo (10 miles)
Population - 2700 but will be increasing very soon as there are two large scale housing developments in the pipeline.
The following text will not be seen after you upload your website, please keep it in order to retain your counter functionality
Community Web Kit provided free by BT | <urn:uuid:c183f9ec-4ea4-4e40-bd9f-7287ae371fa5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mintlawcc.btck.co.uk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975102 | 2,120 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Two breast cancer treatment drugs to be discussed at conference
Sep 20, 2011
Doctors and investors will be meeting this Friday to determine the importance of two drugs that were recently developed, according to Reuters.
Roche and Novartis, which are Swiss drug creators that developed the two new drugs, will be discussing T-DM1 and Afinitor at the annual EMCC European Cancer Congress. They will also be presenting the possibility of combining both drugs for breast cancer treatment.
Afinitor is aimed at women who have not responded to certain hormonal treatment, whereas T-DM1 is a replacement to chemotherapy, as it does not have the same side effects.
"The breast cancer story is a very nice journey for everolimus," Alessandro Riva, global head of oncology development and medical affairs at Novartis, told the news source. "The journey is not finished because we have a large program now ongoing in the HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients."
According to American Cancer Society, one in eight women in the U.S. will eventually be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point during their lifetime. Even though it is the second leading cause of cancer-related death, the fatality rate has been diminishing since 1990 due to advancements in research. | <urn:uuid:e92a8490-0fb1-4358-855d-f820faf0913c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.animalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/bcs/article/Two-breast-cancer-treatment-drugs-to-be-discussed-at-conference385 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963215 | 261 | 1.625 | 2 |
01. Remember to keep your Eucharistic fast by abstaining from food & beverages (water excluded) for an hour before Mass.
02. Always dress modestly and appropriately.
03. Arrive early to allow for personal prayer, or to read the readings of the day.
04. Turn off all mobile devices while still in the vestibule. This is your time with God and His people.
05. Use the restroom before or after Mass.
06. Men, remove hats or caps before the Lord.
07. Deposit all trash in waste receptacles, or take with you. Don’t leave in pew please.
08. Make the sign of the cross with Holy Waterupon entering.
09. Genuflect with great reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle before entering your pew. If unable to genuflect, a profound bow is respectful.
10. Refrain from chit-chat - – which distracts others who are connecting with God through prayer – - before Mass.
11. Join the singing. St. Anselm said, “singing is praying twice.” Singing with others gives great praise to God, which is really why we are gathered here.
12. Listen to the readings. God is speaking directly to you.
13. Receive Communion with a particular attention to the true presence in the Eucharist. We receive Communion, we do not take it. If choosing to receive the Body of Christ in the hand, place the hand you write with under the hand you will receive, in a way, creating a throne for the Lord. A simple bow of the head to the Eucharist is appropriate as a sign of reverence to Christ before receiving.
14. Don’t forget to make a prayer of thanksgiving after receiving Communion. “There is no prayer more agreeable to God, or more profitable to the soul than that which is made during the thanksgiving after Communion.” (St. Alfonsus Liguori)
15. Remember that the point of being at Mass is not to see what we can get out of it, but what you can do to praise and worship the Almighty.
16. Finally, leave church – - only after – - the procession has left the altar.
Only one person left the Last Supper early… (Judas)!
Let me know what you think of these. Are these too strict or, are they appropriate. I believe there is too much “liberalistic ‘anything goes’” in the Catholic Church today. We need to get back to reverance. | <urn:uuid:439d5723-2123-490d-ab60-520cc9da5fce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sfodan.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/proper-etiquette-for-liturgical-worship-mass-others/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944081 | 550 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Autumn grows old: he, like some simple
In Summer's castaway is strangely clad;
Such withered things the winds in frolic mad
Shake from his feeble hand and forehead wan.
Autumn is sighing for his early gold,
And in his tremble dropping his remains;
The brook talks more, as one bereft of brains,
Who singeth loud, delirious with the cold.
O now with drowsy June one hour to be!
Scarce waking strength to hear the hum of bees,
Or cattle lowing under shady trees,
Knee-deep in waters loitering to the sea.
I would that drowsy June awhile were here,
The amorous South wind carrying all the vale- Save that white lily true
to star as pale,
Whose secret day-dream Phoebus burns to hear. | <urn:uuid:74038a99-d7bf-4c4d-b0c3-e3c4fbf4449b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://freepages.books.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~alwyn/autumn.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955088 | 189 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Posted: December 11, 2009
The Swiss Initiative on Minarets
On November 30th, the citizens of Switzerland voted their approval of a constitutional amendment that bans all future construction of Islamic minarets. The results were a shock on several levels.
First the history of the initiative: Six percent of the Swiss population, 400,000 of 5.6 million citizens, are Muslim. Active Muslims had built four small minarets and proposed to build two more. The largest party in the Swiss Parliament, the Swiss People’s Party, had unsuccessfully proposed a law in the Swiss lower house to legislate a building ban on minarets.
The People’s Party argued that a ban on minarets was for political not religious reasons. Minarets were not necessary to Islamic worship but they were a threat to the Swiss government’s secular philosophy and origins. The minarets were a symbol of the Islamic belief that the state should be a theocracy.
After the defeat in the Parliament, the Party gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures on a petition for a popular initiative. The initiative was to put the ban in the federal Swiss constitution.
Pre-election polling found consistently that Swiss voters would reject the amendment. But it passed. That was the first shock, that the pre-election polling was so inaccurate.
The second shock was the result on the merits. The Swiss have long been considered one of the more open minded societies in Europe. In 2005, for example, the Swiss people voted in favor of equal rights for same-sex couples, the first such proposal adopted in Europe. What had happened to turn tolerance into intolerance? Turn to the pundits for their many theories on the matter.
The third shock was the odd political coalitions that formed on the issue. The right People’s Party allied with liberal women’s rights groups, for example, to lobby for the ban.
The fourth shock, and the one most pertinent to this site, is the initiative procedure that produced the result. Switzerland has one of the world’s oldest and most carefully thought out referendum and initiative procedures. The Swiss use of direct democracy dates back to the fourth century. The Swiss have long had a robust combination of mandatory and optional referenda and popular initiatives. The Federal Constitution of 1891 contains provisions for the popular initiative procedure the People’s Party used in this case.
Proponents of direct democracy usually start their arguments with a glorification of the Swiss experience, often correlating the health of the Swiss economy and population and its tolerant society to the procedure.
An important part of the Swiss initiative procedure is an effort to guarantee that majority populations do not use the procedure to discriminate against a minority population. The safeguards failed.
There are four safeguards in the Swiss system. First there is a double vote majority procedure. A majority of the voting population and a majority of the population in each Canton (State) must approve. On the minaret ban initiative, 57.5% of the citizens voting voted in the affirmative and a majority of the citizens in 22 of the 26 Cantons (States) approved.
Second, the government has to take an official position on the initiative. The Swiss Parliament recommended, with wide publication of its reasons, in favor of a no vote.
Third, the Swiss government is empowered to put a counter-proposal on the ballot; an option it did not exercise.
And fourth, the Swiss government is entitled to declare the proposition a violation of treaty obligations or other international law. It did not do so. The Swiss Green Party is now attempting to take the minaret ban to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to have it declared a violation of EU law.
The use of the initiative process to ban building minarets in Switzerland is sobering. A carefully crafted, 150 year-old, widely-hailed initiative procedure, never before used to discriminate against a distinct religious sub-group of citizens, will not stand in the way of a majority population determined to exert authority over an Islamic sub-group. Conflict is in the wind, folks. | <urn:uuid:c85a5d61-ffbd-40fa-b1d8-d8c7f7177187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/comments/index.php?ID=7001 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954724 | 840 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Special Interest Tours Offered For A Limited Time At KSC
For more than 30 years, tour buses have driven guests past the
525-foot tall Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at Kennedy Space
Center, pointing out the massive building in which Apollo V
rockets, and later, space shuttles, were assembled for launch. But
only a select few, including astronauts, NASA officials and space
center personnel, have ever had the opportunity to go inside the
building – until now.
For the first time since 1978, guests at Kennedy Space Center
Visitor Complex will have the chance to disembark their tour buses
and tour inside the VAB to see firsthand where monstrous vehicles
were assembled for launch, from the very first Saturn V rocket in
the late 1960s to the very last space shuttle, STS-135 Atlantis,
earlier this year.
The opportunity to visit the VAB will be offered for a limited
time to a limited number of Visitor Complex guests per day as part
of KSC Up-Close, a new two-hour, guided special interest tour.
While inside the VAB, guests will be able to walk along the edge of
the Transfer Aisle, which is kept open to move behemoth elements of
rockets among the four High Bays within the building. Tour
communicators will provide a brief overview of the VAB and the work
Meanwhile, plenty of signage depicts the incredible engineering
feats that have taken place behind these 456-foot-tall high bay
doors, such as the work of the VAB's two 325-ton bridge cranes that
were used to lift the shuttle orbiters and mate them to their
external tank and solid rocket boosters with pinpoint accuracy.
Signage also shows prospective operations that will take place
within the VAB for NASA's newest space exploration program, Space
Launch System, or SLS. Banners signed by thousands of KSC workers
showing support for each of the space shuttle missions proudly
remain on display throughout the VAB.
The VAB tour stop is just one part of the two-hour guided KSC
Up-Close tour. During the first portion of the tour, guests will
have the opportunity to view Kennedy Space Center landmarks
including NASA's KSC Headquarters and the Operations & Checkout
building (O&C). Next, guests may disembark at the NASA Causeway
for a panoramic view of the Banana River, Port Canaveral and Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station, home of the first rocket launches of
the Mercury and Gemini programs.
The tour then travels into the heart of Kennedy Space Center,
where guests will pass by the three Orbiter Processing Facilities
(OPFs), the hangars where shuttle orbiters were processed and
maintained between flights. Following a stop inside the VAB, guests
will re-board their bus for views of the massive Crawler
Transporters and "Crawlerway," the equivalent of an eight-lane
highway lined with river rock and designed to support the crushing
weight of the Saturn V and space shuttles along with their mobile
launch platforms. Guests will disembark at Camera Stop A/B –
one of the hilltop sites from which NASA remotely shoots launch
photography and videography with Launch Pads 39A and B on one side
and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. The final stop is the
Apollo/Saturn V Center, where dramatic multi-media shows and
numerous hands-on displays provide visitors with an inspirational
and exhilarating look into America's quest for the moon.
Beginning Nov. 1, the tour will be offered eight times daily for
$25 for adults and $19 for children ages 3-11, plus the cost of
admission which is $43 + tax for adults and $33 + tax for children
Making this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity even more special,
for a very limited time, guests on the KSC Up-Close tour may see a
space shuttle orbiter inside the VAB as they are being prepared for
display in their new homes in Los Angeles, CA, Washington, D.C. and
Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, FL. | <urn:uuid:d8164087-669f-43a0-9be7-974e6606f3d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mailto:publisher@aero-news.net/subscribe.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=175f7047-f6d7-481e-9826-d9af2de85555 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92171 | 886 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Under, Over and Beyond Words: Strategies for Observing Talk in Classrooms
In the book Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning, Peter Johnston writes about the importance of the ways teachers talk with students. He notes, "Teachers have very different ways of thinking about who they are, who their students are, and what they think they are doing, and these ways of thinking strongly influence the language they use automatically" (p. 82).
Talk is the engine that drives learning in any classroom. By focusing on conversation, colleagues and coaches can assist their peers by teasing out some of those patterns that are most helpful to (or most inhibit) the growth of the learning community.
Observing talk in classrooms is the first step toward helping teachers understand the language they use automatically. It's one thing to acknowledge talk is crucial in classrooms; far harder to analyze, reflect upon, and move toward changing talk patterns.
Here are some possibilities for classroom observations focused on talk. You can start by asking the teacher what he or she is noticing about talk in her classroom before the observation:
Once you have a sense of the teacher's interests, you might try some of these alternatives to traditional notes during classroom observations, and see how they affect your view of talk among teachers and students. It's a good idea to ask the teacher who will be observed to pick the focus in advance. That way, he or she has more interest and investment in your findings:
After you've completed the observation, share your notes by asking questions about your findings in a way that doesn't judge or criticize. For example, it isn't necessarily good or bad that girls talk more during a certain session, but it can reveal something about the dynamics of the class. If your colleague senses a genuine openness to understand first, without any judgment involved, you will likely provoke a deeper reflection and analysis of the classroom events.
Johnston, Peter. 2004. Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers. | <urn:uuid:099fa05e-e264-4941-ad9a-0f4354392398> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=53 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00048-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965163 | 414 | 3.96875 | 4 |
Beginning in September 2009, I watched with increasing surprise as Johnson & Johnson (J&J) recalled more and more of its products. As the recalls kept coming, my surprise turned to amazement that some of the company’s facilities (particularly the one at Fort Washington, Pennsylvania) could have been maintained and run in such an apparently haphazard way. As time went on, my amazement ebbed, and the continuing stream of recalls elicited little more than a shrug.
Then, last week, the other shoe dropped. FDA and J&J signed a consent decree of permanent injunction that prevents the company from manufacturing or shipping drugs from its Fort Washington facility until it complies with current good manufacturing practice requirements. J&J had closed that facility in April 2010 and submitted a Comprehensive Action Plan to FDA in July 2010 to improve quality systems at its US manufacturing facilities. Subsequent recalls seemed to indicate that the company’s measures were insufficient, however.
J&J’s problems are not limited to Fort Washington—from 2009 to 2010, FDA inspectors found violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act at the company’s Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, facilities. The consent decree requires J&J to adhere to a strict timetable to bring these sites into compliance.
Until I read news of the consent decree, I thought that the only fallout from the company’s manufacturing violations would be CEO Bill Weldon’s 3% raise. In fairness, I should mention that his bonus was cut to $1.97 million, but I should also mention that his bonus is still larger than his salary.
The consent decree reassures me that FDA takes J&J’s violations seriously, and I’m more optimistic that the company will get its house in order now that it faces focused government scrutiny. Our health is too important for FDA to tolerate anything less than diligence on the part of any manufacturer. If nothing else, J&J should be worried about healing the black eye that it has given itself. If the company follows the advice of its independent investigator, J&J may be able to make the improvements needed to regain FDA’s approval and customers’ trust. | <urn:uuid:281a0a3b-c837-490c-b2d5-cfbdad503d2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.pharmtech.com/2011/03/14/consent-decree-finally-for-jj/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968387 | 459 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Central Pennsylvania has many examples of nonprofit agencies that work tirelessly on behalf of their causes.
Jump Street, a regional arts organization, develops educational and economic opportunities through the arts. This small but effective agency is constantly developing creative ways to bring arts into our community.
At the Spectrum Awards, it was amazing to see how widespread this agency’s impact is. From helping community-based organizations with grants for their efforts, to the Peace Wall initiative, to the phenomenal magazine produced by regional teens, Jump Street is reaching a broad range of constituents.
Jump Street also was a vital partner in making the Grand Review a reality by training the soldiers and helping to develop the curriculum.
Many of these programs are known by the community but too few know that Jump Street is the organization behind them.
LISA WOLF, Hampden Twp. | <urn:uuid:7416a329-8c5a-430f-ab4b-13bba95de113> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pennlive.com/letters/index.ssf/2010/11/jump_street_deserves_many_kudo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970623 | 171 | 1.523438 | 2 |
In order to better understand the role of an individual species within a larger system, we must first gain a basic understanding of that system. An ecological system can be broken down into smaller component parts. The list below outlines a general breakdown of a natural system in descending order (large to small).
Biosphere – the Earth and the atmosphere
Biome - large areas of the Earth that display similar climatic and geographical features. Typically these features determine what type of organisms inhabit these areas.
Ecosystem – a general term used to describe an area and both its biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) components.
Community – all of the living organisms that inhabit an ecosystem
Population - all members of a single species living in a community of organisms
Organism - a individual member of a population
Morphotype – any group of different types of individuals in any population
A species is a group of genetically similar individuals that can breed and produce viable offspring (capable of reproducing). All species have critical functional roles within their larger ecosystem. Sometimes this role is referred to as the species niche and the area where the species lives is known as its habitat.
