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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2012
Number of infant deaths remains unchanged
COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina’s overall infant mortality rate continues to show an overall downward trend for the last two decades, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control announced today.
In 2010, 430 infants died before their first birthday. That number is identical to the number who died in 2009. The variance in the statistical representation is due to fewer babies being born in 2010 as compared to 2009.
The data confirms that, despite the slight increase from 7.1 deaths per 1,000 babies in 2009 to 7.4 per 1,000 in 2010, South Carolina’s overall infant mortality rate continues to show an overall downward trend for the last two decades. Rates have shown a steady downward trend since 1991, when the state’s rate was 11.2 deaths per 1,000 babies born, equating to a loss of 644 infants that year.
“We’re pleased to see the overall longterm downward trend of this data,” said DHEC Director Catherine Templeton. “We believe that holding steady with last year’s number, which was an historic low for our state, is a sign that efforts on the ground by DHEC and a host of partners are making an impact in the lives of South Carolina’s children.
“This is a multi-faceted effort, and with the commitment of our partners, such as the SC Department of Health and Human Service, the March of Dimes, our state’s private physician practices and faith-based organizations, pregnant women have more access to needed services, which improves health outcomes for both the mother and her baby,” Templeton said.
Congenital malformations and disorders among infants born too soon or too small continue to be the two leading causes of death among infants less than one year of age. The third leading cause of death was once again Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
While the overall statistical rate was up .3 for all races in the state, the 2010 infant mortality rate for blacks and other minorities was still below the U.S. average for those children. The U.S. rate for blacks was 11.6, while South Carolina's rate for blacks and other minorities was 10.9. South Carolina's rate for white infants was slightly higher than the national average. The national rate for white infants was 5.2, while South Carolina's was 5.5.
One way to reduce infant mortality is to improve the health and well being of the mother even before getting pregnant. Women should talk with their doctor about ways to get ready for a healthy pregnancy. They should see their health care provider before and as soon as they think they are pregnant; have regular prenatal visits; and avoid exposure to tobacco, alcohol and other harmful substances. It is also important that women focus on the prevention and management of chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes so that women are healthy before they become pregnant.
“The infant mortality rate is an important health outcome measure,” said Templeton. “It is often used as a measure of the overall health status of a given population and should be one of our primary focuses as a society.
“While we are all glad that the actual overall number of deaths didn’t increase in 2010, that’s not enough. We are not satisfied that the statistical representations increased and will be working to move those numbers back in a downward direction,” Templeton stressed.
NOTE TO EDITORS:
A complete breakout of the data is available on DHEC's South Carolina Community Assessment Network (SCAN) website at: http://www.scdhec.gov/co/phsis/Biostatistics/index.asp?page=bio
For a detailed query of data from your area, see: http://scangis.dhec.sc.gov/scan/mch/infantmortality/input.aspx
The complete report is available on DHEC’s website at: http://www.scdhec.gov/co/phsis/Biostatistics/an_pubs/2010/IMR2010AnnualReport.pdf
For media inquiries:
Adam Myrick – (803) 898-3884
Email – firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:75c3404a-8cd0-4f88-a1a6-334d20ad93c2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scdhec.gov/administration/news/2012/nr20120411-01.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952198 | 917 | 2.1875 | 2 |
Story posted May 13, 2004
Honoring the "Offer of the College" by Losing Ourselves in Generous Enthusiasms
by Assistant Professor of Geology Rachel J. Beane
May 12, 2004
Thank you, President Mills, for the introduction and for the invitation to speak at this celebration of students' contributions and achievements. I extend a welcome to students, faculty, staff and friends who join us in this ceremony. I am honored not only to speak here tonight, but also honored simply to be at Bowdoin College surrounded by amazing students.
Colleagues often ask me "What are Bowdoin students like?" I respond that Bowdoin students are enthusiastic. When I enter a classroom I have the feeling that you, as students, truly desire to be here -- you want to learn and to be challenged. That is a good feeling, and one that does not exist everywhere. I have taught elsewhere, where in a survey of a class of 100 students, half wrote that they did not want to be there. They not only didn't want to take my class, they weren't excited about attending any college classes. I never get that feeling here. The enthusiasm of the students here at Bowdoin is infectious, and helps me to enter a classroom with energy to share what I know and to explore other ideas together.
William DeWitt Hyde, the Seventh President of Bowdoin, wrote the Offer of the College. Most of us have read or heard this Offer. It deserves repeating this evening:
To be at home in all lands and all ages; to count Nature a familiar acquaintance, and Art an intimate friend; to carry the keys of the world's library in your pocket, and feel its resources behind you in whatever task you undertake; to make hosts of friends...who are to be leaders in all walks of life; to lose yourself in generous enthusiasms and cooperate with others for common ends...
I first read this offer when applying to teach here, and when I was offered the position I taped it to my wall. Since then, I have used it in my grant applications to the National Science Foundation. For me, this Offer speaks volumes. I will address one aspect of it this evening: "to lose yourself in generous enthusiasms." To me this is an encouragement to pursue what we choose with great passion.
We are fortunate at Bowdoin to be surrounded by a supportive community that permits us to lose ourselves in these enthusiasms. Many of you are being honored here this evening, because you have brought great passion to what you do. You have found a discipline, a project, an idea, or a cause that sparked your interest and you pursued it.
It's a wonderful feeling to be interested in something so much that you just have to do or know more. A professor in computer science relayed a story of a student who was so interested in the topic they were discussing in class that day that he went to the library after class to learn more. When he couldn't find enough information to satisfy his interest on the topic in the Bowdoin library, he drove down to MIT that night to look at the books there. Often the pursuit of our enthusiasms takes at least momentary precedence over everything else.
I know that I can easily lose track of myself and time when pursuing my research. As President Mills indicated, I am a geologist. I walk across the rocks and try to learn what happened on our earth millions of years ago. Usually walking across the rocks is not enough for me. First, I might lie down on the rocks so that I can look at them eye-to-eye. Next, I'll hammer out a big chunk of a sample and look at it under the microscope. If you have not looked at a slice of rock under a microscope -- and my guess is that many of you haven't had this wonderful opportunity -- then I encourage you to do so. I find that rocks are like art. The colors and patterns of the minerals are beautiful and mesmerizing. They also tell a story about our earth's history -- about volcanic eruptions off what is now the Maine coast, about continents crashing together and then tearing apart. It is these stories, revealed in the rocks, in which I lose myself.
Our enthusiasms need not be limited to academic interests. One of my passions is my one-year old, Zander. He brings me immense joy. He's also a good example of how pursuing our passions may be difficult at times. At the end of fall semester, Zander wanted to crawl. He wanted to go places, and he would rock back and forth on his knees, but he couldn't crawl. He was grumpy and whiny with his frustration, and we all felt it. He didn't give up, and the frustration he felt was rewarded by the joy of accomplishment. His success was enough to keep him smiling and laughing for weeks at the discovery of the new world opened up to him.
I encourage you to pause a moment now and consider what are your passions? Where do you lose yourself? Now relish that enjoyment, and consider how you might bring this passion to benefit others. Perhaps it's in your choice of career or another activity. If you were all in a class I was teaching, I would call on you now to share.
I don't want to put anyone on the spot, so instead, I'll share. As an undergraduate, I enjoyed science, I enjoyed being outside, and I enjoyed traveling to new places. I put these interests together as a geology major, and then for my career. I have spent summers hiking outside in a number of places, a number of countries. I return from these research trips with heavy luggage full of rocks, with stories about my travels, and with new ideas about geology. I use these rocks, stories and ideas in the classes I teach, because I know that I will be excited when I talk about them. This enthusiasm will allow me to convey more, and students to learn more than otherwise would be possible.
Many of you are being honored this evening for essays you've written, research projects you've done, for excelling in studies. I know that you bring great energy to these projects. You have stayed awake late into the night writing. You have talked about your research with your friends. And, you have been frustrated. Perhaps your lab equipment broke in the middle of your experiment, or your advisor didn't return your draft to you as soon as you wanted, or you tried for weeks to reach someone you wanted for an interview. You have prevailed over many hurdles in pursuing your interests. Now is the time to celebrate.
I congratulate all the students who will be receiving awards this evening. With your enthusiasm, your energy, and your ideas you have made an impact in our community! Let us continue to honor the Offer of the College and lose ourselves in "generous enthusiasms." To bring passion to all we choose to do. To permit our interests to influence our choices. This is how we bring more than we thought possible to a pursuit, and enjoy it while we do it. Congratulations to all! | <urn:uuid:c793ac57-25cd-4366-b34b-3b422dfc3660> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/001453.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97665 | 1,466 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Parliament gave a present to unionized Canadians last week, but the Grinches that are Canada’s union bosses hope to steal it away before their members and dues payers unwrap it.
Just before breaking for Christmas, the House of Commons passed Bill C-377 which will force unions in this country to open their books. It’s estimated unions collect $4 billion to $5 billion in tax-free money with no public accountability.
While union bosses hate the idea and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against it, a 2011 Nanos poll showed 86% of unionized Canadians like the idea and want to know what’s going on with their union dues.
Rather than accept the will of Parliament and the workers who pay them, union leaders promised to fight the bill in the courts, a move that could see millions more spent to keep the public and many dues payers in the dark.
I’ve been in a unionized job more than once in my working life. My mother was a union member and a shop steward, my sister is still in a unionized job. My late father was a member of the Boilermakers union his whole career.
I can tell you first-hand that union members and non-members want to know where the money is going.
The other day, I found out Newton B. Jones, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers president, earned $600,000 in salary and perks in 2011. McClatchy Newspapers reports Jones’ salary increased by 67% over the last few years. Several relatives of Jones are on the union payroll and do very well with generous, six-figure salaries.
Funny, my father saw his pension, held and managed by that union, cut by hundreds of dollars per month before he died last December. It’s the economy and things aren’t going, so well he and other pensioners were told.
Seems things are just fine for Jones and his family.
I’m able to know this because America has long had the kind of disclosure laws that should be coming to Canada. American public disclosure began in the 1950s with a Senate bill called the Kennedy-Ervin Act. Then Democratic Sen. John F. Kennedy led the charge for public disclosure. As president, his administration’s implementation was overseen by his brother, U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.
Big labour’s leader George Meany, the head of the American Federation of Labour, supported the legislation.
Compare that to the reaction from Canada’s union bosses at having to reveal how they spend billions in tax-free union dues and other revenues.
“It’s about destroying the labour movement and it’s about destroying the middle class,” said CAW president Ken Lewenza.
The largest union of federal government workers, PSAC, called the bill “another attack on public services,” and Ken Georgetti, who heads up the Canadian Labour Congress, called the bill “disgusting.”
But what is truly disgusting is that Canada’s union leaders think their dues payers and the tax-subsidizing public deserve less information about how union money is spent than their Canadian unions already report in the U.S.
European nations and Australia also have public disclosure.
Opponents of the bill want the public, but specifically their dues payers, to believe this bill is an attack on unions.
But it is an attack on the unprecedented powers and privileges union bosses have to collect and spend, safe from the prying eyes of the people they take the money from.
As my father used to say at union meetings, show us where the money is going. | <urn:uuid:76290924-f539-4868-b7c3-fd3c552f637e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edmontonsun.com/2012/12/20/long-overdue-look-at-where-union-dues-go | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966387 | 772 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Boulder will submit a new floodplain map to the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is expected to reduce flood insurance rates for many residents and businesses.
The Boulder City Council authorized city officials to submit the map to federal authorities at its meeting Tuesday night.
City planners will start taking the new floodplain boundaries into account in their regulations so that new buildings aren't approved without the necessary flood mitigation. However, it could take six months to a year for FEMA to approve the new maps.
The new Boulder Creek floodplain maps remove 106 buildings from the 100-year floodplain and add 72 buildings. Another 574 buildings saw no change. Twenty-six properties will be removed from the city's "high-hazard" zone, where there is the greatest risk of loss of life in a major flood, and 21 properties will be put into it.
Several property owners expressed concern to the City Council about city policies around the high-hazard zone, including the conditions under which they could rebuild and the rate at which they would be reimbursed.
Because the assumption is that property owners would have flood insurance, the city would only buy flood-damaged property for its post-flood appraised price, not for its pre-flood value.
And if more than 50 percent of a property in the high-hazard zone were destroyed, that building could not be rebuilt in the zone.
City Council members said they would like to take another look at the high-hazard zone policies in the future, but they said there was no reason to hold up approval of the new floodplain maps.
The city is also considering new regulations in the future for facilities that serve vulnerable populations and are located in the 500-year floodplain.
Completion of the mapping project would improve Boulder's rating for flood insurance purposes and result in decreased flood insurance rates.
The City Council also unanimously approved the policy review associated with the Transportation Master Plan update, which includes identifying more funding for transportation projects and making more progress on reducing car use. That includes investigating the feasibility of a communitywide EcoPass program to encourage more people to ride the bus.
Councilwoman Suzy Ageton cautioned against "raising expectations" that communitywide EcoPass would definitely happen. Some council members have questioned whether the city could afford it or whether it would generate a large enough increase in transit use to justify the cost, though other council members have expressed strong support for the idea. | <urn:uuid:d99abf96-b7dd-4622-81aa-dd7fa37d5d98> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_21577605/boulder-submit-new-floodplain-map-fema?source=most_emailed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964631 | 492 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Mr. Viellieu says practices might run into difficulty from staff members who feel a change is making their jobs more difficult. An EHR, for example, provides a formidable obstacle during implementation, when physicians and nurses are trying to treat patients and learn a new software system simultaneously. "They might say, 'This is keeping us from doing what we need to do,' " he says. He recommends acknowledging the difficulties your staff is having and then pointing out the eventual benefits. "Implementation is always the most difficult time," he says. "You have to stress the benefits that you won't get if you allow them to talk you out of it."
2. Implementation can happen in stages. Installing an EHR may have to be done in stages, says William R. Pupkis, CEO of Capital Region Orthopaedics in Albany, N.Y.. For example, physicians are used to dictating the chart, while some EHR systems require the doctor to point and click on a computer to build the chart. Doctors may prefer to continue dictating into voice records, which would only be transcribed into text if needed. Alternatively, the practice might hire clerks to enter information into the computer during and after the doctor examines the patient.
If some physicians or nurses in the practice are resistant to the change, implementing the technology over a longer period of time may help them warm up to the system. Many people worry about fast change, but a slow change process could help people become more comfortable with the systems.
3. The interface can look like a paper chart. The digital chart that the doctors see on the screen looks much like the paper chart they used to have, so using it is very intuitive. The EHR can also include extra features that the paper chart did not have, such as clinical summary that lists allergies and a prescription history. The messaging feature digitizes all of the incoming reports, dictation and messages that used to be on paper, so that everything needed is already attached to the patient's chart. No one has to go find the chart anymore; it's all there.
4. Collect the needed data with a few key workflow changes. Many orthopedic surgeons have expressed concern about the scope of the data collection requirements in the program, says Brad Melis, Founder and Executive Vice President, ChartLogic. Most primary care facilities see 15-20 patients per day, many of which are follow-up visits. Many specialty practices, however, may see 40-60 patients per day, a large percentage of which are new patients.
In terms of EHR data collection, follow-up visits are relatively simple since the patient data has already been entered into the system. New patients, on the other hand, require a new record to be created in the EHR system. Under the meaningful use program, physicians will be required to select from a "menu" of patient data reporting measures. This allows a choice of some options in data entry. All physicians, however, must report three "core" measures of quality: blood pressure management, tobacco use screening and adult weight screening and follow-up.
Since orthopedic practices have generally not collected this information, this will mean a workflow change. While these three core data points can be collected by nurses or physician assistants, the orthopedist will need to document his or her evaluation of the patient. Thus orthopedists should look for EHR systems that focus on speeding up the data entry process through dictation or click minimization. In addition, physicians who are selecting a EHR system for purchase should "test drive" features such as chart review, e-prescribing, order creation and tracking to make sure they are comfortable with the data entry and retrieval process.
5. Automated transcription saves the practice money. Implementing EHR and automated transcription can save practices money, says Michael Rauh, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at UB Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine in Orchard Park, N.Y. "From a cost standpoint, we have more than 30 physicians in our group and we measure the cost of transcription per patient across the board," he says. "We found that those who are non voice recognition users cost about $6.52 per patient. Those who continue to use the technology are reporting an average of $2.34 per patient. One of the partners found it costs him $1.06 per patient, and another reports an average of $0.63 per patient. It's a huge cost savings on the front end transcription. Those who are using this technology are also billing at a higher level because the claims are documented appropriately. When there is a lower cost per patient and a higher rate of reimbursement, it ends up doubly benefiting us."
6. Your EHR vendor should help you with compliance. Your EHR vendor should be an effective technology partner for your practice as you seek to meet the meaningful use requirements, says Mr. Melis. Your vendor should be able to counsel you and your staff on the needed workflow changes and suggest new procedures to handle the new data reporting requirements. Ideally, the vendor can work with you on test runs to make sure all the necessary data fields are being populated correctly.
In addition, your vendor should be able to suggest techniques to meet the other requirements of the incentive program. For example, one rule requires physicians to "provide patients with timely electronic access to their health information (including lab results, problem list, medication lists and allergies)."
Many orthopedic practices find that the best way to comply with the "timely access" requirement is to create an Internet-based patient portal, where the patient information can be quickly uploaded and read by the patient. Your EHR vendor should be able to advise you how to create and maintain patient portals to meet this requirement.
7. It promotes efficiency and communication with other providers. Every orthopedic practice is looking for ways to become more efficient, and implementing EHR with automation can streamline many daily processes. "I think the biggest benefit of this is that my notes are generated the same day that I see the patient and the primary care physician can get information on their patients the same day," says Dr. Rauh. "The technology also promotes communication between myself and physical therapists as well as other specialists. With traditional transcription, it may be two or three days before you get the report written, and then it takes longer to receive approval. With the automated program, the report can be generated and approved in the same day. In a lot of cases, primary care physicians who refer their patient to me get the notes even before the patient leaves the office. This convenience has really increased my referrals because the primary care physicians feel comfortable that something is going to happen and they know what the plan is for their patient."
8. Patients can self-report demographic data. The meaningful use requirements state that practices must collect demographics as structured data, including preferred language, gender, race, ethnicity and date of birth. Again, this is likely to be a new data collection task for many orthopedic practices.
Patients are used to self-reporting this information in many business situations; it makes sense to have them do this in the waiting room, says Mr. Melis. Many medical offices are finding it makes sense to provide check-in kiosks or tablets to patients. At least one company will provide customized "check-in" laptops free to most physicians (the devices display health product ads).
Some practices fear that their patients may not use an online or waiting room option if it is computerized. For example, many elderly patients may not be familiar with laptops. If you want to stay with a paper solution for this demographic and clinical intake data, you can provide "bubble-in" or Scantron forms that can be fed into optical mark readers which will feed the data to your EHR system. This is less efficient than collecting information digitally via tablet, but still an improvement over making staff keyboard in the data.
If you provide bubble sheet forms in addition to a patient portal or kiosk solution, you will be giving your patients several options. The key is to get the patients to enter the data in a usable form, so that your staff can reduce their data entry burden. Again, you should validate your options with your EHR vendor prior to implementing the new solution.
9. Records are easy to use for data-mining. One of the biggest challenges private practice surgeons face when practicing evidence-based medicine is data collection and organization. Surgeons don't have time to input patient information multiple times into different databases and most practices don't have the resources necessary to hire another employee for this type of data management. However, implementing electronic medical record systems takes data input from the surgeon and organizes it in several different ways simultaneously. "We record the data like we would in the ordinary, every day process of seeing the patient," says Scott Trenhaile, MD, an orthopedic surgeon with Rockford (Ill.) Orthopedic Associates. "We collect the data on the front end so it can be extracted later electronically. That's how private practice practitioners can contribute on a grand scale."
10. Merging with others might be necessary to afford the technology. For small groups, implementation of this new technology could put a great financial burden on the practice. One solution some small practices have found to meet these needs is merging with other groups. "What we're hearing is a lot of confusion about what healthcare reform means in terms of how to adopt EMR, which EMR system providers should get and what it's going to mean for patient care in general," says David Shrier, CEO of HCPlexus, the company that produces the Little Blue Book database of physicians. "The orthopedic surgeons need to see more patients to keep up with the declining reimbursements and invest in EMR technologies at the same time." He says one of the solutions many spine surgeons are finding to combat these higher costs is to join a specialty practice or merge their practice with another to form a larger multispecialty practice. "The healthcare reform act requires a lot of technology and that is difficult for small practices to grapple with," he says. | <urn:uuid:b7587e34-c799-481b-898e-d0b285b51d99> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beckersspine.com/orthopedic-spine-practices-improving-profits/item/8943-10-things-to-know-about-ehr-in-orthopedic-practices | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953393 | 2,084 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Key Person System
Each child is assigned a key person. This member of staff will develop a relationship with you and your child, will be present when your child visits and then will work closely with you and your child on a daily basis. This gives children a strong sense of security and enables them to freely develop their potential. The key person will monitor your child’s development and will be available for you to talk to as you wish.
Ofsted quote ‘ an excellent key person system, established through initial home visits and effective routines and transitional arrangements for moving rooms, ensures that children feel safe and secure.’ | <urn:uuid:882d56ae-fa57-438b-9c54-f643780cfaff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.littlechampions.co.uk/our-staff/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943546 | 126 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Emmanuele Ottolenghi longs for the old days when the U.S. was derided as a “hyperpower”:
America was also much more aloof and restrained than the French quip about l’hyperpuissance suggests. America failed to stop genocides in our time — think of Rwanda or Sudan. It walked away from crises it could not understand, let alone solve — think of Somalia. It misunderstood old enemies — think of North Korea. But its unchallenged supremacy was unquestionable when the French objected. And where America chose to act, it did make a difference. The Balkans would not be at peace today had it not been for America’s hyperpower. Multilateralism there, by contrast, only produced deadlock and supervised crimes against humanity.
It’s remarkable that Ottolenghi can look back at the “hyperpower” era at the turn of the century and never mention the enormous destruction that the exercise of that power caused. The Iraq war receives its only mention when he derides the French for their opposition to it. He describes that opposition as “anti-American,” as if trying to prevent the U.S. from making one of the greatest blunders in our modern history were the act of an unfriendly state. When America chose to act in Iraq, our government certainly “made a difference,” but mostly by way of inflicting and unleashing horrific violence on an entire nation. That violence claimed at least one hundred thousand lives and displaced millions at enormous cost to the U.S. and allied countries, to say nothing of the costs to neighboring countries from the economic disruption and influx of refugees that the war caused.
The Iraq war was primarily waged by the U.S., but there were many others that contributed to the disaster. It is commonly and mistakenly referred to as a “unilateral” action because it had no U.N. authorization and represented a major violation of international law, but Iraq war supporters used to be quite proud to remind everyone that it was a war that dozens of governments officially supported*. One could say that “multilateralism” in Iraq produced mass carnage and supervised crimes against humanity.
Ottolenghi also writes:
America has disengaged. Its president seems to have bought Védrine’s argument. And with that, America’s competitors will gladly take its place. Their contempt for America is worse than their fear, because unlike their fear it feeds on America’s weakness. They will reshape the world in their own image, unless America stops them.
The U.S. still has a large military presence in Afghanistan. Our government routinely launches attacks on targets in numerous countries, and it just orchestrated the overthrow of the Libyan government last year. Except for Iraq, the U.S. has not withdrawn from anywhere in the last eleven years, and our government is establishing new bases overseas. It is even hoping to gain access to a base in Vietnam. The idea that the U.S. has “disengaged” is useful to hegemonists interested in scoring some election-year points against the incumbent, but it’s a preposterous claim. If this is “disengagement,” what would “engagement” look like? America’s competitors are not able to “take its place.” More to the point, other states are not particularly interested in “reshaping” the world in their image. Many Americans attribute ideological ambitions to other states that they don’t actually have.
* Most of these governments were new NATO allies, dependencies or other would-be clients that were trying to curry favor with Washington, and the “coalition of the willing” was obviously an exercise in providing international political cover to what was primarily a U.S. and U.K.-run debacle, but they were all parties to the egregious blunder and massive crime that was the invasion of Iraq. | <urn:uuid:071772ff-9c01-41d5-b5c3-62caa6bb947d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/preposterous-nostalgia-for-the-era-of-the-iraq-war/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974574 | 833 | 2.375 | 2 |
The headlines coming out of East Asiahave been rather positive - compared to the horrors of Iraqand , melting glaciers, and plummeting stock markets. The Six Party Talks have been making progress toward ending the confrontation between the United Statesand North Koreaand denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. Over the summer, North Koreaprovided a detailed accounting of its nuclear programs and even destroyed the cooling tower of its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The Bush administration in turn announced that it was taking North Korea off the Trading with the Enemy Act list and the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. After a disagreement over verification, the two sides reached a compromise in October and negotiations are heading toward their third and final stage.Afghanistan
Helped by the other Six Party participants - , , , and China - the United Statesand North Koreaappear to be only a few steps away from ending the Cold War that has divided them for more than half a century.RussiaJapanSouth Korea
However, even if negotiations between Washingtonand Pyongyangproceed smoothly to the next level, the situation in East Asiais far from peaceful. Beneath the surface, an arms race among the countries in the Six Party Talks continues to heat up. Although a global economic recession is putting pressure on budgets everywhere, military spending will likely continue its upward trajectory without public pressure.
The arms race in Northeast Asiais driving up global military expenditures. Any effort to get a grip on the global military industrial complex will have to begin with these six countries.
Military Budgets on the Rise
The numbers are startling. U.S.military spending, which represents nearly half of all global military expenditures, has increased over 70 percent since 2001. Between 1999 and 2006, South Koreaalso raised its defense spending by over 70 percent, and the government in Seoulplans to increase this figure by 7-8 percent every year for the next dozen years. Chinese and Russian military spending increases have been even larger over the same period. In its difficult economic straits, North Koreahas attempted to keep pace, increasing military spending by 25% (in local currency) between 2004 and 2007. Only Japanhas not increased its expenditures over the same period, though an influential group of politicians in the ruling party has been pushing to remove the 1%-of-GDP cap on military spending.
The arms race in East Asiahas specific, regional implications. The continues to lavish funds on Cold War weapons systems that can only be used in wars against comparable adversaries (in other words,United States Chinaor ). While Beijing Russiaand Washingtonhave cooperated on such issues as the Six Party negotiations and counter-terrorism, the Pentagon's moves to deploy missile defense systems in the Asia Pacific are raising Chinese eyebrows. has developed weapons that undermine the security of the other members of the Six Party talks. ButNorth Korea , too, is acquiring military capability that can reach beyond the peninsula.South Korea 's rapid increase in military spending is creating jitters among her neighbors in the region.China Washingtonmay find comfort in an emerging new political consensus in Japanthat favors a strong, offensively arrayed military, but ,Beijing , andSeoul Pyongyangare keeping a worried eye on it. With Russiaand Chinamoving closer together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the United Statesand Japanstrengthening their bilateral alliance, a new Cold War divide is emerging in the region. Increased military spending is both a symptom and a driver of this new confrontation.
This is no mere regional issue. In , the largest militaries in the world - theEast Asia ,United States ,China , andRussia Japan- all face one another. The countries participating in the Six-Party Talks are responsible for 65% of global military spending. These developments in East Asiamirror a global trend: world military expenditures increased by 45 percent over the last decade.
To address this new Cold War, publicize its "hidden" arms race, and press the governments concerned to change their budget priorities, activists from the peace and Asian-American communities have proposed a Pacific Freeze campaign. Modeled after Randall Forsberg's Nuclear Weapons Freeze campaign of the 1980s, the Pacific Freeze calls on the governments in the Six Party Talks to freeze their military spending and then reduce their budgets on an equitable basis - with the United Statesleading the way - as a first step in demilitarizing the region. Like Forsberg's earlier campaign, the initial freeze on military spending would be mutual.
The Freeze includes both the United Statesand , for they are Pacific powers and spend a great deal of money on their military presence in the region. They are also the top two arms exporters in the world. Any attempt to restrain military spending that does not include the former Cold War adversaries will not likely succeed. The Freeze also applies to the entirety of the military budgets and not just the portions used in the Pacific region. TheRussia United Statesdoes not spend its entire half-trillion dollar military budget on its military presence in the Pacific. Nor do Russiaand . However, all three countries can redeploy troops and military hardware to the Pacific region in an emergency. And, since all six countries spend far in excess of their legitimate security needs, freezing the overall budget is a necessary first step in establishing reasonable budget priorities. China
The ultimate goal of the campaign is to draw down military budgets and transfer a portion of the savings to a regional Green Energy fund. But the intermediary goal, as with the Nuclear Freeze campaign of the 1980s, is to get people talking about the issue. Right now, military spending is a sacred cow in all six countries. Every government insists that military "modernization" is imperative. Few civic groups have been able to raise the issue in a unilateral context in the sense of urging their government to unilaterally reduce military spending. So, both governments, and to a certain extent civic groups too, are trapped in a security dilemma. Yet this narrow security dilemma is itself inset in a much larger human security dilemma. At a time when we urgently need funds for the food crisis, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, the AIDS crisis, and other looming crises - all of which threaten human security - military spending is nowhere near the top of the global agenda.
The Six Party Talks provide a strategic opening for this kind of campaign. The participating governments have all been talking peace but preparing for war. With the Freeze, we call on the governments to put their money where the mouths are. Any progress in the nuclear talks is commendable. But the runaway military budgets exacerbate the many challenges to regional security. Despite booming trade relations, the region faces many threats to stability. A regional security mechanism, one of the working groups within the Six Party framework, could begin to address these threats. But unless such a mechanism deals with the arms race in the region, it will address only surface issues and fail to grapple with a driving force behind insecurity.
The current financial crisis - which has finally kicked in globally - may do what peace activists have been unable to do: impose austerity measures on military spending. The prospects for this, however, are not good. First of all, during past recessions and depressions, governments have used arms spending to maintain employment and stimulate the economy. Second, in the , the Democratic Party has continually feared being perceived as "soft on the military." Although he has urged an end to the war inUnited States , Obama also called for redeploying troops toIraq , increasing the size of the military by 92,000 troops, and staying "on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar." The Pentagon wants an increase in military spending ofAfghanistan $450 billion over the next five years (that's over and above the already-scheduled increases for next two years).
Obama, however, is pushing for a large economic stimulus and universal health care. At a time when tax increases are largely off the table, where will the new president get the money for these ambitious plans? The peace movement has to push hard for Obama to choose butter over guns.
Peace activists have tried for years to clip the wings of the Pentagon. We've pushed for military reductions domestically and watched the Pentagon expand like the Blob. We've tried to work at an international level to restrain military spending only to witness the creation of a global military industrial complex. It's time to try something new. Let's leverage the negative impact of the financial crisis and the positive developments of the Six Party Talks to get the issue of military spending on table. The global military industrial complex is eating our planet. A freeze is the first step in chaining this monster and turning to the real problems that confront us.
For more information and to sign the Pacific Freeze Call to Action, please visit:http://www.pacificfreeze.ips-dc.org/
John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus - www.fpif.org - at the Institute for Policy Studies. | <urn:uuid:cf1193e2-ed8a-4357-8416-3fa258ac58cc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zcommunications.org/tackling-the-global-military-industrial-complex-by-john-feffer | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943059 | 1,811 | 2.265625 | 2 |
Every parent wants to help their children learn to read and to foster a love of reading in their children. Unfortunately, teaching children to read is not always intuitive and despite the best of intentions, parents sometimes make mistakes. Knowing what the most commonly made mistakes can help you avoid making them.
Top mistakes parents make in teaching reading to children
- Asking too many questions when reading to your child or when your child reads: Children often experience this as an interrogation. A far better technique is to comment in a way that captures an important point and then see if your children comment. If they don’t, continue by adding to your comment and having child then complete your incomplete thought. This technique is more productive, more relaxed and gets out more language from child — it’s a win-win situation!
- Repeatedly asking your child to “sound it out”:Kids hate this and lots of words cannot be sounded out. (Try sounding out “SOUND”.) Consequently, this approach is not helpful and it causes kids lots of grief. It’s far better to tell them the word and have them say it. Then, re-start the reading of the sentence from the beginning.Another approach is to give your child a speaker speller where your child can type in the word and hear how it is pronounced.
- Having fights about spelling homework: Try to give your child more help to avoid these fights. For example, if your child has to write sentences with certain spelling words (which is a very common task), you should start the sentence – including the spelling word — and then have your child complete it and then write the sentence. For example if the spelling word is “house” you could say…“The lady could not find the house because it was ….”
or, if your child’s language skills are not as advanced you could choose a simpler sentence, such as “the house was on a ….”
- Reading alternate lines when reading a book together: If you read one line of a book to your child and then having your child read the next line, stop. This approach doesn’t allow a child to do sustained reading and sustained reading is the key to effective reading. It’s far better for a parent to read a full page (while you and your child are both looking at the page) and then have your child read the same page. If your child’s reading skills aren’t yet strong enough to do this, practice this method at the paragraph level.
If you’re interested in teaching your child to read, the Reading Kingdom online reading program for kids teaches all six skills needed for reading & writing success. You can sign up for a 30 day free trial. It’s risk-free. | <urn:uuid:76ee3f4f-49af-40dc-ae78-af1a7b7c1a47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.readingkingdom.com/blog/2012/09/24/mistakes-parents-make-teaching-reading-children/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9553 | 582 | 3.3125 | 3 |
The present financial crisis was caused by greedy financiers located on Wall Street and at other financial centers of the world, not so much in Washington D.C., although their lobbyists there were not without influence in their underlying pecuniary mon-omania.
Those who hold the so-called “free market” as a sacred aspect of democracy or of the new global structure have yet to learn of the corrupting nature of government and market when combined in their efforts toward avarice.
The free market purists cannot make themselves go along with the government bailing us out of the mess in which the free marketeers have placed the economic infrastructure of our society and in conjunction with international marketeers, the infrastructure of other nations and that of a would be “normal” global system.
Many could go along with the "free market" purists and let the situation play out to the detriment of those involved, except that today whole societies and masses of individuals are affected, me and you included.
The argument that a government “bail-out” is socialism is as silly as believing that uncontrolled financial institutions and monetary systems of the world should be eliminated because they are government instituted and government controlled. Even Adam Smith, saint of free market and the invisible hand didn't believe that.
I don't believe in a bail-out, socialistic or not. However, we've permitted the disease to go too far without treatment to let the patient die at this point, as all of us are by the collective nature of society the patient.
Neither the market, the conservatives, nor those politicians, mavericks or traditionalists, claiming to represent free market capitalists can in principle interfere in the free market so blatantly, although they do when its not so transparent.
So what to do. The financial infrastructure of this country is as essential as the physical transportation and communication grid of our society. The question is whether we shall leave the patient alone and follow a natural demise or attempt treatment. The problem is that we don't know the proper treatment and because of the urgency, we must improvise.
It seems that the government will have to lend money to those economic units of our society that are most likely to seriously and destructively affect the function of our society if left to their own means.
It also seems necessary to help finance those who were not properly financed by the lending institutions that led to the situation in which we find ourselves today.
A loan means that both of these elements of society will have to eventually pay back the government institution that does the leading.
The government's involvement will be for two reasons; one, it is essential to maintain a functioning and healthy society and two, that the government is the only element of our society large and forceful enough to engage in this enormous and long term venture.
It is now for the most important economists and the most influential politicians to produce the means for making these loans. It seems that the institutions are there. What is required now is a program with proper administration. And here is where the devil is in the details. Let's try to call God's presence there instead.
Unless the pure free marketers can come up with a more practical approach than this “socialistic' one, we as a society must do this in the same way that we go to war for the purpose of protecting our country. Let's see if we can really put our country first this time. | <urn:uuid:5b25da31-965f-4a56-a534-60465027d724> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorewoodnow.com/blogs/communityblogs/43803567.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968913 | 701 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Since President Obama took office, Senate Republicans have led an unprecedented campaign of obstruction, exploiting every arcane parliamentary trick at their disposal to thwart the president’s agenda, turning the Senate into an undemocratic quagmire where “good legislation goes to die.” Perhaps more troublingly, Senate Republicans have used parliamentary stalling tactics to block judicial and executive nominees, effectively hollowing out critical government agencies and causing major problems for the judicial branch, prompting even conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to call on the Senate to approve nominees faster.
Responding to this crisis of governance, a number of junior Democratic senators have proposed overhauling the Senate rules to make the upper chamber more effective. Led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), this group has noted that Senate rules allow a window of time at the beginning at the each new Congress when rules can be rewritten and approved with only 51 votes, instead of the 67 normally need to change Senate rules. But instead of pushing more ambitious reforms via this option, Senate Democratic leaders have tried to reach an agreement with Republicans, suspending Senate business for the past few weeks to allow both sides time to negotiate.
Now, a deal has emerged that, while disappointingly unambitious, would move in the right direction by doing away with secret holds and make it easier to confirm presidential nominees:
There’s now a strong chance for a bipartisan agreement to make it easier to confirm, at least, noncontroversial judicial and executive branch nominees. Chances also remain high that the sides will agree to do away with secret holds, which allow senators to block nominations or bills anonymously.
But that may be as far as the Senate goes in overhauling its rules.
Details of the agreement remain sketchy and “nothing is final yet, and both sides have to discuss the ideas with their caucuses” tomorrow. While a deal to do away with pernicious secret holds is a welcome move that will help the federal government and judiciary operate more effectively, the deal does nothing to address the real problem with the Senate — the filibuster. Indeed, there seems to be little appetite among the leadership of both parties to address the filibuster as it empowers individual senators to extract pork barrel spending or other concessions that suit their narrow political interests.
Some progressives have argued against reforming the filibuster as they fear a day when Republicans control the upper chamber. But this is a democracy where elections matter, and the majority of either party should be able to carry out the will of the people who elected them.
As for conservatives, despite railing against the filibuster when Democrats held up some of President Bush’ most extreme judicial nominees, Republicans have defended the obstructionist tool tooth and nail as sacred. In a hyperbolic op-ed in Poltico today, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) warned that “[g]etting rid of the filibuster would end the Senate as we know it and as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other founders knew it.” But this historical claim has no basis in history — the first filibuster did not occur until 1841, years after both Jefferson and Madison had died. And the filibuster as we know it today did not emerge until the late 20th Century, and has has only been used to create a de-facto need for 60 votes to pass legislation in the past 10 years.
Any change to the Seante’s rules that stops short of weakening the filibuster’s stranglehold on governance should be considered merely a steppingstone to more meaningful reform. | <urn:uuid:9664fe79-33ba-43fc-8872-8b07aac26ef2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/24/140398/senate-rule-deal/?mobile=nc | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953175 | 721 | 1.6875 | 2 |
When Hosni Mubarak Shut Off Cell Phones and the Internet in January 2011 Was the Moment When More Egyptians than Ever Went Out into the Streets
By the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism
An Oral History of the Egyptian Revolution
This manual-in-progress is for journalists, community organizers and practitioners of civil resistance to help ourselves and each other develop better skills, strategies and tactics.