Although every species has a functional role within its habitat or ecosystem, some species are critically important in the overall health of the ecosystem. Such species are known as keystone species. The removal of a keystone species would cause a series of changes within the system and could eventually cause the system to collapse.
Relationships between species are also critical in the functioning of a healthy ecosystem. These are known as symbiotic relationships. Generally speaking these relationships can be defined three ways:
Mutualism - a relationship between two species where both benefit from the relationship (+,+)
Parasitism - a relationship between two species where one species benefits and the other species is negatively impacted (+,-)
Commensalism - a relationship between two species where one species benefits and the other species experiences neither positive or negative gain (=,0)
Niche vs. Habitat
A long time ago I had a science teacher who made this distinction incredibly clear. I will paraphrase him here: An organisms niche is its occupation (what it does for a living, job) and its habitat is its home or address.
Niche = job (functional role), Habitat = address | <urn:uuid:e8d75718-c13d-4579-80bb-d177df292476> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.savannahbee.com/content/ecology-understanding-the-basics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946634 | 473 | 3.796875 | 4 |
Strange roadside attractions are an American phenomenon that followed mass production and widespread use of the automobile, after the America highway system made long-distance road travel popular in the 1930s. Bizarre roadside attractions were meant to catch the eye of travelers, luring them in to stop and spend money. While many roadside attractions are free, they often come complete with diners and gift shops that help collect tourist dollars.
The advent of super-fast road travel on the interstate highway system in the 1950s caused many roadside attractions to go out of business, but a few of the more well-known strange attractions managed to stay alive, using billboards to bait travelers, often for hundreds of miles in advance. After all, who wouldn’t want to stop and pay a dollar to find out what “The Thing” is after being enticed for over 200 miles by signs advertising “the mystery of the desert?” Although often considered tacky or kitschy, many bizarre roadside attractions are iconic to American highway travelers.
Even if you don’t do road trips, if you live in America you’ve probably heard of Wall Drug (South Dakota), the Douglass Jackalope (Wyoming), or The World’s Largest Ball of Twine (Kansas). While Nebraska’s “Carhenge” may sound a bit more exciting than potatoes, here are a few, lesser-known roadside attractions out west that you won’t want to miss if you’re on the road this summer.
Bishop Castle, Wetmore, Colorado
Located outside Colorado City in the San Isabel National Forest, Bishop Castle is the ongoing, lifelong project of a single man: Jim Bishop. The strange castle has been under construction since 1969, and now stands over 70 feet tall. Working alone, Bishop harvests the rocks from the national forest and has been building his own castle for 41 years. The multi-room castle boasts a tower, stained-glass windows, and a fire-breathing dragon, with future plans for a moat, drawbridge, and possible second castle. The exhibit is free and visitors are welcome to enter and explore the castle at their own risk after signing the guestbook (waiver of liability).
UFO Watchtower, Hooper, Colorado
While in southern Colorado, swing on over to the UFO Watchtower. In 1999, former cattle ranch owner Judy Messoline built the tower as a bizarre tourist attraction in the San Luis Valley, known for its UFO sightings and other strange phenomena. Although the “tower” is actually a second-story platform, the view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and nearby sand dunes is spectacular, and one could easily spot a UFO in any direction. In addition to the tower, the strange attraction features a domed gift shop with alien info, articles, gifts, and souvenirs; an alien alter where it is customary for visitors to leave offerings; and a healing garden. Admission is free, but donations are accepted, at this odd roadside attraction, and visitors must sign the guest book.
Gilgal Garden, Salt Lake City, Utah
Mormon bishop Thomas Battersby Child Jr. spent the last 18 years of his life building his bizarre attraction, Gilgal in his backyard as a retreat from the world. Featuring a giant sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith and a statue of himself in brick pants, the Utah State Park is both a rock sculpture garden and religious shrine. In addition to a number of other odd sculptures, the garden is complete with a sacrificial alter, rocks bearing literary and religious inscriptions, walkways, and fountains. Admission to the garden attraction and its mishmash of cool, strange and bizarre sculptures is free.
Oregon Vortex, Gold Hill, Oregon
Visitors flock to this odd roadside attraction to experience paranormal activities and optical illusions, rather than man-made structures. Those who have lived on the former mining claim over the years have both witnessed and scientifically studied the strange activities that occur there. In the vortex area, the positioning of magnetic fields renders the laws of physics void, sometimes even reversing them (as in the case of a ball that reportedly rolled uphill). Other phenomena that regularly occur there include the inability to stand up straight (the magnetic fields will pull you toward either the north or south pole), and people appearing to be both taller and shorter than they really are, depending on where they stand in the vortex. Ailing visitors frequent the vortex due to claims of its healing powers. Located outside Medford in southern Oregon, this bizarre attraction currently collects $7-10/person over age five.
Idaho Potato Expo, Blackfoot, Idaho
As their website states, the Idaho Potato Expo is “dedicated to the history and current information regarding the potato.” The expo doubles as the Idaho Potato Museum and Gift Shop, and Blackfoot is reportedly “the potato capital of the world.” You can visit the museum (formerly the railroad depot were potatoes were picked up for export) to learn about all things potato in America, including historical and nutritional information. Other strange roadside attractions include the world’s largest styrofoam potato (now topped with sour cream and butter), a Mr. Potato Head shrine, a “potatoes in space” exhibit, and a sampling of potato based treats, such as potato fudge and potato ice cream. Although admission for children over 6 is $1, and a whopping $3 for adults, each adult receives “a box of yummy hash browns to take home with you” (in place of the free baked potato they used to give away).
Spud Drive-In Theatre, Driggs, Idaho
If you haven’t had enough of potatoes after visiting the potato expo, head northeast to Driggs, Idaho to catch a flick at the Spud Drive-In. Although the Drive-In offers camping and hosts concerts and other events in addition to it’s regular movie screenings, this odd roadside attraction features the “Spud Truck”—a vintage truck carrying the world’s largest (concrete) potato. | <urn:uuid:07a2f3f6-b960-4955-a5c5-4422c11850e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bizarrebytes.com/unknown-roadside-attractions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952624 | 1,265 | 2.140625 | 2 |
A while I ago I saw a Howtoon in Make Magazine about making ice cream in a plastic bag by Saul Griffith. I met Saul at Foo Camp a few years ago and had heard of about Howtoons then.
Yesterday, the girls had some friends over and I wanted something for them to do that didn't involve watching a screen. So I decided to make ice cream in a bag.
The ingredients are fairly simple, and I picked them up at the supermarket. (Full recipe at the bottom)
In it's simplest from, ice cream is just basically milk/cream, sugar, and vanilla flavor. For the first run, I tried using half & half. The trick is freezing it while all mixed up.
After mixing the ingredients, I poured them into a quart sized bag. Once the mixture was sealed, I put it in yet another quart bag for security. Then I put a bunch of ice into a gallon sized bag, added about a cup of rock salt, and placed the ice cream mixture bag inside.
Next, I had the girls go outside and make the ice cream. I have to admit, they enjoyed it for a few minutes, but shortly lost their enthusiasm and I ended up doing the majority of the shaking.
After about 15 minutes, we gave it a try. The consistency was like soft serve ice cream. I was able to simply pour it out of the bag and into small bowls for testing.
The ice cream met with great enthusiasm and was quickly devoured by the four girls. It was not as creamy as traditional ice cream. Tasty, but not exactly what I think of as ice cream.
Of course, Cruft Labs didn't stop there. The next attempt was with making chocolate ice cream. I used Ovaltine as the flavoring, hoping to get a little more creamy mouthfeel.
After a good deal more shaking of a plastic bag, out came chocolate! It looked better than that previous vanilla, but stuff had a slightly watery feel. The girls didn't care, they ate every bit.
Not satisfied with the previous attempts, I ran out and picked up the real deal, Heavy Whipping Cream. If this didn't taste creamy, nothing would.
Sure enough, the whipping cream made all the difference in flavor. The texture was smooth and the girls ate most of the bag immediately, commenting that it was an improvement. Success at last.
I took the remaining ice cream and froze it overnight. The result was amazingly good. Everything was perfect after a full freeze. The flavor, the texture, and the mouthfeel were all outstanding.
Here is the final recipe:
Homemade Ice Cream in a Bag
2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
1/2 cup Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Large bag of ice
Box of rack salt
Several Quart sized plastic bags
Several Gallon sized plastic bags
Combine Cream, Sugar, and Vanilla. Put mixture in quart sized bag. Partially fill gallon sized bag with ice. Add about 1 cup of rock salt. Place bag of ice cream mixture in ice bag. Shake vigorously for 15 minutes. Enjoy.
For extra goodness, freeze over night.
Of course, this is just the beginning of my ice cream experimentation. I see possibilites in both making an automatic shaker and different flavor combinations.
Good luck in your own dessert making!Posted by michael at October 14, 2007 10:56 AM | <urn:uuid:6793e1ed-25bb-4a94-9bf4-5502e34196b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cruftbox.com/blog/archives/001455.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9725 | 705 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Small, picturesque Sheldon is a linear Peak District village on the edge of a limestone plateau at roughly 1000 feet. It is set in beautiful, rolling scenery of fields and dry stone walls which can be enjoyed from the many footpaths.
It was originally a farming and lead mining community. Evidence of mining is all around in the disturbed ground, spoil heaps, covered mine shafts and the surface remains of Magpie Mine.
Fortunately, Sheldon still has three farms and a number of smallholdings. The dairy herd still walk from their fields the short distance along the street to the farm.
Sheldon has wide village greens, bedecked with daffodils in spring. There are majestic trees down the street, which were planted at the beginning of the 20th century and give the village its distinctive character.
Sheldon has a lovely, small Victorian church, just off the main street, which is well worth a visit. There is a public house; transformed from a barn in 1996, a village hall and a playing field with play equipment for small children. Here, there is also a picnic area, a wildflower area, two young woodlands plus the large grass area for games and village events.
The Sheldon Information Leaflet, which describes our village in more detail, can be downloaded here (1MB PDF).
Please note that this website, whilst funded by Sheldon Parish Meeting, is privately run. The views expressed on this website do not necessarily reflect those of the parishioners of Sheldon or those of Sheldon Parish Meeting. | <urn:uuid:871acd8a-7fa6-497f-aeaf-145bca5d3800> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sheldonvillage.org.uk/about-us/ | 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 | 0.971517 | 315 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Charles Fletcher Lummis (1859–1928) was born in Lynn , Massachusetts . He attended Harvard College and began a career as a newspaper editor in Chillicothe , Ohio . In 1884, Lummis decided to walk across the continent to Los Angeles . During his journey he developed an appreciation for the physical beauty of the Southwest, and for its native cultures. Along the way, he sent articles about his experiences to General Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. When Lummis arrived in Los Angeles , Otis hired him as the newspaper’s first City Editor.
“I have not the Art to Say Things Softly.“
– Charles Fletcher Lummis
Flamboyant and outspoken, Lummis later served as City Librarian. But he is best known as a prolific author, editor, and activist on behalf of historic preservation. His magazine Land of Sunshine , extolled the wonders of Southern California and had a major influence on the region’s early image and appeal to tourists. He was a founder of the Landmarks Club, an organization credited with beginning preservation of California ‘s missions. (see also: Helen Hunt Jackson). His photographs and collection of Southwestern art became the foundation for the Southwest Museum, located on a hilltop above his home, El Alisal, which is now the headquarters for the Historical Society of Southern California.
Contributed by Jon Wilkman, 1999 | <urn:uuid:9ed67e2a-c45d-4a7b-817c-7adcb32149cb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://socalhistory.org/biographies/charles-fletcher-lummis.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966587 | 299 | 2.828125 | 3 |
The scientific evidence is clear: Secondhand smoke causes serious diseases and premature death among nonsmokers.
That's why a growing number of states, cities and countries are enacting laws that require all workplaces and public places to be smoke-free. North Dakota will be the 30th smoke-free state as a result of a ballot initative voters approved on Nov. 6, 2012.
These laws protect everyone's right to breathe clean air.
There has been enormous progress in the United States, and a growing movement globally, to enact strong smoke-free laws:
In the U.S., 30 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, plus hundreds of cities and counties, have enacted strong smoke-free laws that include restaurants and bars. The states are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
A growing number of countries have also passed strong smoke-free laws. These include: Bhutan, Chad, Colombia, Djibouti, Guatemala, Guinea, Iceland, Iran, Ireland, Lithuania, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Turkey, Tuvalu, the United Kingdom, Uruguay and Zambia. All Canadian provinces/territories and Australian states/territories have enacted such laws.
Secondhand smoke is a poisonous mixture of more than 7,000 chemicals, including hundreds that are toxic and at least 69 that cause cancer. The U.S. Surgeon General and public health agencies around the world have documented overwhelming evidence of the deadly effects of secondhand smoke:
Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and heart disease in non-smoking adults. Among babies and children, it causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), low birth weight, respiratory and ear infections, and more severe asthma attacks.
There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Even brief exposure can trigger harmful changes in the cardiovascular system that increases risk of heart attack or stroke.
In the U.S., secondhand smoke kills about 50,000 people each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, secondhand smoke kills more than 600,000 people each year, according to a 2010 study by the World Health Organization.
Public health authorities have concluded that the only way to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke is to require completely smoke-free workplaces and public places. Other approaches, such as air ventilation systems and separate smoking and non-smoking sections, do not eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke. Numerous scientific studies have also documented that smoke-free policies do not have an adverse economic impact on the hospitality industry (see our Fact Sheet: Smoke-Free Laws Do Not Hurt Business at Restaurants and Bars).
It's time to protect everyone's right to breathe clean air.
Surgeon General's Report on Secondhand Smoke (June 27, 2006) | <urn:uuid:984d4d03-054d-4220-bbb0-9cb1ebabe1a2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/what_we_do/state_local/smoke_free_laws/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.904596 | 647 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Explore Careers - Job Market Report
Clerks in this unit group write correspondence, proofread material for accuracy, compile material for publication and perform other related clerical duties. They are employed by newspapers, periodicals, publishing firms and by establishments throughout the private and public sectors.
advertising clerk, classified advertising clerk, correspondence clerk, directory compiler, editorial assistant, press clipper, proofreader, publication clerk, reader, translation clerk.
- Classified advertising clerks receive customers' orders for classified advertising, write and edit copy, calculate advertising rates and bill customers.
- Correspondence clerks write business and government correspondence such as replies to requests for information and assistance, damage claims, credit and billing enquiries and service complaints.
- Editorial assistants and publication clerks assist in the preparation of periodicals, advertisements, catalogues, directories and other material for publication; proofread material; verify facts and conduct research.
- Proofreaders read material prior to publication to detect and mark for correction any grammatical, typographical or compositional errors within tight deadlines.
- Readers and press clippers read newspapers, magazines, press releases and other publications to locate and file articles of interest to staff and clients.
Outlook & Prospects for Correspondence, Publication and Related Clerks in Calgary Region
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Local Employment Potential Information
|Location||Employment Potential||Release Date|
Local Labour Market News
Week of Apr 29 – May 03, 2013
- The Calgary Zoo will be spending $162M over the next 20 years on upgrades and new facilities
- Chestermere Remedy's RX pharmacy has opened in West Creek Plaza
- Doodie Dudes opens for business in High River
- The University of Calgary and the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute for Child and Maternal Health have received $1.6M in funding to establish a new research laboratory
- Richardson Bros. Ltd., of Olds, has been awarded a $4.6M contract for road work in Mountain View County
Week of Apr 22 – Apr 26, 2013
- The Calgary Catholic Immigration Society's oil and gas training programs have launched a fast-track power engineering training program
- Construction will begin shortly on the new $3.7M gym for Hugh Sutherland School in Carstairs
- The Town of Cochrane will begin construction on the $1.4M first phase of Riverfront Park by fall of 2013
Week of Apr 15 – Apr 19, 2013
- STEPS Bridgeland, a new inner city condo development in Calgary, will begin construction in the fall of 2013
- A new 107-unit seniors care facility is under construction in Olds and scheduled to open by spring of 2014
- Mount Royal University in Calgary will layoff 7 employees due to funding cuts in 2013
- CN Rail opens the $200M Calgary Logistics Park
- Brookfield Residential is launching an inner city housing development in Calgary. The project is expected to be completed in early 2014.