It was an experience eerily relevant to the title of this page: The Day the Internet Died. One of the reasons we didn’t panic is that we had already heard the testimony of the Egyptians who speak on this page about their own experience – during the revolution of 2011 – when it was a regime, and not the weather, that shut down the entire Internet and cell phone system throughout the country.
They triumphed in toppling a dictator not just in spite of the attack on their main communications systems, but also, paradoxically, at least in part because of it. If you doubt that, or think it incredible, you’ll probably find their testimonies about their own lived experience very interesting, or at least very challenging to the assumptions of many that technology – and not people – is what makes change happen today.
Since 2000, Narco News has reported about many social movements, community organizing and civil resistance campaigns. Some succeeded in their goals. Others did not. In this work we have found common practices shared by many victorious struggles, and common errors or missteps shared by many that did not succeed.
The sum of lessons learned through reporting thousands of these stories in many lands today becomes the basis for a massive, free, online and multimedia resource that Narco News, with the scholars and professors of our school, have begun preparing for The School of Authentic Journalism’s Manual to Change the World. This page you are reading right now is the very first lesson presented of many to come.
The Manual will feature more pages, like this one, with the testimony of the Egyptians on how they accomplished the first step of their revolution – toppling the dictator – and continue advancing toward the longer-term goal of toppling the dictatorship.
The Manual will also include stories of how civil resistance and organizing battles in other lands were won, and also checklists and “how to” lessons from authentic journalists who reported them to share their skills and experiences so that anyone can learn and apply them – in writing and reporting, video and audio, and use of the Internet – to report on the social movements in the present and the future. With this Manual, we are taking another step forward in making the lessons and curriculum of the School of Authentic Journalism available to the entire world, gratis.
Applications to the April 2013 School of Authentic Journalism are due November 18. Consult this announcement for more information.
Egypt: The Day the Internet DiedIn March 2011, just weeks after the Egyptian Revolution brought the fall of the dictator Hosni Mubarak, the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism went to Cairo to interview key participants about their direct lived experience during those historic moments.
We asked each of them these questions:
On Friday January 28 the regime turned off the Internet. Did that change your experience of the revolution?
If you are someone who had spent a lot of time online before then, how did you spend those newly free hours during the four or five days that there was no Internet?
And what do you think about claims by some international media that the Egypt resistance was a “Twitter revolution” or “Facebook revolution”?
Did the shut down of the Internet hurt the cause or did it help? Why or why not?
The regime and the Interior Ministry in particular announced that on Friday all communications would be cut off for emergency reasons. That meant that all mobile networks would cease operations: there wouldn’t be any mobile communications. There wouldn’t be Internet. There wouldn’t be anything and of course we wouldn’t be able to communicate.
The regime did not want us to gather together and by turning off the Internet and cell phone systems they thought they would prevent us from reaching each other. They assumed that they would be able to separate us and keep us away from each other and that no one would be able to get to the others and therefore everybody going to the protest would not know where to go. They thought people would go all over the place and they would then be able to arrest them in groups or individually.
Ibrahim Mohammed (26-year-old communications worker, not affiliated with any organization or party): I work in one of the communications companies so of course I found out that the Internet would be cut, SMS services would be cut, the networks would be cut. So I started calling all my friends. That day, I had met people from various parties and movements, and also independent people, so I called them regardless of whichever one they were involved with. I started calling them and saying guys, take care, the internet will be cut at 12 o’clock, SMS services will be cut at 10 p.m. and cell phone networks will be cut at 6 a.m.,so whoever wants to send a message to someone should go ahead and do so. And whoever wants to get to someone or to specify a locations should get to them before this happens.
Mohammed Abbas (youth organizer in January 2011 for the Muslim Brotherhood): Read more>> Narco News: The Day the Internet Died | <urn:uuid:0ba909ab-0a0a-43e8-b550-28c59290ef04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/10/narco-news-day-internet-died.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969494 | 1,120 | 2.546875 | 3 |
LEAD's (Labor & Economic Analysis Division's) industry studies provide insight into a particular industry’s contribution to the state's economy. These studies gauge not only the direct benefits of certain industries, but also their impact on the overall economy. These multiplier effects include indirect effects on suppliers -- for instance, a company that builds aircraft purchases component parts such as seats, navigation equipment and engines. Additionally, the company and its suppliers provide wages to employees, which induces spending throughout the economy.
LEAD frequently conducts studies in conjunction with industry trade groups in order to create efficiencies, ensure usefulness, and verify that the most accurate information is used.
International Trade Export Reports
International trade continues to be a key driver in sustaining the state’s economy and job growth. The reports below provide an overview of North Carolina export activities and the economic contribution of exporting to the state.
North Carolina's Military Report
This report analyzes the economic growth potential for the military in North Carolina from 2007 to 2013.
Aerospace and Aviation Workforce Report
This study examines current and projected aerospace and aviation industry job development and workforce training programs in the Elizabeth City, NC region. The report focuses on aerospace manufacturing, maintenance and repair; general aviation; and defense-related activities.
This Resource Guide looks at the economic value of the textile, apparel, hosiery and related equipment manufacturers to North Carolina. The state's rich history in the industry -- and wealth of knowledge of expanding innovation and creativity -- give us an edge in the world market. This Guide includes references for mostly free or at-cost services available to the industry.
North Carolina's Leading Industry Sector Report
In 2010, the NC Department of Commerce's Economic Development Board identified Industry Sector Targeting as an important strategic pursuit. The board's Targeting Task Force produced this report, which analyzes 24 sectors with among the highest economic development potential in terms of job creation and concentration for the state. | <urn:uuid:d2fcdb1a-21b4-4ad8-a659-3018f4fd6dfb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nccommerce.com/lead/research-publications/special-reports/industry-research | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912855 | 394 | 1.890625 | 2 |
The writer E. L. Doctorow does not believe in the idea of progress. Nor does he believe in the absolute sanctity of historical fact. “Where mythology and history converge, that’s where I start my novels,” he says.
Above all a novelist, Doctorow has rejected easy labels, political tags, ideological affiliations, and literary descriptions over the past thirty-five years. For him, the artistic commitment of being a novelist is primary. Others may see in his work an ideology or political statement; he does not. He is equally adamant that he does not write documentary fiction or the historical novel.
”To think that I am writing to advance a political program misses the point,“ he says. ”To call a novel political today is to label it, and to label it is to refuse to deal with what it does. My premise is that the language of politics can’t accommodate the complexity of fiction, which as a mode of thought is intuitive, metaphysical, mythic.”
The author of such critically acclaimed novels as The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1975), Loon Lake (1980), World’s Fair (1985), Billy Bathgate (1989), and The Waterworks (1994), Doctorow learned his artistic vocabulary in his undergraduate years at Kenyon College, then a bastion of the ”new criticism.” He studied under the poet and critic John Crowe Ransom who advanced the theory that only the text is the proper focus of literary study. The author’s intent is of little value, Ransom argued.
Doctorow was born in 1931 in New York. He attended Bronx High School and was graduated from Kenyon College in 1952 with honors. Graduate study followed at Columbia University. His early career as an editor at Dial Press brought him into contact with some of the leading American writers of midcentury — James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Vance Bourjaily, and Tom Berger.
He grew up in a family of second- generation Russian immigrant Jews that venerated books and music. His father, who owned a music store, had a prodigious knowledge of classical music and was often consulted by the leading artists of the day.
Informing much of Doctorow’s work is his concept of history in the context of the novel. He subordinates fact to invention, a recurring theme in his work over the past three decades. He subscribes to the absolute belief that the novelist’s imagination is autonomous, even primary.
For instance, Ragtime, a masterly chronicle of America inexorably moving towards the First World War, is embellished with unlikely “Doctorovian” occurrences. Secret meetings between Henry Ford and J. P. Morgan, Freud and Jung, appropriately enough, boating through the Tunnel of Love at Coney Island, and an encounter between Harry Houdini and the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the ill-fated heir to the Austrian throne, are all part of its fantastical landscape. These same qualities translated brilliantly to the lyric stage, and “Ragtime” the musical is a current Broadway hit.
“I have always been a writer who invents,” Doctorow says, drawing a comparison with an artistic observation of Henry James. “I think books are something you make,“ he adds. ”I make books for people to live in…I lived in it by writing it. Now it’s the reader’s turn.”
Doctorow’s contribution to American letters has been his ability to advance the narrative of a story freed from the traditional convention of plot. His works by consequence often take on the feel of music, not unusual since music was an emotional core of his growing up. Rhythms, cadences, and lyricism in his prose often carry the narrative forward as in verse. He likens this achievement to doing the circus high-wire act, without the lights, without the music, without the drum roll, and ultimately without the wire itself.
Doctorow argues that the purpose of fiction as an art transcends the vaunted objectivity of history. He is more concerned with the way a time feels, smells, sounds, the way people move and the way they speak. He studies paintings and photographs more than historical data. “We live in the past to an astonishing degree,“ Doctorow says. ”Nobody can look in the mirror and not see his mother and father.” It is to these people that E. L. Doctorow gives voice across the distance of time and memory.
By Richard Carter | <urn:uuid:0f02f7de-984b-47ac-bcbb-55d4ef40c299> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neh.gov/print/885 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969548 | 956 | 1.867188 | 2 |
While there are many benefits to eating papaya, there are also a few potential side effects and warnings to be aware of, particularly with regards to the unripe fruit and papain based enzyme supplements.
Green papaya latex, which is rich in the main papaya enzyme papain, has been traditionally used by various cultures in Asia to induce a miscarriage during pregnancy.
For this purpose it was often applied directly to the uterus, but food forms such as green papaya salad, the parasite killing papaya seed smoothie ahead, as well as supplements containing papain are best avoided by pregnant women.
This warning does not extend to a fully ripe fresh fruit, which contains much lower levels of papain and is considered very healthy for pregnant women with it’s rich antioxidant and vitamin content.
Papaya Enzymes and Breast Feeding
Some sources advise against using papaya enzymes, unripe papaya or even the ripe fruit during breast feeding, though no specific reasons or supporting research is given why.
Interestingly, green papaya salads and soups are popular across Asia as a galactagogue, a substance that increases milk flow from the breast. To this end, eating the fruit while it is still green is often recommended for breast feeding women. Many Asian women also eat it regularly, even when not breast feeding, believing doing so can lead to an increase in breast size over time.
Papaya and Stomach Ulcers
There are mixed reports from health resources regarding papaya and ulcers. On the one hand, people suffering from severe stomach ulcers are sometimes advised to avoid the fruit, particularly when it’s green, as well as any digestive enzymes with papain.
On the other, eating papaya with its many nutrients and enzymes is often said to help prevent stomach ulcers and heal minor stomach problems. It may do this by both increasing the protective mucus secretions in the stomach and, due to its ability to speed up the break down of protein, lessening the amount of time hydrochloric acid sits in the stomach.
While the occasional ripe fruit should not cause problems, talk to your doctor if you are being treated for a stomach ulcer and are thinking of using enzymes containing papain for digestion.
Papain may increase the blood thinning effects of medications such as Warfarin and other anticoagulants, including daily aspirin taken for this purpose. As such it is not recommended for use at the same time as a course of these drugs.
It is best not to take papain for several days before major surgery for the same reason.
People with blood clotting disorders, such as thrombosis and hemophilia, are also advised to avoid papain and green papaya. In cases like these, and any of the above, it is best to discuss using papain enzymes with a knowledgeable healthcare professional.
Papaya and especially the green fruit should be avoided by anyone with a latex allergy. Papaya allergies are rare, but people who experience allergic reactions to papaw may also have an adverse reaction to pineapples, avocados, bananas, figs, kiwi fruit, melons and possibly other tropical fruit as well and should use these with caution and watch for symptoms.
Allergic reactions symptoms, while once again very uncommon, can include: swelling or itching of the face, lips, tongue and throat; rashes that appear shortly after consumption; dizziness; difficulty swallowing; and abdominal pain. There may be other side effects of a papaya or latex allergies so seek medical advice as soon as possible if you have any unusual reactions after eating any of the fruit listed above.
For the vast majority of people, papaya and the enzymes from the unripe fruit are an extremely nutritious food and a very healthy addition to your diet. Next is a look at the unusual health benefits of papaya seeds and using them as a treatment for parasites.
Liked this post? Subscribe to the RSS feed for more! | <urn:uuid:28f956c6-5fda-49be-ac74-1a6410caf9b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://superfoodprofiles.com/papaya-enzyme-side-effects-warnings | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963388 | 820 | 2.625 | 3 |
Markel - Meaning of Markel
[ 2 syll. mar-kel, ma-rk-el ] The baby boy name Markel is sometimes used as a girl name. Its pronunciation is MAARKehL †. Markel is largely used in the English language, and its origin is Latin and English-American.
In addition, Markel is a variant of the name Mark (English, Dutch, Russian, and Scandinavian).
Markel is rare as a baby name for boys. At the modest peak of its usage in 1999, 0.008% of baby boys were given the name Markel. Its ranking then was #880. The baby name has since experienced a fall in popularity, and is now of irregular use. In 2011, out of the group of boy names directly linked to Markel, Mark was the most frequently used. Markel has predominantly been a baby boy name in the past century.
Baby names that sound like Markel include Markell, Marcel, Marcele, Marcell, Marcelle, Marcely, Marchal, Marchall, Markelle, Marquel, Marquell, Marquelle, Marsale, Marschal, Marschall, Marsel, Marshal, Marshall, Marshel, and Marshell.
† Pronunciation for Markel: M as in "me (M.IY)" ; AA as in "odd (AA.D)" ; R as in "race (R.EY.S)" ; K as in "key (K.IY)" ; EH as in "ebb (EH.B)" ; L as in "lay (L.EY)" | <urn:uuid:05939533-e70e-4ffc-958b-4a8c3efbb43e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Markel/m | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944496 | 338 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Architectural Digest's 10th Annual Signature Greenroom at the 84th Academy Awards®. Credit: Roger Davies for Architectural Digest.
Every year Architectural Digest designs an exclusive backstage lounge for Oscar presenters and honorees. This year, that greenroom has a designer library, too.
Thatcher Wine of Juniper Books in Boulder, Colorado, was called on by this year's AD Greenroom designer, Waldo Fernandez, to fill the room's empty bookshelves. Fernandez's overall design evokes the Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s, with references to the glamorous parties of director George Cukor. Wine ran with that idea, imagining shelves of books that look like vintage film reels.
"The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences gave me access to their archives," he said. "I picked out classic film scenes, then printed them on book jackets." All of the photographs he chose are recognizable, fit to a new medium. As anyone who has seen Wine's custom dust jackets (FB&C profiled his work last fall) can attest, the effect is incredible. "There is no one else in the world who does what I do with the book jackets, so this was the perfect project for me to come up with a never-before-seen idea ... I am so honored to be a part of it," he said.
Wine flew out to Los Angeles earlier this week to personally install the library backstage at the Kodak Theatre in anticipation of Sunday's 84th annual Academy Awards.
While it's not the first library in an AD Greenroom, it is certainly one in which the books don't just blend into the background. "The idea being that books are relaxing and help calm the presenters before going on stage. My library calms and also inspires with a dose of film history and nostalgia," Wine said.
What's underneath the jackets? A selection of entertainment biographies and books about film, he said. When Wine works on a project like this, he leaves it up to the client whether they want a curated collection or just props behind the art. | <urn:uuid:bc897081-4bc2-4609-b429-10af60cd33d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine_books_blog/2012/02/inside-the-academy-awards-greenroom-library.phtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96026 | 430 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A good match between the values and philosophy of the parent and the school is the key to a successful and happy experience for the child.
- Desire their children to develop character from a Christian world view
- Desire an orderly learning environment in which promotion is based on achievement; respect for others is expected and personal responsibility required.
Phillipsburg Christian Academy is ideally suited for students who:
- Are able to learn effectively and participate in a regular classroom situation satisfactorily
- Have a behavior record that is acceptable and for grades 5 and above have satisfactory letters of reference.
Philllipsburg Christian Academy admits students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to the students of the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, scholarship and financial aid programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs. | <urn:uuid:99e5b83f-a9ad-4a16-aaed-a1697eeb9c28> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://app.razorplanet.com/acct/43392-6776/tmpl/index.php?nid=140345&s=mn&null=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942386 | 198 | 1.625 | 2 |
Andrea Arnold is the co-writer and director of Wuthering Heights, which opens on October 5 in select theaters.
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Wondering if his creator is Heathcliff.
Guest: Andrea Arnold
Subjects Discussed: Characters defined by how they observe things, working with moths, Yorkshire insect wranglers, how to get animals to behave on camera, improvisational and Method-acting sheep, Buñuel’s Land Without Bread, audiences who believe that Arnold killed real sheep, film disclaimers about no animals harmed during the course of production, talking with farmers to get historical details right, how imagination informs more effectively than the facts, avoiding plastic walls for old sets, working with production designer Helen Scott, being upset when something isn’t real, the virtues of filming in a remote place, staying in a local village, getting used to a temporary life without phones, elevation as a geographical identifier as Arnold’s films, putting a camera in a place where a human can exist, Arnold’s dislike of the dolly and the Steadicam, why there weren’t as many wide shots in Wuthering Heights, Lindsay Anderson’s if…, cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s very sturdy hands, working without jibs and gimbals, the visual authenticity of natural human movement, Robbie Ryan running down four or five flights backwards with a camera, giving a very lovely grip named Sam something to do, reading Emily Bronte when very young, the decision to add the line “Fuck you, all you cunts” in Wuthering Heights, respect for Emily Bronte, working with non-actors, being too faithful to a literary classic, finding new takes on Heathcliff, why most literary adaptations play it safe, and literary reverence.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Correspondent: So there’s one really intriguing quality about your films that I have observed. Your characters are often defined by how they observe things. Of course, the obvious explicit example is Red Room, because we have closed circuit cameras in there. But we do see that in Wuthering Heights quite a bit. Often through slats. Often through little cracks. And I’m wondering. Why are you so interested in this idea of defining characters by how they look at things? Is this a way to offer a vicarious experience to the viewer? Do you feel that looking at things or what people decide to see is of greater import or greater revelation than, say, how they perform and how they act?
Arnold: Well, I don’t know the answer to that question really. Because I think when I’m writing, I don’t really think that lucidly about what I’m writing and how I’m writing it. But now that you’ve just said that to me, I realize actually what you just said is true. But actually if you’d ask me to define how I do things, I would never have said that I’m doing that. But now that you’ve just told me, I realize you’re right. And I think that I write quite instinctively. And for some reason I seem to be doing that. I’m always picking. I’ve only ever done one film where I told it from two people’s point of views, where I switch from one person to another. Most of the films I’ve done so far have been telling it from one person’s point of view. And for some reason, that feels like the right thing to do for me. It’s like I feel able to get into one person’s head. I find it more difficult to get into lots of people’s heads. Though maybe, just because I’m telling the stories from that person’s point of view and I’m going along with them and thinking about how they’re thinking and I’m trying to get inside their head, I think that may be why looking at the world from their point of view, I’m trying to get inside their head and work out how they’re feeling. Does that make sense?
Correspondent: It makes sense. It makes me ask at what point do you decide, “Oh, the camera must see what they’re seeing.” It seems to me that this would be a fairly late process in the planning. Is that safe to say? I mean, when do you think about this? Do you think about this during the act of writing the script or anything?
Arnold: I think I do think about it when I’m writing. Because I’m thinking constantly about what they’re looking at and what they’re doing and what they’re feeling. And I think that a lot of what ends up in the film is things that I’ve put on the page. I mean, even in Wuthering Heights, people say to me, “Was that in the script?” And actually no. Although sometimes, with the moths, they were in the script. The moths are in the script. The beetles aren’t in the script, but the moths are.
Correspondent: What do you do to get an insect wrangler, by the way? (laughs) I was curious about that. How do you find the moth expert among the moors and all that?
Arnold: Those moths, actually, were proper Yorkshire moths.
Correspondent: Oh they were?
Arnold: They were proper. The moths may be quite actually. Because we got moths from a man who dealt in Yorkshire moths. A Yorkshire moth expert, I guess.
Correspondent: A specialist. (laughs) There are moth specialists. I did not know.
Arnold: Yeah, there are.
Correspondent: How do you get a moth to behave on camera? I mean, you know they say the thing about children and animals.
Arnold: Moths don’t take directions. No, they don’t. You have to let them be themselves. But he gave us these moths which were in little capsules. And when we let them out, some of them died and it actually made me cry.
Arnold: I guess they do die. I mean, moths don’t last very longer than butterflies, do they?
Correspondent: Don’t we all, right?
Arnold: (laughs) Yes.
Correspondent: Well, that’s interesting that you would feel such sympathy for the moths when this film also depicts a lot of sheep and a lot of rabbits — simulated, I would suspect. I don’t think this was a Buñuel Land Without Bread situation on your part. But I mean, there is quite a lot of animal violence. And I’m wondering what you also did to get that looking as real as it did and why you felt compelled to include this as a representative rough element of this great frontier of the 19th century.
Arnold: Well, I guess it was dealing with animals and having animals on the farm living and dying would be part of life. And it’s part of our life now. Only it’s a hidden part of our lives. In fact, it’s a far worse thing now in life. Because it’s all behind doors and we all pretend it doesn’t happen. And animals are factory farmed in far worse ways. They’re not roaming free and then getting slaughtered at the end of their lives. They’re living in sheds and having pretty closed out lives. So it happens all the time now and then. And I just wanted to represent that accurately. I mean, we have managed to obviously do a good job. Because I get people saying — I think at Sundance, someone said to me — somebody came after and said, “Oh, I feel so sorry for that sheep, you know.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “You killed the sheep.” And I said, “No, we didn’t kill the sheep.”
Correspondent: And he’s no doubt saying this after having a lamb chop dinner, right? (laughs)
Arnold: Well, exactly. But of course we didn’t kill the sheep. And in actual fact, I was so worried about that sheep when we did that scene. I was more worried about that sheep than anyone. I mean, we had a vet there and we had a farmer there who owned the sheep. But that sheep, I have to tell you, was the most amazing sheep.
Correspondent: Oh yeah? What made it amazing?
Arnold: He was so amazing, that sheep. Because he was so calm. He wasn’t frightened. And he did this thing. In the film, you’ll see he’s trembling. It looks like you’ve done something really bad to him. He just started doing that. It was like he knew that he needed to look. I really don’t know.
Correspondent: Really? Unrehearsed?
Correspondent: Improvisational sheep! Wow!
Arnold: And it trotted off. And I kept saying to the farmer, “Are you sure the sheep’s alright?” He said, “The sheep’s fine.” And actually he went off, trotted back to the herd no problem. That sheep was amazing.
Correspondent: No ague or anything?
Arnold: No what?
Correspondent: No ague or anything?
Arnold: No what?
Correspondent: No tremors or anything like that? No dizziness?
Arnold: Nope. No, no, no. It seemed completely fine.
Correspondent: Wow. There are Method acting sheep.
Arnold: Honestly, that sheep. We couldn’t have picked a better sheep. Even when we were carrying it, it was just so calm. It didn’t seem frightened. It seemed completely fine. But of course we didn’t harm the sheep. In fact, I was very very concerned about the sheep and made sure he was completely fine. But, no, we didn’t harm anything. I mean, we make it look bad. But of course no. And I’m a vegetarian and animal complete.
Correspondent: Well, we talked about moths dying. Is there anything equivalent to the SPCA* in the British Isles that you’d have to get the endorsement from?
Arnold: Oh yeah.
Correspondent: I didn’t see any endorsement on the film or anything like that.
Arnold: Well, we had animal handlers there all the time.
Correspondent: Okay. You don’t need to have the designated stamp on the credits like we do here.
Arnold: We have the thing. “No animals were harmed.” I mean, that’s what you have to have. And you have to have people who are there who endorse that and who sign something to say that. So we had all that. We had everything that you’re supposed to have.
Correspondent: So you wanted to include these animals dying on film — simulated, of course — in the name of historical accuracy. I’m wondering what research you did to know how people lived during that time. I know that there were depilatory restrictions in place. I’m curious. What did you do to know that this is actually true? Or was this largely instinctive? Was this largely trusting your gut? Was this largely saying, “Okay, well, if we don’t have television, radios, and smartphones, and we’re just living on a farm, we’re just going to live like this”?
Arnold: Well, partly imagining what it would be like to live on the farm. Partly I spoke to farmers. I talked with some of the farmers up in Yorkshire about how things would have been. And they had a lot of people up in that area who had been up there for generations, and had actually a lot of information. So I went down to a place where people dealt with animals and spoke to a lot of farmers down there. I talked to people. So I did partly talk to people. Part imagination, partly what they were telling me. For example, the way they put their foot on the sheep and stuff like that. That was all told to me, the way they did that. You know, I researched all those things. About how they would handle the sheep and stuff like that. How they would carry it.
Correspondent: Do you feel that imagining what a situation is like is going to carry more truth on cinema than, say, sticking with the hard facts or the hard details? Or going by the letter of what the Yorkshire farmers tell you?
Arnold: I mean, I think I’m somebody who, if I hear something and I believe it to be the truth and they’ve told me something truthful, I will try to hold on to that as best I can. And I incorporate that into what I’m doing. So if they’ve told me something and I’ve heard it a couple of times from the right kind of people, then I think I would do my utmost to make sure that I represent that as accurately as they’ve told me. I think I’m somebody who does actually care about those things. I mean, when I’m talking about using my imagination, I’m talking about using my imagination more to do with the emotion or to do with the way that people are interacting with each other. I’m not looking to deal with practical facts. If I hear something, it’s done a certain way. Also I have a designer I work with and she’s very like that too. And even the house which we restored. Because it was quite run down.
Correspondent: Oh, interesting.
Arnold: We restored it using all the traditional methods. And so all the people that worked on the house used old skills in order to restore it. We didn’t put plastic up that looks like thatchery. We put proper thatch up. We restored the walls to the paths they would have used. We used the right kind of wood.
Correspondent: The stone wall on the outside. Was that touched up? Or built by the cast perhaps?
Arnold: Those stone walls were mostly there. The dry stone walls, that’s all over Yorkshire. So all the people working on the house before we started filming there, they were all using old skills which they all really, really enjoyed.
* — Our Correspondent mistakenly referred to the SPCA when he clearly meant the American Humane Association, which has been adding disclaimers about animals to movies since 1940. | <urn:uuid:e326023e-fc32-4f80-a5f2-a227b93d4e29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.edrants.com/segundo/andrea-arnold-bss-488/ | 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 | 0.975972 | 3,230 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition
A challenging and welcome book. . . . Provides a perspective on modern Japan worth considering with care. Journal of Asian Studies
Presents new ways of comprehending the history of modern Japan (from the preface). [Should be] read widely by all who have an interest in modern Japanese history. Journal of Japanese Studies
Offer[s] expert studies of infinite variety peasant rebellions, insurrections, urban riots, strikes, student disturbances. Reminds [Japan historians] to be concerned not only with the mainstream but [also with] forces of dissent, conflict, and secession. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
[Offers] an entirely new approach to the study of Japanese history. . . . The articles are informative and together stimulate thought about the causes of conflict in Japan. Monumenta Nipponica
This provocative work probes conflictual events in order to discover their broader significance. . . . Carefully researched and intelligently written; a collection of indispensable essays. American Historical Review
First published by Princeton University Press in 1982, this volume depicts the conflict and uncertainty that have bedeviled modern Japan. The eighteen contributors explore dissent, secession, and conflict first in the 1850s and 1860s, when the Tokugawa regime gave way to the Meiji government, and then from the end of the Russo-Japanese War through the mid-1920s. Includes an introduction by Tetsuo Najita and concluding chapter by J. Victor Koschmann.
Other publications by this author: Total War and 'Modernization' and International Perspectives on Yanagita Kunio and Japanese Folklore Studies, both published by the Cornell East Asia Series.
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Students should do the following prior to taking the ASSET:
- Turn in the admissions application, transcripts, etc. in the Admissions Office. Admissions will return the registration form to the student.
- Visit with the Counseling Office and received a referral card for the ASSET test.
- ASSET testing dates: By appointment only, please call the Assessment Center at 281.618.5744 or stop by the Academic Building, room 102 to schedule and appointment. The ASSET test may be scheduled on a Friday morning (9 a.m.-12:30 p.m.) or Thursday evening (5 p.m.-8:30 p.m.). Contact the Assessment Center for summer testing.
- On test day, arrive at the campus testing location (Academic Bldg.#102) 15 minutes ahead of the scheduled time. Make certain to bring the admissions registration form, the referral card and a photo I.D. NO CHILDREN will be allowed in the testing room, and children should not be left unattended on campus. Test fees are $29 for the entire test or $10 per section
- After testing is completed, results will be printed. Please see an advisor for placement./
The student must wait 30 days to re-test. Students may re-test on the THEA test with no waiting period.
- Basic Skill Measures
- Writing Skills (25 minutes)
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Numerical Skills (25 minutes)
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Writing Skills Test
The ASSET Writing Skills Test is a 36-item, 25-minute test that measures the student's understanding of the conventions of standard written English in punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, strategy, organization, and style. Spelling, vocabulary, and rote recall of rules of grammar are not tested. The test consists of three prose passages, each accompanied by a sequence of 12 multiple-choice test items. To provide a variety of rhetorical situations, a range of passage types is employed. Items that measure usage and mechanics offer alternative responses, including "NO CHANGE," to underlined portions of the text. The student must decide which alternative employs the conventional practice in usage and mechanics that conforms to the sense of the context. Items that measure rhetorical skills may refer to an underlined portion of the text or may ask about a section of the passage or the passage as a whole. The student must decide which alternative response is most appropriate in a given rhetorical situation. The elements of the Writing Skills Test and the approximate proportions of the test devoted to each are given.
This exam tests such conventions as the use and placement of commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses, apostrophes, question marks, and exclamation points.
Tests adjectives and adverbs, conjunctions, and agreement between subject and verb and between pronouns and their antecedents.
Tests relationships between/among clauses, placement of modifiers, and shifts in construction.
Tests the organization of ideas and the relevance of statements in context (order, coherence, unity).
Tests the appropriateness of expression in relation to audience and purpose, the strengthening of writing with appropriate supporting material, and the effective choice of statements of theme and purpose.
Tests precision and appropriateness in the choice of words and images, rhetorically effective management of sentence elements, avoidance of ambiguous pronoun references, and economy in writing.
Reading Skills Test
The ASSET Reading Skills Test is a 24-item, 25-minute test that measures reading comprehension as a product of skill in referring and reasoning. The test items require students to derive meaning from several tests by (1) referring to what is explicitly stated and determining the meaning of words through context and by (2) reasoning to determine implicit meanings and to draw conclusions, comparisons, and generalizations. The test consists of three prose passages of about 375 words each that are representative of the level and kinds of writing commonly encountered in college freshman curricula. Passages on topics in prose fiction, business, and the social studies are included. Each passage is accompanied by a set of eight multiple-choice test items. The approximate proportion of the test devoted to each type of reading item is given below.
Advanced Mathematics Test: Elementary Algebra
The Elementary Algebra Test is designed to assess skills commonly acquired in the first high school algebra course. The content areas tested include:
- evaluation of algebraic expressions
- simplification of algebraic expressions
- solution of quadratic equations
- operations with polynomials
- integer exponents
- rational expressions
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Numerical Skills Test
The ASSET Numerical Skills Test is a 32-item, 25-minute test designed to assess basic numerical skills in the performance of operations with whole numbers, decimals, and fractions and basic word problem solving skills involving arithmetic. The elements of the test and the approximate proportions devoted to each content classification are given below.
The items in this category may include operations with whole numbers; decimals and fractions; factors and common factors; multiples and common multiples; comparison of fractions and decimals; ratio, proportion, and percent; conversion of fractions, decimals, and percents; and order of operations for real numbers.
The items in this category may include prime and composite numbers, complex fractions, signed numbers, absolute values, scientific notation, and square roots.
Advanced Mathematics Test: Intermediate Algebra
The Intermediate Algebra Test is designed to assess skills commonly acquired in a second high school algebra course. The content areas tested include:
- solutions of polynomial equations by factoring
- graphs of linear equations
- operations with radical and rational expressions
- the distance formula
- slope of a line
- solution of linear inequalities
- simplification of radicals
Advanced Mathematics Test: College AlgebraThe College Algebra Test is designed to assess skills commonly acquired in a precalculus course. The content areas tested include:
- exponential functions
- operations with complex numbers
- composition of functions
- inverses of functions
- linear inequalities
- graphs of polynomials | <urn:uuid:2382280c-ac6f-4814-af74-6fa47f82110c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lonestar.edu/asset-test.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00068-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914897 | 1,313 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Migrant grateful to fortune
GERD DIETER KRATZER
CO-FOUNDER OF CHAUCER'S RECEPTION AND CONVENTION CENTRE
29-5-1944 - 2-12-2012
GERD Dieter Kratzer, who co-established Chaucer's Reception and Convention Centre, a Melbourne hospitality landmark of the 1970s, '80s and early '90s, has died.
Gerd was born in Oberaudorf, a small village in the Bavarian Alps, the night the Allies unleashed its massive bombing raid on Munich, some 80 kilometres away. His father, who was an officer in the German tank corps, returned to the frontlines and was later captured and imprisoned in Yugoslavia. In the maelstrom of Germany's defeat and an advancing Allied force, Gerd was fostered in an orphanage. It was his foster mother, Gertrude Baumgarten, who gave him the care and love that every child needs. He would often talk about his love for Gertrude.
Life after the war in Europe was harsh and for many the future was uncertain. Gerd's birth mother found a sponsor in Australia and, without the help of any assisted passage scheme, paid the princely sum of £440 to emigrate to Australia. They boarded the Lloyd Triestino's SS Toscana in November 1957 and arrived in Melbourne on December 23, after seven weeks at sea. Gerd, who was 13, attended Balwyn High School where he eventually matriculated.
It was not until July 1976 that he was reunited with his father.
Although he had been interested in chemical engineering, Gerd decided to forgo further studies and embarked on setting up a business of some kind. He formed a partnership with his lifetime friend and fellow Austrian Oskar Hucherig, whom he met in Melbourne, and operated a service station and motor repair business in Templestowe.
The business flourished, but a burgeoning interest in hospitality and catering led Gerd to establish Abound Catering, a relatively modest addition to the hospitality industry, with another friend, Rudy Unger.
In April 1971 the service station and motor repair business was sold, and on August 12 Gerd co-founded Chaucer's with Oskar and Rudy as partners. Chaucer's was Melbourne's first purpose-built reception and convention centre. The venue became well known to a cross-section of the population including politicians and celebrities.
In 1977 Gerd was made life governor of Prince Henry Hospital. Two years later he also became president of the Restaurant and Catering Association of Victoria, a position he held until 1989, and was appointed an honorary life member in 1990.
After operating for 28 years, Chaucer's was sold on September 1, 1999 - a demise mourned by many who remembered its ''golden years''.
Gerd had an unbridled thirst for knowledge and new ideas. His collection of rare books and manuscripts led him to open a small antiquarian bookshop in Camberwell called the Canterbury Tales. He also started Wine Export Australia in 1980. In April of that year he was made a life member of the Austrian Club. His constant interest in cars led him to become an honorary life member of the Buick Car Club (April 1992). In March last year Gerd was made an honorary life member of the Australian Philatelic Traders Association.
A quiet and unassuming person, Gerd's interests extended beyond wine, food, books, antiques and travel to classical music. He was an accomplished classical pianist, his favourite composer being Mozart. His musical soirees were familiar occasions to a small group of friends. Not only would he meticulously prepare background notes on the featured composer but also make sure that everyone present was suitably catered for.
"I can't help it," he would say, "it's my Teutonic upbringing. Everything has to be right and precise." It was only relatively recently that he revealed to some of his friends that he was the direct descendent of Nicholas Kratzer, a mathematician, astronomer and horologist who became astronomer to Henry VIII.
For someone who, through hard work, imagination and sheer determination, led a fortunate and successful life, Gerd had his share of tragedy. His son, Shaun, a champion skier and photographer, died in a skiing accident while holidaying with friends in the Himalayas. Gerd never recovered from the loss of his son.
A generous man and a true bon vivant, he was known to describe himself as an optimist who had led a charmed life and who was happy to know he had also been loved by many. Gerd's generosity was often balanced by his thriftiness. He admitted to me that he abhorred paying the so-called recommended retail price on some commodities; he expected to negotiate with sellers. He was very good at determining the true worth of something.
"Serendipity has shone upon me numerous times,'' he once said. ''I was lucky many times, but often you have to make your own luck. Life is a huge game of chance where timing is everything."
There are many more things about Gerd that I remember. Among some of his favourite sayings were "De gustibus non est disputandum" (You can't argue about taste); "Per ardua ad astra" (Through hardship to the stars); "There is a solution to every problem, you just have to find it."
His business associates would describe him as astute, those who were the recipients of his charity would acknowledge his generosity. But to most who had the opportunity to be close to him, he was a gentle, family-loving and highly civilised person. He was one of the few remarkable people in my life.
His daughters Athena, Natasha, his wife Sally and her daughter Rebecca survive him.
Auf wiedersehen, mein Freund. | <urn:uuid:b77dbc4d-7e6d-4c45-9341-bfaa22d7d48d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theage.com.au/national/obituaries/migrant-grateful-to-fortune-20130128-2dh7e.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990219 | 1,230 | 1.734375 | 2 |
The Daily Star
---- — Sunday is Veterans Day, a day we honor those who have served our country. We most often thank them for all they have done to protect our freedoms, but we also appreciate some of the funny stories that came out of that service to the nation. We asked our readers to share their stories, and the following tales are what they told:
I was drafted by President Roosevelt on Oct. 28, 1942, by invitation — actually it was a threat. Jail time if you didn’t respond. We went to the induction center at Utica for a physical. If you were warm, you qualified.
After a short trip to Camp Upton in Long Island, we stayed overnight and then after a long and dusty trip by train we ended up in Camp Swift, Texas. We called it the “land that God forgot.”
A few of us were put on guard duty that night and told to challenge all people on or near our posts. During the night, my buddy from Texas heard a noise and said, “Who goes there?” It happened to be the officer in charge of the guard. And he replied, “What are you going to do now?” and my buddy said, “I don’t know but don’t you move until I think of something.”
Richard W. Signor of Walton
I was in the 633 Military Police Co. at I Corps near Vijongbu, Korea. One day, we got a replacement who told us that he worked in a circus before he was drafted. Sometime later he said his job was giving demonstrations of eating razor blades. One day he gave a small group of us a demonstration. Our company commander heard about it and had him transferred. The captain said he didn’t want him to die in his company — it would make too much paperwork.
John Cowan of Hobart
I would like to tell you about a story that my brother Bill West told me. Bill graduated from Schenevus Central School and joined the U.S. Marines after school. He was sent to Parris Island. Arriving at night by bus, the new men were lined up in a long line. An officer walked down the line checking every man. After passing my brother, he backed up and looked straight into my brother’s eyes. He said to Bill, “What’s your name?” My brother told him it was Bill West. “Bill West, did I see you smiling?” My brother said, “yes.” “And Bill West, what’s so funny?” “You are wearing a funny hat!” “Oh, you think my hat is funny. Bill West, if I ever see you smiling again, I will pull every pearly white out of your mouth.” My brother told me, “I really believe he would have done it!”