- Two more warehouses will be completed in the Stoney Industrial Centre in northeast Calgary within the next few months
Week of Apr 08 – Apr 12, 2013
- Siemens AG is moving its Canadian headquarters from Oakville, Ontario to Calgary
- New Walmart warehouse coming to Balzac
- Value Village is expecting to employ 60 people when its new store opens in Calgary on April 11, 2013
- Bow Valley College is offering new health care programs at its High River campus starting in May 2013
- Date Modified: | <urn:uuid:78afccd4-c77d-4e62-bd3e-0696c604797a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.workingincanada.gc.ca/report-eng.do?area=25411&lang=eng&noc=1452&action=final&s=2&source=3&titleKeyword= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910908 | 741 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Eye Spy - Festival Poster
Thanks to the 3rd graders in Jennifer Langam’s class at Oakridge Elementary in Arlington, Virginia for suggesting the wonderful questions for this Eye Spy activity. Look carefully. Perhaps you can come up with even more questions to challenge your friends
2011 Poster (PDF, 463 KB)
2011 Festival Artist Jon J Muth has created a colorful picture of one his heroes reading to the festival crowd.
- Question: How many tents do you see on the poster?
- Question: What are the names of the two buildings located behind the tents?
- Question: Who is the famous person sitting and reading in the giant chair? What book do you think he might be reading to his audience?
- Question: How many bears can you find in the poster? Do you recognize any of them from stories you have read?
- Question: Jon J Muth uses many colors in his poster. Can you spot the boy wearing an orange hat? How about the little orange balloon? What else can you think of that is usually orange?
- Question: Do you see a lady dressed in purple?
- Question: Can you find a lion hiding in the crowd? How about a white cat?
- Question: Can you spot the bird that has dark and white feathers and blue FEET?
- Question: It must be a sunny day. Lots of people are wearing hats in the poster? How many hats can you count? Can you find the man in the yellow hat that looks like Curious George’s friend?
- Question: People of all ages and sizes come to the National Book Festival. Can you spot a baby?
2010 Poster (PDF, 465 KB)
Peter Ferguson – 2010 Festival Artist – has created a visual story picture of literary characters eagerly listening to a book being read aloud.
- Question: Let’s start with an easy task. Can you find a domed building with a statue on the top? You can see this beautiful sight from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. where the annual book festival takes place. What is this building called?
- Question: How many tents can you count in this drawing? Do you know how many tents there will be at the National Book Festival?
- Question: Thomas Jefferson said, “I cannot live without books.” Can you find a fascinated young reader sharing a book with avid listeners?
- Question: Peter Ferguson’s 2010 poster depicts book characters listening to a story. How many actual books can you spot in Peter’s artwork? Speaking of books, how many books to you think the Library of Congress has in its collections?
- Question: This animal is a member of the Ursidae family. Can you find a large furry mammal that has appeared in stories with a young golden haired girl?
- Question: Can you find a medium sized mammal with a pointed snout and a long bushy tail? He is wearing a scarf and has a handkerchief in his jacket pocket. Can you name a children’s story featuring such an animal?
- Question: Can you spot me? I have two long white ears and a habit of being late for important dates. I’m holding a book in my paws. What classic story do I appear in?
- Question: This animal highlights a sad chapter in the annals of animal history. Can you spot a flightless bird – almost 3 feet tall – that lived on the islands of Mauritius? It has been extinct since the 17th century. What was it called? Can you think of any children’s stories in which this animal appeared?
- Question: Look for a mammal with a triangular pointed face and a tipped-up nose. It has white stripes on its cheeks and one stripe running from its nose to the back of its head. It is the state animal of Wisconsin. What kind of animal is it? Can you think of any stories in which such a mammal appears?
- Question: Can you spot two good friends listening together? One is wearing a straw hat. His friend is standing behind him. What classic story features these famous characters?
- Question: This pirate character appeared in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, first published in 1883. Do you see the man wearing an eye patch? Who is he?
- Question: Do you see a red-haired girl with pigtails? She is resting her chin on her hands and is listening intently to the story. She resembles the main character in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic novel, first published in 1908. The story takes place in the village of Avonlea, on Prince Edward Island in Canada. What is her name?
- Question: Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem featuring a large black bird that is a member of the crow family. Can you spot it? What is the name of the bird – and the poem?
- Question: This machine is often designed to replace human beings in performing a variety of tasks, either on command or by being programmed in advance. Can you spot a strange metallic creature with 2 round eyes, 2 round ears and a rounded appendage on the top of its head? What is it called? Do you know of any stories that have characters of this type?
- Question: An ape is a primate characterized by long arms, a broad chest, and the absence of a tail. Can you find an ape wearing a red jacket and a yellow crown? Can you think of any apes in literature?
- Question: Can you spot a man with a reddish beard, wearing a black hat, and holding a harpoon? In what famous story does this character appear?
- Question: In the world of folk and fairy tales, one often meets elf-like characters with pointy ears. Can you spot a listener who might be an elf? Have you met any elves in children’s literature?
- Question: In folklore and literature, animals, plants or non-living things are often given people-like characteristics. This is called anthropomorphism. Can you find a tree with human characteristics? Have you read any stories with talking tree characters?
- Question: This female character is holding the letter A in her left hand. She appears as the main character in an 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne called the Scarlet Letter. What is her name?
- Question: Several listeners have extra large noses, but only one is wearing a red cape and has a pink feather in his hat. This is a real person who lived in the 17th century, and also the main character in an 1897 drama written in verse by Edmond Rostand. What is his name?
- Question: This literary character is wearing an armored suit and hat and is thoughtfully touching his white mustache and beard. He is the title character in a 17th century novel by Miguel de Cervantes. The story takes place in La Mancha, Spain. A popular musical called Man of La Mancha is based on this character. Who is he?
2009 Poster (PDF, 625 KB)
Look closely. Charles Santore's beautifully detailed poster reveals literary characters and subjects ranging from children's literature, classics and history, to nature and the arts.
- Question: Can you spot two young children stepping into this amazing scene on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.?
- Question: Look for the United States Capitol dome and locate the statue on the top? Do you know what this statue is called?
- Question: Can you find a large white marine mammal swimming towards the West? What kind of animal is it? In what 1851 novel does this animal play a major role?
- Question: Do you see a famous English poet and playwright holding a feather pen in one hand and a book in the other? What is his name?
- Question: Look for a man holding a skull. In a famous play this character said, “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” What is his name? HINT: See question 4.
- Question: Have you heard this limerick? “A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican.” Can you spot a white pelican flying on the mall?
- Question: Can you find three extinct animals? What are they called?
- Question: Look for a man wearing a watch and a ring with a red stone. He is playing a musical instrument. His nickname is Satchmo. Who is he?
- Question: Can you spot a plate of toast? And a rabbit toasting? What is the name of the rabbit? In what classic story does he appear?
- Question: A green caterpillar is sitting comfortably on top of an umbrella shaped fungus. What is this fungus called? Can you spot two more in the poster?
- Question: This large furry white mammal is listed as threatened on the Endangered Species list. Can you spot two of them? What this mammal called?
- Question: Do you see a group of battling soldiers? Look carefully at the flag and the uniforms. What is the name of the war being fought? Whose side are these soldiers on?
- Question: Someone has come to the tea party wearing a polka dot tie and a large hat. Can you find him? What does the label on his hat say? What is this fictional character's name?
- Question: The National Book Festival celebrates books and reading. How many books can you spot in this poster?
- Question: Final Question: You've already located the United States Capitol Dome. Can you spot another domed building? What is the name of this building?
2008 Poster (PDF, 216 KB)
Look closely. Jan Brett’s poster is filled with book-loving animals parading down the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Many of them represent state birds or animals.
- Question: Can you spot two buildings in the background? What they called?
- Question: What kind of animal is leading the parade? What is he carrying? How can you identify that this animal is a male?
- Question: What is the name of the animal wearing a red and white polka-dot neckerchief?
- Question: Can you spot a Badger sitting on a plaid blanket? Hint: This is Wisconsin’s state animal.
- Question: Do you see a Nene Goose waddling behind the parade leaders? Hint: This is Hawaii’s state bird.
- Question: Look for a Gray Squirrel wearing a green sweater. What kind of animal is it sitting on? What bird is reading the same book?
- Question: Can you find the Appaloosa Horse? Hint: This horse is Idaho’s state animal.
- Question: A Meadowlark and a Cardinal are sitting on the back of a Bison. What are they doing?
- Question: This sheep lives in high altitudes of the Rocky Mountains and has large curved horns. Can you spot it? Hint: This is Colorado’s state animal.
- Question: How many books are stacked on top of the Florida Panther’s head?
- Question: This brown rodent has a large flat tail and is an expert dam builder. Can you spot this New York state animal?
- Question: Can you spot two birds and two mammals riding on the back of a Nokota Horse? What are they? Hint: This horse is gray and is North Dakota’s state animal.
- Question: There are several species of bear in the poster. How many bears can you spot? What species are they?
- Question: The Bald Eagle is our national bird? Can you spot a bird that almost became our national bird? Hint: This is the Massachusetts state bird.
- Question: The Coyote and the Timber Wolf belong to the dog family. Can you spot them?
- Question: Can you spot an animal with a black and white striped tail? What is it? Hint: This is Arizona’s state animal.
- Question: The Pelican has a large bill used to catch fish. Can you spot a Pelican reading a book with a tan cover?
- Question: Can you spot a bird strutting in front of a fawn? What kind of bird is it? Hint: This is Rhode Island’s state bird.
- Question: How many animals can you find that have horns or antlers? What is the difference between horns and antlers?
- Question: Final Question: There is a very large state animal that is not pictured on this poster because it could not swim down the mall. What kind of mammal is it? | <urn:uuid:a00bc9ed-60d6-4208-832d-cca38db26170> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lcweb.loc.gov/bookfest/kids-teachers/creative/eyespy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962824 | 2,641 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Verona-Cedar Grove Opinion: A scorecard for NJ politicians
With new leadership in 2010, New Jersey Transit began an effort to target inefficiencies by cutting executive salaries, reducing the workforce, implementing a hiring and salary freeze and pursuing further revenue sources.
In an effort to decrease spending, it was NJ Transit who developed a fare and service adjustment plan, keeping in mind consumers most dependent on services.
To accurately determine the agency’s performance in areas such as customer service, finance and accountability, NJ Transit developed a scorecard in 2011. With this program, consumers can take an online survey that calculates overall satisfaction of transit services. Consumers are able to rank the agency on a scale of zero to 10, where zero is unacceptable, five is acceptable and 10 is excellent. In just a years’ time, consumer loyalty increased from 67 percent to 76 percent through the scorecard system. Overall satisfaction increased from 5.2 percent to 6 percent. This type of accountability and transparency initiative has been a worthy one for NJ Transit. Looking closely at New Jersey government, this scorecard initiative may be just as worthwhile in calculating satisfaction or dissatisfaction of our legislators.
New Jersey government initiative
It is essential that government agencies and its officials institute greater transparency. The need for such transparency can be found by using a similar scorecard system, as seen with NJ Transit. By building an online initiative, where the consumer would have the opportunity to rate district legislators on areas such as communication, ethical standards, appointment scheduling and overall satisfaction, it would create a needed accountability system. Wouldn’t it be responsible for legislators to think the way NJ Transit executives have? This way, not only do politicians learn about what improvements they need to make, but also ways to improve professionalism. | <urn:uuid:e064b725-6600-4185-be9a-e600dbe7c272> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/174701331_Verona-Cedar_Grove_Opinion__A_scorecard_for_NJ_politicians.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00055-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94411 | 357 | 2.1875 | 2 |
What Babies Learn From Dads
By Harald Breiding-Buss
Research continues to shake up the traditional idea that baby gets all (s)he needs from mum. As most active brain development happens in the first two or so years of a child’s life, Harald Breiding-Buss looks at some of the things fathers do that baby needs.
With all the fuss that is generally made about a mum and ‘her’ baby, it’s easy to think that the best a father can do is stand back, make sure the money keeps flowing in and give mum a little help when she needs it.
As a result a baby becomes rather attached to its fulltime mum. Whenever baby is hungry, wet, sick only mum seems to have the tools and abilities to comfort the crying and do what needs to be done. A well-meaning father may very well be angrily rejected if he tries to meet those needs while mum is around.
So many a working dad restricts himself to being baby’s “entertainer”, a “jester” or a “clown” – all words I have heard a new father use to describe his own role – and waits for his “turn”, when baby is a bit older and daddy can be a role model. Even a well-known author like Steve Biddulph (“Raising Boys”) thinks there’s not much more a father can do before age 6 or so.
Brain science begs to disagree. The first two or three years may well be the most important in a child’s life altogether, because this is where the brain gets ‘organised’ to deal with what life will throw at him. The brain is the most underdeveloped organ we are born with – it has only 25% the size of an adult brain at birth, and is rather simply structured.
Unlike in an older child or adult, the neurons (or nerve cells) that make up the brain, are hardly connected with each other in a baby. The different parts of the brain do not yet communicate with each other. Baby has not yet learned which parts of the brain are most useful for the task at hand.
It is ready for its long journey of learning, but it needs the right stimulation at the right time or it won’t happen. And it is the kind of stimulation baby gets that determines how those neuron connections will turn out.
By six months baby’s brain has already doubled in size, but it hasn’t made any new neurons. The brain has merely grown in complexity. By two years the brain is 80% of an adult’s brain’s size.
Some things baby hasn’t learned by then will be very hard for baby to pick up later – or even impossible. A kitten, for example, that has been prevented from seeing for a few crucial days will end up blind for the rest of its life.
The language centres of your brain also need to be stimulated at certain times quite early in your childhood, even before you have learned to talk much, or you will never be able to put together a grammatically coherent sentence.
Where do fathers fit in this? Isn’t mum already doing everything that’s needed in those early months?
By herself, especially if also isolated from support of her own family, mum is likely to do everything that’s needed for baby’s survival and comfort, but not everything that ensures optimal development. Babies’ brains are stimulated by variety, and fathers provide more variety than they generally realise.
Some studies have shown that even a three month old baby can already distinguish between the different kind of stimulations mum and dad give.
A baby with a dummy in the mouth will placidly suck on it when mum enters the room (provided he is not tired or hungry), but give the dummy a much harder workout when dad comes in. He will probably also show other physical signs of agitation: moving his limbs, trying to roll over or lift himself up.
Dad needn’t even have said a word – baby can recognise him by his step. He already knows that when dad comes it’s playtime, when mum comes it’ll be a new nappy or perhaps some cuddling or singing.
I have seen a four month old boy poking his tongue out at dad when he comes home from work, and mum then tells me that he only ever does that for him. Most likely dad is playing “silly” games with his face with baby, and by poking his tongue out that boy was simply asking for more. He doesn’t do it with mum, because mum’s response is perhaps not quite as stimulating.
So is this dummy sucking and tongue poking important for baby’s development? You bet.
Babies tell their parents what they need – that’s obvious when he’s screaming his lungs out because he’s hungry or something hurts. But when he smiles at you because of the way you play with him, he is doing the very same thing: he is saying “please, keep going like that, my brain is thriving on it”.
Any two people will do the same thing slightly different, but a man does things different from a woman in quite specific ways – be it because of nature or nurture.
From a baby’s perspective there’s the things that are obvious even to us: the scratchy (or hairy) face or the deeper voice. But there is much more: Men and women use language differently, both in terms of choice of words and purpose, although both usually raise the pitch when talking to babies.
When a dad picks up baby he is bound to handle him a little bit different to mum. His greater strength will show through even when he is gentle. You and I are so used to these differences that we wouldn’t notice them, but for a baby everything is new, and everything has to be experienced for a first time.
Dads will usually pick different activities to do with their children than mum, and they will often offer help with a problem later in the game than mum. Dads often pick no toys at all when playing with young babies or play with them in ways different to what the toy is for. When dad plays, pigs can fly and cows can go “brrm”.
(Deliberately misrepresenting things like that is another form of a puzzle, although it seems just like silly entertainment).
Part of the reason why dad may feel like a clown is because baby asks him to be. And baby asks him, because he needs this stimulation to reach his full potential, well-worn as this phrase may be. Dads do it without thinking about it.