Herb West of Jefferson
It was a Saturday morning barracks inspection in Fort Monmouth, N.J., in the winter of 1943. The weather outside was frigid. Someone had mopped the steps leading to the entrance. I was a squad leader on the second floor. As the C.O. and first sergeant came up the steps, they slipped and fell through the door. From my vantage point at the head of the stairs I shouted ATTENTION! As I stepped back, my belt engaged a fire extinguisher hanging thereupon. It fell to the floor. Someone hasted to pick it up and in doing so activated the chemicals contained there in. He then started down the stairs to meet and greet the hapless inspectors. I am almost certain there was the sound of restrained laughter from my squad. Oddly enough, I do not recall that our barracks failed inspection or that we were restricted to quarters for the remainder of the weekend. Clearly the episode could have been a natural for Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, or the Marx Brothers.
Another story took place in Saint Quentin on the Somme River in northeastern France. Our outfit was quartered in what had been a school building consisting of two floors of room of different sizes.
The year was 1944 and all was quiet on the Western Front, some months prior to the German breakthrough in Belgium in December of that year. A company bulletin board featured a bold-faced directive from the C.O. which read: BLACK OUT REGULATIONS WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED! (Exceptions: Rooms Occupied by First Three Graders.) At that time, the highest ranking enlisted personnel were first sergeants, master sergeants and technical sergeants. Someone of lower rank had added a typewritten post script which read : “AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT IN THE FIRST THREE GRADER’S ROOMS.” My response at the time: Why didn’t I think of that?
D.R. Vosbergh, 91,
@Body Copy Ragged:As a member of the 101st Airborne Division Band in the late 1950s we played many parades both on and off base at Fort Campbell, Ky. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the chief of staff of the military, along with Division Commander William Westmoreland were serving as the reviewing officers of a full division review. At this type ceremony, the band stood in front of the reviewing stand and played marches continuously as the troops paraded by the reviewing stand and would last about 45 minutes to an hour.
After about 30 minutes, the cymbal player, who in marches only had to “clang” the cymbals in the beat of the march, fell to the ground. I was directly behind him so broke ranks to help him. Thinking he had fainted, I asked him if he was OK. His comment: “I’m fine, Sergeant, I just fell asleep!” The C.O. came back and asked what happened. I told the C.O. he was just overheated and would be fine, and the band played on.
The division was a strategic division in the later 1950s and involved in constant field training exercises. On one exercise, five troopers were killed and about 140 injured in a parachute drop. I was a member of the Military Honor Guard United and at the ceremony played taps. Westmoreland came over to me after the ceremony and said “Sergeant, I’ve heard taps played all over the world. The way you played it today was marvelous and moved me deeply.” I was pleased.
About three weeks later we were having an indoor training session. At these sessions instead of someone shouting “ATTENTION” to start the activity, a bugler would play a simple four-note bugle call. Westmorland and his aide were standing about five feet from me and the aid said. “OK, Sergeant, let’s get this show on the road. “ I proceeded to play the bugle call and MISSED two of the four notes. Westmorland looked over at me, smiled and said, “Sergeant, you sure as hell play taps better than that call,” and started down the aisle to the stage area. I was surprised he remembered me, and happy he had a sense of humor.
@Body Copy Ragged:It was about 8 a.m., the sun was already coming up in the sky, and the crew of the USS Grasp, a salvage ship, was in Manila Bay in the Philippines getting ready for the job that had to be done this day. It was early 1946 and by now the war was over, but not our job.
I was part of the crew of about 30 men, consisting of both officers and enlisted men. I was the radio operator aboard this ship. Manila Bay was full of sunken ships of all kinds and it was up to the U.S. Navy to clear these ships from the bay. Our job that day was to tow a wreck (that’s what they call the ships that are sunk in the bay) out to sea and to sink it again. Before long we were under way to the wreck that we had to tow out to sea. The Navy salvage crew had been working on this wreck for some time, and it was ready to be moved. They have to patch up the holes and pump out the water from the wreck so it can come up out of the water high enough to clear the bottom of the bay so it can be towed safely out to sea.
The wreck that we had to tow that day was in about the middle of the bay. Once we got under way it did not take us long to get there. It was one of the biggest wrecks that we had had to tow so far. Myself and four other sailors were put on board the wreck. I was there because I was the radioman and was in charge of operations the portable radio that we used to keep in touch with the mothership. The rest of the men were there to secure the tow line to the wreck and to make sure that everything was in order for the towing.
We were soon under way and things were going as planned. The mothership was slowly towing the wreck with us aboard. We were on our way out of the bay between Corregidor and Bataan out to the China Sea. All was going well for our four- to five-hour trip.
About one hour into the trip, the wreck seemed to be creaking and groaning and seemed to be listing a little on the starboard side. It didn’t seem to bother us too much because that happens many times under these conditions. Later, about four hours into the trip, things really started to happen. The wreck was really creaking and leaning more to the starboard then we cared to have happening, so I got on my radio and called the mothership and told them what was happening and that we thought it would be best if they took us off the wreck. They told us not to worry about it because we were getting close to our destination and they would get us off the wreck before it sunk. That was good news because if they waited much longer we could just step off the wreck because we could almost touch the water by now.
Oh, by the way, we threw the tow line over the side and they finally took us off the wreck in our small boat and before we got the mothership the wreck started to sink. Before we go on board the mother ship the wreck was probably on the bottom of the China Sea. | <urn:uuid:fd8089ae-549e-4977-805a-65d5ee9e31a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thedailystar.com/lifestyles/x257826816/Funny-military-memories/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989449 | 2,201 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Michigan Radio's Jennifer Guerra dropped by his Deep Wood Press studio for a lesson in the fine art of letterpress:
The first you thing you notice about Chad Pastotnik's studio is that – minus Chad – everything in it is old. It's almost as though you've stepped back in time to the days of Gutenberg and his printing press.
"Yeah, this is not Kinko's. It's not even your ink jet," jokes Pastotnik.
Hardly. This is hand set, letterpress printing. It's a fine art that's been around for 500 years and has recently undergone a kind of revival in the states. Book Arts graduate programs are popping up around the country and community art centers have started to offer letter press workshops. But none of that was around when Pastotnik was an undergrad getting his fine art degree in printmaking:
"At that point," says Pastotnik, " I didn't even know about the fine book tradition. I'd seen fine books, but I wasn't aware in the 80's what this whole thing was about."
So he honed his skills as an artist and as a book binder instead. That is until one day in 1992. That's when he received a small cylinder press for free from an old printing company in Cadillac. So he started to teach himself letterpress. He admits that at first, it was pretty rough...but he says the journey was well worth it.
"Well," he says, "I wanted words with my images and that was the way to go. You know, it's magic. It's alchemy in the works. It's turning lead into gold."
The art form itself requires an incredible amount of craftsmanship, not to mention patience. Because everything is done by hand. Starting with the paper which gets sliced down to size on a heavy piece of equipment that's shaped like a guillotine.
Then, it's onto the text. Every single letter you see on the page is hand set. Take for example the word "book." Each one of those letters is its own, individual lead cast. Pastotnik has thousands of these individuals letters stored in cabinets around the room.
One cabinet contains all Bernard Booklet Modern. And it goes from 8 point Roman italic all the way up to 24. "It's not just highlight and click," says Pastotnik. "You pick it up and put it in the stick."
Once all the type has been hand pulled and precisely set using the stick, the letters and ink get transferred onto the page using one of the hand presses around the room. Art work is added. And then the sheets are hand stitched and bound in real leather.
Pastotnik's book generally sell for hundreds of dollars. Which he realizes may sound expensive for a book, until you consider the labor that went into making it, not to mention the cost of materials. Of course, he also realizes there are quicker, less expensive ways to make a book than by hand.
"You can send your manuscript off to Lulu.com and get a bound copy back in a week for $12," says Pastotnik. "Why do you need me?"
So why do we need you?
"Because," says Pastotnik, "it's book as art, as opposed to a book for the sake of a vehicle for transmitting information. We definitely do all of that, but it's the finest aspects of what a book can be."
And he can point to some 500-year old examples to prove it. | <urn:uuid:484f49a6-50c2-44f4-a56a-7d91f21e36e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/.artsmain/article/9/144/1373881/People/Northern.Arts.Series:.Deep.Wood.Press/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979883 | 731 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The story of Ai Weiwei is turning into a dark fable that seems to belong in another age of modern history. In Bertolt Brecht's play Life of Galileo, a dissident intellectual recants his beliefs under pressure from an intolerant regime. It was a hit in the US, but Brecht, a communist, decided in spite of its success to return to live in east Berlin. Later, as he observed the absurdities of the Soviet regime, he was moved to joke that the state should elect another people.
Those absurdities are brilliantly recreated in the historically set Berlin film The Lives of Others, and anyone who has watched it must surely feel a shiver of familiarity at official news from China that Ai Weiwei is co-operating with enquiries into alleged economic crimes and bigamy. Observers who side with the Chinese government on this should be ashamed, and those who dislike Ai Weiwei's art and so welcome any prospect of his undoing are seriously confused about basic human rights. The fact is that regimes such as the Soviet and the Chinese are brilliant at exploiting weaknesses and flaws in the people they need to crush. Dissidents can be shamed and subdued in many ways. What do you think a police state is? It is a place where truth can be manipulated.
Ai Weiwei has spoken out eloquently for the universality of human rights and the worldwide hunger for freedom. Even if all the charges China are apparently raising were true, it would not alter anything – and given his brutal detention it is reasonable to assume they are false.
Something historically obscene is happening here. It is as if different times exist simultaneously. In one time-stream, democracy is in global demand and artists including Ai Weiwei are revealing the richness of China's culture to the world. Yet in the sinister second stream it is 1950, and dissidents can be blackguarded and bullied with total impunity by a system that takes Orwell's 1984 as a handbook.
The cleverest thing about The Lives of Others is that it lulls you into a similar eddy of time. You have no idea what year the characters suffer in – and then suddenly it turns out to be 1989 and the Berlin Wall comes down. What seemed a totalitarian system beyond resisting turns out to be a fragile fantasy world that vanishes overnight.
Ai Weiwei is not being tested here – not in the eyes of anyone who cares about freedom or justice. His oppressors are the ones who will be judged. Neither does he have to satisfy some western craving for heroics. "Pity the land that has no heroes," says a character in Brecht's play – to which Galileo replies: "Pity the land that needs heroes." | <urn:uuid:5013712f-ecc4-4193-96dd-6f6ab356fa1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/apr/14/ai-weiwei-china-human-rights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00056-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972875 | 553 | 1.835938 | 2 |
1. If a tree falls in the forest, does it really make a
sound if nobody hears it fall?
now to view a falling OTC derivatives tree being marked to “it
never made a sound” model.
2. In the
simplest terms, credit default swaps (CDS) are a financial insurance product
used heavily by hedgers and speculators in the government debt arena.
3. A lot of investors thought that a huge deflation
would occur when the OTC derivatives written on real estate blew up, but what
they didn’t anticipate was that rule changes would be made by the
Financial Accounting Services Board (FASB).
4. The FASB allowed banks to value OTC derivative
products like bonds, with a maturity date. OTC derivative accounting was legally
changed from “mark to market” to “mark to model”.
5. The deflationists were almost destroyed by the FASB
move, as gold surged from about $680 to $1920. They have re-emerged since the Greek
government has taken centre “default stage”. As you will see, the deflationists are
likely to meet their mark to model maker once again.
6. Companies like MF Global thought they could make big
profits by using investor monies to make bets with CDS products. Their view was that the Greek
government couldn’t pay what it owed, and that failure would trigger a
default event. They were wrong because they didn’t understand how far
the banks have taken the concept of mark to model accounting.
7. In the above document provided by the International
Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), you can see that how the ISDA
defines a credit event (CDS payout time) is open to substantial
interpretation by the ISDA itself.
8. If you take the time to read the document carefully, you will realize
that for all practical intents and purposes, the ISDA votes on whether
any kind of payout can be made to the CDS holder, because they vote to
decide if a “credit event” has occurred.
9. Can you imagine your situation, if at the end
of the day the people who are shorting your gold stock took a vote amongst
themselves to decide what the closing price for the day would be for your
10. In the biggest picture, that is essentially the
situation that the CDS holder is experiencing. Simply put, a default becomes
“not a default” when the ISDA votes that default out of
existence. The bottom line is
that “Team ISDA” will likely put “Team Deflation”
into the dustbin, and the only question that really matters is, are you
11. If so, I’d like you to give the gold chart a
kiss this morning. Keep it
simple, sweetie. Click here
now to view the simplest view you can have of the gold market. Note the three sell signals on the 14,7,7 series of the Stochastics
indicator that I have highlighted.
12. Example A shows the gold price blasting three
hundred dollars higher after the Stochastics
crossover sell signal was given.
Example B shows the gold price declining rapidly after a Stochastics sell signal flashed. What will “Example C”
bring to the gold market? What
will happen when the lines on that Stochastics
indictor cross, as they are threatening to do now?
bottom line is that you can’t know the answer. Selling huge amounts of gold because
it is technically overbought can have disastrous consequences for you. You can be left standing in the train
station while a gold bullet train speeds away.
14. Moderation brings the best wealth-building
results. Selling a bit of gold
into this strength is wise.
15. The professional investor doesn’t buy gold
because, “It’s about to rally!”, and they
don’t sell gold because, “It might fall down!”. If
gold is falling in price, you need to buy a small amount of it. If gold is rising in price, as it is
now, you need to book some light profits. End of professional investor
16. Using theories of where the price of gold may go
next to buy and sell huge amounts of gold is “market
madness”. All “gold
is crashing!” nonsense that occurred into $1525 has now been marked to
“skeleton in the closet” model. The epic loss-booking has been
replaced with new nonsensical stories that gold is going to infinity
any day now, so you have to buy in enormous size. The unfortunate bottom line is
that primal urges continue to dominate the actions of amateur
17. Operate on the gold price gridlines not as a
sea-changing prophet, but as a capital placement machine. You understand that gold is the
ultimate asset, so you place capital into it like a machine on a factory
18. Note the four HSR (horizontal support and
resistance) lines that I’ve highlighted on the above gold chart. They are created by support and
resistance at the prices of $1640, $1700, $1770, and $1800.
19. Based on this HSR, you would place orders to buy
gold in the $1700 and $1640 price area.
Place orders to sell gold in the $1770 and $1800 price area. Keep it simple. I would prefer that you place no buy
orders unless gold has fallen $50 to $100 from these highs, regardless of
where any support is sitting.
20. I think the average daily range for the gold price
will increase dramatically.
Unfortunately, the average high speed (flip) trader lives in a world
where a $100 move in the gold price is mistakenly viewed as critically
important. I would suggest that
the flip trader lives in a make-believe world. The only thing real about the flip
trading world is the enormous size of the booked losses that are experienced
by the vast majority of its citizens.
If you are living life as a flip trader who is obsessed with the
supposed importance of the next $100 move for the gold price, you might
consider the possibility that in the gold world, you are an illegal alien.
21. Default and quantitative easing are not the themes
of this financial crisis.
Surprise is the theme, and you need to embrace surprise, rather than
fight or outsmart it. Don’t
try to become an expert at predicting surprise in a crisis of this magnitude,
if you want to get richer. You
can only embrace the theme of surprise by becoming a risk capital placement
22. Simplicity is the fuel of the successful financial
engine. Is it time for a fill-up?
23. Click this key silver
gridlines chart now. Support
sits at $28.50 and $31. Those are
your simple buy points. On the
profit booking side, you’re doing it now in the $33.50 area, and
you’ll sell more at $35.50 and $37.
24. Take about 1% of your position off the table at each
sell point, and add about 1% to your position at each buy point. Most investors “only”
trade about 100 times too large for their financial britches!
Special Offer For
Website Readers: Send me an Email to firstname.lastname@example.org
and I’ll send you my free “Keep It Simple, Sweetie (KISS)”
report, highlighting the simple actions you need to take here and now in the
GDX and GDXJ markets! | <urn:uuid:728a0381-6928-4b7c-9d88-99be4ba3fde2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.24hgold.com/english/contributor.aspx?article=3795228484G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Stewart+Thomson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00069-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940822 | 1,690 | 2.328125 | 2 |
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High schoolers identify and evaluate Korea's role in inventions in Asia. In this Korean Invention lesson plan, students complete a chart of innovations and discuss where they are from. High schoolers read about Korean inventions and complete a chart. Students discuss their findings and create a timeline of Korean inventions.
In this Roman history worksheet, students read an excerpt about Roman sea Power. Then they use the information from the story to respond to four short answer questions. In addition, students imagine that they are a Roman general briefing new soldiers who have never been to sea and describe how they should operate the corvus during battle. | <urn:uuid:54a33efb-f7ba-49d7-bf64-6f5d03100163> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lessonplanet.com/lesson-plans/warships | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00045-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920152 | 153 | 3.78125 | 4 |
Freaky! Fembot Sings, Mimicking Pop Stars
Researchers in Japan are fashioning a singing, dancing fembot that they hope will perform in pop music concerts someday.
To make the android's vocal performance look more natural, and – in theory, at least – less creepy, the researchers have analyzed and applied the head movements and facial expressions of a real human singer.
The warbling robot , with the Star Wars-esque designation HRP-4C, stands at about five feet, two inches (1.58 meters) tall. It has the appearance of a young Japanese girl, although one admittedly wearing a RoboCop suit minus the helmet.
For HRP-4C's mellifluous voice, the researchers originally relied on software made by Yamaha called Vocaloid. This synthesized singing program is based on recorded vocal libraries provided by actual flesh-and-blood singers.
In the latest demonstrations of the robot's pipes, however, the researchers went with their own new technology dubbed VocalListener, which synthesizes a robotic voice on a computer in imitation of a human voice.
A second technology in play, called Vocawatcher, allows the robot's head to mimic the cranial tilts and nods displayed by a diva belting out a tune.
Another effort to boost the bots' authenticity involves the replication of human breathing. A software program detects where a person would likely draw a breath during a stream of sung utterances, and then this subtle sound is generated based on audio files in Vocaloid.
As shown in the above video, the researchers have captured many of the nuances of a typical vocal performance.
The head tilts – along with the white teeth peeking out from behind the lips and the programmed eye blinks – supply a hefty, rather disturbing dose of verisimilitude.
And although HRP-4C's mouth opens and closes fairly in sync with the projected vocals, the unchanging shape of the lips, which do not flex or scrunch quite like a singer's do when forming certain sounds, ultimately lessen the realism.
HRP-4C's creators would like to see her kind make inroads in pop culture to help get people more comfortable around automatons that could enhance modern life.
"For robots to become widespread in society, I think they need to be used widely in the entertainment industry," said Masataka Goto, leader of the media interaction group at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology that is developing HRP-4C. "As one way of enabling this, we've tackled the challenge of seeing how well a robot can imitate a human singer."
If HRP-4C is ever to dazzle a concert crowd, however, the researchers will probably have to give the fembot's dance choreography a bit of the hyperkinetic MTV treatment. For now, the songstress does little more than just sway her arms. | <urn:uuid:6f1c0c07-ced4-4008-8dff-a7261274731d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.technewsdaily.com/1361-freaky-fembot-sings-mimicking-pop-stars.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00065-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939187 | 599 | 2.265625 | 2 |
ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION
This publication presents results from the Survey of Education and Training (SET) which was conducted nationally by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) from March to June 2009. Information was collected, by personal interview, from individuals on their participation in education and training and on their educational attainment.
This publication contains a cross-section of results relating to education and training and includes a number of time series tables. Analytical text to support the tables is provided in the Summary of Findings and differences between data items discussed are statistically significant unless otherwise specified. The Explanatory Notes provide information about the survey design and methodology, the quality and interpretation of survey results, and information about other products and services available or planned.
This publication includes Data Cubes in spreadsheet format which are available on the ABS web site <http/www.abs.gov.au>. Data Cubes will also be made available for each State or Territory where data quality and confidentiality requirements permit.
CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE
As a result of a major review of SET, which was undertaken in consultation with key stakeholders in 2007, a number of changes were introduced in the 2009 cycle. The scope of the SET was modified in 2009 to include persons aged 15-74. However, the bulk of the questionnaire was asked of persons aged 15-64 years and persons aged 65 to 74 years who were in or marginally attached to the labour force. Persons aged 65--74 years who were in scope but not in the population of interest were sequenced to the end of the questionnaire once their labour force status had been established. For further details, see paragraphs 4-7 of the Explanatory Notes.
The content of SET also changed in 2009. Most notably, the definitions of learning activities have been aligned with the international Classification of learning activities (CLA), resulting in the inclusion of a third category of learning. Participation in informal learning was collected for the first time, to capture information about lifelong learning undertaken by respondents. Information collected about formal qualifications was also expanded to include all formal qualifications completed by respondents rather than the highest three.
Significant definitional changes have been introduced to the 'work-related training' module and an education and employment outcomes topic has been included within the questionnaire. There have also been a number of classificatory changes to align with new ABS standards. Further details can be found in paragraphs 32-53 of the Explanatory Notes and in the Glossary.
As estimates have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between the sums of the component items and totals.
For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.
This page last updated 17 May 2010 | <urn:uuid:d57d0724-ffa9-47e5-a83e-b1843dc8dcee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ProductsbyCatalogue/252D868F10B905F3CA2568A9001393AF | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960517 | 547 | 1.8125 | 2 |
here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo
There isn’t a woman I know who hasn’t had a transformative moment when one seemingly healthy way of life suddenly withers and dies. Usually, another, bolder, more authentic path presents itself and a healthier set of roots are put down and begin to grow.
Some people say that transformation occurs at the moment denial collapses under the weight of our accumulated experience. For others it is art (T.S. Eliot’s moment in the rose garden or Rilke’s experience of the sculpture of Apollo). For some, the transformative moment occurs when tragedy takes away everything we believed we needed to survive - our money, power, work, family, or prestige.
This coming week, I’m going to tell you the story of two sisters whose lives took the predictably different paths women have been choosing since the second-wave women’s movement occurred in the early 1970s.
One sister pursued a high-flying career in the male-dominated oil and gas industry while the other chose the life of a stay-at-home mom.
I’ll be talking to both women about their choices and the calamity that led to a surprising collaboration on a book for women about finance entitled What I Learned about Life when My Husband Got Fired by “Red + Black,” Tina Pennington and Mandy Williams.
While you’re waiting to learn how these sisters turned disaster into a new way of life, please share in the comment section here your own story about how and when your own transformative moment/s arrived. | <urn:uuid:35da56b9-3963-4b97-860b-4be22d41730a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/shenegotiates/2011/02/05/what-to-do-when-the-transformative-moment-arrives/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00066-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932189 | 356 | 1.539063 | 2 |
To Burn Off A Coke?
Source: Huffington Post
Coca-Cola's UK website is offering a new calorie calculator that not only tells you how many calories are in some of their drinks, but also offers an approximate amount of exercise you'd have to do to shed those same calories.
Want to drink a can of Coke? That's 17 minutes of basketball or 32 minutes of yoga for you (and by "you," Coca-Cola is referring to a woman who weighs 60 kilograms -- or about 133 pounds). Or, if you aren't the gym- or studio-going type, you can work it off with a 29-minute dog walk, 45 minutes of ballroom dancing or ironing for 70 minutes.
"Making sure there isn't an imbalance between the amount of calories you take in each day and the amount you burn can help you to maintain a healthy weight," explains the website. "And the best way to ensure energy balance is by eating a well-balanced diet and enjoying regular physical activity."
This type of labeling isn't entirely new: Research shows that describing calories in terms of their exercise "costs" is effective, when compared to labels that just list calories -- or to no labels at all. One study of teenage soft drink purchasing habits found that when sodas were accompanied by in-store labels that described how much exercise would be needed to "work them off," sales for sugar-sweetened beverages dropped and sales for non-sweetened drinks, like water and seltzer doubled.
So will this new initiative help lower rates of sugary drink consumption? The fact that Coca-Cola is in the business of selling drinks suggests perhaps not. Of note, the drinks for which the exercise calculator exists are on the lower end of the sugar and calorie spectrum: a 12-ounce can of Cherry or original Coke is about as caloric as they get. Larger portions like the 20-ounce bottles are nowhere to be found. And most of the other drinks listed -- things like Powerade and VitaminWater -- only include the low- or zero-calorie versions. That's not bad, but it means the company isn't copping to their diet-busting options.
What's more, it's important to note that not all calories are created equal. While the U.S. government recommends that the average adult eat about 2,000 calories per day, they say that a very minimal number of those of those should come from "empty" sources. Soda's calories are considered empty because they do not offer any other nutrients.
Further, there is some evidence that drinking rather than eating calories can create a different effect on the body.In other words, the best way to avoid the calories that come in a sugary drink isn't to do 60 minutes of yard work -- it's simply to drink water in the first place. | <urn:uuid:52a186c3-51d7-49d7-96a4-5f61aaa03947> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kfgo.com/health-news-details.php?pageNum_rsNews=0&totalRows_rsNews=389&ID=5122 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958072 | 580 | 2.203125 | 2 |
BioReliance provides comprehensive services to assess the health of your animals. We have been a scientific leader in laboratory animal diagnostics for over 60 years.
Maintaining healthy animals is critical for ensuring that research results remain uncompromised. The same high quality diagnostic services that we offer to the research community, we also offer for production and companion animals. With deep experience and expertise, BioReliance utilizes several different technologies to meet your needs.
BioReliance testing programs are used world-wide by breeding colonies, animal facilities, pharma/biotech and universities. We also offer for sale the same Diagnostic Materials we use internally. We are unique in our breadth of services and products for animal diagnostics.
Our comprehensive offerings can help you to maintain research integrity, minimize animal losses, and reduce time lost to animal health related problems. Our scientific staff has specialized knowledge and expertise and is always available for consultation.
Key Service Offerings:
Targeted Viral Screening
Serology testing for more than 35 different nonhuman primate viruses and over 30 different rodent, rabbit and ferret microbiologic agents. Technology includes:
- ReliArray™ - This protein array platform screens animal sera at a high sensitivity and specificity
- ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)
- Confirmatory testing is provided at no additional charge, via:
- IFA (Indirect Fluorescent Antibody)
- HAI (Hemagglutination Inhibition)
- WB (Western Blot)
- Real Time Q-PCR
Comprehensive Health Assessment
A modern, well equipped necropsy laboratory is at the center of a suite of labs that provides complete bacteriology, histopathology, clinical pathology, parasitology, tissue banking, and customized studies for a wide range of laboratory animals including rodents, rabbits, nonhuman primates, dogs, cats and exotic species. The lab’s focus is on client service, quality results, and rapid turnaround times.
From a single live animal submission, or environmental sample, a wide variety of diagnostic services are available, including:
- Viral and bacterial diagnostic by Serology and Molecular Biology
- Necropsy Services
- Histopathology Services
- Parasitology Services
- Bacteriology Services
- Environmental Monitoring
- Additional Procedures – Customer Specific
Clinical Pathology Study Support
BioReliance provides a complete program of Clinical Pathology for any laboratory animal. Clinical Chemistry utilizes state-of-the-art technology for organ system and disease panels as well as individual chemistries. Hematology, Coagulation, Urinalysis and Immunoassays are also offered with the most sophisticated equipment available, and performed by personnel who understand animal diagnostics.
Clinical Pathology services can be offered as GLP compliant. All systems and instrumentation have been qualified, are fully integrated into our Quality Management System and are 21 CFR Part 11 compliant.
Our full range of services is available for all species, including production and companion animals. Please contact us for assays and a testing program to meet your needs.
Research Cell Line Testing
All biologicals derived from mice or murine cell lines are potential sources of murine viruses, which can become active when injected into mice, rats or hamsters. Murine virus outbreaks are a major concern for animal facilities, and many institutions require that materials of murine origin be certified free of viral agents before use in animal studies. Services include:
- Non-GLP Antigen Identification Tests by PCR
- MAP-IT (molecular antigen identification tests for Mice)
- RAP-IT (molecular antigen identification tests for Rats)
- HAP-IT (molecular antigen identification tests for Hamsters)
BioReliance AHS maintains laboratories with the latest equipment and technology properly qualified to recognized industry standards, including GLP. As a provider of diagnostic services for research, production and companion animals, BioReliance offers a broad offering of laboratory capabilities:
- Molecular Biology
- Clinical Pathology
BioReliance employs a dedicated team of friendly, helpful client service representatives and scientists with deep scientific expertise to assist you with all your laboratory animal diagnostic needs. These particular services include:
- Online sample submission, tracking and report retrieval is available through our Client Extranet. Results can also be e-mailed, faxed, or mailed as soon as testing is completed. GLP compliant services are available upon request.
- Fully validated LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) for receiving, tracking, laboratory workflow, and reporting results. The LIMS is 21 CFR Part 11 compliant and is utilized for all samples submitted.
- Customizable programs to meet your needs.
BioReliance manufactures and maintains its own antibodies and antigens, including the West Nile virus reagents developed with USAMRIID. These reagents are used throughout the industry in several diagnostic platforms including microarray and multiplex bead array.
BioReliance has an extensive list of materials for both rodent and nonhuman primate diagnostics. The same reliablility and excellence BioReliance provides in its own services is also available for any other laboratory through these high-quality reagents. Available formats include:
- ELISA Plates
Plates for ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) testing from more than 40 different viruses and microbiologic agents are available.
- Coated 96-well ELISA plates
- Multiple formats are available - please inquire
- Each plate is sufficient for 48 tests, including 48 wells of control antigen
- Antigen has been titrated for optimal performance
- All antigens are inactivated
- Control Sera and Liquid Antigen
Positive controls from a variety of pathogens are available as sera and liquid antigen. These polyclonal antibod¬ies were developed in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
- Available in a variety of different aliquot sizes, or customized to meet your needs
- IFA Slides (Indirect Fluorescent Antibody)
Most available antigens have been prepared into slides for IFA assays.
- 12-well slides coated with antigen containing cells
- Other Coordinating Reagents
BioReliance can provide conjugates, substrates, and diluents for use in your assays.
For more information, please inquire at firstname.lastname@example.org
Services are offered for many different species: | <urn:uuid:bee23b44-b1e8-40cf-bf99-fccc2dc82d13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bioreliance.com/animal_health_services.aspx?mid=935 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90468 | 1,344 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Germany’s auto industry saw an increase in car sales despite a widespread debt crisis that has crippled most European economies.
Germany is one of the exceptions, however, as a total of 296,800 new cars were registered last month – 3% more than in the same month a year ago. And over the first six months of 2012, sales rose by 1% to 1.63 million vehicles, the VDA industry federation said.
“The German auto industry is in better form than the rest of western Europe,” VDA chief Matthias Wissmann told a news conference.
Nevertheless, German car exports were feeling the pinch and fell by 1.0 percent over the January-June period, VDA calculated.
You can find more and more rubber news at:
Rubber Markets News, Rubber Prices Reports, Rubber Market Analytics & Outlook Reports | <urn:uuid:c5afc583-b0c1-47d8-a89a-42dcaaa14f13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://rubbermarketnews.net/2012/07/car-sales-up-in-germany-despite-european-economic-crisis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942134 | 176 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Schools a 'sitting target' for criminals?
MANILA, Philippines – Private schools and the University of the Philippines (UP) system have expressed alarm over a spike in reported crime incidents occurring right inside school campuses.
The Federation of Associations of Private School and Administrators (FAPSA) has branded themselves now as a "sitting target" of criminals and bandits who wreak havoc and fear among their students and teachers.
The FAPSA has around 10,000 private school members all over the country, while the UP system has the most number of campuses, and largest land area, among all schools in the nation.
UP students themselves are aware of news reports concerning crimes that are transpiring not only around the National Capital Region but also in provinces.
Just recently, a UP student was stabbed while being robbed of her belongings in Diliman.
UP students said they are very much afraid for their safety and urged the UP administration to do something about campus security.
"Akala ko safe na kami pag nasa loob ng campus," said student Christian.
Aother student, Ces, said she will just have to adjust to the situation by not walking on campus alone. Another student, Ross, urged other students to arm themselves, not with deadly weapons, but with something that they can use against criminals.
The 3 students believe it would be best to always walk with a group and avoid areas in campus where criminals would most likely to attack.
UP Vice President for Public Affairs Dr. Prospero De Vera said crimes may be high in UP campuses compared to other private schools since their school is an open campus where anybody could enter the huge hectare of land.
"UP has to find a solution outside of the traditional solutions," De Vera said. "It’s physically impossible to close the campus by fencing it."
He proposed adding more CCTV cameras and call boxes in every corner of the campus.
He also suggested adding light fixtures to still unlighted areas of UP campuses.
De Vera said the UP campuses, the Philippine National Police (PNP) and local government units should also coordinate with one another on how to strengthen security measures.
He said it is important that information between these units is shared either through seminars or training conducted among PNP personnel and school guards.
De Vera also proposed a campus map indicating the safe places as well as the danger areas that should be avoided by students in certain times of the day.
This is also the suggestion of the Eleazardo Kasilag, the president of FAPSA.
Kasilag said PNP trainings and seminars would be of great help in their schools, which were never considered to be a battle zone.
"Pag may dumating na karahasan, terorista, o atake, wala kami kalaban-laban, sitting targets kami," he said.
"Nakakatakot ang sitwasyon namin, wala kaming alam sa ganyan, academics field kami, hindi battlefield."
Kasilag said their member schools are also continually coordinating with barangay officials for "tanods" to also serve as security forces before, during and after crucial class hours.
National Capital Region Police Office chief General Leonardo Espina, meanwhile, vowed to coordinate with the school authorities.
"We are continuously coordinating with the school authorities," Espina said. "Keep their men down to the barangay level to prevent occurrences of crimes within the school area."
Kasilag and De Vera noted that most of the crimes usually do happen when the students are on their way home, or on their way to school.
They believe what happened in Imus, Cavite, where a teacher was robbed and shot, was an isolated case but still worthy of attention.
"UP is still a safe place. Many of the high profile incidents happen outside the campus except that they dump the body back to the campus," said De Vera.
Kasilag, for his part, said: "Walang dapat ikatakot ang mga magulang hagip namin ang responsibilidad, magtiwala lang sila sa amin.” | <urn:uuid:43e88c2e-7b12-4313-9028-433cc7714bd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/metro-manila/10/02/12/schools-sitting-target-criminals | 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 | 0.96961 | 878 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
-Illusions, by Richard Bach
It was remarked recently that friendship is the new capital. The implication is that people with few connections on social networking sites have less value than those that have lots of connections. I just read personal branding in a recession, and saw that the same sentiment was put forward there, as well. On the web, social equity is viewable through ... the amount of engagement you have on social networks. Quantity, not quality.
I strongly disagree with this idea.
First, I want to be very clear about my use of the word "friend". To me, a friend is someone to whom I will unconditionally give money. A friend is someone I'll go out on a line for. Someone I'll pick up in the middle of the night if they need a ride, no questions asked. It is someone in whom I can confide. I've long held a clear distinction between "friend" and "acquaintance," and the number of people I call friend is small. I'm careful not to refer to people as "friend" unless they truly are. If they're not a friend by my definition of the word, I'll call them a "buddy" or "a guy I hang out with" or some similar lexical indication of a casual relationship.
Following someone on Twitter does not make them my friend. To make the claim that someone with more followers is somehow a more "valuable" person is outrageous in my mind. In part, this is because I see friendship as a two-way street. I don't think it's possible for me to consider someone a friend (by my definition of the word) if they aren't capable or willing to reciprocate that relationship. In online relationships and social networking sites, the power users with thousands of so-called "friends" aren't really establishing friendships because the relationship is largely one-way. The social network power users aggregate and redistribute information, but what do they give back to the people from whom they glean the information they rebroadcast? Maybe a link? Maybe a "shout out"? That's not a very rewarding relationship, is it?
I think the fundamental issue here is the way in which folks use social networking sites. Some folks seek to use them for professional purposes, while others seek to use them for purely personal purposes. It's easy for people "doing business" on social networking sites to underestimate the importance of the social aspect of many of these sites and services, and to miss the point entirely on how they can be used to strengthen the bonds of real friendships. When using social networks for professional pursuits, quantity is important. Following a lot of people from which you can obtain information improves your chances of getting information worth sharing. But it can be a full-time job to separate the wheat from the chaff. And the people you follow aren't really "friends" are they?
I know that my stark separation of "friends" and "acquaintances" is not standard for most folks, and that's okay with me. It would be interesting, though, to see social networking sites offer some relationship indicator other than simply "friend". But I suppose terms like "leech" and "peon" aren't likely to get much use in a social networking site, are they? | <urn:uuid:a0884d9d-8fb6-4963-b321-81def87e4636> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://skippy.net/tag/social-networking | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00052-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970518 | 697 | 1.78125 | 2 |
gary clark wrote:
> I must apologise for my ignorance in advance what is
> svn and where do I get it?
"svn" is short for "Subversion". The easiest way for Windows users to
get it is to install Cygwin (http://cygwin.com/). Subversion is not
part of the default Cygwin install, so you'll have to dig through the
package tree during the installation to turn it on.
You can get further pointers by searching for "Subversion" on the main
> Dont know too much about this svn version?
We keep the MySQL++ source code in an svn repository. So, this gets you
access to the live copy of the source I'm working on right now. | <urn:uuid:047c3784-fd26-4b67-91f4-ebf1c5bb9e40> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lists.mysql.com/plusplus/6380 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912177 | 163 | 2.296875 | 2 |
"Government is looking for cost-effectiveness in all forms of medicine, and we want to show that this form of testing is worthwhile," said Dr. Dawna Gilchrist, a specialist in adult medical genetics at the University of Alberta. A one-year clinical case study conducted by Gilchrist, and other researchers at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, shows that significant cost-savings were achieved while testing a large family for a rare cancer syndrome.
The findings were published in this month's issue of Clinical Genetics.
Dr. Gilchrist, said little data exists on paper to show that genetic testing is cost-efficient. "Through papers such as this, governments may be more inclined to increase funding for genetic services and testing." The case study helps document that genetic testing for mutations in well-characterized, dominant genes is cost-efficient because it either rules in or rules out carriers. The need for further clinical screening is eliminated in those without the mutation.
"Savings are realized when family members are proven not to be at risk for a disorder, and further genetic and clinical screening is unnecessary," said Dr. Gilchrist, lead author on the paper. "The savings can be appreciated both immediately and in the future. And, we've brought relief to the person worried about inheriting a disorder." In this particular case, two asymptomatic family members, found to have the mutation, were able to have prophylactic surgery to significantly decrease their risk of cancer in the future--also a potential savings in health care costs.
The cost analysis was done while testing a large family for multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, a rare hereditary syndrome consisting of cancers o
Contact: Bev Betkowski
University of Alberta | <urn:uuid:a3c7014b-96f8-4a32-9b5a-287658599485> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-2/Genetics-testing-saves-health-care-dollars-2073-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961984 | 355 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Taxes are perpetually a source of debate in this country, from federal taxes right down to the water and sewer taxes charged by local municipalities. Legal disputes often arise when certain taxpayers feel they are paying more than their fair share. In Armour v. Indianapolis, a group of Indiana taxpayers took their tax fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court when a switch in tax policy benefited some more than others.