But not every man is naturally playful, and not every new dad is happy to assume the traditional role of after-hours playmate. With social pressures as they are these men may feel guilty about not being ‘proper’ dads.
Through the mixture of love, gentleness, rough play and (sometimes) scary voice dad also teaches his offspring important lessons about men at this early age, which then become embedded in baby’s brain.
Manhood is a complicated thing, full of contradictions between who you are and what you are supposed to be. Both boys and girls learn much of it from their fathers before the age of two and they learn it in very subtle and subconscious ways that are often impossible to control.
NZ research, for example, has found that girls are at much increased risk of early pregnancy when dad isn’t around before age five (see Father&Child #24). Babies learn important things about men simply because dad is around, and they can’t if he isn’t.
Studies that have researched child development in families, where mainly dad looks after the baby during their waking hours, and found no consistent difference for the outcomes between these or any other children.
Provided dad is reasonably confident in what he is doing, baby will form the same kind of attachment to him that he normally reserves to mum, and dad will get the same kind of satisfaction and purpose from this attachment than a mum normally would. But even in those ‘role-reversed’ households, men are still men and women are still women. | <urn:uuid:6dbb2390-c43e-43fa-a837-d16d2fe73ac9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fatherandchild.org.nz/magazine/issue-25/what-babies-learn-from-dads/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973337 | 1,745 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Fathers can help their children put school bullying in perspective with just a few simple tools. Just like with your toolbox in your garage, not every tool works in every circumstance which involved bullying, but one or more of these tools will help your children understand bullying (and its technology variation cyberbullying), deal with it when it happens, and be less likely to be a victim when the bullies come to call.
Remember that it is not about your child. Bullies don't target children for bullying because the child somehow invites it. Bullies are bullies because they have a problem, not because the victims do. Whether your child is different in some way from the mainstream or not, the bullies are operating out of their own problems and challenges, not your child's. Help them externalize the bullying experience by helping them see that bullying is something children do because they don't have healthy ways or paths available to them.
Partner with an adult. Bullies generally stop when an adult intervenes. If your child has been the victim of bullying and is afraid to go back to where the bullies are, engage a teacher, principal, playground monitor or other adults in the battle. Make sure that your child feels safe reporting the bullying and having a responsible adult intervene.
Take your child's side with the system. Sometimes adults are reluctant to intervene or maybe they don't see the problem. Get involved at school and find an adult that is able and willing to help. Don't just gloss over the issue, but help your child navigate the troubled waters at school. Keep going until you find someone that will help.
Have a safe place of retreat. Teach your child to find and maintain a safe place. Maybe she should play at recess near the playground monitor. Or perhaps she will be safer if she is in a large group of children rather than playing off on her own where she is an easier target. Talk to the school and see what they recommend in terms of a place of safety. Maybe just a little hopscotch on the sidewalk outside the office door would be a good strategy.
Plan out a response. When your child has a plan, and you work with them on implementing the plan and even acting our scenarios, they will be better equipped to handle the situation when it comes up. Use a family night to talk about bullying and then act out some scenarios where your child responds appropriately. A little imagination can go a long way in helping them remember what to do when they find themselves in a hard circumstance.
Share stories. Granted, bullying today can be a lot more sophisticated and scary than it was when we were children. But having your child hear stories about how others (cousins, siblings, friends) handled bullying effectively can give them both tools to handle it and hope that it can be done. Seek out parents whose children got through the ordeal and invite them over to your home for a barbeque and talk about what worked for them.
Stand up then walk away. One element that seems to work wiht bullies is to not be intimidated. We might think that the bully will "up the ante" but usually they just go and look for a weaker victim. Suggest that your child tell the bully to stop and then just walk away and ignore them. It takes a lot of bravery to make the first step, but your child will build a brave character one challenge at a time.
Don't be alone with the bully. Make sure that your child knows that bullying happens less when a person is in a group than when he or she is alone. Have a friend with whom you sit on the bus or at lunch together. If a bully pursues your child, have them head off to a group of people rather than trying to get away from others.
Avoid responding violently. While it may be a common defense mechanism to respond to bullying with a physical confrontation, it almost never works. Trying to take the bully out only provokes further escalation of the bullying behavior. Children are better advised to try to stand up, walk away and ignore strategy. If a child is physically assaulted by a bully, that behavior should be reported to a responsible adult immediately.
Try some of the good online, interactive anti-bullying resources. There are many good online resources that parents can use to have a good discussion about bullying and what to do about it. Take a look at these web sites.
Fathers can do a lot to help their children learn how to deal with school bullying and can give them some excellent tools to address these bullying issues. Help them understand bullying, to be brave when bullied and to use all the resources they have to stay safe and positive. | <urn:uuid:7d5a672e-2a1a-43ce-85c8-2230ddb4af80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fatherhood.about.com/od/handlingcrises/a/How-Fathers-Can-Help-Their-Children-Deal-With-Bullies.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970096 | 945 | 3.78125 | 4 |
While a lot of Japanese people have chosen to grow Western-style gardens – those with flowers and shrubs – the majority still do keep Japanese gardens. Out front they have their lanterns and green conical-shaped bushes, and at back, they have their vegetable gardens.
A friend of mine said that in the olden days, Japanese households took care of their own needs within their own fences. They were self-sufficient that way. What they didn’t have, they traded for. They did not travel far to get what they needed, usually just bartering with neighbors and relatives. And they were always sure their food was safe and fresh, he said. His family used to bring me potatoes, tomatoes, strawberries and an assortment of Japanese herbs like shiso (in Kanji 紫蘇, which is a perilla). They use to invite me over to dinner so I could share in their meals made from vegetables that were all proudly home-grown. They said eating them was healthier and was a lot safer than store-bought vegetables.
So I understood instantly when I saw this article from Mainichi Daily News. Even before the question came up, I had an answer.
Incidentally, the same friend told me that one Autumn, his mother was getting ready to harvest their persimmon but then she woke up the next morning to find all the fruits gone. She was plenty angry but I guess it was しようがない (*read as shiyouganai, meaning a Japanese shrug of the shoulders, something can’t be helped).
The Original MDN Mainichi Article:
Woman steals vegetables from garden because they’re fresher than store goods
ISAHAYA, Nagasaki — A 76-year-old woman questioned on suspicion of stealing vegetables from a local resident’s garden has told police that they were fresher than what were sold in stores.
The woman, whose name has been withheld, is accused of stealing a cucumber. She has reportedly admitted having stolen other vegetables.
“They were fresher and tasted better than what were sold in stores,” she was quoted as saying. Police reportedly seized a cucumber from her home, which matched one stolen from the home of a 58-year-old woman in Isahaya.
Since she has reportedly paid the victim 1,000 yen for everything she took, police did not form a case against her. | <urn:uuid:9e3c5427-32bd-4f87-b07b-9ff5d6896ec5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://japanqna.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/japanese-vegetable-gardens/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.992068 | 504 | 2.078125 | 2 |
An illustrated book about an ocean voyage, a comic-strip biography of a Nobel physicist, and an examination of a controversial period of American history are just some of the new nonfiction titles hitting shelves alongside Marc Aronson’s Trapped.
Feynman by Jim Ottaviani ingeniously uses a first-person narrative and the graphic novel format to present the life of a remarkable man. A brilliant theoretical physicist who worked on the atomic bomb, won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, was married three times, played in a samba band, studied drawing, and hung out at topless bars, Richard Feynman approached everything with exuberance and a sense of play. Ottaviani’s and illustrator Leland Myrick’s enthusiasm infuses every aspect of the book — and they’re even able to provide clear explanations of complex physics. (12 years and up)
Karen Blumenthal’s Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition traces Americans’ drinking habits from colonial times to the present day to show how lack of moderation has caused this country to go from one extreme to the other and back again. She explains the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts that produced the Prohibition era. With an ambitious scope that includes anecdotes, quotes, statistics, photographs, and illustrations to complement the larger story, Blumenthal makes the subject matter relevant for modern readers. (12 years and up)
Far from Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage is Sophie Webb’s richly detailed account of her travels on a four-month-long NOAA research cruise studying the impact of fishing on two dolphin populations in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. Combining scientific information, field guide–like illustrations, and a thorough, realistic account of the day-to-day experiences of a field scientist, Webb provides readers with a closer look at the exciting science and the real-life minutiae of spending so much time at sea. (9–12 years)
From Notes from the Horn Book, August 2011 | <urn:uuid:b49787c2-e5e2-48e1-b9e7-cfd482d84005> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hbook.com/2011/08/choosing-books/reviews/more-new-nonfiction/ | 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 | 0.918389 | 421 | 1.898438 | 2 |
Impressions III (Concert) was painted by Kandinsky soon after he had attended a concert by Arnold Schonberg in Munich in 1911 and according to the exhibition catalogue notes the painting should be looked upon as:
”…one of modern art’s most outstanding examples of synaesthesia, correspondences between music and painting that other early twentieth-century artists sought. A dynamic wave of yellow paint flows across the painting from left to right like a great swell of sound that seemingly reverberates to and fro. Above it in the upper half of the painting is an energetic black in a diagonal position. In the preparatory pencil sketches one can clearly decipher the scene with the open, black grand piano as well as the curved backs of the seated listeners and those standing along the wall…”
This is my final look at the later life of Wassily Kandinsky and some of his more abstract works of art. In this blog I am featuring three of his these works, one from each of his three self-classified categories. After 1910, Kandinsky decided to compartmentalise his work into three groups. The first he called Impressions and these paintings would still retain an element of naturalistic representation. They would be direct impressions of nature. The second category he deemed would be Improvisations and these paintings would convey spontaneous emotional reactions inspired by events of a spiritual type. The last category he termed Compositions. These were paintings which were not done spontaneously but put together carefully, over a period of time, following a number of preliminary studies. These were to be his most complicated works. Although the titles he gave to the three categories seems somewhat arbitrary in fact they harked back to his love of music and in the way he connected, in his own mind, art and music. He would often add musical titles to his individual works such as Fugue, Opposing Chords or Funeral March. By doing this, he wanted to evoke sound through sight and create the painterly equivalent of a symphony that would stimulate not just the eyes but the ears as well.
Kandinsky is believed to have had synaesthesia. Synaesthesia comes from two Greek words Syn which means together and Aesthesis which means sensation. It is a condition that allows a person to appreciate sounds, colours or words with two or more senses simultaneously. Kandinsky believed that colours and painted marks triggered particular sounds or musical notes and vice versa. Did Kandinsky have synaesthesia? Maybe we will never know for sure but what we do know is that he was preoccupied all his life with the correlation between sound and colour. Following a performance of Wagner’s great opera Lohengrin in Moscow Kandinsky recalled:
“…I saw all my colours in spirit, before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were sketched in front of me…”
Let me now return to his life story. In my last blog we had reached the point when Kandinsky and some of his artist friends had set up Der Blaue Reiter group as a rival to their previous exhibiting association the NKVM (The Neue Künstlervereinigung München). In the first exhibition held by the Der Blaue Reiter group, Kandinsky exhibited three of his works, entitled, Impression-Moscow, Improvisation 22 andthe painting which had been rejected by the NKVM jury, Composition V. The exhibition came with a small almanac that Kandinsky and Franz Marc had been working on and the foreword of which set out to explain what visitors to the exhibition would see. They wrote:
“…We are not seeking to propagate any precise or special form in this small exhibition. Our purpose is to show, in the variety of forms here represented, how the inner wish of the artist takes shape in manifold forms…”
The exhibition which besides including works from artists, Kandinsky and Münter, included works from Franz Marc, Auguste Macke, Henri Rousseau to name but a few. It also included strange sketches by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. It was a confusing mish-mash of works, and artistic styles, which totally baffled and stunned both viewers and art critics alike. Even the most benevolent critics found great difficulty in finding some sort of common ground between the various artistic styles on show. It was also around the time of this first exhibition that Kandinsky published his book Uber das Gestige in Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) in which he presented the reader with his thoughts about what he envisioned was the new purpose of art and his writing showed the great diversity of Kandinsky’s intellectual and artistic awareness. In his book he discussed the spiritual foundations of art and the nature of artistic creation. He also wrote an analysis of colour, form and the role of the object in art, as well as the question of abstraction.
Improvisation 19 was completed by Kandinsky in 1911. Annegret Hoberg, the curator at the Städtische Galerie, Lenbachhaus, Munich, which houses many of Kandinsky’s paintings, including this one, wrote about the painting in the exhibition catalogue:
“…It seems as if an unknown ritual occurs in Improvisation 19, a kind of initiation and enlightenment of figures who can be understood as novices. One sees translucent figures outlined only in black. On the left is a procession of smaller form presses forward to the front, followed by shades of colour. The largest part of the painting, however, is filled with a wonderful, supernatural blue, which also shines through the group of figures shown in profile on the right, who seem to move toward a goal outside the painting. The spiritual impact of these long, totally incorporeal figures draws both on the uniformity (that is, they are all the same height, as in Byzantine pictures of saints) and on the fact that deep blue, almost violet shade in their heads may symbolize extinction or transition….This work underscores Kandinsky’s almost messianic expectation of salvation through painting…”
The onset of World War I in 1914 affected Kandinsky, as being a Russian citizen, he had to leave Munich immediately. He along with Gabriele Münter left and went to Goldach in Switzerland, a small town on Lake Konstanz. They remained there until December of that year when Kandinsky went to Moscow and Münter travelled to Stockholm where she would remain and wait for him. Kandinsky did go to Stockholm and met with Münter for the last time. Their close relationship which had started back in 1902 had recently being deteriorating and by March 1916, it had run its course and the one-time lovers parted for the final time. Kandinsky returned to Moscow and soon after his arrival in the Russian capital he met a young woman, Nina von Andreyevskaya, the daughter of a Russian general, and in February 1917 the two were married.
Whilst in Moscow Kandinsky spent much of his time not only painting but working as a teacher, writer and administrator. He immersed himself in the cultural politics of Russia and collaborated in the new reforms in art education. He was director of the theatre and film section of Narkompros, which was the Peoples Commissariat for Enlightenment. In February 1919 the Museums of Painterly Culture were established in Moscow and St Petersburg and Kandinsky became the first director of the institutions and worked hard to expand the organization by setting up a further twenty-two museums in the Russian provinces. In May 1920 Kandinsky helped set up Inkhuk, the Institute for Artistic Culture and he formulated a curriculum for the teaching of art which was based on his strongly held belief that there was an inter-relationship between art and music and looked closely at fundamental forms and colours. His theories did not go down with many of the Russian avant-garde artists on the staff of the institute. They firmly rejected any kind of irrationality in the creative process and because of such differing views between these leading artists and himself Kandinsky found his position weakened and ultimately untenable.
In the autumn of 1921 a road to salvation was offered to him by Walter Gropius, a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School in Berlin, who invited Kandinsky and his wife to visit the school. This was a different Germany from the one he left at the outbreak of war. Many of his artist friends, such as Franz Marc and Auguste Macke, had been killed fighting in the war, whilst others had moved away. The Berlin art scene had changed. The Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement was now to the fore. This grouping of German artists executed works in a realistic style, and they reflected what was characterized as the resignation and cynicism of the post-World War I period in Germany. Leading protagonists of this style of art were George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Beckman. Also popular at the time were the works of the Expressionists and the cultural movement known as Dadaism. This movement was, in the main, a protest against the brutality of the War and the members were also against what they believed was an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both German art and its everyday society. All of these artistic genres were diametrically opposed to all forms of abstract art, and so when, on arrival in Berlin, Gropius offered him a professorship in the Bauhaus in Weimar, Kandinsky jumped at the chance to start a new life in a new city.
In 1924, an artist friend from his Munich days, Paul Jawlensky, introduced Kandinsky to the German art collector and art dealer, Emmy Scheyer. At that meeting she also met Kandinsky’s fellow Bauhaus faculty members, Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee. She formed the four artists into an exhibition group called Blaue Vier (The Blue Four) and Scheyer became their representative in America. The four artists often toured, sometimes as far as America, giving lectures and staging Blaue Vier art exhibitions.