The Facts of the Case
Indiana’s Barrett Law allows municipalities to fund public improvements through special assessments apportioned equally among abutting properties. Under this law, the City of Indianapolis funded the Brisbane/Manning Sanitary Sewers Project. The City levied a $9,278 special assessment that could either be paid in a lump sum or in monthly installments.
One year after levying the special assessment, Indianapolis adopted the Septic Tank Elimination Program (STEP), which financed projects in part through bonds. After switching to the new financing method, the city forgave the debts owed by the property owners who paid in installments. However, the City did not refund any portion of amounts already paid.
A group of taxpayers who paid in full argued that by forgiving the outstanding debt of some taxpayers without issuing refunds to those who made a single full payment, the City of Indianapolis had violated the Equal Protection Clause.
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© Donald Scarinci, Scarinci Hollenbeck | Attorney Advertising | <urn:uuid:0b046b34-8682-4228-b5a3-19742aa81187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=857042a5-d2a6-4777-bd78-47e1da5fdfb2 | 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 | 0.925851 | 407 | 1.828125 | 2 |
For the past two days, I have been listening to the BBC’s live coverage of the England/India cricket matches in England. I have no idea what is going on, although I gather that England is winning. There is something very soothing about this commentary; it is not excitable like some football commentary (no GOOOOOL! calls.) It is definitely not for the beginner, yet I could listen to it all day; it is so soothing.
I have written about my fascination for cricket, and I continue to be fascinated by cricket because it is so inscrutable, aided by a lingo that verges on the ridiculous to the outsider. Cricket is one of the last vestiges of the British Empire, which is why the prominent nations are England and former British colonies (including Australia, New Zealand, a conglomerate of Caribbean countries, nations of the South Asian subcontinent, and former British holdings in Africa.) Unlike football, which spread beyond the official and unofficial British Empire and continues to grow, cricket seems content to be beloved by the few (granted “few” is well over a billion and a half.) Cricket deliberately limits outsiders, which smacks of elitism and Empire. Is there any question why cricket has not spread?
Learning another sport is like learning a language. You have to get the vocabulary, but you also have to learn the grammar, the nuances, and at least be able to distinguish regional dialects. For an American (me), football is like Spanish. It’s something I’ve been aware of since I was a child and learned the odd word. Like Spanish, football is generally easy to learn. Baseball in contrast, the prototypical “American” sport, is like English. Whether you like or dislike baseball, if you are American, you are surrounded by it from birth. Baseball is part of American national heritage, and its slang has infiltrated American English. I am no fan of baseball (I always raise an eyebrow when a baseball fan complains that football is boring), yet I can follow a baseball game, which I often have to do when I visit my family. In contrast, cricket (for an American) is like Latin or ancient Greek, or perhaps Sanskrit. Every once in a blue moon, you come across a cricket term in American English, but those terms are few, far between, and their origin has been completely obscured.
Baseball and cricket are very similar, almost cousins. Both have their origins in English bat and ball folk games, much like football, both rugby codes, Australian Rules Football, Gaelic football, and American football and its derivatives all descend from their own ur-sport. The similarities between baseball and cricket go well beyond origin though. Both are slavishly obsessed with statistics and quantification. Both have a mythic development site; cricket has the Marylebone Cricket Club which established the rules of the game, and baseball has Cooperstown, New York, where according to discredited legend, Abner Doubleday invented the game in a cow pasture (regardless of the veracity of the Doubleday legend, baseball firmly affixed its imprimatur on the story by housing its Hall of Fame in the town.)
Another similarity between baseball and cricket is literature. Yesterday while I was listening to the BBC’s cricket coverage, one of the commentators mentioned that cricket is a game that spawned wide body of literature, while football has not. At least in English–I cannot speak to other languages–there is some truth to this; cricket lends itself to literature (of variable quality) whereas football literature is not quite of the same breadth. Some of England’s greatest writers have written about cricket. Baseball, like cricket, lends itself to a literary culture although for different reasons. There is some remarkably literary fiction and non-fiction written about baseball or using baseball as a theme, metaphor, or launching pad for a larger idea. One of the great essays that I have read is Gay Talese’s famous Esquire piece about Joe DiMaggio “The Silent Season of a Hero.” (Talese also wrote an essay about women’s football, specifically about Liu Ying, the Chinese player whose penalty kick was saved in the 1999 World Cup final.)
Despite what BBC cricket commentator believe, it is not true that football lacks a body of literature, but one cannot deny that a football’s literary culture is not of the same caliber as either cricket or baseball–at least in English; I cannot speak to other languages. Much of the great football literature is either memoir, history, journalistic, or originated in fan culture or on the Internet. There are some famous standouts, Eduardo Galeano’s romantic history Football in Sun and Shadow (in Spanish), and Nick Hornby’s memoir Fever Pitch are two of the most famous. (In fiction, football is woefully lacking. I have not read The Damned United, which seems to be the only work of football fiction in English, but I did see the movie.) Football literature probably does not have the same influence and import that cricket and baseball-related literature do.
(This paragraph is all theory, I have no research to back it up, so please feel free to agree, disagree, and present alternative theories.) If I had to wager a guess, the reason for baseball’s popularity among the literati is because, unlike in Britain, there is not a strong social class distinction in American society. I would also guess that the reason there is more literature about cricket than football is because the elite of British society, which preferred cricket, tended to be the educated class, and Britain’s literary output came from that educated class. Football, being the game of the masses, was until recent times left out in the cold. In contrast, baseball was enjoyed across the American social and geographic spectra while sport associated with either the British Empire and/or the elite fell into a niche or petered out (today’s American national cricket team has but one actual American player.) Because baseball was seen as so quintessentially American, immigrants and their children became fanatically devoted to the sport. Some of those children became writers (Bernard Malamud, Talese, etc.) and baseball inspired them in some way.
Because literary culture is not what it used to be,* there may never be the great literary football fiction. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; football has gotten along fine without it, and the history and development of the game is just as fascinating. The sport which boasts the finest literary (and cinematic and artistic) body or work is boxing, which proves that just because the artistic output is great it does not mean the sport is.
This weekend I briefly watched the World Cup of Softball on ESPN. If you are like me, you didn’t know there was a World Cup of Softball. There is also apparently a Softball World Championship. Apparently these are run by different organizations. I must admit I am not all that interested in the intricacies of world softball governance.
Softball is an odd sport. Taken at face value, softball is like baseball for people who aren’t good enough to play baseball, and do not have the necessary training. It also requires much less space. This explains why softball is a more popular sport to play. From 1996-2008 softball was an Olympic sport, but then I never realized it existed. In that time, softball was dominated by the US team, which is one of the reasons it is no longer an Olympic sport. Today, only a handful of nations play softball seriously (it’s The Onion, you can laugh.) Ironically (bitterly so), at the last softball match in the Olympics, the US lost its title to Japan.
Even though I don’t particularly enjoy baseball, I do understand it, which is why I can say that watching even a little bit of the World Cup of Softball was like watching a train wreck; it was excruciating to see but impossible to turn away from.
Although both men and women play softball across the country, the sport is inextricable from gender politics. Baseball is for men and softball is for women. When the Olympics eliminated softball, baseball too was eliminated. There was not a big push to keep baseball, but softball became something of a cause célèbre. Baseball does not need the Olympics to sustain itself and increase its audience (or marketing potential), but softball has no other major venue despite having two world championships. Thanks to the Olympics, softball was in the vision (peripheral perhaps but vision nonetheless) of the American public. Softball even produced a legitimate media star in Jennie Finch, although she was noted as much for her beauty as for her copious athletic ability.**
I want to support softball, at least in theory. Under this theory I support women’s basketball and I know the names of some players even though I find basketball to be almost as painful to watch as baseball. The difference though is that unlike women’s football and women’s basketball, softball is not women’s baseball, it’s a watered-down version of a sport that women once played, and still do. Softball was basically forced onto women because baseball was a closed shop. Title IX, which usually made things better for women, only added to the problem. Baseball and softball were deemed to be equivalent, and if the school offered softball, it could keep women out of baseball (women’s baseball has a long and tortured history.) As a result, generations of women were forced into an ersatz baseball.
I don’t want to come down too hard on softball, because I don’t want to belittle the players. They are great athletes who train very hard. Furthermore, the national softball league (National Pro Fastpitch) is not exactly setting the nation aflame. There are fewer teams there than in the WPS. On the other hand, according to NPR, women who play for the National Baseball Team get even less respect. Did you know there was a World Cup for Women’s Baseball or before that a Women’s World Series (both of which having teams from countries other than just the US and Canada)? Me neither.
I have not seen a women’s baseball match, so I cannot speak to the skill level involved. I am not sure what kind of market, if any, there is for women’s baseball or softball, but I imagine that the divide hurts both, particularly women’s baseball. Women’s baseball is decades behind in growth and I imagine that, like me, most people do not realize it exists. In the NPR article that I linked to, I found this very poignant quote:
“Despite what they achieved, they never got the recognition they deserved,” says Nicholas A. Lopardo, general manager of the 2004 USA Baseball Women’s National Team. “We’re still scratching our heads to figure out why.”
This phenomenon is not unique to women’s baseball. Just ask any member of the 1991 USWNT who won the first football World Cup in China. The good news is that it can get better if the stars align. Perhaps it is time to stop pretending that softball is a legitimate alternative and that women can and should play baseball. Just like the men.
* I cannot say for sure why literary culture has basically vanished from the US, but I suspect there is blame on all sides. We have a television-driven media that shuns any indication that the lowest common denominator is neither low nor common. In other words, the media believes that we are all imbeciles and treats as us such. There are exceptions, but the exceptions are few and far between. The literati are also to blame for this. Tolstoy and Dickens serialized their novels in literary and popular magazines. Today, the universities have monopolized and gentrified high culture. To be a “great” writer (as opposed to a popular one), one needs to (1) get an MFA from a prestigious program; (2) craft sentences like Nabokov or Joyce only more incomprehensible; (3) ensure that only a select few (mainly university professors) will read, care about, and understand your fiction; (4) write about topics that the plebs (the general reading populace) cannot relate to; (5) focus heavily on the inner lives of “flawed” (i.e. shallow) central characters; (6) win prestigious awards that a publisher can put on a dust jacket; and (7) shun and belittle all attempts to attract a larger public. Also, you need to degrade both anything the larger reading public likes and that public itself for liking it.
** Finch also had the advantage of being a beautiful heterosexual player in a sport that, unfairly, has been stereotyped as a lesbian sport in the same way that men’s figure skating has been unfairly stereotyped as a gay men’s sport. While both softball and figure skating are perhaps more welcoming to gay and lesbian competitors and fans, it does a great disservice to both those sports and their competitors. It also harms their numbers. Coincidentally, neither women’s football nor women’s basketball are perceived as lesbian sports in the United States, and are therefore okay. Nigeria is a different situation. | <urn:uuid:3f3bd500-4b7e-42f5-b495-4cd6caa7a98a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tracingthetree.wordpress.com/tag/books/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975134 | 2,799 | 2 | 2 |
When Stacey went over to her new friend Chelsea's house, she met Chelsea's 4-year-old brother, Shawn. "Hi," said Stacey, smiling. Shawn looked at her but didn't say anything. Then he turned back to a toy he was holding. Later, in Chelsea's room, Stacey said, "I don't think your brother likes me."
"It's not your fault," said Chelsea. "It's not that he doesn't like you — Shawn has autism and it's hard for him to talk sometimes. But I can show you how to play with him, if you want."
Stacey wanted to know what autism meant. Let's find out.
What Does Autism Mean?
People usually call it autism (say: aw-tih-zum), but the official name is autism spectrum disorders. Why? Because doctors include autism in a group of problems that kids can have, including Asperger syndrome and others. These problems happen when the brain develops differently and has trouble with an important job: making sense of the world.
Every day, our brains interpret (understand) the things we see, smell, hear, taste, touch, and experience. But when someone's brain has trouble interpreting these things, it can make it hard to talk, listen, understand, play, and learn.
A kid's symptoms could be very mild, severe, or somewhere in the middle. For example, some kids might be upset by too many noises or sounds that are too loud. Kids who have milder symptoms don't mind loud noises so much. Someone with mild symptoms might need only a little bit of help. But a kid with severe symptoms might need a lot of help with learning and doing everyday stuff.
Kids with autism often can't make connections that other kids make easily. For example, when people smile, you know they feel happy or friendly; when people look mad, you can tell by their face or their voice. But many kids who have autism spectrum disorders have trouble understanding what emotions look like and what another person is thinking. They might act in a way that seems unusual, and it can be hard to understand why they're doing it.
A kid with an autism spectrum disorder might:
have trouble learning the meaning of words
do the same thing over and over, like saying the same word
move his or her arms or body in a certain way
have trouble adjusting to changes (like trying new foods, having a substitute teacher, or having toys moved from their usual places)
Imagine trying to understand what your teacher is saying if you didn't know what her words really mean. It is even more frustrating if a kid can't come up with the right words to express his or her own thoughts, or tell a parent what he or she needs or wants. Sometimes this can make a kid very upset and frustrated.
Some issues — like not wanting to try new foods or not wanting anyone to move your toys — affect lots of kids, not just those who have an autism spectrum disorder. But kids with these disorders have more trouble "growing out of it" and learning to handle stuff that's challenging and annoying.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 88 kids has an autism spectrum disorder, but no one knows what causes them. Scientists think that there's a connection to genetics (something to do with a kid's genes) and the environment. Some kids might be more likely to get autism because it runs in their families. Other kids get it even if nobody in their family has these types of problems.
Knowing the exact cause of autism is hard because the human brain is very complicated. The brain contains more than 100 billion nerve cells called neurons (say: nur-ahns). Each neuron may have hundreds or thousands of connections that carry messages to other nerve cells in the brain and body. The connections and the chemical messengers they send (called neurotransmitters) keep the neurons working as they should. When they do, you can see, feel, move, remember, experience emotions, communicate, and do lots of other important stuff.
In the brain of a kid with autism, some of those cells and connections don't develop normally or don't get organized like they're supposed to. Scientists are still trying to understand how and why this happens.
Getting Help for Autism
The earlier a child starts getting help, the better. But figuring out if a kid has an autism spectrum disorder can be difficult at the beginning. A parent is usually the first to think that something could be wrong. Maybe the child is old enough to speak but doesn't. Or a kid doesn't seem interested in people, has a hard time playing with others, or acts in unusual ways.
There is no cure for autism, but doctors, therapists, and special education teachers can help kids learn to communicate better. A kid might learn sign language or get a message across by pointing at pictures. The care team also can help improve a kid's social skills, stuff like taking turns and playing in a group.
Some kids who have mild symptoms will graduate high school and may go to college and live on their own. Many will always need some kind of help. But all will have brighter futures when they have the support and understanding of their families, doctors, teachers, therapists, and friends. So be sure to be a friend! | <urn:uuid:b667971b-d8f2-4456-8376-39fc81040633> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kidshealth.org/PageManager.jsp?dn=YourOrganizationsName&lic=240&cat_id=20076&article_set=22411&ps=304 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974865 | 1,098 | 3.515625 | 4 |
The history of the Hampden Police Department began in
1965. This is when the full-time police
department was established, but law enforcement in the Town of Hampden can be
traced back to as early as 1878. The
Town of Hampden was originally a part of the Town of Wilbraham, known as South
Wilbraham. The residents of the South
Wilbraham area wanted a local community center for gatherings other than in
Wilbraham proper. These residents voted
for the approval to build such a center.
On October 8th, 1850 a parcel of land was purchased by the
residents of South Wilbraham from the Town of Wilbraham. The deed for this land was notarized by the
local Justice of the Peace, Stuart Beebe.
This was significant because on the land Academy Hall was built. Academy Hall was a community school and
meeting center for the local residents.
Once Academy Hall was built, it was determined that the
residents of South Wilbraham would meet there on Monday nights. As a result of these meetings, the idea of
South Wilbraham to separate from Wilbraham and form their own township was
realized. The township was to have its
own governing body and its own law officers.
These officers would be empowered as constables.
The position of constable was an elected one. All constables were elected by town residents
for a term of three years. A constable
was a representative of the law and had the duties of enforcing the laws,
notifying and warning the inhabitants of the township, and getting those
qualified to vote in elections and other town affairs to do so.
On March 28, 1878 the South Wilbraham region of Wilbraham
became the Town of Hampden. The town
residents elected three members to the Board of Selectmen to oversee the town
government. It was also determined that
these selectmen would be the governing body of the police. They were duly titled as the Police
The first law enforcement officer of Hampden to be elected
was Nelson V. Chaffee. Mr. Chaffee was already
the constable of the former South Wilbraham area when it was part of
Wilbraham. He was joined by two more
constables in the following year of 1879.
These two other elected officials were A.F. Ballard and John Q.
Adams. It was determined that the Town
of Hampden needed three constables to serve the large area of the town.
The constables would serve civil processes and employ police
powers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
They would patrol the main roads on foot or horse back and were usually
summoned by the town residents or selectmen if their services were needed. As a part of their duties, the constables
would issue fines for violations of the laws.
These fines were in the form of citations. These citations were presented to the Board
of Selectmen at a Monday night meeting for payment by the violators. In the case of criminal offenses, these
violators were transported to the Police Court in the City of Springfield. Hampden did not have any lockup facilities
and had to pay Springfield a free for the lockup and incarceration of
For the period between 1888 and 1920, telephone communications
were being set up throughout most of Hampden.
A telephone system was established to notify the constables of any calls
for service. During the day, The Board
of Selectmen would receive all calls at the Town Hall. They would then call the constables. During the night, the constable on duty would
receive the calls directly at his home.
In the year 1921, the Massachusetts State Police Uniformed
Division was established. Shortly
thereafter, a barracks was located in the neighboring Town of Monson. These troopers were issued patrol cars. A part of the State Police duties was to assist
the town constables. The constables
would call the State Police to transport prisoners to Springfield Courts as the
constables did not have their own patrol cars.
The town was growing and the crime rate was increasing. In 1926 it was voted the Town of Hampden
would hire two special police officers to work with the three constables. These special police officers had police
powers only when on duty or when assigned to a special detail. They could not service civil processes and
they were not employed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like the
constables. They were effective in
fighting crime so the town continued to hire more special police officers.
Beginning in 1932, the town hired one
additional special police officer about every one or two years up until
1954. In 1954, it was decided the town
would try to maintain ten special police officers to assist the three elected
constables. These special police offices
and constables all had police telephones in their homes. The selectmen would call whoever was on duty. That officer would then respond to the call
in his own private vehicle.
In 1965, a special committee was set up to investigate the possibilities
of establishing a full time police department for the Town of Hampden. An announcement was placed in all the area
newspapers. The announcement stated that
the Town of Hampden was accepting applications for the position of a full time
Chief of Police. The town received 40
applications and a test was administered by the State police in the Hampden
Town Hall. The three constables and the
ten special police officers would all work for the Chief of Police.
On April 4th 1966 the Board of Selectmen
announced that William G. Joy was the Chief of Police for the Town of
Hampden. Chief Joy was given a budget of
$19,545 to outfit his department. He
purchased the first patrol car that year and had it equipped with a mobile
phone. The Chief had a desk in the
selectmen’s officer at the town hall during the day where he dispatched his
officers in the patrol car by the mobile phone.
Whoever had the patrol car that night, that officer would take the
call. These early mobile phones were not
only available to the police but the public as well. If the line was busy, the dispatched call
would not go through to the patrol car.
As a result of this, Chief Joy established a system of red lights on the
front porches of the officers’ home and at the town hall. If the patrolling officer saw a red light on,
he was to stop there and inquire as to where he was to be dispatched to.
In 1966, the first full time officer was
appointed, Robert Newton. Officer Newton
was also assigned to the newly established Palmer District Court. All their court cases were tried in
Palmer. Chief Joy prosecuted all
department cases himself.
In 1967, The Hampden Police Department purchased it first
radio system. It operated on an AM
frequency band. It was mostly inadequate
for the hilly area around Hampden. Chief
Joy would operate the system during the day from the town hall. At night, he would operate the radio from the
kitchen of him home. He had an antenna
mounted on the roof of his house for reception.
The one patrol car was equipped with a radio to receive calls and to
transmit back to the Chief. That same
year, Chief Joy began teaching instructional classes to reserve officers. Upon completion, and passing the exam, they
became special police officers. This
title would later be replaced with the title of reserve officer.
The Hampden Police Department was given the basement of the
town hall to build a police station in 1968.
George K. Stone was also appointed as a full time police officer that
The department now had a full time
Chief of Police, two full time police officers, and fifteen special police
officers; now call reserve officers. All
these officers, including Chief Joy built the police station and installed the
first ever Hampden Police Department holding cell.
More improvements and changes were added to the Hampden
Police Department in the 1970’s. The
police radio was boosted by adding a power station on top of Burleigh
Road. The police department purchased
its second police car, also equipped with a radio in 1970.
A major change was that Chief Joy suffered a
heart attack and had to retire in 1971.
Officer George Stone was appointed as Acting Chief of the Police and
later appointed as Chief of Police in 1972.
As town prosecutor was hired in 1971.
He prosecuted all the police cases at Palmer Court. At this time, there were three full time
officers and twenty reserve officers working under Chief Stone. Chief Stone was also a member of the Board of
Directors of the Regional Drug Task Force.
In that same year of 1972, Chief Stone was able to secure a communications
grant. He changed the AM radio frequency
to a more power VHF FM frequency.
Through this same grant, he was able to establish a separate frequency
to a radio system for all police departments in the Hampden and Hampshire
county areas. This system became known
as the Western Massachusetts Law Enforcement Channel, or WMLEC. This radio system was designed so that
officers from all over these counties were able to contact each other via
radio. The system was not fully functional
until 1974 and is still used today.
Other significant events came about in the middle seventies and early
eighties. Some of these were in 1975 the
Hampden Police Department received a grant from the Governor’s Highway Safety
Commission in Boston. With this grant, a
radar unit was purchased for one of the patrol cars, and a breathalyzer unit
for the station. Another significant
event, 1976 was the departments’ third marked patrol car. The first ever full time sergeant was
appointed in 1978, Officer Donald Bouchard was appointed to this position. At this time the department had a Chief of
Police, a sergeant, four full time officers, and fifteen reserve offices.
In 1996 there were not three sergeants, six full time
officers, twelve reserve officers and the Chief of Police. That same year Philip J. Adams, a sergeant at
the East Longmeadow Police Department became the Chief of Police replacing retiring
Chief Stone. In 2002, Chief Adams
retired and Douglas Mellis, a sergeant from the Longmeadow Police Department,
was appointed the new Chief of Police.
In 2005, Chief Mellis became the Chief of Police in the Town of East
Longmeadow and Sgt. Farnsworth was chosen to serve as the next Chief of Police in
the Town of Hampden.
NOTE – I would like to thank john DiMaio (a former Hampden
Police Officer and currently a law enforcement officer in Florida, for
gathering these facts. If you believe
that this information is inaccurate or if you find any errors in the above content,
please email at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:520215d3-e3ae-4745-8f3f-f455fd0dc53b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hampdenpolice.com/7301/index.html | 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 | 0.983614 | 2,326 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Thu September 22, 2011
Obama's Jobs Bill Pitch: A Bridge To Nowhere?
President Obama continued his tour in support of his jobs bill Thursday. The latest stop: Cincinnati, at the base of the double-decker Brent Spence Bridge.
The bridge sits on one of the busiest trucking routes in the country, and it's considered functionally obsolete.
Gerardo Claudio lives in Augusta, Ga., and works all over the U.S. He spends about three weeks on the road every month, which gives him a good look at the nation's infrastructure.
"The roads are in real, real awful condition, should I say," says Claudio, who was in Cincinnati on Thursday.
That has consequences for the type of work he does.
"The van that I drive, I mean right now going through all these potholes and this and that, it takes away from the vehicle value," he says. "It takes away in wear and tear."
Obama: Invest Now, Or Pay Later
The infrastructure deterioration that Claudio experiences is Fred Craig's specialty. Craig, an engineer, works on the Brent Spence Bridge Project.
Craig says the bridge was designed for 80,000 vehicles a day. Today, it carries double that number. The shoulders have been turned into traffic lanes, so when there's an accident, the cars back up for miles. Even so, roughly 4 percent of the country's gross domestic product crosses the bridge.
"Locally, it's very important because it connects northern Kentucky and southwestern Ohio," Craig says. "But nationally it connects the Great Lakes to the Gulf."
Obama argues that if the country doesn't invest in restoring this kind of infrastructure now, it'll pay for it later.
"Cincinnati, we are better than that; we are smarter than that," he told a crowd Thursday. "And that's why I sent Congress the American Jobs Act 10 days ago."
As the crowd cheered "Pass this bill," Obama took his Republican critics head-on.
"You know, we've got a lot of folks in Congress who love to say how they're behind America's jobs creators," he said. "Well, if that's the case, then you should be passing this bill. Because that's what this bill is all about, is helping small businesses all across America."
A short walk from the end of the bridge, Greg Cook runs a sporting-goods store. He says he thinks infrastructure jobs are a Band-Aid for the unemployment problem, and he's not interested.
A Short-Lived Fix?
"It's a short-lived fix," he says. "I mean, the guys will be working on the bridge for a couple years, and then they're out of work again."
The truth is, construction on the Brent Spence Bridge would not begin right away even if the bill passes tomorrow. The White House says it never claimed this project was shovel-ready. One reason it was chosen was its political symbolism.
The Brent Spence connects House Speaker John Boehner's home state of Ohio with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's Kentucky. On the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell said it would be great to fix this bridge, but the president's jobs bill won't get it done.
"Don't patronize us by implying that if we pass the second stimulus, that bridges will get fixed right away," McConnell said. "The American people heard the same thing when the administration was selling the first stimulus."
But small-business owner Jeffrey McLaurie says the first stimulus really helped this community. He runs Bromwell's Fireplace and Art Gallery, which calls itself the oldest business in Cincinnati. He says the first stimulus helped spur a mixed-use condo development along the river, called The Banks.
"There's 300 new families living down at The Banks, and more coming. And those people are buying products from me and other people downtown and in the region," McLaurie says. "And it also benefits and helps to repopulate the city center, which I think is very important."
This Cincinnati trip is the latest in a series of jobs events Obama has held across the country. Before this he was in Raleigh, N.C.; Richmond, Va.; and Columbus, Ohio. No coincidence those are also swing states he wants to win to get re-elected in 2012. | <urn:uuid:04bf75e1-ce2c-4bdc-8b40-2abd9e74cf74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kwgs.org/post/obamas-jobs-bill-pitch-bridge-nowhere | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973472 | 898 | 1.773438 | 2 |
PONTE VEDRA, Fla. -- The Poisoned Patriots Fund of America is hitting the road this weekend to raise awareness and money to assist those considered victims of contaminated water present at Camp Lejeune during a span of three decades.
The "Ride for the Cause" is set for Sunday, September 9, starting at 1 p.m. in Ponte Vedra and ending with a convoy of Jeeps on the beach at Vilano Beach two hours later.
"Just like Agent Orange, it is a big thing because there are so many sick ones out there, families as well," said Bob Kahaly who is a local Marine and is fighting toxic neuropathy and non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.
Kahaly says the local group got started a year ago to get the word out about contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, where Marines and their dependents were exposed to chemicals like benzene and vinyl chloride in drinking water.
Recently, President Obama signed legislation to assist those who were exposed to more than a dozen illnesses and diseases, including several cancers and female infertility.
Jacksonville's Veterans Services Office has been hearing from both Marines and dependents who lived on or near the base. The time span to be eligible for medical care is between 1957 and 1987.
Kahaly says the mission now is one of outreach and offering financial assistance when possible to victims who are just learning of their eligibility.
"There is a family in Tampa ... and the family had kidney cancer and the father recently died," said Kahaly on the need offer victims a place to turn for help and guidance on all the paperwork that is involved.
First Coast News | <urn:uuid:e74d3232-4bcc-4d3a-9bd8-fea470a76ae0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.firstcoastnews.com/rss/article/271960/3/Ride-for-the-Cause-targets-awareness-for-Camp-Lejeune-contaminated-water | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00071-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976986 | 341 | 1.773438 | 2 |
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News, Seattle
Astronomers have found the first example of a triple quasar, the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle has heard.
One quasar is rare, three are unprecedented, said Prof Djorgovski
Quasars are powerful sources of energy, thought to be powered by supermassive black holes.
At first, researchers thought the triplet was just an illusion, caused by the splitting of light beams.
But a team using Hawaii's WM Keck Observatory has found the system really involves three black holes.
Each quasar produces massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, including visible light and radio waves.
They are powered by gas falling into a black hole at the centre of a galaxy. This happens most efficiently when galaxies collide and merge.
A single quasar could be a thousand times brighter than an entire galaxy of a hundred billion stars.
Professor George Djorgovski, from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and colleagues studied a system called LBQS 1429-008.
It was found by another group of astronomers in 1989. They reported that it seemed to consist of two quasars.
At first, it was thought that one of the quasar pair was a mirage caused by an effect known as gravitational lensing.
This effect is caused by an object of large mass getting in the path of light coming from the quasar. This splits the light beams, in essence creating a double image.
But astronomers have since identified around 100,000 quasars and dozens of genuine binary quasars.
Professor Djorgovski's team found a third, faint quasar using one of the Keck's 10m telescopes and measurements from one of the European Southern Observatory's 8.2m telescopes in Chile.
The team used computer modelling to see if the observations could be easily explained by gravitational lensing. This explanation turned out not to be a good fit.
If the triple quasar had been down to lensing, the astronomers should have seen four quasar sources, not three. There would have to be something hiding one of the images.
There was no sign of a galaxy, or cluster of galaxies, that could have been the cause of the lensing effect.
The team has also documented small, but significant differences in the properties of the three quasars.
This observation is much easier to understand if the three quasars are physically distinct objects, rather than mirages.
"Quasars are extremely rare objects," says Professor Djorgovski. "To find three is unprecedented".
Professor Djorgovski thinks that the distribution of quasars in the Universe is not random.
Instead, he thinks that the collision and merging of galaxies - and the supermassive black holes that reside at their centres - may actually fuel these powerful sources of energy.
This could explain why there are more than the expected number of binary quasars.
The quasar is being seen during a period of cosmic time when such interactions between galaxies were at their height.
These phenomena may even play an important role in regulating galaxy growth, leading to the joint formation of galaxies and their supermassive black holes - which power the quasars.
Professor Djorgovski said it was also possible that quadruple quasars could yet be found. | <urn:uuid:b9f5ec73-6da8-481d-9d66-d0dbc8835fad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6243361.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948152 | 687 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence
By Elliott Horowitz
Princeton University Press, 356 pages, $35.
* * *
For most Jews, Purim is simply the most riotous of the Jewish holidays: It’s the innocent, if irreverent, celebration of Jewish survival in the face of an ancient threat of genocide. The rituals of Purim — masquerades, theatrical revelry, song and dance, festive afternoon meals, acts of charity and exchanging gifts — combine the best of Mardi Gras, Thanksgiving and Halloween.
But like those other celebrations, Purim has a dark side — one that has long been ignored, repressed or ritually allegorized by the rabbis. The most popular Hebrew Purim children’s song is all about “masechot, ra’ashanim, shirim ve-rikudim” (“masks, noisemakers, song and dance”). But the favored Purim tune in many Orthodox circles speaks to the festival’s more macabre elements. The lyrics for the yeshiva Purim standard, “Ve-Nahafokh Hu” (“And It Was Upside-Down”), are lifted straight out of that portion of the Megillah from which liberal Jews have tended to avert their eyes: “So the opposite happened, for the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them” (Esther, 9:1).
This verse is immediately followed by the Megillah’s gruesome account of Jews’ hangings of Haman and his 10 sons, and by their subsequent wholesale massacres of the gentiles of Shushan and its surrounding provinces.
As Elliott Horowitz displays in “Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence,” his dazzlingly erudite study of the many ramifications of the Purim odyssey from medieval times to our days — when the celebration of Purim has become an excuse for the most violent among the Israeli settlers to abuse, and occasionally murder, their Arab neighbors — the story of Mordecai, Esther and Haman has, over the centuries, accrued the most highly charged symbols of the mutual hatred between Jews and gentiles. While the Megillah’s account of the rivers of blood in which Purim was conceived may have no actual historical basis, its continued recitation has brought many ugly repercussions. Horowitz’s ambitious book achieves two accomplishments: the documentation of 1,500 years of Christian and Jewish interpretations of the knottiest, and naughtiest, sections of the Book of Esther, and then the chronicling of the actual social-historical consequences of those interpretations; that is, how Purim was used and abused through the ages.
On the Jewish side, the problem begins with Haman’s ancestry. He is identified in the Megillah as an Agagite, thus a descendant of the Israelites’ first genocidal enemy, the Amalekites — whom, as God commands, must be remembered and pursued to total extermination. Because of Haman’s nasty lineage, the Sabbath preceding Purim (known as Shabbat Zachor), is dedicated to remembering the treachery of Amalek and the eternal obligation to destroy the “seed of Amalek.” The rabbinic imagination has sown that seed over much of the earth.
More than just the ancestor of Haman, the Biblical Amalek was the grandson of Esau, whom Jews consider the father of Roman Christendom. That is where many of the troubles with Purim, unmasked by Horowitz, deepen. Already in the fifth century, the Jews were conflating the hanging of Haman with the crucifixion of Jesus. And on Purim, they allowed themselves to display publicly their contempt for the gentiles’ Lord and Savior. Hence Emperor Theodorus II’s edict of 408, instructing all his governors to “prohibit the Jews from setting fire to Haman… in a certain ceremony with sacrilegious intent (using) a form made to resemble the saint cross in contempt of the Christian faith.”
For many ceturies after Roman times, Jews continued to behave badly with respect to their neighbors’ religious symbols, as Horowitz documents in a rich chapter on the ways in which Jews expressed their fear and revulsion of the crucifix.
Beginning with Theodorus and ending with Hitler’s 1944 bitter observation that if the Germans lose the war, the Jews will establish a “second triumphant Purim,” Horowitz explains how the holiday was also employed by centuries of Christian clerics to promote antisemitism. We learn that Martin Luther’s hateful comment, in his infamous 1543 essay, “On the Jews and Their Lies,” that “the Jews love the book of Esther, which so well fits their bloodthirsty, vengeful murderous greed,” continued to resonate with German Lutheran and Catholic clerics, even in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In fairness, Horowitz also explores the later tendency of more liberal Christians, such as Methodists and Quakers, to allegorize the Megillah’s disturbing account of mass murder and emphasize its message of hope and salvation.
But among the most fascinating aspects of the intellectual history of Purim is the deep discomfort of many liberal Jewish thinkers with the holiday’s potential promotion of genocide. Leading 19th-century British Reform scholar Claude Montefiore, in an editorial in London’s Jewish Chronicle in March 1888, went so far as to call for Purim’s abolition. But such voices were always a small minority, as most Jews reveled in the story of Purim — massacres and all.
The book is richly illustrated with images of “hanging Hamans” — fanciful displays of Haman and his 10 sons hanging from a tree — that decorated many Megillot and Siddurim since the late Middle Ages. But, as Horowitz notes, such images disappeared rather suddenly from American Jews’ prayer books and scrolls in the early 20th century. He explains that American Jews, repulsed by their country’s deep racism, made manifest most cruelly in the Deep South’s lynching of blacks, had no stomach for the Megillah’s hanging images. Horowitz reminds us that Billie Holiday’s great lament of lynching, “Strange Fruit,” was written by liberal New York Jewish schoolteacher Abe Meeropol.
Lest the reader suspect Horowitz of fanciful speculation on the tensions for American Jews between Purim’s gallows and Georgia’s lynching, his account of Reform rabbi David Einhorn’s sermon for Shabbat Zachor, 1864 — “War With Amalek” — may prove convincing. Their abolitionist rabbi instructed the members of Philadelphia’s Knesseth Israel congregation that the Amalekites of 19th-century America were the Confederate slaveholders. Declaring that “God commands no war against the black color, but against the dark deeds of Amalek,” Einhorn challenged his congregants to ask themselves whether it was “anything else, but a deed of Amalek, a rebellion against God, to enslave beings created in His image, and to degrade them to a state of beasts having no will of their own?”
A century-and-a-half since Rabbi Einhorn’s brave, humanitarian use of the Amalek imagery, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin of the West Bank settlement of Efrat preaches in the opposite spirit, recklessly defining the Palestinians as “the seed of Amalek.” This is a cruel classification extended by Israel’s former chief Sephardic rabbi, Ovadiah Yosef, to Israeli leftist politicians. And in 1990, Baruch Goldstein was “inspired” by his literal reading of the Megillah to massacre 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron on Purim morning.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of Jews have long neutralized the Torah’s command to wipe out the Amalekites by ritualizing it. When I was a young child in Montreal, my grandfather explained that the mitzvah of “wiping out” Haman’s descendants was best fulfilled by writing the word “Amalek” in Hebrew on the soles of newly purchased shoes and then taking a stroll among our good French neighbors, whom, he assured me, certainly were not Amalekites. Horowitz recounts how another, more famous Montrealer, late novelist Mordecai Richler, recalled observing his grandfather, Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg — who, in addition from being the chief rabbi of Montreal, was a Torah scribe — testing his quills by writing, then immediately crossing out, the word Amalek.
The task, and occasional conceit, of historians, is to present the past as objectively as possible, to fight the foibles of our natural subjectivity by not allowing our personal views to distort our narrative. Achieving such neutrality is a goal that never can be perfectly attained, and it is especially difficult when dealing with such sensitive and potent subjects as those in “Reckless Rites.” Horowitz does not succeed fully in concealing his disdain for Israeli settlers’ bloody abuses of Purim. At the same time, he also scrupulously reports on parallel abuses of the holiday by left-wing American Jews — for example, the hippy Purim shpiel at a California Havurah during the Nixon era, in which the local campus Hillel rabbi impersonated the president’s senior aid, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, carrying a briefcase with the inscription “H.R. Haman”— and his account of Christian theologians’ antisemitic abuses of the Book of Esther, particularly those of German biblical scholars after the Holocaust, resonates with a deep, quiet anger.
At the end of his introduction, Horowitz writes: “I must confess that many of the hostile comments about the book of Esther that I encountered in the learned tomes that I consulted in some of the world’s great libraries made my blood curdle, and sometimes made my hand shake as I transcribed them. Readers, I suppose, will often hear the jingle-jangle of these discordant voices….”
What this reader kept hearing, rising above those “discordant voices,” was a scrupulously honest voice, dealing in exemplary fashion with an important subject that has been ignored by scholars precisely because of its extreme delicacy. In his execution of narrating the repercussions of Haman’s execution, Horowitz has enriched us with a model of historical scholarship. Anything but reckless, “Reckless Rites” is a rare gem of academic work that will make a real difference.
Allan Nadler, a frequent book reviewer for the Forward, is professor of religious studies and director of the Jewish Studies Program at Drew University. | <urn:uuid:5782bb7e-b8aa-47a5-9dca-cf2a21158e06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forward.com/articles/6694/haman-s-swaying-power-purim-and-the-image-of-th/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950695 | 2,329 | 2.515625 | 3 |
GW: Life & Times
Slide 4 — Family Man: A Letter to Martha«back
One area of George Washington's life that historians simply don't have much evidence to draw conclusions about is his marriage.