When Kandinsky left Russia he had to leave the majority of his paintings behind. They were sold but the return on them was poor due to the falling value of the Russian currency. However during his eleven years at the Bauhaus he completed over three hundred paintings and several hundred watercolours, all of which he catalogued. His time at the Bauhaus ended in 1932. The previous year had marked the start of a vitriolic campaign against the Bauhaus by the Nazi party and the following year they had it shut down. Kandinsky and his wife fled from Germany and went to Paris and settled in a new apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Kandinsky continued to paint and within twelve months living in Paris his output totaled an amazing 144 oil paintings and approximately 250 watercolours. Kandinsky, although born in Russia, had been granted German citizenship in 1928 but when he tried to renew his passport in 1939, his request was declined. That year, just before the start of World War II, Kandinsky managed to obtain French citizenship.
Composition IX was completed by Kandinsky in 1936. In the work we can make out multiple diagonal bands of colours and small shapes that resemble embryos as much as crustaceans. This canvas earned Kandinsky criticism for not sufficiently articulating the background and the shapes. Nevertheless, it is one of the rare large format canvasses to which Kandinsky once again applied the name of “Composition”. In his book, Concerning the Spiritual in art, he said that this one, of all his “Compositions”, was his most accomplished painting. In total, he completed only ten in all throughout his entire career. Sadly, when the French government purchased it for just 5000 francs rather than the 100,000 he had demanded, he felt quite humiliated. This complex canvas is in fact one of the two works that the French State bought from Kandinsky during his lifetime.
His last known watercolours and drawings were completed in the summer of 1944 and he held his last exhibition at the Parisian gallery, Galerie L’Esquisse that same year. Wassily Kandinsky died of arteriosclerosis in December 1944, aged 78.
I have to admit I have struggled with this blog, the third covering the life and times of Wassily Kandinsky. I struggle to understand abstract art even though leading up to this offering I have read reams of information with regards this type of art. I have included three of Kandinsky’s paintings, one from each of his designated “types”. I will not insult those of you who are very knowledgeable about this form of art by trying to explain, interpret and analyse the works but have relied on exhibition catalogue descriptions of the works. I would like to have ended this blog by saying how much I like the works of Kandinsky but to do so, would be extremely economic with the truth. I will conclude this look at the life and works of Wassily Kandinsky with one of his quotes:
“…Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and… stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to ‘walk about’ into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?…”
Have you managed the “walk about” ? | <urn:uuid:77e30a88-97ad-48c2-b347-7842845dc42b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mydailyartdisplay.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/compositions-impressions-and-improvisations-by-kandinsky/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982798 | 2,758 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Speech and communications as war
This post from Galrahn at the US Naval Institute’s blog is very interesting in its own right, but this response from NewsHoggers’s Steve Hynd also raises some interesting questions. Galrahn contends that in providing an instrument to distribute anti-regime propaganda to a global scale, Google is aiding in a campaign of subversion against what is currently a major US strategic partner. Galrahn goes so far as to label this action a form of unconventional warfare, because Google is essentially taking a side to implement a political decision in a contest of force.
The notion that spreading information or journalism could be a form of warfare deeply worries Hynd, who believes that defining such activity as warfare both endangers legal protections for journalists and strengthens totalitarian regimes. Unlike the case of Wikileaks, where Manning’s release of classified documents (if not necessarily Assange’s dissemination) clearly constitutes an illegal act, this case is, for the reasons Galrahn points out, much more interesting. No US companies are violating or conducting actions which violating their host nation’s laws, and because these are legitimate entities, they have a larger financial and technological base for such programs. To Hynd, even speaking of journalism this way strengthens the case of totalitarianism, and violates the sacred status of immigration and speech.
I think Hynd exaggerates the danger a blogger poses to free speech. Hosni Mubarak did not need external justification to realize that as far as his interests were concerned, the internet and speech were weapons, and act accordingly. The US and other countries responded harshly to Mubarak’s communications clampdown, and, in rhetoric at least, elevated internet access as a new universal right. Mubarak is in a political struggle for his regime’s survival. When a new regime or constitutional order is at stake, everything does start to look like war. As Juan Donoso Cortes put it:
… don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party.
Cortes, a liberal turned reactionary writing in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, was referring to the struggle between Catholicism and the ideologies of liberalism and socialism, and he, like the better known Joseph de Maistre, was on the side of an authoritarian version of the former. Yet he captures the idea of a total political struggle eloquently. In electing to treat communications as neutral in an ideological battle, states circumscribe one form of power to enhance the other. Now, we may see this as perfectly legitimate or natural, and thus exclude it from consideration in a discussion of war. This silence might be wise for policymakers, but it’s less useful for those seeking an understanding the complexities of political conflict, particularly when communications technology has given states and other organizations enormous power to influence popular thought. So, while in an ideal world, speech would not be war, and for a just world, we should endeavor not to treat speech as such, we should still recognize the implications of speech as a form of warfare, because many political agents see it that way.
The United States considered speech a weapon in World War I, and it did as well in World War II and the Cold War. Galrahn is not stating anything revolutionary when he talks about communications technology as policy by other means, except perhaps in claiming that it’s still a form of warfare when the elements of society, rather than the state, are waging it. Because the modern legal order generally does not consider war, in the Clausewitzean sense, a protected right even of states, we will endeavor to avoid labeling information operations or coercion/pressure-through-communications war, at least until it is used against our values and interests. We’ve essentially begun to see this with Wikileaks, and I suspect we will see it again. Although liberalism neutralized political speech long ago, in part as a necessity method of constitutional self-preservation, with every perceived existential struggle it retreats into censorship.
The difference with any society which rules through coercion is that this period of perceived existential struggle, of alignment against an enemy, is more permanent (even normal), and the neutrality of speech becomes politically untenable. Sun Tzu famously said it is best to win without fighting. With the advent of communications technology, and now that of non-state organizations such as Google capable of leveraging its tremendous power independently of the government, Galrahn’s post reminds us of this important question: will it be possible to wage a war not just without fighting, but without anyone realizing a war is being fought? | <urn:uuid:2cfa932e-e1d3-4bed-a354-3b754cf13835> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://slouchingcolumbia.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/speech-and-communications-as-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957472 | 1,026 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The Institute of Propulsion Technology uses a large PC cluster to perform complex numerical computations. The cluster, which is for the exclusive use of the institute, is maintained and administrated by T-Systems-SfR. It consists of 190 dual nodes (380 processors) with the latest 64bit AMD-Opteron technology. The nodes are linked with a fast Infiniband interconnect using the largest available Infiniband switch. As such the processors communicate with each other with the same speed. The system has a master node with 4 processors and 32 GB RAM. This is fail-safed by a second server (slave), which undertakes the tasks of the master in the case of breakdown. The hard disk space comprises 12TB in a SAN network. Additionally, an integrated pre- and post-processing server with 4 AMD-Dual-Core processors and 64 GB RAM has access to the data space. The pre- and post-processing server enables the large amounts of data typically generated in time-accurate multi-stage compressor and turbine simulations to be analysed efficiently.
Primarily, the CFD code TRACE, developed at the Institute of Propulsion Technology for the simulation of multi-stage turbomachinery flows, is run on the cluster. Alongside standard applications, TRACE is also often used on the cluster in the automatic optimization of compressor blades. Similarly, using commercial CFD programs, numerical simulations of the combustion process in aero-engine combustion chambers are also performed on the cluster. | <urn:uuid:3dda6ad8-cf52-4510-9f93-3934c9d59aa0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dlr.de/at/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-2437/3573_read-5277/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908125 | 305 | 2.078125 | 2 |
Bethesda, Md (PRWEB) October 04, 2012
Caddies on Cordell, a sports bar located in downtown Bethesda, has been a long-term Bethesda Systems client. The lighting throughout the bar was outdated and costly from a replacement and maintenance perspective. Management of the sports bar grew tired of changing light bulbs and their increasing energy bills.
The bulbs Caddies used before the retrofit constantly burned out. The bar went through 10–15 bulbs per week, and their lights were on for at least 14 hours per day. The owners grappled with the growing expenses and time devoted to constantly restock the bulbs, as well as continually climbing ladders throughout the entire bar several times per week in order to replace the lights.
On their older system, half of their lights would not dim due to overheating issues on the circuit. For example, over one of their bars, the dimmer switchers did not work properly, and bulbs would go off at random.
Gabe Coulon, Caddies Co-Owner said, “We’ve been told these bulbs last much longer. During the summer, this is huge for us because there is much less heat produced from the lighting. Bethesda Systems also added dimmers, making it simple for universal settings and usage all over the bar.”
The retrofit was an easy decision when we presented them with an upgrade yielding energy savings, reduced maintenance, better quality light and general information behind the benefits of going LED from incandescent or halogen bulbs. With the retrofit completed at Caddies, the sports bar became eligible for PEPCO utility rebates. On top of that, management at the bar now deals with less maintenance, a greener business, and lower energy costs.
Gary Hefner, Project Leader, Bethesda Systems said, “Some lights weren’t on due to circuit overload from excessive wattage. Bulbs were exploding, and Caddies was paying a fortune to PEPCO. After the retrofit, there was a major heating difference since no more halogen or incandescent bulbs were being used, allowing Caddies to no longer run their air-conditioning as hard, thus allowing them to save additional energy.” | <urn:uuid:ccfd7710-2031-43c3-b507-c61ded259822> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb9968636.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974118 | 462 | 1.632813 | 2 |
The Federal Highway Administration and MassDOT have set aside funding for the reconstruction of Beacon St. Working with the City of Somerville, the intent of the project is to design a state-of-the-art roadway that increases the access, safety and mobility for all modes in the corridor.
A "Full-Depth Reconstruction"
Beacon Street will undergo a full-depth reconstruction, which means that crews will dig all the way down to the base layer to completely replace the roadway. The new surface will thus be far less prone to pot-holing than it is currently. Construction is expected to start in spring 2014. The total cost of $4.5 million is funded in full by the federal government and the State.
Prior to road resurfacing, water and sewer pipes will also be repaired - using a cutting-edge process that will result in less inconvenience to residents. The City is contemplating a method for the repair of existing pipelines that is designed to cause less disruption from construction because very little digging is required. In this "trenchless" method, pipes are given a new "structural lining," which involves injecting a coating into the pipes that lines the old pipe, hardens, and effectively creates a new pipe within the old pipe.
The method requires less time, money, and excavation than traditional dig-and-cut pipe replacement. To see how this is done, please see (the video is just an example and it does not reflect support for the company that made the video or the exact details of the method that will be used).
Proposal of a Cycletrack
(Photo: Dan Reed)
A cycle track is a bike lane that is separated from the roadway and traffic by some form of physical barrier. Unlike bike lanes marked only by a stripe of paint, cycle tracks may be bordered by wider no-drive zones, flexible barriers, or a curb. To accommodate the cycle track, parking spaces would be removed on one side of the street from Oxford St. to Washington St. Based on current use levels, a parking study determined that enough parking capacity would remain in the area despite this reduction in spaces.
The City's semi-annual Bike and Pedestrian Counts have repeatedly shown Beacon St. to be the city's most heavily used bike corridor and one of the most heavily traveled in the Boston region. The City recommends the installation of a cycle track to promote both safety and improved traffic flow. But public feedback is still being sought and will be fully considered. For an example of how cycle tracks work, please see .
Unlike the recent rehabilitation of Somerville Ave. or Magoun Square, the Beacon Street project is restricted to roadway reconstruction and roadway features. It is not a full streetscape project. However, in addition to a vastly improved road surface and the proposed cycle track, new crosswalks, signals, signal timing, and crosswalk countdown lights will be installed. All of these items are open for public feedback.
Funding for the project requires that design be complete one year from now in Sept. 2013. Public meetings that will provide information about the progress of the project will continue through February, with each meeting progressing to a more detailed level of information. | <urn:uuid:128a0fd9-2158-4d0b-9ddf-0a81e8808b13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.somervillema.gov/beaconstreet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935061 | 653 | 2.203125 | 2 |
The Senate passed a five-year reauthorization of the farm bill on Thursday. The nearly $500 billion bill sets conservation programs, funds food stamps, provides a safety net for farmers, and will cut nearly $24 billion from the deficit.
“This is not your father’s farm bill,” Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has said repeatedly. The bill would end direct payments to farmers and cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, by about $4 billion.
The legislation is projected to cost approximately $969 billion over 10 years and about $500 billion over its five-year authorization.
But the House is ready to take issue with what the Senate approved 64-35.
The cuts to SNAP will certainly not be enough for House Republicans. The House version will likely look for closer to equal cuts between the commodity title and the nutrition program—which they point out makes up about 80 percent of the farm bill. The long summer of the farm bill will also see an effort to try and bring Southern crop interests on board. They’ve complained about their treatment under the Senate version.
“One thing missing in the Senate farm bill, and that’s actually an attempt to get at where most of the spending is at,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan. “We certainly have billions of dollars spent on people who do not qualify for food stamps, and only in Washington, D.C., could they say that’s not fraudulent.”
In other words, even though the Senate took a major step on the path to enacting a new farm bill, there’s still a long way to go. Farm-bill summer has just begun. The House Agriculture Committee won’t mark up its version of a bill until July 11. The real battle will come if and when there is a conference committee.
The two amendments with the widest margin of approval on the last day of voting were also the least likely to generate any actual outcome. A bipartisan amendment, joined at the last minute by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would require exhaustive reports on the looming defense sequester easily passed by voice vote. But the farm bill is far from final and even under the most optimistic circumstances the legislation wouldn’t be signed by the President until just weeks or months before the sequester is scheduled to kick in.
Another bipartisan effort to end public funding for political conventionspassed 95-4. That amendment would prevent the two parties from using amaximum of $17.7 million each from the Presidential Election Fund to payfor their nominating conventions. This provision will not affect the 2012 conventions because that money has already been appropriated.
This week, lawmakers approved several provisions like the one offered by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., that would prevent millionaires collecting cash from conservation programs. In the last two years, millionaires received approximately $90 million from these programs.
Many lawmakers object to any limitations based on a farmer’s adjusted gross income, but the Senate’s broad 63-36 approval could convince both chambers to swallow the limitation, said Coburn spokesman John Hart.
“Now that it’s passed by the margin it did, it’s going to be hard for anyone in Congress to overrule,” Hart said. “Voting it down would be affirmatively offering welfare to millionaires. No one publicly is going to want to stand up and support that.”
Even the far more controversial limitations on crop-insurance payments for millionaires passed by a wider-than-expected margin. These would limit the wealthiest farmers from being able to receive subsidies to help them cover the cost of crop insurance.
This move did not jibe with the wishes of Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who did not want crop insurance restrictions in this reauthorization.
“My concern is that as we move to a risk-based system, we don’t undermine the reforms today,” Stabenow said, adding that she’d like to see the farm bill “play out” in order to gather enough information before limiting who gets crop-insurance subsidies. Her concern, she said, was that if larger farms don’t have the incentive to buy into crop insurance, it will put a greater burden on the little guys: “We want to incentivize farmers, support them to have skin in the game.”
During two weeks of floor consideration, the Senate considered amendments that would have brought its version closer to what the House will come up with, but those provisions were either withdrawn or shot down.
These fights are not permanently at rest — just napping until conference. | <urn:uuid:7dfbf765-1fe0-4a84-817d-4d59df1d35ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/senate-passes-bipartisan-farm-bill-20120621 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960507 | 1,001 | 1.71875 | 2 |
I found this part of the introduction amusing, as it reminded me of fanfic that makes the reader memorize a long list of orthographical conventions (/ means speech, * means Ginny's thoughts, ~ means Draco's thoughts, etc). It begins with a list of "easy abbreviations," like
v, ov (of)
before i go farther, it wl b well t give a few points v (ov) information t printers w,hr no "caps" are used.
one line drawn under a word in a manuscript indicates t e typesetter tht e word s t b in italics; two lines mean full face; three lines mean large letters from e lowercase for general headings; a waving line drawn under a word means "spacing"; tht s, an "n" quad t b placed between e letters n two quads between a several words, for e sake v emphasis or attention.