Shortly after resigning his military commission, GW wed Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy young widow, on January 6, 1759. They had met the previous year when Colonel Washington returned to supervise extensive renovations at Mount Vernon.
George and Martha never had any children of their own, but Martha had two young children by her first husband, Jacky (John Parke Custis) and Patsy (Martha Parke Custis), whom George was instrumental in raising. In later years, the Washingtons also adopted two of their grandchildren, known as Washy and Nelly.
From the documents, it is very clear that GW cared a great deal for his stepchildren and step-grandchildren. There are records of his careful management of their inheritances as well as letters to and from them. Furthermore, GW corresponded frequently with his many nieces and nephews and gave them advice, jobs and financial help over the course of his life.
There are, however, only three known letters that exist between George and Martha Washington. Before she died, Martha Washington purposefully burned the letters from her husband, to keep their relationship private. Two letters from Washington to his wife were found in a desk that Martha gave one of her granddaughters. Both date from the early months of the Revolutionary War, in June 1775. A brief note from Martha from 1777 has also recently been discovered by one of the editors at the Papers of George Washington. | <urn:uuid:5207f589-d30a-4b37-870c-59eaa3141b6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/education/life/life4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.986923 | 342 | 2.671875 | 3 |
UMass Amherst. College of Engineering, 1938-2007. (17 linear feet).
As early as 1867, Massachusetts Agricultural College offered engineering courses in surveying and the construction of roads and bridges — practical skills that would be valuable to farmers. After the establishment of a separate Department of Agricultural Engineering in 1914, and merger with the Department of Mathematics and Civil Engineering in 1938, UMass began to offer broader education in engineering. The Division of Engineering was created in 1945 to coordinate the expected post-war expansion. Since 1985, the College of Engineering has been organized in four academic departments: Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.
This record group documents the varied efforts to provide an applied technical education to students at UMass and its predecessors. In addition to the College’s annual reports and records of the Executive Council and Engineering Research Council; curriculum and program materials; reports and publications; , the record group includes materials from the first four deans of the College of Engineering.
- University of Massachusetts Amherst. College of Engineering | <urn:uuid:b3027baa-7dd4-4e63-82ff-b78bb620e890> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/umarmot/?s=%E2%80%9CMassachusetts%20Agricultural%20College.%20Department%20of%20Veterinary%20Science%E2%80%9D | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00061-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947707 | 222 | 1.921875 | 2 |
Mystic Tourism: Searching for the Yagé in Peru
By Chris Allsop
Mystic tourism, the basis for William Burroughs’ The Yagé Letters, has begun to develop a burgeoning legitimacy among high-end tourist lodges in the Amazon.
Patricia, our usually sober and reserved lodge manager, was getting excited. Attempting to allay any concerns about my forthcoming encounter with the ayahuasca (or yagé, pronounced ya-hey) hallucinogen, she had agreed to share her experiences with the drug.
Watching Patricia struggle to convey the ecstasy and profundity of the experience, demonstrating the wide-eyed inarticulation that is usually cue to get up and move to another part of Coachella, my anxiety began to increase: this stuff sounded strong.
Beating a trail
Yagé was strong enough by reputation to tempt Beat Generation writer and junkie William Burroughs to travel to South America in search of ayahuasca, a journey immortalized in the epistolary novel, ‘The Yagé Letters,’ comprising letters written first from Burroughs to Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, and then vice versa, when Ginsberg retraced Burroughs’ footsteps.
It was this literary trailblazing that had tempted me into my present journey of teen emulation; except I was now 30, had never worn flowers in my hair, and really should’ve known better. But the closing words of Burroughs’ novel, Junky, had hooked my hormonally demented teenage self and left a lasting mark.
The narrator (a thinly disguised Burroughs) is planning a trip to South America, and the novel concludes with the following mythologizing statement, “Maybe I will find in yagé what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke. Yagé may be the final fix.”
In reality, Burroughs made that trip to Colombia in 1953 buoyed up by research completed by Harvard ethnobotanist, Richard Evans Schultes, and reports that the drug awakened telepathy and the ability of psychic healing in those who partook. A lifelong heroin addict, he also hoped it could provide a cure for opiate addiction.
The precise origins of the practice of imbibing ayahuasca (which translates as “the vine of the soul”) are unknown. There is little doubt, however, that the “mother of all medicines” has played a role in Amerindian shamanistic medicine long before the first Europeans came across it in the early 1700s.
From the perspective of the present-day tourism industry, Burroughs could be classified as a pioneer of woolly-sounding ‘mystic tourism.’ Generally, experiences that fall under this umbrella term include visits to locations seen as ‘spiritual,’ the ingesting of natural highs, or, indeed, both of these things at the same time.
It’s a small, but burgeoning part of the tourism trade quietly promoted by some South American countries where ayahuasca grows wild and is readily available. However, seeking it out no longer has to involve an exhausting five-day jungle trek to an isolated village without decent water pressure.
Some jungle safari lodges located in isolated (but easily accessible) spots among the vegetal turmoil of the Amazon basin are beginning to cash in. Such places now frequently offer program designed specifically for guests looking to tuck into marmalade sandwiches of the mind with Paddington in darkest Peru.
I eventually chose my lodge, The Explorer’s Inn, located in Peru’s famously bio-diverse Tambopata Reserve and 58 km (36 mi) by river from the nearest town (Puerto Maldonado), on the basis that it was a research center as well as a commercial jungle safari destination.
The research aspect added essential gravitas with a suggested PhD in po-faced competence; if something went wrong I felt more confident of a lodge’s ability to keep me sane if solutions were approached from a scientific frame of reference, rather than have any problems exacerbated by the application of Amazonian leeches.
Making the flight from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado, I observe the long fingers of cloud that extend out from the Amazon basin to intertwine with the brown knuckles of the Andes.
The cloud cover eventually clears to expose blanket green below, broken only by thick coils of endless brown river spooling through seemingly stagnant routes. There is terrible turbulence encountered along this journey, and the hilarious irony of my fight or flight response brings me no comfort.
Upon landing I am keen for reassurance and look out for a bespectacled PhD in a safari suit. Instead, I am met by Alan, born and raised in Puerto Maldonado, and my guide for the next five days. He’s friendly, about 20, and dresses like a surfer.
Despite first impressions, Alan turns out to be a modern Mogwai; raised in and around the jungle he has powers of animal identification and detection that appear, to those new to his abilities, so preternaturally keen that he surely must lying.
With my ayahuasca experience booked in for the final day of my lodge safari itinerary, I have ample opportunity during numerous pedestrian safaris to question Alan about his own experiences with the drug. He’s taken it three times, whenever he’s been at a crossroads in his life and felt like he could benefit from a little otherworldly assistance.
Unfortunately for me, Alan is also the Inn’s resident joker, and usually laughs off my queries, sometimes asking me if I’m scared. To this I answer “yes,” he laughs, so it goes. The only intelligible information gleaned is that the ayahuasca experience, for him, was like, “flying through the jungle”.
The afternoon before my session Alan suggests that I skip the scheduled night walk (eschewing a final chance to glimpse the elusive Night Monkey) and instead, “prepare myself.” Not entirely sure what to do with this advice, I sit on the deck chair outside my room, sip water and become increasingly anxious.
Evening falls, and the jungle surrounding the camp becomes a blackboard over which fireflies chalk slow, short sine waves in ectoplasm green. I go inside, check my hair as if I’m about to go on a date, and head over to the dining room plagued by old college memories of marijuana-induced panic attacks.
Patricia and ‘the purge’
My talk with Patricia comes at dinnertime, about an hour ahead of my appointment with the shaman. Those about to take yagé are required to fast, as there’s a vomiting element to the imbibing process.
‘The purge’ (as the vomiting is usually known) is the part I am looking forward to the least, and hoping to avoid if at all possible (brew strengths can vary, as can the results they produce).
Over dinner, Patricia’s conversation switches between scientific pronouncements on how the hallucinogenic effects derive from the ayahuasca’s alkaloids acting upon the brain, to exulting that at its zenith the drug’s effects take you to “heaven.”
Her final piece of advice is to undergo the experience with a question firmly fixed in your mind, whether about your life, career or something else of similar importance. “And concentrate,” she says.
Alan arrives and gives me the nod: it’s time. He’ll be there for the whole experience, a familiar face to turn to in case I’m upset by the dancing crocodiles, or if I simply need assistance to get up and use the toilet. “Usually the latter,” he laughs, slapping me on the back.
We walk to a large, barn-like building on the outskirts of the compound. Inside it’s bare besides twenty or so empty beds arranged in the style of a hospital ward. The only light comes from a candelabra perched on a small circular table.
Also on the table are two tumblers and a jug. Bent over the jug is a small man in an oversized, dirty anorak who Alan introduces as the shaman. His personal appearance is, quite frankly, a big disappointment; a kind of modern mystical vagrant chic rather than the traditional headdress with ceremonial tree branch Burroughs encountered.
The shaman takes off his anorak and pours out the yagé. He knocks back a shot while I get a tumbler full. Alan explains that this shot is all that is needed for the shaman to act telepathically as a guide during my “journey.” Lucky old shaman, since thick, red yagé has the consistency of clay and tastes like soil.
Following the imbibing, we relax. I lie down in the middle bed, the shaman on the bed to my left. Alan places a bucket beside me, and reclines on the bed to my right. Silence descends as we wait for the drug to take effect. My stomach begins to feel very warm.
Over the next four hours, I am definite on only the following few points: that Alan falls asleep and begins to snore; that, at the time of the drug kicking in (after about half an hour) the shaman begins to whistle, which seems to be the extent of his (corporeal) role; that I manage to go to the toilet unaided, and successfully; that I don’t throw up; and that my career question, strapped to a mental mast while the psychedelic sirens of irresponsible drug use sing their persuasive songs, is answered.
This ‘answering’ happens subtly, in and around the visceral light show projected against the backs of my eyeballs, and comprised of old memories that drift up into my consciousness to take on new and unexpected significance.
By the time things are starting to calm down, and I’m ready to wake Alan and return to my room to sleep it off, I am absolutely one hundred percent convinced that I should never, under any circumstances, appear on a reality TV show.
Read more GoNOMAD stories about Peru
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The mission of the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department is to continually strive for an improved quality of life for all citizens through health promotion, disease and injury prevention, and pursuit of a clean and safe environment.
Healthy people in a healthy community.
Our Core Values
The Toledo-Lucas County Health Department will work with integrity to achieve excellence in all aspects of our work. We will make health promotion and disease prevention the cornerstone of our work. We will use the core public health functions of assessment, policy development and assurance as our framework for services. We will endeavor to make collaboration and empowerment our fundamental approach in creating healthy people in a healthy community. We will hold public accountability as a valued standard. | <urn:uuid:60b12bad-1221-4a16-8a85-58f98e0a0913> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oh-lucascounty.civicplus.com/index.aspx?nid=665 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00051-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935552 | 143 | 1.59375 | 2 |
- We're about 2 months into 2012, and now is the time when many New Year's resolutions fall apart... if they haven't already.
Yet there are some people who make it work. So what's the secret to keeping a resolution?
They seem to be a rare breed, people who actually keep their New Year's Resolutions. So what's their secret?
"The good old buddy system works the best... It's most successful if you make the resolution with say, a group. That way if one in your group starts falling behind, you give them a call and say ‘hey, you know , we’re really trying to make this happen this year. Let’s get back in there," says Chris Cook, Wellness Director for YMCA of the Northwoods.
If a friendly guilt trip isn't quite enough, or you'd rather fly solo, seeing the results as you work toward your goal could be the best motivator.
"They love it, they’re excited, they want to keep coming back for more. They come back maybe instead of two days a week, they’re coming three and four, and you’re seeing them almost every day," says Stephanie Ruckheim, a personal trainer with YMCA of the Northwoods.
Another key to success could be your perspective. Looking at your health as an investment could help you put fitness goals first.
"The first thing people cut out of budgets for financial reasons, or time constraints, is their health and well-being. And when you look at the grand scheme of things, the ultimate investment is how long you want to be around here," says Cook.
Another key may be to start small. Over-doing it in the beginning means your less likely to stick with a change for the long-haul.
"Maybe they came in a little too strong and had too big of a goal. Maybe shorten their time in the gym. Sometimes people spend even too much time, I mean you can spend too much time in here," says Ruckheim. | <urn:uuid:ae53a1a0-0942-44f2-a443-fe28e73d55d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wjfw.com/stories.html?sku=20120221174847 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974507 | 428 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Welcome Spanish teachers and Spanish learners! There’s no better place to start learning a language than from the beginning: the ABCs! My ABC Spanish will use the Spanish alphabet as the theme for learning pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar patterns, reading, and culture. You’ll find narrated slide shows, flash cards, activities, worksheets, and printables for each ABC slideshow theme. My ABC Spanish is perfect for kids from 1-100, at home or at school!
Check back soon. New “My ABC” units will be added every month. | <urn:uuid:b210c253-3e33-4495-87ad-b9c779ce48ac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://myabcspanish.com/2010/04/17/hello-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924039 | 117 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Crystalens offers significant advantages over other kinds of lens implants and corrective lenses. Standard (single vision) lens implants don’t have the ability to provide a full range of vision. Most people who have single vision lens implants MUST wear glasses for middle and near vision. Crystalens has the unique ability to focus on objects at varying distances using the eye’s natural muscle. This means the crystalens can provide sharper vision, without corrective lenses, throughout a full range of vision from near to far and everything in between.
Crystalens’ FDA one-year clinical study results indicate:
- 92% of the people enrolled in the study (implanted bilaterally) could see 20/25 or better at distance
- 96% could see 20/20 at arm’s length
- 73% could see 20/25 at near
- 98% of these people could pass their drivers test
- 100% could see their computer or put on their makeup
- 98% could read a magazine, all without glasses or contact lenses.
Also, your ability to see at approximately arm’s length (middle vision) will be greatly enhanced with the Crystalens. In addition, the quality of vision compared to wearing bifocals and/or trifocals is significantly improved. You’ll have a full range of vision; by simply looking at something, crystalens, mimicking the natural focusing ability of your eye, will automatically focus your eye at near, arm’s length, or distance.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Since everyone’s vision is different, results vary by patient. Distance vision will usually be very good within a day or two after surgery. Middle and near vision may be somewhat blurred, but will improve in a few days.
Drops that prevent the eye from changing focus will be applied to your eye after surgery. These drops dilate the pupil and you will notice a sensitivity to light until the drops wear off. These drops ensure the crystalens is correctly positioned in your eye as it heals. It will take 7 to 14 days for the effects of this drug to wear off. Dr. Boothe strongly recommends you wear sunglasses outdoors during this time period. You also may need reading glasses to help you read during this time.
After about 2 weeks, you will notice that your middle (arm’s length) vision and near vision are starting to improve. At this time, it is important that you discontinue the use of the reading glasses in order to strengthen the focusing muscle of your eyes.
It may take several months for your eyes to reach their full focusing potential. Try to avoid the use of reading glasses. The less you rely upon reading glasses, the sooner you will be able read without them. You may notice a difference in your vision from one eye to the other after your eyes heal. This is normal.
Everyone’s focusing ability is different. Most people will be able to see clearly at all distances, however, some people may be more comfortable with additional correction, particularly at night or in dim light. It is important to remember that implant surgery cannot resolve pre-existing visual conditions such as floaters, flashes, or visual field loss that are a result of conditions of the eye and not related to the lens. Dr. Boothe will thoroughly discuss the restoration of your vision, recommending a specific plan for optimizing your uncorrected vision.
While most patients experience much improved vision after cataract surgery, some will have better uncorrected vision than others. It may be necessary for some people to wear glasses for distance and/or near vision to obtain optimal visual acuity. The difference from standard lenses is that most crystalens patients will not be dependent on these supplemental vision aids to function normally.
Insurance coverage varies greatly depending on the policy and provider. Generally speaking, private insurance may cover the cataract surgical procedure and anesthesia. It may also allow a certain additional amount for the artificial lens implant. The insured is then required to pay a deductible as well as any additional amount above the primary coverage. (Some patients are responsible for the total payment - not all insurance companies will cover some.)
Your surgical counselor will review your insurance coverage and your surgical alternatives prior to the crystalens procedure. It may also be beneficial for you to contact your insurance carrier.
IOL Implants Web Marketing Powered by Ceatus Media Group LLC | <urn:uuid:4b3834e6-785d-41e4-b50b-b09bb5abddf4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boothelasercenter.com/crystalens.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00074-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948892 | 897 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Today's poem is from Lindsay's collection "The Congo and Other Poems", in the section headed "Poems Intended to be Read Aloud, or Chanted". Somewhat unusually, Lindsay has included explicit reading directions. I've marked these with a #. There are also several words emphasied in boldface, which I have denoted by *word*. See the links for a properly typeset version of the poem.
(Poem #1264) The Santa Fe Trail
(A Humoresque) I asked the old Negro, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane." I. In which a Racing Auto comes from the East # To be sung delicately, to an improvised tune. This is the order of the music of the morning: -- First, from the far East comes but a crooning. The crooning turns to a sunrise singing. Hark to the *calm*-horn, *balm*-horn, *psalm*-horn. Hark to the *faint*-horn, *quaint*-horn, *saint*-horn. . . . # To be sung or read with great speed. Hark to the *pace*-horn, *chase*-horn, *race*-horn. And the holy veil of the dawn has gone. Swiftly the brazen car comes on. It burns in the East as the sunrise burns. I see great flashes where the far trail turns. Its eyes are lamps like the eyes of dragons. It drinks gasoline from big red flagons. Butting through the delicate mists of the morning, It comes like lightning, goes past roaring. It will hail all the wind-mills, taunting, ringing, Dodge the cyclones, Count the milestones, On through the ranges the prairie-dog tills -- Scooting past the cattle on the thousand hills. . . . # To be read or sung in a rolling bass, with some deliberation. Ho for the *tear*-horn, *scare*-horn, *dare*-horn, Ho for the *gay*-horn, *bark*-horn, *bay*-horn. Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us, and great books bore us! Sunrise Kansas, harvester's Kansas, A million men have found you before us. II. In which Many Autos pass Westward # In an even, deliberate, narrative manner. I want live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics occur to him. I am a tramp by the long trail's border, Given to squalor, rags and disorder. I nap and amble and yawn and look, Write fool-thoughts in my grubby book, Recite to the children, explore at my ease, Work when I work, beg when I please, Give crank-drawings, that make folks stare To the half-grown boys in the sunset glare, And get me a place to sleep in the hay At the end of a live-and-let-live day. I find in the stubble of the new-cut weeds A whisper and a feasting, all one needs: The whisper of the strawberries, white and red Here where the new-cut weeds lie dead. But I would not walk all alone till I die Without some life-drunk horns going by. Up round this apple-earth they come Blasting the whispers of the morning dumb: -- Cars in a plain realistic row. And fair dreams fade When the raw horns blow. On each snapping pennant A big black name: -- The careering city Whence each car came. # Like a train-caller in a Union Depot. They tour from Memphis, Atlanta, Savannah, Tallahassee and Texarkana. They tour from St. Louis, Columbus, Manistee, They tour from Peoria, Davenport, Kankakee. Cars from Concord, Niagara, Boston, Cars from Topeka, Emporia, and Austin. Cars from Chicago, Hannibal, Cairo. Cars from Alton, Oswego, Toledo. Cars from Buffalo, Kokomo, Delphi, Cars from Lodi, Carmi, Loami. Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us, and great books bore us! While I watch the highroad And look at the sky, While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur Roll their legions without rain Over the blistering Kansas plain -- While I sit by the milestone And watch the sky, The United States Goes by. # To be given very harshly, with a snapping explosiveness. Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. Way down the road, trilling like a toad, Here comes the *dice*-horn, here comes the *vice*-horn, Here comes the *snarl*-horn, *brawl*-horn, *lewd*-horn, Followed by the *prude*-horn, bleak and squeaking: -- (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) Here comes the *hod*-horn, *plod*-horn, *sod*-horn, Nevermore-to-*roam*-horn, *loam*-horn, *home*-horn. (Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas.) # To be read or sung, well-nigh in a whisper. Far away the Rachel-Jane Not defeated by the horns Sings amid a hedge of thorns: -- "Love and life, Eternal youth -- Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet." # Louder and louder, faster and faster. WHILE SMOKE-BLACK FREIGHTS ON THE DOUBLE-TRACKED RAILROAD, DRIVEN AS THOUGH BY THE FOUL-FIEND'S OX-GOAD, SCREAMING TO THE WEST COAST, SCREAMING TO THE EAST, CARRY OFF A HARVEST, BRING BACK A FEAST, HARVESTING MACHINERY AND HARNESS FOR THE BEAST. THE HAND-CARS WHIZ, AND RATTLE ON THE RAILS, THE SUNLIGHT FLASHES ON THE TIN DINNER-PAILS. # In a rolling bass, with increasing deliberation. And then, in an instant, Ye modern men, Behold the procession once again, # With a snapping explosiveness. Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking, Listen to the *wise*-horn, desperate-to-*advise*-horn, Listen to the *fast*-horn, *kill*-horn, *blast*-horn. . . . # To be sung or read well-nigh in a whisper. Far away the Rachel-Jane Not defeated by the horns Sings amid a hedge of thorns: -- Love and life, Eternal youth, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, Dew and glory, Love and truth. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. # To be brawled in the beginning with a # snapping explosiveness, ending in a languorous chant. The mufflers open on a score of cars With wonderful thunder, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, . . . Listen to the gold-horn . . . Old-horn . . . Cold-horn . . . And all of the tunes, till the night comes down On hay-stack, and ant-hill, and wind-bitten town. # To be sung to exactly the same whispered tune # as the first five lines. Then far in the west, as in the beginning, Dim in the distance, sweet in retreating, Hark to the faint-horn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. . . . # This section beginning sonorously, ending in a languorous whisper. They are hunting the goals that they understand: -- San Francisco and the brown sea-sand. My goal is the mystery the beggars win. I am caught in the web the night-winds spin. The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me. I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree. And now I hear, as I sit all alone In the dusk, by another big Santa Fe stone, The souls of the tall corn gathering round And the gay little souls of the grass in the ground. Listen to the tale the cotton-wood tells. Listen to the wind-mills, singing o'er the wells. Listen to the whistling flutes without price Of myriad prophets out of paradise. Harken to the wonder That the night-air carries. . . . Listen . . . to . . . the . . . whisper . . . Of . . . the . . . prairie . . . fairies Singing o'er the fairy plain: -- # To the same whispered tune as the Rachel-Jane song -- but very slowly. "Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. Love and glory, Stars and rain, Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet. . . ."
The most striking thing about today's poem - indeed, practically its defining characteristic - is its intense focus on the *sound* of the words. And this is very deliberate - quoting Lindsay: "I respectfully submit these poems as experiments in which I endeavor to carry this vaudeville form back towards the old Greek precedent of the half-chanted lyric. In this case the one-third of music must be added by the instinct of the reader." The temptation is to dismiss this as pure gimmickry, to look no further than the almost jarringly unexpected reading directions and to seize on the word 'experiment' as if that carries the whole value of the poem. However, even the most casual reading should reveal the factor that makes the experiment a definite success - Lindsay has a very fine ear indeed. In terms of sheer sonorousness, I'd rank him right up there with Flecker, Masefield and Kipling, though he does lack somewhat of their talent for description. (Indeed, speaking of Masefield, today's poem is very reminscent of 'Cargoes', particularly the last verse thereof.) Lindsay has blended form and content well, the overwhelming cascade of sound and syllables bears down upon and swirls past the reader like the river of cars and horns passing westwards. And in counterpoint, the recurring note of the Rachel Janes "not defeated by the horns", and the superbly-crafted parenthetical insertion, "(Some of them from Kansas, some of them from Kansas)". And finally the "sweet in retreating" note of the flood passing by, leaving the "wonder that the night air carries" - almost like Cargoes in reverse. All in all, a decidedly unusual, but very memorable and uniquely Lindsay poem. Perhaps not as memorable as the better known "The Congo", but then, neither does it suffer from the latter's appalling racism (it strikes me that many of the complaints against Kipling - his racism, his vulgarity, his sacrificing of poetic principle for start with a popular appeal - are more closely applicable to Lindsay, and if he shares Kipling's strengths, he also shares his failings). And, above all, great fun to read aloud. martin Links: http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCongoandOtherPoems/toc.html has the full text of "The Congo and Other Poems", complete with proper typography, a biography, and an introduction by Harriet Monroe that I strongly urge you to read. | <urn:uuid:bd3c0de4-4dfa-4c4a-a030-77df47d30339> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2003/05/santa-fe-trail-vachel-lindsay.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909531 | 2,553 | 1.867188 | 2 |
Wired.com reported last week that two counties in New York State would be participating in a program to test new software by Clear Ballot that speeds election results audits. Clear Ballot indicated that Monroe and Schenectady counties would be participating. The New York State Board of Elections confirmed the Wired article, but Monroe County officials are unfamiliar with the company and its product.
The United States Election Assistance Commission recently created a grant program to research methods to improve the logistics of Election Day voting, as well as recounts and audits of ballot results. The State of New York Board of Elections was awarded $230,000. The state contracted with Clear Ballot to test its systems for post-election audits.
Via Twitter, I asked Clear Ballot ( @clearballot ) which two counties would be participating in the program. Clear Ballot responded Monroe and Schenectady Counties would be participating:
@dragonflyeye We’re working directly with the NY State Board of Elections, and then Monroe and Schenectady counties.
That tweet has since been removed.
State officials say the new pilot program will not be done with live ballots, but with ballots from this September’s primary elections. The counties of Monroe and Schenectady were selected as test centers because they tally votes using different ballot scanning systems.
Monroe County Board of Elections Commissioner Tom Ferrarese replied via email to my query that they had been contacted about a potential test of a new ballot counting system. But they said they have not heard anything further from the State:
A few months ago the State Board of Elections asked us if we, the Monroe County Board of Elections, would at some point in the future be willing to participate in a pilot testing a new system that would allow us to audit ballots using high speed scanners in an independently programmed system. We indicated that we would be willing to do so. Since then, we have heard nothing back from the State Board and are not in communications with the Clear Ballot folks nor were we even aware of their existence.
Mr. Ferrarese further stated that they would not feel comfortable changing their hand-count auditing system for this election cycle, which he says has worked well for the County in the past.
It’s not clear why the state would use Election Day to run tests, if the tests don’t require live ballots. Perhaps Wired.com story got that part of the story wrong.
I contacted Schenectady County Board of Elections officials to find out if they knew anything about Clear Ballot, but they have not yet responded. | <urn:uuid:7b118f69-91c5-485b-bad5-28c87fc21f1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dragonflyeye.net/blog/2012/10/22/new-york-state-testing-new-ballot-counting-system-in-monroe-county/ | 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 | 0.968805 | 533 | 1.671875 | 2 |
This newspaper didn’t think the Affordable Care Act was the best health care overhaul for America, but for the life of us we can’t figure out why Gov. Rick Perry is so rock-solid against implementing sensible parts of the legislation. Not only has he turned down federal Medicaid dollars to help low-income families acquire health insurance, he also is defiantly opposing the requirement that states create exchanges where uninsured residents can shop for the best health plan.
It isn’t like health care exchanges are a socialistic plot to take over health care. They instead create marketplaces where consumers and small businesses can compare health insurance plans. Republicans as well as Democrats have favored this competitive approach.
In Utah, for example, the state’s GOP leadership approved an exchange in 2011 that has led to a marketplace where insurers can offer their plans and customers can search for one that most fits their needs. The Utah exchange is part of the governor’s office, but it is overseen by two boards of public-and private-sector leaders. The exchange screens plans, the rates insurers charge and the quality of their offerings.
As this newspaper’s Jim Landers reported Tuesday, Utah’s experiment has not been without blemish, but it does feature 140 different plans and lets brokers help companies and individuals find the best options.
In other states, leaders are considering exchanges that are managed through a nonprofit organization that basically sets the ground rules and lets residents do their shopping. The options vary from state to state, and they have been studied or adopted by states led by Republicans.
So this isn’t a wild-eyed concept. In fact, Republicans in the Texas Legislature last year tried to pass a bill that would get the state ready to create its own exchange. The measure was offered by GOP Rep. John Zerwas, a Richmond doctor, but Perry didn’t want much to do with it.
The governor and other opponents contend the Affordable Care Act comes with too many rules governing exchanges. Here’s the problem: If Texas doesn’t create its own marketplace, the feds will do it for us.
Since when is that a good idea?
The smarter play is for legislators to get busy now thinking through the best option. GOP Sen. Bob Deuell, a Greenville physician, tells us that he thinks the Legislature will do something next year. We certainly hope so.
At the very least, Austin should submit a plan to Washington before the law takes effect. Washington may tweak it, but the state can then start negotiating. Standing still won’t help Texans who could gain from a marketplace that informs them about the quality, cost and services of health plans.
GOP GOVERNORS TAKE ACTION
Here are just some of the current and former GOP governors who either have embraced health care exchanges or are leading states that are studying how to create one:
Jan Brewer, Arizona
Gary Herbert, Utah
Brian Sandoval, Nevada
C.L. Otter, Idaho
Robert Bentley, Alabama
Mitch Daniels, Indiana
*Mitt Romney, Massachusetts
*Jon Huntsman, Utah
*Arnold Schwarzenegger, California
SOURCE: Kaiser Family Foundation
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Obama's First Fashion Faux Pas
While we're all rejoicing at the fact that Barack Obama is our new president, we did have some reservations about the tuxedo he wore to the inauguration ball (above). Simply put, the combination of a notched-lapel dinner jacket (by Hart Schaffner Marx) and a big, shiny white bow tie was not quite the thing for a commander-in-chief. We asked our old friend Alan Flusser, the world's leading authority on men's style who's been interviewed several times about Obama's dress sense, for his thoughts on the matter. Flusser is a renowned designer and author of several seminal works on men's style including Dressing the Man: Mastering The Art of Permanent Fashion. You can check out his interview with Charlie Rose here.
In Dressing the Man, Flusser writes, "The whole idea of a formal suit [i.e. tuxedo] is to distinguish itself from the notch-lapel business suit, not replicate it." Flusser declares that a dinner jacket with notched lapels is nothing short of a "sartorial oxymoron, convoluting both the form's aesthetic logic and its promise of timeless elegance." A proper dinner jacket should have peaked lapels, or, for slightly less formal occasions, a shawl collar. As for the white bow tie, that should only ever be worn with tails - hence the classic "white tie and tails" - and should never be satin. (For the record, George W. Bush was also fond of the notched lapel look - though thankfully not the white bow tie - which showed to his disadvantage when he met with stylish French President Nicolas Sarkozy.)
"I've been doing interviews about how purposeful and reasonably stylish Obama dresses and how he might just begin to set a new fashion bar for the congressional set," Flusser tells Luxist, "and then he goes and shows up in that hodgepodge of formalwear contrivance. In fact, although we make clothes for people he knows, I have been reluctant to reach out to him because he obviously has more on his plate than any one human is entitled to. However, after last night's display of sartorial naivety, I am now determined to throw my hat into the ring of potential fashion advisors/designers for his evolving Presidential wardrobe. Frankly I care less as to whether we make his clothes than teaching him what dressing in a statesman-like manner actually constitutes. I think he's just the greatest and I want nothing more for him than to succeed at everything."
That said, Flusser notes, "Talk about dressing green - this is a [sartorial] advisor kind of meltdown. I don't care if he chooses to wear mediocre or inexpensive clothes but that is no excuse for sporting a notch lapel (always peaked or shawl lapel) dinner jacket with an oversized white bow tie, making him look gift wrapped and therefore costumed. Although Obama tends to look as if he's comfortable and wearing the clothes, last night's ensemble made him look as if the clothes were wearing him, like he was taking his best shot trying to wear something he had little feel for, which obviously (as you have so correctly observed) he does not. Okay, sermon over."
Note - for more on the ins and outs of men's formal attire, see last week's Classicist column, "Ralph Lauren, Whit Stillman and Black Tie," and this post from Michael Williams' brilliant style blog A Continuous Lean. | <urn:uuid:469fcd88-10e8-4758-b6f7-44f292bdc835> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.luxist.com/2009/01/21/obamas-first-fashion-faux-pas/ | 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 | 0.970006 | 735 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Assistant Principal Michael Hugelmeyer shares the story of Phillip, who died of a drug overdose. Click for Video.
Family and Community Prescription Drug Forum, MONDAY, April 29th, at RHS
The Riverhead Community Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free Youth once again hosted a family and community forum on Monday, April 29, 2013, at Riverhead High School entitled, "Rx for Disaster: Get Smart about Prescription Painkillers and Over the Counter (OTC) Drugs".
The forum addressed the growing problem of prescription painkiller and over the counter (OTC) drug abuse on Long Island, and ways community members can work cooperatively to address this problem and the subsequent crime and heartbreak related to it.
The forum featured two keynote speakers: Dr. Alexis Hugelmeyer (pictured left), Director of Community Education at Peconic Bay Medical Center (PBMC) and local family physician, and Cathy L., a Long Island parent who lost her 20 year-old son to a drug overdose after an eight year addiction that started with prescription painkillers. A panel of local experts including representatives from law enforcement, the medical community, substance abuse prevention and treatment fields, and the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office were also available for questions. In addition, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office had an officer in attendance from 6:30 to 8:00 to collect any unused or unwanted prescription drugs that could otherwise end up in the hands of teens, addicts and criminals.
The forum followed a daytime presentation given to students in Riverhead High School; this year's focus is on ninth grade students because they did not receive the information last year. Assistant Principal Michael Hugelmeyer opened the presentation with a moving story about his nephew, Phillip, who died of an overdose.
"Last year's presentation had a striking effect on the students," said Dr. Alexis Hugelmeyer. "For our first forum, we were surprised at how engaged and intrigued they were; by the end, it was very clear that we had touched their lives in a very powerful way. To this day, I have parents come up to me in public and thank me for sharing our family's story and for informing their teen about the dangers of prescription narcotics. Every parent needs to learn more about an epidemic that is killing our kids." (See the 2012 Forum Presentation on Youtube.)
RHS and RMS Students Participate in Red Ribbon Week
CAP Peer Leader Trainer Clare Lundberg, Teandra, Rashae, and Dr. Alexis Hugelmeyer with Drug Free Ribbons.
(October 26, 2012) Red Ribbon Week (October 23-31, 2012) is the oldest and largest drug prevention program in the nation, reaching millions of Americans during the last week of October every year. By wearing red ribbons and participating in community anti-drug events, young people pledge to live a drug-free life and pay tribute to DEA Special Agent Enriqué "Kiki" Camarena, who was murdered by Mexican drug traffickers in 1985.
To celebrate Red Ribbon Week, Riverhead CAP and the Riverhead Community Coalition for Safe and Drug Free Youth sponsored an event on 10/26/12 at Riverhead High School to raise awareness about underage drinking and drug abuse. CAP Peer Leaders assisted by handing out red ribbons and literature to their peers during lunch. Dr. Alexis Hugelmeyer was on hand to answer student questions. There was a lot of enthusiasm from the students!
Both Teandra Jenkins and Rashae Smith, tenth graders at RHS, were adamant about staying drug free.
"We're serious about this pledge. We know that using drugs and alcohol can cause all kinds of bad things to happen," stated Rashae.
Teandra nodded in agreement. Both were CAP Peer Leaders in 8th grade, and Rashae is a member of the Council for Unity.
At the Middle School, CAP Peer Leaders are giving out red ribbons through 10/31 in exchange for signed pledges. The pledges will be hung on the bulletin board across from the Main Office.
Clare Marie Lundberg, CAP's Community Prevention Specialist, coordinated this event.
CHECK OUT CAP'S FACEBOOK PAGE FOR MORE PHOTOS! | <urn:uuid:e98d61d7-dac5-4791-a8ca-220142ca5c4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.riverhead.net/HTML/RHS04/News1213/RedRibbonWeek.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00057-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956535 | 858 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The golden rule I learned first is "He who has the gold makes the rules."
If you're one of the millions of people who use the Internet at work, you know workplace rules for Internet use are really quite restrictive: no games, no sex, no personal business, and definitely nothing that might get your company into trouble.
Most people routinely ignore these rules, just as they go 75 mph on the freeway and take company pens home for the kids. Companies like Elron Software and Websense push companies to "crack down" by monitoring employee Internet use.
Elron recently commissioned a second study of this "problem" by NFO Interactive and found (surprise) that "employees' personal use of corporate network resources is rising." Elron President Ray Boelig warned that "exposure is shifting from web to email," adding that employees were passing inappropriate messages and confidential information to outsiders. (Here's another surprise: Elron makes a program aimed at that market, too.)
Under pressure from big-money musical acts like Metallica, universities are now banning such "abusive" programs as Napster. Lawsuits might next be used to rid colleges of Gnutella and, in consequence, move more to buy programs like Elron's that monitor Internet use and let those in charge "crack down" on violators of company or university policy.
I have to wonder, however, whether companies and colleges are acting wisely. Monitoring, controlling and disciplining those who use the Internet "inappropriately" sounds like a good idea, but is it really? How active will your employees be in using the Internet for legitimate reasons if they're constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering if what they're doing is being monitored and might (later) be misinterpreted.
This is especially true on the charge that people are passing confidential information in emails. Do companies routinely monitor their telephone networks, recording what employees say and firing those who say the wrong things? If they had such a tool would they use it? So why do the same thing regarding the Internet?
The obvious answer is: Because we can. The second answer is: Because someone might sue if we don't.
I've decided that "someone might sue" is the biggest threat to liberty Americans face. The fear of lawyers has us all tied up in knots. People are afraid of using hyperlinks because someone might sue. We scour servers for copyrighted content because someone might sue. We limit use of the Internet (and limit its power for good) because someone might sue.
When I worked at CMP Media some years ago, we had a project called Gulliver, later released as Netguide Live. Well, lawyers are the Lilliputians of our time, tying people down with ropes made of paper, moving many to react "pro-actively" in fear of them.
If the promise of the Net turns into a chimera, know now who killed it. Of all the Republican promises being made to Net entrepreneurs, Gov. Bush's promise of denying people use of the courts through tort reform may prove the most enticing.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business reporter for more than 20 years. He has written parts of five books and currently contributes to Advertising Age, Business Marketing, NetMarketing, the Chicago Tribune, Boardwatch, CLEC Magazine, and other publications. His own newsletter, A-Clue.Com, is published weekly.
May 22, 2013
1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT
June 5, 2013
1:00pm ET / 10:00am PT | <urn:uuid:2a45709b-1472-458b-a50d-43a3c8ced962> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1691962/fear-lawyers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00059-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964265 | 736 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Boulder Climbing is fast becoming one of the most popular activities at the Obed Wild and Scenic River. A short trail from the Lilly Bluff Overlook Parking Lot to the park's Boulder Field will give the climbing enthusiast more than a dozen sandstone rock boulders to scale. No ropes are needed in this endeavor, but all climbers must possess nimbleness, dexterity, and a pretty strong grip. Boulder climbing tests your willingness and ability to ascend a rock face that is largely lacking in features and is often overhanging. The intense nature of boulder climbing at the Obed is in direct contrast to the calm and peaceful area where the boulders lie in the boulder field. The cool breezes and chirping birds do not adequetly prepare a climber for the strains and struggles that the boulder field presents. The challenge is in the doing...and in the conquering of a segment of nature.
If you plan to do some bouldering at the Obed, be sure to use chalk to keep your hands dry. Always climb with a friend who can support you as you climb, and always use a crash pad.
Did You Know?
Did you know that more than a dozen boulders are located along the Boulder Trail? There are also more than 100 boulders located throughout the river's boundaries. Many rock climbers also enjoy boulder climbing along the Obed. | <urn:uuid:a86b172e-bf20-413b-8124-4c9fe2686169> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nps.gov/obed/planyourvisit/boulder-climbing.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959867 | 280 | 1.992188 | 2 |
It’s Picasso’s birthday! A fitting remembrance of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Themes and Variations reminds us that Picasso’s many gifts were realized in many different media. Follow this link to an interactive analysis of Picasso as printmaker, which explains the printmaking techniques that he put to inventive use over his long career. See close-up comparisons of his works on paper along a number of key thematic and subject-matter dimensions as well as representative pieces from his many different periods.
Commemorate October 24, 1945, the anniversary of the official first day for the United Nations. Jump on the cyberschoolbus to discover global resources such as an introduction to the UN, Country at a Glance where users can view statistics about all UN members, and InfoNation where users can compare country data.
Many other features like video conferences, quizzes and games, globalization projects, and curriculum on world topics are designed to increase students’ awareness of the global condition. | <urn:uuid:12834606-2113-4a13-84cc-96fd6e84087a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.nettrekker.com/author/jdavidson/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952174 | 211 | 3.03125 | 3 |
We recently obtained a copy of a status report for sustainable travel at sixteen Tyneside schools. Kids usually want to walk or cycle, and the majority lives in walking or cycling distance to the school.
There are some heart-rendering comments from pupils in the qualitative report.
What deeply worried us is this: some schools actively ban pupils from cycling to school, and one North Tyneside school operates a strict contract system. We believe school heads react like this because they have a serious concern about the safety of our roads. But rather to address the root cause, head teachers apparently bury their heads in the sand. Policy concerning sustainable travel is usually quite good and the school may have a travel plan. But it's the implementation that's not happening. The report itself does not really draw conclusions or make recommendations. If we could only get the heads to speak to the politicians, Councillors and MPs.
The report is a must-read for politicians to see the dire straits we find ourselves in as a society.
What do you think? Get in touch http://newcycling.org/contact.
Remember that the Campaign has signed up to the Charter of Vancouver "children's right to cycle" http://newcycling.org/news/20120711/charter-vancouver-childrens-right-cycle
Full "Going Smarter to School" report here [using googledocs] | <urn:uuid:91115624-c13a-4bb0-9cfd-e31e68a0c8a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newcycling.org/news/20120817/cycling-school-no | 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 | 0.94903 | 291 | 2.109375 | 2 |
Top 10 Senior Tips
How can you make the experience the best it can be? How do you get along with your roommate? Living with others is always a challenge, whether it’s with the roommate you have now or the spouse you'll live with someday. Learning how to successfully communicate and thrive in a shared environment is a valuable lesson to learn.
We asked seniors to give us helpful tips for getting along and making the most of living with someone new. Here is insight based on their own experiences:
10 Senior Tips
10. Always ask. Do you think your music is too loud for your neighbors? Ask. Do you think your roommate doesn’t like it when you blow dry your hair at 6 a.m. every morning? Ask. Asking can prevent many communication issues.
9. Be considerate. Be aware of and respect your roommate’s feelings. That means being kind and patient. Also, don’t keep hitting the snooze button when your roommate is trying to sleep. Don’t eat your roommate’s food without asking. Try to give your roommate space when it’s important to do so.
8. Be open and flexible. Community living is an opportunity to share a big part of your life with other people. By keeping that in mind, you can fully appreciate the experience. Find out what you have in common and spend time doing fun things together.
7. Communicate. Have a private talk with your roommate within the first week and make sure both of you know specific things like bedtime, study habits, etc. This will eliminate any potential problems that might arise later in the year. Talk about issues when they come up so little things don’t become bigger things.
6. Don't hold grudges. If you have a crazy roommate, you should always try to work through it because it’s not always as big of a deal as it seems at first. Who knows? You might come to appreciate their craziness.
5. Make memories. Take memory cards full of pictures together to remember the fun you had. The school year always flies by.
4. Make time. Hang out with your roommate just the two of you. Stay up late and talk. Many great conversations come from that time together.
3. Make your bed. As silly as it sounds, keeping things organized in your room makes a huge difference. It is a small space, so keeping your stuff out of your roommate's way will always be appreciated.
2. Set boundaries. Many freshman don’t know how to say ‘NO.' Learn how to do that. Don't let yourself feel taken advantage of, whether it is with bed times, borrowing clothes or sharing food.
1. Use your R.A. If communicating doesn’t work between just you and your roommate, approach your R.A. That’s what they are there for – to help you out. | <urn:uuid:c9a2e882-64ed-40af-b01f-e548646f2d80> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.calbaptist.edu/explore-cbu/offices/residence-life/top-10-senior-tips/?id=2435 | 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 | 0.961657 | 611 | 1.96875 | 2 |
In Buddhist traditions, the belief that there is a continuity of mind from one lifetime to the next as an individual incarnates time and again in a quest for spiritual perfection. It is important to note that Buddhist philosophies do not profess a belief in the existence of the individual "soul" and does not interpret 'rebirth' as the soul's literal reincarnation. See also "reincarnation" and "bardo".
being reborn in Samsara due to our ignorance and past Karma; actual interpretations vary from reincarnation of the self to recycling of constituents.
In Buddhism, the belief that there is some continuty of mind from one life to the next. Buddhism, however, does not accept the existence of the individual soul and therefore does not view rebirth as the soul's literal re-incarnation.
after death the soul begins a new cycle of existence in another human body
The corollary of karma. The doctrine that each individual is born into the world again and again to inherit the effects of his deeds, or rather, that by action in this life the individual creates a fresh personality for himself in order that the results of his actions may be fulfilled in a future life.
Rebirth in Buddhism is the doctrine that the consciousness of a person (as conventionally regarded), upon the death or dissolution of the aggregates (skandhas) which make up that person, becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new group of skandhas which may again be conventionally considered a person or individual. The consciousness arising in the new person is neither identical to, nor different from, the old consciousness, but forms part of a causal continuum or stream with it. The basic cause for this persistent re-arising of personality is the abiding of consciousness in avidya (ignorance); when ignorance is uprooted, rebirth ceases. | <urn:uuid:60615853-76b6-4b7d-9b88-d8219cbb6ec8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.metaglossary.com/meanings/810879/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932688 | 376 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Official Map: Maryland Transit Administration Regional Transit Map
Here’s a large-format multi-modal map from the Maryland Transit Authority, centered on Baltimore. Contrast it against this previously reviewed map of similar scope from the Los Angeles Metro, and it can be seen that the MTA map has got a far better balance of design and usability, and is actually a quite superb and comprehensive map.
Have we been there? No.
What we like: Incredibly legible for such a dense map. It shows light rail, Metro, commuter rail (MARC services) and varying levels of bus service from multiple transit agencies, all overlaid on a nicely stylised street grid. Unlike the LA map, colors are used effectively to differentiate bus routes, meaning the routes themselves are much easier to follow. Bus route termini are also clearly marked, which helps immensely.
What we don’t like: CMRT Transit seems to get short-changed, with all nine of its routes sharing the same magenta colour, making the south-west corner of the map very pink, and those routes harder to make sense of.
Our rating: Shows how important the use of colour is to help people differentate between different routes of a similar service, especially in densely served areas. The palette used is fairly limited, but is used judiciously. Not a map for casual use, but provides a comprehensive and visually appealing guide to services in and around Baltimore. Four-and-a-half stars.
(Source: MTA website) | <urn:uuid:cd51674b-f079-4422-b12f-5016eeb87c4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://transitmaps.tumblr.com/post/20167328638/mta-maryland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944056 | 312 | 2.046875 | 2 |
Seventy-First Township, Cumberland County, NC
Carefully surveyed by Beverly Boyko. This Cemetery is located on private land in a wooded area next to Ft. Bragg,
approximately 1200' west of Stewart's Creek, and 1300' northwest of Lake Hutaff. The cemetery is about
2,112' east of the approach road to the ammunition supply point and about 100' south of Ft. Bragg's boundary road, in the vicinityh of Military
grid coordinates PJ796 849. The cemetery has been badly vandalized leaving approximately 17 looter holes and broken stones
strewn about. Only two headstone base
fragments and seven footstones and footstone fragments remain in place.
The presence of eleven other headstones and seven other footstones are indicated by the remaining fragments lying on the
ground surface, for a total of thirteen head and fourteen footstones.
There are two partial death dates: Neill McDonald who died in 19 and an unidentified woman who died in 190.
Two birthdates are indicated: 1808 (Nancy McDonald) and 184 (unidentified). The name "Lauder" is found on the bottom
of one stone indicating the cemetery was in use while he was in business between 1845 and 1888. All of the markers
are white marble with the headstones
facing to the east and the footstones to the west.
Posted October 19, 2001 by Myrtle Bridges.
Index Cumberland County Cemeteries
Cumberland County Homepage
You are the
visitor since October 19, 2001. | <urn:uuid:29fb9b05-754b-497c-801d-44ff250f783a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncgenweb.us/cumberland/mcdoncem.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946985 | 326 | 2.15625 | 2 |
Movies are the world’s most influential communication medium. They catalyze conversation in countries all over the world. Films teach history, tell stories, and make people laugh until their bellies and faces ache. Moving pictures are for the young, old, rich, poor, educated, and the illiterate.
Etched in each moviegoer’s memory is a panoply of great scenes from tens of thousands of films. How much fun is a dinner, cocktail, or keg party if nobody could quote a movie line? The language of film is universal.
Unfortunately, to re-experience these moments can be painful. Watching Humphrey Bogart kiss Ingrid Bergman or John Belushi scream “Food Fight” or Russell Crowe facing down tigers in the Coliseum is a challenge. These are moments that everyone wants to experience over and over again. But, does anyone really pop in a DVD and patiently scan for their favorite scenes? No. We search the Internet. Mostly, we don’ find what we’re looking for, and, when we do, it’s far from a cinematic experience.
So far, The Internet has provided a piecemeal solution to digital video. There are plenty of video sharing sites filled with user-uploaded content, but their selection is haphazard at best. You might find “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” seven minutes into a longer clip or with abominable picture and sound. Diehard fans do will share shaky, unreliable videos of their televisions shot on camera phones.
So you might find what you are looking for but only if you’re willing to sort through a lot of garbage and put up with subpar film quality. But people love movies so they put up the problems.
Over 12 million people have watched the above clip from The Lion King. I wonder how much money Elton John and Tim Rice have gotten for their work. Neither the owners of these films nor the artists who make them receive any compensation from the display of their works. If it’s not illegal, it’s definitely unethical. This user-generated video industry combined with other public policy issues have unintentionally driven a wedge between Hollywood and the most dynamic and creative Internet companies. Content owners must benefit from Internet distribution and AnyClip wants to provide the most compelling and engaging platform to help them do so.
WHAT IS ANYCLIP
Six months ago, my co-founder Nate Westheimer and I joined an amazing group of Israeli developers who also happen to love movies. We wanted to build a Web service that would allow anyone to find any moment from any film ever made instantly. Our co-founder and lead investor Erel Margalit suggested we name the company AnyClip.
Everybody wants to relive scenes and AnyClip set out to make that possible. Creating the data and search technology to make that work presents formidable challenges. When searching for a scene from a movie, people describe moments in so many different ways: from dialogue and plot description to hazy memories of shark attacks and flying cars. This creates really engrossing and thorny computing problems. If someone searches for “dead shark,” do they want to see Roy Scheider blowing up Jaws (i.e. action on screen) or Woody Allen lamenting the “death” of his relationship with Annie Hall (i.e. dialogue)? The AnyClip platform incorporates tools to handles these issues and more.
Early tests show our service can be a great discovery engine for films. A search for “I love you” produces countless clips from hundreds of movies. A brief visit to AnyClip can yield an iTunes download or an addition to a Netflix queue. At AnyClip, clips are dynamic and up to four minutes long. You can adjust a clip to relive exactly the joyous, daring, or inspirational moment you crave. This sample may encourage a purchase, rental, or download of the entire film. At minimum, it reunites the movie lover with the art and the artists who brought them such joy. This reaffirm loyalty and interest in the future work these artists produce. That’s called “promotion.” AnyClip evokes memories and channels them to enhance the values of the world’s great film libraries.
Today, we also launch a public API for our data and eventually for legally licensed content. This would allow companies like IMDB, Slide, RockYou, Netflix, Zynga, OMGPOP, Twitter, Facebook, Mahalo and – most importantly – the insanely creative and brilliant independent developers around the world to build great user experiences with movie clips on top of our movie data. AnyClip is a platform to power a renaissance of the greatest movies the world has ever known.
DISRUPTIVE BY DESIGN
If you look closely at the movie ecosystem, the only institutions that suffer from a legally available AnyClip are those that benefit from leaving the current system intact. First and foremost are existing Internet media providers that hide behind the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. While nobody knows precise numbers, YouTube has served billions of movie scenes to audiences around the world. Overseas video sharing and PTP sites — Tudou, Megavideo, PirateBay and BiTTorrent –operate outside the reach of US laws. Naturally content owners have been wary of digital distribution in light of these abuses and violations of the DMCA.
History shows Hollywood struggles with new formats and other technological innovation. They are instinctively protective of their core businesses. Thirty years ago, Universal sued Sony for creating the Betamax. Luckily, they failed and today we have a US $25 billion DVD industry. The good news is AnyClip enhances every distribution window. Every one. We don’t compete. We complement.
And that’s important, because DVD revenue is dropping for the first time since the format’s introduction. Piracy and Internet video-on-demand from the likes of Amazon, Netflix and iTunes are changing consumption patterns. Economic realities have forced audiences to reassess their entertainment spending.
One way to stanch the bleeding in the Home Video Market is to reinvigorate the value locked in our memories. Short of innovation, the motion picture industry will continue to see declining revenue and audiences will get fewer new magical moments. Why? Because Quentin Tarantino and Ridley Scott will be given smaller budgets. Does anybody really want to deprive Peter Jackson of the budgets required to make another Lord of the Rings?
Many powerful Hollywood people have told us that AnyClip is amazing but impossible. Some very smart industry executives are rooting for us to succeed but worry about the legal landscape. At its best, the digital rights marketplace is byzantine. These executives are right to be concerned. For the sake of the movie industry’s wonderful and talented people, and the billions of fans around the world, we certainly hope we can find a way to work within the law to create great opportunities for all.
And this includes AnyClip. While we will be a smaller participant in any transactions that occur between content owner and consumer, we believe this business will scale just fine. It’s the greatest content that has ever been made etched in the memories of everybody on Earth. We think “reliving movie moments” is a huge market. We are the catalyst for what will be a high-growth legal clip economy.
Our fourth co-founder is the former CEO of Sony America Mickey Schulhof. Mickey knows the pitfalls as well as the upsides of media innovation having introduced the CD and Playstation to North America. He always tells me that if it weren’t for naysayers, we wouldn’t have revolutionary companies.
“Sometimes you just have to do things, Aaron,” Mickey told me when I first described AnyClip. It’s time for the curtains to open.
Filed under: early stage, media | Tagged: Animal House, Anyclip, Casablanca, clips, Elton John, Erel Margalit, Facebook, Films, Gladiator, Humphrey Bogart, IMDB, Jone Belushi, JVP, Lion King, Mahalo, Mikey Schulhof, Moments, movies, Nate Westheimer, Rockyou, Russell Crowe, Scenes, Slide, Twitter | Leave a Comment » | <urn:uuid:73ce5336-227d-432c-ac7c-c60ceb67d617> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yallaguy.wordpress.com/tag/nate-westheimer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921676 | 1,736 | 1.507813 | 2 |
The prophet complains of the wickedness of the people: God reveals to him the vengeance he is going to take of them by the Chaldeans.
The burden that Habacuc the prophet saw.
How long, O Lord, shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear? shall I cry out to thee suffering violence, and thou wilt not save?
Why hast thou shewn me iniquity and grievance, to see rapine and injustice before me? and there is a judgment, but opposition is more powerful.
Therefore the law is torn in pieces, and judgment cometh not to the end: because the wicked prevaileth against the just, therefore wrong judgment goeth forth.
Behold ye among the nations, and see: wonder, and be astonished: for a work is done in your days, which no man will believe when it shall be told.
Burden: Such prophecies more especially are called burdens, as threaten grievous evils and punishments.
For behold, I will raise up the Chaldeans, a bitter and swift nation, marching upon the breadth of the earth, to possess the dwelling places that are not their own.
They are dreadful, and terrible: from themselves shall their judgment, and their burden proceed.
Their horses are lighter than leopards, and swifter than evening wolves; and their horsemen shall be spread abroad: for their horsemen shall come from afar, they shall fly as an eagle that maketh haste to eat.
They shall all come to the prey, their face is like a burning wind: and they shall gather together captives as the sand.
And their prince shall triumph over kings, and princes shall be his laughingstock: and he shall laugh at every strong hold, and shall cast up a mount, and shall take it.
Then shall his spirit be changed, and he shall pass, and fall: this is his strength of his god.
Wast thou not from the beginning, O Lord my God, my holy one, and we shall not die? Lord, thou hast appointed him for judgment: and made him strong for correction.
Thy eyes are too pure to behold evil, and thou canst not look on iniquity. Why lookest thou upon them that do unjust things, and holdest thy peace when the wicked devoureth the man that is more just than himself?
And thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the creeping things that have no ruler.
He lifted up all them with his hook, he drew them in his drag, and gathered them into his net: for this he will be glad and rejoice.
Then shall his spirit: Viz., the spirit of the king of Babylon. It alludes to the judgment of God upon Nabuchodonosor, recorded Dan. 4., and to the speedy fall of the Chaldean empire.
Therefore will he offer victims to his drag, and he will sacrifice to his net: because through them his portion is made fat, and his meat dainty.
For this cause therefore he spreadeth his net, and will not spare continually to slay the nations. | <urn:uuid:aab4af67-39c5-4ae9-85d6-344757fe6077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=drb&bk=40&ch=1&l=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966122 | 649 | 1.71875 | 2 |
eating, scavenging and growing my way to better foods in Chicago
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Culinary School 1: Intro to Professional Cookery
I ran across this picture the other day and realized that I haven't really gotten into the meat of what I'm doing at culinary school. This picture is me, at Northwest Cutlery, picking up my knife kit and clothes. My very first chefs jacket. It's exciting and nerdy. The point of this whole thing is, it's high time I tell you all what cooking school is like. I'm in class 2-3 nights a week, at least 2 of those nights from 6:30 to 11:00 pm for practicum. Most of the time it's fairly exhausting and sweaty and can be a bit gross but over and above all of that, all the time it is amazingly fun. I find myself chopping carrots at 10:30 at night, knowing full well that I'll need to get up for work in 7 hours and I'm smiling. First things first: Intro to Professional Cookery was the absolute basics. For example how do you cut an onion? First, place your cutting board on a paper towel so it doesn't slide around the table. Second, align your board with the edge of the table, about 1 inch from the edge. Third, grip knife with your thumb and forefinger on the blade, the rest of your hand on the handle. Fourth, did you wash your hands before you started this project? Fifth, realign board. Sixth, grasp knife again. Seventh, put down chefs knife and pick up paring knife. Eighth, peel onion with paring knife. Nineth, pick up chefs knife, slice onion from root to nose. Tenth, realign cutting board (no doubt it has gone askew). Eleventh, using the claw formation on your left hand, claw onto the root end of your onion and make many quick, thin diagonal cuts parallel to the veins of the onion. Twelfth, cut two horizontal cuts with your knife parallel and flat to the board with your chefs knife. Thirteenth, move your claw over your onion, so you're gripping the whole thing and slice it the opposite direction, making perfect small dice.
Thirteen steps for onion cutting and don't even get me started on tournee potatoes. The photo on the left is my final from this class. Tournee potatoes, batonnee carrots, small dice potatoes and onions cut in the manner described above. All this to say, I've now learned how to properly slice onions, carrots, large chunks of beef, bone marrow, celery, leeks, potatoes, shallots, garlic, chicken, duck, flat fish (like halibut or flounder), round fish (like salmon or trout) and how to make tomatoes portuguese and all kinds of butter. Clarified butter, butter for your steak, butter for your snails, butter butter butter. It was a steep learning curve of a quarter, as evidenced by the lack of photo evidence. I do promise that in the following posts, we will actually get to recipes and more photos. For now, just the basics.
Trading pork bellies and coffee by day, then roasting them all up at night, Joanna is a commodities broker by trade, urban farmer/food adventurer at heart. She graduated from Kendall with a certificate in Professional Cookery, writes for Gapersblock.com/drivethru and used to keep chickens in her backyard. | <urn:uuid:11f0802d-abd4-46ed-ba66-e8cdd6099c59> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greensug.blogspot.com/2010/08/culinary-school-1-intro-to-professional.html | 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 | 0.949879 | 718 | 1.546875 | 2 |
PHYSICAL DISABILITIES AND CHRONIC ILLNESSES
A variety of physical disabilities result from congenital conditions, accidents, or progressive neuromuscular diseases and may limit mobility and/or energy. These disabilities may include such musculoskeletal disabilities such as partial or total paralysis, amputation or severe injury, arthritis, spinal cord injury (paraplegia or quadriplegia), spina bifida, cerebral palsy, active sickle cell disease, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, polio/post polio, and stroke. Additionally, respiratory and cardiac diseases which are debilitating, may affect mobility. Any of these disabilities may also impair the strength, speed, endurance, coordination, or dexterity necessary for college life. While the degree of disabilities varies, it is important to recognize that for many reasons, some students may have difficulty getting to and from class, performing in class, taking notes, and managing out-of-class assignments and tests. | <urn:uuid:9e016464-2f99-47ef-890a-619c6e45b780> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northeaststate.edu/disabilityservices.aspx?id=622 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.909398 | 200 | 3.171875 | 3 |
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This nationally recognised course equips students with the skills and knowledge necessary to do youth work. The course content can be applied in a variety of contexts, including in Indigenous, government, church and welfare organisations. The course focuses on how to develop and facilitate programs to address the social, behavioral, health, welfare, developmental and protection needs of young people, including those who are at risk or in crisis.
This course has been developed with feedback from rural and remote Indigenous communities, and course content has been contextualised to give participants a broad range of skills and knowledge to work in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations. The course includes opportunities to practice real skills, work in groups, and share stories and learning experiences.
This qualification has been widely used by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers to supplement their qualifications in primary health care.
Indigenous students are eligible to receive ABSTUDY benefits for the duration of this course. These benefits may include funds for accommodation, meals, and travel to Townsville, as well as an income-dependent fortnightly allowance.
This course is delivered in mixed-mode block training, consisting of three lots of five-day training spread over several months. | <urn:uuid:c60a2261-13c4-40ce-a91e-eeedd0a43da3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/key-resources/courses-training?fid=439 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00063-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957505 | 246 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai on Jan. 4 asked the Ministry of Science and Technology for a report on recently conducted petrol inspections.
A number of automobile and motorbike fires had occurred over the past few months, and one of the reasons for the fires was reported to have been substandard petrol, according to an official dispatch signed by Deputy PM Hai.
Deputy director of the Ministry of Science and Technology's Directorate for Standards, Metrology and Quality Tran Van Vinh said that the inspections had detected four petrol samples in HCM City that contained levels of methanol that exceeded industry standards.
Methanol cost only half the price of petrol and many petrol outlets combined the two in order to boost profits. However, methanol can erode the metal in vehicle engines and consequently was blamed for the recent fires, according to the website physics.hus.edu.vn.
One of the four petrol samples contained 4.3 percent of methanol whereas the regulated amount was 3 percent, said Vinh.
Vinh also said that the Mai Dich petrol station in Hanoi was closed at the end of last month after a petrol sample was found to contain 15.3 percent methanol.
On Jan. 4, the deputy chairman of the HCM City People's Committee, Le Manh Ha, handed out fines from 10-30 million VND (475-1,420 USD) to three petrol trading enterprises for substandard petrol.
A total of 42 automobile and motorbike fires broke out in Hanoi from December 1, 2010 to December 18, 2011, according to statistics from the city's Department of Fire Fighting and Prevention Police.
The domestic press also reported 89 cases of vehicle fires last year across the country, of which 50 automobile fires and 39 motorbike fires killed two people and injured two others.
The causes of 72 percent of the motorbike fires and 50 percent of the automobile fires are unknown./. | <urn:uuid:467aa678-6b04-47d3-85db-93d9240ecf00> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.baomoi.com/Info/Deputy-PM-asks-for-petrol-checks-in-wake-of-auto-fires/6/220653.epi | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00050-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96254 | 402 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Laser scanners can capture an object’s complete geometry, digitally reproducing a highly accurate model in a very short time. Source: GKS, LDI
Using 3-D scanning in the medical field is becoming more common, and the one thing all medical applications of 3-D scanning have in common (which is the greatest challenge as well) is the difficulty of accurately reproducing organic items typically found in medical applications, such as bones, teeth, or other body parts. They are very complex and amorphous shapes with free-form curves. Measuring such forms is nearly impossible and excruciatingly labor-intensive with manual or contact measurement methods.
However when it comes to amorphous shapes, laser scanners can capture an object’s complete geometry, digitally reproducing a highly accurate model in a very short time. 3-D laser scanning is extremely fast, accurate and thorough, and it is able to digitize the entire topography of whatever shape it sees. If the internal geometry of a part is needed, then computed tomography (CT) scanning fits the bill with its accuracy, ability to “see” inside parts, and nondestructive nature.
These types of noncontact scanning result in precisely digitized “point cloud” versions of the shape from which CAD models are made. The CAD model can be used to replicate, manufacture, fit, assemble, animate, test, demonstrate, simulate, and document the object for a virtually infinite array of innovative medical applications.
Laser Design Inc., a supplier of 3-D laser scanning systems has provided scanning systems specifically designed for customers with medical applications. GKS Inspection Services, Laser Design’s engineering services division, has regularly been called upon to perform scans for medical device or research organizations as well.
As medical devices have become more complex and designed with more internal electronic parts, GKS has acquired the capability to perform CT scans as well. It is an ideal measurement method for inspecting extremely complex parts and assemblies too difficult to measure with conventional touch probe or line-of-sight vision-based scanning technologies. Speed and precision make CT scanning a viable option for nondestructive testing of production line and critical components.
3-D digital CAD model files helped manufacture custom prostheses cost effectively for a larger market. Source: GKS, LDI
The Main Applications of Noncontact 3-D Scanning1. Device Development
One of the most prevalent uses for noncontact 3-D laser scanning is in creating new life-saving and life-enhancing devices, such as prosthetics. GKS has scanned various body parts for many different applications. In one project, small hand casts were scanned in order to create fully functional finger prosthetic devices.
The devices were body-powered, lightweight, and allowed the users to regain complete control of the flexion and extension movements of an artificial finger. 3-D digital CAD model files were needed to manufacture custom prostheses cost effectively for a larger market.
According to the prosthesis company’s owner, “Compared to manually measuring, the process of laser scanning cut 60% off the amount of time to make enough accurate measurements of the casts to create a CAD model. With more than 600 different variations of each finger-hand configuration, plus six different hand sizes, getting the correct measurements is incredibly labor intensive. I can’t think of an alternative to 3-D laser scanning that would provide similar results. The geometry is too amorphous to capture without laser scanning.”
GKS delivered highly accurate solid models (±.002” or .05 mm) since they are created directly from scan data. In the past, hand prostheses relied heavily on a fabricator’s artistic ability. They were visually realistic, but not functional with articulation and mobility. Today’s prostheses restore not only the look of the hand, but the function as well. Laser scanning is a technology that can capture the fine details of the hand to make the prosthesis fit comfortably and function perfectly.
2. Device Fit
Because of its amorphous shape, a heart model is difficult to scan with a contact process.Source: GKS, LDI
When the fit of a device is critical to its function, 3-D laser scanning provides highly reliable data. For example, GKS was asked to scan a new mask-like breathing device used to prevent a sleeping disorder. A good seal on the user’s face was critical to the device’s successful function. The mask’s parts were made of different materials based on their purpose in the assembly. The part that made contact with the face was soft and pliable so it would be comfortable and stay in place, while the parts that delivered a stream of air were hard plastic.
Since laser scanning is noncontact, it was able to digitize all the parts of the unit, even the soft ones, without compressing and distorting the shapes. The CAD model was accurate and useful to the engineers so they could make modifications and test the design. 3. Rapid Manufacturing
Laser Design created a fully automated laser scanning system to scan the ear impressions of hearing aid users. The ear impressions, created in the field by audiologists, are sent to the hearing aid maker who in the past had manufactured the final product using a manual process.
The laser scanning system set automatic scan parameters since the ear impressions’ size is quite uniform and then used specialized software to process the scan data of the impressions to make the digital model of the ear shell in a fraction of the time. The model is used to manufacture the ear shell for the hearing aid on a rapid prototyping (SLA or FDM) machine, in effect “mass customizing” the products.
This noncontact process significantly improved the fit of the aids inside the ear canal. A better, more comfortable fit resulted from automated laser scanning and reduced the chronically high return rates for the devices, which saved the hearing aid company a significant amount of money. 4. Device Redesign
Another GKS client wanted to modify an existing model of a plastic resin heart to demonstrate a new cardiac device product. The company needed modifications on the unit to fit the new device and then to be able to manipulate it in the CAD software to create the demonstration piece. The design engineer noted that the heart model was a “tricky, amorphous shape which is difficult to scan with a contact process.” It also had an irregular internal, partially open cavity, which needed to be very accurate since that is where the new device would be inserted.
The most difficult challenge in scanning the heart model was the many small venous features. Larry Carlberg, GKS service bureau manager, says, “We received the resin model with the unnecessary items removed, but the intricate small features were still present. The ability to model the many small features and maintain a reasonable budget is a combination of the experience level of our modelers and our software’s advanced tools.”
The modeling process demanded attention to the tiny surface abnormalities. Otherwise the model would generate undesirable ripples on the surfaces. Once imported into CAD, the design company was able to add the necessary features. Then the data was exported to create a rapid prototype SLA model on which they could demonstrate the new cardiac device product to customers.
5. Inspection and Validation of Device Redesign
Data was exported to create a rapid prototype SLA model on which the client could demonstrate a new cardiac device product to customers. Source: GKS, LDI
Laser scanning also helped a manufacturer validate the design of a new venous filter by ensuring that the computer-aided design (CAD) geometry used as the starting point matched a molded arterial filter part that had been proven safe in the field. Engineers wanted to take advantage of the effective arterial filter model by duplicating much of the flow path geometry in the new venous filters.
But the engineers realized that the geometry of the flow path was so complex that they could not be sure that it matched the original CAD model without stringent inspection. They thought about inspecting the part with a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) but realized that the number of points required to fully validate the 3-D surfaces was far more than it would be practical to capture using one-point-at-a-time contact methods.
GKS implemented a laser scanning process that generated a point cloud with the millions of points to accurately define the complex surface geometry of the part. GKS then created a graphical comparison of the manufactured part with the CAD model, while coding differences between the two in colors that indicate the magnitude of the variation from the design intent.
The engineers were able to instantly visualize the differences between the model and the molded part. Based on these laser scans, engineers made a number of modifications to the CAD model to match perfectly to the actual as-built part. The entire process of scanning the part and developing the difference map took less than two days and the cost for the inspection process was minimal. Compared to conventional CMM touch probe-based measurement, the turnaround for laser scanning was much faster and yielded highly accurate and complete results. 6. Training, Simulations and Animations
With the advancement of computer-aided instruction (CAI) in the medical field, accurate anatomical models are essential. To train doctors on specific procedures, many body parts have been to create life-like simulations and animations depicting procedures and typical treatments. The realism of the images obtained from the scan data is astounding.
Medical devices can be digitized and procedures for fitting, assembly, and implanting them produced for teaching and training. Demonstrations are easily put together with the scan files, and even FEA studies can be run on the physical properties of the materials and devices.
To preserve and transmit knowledge to a wider base of practitioners, an anatomical library or database (of structures such as the spine, teeth, ears, hip joints, etc.) can be compiled for such training purposes, making life-saving surgeries, routine medical procedures and other manipulations safer for doctors and patients alike. 7. Reverse Engineering a Part with no CAD Data
As with any type of physical part that is manufactured, sometimes no CAD data exists for a medical device. The part may be so old that it was originally manufactured in the days before digital models, or the CAD data may have been lost in time when a company was sold or product specifications changed hands. In any case, today’s manufacturing processes, including those that make advanced medical products, require a CAD model for tooling, molds, inspections of parts, and product designs or enhancements.
Laser scanning is a fast, accurate and automated way to acquire 3-D digital data and a CAD model of a part’s geometry when none is available. Re-creating complex free-form shapes is noncontact measurement’s best application. Both the positive and the negative version of a scanned part are easy to create, so no matter what part of a manufacturing process is lacking, 3-D laser scanning can provide the correct type of data file. Also, new features and updates can be integrated into old parts once the modeling is accomplished.
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We have a Christmas Tradition of getting a new Christmas ornaments each year. When we lived in Germany they had the most amazing Christmas stores full of inexpensive ornaments that we could get for 1 or 2 Euros each. And these were amazing ornaments. Now in the USA; when we finally find an ornament we like is costs more about $12-25. Not cool. So this year we decided to do something different. This we we did DIY Christmas Ornaments! It was such a success with the kids that we wanted to share our fun kids craft! We’ll show you how to make your own DIY Christmas Ornaments.
DIY Christmas Ornament Kids Crafts Tutorial
As with all kids crafts, we need to gather our supplies. The thing I love about DIY Christmas ornaments are that they don’t cost a lot of money if you shop at the right time of the year. You will need:
- Clear Glass or Plastic ball Ornaments. I found glass ornaments at Michael’s Craft store, and plastic ornaments at Michael’s and Walmart. They were between $0.50-$1.00 each. You can also find them at Joann’s or Hobby Lobby. If those fail, you can always try Amazon for Clear ball ornament.
- Newspaper. This isn’t necessary but we found it definitely helps keep the mess contained, especially if you are letting your kids help create.
- Paper Cups (not pictured. But great for letting the ornament drip into as they dry.)
- Rubbing Alcohol
- Acrylic paint. We used a few different brands. Mostly I was shopping for the colors I wanted. But all of our paint came from Walmart and were between $1-2 a bottle.
- Glitter (optional)
- Painters markers. These are for decorating afterwards or for writing special “Merry Christmas” Messages on the ornament when given as a Gift.
The first thing you need to do if clean the ornaments. I thought, “oh this step isn’t important”. And actually skipped doing it with our first batch. Not so good. The paint only worked on about half of the ornaments. When you clean the ornaments with rubbing alcohol; it lets the paint stick better on the inside. To clean simply pour a little rubbing alcohol into the ornament. Swish around. Then drain and let the ornament dry.
To decorate the ornament, select the colors you want to use. Drizzle into the ornament. I like to drizzle different colors into the ornament. When I do this, I pour in a pattern of intermixing the colors. Then if you want glitter, add that as well. Then place a folded paper towel over the opening and shake vigorously. Or you can rotate slowly allowing the paints to mix and swirl slowly. The different methods of mixing will give you different patterns on the ornaments.
You can also lay the ornaments on their side and allow gravity to spread the paint around. Then return in a few minutes and slowly rotate the ornament. You continue doing this method until the entire inside is covered with paint. This leaves the colors stronger in their original positions and colors. When you shake vigorously, it mixes the colors more and offers a stronger swirl pattern.
Once the inside of the ornament is covered, place upside down on a paper cup. This allows the extra paint to drip out allowing it to fully dry. Once dry simply replace the hook and hang! See I told you it was simple!
DIY Christmas Ornaments make great Kids Crafts and Christmas Gifts
The great thing about the DIY Christmas ornaments is they are inexpensive, fun, simple and kids love helping! Although Jade is a little young to make the ornaments on her own, my two boys had a blast! They picked their own colors, swirled them and they loved seeing what they could create!
Not only did we make enough ornaments that we can decorate our own Christmas Tree, but we made extras so we can give them as gifts for the grandparents. It makes a very special gift for the grandparents, as it is made by the grandchild. It is personalized and shows their personality. Like J’s ornaments. He really loves Iron Man, and the colors red and silver. Think you could tell?
The part that takes the longest is simply waiting for the ornament to dry. Usually if you are allowing it to drain out the excess paint, it can dry overnight or up to 24 hours.
The final touch is if you want to decorate the outside. This is where the painters come into play. I really like the Elmer’s brand or Sharpie brand. For the ornaments though you will want a fine point tip. If you have access to small stencils, you can use the stencil and paint the different holiday designs on the outside. We looked and looked and just couldn’t find small enough stencils for the ornaments. I was really sad. I miss not having a Hobby Lobby close by.
For us, we used the painters to write the special “To Grandma and Grandpa Love (Child’s name) 2012″ The Silver and Gold colors look great on these as it is rather festive for the holiday. You can also use them to label who’s ornament belongs to whom. It didn’t take long for the kids to forget which ornament was their own. So we can label them before we put them onto the tree.
The DIY Christmas Ornaments can be displayed inside or outside on the trees. They look great in both locations. Although for us; outside isn’t much of an option. The wind blows far too hard to keep them on the tree.
That is basically all it takes to create your own DIY Christmas ornaments. Pretty Straight forward and simple. It is fun for the entire family to get involved, makes great Christmas presents and is a fun kids craft! My kids already want to do it again. We may make this become a new Christmas tradition each year.
Have you ever made DIY Christmas Ornaments?
What colors would you mix for your DIY Christmas Ornaments? | <urn:uuid:94489d23-2091-4f6d-8c51-7989e98a89ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jadelouisedesigns.com/diy-christmas-ornaments/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95051 | 1,304 | 1.742188 | 2 |
How well we recall the jarring broadcasts and heart-rending scenes of orphans in Haiti, whose families and homes were wiped out by the devastating earthquake. These images are deeply etched in our memories, thanks to intensive and sustained world media coverage. As a result, they helped generate an outpouring of support from the public.
Now shift to the Horn of Africa, where more than 2 million children’s lives are in danger as a result of an enormous food crisis, brought on by drought and regional conflict. There is comparatively little media attention. This catastrophe is not on the public agenda. It urgently needs to be.
What is happening in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti is nothing short of a calamity. As a result of the worst drought in 60 years—exacerbated by civil conflict and soaring food and fuel prices—tens of thousands have died, and millions more are malnourished and at risk of death. It is the most severe humanitarian emergency in the world. A massive human dislocation is taking place, with thousands of families trekking across the region to refugee camps in Kenya. Some children are so weakened by malnutrition that they are dying en route to the camps.