Who says kids today are to blame? | <urn:uuid:1d800c31-2400-4e1c-83d4-b423da8e8c52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bradshawofthefuture.blogspot.com/2008/04/teutonik-is-nit-1-fremd-zunge-fyr-di.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925778 | 199 | 2.4375 | 2 |
Labrador Morning | Dec 5, 2012 | 9:13
No Caribou hunt is sustainable at this point
Caribou from the George River herd have been spotted on Orma Lake Road, not far from Churchill Falls. Some say Innu have been in the area hunting since last week. With the most recent herd population numbers as low as twenty seven thousand, the Labrador Hunting and Fishing Association does not support any kind of hunt at this time. To explain more, President Tony Chubbs in studio with Tony Dawson. | <urn:uuid:deea46cf-3e0a-4f43-b38e-f5c84d6005b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Local+Shows/Newfoundland/ID/2312707781/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940887 | 106 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Technological advancements have made ground-based self-healing, self-forming, and self-configuring wireless sensor networks a viable option for monitoring missions.
A wireless sensor network that Lockheed Martin calls the Self-Powered Ad-hoc Network (SPAN) is being deployed in the energy sector to monitor infrastructure such as pipelines. Their low energy use, and self-organizing mesh network, makes them ideal for ground surveillance. To aid in their deployment, the low-cost sensors are being camouflaged in housings that look like rocks, and the sensors harvest energy sources from the surrounding environment to extend their battery life.
The persistent surveillance system is monitored and controlled from a single machine that processes aggregate readings. The smart sensor network can cue a camera or unmanned aerial vehicle to further study an area or call an engineer when a pipeline or bridge structure is in danger of fracture.
A similar wireless sensor network is being deployed by Textron Defense Systems along borders and in Afghanistan. The MicroObserver Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) system can track and detect people and vehicles, and act as a perimeter defense. This system is a wireless mesh with nodes placed underground that can communicate up to a range of 10 km via radio. The system can be deployed quickly with little training needed.
With this new level of sensing capability, with low maintenance and sophisticated algorithms that reduce false reporting, we can expect broader use and more sensor inputs into our systems. | <urn:uuid:2de93689-5de8-4058-b4bb-8e01349f3792> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sensysmag.com/spatialsustain/wireless-sensor-networks-provide-new-levels-of-stealth.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943036 | 295 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Clean victory for environment
Finally! Easterlys pile will be cleaned up. Several state environmental organizations have settled their legal battle against ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor LLC and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management over the large pile of toxic waste the steelmaking company has left next to Lake Michigan for years.
The harmful waste pile from the steel mills blast furnace is estimated to be more than 3 million tons and was dumped about 200 feet from Lake Michigan and near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
It was dubbed Easterlys pile in honor of IDEM Commissioner Tom Easterly, who was a top environmental manager at one of ArcelorMittals predecessors, Bethlehem Steel Corp., from 1994 to 2000. Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed Easterly to lead IDEM in 2005.
Despite federal and state laws that prohibit open dumping of solid waste, IDEM issued the company a landfill permit in 2010 without requiring the company to monitor, control or treat the industrial waste.
Save the Dunes and the Hoosier Environmental Council challenged the permit and won. As part of the settlement, IDEM entered an agreed order requiring the company to impose waste management measures and provide definitive timelines for disposing of the waste.
By bringing this challenge, we arrived at an agreement that protects one of the most unique ecosystems in the world, said Nicole Barker, executive director of Save the Dunes, in a statement. This settlement is a major win for Lake Michigan, and our regions only national park – the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. | <urn:uuid:3574cdd4-adf3-4b1a-90e8-840789bd10ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120727/EDIT07/307279997/1147 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928245 | 309 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Police State - Government has set up thousands of checkpoints on public roads
- In violation of the Bill of Rights, people peacefully driving their cars are being herded like cattle into police state checkpoints to be properly "examined", questioned and then searched against their will.
- Liberal, Conservative, Republican, Democrat. It does not matter. Both parties are working hand-in-hand to take away your Constitutional Freedoms.
In a practice that officials acknowledge has been ongoing for more than a year now, cops in so-called "Conservative" Texas are setting up roadside checkpoints and photographing “suspects”, citing gang culture as a justification.
The McAllen Monitor reports that the South Texas Civil Rights Project, based in Alamo, has taken up issue with the San Juan Police Department, noting that “what they’re doing could be unconstitutional.”
“Police have always been pressing against restrictions the Constitution puts on protecting rights of individuals.” STCRP lawyer Joseph Martin said in response to the increase in the use of checkpoints.
“Passengers are questioned and, in certain instances, individuals are asked by investigators to voluntarily submit to having photographs taken of their gang-affiliated tattoos. The information is then vetted for inclusion in a state database.” reports the Monitor.
No Search Warrants - Feds Radiating Americans at Roadside Checkpoints
The 4th Amendment is ignored by Big Government at every opportunity.
unconstitutional checkpoints are on the rise state-wide.
The gang element is a useful loophole for police to exploit because they can claim they are merely conducting research on gang membership, and asking for voluntary information from gang members while conducting the checkpoints.
Elsewhere in Texas, police have recently called for “permanent” DWI checkpoints in order to “save lives,” raising the possibility that Texans could be forced to show their papers, submit to breathalyzer tests, or even be mandated to have blood drawn whenever they drive down the street.
The TSA has also announced that it will conduct “security assessments” on highways having already set up checkpoints on interstate roads in Tennessee last year. The federal agency was responsible for over 9,000 checkpoints across the United States in 2011. | <urn:uuid:5179ff00-36cd-42d8-918b-8246bb36bd9d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thefederalist-gary.blogspot.com/2013/01/state-run-unconstitutional-highway.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96142 | 463 | 1.539063 | 2 |
By Guy Spriggs
On a windy day in February 2012, Department of Geography associate professor Jeremy Crampton met his Intro to GIS (Geographic Information Systems) students on the main lawn in front of Administration Building for a demonstration of citizen remote sensing.
This cutting edge experiment didn’t require any million dollar equipment, however. Crampton and his students were able to survey the western border of UK’s campus using only a camera, a 2-liter soda bottle, a balloon, rubber bands, and string.
By simply suspending a camera from the balloon, this technique makes it possible to not only physically map an area, but to use other forms of recording (such as thermal imaging) to capture data on vegetable health and building efficiency.
“We can stitch these images together to form a composite image,” he explained. “Anyone should be able to do this.”
Using this equipment, it is possible to gather images and create a map of UK’s campus for less than $300. This makes citizen remote sensing a great option since, according to Crampton, utilizing copyrighted photographs can cost $700 per image.
The photos created with citizen remote sensing are not only cheaper and higher resolution than images from resources like Google Maps, they can also provide useful metadata on the times and dates when the photos were taken.
“This technique was used to document the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Any group that wants to monitor any sort of activity can use this,” he explained.
While GIS can be viewed by students as a job-training step toward a career in geography, Crampton hopes the lasting impression of his course will be a sort of call-to-action.
“It is important to be active participants in data collection,” Crampton said. “This is a do-it-yourself project that can have really positive results.”
The photos taken by Crampton’s camera will be composed into one image using mapknitter.org.
View the photo gallery that documents the setup and demonstration of this remote sensing project. | <urn:uuid:dc9ea355-a9ac-489b-93c9-c778b7d96dd8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.as.uky.edu/balloon-mappings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935901 | 446 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Well, yes it is, but the marker celebrates the person buried there who captured the Apache leader — George Crook.
Located at the final turn of the dirt path to Arlington House (straight ahead just when turning left) is the back side of Crook’s memorial. The large granite marker has a bas relief on the back showing the 1883 surrender of Geronimo (center) along with Crook (right) and other soldiers and braves.
Crook (1830-90) became a brigadier general during the Civil War. He was taken prisoner in 1865 before exchanged for Confederate prisoners and finished the war with the Army of the Potomac.
Crook then served out west fighting Apache, Sioux and Cheyenne Indians. He later caught Geronimo in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. Ironically, Crook became known as an advocate for indians that he felt were mistreated by government officials. He served 38 years in the army before dying at age 59.
The steps leading from Arlington House to the Tomb of the Unknowns is also named the Crook Walk after him. | <urn:uuid:f6e2fb3e-d5d6-4155-b667-65f30349de1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dctourguideonline.com/2012/01/10/the-geronimo-marker-well-sorta/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969239 | 228 | 2.3125 | 2 |
Cassiopeia was a woman in Greek mythology. She was the wife of Cepheus who was king of a place called Ethiopia. This is not the same place as the African country called Ethiopia. They had a daughter called Andromeda. Cassiopeia was very beautiful but also very arrogant and vain. She thought that she was better than other people. One day, Cassiopeia said that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than all of the Nereids. The Nereids were sea-nymphs. When the sea-god Poseidon heard what Cassiopeia had said, he was very angry. He sent floods and a sea monster called Cetus to destroy Ethiopia. Cassiopeia and her husband Cepheus asked an oracle what to do. The oracle said that they must sacrifice their daughter so they chained Andromeda to a rock. A hero called Perseus came and rescued Andromeda. Later, they got married.
There was another woman called Cassiopeia in Greek mythology who was married to a king called Phoenix.
- Moore, Patrick (1987). Astronomers' stars. Routledge. pp. 67. ISBN 0710212879. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DvQNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA67. | <urn:uuid:3bb83758-5d2b-46d3-8162-c6910c395fa9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiopeia_(mythology) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986901 | 271 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Cuidado - Take Care, Bushmasters!
WWII, Bicol Campaign, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 3-4 April 1945. Cries of "Banzai" rang through the jungles - the staccato of enemy machine guns, mortars and rifles broke through the jungle silence. The bayonet charges were suicidal, but the 158th Regimental Combat Team, the "Bushmasters", repulsed the enemy and advanced. It fought day after day, in critical battles, to open the Visayan passages for allied shipping in the Pacific. The merciless campaign lasted 2 months in terrain laced with tank traps, wire, mines and bamboo thickets.
This proud Arizona National Guard unit, organized as the Arizona Volunteer Infantry for the Indian campaigns in 1865, had its motto, "Cuidado" -- Take Care. Mustering in the great southwest desert, the unit was mainly "Mexican-American" and North American Indian from twenty tribes. Expanded in Panama, it was one of World War II's few organizations to complete the trail from "down under" to Japan. | <urn:uuid:48ba3955-874b-442d-9ff0-db1fbeb07d0b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.history.army.mil/html/artphoto/pripos/usaia-print/cuidado-p.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00075-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949899 | 222 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Business in South Carolina
Facts & Stats
CNBC named South Carolina's workforce fifth-best in the nation in 2010.
South Carolina has attracted an impressive roster of major employers including Boeing, BMW, Monster.com, Google, GE Energy and Michelin. Top industries in South Carolina include auto manufacturing, aerospace, biotechnology, and transportation and logistics. The Port of Charleston is among the busiest U.S. seaports. Colleges and universities include the University of South Carolina and Clemson. South Carolina beaches and some 400 golf courses make it a year-round outdoor recreation destination. | <urn:uuid:ff3f986e-58c8-4c8a-ae67-f58c7c820006> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessclimate.com/south-carolina-economic-development | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909932 | 119 | 1.5 | 2 |
A new origin for iron meteorites discoveredUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology
HONOLULU - An article in the prestigious science journal Nature, published this week, goes a long way toward resolving a controversy about asteroids and meteorites that has raged in the scientific community since the 1960s. What do key data about the cooling rates of material inside these heavenly bodies indicate about their makeup and formation, and the origins of planets? Studies of Moon rocks show us that the rocky planets were formed by giant collisions between planetary embryos 4.5 billion years ago that lasted for 50 million years and ended with a mighty impact on the Earth that created the Moon. Now a research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) and the University of Hawaii (UH) has discovered evidence in iron meteorites that shows that planetary embryos, approximately 1000 km is size, formed less than one million years after the birth of the solar system, and quickly began colliding. Iron meteorites are widely thought to be pieces of once molten cores of about 100 asteroids 5-200 kilometers in diameter that took millions of years to cool and billions of years to collide and break up. But according to researchers, Jijin Yang and Joseph Goldstein (UMA) and Ed Scott (UH), this view is wrong. The molten cores, they argue, formed in planetary embryos up to 1000 km or more in size that broke apart in only a few million years -- long before they cooled. Scientists have proposed several theories over the decades to rationalize the diverse cooling rates of iron meteorites thought to come from a single core. One is that either the data, or the computer simulations using those data, are faulty. A second theory is that a major impact fragmented the core and scrambled up the pieces. A third idea is that the asteroid was never hot enough for a core to form so that the metal chunks were spread throughout the silicate mantle.Yang and his coauthors developed a new theory by figuring out how long iron meteorites took to cool down. A set of iron meteorites from a single molten asteroidal core enclosed by a rocky mantle would all cool at the same rate because iron metal conducts heat much more rapidly than rock. But two independent techniques showed that the set of irons cooled at rates that differed by as much as a factor of 50. "We realized" said Scott, "that the accepted explanation for the origin of the iron meteorites must be wrong." After trying many different ideas, the researchers discovered that if a metal body 300 km in diameter were to cool without any silicate mantle, samples a few km from the surface would cool 50 times faster than those near the center. But how could a metallic body of this size have formed in the asteroid belt? Until last year, there was no plausible answer to this question. But a paper published by researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz showed that Moon-to-Mars sized planetary embryos didn‘t just stick together when they collided, as previously inferred. In half the impacts, the smaller bodies would have been torn apart by glancing collisions. Yang, Goldstein, and Scott deduced that a glancing collision by a planetary embryo 1000 km or more across with a molten core could have formed the 300 km metallic body in which the meteorites cooled.
"We used to think that iron meteorites come from asteroids that formed and melted long after the unmelted meteorites called chondrites had formed" said Scott. "But the latest dating techniques show just the reverse. Iron meteorites come from the first generation of bodies that formed less than one million years after the solar system was created, and the chondrites formed over the next few million years. Our work therefore shows that planetary embryos 1000 km across formed in less than one million years and that debris from these bodies survived in the form of meteorites and asteroids." Another UH meteorite researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Sasha Krot, recently proposed that a group of chondrites once thought to be the oldest meteorites may have formed in a giant collision between planetary embryos over 4 million years after the birth of the solar system. "These are very exciting discoveries" says Klaus Keil who heads the cosmochemistry research group at the University of Hawaii. "They have dramatically changed our understanding of the first few million years of Solar System history." This work was funded by NASA.***Article Information: Yang, J., J. I. Goldstein, and E. R. D. Scott (2007) Iron Meteorite Evidence for Early Formation and Catastrophic Disruption of Protoplanets. Nature, v. 446, p. 888-891. For more information, please also see the Planetary Science Research Discoveries article http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/April07/irons.html.For interviews, please contact: Edward R.D. Scott, Planetary Scientist, Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa. Email: email@example.com, Phone Number: (808) 956-3955 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Contact: Joseph Goldstein, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, College of Engineering (413) 545-2165, firstname.lastname@example.org
For more information, visit: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/April07/irons.html | <urn:uuid:e3b3685f-e0e3-4396-95bd-796765cc37ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uhm.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=1760 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949274 | 1,129 | 4.03125 | 4 |
July and August, 2011
My first Russian visit starts in the commercial and industrial port of Murmansk in the Barents Sea. Finally I have made it to Russia!
The National Geographic Explorer approaches the dock amongst loading cranes and commercial railways.
There to greet us are our customs and immigration officials, and the local canine club.
With a current population of a little over 300,000 people, Murmansk has declined in population drastically, losing over 150,000 residents in the last 20 years.
The signs are everywhere of a very busy and important port (the largest city in the world above the Arctic Circle), but these days the city seemed to be asleep as there are very few ships coming and going.
Buildings and the docks themselves are showing signs of decay and disuse. This once important military shipyard is full of rusting hulks.
Of course there are still signs of the communist regime, but capitalism is the predominant theme now.
The Memorial to the Patriotic War reminds us that Russia and America fought together not so long ago...
A grim reminder of what we are all capable of...
Clearing both into and out of Russia happened for us here in Murmansk. A very sobering beginning and ending to our expedition!
The "Kapitan Dranitsyn
" alongside the wharf. This is the Russian ice breaker that Lindblad
used in 2004 to travel to Franz Josef Land.
A nuclear powered submarine is one of the last things we see when leaving Murmansk...