But, this time, the world is not watching. Unlike an earthquake, tsunami, or severe storm, this is not the kind of emergency that happened overnight. Those types of disasters, which spring upon us suddenly, have resulted in large-scale media attention, which, quite understandably, can jolt public awareness and response.
Nor is this the type of disaster that can be easily covered. The Horn of Africa is far away from where the cameras are, from where most newspapers and magazines post correspondents or maintain staff. Cutbacks in foreign media coverage over recent years have contributed to a news vacuum in these remote parts of the globe and, in turn, to the public’s unawareness of the scope of human tragedy.
There have not been many images of the nearly 400,000 people in a crowded refugee camp in northern Kenya. And they are the “lucky” ones. Sustained by food, therapeutic nutritional supplies, and clean water provided by UNICEF and other international humanitarian agencies, their chances of survival are far greater than the millions outside the camps who are fighting for their lives every day.
With the support of governments and donors, we can save the lives of children and other victims of this drought. Americans are a generous and compassionate people. The response to the earthquake in Haiti was tremendous. And the media played a huge part.
There have not been many images of the nearly 400,000 people in a crowded refugee camp in northern Kenya.
Now, we need the media to bring home the appalling story of a mother having to make the “Sophie’s choice” of which child to feed—a sickly baby or a still-mobile pre-teen. But despite the misery, there is hope as well to encourage people to take action. There are babies being nursed back to health with a high-protein peanut butter paste provided at UNICEF-supported feeding centers. But let us be clear, those feeding centers and that peanut paste are there due to the generosity of educated donors. Donors who read, listen, and watch the news. Social media can, of course, also provide considerable attention. But those sites, too, have been largely silent as Africa’s worst food crisis in 20 years escalates.
The news media is an indispensable force in marshaling public attention and support for our success as aid organizations in coping with humanitarian crises—but so is everyone who consumes the media. All of our voices need to be heard. The responsibility for action lies not only with media. We all have the power to call attention to this colossal tragedy and try to stop it. And the sooner that happens, the more lives can be saved. A disaster of this magnitude should not have to be sudden, spectacular, or nearby to rise to the top of the world’s agenda. | <urn:uuid:2c309380-0f2e-4197-a730-b4e47ec2fd29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/27/somalia-africa-food-crisis-deadly-yet-quiet.print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952199 | 827 | 2.921875 | 3 |
Recently two more moons were discovered around the former planet Pluto, bringing the total count up to five. Dubbed P4 and P5 for obvious reasons, these two new moons have brought new understanding on how the dwarf planet fits into our solar system.
SETI, the institute that is more so known for its research into discovering alien life, has decided to spice up the bland names given to the newly discovered moons. Beginning today SETI will hold a contest to name the moons. The institute is asking the public to either pick from a list or write in names associated with Hades of Greco-Roman mythology fame.
A list of the pre-selected names can be found on SETI's website, which I have listed below in the Source #2 link below. I decided to go with two common names myself - Heracles and Persephone. What did you choose? Let us know in the comments.
Further Reading: Read and find more Science, Space & Robotics news at our Science, Space & Robotics news index page. | <urn:uuid:a7cde4ee-3dc9-419c-be2a-53714ddeb3e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tweaktown.com/news/28444/spacett-astronomers-ask-public-to-help-name-pluto-s-two-new-moons/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951398 | 208 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Bright Horizons: Preschool & Kindergarten Prep Showcase
What does inspired learning look like? Attend the Bright Horizons Preschool and Kindergarten Prep Showcase and learn all about the programs.
Bright Horizons’ Preschool and Kindergarten Prep programs focus on developing school readiness in all areas of academic learning and social preparedness. The Showcase event gives children a chance to visit the classrooms and experience Bright Horizons programs first-hand by exploring fun activities at ‘Inspiration Stations’.
Visit BrightHorizons.com/ShowcaseBoston for event dates and locations.
This hands-on session will give parents an in depth look at how Bright Horizon facilities function, and how children will grow with the Bright Horizons curriculum.
- Meet Preschool and Kindergarten Prep teachers
- Visit the classrooms and participate in hands-on activities at ‘Inspiration Stations’ and Explore state-of-the-art facilities
- Learn more about the preschool and Kindergarten Prep programs
- Engage with fellow parents during our Parent Panel
To find a participating location near you, visit: BrightHorizons.com/ShowcaseBoston
Things To Do & Events This Week!
Apps for Kids | <urn:uuid:47b97290-fe22-4482-8501-3291e3cac3dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northshorekid.com/story/bright-horizons-preschool-kindergarten-prep-showcase | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00058-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903823 | 250 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era
L-S parents advised about detecting illegal drug use
BY CINDY HUMMEL, Correspondent
Any Lampeter-Strasburg High School student can buy drugs right outside school if he or she knows the right person, according to a Lancaster County drug task force member.
"There is a drug problem at L-S," the officer told about 50 high school parents on Feb. 7.
The officer, who did not want to be identified by name, said L-S is not alone. Drugs are everywhere, he said.
In the district, the officer said, he arrested two recent graduates who had three pounds of marijuana. He caught a 30-year-old user and his 15-year-old supplier. One of the biggest busts the officer was involved in occurred in Pioneer Woods, which is not far from Pioneer Field, he said.
Maria Ronneburger, president of the L-S Parent Teacher Organization, researched the drug problem in the area and made it her mission to inform other parents. A year ago, she invited speakers on a night solely for the purpose to learn about drugs. Fifteen people attended.
This time around, Ronneburger brought speakers in on a winter back-to-school night at the high school. Parents heard a brief introduction and were able to see drugs and drug paraphernalia first-hand at the beginning of the night.
Most of the parents returned, after meeting with teachers, to hear the drug task force member and Dr. Michael Reihart, an EMS medical director.
The officer described to parents some warning signs that their children might be using drugs. Those signs include glassy eyes, slurred speech, suddenly dropping grades and poor hygiene. Other signs are boxes of plastic bags and electronic scales.
Drug manufacturers have come up with creative ways to disguise synthetic drugs, he said.
One bath-salts manufacturer markets its product as bubble gum-flavored potpourri that is not intended for human consumption.
The officer said the 1.2-gram packets are suspicious when one questions why a product not for eating would be flavored, and why such a tiny amount of potpourri would cost $30.
Bath salts also go by brand names such as Bolivian Bath and Garden Fuel.
Parents learned how drugs can be hidden in highlighters and hollowed-out cigars. Drugs have even been found suspended by a string in air ducts.
Another menace is in the form of synthetic drugs. A chemist can change one minor part of an illegal drug to make it legal, Reihart said.
Reihart gave a presentation on the effects of drug use. Users can begin stuttering and loose control of brain function and bodily control. Sometimes they die.
Pleased with the parent turnout, Reihart said his goal in giving presentations is to prevent one drug-related death.
L-S high school nurse Teddy Book told parent that the district's random drug tests give students a way to avoid peer pressure, which is the number-one reason people start using drugs.
Book said that by law, the district cannot test all students. It can provide student numbers of those who participate in extracurricular activities or drive to school. The testing facility randomly picks numbers, and those students are tested.
In 2009-10, one student had a confirmed positive result, out of 240 tested, according to Superintendent Kevin Peart.
In 2010-11, two students out of 280 had a confirmed positive result, and in 2011-12, the number was three out of 140 tested.
Results from the current school year are not yet available. | <urn:uuid:262b2a28-2b0a-448d-a79a-26f13c8dc7ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lancasteronline.com/eedition/pages/news/edition/CEAM/20130213/M/5/2450305/2/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965237 | 760 | 1.9375 | 2 |
Human Capital News Roundup: The nurse faculty shortage, discharging homeless patients, “diaper deserts,” and more.
Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:
NJ Spotlight reports on a state Senate committee hearing in New Jersey this week at which legislators heard from health, business and academic leaders about how the New Jersey Nursing Initiative has made progress in addressing the state’s staggering 10.5 percent nursing faculty vacancy rate. Among those testifying was John Lumpkin, RWJF senior vice president and director of the Health Care Group. Read more about the hearing.
A study by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumnus Haslyn Hunte, PhD, MPH, and colleagues find that Blacks who feel discriminated against or mistreated are more likely to abuse alcohol and illegal drugs, Medical XPress reports.
Kelly Doran, MD, an RWJF/U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Scholar, wrote a blog for the Huffington Post about why “Hospitals Should Never Discharge Homeless Patients to the Streets.” Hospital care teams often discharge patients “to home” without asking or thinking about their housing situations, perpetuating their cycle of homelessness by sending them back to the streets instead of supportive housing, she writes. Fierce Healthcare also reported on Doran’s post.
Brendan Nyhan, PhD, an alumnus of the RWJF Scholars in Health Policy Research program, gave comments to the Daily Beast about political reporting and predicting election results.
MedPage Today reports on research by RWJF Physician Faculty Scholar Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, that she presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology annual meeting. Gupta’s research finds that the economic cost of food allergy in the average American child tops $4,000, with more than half of the cost attributed to career sacrifices by parents.
Joanne Goldblum, an RWJF Community Health Leader and founder and executive director of the National Diaper Bank Network, wrote a piece for the Huffington Post about the nation’s “diaper deserts”—where diapers are either unavailable or sold at convenience stories in small packages for high prices packages. Read another post by Goldblum, which was cross-posted on the RWJF Human Capital Blog.
Health & Society Scholar Matthew Killingsworth, PhD, and his colleague used smartphones to survey 5,000 people from 83 countries about their experiences and associated happiness. The researchers also examined “mind wandering.” Among their findings, Business Insider reports: people are happier when their minds are focused on the here and now instead of when their minds are wandering.
The Hartford Courant spoke to Health & Society Scholars program site directors Lisa Berkman, PhD, and James House, PhD, about why women's life spans are shrinking in many parts of the U.S. | <urn:uuid:8371047d-6309-4e69-a174-ac6f9766ab68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/human-capital-blog/2012/11/human_capital_newsr2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00054-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946278 | 624 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Readers may have noticed from our 3Di website that our aim is to “change the way we think about intelligences and education“. Our blog post today consists of several paragraphs selected from the Forbes magazine website which are saying very much the same thing: all our thinking about teaching, learning and intelligences needs to change.
People around the world are waking up to the fact that the 19th Century educational paradigm is well past its sell-by date, and a learning revolution is needed if students are to fulfil their potential in a wired world of electronically connected, creative individuals and organisations.
Forbes is an American business magazine owned by Forbes, Inc. Published biweekly, it features original articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. Forbes also reports on related subjects such as technology, communications, science, and law.
Forbes is by no means a bastion of idealistic and socially progressive thinkers. Forbes readers are not known to be radical critics of the established world order. All the same, they are now being challenged to change their perceptions about the school and college system, and about the real needs of learners in the modern world. Bear in mind that Forbes is first and foremost a serious magazine for people who want to get seriously rich.
Sebastiab Thrun has found a fresh challenge that excites him: fixing higher education. Conventional university teaching is way too costly, inefficient and ineffective to survive for long, he contends. He wants to foment a teaching revolution in which the world’s best instructors conduct highly interactive online classes that let them reach 100,000 students simultaneously and globally.
Udacity’s earliest course offerings have been free, and although Thrun eventually plans to charge something, he wants his tuition schedule to be shockingly low. Getting a master’s degree might cost just $100. After teaching his own artificial intelligence class at Stanford last year – and attracting 160,000 online signups – Thrun believes online formats can be far more effective than traditional classroom lectures. “So many people can be helped right now,” Thrun declares. “I see this as a mission.”
There’s a startup boom in online higher education, but nearly all of the players hope to advance by working within the system.
Such careful collegiality is not the Thrun way. “It’s pretty obvious that degrees will go away,” Thrun says. “The idea of a degree is that you spend a fixed time right after high school to educate yourself for the rest of your career. But careers change so much over a lifetime now that this model isn’t valid anymore.”
So Udacity is charting its own path as a career academy for brainy people of all ages. Most of its 25 employees are video, graphics or software whizzes determined to make each second of online instruction as eye-catching and compelling as possible. It currently offers 11 courses, for free, in subjects such as computer programming, statistics and mathematics.
Udacity later this year is expanding into the humanities. Thrun says the service will always have “a free path,” but the idea is eventually to charge for certificates or enhanced features such as chat.
“I was a popular professor,” Thrun says. “My teaching ratings were usually good. I could take complicated subjects and explain them in an entertaining way.”
Even so, professor Thrun privately knew something was wrong. In many of his classes students fared much worse on the midterm exams than he expected. He says he had fallen into the “lecturing trap,” in which the instructor looks brilliant and a handful of top-performing students create the appearance of a lively class – but most students aren’t keeping pace. Thrun needed a way to engage all students.
3Di’s view is that the majority of university courses are prohibitively expensive for millions of the less wealthy, and often their working methods are alienating, dull, uncreative & demotivating. Information can often be better disseminated through the Internet. However, there is always going to be great value in bringing people together in seminars for debate, discussion and creative thinking. There are surely many ways to combine the best of the old with the best of the new.
* * * * * *
Peter Diamandis wants help. The man whose X Prizes have spurred breakthrough ideas in areas such as space travel and oil-spill cleanup aims to launch a similar initiative to help fix education in the U.S. But as he told an audience at the SXSW Interactive festival in March, he isn’t sure how to do it.
There’s no shortage of high-tech visionaries and tycoons these days, running around with ideas about how to fix education. Many of them are finding, though, that technology alone isn’t enough. Exciting ideas founder quickly if they don’t sustain motivation in students who perform at widely different levels. Other challenges include the need to engage effectively with school districts, teachers and parents.
Nonetheless, Diamandis vows to press on. He told the SXSW audience that his X Prize Foundation is looking to hire at least five more senior staffers this year, including someone to run the education initiative. “One of our goals should be to build an educational system we can be proud of,” he declared.
3Di has no doubt that change needs to take place on several levels – curriculum, delivery, and whole system. We know from our own experience of running courses in schools and universities that students appreciate thorough and imaginative preparation, stimulating delivery, peer and tutor collaboration and proper practical involvement, with opportunities to engage and discuss with one another. We also need to be mindful of the fact that what we should do as educators is to simultaneously promote creative and imaginative thinking, social intelligence, emotional intelligence and personal intelligence. It’s not just the intellect that needs to be stretched and stimulated when preparing young people for the rest of their lives.
Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete
America’s last competitive advantage – its ability to innovate – is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system, according to research by Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner.
Taking the stage at Skillshare’s Penny Conference, Wagner pointed out the skills it takes to become an innovator, the downfalls of America’s current education system, and how parents, teachers, mentors, and employers can band together to create innovators.
American schools educate to fill children with knowledge – instead they should be focusing on developing students’ innovation skills and motivation to succeed, he says:
“Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today knowledge is free. It’s like air, it’s like water. It’s become a commodity… There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.”
Knowledge that children are encouraged to soak up in American schools – the memorization of planets, state capitals, the Periodic Table of Elements – can only take students so far. But “skill and will” determine a child’s ability to think outside of the box, he says.
As lined out in his book, “The Global Achievement Gap,” that set of core competencies that every student must master before the end of high school is:
- Critical thinking and problem solving (the ability to ask the right questions)
- Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
- Agility and adaptability
- Initiative and entrepreneurialism
- Accessing and analyzing information
- Effective written and oral communication
For his latest book, “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World,” Wagner has extended his studies to address the problem of how we teach students these skills. He has come to the conclusion that our country’s economic problems are based in its education system.
“We’ve created an economy based on people spending money they do not have to buy things they may not need, threatening the planet in the process,” he says. “We have to transition from a consumer-driven economy to an innovation-driven economy.”
In an effort to discern teaching and parenting patterns, Wagner interviewed innovators in their 20s, followed by interviews with their parents and the influential teachers and mentors in the students’ lives. He found stunning similarities between the teaching styles and goals he encountered with these influential teachers at all levels of education and concludes, “The culture of schooling as we all know it is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators.” He identified five ways in which America’s education system is stunting innovation:
1. Individual achievement is the focus: Students spend a bulk of their time focusing on improving their GPAs — school is a competition among peers. “But innovation is a team sport,” says Wagner. “Yes, it requires some solitude and reflection, but fundamentally problems are too complex to innovate or solve by oneself.”
2. Specialization is celebrated and rewarded: High school curriculum is structured using Carnegie units, a system that is 125 years old, says Wagner. He says the director of talent at Google once told him, “If there’s one thing that educators need to understand, it’s that you can neither understand nor solve problems within the context and bright lines of subject content.” Wagner declares, “Learning to be an innovator is about learning to cross disciplinary boundaries and exploring problems and their solutions from multiple perspectives.”
3. Risk aversion is the norm: “We penalize mistakes,” says Wagner. “The whole challenge in schooling is to figure out what the teacher wants. And the teachers have to figure out what the superintendent wants or the state wants. It’s a compliance-driven, risk-averse culture.” Innovation, on the other hand, is grounded in taking risks and learning via trial and error. Educators could take a note from design firm IDEO with its mantra of “Fail early, fail often,” says Wagner. And at Stanford’s Institute of Design, he says they are considering ideas like, “We’re thinking F is the new A.” Without failure, there is no innovation.
4. Learning is profoundly passive: For 12 to 16 years, we learn to consume information while in school, says Wagner. He suspects that our schooling culture has actually turned us into the “good little consumers” that we are. Innovative learning cultures teach about creating, not consuming, he says.
5. Extrinsic incentives drive learning: “Carrots and sticks, As and Fs,” Wagner remarks. Young innovators are intrinsically motivated, he says. They aren’t interested in grading scales and petty reward systems. Parents and teachers can encourage innovative thinking by nurturing the curiosity and inquisitiveness of young people, Wagner says. As he describes it, it’s a pattern of “play to passion to purpose.” Parents of innovators encouraged their children to play in more exploratory ways, he says. “Fewer toys, more toys without batteries, more unstructured time in their day.” Those children grow up to find passions, not just academic achievement, he says. “And that passion matures to a profound sense of purpose. Every young person I interviewed wants to make a difference in the world, put a ding in the universe.”
“”We have to transition to an innovation-driven culture, an innovation-driven society,” says Wagner. “A consumer society is bankrupt — it’s not coming back. To do that, we’re going to have to work with young people — as parents, as teachers, as mentors, and as employers — in very different ways. They want to, you want to become innovators. And we as a country need the capacity to solve more different kinds of problems in more ways. It requires us to have a very different vision of education, of teaching and learning for the 21st century. It requires us to have a sense of urgency about the problem that needs to be solved.”
Wagner is not suggesting we change a few processes and update a few manuals. He says, “The system has become obsolete. It needs reinventing, not reforming.”
These urgent calls for action have been heard for many years from people such as Sir Ken Robinson and authors Gordon Dryden & Jeanette Vos (The New Learning Revolution). Those calls have been heard and acted upon long ago in several progressive countries, especially those that put the wellbeing of students first and foremost – Finland, Denmark, etc. The USA and Britain, as well as other, larger countries where there are many vested interests, a great deal of wealth, rigid expectations and a love of hierachical systems, have behaved like enormous heavy battleships or aircraft carriers – which take forever to slow down, let alone turn around.
China, on the other hand, has re-tooled, re-trained and is re-inventing its entire education system along the lines suggested by Dryden and Vos. China has thereby followed the lead of smaller Asian countries such as South Korea, Singapore and the province of Hong Kong, which are the new stars of the international success league for education and the wellbeing of children.
Time to wake up.
“Not everybody needs to go to college, and those that do may not need to go right now.”
“Diversities of talent.”
“We must not have a singular conception of ability and intelligence. Think about that the next time you need a fireman to save your life.”
“A 3 year old is not half a 6 year old.”
“Kids are now being interviewed for kindergarten.”
“We have built our education systems on the model of standardised fast food.”
“It’s about passion and what excites our spirit and our energy. The reason so many people are opting out of education is that it doesn’t feed their spirit and their passion.”
“Human flourishing is not a mechanical process or part of a factory model. It’s an organic process. You cannot predict the outcome of human development.”
“Our education system is predicated on the idea of ‘academic ability’. The whole system was invented in the 19thC to meet the needs of industrialism.”
“We need to radically re-think our view of intelligence.”
“Intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn’t divided into compartments.”
“Creativity comes about as a result of different ways of seeing things.” | <urn:uuid:98c1397d-964b-4f87-b145-67f91a0ac10e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://3diassociates.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/forbes-radical-thoughts-on-education/ | 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 | 0.962021 | 3,158 | 2.140625 | 2 |
Containing over 100,000 volumes with over 20,000 in special collections, the Architecture and Planning Library serves the academic and research needs of scholars and professionals in the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, and planning as well as those whose focus is in the history of art and American Studies. The library also hosts over 200 current periodical subscriptions in its celebrated reading room in addition to facilitating access to hundreds available online.
The library also houses the Alexander Architectural Archive which contains documentation for historic and architecturally important projects in and out of the state, focusing primarily on work by Texas architects. To access information about the collections at the archive visit the Collections and Finding Aids page.
Subjects covered by the library's collection include:
- architectural design, theory, history, and criticism
- historic preservation
- building technology
- landscape architecture
- interior design
- sustainable design
- urban design
- community and regional planning
Some materials are contained in Special Collections from which items may be viewed, in a limited capacity, upon request.
Materials not available from campus libraries can be requested through the University of Texas Libraries' Inter-Library Service.
Available through workstations in the University of Texas Libraries or via the Internet, Databases and Indexes to Articles provides access to periodical indexes, full-text resources, books and dissertations, statistical sources, and more. Avery Index and other database assistance is available from staff in the library.
Especially useful for architecture and planning research:
- Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals
- Art Abstracts
- Bibliography of the History of Art
- Current Urban Documents
- Oxford Art Online (includes Grove Art Online)
- PAIS International
To borrow items from any UT library, or use other services restricted to current UT students, faculty, and staff, non-UT borrowers need to obtain a library card through one of the several programs offered to the community by the University of Texas Libraries. | <urn:uuid:cd6e73f2-24a8-4bb5-8094-c640dd9509e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lib.utexas.edu/apl/collections | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917961 | 402 | 2.03125 | 2 |
With all the attention being paid to Abraham Lincoln in connection to Barak Obama's presidency, I thought for a moment when I saw the historic United States flags hanging from the west side of the Capitol Building as a backdrop to his inaugeral that one of them was a 34-star "Civil War Era" flag. Ah, but this image clearly shows the flag has 21 stars! What is the significance of that, you may ask? Barak Obama, master of symbolism, chose the 1819-1820 edition of the United States Flag because it has very particular meaning.
That was the flag when they added the star for Illinois! | <urn:uuid:aebec363-5f2f-4764-bc53-8d22e994be37> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/2009/01/the-eye-sees-what-it-wants-to-see.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00053-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964618 | 130 | 2.4375 | 2 |
The HS2 line will use 225mph trains to link London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and is expected to be completed by 2033.
The speed of many journeys along the route will be cut drastically, making it possible to travel from central London to Manchester in only one hour and eight minutes, an hour faster than is currently possible.
The route passes through the consituencies of MPs who are hostile to the plans, including Cheryl Gillian, the former Welsh Secretary, who said thousands of people in her constituency of Cheshire and Amersham and elsewhere will have their lives “blighted” by the project.
The line does not travel through Derybshire Dales, transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin's constituency.
HS2 has also caused controversy in the Chancellor George Osborne's constituency of Tatton. Residents and councillors in the area have criticised the project for its potential impact on the countryside.
As the map above shows, the high speed track proposal may involve building on protected green belt land in certain areas. | <urn:uuid:56081a0f-58bc-49b6-a5d1-cf98bdd36024> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/9831802/Interactive-map-HS2-high-speed-rail-route-in-detail.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961845 | 211 | 2.296875 | 2 |
Neighborhood leaders interested in learning all the behind the scenes work that goes into operating the City of Tallahassee have an excellent opportunity as the City again presents its Neighborhood Leadership Academy. Open to neighborhood representatives and leaders living within the Tallahassee city limits, the Neighborhood Leadership Academy is presented as a two-month course, with participants meeting once a week for nine weeks.
The Academy is designed to empower interested citizens to learn more about how their local government operates. The instructional and interactive forum allows neighborhood leaders to learn the best ways to access City services and receive assistance when needed. It also serves as a venue to provide feedback on how services might be enhanced.
Neighborhood Recognition Program
It is awards time, as we recognize the Neighborhood of the Year and Neighbor of the Year. Check out our information page and download an application for nomination.
'How to' Guide to Neighborhood Associations
Information on starting and maintaining a neighborhood association.
Register Your Neighborhood Association
Register your neighborhood association online!
Get your community involved in environmentally conscious initiatives.
Rooming House Ordinance
Know the rules on allowing your home to become a multi-family residence.
So You Want to Live Off-Campus
Check out our special section regarding students living off-campus | <urn:uuid:fc92ccaf-190d-4b81-be42-ff90a190b94d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.talgov.com/parks/parks-neighborhood-index.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935986 | 260 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Grover Cleveland is being considered for the “turnaround” method, which would give the building a new name and eliminate 50 percent of its staff come September. Schools are slated for turnaround when they've been on the state's Persistently Low Achieving (PLA) list, meaning graduation rates were below 60 percent, for the last three years.
Currently, Grover Cleveland's graduation rate is at 58 percent, 5 percent below the city average.
But speakers in the public comment period of the hearing said the school is not being considered fairly by the city.
The school, which started the 2011/12 school year under the federal restart model, got a new principal midway through September and therefore did not get the chance to prove its ability for success yet, they argued.
In addition, Grover Cleveland is one of nine test sites in the city for iZone – a program that lets students perform their studies any time, any where.
Students also work with the community, holding music concerts at a local senior center and hosting holiday events, such as a haunted house, speakers said, adding that if the turnaround method is implemented, the school could lose its plant science program, its music instruction and other services.
Alumni also attended the hearing, including Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan, class of 1976, and the Queens representative on the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), Dmytro Fedkowskyj, who also graduated from Grover Cleveland, as did his mother.
Deputy Schools Chancellor Mark Sternberg stressed before the public comment period that the Education Department wants to help the school, not hurt it.
“It comes from a place of wanting to help our students,” he said of the turnaround proposal. “The structures and the staff that come with a new school can more quickly accelerate the pace of reform.”
In addition, he said, under the turnaround model, the school would receive upwards of $2 million in federal funding for reform programs.
But Nolan, who was wearing the school pin she saved from when she graduated Grover Cleveland, said she worked in Albany to help secure funding for the school under the restart model last year.
“I did not sponsor this so my high school could be closed,” she said.
In addition, Nolan added that the school operated under the restart model until the city struggled to reach an agreement over teacher evaluations, and then the turnaround model was proposed.
“I am deeply concerned about the effect this sudden change in course will have on the students at Grover Cleveland High School,” Nolan said. “Even just the announcement of the possible closing has probably done damage to the school's future prospects.”
Master English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher Maria Rozos said the school's graduation rates are low in part because many students don't speak the language when they enter the school, and sometimes are illiterate in their native tongues.
She said it takes a second-language learner five to seven years to acquire academic-level English.
“However, the ESL students are held to the same standard as the mainstream native-English speakers and are expected to graduate in four years even though this goes against language theory and research,” Rozos said.
“As a school, we work tirelessly to prepare our ESL students for college and careers,” she added, citing multiple grants and programs the school received.
In addition, she said six out of seven of the last school valedictorians were did not speak English as their first language.
Selena Vasquez, a 10th grader at Grover Cleveland, said she and her peers want to go to college and get careers, which they are striving for under the instruction of their teachers.
“Many of the students that attend or have attended Grover Cleveland High School have formed great relationships with current staff and grown to trust them,” she said, giving examples of her favorite teachers.
“The staff in the school should not be penalized for something that is not their fault,” Vasquez added. “The teachers don't have control over the students' decisions and it's the parents' responsibility to make sure their child is going to school and passing.”
Further comments and questions about the proposal can be sent to D24proposals@schools.nyc.gov, and calls can be made to 212-374-7621. An analysis of the public comment and question-and-answer session at Monday's hearing will be available online before the PEP votes on the proposal on April 26. | <urn:uuid:b280dcfb-9c25-4edb-ba46-de26b8374058> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glendaleregister.com/view/full_story/18154904/article-Ridgewood-makes-last-effort-to-save-Grover-Cleveland | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977094 | 950 | 1.851563 | 2 |
Packet Telephony Gateways to Thrive During PSTN to Internet Conversion Says In-Stat.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 2001
As the public switched telephone network (PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) The worldwide voice telephone network. Once only an analog system, the heart of most telephone networks today is all digital. In the U.S. ) is gradually replaced by the Internet as a mode by which to carry voice, data and video traffic, growth in both port shipments and revenues for packet telephony Synonymous with IP telephony and voice over IP (VoIP), in which a digital voice stream is broken up into small chunks (packets) and transmitted over a packet-switched network. See IP telephony and packet switching. gateways will escalate, according to according to
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.
2. In keeping with: according to instructions.
3. Cahners In-Stat Group (http://www.instat.com).
The high-tech market research firm finds that, as a result, packet telephony gateway revenues will reach $5.855 billion in 2005.
"The Internet is being continually enhanced with higher speed access, convergence products such as packet telephony gateways and software to provide basic and enhanced services Enhanced service is service offered over commercial carrier transmission facilities used in interstate communications, that employs computer processing applications that act on the format, content, code, protocol, or similar aspects of the subscriber's transmitted information; .
"However, we are still in the early stages of this evolution and it will take many years before the world is completely connected via a converged digital network," said Norm Bogen, director of In-Stat's WAN and Service Provider Group.
At present, packet telephony gateways are being deployed by a variety of service providers in order to offload To remove work from one computer and do it on another. See cooperative processing. data and voice traffic from the PSTN. This is enabling providers to deliver lower cost long distance voice services today and to create a next generation network capable of delivering advanced voice, video and data services tomorrow.
Hence, the opportunity for packet telephony gateways exists today and will continue for many years before the PSTN is dismantled. However, In-Stat believes that IP networks will eventually become the single converged network The integration of the telephone system with IP-based data networks. See softswitch.
(networking) converged network - A single network that can carry voice, video and data. of choice as they will provide increased scalability and flexibility, at a lower cost.
Bogen continued, "In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified"
meantime, meanwhile , convergence products like packet telephony gateways will be used in conjunction with the overlay networks A logical network that runs on top of another network. For example, peer-to-peer networks are overlay networks on the Internet. They use their own addressing system for determining how files are distributed and accessed, which provides a layer on top of the Internet's IP addressing. to send voice, data, fax or video from anywhere to anywhere."
In-Stat has also found that:
-- In 2000, there were a total of 5.143 million voice ports shipped on a variety of packet telephony gateway platforms. The total manufacturer revenue generated in 2000 from voice gateways was $1.127 billion. -- Packet telephony revenues are expected to increase by 12.3 percent in 2001 to $1.265 billion. This relatively slow growth is due to the worldwide slowdown in communications equipment spending that In-Stat expects to see this year. -- Beginning in 2002, much more rapid growth is expected in both port shipments and revenues for packet telephony gateways, resulting in gateway revenues of $5.855 billion in 2005.
The report "Creating the New Public Network with Packet Telephony Gateways," (No. WN0102MI), segments the packet telephony gateway market by platform and provides equipment vendor market shares by platform in addition to a five-year forecast of port shipments and revenues for the total market.
To purchase this report, or for more information, please visit http://www.instat.com/catalog/cat-wn.htm or contact Courtney McEuen at 916/984-1179; firstname.lastname@example.org. The report price is $3,495 USD USD
In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar.
The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. .
Cahners In-Stat Group (http://www.instat.com/) covers the full spectrum of digital communications Transmitting text, voice and video in binary form. See communications. research from vendor to end-user, providing the analysis and perspective that allows technology vendors and service providers worldwide to make more informed business decisions.
In-Stat is a unit of Cahners Business Information (www.cahners.com), a leading provider of critical information and marketing solutions to business professionals and a member of the Reed Elsevier plc group. | <urn:uuid:536a1856-faa3-436c-9dbe-c7602efe5b67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Packet+Telephony+Gateways+to+Thrive+During+PSTN+to+Internet...-a074793972 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932592 | 1,142 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Some of our devoted condor fans have been asking about Saticoy, the California condor chick who hatched and was raised by his parents while on the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s Condor Cam last year. For those who are new to Condor Cam, Saticoy is the older sibling to this year’s chick, Cuyamaca.
On April 11, Saticoy was transported to his release site with two other condors who hatched at the Safari Park last year, Nechuwa and Sukilamu. These three young males are being housed in the Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge in a flight pen with a wonderful view of the quiet, wide-open spaces of the Refuge. Beautiful wildflowers growing all over the grassy, rolling hills lead to the canyons and mountains that provide prime condor nesting habitat. The Refuge is located just north of Santa Barbara in southern California’s Kern County.
The flight pen acts as a hacking site, or a place where the young birds become familiar with their surroundings before they are released to the wild. They can acclimatize to the weather and wind. Also, there are 66 other condors flying free in this region, and many of them frequent the hillside where the flight pen is located. This allows the resident condors to meet the new, young release candidates; when the young birds are released, they won’t be complete strangers to the free-flying condors. When we put Saticoy (wearing wing tag #36), Nechuwa (wing tag #37), and Sukilamu (wing tag #43) in the flight pen, four wild condors were already watching from the outside, curious about their new neighbors.
Saticoy and his pen mates will stay in the flight pen through the summer. If all goes well, the field biologists will release them to the wild sometime in September, about 18 months after Saticoy’s hatch. As you can see, California condor development is a long and involved process! | <urn:uuid:372a1204-d709-4a2d-bb11-6bfc397d92c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.sandiegozoo.org/author/ron-webb/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958314 | 425 | 2.171875 | 2 |
Alcohol: The World’s Oldest Recreational Drug
By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK
Last week it was announced by the British Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, that Professor Les Iversen had been appointed as the new chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). This is the board that advises the UK government on drug issues. Professor Iversen was, until his retirement, at the Pharmacology Department at the University of Oxford. He is also the author of several books on drugs, including Drugs: A Very Short Introduction (2001). In the short excerpt from that book, below, Professor Iversen talks about the oldest of all recreational drugs: alcohol.
Alcohol is the oldest of all recreational drugs, and it is widely consumed in the Western world. The production of wines, beers, and distilled spirits is a very large industry, with worldwide sales of more than $300 billion. In most Western countries more than 80 per cent of the adult population will admit to having tried alcohol, and about 50 per cent are regular users. The consumption of alcohol continues to increase, and the range of alcoholic drinks is constantly widening – with, for example, sweet ‘alcopop’ drinks to attract the younger consumer – and in many countries alcoholic products are available twenty-four hours a day in supermarkets. The alcohol industry spends large amounts of money on advertising to encourage the sales of its products. The consumption of alcoholic drinks is deeply embedded in the culture of many countries: the special atmosphere of the traditional English pub or the German beer garden; the custom of drinking wine with the meal in France and Italy; the ice-cold aquavit of the Scandinavian cold table; and the universal champagne at the wedding reception.
Exactly how alcohol acts in the brain to produce initially a state of excitement and intoxication and later sedation is not precisely understood. Scientists believe that the key actions of alcohol target the two principal chemical messenger systems in the neural circuits of the brain. Alcohol enhances the actions of the main off signal, GABA, and partially blocks the main on signal, L-glutamate. But there is more to it than that: the pleasurable intoxicant actions of alcohol seem to be due in part to its ability to stimulate opiate mechanisms in the brain – the same ones that are stimulated more directly and more aggressively by heroin. The drug naltrexone acts as an antagonist of the opiate receptors in the brain. It has been used successfully in treating heroin addicts, and more recently it has been shown to be effective in treating alcoholics. The drug removes the pleasurable effects of both heroin and alcohol, making it easier for the dependent user to quit.
The majority of drinkers are able to indulge in alcohol without damaging themselves or others, and indeed a number of studies have shown that the consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. But alcohol consumption also has a considerable down side. The acute stage of alcohol intoxication releases normal inhibitions and tends to promote reckless and often violent behaviour. Fights with broken bottles and beer glasses as weapons can interrupt the friendly atmosphere of the English pub. In addition, the adverse effects of the drug on the regions of the brain that are involved in behaviours that require precise control, as in driving a motor vehicle, make it dangerous to drink and drive. A very high proportion (more than 50 per cent)of fatal traffic accidents are associated with alcohol. A high proportion of violent crimes, in particular domestic violence, are also associated with drinking.
A certain proportion of alcohol consumers, perhaps as many as 5–10 per cent, become dependent on the drug as alcoholics. Alcohol will come to dominate their lives, often leading to loss of job and family. They may suffer physical damage to liver (cirrhosis) and other organs, and in extreme cases they may suffer drug-induced brain damage and premature dementia. It is estimated that there are 150,000 alcohol-related deaths in the USA each year.
The consumption of alcohol during pregnancy poses special risks. About 1 in 1,000 of the children born in the USA every year suffer from ‘foetal alcohol syndrome’. This is a condition in which the development of the brain is permanently impaired, and it leads to permanent retardation of intellect, with IQ scores of 60 or less. Foetal alcohol syndrome is the single most important cause of mental retardation in the USA. For reasons that are not understood, women differ greatly in their susceptibility to alcohol. As little as 2 units a day can in some cases lead to foetal alcohol syndrome in the baby. | <urn:uuid:c6ae6cf1-ba5f-4531-944b-d7c73f8504ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.oup.com/2010/01/drugs-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959565 | 945 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Congressman Murphy, a Former Child Psychologist, Responds to Tragedy
Murphy, who previously was a child psychologist before being elected to Congress in 2002, shares 10 suggestions to help adults reassure and comfort children during this difficult and confusing time.
U.S. Rep. Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, released the following statement on the violent shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Murphy previously was a child psychologist before being elected to Congress in 2002.
"(Friday's) senseless tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School leaves us all shocked. We don’t have words to explain our grief, and we cannot begin to understand what would cause an individual to inflict this kind of pain on fellow human beings, let alone defenseless children. To the grieving families, our deepest condolences go out to you all. For the many teachers, first responders, police officers and emergency personnel who were focused on returning the students to safety, we thank you for putting yourself in harm's way to save a child's life. We hold you all close in our prayers.”
Prior to holding elected office, Murphy had a career in the mental health field—specializing in child psychology. Murphy says that hearing about an event as traumatic and horrific as the Connecticut elementary school shooting may affect children and parents far away from where the event occurred because it makes us all feel a little less safe.
"Don’t ignore it," said Murphy. "It’s better to discuss it with children and for parents to discuss with each other. Over the coming days, many parents and children will be affected by the horrific level of the events. While some may be far away geographically, tragic events can hit very close to home emotionally. If your children are exhibiting signs of distress, please don’t ignore it.”
Murphy shared 10 suggestions to help adults reassure and comfort children during this difficult and confusing time:
- Ask your child what he/she heard about the incident.
- Listen to their concerns and emotions.
- Answer their questions with age appropriate information.
- Support, comfort and reassure them of their safety at home and school.
- Observe/watch for symptoms of problems: appetite, sleep, worries, aggression, anger, sadness.
- Protect them from other media exposure and information that creates more fear and problems.
- Call for other professional help for your child if needed.
- Review with school personnel how they are handling security and counseling students at school
- Pay attention to and take care of your own concerns and worries as a parent.
- Keep watch over time as concerns and symptoms may come later.