In 2012 I will once again travel to Russia with Lindblad Expeditions. For more information please go to www.expeditions.com | <urn:uuid:6e4c0109-c989-4a10-ba89-5ddb4d84a7de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mikenolanwildlifeimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/to-russia-with-love.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929122 | 350 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Below are brief descriptions of the economist and environmental science positions for which NCEE typically recruits. NCEE is EPA's center of expertise for cutting-edge research and analysis in environmental economics. Information on open positions are routinely announced on our email service. Economist positions are usually also listed at the Job Openings for Economists website. You can find out more about our formal application process, which is established under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Disclaimer: Official announcements of NCEE employment opportunities will be made through postings on NCEE's and other official sites (http://www.epa.gov/ezhire/ and http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/). Please hit reload or refresh to make sure you are viewing the most recent version of this page.
Occasionally, NCEE has management position openings. Though such positions may also fall under the one of the other job titles below, to highlight the management or supervisory nature of the position, information on any open positions is available on our Current Management Openings page.
NCEE typically recruits economists at the ASSA and AAEA annual meetings. NCEE also considers applications for two-year research assistant positions. Applicants should have an M.S. or Ph.D. in economics, or anticipate defending before employment would begin. Benefit-cost analysis skills and research experience in environmental, natural resource, agricultural or related applied microeconomics fields are required. Open research and policy analysis subjects include: direct and indirect methods of valuing benefits to human health and ecological services; costs of regulatory compliance; and information-based and economic-incentive programs. Salaries are competitive. U.S. citizenship is required. EPA is an equal opportunity employer. Information on any open positions is available on our Current Economist Openings page.
Environmental Science Positions
NCEE conducts original research in environmental economics and supporting and related scientific fields to inform policy development at EPA. NCEE scientists provide information on environmental and systems modeling to support decision-making, participate in regulatory development activities, and develop and evaluate environmental policy options. Often such modeling supports more rigorous and scientifically-grounded economic analysis of benefits, co-benefits, and costs. Examples of scientific, policy-related work performed at NCEE include: a national evaluation of public health risks from ambient air toxics; America's Children and the Environment, EPA's report on indicators of children's environmental health; bioeconomic modeling for benefits analysis; papers on particular aspects of human health risk assessment; and a detailed course on the effects of reactive nitrogen in the environment. NCEE staff have published their work in journals across many disciplines, including The Lancet, Environmental Health Perspectives, Risk Analysis, Environmental Research, Environmental Science and Technology, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. EPA is an equal opportunity employer. Information on any open positions is available on our Current Environmental Science Openings page. | <urn:uuid:69b02cf1-4446-4291-aa36-d12336795e16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yosemite1.epa.gov/ee/epa/eed.nsf/webpages/Careers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919249 | 600 | 2.109375 | 2 |
If you're a teacher who loves a good story and an even better storm, then this is the site for you! You'll find classroom-tested lessons that:
- integrate earth science, social studies, language arts and math;
- are adaptable for different grade levels, and
- focus on Wisconsin weather, culture and narrative arts.
Your class is invited to submit locally-collected weather lore too.
Learn more about the Wisconsin Weather Stories project, or go to a curriculum unit in one of the three story categories below. | <urn:uuid:a0c619e2-5515-4610-8020-d0f73383b9e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://weatherstories.ssec.wisc.edu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917568 | 110 | 2.15625 | 2 |
American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics
Volume 140, Issue 1 , Pages e25-e30, July 2011
Introduction: In this study, we examined the influence of field of view (FOV) and voxel size on the diagnostic efficacy of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) scans to detect erosions in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ).
Methods: The sample consisted of 16 TMJs containing natural or artificially created erosions and 16 normal TMJs. CBCT scans were obtained with 3 imaging protocols differing in the FOV and the size of the reconstructed voxels. Two oral and maxillofacial radiologists scored the scans for the presence or absence of erosions. Diagnostic efficacies of the 3 imaging protocols were compared by using receiver operating curve analysis. For each TMJ imaging protocol, we used thermoluminescent dosimetry chips to measure the absorbed dose at specific organ and tissue sites. Effective doses for each examination were calculated.
Results: Areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.77 ± 0.05 for the 6-in FOV, 0.70 ± 0.08 for the 9-in FOV, and 0.66 ± 0.05 for the 12-in FOV. The diagnostic efficacy of the 6-in FOV, determined by the area under the curve, was significantly higher than that of the 12-in FOV (P ≤0.05). Effective doses for bilateral TMJ evaluation were 558 μSv for the 6-in FOV, 548 μSv for the 9-in FOV, and 916 μSv for the 12-in FOV.
Conclusions: The diagnostic efficacy of CBCT scans for the evaluation of erosive changes in the TMJ is highest for the 6-in FOV and lowest for the 12-in FOV.Full Abstract | <urn:uuid:f740a3bb-bb1c-450d-8a87-c442916295a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dentalcompare.com/Journal-Updates/19431-Cone-beam-Computed-Tomography-to-Detect-Erosions-of-the-Temporomandibular-Joint-Effect-of-Field-of-View-and-Voxel-Size-on-Diagnostic-Efficacy-and-Effective-Dose/?ctid=1&cid=4851 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936239 | 400 | 1.523438 | 2 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
MONDAY, JUNE 20, 2005
TDD (202) 514-1888
FORMER NAZI GUARD JOHN DEMJANJUK
IS RULED REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division announced today that Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael J. Creppy has found John Demjanjuk, 85, removable from the United States on the basis of his service during World War II as an armed guard at a Nazi extermination camp and two concentration camps in German-occupied Poland and his subsequent concealment of that service when he immigrated to the United States.
As a former guard at the Sobibor extermination camp, Demjanjuk - a retired auto-worker from Cleveland, Ohio - is only the second person ever brought to court in the United States for having served at one of the four Nazi camps constructed solely to murder people.
Chief Judge Creppy’s decision last week follows the government’s successful prosecution of its denaturalization case against John Demjanjuk in federal court. In 2002, following trial, Chief Judge Paul R. Matia of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled that the government had proved that Demjanjuk was an armed guard at Sobibor, where 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered; at the Majdanek concentration camp, where at least 170,000 civilians died; at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where some 30,000 civilians perished; and a member of a unit trained at the Trawniki Training Camp to implement “Operation Reinhard,” the Nazi program to dispossess, exploit, and murder Jews in Poland. Judge Matia specifically found that Demjanjuk participated in “the process by which thousands of Jews were murdered by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide” in the camp gas chambers at Sobibor. Judge Matia’s decision to revoke Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was upheld by a federal appeals court last year, and the government commenced removal (deportation) proceedings on Dec. 17, 2004.
In his 16-page decision, Chief Judge Creppy, citing Judge Matia’s conclusive findings, noted that Demjanjuk’s actions “prevented the escape of the prisoners being held captive and who were left at the disposition of the Nazis,” thus subjecting them to “terrible abuse and almost certain death.” He ruled that Demjanjuk was therefore removable from the United States as an alien who participated in Nazi-sponsored persecution on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion. Still to be decided by Chief Judge Creppy is the country to which Demjanjuk is to be removed. He will also rule on any application that Demjanjuk may file for deferral of removal, which he ordered must be filed prior to the next hearing in the case, scheduled for June 30, 2005 in the U.S. immigration court in Cleveland.
“John Demjanjuk’s role in helping to doom thousands of Jews to annihilation in Sobibor’s gas chambers renders him singularly unworthy of continued residence in this country,” said Eli M. Rosenbaum, Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which investigated and prosecuted the case. “His participation in the ghastly crimes of the Holocaust renders him unfit to remain here, and the government will seek to remove him as expeditiously as possible.”
The deportation case was litigated by OSI Senior Trial Attorney Stephen Paskey. Since OSI began operations in 1979, it has won cases against 100 individuals who assisted in Nazi persecution. In addition, more than 170 individuals who sought to enter the United States in recent years have been blocked from doing so as a result of OSI's “Watch List” program, which is enforced in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security | <urn:uuid:06d05bcd-a514-494e-a2b8-aedaa23f72bc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2005/June/05_crm_326.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960278 | 858 | 1.773438 | 2 |
Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the potential challengers to Apple's phenomenally popular iPhone, perhaps the one with the best prospects is Google's Android, which is not a mobile phone per se, but rather an open-source platform that the company encourages phone manufacturers to deploy in their own products. Similarly, Google encourages computer programmers to develop applications for the Android environment. But learning how to create such applications is daunting to the uninitiated, particularly for developers who have never before worked with the user interface controls, Web services, and other resources involved. A recently published book, Unlocking Android, is designed to help such developers." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.Unlocking Android was put out by Manning Publications on 28 May 2009, under the ISBN 978-1933988672. It was authored by W. Frank Ableson, Charlie Collins, and Robi Sen — all of whom have extensive experience in developing mobile software applications. The publisher's Web page makes available author biographies, descriptions of the book, all its ancillary parts (the foreword, preface, acknowledgments, table of contents, and index), a white paper on Android (oddly termed a "green paper"), and two sample chapters ("Targeting Android" and "Intents and services"). There is a link to download the source code from the Google Code site, organized by chapter. The Manning site also hosts a forum, where readers and the authors can discuss the book. As of this writing, there are 42 threads, comprising 120 messages. Lastly, the site has links to order both the print and electronic versions of the book. Note that purchasing the former automatically entitles one to a copy of the latter. Manning appears to be pioneering this approach to making e-books more readily available to customers, since every print copy now contains an insert with a list of codes that can be used to download a PDF copy of the book.
|author||W. Frank Ableson, Charlie Collins, Robi Sen|
|reviewer||Michael J. Ross|
|summary||A guide to developing applications for Google's Android.|
The book is ostensibly intended for Android beginners, even though it does contain enough detailed information to serve as a partial reference for more experienced developers. It is organized in a logical fashion, in three parts, starting with an overview of Android itself, both the technology and the organization behind it. Then the reader is introduced to the Android programming environment, along with its many components and capabilities. The book concludes with tutorial chapters that step the reader through creating a sample Android application and more. The material covers Android SDK 1.x. Since Android programs are written in Java, any reader fluent in that language will have a much easier time absorbing the ideas. However, the authors state that even non-Java programmers should be able to follow the examples, as long as they have knowledge of similar languages, such as C, C++, or C#. However, even a cursory glance at the code, by such a reader, would prove that Java knowledge is essential.
The first chapter — oddly named "Targeting Android" — introduces the platform, the organizations behind it, the mobile market as a whole, Android's features, how it differs from featured phones and smartphones, its open-source licenses, platform components, libraries, service managers, programming environment, and virtual terminal. Be warned that Figure 1.1 could be confusing to some readers, because it shows the layers of technology that compose the Android platform, but pictures them on the front of a mobile phone, showing a keypad, which makes the layers appear to be part of the actual user interface; the phone should be removed from the illustration, in a future edition. The chapter goes on to discuss booting and activating Android, as well as how to map applications to processes. Some readers anxious to get to the technical nitty-gritty, may become impatient when reading the first portion of this chapter, because it largely consists of introductory material. Yet this context can be helpful and interesting to people unfamiliar with the mobile phone market. (Articles and tutorials aimed at new mobile application developers, oftentimes assume that said developers are already extremely familiar with the rapidly changing mobile market.) In the later portion of the chapter, readers are shown a handful of code snippets, with some explanation as to what they are doing and how. In reading this material, the reader could be easily overwhelmed with all of the new terminology. One can only hope that the authors were not thinking that the typical reader would understand all of what is discussed, or be able to do anything with it. A canonical "Hello, world" program or something similar — with an explanation as to how to execute it — would have been a far more gentle introduction. By the way, the first few code snippets are poorly indented, and some of the method names are italicized, while others are not — with no mention as to what this might signify, either in the chapter or in the earlier "Code Conventions" section.
In Chapter 2, the reader is introduced to the key tools for basic Android development, including the SDK, Eclipse, and the Android Emulator. An example application — a tip calculator — is developed, step by step, to illustrate those tools. Clearly, this tutorial information should have been presented before the second section of the previous chapter. It nonetheless serves as a valuable introduction to programming Android. Incidentally, Figure 2.1 labels the development environment as being located on a laptop, incorrectly suggesting that desktop computers are not equally usable platforms. Later, when the authors suggest that readers add the Android SDK tools directory to their system search path, they specify only the release-independent directory (containing adb, for instance), and not the release-specific paths (containing aapt, which is the first tool discussed); readers presumably should add both. Also, the authors should specify which release to use, 1.1 or 1.5. The reader eventually is told how to run a sample application — and not a moment too soon, because at that point the reader is already 15 percent of the way into the book. To reach that point, she must wade through more introductory material than was needed, in addition to discussions of network speed and latency, command line tools, DDMS, Java packages, and other information. All of this could and should be covered later, when it would be much more meaningful, and the reader would have greater motivation to learn it, having seen an Android application running (if only in the emulator).
Part 2 forms the bulk of the book, consisting of nine chapters devoted to the essential aspects of Android application development: user interfaces, including the Activity class, views, resource types, and manifest files; Intent classes, broadcast receivers, task services, and inter-process communications; data storage and retrieval, including user preferences, files stored on the local system and on SD cards, databases, and the ContentProvider class; networking, including client/server interaction, HTTP, and Web services such as SOAP; telephony, including how to receive and initiate calls and SMS messages; notifications and alarms; generating graphics and animation; multimedia, including audio and video, utilizing the OpenCORE technology; location-based applications, using a variety of tools, including Google Earth's KML. All of these chapters make use of example applications, with annotated source code and screenshots of the applications running in the Android emulator.
The third and final part of the book comprises two chapters, each of which extends the core concepts of Android development. Chapter 12 steps the reader through the creation of a substantial application, named "Field Service Application," designed for mobile technicians who provide support services for customers of contracted clients. The application is designed to be used by both the technician and his home office to assign and manage job orders, capture customer signatures of completed jobs, order replacement parts, and receive navigation assistance. The final chapter, "Hacking Android," explores Android's utilization of Linux, the C programming language, and the SQLite database — as well as how the Android developer can access these capabilities under the hood.
Appendix A explains how to install the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE), the Android software development kit (SDK), and the ADT plug-in for Eclipse. Readers who do not already have those components installed on their computers, may want to first read the appendix and follow the procedures. Note, however, that the procedures given in section A.4, for installing the ADT plug-in, are already out of date — namely, for Eclipse version 3.3. In addition, the URL given by the authors ("https://dl-sll.google.com/android/eclipse") is invalid, because it is missing the trailing directory slash, which is necessary for it to work within Eclipse. (This points up the importance of including root directories in URLs, despite their common absence, because even though Web browsers will automatically correct this upon receiving an error message from the server, Eclipse evidently does not.) The online Android installation instructions are much more useful, because they also include the latest version of Eclipse, 3.4.
As is to be expected with the first edition of any detailed computer programming book, this one contains some errata — for instance, in the first portion of the book alone: "Android[']s" (page xxii, twice), "Webkit" (page 7, in the caption), "SQLite[,] an" (page 11), and "byte code[s]" (page 13). Also, terms such as "Internet" and "Web" are in all-lowercase, throughout the book, even though they are proper names. (In our world of instant messaging and Twitter, grammatical degeneration continues apace.) For any reader who wishes to follow along and implement the sample projects, possibly the most disappointing decision by the authors was that of offering the sample code not as a single archive file, or even individual archive files for each of the 13 chapters. Instead, the reader must tediously click through multiple layers of directories, just to get the code displayed in a browser, one file at a time. Readers are advised to employee a Web copying utility, which, given a starting URL, will try to download all of the linked pages, recursively, and store those Web pages and other Web elements on their own computer (even localizing links, to retain working navigation in the saved pages).
Yet by far the biggest problem with this book, is that while it claims to be an introductory text, suitable for someone completely unfamiliar with Android, it does not bring the newcomer up to speed at a reasonable pace for learning. Instead, it presents a large number of code snippets and tools to the reader, without adequate explanation for the beginner to truly understand what is happening. This pattern begins even in the first chapter, which is sorely lacking a tutorial on how to execute the sample code — to better understand it and perhaps modify it (a practice that most programmers find quite valuable for assimilating a new technology). On page 23 is a frustratingly brief sidebar on testing the receipt of an SMS message, that is far from adequate for the reader anxious to begin testing out this new material. The second chapter continues this unfortunate tendency of describing tools prior to giving the reader enough information to run those tools themselves in the same manner, and see the same results. For instance, on page 41, the authors show how to use the adb tool to connect to a running emulator session, but at that point the reader has no such sessions running. (Sometimes the authors of programming books understand the material quite well, but neglect to view it from the perspective of someone who does not yet have that understanding.)
While more appropriate for intermediate Android developers than claimed, Unlocking Android contains a wealth of information to help Java programmers begin developing mobile applications for Google's new platform, with numerous code snippets and screenshots.
Michael J. Ross is a freelance Web developer and writer.
You can purchase Unlocking Android from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. | <urn:uuid:04c7af9f-0670-4226-aa80-7413aa924c98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://books.slashdot.org/story/09/06/29/139256/Unlocking-Android | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93449 | 2,485 | 2.09375 | 2 |
NEW YORK, N.Y.-
A series of eight expressionist paintings by French-American artist Romain de Plas, 1971-2002, is now on view at the Museum of the City of New York
through December 4, 2011. The highly-charged works portray the Towers in a range of modes from calm to agitated, suggesting rather than graphically depicting the chaos of the attacks. Shown in conjunction with photographs by Camilo Jose Vergara, who documented the World Trade Center for forty years, Romain de Plass paintings commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 in this exhibition which has been on view since September 2, 2011.
Romain De Plas was born January 4, 1971, in Paris , France , and moved to New York City when still a child. He attended Brown University and went on to earn a degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston , in 1998. De Plas worked and for a time lived in a studio on Rivington Street in downtown Manhattan , which provided a view of the World Trade Center . Following the attacks, he worked in the early morning hours, trying to visually express the magnitude of the event and beginning what would become a series of 11 paintings. De Plas died suddenly on September 13, 2002, before he could bring his project to completion. The works on view serve as a meditation on the event and a tribute to the World Trade Center and those who died, some of whom were de Plass friends.
Although his work has been shown in Paris , Antwerp , and New York , the World Trade Center series has never before been exhibited. | <urn:uuid:25bc538b-8c00-4742-ba6d-b08e54465b06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artdaily.com/section/lastweek/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=51529&int_modo=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978111 | 332 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Back in July, I suggested that Park Guen-hye (박근혜) of the Saenuri Party (새누리당 or the ‘Saenuri-dang’, the New Frontier Party) was defying gravity in her race for South Korea’s presidency, and I listed five reasons why:
- She’d rebranded her party from the Grand National Party into the ‘New Frontier’ Party.
- She then led the Saenuri Party to victory in elections for the National Assembly in April despite the unpopularity of her party’s incumbent president Lee Myung-bak (이명박).
- Even six months ago, she had already co-opted the message of the center-left on ‘economic democratization,’ chaebol reform and income inequality.
- South Korea’s progressive opposition was largely divided.
- Mixed feelings (including some nostalgia among older voters) about her father’s authoritarian reign from 1961 to 1979 largely neutralized potentially controversial family ties.
By the time South Koreans went to the polls yesterday, all of those factors contributed to her victory.
She has defeated Moon Jae-in (문재인) of the Democratic United Party (민주통합당, or the ‘Minju Tonghap-dang’) with 51.6% of the vote to just 47.9% for Moon, ending what was always a very close race — albeit one where Park always seems to hold a slight edge.
As we look ahead, all of those factors should equally inform us as to what to expect from Park — the first woman to become South Korea’s president — and her incoming administration.
By rebranding her party as the ‘New Frontier’ Party — and making clear that the new frontier would not include Lee (who narrowly defeated Park for her party’s presidential nomination in 2007) — and then running against Lee’s record as much as against her opponent, she neutralized one of the most significant impediments to her candidacy. She reinforced the split during the spring legislative campaign — and, by the way, she’ll enter the Blue House with a very friendly parliament as well. Moon, had he won the election, would have been hampered by a hostile Saenuri majority, but Park will find a largely pliant National Assembly — Saenuri legislators know that they would not have that majority without Park. So she’ll wield significant power as president in order to push through her campaign agenda.
That agenda, frankly, does not appear dissimilar to the agenda Moon promised. While the policy details have been less than detailed, Park’s campaign emphasized traditionally liberal themes, and that moderate agenda certainly helped elect Park yesterday. If Park wants to avoid the unpopularity of her predecessor, she’ll have to produce legislative accomplishments, not only on chaebol reform, but also find a way to reduce Korean income inequality and, ultimately, she’ll probably need to be lucky enough to have robust GDP growth.
On North Korea, too, both candidates agreed that the next president should be more conciliatory to North Korea than Lee’s administration, but they shied away from advocating a full return to the ‘Sunshine Policy’ of the late 1990s and 2000s that increasingly seemed to South Koreans like a series of handouts in exchange for further aggression from North Korea. So under Park, South Korea will likely retain its firm approach to North Korea, but with relatively more carrots than sticks.
In terms of the geopolitics of East Asia, Park — who assumed the role of first lady during her father’s administration at age 22 when, in 1974, her mother was assassinated by North Koreans — will certainly be no shrinking violet (get set for five years of hearing the phrase ‘the Iron Lady of Asia’).
Indeed, it’s a crucial time for East Asia, given that King Jong-un has been in power for only a year, Xi Jinping (习近平) only last month took over as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (中国共产党) and is set early next year to become the president of the People’s Republic of China, and the hawkish Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三) only last Sunday won Japan’s parliamentary elections, returning him to power as prime minister. Park’s immersion in Korean politics since the 1970s and her perceived toughness (she once returned to the campaign trail in 2006 just days after an assailant slashed her in the face with a knife) also likely contributed to her victory yesterday.
Moon’s campaign never really found a way to bridge the gap with his fellow liberal presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo (안철수). Talks between the two to form a merged candidacy throughout November failed when they couldn’t agree whether Moon or Ahn should head the ticket. That failure increasingly tarnished both candidates — at one point, Moon trudged through a snowstorm to see Ahn at his home in Seoul, only for Ahn to stand him up. Ahn finally withdrew his candidacy in favor of Moon in late November, but the bitterness with which he did so and the reluctant nature of his support certainly crippled Moon.
Ahn, whose emo presidential performance was marked more by moodiness than canniness (he declared his candidacy only on September 19 after playing a Hamlet-esque waiting game for much of the summer), still polled better against Park than Moon. Ahn’s appeal to younger voters, in particular, as a former software entrepreneur and university professor, was predicated on his ability to transcend the traditional rancor of the conservative-liberal showdown in South Korea, despite his obvious progressive tilt. He certainly remains a top contender for 2017, if he’s interested, but he’ll need to figure out how to spend the next five years, and he might want to consider earning some experience in government.
Moon, the former chief of staff to the late Roh Moo-hyun (노무현), whose candidacy, for better or worse, was viewed as a sequel to Roh’s presidency, will now likely fade into the background — the DUP’s failure to capitalize on a teetering economy and an incumbent president plagued with corruption accusations and an approval rating of around 20% could cause some disarray, given that the DUP represents a wave of mergers of various smaller liberal parties over the past decade.
Finally, Park’s apology in September with regard to the excesses of her father’s regime — despite the economic growth that marked the 1960s and 1970s, his authoritarian government stifled protests, often with force, ignoring an increasingly loud call for liberal freedoms, expanded human rights and a democratically elected government. Although liberal democracy came to fruition in South Korea by the late 1980s, and although Park is fully committed to South Korea’s now-firmly entrenched system (no one thinks Park the daughter wants to transform the Blue House into a military dictatorship), her longtime defensiveness about her father’s record struck many South Koreans uneasily.
Her apology was a key turning point in the race, likely reassuring moderate and younger voters. Nonetheless, with GDP growth cooling after decades of relatively high GDP growth (despite the 1997 Asian economic crisis), older voters in particular, with fond memories of the strength of South Korea’s economy under Park’s father, voted in droves on hopes that Park (the daughter) can restore some of the luster of the South Korean economic miracle.
Filed under: South Korea Tagged: | ahn, ahn chul-soo, apology, blue house, CCP, chaebol, democratic united party, DPRK, DUP, GNP, grand national party, iron lady, japan, kim jong-un, lee myung-bak, moon, moon jae-in, new frontier party, north korea, park, park chung-hee, park geun-hye, roh, roh moo-hyun, ROK, saenuri, shinzo abe, south korea, sunshine policy, xi jinping | <urn:uuid:4baf0e27-fee4-4826-80aa-29103432eda3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://suffragio.org/2012/12/19/park-guen-hye-becomes-south-koreas-first-female-president/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967335 | 1,768 | 2.03125 | 2 |
Fire, blaze, inferno, conflagration.
Regardless of what it may be called, every town on Cape Cod has had at least one memorable fire in its history, though the causes of some remain as hazy as the smoke they billowed.
The village of Dennisport suffered a destructive fire in October 1931 that quickly destroyed an entire block of businesses including a grocery store, a clothing store, a drug store, a barber shop, and a dentist’s office.
On Main Street, Sandwich in December 1913, the Boyden block was consumed by flames, which according to a Barnstable Patriot article was home to a paint shop, a fruit store, a furniture upholsterer, a hat store, a variety store, and electrical contractors named Garland and Bartley. The electricians, it was noted, “also had a large stock in the building, on which there was no insurance.”
Also lost in the Sandwich blaze were the quarters of the DeWitt Clinton Lodge of Masons and the Charles Chipman Post No. 132, G.A.R. headquarters.
The town of Barnstable has experienced a number of fires, including an October 1827 blaze that reduced the county house to charred ruins and took with it probate records, court records, and 93 volumes of deeds, thus clouding the issue of property ownership for the past two centuries.
Main Street, Hyannis was victimized by a fire in March 1892 that wiped out a number of stores housed at Cash Block at the intersection with Pleasant Street. Yet, that fire was outdone by another Main Street blaze which occurred on an evening in December 1904 and which destroyed 600 feet along the north side of the east end of the street. Burned were more than a dozen buildings containing a public market, a grocery store, a dry goods store, a department store, a photography shop, a dressmaker, a tailor, a shoe store, a paint shop, a drug store, the Singer Sewing Machine Company, the US post office, and the New England Telephone Exchange. The largest structure to fall was the Eagleston Building, which housed a number of businesses.
Also consumed by the flames was the Universalist church, which, ironically, had replaced an earlier church building destroyed by fire in 1871. (Amazingly, the original church building at this site was moved in the 1840s to become part of the Cash Block, and burned in the aforementioned 1892 fire – three generations of church buildings burned in a three-decade span!)
There was a fleeting hope that the church might escape the 1904 conflagration, unharmed, as the distance between the Eagleston Building and the church was a good 30 to 40 feet. Yet, the blaze was too intense, and the flames leapt westward to ignite the church. Efforts to save the Universalist meeting house were in vain and it was consumed, with the spire and its accompanying gilded weather vane of Gabriel blowing his trumpet crashing down to the street below, the clock in the tower displaying the time of the church’s demise – five minutes to three in the morning.
Just a little more than a month later, in January of 1905, came more misery to Barnstable in the form of another church destroyed by fire. As detailed in the January 16th issue of The Barnstable Patriot, “About one o’clock Sunday noon, just after the close of Sabbath School, the Unitarian Church in Barnstable was discovered to be on fire, and on opening the inside door the auditorium was found to be completely filled with smoke. An alarm was immediately given. A good stiff breeze from the south-west was blowing at the time, and although hand extinguishers were used, the flames could not in any way be stayed, and only one rug and the front door were saved. The fire consumed everything connected with the church, even the steeple itself falling in on the ruined pile.”
It was believed the furnace was the source of the blaze that destroyed the church, which dated to 1836, replacing an earlier meeting house built in the first decades of the 18th century. Just a few years before its demise, the church was “prettily frescoed,” had new carpeting installed, and also had a “beautiful memorial window … put in by the late Dr. Henry Tuck of New York in memory of his mother,” according to the Patriot. The church also housed a pipe organ, which was insured for $525 through the Barnstable County Mutual Fire Insurance Company. The church building itself had $2,500 in insurance coverage.
“The loss is a great one,” the Patriot reported, “not only to the Society, but also to the whole village. The Society will at once take steps toward re-building.” And, in fact, the church was rebuilt, and the new building was dedicated in 1907, standing as it does today high atop Cobb’s Hill, overlooking the surrounding Barnstable village. | <urn:uuid:daf11c93-53d3-4c6e-b302-ced819807625> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/home2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29419&Itemid=306 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984007 | 1,038 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Photosynthesis is the main life process of plants, the means by which they manufacture the energy to conduct all other life functions. The sunlight captured by the green cells in the leaves produce plant sugars and energy. Respiration, foliage growth, root development, turgor pressure and reproductive activity all play off this basic process of light capturing and conversion.
Photosynthesis converts the light energy from the sun into a chemical energy that can be stored and dispersed throughout the plant to carry out all of the interdependent life processes. The light energy captured by cells in the leaves mixes with carbon dioxide and water in the cells to make sugar. This process cannot occur if the plant does not receive sunlight, and all of the life processes will be slowed or altered if only minimal light is available.
Water in the plant and taken up by the plant roots is used along with the energy from light to run the photosynthetic process. Plants under drought stress either from lack of soil irrigation or from dessication from sun, high winds, arid climates or high heat will strain to complete photosynthesis. The internal turgor pressure in water-based tissues called phloem holds the plant and leaves in an upright position where they can absorb optimal sunlight. Under drought stress, the plant can wilt and collapse, reducing the surface area the plant has to soak up the sunlight and conduct photosynthesis.
Plants take carbon dioxide in through openings on the underside of the leaves called stomata. The stomata open and close to take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. Under plant stress from excessive heat and/or drought stress, the stomata do not open, and a secondary, less-efficient survival process kicks in called the Calvin cycle, where the plants' basic processes are turned inward and stomata remain closed until environmental conditions become more favorable and night comes, the weather cools and moisture is more plentiful. This restricts the flow of carbon dioxide, water and light energy to carry out the photosynthesis process, slowing all plant functions over the short term. | <urn:uuid:d9bee080-1e5c-4103-868b-1bbdf5bf528a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gardenguides.com/89633-factors-affecting-photosynthesis-green-plants.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927497 | 413 | 4 | 4 |
What could be more fun that planning a great vacation? Gathering maps, guides, travel videos, and language courses will put you on the right path. Especially if you are an independent traveler, you will need all the information and help that you can find before embarking on that joyous journey. You can start out by perusing beautiful travel videos of various places around the world. Great Journeys sells over 3,850 travel videos to almost every nook and cranny of the world.
Once you have decided where you would like to travel, then the next step is to obtain maps and guide books of that area. Great Journeys sells over 14,500 different maps to countries and cities all around the world, and carries over 5,000 different guide books. Even hard-to-find regional and provincial maps are listed so you can get up-close and personal to your favorite destinations. Take a walking tour of London, or drive through the fascinating Puglia region of Italy and see all the little towns that give this region its unique charm. Trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro, or just take a lazy cruise down the Rhine River valley in Germany. Experience the Elephant festival in Kandy, Sri Lanka, and be intoxicated by the dancing and the brilliant colors that will take you back in time when the world was a more innocent place. Stroll down the back lanes in Kathmandu and lose yourself to the twinkling of bells from the wooden temples. Marvel at the cave houses in Cappadocia in Turkey, and meander through the backwaters of Kerala in India in your own wooden houseboat pushed along with native guides using poles. The world is your oyster so to speak, and just letting yourself dream of faraway places and then obtaining the necessary resources to make the perfect trip is all part of the fun of a great vacation.
And finally, why not learn a few words of the language to endear yourself to the local populace. "Mai pen rai" ('never mind' or 'no problem') you might say in Thailand. Or a simple "Bon jour" in France will make you feel as though you are getting to be part of the local culture. Great Journeys lists over 1,000 different language courses, from beginner to advanced, covering approximately 200 different languages. It's easy and fun. Yes, you can now speak Igbo like a native when you travel to Nigeria, or Laotian if you're thinking of traveling to Laos, or any of the more popular European languages.
** Travel Videos ** | <urn:uuid:39aa3b0b-a8ee-4446-a4f1-5bf8e05a1b19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maps2anywhere.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917601 | 523 | 1.648438 | 2 |