Later next week, Murphy will be participating in an in-depth discussion on this tragedy on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal on Wednesday morning along with his Mental Health Caucus co-chair U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano. Since 2003, the Congressional Mental Health Caucus has worked in a bipartisan manner to inform, educate, and advocate to members of Congress and the public on a variety of mental health issues.
Follow the latest updates on the tragedy on our sister Patch in Newtown. | <urn:uuid:b48e7448-ef51-4253-9923-9b92984cb8c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://canon-mcmillan.patch.com/articles/congressman-murphy-a-former-child-psychologist-responds-to-tragedy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95303 | 647 | 2.359375 | 2 |
Out of the devastating storm that ravaged the southern Philippines, a “miracle” baby was born.
The child was born on the roof of a flooded health center after her parents escaped some of the worst flash flooding witnessed in the Philippines in recent years.The flooding was triggered by the typhoon Washi, which caused major destruction in two southern Philippines cities.
Annaliza Tumanda gave birth to a new baby girl on Saturday after escaping her home by swimming through the floodwater with her husband and three children during the height of the devastating storm.
A very pregnant Tumanda went into labor shortly after finding refuge in a neighboring three-story home and was brought by rescue workers to the roof of a flooded health center.
On the roof, Tumanda gave birth to a healthy 6.6-pound “miracle” baby girl.
The U.N. has compared the Philippines flood destruction to the likes of a tsunami. Entire villages have been wiped out due to the flooding and over 1,000 people were killed with over 640,000 people displaced.
“It was as if the cities were hit by an inland tsunami,” said U.N. humanitarian coordinator Soe Nyunt-U of the storm.
After surviving the catastrophic flooding, the couple decided to name their child Sendang, the feminine version for the Philippines’ name for the deadly storm.
The couple said they chose to name their child after the storm out of "gratitude" for the survival of the child and to “never forget.”
“It’s a blessing we all survived and my baby is well,” Tumanda said from an evacuation center in Cagayan de Oro.
“With God’s will, we survived. It was like a miracle,” the mother added. | <urn:uuid:25d2e738-e313-4151-a3fe-eb2a4b8a33ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christianpost.com/news/miracle-baby-born-on-roof-in-phillipines-flood-65477/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974338 | 384 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Is it medevac time?
From U.S. Coast Guard reports
Many trips go by without serious incident. However, when an event calls for professional medical attention, it may be in the skipper's hands to request a medical evacuation.
On a foggy July morning, the crew of a Maine-based 87-foot offshore lobster boat was preparing to set traps some 160 miles northeast of Massachusetts' Cape Cod.
Looking aft, the skipper noticed a crewman slowly making his way toward the hatch at the bottom of the house; he looked like he was in pain. The skipper checked the radar and the horizon for traffic; there was none, so he made his way down the ladder.
He found the crewman lying on deck in the companionway, wincing in pain. The crewman explained that a cable or line had fallen across his neck and that he heard a crack. The pain was getting worse, and the crewman said his toes were going numb. The skipper knew it could be a back or neck injury. By 10 a.m. he had contacted the Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia, via Inmarsat and requested an offshore medevac. Halifax immediately contacted the U.S. Coast Guard.
The skipper directed a deckhand to apply ice to the crewman's neck and advised Halifax that he was heading toward shore and was about a 24-hour steam from the nearest port. By 10:15 the Coast Guard established communications with the fishing vessel.
The Coast Guard contacted a flight surgeon because of the risks associated with hoisting. The Coast Guard began to relay questions about the crewman's condition, symptoms, and pain medications aboard the vessel.
At 11:10 the Coast Guard informed the skipper that a helicopter would be sent for the medevac. At 12:10 an HH-60 helicopter and an HU-25/Falcon jet were en route to the fishing vessel.
The skipper called the Coast Guard at 12:15 to give an updated position. The fishing vessel and rescue team continued to close the gap and to communicate every 30 minutes, discussing the vessel's position, the crewman's condition, on-scene weather and how the medevac would proceed.
The helicopter arrived at 1:55. By 2 p.m. the rescue swimmer and litter were on deck. Fifteen minutes later the crewman and swimmer were hoisted off the boat, and the helicopter was en route to Boston. The crewman arrived at the hospital at 3:35, in stable condition.
The crewman in this case was very fortunate to have an experienced skipper. Within minutes of the accident the skipper had made a request for a medevac, curtailed his fishing operation, headed toward port and started to treat the crewman's injury.
Here are a few pointers on how to prepare for a medevac:
• Instructions from the pilot may include the desired course and speed if the ship is underway, the rescue equipment to be used, whether they will send an air crew to your vessel, and what part of the vessel they will hoist to.
• Anyone on deck should wear a life jacket and high-visibility clothing.
• Lower and/or stow booms, rigging, flagstaffs, and antennas not required for communication; secure loose gear, hatches, and the like in the hoisting area.
• Switch off the radar once the helicopter is overhead.
• Allow the hoist wire to ground in the water or on deck before grabbing it. It can have a strong static charge.
• Do not secure or tie-off the hoist wire to the vessel.
• Do not shine a searchlight toward a helicopter at night; the pilots wear night vision goggles.
Keep your first aid and CPR skills current, and fish safe!
Callifornia crabbing: Here's a fun video shot on the decks of the Majestik while catching Dungeness crab off the coast of northern California.
Alaska fisherman and commercial fisheries activist Kevin Adams was elected chairman at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute board of directors meeting on May 9 in Anchorage.
The governor-appointed board consists of seven members: five seafood processors and two industry representatives actively engaged in commercial fishing. Adams was appointed to fill a harvester seat by Gov. Frank Murkowski in 2004.
With 38 years of fishing experience in Bristol Bay, Adams has long been an active member in the Alaska fishing industry, ASMI says. He has worked for both the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and the Bering Sea Fisherman's Association, and represents Alaska fishermen on numerous boards.
The Northeast Regional Planning Body, a group of state, tribal and federal representatives from New England who are working to implement the National Ocean Policy and address critical New England ocean issues, is holding a series of public meetings in May and June.
The meetings are being held to discuss draft regional ocean planning goals and associated potential actions. The planning body seeks input on these goals and actions. Additional information on the group's progress can be found here.
The meetings will also provide an opportunity to review draft maps and products from initial efforts to gather information on the natural resources and diverse uses of the ocean, including fishing, transportation, energy and infrastructure, aquaculture, and recreation. | <urn:uuid:dae7da88-a3f8-4974-a51c-8ddc0febac1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationalfisherman.com/national-fisherman-november-2010/170-2010-11-consequences | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960561 | 1,099 | 2.140625 | 2 |
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) intends to launch on May 16 a new Internet wargame, recruiting a community of more than 1,000 players to collaborate on solving real-world problems facing the Navy.Interesting.
Scheduled to run for three weeks, the Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) exercise will recruit online players from across the government to suggest ways of combating piracy off the coast of Somalia.
“MMOWGLI is an online game designed to find and collectively grow breakthrough ideas to some of the Navy's most complex problems--those 21st-century threats that demand new forms of collaboration and truly outlying ideas,” said Dr. Larry Schuette, ONR’s director of Innovation, whose office is managing the project.
The piracy scenario was chosen as a means to demonstrate the platform, but MMOWGLI itself can be applied to any scenario, officials said.
ONR intends to produce varying results from a diverse group of players drawn from the ranks of academia, defense, and government and nongovernment organizations. The plan is for MMOWGLI to identify solutions to difficult challenges by tapping into the intellectual capital of a broader community.
“We hope MMOWGLI will help us to understand what happens when your insights are combined with the observations and actions of another player,” Schuette added. “Will that fusion result in a game-changing idea or solution, or will the MMOWGLI platform teach us something about our traditional thought processes?”
For the pirate-specific trial, I wonder how many "successful" strategies will involve not letting the pirates get to sea with their weapons and ladders?How many will involve an invasion of Somalia or a long, slow wait for some sort of civilization to assert itself over that failed land? Is there a "patience" meter?
Will the game reward more "action" oriented strategies (chasing pirates) or more "static" strategies like blockading pirate ports of operation?
I wonder how the game deals with alleged "allies" who show up to wave their national flag, but who don't really do anything meaningful to address the pirate issue?
Kobayashi Maru, anyone? | <urn:uuid:d39ac227-59f3-4ac3-95ef-2c84655efd19> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eaglespeak.us/2011/05/online-wargame-as-piracy-fighting-guide.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00049-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933199 | 469 | 1.96875 | 2 |
Pilgrimage to the Heart of the Sacred
Pilgrimage is a life journey towards the heart of the Holy Mystery. Through these writings, and the Soul Work, one discovers what the wisdom of the ancients always knew…God is within us and we are within God.
Spiritual Leadership Course
The hardest path, journey or pilgrimage for a spiritual leader is not those steps taken outwards, but rather inwards. This course is adapted from Rev. Dr. Tyler Ragan’s book Pilgrimage to the Heart of the Sacred, the course itself is a 20 week self-discov
The Bard's Spirit: Shakespeare's Social Gospel
Only Ty Ragan could weave together the stories of Shakespeare, and the Bible, to bring together their full weight and meaning. Then to have us delve deeply into the meanings of not only Shakespeare, or the bible, but our own lives. For mired in these tale | <urn:uuid:4370a2e7-842c-4da2-ac37-50b91838a1ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tyragan.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/the-jesus-seminar-goes-to-hollywood/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932455 | 190 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Executive Order 2007-02S Under Executive Order 2007-005, all state agencies, boards and commissions were directed to conduct an energy audit for all owned and leased facilities by June 2007. Each entity covered by the order is required to reduce statewide energy use in their facilities by 5% during the next year, and 15% during the next four fiscal years based on the results of the audit. The order also contains provisions for reducing motor fuel use and creates the role of the Governor's Energy Adviser to coordinate state energy policy for state agencies, boards, and commissions. The order will remain in effect until it is rescinded or until Governor Strickland leaves office. On September 27, 2007, the Ohio School Facilities Commission (OSFC) passed Resolution #07-124, approving the incorporation of energy efficiency and sustainable design features into all future and some previously approved school projects. All K-12 public school projects approved by the OSFC are required to meet a minimum of LEED for Schools Silver certification, with strong encouragement to achieve the Gold level. There is additional emphasis on maximizing Energy & Atmosphere credits. The resolution directs OSFC to cover all LEED registration and certification fees and to provide a supplemental allowance to project budgets for the incorporation of sustainable, green strategies.
Changes to the Ohio Building Code are proposed by the Board of Building Standards. The Board's powers and duties include adopting rules governing the construction, repair, and rehabilitation of buildings in the state; certifying municipal, township, and county building departments to administer the code; and establishing minimum standards for construction materials. Thus, the Board is the primary state agency authorized to protect the public's safety and welfare in building design and construction. The Division of State Fire Marshal, also in the Ohio Department of Commerce, promulgates the fire code. Rules proposed by the Board are filed with the Secretary of State, the Legislative Service Commission, and a committee of the General Assembly known as the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review (JCARR) at least 60 days prior to adoption. The JCARR reviews the rules to ensure that they do not exceed the scope of the agency's statutory authority, do not conflict with another rule of the same or a different agency, and are consistent with the legislature's intent. If acceptable, the rules go to public hearing at a time and place set by the agency in a public notice. The public notice must be issued at least 30 days prior to the hearing and must include a synopsis of the proposed rules. The hearing must be held within the 13th and 50th day after initial filing with the appropriate state agencies. The agency may adopt the rules consistent with the synopsis 61 days after initial filing. If, as a result of the public hearing, substantive changes are made that are inconsistent with the synopsis of the proposed rules, the rules must be refiled and a new hearing must be scheduled. However, if substantive changes are made that are consistent with the synopsis, the rules must be refiled and then undergo a 30-day review before the board can adopt them. Following adoption, the Board files the adopted rules with the appropriate state agencies. The JCARR then has authority to review the adopted rules under the same criteria used with the rules as proposed.
Building officials whose building department has been certified by the Board of Building Standards enforce the provisions of the Ohio Building Code for their jurisdiction. Plans must be submitted for all buildings within the scope of the code, as adopted by the state and local government. The jurisdiction is required to review and approve the plans and to perform inspections to determine if the work performed conforms with the approved plans. One-, two-, and three-family dwellings are reviewed by building departments only when they also have responsibility for one-, two-, and three-family dwelling plan review.
Compliance is determined through plan review and inspection at the local level by the local certified building department. If there is no certified building department within a jurisdiction, the Ohio Department of Commerce Division of Industrial Compliance reviews and approves plans for commercial construction. One-, two-, and three-family dwelling plans are not reviewed for MEC compliance at the state level.
Prior to July 1, 1979, the rules of the Ohio Board of Building Standards were compiled in a document known as the Ohio Building Code. On October 20, 1978, the Board adopted a rule, effective July 1, 1979, repealing most of the existing Ohio Building Code and adopting by reference, with special Ohio modifications, the Ohio Basic Building Code/1978, Seventh Edition (OBBC) and the Ohio Basic Mechanical Code/1978, Third Edition. The Building Officials and Code Administrators (BOCA) International and Banks-Baldwin Law Publishing Company publish the Ohio codes. The resulting collection of model code sections and superseding Ohio provisions, together with the Council of American Building Officials (CABO) Model Energy Code (MEC) and the Ohio Plumbing Code (which was retained from the former OBBC and was based upon the 1995 International Plumbing Code) comprised the OBBC.
On April 21, 1995, Ohio adopted the 1993 MEC and the code version of ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1-1989. These codes went into effect July 1, 1995. Legislation (SB118 and MB 243) was proposed in 1996 to delete some provisions of the law. It proposed to eliminate the Board of Building Standards directive for the adoption of new energy standards when technical advances would make the current standards obsolete or inadequate. The act retained a provision to base the residential energy standards on HUD requirements (1993 MEC.) It also eliminated the criminal penalty for builders that do not comply with the energy code. The session recessed in June 1996 without acting on the bill. On March 1, 1998, the 1995 MEC was adopted and became effective.
Problems associated with implementing the residential provisions of the MEC were addressed. On June 27, 1997, a Budget Bill (HB 215) was signed and included a $300,000 study of the State Building Standards Law. The Board of Building Standards funded the study. The MEC was reviewed within the context of this study. The study defined how economics, enforcement, model code adoption, and the use of new materials impact safety, quality, and cost of construction. Five public forums were held in June 1998 to hear comments about the OBBC. Findings by the Department of Commerce were reported to the Governor and General Assembly in December 1998.
However, because the publishers of the updated codes have not met their publishing deadlines, the Board of Building Standards authorized the use of the 2002 OBC as an alternate compliance method until September 1, 2005. Because the OBC references the IECC, designs using the 2005 OBC needed to use the 2003 IECC, and designs using the 2002 OBC needed to use the 2000 IECC. Mixing of the codes was not allowed, and submitted documents needed to be clearly marked with the set of codes used. ASHRAE 90.1-2004 became effective Sept. 6, 2005.
On March 31, 2008, Ohio's Governor signed an Executive Order authorizing the Ohio Board of Building Standards to file four Emergency Rules that essentially rolled back the reference to the 2003 IECC, effective immediately. This change only applied to one-, two-, and three-family dwellings. All non-residential buildings would still be required to comply with either the 2006 IECC or the 2004 ASHRAE 90.1.
On January 1, 2009, the Ohio Board of Building Standards re-adopted the 2006 IECC and added an additional prescriptive option for demonstrating energy code compliance for one-two and three family dwellings. The new prescriptive table is found in Chapter 11 (section 1104) of the Residential Code of Ohio.
On March 7th, JCARR approved the adoption of the 2009 International Building Code which included references to the International Energy Conservation Code and ASHRAE 90.1-2007. Effective November 1, 2011 established by the Board of Building Standards. | <urn:uuid:43f90370-83a5-4cec-9cef-c8b538a0d014> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.energycodes.gov/print/650 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00062-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958913 | 1,626 | 1.804688 | 2 |
First things first: River of Doubt is absolutely riveting! But for me to tell you that, I had to be reminded to do so by sitting through two-plus soporific hours in a chilly theater last night watching (the usually enchanting) John Lithgow stumble and scream through a couple of decades of journalist Joseph Alsop’s life – Alsop’s grandmother, Corinne Roosevelt, was Teddy Roosevelt’s younger sister and appears sporadically throughout River. Then I opened an email this morning from a Smithsonian APA Program colleague about only reading fiction, so just to be contrary, here I am …
Teddy Roosevelt’s third bid for the presidency in 1912 was a spectacular failure. Having survived a sickly childhood by taking on impossible adventures out of sheer will, Roosevelt refused to quietly retire, and instead headed to South America to undertake what would be the greatest physical challenge of his life: to chart the unknown waters of what was then known as the Rio da Dúvida, or the River of Doubt, which winds through Brazil and eventually flows into the Amazon.
Former National Geographic magazine editor/writer Candice Millard tracks the grueling journey through journals, letters, and articles not only of the former President, but also of his tenacious co-participants, including Roosevelt’s son Kermit, Brazil’s most famous explorer and expedition co-commander Colonel Cândido Rondon, and legendary American naturalist and explorer George Cherrie. Before the expedition actually reaches the River (possible spoiler alert here), Roosevelt will have had to separate from the incompetent outfitter Anthony Fiala and the arrogant and racist Father John Augustine Zahm.
As much as the expedition’s human participants are the book’s heroes (and villains both), Millard’s most excellent adventures are enhanced by ever-so-graphic descriptions (or nightmares, if you will) of the flora and fauna throughout the uncharted territory (no spoilers here, ahem … except to mention that piranhas ain’t got nothin’ on candiru!).
With Paul Michael narrating, I found myself running the river trails with more than the usual alertness – hey, I’m in DC, I never know what sort of slimy surprise I might run into! Millard’s expert storytelling proves absolutely addictive – surely, the late President is shouting ‘bully!!’ for her debut effort from wherever his latest adventure might be. | <urn:uuid:944ddbc9-1653-4267-9891-28c4f50c061d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bookdragon.si.edu/tag/river-of-doubt/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00043-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940976 | 524 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Federal Ministry of the Environment
3- DAY TRAINING WORKSHOP ON CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION FOR SMALL SCALE FARMERS HELD 10th- 13th SEPTEMBER, 2012 AT IDYLL FOUNTAIN HOTEL, ABUJA
With support from Oxfam GB and its partners UNDP and the Federal Ministry of Environment-Climate Change Department; the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding Nigeria and Nigeria Conservation Foundation organized a 3-day Training of Trainers’ workshop on Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture. The training had in attendance small holder agro-producers, Agric extension officers and relevant non-governmental organizations in Nassarawa, Katsina and Plateau state.
The Women in Peacebuilding Program, WIPNET, of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, WANEP was initiated in 2001 with the broad goal to elevate women from their state of obscurity to the fore to enable them play key roles alongside men in building peace. This was based on the realization that ‘gender and peacebuilding’ did not adequately respond to the existing gap between men and women and that men and women cannot attain equal opportunities espoused in the gender equality definition if women are absent from the scene altogether.Read More ...
WANEP Conflict Prevention Program takes a holistic approach to addressing issues of conflict at different stages and levels. This includes works on: structural prevention of conflict targeted at building a culture of prevention, early prevention of conflict at the indication of a serious dispute, late prevention when serious armed conflicts appear imminent or have begun or post-conflict peace building designed to prevent a recurrence of armed conflict.Read More ...
|Narrative Report of Three-Day WIPNET Replication Training on the Strategic Reviewand Confidence Building Project for Women Leaders from Focal Communities Obom Itiat/New Bakassi in Cross River State - May 9th-14th, 2011|
|Activity Report of WIPNET Members in Akwa Ibom State A.K.A Iban Emem (Women of Peace)|
Activity Report of WIPNET Members in Akwa Ibom State A.K.A
Iban Emem (Women of Peace)
Advocacy Visits to Paramount Rulers of of Ikot Ekpene and Itu Local Government Areas.
The Women in Peacebuilding Program, WIPNET, of the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, WANEP was established in the year 2003 with the broad goal to elevate women from their state of obscurity to the fore to enable them play key roles alongside men in building peace. This was based on the realization that ‘gender and peacebuilding’ did not adequately respond to the existing gap between men and women and that men and women cannot attain equal opportunities espoused in the gender equality definition if women are absent from the scene altogether.
In line with WIPNET’s goal of building women’s capacity to play active and visible roles in peace-building in Nigeria, the current project “Sustaining Women Social Networking for Effective Participation in Peace Processes in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria” is geared towards training and mobilizing platform for women groups and relevant agencies for policy engagement and sustainable peacebuilding interventions; conflict prevention and peace advocacy in the states of the Niger Delta. It is a three year project that spans 2011-2013. Two communities were selected in each of the Niger Delta States with the Training of women Leaders otherwise referred as TOT and with the mandate to replicate these trainings to twenty five women in each community for replications and mentoring.
As a sequel to the replication trainings carried out in Ikot Ekpene and Itu Local Government Areas, the women leaders carried out advocacy visits to the paramount rulers of these Local Government Areas in order to facilitate women’s participation in peace processes and leadership at the community levels. The group met with His Royal Majesty (HRM) Augustine E.J. Assiak and His Royal Majesty (HRM) Edidem Edet Akpan Inyang and their council of chiefs to introduce WANEP/WIPNET to them in the communities and Akwa Ibom State at large.
The team leader of the group, Mrs Regina Fabaian, briefed the council members on the Vision, Mission and Objectives of WANEP, she also presented some WANEP/WIPNET Publications to the council members. They in turn expressed their joy at the women’s willingness to work with traditional institutions in fostering peace and development in the community.
The Iban Emem group which also comprised of Mrs Helen Amos, Evang Stella Umo, Mrs Rosemary Akpabio and the WIPNET Focal Person for the South South Zone Ms. Ann Uduka visited Ibiono Ibom NCWS to celebrate the 2012 International Women’s Day.
As measures of strengthening the association, members of Iban Emem (Women of Peace) in Akwa Ibom State have agreed to have a uniform, open a bank account and register as a cooperative society. The group is also planning for a peace march in a selected community on the International Peace Day slated for September 21, 2012. | <urn:uuid:5814ad0a-1cb1-4e73-b6c5-02c9f2b2bf95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wanepnigeria.org/index.php/component/jevents/day.listevents/2012/06/09/- | 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 | 0.934115 | 1,066 | 1.6875 | 2 |
“Conclusion,” Our Heritage: A Brief History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 145
Each of us has a place in Church history. Some members are born into families who for generations have embraced the gospel and nurtured their children in the ways of the Lord. Others are hearing the gospel for the first time and entering the waters of baptism, thereby making sacred covenants to do their part in building the kingdom of God. Many members live in areas where they are just beginning their era of Church history and are creating a heritage of faith for their children. Whatever our circumstances, we are each a vital part of the cause of building Zion and preparing for the second coming of the Savior. We are “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19).
Whether we are new members or old, we inherit a legacy of faith and sacrifice from those who have gone before us. We are also modern-day pioneers to our children and to those millions of our Heavenly Father’s children who have yet to hear and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ. We make our contributions in different ways throughout the world by faithfully carrying out the work of the Lord.
Fathers and mothers prayerfully train their children in principles of righteousness. Home and visiting teachers care for those in need. Families bid good-bye to missionaries who have chosen to devote years of their lives to carrying the gospel message to others. Selfless priesthood and auxiliary leaders answer calls to serve. Through countless hours of quiet service given in searching out the names of ancestors and performing sacred ordinances in the temple, blessings are extended to the living and the dead.
We are each helping to fulfill the destiny of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith. In 1842 he prophesied:
“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” 1
Although the Church remained very small during the Prophet Joseph Smith’s lifetime, he knew that it was the kingdom of God on earth with a destiny to fill the whole earth with the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have seen the dramatic growth of the Church in recent years. We are privileged to live at a time when we can offer our faith and sacrifices in helping to establish the kingdom of God, a kingdom that will stand forever.^ Back to top | <urn:uuid:87a16f5e-0f77-49b1-8b01-2ccd562224a4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=f803c106dac20110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=198bf4b13819d110VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950811 | 585 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The early episodes of Showtime’s new documentary television series, Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, revolve almost entirely around World War II. You will not mistake them for anything starring Tom Hanks or produced by Ken Burns. And that makes Stone proud.
A mention of Hanks, who portrayed ordinary GI Joes as quiet heroes in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, draws nothing but a derisive snort from Stone. And Burns’ mammoth PBS documentary The War sets him off like a firecracker.
“ The War was not real history at all,” Stone says. “It was simplistic. It makes the United States into the center of the world. It builds into the mythology we created during the war, the mythology that perverted history. It perpetuates the myth that dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was good. Dropping the atomic bomb was not good. It was a perversion of good.”
Stone’s approach to history has never been exactly conventional — in films like JFK and Nixon, he presented the assassination of President Kennedy as the work of a massive conspiracy by fascist oilmen and the president’s own government. So it’s hardly surprising that his 10-part series, which debuts at 8 p.m. Monday on Showtime, veers off the beaten historical path.
In Stone’s view of history, the Soviet Union, not the United States and Great Britain, saved the world from Hitler. President Truman used the atomic bomb not to end World War II but as blackmail in support of American empire. A lot of the people we think are heroes are really villains, and vice-versa.
Revisionist history? Sure, says Stone; the way Americans understand history is sorely in need of revision.
“We take on these myths, like who starts the Cold War,” he says. “I take this personally, because I grew up in that era. The Cold War, in the history we learned in school, was always started by the Russians. That’s just not true. ...
“[President] Eisenhower — we take on the myth of him being the father figure of the 1950s, Father Knows Best. He’s really a man who intervened everywhere in the Third World and caused a lot of trouble. Under Eisenhower, our nuclear capacity blossomed up into a megastate that he himself called the military-industrial complex.
“We take on Reagan. We talk about the 1980s, the resurgence of the right wing, which has never really ceased. It ends with what’s going right now, goes right up through November 2012. We do not regard Obama as a heroic reformer. In the companion book we prepared for the series, the chapter on Obama is titled Obama: Managing A Wounded Empire.”
There are no blockbuster factual revelations in Untold History, and Stone concedes the show’s title is probably a slight exaggeration.
“I would not call it heavy original scholarship,” he says. “There might be some documents here and there known only to a few. But it’s not breaking news. What it does is much deeper than news. It establishes patterns. World War II was not just the Greatest Generation and a war against the Nazis. We ask who was this war really being fought against, and by whom, and why?
“I never had this in school. I don’t think most kids do. My daughter is in a very good private school and she just gets the same old myth: We dropped the bomb to save American lives. ... And she’s 16, in a very good private school in Los Angeles. If you want get really bad, go into public schools. You know, we’d love for this to be shown in schools. You have to get the kids away from myths once in a while.” | <urn:uuid:22fd024a-360e-4349-aa6b-3803d6cb3573> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/11/3089310/oliver-stones-view-of-us-history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00073-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965024 | 819 | 1.976563 | 2 |
Millions of Egyptians are voting in the country's first democratic elections since the ouster of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak a year and a half ago, the Associated Press reports.
The two-day election pits leaders of the Mubarak era against Islamists, who have gained popularity since the 2011 revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood is the most popular of those groups, and already holds substantial power in the parliament. There are 50 million eligible voters.
While Mubarak was president, the autocratic leader ran unopposed in elections, giving voters the simple option of a yes-or-no ballot. The military, which took over after last year's revolution, has agreed to give up power by July 1. | <urn:uuid:694ee6d8-9c72-46a7-b098-826e54dd5a43> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/egypt-holds-first-free-election-20120523 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00070-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969847 | 139 | 1.890625 | 2 |
British physicist Stephen Hawking may claim that extra dimensions provide the key to understanding the "grand design" of the universe, but it's Chinese-American mathematician Shing-Tung Yau who actually figured out how those extra dimensions work.
In his new book, "The Shape of Inner Space," Yau and his co-author, Steve Nadis, touch upon the work that led to the discovery of theoretical "Calabi-Yau spaces" — and the cosmic implications of multidimensional geometry.
The typical representation of a Calabi-Yau space looks like twisted web of a crumpled-up piece of paper. There's something elegant about its look — in fact, Calabi-Yau paperweights were voted the most popular gewgaw for holiday giving in last year's Cosmic Log Geek Gift Guide contest. But these shapes aren't just abstract art: String theorists believe that every single point in our universe is actually a compactified Calabi-Yau space in six dimensions.
Why would they think that? It's because the best theory they've been able to come up with for the universe's grand design requires 10 dimensions to make all the mathematics come out right. Because we can only perceive three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, they suggest that the other six dimensions curled up into near-nothingness when our universe took shape.
Yau was the one who worked out the mathematics for the curled-up spaces. At first, he was trying to disprove a conjecture about complex geometry that was proposed by another mathematician named Eugenio Calabi. But then Yau came around to the view that Calabi was actually right, and in 1976 he published the proof that laid the groundwork for the concept of Calabi-Yau spaces. String theorists eventually seized upon the concept in their explanations for the universe's 10-dimensional structure. Later, the theorists threw in an extra dimension to make it 11, because that helped make sense out of five different subtheories. It's that 11-dimensional view of the universe, known as M-theory, that Hawking is touting as the groundwork for the grand design.
"The Shape of Inner Space" delves deeply into the math behind M-theory. It also traces Yau's life story, which started with his birth in China in 1949 and and Hong Kong and eventually brought him to Harvard. There are plenty of career highlights along the way: In 1982 Yau won the math world's most prestigious prize, the Fields Medal, for proving the Calabi conjecture. In 2006 he played a role in the tale of Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman's refusal to accept the Fields Medal for proving the famous Poincare conjecture. And Yau is also known for his high-profile criticism of the Chinese educational system and scientific establishment.
You can read all about that and more (including Yau's early yen for kung-fu novels) in an extended interview on Discover magazine's website. During my telephone chat with Yau this week, we focused more on the cosmic perspective. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:
Cosmic Log: Recently there's been a lot of talk about multiple dimensions. Stephen Hawking also recently wrote a book, I hear ... and he talked about how M-theory was really the secret to the "grand design." But in your book, you point out that the grand design really has a lot to do with geometry. So a lot of people wonder what's going on with multiple dimensions that we can't directly perceive. What difference does it make for our understanding of the universe?
Shing-Tung Yau: We physicists always try to bridge two important discoveries in physics together. One is general relativity, and the other is quantum mechanics. There were many efforts to discover such a unification field, [but none was successful] until string theory came along. So far that's the only consistent theory. In order to make quantum mechanics consistent with general relativity, there is no other choice but to make space-time be 10-dimensional. On the other hand, we do have to try to understand the space-time that we perceive. So we make six dimensions very, very tiny.
We still see the four-dimensional space-time that we experience in general physics, special relativity and all that. This six-dimensional space is what we call "internal space." There are a lot of models for this, but the most effective and useful model is Calabi-Yau space, where We can do all the calculations. And in fact, if we can choose the right Calabi-Yau space, we should be able to calculate the properties of the particles in the universe. But the trouble is, right now, we have many candidates for these calculations. One day, if we have the fundamental physics that can lead us to know how to calculate such geometry, and if we pick the right geometry, we will be able to calculate the masses of all the particles in the universe.
In any case, a great number of important discoveries have been made, in terms of philosophical principles as well as mathematics. So as a mathematician I'm very excited about this.
Q: Some people say that our universe could be just one among 10 to the 500th power possibilities. I guess that has led some people to say that the study of the structure of our universe can do nothing more than catalog one of those possibilities, and that there's no particular reason why the laws of physics work one way rather than another way. The only answer would be, "Well, this is just the way it is." Just as one cave is more habitable than another because of the way it's laid out, it just so happens that the geometry of our universe makes it more suitable for life, and there's no use trying to figure out why that is.
A: That's one point of view. I do not necessarily take that point of view. The fact that we can already see that there is a finite number of possibilities is very exciting. There could have been an infinite number of possibilities for space-time. But right now we know of only a finite number, and that should be considered a good starting point.
Other people have called this the "cosmic landscape." Maybe that's what they think, but that's not what I believe. There must be some more fundamental principle in order to choose the right geometry to tell what the universe is supposed to be.
Q: What do you think are the most promising experimental avenues for determining the geometry of the universe?
A: If supersymmetry can be found, that would be very exciting for string theory. The whole theory is based on this supersymmetry. It may be possible to find supersymmetric partners in the Large Hadron Collider. If supersymmetry exists, most people would start to think that string theory has a strong foundation.
First, the experimental data have to come out. Then it will be time to look for more concrete statements about the geometry, and hopefully based on that, we can try to make more concrete statements about the geometry of the universe. Right now we don't have the experimental data, so we cannot say much. On the other hand, we can do a lot of theoretical calculations, using computers, and the calculations come out to be very beautiful. They have led to many important discoveries in math itself.
Some of the discoveries in mathematics are extraordinary. The calculations have solved problems that we didn't know how to solve for 100 years.
Q: Do you have particular solutions in mind?
A: Mathematicians have been looking at polynomial equations. You want to know how many solutions are there. We didn't know how to do this for a long, long time. In some important cases, string theory has inspired us to find the right formula. The formula is extremely complicated. If we didn't know much about string theory, I believe that even now, we still would not be able to find such a formula. But based on the inspiration and the intuition from string theory, we found the formula, and we also proved it. We proved it independently of whether string theory itself is right or wrong.
Q: So string theory already has yielded important scientific advances, even if it hasn't unraveled the deepest mysteries yet.
A: That's right. Many, many important problems in mathematics and geometry were solved, and that's why many mathematicians are actually looking to string theory, because it provides intuitions that we did not have before.
Q: The mathematics of string theory is beautiful, but there's also a beauty to these depictions of Calabi-Yau spaces. How do you feel about those representations? Are they simplications of what you've done, or do you see them as tributes to what you've done?
A: Those pictures are grossly simplified versions of what we know. We cannot really draw a Calabi-Yau space, because it is a six-dimensional space. We use computers to make some slice of these Calabi-Yau spaces. What we see is far away from being the original picture of what we think in our heads, but it's useful, I think, even to look at the slice. In our original philosophical description for the space, we can do a huge amount of things — in algebra and number theory, many problems can go back to this space.
I constructed this space eight years before string theory became an important subject. I just thought that it was exotic and beautiful. I couldn't imagine that any other space could be more beautiful. We went on to many discoveries in math. And then, to my great surprise, the string theorists came along, and all these great people in string theory came to ask me how this space was constructed. I was really excited by the possibility that such spaces could be used to understand nature.
Q: In the past, you've talked a lot about China's status in science, math and technology, so I can't let you go without asking at least one question about global competitiveness and the worries that people have about American innovation.
A: There is absolutely no question that America will be the leader for a very long time. I think it would take a long time for any Chinese universities to be as good as our top universities. It may take 50 years, it may take a century. So America's science and technology is really far ahead of China's. I don't think Americans should worry about it. But on the other hand, of course, there are a lot of good Chinese scientists coming up, and they are very competitive. I wish that they would be as original as our American colleagues.
So it's very interesting to have a good group of Chinese scientists competing with us. They will make us better. I always feel it is important to have challenges — to have people competing with us. Otherwise we'll think that we are just great and will not evolve toward a better scientific world. So I don't think there'll be any negative effect from this competition. It will be positive — for both sides.
Update for 7 p.m. ET Oct. 3: Toward the latter part of the book, Yau and Nadis take the concept of a 10-dimensional (or 11-dimensional) universe into some speculative frontiers. For example, what would happen if those rolled-up dimensions were to "un-scrunch" themselves? That phenomenon, known as decompactification, would be a very bad thing for the universe as we know it. It's the kind of stuff that science-fiction nightmares are made of.
Where would you look for evidence of extra dimensions? On the widest scale, you might look for anomalous areas in the cosmic microwave background (the so-called "big bang afterglow") that could be seen as signs that our bubble universe has bumped into a neighboring bubble. You might also look for evidence of cosmic strings at work. Yau and Nadis say cosmic strings could be detected by instruments to come such as the Gaia satellite or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
On the smallest scale, you might look for supersymmetric particles in the Large Hadron Collider, as Yau said in the Q&A, or you could look for special types of particles leaking back and forth through extra dimensions. Kaluza-Klein particles would have unusual masses or spins due to their sojourn through the multidimensional realm.
More about extra dimensions:
- Physicists probe the fifth dimension
- The quest for a theory of everything
- Black strings: Black holes with extra dimensions
- Hey, it's only a string theory (scroll down to Oct. 25, 2005)
- One of the best-known popularizers of string theory and extra dimensions is Columbia physicist Brian Greene, whose book "The Elegant Universe" has been made into a public-TV documentary series. You can read my review of the documentary and my extended Q&A with Greene, but for the whole shebang, you simply have to watch the full three-hour series online at the PBS "Nova" website. If you're intrigued by unseen dimensions, this is must-see free TV. | <urn:uuid:b40681e7-259a-479a-bde2-e37dea79fae5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2010/10/01/5215017-scrunched-up-dimensions-untangled?threadId=1092183&commentId=18117687 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970841 | 2,705 | 3.3125 | 3 |
On a conference call with reporters just now, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse made official what I reported here on Friday: This week, he will introduce a bill that would ensure that millionaires paying lower tax rates than middle class taxpayers would henceforth pay a 30 percent tax rate.
Whitehouse clarified that the proposal — the first concrete legislative vehicle for implementing the “Buffett Rule” — will not tamper with existing tax rates. Instead, under the proposal, those making more than $1 million a year would be required to calculate their overall tax rate, taking into account all their income and the full sum of what they pay in taxes. If that amount adds up to less than 30 percent, they would be required to make up the difference.
Whitehouse boiled down the proposal into one line: “If your income is over 1 million, multiply it by 0.3, and if that number is bigger than you’d otherwise be paying, pay that.”
Interestingly, Whitehouse confirmed that the White House had been notified about what he’s up to, which suggests Obama advisers are happy to see this proposal proceeding, at a minimum for the purposes of discussion.
“We’ve reached out to the White House to let them know that we’re doing this,” Whitehouse said.
In his state of the union speech, Obama called for millionaires to be required to pay a tax rate of 30 percent, without offering specifics. Whitehouse’s proposal offers a specific way to make this happen, so it’ll be very interesting to see how it’s received by Obama, the Dem leadership in the Senate, and of course, Congressional Republicans.
Whitehouse said he’d already attracted two cosponsors for the bill and that more would be rolled out in coming days, so keep an eye on what kind of momentum builds behind it and what Senate Dem leaders say about it.
“People believe that the American tax system is not fair, and that the more lobbyists and the more wealth you have, the more goodies you get out of the tax system,” Whitehouse said. “This is a welcome proposal and I hope this will be supported across the board.”
Of course, it won’t be supported across the board; Senate Republicans are all but certain to oppose it. If Dems play their political cards right, they could force a high-profile vote on this proposal — one that Republicans will vote down en masse — even as the GOP appears set to pick a nominee who is worth $250 million and is personally benefitting to an enormous degree from the loophoples the proposal is designed to fix, on behalf of the middle class. | <urn:uuid:ab65b1cb-204d-42a3-8c98-02619d337919> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/introducing-the-pay-a-fair-share-act/2012/01/30/gIQAu8AacQ_blog.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00060-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961654 | 556 | 1.523438 | 2 |